Affordable Housing Solutions to Decide Between Buying or Renting in 2022

Buying a house vs. renting an apartment used to be a matter of priorities, budget, and aspirations. However, the pandemic struck, and we now live in the "new normal."

Home prices soared to new highs this summer due to historically low home availability, cheap loan rates, and a competitive real estate market. The odds are seen against buyers, not sellers. And the sweltering housing market shows no signs of abating.

 

So, renting, rather than purchasing, HUD training can help you save money, boost your chances of getting the property you desire in the future, and avoid a stressful purchase process.

 

Choosing between buying a house and renting an apartment can put you in a dilemma. However, for the time being, there are some significant benefits to renting.

 

Home Prices Have Skyrocketed

Owning a property in the United States has never been more expensive than it is now. The median existing-home price accelerated to $363,300 in June 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors [1]. This is a new high. Year-to-year gain indicates that these figures won't fall anytime soon.  

 

Apartment Prices Are Stable

During the epidemic, the average rent price increased as well, albeit not as dramatically. Between June 2020 and June 2021, the cost of a one-bedroom apartment climbed by 4.63 percent nationally [2]. During the same time, the rental price of a two-bedroom apartment was higher by 3.43 percent.

According to the National Association of Realtors, sales of existing single-family homes, condominiums, and townhomes gained 1.4 percent between May and June 2021. The month of June saw a 22.9 percent increase in sales over the previous year [3].

 

Housing Inventory will be Limited If you don't have the expendable income, buying a house can be arduous. This is largely due to a housing supply scarcity across the nation According to Altos Research, there was a reduction in properties for sale in February 2021 as there were a year earlier [4]. This includes townhouses, condos and single-family residences

 

Older homeowners who were at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 stayed in their homes longer, restricting turnover. In such a competitive market, some homeowners were unable to obtain new housing solutions, while others clung to their present home's low mortgage during a period of financial uncertainty. During the epidemic, more boomers invited their college-aged and adult children back into the family home.

 

Many cities and areas are experiencing an increase in apartment inventory. Individuals are moving out of apartment apartments as more people purchase homes. This implies that renters, particularly in certain cities and localities, have more options.

Many downtown districts became quiet as stay-at-home orders closed offices and non-essential enterprises. Renters didn't need to be close to work any longer, and they couldn't take advantage of the restaurants and entertainment that dense urban cores normally provide. Extra space (both indoors and out) became a valuable commodity as people worked, studied, and socialized at home.

 

The Bottom Line

Renting vs. buying a property is a personal choice that is based on your objectives, financial constraints, and priorities. However, in 2022, due to a highly competitive and expensive housing market, renting offers many distinct advantages. all you need to make sure is to look for Innovative affordable housing solutions before you take the plunge. 

Unfolding Fair Housing: Equal Access For LGBTQ+

LGBTQ+ adolescents account for up to 40% of the homeless youth population, which is estimated to be somewhere between 400,000 and 2.8 million per year [1]. Part of the HUD's movement is to provide affordable housing with equal opportunity to become a tenant. However, not many citizens are aware of the rules and regulations, which can deter them from applying. As a property manager, it's important to gain knowledge in all HUD programs to provide safe and secure housing.  In this blog post, we will look into the measures taken to overcome this predicament, which further makes it indispensable to look for affordable housing webinars.

 

What is the  2012 Equal Access Rule?  

HUD began adopting administrative actions to ensure individuals in the LGBTQ+ community have equitable access to HUD-assisted housing, beginning with the Obama administration. On February 3, 2012, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a final rule called "Equal Access to Housing in HUD Programs Regardless of Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity," which refrains asking people about their sexual orientation or gender identity when determining eligibility or making housing available. Individuals, on the other hand, can choose to self-identify their sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

The "Equal Access Rule" enabled questions concerning an applicant's or occupant's sex to be asked for the restricted purpose of deciding placement in temporary, emergency shelters with shared bedrooms or bathrooms, or establishing the number of bedrooms a household may be entitled to. Without regard to actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status, the rule defines "family" to include single people or groups of people who live together, including the elderly, disabled, and those with or without children.

