Flagstaff, Arizona runs a tight, expensive rental market, and Northern Arizona University keeps it full: student renters fill the older houses of the Southside and the apartments ringing campus, most of them owned by individual landlords. When water is bundled into those leases, tenants who never see a bill have no reason to run less, and the owner quietly eats the difference. Water submetering fixes the incentive by billing each unit for its own usage instead of spreading one total across the building. True Submeter installs an individual water meter on every unit and invoices tenants automatically each month for exactly what they use, so the full water bill comes back to you. Usage drops once it costs something, billing disputes end, and net operating income climbs, with most owners recovering the hardware inside about six months. In a mountain town where every housing dollar is already stretched, water is the one cost you can stop splitting and start recovering.
