Become an Apartment Building Superintendent
An apartment building superintendent is in charge of the overall maintenance of the building. The superintendent takes care of routine maintenance, keeps the public areas clean, handles minor repairs and is in charge of hiring and supervising outside contractors brought in for bigger jobs he can't handle. The superintendent often gets the free use of an apartment complete with utilities. Many often get a salary on top of this although typically it is not a large sum. Many apartment building owners prefer to hire couples as their apartment managers, especially for larger buildings, but there is no reason a single person would not be hired as long as this person has the proper training and background.
Steps
- Educate yourself. You need a minimum of a high school diploma as well as a working knowledge of mechanical and electrical maintenance. This training is often offered at vocational training schools or through community colleges. Some colleges offer degrees in property management, and building owners will often choose the college graduate over others with less formal training.
- Learn handyman skills. Apartment building managers are normally expected to make small repairs such as replacing broken tiles, patching small holes in a wall, replacing broken windows and painting. Other jobs could be unclogging pipes, replacing plugs on electrical appliances, routine maintenance on heating and air conditioning units like changing filters and cleaning. If the building has a laundry room, washer and dryer repair skills would also be needed.
- Hone your people skills. An apartment superintendent needs to work with many people from all walks of life. The superintendent must be diplomatic, but able to settle disputes between tenants so both parties are satisfied and coordinate repair work schedules to the best advantage of the tenants while still providing the contractor with adequate access to the job site.
- Learn organizational skills. An apartment superintendent must be organized. Routine maintenance tasks must be performed on schedule, but the schedule must be flexible enough to allow for emergencies. Some routine chores you will encounter are listed here.
- Perform various cleaning tasks in public areas. This includes vacuuming and/or scrubbing lobbies, stairs, elevators and hallways.
- Outside maintenance such as grass cutting, weeding, tree trimming, window washing and leaf collecting are all tasks that the apartment building supervisor would be expected to handle. The building owner will expect all of these chores and more to be handled on a regular basis and to receive scheduled reports from the superintendent.
Tips
- Serving an apprenticeship with a professional janitorial service company can be invaluable experience, especially when working in a very large apartment building. The professionals have worked for years in time-management research to allow them to complete the largest amount of work in the shortest amount of time.
- When making your resume, try to get personal references that emphasize your honesty and dependability. These could come from your former employer or perhaps the leader of your church. Building owners often give their apartment superintendents access to bank accounts with huge sums of money going through them in the form of rents and payouts to outside contractors.
Warnings
- Keep receipts and other paperwork regarding free or discounted rent and utilities to report at tax time. It is usually considered as part of your earnings.
- An apartment building superintendent is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with little time off.
Things You'll Need
- High school diploma
- College or vocational school degree in building maintenance