 

Tracing the Changes in Equal Access Rule 

On September 21, 2016, HUD issued a final rule titled "Equal Access in Community Planning and Development Programs based on an Individual's Gender Identity," which required housing, facilities, and services funded through the CPD program to establish, amend, or maintain program admissions, occupancy, and operating policies and procedures to ensure equal access to program, benefits, and services.

 

HUD Actions to Combat Gender-Based Identity and Sexual Orientation Discrimination

The HUD stated on February 11, 2021 that it will administer and enforce a fair housing rule prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The affordable housing management training began enforcing the policy outlined in Executive Order 138988 on "Preventing and Combating Discrimination based on Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation," according to a memo dated February 4, 2021.

 

The Federal Fair Housing Act forbids discrimination in housing based on gender identification. Nearly all housing and housing-related services, including shelter programs, are covered by the Fair Housing Act. A housing or shelter provider is prohibited from denying entry, imposing alternative terms or conditions, or harassing a person because they are transgender or because of their actual or perceived gender identity under the Act. Providers must record explicit standards in personnel handbooks and other policy documents, as well as publicly publish rules where residents, volunteers, visitors, and staff can see them, to create an -inclusive environments.

Unfolding The Best Practices for Managing Your Housing Waiting List

A waiting list is a valuable item in the audit-preparation toolkit of a public housing authority. As a result, regardless of geographic location, effective administration of housing wait lists remains a basic capability of PHAs. Maintaining compliance in this area ensures clean audits and lowers the chances of a negative fair housing claim. Overall, following HUD-established best practices for managing wait list openings, ensuring equal access, choosing applicants, and documenting these actions is critical. Our HUD training workshop can impart a better understanding of how to manage your waiting list. 

Prepare and Experience the Best Affordable Housing Solutions 

Preparing internally for a wait list opening is a fantastic method to start or update your policy. If you haven't opened your waitlist in years, you may notice an influx of candidates when you do. Worried that your organization will take too long to process your waiting list? Consider using a lottery technique to distribute waiting list spots to a set number of candidates who are picked at random.

You should aggressively market the opening to ensure equal housing and equitable notice. As a result, you'll be able to contact as many eligible families as possible, including those who aren't likely to apply on their own. Begin by determining the specific needs of your local housing market. You will be able to target your outreach efforts more effectively if you go through this procedure from the beginning.

Distribute your advertisements in as many languages as possible to reach a targeted audience. Keep meticulous records of your efforts here as proof of your organization's commitment to fair housing compliance. Also, remember to review your waiting list regularly. Examine your waiting list: Does it appropriately reflect the goals of your housing choice voucher program? If this isn't the case, it's time to rethink your outreach strategy.

Purge Your Waiting List 

If your waitlists are short or leasing is scheduled within a year, you may not need to go through the purging procedure if you work for a smaller housing authority. Regardless of the size of your authority, it's a good idea to follow this procedure. This will allow you to keep track of whether applicants have had significant life changes, such as changes in welfare benefits, family composition, or income.

If you do decide to purge, send a letter to everyone on your waiting list asking if they want to be removed, or set up an online system where applicants must log in regularly to be on the list. Again, you want to make sure you comply with fair housing laws by accommodating people on the list who can't answer your request, such as a disabled applicant. You should put the family back on the list as a reasonable concession in this circumstance. So, you can look for affordable housing solutions. 

Guidance Book or HUD Training Workshop 

The busy schedules of people have led them to look for workshops to confirm that they are following both HUD and local rules for selection to manage their housing wait list effectively. As a best practice, organize your list such that it's simple to figure out who should be chosen next for a specific program. At the very least, your list must include the applicant's name, application date and time, geographical preferences, household size, and racial or ethnic identification.

