Per-unit extraction and drying when a leak crosses apartments and condos, arranged with the manager or association.
Fastest: call (833) 490-5225. Or send this and we call you back.
Apartment and condo water damage starts in one unit and ends up in several, so each affected home is mapped, dried and recorded as its own job. Dallas Water Damage Restoration works with the property manager or association across Dallas and Dallas County, the phone is answered at every hour, and a crew is sent when one becomes available.
In a building you do not control, sort out what is yours to stop. A valve under a sink, behind a toilet or on the washer box is yours to close. The riser that feeds a whole column of homes belongs to the building. Tell maintenance first, then lift belongings off wet floors, press a towel against the door threshold so the corridor and the neighbors stay dry, and photograph every room before anything moves. Call (833) 490-5225 after the building knows.
What separates a multi-unit loss from a house loss is the route the water takes. It leaves the home where it began through the openings in the floor for pipes, wiring and ducts, and it turns up in the ceilings below, in the walls either side and sometimes in the corridor. The wet area two floors down can be larger than the one at the source, so every home on the path is read, not just the one with the stain.
Dallas has several kinds of multifamily building, and they leak in different ways: stacked towers in Uptown, Oak Lawn and downtown, where many older office buildings have been converted; low apartment complexes across Irving, Richardson, Garland and Northwest Dallas; and apartments and townhomes near the SMU campus in University Park. The crew measures the work by the home, whatever the building.
Each affected home is its own job, with multi-unit work estimated at $1,500–$8,000 for every unit mitigated, because each needs its own moisture map, equipment and readings. The work starts where the water is deepest and moves outward: the source home, the homes below, the homes beside, then the corridor. Management approves access, and each unit's records are kept separately.
The order follows the water, not the floor plan. The source home comes first because that is where the water is usually deepest and where the supply can be confirmed off. The homes beneath it come next, since water keeps traveling down through ceilings, then the homes either side, then the shared void and the corridor. A technician may revisit an early home at the end to confirm that nothing wicked into it from the next one.
What sets a home's figure is the same short list as any water loss. The category of the water, the number of rooms reached and the materials on the floor and in the ceiling matter most, and so does the time since the leak began. A single bedroom ceiling and a kitchen with cabinet bases are different jobs, even though both are one home on one invoice.
Access is a logistics problem as much as a drying one. Equipment has to travel by a lift or a stair, corridors have to stay passable, and units have to be opened by someone with the right to do it. The technician asks which dock or freight elevator is available, who holds the keys, and what notice residents need. Drying then runs as three to five days for an ordinary room, with the readings deciding the end.
Building maintenance or the property manager first, because they can close the riser, enter the unit above and approve access. Then your own insurer, then the crew. Renters tell the landlord in writing and condo owners tell the association and the manager. Anyone can ask for drying, but access to common areas is the building's decision.
The reason for that order is control. A resident can close a fixture valve but cannot close a riser, and cannot enter the home above to find out why water is coming down. Maintenance can do both, and on a night with water running through a ceiling the quickest route to stopping it is often one phone call to the building's emergency line.
Put it in writing as well. A short message with the time, the room, a photograph and the words wet ceiling or wet wall does more for a later claim than a call nobody logged. Who may authorize work in a home depends on your lease or the association's documents, and who may authorize work in a corridor or a shared void is the owner or the association, so the crew will ask who that is before it enters.
The crew can begin on your own home once you give access, even while the building sorts out the rest. Keep your own photographs and your own list of damaged belongings, and note the name of whoever you spoke to at the building and when. Those details settle arguments that the water itself never does.
That is settled between the policies, not on site. A building or association policy, an owner's own policy and a renter's policy can each answer for different parts of the same wall and for belongings, and each insurer decides coverage under its own wording. The crew's job is the record: per-unit photographs, readings and removed-materials lists.
Nobody on a restoration crew can tell you who is liable, and anyone who does is guessing. Liability depends on what failed, who owns it, what the lease or the association's documents say and what each policy covers. The crew can show where the water started, how far it went and what it wet, and the insurers and the building take it from there.
Questions worth putting to your agent early, whichever policy you hold:
Two thresholds apply. The owner exemption from mold licensing does not extend to residential property with 10 or more dwelling units, and mold work is licensed through TDLR from 25 contiguous square feet. For asbestos, a building with more than two dwelling units counts as commercial, so a survey comes before renovation or demolition.
