In this episode of The Nine at Nine, host Teego interviews Tiffany Mittal, founder of Utility Ranger, a prop‑tech software that lets small‑scale multifamily owners bill tenants for utilities using the RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing System) method. Tiffany explains how traditional utility‑billing services ignore mom‑and‑pop owners because of low volume, prompting her to create a DIY tool that automates bill entry, proportional allocation based on unit size and occupancy, and tenant invoicing. She shares a case study of a 36‑unit San Diego property that generated $36,000 of additional revenue in the first year, leading Freddie Mac to value the asset $1 million higher and enabling a $500,000 refinance to acquire another property. Tiffany also discusses her personal path from supporting her husband’s multifamily business to launching a tech solution, and offers practical advice for newcomers: start with four‑plus units, secure a 30 % down payment, obtain a commercial loan that evaluates the property’s cash flow, and build relationships with bankers and brokers. Listeners are directed to utilityranger.com and Tiffany’s social media handles for more information.
Chapters
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. You know where you are, The Nine at Nine with me, Teego. And you know, if you're tuning in right now, we've got an amazing expert coming in. And this expert has a specialty for all you multifamily real estate owners out there that have been going, help, I need some help with utilities. Guess what? She's here. So sit right there, we'll be right back. Hey everybody, welcome back. Yeah, you heard me right, we're going to talk about multi-family real estate owning. And it's like, you know, we've had real estate experts on here since we started this show, but this is the second time, because Dr. Wah is out there. This is the second time we've had someone who really understands multifamily real estate, and she also understands, hmm, the Utility Ranger. Hey Tiffany, are you out there?
I am. Thanks for having me on the show.
All right, so see, I've got this thing because I saw your logo and everything, and I'm going, okay, she's like, you know, a superhero for utilities. That's what hit me. So, okay, what is your business?
So Utility Ranger is a prop tech company targeting the multifamily owner-operator. In multifamily, uh, prop tech companies traditionally go after very large, uh, apartment owners, people who own 1,000 units or more. But you know as well as I do, the majority of people actually who own multifamily are small mom-and-pop owners just like myself and my husband. And we found many times over and over again, when we would try to have technology implemented on our properties, nobody would help us. They wouldn't help us because we weren't big enough or we'd be like their tier 5 client. And so we had a problem with our utilities, meaning our utility rates were going up. We were covering the bill for the residents for water, sewer, trash, and the bills kept going up and we couldn't raise the rents fast enough to cover the increase in utilities. And so we wanted to bill back the utilities to the tenants to have them pay their fair share and help them conserve and have them have a little bit of stake in the game and making sure that they're paying their fair share. But the companies that are out there today wouldn't help us because we weren't big enough. And so I, uh, I went to go work for one of these companies, learned everything I could to learn about utility billing, and then said, you know what, the reason they're not helping small owners like me is because Because small owners just don't have enough buying power and it's not worth the amount of labor it costs to do it from a service side. So I said, you know what, these owners, they don't need these service companies. They just need a tool to do it themselves. And so that's what I was committed to develop is a tool that basically allows an apartment owner to bill their own tenants for utilities using a system called RUBS, which is ratio utility billing. It's proportionately dividing up the bill. But it allows the owner to do it themselves, completely cut out the middlemen, and start to receive utility reimbursement revenue rather than utilities on the expense side.
Wow.
And what that means though for owners, and a lot of people don't get this side of it, it's not just about billing your tenants, it's about creating a mechanism to grow your portfolio. And what I mean by that is If you think about your expenses on a multifamily asset, your utilities are like the 3rd largest expense on the books. When you start taking that utility money and getting it recouped from your tenants, that money now goes on your revenue side. We did this with a 36-unit property in San Diego, and the first year after we started billing our residents, we got about $36,000 of additional revenue that year, about $1,000 a unit per year. When we went to go refinance that property, Freddie Mac did a loan for us and valued our property at $1 million more only because of the utility billing program. And so we were able—
Wow.
That's a lot. We were able to refinance $500,000 to then use that money to buy another property. And it's like these small owners don't have the opportunity because no one will help them. Like, How are they at such a disadvantage? The big guys have been doing this for years. Like, why can't the small guys have access to it? And so I said, you know what, I'm going to create a tool to do it themselves and completely cut out the service providers because they're not needed. These— so we don't know ourselves. That's what Utility Ranger is. It's a tool to do it yourself.
