Thanks Peter, and I know this page very well.
My question is "How do your PMs manage this? Do they read the meters at the start of a tenancy, and read them again when the rates bill comes in so they can work out how many kilolitres have been used by each tenant in each property?"
This is what we have been doing, but it must be a pain to do when you have a couple of hundred to do. I believe many PMs are not doing this, and letting the landlord pay for water. Is that pretty much the case?
Because the meter readings by BCC are three months behind, we have a few options that I can see.
1. Read the meter at the beginning of the lease. When the first rates/water account issues, read the meter again and work out manually how much water they have used. This is a pain, but really the only way I can see of having the money reimbursed. This is how we have been doing it, but it does my head in, especially now we have taken over management of my parents' portfolio. Suddenly I have a lot of meters to read.
2. If we are too lazy to read the meters every quarter, we could wait for the rates notice that covers the water usage for when they were definitely already in the house and copy the usage page and charge them exactly what is on the page. This is an easy option but could mean we end up paying up to three months' water cost at the start and end of each tenancy. Water cost is fairly cheap, but I believe it will increase (and SHOULD increase to make people more accountable) and frankly, I don't want to pay for the tenants' water use.
So, I wonder if you could actually ask your PMs how they do this. One PM we used to let a house was surprised that we wanted to charge for water usage, so I assume that unless a landlord insists on it, perhaps most agents are still just having landlords pay for water.
Tenants being able to pay for water usage is still fairly new in Brisbane that I think perhaps people are slow to wake up to the fact that they are paying for water use by their tenants that could be passed on.
What do you think?