water pipe burst after tenant evicted. Property management didn't inform us

[Yang Zheng]

We are a small landlord in MA with a rental in Rhode Island managed Nexus Property management. So tenant owed us couple months rent and was evicted and property management went in and filmed the condition. They didn't tell us about the heat condition and such.Couple days later our handyman came in the check and found out heat was off, water pipeline burst due to cold weather. Can we ask management company to pay for the damage? Thanks!

[James Back]

I would get this fixed asap and just chalk it up as a learning experience.  Some cities have forms you can fill out that will automatically convert the utilities back into your name, so check with that first.  You need to find out the root cause of what happened, did the utilities get shut off, if so was it before or after the PM was there.  If it was before then you're Standard Operating Procedures with your PM needs to state they check the function of heating and air upon tenant move out and have a formal notice provided to you.  Take this info and add it to your standard operating procedures for when a tenant leaves/is evicted.  I thankfully learned this lesson in the middle of summer, but it did push my turnover back by a few days because of having to wait for my contractors to get in until the utilities were turned back on.