Utilities included? Furnished? Pros and cons

[Jonathan Dempsey]

When house hacking or just renting in general, what are the pros and cons of including utilities? Also, same question but with furnishing

[Frank Chin]

There are several considerations.

1. Is this the general practice in the area. If rentals in the area includes utilities and your's is the only one that doesn't, it would make yours harder to rent.

2. Depends on whether the utility is on a separate meter. If not, if by percentage, you can have a paranoid tenant watching everything you do and drive you crazy. I know this, I work with one guy that watches how many home cooked meals his landlord makes, how many visitors he has which he prepare meals for. Then he counts how many takeout meals he eats. He concludes the landlord uses 90% of the cooking gas at yet charges him 50%. The cooking gas was only $30.00 a month for the whole house. He complains to the landlord every month and to me a couple of times a week. So I ask him, if your landlord charges $770 a month for rent, instead of $750 and gas, would he go for the $770. He said he would if that's the way it's rented. 

3. This is not to mention allocating the bills, going after the tenants is a total PITA. I got a SFR that tenant pays for water. Originally, had the water bill put in the tenants name and they pay direct. Didn't realize they never paid it, paid them the deposit back on move out. Then I found out months later the municipal utility transfers unpaid water bills to your tax bill with fines and penalties. Now I get the bill, pay it, scan an email a copy to the tenant. Problem is the current tenant is constantly paying late on the rent, and I have to chase him separately for the water, and usually, the excuse is I can't find it, give me another copy.

All in all, my rentals in NYC includes all utilities and all built into the rent, much simpler. Outside of NYC, it's not, so I see both sides.