You must preserve applicants' records for three years after they are removed or choose to withdraw from your waiting list, and even longer if they become a legal resident, according to HUD standards. So, to get the best affordable housing solutions, you should look for the best workshops to gain useful insights. 

Related Posts-

https://trainingprogramforhousing.wordpress.com/2021/11/15/importance-of-housing-management-training-for-property-managers/

https://e3housingsolutions.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-do-housing-webinars-work.html

Adding Webinars and HUD Training for New Property Managers

 As businesses are figuring out operations during a pandemic, budget constraints can be a major obstacle. In most cases, training programs are often overlooked. This will lead to managers trying to achieve more with less resources to rely on. However, you don't want to deny the fact that the need to continue learning, adding value, and improving the skills of property managers is becoming even more critical.

Both small and big housing enterprises are recognizing the benefits of housing training webinars. To address the challenges HUD managers and agents face, they are leveraging webinars into their list of training options as a low-cost alternative to get access to webinars and training materials when they want or need it.

However, many don't understand the shift to housing training webinars. The reason behind the switch is the update the learning and development strategy. Rather than holding traditional face-to-face training workshops, webinars are particularly well suited for educating and engaging a large group remotely. They are professional, yet they allow you to be creative with the sessions. The best part is that E3 Housing Solutions offers webinars with an annual subscription that features free access to HUD training courses for different stages of employee training.

Benefits of Housing Training Webinars

Still not sure how HUD training webinars can help your business in Los Angeles? Still on the fence about creating your own webinars? Listed below are a few of the benefits that will help guide your decision to invest in training webinars:

 

1. Insightful Information at Your Convenience: It gives participants the flexibility of learning from the webinars while they can access the e-resources anywhere on their own scheduled time. However, to build authority, you need to ensure that you get in touch with specialists to create a roadmap strategy as well as provide attendees with insightful information. This way, you can solve internal challenges and area for growth your property managers may face. Note that, to be ahead of your competitors, you will need to deliver webinars consistently and develop useful content your agents can rely on.

 

2. Deliver Relevant Training: E3 Housing Solutions is fortunate enough to work with the most esteemed industry experts, leading the consultations and providing participants with knowledge on a specific topic they have been striving for. In fact, during live webinars, experts engage the audience using videos, slides, and holding interactive sessions such as Q&As, polls, and surveys. All in all, the webinar training setup allows agents and managers to have their concerns addressed in a personal and interactive manner!

 

3. Set Standards for New Managers: Here, you can convey what you expect and how each process works like filling vacancies or checking for third-party certification. This can be great for the continuation of your organization's desired culture. Also, it is important to set the tone right from the start. To simply put, using webinars for training housing managers is an exceptional way to set the standard. Additionally, these are designed to deliver information in an optimal time frame, although you need to make sure you connect with the experts in the field to deliver the best.

An Efficient way to Increase Productivity: Any housing organization that is serious about surviving in today's cut-throat HUD environment needs to be compliant as well as generate a continuous stream of happy tenants. But how does it relate to webinars? Hosting HUD training in Los Angeles by housing organizations allows you to train many attendees and all are prepared to follow the same processes. Furthermore, as you continue to demonstrate your skills, knowledge, and expertise through the insights offered in the webinars, the attendees learn a lot and their skills tend to grow exponentially.

How do Housing Webinars Work? A Comprehensive Guide

It has never been so easy to provide training to property managers as it is today. There are so many channels from onsite training to online webinars, that organizations can opt to set up a streamlined method and offer easily accessible training materials to see their plans through and achieve their goals.

Looking for one solution that educates, engages, and trains your property managers? The answer is opting for Webinars. Housing webinars are an essential tool that organizations and landlords can use for onboarding and ongoing training. Often housing-related, these sessions can be used to share knowledge, ideas, and updates on HUD with people around your team.

E3 Housing Solutions is available to help your team with HUD learning needs, through our structured and well-designed online webinar workshops to connect and engage with the audience. Our expert trainers come equipped with an agenda and create a dynamic space where the main aspects can get through to participants of webinars in an efficient way. You must carefully weigh your objectives and incorporate them into every aspect of the webinar training process because all of these aspects are crucial for strategic training courses.

