How to hire a resident manager: where to find, how to screen and what to pay

A resident manager is the live-in, on-site manager of a smaller building: the person who shows and leases vacant units, collects rent, answers the after-hours call, handles small problems on the spot and lines up vendors for the rest. They live in a unit at the property, and residents know exactly who to knock on.

The role sits between a building superintendent, whose center of gravity is maintenance, and a property manager, who carries operating results for a portfolio or an owner. For the candidate's view of that split, our what a resident manager does guide covers the role from the seeker's side; this page stays on the employer's side of the hire.

Sometimes the law decides for you. California requires a manager, janitor, housekeeper or other responsible person to reside on the premises of every apartment house with 16 or more apartments when the owner does not live there (25 CCR 42). One caretaker can cover all structures under one ownership on one contiguous parcel.

New York has its own layers. Under state Multiple Dwelling Law 83, where 13 or more families occupy a multiple dwelling and the owner does not live there, a janitor, housekeeper or other responsible person must live in the building or within 200 feet of it. New York City's Housing Maintenance Code then carries a janitor requirement of its own for buildings with nine or more units.

Outside those mandates, the case for the hire is operational. A resident manager shrinks response time: a leaking water heater at 11 p.m. becomes a shut-off and a vendor call instead of a voicemail, and a prospect who drives by on a Sunday still gets a tour. Rent collection gets a person on the ground who notices when a pattern starts.

Be clear about what the role is not. Your resident manager will not build budgets, run owner reporting or supervise a leasing team — a posting written around what the job actually is keeps both the hire and your later pay-classification decisions honest.

If you are sizing the whole on-site team — office, maintenance, and whether one person can carry a smaller property — our staffing context guide walks through how on-site coverage scales with property size.

Start with people already adjacent to the work: assistant managers who want a site of their own, leasing agents ready to carry rent collection, and maintenance staff who know buildings and would trade a commute for a unit. A resident manager job changes where someone lives, so your strongest candidates are the ones for whom the housing genuinely works.

Look inward too. A porter, make-ready technician or leasing agent who already knows the property starts with the building, the residents and the vendors already learned, and your current site staff can tell you which of them residents already trust.

Couples are worth a look for smaller buildings. Two people can split the office and the maintenance load and cover after-hours calls for each other — the arrangement only works when both people actually want to live on site, and our career guide to couple apartment manager jobs covers how candidates approach it.

When you post externally, use channels whose audience is property management people: a board that lists only property management work, apartment association job boards for the local market, and the general boards for reach. Our guide to where to post property management jobs compares the options role by role, and posting your resident manager opening here puts it in front of people who already search property management jobs.

Say the live-in part plainly in the posting. Candidates self-select hard on housing: the unit itself, who lives in it, whether partners, kids or pets fit, and what happens to the apartment if the job ends. A posting that buries the housing terms collects applicants who were never going to accept them.

Whatever the channel, our hiring hub collects the employer guides on this site, from writing the posting to the first 90 days.

Screen first for reliability with after-hours problems, because that is the job's core promise. Ask for the specific story: the worst late-night call they handled, what they did in the first ten minutes, when they called a vendor, and what they reported the next morning. Dependable answers have timelines and names in them.

Test the leasing and rent-collection basics. Have them walk an application from prospect to move-in: what they ask, what they document, how they handle a deposit, and how they post a payment and answer a resident who disputes the ledger. How much of that an unlicensed employee may do is set state by state — the license section below covers it — so screen for both the skills and the judgment to stay inside your state's line.

Screen maintenance judgment separately from maintenance skill. A resident manager should know where the water shut-offs are, when a job is a work order and when it is an emergency, and when to stop and call a licensed trade. You are not hiring a plumber; you are hiring someone who knows when to call one.

Screen for life fit as a job requirement, and keep the questions job-related. Living where you work changes grocery runs, guests, pets and days off. Candidates who have done it will talk about boundaries unprompted; candidates who have not should hear what the building is like on a Saturday night before they get an offer.

Documentation separates professionals from improvisers. Ask how they recorded an incident, a notice or a handwritten receipt at their last job — the habit matters more than the software.

Screen fair housing judgment with scenarios, not slogans: the same criteria applied to every applicant, an accommodation request routed through company policy, and notes kept without being asked. The stakes sit with the company — under HUD's rule at 24 CFR 100.7, an owner or management company is vicariously liable for a discriminatory housing practice by its agent or employee even without knowledge of it.

Close with references aimed at dependability. Talk to previous supervisors about attendance, after-hours response and whether residents trusted them — a resident manager reference should sound like a neighbor's reference with a timesheet attached.

A resident manager hire carries the standard employer compliance stack — pay-posting laws, the FCRA, fair-chance timing, Form I-9 — plus the housing piece unique to live-in roles. The sequence below is a practical default, not legal advice: confirm the legal steps with your state agencies and counsel.

