Belmont cragin, gas meters code

[Alejandro Ferrer]

Hello biggerpockets community. I just recently purchased my first house hack, a 4 unit (2 floors- 2 units front and 2 units rear) building in the Belmont cragin area. The property has two gas meters. 1 for the 2nd floor and the other for the 1st floor. My question is, should I separate the gas meters or charge a little more on the rent to cover that expense which I will be paying, Is there a code for the area that says I can’t have two meters for all 4 units? Should I see if paying to separate will be too much,if not will I make my money back after raising rents? Should I have someone from comed do the change or a contractor add a sub meter?. Tenants are paying way below market rates and don’t pay utilities which will change once I make leases. 

Thank you guys. 

[Paul De Luca]

@Alejandro Ferrer

Like @Charles Carillo said, the best long term solution would probably be to separate the gas meters so that the cost of gas will be paid by each respective tenant. However the upfront cost of doing that is going to be pretty high. It's worth investigating to see if the juice is worth the squeeze.

I assume that this is a legal 2-flat with a non-conforming garden and attic unit because there are only 2 gas meters. Did you know that going into the sale? This should probably have been a question you asked either before or during escrow. 

To avoid either you or the other metered unit tenants absorb the costs of the non-metered units, consider adjusting the rents to make it so that the tenants in the metered and unmetered units are paying a fair market rate.