Top Benefits of Water Submetering for Property Owners

Water submetering is gaining traction among property owners as water prices rise, regulations tighten, and sustainability becomes a priority. These factors create a clear need to use water more efficiently. Submetering provides data-driven visibility, enabling both owners and residents to understand and manage their consumption more effectively.

Accurate tracking, robust data collection, and advanced leak detection bring tangible results—lower costs, stronger cost recovery, better water conservation, improved tenant relations, and compliance with regulatory requirements.

This article explores how water submetering can help save money, prevent waste, strengthen conservation efforts, increase property value, improve tenant satisfaction, and support data-driven decision-making.

Understanding Water Submetering

Water submetering involves installing separate meters for each unit or tenant in a building. These individual meters measure the exact amount of water used by each tenant rather than the whole building sharing a single water meter. This setup allows property owners to bill each tenant for their personal water usage.

Submetering is a straightforward process. First, a professional installs meters for each unit. These meters track water usage and almost real time send the data to a central system.The property owner can then generate accurate bills based on the exact amount of water each tenant uses. This method is fairer than traditional systems, where everyone shares the cost of water, regardless of usage.

Having a clear understanding of water submetering can make property management much easier. It provides transparency and helps tenants understand their water consumption better. When tenants see their actual water usage, they are more likely to be careful about wasting water. This awareness can lead to a more effective and responsible use of water throughout the building — in addition to many other benefits.

Save Money with Fair and Accurate Billing

One of the biggest advantages of water submetering is saving money through accurate billing. When each tenant pays for their own water usage, they are more motivated to use water efficiently. This can lead to lower overall water consumption in the building, reducing the property owner’s water bill.

1. Fair Billing: Water submetering ensures everyone pays for what they use. Tenants who use less water pay less, which encourages them to be mindful of their consumption.

2. Reduced Waste: When tenants are responsible for their own bills, they tend to waste less water. This means fewer long showers, less running water while washing dishes, and other wasteful habits are minimized.

3. Operational Savings: By accurately tracking water usage, property owners can identify high-usage units and address any issues, such as leaks or inefficient appliances. Fixing these problems sooner rather than later can save money on repairs and reduce water waste.

Water submetering also helps avoid disputes between tenants and property owners. When bills are based on exact usage, there’s no question about whether someone’s bill is fair. Tenants appreciate the transparency, and property owners save money by not covering excess water use. Overall, accurate billing from water submetering can lead to significant savings and more efficient water use.

Reduced Operating Costs for Property Owners

Under bulk billing, property owners assume all water costs and pass those on to residents using usually RUBs allocation methods. When a property is submetered, residents assume their own costs and pay for exactly what they use – a massive reduction in operating costs for property owners. Operating costs are reduced through multiple avenues. 

1. Reduced Water Consumption: The Environmental Protection Agency’s National Multi-Family Sub-metering and Allocation Study demonstrated a 15.3% reduction in overall water usage from submetering, representing a significant cost saving for property owners.

2. Shifts Utility Costs to Residents: Residents assume the responsibility for their own water costs, billed accurately and transparently. This means owners no longer need to subsidize high-use residents, and shared utilities are no longer bundled into operating budgets.
3. More predictable budgets: Submetering allows owners to plan more effectively. Operating cost variability drops, owners gain more control over budgeting, and utility expenses shrink.

Encourage Water Conservation

Water submetering promotes water conservation and helps sustainability goals by making tenants accountable for their own usage. When people are aware that they are paying for every drop they use, they tend to be more careful. This awareness leads to more responsible water use and less waste.

1. Better Habits: Tenants are likely to develop water-saving habits, such as taking shorter showers, fixing dripping faucets, and only running dishwashers or laundry machines with full loads.

2. Immediate Feedback: Submetering allows tenants to see their water usage daily, weekly, monthly or other periods. This feedback helps them understand how their actions impact their water bills.