And so— Is it a software tool or is it a hardware tool?
It's a software tool. So you mean it's— you enter in your utility bills each month, it divides everything up for you, and it emails all the residents their bills, um, all within a matter of minutes. And so you don't need to go back and forth with a service company who are manually entering this information. You can just do it yourself.
Oh, that's neat. So it's like you get a single— as the owner, you get a single utility bill, and then your software is dividing it up according to the units. So if you got 36 units, it's dividing it up up equally 36 units, or they know which, you know, how much each unit is using?
So it's not dividing it up equally, and we're not installing submeters because there's a lot of upfront costs with installing submeters. It's dividing it up based on the number of people in your unit, because you can't have, you know, little granny in one unit and a family of 5 in the next unit and split it. It's not fair. So it's taking the number of people in your unit in comparison to the whole property's occupants And it's taking the size of your unit in comparison to all the sizes of all the units on the property. So it's proportionately dividing it up based on who's living in the unit and the size of your unit.
So I know we had a little bit of a chance before we got on and we talked about the fact that you're a mom of 4, so you got your hands full there. And then, you know, higher education, all of that is important. But how did you get into multifamily as opposed to being a flipper or just owning another house? What made you decide, you know what, we're going to go down the journey of multifamily?
Um, well, I was fortunate enough to, uh, kind of get into it by default. My husband has been in multifamily for a number of years, and so I actually, when I went to grad school, was helping him with his multifamily apartments and realized I don't actually want to be in the multifamily world, like in the day-to-day operations. If I had to deal with bed bugs and tenant problems one more time, it was driving me crazy. But I really love the, like, the, the investment side of it, working with owners who are trying to build something, build a portfolio, provide a good product. You know, it's just a different avenue to go down. And that way I didn't have to work with my husband day in and day out. I could be the vendor and he could be the owner because we're both a little alphas. It's kind of hard to work together or work for one another. And so it was a way to work with him and work in the same industry and go to the same events, but work on a side—
And save the marriage.
And work on a side of it that was interesting to me, the technology side.
That's amazing. So if somebody is looking at this right now and they're going, oh my goodness, I'd love to get into multifamily, they're a flipper, they have a couple of properties, you know, how do you get started with the first one? How do you go, okay, This is what I want to do. How do you get started with the very first one?
I think a lot of people don't realize when you're trying to invest in multifamily, it's a lot easier than people think it is to get into. People may start off with a duplex or a triplex, but once you get above 4 units, you can get a commercial loan versus a residential loan. And when you get a commercial loan, they don't actually look at your own income as a means of qualifying you for that loan. They're actually looking at the property's income itself to qualify the property for the loan.
Wow.
So when you want to get into multifamily, if you start off with 4 units or more, as long as you have that 30% down payment, they're not looking at you. They're looking at the property as an asset. And does the property bring in enough revenue to cover the mortgage, um, plus some of the operations? So I would say start with 4 units, go up from there, and start building relationships with bankers and commercial brokers, because all the good deals don't happen on LoopNet. Or these softwares, uh, they happen by relationship building within the industry.
I love it. So if you're a multifamily owner and they're going, oh my God, how do I get the Utility Ranger? How do they get in touch with you?
Um, utilityranger.com is the website to go to. You can also follow me on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn. Tiffany Mittal is my handle, or Utility Ranger, either or. Um, on all the platforms.
Well, I want to thank you so much for hanging out with me and just sharing because I learned something new today. It's like, oh, I need to talk to my brother. Maybe that's something we need to get into— multifamily. He's probably sitting over there going, yeah, we're not doing anything new right now. But I would love to do it. You're absolutely amazing. I want to have you come back because I want to talk about, you know, family and balancing time and all that kind of stuff. But I definitely wanted to share You know, Utility Ranger today. And I thank you so much for being on the show with me.
Thank you so much for having me.
Awesome. All right, everybody, you know what to do. If you didn't write down utilityranger.com, or if you're driving, don't send me a hate email or text me. Go to tegodirect.com, type in Tiffany, type in multifamily, she's coming up. Type in utility, she's coming up. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You know I want you to come back next time. And as always, I'm Tego. I'll talk to you next time.
