Assistant Community Manager

Hawthorne Residential Partners runs nearly 50,000 apartment homes across the Southeast, and the Assistant Community Manager role at Hawthorne Palmetto in Simpsonville, SC is where you'll feel the full weight of that operation at the property level. This is a working role. You'll be in the leasing office handling traffic, following up on delinquency, reviewing ledgers, and covering for the Community Manager when she's out. The job has real range, and that's both the appeal and the honest challenge of it.

On any given day you might run a leasing tour in the morning, spend part of the afternoon on payment posting and ledger audits, then de-escalate a resident complaint before the office closes. The financial side is real work: rent collection, check scanning, delinquency tracking with weekly follow-up calls, and supporting eviction procedures when it gets to that point. It won't always get to that point, but you need to be comfortable with it when it does. Renewals, lease document accuracy, and occupancy goals are yours to own alongside the Community Manager.

Hawthorne leans into internal growth. Their Career Path Program is a real part of how they develop staff, and the ACM seat is explicitly positioned as the step before Community Manager. If you want to get to the CM chair, this role builds the habits that get you there: financial literacy at the property level, confident conflict resolution, and the ability to hold a team together when leadership is absent.

What the role calls for

• High school diploma or GED
• Two years of property management experience preferred
• At least six months in an assistant community manager capacity preferred
• Valid driver's license required
• CALP designation is a plus, not a requirement

The schedule runs Monday through Friday, 9 to 6, with Saturdays from 10 to 4. One weekday off keeps it to 40 hours, but resident events and community needs can shift things occasionally. That's standard for this work and worth knowing upfront.

Compensation includes an hourly base plus monthly leasing and renewal commissions and quarterly performance bonuses. Benefits cover medical, dental, vision, a 401k match, paid time off including your birthday, pet insurance, paid parental and adoption leave, and company-paid life insurance. Telehealth access is included as well.

Strong candidates here tend to be people who already understand the rhythm of a multifamily office, know how to read a resident ledger without needing a tutorial, and don't freeze when a situation gets tense. The leasing piece matters, but the financial and administrative side is what separates a capable ACM from one who's still figuring it out six months in.