Getting Back Into Hot Water With Your Tenants

AKA – What To Do When Tenants Have No Hot Water!

Everyday’s an adventure when you’re a landlord! Especially when a somewhat important part of your property breaks down and a tenants are mad.

The quick intro is I had a hot water tank go down, it didn’t burst a leak, it just wouldn’t stay lit. If it doesn’t stay lit, the water doesn’t get hot, if the water doesn’t get hot, the tenants get upset, I had an upset tenant.

Now for the extended story!

Why It’s Good To Have Contractors On Speed Dial

You never know when or what will break and that’s why it’s important to have people to call when things eventually do stop working. Whether it’s a fridge, a furnace or a hot water tank, over the years I’ve gathered a group of dependable people I can call in case of an emergency.

Last week was no exception, except for timing.

This is the part that’s problematic as a landlord. Timing.

It was last Wednesday just before 10 at night I got the text from the downstairs tenant at one of my properties that the hot water tank was out. It was pretty unlikely it quit at 10, it probably quit sometime during the day, or even first thing in the morning and I understand it’s not something they may know immediately about, but from a cost effectiveness stand point, I wasn’t going to call a 24 hour plumber to show up at midnight and pay huge charges for what I suspected would be a small problem.

That’s where the timing appeared to go down hill.

The next morning at 8:30 I called our favorite plumber and explained what the problem was. Much like triage in emergency, he had to decide where my “emergency” fit in his day and since he had two people with no water, I came up as number three on the list of importance.

This I understand, but the next problem was, he also had two other appointments he couldn’t change the next day, so things looked tight. But he was going to get back to me later in the day, once he found out how long or how short the other jobs would be.

So I settled down and by late in the afternoon, I still hadn’t heard from him. Now I wouldn’t say panic set in, as I know not having hot water can be a pain, but it isn’t life threatening, but then the upstairs tenant texted me.

I Was Given The Ultimatum

He wasn’t happy. He also informed me that going 48 hours without hot water was unacceptable. Now this is where things could have gone horribly wrong, and it’s also where the lesson comes.

First, to my knowledge at this point it wasn’t 24 hours, it was less than 18 hours earlier I first found out. So maybe someone there forgot to tell me the day before?

So rather than taking a defensive aggressive stance, (and this is what I also recommend you do), I defused the situation by agreeing with him, explaining what I was doing and going as far as to explain to him that if I hadn’t heard back from my plumber by noon tomorrow, I would either bring someone else in or personally come fix it myself.

That’s when he gave me the ultimatum of either it was fixed tomorrow or he was bringing someone in at my expense.

If you know anything about hot water tanks, they aren’t extremely technical products. Usually there is only a couple of things that go wrong and they typically can be fairly inexpensive to fix. However, they are awful expensive to replace and it’s often easier for someone to recommend a replacement than to simply do some quick trouble shooting or even replace a cheap part with fingers crossed.

The last thing I needed was for the tenant to bring someone in and to get a $1,200 bill for the installation of a new hot water tank, so again I reassured him it would be dealt with. I called my plumber again and ended up in voicemail, so I left a quick message explaining where things were at.

Why We Love To Work With The Same People Over And Over

Finally around 6:30 that night my plumber called me, he had just finally fixed the second emergency and wanted to come to the property to check the tank. Whew.

As I mentioned earlier there are typically only a few parts that quit on hot water tanks. The most common is the thermo couple which simply triggers the gas flow as it cools down. When it doesn’t work, it doesn’t trigger and hence, no hot water.

Thermocouples are not expensive. they are usually $20-30, which is way less than the cost of replacing a large tank! They are also not hard to replace.

They can usually be swapped out in 15-30 minutes, so my fingers were crossed.

By 7:30, my plumber called me back to confirm yes indeed it was the thermocouple and everything was back up and running, life was once again good and the tenants were happy.

Now as I mentioned, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to change the thermocouple, so why did it take him an hour? Well again, this is why it’s important to have trusted go to people you deal with.

After he changed the thermocouple out, he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to make sure it stayed lit and the tank heated up properly. So while he’s waiting, he hears water running in the toilet. When he questions the tenants they say it’s been like that for a while!?!?!?!?!?!? Sigh.

So he proceeds to replace the flapper and saves me money in the long term. By the time he’s done he’s able to check the tank, it’s still lit, the water is getting warm and his job is done above and beyond the normal call of duty.

The TakeAways

So what did we learn from this? Well first, you really need some trusted contractors. This can be hard as so many of them come and go, so many just aren’t up to snuff and so many simply rip you off.

But when you do find a good one, you need to make sure you hang on to them for dear life! I refer all of our contractors/repair folks to people all the time. I need them to stay busy to stay in business and to get tons of referrals from me so they in turn look out for me whenever they can as well.

Second, you shouldn’t power trip on your tenants when they get their backs up against the wall. Did my tenant have a legitimate beef about the hot water. Well, I can understand his side, he may not have know I only heard about the problem late at night, he may not have known I was actively working on it and he may not have known I really was trying to get it fixed.

I could have put him in his place, I could have matched his aggression and called his bluff (currently we have less than 1% vacancy rates in our city, so I would have very little problems replacing him and most likely at a higher rent), but I took the high road and worked with him and explained I was doing everything under my power.

This is part of the landlord business that landlords need to understand. You want to work with your tenants as good tenants can make your life easier. Getting angry back may have made me feel better momentarily. I could have shown him who was boss and that I was the property owner and that he had no right to question me, but it wouldn’t have served anyone.

In the end, he was ecstatic with the plumber coming after regular hours, he was happy with me for getting it dealt with and he will most likely be a very content minimal problem tenant for as long as he stays with me, because he knows I am being pro-active and dealing with any issues.

So, have you ever found yourself in similar circumstances? If so, how did you deal with it? Could you have dealt with it better? Let me know your thoughts on how I handled it and if you found this helpful for future reference!