All Forum Posts by: Kee Lee

Spend a couple hundred dollars and have an attorney draft a f*** off letter. 

Dear Tenant:

As you are aware, the water leak was directly caused by your failure to change the air filter. It is your responsibility to change the air filter to prevent this from occurring (see Lease, page 3, paragraph 2). 

Your negligence in failure to change the air filter has directly caused me to incur significant expenses. Not only did I have to hire someone to diagnose and remedy the cause of the leak, as well as dry the affected area, but I am now facing a $12,000 expense to remediate the mold your negligence caused.

Due to your negligence causing these large expenses, it is necessary for me to file a claim with your renters insurance policy. If you also have losses that you feel may be covered under your renters insurance policy, I suggest you do the same. However, I bear no responsibility for your damages as they were directly caused by your negligent actions.

Sincerely,

Landlord

PS: Your rent will be going up due to this!!

Quote from @Kee Lee:

Ah I didn't know, thanks for the info Russell, what a headache!

 The coverage amount probably isn't the main issue.  Insurance in most cases only cover mold/fungus IF the mold was caused by a covered loss.  

So, if mold simply develops over time and has nothing to do with a claimable situation like a pipe bursting, it won't be covered at all.

Beyond that, there is likely a sublimit for mold as mentioned by Ken IF there is coverage at all.  That limit could vary greatly from policy to policy and many policies will exclude mold altogether even if caused by a covered loss.  

Holy moly!  That's almost hilarious.  That's the mold test?  Agar plates?  You can put those things in any non-sterile environment and they will be covered in all sorts of yucky stuff in a week.  A really good one is to wash your hair really well, then put a piece of hair on one of those things.  You will wanna shave your head bald.

Do some googling, most of those home test kits are a scam.  Every test kit comes back as positive and they get to market you remediation.

I would talk to your tenant and try to sus out their motivation.  Sometimes people are trying to get out of things, sometimes they are just plain irrational.  I had a tenant that wanted me to check the sewer line multiple times because someone was sneaking into her house through it.

Don't be afraid to come back with a shrug and a "ok...I guess I'll see you in court".  Everyone thinks they can sue for everything until an attorney tells them to give them a 5k retainer to just file the initial paperwork.  If you have made a reasonable effort to address anything that may cause mold you're fine.  If you have further questions, call your insurance company, they will be able to give you some insight into your liabilities since chances are they will be representing you for a mold claim.

Lastly, you can call a remediation company for a quote.  I have no idea what the cost would be for some sort of them spraying stuff all over the place, but it might be a small expense compared to losing a valuable tenant.