Personalizing your message to the individual recipient is the best way to avoid this.

This is a revision of my old post on this timely topic.

My grandfather, along with his twin brother, were home builders who transitioned into building and managing a significant multi-family portfolio, which remains family managed to this day.With my personal family background, as an agent I have largely engaged in the multifamily space working with legacy owners in the sale of their properties - from 6 unit, single building properties to 19+ unit, multi-building properties.

So for example I'm very conservative and don't want any debt on them because I feel this hardens them in case of a severe recession.

This is unfortunately part of the game that we play.

If this is a project for you and you are newer to flipping I would have a seasoned person/mentor help you through this that has done it in the city for example @Joshua Janus as he mentioned it did it.

Who has any creative ways I can go about making this happen? 

It's a complete roll of the dice when you switch to the smart meter, so this doesn't surprise me....it could go up or down depending on the actual water uage.  

Any other pros or cons to this method of investing for at least getting started? 

I don't remember seeing this in the past, but could have just missed it.