Cleveland Water and Sewer Bill charge to tenant / RUBS

[Jeremy Janszen]

Question to the forum about any best practices in Cleveland for billing back water/sewer costs to tenants in your duplex houses.  Many duplexes here are serviced by a single water meter and, by design of the plumbing, difficult to impossible to sub meter.  Considering a charge-back over and above rents of something like $25/person/month to tenants to cover water/sewer.  I'm hesitant to just tack it into the rent since that would a) make it less market competitive and b) locks me into an assumption of how many people would be living in the unit which has an affect on the water bill.

I'm curious for ideas and practices to bill back water (particularly in the Cleveland market) that work well for you.

Thanks for any suggestions!

[Adam Bontrager]

We typically include a separate clause in the lease agreement that specifies the monthly amount the tenant will be responsible for.  The amount is usually determined by the number of tenants moving in (as indicated on the rental application).  For example, if we know 1 unit will have only 2 tenants, we may charge them $30 but the 2nd unit will be charged $60 because there are 4 tenants moving in.  It's not foolproof but it keeps the water/sewer payments separate from the actual rent charge and allows us to split up the water/sewer bill as fairly as possibly.