Re: tenant water shut off for one night

[Lori Mills]

question: How should you compensate a tenant who's water you had to shut off for one night because it was very late and your handyman could not fix a leak in the water heater hose until the next day? Feeling bad and even though they said, "it's all cool" I would like to do something nice. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[Kyle J.]

It's nice that you want to compensate them, but personally I wouldn't. It was a relatively minor inconvenience, and they said it was all good. Plus, if you compensate them for this you run the risk that they'll expect compensation every time something goes wrong in the future. Some things just happen and are beyond your control. The best thing you can do as a landlord is to be responsive and fix things quickly when they come up, which it sounds like you did. I'd leave it at that.