As a landlord, you want to cut down on what maintenance you can to save yourself time and money. But this does not mean putting off necessary maintenance tasks.
Instead, you may ask yourself: what maintenance tasks can I make the responsibility of my tenants? What tasks should be tenant responsibilities?
Here’s our guide for answering those questions in a way that’s right for you and your property.
Commercial property lease agreements often make repairs the tenant’s responsibility.
In the world of commercial property leasing, it is not at all uncommon for lease agreements to include stipulations that the tenant should be responsible for making necessary repairs to their unit.
These clauses in the lease clarify exactly what the tenant is responsible for in maintaining the building. This doesn’t have to be limited to damage caused directly by the tenant. In fact, commercial leases often give the responsibilities of maintaining everything from fixtures to floors and walls to the tenants. Only structural repairs and large system amenities like HVAC should be maintained by the landlord.
However, commercial properties can allow for greater tenant responsibilities because there is typically greater liability and protection when it comes to leasing to businesses.
Residential renters are not always as dependable.
You can give your residential tenants more maintenance responsibility — but should you?
In most markets, you have the freedom to put more repair and maintenance responsibility on your residential tenant. Check your local ordinances to ensure there’s no law stipulating that you cannot before you actively considering doing so, but there are reasons why that may not be the best idea.
You might think asking your tenant to cover minor repairs—perhaps anything costing less than $100—is a fair deal. While this may or may not be the case, you might find it’s a lost more expensive than you think.
First, you might not have much incentive to include such a mandate in your lease to begin with. In a high-vacancy market, adding a clause in your lease that makes your prospective tenant responsible for repairs could lose them. With other rentals available that don’t have a clause like this, the tenant will naturally favor them over yours. In a lower-vacancy rental market where the interested renter doesn’t have much choice, you might get away with this – but that doesn’t mean you should.
Giving tenants much responsibility over repairs means a backlog of costly maintenance.
While it may sound appealing to give your tenant charge of some more minor maintenance tasks, they aren’t invested in your property long-term. In other words, they don’t care enough, and this is entirely fair.
Your tenants lead busy lives. There is no incentive for them—even with a mandated clause in their lease—to take time out of their day and money out of their own pocket to make little fixes and conduct preventative maintenance on your property. If they owned the home, that incentive would exist in the form of protecting their asset, but since they’re renting, that risk is on you.
This means the real incentive exists in tenant’s either pretending they didn’t notice anything wrong or simply avoiding the needed repairs.
This is the same reason you’ll sometimes see tenants fail to report maintenance that needs doing even when the responsibility is on you as a landlord: there is little incentive to fixing the problem and perhaps more incentive in avoiding the disruption of a having a maintenance crew enter their home.
Unreported and unmade repairs lead to mounting problems that can create costly disasters. You very likely will not save money by putting repairs on the tenant, and instead might spend a lot more long-term.
Instead, there are a few simple tasks your tenants can and should be doing on your property.
Maintenance tasks your tenants should be responsible for:
Here are a few easy tasks that your tenant will be actively encouraged to carry out and should be responsible for per your lease agreement:
Changing burnt-out lightbulbs
Changing batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors
Fixing damages directly caused by the tenants
Disposing of waste and garbage properly
Keeping the property clean and safe
With most tenants, completion of these tasks is a near-guarantee. For anything more, you might be asking for a backlog of maintenance and a disaster-prone property. To save yourself some money, consider preventative maintenance rather than tenant-maintenance.
For more information on effective property management, contact 208.properties today.