I have a 2 family rental property. 1 family has been good for 10 years. A few years ago a vacancy resulted in them moving downstairs to the bigger apartment. They added some cousins or something. More new people. At the same time I got new tenants for upstairs. Then the water bill started skyrocketing. I had a plumber check for leaky toilets leaky lines he didn’t find anything. He turned the meter off and said it’s due to excessive use. I’ve been hanging out in the laundry room. There’s 1 guy that does 8 hour marathon laundry sessions with all the high water options like deep water and double rinse. I think he’s the one that’s driving up the bill. I had everything else checked the other family weren’t using that much. Could it be something else or is it him?
I have a very high water bill. Could it be from the people that use the washing machine all night?
byu/PkPajamas inRealEstate
Posted by PkPajamas
9 Comments
Assuming you’re the LL. It’s him. But he’s not doing anything wrong.
If your lease says the LL is responsible, you are.
If the water usage jumped when he moved in, it’s probably him? Not really understanding what you are hoping to get out of this post. It obviously could be something else, but with what info you have already gathered, seems like it’s the tenant? Do you pay for the water per the lease?
To be clear, you do know how many people total are in your properties?
I would run the math for water use compared to other tenants.
Multiple people showering is probably the larger contributor. It would be weird to not renew over the water bill, though, just add a surcharge to the next lease to cover the extra usage
Probably has a laundry business
Kinda hilarious to offer any LL paid utility and be surprised that it’s being used, even more so to speak of sustainability while owning a rental property.. that being said, non-renewal is the legal, prudent answer to your problem. At least you’re not trying to break the lease or restrict the water in some way.
Clear out this unit. Wait a month. You will have your answer.
A thousand dollar water bill sounds like the plumber missed a leaky washing machine, toilet, water heater dishwasher, outside hose.
If you live in an expensive area with tier pricing a thousand dollar bill might be 50k gallons or 65chf. In a cheaper city it could be more than twice that. A big load of laundry is like 50 gallons. They don’t have tome to do 1000 loads of laundry. That would be like 30+ loads every day.
Why not just send them a letter that anything over a certain amount gets charged back to them? Our LL at my building did this. Our water is included with rent but 3 months straight apparently the new person across the hall had their toilet constantly running and never said anything. We all got a notice saying that excessive water bills would be our responsibility going forward. The normal bill was under $20 a month and I think they charged us if it went over $50 or something.