Landlord Atlas

What does Wisconsin law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 30, 2026 All Wisconsin topics →

Wisconsin requires a landlord to keep the premises and the equipment supplying agreed services in a reasonable state of repair, to make all necessary structural repairs, and to comply with any local housing code that applies.

Cited to Wis. Stat. § 704.07 (repairs; untenantability) (1) to (5) and 13 more cited sources · Verified August 30, 2026

The duty sits in Wis. Stat. § 704.07 and cannot be waived in a residential lease, and a court-made implied warranty of habitability, recognized in Pines v. Perssion in 1961 and applied by the Wisconsin Supreme Court as recently as 1999, still operates alongside it as a contract claim requiring privity. Wisconsin sets no notice period and no repair deadline: the landlord must proceed promptly, and any repair date the landlord actually promises becomes binding. The tenant's remedy is automatic proportional rent abatement while in possession, or the right to move out and stop owing rent. There is no repair-and-deduct remedy, no escrow, and no right to withhold rent in full while staying. The money comes through the administrative code instead — a violation of the residential rental practices chapter carries twice the tenant's loss plus costs and a reasonable attorney fee. Retaliating against a tenant who complains about a defect is barred both by statute and by that chapter, on a but-for test with no presumption and no time window.

Wisconsin habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from Statute and a court-recognized implied warranty, each doing independent work
Duty source details The statutory duty is Wis. Stat. § 704.07, which allocates repair duties between landlord and tenant and supplies the tenant's remedy in subsection (4). A contract-based implied warranty of habitability operates alongside it. The Wisconsin Supreme Court recognized that warranty in Pines v. Perssion (1961) and decided such a claim on its merits as recently as Antwaun A. ex rel. Muwonge v. Heritage Mutual Insurance Co. (1999), holding that it requires privity of contract with the landlord and sounds in contract rather than tort — two operative rules found nowhere in chapter 704. Chapter 704 contains no clause displacing the common law, and the Court of Appeals said in Raymaker (2006) that its no-private-right holding was not intended to extinguish causes of action that exist independently of § 704.07.
Who is covered Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live More than one source does real work — the details on this page say which
What must be kept in repair Section 704.07(2) states general duties rather than a list: the landlord must keep in a reasonable state of repair the portions of the premises the landlord controls and all equipment under the landlord's control that supplies services the landlord expressly or impliedly agreed to furnish — the statute's own examples are heat, water, elevator and air conditioning — must make all necessary structural repairs, and, in a residential tenancy, must comply with any local housing code applicable to the premises. The duty to repair or replace plumbing, electrical wiring, machinery or equipment no longer in reasonable working condition switches off where residential premises are subject to a local housing code, and the tenant's matching duty to keep those items in working order at minor cost switches off in the same municipalities, so in a code municipality the city's code supplies the standards for both sides. The administrative code adds duties of its own: before entering into a rental agreement or accepting earnest money or a deposit, the landlord must disclose known uncorrected building or housing code violations that present a significant threat to health or safety, and six stated conditions affecting habitability — no hot or cold running water, heating facilities that are unsafe or not capable of maintaining at least 67 degrees Fahrenheit in all living areas during the seasons the unit may be occupied, no electricity or unsafe electrical components, structural or other conditions that are a substantial hazard or create an unreasonable risk of injury, and plumbing or sewage facilities not in good operating condition. A separate statutory definition of a habitability violation in § 66.0104(1)(ah) lists nine conditions, adding missing smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, rodent or insect infestation and excessive mold — but that definition exists to run local rental-inspection programs and is not itself a landlord duty.
Heat standard type No heat-specific standard beyond the general duty
Heat standard details No heat-specific figures or season stated
Headline repair day count No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern
Notice and repair-window rules Wisconsin states no day count anywhere. The statute imposes no express notice requirement on the tenant and nowhere requires notice to be in writing; the Court of Appeals held in Raymaker that a notice element is implied into the duty to make necessary structural repairs, because the landlord must be able to judge whether a repair is in fact necessary. The landlord's standard is to proceed promptly to repair, rebuild or eliminate the condition. For the abatement remedy the courts supply the operative clock: Boelter holds that abatement runs from shortly after the landlord is on notice both that the condition exists and that it poses a substantial safety hazard, that a landlord can reasonably be allowed a short period to accomplish the work, and that when abatement begins is a question of fact for the trial court. The one hard deadline in Wisconsin habitability practice is contractual — a landlord who promises that the unit or any part of the premises will be cleaned, repaired or improved must state the date or time period for completion and must meet it, unless the delay comes from a labor stoppage, unavailable supplies or materials, an unavoidable casualty or another cause beyond the landlord's control, in which case timely notice of the reason and of the new completion date is required. Nothing conditions the duty or any remedy on the tenant being current on rent.
