When looking into how to recover water, sewer and other utility costs, the single most common questions center around cost and Return On Investment. And that’s the way it should be – Landlords and Property Managers are bottom-line businesspeople.
Here’s some tidy answers to Frequently Asked Questions about submetering and Ratio Utility Billing. Note the ROI comment about RUBS. The definition of ROI is Annual Profit divided by Investment Cost. But since RUBS has zero investment cost, you’d have to divide by zero…and as you’ll recall from math class, any number divided by zero yields “undefined” as the answer.
Billing residents for water and sewer is a conservation measure that helps profitability of apartment communities as well as condo associations, shopping centers and various mixed use properties. No matter how most people want to conserve simply because it’s the right thing to do, the harsh reality is that green money trumps green conservation.
When people get all the water or gas or electricity they want for no cost, they don’t report leaks and they waste. But when one’s usage is tied to one’s wallet, people conserve.