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Michigan bills would require landlords to do repairs within 48 hours or renters can withhold rent
(michiganadvance.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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I think it should be like 7 days, but 2 days seems too short.
Depends on the action needed.
Personally, I feel like for health and safety items, after 48 hours the renter should be able to call someone to do the repair on their behalf and bill the landlord any reasonable fees / withhold that money from the next month’s rent.
Hell, can you even get somebody booked in that timeframe if you do? Even for emergency service?
Yes.
Every tradie has a "fuck you" price. If I can take it out of rent, that money has already been budgeted.
Michigan has colder winters. What if your heat goes out? Two days is too long in this scenario, especially for elderly or young kids.
If it’s heat or power or water in the dead of winter, 2 days is frankly extremely generous.
If it's power or water at any time of the year, 2 days is frankly extremely generous.
A short time frame is fine because the consequences for missing it is that rent is delayed until the repair is complete, or the tenant is authorized to arrange for repairs themselves and deduct the costs from the rent. Neither of those are onerous so there doesn't need to be a long grace period.
This is also specifically for safety related repairs. It's not like a tenant can withhold rent for a broken window screen or dripping faucet.
Yeah some work requiring contractors can take days to even find someone who can fit you into their schedule. 2 days seems great for critical to life things like no heat/ac, no functioning water/sewer, etc. But like, roof damage, a broken window? shit like that? Larger jobs It'll take at least a week to get a crew scheduled to even show up, and seems like an unreasonable legal burden.
48 hours is plenty of notice to find somebody to tarp a hole in a roof or board up a broken window.
My assumption would be they have 48hrs to book a service that takes time to fix and provide notice of scheduling.
The wording seems to be that repairs must start within 48 hours, which is reasonable. Landlords could likely successfully argue that ordering replacement parts or having a someone scheduled to come out counts as starting or commencement.
Seven days is a long time to be homeless simply due to a landlord's neglect.
Wrong, they should be on-call 24/7 to do repairs immediately. 48 hours is a generous compromise offer.