3. Incentive to Save: Knowing that lower water usage directly translates to lower bills gives tenants a financial incentive to conserve water.

Overall, water submetering makes people think twice about leaving taps running or wasting water. This conservation effort benefits the environment and helps property owners meet sustainability goals.

Identify and Address Leaks Quickly

Water submetering systems help detect leaks quickly by providing detailed and real-time data. This rapid identification helps property owners address issues before they become serious problems.

1. Spot Sudden Spikes: If there is an unusual increase in water usage, it might indicate a leak. Submetering systems make it easier to spot these spikes.

2. Pinpoint Problem Areas: With individual meters for each unit, you can identify which specific area or tenant is experiencing a leak.

3. Prevent Damage: By catching leaks early, property owners can prevent costly water damage and mold growth. This proactive approach saves money on repairs and keeps the property in good condition.

Fast leak detection ensures that problems are fixed before they escalate. This efficiency is one of the most practical benefits of water submetering. An Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) trial by the University of California showed that homes with AMI and conservation messaging saved an average of 4.8 gallons per day solely from leak reduction. On a per-home basis, the study suggests around $60 per year of savings – highly significant across many units in a multi-family building.

Higher Property Values & Marketability

Water submetering solutions are an effective way to make a property more attractive to investors and buyers, boosting value by providing tangible benefits in terms of operating costs. To renters, buildings become more desirable because of transparent billing.

1. Improvements to Net Operating Income: By passing utility costs to the residents who generate them, property owners can enjoy improvements in NOI thanks to reductions in operating costs. Higher NOI means the property is more profitable and, therefore, more valuable to investors and potential buyers.

2. Extends Asset Life: Features like leak detection, advanced and durable construction of meters, reduced strain on systems increase the overall lifespan of your systems by reducing maintenance needs and increasing profitability. 

3. Appeals to residents: Fair, transparent billing attracts residents who want more control over their consumption. Conservation-minded residents are more likely to choose your property, and by no longer bundling water into rent, residents can exercise more control over their consumption and costs.

Water submetering systems provide owners with flexible options when marketing their properties to both investors and residents. Enhanced marketability, improved profitability, and attractive, flexible options boost property values as one of the biggest benefits of water submetering.

Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory compliance is an increasing burden in many jurisdictions. Multiple states now require submetering in various forms, including California and Texas. Therefore, submetering can be a legal requirement at the local, regional, or state level.

1. Texas: The Texas Water Code specifies that all multi-unit residential buildings for five or more units built after Jan. 1, 2003, must have individual meters or submeters where feasible. 

2. California: All new multi-unit residential buildings built after Jan. 1, 2019, must have submeters or individual meters according to California state law.

Regulatory compliance is a legal issue — penalties vary and can be severe if you’re found to be in breach. By installing an effective submetering system, owners can become compliant with relevant regulations or future-proof their properties in anticipation of regulatory changes. 

Improved Tenant Relations & Accountability

Tenant disputes over billing, perceived issues of unfairness, and a lack of personal responsibility are common causes of poor owner-tenant relations. Water submetering can change the owner-tenant relationship and reduce disputes by providing neutral, objective measurements and billing mechanisms.

1. Perceptions of Fairness: Because everyone pays for only the water they use, the system is perceived as being more fair than bulk billing. Tenants who feel they use less water than other tenants know that their neighbors will pay fair bills.

2. Transparency: Tenants know exactly why their bills are what they are because they can track and monitor their own water consumption. There’s no estimation, no room for debate — monthly costs are predictable, based only on their own usage, and set by the utility. The owner-tenant relationship becomes less fraught.

3. Personal Accountability: When tenants see how their bills are directly related to their own consumption behavior, they become more conscious of their consumption. This leads to reduced waste, faster reporting of leaks or issues, and more respect for shared infrastructure. An EPA study showed a 15% reduction in overall consumption as a result of submetering, representing a substantial saving for both owners and tenants.

