This is general guidance on writing a clear request and keeping a record — not legal advice. What a landlord is obliged to repair, how quickly, and what you may do if they don’t are set by state and sometimes local law and vary sharply. To find the agency that covers your state, start at USAGov’s guide to filing a complaint against a landlord. For anything where real money or your housing is at stake, talk to a local attorney, a tenants’ service, or a legal-aid organization near you before you take a step you can’t undo.
The short version: seven steps
- Gather the facts before you write a word — dates, prior contact, photographs, access windows.
- Check how your lease says notices must be sent, and use that channel.
- Describe the thing, not the person: what is wrong, when you noticed it, what has changed.
- Offer two or three specific access windows.
- Ask for an attendance date — and for the work-order reference when you follow up.
- Follow up on the same thread, with a new date on it.
- Escalate in order — and stop for advice if real money or your housing is at stake.
The rest of this guide fills each of those in, with a worked example.
Why writing a repair request down changes the outcome
Nothing about a written repair request is adversarial. Landlords and property managers are often working through a queue across several properties, and a message that arrives with the address, the date, the photographs, and three access windows is simply the easiest one to action. That is most of the benefit, and it arrives immediately.
The second benefit arrives later, and it is the one people wish they had. Months on, when a deduction appears on a deposit statement or a small problem has become an expensive one, the question is always the same: when was this first reported? “I mentioned it in March” is a memory. A dated email is a document, and it is the only version of March you can still show anyone.
What to gather before you write the repair request
This is the step that is easiest to skip, and the message is noticeably harder to act on without it. Before you open a blank reply box, write down:
- The date you first noticed it, as precisely as you can
- Every time you have mentioned it since — the date, how (phone, text, in person), and who you spoke to
- Photographs or a short video taken today, not from memory — phone photos carry the device and timestamp in their metadata, and can carry the location too if your camera is set to record it; harmless going to a landlord who already has your address, but worth checking and stripping before a photo travels further
- What has changed or worsened since you first noticed it
- Two or three access windows you can genuinely offer, and whether you would leave a key
Five lines on a scrap of paper. With them in front of you the message writes itself; without them you will be halfway through a sentence before you realize you don’t know when the damp patch started.
What a repair request to a landlord must contain
| Element | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| The unit address, in the first line | The reader is looking for a record to attach your message to |
| What is wrong, with no adjectives | A fact has to be dealt with; an opinion can be dismissed |
| When you first noticed it | This is the date the whole record hangs on |
| What has changed since | Turns “annoying” into “getting worse”, which is a different priority |
| Any prior contact, dated | Closes off “this is the first we’ve heard of it” |
| Photographs, taken today | The evidence you cannot recreate later |
| Two or three access windows | Removes the last honest excuse for delay |
| A request for an attendance date | Turns an open-ended “we’ll look into it” into a commitment you can hold them to |
A worked example: a repair request email
The example below is invented — the people, the household, the address, and the numbers are all fictional, and the phone number uses the 555-01xx range reserved for fiction. It is here to show the register: how much detail is enough, and where a sentence should stop.
Subject: Repair request — kitchen faucet leaking at 4B, 60 Ferrers Court
Hello Priya,
I’m writing to report a repair needed at 4B, 60 Ferrers Court.
What’s wrong: the kitchen faucet drips continuously from the base of the spout, and the cabinet floor underneath is staying damp. I first noticed it on May 30, and since then the damp patch has spread to roughly a foot across and the particleboard at the back of the cabinet has started to swell. I mentioned this to the maintenance line on June 4 by phone.
I’ve attached three photos taken today.
Could you let me know within the next few days who will be coming and when? For access, someone can be here weekdays before 10am, Wednesday afternoons, or any time Saturday, and I’m happy to give a contractor a key if that’s easier.
Thank you,
Theo Merrow
4B, 60 Ferrers Court
555-0168
Seven sentences and a signature. No adjectives, no grievance, and nothing in it that anybody could reasonably object to — which is exactly why it is hard to leave unanswered.
Which channel counts as notice to a landlord
A perfect message sent the wrong way is a message that never happened.
- Read your lease first. Some leases name a specific channel for notices — a tenant portal, a named address, or mail to a particular office. Use whatever it names.
- If it is a portal, send it there and email a copy to yourself. A portal you lose access to at move-out is a record you lose too.
- Reply on the original thread for every follow-up, so the history travels with the message. Do not start a fresh email.
- For anything urgent — heat, water, a leak, a failed lock, an electrical smell — call first, then email within the hour so the call is on the record with a time on it. If it is a gas smell, a fire, or a live electrical hazard, get out and call the utility or 911 first; the email comes afterward.
What to do when a landlord doesn’t reply
There is no universal waiting period, and some states set one in statute for habitability repairs — look yours up rather than relying on a rule of thumb. As a practical matter, give a routine repair about a week, then follow up on the same thread. Keep it short: restate the problem in one line, say what has changed, attach today’s photographs beside the originals, and give a new date — a few business days out — by which you would like a work-order reference and an attendance date.
Ask for the work-order reference by name. It is the thing that converts “we’ll look into it” into a record inside their system that somebody else can be asked about later.
If two follow-ups go unanswered, the next rung is a formal complaint: the dated history as a list, one named outcome, a real deadline, and the next step you will actually take. Only name a step you are genuinely prepared to take — a vague “I’ll be taking this further” commits you to nothing and names no action, which is exactly why it is easy to set aside. Find out first who actually covers your situation locally: in many places a city or county code-enforcement office handles habitability complaints, but the right office varies — in some areas it is a housing authority, a health department, or nobody at all. USAGov’s landlord-complaint page is a reasonable place to start, and a tenants’ service can tell you what applies where you live.
Keep a record of what you sent your landlord
A folder and the habit of forwarding things to yourself is enough. Keep:
- What you sent, and the date
- What came back, and the date — including “nothing”, because a gap in a dated list is part of the record too
- Every reference number: work orders, ticket numbers, the name of whoever you spoke to
- Photographs, dated, taken before anything is cleaned up or repaired
- Receipts for anything you spent to stop the problem getting worse
You are not building a case. You are making sure that if you ever need one, you are not trying to build it backwards from memory.
Get the repair request template free
The repair request above is one of two templates Ardent Workshop publishes free, with no signup — the other is a contractor quote request — in the Repair Request & Contractor Quote Request Templates. Both come the way every template in the Home & Household Scripts & Letters Swipe Bank comes: as a fill-in version with every blank in brackets, and written out in full so you can see the register before you start.
The full bank adds the urgent-repair message, the follow-up when nothing has happened, the deposit-return request, the deduction dispute, and the escalation ladder that runs from a nudge to a written demand — plus what a demand letter is and when one is the right last step. If you are weighing whether to write it yourself at all, compare swipe templates vs hiring help. More tools for renting are collected at templates for renters.
