Letter from the Executive Director for December 2022: One Year of “Price Per Unit”

December marks one year since we increased our dues. Our new “price per unit” dues structure is succeeding, as we will report. In other news this month, our crash course reached a milestone. We released some new event infrastructure. And the affiliate service RentHelper finished comprehensive upgrades to payment plans.

We launched our new dues schedule on Dec. 29, 2021. Over the last year, membership has held steady at around 2,400 members. We’ve all pitched in extra to grow MassLandlords. This has been enormously appreciated and effective. We have used our added resources for several policy projects. We are sustaining our litigation against the Department of Housing and Community Development. We have prepared half a dozen bills for the 193rd legislative session, which starts in January. And we know what to do to oppose Boston rent control if and when it should be formally announced.

In November, our crash course taught its 500th graduate. This milestone represents an estimated 10,000 units now under better-prepared management. We’d like to thank attorneys Peter Vickery in Amherst and Adam Sherwin in Charlestown for teaching all of these owners and managers. Our course will continue to rotate through Boston, Springfield and virtual venues.

We have released a new event marketing tool so team members can generate event listings based on a selection of speakers, topics and other event details. This new tool will facilitate faster event listings, meaning we can set the schedule further in advance.

The affiliate service RentHelper released a comprehensive upgrade to its payment plans. This service now serves a record number of renters (more than 200). Many renters are cashflow challenged and yet succeed long-term with RentHelper’s weekly, biweekly and more flexible payment plans. We designed this service to work with renters who don’t have a bank account. This is also the only service with good and bad credit reporting. This service was spun out of MassLandlords in 2017.

Remember that we will be voting for our next director in December. Details about candidates will be released separately.

MassLandlords’ work benefits owners, managers and service providers of rental housing across the industry. Please join as a member, become a property rights supporter or increase your level of support.

Sincerely,

Douglas Quattrochi

Executive Director

MassLandlords, Inc.