Splitting Water Bill on Tenants

[Eric Maury]

Hi Guys, 

First time turning to BiggerPockets but love the community and could really use some feedback. Right now I own a multifamily--2 units--1 2br, 1 1br with a shared washer/dryer in house. My water bill is being run up every quarter, and I'm paying over $500 each bill. They're using over 130% of the average usage rate and I don't want to continue to float this bill. 

Recently I started to look into sub metering or installing RUBS but both options seem to have issues. The sub-meter seems to be expensive, and I really don't want to take on a few thousand dollar expense to do this. The Radio Utility Billing System seems really affordable and logical but I can't find a company to do this for such a small unit size. Does anyone have any advice, has anyone been in this type of predicament? 

Any and all help is appreciated, running out of options right now. 

[Jedd Braunwarth]

@Eric Maury Welcome to the forums! What City are you in? I ask as different states and different cities have laws that prevent you from doing RUBS or require you to do a certain type of meter, etc. RUBS is certainly the lowest cost as there is nothing installed, just labor to divide the bill. The issue with RUBS is how will your tenants react, will one complain saying they are saving water and the other tenant does not? Does one side have a larger family? That side will obviously use more water. Submetering costs really depends on what you want such as local company, automated reading, is your plumbing currently split to each unit or not, etc. Costs are higher for submetering to install but once done prevents complaints of water usage as it is accurate and it increases the property value as you just increased the NOI.