Investment property owners given simple service charge option in WA

Organising bills and responsibilities with a tenant or with your landlord can be a headache, however Western Australia has a solution that allows property owners to prepay for the entire year and to set up a “tenant bill”.

The “tenant bill” allows Western Australian property owners to issue separate water use accounts to tenants and allows both owners and tenants to direct debit to pay service water use charges – this will cause no fee to be charged via the My Water website.

This comes as the Water Corporation looks to make it easier for property managers, investment property owners and tenants to manage their accounts and is the result of feedback from its customers, explains Water Minister Mia Davies. 

“Customers can now choose to prepay their service charges for the financial year, without applying a credit to future accounts. This will reduce the number of service charge bills received from the Water Corporation to one per property, making it easier for customers with multiple accounts to manage their bills,” Davies said.

“Investment property owners and property managers simply need to inform the Water Corporation there is a tenant on site which then gives the Water Corporation permission to issue a separate water use account every two months directly to tenants.”

Owners and tenants, as of yesterday, can choose to set up these separate direct debit arrangements. PDF copies of bills can now also be sent to individual email addresses. 

“This gives property owners and tenants the ability to set-and-forget their payments every two months,” she said. 

Two-monthly billing has apparently been popular with investors as it quickly shines a light on unusual water usage, allowing them to detect leaks and other activity earlier.