All Forum Posts by: Jedd Braunwarth

@John Crouthamel welcome to the forum. Des Moines area is awesome. What do you do for sales? I covered Iowa as a sales engineer for 5 years (technically still do...). Definately go to the Thursday meet up on Ingersoll. I do not make many anymore but still very beneficial. 

@Rich Jordan The pricing is going to be all over the board depending on what company you go with, types of meters available, if your plumbing is separated already or if it needs to be (depending on company or meter type). On my end pricing is going to be more in the $100 per unit range if plumbing is already separated and $300 per unit range if plumbing is not separated. Do you know how the plumbing runs in the 30 unit? Does each unit have it's own hot water heater? 

I can only speak for water as I do not know pricing for gas or electric as of today.

@Benjamin Seibert did you quote include separating plumbing? Was that from the local municipality or a submetering company?

@Jonathan Beasley There are plenty of options out there to submeter, some are expensive and don't make sense unless you scale, others can work on something as small as a duplex. Some of the biggest factors are what type of meter the company big selling, can the municipality install their own meters (this is the best), is plumbing separated, how expensive is your water/sewer. I see comments from VA and PA, those seem to have relatively high water and sewer fees so it make make sense and a fast ROI on smaller properties.

@Eric Maury, thanks, I started looking at all of these options myself with my own properties before starting my own metering company. Pricing is going to be all over the board depending on each company and what they have to offer. Let's chat in private as I do not want to seem to solicit to anyone and everyone on a public forum but in general our innovate model that installs in applications where plumbing is not separated probably runs $200-300 per apartment unit ($400-600 for an entire duplex). If plumbing was separate is is quite a bit less with all companies as you only need one water meter per apartment, think $100 per apartment unit. RUBS you may not even need any equipment as they just ratio the water bill based on either a percentage of the water bill each month, square footage of each apartment, number of people in each apartment, etc. It is the easiest and lowest cost as you just pay a company or yourself to ratio out the bill each month but certainly is not fair or accurate for obvious reasons. 

@Eric Maury Welcome to the forums! What City are you in? I ask as different states and different cities have laws that prevent you from doing RUBS or require you to do a certain type of meter, etc. RUBS is certainly the lowest cost as there is nothing installed, just labor to divide the bill. The issue with RUBS is how will your tenants react, will one complain saying they are saving water and the other tenant does not? Does one side have a larger family? That side will obviously use more water. Submetering costs really depends on what you want such as local company, automated reading, is your plumbing currently split to each unit or not, etc. Costs are higher for submetering to install but once done prevents complaints of water usage as it is accurate and it increases the property value as you just increased the NOI.

@Ben Davis Welcome! I am active in the same areas you are looking. I live in Waconia. House hacking is certainly a great way to get started, just make sure you still run the numbers to make sure it makes sense as an investment when you move out. My wife and I house hacked a duplex to get started and it made it vary easy to learn the ropes but also to get the next property faster. It is a hot market like everyone says but to me I feel the market is softening just a bit as the rental properties are not selling as fast as last year. We have a duplex on olive st. in Waconia (a little over priced) but nice.  A low cost one in St. Boni... Maybe too far out but Silver Lake has a couple good things on the market and Litchfield has an apartment complex.

Is it a true duplex or a conversion? Careful as some areas they will require it to be finished as a single family if not a true multi. This just happened by Drake on a property.

@Dan Bosak full disclosure to start, I own a submetering company but am also a RE investor and have done both RUBS and submetering prior to owning the company. Wanted to chime in mainly in response with what @James Kojo mentioned above. He is absolutely right! Tenants are much more likely to pay the utility payments to you, landlord or property manager as they do rent. We offer both options where tenant can pay us or pay you but there seems to be a lot more late payers, non payers and just general chasing people to pay when they pay a third party. Highly recommend that they pay you as they do rent.

Finally, as for laws, every state is different but I think you received great advice already from your attorney. Most every state allows submetering, some are more strict than others such as CA, but all require that you cannot profit from it. What they mean by profit from it is charge above and beyond what the local municipality/utility charges. If you charge more then you become a utility provider in itself. If you charge the same or less you are not profiting from it, just passing the costs on.

@James W. Yes, our system is 100% automated. We monitor and bill apartment units in states all over the U.S. without ever going on site. We even have some in Ecuador! Our system comes with a private wifi network and cellular set up to log data. Basically a plug and play system. Send me a private message as I do not want to this thread to get to far off topic on our company as that was not my intent.

@Doug Karkow thought I would jump into give my input as I have actual experience with this since I own rentals in IA and MN as well as a submetering company. Lower rent rates and submetering or RUBS really is not an issue, most do not even ask what utilities cost per month, they look at base rent, as you mentioned. The issue I have seen with lower end units with submetering is it is  just one more payment they have to make and that you or another company has to collect. So, just as it is already with tenants, you pick a bad one and they will not pay, be late, never pay, make up excuses, etc. Lower end rentals, with my experience in submetering, just adds to collecting another payment. The flip side is when you do submeter these units the tenants are held responsible for the water and leaks are reported, they do not waste water, etc. Your water bill for your entire complex will come down significantly the first month you install water meters and pass the bill back to the tenants.