The Rules Glossary · Property Tech

Accommodation effect: what a granted accommodation changes in the rest of the system (a waived pet charge, an assigned space, a moved due day), stored so the ledger and the lease obey the decision instead of staff remembering it (Fair Housing).
Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan (AFHMP): the HUD-approved plan HUD-assisted properties must follow, marketing to those least likely to apply, carrying the Equal Housing Opportunity logo or statement and keeping records of media and activities for compliance reviews (Fair Housing).
Applicability condition: a fact about the property, landlord or tenancy (building age, owner type, portfolio size, service-member status) that decides whether a rule or its exemption applies; a rule's conditions name the facts it needs (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
As-of event: the event whose date selects a rule version for a rule type (date a deposit was collected, a notice served, a tenant vacated, a fee charged), recorded in the rule-type registry and stored on each evaluation (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Assistance animal: an animal a person with a disability needs, the highest-volume accommodation request; a granted request waives pet rent, fees and deposits for that animal on that lease (Fair Housing).
Assured periodic tenancy: the default English tenancy since the Renters' Rights Act's 1 May 2026 changes, with no fixed term, continuing until a party ends it (Outside the US).
Audit production: what an operator delivers for an audit request, generated as of a timestamp from the system of record with a manifest of hashes and a recorded reviewer, so it can be regenerated and compared if challenged (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Audit request: an audit treated as a request with a requester, authority, scope, deadline and production, with a legal hold placed on its scope (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Bacs Direct Debit, Direct Debit Guarantee: the UK's direct debit rail, and its consumer guarantee of advance notice of changes in amount, date or frequency and a full and immediate refund of an amount taken in error (Outside the US).
BECS (Bulk Electronic Clearing System): Australia's direct entry batch rail for debits and credits, administered by AusPayNet (Outside the US).
Bond authority: in most Australian states, the government body that holds rental bonds instead of the landlord (NSW Fair Trading, through Rental Bonds Online, in New South Wales); the landlord's ledger carries only a lodgement reference, a status and a claim at the end (Outside the US).
Business, service provider (CCPA): under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the operator that meets the law's tests is the business, and the software vendor acting on its instructions under contract is normally its service provider or processor, until it uses resident data for its own purposes (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Combination (of rules): how a rule type combines across a property's jurisdictions, decided once per type: strictest wins for caps, longest wins for notice periods, all apply for protected classes and disclosures, and most specific wins for a few replacing rules (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Consumer information: under the FTC Disposal Rule, consumer reports and information derived from them, including residential or tenant history (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Costa-Hawkins Act: California's law letting an owner set initial and all subsequent rents for units with a certificate of occupancy after February 1, 1995 or that are separately alienable, notwithstanding local rent control; modelled as a carve-out on the state's preemption row (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Crypto-shredding: encrypting sensitive documents with per-record or per-person keys so destroying the key disposes of every copy, including those in backups that can't be edited (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Custodial, insured scheme: the two types of UK deposit protection scheme: a custodial scheme holds the deposit itself, and an insured scheme lets the landlord or agent hold it while paying the scheme to insure it (Outside the US).
Deposit protection: in England and Wales, the duty to put a tenant's deposit in a government-backed scheme and give the tenant the prescribed information within 30 days of receiving it, with the return running through the scheme (Outside the US).
Disparate impact: liability for a practice because of its discriminatory effects, without intent, recognized under the Fair Housing Act in Inclusive Communities (2015) and codified by HUD as a three-step burden-shifting test at 24 CFR 100.500 (Fair Housing).
Disposal event: the append-only proof that records were destroyed: what, under which schedule or request, by what method, in which stores, when and by which job (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Disposal Rule (FTC): 16 CFR 682, requiring anyone holding consumer information for a business purpose, landlords and their service providers included, to dispose of it with reasonable measures against unauthorized access (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Effective-dated rule: a legal rule stored as data with a jurisdiction, a rule type, typed parameters, a validity period and a source, so the rule in force on any date can be found (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Fail closed: when a fact needed to establish an exemption is missing, the evaluation applies the stricter outcome and asks for the fact rather than assuming the exemption (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP): HUD's grant program that often funds the fair housing organizations sending paired testers; its funding has been in litigation since HUD terminated grants in February 2025 (Fair Housing).
Fairness test: running a decision process (screening criteria, a model, ad delivery, an AI agent) over a population and comparing outcomes across groups, recorded with method, population, period, comparison, review threshold and what was done (Fair Housing).
Field preemption: a higher law taking a whole field of regulation for itself, so lower jurisdictions' rules in that field don't apply at all (Florida § 83.425, Texas HB 2127); modelled as a row displacing subordinate rules of named types for a period (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Housing for older persons: housing that qualifies under 42 U.S.C. 3607(b) (all residents 62 or older, or 55-plus housing where at least 80% of occupied units have a resident 55 or older) and may exclude families with children, given published policies and recurring occupancy verification (Fair Housing).
Impact query: the list, run before an approved rule change takes effect, of properties, leases and scheduled actions it affects (offers above a new cap, fees above a new limit) (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Interactive process: the exchange between provider and requester on an accommodation request (verification asked and received, alternatives offered, decision), tracked as a case with a response-by date; a denial can't close without an alternatives step (Fair Housing).
Jurisdiction resolution: finding the effective-dated set of jurisdictions (state, county, city, special districts) a property or building sits in from its location, preferably its parcel, never its mailing address, and having a person confirm it (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Large holder (Spain): under Ley 12/2023, an owner of more than ten urban residential properties or more than 1,500 square meters of residential space (a regional declaration can lower it to five properties), whose rent in a stressed area may not exceed a reference price index (Outside the US).
Legal hold: a suspension of disposal for records in a scope (usually a property or person over a period) until released, placed for complaints, suits, subpoenas, inquiries, audits and disputes; the disposal job never deletes held records (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Legal review (of a rule): the workflow a rule passes before it applies: drafted from the source with open questions, shipped with test cases, approved by a second person (a lawyer for contested readings), impact-checked and announced to operators (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Legal source: the statute, ordinance, regulation, court order, guidance or published figure a rule comes from, stored with its URL, retrieval date, a content hash and how it is watched for change (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Mietpreisbremse: Germany's rent brake (BGB § 556d): in areas designated by state ordinance as tight markets, rent at the start of a tenancy may exceed the local comparative rent by at most 10% (Outside the US).
Occupation contract: the Welsh replacement for tenancies under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, held by contract-holders and either secure or standard, with standard contracts periodic or fixed-term (Outside the US).
Ontario rent increase guideline: the province's published annual maximum increase, calculated from Ontario CPI and capped at 2.5%, with units first occupied after November 15, 2018 exempt (Outside the US).
Paired testing: sending testers (or synthetic applicants or prompts) identical except for a protected characteristic or its signal, to see whether people are treated differently; used by fair housing organizations and for testing AI agents (Fair Housing).
PIPEDA: Canada's federal private-sector privacy law for commercial activity, displaced within Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec by their substantially similar laws, but still applying to information crossing provincial or national borders (Outside the US).
Policy override: an evaluation outcome recording that an operator's setting was looser than the law, so the law applied instead (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Preemption: a higher law removing a lower law's force, so the lower rule doesn't apply however strict; it comes as field preemption, partial preemption that carves out cases, a state floor that allows stricter local rules, and federal law that stacks (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Prescribed form: a government-mandated lease or notice form (Ontario's standard lease, Quebec's mandatory forms), filled by the platform and recorded on the lease by version as signed or served (Outside the US).
Prescribed information: the information about a protected deposit that an England or Wales landlord must give the tenant within 30 days of receipt under section 213 of the Housing Act 2004 (Outside the US).
Privacy request: a person's request to know, access, correct, delete or opt out, handled as a case with a deadline from the applicable law, fulfilled across every store, and closed with a record of what was kept and why (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Private residential tenancy (PRT): Scotland's open-ended tenancy created by the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016, with rent increased by notice on a three-month minimum period (Outside the US).
Protected class: a characteristic fair housing law protects (federally race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin and disability, plus state and local additions), resolved per property and date as the union across its jurisdictions (Fair Housing).
Reasonable accommodation, reasonable modification: a change in rules, policies, practices or services a person with a disability needs for equal use of a dwelling, and a structural change to the premises, usually at the resident's expense in private housing; refusing either is discrimination (Fair Housing).
Regulator of Social Housing, registered provider: England's regulator that keeps the register of social housing providers and sets the outcomes social landlords must deliver; registered housing associations and councils run on different rent, allocation and reporting rules from private landlords (Outside the US).
Renters' Rights Act 2025: the English act whose main tenancy reforms commenced 1 May 2026: Section 21 abolished, assured periodic tenancies, one rent increase a year, no rental bidding, rent in advance capped, with registration and further phases to follow (Outside the US).
Retention schedule: the operator's period for keeping a record type, running from a trigger event (move-out, waitlist removal, decision), checked to be at least the longest applicable legal minimum and no longer than the privacy ceiling (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Right of publicity: the right against commercial use of a person's persona without consent (Ohio's statute is the example); displaying a public deed record and using a person's name to sell a subscription are different acts (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Rule evaluation: the stored record of a computed result (a cap, deadline, fee or notice) with the as-of date, the rule versions and preemptions considered, any operator policy, the inputs and the outcome; evaluations are stored, never recomputed (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Rule type: a registered kind of legal rule (security_deposit_limit, entry_notice, rent_cap and so on) with a parameter schema, a combination, an as-of event and an owning chapter; adding one is a code change, adding a jurisdiction's version is a row (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Rules matrix: the table mapping each rule type to how it combines, which event's date selects its version, and the chapter that owns what it means (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Section 21: the English "no fault" eviction route, abolished from 1 May 2026, after which a landlord needs a legally valid possession ground (Outside the US).
Source of income (SOI): a state and local protected class covering lawful income such as housing vouchers, the class that changes software most because it reaches income tests, minimum credit scores and screening scores (Fair Housing).
Stressed residential market area: an area declared under Spain's Ley 12/2023 in which rent for a new contract on a previously rented home is generally limited to the previous contract's rent with its annual update (Outside the US).
Sunset clause: a statute's built-in end date (California's statewide cap remains in effect until January 1, 2030), stored as the end of the rule's validity and raised for review ahead of time (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
TAL, LTB, RTB: the provincial tenancy tribunals named in the volume: Quebec's Tribunal administratif du logement (which fixes rent when a tenant refuses an increase), Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board, and British Columbia's Residential Tenancy Branch (Outside the US).
Tenancy form: a lease attribute naming the kind of contract (fixed term, periodic, assured periodic, private residential tenancy, secure or standard occupation contract) that the lease state machine branches on instead of on country (Outside the US).
Tenant policy: an operator's own setting for a rule type (a grace period, a lower late fee), which may be stricter than the law but never looser; it's checked against the applicable legal rules on write and on every rule change (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Undue burden, fundamental alteration: the narrow grounds on which a housing provider may deny an accommodation request, after discussing alternatives that meet the need (Fair Housing).
VAWA documentation: certifications and documents of domestic violence, dating violence or stalking, which HUD-assisted properties must keep in a separate file in a separate secure location, confidential and out of any shared database (Records, Privacy & Audits).

Accommodation effect: what a granted accommodation changes in the rest of the system (a waived pet charge, an assigned space, a moved due day), stored so the ledger and the lease obey the decision instead of staff remembering it (Fair Housing).
Affirmative Fair Housing Marketing Plan (AFHMP): the HUD-approved plan HUD-assisted properties must follow, marketing to those least likely to apply, carrying the Equal Housing Opportunity logo or statement and keeping records of media and activities for compliance reviews (Fair Housing).
Applicability condition: a fact about the property, landlord or tenancy (building age, owner type, portfolio size, service-member status) that decides whether a rule or its exemption applies; a rule's conditions name the facts it needs (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
As-of event: the event whose date selects a rule version for a rule type (date a deposit was collected, a notice served, a tenant vacated, a fee charged), recorded in the rule-type registry and stored on each evaluation (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Assistance animal: an animal a person with a disability needs, the highest-volume accommodation request; a granted request waives pet rent, fees and deposits for that animal on that lease (Fair Housing).
Assured periodic tenancy: the default English tenancy since the Renters' Rights Act's 1 May 2026 changes, with no fixed term, continuing until a party ends it (Outside the US).
Audit production: what an operator delivers for an audit request, generated as of a timestamp from the system of record with a manifest of hashes and a recorded reviewer, so it can be regenerated and compared if challenged (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Audit request: an audit treated as a request with a requester, authority, scope, deadline and production, with a legal hold placed on its scope (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Bacs Direct Debit, Direct Debit Guarantee: the UK's direct debit rail, and its consumer guarantee of advance notice of changes in amount, date or frequency and a full and immediate refund of an amount taken in error (Outside the US).
BECS (Bulk Electronic Clearing System): Australia's direct entry batch rail for debits and credits, administered by AusPayNet (Outside the US).
Bond authority: in most Australian states, the government body that holds rental bonds instead of the landlord (NSW Fair Trading, through Rental Bonds Online, in New South Wales); the landlord's ledger carries only a lodgement reference, a status and a claim at the end (Outside the US).
Business, service provider (CCPA): under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the operator that meets the law's tests is the business, and the software vendor acting on its instructions under contract is normally its service provider or processor, until it uses resident data for its own purposes (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Combination (of rules): how a rule type combines across a property's jurisdictions, decided once per type: strictest wins for caps, longest wins for notice periods, all apply for protected classes and disclosures, and most specific wins for a few replacing rules (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Consumer information: under the FTC Disposal Rule, consumer reports and information derived from them, including residential or tenant history (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Costa-Hawkins Act: California's law letting an owner set initial and all subsequent rents for units with a certificate of occupancy after February 1, 1995 or that are separately alienable, notwithstanding local rent control; modelled as a carve-out on the state's preemption row (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Crypto-shredding: encrypting sensitive documents with per-record or per-person keys so destroying the key disposes of every copy, including those in backups that can't be edited (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Custodial, insured scheme: the two types of UK deposit protection scheme: a custodial scheme holds the deposit itself, and an insured scheme lets the landlord or agent hold it while paying the scheme to insure it (Outside the US).
Deposit protection: in England and Wales, the duty to put a tenant's deposit in a government-backed scheme and give the tenant the prescribed information within 30 days of receiving it, with the return running through the scheme (Outside the US).
Disparate impact: liability for a practice because of its discriminatory effects, without intent, recognized under the Fair Housing Act in Inclusive Communities (2015) and codified by HUD as a three-step burden-shifting test at 24 CFR 100.500 (Fair Housing).
Disposal event: the append-only proof that records were destroyed: what, under which schedule or request, by what method, in which stores, when and by which job (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Disposal Rule (FTC): 16 CFR 682, requiring anyone holding consumer information for a business purpose, landlords and their service providers included, to dispose of it with reasonable measures against unauthorized access (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Effective-dated rule: a legal rule stored as data with a jurisdiction, a rule type, typed parameters, a validity period and a source, so the rule in force on any date can be found (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Fail closed: when a fact needed to establish an exemption is missing, the evaluation applies the stricter outcome and asks for the fact rather than assuming the exemption (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP): HUD's grant program that often funds the fair housing organizations sending paired testers; its funding has been in litigation since HUD terminated grants in February 2025 (Fair Housing).
Fairness test: running a decision process (screening criteria, a model, ad delivery, an AI agent) over a population and comparing outcomes across groups, recorded with method, population, period, comparison, review threshold and what was done (Fair Housing).
Field preemption: a higher law taking a whole field of regulation for itself, so lower jurisdictions' rules in that field don't apply at all (Florida § 83.425, Texas HB 2127); modelled as a row displacing subordinate rules of named types for a period (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Housing for older persons: housing that qualifies under 42 U.S.C. 3607(b) (all residents 62 or older, or 55-plus housing where at least 80% of occupied units have a resident 55 or older) and may exclude families with children, given published policies and recurring occupancy verification (Fair Housing).
Impact query: the list, run before an approved rule change takes effect, of properties, leases and scheduled actions it affects (offers above a new cap, fees above a new limit) (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Interactive process: the exchange between provider and requester on an accommodation request (verification asked and received, alternatives offered, decision), tracked as a case with a response-by date; a denial can't close without an alternatives step (Fair Housing).
Jurisdiction resolution: finding the effective-dated set of jurisdictions (state, county, city, special districts) a property or building sits in from its location, preferably its parcel, never its mailing address, and having a person confirm it (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Large holder (Spain): under Ley 12/2023, an owner of more than ten urban residential properties or more than 1,500 square meters of residential space (a regional declaration can lower it to five properties), whose rent in a stressed area may not exceed a reference price index (Outside the US).
Legal hold: a suspension of disposal for records in a scope (usually a property or person over a period) until released, placed for complaints, suits, subpoenas, inquiries, audits and disputes; the disposal job never deletes held records (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Legal review (of a rule): the workflow a rule passes before it applies: drafted from the source with open questions, shipped with test cases, approved by a second person (a lawyer for contested readings), impact-checked and announced to operators (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Legal source: the statute, ordinance, regulation, court order, guidance or published figure a rule comes from, stored with its URL, retrieval date, a content hash and how it is watched for change (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Mietpreisbremse: Germany's rent brake (BGB § 556d): in areas designated by state ordinance as tight markets, rent at the start of a tenancy may exceed the local comparative rent by at most 10% (Outside the US).
Occupation contract: the Welsh replacement for tenancies under the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, held by contract-holders and either secure or standard, with standard contracts periodic or fixed-term (Outside the US).
Ontario rent increase guideline: the province's published annual maximum increase, calculated from Ontario CPI and capped at 2.5%, with units first occupied after November 15, 2018 exempt (Outside the US).
Paired testing: sending testers (or synthetic applicants or prompts) identical except for a protected characteristic or its signal, to see whether people are treated differently; used by fair housing organizations and for testing AI agents (Fair Housing).
PIPEDA: Canada's federal private-sector privacy law for commercial activity, displaced within Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec by their substantially similar laws, but still applying to information crossing provincial or national borders (Outside the US).
Policy override: an evaluation outcome recording that an operator's setting was looser than the law, so the law applied instead (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Preemption: a higher law removing a lower law's force, so the lower rule doesn't apply however strict; it comes as field preemption, partial preemption that carves out cases, a state floor that allows stricter local rules, and federal law that stacks (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Prescribed form: a government-mandated lease or notice form (Ontario's standard lease, Quebec's mandatory forms), filled by the platform and recorded on the lease by version as signed or served (Outside the US).
Prescribed information: the information about a protected deposit that an England or Wales landlord must give the tenant within 30 days of receipt under section 213 of the Housing Act 2004 (Outside the US).
Privacy request: a person's request to know, access, correct, delete or opt out, handled as a case with a deadline from the applicable law, fulfilled across every store, and closed with a record of what was kept and why (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Private residential tenancy (PRT): Scotland's open-ended tenancy created by the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016, with rent increased by notice on a three-month minimum period (Outside the US).
Protected class: a characteristic fair housing law protects (federally race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin and disability, plus state and local additions), resolved per property and date as the union across its jurisdictions (Fair Housing).
Reasonable accommodation, reasonable modification: a change in rules, policies, practices or services a person with a disability needs for equal use of a dwelling, and a structural change to the premises, usually at the resident's expense in private housing; refusing either is discrimination (Fair Housing).
Regulator of Social Housing, registered provider: England's regulator that keeps the register of social housing providers and sets the outcomes social landlords must deliver; registered housing associations and councils run on different rent, allocation and reporting rules from private landlords (Outside the US).
Renters' Rights Act 2025: the English act whose main tenancy reforms commenced 1 May 2026: Section 21 abolished, assured periodic tenancies, one rent increase a year, no rental bidding, rent in advance capped, with registration and further phases to follow (Outside the US).
Retention schedule: the operator's period for keeping a record type, running from a trigger event (move-out, waitlist removal, decision), checked to be at least the longest applicable legal minimum and no longer than the privacy ceiling (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Right of publicity: the right against commercial use of a person's persona without consent (Ohio's statute is the example); displaying a public deed record and using a person's name to sell a subscription are different acts (Records, Privacy & Audits).
Rule evaluation: the stored record of a computed result (a cap, deadline, fee or notice) with the as-of date, the rule versions and preemptions considered, any operator policy, the inputs and the outcome; evaluations are stored, never recomputed (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Rule type: a registered kind of legal rule (security_deposit_limit, entry_notice, rent_cap and so on) with a parameter schema, a combination, an as-of event and an owning chapter; adding one is a code change, adding a jurisdiction's version is a row (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Rules matrix: the table mapping each rule type to how it combines, which event's date selects its version, and the chapter that owns what it means (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Section 21: the English "no fault" eviction route, abolished from 1 May 2026, after which a landlord needs a legally valid possession ground (Outside the US).
Source of income (SOI): a state and local protected class covering lawful income such as housing vouchers, the class that changes software most because it reaches income tests, minimum credit scores and screening scores (Fair Housing).
Stressed residential market area: an area declared under Spain's Ley 12/2023 in which rent for a new contract on a previously rented home is generally limited to the previous contract's rent with its annual update (Outside the US).
Sunset clause: a statute's built-in end date (California's statewide cap remains in effect until January 1, 2030), stored as the end of the rule's validity and raised for review ahead of time (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
TAL, LTB, RTB: the provincial tenancy tribunals named in the volume: Quebec's Tribunal administratif du logement (which fixes rent when a tenant refuses an increase), Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board, and British Columbia's Residential Tenancy Branch (Outside the US).
Tenancy form: a lease attribute naming the kind of contract (fixed term, periodic, assured periodic, private residential tenancy, secure or standard occupation contract) that the lease state machine branches on instead of on country (Outside the US).
Tenant policy: an operator's own setting for a rule type (a grace period, a lower late fee), which may be stricter than the law but never looser; it's checked against the applicable legal rules on write and on every rule change (Landlord-Tenant Law as Data).
Undue burden, fundamental alteration: the narrow grounds on which a housing provider may deny an accommodation request, after discussing alternatives that meet the need (Fair Housing).
VAWA documentation: certifications and documents of domestic violence, dating violence or stalking, which HUD-assisted properties must keep in a separate file in a separate secure location, confidential and out of any shared database (Records, Privacy & Audits).