The DIY Solution to Finding a Part-Time Super

For smaller co-ops and condos – with fewer than, say, 40 units – hiring a full-time super can make little financial sense. Many of the boards in these smaller buildings have been turning to the growing number of agencies that provide part-time supers, tailored to each building’s budget and needs.

But if your building needs a super and your board doesn’t want to go to outside superintendent suppliers, what are your options?

Pamela DeLorme, the owner of Delkap Management, says she is seeing more small buildings hiring residents from within the property itself to handle super responsibilities. One building under her management hires an outside person to do heavy-duty maintenance work but pays a couple who lives there to do regular maintenance. She vacuums, he takes out the garbage, and the co-op saves money.

“They want the extra bucks, so they don’t mind doing it,” she says. The couple is paid through the building’s payroll, rather than as 1099 employees, and the pair are covered by a minimum workers’ compensation policy.

A small condo complex DeLorme manages has an arrangement with a porter who works from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. at a larger building nearby, then moonlights as the condo’s part-time super. “The complex just needs four hours a day, so he goes over before or after work so these people can get 20 hours a week,” DeLorme says.

The porter’s full-time position is in a union building; the condo complex is not unionized. But 32BJ SEIU, the union representing property service workers, does not restrict union members from working in non-union buildings during their off-hours, according to a union spokesperson.

From the union’s perspective, such arrangements are viewed as financially beneficial to their members, says attorney Dean Roberts, a partner at Norris McLaughlin & Marcus. Likewise, the boards of large buildings typically don’t object to staff members working at neighboring buildings during off hours so long as it doesn’t affect their full-time responsibilities. Says Roberts: “It provides them with extra income and could help keep them around longer.”