Rena
  1. Forum
  2. Passive
  3. Co-Living / Room Rentals
DiscussionCo-Living / Room Rentals

my tenant moved out mid-month, claimed the house was "uninhabitable" because the wifi router was in someone else's room

that word scared me enough that i responded fast. drove over the same day, walked every inch of it, took photos and video of all five rooms and both bathrooms. nothing wrong. router placement is a house rules issue, not a habitability issue, and i had an electrician friend confirm there were no actual code problems. still had to eat nine days of vacancy on that room, $285 lost, because i did not want to push for rent while the word "uninhabitable" was sitting in a text thread. ended up refunding the prorated nine days just to close it clean. total hit was $570, half rent lost and half refunded. the room rerented in four days after i posted it so the longer damage was the distraction, two days of my time i cannot account for. what i still don't know is whether responding that fast helped me or just trained the remaining four tenants that dramatic language gets a fast check. nothing in my lease defines habitability beyond what the state requires and i think that's where i need to fix this.

1 reply

the fast response was right but the refund probably wasn't. wifi router location is so far from a legal habitability claim that most landlord-tenant attorneys would have laughed it out of a hearing in under five minutes, and you had the documentation to prove it.

the lease language gap is real though. i'd add a clause that explicitly ties habitability disputes to your state's statutory definition and requires written notice with a 30-day cure period before any rent withholding or abandonment is valid. that one sentence probably kills 80% of these bluffs before they start.

$570 and two days of your time is cheap tuition, but only if you actually change the lease before the next signing.