Landlord Question and Answer Forum

Our renters called us to notify us that our 4 year old refrigerator was not cooling/freezing. We had a serviceman come out the next day. They now claim to have $396.00 in loss of food and nutritional supplements. They have a $500 deductible on their insurance so they are asking us to claim on our insurance, however, we have an even higher deductible. My question is how to handle this situation and is it our responsibility?

I think if you were responsible for maintaining appliances you would be responsible. When stuff like that happens to me, I provide an alternative to get the tenants through until the serviceman can come and fix the issue.

Posted by Bea S, SD on Tuesday, March 28, 2017

I do not think the question was answered. BY law is the landlord responsible?

Posted by Mukesh S, FL on Sunday, May 7, 2017

I'm a landlord myself who owns two single-family homes as rentals, and this has never happened to me. If it ever did, I think I would simply pay the $396.00 myself and call it good. I know it is a good sum of cash but dealing back and forth about the situation with your tenant (which they'll view you as cheap and can strain the landlord/tenant relationship) or dealing with the insurance company over $396.00 in my opinion is not worth it. If this ever happened to me, I would find a company that services appliances 24/7 so that in the event something like this happens again I have someone at the rental property the same day to avoid a similar situation.

Posted by Darwin Q, AZ on Tuesday, May 9, 2017