Snow and ice on a rental property create a liability that depends on who agreed to deal with it, and most leases are silent on exactly that question.
Responsibility for clearing snow can be assigned in a lease. Liability for an injury is harder to assign.
Three things about ice on a property you own.
Someone injured on an icy walk at a property you own generally makes a claim against you. A lease assigning snow clearing to the tenant is relevant evidence and it does not remove you from the claim, particularly for common areas or where the property is multi-unit.
Where a lease says nothing about snow, the argument after an injury is about what each party assumed. A clause stating plainly who clears what, and how quickly, is free to add and resolves most of it before it starts.
If you do not live nearby, somebody has to be arranged. An unfulfilled intention to deal with it personally is the worst of both positions: the tenant did not do it because it was not theirs, and you were not there.
Winter obligations, assigned clearly.
Usually nothing, and it should say something.
A slip claim is the likeliest liability loss up here.
Tenant, contractor or nobody. The third is common.
Tell us who clears the snow and what the lease says about it.
We will draft the clause and set the liability for a slip claim.
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