What counts as a maintenance emergency

Every property manager has a version of the same night. The phone rings, a tenant says something is leaking, and you have to decide in a few seconds whether to get dressed. Most of the time it can wait. Sometimes it really cannot. The hard part is that the call sounds the same either way.

The fix is to make the decision once, in daylight, and write it down. Below is a plain list you can adapt. It sorts requests into three buckets and says what should happen next for each one.

One question sorts almost every request

Ask: is someone in danger, or will the home be damaged further if this waits until morning? If the answer is yes, it is an emergency and a person acts tonight. If the home is safe but not livable in some important way, it is urgent and gets a person within a day. Everything else is routine and gets booked during business hours.

That question also tells you when a request changes buckets. A kitchen leak is an emergency while water is still running. Once the tenant closes the valve under the sink and the water stops, the same leak becomes urgent. The repair is identical. What changed is that nothing is getting worse.

Emergency: someone acts tonight

• Fire or smoke. The tenant calls 911 first. You find out after they are safe.
• Gas smell. The tenant leaves the home and calls the gas utility or 911 from outside. Nobody flips switches or tries to find the leak.
• Carbon monoxide alarm. Everyone gets out and calls 911. A beeping alarm with a low battery is a different request and can wait for a new battery.
• Water that will not stop. A burst pipe, a supply line that sprays, water coming through a ceiling. If the tenant cannot stop it with a valve, someone goes tonight.
• Sewage coming back up into a tub, shower or floor drain.
• No heat when it is dangerously cold, or no cooling during extreme heat for a tenant who is elderly, ill or has a baby at home.
• No power to the whole home when the utility says the outage is not on their side.
• A door or window that will not lock after a break-in, or a broken ground-floor window.
• Water near electrical, such as a leak into a light fixture or panel.

Speed matters with water even after the danger passes. EPA guidance for schools and commercial buildings aims to dry wet materials within 24 to 48 hours, before mold growth starts, and the same timing is a sensible target at home. That is why an active leak gets a person tonight and a stopped leak still gets one the next day.

Urgent: a person within 24 hours

• A leak the tenant has stopped with a shut-off valve, so the water is off but the fixture is still broken.
• No hot water.
• The only toilet does not flush. If there is a second working toilet, it moves to routine.
• The refrigerator stops cooling.
• Heat or cooling is out in mild weather.
• A smoke or carbon monoxide alarm that keeps chirping after the tenant changes the battery.
• A pest problem that affects health, like rodents in the kitchen.

Urgent requests are where most "nobody came" complaints start. The tenant was told someone would call tomorrow, and then tomorrow got busy. Give urgent requests a time, tell the tenant that time, and check it happened.

Routine: book it during business hours

• A dripping faucet or a running toilet when another toilet works
• A slow drain
• An appliance that works but makes a new noise
• A cabinet door, a loose handrail inside the home, a sticking window
• Cosmetic damage, paint and caulk
• Light bulbs, filters and batteries the lease puts on you

Routine does not mean ignored. The tenant should still hear, the same night, that the request was received and when to expect a call. Tenants can live with waiting. Silence is what makes them call again. The tenant maintenance request process covers that first reply.

The gray areas, decided ahead of time

A few requests land in different buckets depending on the property and the weather. Decide them now so the person holding the phone is not deciding alone.

• Heat and cooling. Pick an outdoor temperature for each that turns an outage into an emergency, and note tenants who are more at risk.
• The only toilet. Many managers treat it as urgent during the day and an emergency overnight if the tenant has no other option.
• Lockouts. Decide whether you open doors after hours, what you charge, and whether a locksmith is the better answer.
• Appliances. A dead refrigerator full of food may be urgent for a family and routine for an empty unit.

Rules on what a landlord must repair and how fast vary by state and city, and your leases may promise more. Check local habitability rules before you publish your list, and keep a copy with each property.

Tell tenants before anything breaks

A list only helps if tenants have it before the night they need it. Put it in the move-in packet, the lease addendum and the first text they get from your maintenance number. Keep it short:

• What to do first for fire, gas, carbon monoxide and anyone in danger: call 911 or the gas utility
• Where the main water shut-off is and how to close it
• What counts as an emergency at their home, in plain words
• What happens with everything else: a reply the same night and a call during business hours

Turn the list into an on-call rule

Once the buckets are written down, the on-call rule nearly writes itself. Emergencies go to the first person on call, then a backup if the first person does not take it within a few minutes. Voicemail does not count as taking it. Urgent and routine requests wait for the morning, and someone owns calling those tenants back first thing.

If you would rather not carry that phone yourself, Ours works from the list you write. It answers the tenant, asks your safety questions, and calls and texts whoever is on call, then your backup. Everything else waits for the morning, and the tenant is told when to expect a call. See how it works on after hours and emergencies.

What the law and safety agencies say

State law draws some of these lines for you. Washington requires a landlord to begin repairs within 24 hours of written notice for a loss of heat, hot or cold water or electricity, or an imminently dangerous condition. Texas requires a diligent effort to repair a condition that materially affects the physical health or safety of an ordinary tenant once the tenant gives notice. California lists heat, hot and cold running water, working plumbing and gas, and safe electrical wiring among the basics of a habitable home. See repair timelines by state.

Two calls always start outside your process. A sounding CO alarm means everyone gets to fresh air and calls 911, per the Consumer Product Safety Commission. A gas smell means everyone leaves, touches no switches, and calls 911 and the gas utility from a safe distance, per gas utilities and federal pipeline safety guidance.