national multiple family submetering and allocation billing program ...

submetered. Complete responses of complaints can be seen in Figure 4.11 and Table 4.11 in
Chapter 4.
Owners also need to have a method to recoup uncollected water bills. According to
electric and gas utilities, and third party water billing companies, uncollected resident bills in
multifamily properties range from 7% to 15% (AWWA WCD 2001). In the read and bill
company survey, the average non-payment rate was 12.7%. However, in the manager survey,
the average non-payment rate was reported to 6.1% for submetered and 6.4% for RUBS
properties. Taking unpaid water bills out of a general security deposit has been one solution. In
some states it is illegal to take utility bill payments out of the security deposit, and instead, a
utility deposit can be collected for this purpose.
Owner Benefit/Cost Analysis
Submetered Properties
Based on results from the manager survey, the water analysis from this study, and
industry prices, a more thorough economic analysis was performed on the costs and payback
periods for submetering. The economic analysis is impacted by whether or not the owner lowers
the rental payment by the estimated average water bill. Because most water and wastewater
billing programs are introduced at lease signing and renewal, rental prices are often not lowered
(but are arguably less likely to increase in the long term). In addition, many property owners
consider the fact that water rates have been increasing at a rate higher than rental rates, and
therefore don’t lower the rent to try to recoup some of their net operating income loses. In this
way, all water costs that are passed to the resident are realized as an increase in net operating
income for the property owner. The increase in yearly revenue also helps to increase the property
value.
Table 6.2 shows the benefit/cost analysis for a variety of installation costs, all of which
assume automatic meter reading (AMR). The useful life of an AMR meter is 15 years, but the
battery to run the transmitter only has a useful life of 10. Since the transmitter is either part of
the meter register or an expensive stand-alone part, owners will typically replace the entire thing
at 10 years. For this analysis, a 20 year life is assumed, which includes the initial installation and
one replacement. For any AMR billing method, there is always a base cost per property that
includes a receiver, computer, and software. This cost has less impact at larger properties, where
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