Put that in your glass and drink it!

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Today I took advantage of a free water test. The guy was pretty nice, and it turned out that he had remembered my name from talking with my business partner just a couple of weeks earlier. (At least I know a good person to ask for an opinion on the service, because I now know he took advantage of it.)

The guy was very pleasant. It turns out my water has a lot of chlorine in it from the shocking that the county gives it to kill all the nasties in it. Our water filter gets rid of most of the chlorine (he tested that too) but we just end up reabsorbing it when we shower. Hmmmm. Something to ponder.

Anyway, he told me about one of his other clients in a new development down the road from me a few miles. About 900 homes are planned in this development, and less than 10% are sold now. The location necessitated a buildup of the utility infrastructure, including water. The way the allocation is working out is that the residents there now are paying a proportional share of what the water bill for the development would run if it were at full capacity. (I don't know why.) This ends up being $360 per month for water, and the water comes out yellow.

Ouch! Not only is the community not really thriving yet, but the trailblazing residents have an onerous water bill that doesn't even put out decent water! So tack on purchase and servicing of a water purification system, and it's easily $400 per month in addition to HOA fees and whatever mortgage, taxes, and insurance the residents pay.

I wouldn't think to ask this kind of question if I were purchasing a home in a new subdivision or development. (I probably wouldn't be a trailblazer anyway.) This cost would blindside me. I'd never imagine paying that much for water. Whether this cost was fully disclosed to the residents or not, I don't know. I wouldn't think it would be a selling point, though.

As the real estate market in the US continues to unravel and developers get caught with their pants down, people who bought the first houses find themselves losing what equity they had in their new homes to depreciation, or worse, upside-down on their mortgage. So they're stuck for the moment in a new home with a view of construction sites, unable to refinance and/or move.

Now add to the list the possibility of bad water from unfinished community treatment facilities at ten times the regular price. Bottoms up!

8 thoughts on “Put that in your glass and drink it!”

  1. Wow, that's absolutely insane! I would never even have imagined that's legal even!!

    It just goes to show what state the R/E industry is in in the United States.

    Reply
  2. That sounds like grounds for a class action suit if those homeowners were not told about the extra pricey water bill prior to purchase. Not to mention, it sounds like there's something really going wrong with the new water infrastructure if the water comes out of the tap yellow!

    Reply
  3. $360 is quite a lot! I wonder why it's yellow (presumably, it's the same water source as yours)?

    I think you can install shower heads that filter water too, but I'm not super familiar with them. I figure, as long as "a lot" isn't "too much", I'm ok with municipal water.

    Just a note – I'm not sure its the chlorine itself you have to worry about though. I'd be more concerned about the DBPs (particularly in the shower)…

    Reply
  4. You are right on with that analysis. People upside down on their mortgages and then getting burned on their water on top of it. I would want an inspection before I purchased any home, but I guess these folks bought preconstruction. I have decent water, but I still use a filter. Always will.

    Reply

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