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Updated over 3 years ago, 04/19/2021
Property Manager making me pay utilities
I have a couple units in the same market. The first unit I got signed with a PM and have been very happy with them. Standard stuff, tenant pays all utilities. Water and Sewer must be in my name, but the tenant is sent a bill each month. I have had zero issues with this unit or the PMs. I brought a second unit in with existing tenants (that I inherited from purchase) that needed to be re-leased. The tenant was behind in rent after just one month, but has actually caught up. (they had a temporary job loss due to covid). I noticed that I wasn't seeing the water/sewer payments. I just was given the explanation today that the tenant is not responsible for water and sewer. Apparently when they released, the PM negotiated with the tenant to not pay water/sewer. This property is already 15%+ under market but I had decided that keeping (what I thought was a stable) tenant in the unit was worth slowly bringing them up to market rents. Now I am hemorraging 60% of my cashflow every month to their utility bills, and they are arguably 30%+ under market rent. I am extremely pissed about the PM not asking if this was ok.
Thoughts?