At 9:12 on a Tuesday night, a tenant texts: “no hot water.” Is that an emergency? What about “the AC died” in July — and does the answer change if the unit is in Phoenix? What about “there’s water under the sink”? Landlords who struggle with triage usually don’t lack judgment. They lack a pre-made rule. When every request is judged fresh, at whatever hour it lands, you get inconsistency — one tenant’s drip handled overnight, another’s ignored for a week — and inconsistency is exactly what tenants remember and dispute. Here is a three-level framework you can decide once and apply the same way every time. One note before the checklist: this is operational guidance, not legal advice. Your lease, your written emergency procedure, and your state and local laws outrank everything below.
Level 1 — Emergency: someone could get hurt, or damage is spreading
Act immediately, at any hour. The test: will waiting until morning put a person at risk or make the damage meaningfully worse?
- Smell of gas — the tenant leaves the unit and calls the gas utility or 911 first, before texting you
- Carbon monoxide alarm sounding
- Fire, even “small” or already out — 911 first
- Burst pipe, or any water flow that can’t be stopped at a valve
- Sewage backing up into the unit
- No heat when outside temperatures are at or near freezing
- Sparking outlet, burning smell from wiring, exposed live wires
- An exterior door or lock that won’t secure the unit, including after a break-in
- Roof failure or outside flooding during active rain
- The unit’s only toilet completely unusable — a household can’t wait out a weekend
Level 2 — Urgent: a major function is lost, but the situation is contained
Respond the same day; aim to resolve within one to three days.
- No hot water
- Weak or failed heating in cold-but-not-freezing weather
- Air conditioning out during serious heat — note that in some jurisdictions and leases, AC failure in extreme heat is treated as an emergency; know your local rule before you file it here
- Refrigerator not cooling (the food-spoilage clock is running)
- An active leak that’s contained — bucket under it, or water shut off at the valve
- One of two bathrooms out of service
- A clogged drain that plunging won’t fix
- A lock problem where the unit still secures
Level 3 — Routine: inconvenient, not urgent
Acknowledge quickly; schedule on a normal timeline — days to a couple of weeks, ideally batched with other work at the same property.
Routine doesn’t mean ignorable. A Level 3 drip left for three months becomes a Level 2 swollen cabinet floor — and a tenant who has learned that reporting things accomplishes nothing.
- Dripping faucet, running toilet
- One stove burner out of four
- Closet door off its track, torn window screen
- Cosmetic issues: chipped paint, small drywall dings
- An appliance quirk with an easy workaround
The clarifying questions that sort borderline cases
Most triage mistakes are information problems, not judgment problems. “Water everywhere!!” might describe a cupful or a lake. Before classifying, ask: can you send a photo or a ten-second video? Where exactly — which room, which fixture? “The sink” in a two-bathroom unit is four sinks. Is it still happening — steady, getting worse, or stopped? When did it start? Can you reach the shutoff? Walk them to the under-sink valve or the breaker — a tenant who can stop the water just downgraded the ticket. Is anyone unsafe? Any gas smell? If yes: out of the unit and on the phone with the utility or 911 before anything else.
One reply usually covers it: “Thanks for flagging this. Quick questions so I can get the right help out: can you send a photo, is it still leaking or has it stopped, and do you see a shutoff valve under the sink?”
Every request deserves a fast acknowledgment — even Level 3
Triage levels govern how fast you fix, not how fast you reply. The reply should be quick at every level, because silence is what escalates: the tenant re-sends, then calls, then assumes you don’t care — and by the time you respond, a routine item has hardened into a grievance that starts with “I reported this weeks ago.”
The acknowledgment carries no repair promise. “Got it — I’ve logged this and will update you by tomorrow evening” is honest at every level, commits only to communication you control, and buys you time to classify calmly instead of diagnosing from a panicked text.
This is the one piece of triage worth automating. Tenvo, for instance, sends a templated receipt the moment a tenant’s text or email arrives and files the message into a threaded ticket for your review — but it does not decide the level, and no software should. The judgment about danger and damage belongs to a human reading the actual details. A tool’s job is making sure nothing sits unacknowledged while that judgment happens.
Set the emergency route before you need it
Triage assumes the message reaches you the right way. Put the route in the lease and in a move-in welcome note: life safety — gas smell, CO alarm, fire — 911 or the utility first, then me. Emergencies — flooding you can’t stop, no heat in winter, can’t secure the unit — call me. Everything else: text or email any time. You’ll get a confirmation, and I’ll follow up.
While you’re at it, show tenants where the water shutoff and breaker panel are at move-in. Two minutes of tour defuses the worst version of half the emergencies on the Level 1 list.
Your lease and local law outrank any checklist
States and cities set their own habitability rules and repair timelines. Heat, hot water, and essential services often carry specific legal clocks, and what counts as “essential” varies by climate and jurisdiction — air conditioning being the classic example. Some leases spell out an emergency procedure you’re contractually bound to follow. Where this checklist and your local law disagree, the law wins. Your state landlord association or a local attorney can tell you the actual deadlines you’re working with; it’s an hour well spent before the 9:12 pm text arrives.
Decide your levels once. Write them down. Apply them the same way for every tenant. And make sure the reply, at least, is never the thing that waits.
If the reply is the thing that keeps slipping — messages scattered across your phone, receipts forgotten, threads lost — Tenvo handles that layer for $29/month: every tenant text and email becomes an acknowledged, threaded ticket, and you stay the one deciding what’s urgent.