Tenants Water Bill is Outrageous!

[Tyler Warner]

Hello, Happy Tuesday! Here is the situation I currently find myself in!!

My Tenants are excellent meaning they pay everything on time and have treated my rental like their own. I got a call from them 2 weeks ago claiming that their water bill came in double what previous months have been. For reference its about $500 just due to water. I have done a thorough walkthrough of my property and have detected no leaks as of now, but we have not brought out a plumber yet! My tenants have contacted City of Austin to reread the meter and ensure that there are no leaks on their end. We just heard that there was no leak detected on their end and meter reading was accurate. Now, the city is threatening to turn off their utilities because they are late on the $500 water bill.

In this situation, How would you handle this as a Landlord? Is it worth it being added to the utility bill as the owner of the home so that I can call and talk with Austin Water (dont know if that's possible)? But I also dont want to be liable for unpaid bills as well. Do you think that a plumber needs to come out to ensure that there are no leaks? Any recommendations would be very helpful!! Thanks

[Edward Messer]

@Tyler Warner I'll start with a potential source of the leak - from personal experience.  Toilet flapper.  My rental hit me with a $300 water/sewer bill during a month that it was unoccupied.  Turns out the seller used the toilet on the last day and the flapper stuck open resulting in 23,000 gallons of water going down the drain.  It's sneaky because you can't always hear them, especially if the bathroom door is closed after use.  

As for how to handle the tenant, I would not get yourself added to the utility, unless you can do so without admitting financial liability.  Rather, I'd be proactively involved with the tenant and a plumber to try to ID the problem.  If the house had an outdoor spigot and that spigot leaked after the tenant occupied, and it was not leaking before occupancy- technically it is your problem to fix the leak, but not your responsibility for the water bill.  That would be on the tenant to ensure the spigot was off after they last used it.  

But as you said, if your tenants are excellent tenants, I would do all I could within reason to help them resolve this.  It is up to you to decide what is 'within reason'.