Who Pays for the Repair? A Straight Answer for Santa Ana Renters and Landlords

A big share of our Santa Ana calls start the same way: the refrigerator in a rental unit quits, and before anyone books a repair, there’s a standoff. The tenant thinks the landlord should pay. The landlord isn’t sure they have to. Food is going warm while everybody researches.

We work for both sides — property managers with forty doors and tenants paying out of pocket for their own washer. So here’s the plainest explanation I can give of how this actually works, plus the practical stuff: how to document a request, how authorization works when the caller and the payer are different people, and what repairs actually cost so nobody gets taken for a ride.

One disclaimer, once: I’m an appliance technician, not a lawyer, and this isn’t legal advice. It’s field experience plus a working knowledge of the rules everyone in this business operates under.

The Basic Rule in California

California’s habitability law requires landlords to keep a rental unit livable — plumbing, heat, hot water, electrical, weatherproofing. Here’s the part that surprises people: most appliances aren’t on that list. A refrigerator or a washer is generally not legally required for habitability. A working stove usually gets treated differently, since cooking facilities are part of a livable unit.

So the real answer to “who pays?” lives in the lease, and it follows one principle that holds up in almost every situation:

Whoever owns the appliance maintains the appliance — and if the unit came with it as part of the lease, the landlord owns it.

If the apartment was rented with a refrigerator, a range, and a dishwasher in it, those are the landlord’s equipment, the same as the water heater. When they fail through normal use, the landlord repairs them. Not because of habitability law — because the lease included them, and the tenant is paying rent for a unit with a working fridge.

The Three Cases We See Most in Santa Ana

Case one: the fridge that came with the unit dies. Landlord’s responsibility, in nearly every lease I’ve seen come up on these jobs. The exception is a lease that explicitly states appliances are provided “as-is” with no maintenance obligation — rare, and something a tenant should notice before signing. The other exception is damage versus wear: a compressor failing at year nine is normal wear. A shelf snapped off or a door boot sliced open is damage, and landlords can fairly bill that back.

Case two: tenant-owned washer in a hookup unit. Lots of Santa Ana apartments and rented houses have laundry hookups but no machines. Tenant buys their own washer, tenant repairs their own washer. Full stop. The landlord’s responsibility ends at the hookups themselves — the valves, the drain standpipe, the electrical outlet. If the wall valve is seized or the drain backs up, that’s a landlord problem. If the washer’s drain pump ate a sock, that’s the tenant’s bill. We diagnose which side of the wall the problem is on all the time, and putting that in writing on the invoice has settled more than one dispute.

Case three: the range that came with the apartment. Landlord’s, and this is the one where dragging feet is riskiest, because a dead range gets closest to an actual habitability issue. No working cooking facilities is not a “we’ll get to it” situation. In my experience Santa Ana landlords move fastest on these, and they’re right to.

How a Tenant Should Ask (So It Actually Gets Fixed)

Verbal requests evaporate. Do it this way instead:

1. Put it in writing — text or email is fine, dated, describing the problem specifically. “Refrigerator not cooling, freezer at 30°F, food spoiling” beats “fridge is acting up.”
2. Photograph or video the problem. A thermometer reading in the fridge, the puddle under the dishwasher, the error code on the display.
3. Give reasonable time. California’s benchmark for repairs is 30 days, but a dead refrigerator reasonably warrants days, not weeks, and most landlords know it.
4. Keep every reply. If it ever escalates, the paper trail is everything.

You may have heard of “repair and deduct” — California does allow a tenant to fix a problem and subtract the cost from rent. Know what it actually requires before leaning on it: the problem generally has to affect habitability (which most appliance failures don’t), the landlord must have been notified and given reasonable time, the deduction is capped at one month’s rent, and it can’t be used more than twice in 12 months. For a fridge the lease included, it’s usually a weak tool. Written notice and persistence work better, and they don’t put your tenancy in contested territory.

A Word to Landlords: Do the $180 Math

I’ll be blunt, because I see this go badly. A typical single-part appliance repair on a rental-grade machine runs $150 to $300. A tenant who reports a dead fridge and waits two weeks staring at a cooler of melting ice starts browsing listings. Turning over a unit in Santa Ana — vacancy, cleaning, marketing, screening — costs thousands, and that’s before the vacancy month itself.

Authorizing a $180 repair the day it’s reported is not generosity. It’s the cheapest retention program that exists. The landlords we work with regularly have figured this out, which is exactly why they call the same day the tenant does.

How We Handle Split Calls

When a tenant calls us about a landlord-owned appliance, here’s our process, and it’s built to keep both sides comfortable:

• We take the tenant’s description and the landlord or property manager’s contact info.
• We get payment authorization from the owner before doing repair work. Diagnosis happens first; then we call the landlord with the finding and the exact quote, and they approve it directly.
• The tenant doesn’t front money for the landlord’s equipment, and the landlord never gets an invoice they didn’t approve.
• Everyone gets the same written diagnosis. If the failure was wear versus damage, we say which, because that’s usually the question behind the question.

Property managers: we’re happy to keep a card on file and a standing authorization limit so routine repairs don’t need a phone call at all.

What Repairs Actually Cost

Both sides deserve to sanity-check a quote. Realistic ranges for common rental-unit repairs in our area, parts and labor:

Repair	Typical Range
Refrigerator not cooling (fan, thermostat, defrost)	$180–$350
Refrigerator compressor	$600–$1,200
Range igniter or element	$150–$250
Dishwasher pump or valve	$180–$320
Washer drain pump	$160–$280
Dryer heating element or thermal fuse	$150–$280
Door gasket (fridge or washer)	$150–$300

If a quote lands wildly outside these ranges, ask why. Sometimes there’s a good answer — built-in units, discontinued parts, a second concurrent failure. Sometimes there isn’t.

The Short Version

Lease includes it, landlord fixes it. Tenant owns it, tenant fixes it. Hookups and everything behind the wall are always the landlord’s. Put requests in writing, respond to them fast, and let the repair company handle the authorization handoff so nobody’s fronting anyone else’s money.

Whichever side of the lease you’re on, call us at (714) 252-4115. We’ll diagnose it, tell you plainly whose problem it is, and get the right person a quote the same day.