ATA 003 – What do you do if a tenant continuously leaves the boiler on?

Welcome to episode 003 of 'Ask The Angels' where we answer your rent to rent questions.

If you’d like to have your question answered go to rent2rentsuccess.com/ask and record your question from me to answer for you.

We’ve had a really good question from Denzel about utility bills.

Here’s Denzel’s question...

I wanted to ask, if you include all bills in your room offering?
What do you do if a tenant continuously leaves the boiler on? 
How have you remained profitable? 
I know some people have usage limits in their contracts, but how have you successfully enforced this if a tenant moves out before their contract is scheduled to expire (so the deposit is therefore used up) and they refuse to pay?

This is a great question.

Usually with HMOs and rent to rent you are paying the bills and not the tenant. 
And utility costs can really affect your bottom line. 

We also have a fair usage policy in our AST but we haven’t needed to enforce it because… 

Drumroll please, 

We use Inspire. 

Inspire is a heating controller. 
It switches the heating on and off at pre-determined times. 
Yes housemates still have control. 

They can ‘boost’ the heating at any time for 1, 2 or 3 hours then the heating will return to pre-programmed settings until the next boost. 

We like this system because it gives housemates control so they turn on or turn up the heat at any time. 

And it’s good for us because they don’t have to remember to turn it off again.

As you say Denzel, what used to happen is that someone would turn the heating from ‘timed’ to ‘on’ because it got cold and forget about it so it could be on in the middle of Summer when not needed.

You can find out more about Inspire at https://www.inspirehomeautomation.co.uk/
It costs around £200.

If you’re in Kickstarter you find deeper details on exactly what it costs to run an HMO in M5.1

In summary, 

Denzel, fit a thermostat like Inspire which will ensure that the boiler isn’t on when it’s not needed. As regards to trying to claim after the tenant has moved on, I don’t think this is worth pursuing. 
Put it down to experience. 
Put a thermostat in place. 
And move on.

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