Washington's municipal utility statutes create against the premises rather than against the customer, and everything else on this page follows from that. The claim attaches to your land. Whose name is on the account generally does not change what the lien attaches to.
There are exceptions, and they are the most practical part of this page. They are covered further down, after the general rules.
| Utility | Lien on the property? | How far back it reaches | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| City water | Yes | Four months, extended after a governor's emergency declaration | RCW 35.21.290 |
| Municipal electric | Yes | Four months, same extension | RCW 35.21.290 |
| City sewer | Yes, and senior to your mortgage | Six months automatically; one year where the city has so provided by ordinance; longer only by recorded lien notice | RCW 35.67.200, .210, .215 |
| City garbage | Yes, where the city's ordinance so provides | Tied to the recorded notice and the labor and material lien deadlines | RCW 35.21.130, .140 |
| Water-sewer district | Yes, subject only to general taxes | No stated limit | RCW 57.08.081 |
| Yes, through the district lien machinery | No stated limit | RCW 35.58.570 | |
| PSE electric and gas | No statutory lien at all | Not applicable | See below |
Three consequences follow from that.
One: in Seattle you cannot put water in a tenant's name at all
Seattle Public Utilities policy CS-310 puts it plainly:
The legal owner of a property must be the primary Account Holder and is liable for all water, sewer, and solid waste services charges provided to the premise. Seattle Public Utilities, policy CS-310
The City's own guidance for renters says the same thing from the other side: since 2011, new tenants cannot open accounts in their own names, and the landlord is responsible for the overall account.
So for water, sewer and garbage in Seattle, the tenant-account strategy is simply unavailable. There is no tenant account to create. A second Seattle water meter buys you measurement and no transfer of liability, and on the 2026 schedule that measurement could cost on the order of $24,000 if the tap and the are both charged (SPU hasn't made clear whether they stack). Either way, that is a high price for measuring a tenant's water use.
Compare a , which does the same measuring job for a few hundred dollars. It gives you the same conservation incentive and the same fair basis for billing. Like the second meter, it does not transfer any liability.
Two: there are two separate four-month rules, and both are narrow
Landlords often rely on a four-month cap. There are two four-month rules with different scope, and they shouldn't be treated as one.
- The lien cap. RCW 35.21.290 gives cities a lien against the premises for four months of charges, and expressly not for charges more than four months past due. It covers water and municipal electric.
- The bar on collecting from the owner. RCW 35.21.217(2) prohibits a city from collecting from the owner "any charges for electric light or power services more than four months past due." That limitation is written on the face of the statute. It reaches electricity only.
Neither one applies to sewer, which is usually the larger bill.
The sewer lien under RCW 35.67.200 is superior to all other liens and encumbrances except general taxes and local and special assessments, which means it outranks your mortgage. It is not open-ended: RCW 35.67.210 makes it automatically effective for up to six months of delinquent charges without any recording, RCW 35.67.215 lets a city extend that to a year by ordinance, and beyond that window the city has to record a lien notice with the county auditor. Even so, six months of unpaid sewer that ranks ahead of your mortgage and needs no paperwork to create is a meaningful exposure.
Three: separate metering does work for electricity
The three options compared. Option B is what most properties end up with, and it is the one that moves the bill to the tenant. With option A, the owner keeps paying. Option C offers nothing beyond B, at roughly twice the connection cost.
Unlike Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light does let a tenant hold the account in their own name. That one difference is what makes a separate electric meter worth having. It also happens to be the part we can help with.
City Light also puts the flip side in writing. Section 6.8 of the Requirements for Electric Service Connection, 2026 Edition, says that all accessory dwelling units without separate metering, and any units found to have mixed or common loads, will be billed in the owner's name, and that where common load exists an additional house meter is required. If the cottage is fed from the house meter, the bill stays in the owner's name, and the handbook says so directly.
If you searched for that sentence and didn't find it, the older wording explains it. The 2024 Edition wrote it as "auxiliary dwelling units," not accessory. A search of that edition for the common term returned nothing. The 2026 Edition fixed the wording.
What RESC section 6.8 says, in both editions
Section 6.8 carries a second sentence that is just as important, and this one is new. Multi-unit services must have at least one meter for each legal dwelling unit, except accessory dwelling units. The 2024 Edition had no such exception. Taken together, the two sentences make the position unusually clear:
- City Light will not force you to meter the cottage separately. An ADU is carved out of the one-meter-per-unit requirement, so the decision is left to the owner.
- Without a separate meter, the owner is billed by rule. An unmetered ADU is billed in the owner's name. A tenant can't hold an account for a meter that doesn't exist.
- Mixed or common load can return the bill to the owner even with a separate meter. If the cottage and the house share circuits, or if a shared load such as exterior lighting or a well pump sits on the wrong side, City Light can find common load, bill the owner, and require an additional house meter. Fixing that means rewiring after inspection instead of getting it right at design.
That one paragraph of the utility handbook covers the main case for separate metering. It is also why the load separation needs to be right the first time rather than at a space check.
Steps that limit an owner's exposure
- File the written request for duplicate bills and delinquency notices. It costs nothing. Under RCW 35.21.217, where a city fails to notify an owner of a residential tenant's delinquency after receiving a proper written request and the required address information, the city has no lien against the premises for those charges and is barred from collecting the electric charges from the owner. Note that the loss-of-lien limb is not written as electric-only. Water and sewer districts have a parallel provision at RCW 57.08.081, under which failure to notify results in loss of lien rights. In district territory that filing is doing more protective work than the meter is.
