Can an HOA charge you for water or utilities?
Reviewed by the OurHOA team · Updated June 2026
Can an HOA bill you for water, sewer, trash, or gas? How bulk-metered allocation and submetering work, the limits on marking utilities up, and what happens if you don't pay.
The short answer
Often yes - but how, and how much, depends on the way your community is metered and on what the governing documents authorize. In many condominiums and some planned communities, the association buys a utility - water, sewer, trash, sometimes gas or hot water - in bulk for the whole property and then passes the cost on to owners, either folded into your regular dues or billed as a separate utility line. That is normal and usually legitimate when the declaration provides for it. What an association generally cannot do is invent a utility charge with no basis in the documents, or quietly turn a pass-through cost into a profit center. The two questions that decide most disputes are: how is my share measured, and is the association charging me more than the utility actually costs?
Bulk metering vs. submetering
There are two common setups. In a master- or bulk-metered community, the utility company sends one bill to the association for the entire property, and the association divides that cost among the homes. In a submetered community, each unit has its own meter (or submeter) that records its actual usage, and you are billed for what you personally used, much like a normal utility account. Submetering is generally the fairer of the two because it ties the bill to consumption - a single person in a small unit isn't subsidizing a large household next door. A number of states have pushed in this direction: California, for example, now requires individual water submeters in most newly constructed multifamily buildings so usage can be billed accurately rather than averaged.
How your share is calculated when there's no submeter
When a community is bulk-metered, the association has to pick an allocation method, and that method should come from the declaration or an adopted policy - not from a number a board makes up. Common approaches include splitting the cost equally per unit, allocating by each unit's ownership percentage or square footage, or using a ratio formula (sometimes called RUBS, a ratio utility billing system) that estimates each home's share from factors like occupancy or unit size. None of these is perfect, and an allocation that bears no rational relationship to actual use - or that singles out particular owners - is the kind of thing owners can challenge. Ask the board, in writing, which method it uses and where that method is authorized.
The HOA usually can't mark it up
A pass-through is supposed to pass through. Where a utility cost is allocated or submetered and billed to residents, the association generally may recover the actual cost plus, at most, limited and clearly defined administrative fees - it is not supposed to bill residents more than the underlying utility charges and pocket the difference. Some states regulate this directly: Texas, for instance, governs submetered and allocated utility billing for condominiums and other multi-unit properties through state rules that cap what residents can be charged at the provider's actual cost plus narrowly permitted fees. Even where there is no utility-specific statute, the board's general fiduciary duty and the requirement that assessments track real expenses point the same way. If your utility line is consistently higher than the community's actual bill divided fairly, that is worth questioning - and worth requesting the records to verify, as our guide on how to read HOA financials explains.
What happens if you don't pay the utility charge
This is where a utility bill from the HOA differs from one straight from the water company. When the declaration treats utility costs as part of your assessment obligation, an unpaid utility charge is usually treated like unpaid dues - meaning the same late fees, collection steps, and in many states an assessment lien can follow, exactly as described in our guide on what happens if you don't pay your HOA dues. That makes withholding a risky way to protest a charge you think is wrong. The better path is to pay under protest if your state allows it, request the metering and billing records, and dispute the charge in writing - rather than letting a utility line you disagree with snowball into a lien on your home.
How OurHOA helps
Utility billing is one of the easiest places for a small self-managed community to lose trust - a murky allocation, a markup nobody can explain, a charge that doesn't match the meter. OurHOA helps boards keep the underlying numbers straight and visible: tracking what the community actually pays, billing owners consistently with the method the documents call for, and keeping records owners can check. When residents can see that their utility share simply mirrors the real bill, applied the same way to everyone, the charge stops being a fight and goes back to being a line item.
OurHOA is the friendly, affordable way self-managed communities keep dues, records, and reminders in one place. See how it works.
These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.