All Forum Posts by: Jedd Braunwarth

@Weina Shi Yes, RUBS is the way to go if you want to avoid hardware costs. Funny, Sant, the other commenter so far, and I were just having this conversation in another thread. I used to implement RUBS in a 6 unit. Here was my experience:

 For the most part it worked well but the reason I was swayed away and looked into submetering was because it increased the number of calls/complaints I would get from my tenants. I would get calls and emails over the weekend from one tenant letting me know the other tenants had friends staying the weekend with them and they wanted me to know because they did not want to be assessed the additional water usage. It was basically a "point the finger at other tenants for high usage each and every month" To their benefit in many ways I agreed with them as I wouldn't want to pay for other people who weren't responsible for water usage. It didn't cost me anything but I got tired of the complaints. Clearly the ultimatum is RUBS is free to implement and only costs a monthly fee to pay a company to do it for you or your own labor to do it each month vs. pay for a larger up front cost to install meters (that is not always cheap) and a monthly monitoring cost.

@Account Closed Yes, the city will install meters in a multi-family. However, each city is going to have different codes you have to comply with. Some are very easy to work with and as long as you have individual water lines going to each apartment (which plumbing separation can be the most costly part) they will install meters. I have yet to hear of a municipality do it for free though. They all charge for the meter and the connection fee. Some will be very strict and if you make large plumbing alterations or even just cut into the pipe to put their meter they will require you to bring all plumbing up to code. One instance I have seen was an 80 unit complex had individual water lines all in one utility room. They contacted the city to install 80 meters. The city quoted them $5,500 per apartment unit to install meters and service connection fees. BUT, they also said that all plumbing had to be then brought up to code and the water main coming from the street did not meet fire code and that would have to be dug up and replaced in addition. We are now in there with a $60 meter which did not require any plumbing code violations. Honestly though, if you can or your locale is easy to work with having city meters is 100% the best option! I tell all of our clients that if they can go that route do that, if they can't then come to us.

I am obviously biased with submetering vs. RUBS but before I started the submetering company I started implementing RUBS in my own 6-plex. For the most part it worked well but the reason I was swayed away and looked into submetering was because it increased the number of calls/complaints I would get from my tenants. I would get calls and emails over the weekend from one tenant letting me know the other tenants had friends staying the weekend with them and they wanted me to know because they did not want to be assessed the additional water usage. It was basically a "point the finger at other tenants for high usage each and every month" To their benefit in many ways I agreed with them as I wouldn't want to pay for other people who weren't responsible for water usage. It didn't cost me anything but I got tired of the complaints. Clearly the ultimatum is RUBS is free to implement and only costs a monthly fee to pay a company to do it for you or your own labor to do it each month vs. pay for a larger up front cost to install meters (that is not always cheap) and a monthly monitoring cost. 

@Account Closed, full disclosure I own a submetering company but thought I would respond since I am so close to this every day and need to know what is out there with competition. You will really get a wide range of prices depending on what YOU want. Really there are manual reading (lowest cost), radio read systems that the owner will do similar to municipalities (generally highest cost as you have to buy the software and radio reading hardware) and finally automated reading where the submetering company reads the meter for you and generates the water bill. I am sure you already know this with your research. In my experience for main line meters (one per apartment) going with 3/4" is required. 1/2" is too small and will not provide enough flow and would only go that small if you are reading hot and cold individually or even per point of use. Pricing, many will sell a brass meter similar to what the city uses and these will run anywhere from $100-200 per meter. Plastic meters will be lower cost. Some submetering companies will offer meters for free but charge a higher monthly monitoring rate to recoup the cost or even lease the meters out. Obviously manual reading may be the lowest cost but each month requires man hours to read each. The advantange to that is that you get a walk through of every unit you own each month to make sure things are in order. Finally, generally advertising $10-20 less per month once you start submetering is the norm. The results are good by doing that as you get more interested candidates and the water bill is always much higher than $10-20 each month, so money in your pocket. The most amazing thing I have seen is how much the water usage drops per month overall when the tenants are responsible for the water. No more long showers and leaking toilets do not go unreported. Good luck!

@Andrew Heairet wanted to jump in and offer what I do/have done. I owner occupied a duplex for awhile and I did all lawn and snow removal myself. It seemed as if the owner lived there it was expected I took care of it. Plus, nobody cares more than the owner of the quality of the property. I wanted it to look good and my tenants were very happy!. I no longer live in that one and have a few more, I pay a professional lawn and snow removal company to do all of my properties. I dabbled with having tenants do it but again the quality was terrible. Some let the grass grow long, didnt trim, only shoveled if it was a lot of snow, etc. Even adding detail to the lease did not help. Now, with a professional service it is off my plate and I do not worry about it and all of the properties look great. I can charge a little more for rent as many tenants like that they do not have to do any "maintenance"!

welcome @Tony Kuschel! I am in Waconia and have a small multi up here and some down in Iowa. Let me know if you want to grab coffee or a beer sometime.

@Amber Gonion I will try to answer for Terry since I know him well :). He is quite busy with an apartment complex reno right now. Yes, in fact you actually need to have your brokerage RE License to be a property manager. Unless, as you said, are resident manager or you have ownership interest in the property.

@Sean M. I found your post interesting as I currently invest in both MN and Iowa. Those are my two markets. My MN properties are western Minneapolis suburbs. In Des Moines I have a couple properties in the area you are looking and a few in other DSM areas. When might you move? We should grab coffee or a beer and chat. Very interested how you found and decided to focus on those two markets.

@Jackson Long send me a message, I've trying many different options and have one you may be interested in.

@Adam Crocker I agree with others, you need a new job. Now is the time in your life when you literally have the most time to work. it may not always feel it but wait till you have a family and other obligations. Curious who you work for as you say it has big upside? Have you taken the initiative to ask to be full time? 3 years is a long time to wait only making $17k. think, you've made $51k in that job over the 3 years. what is the income lost in that time waiting. Say after the first year you got ambitious and didn't want to wait and then made a simple $45k working full time the last two years, you would have grossed $107k in those 3 years. Still not a lot of money but you are losing a lot of money waiting.