Property manager Connie Rosemond calls herself the “eyes and ears on the ground” for her out-of-state landlord clients.
Rosemond works behind double computer monitors in her home office in Maple Heights. She coordinates contractors making repairs. She manages landlords’ paperwork, including the property tax and utility statements she must submit to register rentals with the city.
She represents more than 50 rental properties in Cleveland, making her one of the city’s larger local agents in charge. That’s a person who has assumed legal responsibility for landlords’ rentals. Cleveland created the new role in a 2024 overhaul of housing laws known as Residents First.
Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has pledged to crack down on landlords who neglect necessary maintenance at their properties. Residents First places such local agents as Rosemond in the center of that work. She’s a new link in what City Hall hopes is a chain of accountability between landlords and housing laws.
If her clients ignore code violations, the city could charge Rosemond in Cleveland Housing Court.
“The only reason why I’m doing it — extremely reluctantly — is because the clients that I work with, I’ve been working with them for a while and they, we, have a mutual trust in each other,” she said in an interview.
What’s in Residents First? Read a summary of the law here.
Local agents are not just names on paper
Most local agents represent just one or two properties. But some have bigger portfolios ranging from a few dozen to more than 100. To hear what local agents thought of the city’s new rules, Signal Cleveland obtained City Hall’s list of agents through a public records request, contacted more than a dozen of the largest ones and interviewed a few of them.
So far, Cleveland has not charged a local agent for problems at a landlord’s property. But local agents were apprehensive about the legal liability they’re taking on.
“It’s not just signing my name to a piece of paper,” Rosemond said. “It might be as simple as doing that, but what I’m signing my name to is not some light thing.”
Others in the real estate business said the legal risk of becoming a local agent is too great. They won’t sign up to be local agents for the landlords they serve.
Cleveland Building and Housing Director Sally Martin O’Toole acknowledges that serving as a local agent can be risky, particularly if the landlord client isn’t reliable.
But that is part of the point. O’Toole argued that the local agent requirement will put pressure on unresponsive landlords. They’ll have to “step up” in order to convince a local agent to sign on with them, she said.
“I know that it seems terrifying for someone to sign up as a local agent,” she said, “and obviously vet very carefully who you’re working for. Is this a responsible landlord who is going to repair their property? Because I certainly wouldn’t want to be the local agent for someone who is a derelict property owner from out of state.”
Many small local agents and several big fish
There are big local agents and small local agents. Most agents — 74% of them — represent only one or two properties, according to data provided by the Cleveland Department of Building & Housing.
On the other side of the spectrum, just 11 agents are responsible for more than 100 properties each.
The view from one Cleveland-area local agent
Rosemond manages nearly 200 units of rental housing in the Cleveland area, she said. As a local agent, she represents landlords with mailing addresses in such states as California, North Carolina, New Jersey and Colorado, according to the city’s local agent list.
She has seen how long-distance real estate deals can go awry. Rosemond briefly managed properties for a few of the Swedish landlords who bought rental homes in Cleveland only to see their investments run onto rocky ground.
Rosemond said she agrees with City Hall that out-of-town investors should have representatives on the ground in Cleveland. But the way she described it, the city had “lumped” her clients into the same category as property owners who don’t care about keeping up their rentals.
“The majority of my clients are not very happy about this strong-arming here that the city is doing,” she said, “especially when you have properties that are properly being managed by a reputable real estate company.”
Ohio requires property managers to be licensed real estate brokers. But unlicensed property managers are “popping up all over the place,” according to Rosemond, who is a broker. If City Hall maintained a registry of property managers, she would gladly sign up, she said.
“I can’t tell you the number of clients that I have, that I’m getting, and it’s just like never-ending, of investor owners that have gotten screwed over by these management companies that don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”
Another point of contention for her are Residents First’s new paperwork requirements. The law requires landlords to be up to date on property taxes— or on a payment plan with the county — in order to register with the city. Rentals with four or more units can’t be in arrears on utilities, if the landlord is responsible for them.
Because of those rules, it now takes more time to apply for the city’s rental registry now, Rosemond said. But there’s a reason for those rules, according to O’Toole: to protect tenants from being displaced by a tax foreclosure.
“I also don’t want to say you’re in full compliance with our ordinance if you’re stiffing all of your utilities and then your tenants are subject to a shutoff,” O’Toole said.
If landlords are having difficulty getting their tax paperwork together, the city can help them do so, according to Scott Cahill, who works for the building department. Registering with the city costs $70 per unit.
Landlords around the U.S. and the world
Where do Cleveland’s landlords live? That can be a tough question to answer. Cleveland’s rental registry at least tells us where landlords get their mail.
Of the 10,314 properties with local agents, 60% of them have mailing addresses in Ohio. That doesn’t mean the landlord is based in the Buckeye State, however. It’s common for out-of-state companies to maintain a mailing address in-state.
The rest of the addresses on the list are spread around the country. About 1,241 Cleveland properties with local agents have mailing addresses in California. Next on the list are New York and Florida, with around 350 properties each.
Another 32 addresses on the list are outside the United States — in Canada, Israel, France, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.
Local agents still need landlords to pay for repairs
Although City Hall requires local agents to be legally responsible for rental properties, agents such as Andy Morris say it’s up to landlords to pay for repairs. Morris owns Realty Trust Services and is the local agent for about 45 properties in Cleveland.
He is willing to give Residents First a try, with reservations. Morris said he has seen local agent-style requirements in other cities, too. He didn’t think it was novel to require that landlords list a main point of contact, he said.
But the issue for Morris is that Cleveland’s law holds a local agent fully responsible for conditions at a property — even if the local agent doesn’t have full control of what happens at the rental. He can only make repairs if a landlord agrees to pay for them. Morris said that he usually asks landlords to give him “full ability” to work at a property.
“Most of these guys are not independently wealthy, and most of them don’t want another individual to have almost unlimited amount of money to, say, draw financially on their resources,” he said. “You get why someone might be a little worried that some other dude in another state, even if they’re licensed and all that, could just pull money out of their account.”
For real estate broker John Lynch, the local agent equation offers nothing but legal liability. He co-owns a Keller Williams real estate franchise with a property management arm. The former Cleveland City Council member said he refuses to sign on as a local agent.
“I have no guarantee from the owner of the property that they’re going to maintain it the way the city wants it, that they’ll correct the violations,” he said. “And if they don’t do it, I’m not going to assume the responsibility, legally or financially, to do that.”
