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An agent is employed to work in the principal/landlord’s best interests. A good agent will work for both the landlord and the tenant. If this agent never bothered to clarify if the heating worked, this agent is a bad agent. If this agent ASSumed that the tenant would find it obvious that the heating did not work, even though they asked for clarification, then this agent is terrible, and is not only pulling the wool over their own eyes, but over that of the landlord and tenant.
If a tenant has a lease for a property that has a heating system in it, then, unless it is specifically excluded, or it is mentioned in the lease that the system does not work, the tenant is right to expect it to work, and is right to ask for it to be repaired. If there was a dishwasher in the kitchen at the inspection time, would you expect it to work if you were the tenant? I know I would, unless it was specifically excluded. It is not up to the tenant to find out if something works before using it, it is up to the landlord to declare that it is excluded or inoperable. The agent is just an extension of the landlord.
Danb,
I have been both a property owner and a tenant before, so I am looking at this from both perspectives. I agree with you that a request for a water pump is quite excessive, but what is the use of the water tank if you cannot use the water inside?
If the garden (or at least lawn) is the responsibility of the tenant, then why should the tenant have to pay for the water? Double whammy for the tenant. That is why I never charged for the first 25% of water charges. I expect my property to be clean and green when my tenant leaves. I do not expect them to have to pay twice for it though. All of my tenants have happily kept my gardens growing! I also send a gardener out to do the pruning of the trees and shrubbery. I cannot expect my tenants to be responsible for killing a shrub when they pruned it too far back, unless they are a trained gardener, of course.
My final thoughts on water in a lease… if there is a water tank on the premises, it should be plumbed into the garden, laundry and toilets to enable greywater use. If that means installing a water pump, well then so be it. The tenant will then pay for all water charges… If there is not a water tank on the premises, the tenant should be subsidised for water usage, or not expected to keep a green garden.
Tenants do ask for a lot sometimes, but landlords are equally unreasonable, and expect too much from their tenants. I was your average landlord once and once only. I squeezed every little bit out of the tenant that the lease provided, and in the end had suffered damages that exceeded the bond deposit that was paid. End result, loss on damage, and loss on empty premises during cleanup. Since that time, I look at every landlord decision from my tenants perspectives, and if it is going to have a negative impact on them, I will reconsider my decision. I have never suffered damages since, have never had to make a claim on a bond, and have never had my properties vacant for more than 24hrs to perform final inspections and touch-up mend fair wear and tear.
Oh Xenia. You asked for it when you installed an Electric water heater. Gas is sooo much more efficient and affordable for the user!
But, in the end, the tenant has little choice about the hardware installed, and asking for replacement of a perfectly operable unit is absurd. You just better hope they don’t find a way to destroy the electric heater, just to get their point across! There are some vindictive souls out there!
Imagine if your tenant requested that you also install solar panels on the roof so that they didn’t have to pay for the extra electricity that they now have to fork out to run the new water heater!
