Buy or rent hot water heater?

[Tawny Bloom]

Our tenants just signed a new 12 month lease starting June 1st.  Yesterday we noticed that the hot water heater for that unit needs to be replaced.  We have two options for replacement: 1)buy a new one (we own the current one) or 2) rent one from the gas company and we pay rental fee. I like the idea of the rental because if anything goes wrong they just call the gas company instead of us.  Thoughts?