Every August, Baylor sends thousands of students back into Waco, Texas rentals where water is folded into the rent, and every gallon they run after that lands on the landlord. Water submetering ends that: each unit gets its own meter, each tenant gets billed for their own use, and the full water bill finds its way back to the owner. Waco’s off-campus market is mostly individually owned houses and small complexes in the blocks around campus and out toward the Brazos, the kind of properties where one heavy user can wreck a shared bill. True Submeter puts an individual water meter on each unit and sends every tenant an automatic monthly invoice for exactly what they used. Consumption falls once water carries a price, arguments over who used what disappear, and the recovered cost lifts net operating income, usually paying back the whole system inside six months. Bill the water like the expense it is, not a rounding error in the rent.
