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  1. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    1,995

    Default Re: Water and Sewage Bill

    The short answer is "YES, they can do this".

    I had a residential rental where all the tenants pay the water and sewer, and arranged to have the tenants billed. Some years back, after staying nine months, a tenant of mine moved, I found out they moved out of state without paying the water, electric, or the phone bills.

    As water was a municipal utility, the law in the county calls for the owners to either pay the bill, and if not, then it is added to the property tax, and then liens placed on the property if not paid. I also owned rentals in NYC where a few years ago, the municipality sent out notifications requesting the owners signature agreeing that from there on in, all owners are responsible for the water and sewer regardless of who the bills are issued to and held responsible for it if not paid. It's been always so, but many owners were not clear on this point, lawsuits filed, thus the notification.

    So where I am, and all the counties around me, owners are held responsible for bills on municipal run utilities, even if the bills are issued to the tenant. What I do now is I pay the bill, turn around and bill the tenant, and the tenant is subject to eviction if not paid, as it becomes part of the rental charges per the lease.

    In my case, I paid the past due water bill and I had no time to go after the tenants who moved to FL. For a while, I had to sign affadavitts to the electric and phone companies for all my new tenants that they are my true tenants and not in any way related to the tenant who moved and skipped. Apparently many scammers who skipped out on bills simply opened up new accounts under false names claiming to be new tenants.

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