LL/Tenant Maintenance Question
 

About a month ago, we experienced a blockage of our bathtub. I tried several remedies for this, including spending about $100 worth of Draino, Liquid Plumber, CLR and other junk to try and clear what I suspected was a clog in the drain. Eventually I got sick of screwing around with it (and literally pouring my money down the drain) so I called our property manager and reported the blockage. She said she'd call their plumber out, which she did. The guy came out, cleared a blockage (I guess all he did was snake the pipe - I wasn't here, this is what my wife says) and everything has been draining fine since.

Today I open my mail and the f*cking property company has the audacity to send me a bill for the plumber. Needless to say, I'm pretty pissed off about this. However, before I march over there and tell my P.M. to shove the bill up her fat ass, I figure I'll cool off a bit and ask the wisdom of the board here. It's not so much the amount of the bill (it's fairly small and I can pay it), it's the principle of the matter. Maintenance is supposed to be the landlord's responsibility - not the tenant's. If I had known I was going to be the guy paying the bill, I'd have snaked the goddamn pipe myself - for free.

I want to know firstly if it's even legal to do this. Secondly, I want to know what (if any) recourse a tenant has to select a plumber, electrician, roofer or anything else, or if the landlord can simply hire his/her brother-in-law to do the work and then jack up the invoice for ten times the market rate and force the tenant to pay it.

This smells like bull$hit, and needless to say I'd LOVE to have the law on my side. However, I will wait for confirmation of this before responding to this bill.

your lease may have info on this?

What does the lease agreement outline?

I own a rental house and take care of all normal wear and tear, including plumbing issues such as yours, as long as there was nothing odd about the blockage.

We do state this in our lease agreements. Again, I'd check there first. Good luck.

Jeff,

The property owner did not put something in the plumbing to cause the blockage. You or your wife did. Probably built up hair over time. Why should they have to pay to remove your hair from the drain? If you tried to shove 5 lbs of stuff down your garbage disposal and it plugged up, would you expect the property owner to pay?

Sheesh, I'm so glad I don't have rental properties in California!

I always took care of the Roto Rooter bills regardless of how the clogs happened during my 15 years of landlordship. This was in multi tenant buildings not single family homes.

On my rentals I have a clause that the tenant picks up first $50 of repairs(to reduce nickle and dimeitis) so they are not calling me on stupid stuff. They break it they fix it, but they gotta call me on anything they are doing first, changing light fixture, painting or wallpapering. I am paying rather than tenant, unless you flushed a blanket down the toilet or something.

+1 on the not owning rentals in California, mine are in Tejas, you screw up and the constable comes and puts a 72 hour notice on the door, was like a $15 fee for that service I believe.

I used to pay for the clogged plumbing until I realized the only way to get tenants to think about what they put down the drain was to make them start paying for the plumber.

Being a landlord too, I dont sympathize with your situation.
I have to clear out the hair yearly in the drains in the house.
I dont send a bill to my lender.

Interesting: Is there a grace period for new tenants? Why should they pay for your last tenants hair?

I charge for clogs, the pipes worked when they moved in after all. I also charge for obvious damage to things as stated in the lease.

I'm a LL and I certainly don't charge for this sort of thing. If the LL does charge for blocked drains etc the tenant may hesitate before calling and it can lead to bigger problems.

One tenant didn't want to bother me about the shower tray drain being "a bit blocked" and the water was draining over the back and into a closet then into a bedroom, ummm...

Bingo...I take the long view and, because I do, I have always had longterm tenants who know I'll respect them if they treat me well.
Last ten years? Two renters.

I agree if it's a blockage that we created, I should either clear it or pay for it. I actually don't have any problem with this. The problem I have is that after attempting to clear the clog myself (without success) the management co. just arbitrarily decided to have a guy come out and do it - then stick me with the bill for it. This was done without my consent. I simply called them and said "I have a bathtub that won't drain, I've tried clearing it and can someone look at it?" At that point in time, it might have been a hair clog, a busted pipe, a root issue, who knows. Turns out it was probably just a hair clog, but at the time I reported it, there was no way of knowing.

There's also the issue of not knowing if it was specifically MY drain that was clogged. This is a rather old, multi-unit building and for all I know, the clog was downstream of where my drain ties into the house sewer. The unit next door to me has been vacant for a few months, so there's no way to tell (nobody in that unit to complain of ALSO having a backed-up drain).

I think I'm just going to eat this one. Not terribly happy about it, but I'm willing to say it was PROBABLY our use of the pipes over time that caused the clog. No guarantee, but I'll just pay it and make it go away. It's only 70 bucks, so not worth causing a stink about.

I'm seriously thinking about sending the LL an itemized bill for ANOTHER pipe issue from two years ago - the pipe under the sink was so badly deteriorated/corroded that it sprung a leak and ruined a bunch of stuff we had stored in the cabinet under the sink. Not much valuable, but came to about $100 to replace overall (toiletries, etc.) The LL paid for that repair (as well they should have - I'd have gone through the roof if they'd sent me a bill for that), but if they want to get into this kind of "nickel-dime" B.S. game with me, I'll start playing it back. They've made a schitload of $$$ off me in the time I've been here and I'm a very good tenant to them. I don't forgive stupid B.S. like this lightly.

I'll pay the bill, but I seriously think I'm going to compile one for the previous incident now that they're showing just how cheapass they're willing to get over stuff like this.

Look here

http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/problems.shtml

and refer to your rental agreement.

I suspect that, since a rental unit must have a functioning bath to be "habitable", it is the landlord's responsibility to make the drain function unless the problem is due to the tenant's "neglect" or "abuse". Normal bathing is not neglect or abuse, no matter how hairy you are.

You might also do some walking through the yellow pages and find the local agency that handles rental matters, if you want to be 100% sure of the answer.

Personally, I would absolutely not pay the bill. In all the years I rented in CA, I never had to pay for drain declogging or similar fix-it stuff, admittedly I usually fixed it myself but sometimes I just had to call the property manager. If they gave me a hard time, I would find another place and give notice. I'm assuming there is nothing uniquely desirable about your rental unit.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'm rethinking this a bit. Although I can see the inherent fairness in paying for something I break, I'm not certain I "broke" anything and occasionally clogged bathtub drains are a fact of life when people live in a place. This SHOULD (IMHO) be factored into the routine maintenance costs that an owner expects to have to cover as a cost of doing businesses. I already arguably pay such costs in the form of my rental prices - and if I don't, then frankly I shouldn't be penalized because the LL (or his property management company, in this case) is too stupid to factor it in.

In actuality I'll probably pay it this one time only. Just to shut them up and make them go away. Mostly, I just want to be left alone to do my own thing here and want to stay "off the radar" with my property mangement people. I've found that typically no good can ever come from being ON their radar.

I pay considerably below market rate for this unit (at least before rental prices started falling around here, now I'd say it's just "below market", not "considerably below market). Places similar to mine in this area with two garage spaces are on the order of $400-ish more a month, typically. I'll suck up the 70 bucks this time, but I do appreciate the information. I'll definitely be printing that out and sticking it in my file for future reference.

Your lucky We make our tenants service the HVAC system twice a year at their cost. Clogged pipes are their problem. Tenants can negotiate those type of things. Read the lease carefully before you sign.