What's the ideal water billing setup?

Hi all

I've recently bought my first IP (yay!).

Just wondering what the best way is to handle water bills. I don't have an LOC or similar at this stage, so I'm thinking it's fine to let the PM handle this by having the water bill sent to them directly.

Speaking to the agent, she says their normal policy is to take the ENTIRE water bill amount (fixed + usage) out of the rent, and then invoice the tenant to pay me directly. I'm uncomfortable with this, but not sure if it's common?

I guess the benefit of doing it this way is the water bill gets paid on time, but what happens if the tenant doesn't pay the usage charges on time? Apart from the obvious reasons (tenant has cashflow issues / forgets), this could also happen if the PM doesn't manage it properly.

At this stage I have no reason to question the efficiency of the PM; I'm just trying to keep things as neat as possible.

I'd prefer the way I currently pay for water usage where I rent, ie. the PM sends usage charges to me to pay into the same account as the rent.

Your thoughts?

 

I pay the full water bill myself and my PM charges the tenants for the usage

 

Does the tenant pay the usage into the PM's account, or directly into your account? And I guess the followup q - does it matter which?

Cheers

 

They just pay it together with the rent

 

Cool thanks! I'll tell the PM to go ahead, then

 

I used to do this but the agent kept paying the bill also, so it often got paid twice. They never remembered that they got the bill just to claim from tenant. So every few months had to get a refund from council. So I changed it, cancelled direct debit, agent can handle the lot.

 

Normal course of action is all bill is paid out of rent by agent.
Tenant is invoiced for usage and supply charge - given a timeframe to pay
Tenant pays invoice to agent - Not directly to landlord - how would this get tracked???
That portion is disbursed to landlord during normal end of month or mid month procedure.

If tenant does not pay their portion, they are breached and legal action is taken exactly like arrears for rent.

 

Much easier to have agent do it all. The pm system is to pay bills and invoice tenants at the same time. When 95% of bills are done this way it's easy to just put the few that are already paid by landlords as another payment.

Also if landlords are late in handing invoices over and the deadline to invoice tenants has lapsed, we can no longer invoice tenants on that bill.

 

I pay the utilities etc

Agent collects usage and sends it as/when paid.

You can get the agent to do the lot, but you still have to check on things.

Main reason I do it, to look at usage, know bill is paid and to know if there is some issue, but nothing is foolproof, I have an agent that often buggers it up, most can handle this though.

 

Yep, if doing yourself, make sure you do not sit on the bill ! most states I think have a time frame to pass on.

 

It would be good if the councils etc all supplied a separate bill, some include it with rates.

 

I do as above and record water usage on a spread sheet:
-Date/QTR
-Source (council/tenants)
-amount
-balance (which should be zero at end of each qtr)

What time frame do you usually give?

 

Was renting for 7 years and never had to pay a water bill here only power and gas. Only paid water if you exceeded some threshold which we never did. However last year the new agent did say that the water bill will now be 50/50.

 

It is the LL option, they can pay for you usage if they want, but this encourages abuse and is madness anyway, it should be like electricity and gas and phone, everyone should have own water acc IMO.

It is not 50/50, but I guess they could pay 50% of your usage if they wanted too.

 

3 months for SA

 

I think 14 days

 

This is the case with Qld, but in Vic properties the water companies are kind enough to split the bill and invoice for supply comes to owner and invoice for usage to the tenants.

 

Tasmania currently won't split the bill between tenant and landlord. From TasWater website:
"TasWater’s relationship for billing purposes is with the owner of the property, not with the tenant."

...but it looks like some organisational changes are coming to TasWater next year, so things could change.

 

Bought our 1st IP recently and received first water bill yest. It has Water Service charge and Sewerage Service charge on it? Is this what a LL is meant to pay.

Also, planning to get this bill sent directly to PM in future. Does it just involve just calling the council and changing the address where bill needs to be sent out?

We are based in VIC.

 

Yes, tenant is invoiced directly for usage.
PM can look after changing address etc for you but it is changed with the water service provider (ie SE Water) not council.