Let's dive right in to learn more about this versatile form of teaching and training!

Apart from the teaching, instructive and theoretical, in webinar training, participants are encouraged to ask questions, take surveys and interact with the trainer or indulge in a practical section that answers most of their queries. Webinars are versatile because they are:

1. Held live
2. Pre-recorded
3. Customized
4. Current

It is an excellent way to:

1. Educate teams on the new HUD rules and regulations.
2. Explain how the changes can impact the internal teams and organization.
3. Share essential information on the tenant onboarding process to make them familiar with the company's processes.
4. Provide ongoing training and access to training materials to existing employees.

 How do Housing Webinars Work?

A lot is going on behind the scenes even when preparing the most basic webinars.  When it comes to online HUD training courses, the team at E3 Housing Solutions have the best talents in the business to make the experience seamless for your organization.

Housing webinars allow the trainers to share documents of all kinds including, but not limited to, video sessions and documents with the attendees. All in all, this allows a small group of property managers to meet online and collaborate in real-time. To add, great webinar presentations take more than a well-uploaded presentation deck, it involves:

●     The trainer does all the behind-the-scenes work to provide specialized assistance and ensure that the webinar is nothing short of success.

●     The trainer navigates the participants through the webinars and helps them with the complexity of housing webinars with ease.

Most often, these guidelines are placed to increase attendee engagement. Information retention increases when watchers have something interesting to do. Be it a Q&A session or interactive tools like surveys and polls. However, interaction and engagement are not where it ends. There is more to it to make it successful.

The trainer needs to take a full picture into account to deliver new HUD owners and agents with the right topics and material that will serve their needs. Lastly, webinars should be designed such that they are easily repurposed as on-demand webinars and accessed as and when required. Imagine hosting a webinar once, getting an annual subscription, and using the same content without investing more money into training.

Housing Consulting is More than Giving Advice

Differences in productivity of property managers? Especially, in large corporations and even for independent property owners, productivity is often attributed to the quality and variations of their management practices. While the phenomenon of property management can be complex and difficult to measure, recent research has focused on practices like housing consulting services online.

The forces driving change are numerous and can vary. For instance, disruptive technology, changes in business models, updates in HUD rules and regulations, and the pressures exerted by intense global competition are transforming the rental marketplace.

The Challenges Faced by Property Manager

• Unpredictability in the housing industry: With the whole rental landscape rapidly evolving, and new business models popping up more frequently, there can be a lot of confusion among property managers.
• Changes in tenant requirements: Some property managers feel unprepared to adapt to these changes since they’re not well-versed in the processes.
• With the complexity in processes like quality control audits and screening tenants, property managers feel an unrelenting pressure to keep up with the constant change.

There are two primary ways organizations can encourage their property managers to acquire new skills, 1) aiding property managers with onsite training services from housing experts, 2) hiring consulting services for one-on-one support from an affordable housing expert. To get the best results, most firms use both approaches to stay relevant in the highly competitive market.

Housing Consulting Services Online: Why do you need it?

Most businesses think they need consulting when they implement a large-scale change management initiative where there is a lack of know-how among the employees to develop and implement a change. And this stands true for the housing sector. Hiring an expert with years of practical working experience can not only help firms reach their desired outcomes faster but can limit the risk associated with certain processes.

In order to achieve this, an appropriate process must be carried out to determine subsequent actions. For instance, quality control audits are carried out by experts to ensure your files and documents are the best they can be. Here is how the process is carried out:

1. The first approach in the process is to collect all the necessary data of the organization. The objective here is to determine the loopholes and problems in the process.
2. Next, the problems and your set objective are to be carried out in more depth to rectify the underlying issues.
3. The action is taken to lead the company to improve. Once approved by the client, the necessary quality control audits are carried out.
4. Guided by the expert team, action is taken on the proposals, and solutions are carried out to overcome the challenges your property managers face daily.

