How to not lose money without submetering?

[Jackson Long]

Closing on a 5plex.  Just got the submetering quotes and they are.... 5x what I thought they would be.  If I need to go forward with shared utilities what are somethings I can do to mitigate the damage?

[Ryan D.]

Have the utilities in your name, and bill the tenants. You can do this via a third party company (look up RUBS, ratio utility billing service) where the monthly bills are passed on proportionally. Alternately, you can do it yourself and take the average of the past 12 months bill's and divide by the number of tenants who live in the building & bill accordingly, etc.