Water Submetering in Kansas City: $7k Recovered, Tens of Hours Saved

Overview

A Kansas City area owner-operator manages a growing portfolio of rental properties in the metro.

As a one-person team overseeing nearly 200 units, they were absorbing water and sewer costs, spending hours each month on billing, and struggling to catch usage issues before they became expensive. After piloting SimpleSUB submeters, they expanded the system across multiple properties, gaining visibility, control, and a reliable way to recover costs.

Now, they are standardizing submetering across all new developments.

Customer Profile

• Customer: Condominium and townhome-style rental portfolio
• Location: Kansas City metro area, Kansas
• Property Type: Condominiums and townhome-style rentals
• Units Under Management: Approximately 200, with additional projects under construction
• Meters Installed:
  • 100 units at one Kansas City–area property
  • 48 units at a second property in the portfolio
  • Prior pilot at a third property that has since been sold
• Interviewee: Owner/operator

The Problem: Unrecovered Utility Costs and Time-Consuming Billing

The properties were master-metered, which meant water and sewer bills were paid by the HOA or ownership.

Residents did not pay based on usage, which led to rising expenses that cut into NOI.

City-installed meters were too costly for these townhome-style developments, and while submetering offered a solution, billing residents back manually was a major time sink.

With water and sewer billed separately by different utilities, and in different units, the owner spent hours each month converting data, calculating costs, and entering line items manually into the property management system.

The Solution: Over-the-Pipe Submeters With Real-Time Alerts

The owner first tested SimpleSUB submeters at a single property.

Based on that pilot, they expanded to 100 units at one Kansas City–area property and 48 units at another, with more underway. The clamp-on submeters provided unit-level usage data, automatic alerts, and the operational control they needed.

They are now working directly with SimpleSUB to automate the billing process inside AppFolio.

Why SimpleSUB Worked

• Lower-cost alternative to city-installed meters. Over-the-pipe installation eliminated the need for costly plumbing or new utility connections, making it ideal for townhome-style developments.
• Pilot success led to rapid expansion. A successful initial rollout gave the owner confidence to scale SimpleSUB across long-term hold properties and future developments.
• High-usage alerts helped catch leaks early. The system’s real-time notifications allowed leaks to be identified before they became costly, reducing water waste and protecting the asset.
• Reliable usage data uncovered billing errors. SimpleSUB’s accurate unit-level metering helped identify and resolve a $7,000 billing discrepancy with the city at one property.
• Partnership on AppFolio integration. The owner is collaborating with SimpleSUB to create a billing workflow that calculates resident charges from usage and pushes them directly into AppFolio, reducing manual work.

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“I love the notifications whenever the usage is high, because we have found problems, we had water leaks, and we would get those notifications and we could get right over there and say, ‘Hey, you are using a ton of water.’ We found things that save the tenant money and ultimately help us maintain our property better.”

Results: Cost Recovery, Time Savings, and Long-Term Adoption

Even with rollout still in progress, the owner has already seen measurable financial and operational improvements from submetering with SimpleSUB:

• Thousands recovered in utility overcharges. At one property in the portfolio, the owner used SimpleSUB’s unit-level usage data to reconcile the utility’s charges and discovered significant discrepancies. This resulted in a $7,000 credit from the water provider, money that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Without submeters, these errors would have been difficult, if not impossible, to detect.

• NOI gains through fair cost recovery. Previously, water and sewer were absorbed by the operating entities or passed through the HOA. Now, as leases renew, utility costs are being billed directly to residents based on actual usage. This approach is both transparent and defensible, helping boost monthly income and improve financial performance without increasing rent.

• Hours saved each month on manual billing. Before submetering, the owner spent over two hours per billing cycle per property manually exporting data, converting units, calculating charges, and entering them line by line into AppFolio. With SimpleSUB’s planned integration, that time is expected to shrink dramatically, freeing up time to focus on leasing, maintenance, and operations.

• Early leak detection and property protection. Thanks to high-usage alerts, the team has caught multiple water leaks early, avoiding tenant frustration, potential damage, and inflated bills. These alerts do more than save tenants money; they also protect long-term asset value and help maintain good resident relationships.

• Future-proofed operations with portfolio standardization. Encouraged by the early results, ownership has committed to making SimpleSUB submeters part of the standard development model. All new builds now include submeters from day one, allowing for utility cost recovery from the start and ensuring smoother operations as the portfolio grows.

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“We like the meters, we like the way they work. So we are putting them in everything that we build moving forward.”

See What You’re Really Paying For

If you are managing apartments, condos, or townhomes and still on a master meter, you may be absorbing costs your residents should be covering. Smart submetering gives you the data and tools to recover those costs fairly and automatically.

Request a free usage and billing audit to find out:

• How much of your water and sewer costs you can recover
• How much NOI you can unlock by shifting those costs off your P&L
• How much time you can save by automating your billing process

Schedule a demo today to see what SimpleSUB can do for your properties.