Town officials urge restraint to Ocean City landlords

After tensions between residents and landlords threatened to boil over last summer, Ocean City officials declined to toughen regulations on short-term rentals.

Still, things will be different this summer. The first tangible evidence came Tuesday as town officials hosted a three-hour workshop with about 75 landlords, real estate agents and other representatives of the resort's lucrative lodging industry.

"A property owner does have a right to rent their property, but they do have responsibility," Blaine Smith, the assistant director of planning, told the gathering in a conference room at the Roland E. Powell Convention Center.

Last year, town leaders vowed to step up enforcement of building, police and fire codes in response to concerns raised by scores of residents at a public meeting last August. The first step: Bringing property owners up to speed on the rules they — and their tenants — have to follow.

Aaron Evans, who owns five properties consisting of 20 rental units, said he appreciated the opportunity to learn about the town's expectations. Town authorities are just trying to make the best of a difficult situation, he added.

"It's hard to find a balance between landlords and residents," Evans said.

The controversy over weekly rentals grew out of neighbors' ire over a home on Teal Drive that was advertised as being available to 17 people. Town rules limit occupancy to no more than four unrelated people.

That landlord was unaware of the codes at the time but has begun complying with them, Smith said. With 17,000 properties registered as rentals, however, Ocean City has an enormous task of getting other offenders to follow suit and only a small staff to do it with.

"You wouldn't believe how many phone calls we get and how that translates into more paperwork, more phone calls, more paperwork, more phone calls," said Kevin Brown, the town's chief building official.

On Teal Drive alone, six of the 17 homes are rentals, and several are leasing to too many people at once, said Jerry McAllister, who lives on the Mallard Island street. He can tell by viewing rental ads and counting the crush of people coming and going, many of them on Friday-Sunday stays, he said.

"We bought to be in a quiet, reserved community, and we're ending up with people all down for these mini-weeks," McAllister said in the hallway outside the workshop.

He has called authorities to complain, but it does little good. Most of the problems happen on the weekend. Police will come out and quell noise issues, but building officials aren't available to inspect the offending home until the following Monday. By then, McAllister said, there's nothing left to investigate because the tenants are gone.

"It's easier to address now" before the summer tourism season begins and problems begin cropping up, Councilman Wayne Hartman said. "This isn't just about enforcement. It's about how we can help you."

But property owners must navigate a maze of sometimes-conflicting housing codes to get that help.

For example, while the town puts a lid on more than four unrelated people staying in a home, state fire codes allow a family plus five "outsiders" to stay in the building. A group such as a bachelors party can constitute a "family" because its members are "closely familiar" with each other, officials say.

Authorities said property owners can help themselves in several ways. For one, they should put penalties in their leases for police-documented noise violations. They also should take pictures or otherwise document the existence of smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors before tenants move in to prove, if necessary, a future tampering charge.

But some regulations don't sit well with some industry representatives.

People aren't allowed to sleep in fold-out beds or sofas because living rooms aren't equipped with the proper smoke alarms and the beds might block the path of people trying to escape a fire, officials said.

"I would bet 90 percent of condos in Ocean City have sleep sofas," said Ed Balcerzak, a real estate agent and owner of several rental properties. "A lot of this for years has been overlooked, but now it's getting scrutinized."

It's important to keep Ocean City's property issues in perspective, Sgt. Mark Paddack of the town's police department reminded the crowd.

"In terms of crime in Ocean City, if you think of noise on the same level with murder, rape, arson — no," he said. Extending his left hand at waist level, Paddack added: "It's somewhere down here."

He and his fellow officers, therefore, must strike the right tone between keeping the peace and allowing the vibrant strip of a town to maintain its resort atmosphere.

"This town is noisy," Paddack acknowledged. "That's why I live in a quieter neighborhood up north."

jcox6@dmg.gannett.com

410-845-4630

On Twitter @Jeremy_Cox

Root of the controversy

The controversy about weekly rentals grew out of neighbors' ire over a home on Teal Drive that was advertised as being available to 17 people, while own rules limit occupancy to no more than four unrelated people. That landlord was unaware of the codes at the time but has begun complying with them, according to Assistant Director of Planning Blaine Smith.

Many properties to monitor

The town of Ocean City has a total of 17,000 properties registered as rentals.