Resident Expense Management

Empower residents to take control of their utility bills

Reduce Utility Costs for Your Community

Resident Expense Management or REM® is designed to help residents decrease their utility bill through awareness, education, and conservation. REM is a tool that offers a personalized dashboard that residents use to monitor and track their daily consumption on any web enabled device, with the hope of creating personal awareness, available 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Benefits of Using REM

Monitor daily utility consumption
Compare current usage to benchmarked usage
Personalized utility dashboard
Awareness allows residents to take control of consumption

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Exclusive Access

Residents have access to their daily utility consumption through a customized dashboard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Personalized Dashboard

Raise awareness of consumption and the environment for residents to learn how to identify conservation opportunities. They can monitor daily utility consumption, available through a smart phone 24 hours a day.

Decrease Utility Consumption

Compare similar resident consumption against other resident profiles and target cost-saving opportunities, helping to reduce utility bills.

Increased Property Value

Many other property owners have told me that they do not have the money to make the initial investment to install meters. But I recommend that they find a way to fund it because the payback is rapid — usually about one year to 18 months, and the revenue recovery is ongoing. For example, when we purchased a 169 apartment home community in Indianapolis, I asked our bank to add the cost of meter installation onto our loan, which they readily did after I demonstrated how the program significantly increases property value. It cost about $225 per apartment home to install the gas submeters at the property, for a total of $38,025, and our mortgage increased by only $500 per month. The gas bill for that property alone is $85,000 per year and we recover about 70 percent of those costs, after factoring out common area and vacant apartment home costs, a savings of $59,500 per year, which far surpasses the initial installation cost. Another benefit is that our property value has increased exponentially, which I calculated by taking the $59,500 at a 9.5 percent cap rate (rates can vary) which raised the property value by more than $500,000.

Recouped Cost

The results did not disappoint me. In December the bills declined after we began billing residents for their water consumption. In March 2003 and April 2003 bills were approximately $270 per day; May fell to $254. The difference between $462 in April 2001 and $270 in April 2003 is $192 per day – a payback of less than one year. The payback actually is much faster because we are collecting about $2000 each month from the billing program, an amount that should double by year-end as new leases are signed.

Adding to the Bottom Line

We have calculated the increase in property value that comes along with submetering. For instance, on a property with 285 apartment homes with an average water bill of $7,000 per month, we can add up to $6,000 or more per month to the bottom line. At a 9 percent capitalization rate, that equates to a property value increase of $800,000.

Conscious Energy Use

An obvious trend has emerged now that residents are responsible for their own utility bills. Before the days of submetering, it was not uncommon to see windows open or hear air conditioners running in the middle of winter with heaters going full blast. It was a way to cool down the apartment, but now that residents are responsible for their own bills, they tend to just turn down the heat.

Seamless Transition

Ikehu Utility Solutions has done an excellent job with our properties. They are very professional and have seamlessly transitioned many of our apartment buildings to the Ratio Utility Billing program, as well as setting up online automated meter reading and billing with our newer properties. I would recommend them to small and large property owners alike.

Responsive and Professional

We have found Ikehu Utility Solutions to be an extremely professional company. Their representatives are always responsive and attentive to our questions, as well as being very knowledgeable of all state regulations regarding utility billing. They gave us suggestions for increasing our revenue and we have seen a marked increase in collections and revenue since we started using their services. We are very pleased with all aspects of their service and look forward to a long, continued relationship with Ikehu Utility Solutions.

Great Incentives

Accurately monitoring each apartment home’s electrical usage gives greater incentive for residents to conserve energy, since they are paying for exactly what they use. During a one-year period, an average of 17 percent less energy was consumed in the submetered residences.

Resident Expense Management

Reduce Utility Costs for Your Community

Benefits of Using REM

Exclusive Access

Personalized Dashboard

Decrease Utility Consumption

Ikehu Utility Solutions Customer Testimonials

Increased Property Value

Recouped Cost

Adding to the Bottom Line

Conscious Energy Use

Seamless Transition

Responsive and Professional

Great Incentives

Hawaii Utility Billing Services

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Account Management

Sales Team

Customer Service