How to read and bill my submeters

[Katie Neason]

I recently completed the construction of a 26 unit mixed use building. There are up to 6 commercial tenants and 20 residential lofts. I thought I was being brilliant by installing submeters for all of the units. I am 8 months into the first tenant moving in and two tenants from being full and I cannot figure out how to use effectively and efficiently use the submeters (sensus). My property management company doesn't know, Sensus is clueless, I talked with the city and my main contact there said he could teach me how to read them manually, I have reached out to a few apartment owners and developers in town and NOBODY knows! I am not going to read 26 meters each month! There must be a service or way to make this automated. I am looking for a way to automatically read them, generate a bill monthly and send it to the tenants. A system I can pass off to the management company and they can execute. I have been investing for over 10 years and have always heard, if you can go into a property and find a way to submeter it you can force appreciation through a higher NOI. Here I am with the units submetered and I can't figure out how to make it work 🤪. I know there is an established system that makes sense. Who knows what it is?