Folks,It is possible to build a Passivhaus compliant home (energy consumption <=15kWh/m^2 per annum) using off the shelf materials with a marginal increase in construction costs (~10-15% ... less as the workforce becomes more skilled).Primary heating and cooling of such a home can be accomplished via the ERV/HRV system with a small auxiliary heating source (there's a house here that has a 1500w auxiliary coil to provide additional heat to the fresh air supply during the coldest part of winter ... that's essentially replacing your furnace with a hair dryer).Even a near-Passivhaus construction (or retrofit) can lower energy costs 70% or more in comparison to the conventional (or even R2000) house being built in Canada these days.  

Can you put in separate meters or submeters to charge water consumption back to the users?

There is no way to know without consumption data.

We had started posting the monthly laundry water consumption in the laundry room when we started the shadow billing, so the tenants were able to see the impact of the new machines and benefits of washing full loads vs small loads.  

I would have thought the common area, but if the rate of consumption was 121/day then there aren't enough units attributed to the common area to be that one.  

My thought is to try and come up with some kind of formula based on sqft, bedroom, bathroom, and # of tenants to get an average percentage of consumption per unit, then bill back based on that math.

It's simply matter of consumption.

What happens when foreign governments and entities stop subsidizing our over consumption via treasury purchases and all those dollars return home? 

The caveat of investing out of state, as you pointed out, is the time consumption/prepration of developing your core four (RE agent, lender, contractor, pm, etc.)

Court case in my area determined that a landlord cannot holdback on returning 'pet deposit', as a pet allowance implies typical pet consumption.