When you rent a house in Austin, you get the house, and some basic appliances. Usually this includes built-in stuff such as the dishwasher and range (technically not a built-in, but treated as such), sometimes a built-in microwave. If one of these items breaks, the landlord pays to fix it.
What about a refrigerator, washer and dryer?
Washers and Dryers are not normally included with a rental house in Austin. Refrigerators are more commonly included, but still less than half of rental houses in Austin include a refrigerator. At the time of this writing, for example, there are 844 Active rental house listings in the Austin MLS. Of those, 356 are advertised as including a refrigerator. Many of those will stipulate that the refrigerator, washer or dryer is not maintained by the landlord. If you are renting a house in Austin, you should expect to bring your own refrigerator, washer and dryer unless they are provided for in the lease agreement.
If a refrigerator is included, who pays to maintain it?
It depends. For the properties we manage, we normally do not include maintenance of “left behind” or “orphaned” appliances. From a management standpoint, I’d rather let tenants bring their own appliances and maintain them. But we often inherit or end up with appliances being left in a property either by departing tenants or owners who no longer need or want them. When this happens, we could simply have them hauled off or sell them on Craigslist, or we can leave them in the property for the next tenant to use.
Often, a departing tenant who brought their own fridge will have bought a new home and the builder provided an appliance package. That tenant will call and say “we don’t need our fridge. It’s about 8 years old but works great, should we leave it there in case the next tenant wants to use it?” And I’ll say “yes, go ahead and leave it. If the next tenant doesn’t want it, I’ll get rid of it”.