Tenants Witholding Rent
Hi All,
I have some tenants in their last month of an 18 month lease. I am an out of state landlord and have a great management firm managing the property in my absence. During their tenancy, I have never heard them complain about a lot of issues.
We had two major appliance breakdowns during their tenancy, one the A/C was down for about three days (the property management company installed a window A/C while the central unit was being repaired) and recently the water heater was out about five days (including a weekend where no plumber was available to install). In all of these, all efforts for repairs were diligently made and the tenants were well informed of the progress.
Now tenants are claiming that all these things added up mean they should not have to pay rent for their last month and have not paid June rent as of the 9th. I think their argument is totally bogus and I am not inclined to listen to this. I should add that after the heater problem was fixed, I did send them a gift certificate for their inconvenience, which to the best of my knowledge they have not rejected.
What is the best way to handle this? Do they have a right to refuse to pay rent? Attempts to fix the major problems were made as soon as I was informed, it just takes a while to schedule plumbers & HVAC people and to get equipment. I never refused to repair anything and in my opinion, things were fixed in a timely manner.
Thoughts please? Has anyone else had to deal with this before?
Thanks,
JS
Hey,
The advice you are being given is nothing but a load of nonsense.
In real life, things break and they take time to fix. That is life.
If everytime something breaks you start reaching in to your pocket to pay for a hotel room or rebate rent, you will quickly have no money.
The water heater broke and that is too bad, but you did NOT break it and you had someone work on it as fast as you could...I would contact the tenants and find out what is going on in their heads (but I self manage my properties). For you, I would get the management company to contact them by mail and issue them a Pay or Quit notice.
Bruce.