Repair and deduct No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Wisconsin statute and no Wisconsin decision lets a tenant have a condition repaired and subtract the cost from rent, so there is no cap, no notice procedure and no contractor rule to state. The administrative code could not supply the remedy either: § 704.95 forbids the department of agriculture, trade and consumer protection from issuing an order or promulgating a rule that changes any right or duty arising under chapter 704, and the Court of Appeals applied that test in State v. Lasecki (2020) — the department may write where chapter 704 is silent, never where it speaks, and § 704.07(4) speaks to what a tenant may do about rent. A tenant who deducts anyway is simply short on rent: there is no private cause of action under § 704.07 to fall back on, a nonpayment notice under § 704.17 and an eviction under chapter 799 follow, and § 704.45(2) expressly preserves the landlord's possession action where rent is unpaid. What Wisconsin gives instead is automatic proportional abatement under § 704.07(4). A written lease may create a repair remedy the statute does not, and that is the only lawful route in Wisconsin to anything resembling repair and deduction.
Rent withholding or escrow Yes — at least one lawful path exists — How: withholding on the tenant's own action, no court filing first — Rent abates automatically and proportionally while the tenant stays: if the tenant remains in possession and the condition materially affects the tenant's health or safety or substantially affects the use and occupancy of the premises, rent abates to the extent the tenant is deprived of the full normal use of the premises. No court order, escrow account, municipal certification or official inspection is required first, and no cap applies. Two limits define the shape of the remedy. First, the same subsection says it does not authorize rent to be withheld in full while the tenant remains in possession, so a tenant who pays nothing is exposed to a nonpayment eviction; the lawful course is to pay the abated share. Second, abatement is the exclusive remedy for a violation of the landlord's duties under § 704.07(2) (Zehner), and the section creates no private cause of action (Raymaker). Wisconsin has no court or agency escrow program of any kind. The remedy is not confined to premises that are unfit to reside in — the Court of Appeals rejected that reading in Raymaker, noting that subsection titles are not part of the statutes, and Boelter applied abatement to an appliance that could not be used as intended without a risk of fire or electrocution.
Termination over habitability failures Yes — a statute states the right — Under § 704.07(4) the tenant may remove from the premises when they become untenantable because of damage by fire, water or other casualty or because of a condition hazardous to health, or when there is a substantial violation of the landlord's duties materially affecting the tenant's health or safety — in each case unless the landlord proceeds promptly to repair, rebuild or eliminate the problem — and also when the inconvenience of the nature and period of the repair would impose undue hardship on the tenant. The statute states no notice period, no writing requirement and no court step. A tenant who justifiably moves out is not liable for rent after the premises became untenantable, and the landlord must repay rent paid in advance apportioned to the period after that date; where the tenant is forced to vacate permanently, the remedy is nonliability for rent for the remainder of the lease term (Logterman, adopted in Zehner). The subsection does not apply where the damage or condition was caused by the tenant's negligence or improper use.
Essential-service remedies No distinct treatment beyond the general duty — Wisconsin treats essential-service failures no differently from other conditions: there is no faster clock, no right to buy substitute services and deduct their cost, and no substitute-housing remedy. Heat, water, elevator service and air conditioning enter through the general duty — equipment under the landlord's control supplying services the landlord agreed to furnish must be kept in a reasonable state of repair — and a failure that materially affects health or safety carries the same abatement and removal remedies as anything else. One separate protection exists on the retaliation side: terminating or substantially reducing heat, water or electricity in response to a protected tenant act is a prohibited practice under ATCP 134.09(5), with the doubled administrative remedy attached. Deliberate utility shutoffs and lockouts as such belong with the eviction rules.
