You may have heard landlords complaining about the state of affairs at the property that they have rented out – mostly putting down tenants and their carelessness. This actually goes two ways. While tenants are responsible for ensuring that the house they have rented is kept in good repair, it is also the responsibility of landlords to make sure that the general repair and maintenance of the house is followed up.
Unless otherwise stated in a tenancy agreement, it is the responsibility of a landlord to bear the expenses of repairs and upkeep of his property – even if it has been rented out to someone else. At the other end, if you are a tenant whose landlord has not kept up with repairs in the house that you are living in, you need to contact him – possibly through a letter of complaint.
A letter of complaint in this situation will serve two purposes – inform the landlord that there is a problem that needs to be taken care of and to get him to do something about it. If you have verbally informed the landlord (or even sent it in writing) that some repairs need to be done, you can still write another one. Also, if you have just signed the rental agreement and have recently done a survey of the property that you will be calling home soon, any needed repairs must be communicated to the landlord immediately.
Sample Letter of Complaint to Landlord for Repairs
John Dade
66 Booth Road
Fort Collins, CO 81210
(777) 777 – 7777
John @ email . com
June 30, 2015
Mr. Danny Mote
273 Centre Avenue
Fort Collins, CO 80294
Dear Mr. Mote:
As tenant of 66 Booth Road, Fort Collins – which I have recently rented from you – I am concerned about a few conditions of the house that I thought I should bring to your notice. Since I have just moved in, I still have a lot of exploring to do but on first inspection, I came across these two potentially dangerous conditions that require your immediate attention:
• The large sliding bay window in the downstairs living room can also be opened from the outside as the lock has come free from its socket. This can easily let intruders in – you must be aware of the several burglaries that have taken place in the surrounding neighborhoods and this is quite disconcerting.
• One of the bathrooms upstairs has a leaky pipe due to which we have had one flooding. At the moment, we are placing buckets under the pipe but it gets very difficult to keep emptying buckets during the night. If we sleep through, we might end up with a flooded ceiling of the room on which the bathroom is built.
When we signed the rental contract, you assured us that the house was in good repair and I took your word for it. Now that these problems have been discovered, I would appreciate it if you would have them repaired immediately so that we can finish settling in. Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
(Signature)
John Dade
(777) 777 – 7777