Question: My wife and I purchased a 10-unit residential building as an investment. This is our first time owning a rental property, and we quickly realized it’s a lot of work. We hired a property manager to deal with all of the details, and for a while everything seemed to be fine. Last week, however, we received a notification from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that one of our tenants had filed a complaint against us, claiming that our property manager had sexually harassed her. We know nothing about this — can we be liable for what the property manager did here? We hired him so that we wouldn’t have these kinds of headaches!
Answer: Both federal and state fair housing laws impose absolute vicarious liability on property owners when management violates the law. In other words, if your property manager violates a tenant’s rights under the fair housing laws, you may be held legally and financially responsible for what the manager did, even if you had no part in the illegal behavior and had no knowledge of it at the time it happened.
This liability applies to the actions not only of the manager but also of any employee of yours that might have contact with tenants, such as a maintenance worker. Liability for discrimination under the fair housing laws from administrative complaints or lawsuits can cost you thousands of dollars in damages and attorney fees. You can also be subjected to years of monitoring by a local fair housing or government agency.