1. Write the posting. Name the building, the unit count, the schedule, the on-call expectations, the housing terms and the pay. California and Washington require the pay scale in the posting once you employ 15 or more people. New York requires compensation or a range in job ads for work performed at least partly in New York when you employ four or more, and Colorado requires good-faith pay disclosure, a general description of benefits and the expected application close date. Posting rules keep moving, so confirm the current rule with your state labor department.
2. Screen against the actual building. Sort for live-in willingness first — a candidate who will not live on site is a no regardless of resume — then for the leasing, collections and after-hours evidence above.
3. Interview to a structure. Ask every candidate the same core set and score the answers the same way. If you add scored exercises or tests, the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures — adopted jointly by the EEOC, the Civil Service Commission, the DOL and the DOJ — govern selection procedures, so keep every exercise job-related and scored consistently.
4. Walk the property with finalists. Tour the building, meet whomever they would work beside, and show the actual unit. Keep the visit a tour rather than an unpaid work sample.
5. Make the offer conditional, then run the background check lawfully. Under the FCRA, a report you buy from a screening company is a consumer report, and the rules attach before you order it. Give a clear, conspicuous written disclosure that consists solely of that disclosure — no waivers or extra terms on the page — and get the applicant's written authorization, which may sit on the same document.
6. If anything in the report might cost the candidate the offer, send the pre-adverse action notice first: a copy of the report plus a written description of their FCRA rights. The FTC's employer guidance says to include a copy of the report and "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."
7. Only then act on the report, and follow up with a notice that names the screening company, its address and phone number, and the fact that the company did not make the decision. Federal law sets no fixed waiting period between the two notices, so build a reasonable review window into your timeline instead.
8. Handle criminal history carefully. EEOC's enforcement guidance on arrest and conviction records — still in effect at our October 2026 review — treats an arrest alone as insufficient. Its targeted screen weighs the nature of the offense, the time elapsed and the nature of the job, followed by an individualized assessment. Timing is local: California bars employers with five or more employees from asking about conviction history until after a conditional offer, and New York City requires the same conditional-offer timing plus its own Fair Chance Process before a withdrawal. Washington instead bars criminal-history questions and checks until the applicant is initially determined otherwise qualified. Check the version where the property operates.
9. Do the I-9 on time. Every person hired after November 6, 1986 needs a Form I-9. The employee completes Section 1 by the first day of work; you complete Section 2 within three business days; keep the form for three years after hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later.
10. Keep the hiring records. Employers covered by Title VII, the ADA and GINA must keep applications and other hiring records for at least one year from when the record was made or the personnel action taken, whichever is later.
11. Close the offer in writing. Pay, schedule, on-call terms, the housing and occupancy terms, and how the first year gets reviewed — in one document, before day one. Our guides to the property management hiring process, background checks, fair-chance hiring and the employee housing agreement cover each piece in depth.

Start from the federal benchmark — with a label. BLS publishes no separate resident manager series: occupation 11-9141 covers property, real estate and community association managers together, and it counts payroll employees only, so owner-operators' income never appears in it. In the May 2025 OEWS survey that occupation earned a median of $69,990 a year ($33.65 an hour). The middle half earns between $50,720 and $97,910. The national spread runs from $41,010 at the 10th percentile to $139,680 at the 90th, with a mean of $83,710.

The May 2025 OEWS survey counted 311,180 wage-and-salary jobs in the occupation nationally — a payroll count, not a count of open jobs. The series is shared: BLS reports no resident-manager line of its own, and assistant property managers, regional managers, community association managers and leasing managers all land in the same 11-9141 row. Treat the figures above as occupation-wide context rather than the price of one live-in job, and set your offer against the market you actually hire in. Our resident manager salary data page carries the full state and metro BLS tables.

Then the live-in piece, because a resident manager package has two parts the law treats separately: the paycheck and the apartment.

Under the FLSA, an employer may count the reasonable cost of lodging toward an employee's wages — but reasonable cost may not exceed the employer's actual cost and may not include a profit. Facilities provided primarily for the employer's benefit cannot be counted as wages at all. State wage rules can cap the credit differently, so confirm the rule with your state labor agency before you run the payroll.

The tax question is separate. Under the section 119 rules, lodging is excluded from an employee's income only if all three tests are met.

The lodging must sit on the employer's business premises, be furnished for the employer's convenience, and be required as a condition of employment. IRS Publication 15-B reads the condition test to fit employees who must live on the premises to properly perform their duties — for example, employees who have to be available at all times.

Two limits matter. A written statement that the lodging is furnished for your convenience is not enough on its own — there has to be a substantial business reason beyond providing extra pay. And if the employee may choose extra cash instead of the apartment, the lodging isn't excluded when they take it; a cash lodging allowance is never excluded.

A plain rent discount is a different animal. IRS Publication 15-B says employee discounts do not apply to real property, so a discounted unit for a resident manager who does not meet the section 119 tests is generally taxable wages. Have a CPA set the treatment before the first paycheck, not after.

