Posted May 8, 2013
Out of the 523 unique rental property owners in River Falls, 312 (59.65 percent) of them live in the city. Therefore, 40.35 percent live outside of River Falls.
If multiple owners and all of the properties are included in the analysis, 431 of the 689 properties had owners who lived in River Falls for a total of 62.69 percent. That would make 37.31 percent of the properties owned by landlords outside of River Falls.
The farthest owner was Lanny Neel, who lives in Hakalau, a city in Hawaii. Hakalau is approximately 3,930 miles from River Falls.
According to the municipal code found on the City of River Falls website, some duties for rental property owners include that “[e]very owner of a dwelling unit shall be responsible for maintaining, in a clean and sanitary condition, the shared or public area of the dwelling and premises thereof.”
Also, according to the code, “Every owner of a dwelling containing a single dwelling unit shall be responsible for the extermination of any insects, rodents or other pests therein or on the premises and every occupant of a dwelling unit in a dwelling containing more than one dwelling unit shall be responsible for such extermination whenever his or her dwelling unit is the only one infested.”
Furthermore, “Every owner shall be responsible for providing furnace filters. The owner shall also be responsible for the periodic changing of the filters, except where the tenant has agreed to supply such service.”
Finally, the municipal code states that, “Every occupant of a dwelling or dwelling unit shall dispose of all his rubbish in a clean and sanitary manner by placing it in the rubbish container.” These are just a few of the examples of the responsibilities of owners of properties in River Falls.
Reporting by Rhea Blaiser, Ashley Goettl, Hyeon Hui Lee, Arianna Schultz and Amanda Webster
The article may be found online at https://uwrfjournalism.org/2013/05/majority-of-owners-live-in-river-falls/.