Nearly a third of tenants in the privately rented homes have sometime in their tenancy carried out repairs rather than putting a request to their landlord to carry them out.

This is according to research carried out by a property emergency call out service and that overall costs for the repairs averaged out at £63.20, however as many as one in six paid more than £100 on repair(s).

The most common repairs that were carried out by 20% of those tenants polled were to faulty showers and blocked drains. Faulty wiring, broken locks and keys were replaced by one in six tenants, just behind this carpets were replaced and leaking pipes were repaired by one in seven tenants. However what is surprising is the number of tenants that had paid for boiler repairs as one in fourteen claimed that they had done so.

The most common reason why tenants had took it upon themselves to carry out repairs because they felt 'quicker and easier to do it themselves’, this was claimed by 50%.

25% repaired the property as it was their own fault and one in eight had to because they said their landlord would not help. A quarter said they caused the fault and felt responsible for repairing it, while one in eight said their landlord refused to help.

6% said that they had a landlord who tried to do some work but made the problem worse.

Within the research most of the tenants had said their landlords visited the property within one day of being told of a problem. Whereas one in three had waited for more than a week for anyone to visit the property, view the damage and put right.
 

Helen Brooker, head of the home membership scheme, said: “Not being responsible for repairs is often seen as a perk of renting. Some landlords may accuse tenants of not taking care of properties but our research shows they seem to be more conscientious than they’re often given credit for.

“The relationship between landlords and tenants can be rather fragile and fallouts over repairs are quite common. Having clear guidelines about who is responsible for particular issues could be helpful, as could having reasonable expectations as to how landlords will deal with household repairs.

“Some of the repairs that tenants told us they’d undertaken might have been quite simple and cheap to fix. But some things – relating to gas and electrical problems for example, should only be carried out by properly qualified professionals. It could be useful for landlords to leave details of somebody the tenant could contact in their absence, such as a trusted tradesperson.”