Wording of new lease with utilities including. - Landlord Forum thread 256061

Wording of new lease with utilities including. by Walter on May 24, 2012 @17:15

I would like to prevent overuse of utilities & charge accordingly if it happens.
This is our first try with a tenant with included utilities. The tenant will be upstairs and there are two utlity setups. The owner originally was upstairs, so the utilities are also hooked up to the garage and basement. I can't rewire the whole system right now.
Now that we have moved into the empty apartment downstairs and are using the garage and basement we want to avoid sorting the bills and will include the utilities of electric and gas in the above apartment.
I have had a hard time finding legalese on how to insert the prevention of overuse of utilities.
I have noticed leases mentioning that the tenant shall not have the air on or heat on (well the heat should be set to low) when not home. Not having windows open when heating/cooling is in use.

We have prior tenant utility bills to go by on past therm/kilowatt use.

What would proper wording be to insert into lease? Anything else we should consider with utilities included?

We were sooo burned by the last tenant...want to make sure our bases are covered.

Thanks for any advice!
Wally

[ Reply ] [ Return to forum ]

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including. by OK-LL on May 24, 2012 @17:23	[ Reply ]

Have you looked into purchasing and installing a lockout thermostat that only allows setting between x and y? There are some other LLs on this forum who can advise you on those. Beyond that, you maybe could use language like, "Tenant will be responsible for any excess utility useage. Excess utility useage is defined as x% over the utility expense for the same period in the previous year." But I can see some problems with that already. I think controlling the heat/cooling by an appropriate thermostat is your best bet.

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including. by Anonymous on May 24, 2012 @18:09	[ Reply ]

I agree with OK-LL. The best bet is going to be having a thermostat that either you control or locks out if not in a certain range. Tenants will not really care if they are overusing the utilities. And agreeing to pay for the overage is fine in theory but you can bet if they get a bill that they went over the limit and now owe X amount of dollars, they will argue with you that it can't be them and it must be because you used it, etc. We include water in our apartment. So far with the exception of two tenants it hasn't been a problem. One tenant had his family come over and do 6 large garbage bags filled with laundry every weekend. Obviously, it was an issue. The following tenant, would run the bath water like it was a pool for their kid. The water would be running for 2 hours every few days. These same tenants also ran up their heat and electric bills (they were responsible for that utility) to the point where they owe and still owe the utility company over $1200 on two different accounts (they would put a family member's name on the account instead of paying it off and leaving a deposit).

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including. by Jake on May 24, 2012 @19:21	[ Reply ]

A thermostat with a fixed temperature will help but even then, expect the utilities to be higher than when you occupied the apartment...a lot higher. Set the rent in expectation of a higher utility bill and they place a dollar cap on both the water and the electricity or a dollar cap for both combined. Put this cap in your lease with wording that the overage will be added rent. State the week it will be due. Never let the tenant tell you that they have the rent but not the utility surcharge. If they do not have both, they do not have the rent. Tell your tenant what week to expect the bump and require it to all be paid at one time. Not spread out over the remainder of the month. Do not try to manage their behavior toward lowering the bill. If the bill is high enough, they will either pay or manage their own behavior. Also, put it in the lease that they can not "take in wash."

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including. by NY-LL on May 25, 2012 @10:55	[ Reply ]

A qualified electrician can easily separate the first floor, second floor, basement and garage electric facilities to independent meters provided the first floor, second floor, basement and garage have independent circuit breakers. It will cost more if additional circuit breakers are required. It is always best to allow the tenant to be responsible for their own utility bills, especially in the case of electric and gas and even water. The long and the short of it, you will be less involved with the tenant if the utilities are separate and independent. By all information provided, there have been past issues of tenant utility overages in the past ... so just spend a few hundred dollars now to avoid the utility overage disputes later. In the event that legal action is deemed necessary related to the rental and utilities, the court generally will side in favor of the tenant regarding shared utilities, making the owner/landlord responsible for all usage.

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including.

Re: Wording of new lease with utilities including. by Douglas (KS) on May 25, 2012 @13:49	[ Reply ]

Not sure what the setup of the building is, but you can also consider submetering or RUBS (ratio utility billing system) to break out individual unuts When including utilities, except the bills to be much higher.