Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Counting the # of Residents for Calculating HOA Dues in a Condo Building

[Ken Winter (ken]

I strongly recommend submetering for utility bills that are not already
metered for each residential unit.  Our experience with submetering for
water bills is described here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14kO0ncu6-G0W_qJKJqsjxXT9xYAotIWSXGhqTK1aF0c/edit?usp=sharing
This article is a work-in-progress – more to come when I get a chance – but
what's there will explain how submetering works and why we're glad we did
it.  If you have corrections or questions, you can add them as comments to
the article, and I'll incorporate them into the text.

If you're doing new construction vs retrofitting (which we did),
submetering is even more desirable.  And yes it can be done for electrical
(and gas) as well as for water.

~ Hope this helps
~ Ken Winter, Sunward Cohousing, Ann Arbor MI

On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 7:27 AM Janet E. Boys <janet.boys [at] temple.edu> 
wrote:

> We have 3 parts to our HOA dues.
> 1 - WIFI fees - same fee for each unit
> 2 - We are part of a master association which has fees per bedroom.
> 3 - Our own HOA dues which covers insurance, our management company, and
> all utilities (gas, water, electric) except for electricity drawn by plug
> and socket inside the units. Even though the utility usage would vary by
> number of occupants, we charge by square footage. That is mostly fair
> because heating and cooling, our largest utility expense, varies by volume
> of the unit (among other things).
>
> Personally, I would love having individual meters for water, water heating
> and HVAC instead - but the developer did not do this. Our heating system is
> supposed to detect that one unit is cold and another is warm and move heat
> from one to the other. The only gas we use is for the common stove and
> heating our water.
>
> Changing the HOA dues by number of occupants would be difficult to do with
> our management company and would make budgeting difficult. Prior to
> cohousing when my husband and I were getting solar panels on our roof and
> wanted to qualify for a rebate, the installers were astounded that we used
> less electricity (not for heating) in a bigger house than their
> record-to-date skimping little old lady. Children are even harder to
> account for.
>
> Janet Boys
> Aria Cohousing Community
> Denver CO
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l-bounces+jboys=temple.edu [at] cohousing.org> on
> behalf of Alice Alexander <aliceanne4 [at] gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2021 10:19 AM
> To: Coho-l <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_ Counting the # of Residents for Calculating HOA Dues in a
> Condo Building
>
> A question for those cohousing communities that live in a condo or
> multiresidential building, and jointly meter utilities and building costs
> (or anyone who knows of other communities that are similarly structured):
>
> How do you count the # of residents in each condo for the purposes of
> calculating HOA dues? Specifically:
>
> * Owners (and when they are away, renting or not renting, does that number
> continue to be applied or is it increased or decreased?)
> * Children - do you count children and if so at what age?
> * Renters - how do you count those renting? or is it covered via # of
> owners?
>
> Many thanks.
> --
> Alice Alexander
> Durham Cohousing
> Durham, No Carolina
>
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