Billing becomes a fair, transparent, and collaborative system instead of a source of shared frustration. 

Better Data for Property Management

High-quality data is one of the core benefits of smart metering, and it delivers even better benefits in a submetering setup thanks to the granularity allowed by individual unit submeters. The ability to make strategic, data-driven choices about property management is a substantial benefit for property owners with implications for maintenance budgets, infrastructure upgrades, and strategic planning. 

1. Risk Management: Submetering data provides defense against fair billing complaints or lawsuits, provides transparent records for resident communications, and documentation for regulatory audits.

2. Smart Capital Planning: Better data allows you to justify upgrades using real usage data, prioritize high-impact investments, and track your ROI on previous investments. 

3. Portfolio-level Utility Management: Robust data from your submeters and meters can allow comparative analysis across properties, buildings, units. This allows owners to identify occupancy trends or seasonal patterns, to benchmark performance across locations, and easily identify high-consumption buildings and problem areas.

Water submetering results in smart asset management, stronger financial planning, and easier compliance.

Utility Cost Recovery

Water submetering is a powerful tool for utility cost recovery. The EPA’s 2004 Multi-Family Sub-metering and Allocation study showed that traditional methods of recovery such as RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Systems) provided no statistically significant reduction in water use. In contrast, submetering was found to decrease overall water consumption by 15% to 20%.

1. Shifting Utility Cost to Residents: Through shifting the burden for utility costs onto the residents who use the water, owners decrease their proportion of utility costs. This does not account for unoccupied units, but represents a substantial saving regardless.

2. Compliance: Some states require submetering and individual billing. This means that submetering is the only viable option for utility cost recovery.

3. Higher Recovery: Submetering allows much higher recovery than other methods, as a large fraction of the cost is borne by residents themselves. This means that owners are no longer paying extra when usage is higher than usual. In some jurisdictions, admin fees are allowed, increasing cost recovery.

Submetered vs. Non-Submetered Properties Comparison Table

Category	Submetered Properties	Non-Submetered Properties
Water Consumption	15-20% lower consumption	Baseline consumption
Tenant Accountability	Tenants are responsible for their own bills, driving behavioral changes	No personal accountability for tenants as costs are shared or allocated not based on usage
Leak Detection/Repair	Early leak detection saves water and money	Leaks often go undetected, wasting water and increasing bills
Billing & Transparency	Tenants are billed based on transparent, individual costs	No transparency or personal accountability
Operating Costs	Predictable, manageable operating costs	Unpredictable costs
Regulatory Compliance	Meets mandates in jurisdictions requiring individual metering or billing etc.	Not compliant in some jurisdictions requiring individual billing, submeters, or meters
Data	Provides robust, high-resolution data analytics to enable strategic decisions	No data for comparative analytics, reporting, or management purposes
Utility Cost Recovery	Much higher utility cost recovery with measurable results	Hard to measure, lower cost recovery

Case Studies and Real-World Benefits of Submetering

Submetering benefits are far from theoretical: they’re real, tangible solutions delivering achievable benefits.

Mainlink & Axioma’s Solution in Gdansk

In Gdansk, Poland, Mainlink delivered a smart submetering solution to a residential community of 140 apartments. The problem was clear: billing was inaccurate and often delayed, residents received estimated charges, which led to disputes, and property managers had no clear visibility into where their water losses were or why they occurred. 

Within the first few days of operation, the system flagged unusual consumption from three separate apartments. In one apartment, a leaky toilet wasted over 79,000 gallons of water over several months, leading to revenue loss equivalent to $750 in the local currency. Without remote monitoring, the issue would have been undiscovered until the next manual read. Fortunately, the other two apartments showed smaller leaks and were fixed before they become costly problems.

Gdansk shows the importance of water submetering for helping to keep operating costs down, in leak detection, and the utility of individual unit-level precision in monitoring.

