Owning real estate is one of the most effective and time-tested positive cash-flow investments. It is especially worthwhile when your investment property is managed by a Property Manager that you trust. Your time is valuable!

Staying on top of utility changes and charges during tenant turnover is one of the many areas in which you should be able to trust your Property Manager. You certainly don’t want to worry about making sure tenants switch utilities into their name on the start date of their lease… We will take care of this for you!

You could lose $100 or more per turnover if your Property Manager isn’t paying very close attention to the service period of the final bill. As an owner you are responsible for the utilities during a vacancy, but the tenant is typically responsible for all utilities as soon as their lease starts. If they forget to switch the utilities into their name on the start date of their lease, utility charges that the tenant is responsible for will show up on the final bill.

During the summer in Austin, TX electricity bills can be high – especially if a tenant keeps the AC temperature quite low. Not to mention that the vast majority of tenant turnovers happen during the summer – these months are busy and paying close attention to the service period of every utility bill cross referenced with new lease start dates could easily fall through the cracks.

It takes an attentive and hands-on Property Manager to understand this nuance in tenant turnovers and to make sure you are not overcharged for utilities.

Here at Crosstown Properties, we have a routine process for paying utility bills to make sure our owners are charged the correct amount. Consider this turnover from last month:

A new lease started on June 1st. The final day of the gas bill in the owner’s name was June 12th with a balance of $49.42. With a 15-day service period, that means the tenant was responsible for 12 out of 15 days and the owner responsible for only 3 days!

We divide the final bill by the number of days in the service period and multiply by the number of days from lease start date to final bill date to correctly charge the tenant for the days after their lease start. This is how we ensure that our owners are not overcharged on utilities during turnovers!

People often find us by searching “property management Austin,” “rental home management austin, tx,” “property manager near me,” and “property management companies austin, tx.” We’d love to hear how you found us!