Repair or replace? A landlord’s guide to appliance decisions

This landlord’s guide lays out the repair-versus-replace decision in concrete terms: the “50% rule” (replace if the repair runs past half the cost of new), the age-times-cost formula, the warning sign of repeated service calls, and even the tax treatment of repairs versus capital replacements.

Every one of those rules needs the same two inputs — what’s actually wrong and what the fix will cost — and that’s precisely what most landlords are missing when a tenant says “the fridge died.” OwnWise fills it in: it diagnoses the likely fault, estimates the repair cost, and flags whether it’s a quick fix or a unit on its last legs, so you can run the 50% rule with real numbers instead of a guess. It also checks whether a manufacturer warranty should cover the part before you spend a dime.

Know the formulas; let OwnWise give you the figures to plug into them.