Rental Inspections Challenged in Court

The Minnesota Supreme court overturned a lower court ruling this week that could hurt the many cities that are now requiring rental inspections. The case involves a Red Wing city ordinance that requires that all rental properties have on-site inspections performed by the city. Any landlord that was unwilling to allow the inspection was issued an adminstrative warrant (like a fine).

According to the Court’s decision, the law as overreaching. It could be used to violate residential privacy rights and “could become the tool of choice for governments to enter people’e homes”. The supreme court remanded the case to the court of appeals for further deliberation.

The lawsuit was brought by the Institute for Justice. Here is the all the details.

0 comments

Add your comment

Nickname:

E-mail:

Website:

Comment:

Anti-Spam:

What is the sum of four + ten ?

Other articlesgo to homepage

	PO Boxes & Landlords(1) I am not sure where this came from or who starting teaching it. I have heard many old-school landlords say that they use a PO Box for their rent checks. I guess the theory was that you don’t want your tenants to know where you live. I suppose in case of a zombie apocalypse that would be [...]

	Minneapolis Occupancy Limits(0) For as long as I have owned properties in Minneapolis, I have always been confused by the occupancy limits per unit. The official language of the housing rules and standards for occupancy is: The maximum occupancy for a dwelling unit located in in these zoning districts [R1, R1A, R2, R2B, R3] is one (1) family plus [...]

	Burnin’ Down the House(3) So this is a new one for me. In the last 30 days, two different customers lost their rental properties to house fires! I swear I had nothing to do with it. One happened because of faulty wiring in the attic which caught fire. I passerby saw the smoke and called the fire department. No one [...]

	IRS Increasing Audits of Rental Property Owners(1) The IRS has just agreed with a study that says that they should be doing more audits of rental property owners. The study believes that many owners will under report their income on their taxes. In one part of the study it showed that in 2001, almost $12.4 billion was misreported to the IRS. Read [...]

	Artistic Townhome(0) These days, probably 90% of the homes that I go into are vacant and foreclosures. As you can imagine, over the last 3-4 years in this foreclosure market, I have seen just about everything. From a frozen water bed to a house that maybe could be on an episode of hoarders. Surprisingly, these houses are not [...]