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I'm a landlord in Texas and I was just told by my property manager that the tenant said the garbage disposal needs to be replaced.

My property manager, without doing any research or investigating, asked if I could dispatch a plumber to fix/replace it.

I wanted to do some troubleshooting first because a garbage disposal can be easily fixed by resetting it and manually turning the motor under the sink. I've done this several times when I used to live at that property and I think it's not a big deal to ask of my tenant to do this.

In the past, it's happened where I was told that I had to replace something but it turned out that all that was wrong was the switch was off, as an example.

Is this legal to do? And is this smart to do? I obviously want to save money but I want to avoid getting in some kind of legal hot water here.

TiramisuOho
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3 Answers3

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Unless your lease with the renter specifies that the tenant may be called on to do some forms of maintenance, then you or your agent has to do the troubleshooting. Without language about that, the lease obligates the tenant to pay the specified amount each month and obligates you to provide working fixtures. What you are suggesting seems pretty minimal, and the tenant might agree to it as a convenience to get it fixed more quickly. But if they say 'no', then it's on you.

If it was me I wouldn't dream of asking a tenant to do this, simply as a practical matter. You likely don't have any idea of how competent they are around electrical and mechanical stuff, and they could seriously injure themselves. Presumably you do have some confidence in the mechanical and electrical skills of your property manager. You do not want your manager calling you to say "Hey boss, I found the tenant lying in the kitchen in a pool of water, apparently electrocuted and with their hand turned to hamburger."

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Here's a comparable example:

I once complained to my landlord's agent that an appliance wasn't working. They sent an electrician, who came and looked at it, pressed some buttons, and everything was working.

They sent a bill to the agent, who forwarded it to me and told me I had to pay it because nothing was wrong with the appliance.

I told them to get lost, quite fairly I think. This was because there was no reasonable way that I could have know the magic combination of cryptically labelled buttons to press.

However, if they had said to me "the instructions were left in the drawer right next to the appliance" then I think it would have been quite reasonable for them to expect me to pay the unnecessary bill, and to deduct it from my deposit if I refused.

So my answer is really, you should expect them to do something if it is what the manufacturer of the equipment would expect the end user to do, as shown by the instructions. This also at least partially helps shift the liability to the manufacturer if something goes wrong.

Tom V
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It's not a legal answer, but it's worth thinking of the worst case scenario here, who is liable, and how this plays out if something goes wrong.

In this case, what happens if:

  1. The tenant, while following your instructions, drops whatever they were turning the motor with directly into the garbage disposal by mistake, damaging it. As a tenant, I'd not want to find out if me or the landlord is liable for a clumsy slip of whatever I was using to turn the motor, so I'd refuse without something written saying I'm not responsible for damage.

  2. There's a loose wire in the casing, and I electrocute myself while following your instructions. Presumably, someone will sue you. And that's going to be a complicated, expensive case.

Now, if some general purpose handyman sticks a pipe wrench down the garbage disposal, killing himself and trashing the machine, it's a lot more neatly handled. Presumably, he has insurance. There was an assumption of competence on his part, assuming nothing was obviously dangerous. There's still possibly a lawsuit, but at worst it's a lawsuit fought between two insurance companies, which is far more preferable than "personally liable in some way for the death of x".

You probably can request the tenant do the work, but I'd caution against it. Part of being a landlord means hiring people to fix stuff. I'd also argue that if this is tripping, say, a circuit breaker, that also suggests something is not right in the electrical system, and it would be very easy for the family of the hypothetically electrocuted tenant to find an expert to testify to this.

lupe
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