Water damage and tenants "education"

[Alex N.]

The story is pretty typical: inherited tenant did not report leaking bathtub faucet, it caused water damage downstairs and was reported by the tenant from below. Water damage is not huge, hopefully I would only have to repaint the bathroom. However my question is: should I just repair everything myself or charge the tenant?

On this forum I see that opinions like "stop shifting blame, man up, bite the bullet" are pretty popular....

But my question is more about: how can I use this opportunity and help tenant understand that they should report issues ASAP even if they don't care about the place where they live?

Complications:

- lease language contains clause that "tenant should maintain plumbing fixtures and report issues", but it doesn't say anything about preventable damage. Even though after I took over the building I sent everyone a flyer mentioning that all preventable damage will be charged to their account, it does not their current lease in any way.

- risk of losing the tenant + related expenses + very unclear prospects of winning this case (they would argue that leaking faucet that was not overflowing the bathtub is not something urgent in their mind)

Poor alternatives (IMHO):

- Tell them to repair the bathroom themselves, but there is no way I can enforce it.

- Fix it, talk to them, give them "last Chinese warning" and hope that this will do it.

** BTW when I called tenant to tell them that there is a leak, they said: I know, in the bathroom. It's been going on for some time. But right now everyone is at work so we cannot do anything.

Thank you for your opinions.

[Kyle Hipp]

Sounds like this was a recent purchase. I always meet in person and see if there are any issues shortly after purchase along with doing a more detailed inspection. Then I also go over several more common issues and instruct them to contact me with issues. I would rather they call or text and say they are going to get draino for a clogged line so I can then come over and repair it correctly instead of them causing damage. 

So in this case, I would reiterate this, fix the issue and let them know the cost, and that you will cover this time but if it happens again, you will be charging. If you were very clear from the begining, then doing a percentage of the cost charge would not be unreasonable.