How do you deal with an irate resident? The absolute worst thing you can...

How do you deal with an irate resident?

The absolute worst thing you can do is immediately start citing what the lease says.

All three of these from Isabella is gold, but my go to has always been the first.

Ask if it’s ok to take notes so you fully understand the situation, sit down, and just listen.

Yes, you may already know the answer, so it’s incredibly tempting to immediately provide that, especially since you have a ton of other things you need to be doing.

But if you do that, you aren’t providing what they are often looking for - someone to care about the situation.

Sure, they want their issue resolved, too, but if we can’t provide that, we can still offer our attention and caring.

When I was on site, I found that once they got it out of their system, they would calm down.

And even if I couldn’t provide what they wanted, they appreciated that I actually cared about their plight.

One caveat: you are not a punching bag. An upset resident I can deal with, an abusive one I cannot.

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Isabella Jiménez

The challenge of transitioning from Leasing Consultant to Assistant Community Manager isn't the spreadsheets or even the software. It's navigating high-stress conflict.

When I first took on this role in April, those intense resident conversations made my stomach churn. They were overwhelming, stressful, emotional, and filled with escalation and frustration.

Now, a few months later, I've learned a lot – and I feel confident that I've learned more than I thought I would.

Here are some of the lessons that conflict has taught me:

• De-escalation requires silence

You don't have to dive straight in with policy explanations or solutions. Sometimes, just letting someone air out their frustration will help defuse the situation. The best thing you can do is listen, because understanding is part of the job.

• Distinguish the person from the problem

Residents aren't lashing out at you, they are reacting to an environment that feels out of control. This perspective keeps you grounded and focused on resolution rather than self-protection.

• Clear is kind

We can't always give residents what they want. But giving a straightforward, honest response is always more helpful than making promises that can't be kept. A resident who feels heard is more likely to accept an answer of "no."

Conflict isn't ever easy, but engaging with these interactions has turned out to be one of the most satisfying aspects of my leadership journey.

To all of my property management colleagues: How long did it take you to get good at handling resident conflict? Do you have a go-to technique for de-escalating?

How do you deal with an irate resident?

The absolute worst thing you can do is immediately start citing what the lease says.

All three of these from Isabella is gold, but my go to has always been the first.

Ask if it’s ok to take notes so you fully understand the situation, sit down, and just listen.

Yes, you may already know the answer, so it’s incredibly tempting to immediately provide that, especially since you have a ton of other things you... Show more

Lucy Gomez

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I certainly understand there can be a significant price increase for not giving sufficient notice but going from $1800 base rent to $9,500 is absolutely absurd.

What are your thoughts?

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Guest Insider Not in FL. You don’t even have to allow month to month. A price increase by that much pretty much means your ownership doesn’t want people on month to month.

Guest Insider Yes that’s correct, owners don’t want the uncertainty of a M/O occurring esp if a property already has high exposure.

Reba Shahan & especially of you just moved in & a turnover is required again. Almost better to commit to a short-term lease.

Guest Insider As long as it was notified that this was the mtm price on your renewal offer, they can increase as much as they want.

Miles Scruggs This is a national group and I’m sure you understand different local states and jurisdictions make their own laws.
Short of it, though they’ve priced their market you have complete free choice. Either it’s worth it to you at that rate to stay or move and find another place that is worth it to you.

Guest Insider On paper you "can" do all kinds of things but, in reality, an absurd increase brought to a judge will be thrown out because it is unconscionable. If you make MTM $500,000 because no limit is given under the law, do you think you'll collect? No way.

Guest Insider What state are you in?

Guest Insider Georgia

Leah Love Anonymous member No laws cover this for Georgia. Sorry. 😢

Guest Insider $1,000 is the max i think is reasonable month to month, 9,500 is insane

Tamara Sanchez I’m in San Jose, California and our studios go for $1500+ 3br apartments go for like $4k. Anything is possible but even we have caps on rent increases but most places I’ve worked do not do month to month in this area and if they do it will be a pretty penny.

