Submitted by higherhopez t3_10jfc7d in boston
The apartment is priced very reasonably, but there are no utilities included. Not heat, not hot water. And it’s oil heat, gas cooking. I asked the agent how much the utilities ran per month for the previous tenant and she said $300, but neither she nor the landlord can provide proof of this.
I feel like taking this apartment would be walking into a trap where I’m stuck with a $600 bill every month.
Edit: Size is 600 square feet
100% depends on the insulation of the apartment. I live in a very well insulated first floor apartment and keep the thermostat at 65. I fill the oil tank once a year.
Is the hot water on gas? It definitely helps if heat is the only thing running on oil. Then you only have to worry about it in winter.
I wouldn't trust the number you were given. There's too many variables at play.
Hot water is oil, too, unfortunately.
That’s not technically a bad thing. The system is a closed loop. Hopefully a plumber reading this and will assist with an ELI5.
In the winter it's definitely not a bad thing. Because then your heating plant is doing two for one.
And in the summer that's the only reason it uses oil, and, depending on how hot you take your shower (or how hot you set the water heater at), it's only every couple of days for just a bit.
Now, having oil heat and electric water heater at the same time. That's stupid.
That’s gonna be way cheaper than electric right now
No its not. Theres no way that a landlord is installing an oil fired water heater for ~$3000 when theres already gas in the building.
Oil is stupid expensive.
So is electricity, now. Just jumped 70%.
So is natural gas lately.
Eggs are expensive now
So is foreign currency exchange rate. (0.0077 USD = 1 JPY in early January, now 0.0084 USD = 1 JPY).
Eggs are on the their way back down
You don't give any indication as to size, but id it's on separate heat it's likely at least 2br. It won't be $600 every month, but when it's very cold if you like a warmer temp it'll be very, very expensive. A lot of the oil heat apartments are older without great windows and other things. We've had a really mild winter, but yes budget as if it could be even higher than $600/month for a few of them.
I heat 2000sqft on oil, about $300 a month this year. Gas would be $50 for us, but we only use gas for Hot Water.
Where do you live? I heat my 2000sq ft house for about $300 each month for 6 months.
Note, I live in northern New England
I’m south of Boston… the house is old, circa 1895 but has newer insulation in some areas
Something is wrong or your thermostat is at 70
It’s 68, why would you say that something is wrong? We use approx 75 gallons a month, that’s 2.5 gallons a day?!
That’s a meaningless number, you need to track gallons per degree day. Start putting your oil receipt into a google spreadsheet, enter all the numbers, track your kfactor etc
But if you want a comparison my 3000 square foot house used 2.4 gallons between late October and late December in NH. I have the thermostat go down to 58 at night /daytime and up to 67 for the evening afternoon when everyone is home.
You are probably not insulated in your attic or not enough.
We are not, it’s a very old home with settled blown in on the first and no insulation in the attic rafters. We keep it at 68 day/night
Replace your thermostat with a nest or something. If nothing else turning down the heat when you aren’t home will save you enough to pay for it
Also my house is about twice as old as yours. I think you are renting but if not get some spray foam in the rafters
We have ecoBees on all floors. We prefer warmer nights. This spring we are re-doing the attic so we are spray foaming.
FYI, I did look up the average consumption of homes in Cold weather climates. 50 deg ambient = 2.0 gals per day avg 40 deg ambient = 3.7 gallons 30 deg ambient = 5.3 gallons 20 deg ambient = 7.0 gallons
So it looks like we are below / on par with that with this seasons averages.
Nothing beats degree days for measurement. If your oil company is worth a damn it’ll report on your degree days since last fill up and kfactor.
Oil isn’t so much more expensive, it’s just a big hit every time they come fill the tank. Instead of having a steady monthly bill, you get basically no cost all summer and fall, then a few 600 dollar bills in the winters, then nothing again. If you have some flex in your income it doesn’t matter, you end up spending the same amount of money on heat. For some folks it’s a little easier to have monthly payments that never go above a couple hundred bucks even if annually it’s the same amount paid.
Lots of oil companies offer budget billing; I think Green Energy Consumers Co-op requires participating oil companies to offer one. Every summer, we're informed of our monthly payment, and in the spring it may be adjusted up, down, or suspended.
depends on the winter. winters here are not cold as they used to be.
but yeah, oil going to fuck you on costs compared to gas.
