Renters Can Now Force Repairs (New Law)
Today, we're diving into something that should make every landlord watching sit up straight. In Duluth, Minnesota, the most aggressive tenant repair law just passed, and it passed overwhelmingly. 69% of Minnesotans voted yes on the proposal to allow tenants to make simple repairs in their units without landlord oversight. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Landlord Lens.
Speaker 1:I am joined as usual by Seamus. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Doing great, John.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Are you ready to talk about self repair laws?
Speaker 2:I absolutely am. I think it's a super important topic and an interesting example from Duluth, Minnesota with this new law that was passed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and passed overwhelmingly. 69% is a huge huge win for the tenants rights groups there, but creates a brand new reason to file a lawsuit for landlords and renters alike.
Speaker 2:Absolutely creates a lot of opportunity for friction in that relationship, but let's roll the video and learn more.
Speaker 3:Duluth just became the first city in Minnesota to pass a right to repair law empowering renters. The law lets tenants make simple repairs to their rental units and then deduct the cost of those repairs from their next month's rent. That can be up to $500 or a half month's rent, whichever is greater. How it works is tenants inform their landlord when a repair is needed. Things like broken windows and doorknobs or leaky faucets and clogged drains.
Speaker 3:The landlord has two weeks to fix it or at least schedule the repair. If they don't, the tenant can do the work themselves or hire someone to do it and then deduct the cost from their rent.
Speaker 2:Well, there you have it, John. The law is allowing tenants to self repair if they've given written notice of a maintenance request that has gone unresponded to in fourteen days. How do we feel about it?
Speaker 1:Complicated, because I think one thing I'll ask you, Seamus, to kind of tee this off is what is your repair process? When you get a repair request in, what do you have to do?
Speaker 2:All right, so I'm considering kind of four different things. The first is the actual problem, right? Many maintenance requests will come in, they don't have a level of specificity, or maybe they're just the tip of the iceberg, right? So there is this mitigation of future damage, but also just a triaging of like, what problem should we actually solve, right? Water's pooling on the bathroom floor, is it leaking from the toilet, is it leaking from the sink, right?
Speaker 2:What problem should we actually solve? So that's one. Number two, I'm thinking about the service provider. Who it is and the quality of work they do. I have my own team that I know to call.
Speaker 2:I got them on speed dial, a plumber, an HVAC individual, a handyman.
Speaker 1:Sometimes yourself.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's myself, right? That will come in and do the job. And I want a trusted individual. And if I have to go outside that team, I wanna be able to ask about references. I wanna ask about similar jobs they've done in the past, right?
Speaker 2:So that's number two, the quality of the service provider. And number three is the quality of the equipment that they install. What most people anticipate is the landlords are gonna do everything that's cheap, but in a lot of cases, like a water heater I recently had, I actually wanted the better quality one because I don't wanna do this again. Right? I want that 20 warranty.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? And so the quality of the equipment actually installed. And then the last one of course is the price. I wanna make sure I get multiple bids so that I'm paying an appropriate price for the job that's getting done.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. A of clear ways in which you make sure the right work is done for the right price to achieve the best outcome to actually finish the maintenance job. Yep.
Speaker 1:How would your approach change if you weren't on the hook for the cost of the repair or for the change in the asset?
Speaker 2:So I'm a tenant now in Minnesota. Yep. And I have the self repair option. Well, first, a lot of it is gonna just be around what is most convenient for me, right? Timing, easiest person to get ahold of, easiest person to come do the work.
Speaker 2:There's less of an emphasis on the actual mitigation, less of an emphasis on the triage. What is the actual problem? And then as a tenant, I'm not going to call three different service providers and get three different bids, right? I'm just going to get whatever bid or I'm just going to take the first bid I get that fits within this $500 or half of rent that I can deduct, right? Because at the end of the day, it's not really money out of my pocket, right?
Speaker 2:So I don't care. And then the last piece I think is just on equipment selection, right? What is actually being put in there? What is the method with which they're actually doing the repair? Is it up to the quality that I want as landlord, right?
