Repair request letter to your landlord

What the landlord has to keep in repair

The Residential Tenancies Act requires the landlord to provide and maintain the home in a reasonable state of repair, having regard to its age and character and how long it is likely to stay available to live in. The landlord must also meet building, health and safety rules, the healthy homes standards and the smoke alarm rules. Tenancy Services describes this as keeping the plumbing, wiring and structure safe and in working order, and making sure locks and fastenings work.

Tenants have a duty too: tell the landlord straight away when something needs fixing, however it happened. If you delay and the damage gets worse, the landlord may be able to claim some of the extra cost from you.

How quickly repairs should happen

No fixed number of days applies to ordinary repairs. Tenancy Services' guidance is to allow a reasonable amount of time for routine maintenance, and to finish work as soon as reasonably possible when the problem is urgent and likely to injure people or further damage the property. What is reasonable depends on the problem: a leaking hot water cylinder is not the same as a sticking drawer.

Before the landlord or their tradesperson comes in to do necessary repairs, they must give you at least 24 hours' notice that says why, and come between 8am and 7pm. You can agree to a different time on the day if it suits you.

Urgent repairs

If the disrepair is likely to cause injury to people or property, or is otherwise serious and urgent, and you did not cause it by breaching the tenancy agreement, you can have it repaired yourself. The landlord must pay back your reasonable costs, as long as you told them first or made a reasonable attempt to. Keep the receipts and a record of how you tried to reach them.

If the repair does not happen

1. Ask in writing, with photos, using this letter, and keep a copy.
2. If nothing happens in a reasonable time, give the landlord a notice to remedy. Tenancy Services publishes a template for tenants. It says what the landlord has not done, what they need to do, and the deadline.
3. If you might ask the Tenancy Tribunal to end the tenancy over the breach, the notice must give at least 14 days. These are calendar days, and you need to allow delivery time on top. If you only want something fixed, Tenancy Services says you can set a shorter time that is reasonable for the job.
4. If the deadline passes, you can apply to the Tenancy Tribunal. It can order the work to be done by a set date, award compensation, award exemplary damages where the breach is an unlawful act, and end the tenancy.

Keep paying rent while you wait. Tenancy Services says tenants cannot refuse to pay rent while waiting for a repair, although you can ask the landlord for a temporary rent reduction. A landlord cannot give notice to end the tenancy because you asked for repairs: that is a retaliatory notice and an unlawful act.

If your landlord uses Landy, you can log the request with photos on the shared repair board, so both of you see the same dates. For how landlords can handle requests well, see a fair maintenance request process.

Rules checked 23 September 2026 against the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (version as at 1 December 2025) and Tenancy Services guidance.