New Hampshire Buyer's Guide FEBRUARY 2020 | Page 7

A Note from the White Mountain Board of REALTORS ®
Thank you for picking up a copy of The Buyer’s Guide!
The properties that you will find throughout this beautiful publication are made possible through the efforts of
area businesses, brokerages, and most impressively, by over 160 dedicated real estate professionals who take
great care in serving the real estate consumers in our area.
Perhaps you have picked up this publication as a guest to our region, staying in a short term vacation rental
and are thinking about purchasing. Some would like to ban the practice of short term rentals. If that effort is
successful, thousands of visitors will not be spending time in the White Mountain region in the years ahead,
costing the area economy millions of dollars in lost revenue and excluding an entire group of travelers who have
come to enjoy the flexibility and comfort of vacation home rentals.
The ability to rent out one’s home is about as fundamental of a property right as exists.
Realtors ® have and always will champion against government attempts to eliminate such rights.
In that spirit, here are some of our ideas to reach a reasonable compromise:
• Registration: Currently, state law mandates that owners of restricted property, meaning long-term rentals,
must file a statement with the town that provides the name, address, and telephone number of a person who
is authorized to accept service of process for legal proceedings. The same should be required of short-term
rentals.
• Noise, parking and sanitation: Realtors ® continue to support law enforcement’s ability to address noise
and disturbances within our neighborhoods. Same with parking and sanitation violations. Long-term,
short-term and owner-occupied single-family owners should be equally subject to these health and safety
ordinances.
• Disorderly housing: If the owner of a property rents repeatedly to people who are violating town
ordinances, that owner should bear consequences. However, the town should not target individual owners
with poorly defined definitions of what makes a house disorderly. There must be clear and repeated
violations of town ordinances.
Mount Washington Valley enjoys a working, dynamic economy. Let’s come together, protect what makes our
community so unique and special, and work together, hearing and respecting all sides. If we can do that, we are
confident a reasonable solution that works for everyone is likely.
We know you have a choice to use a REALTOR ® when it comes to real estate services. Our members commit
themselves to further education to benefit consumers, advocate for homeowners’ rights, and provide a
professional standard of conduct backed by one of the oldest trade organizations in the world, the National
Association of REALTORS ® .
We hope you will consider working with a REALTOR ® who stands to protect your rights of homeownership and
enjoyment of our area in this ever changing landscape. Because that’s who we “R”.
Respectfully,
Lee Ann O’Hara, 2020 President
White Mountain Board of REALTORS®
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