If you rent(ed) a house

mom2ll

Was the yard maintenance included?  If not, did you hire someone or do it yourself. 

Thanks! 

FinallyKrisB

It was not.  But ours was a very informal arrangement for a family friend.

We did it ourselves.

TXBELLA

We rent out our Townhouse ITL that has a large yard. We require that our renters maintain it.

 

Kimmer123

We rent and yard maintenance is not included in our rent. We hired someone to do it because it's cheap enough that it doesn't make the  DIY time/effort/equipment cost worth it to us. 

 

Looking back we signed a pretty crappy lease. We pay a lot of maintenance expenses for this house that I don't think we necessarily should. Our landlords are fantastic, but it's a crappy lease. 

mom2ll

Kimmer123:

We rent and yard maintenance is not included in our rent. We hired someone to do it because it's cheap enough that it doesn't make the  DIY time/effort/equipment cost worth it to us. 

 

Looking back we signed a pretty crappy lease. We pay a lot of maintenance expenses for this house that I don't think we necessarily should. Our landlords are fantastic, but it's a crappy lease. 

You shouldn't have maintenance expenses other than the yard and basic care and cleaning of the home.  You shouldn't have to do anything to the mechanics of the home.  Some older leases have a small deductible that you pay, but that's no longer allowed.  They actually removed it from the Texas Association of Realtors Lease.  May be time to re-negotiate.  I can email you a lease.

Kimmer123

bpaullo:

Kimmer123:

We rent and yard maintenance is not included in our rent. We hired someone to do it because it's cheap enough that it doesn't make the  DIY time/effort/equipment cost worth it to us. 

 

Looking back we signed a pretty crappy lease. We pay a lot of maintenance expenses for this house that I don't think we necessarily should. Our landlords are fantastic, but it's a crappy lease. 

You shouldn't have maintenance expenses other than the yard and basic care and cleaning of the home.  You shouldn't have to do anything to the mechanics of the home.  Some older leases have a small deductible that you pay, but that's no longer allowed.  They actually removed it from the Texas Association of Realtors Lease.  May be time to re-negotiate.  I can email you a lease.

We're actually month to month now, so I don't necessarily want to sign a lease until we figure out if we're going to stay in this house or not. But we've paid a deductible for every single repair to this house. For stuff like repairs to the A/C, which took them 3 years and 5 repair man visits to fix properly.

warontv

No. We have to maintain the property "as if it were our own". Which sucks. 

ETA: We pay a deductible for repairs. 

mob102

My co-worker negotiated the maintenance with the landlord before signing the lease.  My co-worker agreed to water the lawn every other day if the landlord would agree to keep up with the other lawn maintenance such as a lawn service.  I think with it being the summer it's been they've broken even on maintenance.  It's a pretty huge yard.

melissa0312

we were in a townhome, so it was partially taken care of - the grass in front of our gate was mowed. the bushes and flowerbeds in the front and the backyard was our responsibility. we got a hedge trimmer and a weedeater and took care of that stuff ourselves.

plaidfrogg

We rented our first house here, and lawn maintenance was included. We also had a deductible for all repairs, including maintenance-type service. That sucked especially when their ceramic-top stove cracked under totally normal use due to a known manufacturer's defect.  I do think tenants should be responsible for repairs due to negligence or other damage, but not for regular maintenance/service.

TexasSmith

We are in charge of our own lawn maintenance. DH does the mowing, I do the weeding.

BritanyV

warontv:

No. We have to maintain the property "as if it were our own". Which sucks. 

ETA: We pay a deductible for repairs. 

Ditto.

We hired a yard crew to take care of the yard since dh works out of town so much and I literally CAN NOT use a weedeater!  

kat.in.the.hat

In our duplex, yard work was included.  which they probably included because expecting two renters to work it out would have been kind of crazy

duchessII81

You probably remember this but lawn service is included for both of our rentals.

LMA06

No, we were responsible for yard up-keep ourselves. our yard was small at the rental so DH took care of it.

Kaz2009

We rent a town home here. Our yard maitanence is not included, but it is really small. In fact when we moved in we asked if we could replace the small patch (v small!) with gravel as it was basically just weeds... and the landlord said that was fine if we paid for it. We did it ourselves, and it has improved the look a lot. 

They did leave a trimmer (?) that we could have used to cut the small patch of grass which we would have done ourselves....It would have only taken 5 mins!

The front yard however is maintained by the HOA and is included in the lease.

 

The house we rent out in Canada has a reasonable size yard, the tenants are responsible for the yard maintenance.... but it is mostly plants that are easy to maintain... and if they die... they can replace them or not... it's calgary plants often don't make it through the winter!!

  

bpaullo....funny that you say that we shouldn't have to pay any other maintenance expenses... we have been asking since the beginning of the summer to service the a/c and other larger things (we also have an elevator... it was an old ladies house, we don't really use it but it would have been nice to use after my unexpected c-section but I was too scared to incase it got stuck!) and none of it has happened....Im not liking the management company for the property!

How long ago did the deductible stop being allowed? And if we have a 3 year lease and it is included I guess we are stuck with it for that time?