I briefly lived with oil heat and it was miserable. ~$400 every 3 weeks to barely keep the pipes from freezing. And the oil company was miserable to deal with, delivering oil we didn't order and charging us anyway.
Since then we've made oil heat a nonstarter for any apartment we look at. Unless the house is otherwise updated with modern insulation, windows etc. the oil is gonna be a money sink and not worth imo.
Never ever rent with oil heat. It is an absolute curse.
Electric heat also. I tell prospective tenants all day long that the bill will average $300/month across the whole year, but inevitably the tenants leave a year later, saying that no one warned them that heat would be that expensive. Guys, I tried to warn you. There's a reason I'm $300 cheaper than nearby apartments.
Any reasonable landlord would convert from oil heating.
Find another apt.
What most people fail to realize if you lose your job and can’t pay your gas/electric bill, as public utilities, they have to give you grace period and/or set up a payment plan for you so you won’t freeze over the winter.
Oil companies are independent and are not responsible for any of that- so if you don’t have enough money to buy oil, you’re shit out of luck.
The economy is too uncertain, I would look for an apt heated by gas or electric.
Check out if the apartment is well insulated. Old drafty properties are utility hogs year round.
No utilities included is pretty common, especially in double/triple deckers where it's easy to hook things up separately for meters which is required to shuffle the cost of utilities onto the tenant.
As for why the broker won't provide proof of the utilities, that's probably because the landlord/broker aren't the ones paying the utilities. I imagine the best they could do is ask the current tenants for a copy of their last bill, but that's not something they generally do.
Since it's oil heat though, you could probably get the size of the tank and how often it's generally filled from the landlord/broker. Use that to call a few heating oil suppliers in the area for quotes on how much filling a tank of that size would cost this time of year. That should get you a fairly accurate estimate. YMMV though because you may use more or less heat/hot water/etc so I'd just toss on a bit extra to really be safe budget wise.
No one can guarantee what utilities cost. How much electricity do you use? Do you tend to leave lights on? How long of a shower and how hot do take? How often will you cook on the gas stove? How hot do you keep it in the winter? How well insulated is the unit? There are so many variables that change person to person when it comes to utilities.
I lived in a 900 square foot apartment that had oil heat with radiators. Only lived there for one winter (2017) but spent about $2k on oil. Never again.
Confirmed.
It won't be 600. I'd be surprised if it was 300
But with oil + gas + electricity + water/sewer…
It's pretty rare for water/sewer to be on the tenants.
Water is required to be paid by the landlord, though if there are separate meters - a landlord can bill the tenant afterword.
Still, it's very rare. Sounds like too much of a hassle for renting, I wouldn't do it.
I've had oil heat. It won't be nearly that much. If the rest of the apartment is a good deal, I'd grab it.
I’d check to see if there is a cheaper oil supplier. Last year it was around $2/gallon, this year it’s closer to $5/gallon but if you shop around some give a good deal for the first fill…
I’m a landlord and the heating is by oil for 1000sq ft. What I can tell you is it totally depends on your usage. 600 sq feet running at about 70f you’ll be looking at maybe a couple hundred for heat and I think that’s on the high side. If you’re just cranking it up and opening the door all the time then it’ll be higher but normal usage won’t be bad.
I lived in an oil heat apartment until recently, and it cost a fortune to heat and half of it never really warmed up due to crappy baseboards and lack of insulation. But the rent was below market rate, which was great for 6-8 months of the year.
Oil heat is the absolute worst. Ridiculously expensive!
Oil is the worst. If you can avoid renting a place with oil, do so.
This wouldn't affect you as a tenant but I have had to replace my hot water oil heater twice in the last 10 years. The servicing co says finding one is like hen's teeth and they don't even make them in the us anymore. As someone else said, it is so expensive in winter months but almost 0 in warmer months. Hope you find a good place!
No one has mentioned this yet but if you know the utility provider (e.g. Eversource, National grid) you can call them and ask them to give you an average of the cost per month in the previous year. They will also be able to tell you summer vs winter. However it doesn't tell you the usage of the previous tenants, so you might use more/less than them and get a very different bill. Not sure about oil heat but did this for my electric and gas bill.
Use electric heater for your room and you’ll probably pay at least half on heating
So find anotha one.
Hamsox94 t1_j5k048v wrote
They cannot guarantee you an expected amount because the prices of everything changes frequently. Also some people keep their house at 60 degrees and others at 70 degrees, it's going to fluctuate