Retaliation protection Protected by a general retaliation statute — Section 704.45 bars a landlord in a residential tenancy from increasing rent, decreasing services, bringing an action for possession, refusing to renew a lease, or threatening any of those things, where a preponderance of the evidence shows the action or inaction would not occur but for retaliation against the tenant. That is a but-for causation test the tenant carries throughout — Wisconsin has no rebuttable presumption and no look-back window, which makes the mechanism materially harder for a tenant than a presumption state's. The section states a prohibition and stops: it carries no damages, no civil penalty, no attorney fees and no express affirmative defense, so in practice it is asserted defensively in the eviction action. Two carve-outs sit in the section itself: the landlord may still bring a possession action where the tenant has not paid rent, other than a rent increase the section prohibits, and the section does not apply to complaints about defects the affected tenant caused by negligence or improper use. A second and independent prohibition sits in the administrative code at ATCP 134.09(5), which bars terminating a tenancy, giving notice preventing the automatic renewal of a lease, or constructively evicting a tenant by any means, expressly including terminating or substantially reducing heat, water or electricity. That one carries money: a violation of the residential rental practices chapter entitles a person suffering pecuniary loss to twice the loss together with costs and a reasonable attorney fee. — Under § 704.45: making a good-faith complaint about a defect in the premises to an elected public official or a local housing code enforcement agency; complaining to the landlord about a violation of § 704.07 or of a local housing code applicable to the premises; and exercising a legal right relating to residential tenancies. Under ATCP 134.09(5) the protected acts are stated differently and more broadly in places: reporting a violation of the residential rental practices chapter or of a building or housing code to any governmental authority, or filing suit alleging such a violation; joining or attempting to organize a tenants' union or association; and asserting or attempting to assert any right specifically accorded to tenants under state or local law.
Damages, penalties, and defenses Section 704.07 carries no damages measure, no civil penalty and no attorney fees, and it creates no private cause of action, so a tenant's recovery under it is the abatement itself or release from rent after moving out. The money in Wisconsin habitability disputes runs through the administrative code: a person who suffers pecuniary loss because of a violation of an order issued under Wis. Stat. § 100.20 — which is what the residential rental practices chapter is — shall recover twice that loss together with costs, including a reasonable attorney fee, and the doubling is mandatory rather than discretionary. That hook attaches to the administrative duties (pre-lease disclosure, promises to repair, prohibited rental agreement provisions, prohibited practices), not to the statutory repair duty, which is why an abatement claim draws no doubling (Boelter). The landlord's defenses are: damage or a condition caused by the tenant's negligence or improper use, which both excepts the repair duty and disapplies the abatement subsection; fire, water or other casualty not caused by the landlord's negligence or intentional act, which moves the case out of the duty subsection entirely; want of notice of the defect, and the argument that a structural repair was not a necessary one (Raymaker); and, where residential premises are subject to a local housing code, the statutory plumbing and electrical duty simply does not apply. Running the other way, a landlord may recover the reasonable cost of repairing damage caused by the tenant's acts or inaction, including insect or pest infestation, with the landlord's cost presumed reasonable unless the tenant proves otherwise; since 2017 that expressly includes materials provided or labor performed by the landlord and, at a reasonable hourly rate, the landlord's time spent buying or providing materials, supervising an agent or hiring a third-party contractor. Wisconsin gives the landlord no access-refusal defense and no rent-current precondition.
Can the duty be waived or shifted Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page
Waiver and delegation rules An agreement to waive the requirements of § 704.07 in a residential tenancy, including an agreement written into the rental agreement, is void. There is no exception of any kind: no single-family carve-out, no size or building-type gate, no formatting or good-faith escape, and no provision letting the parties hand the repair duty to the tenant. Two further provisions widen the consequence. Under § 704.44(8) a residential rental agreement that waives any statutory or other legal obligation of the landlord to deliver the premises in a fit or habitable condition, or to maintain them during the tenancy, is void and unenforceable in its entirety, notwithstanding the severability section — the whole lease falls, not just the offending clause. The identical clause appears in the administrative code at ATCP 134.08(8), and because a void agreement is a violation of that chapter it also carries twice the tenant's pecuniary loss plus costs and a reasonable attorney fee. A lease may lawfully give a tenant more than the statute does: the Court of Appeals held in Raymaker that a repair remedy other than the one in § 704.07 must be written into the lease. Nonresidential tenancies are the mirror image, because there the whole section is only a default rule that a contrary provision in a writing signed by both parties displaces.
