Heat/AC units!

On SFR #3, yet another issue popped up.  If you've read previous posts, you know that some units (4 or 5) were not paying for their utilities.  Well, it became extremely (and unusually cold) in MS for a couple of weeks.  This caused several units to need repairs or replacement.

Here is the kicker here.  All of the units we paid electricity for had an issue.  Here's why, and this is very important.  When your tenant does not pay for their electricity, they DO NOT care how much electricity they use.  What happens is the tenant will set the heat up VERY high to keep the apartment well heated during the winter months (Some units we confirmed had it set to 80!).  When it drops down to 9 degrees at night, heating units just can't keep up.  We are fairly sure this was the cause of most of the problems.  We had a few thousand dollars of repairs to heating units (including 2 replacements) because of the extreme cold.

The lessons learned from this:
-- Make sure you don't pay for your tenant's power.  They won't care how much they use and will push AC/Heating systems to the max.
-- It might not be a bad idea to send someone out to check all your units before it gets super cold or hot and do preventive repairs.  A $500 service visit could have saved us $3k+.

Oh well, onward and upward!