Every December, a version of the same moment happens in lobbies across the country. A resident hands over an envelope, then spends the walk to the elevator wondering whether it was enough. Nobody compares notes, because asking a neighbor what they gave the super feels like asking what they paid for their apartment.
So residents guess. The guides they check when deciding how much to tip building staff disagree with each other by a factor of five, because they were written for different buildings.
That gap is the real problem with figuring out how much to tip building staff. The right number depends on where you live, how many people work in your building, and how much you actually lean on them. Almost nobody explains which set of numbers applies to you.
Here’s the version that does.
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How much to tip building staff, role by role
The national baseline comes from the Emily Post Institute's holiday tipping guidance. The right-hand column reflects what New York City guides have converged on for 2025 and 2026, and Brick Underground, StreetEasy, and Corcoran all land within a few dollars of each other. Treat both columns as recommendations rather than measured behavior. They’re what guides suggest, not what your neighbors actually did.
|
Role |
National baseline |
Full-service building, major metro |
|
Superintendent or resident manager |
$20 to $80 |
$150 to $300 |
|
Doorman |
$15 to $80 each |
$75 to $200 each |
|
Concierge or front desk |
$15 to $80 each |
$75 to $200 each |
|
Handyman or maintenance |
$15 to $40 |
$50 to $100 |
|
Porter |
$15 to $40 |
$25 to $50 |
|
Garage attendant |
$10 to $30 |
$25 to $75 |
Most residents live somewhere between those columns. A 40-unit building in Denver with one part-time maintenance person sits near the left. A 250-unit tower with a 24-hour desk sits near the right. If you want the role broken down further, our doorman tipping guide goes deeper on the one most residents ask about first.
One thing worth knowing about the people on the receiving end: in New York, roughly 34,000 residential building workers are represented by 32BJ SEIU, which ratified a new four-year contract in June 2026 running through April 2030. The average door person there earns about $62,000 a year. Tips supplement a real wage. They aren’t charity, and staff don’t treat them that way.
The evidence, and what actually adjusts the number
The staff most residents forget
Tipping tends to follow your sightline rather than the org chart. The doorman who greets you twice a day is easy to remember. The night porter who mops the lobby at 5 a.m., the weekend relief staff, and the maintenance tech who fixed your radiator while you were at work are the ones who get skipped, and they’re often the people overlooked, because they aren’t as visible to residents.
Ask the management office for the full staff list before you start writing envelopes. Most buildings will give you one, and plenty will print it for you on request. If your building uses TippingLink, management can print the current staff roster straight from the dashboard. If the list is longer than your budget, spread the same total across more people rather than giving a large tip to the two employees you happen to know by name. The people who keep your building running mostly aren’t the ones standing at the door.
Four things that move the number
Staff size matters more than building size. The larger the staff, the smaller each individual tip tends to be, because the total you’re splitting stays roughly constant. A building with 14 employees will see smaller per-person envelopes than a building with 3.
Usage matters. If you get 12 packages a week, travel often enough that someone holds your mail, or call the super for things that aren’t emergencies, you’re consuming more of their time than your neighbor who’s rarely home.
Ownership matters, though maybe it shouldn’t. Renters tip less than owners as a group, a pattern Brick Underground and StreetEasy both note. One Manhattan doorman put it plainly to CityRealty: “Some absentee owners do tip but some don’t, and some of my biggest tips are from renters not shareholders. It’s really about the people and not about who owns or rents.”
Whether your building pools tips matters most of all, because it changes the mechanics rather than the amount. More on that below.
If you’re still unsure where to land, the useful heuristic comes from a doorman with 22 years on the job: “A good rule of thumb is that if you think the tip might be too small, it probably is.”
When to give it
It’s best in early December, and earlier is better than later.
The bulk of holiday tipping happens in the two weeks before Christmas, which means your envelope arrives in a stack of 60 others. Giving in the first week of December helps staff with their own holiday shopping, which is the whole point.
Late isn’t a total taboo, as doormen collect tips into February. But a tip that shows up in mid-January reads as an afterthought, although it may not be intended that way.
If you moved in during the fall, tip anyway, and scale it to the time you’ve been there. Nobody expects a full-year tip from someone who arrived in October, and giving nothing because you feel like you haven’t earned the right is the more awkward outcome. Half the suggested amount with a short note explaining you just moved in works fine.
How to actually hand it over
Cash in an envelope is still the default, and the envelope should have your name and unit number on it. Staff can't thank you for something they can't trace. If the cash run, the card shopping, and the envelope labeling sound like more than you signed up for, TippingLink handles all of it from your phone. More on that below.
Write something. This is the part residents skip and staff remember. The Emily Post Institute suggests two or three sentences, and that’s genuinely enough. The 22-year doorman again: “When a tenant writes a note expressing their appreciation, it really makes our day, and we go out of our way to offer even better service.” A $75 tip with a note lands better than a $100 tip without one.
Then there’s the cash problem. According to the Federal Reserve’s 2026 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, published in May 2026, cash accounted for 14% of consumer payments in 2025, about 6 payments out of 47 a month. Most people still carry some cash. Very few carry the $400 it takes to tip a full staff.
That’s why every major guide now says digital is acceptable. Brick Underground calls Venmo and Zelle “fast, convenient, and contactless.” StreetEasy describes digital options as increasingly acceptable. Corcoran notes that boards and managers sometimes circulate handles directly.
Peer-to-peer apps work, but they put staff in an awkward spot. Handing a resident a personal Venmo handle means sharing a personal phone number and a transaction feed, and there’s no record for anyone who needs one.
What digital tipping looks like when it’s built for buildings
TippingLink is BuildingLink's digital tipping product, built for residential communities. It's available today, but each building has to turn it on. If you'd rather tip from your phone than the ATM, ask your management office about enabling it. And if your building already has it, here's what changes about the questions above.
No building login, and the office isn’t reviewing who gave what
You don't need a BuildingLink login to send a tip. Residents go to the tipping page directly and fill in their first name, last name, unit number, and email, then pay by credit card or bank transfer (ACH). The whole thing takes a few clicks from any phone or computer, at any hour, from anywhere. And your information stays protected: TippingLink encrypts all sensitive data and runs on PCI-compliant, SOC 2-certified systems, backed by BuildingLink's 25+ years serving more than 7,500 properties.
What management sees is different. Tip information is privacy-protected, and management isn’t shown individual tip details, so nobody in the office is reviewing who tipped whom or how much. The one exception is a shared tip pool, where management may see the overall volume of tips and how the pool was distributed, because someone has to administer the fund.
Residents get their own record. TippingLink sends an email history of who you tipped and when, so there's no second-guessing whether the doorman on the night shift got an envelope. