BROKEN BOW, Okla. — BROKEN BOW, Okla. (AP) — Cabin owners and their rental companies will need a new state law or a real estate broker to be able to continue leasing cabins following an opinion issued by state Attorney General Drew Edmondson on Wednesday.
Edmondsons opinion which has the effect of law effectively shuts down the rental companies unless they are under the supervision of a licensed real estate broker.
The controversy developed this summer when several cabin rental companies in the Broken Bow area received letters from the Oklahoma Real Estate Commission. The companies had for several years provided day-by-day and weekend rental services for many large cabins near Broken Bow Lake.
During the summer, the OREC notified more than a dozen rental companies they were under a formal investigation for unlicensed real estate activities. The commissions executive director, Anne Woody, said it was unlawful for an unlicensed person or entity to engage in licensable real estate activities, including renting cabins.
Working through state Sen. Jerry Ellis, D-Valliant, the rental companies sought the attorney generals opinion.
On Wednesday, Edmondson agreed with the Real Estate Commission.
"A person who is not an employee of a cabin owner, and who, for a fee rents out a cabin in Oklahoma, to tourists based on a daily rate, or attempts to negotiate any such activity or solicits listings of such cabins for rent or advertises or holds himself or herself out as engaged in such activities must be licensed as a real estate broker by the Oklahoma Real Estate Commission because such a person falls within the definition of a real estate broker," Edmondson's four-page ruling said.
Michelle Finch, the co-owner of McCurtain County Getaways, a Broken Bow cabin rental agency, said she was flabbergasted by the ruling.
"Here we are contributing tax revenue and developing tourism and this, its just insanity," she said.
"We collect $9 million a year from lodging," she said. "Weve been seeing it grow every year. There are between 2,500 and 3,000 tourists here every weekend. Now we have people messing with that."
She said the rental owners would turn to the Legislature to solve the problem.
"Many, many of the cabin owners in the area have announced their support for our cause," she said. "We just hope the lawmakers see the unintended consequences in this."
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