BiggerPockets

I recently received a bill from my electic company in the amount of $400 for my vacant 1 BR (600 sqft) town home/condo! The bill states that I used ~1500 Kilowatt hours. How can this be! I spoke with the electric company and they sent out an inspector to look at the meter and he stated that there was nothing wrong and that they took accurate readings.

I just purchased this property, and this was my first month of electric bills (so no history).

There are only 720 hours last month, that would mean I would have had to run mutiple appliances everyday last month all day. I turned off the refrigerator and the lights were off.

Does anyone know how this could have happened? Is there a way or has anyone ever had experience with someone stealing electricity? If so, how was this theft discovered etc.

Has anyone disputed a bill with the electric company? How did this turn out?

Look for any neighbors that are running extension cords to an outside outlet or going through attic or basement. I have found this a few times on vacant houses.

Most of the electricity stealing we see are people that steal the meter to go put in their house or actually use jumper cables ot bypass the meter and steal from the city. 40% of the REO's we buy have had electricity stolen in the past and it is a big ordeal to get them to come turn the electricity on as they want paid. We have to show them the deed and then go through the supervisors as they want the owner who lives in California to come in to the office personally.

Allen, thanks for the tips, I will have my property manager check on the extension cords being plugged into outter outlets. Have you ever had anyone go through the walls etc to get to the power line that runs to your property. Could you elaborate on the "Jumper cables" comment that you made.

I am trying to think outside the box here and this is a condo, so there are no basements nor attics, and limited outlets exposed to someone. The property does share two walls with neighboring units.