Tenant paints house -now wants rent reduction

[Marci Stein]

tenant informed he painted the house and wants to pay half the rent  (400 not 800). 

He reminded me that when he moved in last year I said if he paints i will reduce rent, 

but never said how much. This was to be a discussion before-- not after- the paint.

If he had asked me before I would have said i will paint house (I really need the rent money.)

 BUt he took it upon himself. Do I now have to take money from the rent because he did the 

work, even though I never asked him to?

[Justin R.]

Marci Stein You made the mistake of verbally agreeing that he could do the work. Lesson learned. At this point, I would do two things:

1. Treat this as work you hired someone to do. Check it for quality and talk to the tenant about it as a customer of a handyman would.

2. Insist one rent being paid in full on time every time. If you hire the tenant to do something, ask them to send you some sort of invoice (even if just an informal email saying what they did). Pay that invoice with a separate check independent of rent.

3. Don't do it again. As someone else said, don't get in the business of crediting rent for things - it gets cloudy very quickly. Treat these things as separate transactions.

It's only $400. Don't go to the mat over it. Tenants will make mistakes repeatedly ... Landlords should only make them once. Learn, and don't let it happen again.