Buying/Selling/Renting a Property in Kirkland

If you are selling your house, please contact the City’s Utility Billing office at 425-587-3150 or via the Our Kirkland customer service portal to provide a forwarding address and to schedule a final water meter read if needed. Water meters are read during normal business hours (Monday-Friday, except for holidays). Please allow 2 business days to complete this request.

Escrow companies may request an estimated final bill prior to the closing date through our online portal Webcheck. Estimated bill requests made after the closing date will not be processed.  Please note that the estimates calculated can be considerably higher than the average bill. The true amount due will be determined by the final bill generated after closing.  There is a $25 fee for the Webcheck service that will be added to your account.

Once the closing of the property is recorded in the official King County records, we will prepare a final bill that will be sent to the escrow company that requested an estimated final bill via Webcheck, or to the forwarding address provided by the seller of the property.

Any money received above and beyond the amount of the final bill will be refunded via check within 45 days of receipt.

Please leave all waste carts in a safe location on the property for the next residents use.

We are unable to place garbage service on hold unless the property will be vacant for a minimum of 8 weeks prior to the closing date. If you wish to reduce the costs of your garbage service, please contact Waste Management directly at 1-800-592-9995 to request the minimum level of service available.

Please be aware of the following fees that may be applied to your account for additional services provided during the selling of your property:

ESTIMATED FINAL BILL AND LIEN SEARCH FEE - $25

This fee is applied to your account when an escrow company requests an estimated final bill through Webcheck. Please refer to your escrow contract for further information.

FINAL WATER METER READ FEE - $40

This fee is applied to water accounts that require a final water meter read when the property closes. 

Please be advised that while the City offers to send the bill directly to the service address for your tenant, this is a courtesy only and the owner of the property is still responsible for ensuring timely payment of the bill. Utility accounts remain in the name of the owner regardless of any rental agreement on the property.

We do not prorate between tenants and are unable to provide first/final bills to tenants in accordance with their move in/out date.

To have billing statements mailed to the service address made out to “TENANT”, please submit a tenant billing form(PDF, 332KB). A $10 fee is charged to your account for setting up tenant billing.  Paperwork can be submitted via email utilitybilling@kirklandwa.gov, or through the Our Kirkland customer service portal, or via mail to:

Kirkland City Hall
Utility Billing
123 5th Ave.
Kirkland, WA 98033

You may also deliver forms to the Utility Billing drop box located outside the front door of City Hall outside of standard business hours.

Because the bill will be made out to “TENANT” rather than the individual's name, you may leave tenant billing in place as one tenant moves out and another moves in without any additional fees.

Tenants do not have the authority to set up tenant billing themselves. All changes to billing must be authorized in writing by the owner of the property or the established property manager.

With tenant billing in place, property owners will no longer receive a copy of the bill in the mail although they may still access electronic copies at our online portal Paymentus. Owners will still receive copies of any delinquent notices in the mail, as well as any correspondence regarding the well-being of their property (such as notices of extraordinarily high water consumption).

Please contact us at 425-587-3150 or via the Our Kirkland customer service portal if you have any questions. 

Welcome to Kirkland(PDF, 2MB) !

The City of Kirkland offers tenant billing if requested by the homeowner or established property manager. If your landlord has asked you to set up billing, please direct them to the tenant billing form(PDF, 332KB) .

Once submitted by the homeowner, billing will be delivered to the generic word “TENANT” at the service address (specific tenant names will not be associated with the account). If you are a tenant and receiving a bill, please be advised that a copy of any late notices will also be provided to the property owner or their designee.  

If you would like to change your level of garbage service, or if you cannot find any garbage carts on the property at the time of move in, please contact Waste Management at 1-800-592-9995.

Billing for garbage service is provided by the City of Kirkland for all Kirkland residents. Your provider for water and sewer is dependent on your address. Please contact the Utility Billing office at 425-587-3150, via Email at utilitybilling@kirlandwa.gov, or access our Our Kirkland customer service portal if you are unsure of your service provider. Rates for services provided by the City of Kirkland can be found here. Services are billed every 2 months. For instructions on the various payment options, please visit our Payment Instructions and Billing Policies webpage.

Tenants may register for an account online at Paymentus and can receive email notifications of the bill with or without the establishment of tenant billing. Please be advised that any email notifications or autopay options set up within Paymentus are managed by the user and will need to be cancelled by that user upon move out. We do not have access to your user account and are unable to cancel these options on your behalf.

We do not prorate bills between tenants and are unable to provide first/final bills in accordance with a tenant’s move in/out date. Please discuss the division of first/final bills with the property owner/manager.

Property managers have the ability to track several utility billing accounts via our online portal Paymentus. Once registered as a user, you may add the accounts of all the properties you manage and retrieve copies of bills at any time.

To establish a property manager on an account, please submit the Property Management Form(PDF, 360KB) . If you are unable to obtain the signature of the owner for the form, please submit a copy of your property management agreement/contract along with the form.

For a commercial property, to request that the utility billing be sent to the commercial tenant at the property, please complete and submit our Commercial Tenant Billing Form(PDF, 371KB) .

We are required to maintain the contact information for the owner of the property.  This is because the owner is ultimately responsible for all utility charges even if they have hired a property manager to pay the bills.  Please be sure to include that information in the owner’s information section of the form.

For HOA’s or other situations in which it may be difficult to determine a single property owner, please provide us with the contact information of an individual who would be authorized to hire the property manager such as the HOA president or other board member.

Once the property management form is submitted, bills will be sent to the property manager. To send bills to the tenant of the property, please submit the tenant billing form(PDF, 332KB)  along with the property management form and review the tenant billing policies located here.

We do not prorate between tenants and are unable to provide first/final bills in accordance to the tenants move in/out date.