Inheriting Tenants and repairs needed

[Courtney Sorrell]

Good afternoon BP'er's, I'm a newbie looking for your wisdom!

I'm closing on an up/down duplex at the end of the month, both units occupied. The inspection looked good overall but the downstairs bathroom has a pretty good leak going from the toilet through the subfloors and into the foundation that I can see. The inspector noted that the bathroom floor is off-level and feels squishy, and recommended immediate remediation (new subfloor, etc).

The problem is that the tenant in place just resigned and will be there until next March, so now I'm wondering what I can legally do. What would you do?

[Andrew Portnoy]

At least there's good news in that the problem is in the lower unit so the repairs will be confined to it. If the leak is coming from the toilet, there's a good chance that the toilet was not seated properly on a wax seal and water is escaping and deteriorating the floor.

Putting legality aside, both you and the tenants are interested in fixing the problem. the tenant also wants a functioning bathroom, which isn't compatible with a drawn out repair.

stopping the leak is your number one priority after closing, and it's causing the subfloor deterioration. A professional plumber should have no issue fixing a leak and returning the toilet to working order within a day, which is totally reasonable from a tenant perspective. Provide them the 24 hours notice to enter or whatever the lease requires.

Once that's done you can take the next steps. It's likely that the floor will be fine for a year as long as the leak is addressed. Once the tenant moves out, consider doing a bathroom renovation.

I'm guessing from the current situation that this isn't a high end rental otherwise the tenant probably wouldn't have signed a new lease. They probably saw the place on the market and didn't want the new owner to jack up their rent.