insurance and repairs

[tobe]

I have an old house that needs the chimney replaced. I have a long term tenant who wishes to stay in the property while the repairs are completed. The tenant is a little bit intellectually disabled, and I am worried what my liabilitiy is if a stray brick finds its way from the chimney onto his head. I spoke to the insurance people, and they said if it was feasable and reasonable for an owner occupier to stay in the property while the works were completed, it would also be reasonable to expect the tenant to stay ( I was going to kick him out while the works were carried out). If the workman fenced off the area, and made all possible precautions to avoid problems, if they did occur, the insurance company would pay. Im kinda ok with this outcome, but I would like anyone else who has been in a similar situation to comment please.

 

[Raddles]

Hi there
I noticed you haven't had a reply yet - and just wanted to empathise with you over what is best to do when you know you have repairs to do.
We are in a similar situation with a property which has been affected by drought in that the ceiling plaster has come away (glue affected) and has these great bows in it. Ideally we should get in there and either nail the ceiling plaster back up or take it all down and have it redone. But we too are concerned about doing such repairs whilst we have tenants in the home (who incidentally are not complaining about the ceilings). We couldn't do that sort of work with tenants occupying because we may damage their property in the process - so at the moment we are biding our time. We also don't want to give our tenants notice because the Toowoomba market at the moment is running at about a 4% vacancy rate - which means even if we did the repairs we may not get a tenant back into the property.
I would think if you could safely undertake the repairs you propose and your tenant has no problems with it - you should go ahead. I am also conscious of a recent headline stating that many mentally incapable people are being turfed out of properties with the rental squeeze - and you don't want to add to that statistic.
thanks