Previous owners lied about water bill

[James Johnson]

Hello, I wanted to get some advice on a potential legal situation,

I recently purchased a property where we were told that the tenants had been paying the water bill. We come to find out they had never been paying the bill which is roughly $500/month for all 4 units (total). Naturally this completely kills our proforma.

The leases state that the tenants ar responsible for the water bill so of course we can, and likely will, start enforcing the lease. That being said, we are about the piss off all our tenants because the previous owner never billed them back for the water.

Does anyone have suggestions or advice on how to handle this? Should we be taking the previous owners to small claims court for something? 

Any and all advice is welcome!

Thanks!

[James Johnson]

Update to this situation;

I started charging back the water bills to 3/4 of the tenants (because those 3 leases said I could). And after about 2 months of owning the property, I had a plumber go check all 4 units for water leaks and he found 2 toilets running. I guess the tenants didn't care (hopefully they will now since they will be paying for the water!!). Water bill now runs about 240-260/month and as of June 1st, all of the water is being billed back to the tenants and we are running smoothly!