- Separate electric meter, account in the tenant's name. This converts an open-ended exposure into a bounded one.
- Give written notice at every move-out, immediately. RCW 35.21.217(4) gives you fourteen days from termination of the rental agreement and vacation of the premises, and it is missing that statutory deadline that forfeits the four-month cap. Seattle City Light's own published rule is tighter: owners and tenants are equally responsible for notifying City Light within ten business days of any change in occupancy or ownership, and City Light says landlords may be held responsible for all or part of a delinquent tenant account if it is not properly notified. Work to ten business days and you satisfy both.
- Size the deposit for the exposure you cannot transfer. In Seattle that is water, sewer and garbage, and no meter changes that.
- At sale, name every utility and special district to your closing agent under chapter 60.80 RCW. Where a utility misses its statutory response window, unrecorded liens are extinguished and cannot be recovered from the purchaser. Leaving one off can pass liens to the buyer, and the capacity charge administrator is the one most often left off.
PSE is structurally different, which helps the owner
The lien statutes reach only cities, towns and districts that own their own utilities. Puget Sound Energy is an investor-owned utility regulated by the Utilities and Transportation Commission, so it sits outside them and has no statutory lien against your property. Its recourse is ordinary collections against whoever holds the account.
Two cautions. Read PSE's owner allocation agreement before signing it: service transfers automatically to the owner's account when a tenant vacates, and the owner pays for vacant periods. And a departing tenant's unpaid balance at your address can make the next applicant a deposit-required customer under the utilities commission rules, which can make re-renting harder even though there is no lien.
A second issue with a shared meter
A lapsed owner account can lead to a tenant claim
If the cottage runs off the main house's meter and that account lapses, the shutoff that follows is a legal problem as well as a practical one. RCW 59.18.300 makes it unlawful for a landlord to intentionally cause termination of a tenant's utility services. The landlord is then exposed to the tenant's actual damages plus up to $100 for each day the tenant is deprived of service, plus costs and reasonable attorney fees.
Whether a shutoff for simple non-payment counts as intentionally causing termination is a fact question rather than an automatic finding, and brief interruptions to make necessary repairs are excepted. Even so, it is a dispute better avoided, and one more reason to separate the electric meter even where it isn't required.
Submetering and ratio billing, and why we usually recommend neither
| Approach | What it does | Effect on your liability |
|---|---|---|
| Utility meter, tenant account | The utility bills the tenant directly | The only real transfer, and only for electricity and gas |
| You measure actual use and bill the tenant | None. You are still the utility's customer | |
| You allocate one bill by formula, with no measurement | None | |
| Roll it into the rent | You bear the volatility and charge accordingly | None, but you were the debtor anyway |
The last three are identical in liability terms, so pick whichever is simplest and least exposed to regulatory change. Rolling utilities into rent is the most defensible. There is no third party billing compliance to deal with. You also avoid exposure to a ratio billing ban and any argument about whether a pass-through counts as rent under the statewide rent increase cap, and both of those are live risks. Seattle's Renters' Commission has formally recommended banning ratio billing outright, and whether variable utility charges paid directly to a landlord count as rent under the 2025 rent cap legislation has been characterized as unsettled.
Seattle's third party billing ordinance regulates the practice at three or more units, so a house plus one cottage sits below the threshold. If you are building two accessory units, which state law now generally requires cities to allow, check whether three units on one parcel pulls you over that line. We could not resolve that from the published text, and the compliance requirements are substantial.
The one-page version
The main steps
- Put the cottage on its own electric meter and the account in the tenant's name.
- File the written request for delinquency notices with every utility that serves the property. It costs nothing and it is the strongest single protection in the statute.
- Notify in writing within ten business days of every move-out.
- Assume water, sewer and garbage are yours in Seattle, and price them into the rent and the deposit.
- Treat the King County capacity charge as the owner's cost everywhere.
The last part covers what changes for the owner once a tenant moves in. Part 8.
Sources
- RCW 35.21.217, the notice and owner-liability provisions; RCW 35.21.290, the water and electric lien; RCW 35.21.130 and 35.21.140, garbage; RCW 35.67.200 with RCW 35.67.210 and 35.67.215, sewer.
- RCW 57.08.081, water-sewer districts, including the loss of lien rights on failure to notify.
- RCW 35.58.570, capacity charge enforcement; chapter 60.80 RCW, the utility escrow statute.
- RCW 59.18.300, unlawful termination of a tenant's utility service.
- Seattle Public Utilities policy CS-310, Customer Billing, Payments and Collections; Renting in Seattle, utilities.
- Seattle City Light, Electric Billing Practices, Procedures and Disclosures, August 2024, and the Landlord, Owner and Agent program.
- Seattle City Light, Requirements for Electric Service Connection, 2026 Edition, published January 2026, section 6.8, Metering Requirements for Multi-Unit Buildings. Read from the handbook itself on 20 August 2026, alongside the 2024 Edition for comparison. The owner-billing sentence appears in both editions; the accessory dwelling unit exception to the one-meter-per-unit rule is new in 2026 and is listed in that edition's own table of significant changes.
- PSE owner allocation agreement; WAC 480-100-113 on residential deposits.
- Seattle Municipal Code chapter 7.25, third party billing; Seattle Renters' Commission letter on ratio utility billing, 2026.
This describes how the statutes are written. It is not legal advice, and we are electricians rather than attorneys. Statutes are amended, utility policies change, and the application of any of this to your situation depends on facts this page cannot know. Where a common belief turned out to be wrong on the face of the statute, this page says so and gives the citation so you can read it yourself. Read in August 2026.