South Bend, Indiana is a landlord’s kind of college market: affordable older housing, a steady stream of tenants from Notre Dame and the broader city, and much of it owned by individual investors who bought a house or two near campus. The catch is the water. When it rides inside the rent, owners quietly cover whatever their tenants pour through the older, leaky fixtures common in the neighborhoods north and east of campus. A renter with no bill has no reason to report the toilet that never stops. Water submetering is how owners take that cost off their own books: an individual water meter goes on each unit, and True Submeter invoices every tenant automatically for exactly what they use, so the full bill comes back to you. Consumption drops, arguments over the water charge disappear, and net operating income rises, with most owners made whole inside six months. Cheap rent does not have to mean free water.
