Maintenance & Repairs Clause
in Your Lease
What it actually means, what Nevada law says, what's specific to Las Vegas - and exactly what to do. In plain English.
Quick Summary - What You Need to Know
- NRS 118A.355(1) gives the landlord 14 days after receiving the tenant's written notice specifying each failure to remedy the breach or to use best efforts to remedy it.
- Once those 14 days pass, the tenant may terminate the rental agreement immediately, recover actual damages, apply to the court for relief, or withhold rent without incurring late fees until the breach is remedied.
- Where the failure is an essential item or service, NRS 118A.380 cuts the window to 48 hours, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays.
- Repair-and-deduct under NRS 118A.360 is capped at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period.
- NRS 118A.290 supplies the habitability standard itself, including weatherproofing, plumbing, hot and cold running water, adequate heating, electrical systems and any air-conditioning the landlord supplies.
Understanding the Maintenance & Repairs Clause
Your maintenance and repairs clause decides who fixes the dead air-conditioner and how long they get. Nevada answers the second half with two numbers rather than one, and which one you are owed depends on what broke.
The general count is 14 days under NRS 118A.355, running from the landlord's receipt of your written notice. If what failed is an essential item or service, NRS 118A.380 replaces that with 48 hours, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays.
Not high. The statutory wording we read came from a reproduction of NRS chapter 118A rather than the State of Nevada's own publication, so confirm the current text of NRS 118A.290, NRS 118A.355, NRS 118A.360 and NRS 118A.380 before you rely on a number in a dispute.
What renters assume
That Nevada gives your landlord one repair window, so a dead air-conditioner in a Las Vegas July has to be waited out for the full two weeks like a dripping tap.
What is actually true
There are two windows, and the shorter one is the one most renters need. NRS 118A.380 puts essential items and services on 48 hours, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays, and it names air-conditioning among them.
Las Vegas shows on this chart at 14 days, and it does not sit there alone. Three of the other thirteen cities carry the same figure - Chicago, Nashville and Boston - so this is a middle-of-the-pack number rather than a distinguishing one.
Four cities have shorter figures: Austin and Miami at 7 days, Seattle and Phoenix at 10. Two are longer, Los Angeles and Portland at 30 days. Four carry no deadline figure at all - New York City, Denver, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
The chart has room for one number per state, and for Nevada that number is the general one. The 48 hours that NRS 118A.380 allows for an essential item or service does not appear on it, which is why the bar understates how fast a Las Vegas renter can move on a broken air-conditioner or a dead lock.
Plain English Version
Nevada puts your landlord on a clock, but you choose which clock by naming what broke. Ordinary habitability failure, 14 days from your written notice. Essential item or service, 48 hours, weekends and legal holidays not counted.
Repairs Clause Example - What the Wording Looks Like in Las Vegas, NV
The sample clause below is real lease language - a court quoted it word for word, and then ruled on it. What the judge decided is at the bottom of this block.
Find the equivalent paragraph in your own lease and read the two side by side. The wording will differ; the moving parts rarely do.
An apartment lease's reimbursement paragraph opens with the sentence below; the wording that follows it in the original document is not printed here.
REIMBURSEMENT. You must promptly reimburse us for loss, damage, or cost of repairs or service caused anywhere in the apartment community by your or any guest's or occupant's improper use or negligence.
Quoted from the published opinion in Churchill Forge, Inc. v. Brown, 61 S.W.3d 368 (Tex. 2001). Judicial opinions are not subject to copyright; the lease language is reproduced in limited part for commentary under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
“loss, damage, or cost”
Nevada's statute uses the same money words the other way round. Where an essential item or service fails, NRS 118A.380 lets a tenant recover actual damages including damages based on loss of use or diminution of fair rental value, deduct the actual and reasonable cost of procuring that service, and withhold the rent falling due during the noncompliance without late fees or notice charges.
“of repairs or service caused”
In Nevada's statute book the word service has the opposite job. NRS 118A.380 puts essential items or services on a 48-hour clock, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays: heat, air-conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, gas and a functioning door lock. There a service is something the landlord keeps running; here it is something a tenant is billed for, and causation is the pivot the charge turns on.
“the apartment community by your or any”
The sentence moves from a place to a set of people in one breath, and the place is the whole property. Inside the incorporated City of Las Vegas the condition rules come from the Municipal Code, Title 9 (Health and Safety) and Title 16 (Buildings and Construction), codified through Ordinance No. 6937 of January 21, 2026. Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley, Enterprise, Sunrise Manor and Whitney, the unincorporated towns taking in the Strip, answer to the Clark County Code at Titles 9, 11 and 22.
“negligence”
The standard a charge here has to be measured against, and the only kind of limit the sentence carries: a test, not a ceiling. Nevada's own self-help route is limited by a number instead: NRS 118A.360 caps repair-and-deduct at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, opening 14 days after written notice to the landlord, or sooner if conditions require in an emergency.