Leading court decisions Pines v. Perssion, 14 Wis. 2d 590, 111 N.W.2d 409 (1961) — Held that a lease of a furnished house carried an implied warranty of habitability and that the warranty was breached where the premises were unfit at the start of the term. The covenant to pay rent and the covenant to provide a habitable house were treated as mutually dependent, so the breach was a failure of consideration that left the tenants liable only for the reasonable rental value of the premises during the time of actual occupancy. • Antwaun A. ex rel. Muwonge v. Heritage Mutual Insurance Co., 228 Wis. 2d 44, 596 N.W.2d 456 (1999) — Decided an implied warranty of habitability claim on its merits, describing the residential lease as carrying an implied promise that the premises will be fit for human habitation. The claim could not be maintained against a landlord with whom the plaintiff was not in privity of contract, and it could not be maintained where compensatory rather than contractual damages were sought, the Court noting that no Wisconsin case has allowed compensatory damages for a violation of the warranty. • Zehner v. Village of Marshall, 2006 WI App 6, 288 Wis. 2d 660, 709 N.W.2d 64 — Held that subsection (4) of § 704.07 is the exclusive remedy for violations of subsection (2), so a tenant must allege that the condition either made the property untenantable or affected the tenant's health or safety; renters whose complaint alleged neither could not proceed under the section. The opinion also describes the implied warranty of habitability adopted in Pines as having been codified at § 704.07(4). • Raymaker v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., 2006 WI App 117, 293 Wis. 2d 392, 718 N.W.2d 154 — Held that the landlord-tenant code is not a basis for strict liability, negligence per se or a private cause of action, and that the remedy the statute provides is rent abatement under § 704.07(4); the duty to make necessary structural repairs implies that the landlord has notice of the defect, and the word necessary does real work. A footnote adds that a statutory violation is not by itself a basis for suit and that the court did not intend to extinguish causes of action existing independently of § 704.07. The opinion rejects the reading that abatement applies only where the premises are unfit to reside in, since subsection titles are not part of the statutes. • Boelter v. Tschantz, 2010 WI App 18, 323 Wis. 2d 208, 779 N.W.2d 467 — Held that an appliance that cannot be used as intended without creating a risk of fire or electrocution is not in reasonable working condition and constitutes a substantial violation materially affecting the tenant's health or safety, entitling the tenant to rent abatement proportional to the loss of the full normal use of the premises. Abatement was appropriate going back to at least shortly after the landlord received notice both that the appliance was damaged and that it posed a substantial safety hazard, allowing a short period to accomplish a replacement. The opinion also holds that double damages, costs and attorney fees are unavailable on a rent-abatement claim because the claim arises under § 704.07 rather than under the residential rental practices chapter. • Logterman v. Dawson, 190 Wis. 2d 90, 526 N.W.2d 768 (Ct. App. 1994) — Read § 704.07(4) as limiting a tenant's remedy to rent abatement for the period the property is untenantable, or nonliability for rent for the term of the lease where the tenant is forced to vacate permanently, and held that the section does not reach damages representing the value of the tenant's mobile home. The opinion also reads the closing sentence of § 704.07(1) as coordinating the section with other statutes rather than displacing them. The passage was an alternative ground in a mobile-home-park termination case; the Court of Appeals adopted it as the exclusivity holding in Zehner. • State v. Lasecki, 2020 WI App 36, 392 Wis. 2d 807, 946 N.W.2d 137 — Construing Wis. Stat. § 704.95, held that the section prohibits the department of agriculture, trade and consumer protection from making different any right or duty originating in chapter 704, but leaves the department free to make rules on subjects on which chapter 704 is silent. The decision concerns administrative rulemaking authority and the security-deposit rules; it does not address the habitability duty itself.
