Tenants Repairing Responsibilities

Tenants Repairing Responsibilities

9:22 AM, 5th October 2012, About 12 years ago 1

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Following on from my article about whether pest control is a landlords or a tenants responsibility, I’ve had a few people contact me about tenants repairing responsibilities.

A lot of landlords and tenants are unaware that quite a lot of repairs fall upon the tenant. If you know this, you can save yourself time and money. The key thing is to confirm your repair policy in advance. This will minimise the risk of having to disappoint tenants when they may otherwise have reported a repair.

So what repairs is a tenant responsible for?

  1. Damage to anything that belongs to the tenant or was brought into the property by them (eg, if they own the fridge, they have to repair it)
  2. Any damage caused by the tenant, their family or visitors deliberate act or misuse. For example; Breaking a window, smashing a door, losing keys, blocking a drain by flushing away nappies or food waste etc. Sitting on radiators and forcing them to come off their brackets. Common sense really!
  3. Cutting the lawn, cutting back hedges and shrubs
  4. Keeping the house and outside clear from any rubbish (it also keeps the neighbours happy)
  5. Changing lightbulbs, smoke alarm batteries and fuses
  6. Decorating inside the house (excluding fair wear and tear)
  7. Keeping the house ventilated to avoid damp.
  8. Fitting new digital TV aerials, broadband, telephone, or satellite connections (you do need to repair any existing ones that are broken)
  9. Removal of pest infestations 🙂

At NPG we have an online and telephone repair process that checks repairs and warns tenants that they will have to pay for any repairs that are deemed to caused by their neglect. This makes tenants think twice before making the call 🙂

The process also includes categorising repairs into priority levels:-

  • Emergency
  • Urgent
  • Standard

We can then deal with them appropriately.


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Comments

Joe Bloggs

9:57 AM, 16th October 2012, About 12 years ago

tenants are also responsible for the mould resulting from a failure to ventilate, heat or occupy in a tenantlike manner.

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