Factoring utilities into a duplex analysis

[Kyle Curtin]

Good morning everyone!

I am running all of the numbers on the first positive cashflowing duplex property I found on Zillow.

I got to the utilities, and found the town rates for sewer and electrical, but how does that factor into my expenses? How could I make an educated guess to ballpark how much they are using? Are these the right numbers that I am working with?

Sewer:

Minimum quarterly charge- $10.00/quarter

Sewer fee rate- $6.32/100 cubic feet for first 1000 cubic feet

Sewer fee rate- $7.12/100 cubic feet for all usage over 1000 cubic feet

Electrical:

Delivery services:

Customer charge- $5.60/month

Distribution charge- $2.97/ kWh

Transmission charge- $2.308/ kWh

Supply services:

Generation charge- $7.30/ kWh

Purchase power adjustment- $0.43/kWh

Hydro Credit- -0.66/kWh

All help is appreciated thank you!

[Matt Vezina]

For water/sewer it's tough to do more than guesstimate if you are just looking at the listing and not getting actual expenses from the seller.  I know that my three unit tends to be around $200 per quarter for water/sewer so that's what I would plug in  for a similar building but of course that's location dependent.  Maybe you could find some landlords in your area who would share average expenses.  

Electricity depends on the building and whether or not the units are separately metered.  I prefer to steer clear of landlord paid electricity in the apartments as it's subject to such variation depending on the tenant's lifestyle, but it is possible to build it into the rent.  Like the sewer though, it's a guesstimate until you are looking at actual expenses on a building.  Finding the rate at which utilities are charged only gives you part of the answer.