Building under pole home

[JBY]

I live in a small 2 bedroom pole home. Ive had a quick verbal quote done and for approx $100K I can build a 2 bedroom flat with kitchen and 1 bathroom underneath it. In other words, it will be an exact replica of my existing upstairs floorplan done underneath. I want to either rent both out seperately, or live in one (as a weekender as Im moving out) and rent the other to maintain the holding costs. All sounds OK, but Im just wondering what to do about seperate electricity bills. It already has an existing electric hot water system in place. This may be a dumb question, but is it simply a matter of getting a seperate hot water system installed?, or is this complicated?

Cheers.
JBY

 

[Rockstar]

We have 2 meters in our house which get billed to the same account. We just keep tabs on the 2nd meters reading and charge the user according to the going rate on the account.

 

[bornfree]

Too risky if underneath is not legal height and fully approved.

 

[Amadio]

Finally googled pole home to find out what it was. I was imagining a tee-pee.

 

[fernfurn]

Friend of mine built in under hers, one big room with the most fantastic views out to sea and a bedroom and bathroom. Looked great and would add to the value of the home, although maybe not $100k worth. Ask a re what they think of added value

 

[JBY]

We have 2 meters in our house which get billed to the same account. We just keep tabs on the 2nd meters reading and charge the user according to the going rate on the account.

Thanks Rockstar, that was the response I was looking for. Do you live in your house in question or rent both aspects out? It sounds like you have the electricity account in your name and that you pay it and then seek reimbursement from the tenants.

I dont want to self-manage and would be doing everything via a real estate agent. If I was to rent out both parts of the house seperately I assume that one way to go would be just to have the electricity account sent to me at whereever I am living and then send copies to each of the respective tenants for them to reimburse their share accordingly.

But Id definately rather not get involved in chasing tenants to pay their electricity bills. Am I missing something here or is there a better way of dealing with it via a property manager?

 

[Rockstar]

Either the property manager or yourself would know which meter was for the main house and visa versa. The bill would probably be combined (though maybe the electricity provider can split it on the bill?) and so someone would need to read it each quarter and split the cost accordingly.

We have built under our pole home but the extra meter is not for the downstairs portion. Our extra meter was installed for our local ISP who uses our roof for an aerial access point and have a computer in a box under our house which uses a small amount of power. Every quarter I send them a bill to compensate us for their power consumption.

 

[gecho1]

seperate meters

If you are ok to spend approx 100k on a build under, just get the sparky to sort out a second meter for the build under. This would not add exessivley to the overall costs, and ensure you would not have to chase your tenants for their share of te elec usage bill, which could prove more trouble than it's worth.