The sentence stood, and the case went back. The Texas Supreme Court held the reimbursement clause enforceable, reversed summary judgment for the co-signing tenant and remanded the case. The route matters more than the result: Tex. Prop. Code § 92.006 bars only a contractual waiver of repair duties the landlord actually owes under Subchapter B, and § 92.052(b) gives a landlord no duty to repair damage caused by the tenant, an occupant or a guest. With no duty on that damage there was nothing to waive, so neither the Property Code nor public policy stopped the parties agreeing the tenant would pay. Why a renter should care: the clause reached a cotenant who had not herself been negligent, because it covers your guests and your occupants as well as you. Justice Baker dissented and would have voided the sentence for failing § 92.006(e) - its requirement that such an agreement cover one dwelling, and the requirement in § 92.006(e)(4) that it be conspicuous and underlined. This is 2001 Texas law, decided on the Texas Property Code. It is state-specific and not a national rule: a differently worded statute produced the opposite answer in Iowa in 2016.
One court, one lease, one state. That answer is not automatically yours, and your lease may be worded to land differently. Use this to know what to look for and what to ask - your state's tenant hotline or a local tenant attorney can answer it for your document.
Nevada Law on Maintenance & Repairs Clause
- NRS 118A.355(1) gives the landlord 14 days after receipt of the tenant's written notice to remedy each specified failure or to use best efforts to remedy it. Written notice is not required where the landlord admits knowledge of the condition to the court or has already received written notice of the violation from a governmental agency charged with enforcing a housing code.
- For essential items or services the window is 48 hours, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays (NRS 118A.380). The section names heat, air-conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, gas and a functioning door lock, along with other essential items or services required by the rental agreement or by statute.
- The essential-services remedies under NRS 118A.380 are unusually wide: the tenant may procure reasonable amounts of the item or service and deduct the actual and reasonable cost from rent, recover actual damages including damages based on loss of use or diminution of fair rental value, withhold rent that comes due during the noncompliance without late fees or notice charges, or procure comparable other housing, during which rent for the original premises fully abates and the excess cost of the substitute housing is recoverable.
- Repair-and-deduct is capped by NRS 118A.360 at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, and is available 14 days after the tenant notifies the landlord in writing, or more promptly if conditions require in an emergency.
NRS 118A.290; NRS 118A.355; NRS 118A.360; NRS 118A.380 - statutes change; verify the current text for your situation.
Nevada writes the numbers down, and it writes two of them. NRS 118A.355(1) gives the landlord 14 days after receipt of the tenant's written notice specifying each failure either to remedy the habitability breach or to use best efforts to remedy it.
What sits at the end of those 14 days is a menu, not a single remedy. The tenant may terminate the rental agreement immediately, recover actual damages, apply to the court for relief, or withhold rent that comes due without incurring late fees until the breach is remedied.
Written notice is the normal trigger, but not the only one. Under NRS 118A.355 it is not required where the landlord admits knowledge of the condition to the court, or has already received written notice of the violation from a governmental agency charged with enforcing a housing code.
The second clock is much shorter and much more specific. NRS 118A.380 allows 48 hours, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, where the failure is an essential item or service, and it names heat, air-conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, gas and a functioning door lock, along with other essential items or services required by the rental agreement or by statute.
The remedies on that shorter track are unusually wide. The tenant may procure reasonable amounts of the item or service and deduct the actual and reasonable cost from rent, or recover actual damages including damages based on loss of use or diminution of fair rental value.
Two further options sit alongside those. The tenant may withhold rent that comes due during the noncompliance without late fees or notice charges, or procure comparable other housing, during which rent for the original premises fully abates and the excess cost of the substitute housing is recoverable.
Repair-and-deduct for ordinary defects runs on a formula rather than a flat figure. NRS 118A.360 caps it at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, and makes it available 14 days after the tenant notifies the landlord in writing, or more promptly if conditions require it in an emergency.
Behind all of it is the standard the unit has to meet. NRS 118A.290 supplies the habitability requirements, including weatherproofing, plumbing, hot and cold running water, adequate heating, electrical systems and any air-conditioning the landlord supplies.
Treat every one of these figures as something to verify rather than quote cold. Read NRS 118A.290, NRS 118A.355, NRS 118A.360 and NRS 118A.380 in the state's own current publication before you withhold rent or send a termination notice.
Nevada Tenant Protections
Nevada gives you dated remedies rather than a vague reasonable-time standard, and it gives you two windows instead of one. Written notice specifying each failure starts a 14-day count under NRS 118A.355(1), within which the landlord must remedy the breach or use best efforts to remedy it; after that the tenant may terminate the rental agreement immediately, recover actual damages, apply to the court for relief, or withhold rent without incurring late fees until the breach is remedied.
Written notice is not required where the landlord admits knowledge of the condition to the court or has already received written notice of the violation from a governmental agency charged with enforcing a housing code. Where the failure is an essential item or service, NRS 118A.380 cuts the window to 48 hours excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, and lets you procure the item or service and deduct its actual and reasonable cost, recover actual damages including loss of use or diminution of fair rental value, withhold rent that comes due during the noncompliance without late fees or notice charges, or procure comparable other housing while rent on the original premises fully abates.
