Installing Individual Meters on Properties

[Brandyn Collins]

I am looking at properties and have found a few deals that I would be interested in if I were able to install separate metering on a duplex. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with how much this may cost?

One of the biggest things that I've been finding that kills my numbers is it seems about half or so of the current Owners are paying atleast water/sewage (not passing it onto tenants) and in some cases all utilities. This seems to be due to not having metering separated on their properties. I am interested in seeing if it would be cost-effective to have meters installed so that we could pass these expenses onto the tenants...

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much!

[John Warren]

@Brandyn Collins a lot of these items are incredibly market specific. For instance, in the Chicago suburbs where I work pretty much no one that I know is passing water costs on to the tenants. If I decided to spend the time and money sub metering, I would be doing something no one else in the market is doing. I would most likely get push back on this from potential tenants, and may have to lower rent (which defeats the purpose!). 

For gas and electrical meters, I have only had to install one new electric service/panel on my property in South Bend, IN. In that market I believe the cost was somewhere around $2200 to do this project. I probably over paid as I am out of state and ended up going with a very good/expensive company. One of my clients did this job locally in Berwyn, and it ran somewhere around $1500-2,000 per meter for the electrical. The gas was more dependent on how much re-piping had to be done, but it was also fairly expensive. 

I hope this helps! Make sure to research the local market before puling the trigger on any of these items.