What Is a Building Superintendent? Apartment Super Career Guide

Building superintendent, building super, apartment superintendent and apartment super all name the same job: the hands-on building employee who keeps a residential building working and its residents served.

The super makes minor repairs before they become contractor calls, responds when a leak or a no-heat complaint comes in, and keeps shared spaces and building systems in service.

The job exists wherever a building needs its own hands-on caretaker.

New York City goes further and writes it into the Housing Maintenance Code, which calls the role a janitor providing janitorial services and requires owners to provide that service in every multiple dwelling of nine or more units.

The title is not the same job as a construction superintendent, who runs building projects.

It is a different career with different training and employers.

It is also distinct from the property manager, who handles leasing, budgets and owner reporting, and from the doorman and porter roles that cover the front desk and the cleaning work.

On this board the super sits in the building-staff group beside the maintenance technician, the building engineer and the porter — related jobs that share skills but not the job.

New York City's code defines janitorial services as cleaning and maintenance, including the making of minor repairs.

It also covers furnishing heat and hot water where a central source supplies them, removing garbage, refuse, ashes and wastes from the premises, and removing snow, ice and dirt from the sidewalk and gutter.

That definition is a usable map of the job in any older building.

• Minor plumbing and electrical repairs, patching and painting
• Appliance fixes, hardware, doors, locks and common-area upkeep
• Trash handling and curb and sidewalk care, snow included
• Keeping heat and hot water running where the building supplies them

The role is also the building's visible first call.

New York City owners must post a sign with the janitor's name, address — including the apartment number — and phone number, and post a new one within five days of a change of janitor.

Heating is the season-defining duty.

New York City's heat season runs October 1 to May 31.

When it is below 55°F outside between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., indoor temperature must be at least 68°F, and overnight it must be at least 62°F regardless of the outdoors.

Hot water must be at least 120°F year-round.

The schedule follows the building.

BLS notes that general maintenance and repair workers — the occupation group used here as the super's proxy — may need to be on call outside normal business hours.

New York City's code gives 9-or-more-unit buildings three ways to satisfy the janitorial requirement: the owner performs the services personally while living in the building, the owner provides a janitor, or the owner provides 24-hour janitorial service approved by HPD.

If a janitor provides the service, the code sets where that person lives: in the building, or within one block or 200 feet of it, whichever is greater — unless the owner lives in the building or 24-hour janitorial service is provided.

A janitor who serves more than one multiple dwelling may not service more than 65 dwelling units, and must have a telephone where they can reasonably be reached.

The code's janitorial-services article does not apply to the New York City Housing Authority.

When the job is live-in, the housing is part of the compensation — that is what a superintendent apartment refers to.

Under New York City's rule the janitor may live in the building or nearby; live-out supers there stay within the code's distance and unit limits, including when they cover several buildings.

Hours work differently on site.

The FLSA rule at 29 CFR 785.23 says an employee who lives on the employer's premises is not considered working all the time on the premises, and any reasonable agreement on hours worked that considers all the facts will be accepted.

California sets its own residency rule: under 25 CCR 42, a manager, janitor, housekeeper or other responsible person must live on the premises and be in charge of every apartment house with 16 or more apartments when the owner does not live there.

Rules vary elsewhere; where no local rule applies, whether a super lives on site is set by the owner or the management company in the hiring deal.

Our research found no single national gate for the job; the requirements that reach supers are local codes plus task-specific federal rules.

In the closest federal occupation profile — general maintenance and repair workers — BLS says workers typically enter with a high school diploma and moderate-term on-the-job training.

The repair range is the real credential: plumbing repairs, electrical basics, appliance work, carpentry and painting, and the heating and hot-water systems an older building runs on.

New York City puts a paper trail on competence: the owner must certify the janitor's competency to HPD within 60 days of hiring, unless the janitor has satisfactorily completed a course of at least 15 hours given or approved by the Department of Buildings.

Federal rule reaches the job by the work.

Under the EPA's Section 608 (40 CFR 82.161), anyone who could reasonably be expected to violate the integrity of a refrigerant circuit must pass an exam from an EPA-approved certification program.

That applies to work maintaining, servicing, repairing or disposing of appliances containing a class I or class II refrigerant or a non-exempt substitute.

Bigger plants carry their own gate: in New York City, a High Pressure Boiler Operating Engineer license from the Department of Buildings is required to work as a high-pressure boiler engineer, and it is renewed every 3 years.

Our pay sources have no building-superintendent line of their own, so the figures here use the closest available group: general maintenance and repair workers (SOC 49-9071), a cross-industry occupation covering maintenance work in every industry, not just apartments.

In BLS's OEWS May 2025 release, that group's median pay was $23.84 per hour, or $49,590 per year, with the 10th percentile at $35,350 and the 90th percentile at $77,180.

New York City union buildings sit on their own scale.

On April 17, 2026, 32BJ SEIU announced it had reached a tentative four-year agreement with the Realty Advisory Board covering doorpersons, porters, handypersons, supers and resident managers.

The union announced $4.50 per hour in wage increases over the term, a 15% increase to the guaranteed pension, and no healthcare premium sharing.

By the union's count, that residential master agreement covers nearly 34,000 members maintaining 600,000 households in 3,500 co-ops, condos and apartment buildings.

When the job includes the superintendent apartment, the tax question follows it.

IRC §119(a) excludes employer-provided lodging from income only when the lodging is on the employer's business premises, is furnished for the employer's convenience, and is required as a condition of employment.

How a specific offer is treated depends on its facts; a CPA can review it before you accept the job or write the offer.

The building super salary page carries the full BLS table for the closest available occupation, so you can see the national spread in one place.

Porter, handyperson and apartment maintenance work all build the repair range a super draws on.

BLS describes new maintenance workers starting by watching skilled workers and doing simple tasks such as fixing leaky faucets and replacing lightbulbs before moving on to harder work.

Within building operations, the next roles a super chases are maintenance supervisor, building engineer in a plant building, resident manager, or facilities manager.

BLS notes some maintenance workers move up to supervisor or manager roles, and that jobs such as facilities manager may require a college degree.

The occupation concentrates in the industry, too: real estate and rental and leasing is the largest employer of general maintenance and repair workers, at 20% of the occupation, per BLS.

BLS projects employment in the occupation to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035, with about 148,700 openings a year in its employment projections.

Pay ranges widely from building to building: the occupation's 10th-to-90th-percentile spread runs $35,350 to $77,180 (OEWS May 2025), and in New York City's union buildings wages are set by the master agreement negotiated with the Realty Advisory Board, not building by building.

Supers are hired by building owners, by co-op and condo corporations, and by management companies that staff residential buildings for their clients.

In New York City the role is structural — the code requires janitorial service in buildings of nine or more units — and elsewhere the job turns up wherever a building needs its own hands-on caretaker.

Applications that get read show the repair range, heat and hot-water experience, and the availability the job runs on.

A live-in candidate states the radius they can cover; a live-out candidate states the buildings and systems they have run.

When you are ready, browse building super jobs on PropertyManagerHires — a board that lists only property management work, from single-building owners to management companies.

Career information, not legal, tax or licensing advice. Housing-code, boiler-license, certification and tax rules change and vary by city; confirm current requirements with NYC HPD, the NYC Department of Buildings, the EPA or a CPA, as the question needs.