
Quoting
Taxing Matters
The landlord might not be responsible for all the damage that occurs to the unit. That depends a great deal on the applicable state law and the terms of the lease agreement. Under Kentucky law, the landlord must, among other things, "Maintain in good and safe working order and condition all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied by him." KRS § 383.595(1)(d). But then comes the exception: the landlord and tenant may agree in the lease that the tenant will assume some or all of the landlord's responsibilities under the statute so long as the agreement is made in good faith. KRS § 383.595(4). My state has a similar set up, and I ensure in all the leases I draft for clients to specify exactly which things the tenant must do and what the landlord is responsible for, and typically what clients want is for the tenants to fix the small stuff that a tenant could do himself or could have done at a small cost (say under $100 or whatever). The point is that the split of responsibility in states like this ends up being a matter of negotiation between the parties; only if they don't specify what the deal is do they punt back to the statute to sort that out. So in this case, we can't know what the landlord was obligated to do and what the tenant was supposed to do without reading the lease.