Listen On:
Managing utilities in rental properties has become increasingly challenging for small landlords. In this shorty episode of the Your Landlord Resource Podcast, Stacie Casella and Kevin Kilroy discuss a strategy many landlords are beginning to implement: charging tenants a flat monthly utility fee.
Many duplexes, fourplexes, and older multifamily buildings have shared water meters, which means landlords often include water, sewer, trash, and recycling in the rent. Historically this worked well when utility costs were predictable. But as rates continue rising in many areas, landlords are often unknowingly subsidizing tenant usage.
In this episode, Stacie and Kevin explain how a flat utility fee works, how it differs from RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing System), and why landlords may choose this method as a cost-sharing solution. They also discuss how tenants typically respond when this change is introduced and the importance of communicating clearly and implementing the fee properly through lease renewals.
Stacie shares real examples from their own rental properties and explains how they calculated a fair utility fee while still maintaining positive tenant relationships. The goal is not to increase profit but to allocate shared building expenses more fairly while helping landlords maintain sustainable rental operations.
If you own small multifamily rentals and are struggling with rising utility costs, this episode provides practical insight to help you decide whether a flat utility fee might be right for your property.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why many landlords historically included utilities in rent
- How rising water, sewer, and trash costs impact rental property profitability
- What a flat monthly utility fee is and how it works
- The difference between a flat utility fee and the RUBS billing method
- How tenants typically respond when landlords introduce a utility fee
- Best practices for implementing a utility fee at lease renewal
- Why clear lease wording is essential when charging utility fees
Links & References
EZ Landlord Forms State Specific Leases and Forms
TurboTenant The best tenant management software for self-managing landlords.
Connect with Us:
🌎 Visit our website
📧 Subscribe to our newsletter.
👆Click this LINK to select from our FREE Landlord Forms and Doc’s
🤳Text Us SMS text to 650-489-4447. We love questions and love letters, hate mail not so much!
📩Email us at: [email protected], [email protected]
✔️Course Waitlist: From Marketing to Move In, Place Your Ideal Tenant
📱 Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, & join our private Facebook group
🎧 Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app
Check out samples of our newsletter👇 If you love it, you can subscribe from there!
- A Caution to AI: The Possibility of Fair Housing Violations
Landlord Update Greetings! I am sitting here in awe and cannot believe it is already June. I don’t necessarily want to slow time down, but I sure do wish it could go at a pace where I was able to make more time to appreciate all the goodness around us. In the last newsletter I discussed how we finally finished kid 2’s duplex and it is now on the market in Boise. He and I have had some long conversations about how to price the rental rates for the units, and he wanted to shoot for the stars…Read more - The Landlord’s Checklist for High Tenant Retention and Demand
Landlord Update Hello fellow landlords! May is now being dubbed the new December, minus the wrapping of Christmas gifts! Whoa…has it been BUSY! And we don’t have any kids in school or graduations to celebrate this year! It’s all good stuff though. The week before Mother's Day, Kevin and I flew out to Idaho with my parents so we could help Kid #2 finish up work on his duplex. There was a large hole in the concrete right at the bottom of the steps and my dad, being pretty handy, was able to…Read more
*This post contains affiliate links. We may earn a very small commission (at no additional cost to you) if you purchase from here. These small commissions are to benefit our business so thank you for your support.
Estimated reading time: 0 minutes