To pay or not to pay

[Star J.]

Newbie 8 family rental owner. In my area the water company can hold the landlord liable for any unpaid water charges whether it is in the tenants name or not.. How are other landlords passing that cost to tenants while maintaining the utility in their name? Or is it better to increase rent and obsorb the cost?

[Lynn McGeein]

Originally posted by Star Jay:

Thanks all. In this case, there are 8 tenants in the building (only one water line). I too think it's a good idea to have the utilities billed to them directly as long as I can keep up with the balance to ensure I don't get an unexpectingly high bill and have to pay it all at once. But for this multifamily, I'm needing some ideas :-|

We had a short-term lease at a place where water was not metered separately, and they portioned it based on how many people were listed in the lease as living there full time, so we only had 2 while our neighbors had a family of 4, so they paid more.