Last winter a tenant in one of my six-unit buildings backed a bicycle into the entryway wall and put a hole roughly 20cm wide clean through the plasterboard. Nobody reported it for four days, and by the time I noticed on my weekly walkthrough, the edges had already started to crumble from people brushing past it. Common area damage is one of the trickiest problems I deal with across my 9 properties, because unlike damage inside a unit, you often don’t know who did it, and the lease clauses covering shared spaces are usually much thinner than the ones covering the apartment itself.
After handling this same situation more than a dozen times over 15 years of self-managing, I’ve settled into a process that keeps costs down and keeps tenants from feeling like they’re being blamed unfairly. Here’s exactly how I work through it.
Step 1: Document Before You Touch Anything
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The first thing I do, before any repair talk, is photograph the damage from three distances: a close-up showing the actual break, a mid-range shot showing where it sits in the hallway or stairwell, and a wide shot showing the whole common area for context. I also note the date, time, and weather if it’s an exterior area like a bike shed or parking stop. This has saved me more than once when a tenant later claimed the damage was already there when they moved in u2014 I keep move-in condition photos of every common area precisely for this comparison.
Step 2: Figure Out Who’s Responsible
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With only 6 to 8 units sharing a hallway, it’s usually possible to narrow things down. I check a few things in order:
- Ask the building’s line chat group (I run one for every property) whether anyone saw or heard anything
- Check my own hallway camera footage if the building has one u2014 about half of my properties do now
- Look for physical clues: a scraped bike tire, a dropped moving box, paint transfer matching a specific piece of furniture
- Talk to the tenant closest to the damage first, since proximity narrows the odds considerably
If nobody comes forward and I can’t identify a responsible party within about a week, I treat it as a building maintenance cost and repair it out of my own reserve fund rather than let it drag on and irritate everyone.
Step 3: Have the Conversation Directly, Not by Text
Once I know who caused it, I call rather than message. A text about property damage reads as accusatory no matter how carefully you word it, and I’ve found tenants are far more cooperative on a phone call where they can explain what happened and hear that I’m not angry, just trying to get it fixed. In that dented-wall case, the tenant admitted it immediately once I called, and we agreed on a repair cost of 18,000 yen split from her deposit, which she was fine with since it was less than half of what a full drywall patch and repaint from a contractor would have cost.
Who Actually Pays: Lease Clauses and Deposits
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Every lease I use now has a specific clause stating that tenants are responsible for damage they or their guests cause to common areas, separate from the standard unit damage clause. Before I added that language about six years ago, I had exactly one dispute where a tenant argued common areas weren’t technically covered by his unit’s rental agreement u2014 he wasn’t entirely wrong given how the old lease was worded, so I ate a 40,000 yen repair cost myself. That mistake is why the clause exists now.
For collecting payment, I have three options depending on the situation:
- Deduct from the security deposit at move-out if the tenant is leaving soon anyway
- Request direct payment via bank transfer within 30 days for anything under about 25,000 yen
- Split the cost with the tenant when responsibility is only partial, such as an accident rather than negligence
Doing the Repair Yourself vs Calling a Contractor
For anything under roughly 30,000 yen in materials, I do it myself. Drywall patches, scuffed handrail touch-up paint, and cracked floor tile in an entryway are all well within a weekend DIY job if you’ve got basic tools. A drywall repair kit runs about 3,000 yen and takes maybe two hours including drying time between coats of joint compound. Anything structural, involving the building’s fire-rated walls, or requiring an electrician for a damaged common-area light fixture, I hand off to a contractor u2014 I’m not going to risk a fire code violation to save 15,000 yen.
Preventing Repeat Damage
After the third or fourth incident at any given building, I usually add a small physical fix rather than just relying on the rules: corner guards on hallway walls near stairwells, a designated bike rack instead of letting people lean bikes against the entryway, or better lighting in a dim stairwell where people are more likely to bump into things. These fixes typically cost under 20,000 yen total and cut recurring damage reports by roughly half in my experience, which is a much better return than chasing down repair costs every few months.
That’s the process I run across all 9 of my properties whenever the common areas take a hit u2014 document first, identify calmly, and fix it at the lowest reasonable cost before it becomes a bigger dispute than it needs to be.
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15 years of landlord experience u00b7 3 apartment buildings u00b7 DIY renovations that saved millions of yen. Browse all articles at diytosan.com
