Strange Apartment Management Stories

Apartment Management offers all manner of tales foroperation of a complex. After all the manager and
our management enjoyment and we have had ourmaintenance can be everywhere and do everything.
share.As a matter of policy, we operate community
Unusual business enterprises on the premiseswatches at all of our properties with more than 100
Our lender sent a note wanting to know the status ofapartments.
Latoya's Escort service. Fortunately, we evictedMaintenance Man's Wife Goes Berserk
Latoya immediately after taking over our property. ThisA few years ago, one of the maintenance men's
enterprise provides strong evidence for wellwives became convinced her husband was having an
documented formal community behavior policies andaffair with one of the leasing staff. Unfortunately, the
the value of buying in landlord friendly jurisdictions.woman was also bipolar and prone to aggressive
While this is an extreme case, the quality andmood swings. In her highly agitated stated, the woman
marketability of a property is closely tied to residentfirst threatened the leasing assistant. When this act,
behavior. A quite, clean, safe neighborhood is adidn't cause the desired change the angry wife
marketable neighborhood.determined to wield her car as a weapon repeatedly
Your property is interfering with my liferamming the leasing staff person's car with her own
On another occasion, a neighbor to a complex weuntil she was taken into custody by local authorities.
operate determined that our property's trees wereWhile the maintenance man was a valued manager
preventing his installation of Dish Network services.and staff person, the course was clear. We had to
This individual paid our management a visit informing usask the employee to resign that day.
that he would be over soon to cut down the offendingOperating a property often requires firm action on the
pine trees. As owners and managers, we aren't fanspart of management to see to the health and safety
of this sort of behavior. We dispatched our managerof residents and to the integrity of the project.
to the neighbor's home with a formal letter and anCrazy Woman Sees Witches in her Home
informal message that should he take this action heOne property we own was constructed in the early
should keep in mind that our investors were a bunch of70s. At about the time of construction one of the
big city lawyers.current residents moved into the property. And, there
This unusual case is a good example of theshe had remained ever since (almost 40 years).
importance of acting in a measured way, but havingApparently, in recent years dementia had set in and by
strong legal support should the need arise to protectthe time we purchased the property the woman was
the property.hearing voices and seeing witches in the house. Now
It Takes a Villagethe unit had original appliances, original shag carpet and
While most of us think of the saying "It takes a Village"the work on the property made this a low priority. So,
as referring to raise a child, the idea can also extend towe kept social services informed and though her rent
having a safe and secure community. One of ourwas far below the property average, we decided the
communities near a large army base endured a shortbest approach was allow her to stay put. We didn't
string of burglaries until one morning I received a callneed to incur the make ready cost and chose to hang
that the culprit had been captured at gun point. Theonto this long time loyal but disturbed woman. About a
first obvious conclusion is that one of the soldiers hadyear later, the woman passed away.
solved the problem. However as it turns out, one ofEffective property management requires adapting to
the military wives had observed the villain crawling in athe initial conditions rather than simply acting on policy.
window and retrieving her trusty shotgun held theAnyone in the apartment management business will
criminal at gunpoint until the sheriff could arrive. Whileencounter a wide range of strange and unusual
we don't condone taking such strong measures, theevents. How these circumstances are managed can
incident shows how important having an involvedimprove operations and burnish the business image of
interested community can be to the effectivethe property.