Posts by: Mary Nitschke

Why build green?

By On June 24, 2014 · Leave a Comment

There are a number of reasons to build green apartments including it may be mandatory, it can save money and it strengthens our National Security. My favorite green play is Prometheus’ 203-unit property, called Madera, in downtown Mountain View, California, where the air is crisp, the residents are Google, and the rents are strong. Madera […]

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Everything old is new again—the California drought

By On April 3, 2014 · Leave a Comment

In 1977, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought state of emergency. It started with voluntary water reductions, and then was converted to mandatory water restrictions.

Households were given a water budget—families were given an allotment of 225 gallons-per-month of water to use. If you used more than that, you were fined. (In the […]

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Did you flush?

By On December 8, 2013 · Leave a Comment

How much water does one person flush down the toilet each year? If your toilet was installed in 2001 or later, it’s likely to be 1.6 gallons per flush.

That means (best case is 5 flushes per day) we use 8 gallons per day to cast off our waste. Annually, one person uses 2,920 gallons […]

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Multifamily cash cow: recycling

By On July 2, 2013 · 1 Comment

I’m first. I’m first. That’s my nanny-nanny- boo-boo prophetic warning to all y’all outside California. And, yes, you might want to throw my Birkenstocks and granola in the trash, but you best take a better look at what you are putting in that dumpster. Trust me; this is not some Charlie Sheen style “winning.”

I took the first recycling bullet with California’s […]

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Flashdance and the compactor

By On December 7, 2012 · 2 Comments

When evaluating trash enclosures, configuration, and community requirements, remember the movie, Flashdance. Not as much for the pressure washing of Jennifer Beals, as for the film’s powerful and innovative use of legwarmers. Remember legwarmers? They were iconic in the 80s.

Like legwarmers, compactors were iconic multifamily trash enclosures. In the 1970s and early 80s, […]

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Looking into each other’s houses

By On July 13, 2012 · Leave a Comment

As property managers, we spend a lot of time getting to know what everyone else is doing. We like to compare.

We are obsessed with knowing what other properties in the same market are charging for rent. We even call each other pretending to be prospective residents. We make significant investments in technology to […]

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