The TDLR owner exemption lets an owner, or an owner's managing agent or employee, work on mold at a residential property without a license, unless the property has 10 or more residential dwelling units. At that size, an owner or manager should assume the ordinary licensing rules apply to them. Texas also keeps the two mold jobs apart, so one license holder cannot assess and remediate the same project, and testing and removal cannot be sold together from 25 contiguous square feet up.
Asbestos is a different rule with a different threshold. Before a public or commercial building is renovated or demolished, the state program calls for an asbestos survey, and an apartment building with more than two dwelling units is counted as commercial for it. A covered abatement project needs written notice at least 10 working days beforehand. Single-family homes follow other rules, so put the question to the state asbestos program and the city.
Age matters in practice. Buildings in the pre-1980 parts of town, including Oak Cliff, East Dallas, Garland, Richardson and Mesquite, are the ones where old textured ceilings, joint compound and flooring raise the asbestos question, and the EPA lead renovation rule reaches pre-1978 homes. A complex that already holds an asbestos survey has an answer ready when a ceiling has to come down.
Ground-floor homes flood at the door, not the roof. On August 22, 2022 DFW Airport logged 9.19 inches in 24 hours, and floodwater in some metro apartment buildings reached up to two feet. That water is Category 3, a standard Texas homeowners policy normally excludes flood, and National Flood Insurance Program cover generally takes 30 days to begin.
That day southeast Dallas reported 15.31 inches, Balch Springs about 12.60, and Dallas Fire-Rescue answered nearly 200 vehicle emergencies within 24 hours. For a complex, that kind of rain tests thresholds, breezeways, parking structures and the lowest doors, and a single inch of water across a ground floor is wet carpet, pad, bottom plates and cabinet bases in every home on that level.
The water is Category 3, grossly contaminated, so porous materials it reached are removed rather than dried and surfaces are cleaned and treated before drying begins. For residents it means belongings come off the floor quickly, and for the building it means the cleanup is scheduled home by home with the corridors protected.
Coverage is the difficult part. A standard Texas homeowners policy normally excludes flood, so renters and condo owners should ask their own agents how their policies treat it, and it is worth asking management whether the building carries flood coverage of its own. Flood cover is a separate purchase, from FEMA's flood insurance program or from a private insurer, and the federal policies generally take 30 days to start.
Do not enter a home that is taking on water without the manager's say-so, keep out of water near outlets, breaker boxes and appliances, and stay out of an elevator if water is running into the shaft or the machine room. Leave a bulging ceiling alone. Treat water that came up from a drain as contaminated and keep children and pets away from it.
Maintenance or the manager closes the riser if the leak is in a shared line, and the fixture valve is closed if it is in a single home. The technician learns who holds keys, which elevator or stair can carry equipment and who authorizes entry to each unit.
Each affected home gets its own moisture map, with ceilings, walls, floors and cabinet bases read separately, plus the corridor and any shared void between floors. The map shows how far the water traveled, which is often further than the stain.
Standing water comes out of the source home first and then the homes below and beside it. Wet carpet pad is lifted, and ceiling board holding water is relieved in a controlled way over protection instead of being left to fall onto a bed or a sofa.
Wet insulation, soaked ceiling board and swollen cabinet bases come out. Plastic barriers separate a drying home from a dry one, and corridors are protected, so the building keeps working while equipment runs in the affected units.
Air movers and dehumidifiers are set unit by unit, and each home is read against dry material of the same kind in that home or the one beside it. Equipment leaves a unit when its numbers land, not when the others finish.
Each home gets its own photographs, readings and removed-materials list, and the manager or association gets the building-level record. Residents can send theirs to their own insurers, and rebuild work is quoted after drying.
A failure in a shared supply riser or waste stack sends water down through the same position in every floor, so one break can reach a column of homes. In older office buildings converted to apartments and condos, the bathrooms and kitchens added later sit over each other in the same way.
In walk-up buildings and garden complexes the water travels sideways, through shared walls and along corridors. A roof leak can reach top-floor homes, and a ground-floor burst can wet the breezeway slab and the unit beside it.
An air handler in a utility closet, a water heater or an in-unit washer can overflow into the closet floor, under the wall and into the home below, and clearing a drain line or replacing a pan is an air-conditioning contractor's repair. These are covered in detail on the AC condensate leak water damage and appliance leak water damage pages.
Heavy rain can push water under ground-floor doors, across breezeways and into garages. That water is Category 3, which changes the cleanup, and flood normally sits outside a standard homeowners policy. The flood damage cleanup page explains the order of work.
