One Electric Meter for Duplex

[Timothy Jacob Wallace]

I'd like some feedback from the BP audience.

Long story short, I bought a duplex on a lake. The margins are slim but still positive, but the reason I purchased the house is due to property values rising a significant amount in two years (dam issue on lake, currently extremely low, coming back up in 2022 after repairs). The current plan is to hold property at the very least until 2022 when the lake comes up, likely plan on holding a little past that. My issue is this, this is a former SFH, the upstairs remained the same, basement turned into a separate residence, house is on one electric meter. Electric bill averages around $300 +/- per month for the year for entire duplex. I'm still awaiting quotes, but from research I expect rewiring and putting in additional meter to be south of $10,000, closer to $5,000. Initial plan would be to place downstairs unit with a mini split system for HVAC purposes and keep upstairs unit on current HVAC set up.

The options I'm weighing are rewire with separate meter, increase cash flow, the reno pays for itself in a couple of years.  The reason I'm hesitant on option #1, is that I don't know if it will hurt property value.  House is lake front, not many MFH around, but a couple, mostly vacation homes and smaller single family homes, but still close to several decent size cities/towns and jobs (<15 minutes).  When I go to sell this house, I'm curious if the second meter will stunt interest since some buyers would be interested in turning the residence back into a single family home.

Any advice on this situation?  Any one have experience splitting utilities between two units on one meter without adding an additional meter?  Would like to straighten out sooner rather than later as current contracts for tenants are ending next month and December.  Good news is I purchased at a great price so I'll make money in the long run, but I would like to find a plan that works best for both short and long term if there is one that reduces my utility costs and keeps home value in place when I'm ready to sell.

[Jeff Willis]

MY 2 cents. A single meter will piss off 100% of your tenants, they will always claim they are overbilled

For every MFH I owned, I added a subpanel for each part with its own sub-meter. These are not electric company meters. The electric company reads the main meter and I apportioned by the sub-meter readings.  This is also a great approach since common area electricity, etc, is still off the main panel 

See  https://www.powermeterstore.com/category/tenant-submetering