How to charge tenants for water bill

[4980000]

How do i charge my tenants for water usage.
I dont have any water meter installed.
Its a multitenant building and have a single water meter installed at the main line.

Feroz

 

[bimr]

If you are serious about charging individual tenants for water, you should hire a plumber to install a water meter for each apartment. That will allow you to split up the bill from the city. You also will need to put the language in the lease before you can bill them. What does your lease agreement say right now?

 

[49merc]

Check with your water supplier - they may have a standard detail for a meter manifold, and they may let you install separate meters and set up an account in each tenant's name so they will be billed directly.

 

[TBP]

You'll very likely have to let the utility meter & charge for the water to each unit. I know of landlords that have tried to portion-out heating costs by metering the hot water or steam off the buildings central boiler, and have had a nasty legal surprise - they found out it wasn't legal for them as a landlord to do so. No only did the have the expense of installing the now useless meters - they had to refund the money to the tenants. I'd check legalities before spending any time or money.

 

[ap76]

In many states, individual metering of water/sewer and the like requires you to be under the umbrella of that state's public utility commission.

The local water authority may be able to work out an arrangement to meter an bill your tenants directly if the lease doesn't prohibit this. However, the ease of this will be likely be determined by:

1. Access to the meter after installation
2. if access is restricted, does the authority use Automated Reading.
3. Does the connection (tap) fee for this outweigh the benefit to doing it?

 

[hydrae]

Check with the PUC of your state, in my state it is allowed to submeter with a whole lot of conditions, such as: you can not make money at it, you cannot charge for the installation of the equipment or for your time to maintain said equipment.

Hydrae

 

[cvg]

wouldn't it be a lot easier to just increase the rent by $25 per month to cover the water bill?