Pricing follows the home, not the building: every affected unit is mapped, equipped and read on its own. What moves a unit's figure is the water category, how many rooms the water reached and which materials sit in its floors, walls and ceiling.
| Job | Typical range | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-unit water damage (apartment or condo, per unit mitigated) | $1,500–$8,000 | Per affected home, each with its own readings, equipment and record |
| Emergency inspection and moisture assessment | Free–$200 (often credited if work goes ahead) | Walks the source home and the homes on the water's path |
| Ceiling water damage repair (one section, incl. texture + paint) | $450–$1,800 | A repair-stage figure for the home below the leak, quoted after drying |
| AC condensate or air-handler leak cleanup (ceiling and wall drying, one area) | $600–$2,500 | A utility-closet overflow that reached the home below |
| Structural drying for one room (3–5 days, equipment + monitoring) | $800–$2,500 | A room-level figure for a single affected space within a home |
| Contents pack-out, cleaning and storage | $1,000–$6,000+ | When furniture and belongings have to leave so a floor or wall can be dried |
Estimates for Dallas County in 2026. Plumbing in the building, air-conditioning equipment and the rebuild after drying are billed or quoted separately, and the first-stage price for each home is agreed before equipment goes in.
Call any hour and explain what is going on. You get a clear price before any work starts.
High-rise housing in Uptown, Oak Lawn and downtown stacks kitchens and bathrooms over each other, and many older office buildings there have been converted to apartments and condos. A leak in one home can reach those below it, and the person who can stop it is the building engineer. In Uptown and Oak Lawn and Downtown Dallas the first call is to that engineer, and the second is for the cleanup.
Apartment complexes spread across Irving, Richardson, Garland and Northwest Dallas, and along US-75 in Richardson. Low buildings pass water sideways through shared walls and across breezeways, so a leak that begins in one ground-floor home can wet the one next door as readily as the one above. Each of those cities issues its own permits, so which permits a repair needs depends on the address.
University Park is a separate city inside Dallas, with apartments and townhomes near the SMU campus and Snider Plaza, and it issues its own permits for repair work. Texas has no state general-contractor license, which makes the city the place to ask, and the same goes for Highland Park next door. Inside Dallas itself, ask which permits the City of Dallas requires before the rebuild starts.
Stains, sags and soaked insulation from attic equipment, hail-worn roofs and upstairs bathrooms, traced, dried and refinished.
Clogged drain lines and overflowing attic drain pans soak Dallas ceilings all summer. The water side is extracted, dried and documented.
Walkthrough-priced extraction, containment and drying for Dallas offices, warehouses and shops, with a moisture record for the owner.
Drying slab floors, wall cavities and framing to a measured standard, with readings logged daily instead of guessed.
Not sure if you're covered? Check your ZIP code.
Yes, for your own home, once you give access. The crew will map and dry whatever the water touched in your space and gives you your own photographs and readings. Where the work reaches a corridor or a shared void, the building's owner or association has to authorize it.
Only with permission. Access is arranged with you and the building, often with notice, and keys come through management. Tell the technician about pets, locked rooms and anything fragile, and photograph your belongings first so you have a record of how the home looked before anyone came in.
Often they are not out at all. Containment separates drying areas from dry ones, and equipment runs while people live around it. A home with a flooded kitchen, the only bathroom, or sewage in it may be impractical to stay in, and decisions about relocation sit with the building and your insurer, not the crew.
Texas gives owners and their managers a mold-licensing exemption on residential property, but not once the property has 10 or more dwelling units, so at 40 units assume the standard rules reach you. Texas licenses mold work through TDLR from 25 contiguous square feet, and assessor and remediator must be different license holders. TDLR can answer questions about a specific property.
That depends on the policies. A building or association policy and a resident's own policy are written to answer for different things, and the wording decides which of them responds to belongings and to loss of use. Ask your agent, keep a list of what was damaged with photographs, and expect your own insurer to make that decision.
Yes, with the owner's or association's authorization. Water that crossed into a corridor wets carpet, ceiling tile and wall bases, and leaving those wet keeps the neighboring homes damp. The crew reads and dries them, protects walkways, and adds them to the building-level record.
Dated photographs of every room, a list of damaged belongings, your written notice to the manager, the manager's reply, and the crew's moisture readings and removed-materials list. If you can, ask the manager for the maintenance record of the repair.