Guest Insider Tamara Sanchez I think my state has to offer month-to-month, but I'm not sure. I work for one of the bigger companies and it's $1000 per month

Guest Insider you can buy a home for alot less than 9500 a month

Guest Insider in CA it is 9 percent every 12 months

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Let's do this trend:
We listen and we don't judge: Multifamily edition 🤣

Guest Insider We listen and we don’t judge episode 2! Me listening to a Resident for 20 minutes while they cry on how they can’t pay their rent because they ran into some medical issues and personal things in their life, I go along with it in compassion only to see them walk through the door an hour after our conversation with fast food and fresh nails!

Guest Insider And don’t forget the $500 hand bag!

Guest Insider Hey! Everyone has money for food 🥘 😂😂😂

Dan Holden Sometimes when tenants call, I just set the phone down and let them talk to them selves. Its better for everyone that way.

Fernando Ramos I'll go first:
We listen and we don't judge...
I've nodded along for a full 10 minutes while a manager confidently explained their fire system to me completely wrong and all I said was "interesting."
Your turn vendors AND property managers, drop your confessions below. We listen and we don't judge.

Guest Insider Fernando Ramos if only said manager knew your background. 😭😭😭

Guest Insider Back in my restoration days….when residents would call the PM to complain about “black mold” growing on their shower walls 🤦🏻‍♀️ most likely to wiggle out of their lease contracts or get free rent. I would have to politely explain to the resident that Mold cant grow on tile because it’s non-porous & It’s just surface mildew that happens to your shower and windows when you never clean them 🫢
We listen and we don’t judge…
…But then we educate and re-direct 😂

Guest Insider When an annoying resident comes in the office just to chat, I pull up an old recorded teams meeting just to say “can’t talk right now I’m a meeting”.

Guest Insider Anonymous stealing this idea 🤣

Guest Insider When residents call and have an attitude right off the bat I’ll put them on an extended hold as a “time out”

Guest Insider I have had a saying for many, many, years. "Observe, but don't absorb."

Guest Insider I can’t play…I DO judge. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Guest Insider I may have done some steering when I was a leasing consultant 25 years ago making sure all the exotic dancers had their own building by the back pool after one was tanning topless at the main pool.

Guest Insider Sometimes I’d pull the ac disconnect and act like the part is on back order for units under eviction.
We listen and we don’t judge 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Guest Insider When one of my teammates gets stuck with a talker I come around the corner, with props (files) in hand, to assign them an “urgent” task. That usually wraps up the conversation they were stuck in.

Guest Insider When I was onsite, if a resident had a question about something I didn’t fully understand, I’d just talk a lot and use technical terminology that they wouldn’t understand, but do it with the tone like I’m talking to a kindergartner. At the end, I’d say, ‘Does what I’m saying make sense?’ And they always said yes, for 20 years.
In my head, I’d be like, ‘That’s great, because I have no idea what I’m talking about.’

Guest Insider When I worked at a senior building they would talk so much, which is FINE but I was a one person office and still had deadlines so I kept my office line on speed dial from my cell phone and would just call myself and excuse myself because I had to take a phone call

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A surprising number of platforms do not surface availability in the code. Just because you see availability doesn't mean that the AIs can. Also beware of AI audits. They can surface problems that don't really exist. For example, if you're using JavaS

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You are definitely not the only one! I only know to try to "kill the customer with kindness" and be really kind in how you say anything, even telling someone you have to evict them, and be willing to say you're sorry - not that you DID anything wrong, but you're sorry they have the circumstance, or...

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Agree! We have to laugh (or we'll cry - something like that! ha!). There is a scientific reason too: "Laughter boosts workplace productivity by up to 12% and reduces stress hormone (cortisol) levels by over 30%." Source: National Institutes of Health

Gerry Hunt

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You are speaking my language! Ronald Harrington, Latrice Leakes, and I did an Apartmentalize session on this exact topic!! Great insight.

Gerry Hunt

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One would think we are back to healthy, but this is a revenue-based chart, not an NOI chart. And we all know what happens when we layer expenses on this graph.

Always enjoy your posts, Trey .

Source

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There is a giant trend in multifamily happening right now, which is the rise of consultants and fractional executives. The opportunities can be amazing, but the challenges are not small, either. Suddenly, one is in a new role of marketing themselves to generate business, and now that business has many more "bosses".Two amazing people came together to talk about the in's and out's of going solo, Dana Pate of Stitched Marketin ...

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I’m gobsmacked! I just saw the future of leasing, and it’s their bots talking to ours.

I decided to shop several properties onsite, but instead of going to their ads or websites, I simply asked Meta’s Muse to set everything up for me.

