Thief broke locks in my tenant door- how soon it should be fixed

[Lena S.]

Hi, 

As a landlords, do we have to  fix their doors immediately or  we still  have 24 hrs time to come and make this repair? 

We got a call at about 6 pm from these tenants and according to them there was a thief and their doors are broken and not in working condition, luckily nothing disappeared from  their apartment, and they need our immediate action to fix a door.  We told them to file police report and they did it.  Honestly, there are the only tenants with problems, and I don't really believe them, on top of it they don't even pay their rent on time. The are inherited tenants from previous owner and now I feel we did mistake to extend contract with them for the next year of April 2019. If I could I would get ride of them today.

Thank you for all your advice

[Dick Rosen]

I wouldn't worry about it until the next morning. You are probably guessing correctly, they probably locked themselves out and broke in themselves but you can't prove it. That's why I chose many years ago to remove all locking door knobs and use deadbolts only, that way they have to have a key to lock the door from the outside. I've not had a mysterious break in since and that was about 10 years ago that my locksmith advised me of this.