And Trespassers Depending on the state in which they live, landowners have different degrees of responsibility to different types of people who come onto their property. The system is three-tiered.
Property owners owe the highest degree of care to invitees to make sure they are safe from dangers.
A tenant is not considered an invitee. Rather, a tenant is treated as an owner of the property that he or she leases and owes a duty of reasonable care to invitees that enter his or her rental unit. Property holders such as landlords and tenants must also ensure that conditions are safe, though the degree of liability is lower to licensees than to invitees. The property holder must take reasonable care to protect licensees from any hazardous risks the property holder knows about. Landowners are not obligated to keep from harm trespassers who intrude on their land without permission.