Who pays your Utilities

Question

Curious to hear from other landlords on whom pays the utilities (gas/electric/water etc) in your properties. Do you write this into your lease, or do you cover this for them.

Nathan Gesner · Answer

Tenants always pay the utilities. If there is a shared meter, I still build the cost into their rent so they are paying for it. I also recommend adding a little buffer in case you get a tenant that uses more utility than average. For example, you can say "Rent includes up to $150 in utility use. Anything above this amount will be billed to the Tenant."

Isaac Barrow · Answer

Tenant pays the utilities on about 90 percent of our portfolio. On others, as some others have mentioned, the utilities are covered by the rent.

Theresa W. · Answer

What's not directly billed to the unit by the utility gets built in to the monthly rent by me.  Water/sewer service in my area can be liened by the jurisdiction for non-payment, so I still pay that myself, but take the past 12 months' average, knock off a small bit and add it into their lease on top of regular rent.  My goal is to pass on 100% of the bills.

Caleb Heimsoth · Answer

Sure if the numbers work go

For it.  I have rentals where landlord pays some of these sorts of utilities (reimbursed by tenants) and it just doesn’t seem super scaleable to me. People by multifamily like this and it works.  That’s great.  It’s just probably not for me

John Knisely · Answer

@Caleb Heimsoth that specific situation, of course. The point I'm getting at is, if the numbers still work, then does it matter that the tenants aren't directly paying utilities?In my area, the multifamily inventory is old (mostly converted single family housing) and prohibitively expensive to re-meter in most cases unless you are doing a full rehab already.

Caleb Heimsoth · Answer

Sure I guess I’d buy it but we both know that’s highly unlikely to ever happen

John Knisely · Answer

So if I offered you a 4 unit property worth 500k for 100k but the utilities weren't split, you wouldn't buy it?

Who pays your Utilities

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