9 Ways Smart Water Submetering Can Improve Your Property
What is Smart Water Submetering?
Whether you’re a first-time landlord or a seasoned property manager, proper utility expense management can make your job a lot easier—and poor utility management can make it a lot harder.
Smart water submeters, also known as water suite meters, are an increasingly popular and extremely useful tool for utility expense management because they place direct responsibility for water use on each individual or family.
In contrast to the traditional bulk metering method, smart water submetering allows residents to control and reduce their expenses—and with consumption-based billing, there is more motivation to do so.
Why Do You Need a Water Submeter?
As water expenses continue to rise, accurate billing services on your property can help you gain more control over your residents’ water bills, precisely and separately bill each resident, and even reduce overall costs for both you and your residents.
When you install state-of-the-art water submeters, you’ll reap many benefits, including proven cost-saving benefits and consumption reduction, which will help save you money and save the planet from a larger ecological footprint.
9 Benefits to Water Submetering for Property Owners, Managers, and Landlords
There are tremendous benefits to switching to smart water submetering from traditional bulk metering. If the popularity of this emerging utility expense management doesn’t speak for itself enough, here are nine benefits to smart water submetering that you could be cashing in on.
- 1. Reduce Water Consumption by 20%
At WATABILL, we’ve found that our clients are able to reduce their water consumption by 20% on average, and some industry leaders have claimed that water submetering can reduce consumption upwards of 30%.
Compared to non-billed residents, individually billed residents use a lot less water. And it makes sense why. When they’re responsible for paying it, they’re much more conscious when they use it.
- 2. Identify High-Use Areas
With traditional bulk metering, you are forced to assume that your buildings’ water use is the same across the board.
But when you bill residents separately, you can identify high-use areas. These insights not only allow you to separate your high-use from low-use residents—they can help you adjust fees, see potential pitfalls, and know if you need to educate residents on water consumption.
High-use areas can also indicate leaks.
- 3. Detect Leaks and Damage Before They Become Disasters
Did you know that common household leads in taps, toilets, and pipes generally account for 10% of a persons’ water use per day? Leaks are responsible for such a high percentage of water use due to aging infrastructure, which is an especially common struggle in older buildings.
When you install smart water submetering, you can reap short- and long-term benefits of leak protection. During installation, a technician can provide leak and tamper detection, helping you identify any existing problems in your system.
Once your smart water submeters are installed, they can provide early detection of potential property damage from things such as leaks and freezes by identifying unusual water patterns. In the long run, you will reap immense savings by avoiding costly repairs.
- 4. Reduce Stress on Plumbing and Building Infrastructure
You can further avoid expensive repairs through smart water submetering since this utility expense management system reduces the overall stress on your buildings’ infrastructure.
Although water pressure that is too low can result in complaints from your residents, water pressure that is too high will cause complaints in your plumbing system as high pressures force water out of cracks and put stress on aging pipes.
With a smart water submeter, you can monitor water pressure and ensure that everyone is happy. Best of all, you can prevent the onset of repairs and save money in the long run.
- 5. Increase Your Property Resale Value
Installing a smart water submeter will increase your property resale value. In today’s market, buyers want multifamily properties with a submetering program already in place.
Whether buyers would prefer to install submetering or deal with the hassle of managing bulk metering in a building without water submetering, a property with it already installed means less work for them—and a more appealing proposition.
- 6. Put Less into Monthly Fees
Alongside all the tremendous benefits to water submetering, it’s simply less effort on your part—and for many property managers, owners, and landlords, convenience is enough to encourage them to convert.
Now, pair that with the cost-saving benefits, and it’s a win-win solution all around. With smart water submetering, you can eliminate both the hassle and the labor costs involved in calculating monthly rental or condominium fees with water bills factored in.
So, you can reduce administrative overhead, thereby decreasing the effort and cost surrounding water utility management.
- 7. Enjoy No Capital Costs When You Finance
For many property managers, the up-front costs may drive them away from choosing water submetering. Luckily, many water submetering companies offer financing—which means there can be zero capital costs.
- 8. Avoid Subsidizing Residents’ Water Costs
When you choose water submetering, you choose a system that is fairer to your residence. Tracking individual units’ water usage means that you aren’t forcing low-use residents to pay for their high-use neighbors’ bills.
With traditional bulk metering, it is typical for your residents to subsidize water costs, so suite metering is a much fairer system—and everyone wins.
Low-use residents benefit because they save money that would have been spent supporting their neighbors, and high-use residents benefit by seeing their water consumption. When they see what it costs, they can be more conservative about their water usage.
- 9. Compete in the Market with Lower Rent
Choosing smart water submetering can also help you offer competitive rental prices in the housing market.
Instead of calculating water costs into rent, you can reduce monthly rental rates with water submetering. Lower rent costs will be more competitive in the market, and suite metering also means that you can keep rent low and avoid rent increases.
The benefit of less water consumption will help reduce costs in many ways, but low rent looks great on paper and will drive more residents to your doors.
Install Smart Water Submetering with WATABILL
Whether you manage new or old multifamily units, condominiums, commercial spaces, or more, water submetering can save you time, money, and energy—all of which are extremely valuable.
Smart water submetering will reduce your overhead in several ways, and the more units you manage, the more you can expect to save. With all these amazing benefits to smart water submetering, you might be wondering if there are hurdles you’re not aware of.
Well, the good news is that smart water submeter installation doesn’t have to be a hassle.
A common myth is that smart water submetering is difficult. If you try to do it yourself, it is. But when you hire professionals to complete the installation and manage your services, smart water submetering is simple.
At WATABILL, we handle submeter installation, billing, and servicing, so you don’t have to. As water bills continue to increase, smart water submetering offers a way for you to make your property shine on the rental market and help save the planet in the process.
