WWYD re tenant making a small problem bigger?
Have a tenant who a student and went home for break for a few weeks over the summer. He's been back a couple weeks now and text yesterday to explain that the toilet had been leaking and he shut the water off to it while he was gone in case it got worse but that when he went to turn the water back on the tank cracked. Its not totally clear to me what happened but I get the impression he took the tank off trying to fix the issue himself and dropped it putting it back on causing the crack which ultimately resulted in us having to replace the entire toilet. Since its an out of town property, we paid $100 to have it installed and another $80 for the toilet.
He rents a SFH and in general we ask that he take care of general house maintenance (ie we're not driving down to change a light bulb or fix a fence picket but if there is a repair, especially one that requires immediate attention, that he contact us. I'm conflicted between being glad he was willing to look to see if it was a simple seal he could replace to being irritated because he likely turned a $5 fix into a $180 one. We've already covered the cost and the repair has been made but I'm curious what other landlords do in this situation - do you just consider it part of the job and suck it up or do you hold the tenant responsible?