The Senate Bill 256 which was going to make sweeping changes in our law died in the assembly, but some of the items from it passed under Senate Bill 151. The biggest one has to do with late fees. Late fees have been reduced to 5% capped total across the spectrum. Any charges for constable court services can be in the Late Fee, provided that is capped at 5%. If your rent is a $1000 a month, your late fee would be $50 and that would have to include servicing and court costs. A bigger change than that was in how you serve notices. In the past, property managers and property owners can serve their own notices. Now, it has to be done by the constable, the sheriff, or by a licensed process server. The 5-day notice that was served is now 7 days. These are Judicial days which are days that the court is open. Everybody in Southern Nevada knows that Henderson in North Las Vegas only open their court house 4 days a week, so there are only 4 Judicial days in North Las Vegas and Henderson. Las Vegas courts are still open 5 days a week. It's going to change the way that we do our leasing for certain. One of the things that we were doing in the past was charging rent and then wanting the tenant to pay the sewer bill and trash bill separately outside of the lease. With the new laws, it would be a lot easier for everybody concerned if there was just one fee to pay. The rent should include all the services that are provided with the house: landscaping, pool services, sewer services, and trash services. It's all one price takes the confusion out of it.
Going forward, any new lease that we create and the leases that we currently have have one fee: the rent. And everything is included in the lease. This sure does make things easier for us.