Cleveland Rental Property Utility Question: What can I legally make the tenant pay?

Question

Hello fellow Cleveland Investors!

I'm getting ready to rent my single-family home and I need your local insight. I've been getting a lot of different answers about what utilities landlords have to pay and which ones tenants can pay.

• 1. What utilities are SFH landlords typically responsible for in Cleveland (Water, Sewer, Trash, Gas, Electric, etc.)?
• 2. Which utilities can I legally require the tenant to pay?
• 3. What are the key lease requirements in Cleveland to successfully shift utilities to the tenant's name?
• 
• I know Cleveland has specific ordinances (separate metering, clear lease language) that complicate this—I want to do it right.
• 4. What system works best for you? I would like to make this process as smooth and headache free as possible!

Bonus points if you can share the source of the law or ordinance (e.g., Cleveland City Code or ORC section) where you found this information!

All advice from those operating in the Cleveland area is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Patrick Drury · Answer

@David De La TorreKeep in mind, you want to keep water in your name even if it is a single-family and back bill based on usage, because water/sewer stays with the property owner in the state of Ohio

Andrew Weiner · Answer

Great questions to get answers to ahead of time.

1.  Every landlord is different, its pretty normal in single family to charge the tenant everything.

2.  In Cleveland SFH can charge tenants all utilities, trash is included with taxes so no extra bill here.

3.  Water and Sewer stay in the owners name, you just pay it and bill it back to them each month.  Electric and Gas get changed into the tenants name.  The lease should state just this, electric and gas need to be transferred prior to you giving them the keys and you should verify this.  The lease should state that you pay the water and sewer and bill it back based on the actual usage.

4.  The language in Cleveland only applies utilities that are not individually metered, so if you have one water meter for a duplex/triplex for example.  This does not apply to single family dwellings where everything is individually metered.

5.  Schedule the electric and gas to shut off a few days after move in so if there is any issue it doesn't drag on.  If you go a few months then its not as easy to get reimbursed for the cost and to just pick an arbitrary date to shut off their utilities.

Make sure to register your water and sewer accounts with online access so you get leak alerts if something is running.  A running toilet can create a HUGE bill very quickly and you don't want to get into a fight with a tenant or put them in a situation that they can't pay it and it blows up their lease.

Good luck to you!

Drew Sygit · Answer

@David De La Torre great anwers so far!

I'll add what I can:

1) You can probably actually charge tenant for trash - if you can break it out from the property tax bill.

3) Lease language needs to be very clear as tenants will try every angle to get out of paying!

5) For electric & gas, get proof tenants have set up accounts in their name BEFORE giving them keys. This will avoid winter problems with frozen pipes.- ALso see if UTL companies have a Landlord Protectoin Program that will auto-transfer to your name instead of shutoff. Tenants do stupid things and you don't want eat off during winter and burst pipes causing thousands of dollars in damages you have to try and chase tenants to pay. You also want to avoid fighting with your insurance company because they'll want to deny claim due to no utlities being on.

WATER: biggest challenge. Sems Cleveland is like Metro Detroit where tenants can NOT set up their own water account like with electric & gas.

So, the water bills are tied to the owner or the property. In Metro Detroit, if they are not paid, the city sells them to county (with penalties & interest) and county adds to tax bill.

Since the water bill stays in owner name, this creates challenges:

1) Billing Tenants - do NOT let water bill go to property and trust tenant to pay! - You can allow this only if duplicate water bill sent to owner. You will then need to bill tenant and monitor if & when they pay:--- Charge city late fees + Processing Fee to tenant--- What will you do if they don't pay?

2) Dealing with water leaks and high useage bills- Tenants aren't the best at reporting water leaks, dripping faucets or running toilets - all which will spike a water bill.- Tenants are great at denying responsibility and claiming owner should have fixed the leak faster. Courts often side with tenants:(- So, you'll want strong & thorough language in your lease requiring tenants to quickly report water useage issues and making them accountable if they do not. --- You'll also want to monitor the bills for high useage to just avoid this fight with tenants.--- Also see if city water dept can supply daily useage reports. You can use these to identify when the leak started, compare to when tenant informed you (time they are responsible) and then see how long it took you to get it fixed (time you are responsible).

Bonus Points? What specifically are you offering?- Hopefully, you'll at least show your appreciation for the free help everyone is giving you by VOTING for their responses!

Arman Ahmed · Answer

@David De La Torre

Hey David, for single-family homes in Cleveland it’s standard to have tenants pay electric and gas directly, while water and sewer stay in your name but you can bill them monthly based on actual usage. Make sure your lease clearly outlines which utilities are tenant responsibility and verify accounts are transferred before move-in. Using property management software helps track bills and alerts for any issues. This keeps it smooth, avoids disputes, and ensures you stay compliant.

Alfath Ahmed · Answer

1.1 Have tenant pay electric, gas, and water. But have landlord tenant agreement for water so you get the bills every month. Cleveland you need to make sure the water is paid.

2. Have them pay for everything

3. Have them switch utilities and confirm with service providers, or have your pm confirm

4. Not complicated.

5. use apartments software

Michael Norris · Answer

The city has a lot of useful links on their websites that can help.

https://www.clevelandohio.gov/residents/codes-ordinances/res...

You should really hook up with a Cleveland specific real estate attorney because there are some other goofy rules such as... any renewal clause in the lease has to be in bold font double the size of any font in the rest of the lease. Source: Our REIA had one of the the previous housing court judges come in as a speaker and he did a presentation based around the most common issues landlords have in housing court.

Not being lead inspected and registered with the city can also delay or block any evictions you try to perform until you have those certificates.

It has not happened to me but I have heard other landlords say they were stuck having to pay for a tenant's unpaid utility bill to get service turned back on and/or transferred to a new tenant.

Cleveland Rental Property Utility Question: What can I legally make the tenant pay?

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