Appliance Repair for Landlords and Rental Properties

If you own or manage rental property, a broken appliance is not really an appliance problem — it is a scheduling problem. You are not the person standing in the kitchen, the person who is there cannot approve the repair, and the unit needs to be working before the next tenant moves in. Bozmanfix handles that split for you: we contact your tenant directly to arrange access, do the work, and invoice you. You do not need to be on site, in the state, or on the phone chasing anyone.

This is not something we adapted for this page. It is how the majority of our property-manager work already runs — landlords and management companies in Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa book the job, we call the resident to get in, and the invoice goes to whoever is paying.

The problem is access, not the repair

Every rental repair has three people in it and only two of them can be in the kitchen. The tenant knows what is wrong and can let a technician in, but cannot authorize spending your money. You can authorize the work but are not there to see the machine. And most repair companies are built around one homeowner who is both — so they book a window, the tenant is at work, nobody answers the door, and you pay for a wasted trip.

We handle it the way it actually needs handling: the request comes from you, the scheduling conversation happens with your tenant, and the decision comes back to you. Nothing is approved without you, and nothing waits on you being available at 10am on a Tuesday.

How a rental call runs, start to finish

1. You book and tell us who to call. Address, the appliance, and the tenant’s name and number. If you have a preference on access — lockbox, on-site manager, tenant present — say so and we work to it.
2. We contact the tenant, not you. Scheduling is arranged directly with whoever is at the property, in a window that works for them, so the visit actually happens on the first attempt.
3. Diagnosis, then a number to you. The technician establishes the real fault and reports the cost to you — not to the tenant. Nobody is put in the position of approving your spending.
4. You approve, we repair. Common parts are stocked on the vehicles, so most repairs finish in the same visit rather than becoming a second appointment and a second day of tenant coordination.
5. The invoice goes to you. You are billed after the work is complete. The tenant is not asked for payment and never handles the money.

Paperwork and payment — straight answers

Certificate of insurance

Available on request. If your management company requires a COI on file before a vendor works on the property, ask when you book and we provide it. This comes up regularly — management companies have asked us for it directly — so it is a normal part of onboarding rather than an unusual favor.

W-9

Bozmanfix LLC is a registered business and can provide a completed W-9 on request for your vendor file or 1099 reporting.

When you pay

Nothing up front. The diagnostic fee is $99 and is waived when you approve the repair, and you are invoiced once the work is finished. There is no deposit, no prepayment, and no charge to your tenant at any point.

Written cost before the work

You get the parts-and-labor number before anything is replaced, so the invoice never contains a surprise. If you want the reasoning behind our pricing, here is how our transparent pricing and written estimates work.

Warranty on the repair

Completed repairs carry a 90-day parts and labor warranty. For a rental that matters more than it does in an owner-occupied home: if the same fault reappears inside that window, it is our return visit rather than a second invoice and a second conversation with your tenant.

Turnover windows and vacant units

A repair between tenants is a different job from a repair with someone living there, and the constraint is the calendar rather than the fault. When a unit is vacant, access is simple and the only thing that matters is whether the appliance is working before the new lease starts. Tell us the move-in date when you book and we schedule against it, because a fridge that gets fixed the day after a tenant arrives is a fridge that generated a complaint on day one.

Vacant units also let us do something that is impossible with a resident in place: check the other appliances while we are there. If a dishwasher is being repaired anyway, a technician can look at the washer’s drain, the dryer vent, and the refrigerator’s condenser in the same visit — the three things most likely to become next quarter’s emergency call.

What actually breaks in rental units

Across our property-manager work, four appliances generate most of the calls, and the pattern is consistent enough to plan around:

• Refrigerators — the most frequent call by a clear margin. Not cooling, freezing food, ice maker failures, and water on the floor. Also the one tenants report fastest, because food is at stake.
• Ovens and ranges — will not heat, will not ignite, temperature well off the setting. Common in units where the appliance came with the building and has served several tenancies.
• Dishwashers — not draining, not cleaning, leaking. Often mistaken for a broken machine when the actual cause is a blocked filter that has not been cleaned in years of successive tenants.
• Washers — will not drain or will not spin. Frequently an object in the pump or a hose kinked when the machine was last moved, rather than a failed component.

Dryers sit just behind those four, and almost always come back to venting. The useful takeaway for an owner is that a large share of these are cheap or free to prevent — filters, vents, hoses — and expensive to ignore.

Repair or replace: the landlord version of the question

The math is genuinely different from a homeowner’s. You are not buying an appliance you will love for fifteen years; you are keeping a unit rentable at a defensible cost. A repaired appliance that works reliably is worth more to you than a new one that ties up capital, and a mid-range machine that is easy to service beats a feature-heavy model whose control board costs more than the repair budget for the whole unit.

Where replacement genuinely wins is when the same appliance keeps generating calls, because each one costs you a tenant conversation as well as an invoice. We will tell you which situation you are in rather than defaulting to whichever is more profitable for us — and if you want the full framework, see our repair-versus-replace guide. If you would rather understand how we arrive at a diagnosis in the first place, that is covered in how technicians diagnose appliance problems.

If you manage several properties

Portfolios get easier once we know your properties. Repeat work means we already have the access arrangements, know which appliances are in which units, and know the make and model before dispatching — which is the difference between a technician arriving with the right part and arriving to look. For owners and managers who call us regularly, our Priority Membership adds priority scheduling and reduced labor cost, which is worth looking at if appliance calls are a recurring line in your budget.

And if you are not local, that is the ordinary case here rather than a complication. Out-of-state owners are exactly who this process is built for: your tenant lets us in, you approve by phone, the invoice reaches you by email.

Where we serve landlords and managers

Frequently Asked Questions