The Importance of Implementing Housing Consulting Services Online:

1. Efficient change management: Change is often the most difficult to tackle internally by the teams. However, with strategic planning it would be easy for the company to achieve desired goals in short. Planning of the processes starts at the top but is intertwined all the way down to where change occurs.
2. With the shift in priorities, there is an improvement in the business process: Consulting specialists help to improve organizations performance by shifting priorities as per requirements. Moreover, hiring an outside party for the same helps foster that adaptability. For instance, along with the processes the consultants will help property managers identify their own areas of improvement.

For new HUD owners & Agents: We cannot deny the fact that to overcome challenges housing organizations need specialized assistance. A specialized advisor will be able to pinpoint exactly what is holding an organization back, whether that be workflow process or organization-wide pitfalls, all the aspects come from a place that lacks bias and is tailored to ensure that your project is nothing short of success.

The Importance of Onsite Training Workshops for Property Managers

Training workshops, especially for the affordable housing industry aren't one-size-fits-all. When it comes to building a perfect training program for housing, there isn't one simple answer but there are few elements that can consistently help employees in different situations and stay relevant to the trends and upgrades.

It goes without saying, better training leads to better processes and better work. In today's evolving and ever-changing marketplace of real estate, the importance of onsite training has never been greater. It is important to keep your organization competitive. Most importantly, whether you hire a fresher property manager or experienced, they tend to have weaknesses or gaps in their skills or specialists in some fields. In some cases, much of the process that goes in your organization is likely to fall outside of the training they already had.

One of the best ways to enhance knowledge and skills is through training. It enables organizations or independent property owners to strengthen their skills as well as build up knowledge where it is lacking, all at one place with high-quality and comprehensive employee training development. At E3 Housing Solutions, their specialized trainers work closely with your property managers to ensure they stay compliant with state and federal regulations through those webinars and onsite training programs.

Checklist to Develop a Successful Training Program for Property Managers

1. Assessing learning needs throughout the company
2. Finding a customizable and effective training program with an experienced team
3. Aligning training with company objectives
4. Modern, relevant, and easily accessible learning content
5. Onsite training equals learning from real-time situations and creative training initiatives
6. Ongoing learning and simplified HUD training with the convenience of access to online training

Many real-estate organizations, especially linked with affordable housing, spend thousands of dollars each year on training their property managers only to know that they are not applying any new concepts learned or processes that can help streamline screening and maintenance of the property. For deep understanding, a series of practical learning is importantto support a core concept or skill.

Further more, the implementation phase is where the training program for housing comes to life. Organizations need to decide between online and onsite training as well as employee engagement, which is only possible with thorough planning of the training topics and deciding on the resources like webinars, online documents, and recent news on HUD beforehand. Only planning a simple training program is not enough. The entire program should be evaluated continuously to determine if it was successful and met the company objectives.

Why do housing organizations need to initiate employee training?

Ongoing training will:

1. Enable your property management team to respond and adapt to changes quickly that can otherwise impact their performance. These improvements will positively affect the productivity of property managers, which will ultimately help your organization to increase their profit and efficiency.
2. With increased diversity in the processes, they can gain expertise in sectors they never learned about. Moreover, training programs also prepare employees who want to move into higher roles and take on more responsibilities in the organization.
3. Onsite training workshop is one of the significant ways through which the performance of groups and individuals is improved within an organization. A well-planned and organized training program ensures that the property managers have a deeper understanding of their role. With continued teaching, that is enhancing their skills and abilities, they will not just become better at management and maintenance, but they will also feel more productive.
4. The consistent learning that training programs offer is relevant to the company's basic policies and procedures. Property managers become aware of the expectations and procedures within the affordable housing and act accordingly on the safety, maintenance, discrimination, and administrative tasks.
5. Most professionals in the housing sector confront some disadvantages in their workplace skills. Training programs help to reinforce their skills and act as an impetus for improvement.