Local rules Local law does real work in Wisconsin, and three different preemption rules run at once. Where a local housing code applies to residential premises it becomes the landlord's own statutory duty under § 704.07(2)(a)5, and it displaces the statutory plumbing and electrical allocation for both landlord and tenant, so in a code municipality the city's code supplies the operative standards. The residential rental practices chapter yields only to a direct conflict: local ordinances survive unless compliance with one can be achieved only by violating the other, and complying with a local ordinance never excuses compliance with the chapter. Section 704.07(5) is a ceiling on one kind of ordinance — a local rent-abatement ordinance may permit abatement only for conditions that materially affect the tenant's health or safety or substantially affect the use and occupancy of the premises. And § 66.0104 preempts a named list of ordinances regulating landlords and caps local rental-inspection programs, using the nine-item statutory definition of a habitability violation to set inspection frequency, correction periods and fee limits; it does not stop a municipality from having a housing code.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Wisconsin Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 30, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/wisconsin/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Wisconsin habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does Wisconsin have an implied warranty of habitability?
Statute and a court-recognized implied warranty, each doing independent work. The statutory duty is Wis. Stat. § 704.07, which allocates repair duties between landlord and tenant and supplies the tenant's remedy in subsection (4). A contract-based implied warranty of habitability operates alongside it.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Wisconsin?
No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern. Wisconsin states no day count anywhere. The statute imposes no express notice requirement on the tenant and nowhere requires notice to be in writing; the Court of Appeals held in Raymaker that a notice element is implied into the duty to make necessary structural repairs, because the landlord must be able to judge whether a repair is in fact necessary.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in Wisconsin?
No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Wisconsin statute and no Wisconsin decision lets a tenant have a condition repaired and subtract the cost from rent, so there is no cap, no notice procedure and no contractor rule to state. The administrative code could not supply the remedy either: § 704.95 forbids the department of agriculture, trade and consumer protection from issuing an order or promulgating a rule that changes any right or duty arising under chapter 704, and the Court of Appeals applied that test in State v. Lasecki (2020) — the department may write where chapter 704 is silent, never where it speaks, and § 704.07(4) speaks to what a tenant may do about rent.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Wisconsin?
Yes — at least one lawful path exists — How: withholding on the tenant's own action, no court filing first — Rent abates automatically and proportionally while the tenant stays: if the tenant remains in possession and the condition materially affects the tenant's health or safety or substantially affects the use and occupancy of the premises, rent abates to the extent the tenant is deprived of the full normal use of the premises. No court order, escrow account, municipal certification or official inspection is required first, and no cap applies.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Wisconsin?
Protected by a general retaliation statute — Section 704.45 bars a landlord in a residential tenancy from increasing rent, decreasing services, bringing an action for possession, refusing to renew a lease, or threatening any of those things, where a preponderance of the evidence shows the action or inaction would not occur but for retaliation against the tenant. That is a but-for causation test the tenant carries throughout — Wisconsin has no rebuttable presumption and no look-back window, which makes the mechanism materially harder for a tenant than a presumption state's.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Wisconsin?
Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page. An agreement to waive the requirements of § 704.07 in a residential tenancy, including an agreement written into the rental agreement, is void. There is no exception of any kind: no single-family carve-out, no size or building-type gate, no formatting or good-faith escape, and no provision letting the parties hand the repair duty to the tenant.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of Wis. Stat. § 704.07 in full, together with §§ 704.06, 704.44, 704.45 and 704.95 and Wis. Stat. § 100.20(5), on the Legislature's official statutes site (2023-24 Wisconsin Statutes updated through 2025 Wis. Act 247, published and certified August 5, 2026), cross-read against the official chapter 704 PDF; Wis. Stat. § 66.0104 read in full for the local-preemption regime and its statutory definition of a habitability violation; every section of Wis. Admin. Code ch. ATCP 134 read on the official administrative code site (Register November 2024 No. 827), with each section's own history line; the enrolled text of 2017 Wis. Act 317 read on the Legislature's act archive to establish the current wording of § 704.07(3) through (5); the Legislative Reference Bureau's numerical listing of sections affected by 2025-2026 Wisconsin Acts, and the bill histories of 2025 Assembly Bills 1119 and 202 and their Senate companions, read for the legislative position; and the official reporter texts of Pines v. Perssion, Antwaun A. ex rel. Muwonge v. Heritage Mutual Insurance Co., Zehner v. Village of Marshall, Raymaker v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., Logterman v. Dawson and Boelter v. Tschantz, each read in full, plus the Wisconsin Court System's own published opinion in State v. Lasecki.