Landlords: Watch your Water Bill
When is the last time you examined your water bill? Are you sure it is correct? How much water should an apartment building, duplex, or 4-plex be using? Allowing toilets to run on and faucets to drip can add $50, $100, even $400 per month in extra expenses. I even had an $800 water bill at a single family house because the tenant never told me the toilet starting running all the time.
Excuse the pun, but that was just money down the drain. Never to be recovered. Not put back into the property.
A rise in the water bill can be triggered by several items:
- Dripping faucets
- Running Toilets
- Malfunctioning washing machines
- Outside spickets that are not turned off
- Even more people living in the apartment than you expected (and may be on the lease)
- I even had one police detective tell me that illicit drug manufacturing in a home can use large amounts of water!
Call you municipality and ask them how many gallons or units should be used per month per person. Do the calculation to see how close you are. If your water usuage is outside the norm, stop by at your apartment immediately and hunt around for the offending appliance.
Additionally, don’t assume the water usuage you have been seeing on your bill for years is the lowest it can be. You may be sitting on some cost saving opportunities. Replacing shower heads and toilets older than 10 years can dramatically cut your water bill. Many of the older toilets used 3.5 gallons per flush compared to many today that use 1 gallon! These improvements can pay for themselves within 1 year as well as protect you against the $800 water bill (since the unit is brand new).
Read your water bill the next time it comes in the mail and see if you can stop those pennies, dimes and even dollars from going down the drain.
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Oh the good ole’ water bill! I make sure to watch this closely with tenants. Thanks for this outstanding information!
Good info. It is so crucial to watch this bill. Even if you have tenants paying this bill you want to stay on top of it. The water bill is the one utility bill that stays with your property. So if your tenants bail on you, you don’t want to be left high and dry or maybe better said all wet.
I rent a house in Clearwater. The tenants signed a lease on Feb 1st which states that they are responsible for water/sewage. I put the water/sewage account into the tenants name. The tenant is current on lease payments.
In Sept I receive a letter from the city saying they have not received a payment since Jan and a bill for $950 in unpaid water/sewer. The city has a by-law that states the owner of the property is responsible to pay and the city has threatened to put a lien on the property if it is not paid in 2-weeks.
I confronted the tenant about this but they are refusing to pay it off.
I asked the city to cut off the water and they told me they will proceed with giving the tenant a 10day notice.
Every city is different. I would be concerned that if the water is off, the city may come back and say the property is uninhabitable. You may need to move the tenants out (which might be fine). Watch that the city doesn’t then condemn the property.