On-Site Insight
by Riley
Editor’s Note: “On-Site Insight” is a new column written by a longtime San Francisco resident manager. The author has decided to go by the pseudonym “Riley” in order to maintain her privacy. The new column will run quarterly, and will focus on the trials and tribulations of managing large rental properties.
Somewhere between the owner of a multiunit building and the tenants living their lives in a unit is the life of the resident manager, who doesn’t look at the dwelling as an investment or as a place of sanctuary away from the working world. The resident manager looks after someone else’s investment and lives on call 24 hours a day, privy to both the best and worst of the human experience. This column is about my life as a resident manager over more than a decade in an upscale neighborhood, learning the rules and regulations day by day, while coexisting with tenants as a neighbor as well as a manager.
Over the years, I have learned just how fine the line is between trying to be a good neighbor—the person who makes people happy in the place they reside—and the hard-nosed manager enforcing the rules of the rental agreement. Twelve years ago, when I started as a resident manager, my thoughts were idealistic: make the building a cleaner place to live, provide a well-maintained residence efficiently and on a budget, and maybe make a few friends along the way. Over the years, though, my perspective has changed.
Take, for example, “Lisa,” a woman who moved into the building as the wife of the actual tenant long before I took the job as resident manager. If it weren’t for this job, I would never have been friendly with Lisa. She was the classic stereotype of the spoiled Beverly Hills girl who felt those around her lived to make her life better, using people to her benefit and throwing them away when they did not provide what she needed, speaking to people only when they could be of service, and snubbing them when they were not of use. Shortly after I became the resident manager, her husband was thrown away, kicked out in a loud disruption to all in the building. Lisa became the sole tenant through charm; she signed a new lease and started a new tenancy through friendly discourse and a winning smile. She seemed to be the perfect tenant, with promises to maintain her unit, pay her rent on time and live quietly without disturbing others. At the time, the new lease was a win-win situation; the now-gone husband was a habitual late payer and loved to have late-night parties. Why check references? Lisa would have to be better than what was there before.
As soon as the new lease was signed, the friendly girl and her promises were gone and all bets were off when she wanted something “extra.” Whenever she made a request, the charm started all over again, and in my innocence I would fall for it. Unfortunately, if the answer was no, which many times it was in order to represent the interests of the owner, the sweetness would disappear. Not only that—punishments, such as a loud stereo or yelling off the fire escape late at night, directly under my bedroom window, would be inflicted. When speaking to the woman about these problems, the response would be, “You don’t do anything for me, so why should I care?” Each request was weighed carefully, looked at from my perspective as to what it would cost the building. Her needs were not small and the wants usually came with a large price tag, from installing new hardwood floors to replacing the cupboards in the kitchen because they did not suit her tastes. The answer was almost always no and the retaliation was swift and without remorse. Once again, in my innocence, all of these requests and denials were kept friendly and were conducted verbally. After all, this was my neighbor. I felt we should be cordial.
Two months into my new position, Lisa wanted to refinish her kitchen cabinets herself, sanding, staining and finishing on her own time. My management company said, “Why not?” The finish on the cabinets was original to the building, which in this case was not a benefit. With a small nagging voice in my head (a voice I have now learned to listen to), I allowed the project. Over the next two months, clouds of sanding dust and old varnish billowed into my apartment, as the work was done directly under my windows, and the sanding tools buzzed at all hours. Other tenants were inconvenienced in addition to me, but Lisa was happy. She was enjoying the home improvement project underway.
When all was sanded and varnished to her satisfaction, the end result was positive; the cabinets looked better and she had done a good job. I was impressed and the building did benefit. The relationship with Lisa seemed to be excellent and a little inconvenience was the least I could do, as the result was a happy tenant and a better unit in the long run. I told myself that the nagging voice in my head was just my propensity to worry needlessly, to not trust. After all, tenants would never do anything to damage their living spaces or lose their deposits, right? I thought I had learned through this positive experience—trust and be trusted.
Two months later, Lisa casually asked if she could replace one tile in her kitchen counter, as it was cracked. I agreed, with the stipulations that the replaced tile match the existing tile and that the work was the quality of the cabinetwork. Once again, this discourse was verbal and informal. Over the next few months, she played her stereo too loud, but generally kept to herself, paying her rent later and later and requesting less and less. She did not ask to have things fixed and had stopped asking me to come in her unit to look at what could be done. In one instance, when I made a request to inspect the smoke detector, I was denied entry to the unit. She said she was just too busy to let me in and she would test the smoke detector herself. There were no more requests for home improvement, and once again the voice in my head nagged on, but I ignored it.
Eventually, Lisa gave notice, stating that San Francisco was too expensive and she was going back home. Moving day came and Lisa did not want me to look at the unit before she moved. She left in the middle of the night, leaving her keys outside my door without saying goodbye. Entering the unit was the shock of my short tenure as manager. The tenant had taken all of what she wanted and left all that she did not, including the old rotten food, trash and cat feces sprinkled around the unit. But beyond the trash and the things that could be cleaned, Lisa had finished her home improvement project. Yes, she replaced the one broken tile; in fact, she had removed and replaced every tile in the unit. The bathroom, which was tile from ceiling to floor, was a nightmare. The work was bumpy, uneven, lacking grout and not sealed. The area around the shower was a moldy mess. In the kitchen, Lisa had retiled the complete counter top, as well as all the surrounds. She had removed the counter base and replaced it unevenly. It was now slanted so that any water or liquid spilled from any vantage point in the kitchen ran in a river into the electric stove, eventually shorting it out. Luckily, this rendered it useless before the unit burned to a cinder in an electrical fire.
While the newly sanded and finished cabinets still glowed from their makeover, Lisa had caused thousands of dollars of damage and managed to leave a fake forwarding address and defunct telephone number as the only means of contact. Small claims court was of no use to the building, as her location was a mystery, and her deposit did not come close to covering the damage.
Lisa became my first learning experience as a resident manager. I now listen to that little nagging voice in my head, and I have decided that worry is a good quality for a resident manager. Tenants must not ever be considered friends, or even potential friends, as my position is part of a business. The most important thing I learned is that I must correspond with the tenants in writing; each request is a transaction that should be regarded as having the potential for a positive outcome or a disaster. To this day, I think about Lisa, wondering where she is and who else she is teaching my mantra: “Maintenance issue? Please put it in writing.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. For the past 12 years, “Riley” has been a San Francisco resident manager in a large, well-cared-for building. The names of the tenants, as well as the columnist, have been changed to protect the building and all involved from the court system and irate neighbors. Copyright © 2007 by SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.