Utilities and maintenance

[Faustin Hoover]

Two questions. If you were looking at a multi family and the current owner pays utilities how do you go about dividing them at least electric? Also if 2 units have a boardwalk to get out of their unit and the other has a small porch are you responsible for snow removal/ice. Here in ohio we have crazy winter weather so just curious. Thanks in advance.

[Evan Polaski]

@Faustin Hoover, splitting utilities can either be done by installing true submeters, or even calling utility to truly split them, or by running a RUBS type system, and effectively calculating estimated useage of each tenant and billing back.  I.e. if all units are same size, you could simply divide bill by number of units and bill back to tenants.  If you have 1 and 2 bed units, you would typically divide bill by number of bedrooms, and multiply back the number in each unit.

As for snow, personally, I always had tenants take care of any individual use areas, i.e. a small porch that directly access to only one unit, the tenant needs to shovel and salt that area.  Common areas, i.e. your boardwalk that accesses two units, I would take care of.  But I also know people that have say a duplex or quad and they make the tenants take care of the common walks, as well.  Again, it needs to be spelled out in the lease.

And with both of these, while I am in Ohio, as well, I would still check with a local attorney to confirm everything is legal.