What should I do if my request for maintenance has not received the attention I believe it deserves?
Wear and tear is part of everyday life living in a property. With that sometimes comes damage and hopefully repair. In Queensland, a landlord is responsible for undertaking reasonable repairs to your property and in a reasonable timeframe. Urgent/emergency repairs must be undertaken within 24 hours.
Wear and tear is part of everyday life living in a property. With that sometimes comes damage and hopefully repair. In Queensland, a landlord is responsible for undertaking reasonable repairs to your property and in a reasonable timeframe. Urgent/emergency repairs must be undertaken within 24 hours.
Urgent v non-urgent repairs:
First off it’s important to be able to differentiate between what is classed as an urgent and a non-urgent repair so you know that your expectations are reasonable.
Urgent repairs: These include any damage that makes the home unsafe or insecure, a lack of gas, electricity or water supply, breakdown or failure to any essential service for hot water, cooking, heating, cooling or laundering, and serious damage from a natural disaster. Emergency repairs are itemised more fully in your lease conditions.
Non-urgent repairs: These are less well defined but you can loosely categorise these as anything that falls outside of the defined urgent repairs.
Your landlord is not required to make repairs for any damage that you or your guests cause. For example, if you break a window it’s your responsibility to fix it.
Your landlord is required to maintain the property in reasonable repair. Urgent repairs that have not been caused by the tenant are of course the landlord’s responsibility.
It’s important that you keep paying your rent. Whilst you will be tempted to self-compensate for your troubles, your rental payments have nothing to do with the property maintenance issues. A ‘rent strike’ can result in a breach of your tenancy agreement and the landlord may be able to use this to end your tenancy. Skipping rent payments is never a good option though and can impact upon your ability to secure a rental property in future.
Be careful not to undertake any non-urgent repairs yourself without the landlord’s consent. If you do happen to get their consent, be sure it’s in writing and includes their agreement to pay for the work completed.
If you cannot get your property manager/landlord to fix maintenance issues, contact the residential tenancies authority and lodge a complaint. They will advise you on your rights and the course of action to take.