My happy AI assistant opened its own browser, scheduled my first appointment, then lined up comparable properties with pricing, reviews, amenities, and move-in vs. monthly costs.

Email confirmations started... Show more

Brent Williams

Guest Insider This is 💯 why I’m building multisites.ai (websites for AI agents not just humans). It’s going to change so much faster than people realize.

Guest Insider I'm interested in what that looks like! (As in, I've checked your website; now I'd like to see that in the wild)

Guest Insider The second the wrong rate gets quoted without fees included I promise you someone will care.

What part of the process did you trust? What didn’t you?

Guest Insider What's interesting is that one of the comps didn't have full disclosure on their website of fees, so that definitely was a trust killer. It left a bad taste from the start. And the bot called them out on it: "you'll have to ask them since it's not transparent." If I had to say what part of the process I didn't really trust, it was the concessions - they weren't really promoted well and it skewed some of the conversation. But these are likewise human problems, not just bot problems.

Guest Insider Matthew Bullock that’s awesome it called them out. I worry about how much companies have differing data out there due to uncontrollable sync timing or worse and what happens when bots draw from that data. I’ve got an audit tool we are working on to test AI outputs for accuracy for that reason.

Would love to download with you on your experimentation,

Guest Insider Interesting experiment. I’m curious if all of the emails you received where also from bots automations. When exactly did a human from the property side enter the process? Was with a email, a phone call or only when the tour happened. Would you have toured a property that didn’t call you?

Guest Insider The emails I got back were mostly auto-responses. I got a call from the third property back within 60 seconds of submitting the guest card. And it was a human on the line, not some "voice bot" trying to ask me to take the next step. And, surprisingly, they were calling me to personalize the process -- even after I'd scheduled the tour. They could have simply said to themselves, well, we've got the tour - that's that. But they called within a minute, just to say hello and introduce themselves.

Guest Insider No, people will not care what it looks like! You’ll never see it. I think this is such an interesting conversation because it really opens the door to how we protect our branding. That website was our billboard for years. It took the place of those brochures. Where do you think it goes from here? Sure, everyone’s AI agent can browse all the websites, and then the reality is they are representing the brand. I think it probably takes more than a machine readable site to protect the image that you really want perceived by residents. I don’t know the answers. I just love the conversation!

Guest Insider I was describing this to a friend in the business. And the situation is like this: instead of sitting down with each leasing agent separately at each property, it was like I was able to put them all in the same room offsite and ask them all the same questions at the same time, without making the rounds. It levels the playing field for the prospect. They get to take us out of our comfort zone where we have the pretty designs on our websites and buzzy slogans about the experience. From there, I get to pepper them with questions and see how they all shake out, group interview style.

Guest Insider Yes! Pretty soon most purchases will be done by AI agents talking to and negotiating with other AI agents. It’s super fast and efficient, but it is also dramatically changing the entire purchase process for both companies and buyers.

Guest Insider Yes, that's exactly what I was seeing. I'd heard about it and read about it for months, but having it happen for me without much effort on my part - it was eye opening.

Guest Insider Hello, Muse and all AI agents out there. Meanwhile, human interaction will still make a good impression. The AI agent will just make this process easier.

Guest Insider It's a tale as old as time, but more important than ever as we all know when we're getting AI slop instead of real, authentic communication and connection.

Steve Matre Movin' fast!

Guest Insider Steve Matre You're not kidding! I keep saying, "well, that changes everything." And then AI changes the game again.

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For years, many affordable housing operators have treated HUD inspections the way a homeowner treats a dentist appointment: something to prepare for right before it happens, not something to think about in between. That approach is about to get considerably more expensive.What's changing in NSPIRE scoring on October 1, 2026Starting October 1, 2026, HUD will begin applying point deductions under the National Standards for the Physical Inspection o ...

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The Most Expensive Phone Call in Commercial Real Estate Is the One You Don't TakeIn more than 30 years in commercial real estate, I've been on both sides of the recruiting call. I've been the broker getting courted, and I've been the one picking up the phone to recruit talent.Here's what I've learned: The brokers who say, "I'm happy where I am, no thanks," before hearing a word are often the ones who end up leaving money, growth, and options on t ...

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Looking for renter's insurance company that integrates with Appfolio.

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