Speaker 2:Not considering that because I don't know it, you know? And so I think that's the big difference, right? It's kind of night and day as to how a landlord's going to approach these things and how a tenant will approach them in self repair mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's talk about that. So obviously, the maintenance process you have or the one you kind of put together ad hoc if you only get two or three a year, right, if you're one property, is built to both achieve good outcomes for the tenant, but also protect your wallet and protect your asset in in the property. How do you avoid getting to a place where the tenant who does not have any of those incentives goes out and does it? What what are what are some new things in your playbook you might need to introduce or just some things you need to be on top of?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're a landlord in Duluth right now, your lease agreement has to say how you want to receive maintenance requests. That's perfectly legal, right? And so my lease agreements, I'll say as a TurboTennant user, right? All maintenance requests have to be submitted through TurboTennant and that coordination and messaging will happen through TurboTennant around that, right?
Speaker 2:That gives me the ability to control that situation so that I get that notice. It doesn't get lost in a voicemail, an email, spam folder, right? It doesn't get just lost in text messages. Yeah. And that also, that notification of a maintenance request also starts that fourteen day clock.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. There's a timestamp now.
Speaker 2:Exactly, so that comes in, boom, I know exactly when I have to go back and forth. I message back and forth with the tenant right in Turbo Tenant so that I have those timestamps, right? Hey, addressed this quickly. And then the other piece that happens automatically through the TurboTennant system, and if you're not using TurboTennant, I'd suggest, well, use TurboTennant, but I'd suggest making sure you also have a follow-up after the repair is done, where they have to confirm that the repair was successful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's not a lingering issue. Because I also think that this laws like this are ripe with a situation of I put in a request for a repair, it gets fixed, I'm unsatisfied as the tenant with the level from which it was fixed, and the clock keeps running. Right? The law doesn't specify that a new maintenance request has to come in in that situation.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right? So that's, you know, that in my mind is a very easy way with which this fourteen days could expire, even though as a landlord you've been doing the right things.
Speaker 1:If you're able to contain all the communication in one spot, and a, you know, disinterested third party can review that, review the photos that come out of the actual work, review the photos on the maintenance request, and say, yep, looks like the work got done that was agreed to. You're probably safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I would I would directly go to the tenant and say, did the work get done as you would have expected? Yeah. Is this maintenance request closed?
Speaker 1:You know, when when you think of it that way, and, you know, two weeks is a long time, actually responding quickly and taking the actions required to get a repair just like you would in in your own house with with a leaky pipe or something Sounds pretty reasonable. It just requires staying on top of it, documentation, all in one place, clear folder of activity.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And what I don't understand right now, and maybe more guidance will come out, but, like, let's say a repair request is sent in a month ago via an email and a spam folder, right? Yeah. Has that already expired? So today as a tenant, I start making those self repairs and they all get deducted from my rent, right?
Speaker 2:Sounds great. The other thing that's not specified is what if I DIY it for those self repairs? Oh, yeah. Right? I I decide that I want I'm
Speaker 1:worth $400 an hour.
Speaker 2:Yes. Either my hourly rate, right, or I decide that I want to drastically upgrade the the mirror over the vanity or Right. Know, some element like that. There's a little shelf that's loose and instead of putting in a new solid anchor, I decide to buy entertainment center. Then that just gets deducted Yeah, out of exactly.
Speaker 2:I think this is rife with opportunities for a lot of tension between landlords and tenants. It also requires a huge degree of interpretation on both sides as to what what is within each person's power control. So it's it'll be interesting to see how it plays out and whether this is the kind of policy that we see start spreading.
Speaker 1:I I would imagine we do see it start spreading. That 69% approval rating probably sounds like music to the years of city council members the world over. So it'll it'll be interesting to see where it spreads to and and the kind of fallout we we we get to observe. We'll probably have shows about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And like so many things that we end up talking about, it it does represent this kind of sliding where landlord doesn't own the property. Yeah. Things can happen to it. Right?
Speaker 2:Outside of their their con I won't say outside of their control, but I would say outside of their approval maybe. Yep. And it does kind of represent this, I would say, this loosening in the hold landlords have on their own property. And generally, that's that's going to face a lot of and should face a lot of pushback from landlords.
Speaker 1:Agreed. Cool. Well, thanks everybody. I appreciate you hopping into another landlord lens with us as we talk about these right to repair law. If you like the content, like and subscribe.
Speaker 2:If you have any tenants that have done a self repair that turned into a nightmare Oh, yeah. Please share those in the comments because I'm sure some of our audience right now is thinking about the self repairs that they've they've seen and the amount of work that created for them.
