Renter wants to do repairs-should we let them?

[Kristin Kerr]

Hi, my husband and I recently became landlords after a new job took us out of state. Long story short, we wound up with only about a month to decide to move, rent out our condo, and move out of state. 

Thankfully we found a renter (we had a background check, credit check, proof of income, all of that done before agreeing to anything) very quickly. Right now we are just trying to figure out what repairs to let the renter handle on their own (at their request) and what to have a contractor or handyman come in and do. 

The renter has already replaced one of the toilets without our permission, we were not happy about that one, the toilet wasn’t broke, it took a minute to flush but it wasn’t broke. We would have readily said yes to replacing it (it was on our short list of things that we wanted to fix before we found out about the move) but the fact that it was replaced without asking first was not cool. 

There are a couple of other things that they want replaced that aren’t technically broke, a drip in the shower, a faucet that has a small leak when it’s turned on just the right way. Again, it was on our list of things to do...eventually. We are not opposed to any of these things being replaced, but the tenant wants to replace them and we are a little leery of letting them replace plumbing things. Oh, and we just got an email last night with them asking about replacing plugs in the bathrooms and kitchen with GFCI plugs, again, not opposed, but do we want a tenant messing with the electrical? 

They are an engineer at an automotive company, so I don’t doubt their intelligence, and they say they have done a lot of this stuff before. I just don’t know what to allow them to do. 

and of course, they want the cost of all of this taken off of the rent, which is fine, we could save a few bucks that way actually by just paying the cost of materials. But would it be worth the potential risk? And it’s only been 3 months and they are asking for permission to do at least 4 projects. And I don’t see it stopping, I could see there being 1-3 things a month they want to do and have taken off the rent. At what point do we say “no, it’s fine” or something like that?

We never planned on being landlords, and we were not prepared for this at all. Unfortunately, renting it out made the most sense so that’s where we are at