I'm in escrow to purchase a 6 unit apartment building in Ohio and I noticed the sewer and water costs were 73% of the total monthly expenses. Is there a way to lower those utility bills? Perhaps I could pay to have a system installed of some kind to be more efficient? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You can install low wattage led lights. Make sure appliances are energy efficient. Install motion sensitive lights in common areas and bathrooms. Check on the efficiency of the cooling and heating systems. This are you biggest energy consumers. For water, it only costs a few hundred bucks to install low flow showerheads and even low flow faucets. In an 6 unit property. This should save you about 5k a year

@Paul Smith  Dripping faucets and toilets that leak can account for some waste. There might be a leak between the meter and the house. Check it all out. Some will recommend low flo toilets etc. But be careful, modern toilets and old plumbing don't always mix well. Keep looking into this and see what comes up. You might also pursue passing some costs on to the tenants. Make sure you look at the toilets and faucets when you do your periodic inspections. Tenants often don't care or notice.

Have you checked the propety for leaks or a running toilet? A single running toilet can use thousands of gallons in a month and rack up $200 or more in increased water use. It's one of the biggest culprits and should be checked immediately.

Originally posted by @Paul Smith :

I'm in escrow to purchase a 6 unit apartment building in Ohio and I noticed the sewer and water costs were 73% of the total monthly expenses. Is there a way to lower those utility bills? Perhaps I could pay to have a system installed of some kind to be more efficient? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I would get your water sub-metered right away. Water Watch - Ron Porshinsky and Spectrum Utilities are two sub-metering companies in Columbus that I refer to people.

Excellent information. Thank you all for the help! 

Nice! Where in Ohio?

Anyway you can do a submeter on each unit?  

Also check for the number of tenants in each unit - Anyone there must be on the lease.

Make sure ANY outside spigots are permanently off.

Originally posted by @Michael P. :

Nice! Where in Ohio?

Southeast Cleveland 

I suspect I should hire a plumber to visit the property and do an assessment on the fixtures to identify any inefficiencies? If I could lower the sewer and water by just 10% I will increase the NOI by nearly $1,700/yr, so I wouldn't mind spending a couple thousand to make any corrections.

Originally posted by @Paul Smith :

I'm in escrow to purchase a 6 unit apartment building in Ohio and I noticed the sewer and water costs were 73% of the total monthly expenses. Is there a way to lower those utility bills? Perhaps I could pay to have a system installed of some kind to be more efficient? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 I would get a sub-metering company. 

Low flow shower heads and faucets

Not low flow toilets as they often cause other issues

Led lighting

Shop around trash vendors

If you pay gas, the on demand stuff water heating will save you money over tanks

Blankets around hot water heaters if you pay gas

A lot of little things will add up to big savings.

@Paul Smith

Hello Paul, Sounds like leaks, landscape irrigation is notorious for undetected leaks. It's generally poorly installed. Also, there are many "water leak detectors" on the market. It's a unit that would be installed between your meter and the building. It monitors anomalies in water usage, pressure, flow rate, and temperature. Some can even detect chemical composition and contaminates, like lead. They can be set up to alert you, through wifi when it detects a leak, some systems can shut the water off if it detects a catastrophic leak. Lots of options and costs. Probably wouldn't help you figure out what's going on with the water issue now, but might help in the future, once the issue is stabilized.

Good luck!

check to be sure you dont have leaks in any landscape watering systems....  i had 3 sprinkler heads that were gone and so when the sprinklers went off it was just water running full force for 10 min at a time until I found those issues! 

also check how hot your hot water heater is....  keeping it at 120-130 instead of hotter can really save as hot water heaters will be setting the cost for all your electric by demanding a certain wattage and if you can lower than even a bit it will really help. 

you also can check to be sure you dont have any leaks, use LED lights, etc, 

The low flow fixtures including toilets are important particularly if the toilets are quite old. Not sure what issues people have run into besides not liking them. We have had good results with changing them out and some chronically leaky faucets.

Originally posted by @Paul Smith :

I'm in escrow to purchase a 6 unit apartment building in Ohio and I noticed the sewer and water costs were 73% of the total monthly expenses. Is there a way to lower those utility bills? Perhaps I could pay to have a system installed of some kind to be more efficient? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 Sounds like there is an active leak somewhere.