Now the exemption question. The federal FLSA white-collar salary level in force in 2026 is $684 a week ($35,568 a year) — the restored 2019 thresholds, after a federal court vacated the 2024 rule and the DOL republished the prior levels in a final rule dated May 15, 2026. A salaried title alone decides nothing: the executive exemption expects the employee to customarily and regularly direct the work of two or more other employees, and the administrative exemption expects office or non-manual work tied to running the business with discretion on matters of significance. Measure the duties your posting actually names against those elements, and confirm classification with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel.

Two live-in specifics. Free or discounted housing never counts toward the $684 salary test — the level is measured exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities. And the highly compensated employee route never covers non-management maintenance and trades work, however well paid: it starts at $107,432 in total annual compensation, including at least $684 a week on a salary or fee basis.

California stacks a higher floor on top: the exempt salary there is no less than two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment — $16.90 an hour from January 1, 2026, which works out to $70,304 a year. Confirm your own state's threshold with its labor agency before you classify anyone.

Structure incentives around what you screened for: collections, renewals, clean turns and after-hours coverage. If the role is non-exempt, nondiscretionary bonuses — attendance, production or per-lease amounts — must be folded into the regular rate for overtime weeks. Have the structure reviewed before you announce it.

There is no national answer to whether a resident manager needs a real estate license. Who may lease or manage for others — and who is exempt — is set state by state, and exemptions turn on duties, pay and who the person works for, never on the job title. Three states show the pattern.

California exempts the resident manager of an apartment building, apartment complex or court, and that manager's employees, from the leasing and rent-collection license requirement (B&P 10131.01) — the same state whose 16-or-more-apartment rule makes the person mandatory in the first place.

Texas exempts an on-site manager of an apartment complex, and an owner or the owner's employee who leases the owner's real estate, from real estate licensing (Occ. Code 1101.005).

Florida exempts salaried employees of an apartment-community owner — or of a registered broker for the owner — who work in an on-site rental office in a leasing capacity (F.S. 475.011(4)).

Read those exemptions the way the statutes write them: each attaches to specific duties, a specific employer and, in Florida's case, salaried pay. In those three statutes, a title on a business card is not what earns the exemption — the duties, the employer and the pay are. Whether an exemption reaches a resident manager who works for a third-party firm rather than the owner turns on the same duty-and-employer language — confirm it with the state real estate commission rather than assuming.

Verify rather than assume. Ask for any license number the person claims, look it up in the commission's public licensee search, and check the firm's own license if the hire will act under it. Write the role's actual duties into the job description, because the exemption analysis follows the duties.

Credentials are not licenses. Industry designations such as IREM's CPM are voluntary — IREM itself requires CPM graduates to hold an active real estate license only where one is required for the position in their state. Treat a credential as evidence of training and commitment; verify the license separately.

Rules change, and exemptions are narrow. Confirm who needs a license — and who is exempt — with your state real estate commission before you extend an offer. Our state-by-state licensing guide explains how the rules are structured.

Set the first 90 days as a written plan. Hand over the logins, keys, vendor list and rent-collection calendar on day one. Walk the building together — shut-offs, panels, roof access, laundry, parking — and introduce the person to your maintenance contractors. Then name the after-hours protocol: what counts as an emergency, who gets called, and what gets written down.

Write the hours down too. Under 29 CFR 785.23 an employee who lives on the employer's premises is not considered working all the time they are on the premises, and any reasonable agreement on hours worked that considers all the facts will be accepted.

On-call time is its own question. Time is working time when the employee must stay on or near the premises and cannot use it for their own purposes; merely leaving word where they can be reached is not. Call-outs themselves are hours worked. Confirm the on-call terms with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel before you publish a schedule.

Put the housing terms in a written occupancy agreement that stands beside the employment offer: what the unit is, what happens to it if employment ends, guests, pets, and who fixes what inside it. Our guides to employee housing and rent discounts and the employee housing agreement cover the payroll and paperwork, and the pay section above sets out the tax tests a CPA should confirm.

Train fair housing from day one and document it. The federal Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. 3604) prohibits discrimination in renting because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin and disability; state and local laws can add more.

Under HUD's rule at 24 CFR 100.7, the company is vicariously liable for a discriminatory housing practice by its agent or employee even without knowledge of the conduct. It is also directly liable for failing to take prompt action to correct and end discrimination it knew or should have known about. That liability is the business case for the training. Our fair housing training guide covers building the program.

Do the payroll mechanics cleanly: timekeeping that matches the hours agreement, the lodging credit run at actual cost, and the housing treatment your CPA set.

Plan for the ending while you are still at the beginning. A live-in hire who does not work out is also an occupant, and removal runs through state law. In California, a person who occupied premises as an employee becomes subject to unlawful detainer proceedings once the employment relationship has been lawfully terminated (CCP 1161(1)); other states' processes differ. Have counsel review the occupancy agreement before you need it.

Keeping a good resident manager is mostly about respecting the bargain: on-call terms honored in practice, pay reviewed against the market band, real backup on fair housing judgment calls, and boundaries that let the apartment be a home. Our guides to onboarding and retention cover the rest of the program.

Employer information, not legal, tax or licensing advice — confirm licensing questions with your state real estate commission, wage-and-hour questions with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel, and housing tax treatment with a CPA.