Industry
Multifamily and Property Portfolios
Common-area utilities, master-metered buildings, and the long tail of small commercial accounts.
Multifamily portfolios carry one of the most under-optimized utility footprints in commercial real estate. Common-area meters, master-metered buildings, sub-metered residential pools, and the long tail of small commercial accounts each have their own tariff exposure, demand profile, and incentive eligibility. Most property management teams audit at refinance, never between. We work portfolio-wide, continuously, across BGE, PEPCO, Delmarva, and Washington Gas accounts.
Common patterns we see in this vertical
- Common-area meters billed under general service tariffs that no longer fit actual load
- Master-metered buildings exposed to demand ratchet penalties most operators do not track
- Franchise fee surcharges miscalculated against actual municipality ordinances
- Sub-metering pass-through reconciliation errors invisible without bill-level audit
- EmPOWER and equivalent program eligibility often unclaimed across the portfolio
Findings in this vertical
Patterns the audit pipeline catches
- PATTERN 01
Common-area tariff misclassification
Buildings transition between general service tiers as occupancy and equipment loads shift. The utility does not reclassify automatically. We catch the lag.
- PATTERN 02
Estimated reads on lightly-occupied accounts
Vacant or low-activity meters are estimated for months at a time, often inflated. The true-up rarely happens until we file the claim.
- PATTERN 03
Demand spikes from unbalanced HVAC cycles
A single rooftop unit cycling out of sync can drive a portfolio-wide ratchet floor. Interval data surfaces it within days of onboarding.
- PATTERN 04
Franchise fee errors across municipalities
Portfolios spanning multiple jurisdictions accumulate franchise fee discrepancies that compound across every account.
Services that lead in this vertical
Where we tend to spend engagement time
Billing Forensics
Every line on every bill, verified against the utility's own rules.
Read more →Tariff Audits
The right tariff for the way you actually use power.
Read more →Incentives & Grants
Federal, state, and utility incentives that fund the projects you would do anyway.
Read more →Community Solar
Solar savings without the rooftop, the panels, or the financing.
Read more →
In depth
Questions specific to this vertical
How does a multifamily engagement differ from a single-property audit?
Portfolio engagements run all accounts through the same pipeline at once. We onboard every utility account under your management at the start, ingest historical bills across the portfolio, and surface findings ranked by recovery dollar and probability. Property managers often discover that the smaller accounts in the portfolio (common-area meters, parking lot lighting, leasing office HVAC) carry proportionally more bill error than the larger central plant accounts that get the attention. Cross-portfolio finding patterns also become visible only with the broader dataset. The same finding type recurring across multiple buildings often signals an asset-management opportunity bigger than any single bill correction.
Do you work with the resident-billing side of master-metered buildings?
Yes. Master-metered buildings with sub-metering pass-throughs require their own audit discipline: we reconcile the utility bill against the sub-metering settlement, check the allocation methodology against tenant lease terms, and verify the math on every cycle. Sub-metering vendors are not adversarial, but their calculations are not externally audited unless someone asks. Several engagements have produced material recoveries on the sub-metering side alone, separate from the utility bill audit.
How does community solar enrollment work for a multifamily portfolio?
Community solar in Maryland, DC, Delaware, and New Jersey allows portfolio accounts to subscribe to local solar project capacity and receive a credit on the utility bill at a discount. For multifamily, we evaluate which common-area accounts qualify, structure subscriptions to match historic usage at the building level, and negotiate program terms with performance protection. The enrollment is paperwork, not equipment. Buildings continue normal utility service and see a credit line item monthly. We have separate detail on the community solar product line.
Working in multifamily? Send us a bill.
One recent invoice is usually enough for us to see whether there is meaningful savings on the table.