Rental Housing Act landlord responsibilities come down to one sentence: you hand the tenant a home that's fit to live in, and you keep it that way for the whole lease. That's the Rental Housing Act 50 of 1999, as amended. Here's the part people hate hearing. The Act doesn't give you a neat table of days per repair. It gives you a duty, and a Rental Housing Tribunal in every province that will decide whether you met it. So your real job as a property manager is fixing the right things fast enough, and being able to prove you did.
Last reviewed 12 October 2026. This is practical guidance from someone who has run maintenance, not legal advice. For a live dispute, check the current Act and your province's regulations, or speak to an attorney.
What does the Rental Housing Act make the landlord fix?
The amended Act puts two things on the landlord. Give the tenant a dwelling in a habitable condition. Keep it in good repair.
Habitable isn't vague. The Act ties it to the basics: protection from the weather and damp, a structure that's safe, and access to water and sanitation. If a home fails on one of those, it's on you. Not the tenant, not the agent's admin. You.
In practice that means you fix:
- Roof leaks, rising damp and anything letting rain or wind in
- Structural problems like cracked walls, sagging ceilings or unsafe stairs
- Plumbing, drains, toilets and the geyser
- The electrical installation, from the DB board to the dead plug in the kitchen
- Doors, locks, windows and burglar bars, because a home you can't secure isn't usable
- Fixtures and appliances you supplied with the lease, unless the lease clearly says otherwise
What the tenant has to fix
The tenant pays for damage they, their family or their guests cause. A window broken by a cricket ball. A drain blocked with fat. A door forced after a lost key. That's theirs.
Fair wear and tear is yours. Paint fading after three years, carpet worn down in the passage, a tap washer that's simply old. Don't try to bill a tenant for a building getting older. That's a fight you'll lose.
Small consumables like light bulbs are normally sorted in the lease. Put it in writing so nobody argues later. The amended Act requires a written lease anyway.
Sectional title: the body corporate isn't your excuse
If the unit sits in a sectional title scheme, the body corporate maintains the common property. The roof, the external walls, the shared pipes. The owner looks after the section itself.
But the tenant's lease is with the landlord, not the body corporate. If water is coming through the ceiling from a common pipe, you still own the problem with your tenant. Log it, report it to the managing agent or trustees in writing, and chase until it's done. 'It's the body corporate's pipe' won't land well at a hearing if you can't show you ever chased it.
How fast do you have to fix it?
Straight answer: the Act doesn't set a universal number of days. The standard is a reasonable time, and what's reasonable depends on how bad the problem is. Several provinces also have unfair practice regulations under the Act that add detail on repairs and notice. Check the current version for your province before you write your lease.
So here's how I'd triage it. This is my operating rule, not the law:
- Same day: no water, a burst geyser, sewage backing up, exposed live wiring, a door or gate that won't lock. Make it safe today, even if the full fix takes longer.
- Within a few days: a roof leak in rainy weather, the only toilet not flushing, a dead stove that came with the unit.
- Within a couple of weeks: dripping taps, a sticking door, a cracked tile, a loose handrail that isn't a fall risk yet.
- Next planned visit: cosmetic work. Paint, sealant, the cupboard hinge.
Make it safe today is the bit that matters. You won't always get a plumber and the part on the same afternoon. You can always get the water off, the area isolated and the tenant told exactly what happens next and when.
What happens if you don't fix it?
The tenant can lodge a complaint with the Rental Housing Tribunal in your province. It costs them nothing. The Tribunal can call you to mediation or a hearing, and its rulings carry the weight of a magistrate's court order.
Tenants are generally told not to stop paying rent over repairs, because the Tribunal is the proper route. Don't treat that as protection. A tenant with a dripping ceiling and three unanswered WhatsApps is a tenant heading for the Tribunal. And you'll be explaining yourself with nothing in writing.
The paper trail is the whole game
When I ran maintenance in London for housing associations and letting agents, the back office had one rule: if it isn't logged with a date, it didn't happen. Different country, same truth. When a dispute lands, nobody remembers the phone call. They remember what's written down.
For every repair, keep:
- When it was reported, how, and the tenant's own words
- The tenant's photos, then the contractor's before and after photos
- Who you sent, when you sent them and when they actually attended
- The quote, the invoice and what you approved
- The tenant's confirmation that it's done, or a note of why they wouldn't confirm
Then do the joint inspections properly. The Act expects landlord and tenant to inspect the property together before move-in and again before the lease ends. Take dated photos room by room. That inspection is the only fair way to separate tenant damage from wear and tear when the deposit comes up.
How Plan@Job handles the repair log
Plan@Job is AI-powered project and operations management for construction and property businesses. Property maintenance is one of the main use cases, and a clean repair record is the point.
Here's the workflow as it runs in the UK today. A tenant reports a fault. It goes in as a job against the property, with the report, photos and dates attached. From that moment it's on the record.
Sophie Bennett, our AI Enquiries Coordinator, checks the job brief for missing information. Which unit, photos, access times. If something's missing, she asks. If she still doesn't have it after two attempts, she hands it back to a person.
Daniel Reed, our AI Operations Manager, can share eligible jobs with your existing vetted contractors, follow up on quotes and proposed dates, and send you a morning brief of what's open. You can see how both work on the AI staff page.
What neither of them does is make your decisions. You choose who gets the job. You approve the price. You decide whether a repair is tenant damage or fair wear and tear. Those calls stay with a person, which is exactly where the Tribunal will expect them to sit.
For bigger work, say a bathroom refurb between tenancies (an illustrative example), you can split the job into stages with their own scope, dates, status and costs. That's the project management side.
One honest note. Plan@Job's launch market is the UK. In South Africa we're taking reservations, not running live accounts yet. If you want it when it lands here, reserve your spot on the South African property managers page.
The verdict
Fix what makes the home unsafe today. Fix the rest in a reasonable time. Write every step down.
Your next move is simple. Open your current repairs list and check that every open job has a report date, a photo and a next action with a name on it. Any job missing one of those is where your risk sits.
FAQ
Can I deduct repair costs from the tenant's deposit?
Only for damage the tenant caused beyond fair wear and tear, and only once the outgoing joint inspection is done. Keep the invoices, because the tenant is entitled to see what the money went on. If you skipped the inspections, you're on weak ground.
Who pays for a burst geyser?
Usually the landlord, and normally it goes through the owner's building insurance. The tenant's job is to switch off the water and report it straight away. In a sectional title scheme, check the scheme's insurance policy and rules, because geysers are often covered under the building policy and the excess terms vary.
Can a tenant fix something themselves and deduct it from the rent?
Not unless you've agreed to it in writing. If a tenant does it on their own and short-pays, you've swapped a repair for a dispute. The better move is to answer fast enough that they never think about it.