The Value of an RHAWA Membership
RHAWA has helped housing providers across the state of Washington make the most of their rental properties for decades. As laws and expectations have evolved, so have we. We have assisted thousands of housing providers with thousands of properties over the years, and as a result we have learned quite a bit ourselves. Through it all, RHAWA has been and will continue to be here to support you and make the experience of being a housing provider a rewarding one.
So, what does your membership fee get you, really? Why pay those dues, and why go with RHAWA over another housing association? The short answer is that you are getting access to the best and most comprehensive suite of tools and resources available to rental housing providers.
First, we will start with you. Your property, your risk, your responsibilities, and hopefully your reward. Your best defense in almost any dispute with a resident is your lease agreement. The RHAWA lease agreement is battle tested in court and is regarded as the best one out there by industry attorneys. Each iteration of our lease undergoes a thorough review process by outside legal counsel before being uploaded to our website, and our forms are consistently updated to reflect alterations in state and local law. With an RHAWA lease, you never have to wonder if you are following local rental housing laws; that peace of mind is what our staff strives to provide. Many of our members consider our lease alone worth the price of admission, but there is so much more available to you than that!
We provide you not only with all the forms and notices you could need during a tenancy, but right beside each form we also give you the necessary information on how and why to use them. We have an internal screening department that can help you get you started, and an online portal so that you can do it all yourself in just a few clicks if you would like. Our executive director and government affairs team constantly monitor local and state initiatives and report back, giving you access to the inner workings of government and notifying you of changes that will affect your rentals. Lastly, our licensed Real Estate School, the Rental Housing AcademyTM gives you a chance to learn more about your industry from leading experts in their field on any number of topics. We host live online classes most weeks, each of which become available in our ONDEMAND platform after 30 days. Members may subscribe to the ONDEMAND platform to access over 100 class anytime.
Secondly, we will touch on the community we create together. With over 7,200 individual active members representing an even greater number of housing providers, we are by far the largest rental association in Washington. With hundreds of years of combined experience as housing providers, we truly are each other’s best bet for advice and information. Our CONNECT member forum allows everyone to share their experiences and ask questions while our LINK meetings and live events give you a chance to meet other housing providers and develop more personal relationships with other people like yourself. The CONNECT forum has also undergone some organizational changes recently which has increased engagement. The more our members engage on the forum, the more useful it becomes for everybody. We are incredibly excited about the recent improvements to the CONNECT forum and look forward to rolling out more changes that will make the forum even easier to use!
Located in the same page of our website as the CONNECT forum, out Support Center is a hub of information regarding rental housing best practices and RHAWA itself. In the Support Center you will find two directories: one for information on Member Service Resources and one for information on Rental Residential Resources. In each of these sections you will find a wealth of information on everything RHAWA and rental housing! We anticipate that most members will find the information they are looking for in one of these two sections. However, if you still have questions, please utilize the blue “? Support” button in the bottom right corner of your screen. This button will allow you to engage with our AI ChatBot who will either point you in the right direction or direct your question to a staff member.
Circling back, our strength in numbers allows us to amplify the message of a housing provider with the voice of thousands of housing providers to enact meaningful change in local and state policy. In just the last year, RHAWA thwarted yet another attempt by the state legislature to enact rent control. 2023 will hold its own challenges, especially at the state level, but you can be confident that your membership with RHAWA means you will always be in the loop about what is happening and be given every opportunity to make a direct impact on the proceedings whenever possible. Like the CONNECT forum, the more members who engage in our advocacy efforts, the more effective we will be. Stay on the lookout for information about Legislative Day, which allows our members to interact directly with state level lawmakers, which will occur in early 2023 during the height of legislative session.
Our organization has grown from a local group to a statewide powerhouse thanks to a willingness to adapt, to grow, and to always challenge ourselves to be better for the community of housing providers that we serve. Your membership with RHAWA is an important investment in the success of your business and one none of us take lightly. I would encourage everyone reading this to take a few minutes to explore a new part of RHAwa.org in the next week to make sure you are getting everything you can out of your membership. Trust us, we want you to use it all!
If you have questions or feedback, you can reach out to us, and we would be incredibly happy to talk to you…our contact information is to the right underneath the table of contents in the paper every month. We look forward to hearing from you!