Our tenant is jacking up my energy bill
Owning rental properties can be a great thing for investing in the future.
However, when you live in a double and rent out the other half, it can be a hassle as well.
This is mostly because you see your tenant on a day-to-day basis and know everything that they are doing. If you hear a loud crash or see something that is damaged you may tend to overreact. This is the case with my husband and I because when we decided to purchase our first home we knew we wanted something that would help pay the mortgage. We decided that purchasing a duplex was our best option and for the most part it has been. The rental agreement that we have with our tenant includes the cost of heating and that became a problem. When we first bought property we were renovating it so we knew that heating both spaces was expensive but felt that it could be kept under control. When’s our first tenant moved in we realized that we no longer had the ability to adjust the temperature on their side and we found out that they were using way more energy than we had done. We decided to talk to her HVAC dealer and see if there was some way to have a programmable system put in that we could adjust when needed. We had a talk with the tenant and told her that we would be controlling the temperature and ask them what they wanted it set at. When she told us that she would like her apartment to be at 80° we told her that was unreasonable. She did not like the cold Winters but we told her that if she wanted her place to be that warm she would have to pay her own energy cost. This made a big difference in her choice and she agreed to keep it at 70 instead.