Investing in real estate can be an adventure. Sometimes the adventure is filled with success and dividends and sometimes the adventure is filled with trials and tribulations. Having water damage is never a fun experience, and when one of your West Palm Beach rental properties needs water damage repair, it can be very stressful. Here are some tips for dealing with water damage repair as a landlord.  

Call A Water Damage Repair Company

The very first thing that you are going to want to do when your tenant announces that there is some sort of water damage in your property is to call a professional water damage repair company. You may be tempted to handle this issue by yourself, but if you are not particularly handy and the water damage is extensive, you should spare yourself the grief. It is especially important to have a water damage repair company do an assessment in situations like these so they can prove if needed in a court of law, what the cause of the water damage was.  

Contact Renters Insurance

Hopefully, you have required your renters to have insurance while they are staying in your property. If you have, then you will likely want to contact them because their insurance will be handling the expenses from the water damage if it was the fault of the tenant. They might have different stipulations depending on the kind of insurance, but it is always best to first give them a heads up that there has been water damage and to find out what they cover. Your homeowners insurance may end up paying the bill as well. Make sure you know the cause of the water damage so you can negotiate with the right insurance company.  

Know Your Rights

It is very important that you know your rights as a landlord. It is your responsibility to make sure that the plumbing in your property is working efficiently and that you are keeping it well maintained. Most of the time, it will fall on the landlord’s shoulders to fix any repairs. However, if there was some kind of leak caused by the tenant like a pipe burst due to pipes freezing in cold conditions in the home, your tenant should be held responsible. This is why it is so important to have the opinion of your water damage repair company of what the root cause of the damage was. No one wants to pay a bill, and you might end up taking your tenant to court or vice versa if there is an argument about whose fault it was.  

If you are a landlord and your property has been hit by water damage, contact Regency DRT before you do anything else. You may need to pay to fix the damage, but if you call soon, you may avoid having to pay for damages to your renters belongings as well as the damage to the property.