Gas furnace / baseboard heat in apt

[Angela Kamenik]

We have a 7 unit older house turned into apartments we’ve bought in the last year.  Tenants pay own electric, we pay other utilities. Despite us paying most utilities it cash flows nicely.  It’s had a very low vacancy rate and thus far has been a great investment.  We’ve discussed trying to separate utilities but the cost is substantial.  We’re making money the way it is and we’ve had several tenants tell us the included utilities were a big draw.  We recently had a tenant move out and have been doing some minor updating to the apartment. All units have natural gas heat (there are 4 furnaces for the 7 units). The unit we are currently updating has its own furnace as well as a few baseboard heaters. I was thinking we could install more baseboard heaters and turn off gas furnace all together or at least turn on the baseboard heaters enough to cut down on gas consumption. The thermostat is toward the rear of the apartment and the current baseboard heaters are near the front. 

I would appreciate any and all comments / suggestions to cut down on our portion of heating cost while minimizing the amount of work and cost to us. 

Angela