As a commercial or residential landlord or as a property manager, finding ways to promote your building or property while also added value for your tenants is always a factor. With the use of smart metering technology, property managers and landlords can promote their properties, add to their marketing campaigns and also help make their job easier as well.
What is Smart Metering?
Most people are familiar with the term “smart metering,” but there are also some misconceptions. Smart meters are used on each unit and report utility use back to private companies or utility company on a pre-set schedule. This schedule will be determined by the utility or the private company managing the smart meters in a given building or property.
This information will be available to the property manager, landlord or people authorized by the landlord, to view the information. It also allows each tenant to receive a bill from the smart metering service. The billing will be for the actual amount of water or other utility used by the unit as it is not a ratio utility billing system plan.
Marketing to Potential Tenants
For marketing units and keeping vacancy rates as low as possible, having smart meters is a selling point for most tenants. They have the freedom to control how much water they use, so they have direct control over their bill.
This is very different than shared types of billing using any type of ratio billing calculation. When tenants of residential and commercial properties understand they won’t pay for their neighbor’s wasteful ways, it becomes a selling point.
Monitoring Properties
Landlords and property managers with large complexes or properties in multiple locations will find the smart metering technology can be an effective monitoring system. Through logging into the system and looking at usage patterns by the unit, it will be easy to spot water usage in vacant units which may signal illegal use or some type of water leak.
Additionally, water use patterns and water conservation programs can also be implemented and monitored using data from the smart meters. This may be an essential consideration in “green” buildings and complexes.