If you rent
This one is not yours to hire for.
A contractor cannot take a building job from a tenant, so a number here would only waste your evening. There isn’t one. What follows is what actually moves it along.
- 00Stop the water if you can reach a valveUnder the sink, behind the appliance, or the main one if you know where it is.
- 01Power off in wet rooms, at the breakerNot by unplugging something standing in water.
- 02Photograph everything, with the date visibleThis is the step tenants skip and later need. Your belongings and the building, separately.
- 03Tell the landlord in writingEmail or text, not a phone call. What matters later is that you told them, and when.
Why writing matters more than speaking
Almost every protection a tenant has starts running from the moment the owner was told. A phone call leaves no record of that moment; a message does, and it costs you nothing to send one as well as ringing.
Keep your own copy of what you sent and what came back. If nothing came back, that is also a record.
What the law generally says, and why we stop there
Most states hold a landlord to an implied warranty of habitability: the building has to be fit to live in, and water coming through it is not. What follows from that varies a great deal. Some states allow repair-and-deduct up to a limit, some require notice periods, some allow rent to be paid into escrow, and a few allow none of it.
The rules are genuinely different state to state, and a confident answer on this page would be a wrong one somewhere. Your state attorney general or a local tenants’ rights service has the version that applies to you, and asking them costs nothing.
Your belongings are a separate matter entirely
The owner’s policy answers for the building. It does not answer for your furniture, your clothes or your computer. That is renters insurance, and it is a policy you either hold or do not.
Renters policies treat water much as homeowners policies do: a sudden accidental escape is covered, a slow leak that ran for months is not, and water that rose from outside is not covered at all without separate flood cover.
If you own the property and landed here by mistake — including if you own a place you let out — start here instead →