How Billee recovered $220,800 a year across a 10,000‑unit portfolio
Broken meters, missed stormwater fees, and one utility cap frozen since 2021 were quietly leaking revenue across 36 Texas properties. A property-by-property billing audit turned $220,500 in missed fees into recovered income, and rolled up into $1.84 a month in net NOI recovered per unit, portfolio-wide.
A 36-property portfolio built for a dedicated account team
The RET LP portfolio runs 36 properties and roughly 10,000 units, most of them concentrated around Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas. At an average of 278 units per property, this is the scale Billee is built for: large enough to justify a dedicated account team, and spread across enough properties that manual bill review was never going to catch everything.
The same few problems, repeated across 36 properties
Property-by-property audits turned up the same few issues, over and over: meters that had failed and were undercounting usage, allocation methodologies that no longer matched Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) rules, and trash or stormwater admin fees that were missing, stale, or years out of date. None of these problems are dramatic on their own. Repeated across 36 properties, they add up to real NOI left on the table every month.
- Broken or malfunctioning meters undercounting usage at multiple properties across the portfolio
- Utility allocation methodology out of step with TCEQ rules
- Trash and stormwater admin fees missing entirely, or never updated since they were first set
- A flat $45 utility cap on one building at a Garland, TX property, unchanged since November 2021
Audit, fix, and track, property by property
- 01
Audited billing methodology and rates on every flagged property, checking allocation against TCEQ rules line by line.
- 02
Replaced failed meters where broken hardware was blocking accurate recovery. At one Houston property, a $7,015 meter replacement unlocked $41,000 in previously missed recovery on its own.
- 03
Corrected or introduced missing admin fees for trash, stormwater, and gas, phasing new fees in with lease renewals where a fee needed to be added rather than fixed.
- 04
Renegotiated the one property still running under a legacy flat utility cap, closing the gap between the cap and the true allocated amount.
- 05
Put every methodology and fee change on the Billee dashboard, so property teams can see recovery status without waiting on a report.
Five properties, five fixes, $220,500 recovered
Every property in the audit had its own mix of problems. The fixes were specific to each one, but the pattern (broken hardware, out-of-date fees, stale methodology) repeated across the portfolio. (Billee billing audit data, 2026.)
Broken meters, incorrect allocation methodology, wrong trash fee, and missing stormwater fee.
A $7,015 meter replacement enabled $41,000 in missed recovery. Billee also updated the TCEQ allocation and admin fees.
Incorrect trash admin fee and a missing stormwater admin fee.
Corrected the trash fee from $2.95 to $3.00 and added a $1.15 stormwater fee.
Incorrect trash admin fee and a missing stormwater admin fee.
Raised trash admin from $1.15 to $3.00 and phased in a $3.00 stormwater fee with lease renewal.
A restrictive $45 flat utility cap on one of two buildings, unchanged since November 2021.
Updated the recovery variance between the cap and the true allocated amount.
Broken meters, allocation methodology, incorrect trash admin fee, missing stormwater admin fee, and a missing gas fee.
Replaced meters, moved stormwater and TCEQ allocation to per-unit, added a flat trash admin fee, and phased in a $3.00 stormwater fee with lease renewal.
$1.84 recovered per unit, per month, portfolio-wide
Per-unit service admin fees are the largest single line in the model. Billee charges the RET LP portfolio $3.83 per unit per month, below Billee's own $4.25 posted rate and well under the $5 to $8 that market rate providers typically charge. Layer in fees that market rate providers charge and Billee doesn't (property data API access, move-in and move-out account fees, late payment fees) and the net hard-cost savings alone comes to $1.25 per unit, per month.
Add the additional value Billee's model identifies (setup and conversion fee savings, a 50 basis point new recovery target, and late fee elimination) and the net total comes to $1.84 recovered per unit, per month. Across the portfolio's 10,000 units, that is $220,800 in net NOI impact a year. (Billee portfolio economics model.)
| Line item | Billee | Market rate providers | Billee savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard costs, per unit / month | |||
| Service admin fees | $4.25 | $5–$8 | $0.75 |
| Additional VCR ancillary income | 50–65% rev share | 50% rev share | $0.11 |
| Property data API access fee | No fees | $500–$1.5k | $0.15 |
| New account fee (move-in)* | No fees | $2–$5 / resident | $0.07 |
| Final bill fee (move-out)* | No fees | $5–$10 / resident | $0.17 |
| Additional potential value | |||
| Sales tax, utility, and rate audits** | No fees | 30–35% capture of savings | TBD |
| Setup / conversion fee savings | $250–$500 | $500–$1k | $0.09 |
| 50 bps new recovery target** | +$0.33 savings | Standard | $0.33 |
| Late payment fee savings | No fees | 3–5% fee | $0.17 |
| Net total potential savings, per unit / month | $1.84 | ||
Rolling out across the rest of the portfolio
The same audit and recovery process is now extending across the rest of the RET LP portfolio through 2026, with each property's methodology and fee status tracked on the same dashboard used for the five properties above.
