Rental Property w/o Electricity WWYD

[awoodm]

We have lived in the same rental home for over a year, and recently re-signed a 2 year lease agreement w/ our landlord. We've never had any issues - until now. Yesterday afternoon I was working from home, and all of the power in the house went out - I went to the breaker to reset and sparks flew out. We contacted the landlord, and he was able to get a "guy" out - landlord's friend of a friend type thing, not an actual company- late that evening to replace a breaker. We were out of power for about 9 hours. So, supposedly it was fixed, but the power went out again at 4pm. We live in TX, so it's not freezing or anything - but it is supposed to drop to the 30's tonight so we will probably need to get a hotel since the kiddos are already having some sinus issues with the weather changes. We have really awesome neighbors who let us run an ext cord from their house to our fridge, so food is fine, but we can't cook and have no heat or lights. I am going through the lease agreement, but was just curious if anyone else has been in a similar situation or had input on how much time is reasonable to expect from the landlord for a complete repair. He has not returned our calls for the last few hours and has not offered a rent reduction or to pay for a hotel. Suggestions? Any BTDT?

[wellyes]

I've never been in your shoes, but I think it is totally reasonable to expect a hotel reimbursement for a night in the 30s. Good luck, that stinks!

[amldaley]

There was another BBB'er who had a similar issue a couple of months ago and there were alot of responses to her thread but I think she was without heat or power for DAYS.

Your rights and obligations as a tenant are a matter of state law, so you will need to read through the specific laws for Texas to find out what a reasonable time is, if you can reduce or withhold rent, be comped for the hotel, etc.

Here are a couple of links that may help you:

http://texastenant.org/

https://www.oag.state.tx.us/consumer/tenants.shtml

Best of luck! Never an easy or fun situation.

[kozachka]

I was the other poster. We did not have heat and the temperature was in the mid-30s in NorCal. Our landlord's manager was not as responsive as we would have liked her to be, so I ended up calling a renter's board and they told me that while there is no strict definition of how many days for an essential breakdown like heat in winter our landlord had up to 7 days to have it fixed as per case law. In our case a repairman finally showed up on the 7th day (after couple e-mail messages from us getting nastier and nastier, final one referencing legal statues). We were also told that we should not withhold rent but rather go through the small claims court if we get the problem repaired by a company we call, since that would put us in violation of the contract and we'd be served with a notice to move out. We also had a right to move out (without much of a notice) since the place was inhabitable, but it's not so easy to find a good rental property where we live, it took us many months, so we really did not want to pursue that option.