recent purchase of building with tenants - house lights on tenant circuits. options?

Asking this for a friend – she’s tried to register, but never got the verification email. Anyway – she and her husband, both older and very nice (lol if it matters 🙂 )  have a recently acquired 3 family brownstone with existing tenants on the top two floors.   She will be occupying the owner’s duplex (a familiar setup for many of us) . The building is fairly turn key and mostly updated, but when she asked me to come do an informal walk through, we noticed the house lights (always-on hallway lights) are on their respective tentant’s electric circuit.  There are 3 electrical meters and tenants pay their own electric – it isn’t included with rent.  It is my understanding that this setup isn’t correct (or am i incorrect?  My own house had them split out already, so i haven’t encountered this) What options will she have?  The fixtures use 18w CFL’s x 2 for each floor, so the actual impact on the bill is pretty small, but the hallway fixtures are indeed wired to the floor’s sub panel, not the house panel.  There is no easy raceway down to the basement without breaking walls inside the apartment(s) which is something she’d like to avoid. Would it be fine to issue a 10 dollar credit to each tenant for each month they are paying electricity? (this would more than cover the monthly cost, but 6.71 or whatever isn’t a nice round number)  or does she have to bite the bullet and have them rewired to the basement?  initial estimates are pretty pricey – mainly because the work has to be done with minimal impact to the tenants (if the house were empty, it would be much easier)

Goatcrapp

in Landlord 13 years and 3 months ago

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jre | 13 years and 2 months ago

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So long as you add to your lease that the tenant is amenable to pay for the hall lights, you are fine. Otherwise it may be considered shared metering and you may be obligated for their entire electric bill. Also, you may want to look into LED bulbs, they are initially more expensive but use far less electricity than compact fluorescent bulbs. Good luck

needmtg | 13 years and 3 months ago

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Exactly. Legality is sometimes at odds with common sense.

Putnamdenizen | 13 years and 3 months ago

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Have the tenants complained?  Let sleeping dogs lie.