Section 8 Rent Increase
I am looking at a section 8 occupied property(3bed 2.5 bath) with a lease expiring in March. The property values have increased greatly in this neighborhhood in the past 6 months and the current rent is $700. The tenant has indicated they would like to stay and the HA is paying the entire rent. I checked the HUD guidlines for max rent allowance and found 2bed is $748 & 3bed is $1044. Please reply with any experience(s) with raising section 8 rents and/or comments why this rent seems so low. I do not know how long the current renter has been in place. I do currently own a 2bed section 8 property with lease expiring in June which is currently rented at $650 which I would like to increase as well.
I have a Section 8 property in Long Beach, CA. The process to raise the rent is pretty easy - just write a letter stating that you want to raise the rent, how much you would like to raise it to, and send a copy of the letter to each the tenant and to the Housing Authority.
The problem is that you have to do this 90 days before it can take affect which means you will have to put the tenant on a month-to-month in March until you can reach the 90 day mark for the increase. Sounds like it should be no problem since your tenant wants to stay.
Now - the biggest problem is with the budget Congress has allocated to the HUD program - it has been slashed in the past year. As I am sure you know, HUD quit accepting new families for vouchers, and froze all rent increase for several months until they got the budget straightened out - in my area they laid off 40% of their staff to make the budget work.
According to the Housing Authority monthly newsletter, rents in my area increased 15% in the past year, so when I applied for increases, thats what I asked for. The contact in the rent increase department said I should "shoot for the moon" as far as price, and they would approve whatever they could.
I applied for rent increases on all of my units at the end of October and I still have not heard back about increases I was hoping would take effect February 1st. I am crossing my fingers.
Hope this helps.
In NJ Section8 - you just have to request an increase in writing! Last year, I was talking to the section 8 people about increasing the rent and I told her that I wanted to increase it from $700 to $730... She said to me "send me a written request for $800"... I said - OK... Now I am getting $800 for this place...
JUST ASK!
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