Tenant troubles, plumbing

[Wilson Lee]

How do you as a landlord enforce your lease where a tenant is a fault for repairs and still leasing the rental?

My tenant has reported a clogged bathroom slink drain today.   We had all the drains and sewage lines cleaned 4 months ago at the tenant request at the time of move in (5 months ago) when she complained of slow drainage.   Just last month maintenance crews where on site to fix a different issue when they pulled a toy out of the bathroom sink drain.  

Our lease stats the tenant will pay for plumbing maintenance for which they are at fault.  It list out a number of items not to put down the drains.  And stats that cleaning the drains regularly is apart of the tenants responsibility from maintaining a clean and sanitary environment.   Adding this clause seem like the right thing to do when we made the lease.  But now I am at a loss as to how to enforce it.  How should we handle it? 

Option 1,  They call the plumber.

Having the tenant handle normal maintenance seems the right course of action.   I avoid having the collect payment from them. They pay for the service directly.   But I lose control of who is doing the maintenance.

Option 2, I call the plumber and then collect from my tenant.

I can choose my plumber to help control cost and quality of work. I will have to collect from the tenant. 

This tenant has paid rent on time every month except this month.  She called on the 28th of last month to say she was short on rent.  claiming medical bills for her child (single mom).  I told her I still have to send out a  legal notices and charge a late fee.

She probably can't pay for the maintenance in her current financial condition. 

[Jim K.]

@Wilson Lee

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. No guru talks about this in the real estate seminars.

The worry about "controlling quality of work" has to be such as to not matter in properties that are managed by property managers from afar. This, as you already understand, is not a reasonable notion in most SFR built to residential specifications. Yes, you can beef up these homes to serve as hardened rentals, but still -- unless the place was built the place to commercial specs to begin with AND is new or almost-new, this is something you need to worry about.

You have a largely unenforceable plumbing provision in your lease, as you now find. Yes, when you find a toy stuck in the john, you can say that it's your tenant's fault. But a slow-running drain and most other usual repairs? Not so easy or uncomplicated to assign blame.

You have a tenant who doesn't have the financial resources to deal with your lease or her current situation. And it's so sad. No guru tells you that you're going to have to evict sick kids if you aim to succeed as a landlord.

You are not a charity, and you pay your taxes. This woman needs help from the social services. You do not budge on the rent. You begin the eviction process if this woman exceeds the boundaries of your policies. You're not doing her any favors by keeping her there when it's an open question if she can pay for her housing. You're just adding an unhealthy dollop of chronic stress to her life. Yes, you will add major acute stress to her life by evicting her, but at least she will resolve her housing situation eventually. I would help a tenant like this with finding a new place, but that's just me.

But as far as the maintenance goes, unless you're self-managing and are damned sure you know what you did to clean the lines out and what the tenant must have done to clog that line up, well, you're going to be unclogging that line for free just because it's the simplest solution.

Ideally, you should not be giving a job like this to a plumber or a plumbing service. Unclogging a drain is handyman's work. You can buy a decent 1/4 in. hand drill snake at HD or Lowes for thirty bucks if you or your handyman doesn't have one. If you've never unclogged a small drain watch a few videos on YouTube. Of course, you should be self-educating on home maintenance whether you have a property manager or not...this is your business now, and you have to learn it. There are all kinds of books on plumbing aimed at the DIYer, any will do on something this simple.

I read posts like this and remember why I've chosen to self-manage and work on my own properties until I get out of SFR.