For ordinary defects, NRS 118A.360 allows repair-and-deduct capped at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, 14 days after written notice or more promptly in an emergency. NRS 118A.290 sets the habitability standard those remedies enforce.
What's Specific to Las Vegas
Figures are the state rule, or the stronger city ordinance where one exists. Verify the current law for your own situation before relying on it.
The first thing to settle in Las Vegas is which government your address answers to, because two of them serve mail that says Las Vegas. The incorporated City of Las Vegas enforces its own Municipal Code, codified through Ordinance No. 6937 of January 21, 2026, whose relevant titles here are Title 9 on health and safety and Title 16 on buildings and construction.
Much of what people call Las Vegas is not in the city at all. The unincorporated urban towns of Paradise, Winchester, Spring Valley, Enterprise, Sunrise Manor and Whitney - which take in the Strip - are governed by the Clark County Commission under the Clark County Code, principally Title 9 on public health and sanitation, Title 11 on abatement of nuisances and Title 22 on buildings and construction.
Their Town Advisory Boards advise the Commission rather than legislate, so any local rule for those towns comes from the Commission itself. On the city side, the 2022 Dangerous Buildings Code the City has adopted lets its Building Official abate unsafe structures as public nuisances by repair, rehabilitation, demolition or removal.
Our record finds no landlord-tenant title in either code and no local ordinance setting its own repair deadline. The clock a Las Vegas renter relies on is therefore the statewide one - 14 days under NRS 118A.355, or 48 hours under NRS 118A.380 for an essential item or service - whichever side of the city line the unit sits on.
That does not make code enforcement pointless. NRS 118A.355 treats written notice of the violation already received from a governmental agency charged with enforcing a housing code as standing in for your own notice, so the inspection is worth pursuing alongside your letter rather than instead of it.
Good - that is how the count starts anyway. NRS 118A.355(1) measures its 14 days from the landlord's receipt of a written notice specifying each failure.
Useful. NRS 118A.380 names heat, air-conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, gas and a functioning door lock, plus essential items or services required by the rental agreement.
Question it. NRS 118A.360 allows $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, and a lease clause is not the statute.
Question it. After the 14 days in NRS 118A.355, a tenant may withhold rent without incurring late fees until the breach is remedied.
Sources
The law this guide relies on, and where to read it. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before you act on it.
- NRS 118A.290; NRS 118A.355; NRS 118A.360; NRS 118A.380, read on nevada.public.law. Nevada publishes the official text at www.leg.state.nv.us.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
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Repairs on the landlord's own timetable
Open-ended wording invites indefinite waiting. NRS 118A.355 allows 14 days after your written notice, and NRS 118A.380 cuts that to 48 hours for an essential item or service.
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Notice by phone call only
NRS 118A.355(1) runs from a written notice specifying each failure. A clause steering you to a call leaves you with no dated start point to count from.
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Air-conditioning treated as a courtesy
NRS 118A.290 puts air-conditioning the landlord supplies inside the habitability standard, and NRS 118A.380 names it as an essential service on the 48-hour window.
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Repair-and-deduct signed away
A clause promising you will never deduct is aimed straight at NRS 118A.360, which allows $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, per 12-month period.
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Rent due whatever the condition
Read a no-withholding clause against NRS 118A.355, which lets a tenant withhold rent without incurring late fees once the 14 days have passed.
Your Rights as a Las Vegas Tenant
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Fourteen days after written notice
NRS 118A.355(1) gives the landlord 14 days after receiving your written notice specifying each failure to remedy the breach or to use best efforts to remedy it.
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Forty-eight hours for essentials
NRS 118A.380 cuts the window to 48 hours, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, for heat, air-conditioning, running water, hot water, electricity, gas or a functioning door lock.
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Four remedies once the days run out
Under NRS 118A.355 you may terminate immediately, recover actual damages, apply to the court for relief, or withhold rent without late fees until the breach is remedied.
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Repair-and-deduct on a formula
NRS 118A.360 caps it at $100 or one month's periodic rent, whichever is greater, in any 12-month period, available 14 days after written notice.
What To Do - Step by Step
Photograph it the same day
Date-stamped photos and a short video fix when the defect started. Every Nevada count on this page runs from your notice, so the timeline is the case.
Put the notice in writing
NRS 118A.355(1) counts from the landlord's receipt of a written notice that specifies each failure. Email the person named in the lease, describe the unit and every defect, and keep the sent copy.
Name it as an essential item
That is what moves the window from 14 days to 48 hours under NRS 118A.380, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays. The section names air-conditioning, heat, water, electricity, gas and a working door lock.
Call code enforcement as well
Written notice of the violation from a governmental agency charged with enforcing a housing code can stand in for your own under NRS 118A.355. Inside the city limits the Building Official also abates unsafe structures under the 2022 Dangerous Buildings Code.
Verify the statute text
Read NRS 118A.290, NRS 118A.355, NRS 118A.360 and NRS 118A.380 in the state's own current publication before you act on a number.
Get advice before you withhold or terminate
Withholding rent or terminating under NRS 118A.355 ends or reshapes your tenancy. Have Nevada legal aid or a tenant help line read your notice, your dates and your receipts first.