Washington gives a landlord 24 hours to begin work when a tenant loses heat, water, or electricity. Not to finish. To start. Few states have written any number down at all, which makes that one a useful yardstick well outside Washington: it is hard to call a response unreasonable when it would have satisfied the tightest statute on the books.
So set that as your floor today: anything touching heat, water, electricity, gas, or safety gets dispatched the day it is reported, wherever your properties are.
Everything else is where the law gets specific, or refuses to.
Two kinds of state
A handful of states write a clock into the statute. Most do not. They require the unit to be habitable and require repairs within a “reasonable time,” and reasonable is decided after the fact by somebody who was not there.
The states with numbers are useful even if you do not own there, because they are the closest thing to a published answer for what reasonable looks like.
Washington: the clearest clock in the country
Here is the rest of the Washington rule. Three deadlines, all running from the date the tenant gives written notice (Wash. Rev. Code § 59.18.070):
- 24 hours where the defect deprives the tenant of hot or cold water, heat, or electricity, or is imminently hazardous to life
- 72 hours where it deprives the tenant of a refrigerator, range and oven, or a major plumbing fixture supplied by the landlord
- 10 days in all other cases
The statute says the landlord must commence remedial action within those windows, not finish. It also puts the burden on the landlord to see that the work is completed promptly. That distinction matters: dispatching a vendor on day one and letting the job drift for three weeks is not compliance.
California: no fixed deadline, a 30-day presumption
California requires the landlord to keep the unit habitable, and Civil Code § 1941.1 lists what that means in specific terms: weatherproofing, working plumbing and gas, hot and cold running water, heating, electrical, and the rest.
There is no statutory repair deadline. What exists instead is a presumption inside the tenant’s remedy. Under Civil Code § 1942, a tenant may repair a dilapidation themselves and deduct the cost from rent if the landlord neglects to act within a reasonable time after notice, and subsection (b) provides that a tenant who acts after the 30th day following notice is presumed to have waited a reasonable time.
Read that carefully, because landlords get it backwards. Thirty days is not a deadline you are entitled to. It is the point past which the tenant’s own action is presumed reasonable, and the presumption is rebuttable in either direction: a shorter wait can be reasonable when the circumstances require it, which for a broken heater in January means a few days at most.
Two limits are worth knowing. The tenant’s repair-and-deduct is capped at one month’s rent, and it cannot be used more than twice in any twelve-month period.
Specific appliances have their own California rules. Our page on stove and refrigerator habitability under AB 628 covers one of them.
Oregon: a seven-day notice on small defects
Oregon carved out what it calls a minor habitability defect: one that can reasonably be repaired for not more than $300, such as leaky plumbing, a stopped-up toilet, or a faulty light switch (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.368). Mold, radon, asbestos, and lead-based paint are excluded.
The tenant gives written notice describing the defect and naming a repair date at least seven days out. Miss that date and the tenant may have the repair done and deduct the actual and reasonable cost, up to $300.
Seven days for a light switch is a tighter standard than most landlords assume anywhere.
Florida: seven days, and the remedy is termination
Florida approaches it from the other end. Under Fla. Stat. § 83.56(1), if a landlord materially fails to comply with the maintenance duties in § 83.51(1) within seven days after the tenant delivers written notice specifying the noncompliance and stating an intent to terminate, the tenant may terminate the rental agreement.
There is no repair-and-deduct here. The tenant’s lever is the lease itself, plus a rent reduction proportional to the loss of rental value when the unit is not made untenantable but the noncompliance continues.
What “reasonable time” means when there is no number
In the majority of states, you are working against a standard rather than a clock. The factors courts actually weigh are consistent enough to plan around:
- How bad is it. No heat in winter is not the same as a closet door off its track.
- How fast could a normal landlord have acted. Vendor availability is a real factor and a thin excuse if you never called anyone.
- What you did after the notice. A dated dispatch record two hours after the report reads very differently than silence.
- Whether the tenant was told anything. Communication does not repair a heater, and it changes how the delay is judged.
Point three is the one you control completely. The evidence that you acted quickly is a record with timestamps: when the tenant reported it, when you dispatched a vendor, when the work was done. Build that record at the time, not reconstructed later from memory.
A rule of thumb that beats the statute
Set your own internal clock and run to it everywhere:
- Same day for water, heat, electricity, gas, security, or anything imminently hazardous
- Three days for a major appliance or a major plumbing fixture
- Ten days for everything else, with a status update to the tenant if it will run longer
That is Washington’s statute in plain words, and Washington’s is the strictest of the four here. Run to it and you stop needing to keep fifty deadlines in your head.
One more thing the statutes have in common: every clock starts at notice, and notice usually has to be in writing. A repair reported by text at 11pm and never logged is a notice you will have trouble dating in a dispute. Maintenance intake and work orders timestamp the report and the dispatch, and the entry rules for the repair visit itself are a separate obligation you still owe.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules change and local ordinances vary. Confirm current requirements with your city, county, or an attorney before you act.