Positive Apartment Management People Skills

Though many tenants tend to complain about ineffective apartment management, if they had to spend a week walking in the shoes of the person whom they were complaining about, they would probably be telling a completely different story. Running a complex is no easy task, what with all of the duties and responsibilities it requires. It takes someone who not only has exceptional time management skills, but also someone who is not afraid of dealing with tough customers, meaning tenants that, for whatever reason, fail to pay their rent on time.

Working in apartment management certainly encompasses a wide range of job duties. Their jobs encompass customer service, meeting and greeting potential residents and assisting tenants. They are also a part of the maintenance industry, as they also have their hand in delegating the activities that will maintain and update their units and keep residents safe.

There is a bit of policing involved in apartment management , as well. When a tenant is parking in the wrong spot, or if they have pets that are not on their lease agreement, someone has got to set them straight. Even though most tenants do pay their rent on time and without incident, it is not uncommon for apartment management to have the unpleasant task of dealing with tenants that have moved out unexpectedly without finishing their lease, leaving the unit filled with trash and completely wrecked.

These units require extreme cleaning and maintenance before they will be ready to be rented again. The person in charge has the task of not only insuring that the unit is made ready for new tenants, but also of attempting to retrieve lost rent from the tenants that decided to take off mid-lease. Collections are not usually an enjoyable part of the job, but it is one of the many duties that are responsible for each day.

Secretarial skills are important, as they may be ones answering the phone from time to time. Having some working knowledge of accounting cannot hurt, either. It will come in handy when they are tracking expenditures that have gone out, or when they are busy creating monthly expense reports. And if the person is an experienced writer, then it will serve them well when it comes to creating and publishing a regular newsletter that goes out to the tenants to alert them to any changes, to remind them of special events and occasions within the community or to profile one of the staff members.

Being in a position of apartment management is really more comparable to ten jobs all rolled into one, so individuals must be flexible, task oriented and cheerful, and excellent with customer service. Someone bad mouthing their complex or unit manager for being incompetent would do well to be told to cut the person some slack or go apply for the position and see if they can do it themselves!

As a general social custom, it is a good idea for people to acknowledge their managers once a year or so by sending Thank You or Holiday cards to the office along with their monthly rent. People who work hard for you all year enjoy feeling appreciated.

Of course, apartment management can take it upon themselves to make certain that each interaction that they have with a tenant ends with an expression of appreciation for them. Building strong relationships with residents of their community is part of their job as well. It pays off to be excellent at that aspect of their job, and it will take them far in the eyes of the local residents and help curb the negative stigma that is sometimes attached to being the land lord.

Alameda California Storage

Local Alameda California Storage

Close this Window Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BuddyMarks BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea

del.icio.us Digg diigo DotNetKicks DropJack dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com

Furl Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle kirtsy linkaGoGo LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace

MyWeb Netvouz Newsvine oneview OnlyWire PlugIM Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy

Slashdot Sphere Sphinn Spurl Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

 If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

More »

Tweet This Post 

• DirecTV Customer Service Sucks. As some of you may recall, a few weeks ago I wrote about how DirecTV pulled a bait and switch on the service at my house. After about 45 minutes on the phone with customer service I finally gave up trying to plead my case which was that the offer......
• Poor Service Really Stinks - An Update A couple weeks ago, I had written a post of our poor experience at our favorite fine dining establishment. After all this time, I really thought our complaints fell on deaf ears.  We felt disappointed.  Was our favorite place going down the tubes? Again, we were very tactful in describing......
• Labor Day! Happy Labour day! It's the unofficial end of Summer, a day for picnics and barbecues. But it is important to remember what this holiday is about. Especially in today's economic and labour climate. There are so few jobs today, that employers are routinely cheating all employees - not just the......
• Customer Service Calling Day Today, I spend an hour making a few customer service calls due to what I perceived as billing errors. The first was to Sprint. Even though I updated my address on their website, they kept the old billing address. That wasn't my big concern, though. It was the $4 of......
• How Much is Customer Service Costing You? (Part 2) (If you haven't already, reading part one first will be helpful. A quick summary is that I've run into a couple of customer support problems this week.) The other problem that I've had is with my cell phone, the Palm Treo 700P. I've had Palm Treo's from when the Sprint......