Rental owners in Moscow, Idaho who bundle water into rent are paying for usage they have no way to see, and water submetering is how they start billing it accurately. The University of Idaho anchors this market, and the housing serving it is largely individually owned: older homes near campus, duplexes, and small apartment buildings leased to students on the academic year. A renter paying flat rent has no reason to care what a meter says, because there is no meter they will ever look at. True Submeter changes that with an individual water meter on each unit and an automatic monthly invoice sent to every tenant for exactly what they used. The full water bill returns to the owner, consumption drops once usage carries a cost, disagreements over the shared bill end, and net operating income improves, with the equipment generally paying for itself in about six months. On the Palouse, where two campuses keep this rental market full, precise water billing is worth the ten minutes it takes to install.