Mainlink & Axioma Solution in Santa Clara

In Santa Clara, California, Mainlink installed its water submeters into a four-storey, 202-unit multi-family community. The Mission Terrace Apartments’ problem was that older meters led to less accurate billing and resident dissatisfaction, along with undetected leaks. In just 30 days, service provider Meternet planned and implemented the installation of 404 submeters at the Mission Terrace Apartments.

Within the first two months six leaks were detected, but in Santa Clara, there were real savings in capital expenditure too. Compared with a traditional meter installation, Mainlink’s smart submetering system saved $8000 in labor and was completed twice as quickly as a typical mechanical meter installation. 

Challenges & Considerations of Water Submetering

Submetering solutions can be transformative for residents and owners, but they come with intrinsic challenges and considerations that need to be managed and properly contextualized. While none of these problems are insurmountable, several present unique obstacles that require careful attention.

Installation Costs

Capital expenditure can be higher compared with traditional metering setup, still it depends on the state prices. Choosing the right submetering solution is essential, as partnering with a reputable, trusted provider can deliver substantial savings. In some jurisdictions there are subsidies and programs designed to help cover the costs, but a full smart submetering rollout may be cheaper than you think.

Advanced, smart systems are easier to install, so you can realize substantial budget savings and optimizations. A typical 200-unit smart ultrasonic submeter installation in California is estimated to save on labor and deployment around $20,000 compared with a traditional mechanical metering solution.

Tenant Communication, Expectations & Education

Managing tenant communication, expectations, and education is essential to a successful submetering rollout. Tenants should be actively engaged in every part of the process so that they understand the benefits of this new approach. Outreach focusing on empowering residents to take control over their consumption and reduce their own bills or framing reductions in water use as a conservation issue are often more successful than discussions of cost-saving from the owner’s perspective.

Privacy & Data Management

Smart meters collect detailed consumption data that can reveal household habits and other private information. Therefore, privacy and data security are a major concern. With the right approach, it’s trivial to ensure privacy and data security. A robust, secure solution from a trusted provider can provide an encrypted communication and secure platform that keeps your data safe.

Technical Implementation & System Compatibility

Implementing different solutions requires different approaches. Some submetering systems will require specific hardware and software, which may have compatibility issues with existing infrastructure. Other solutions are hardware agnostic and allow for more flexible implementations utilizing legacy hardware and existing infrastructure. Consult with a reputable provider to discuss the available options.

Reliability & Maintenance

Maintenance is a significant contribution to operating budgets, so the thought of a full system upgrade to submetering can be challenging. By choosing a low-maintenance submetering option, you can keep costs down and keep your system effective for longer, reducing your budgets in the medium to long term. Mechanical meters are typically higher maintenance than ultrasonic meters and less durable. 

Property Type, Layout & Plumbing Considerations

Not all solutions are suitable for every property type, layout, or plumbing system. Individual conditions can alter the suitability of a given solution for your property. If you have a widespread, rural property, certain communications protocols used in many submetering solutions may be inappropriate. If you have a particularly complex plumbing system, it may be difficult or impossible to install traditional mechanical meters. In these cases, a more flexible ultrasonic water submeter may be the perfect solution.

Consultation with a provider can help you understand your options.

Conclusion

Water submetering solutions are an effective, practical tool for property owners to realize substantial tangible benefits: from reductions in operating cost, enhanced tenant satisfaction, and robust data to transparent billing, greatly enhanced utility cost recovery, and regulatory compliance.

Adopting water submetering aligns with both economic and environmental goals. Property owners can encourage sustainable water management practices by installing submeters, empowering residents to feel accountable for their own consumption. 

Multifamily water submetering provides the tools needed to manage resources wisely and promotes a culture of conservation. If you’re looking to maximize the efficiency and value of your property, water submetering is a smart investment.Ready to reap the benefits of water submetering for your property? Visit Mainlink to explore our next-generation smart metering solutions and see how we can help you achieve your goals.