Broken stove door who is responsible for fixing??

[Leah Holliday]

Question I have a rental property in St. Paul MN. My tenant is asking me to come and replace the stove because the front of the oven door came off. When looking at the pictures the hole where the screw goes is broken. I believe the tenant unscrewed the screw to try and clean the glass in between the doors and broke it. ( My theory) Would this be my responsibility to fix or theirs. This tenant has had 7 maintenance request in the past year. The prior tenants were there for 10 years and did not have any issues. This is a well maintained 3 bedroom home. Who is responsible for fixing this??? 

??

[Jim K.]

@Leah Holliday

Well, this is an easy fix at least.

You need some JB HighHeat Weld, sold in an epoxy putty stick for nine bucks a pop at Amazon, Lowes, HD, pretty much every home repair store. Break a small piece off, knead the epoxy base and hardener together, fill the hole this screw goes in with the putty mix. Wait an hour and screw the screw back into its place. Wait seven more hours for the epoxy to cure and to use the oven normally. JB HighHeat goes up to 500 degrees F, which should be more than enough. If there's a problem and the repair fails, redo the repair with JB ExtremeHeat metallic paste or its imitators, which goes up to 1000 degrees and higher. No part of your oven will ever get that hot.

Seven maintenance requests in a year is unusual, but in 10 years, no maintenance issues were brought to your attention by the tenant? In the real world, this usually means that a lot of stuff on the property needs deferred maintenance. A lot of tenants will say nothing about maintenance and do basic fixes themselves for fear that you'll consider them problem tenants and raise rent on them. Clearly, your ten-year-tenants were of this variety, and just as clearly, you think the 7-maintenance-requests-in-a-year tenant is a problem tenant. They could just be catching up on stuff the other tenants said nothing about or half-heartedly tried to fix themselves.

Anyway, you or your handyman should be able to handle this in one simple visit with a screwdriver and the epoxy stick. Good luck.