I want to Join a Landlord Association in Massachusetts, but Which One?

If you're a landlord in Massachusetts, your choices for talking to other landlords are staggering. You could find any number of groups with any number of names:  rental housing association, landlord association, landlord club, landlord network, apartment owners association, landlord organization, property owners association, real estate investors association... the list goes on and on!

I've seen them all.  Here's my point of view.

Types of Landlord Associations

I think all these varieties boil down to three main formats:

• Newsletter groups
• Meeting groups
• Sales groups

Newsletter Groups

These groups send you a newsletter and focus on public policy advocacy as their primary efforts. They may hold a meeting once a year.  In this category I include the Small Property Owners Association and the Massachusetts Rental Housing Association.

The Small Property Owners Association (pronounced "SPO-uh") is based in Cambridge and well situated to influence legislation written on Beacon Hill.  The Massachusetts Rental Housing Association is based in Waltham and has the same basic aim.

Issues that are "hot" right now are "rent escrowing" and licensing/inspections.  "Rent escrowing" would require a tenant to pay rent to an escrow account during a legal dispute.  "Licensing" would require landlords in certain jurisdictions (e.g., Boston) to pass a state or municipality-administered review before an apartment could be legally rented.

You can't join the MRHA directly, you have to join a local meeting group.  You can join SPOA directly.

One of the things we'd like to do with MassLandlords.net is coordinate public policy advocacy.  In the past SPOA and MRHA have supported their own versions of essentially the same bills.  We've made little progress as an industry when we're divided like that.

Sample of this month's MRHA newsletter

Meeting Groups

This would seem to be the largest category.  These groups have a meeting more or less every month, usually with less activity during the summer.  The focus of these groups is on in-person networking and education, although oftentimes networking is the primary result.  It's difficult to arrange consistently new and informative educational meetings month after month, year after year.  Many of these groups use their own members to give presentations (e.g., have the association's attorney speak about landlord tenant law).

You can join these groups directly, on their own sites.  We're working to pull these groups under the MassLandlords.net umbrella so that you can join here and be assured consistently high quality digital services.

Many of these groups have established memberships in the 50 to 200 people range.  Some of these members have been with the organization for 30+ years.  So you know these groups will continue to operate for a long time to come.

There are also some meetups, almost entirely in the Boston area, focused on education and networking, perhaps with more focus on real estate investments broadly.  The meetups include "fix and flip" type investors and aren't focused on rental operations per se.

A picture from an in-person meeting, where landlords are sharing local news and tips.

Sales Groups

Anything that sounds like REIA (some pronounce it "REE-uh") most likely fits into the "sales" model.  These "real estate investor associations" usually bring in blockbuster speakers from national tours.  It sounds great, until you realize they're trying to sell you on their expensive coursework and training materials.

You can make a lot of valuable connections by joining a REIA, and maybe even have some fun, but you may find you'll hop in and hop out again.

A screenshot from the Meetup.com page for Destiny REIA, advertising a "famous wealth-building game".

Can I Join Another Landlord Association and Still Get Access to MassLandlords.net?

Maybe.  We're working with the various groups in the state to arrange for their members to get access to our forms, videos, spreadsheets, etc.  If you join one of those other groups, you can ask their "board of directors" (or other management) to have their group partner with us.  Or if you join us, you can get access to all of our resources now, and when an in-person group near your zip code opens up to MassLandlords.net members, we'll let you know!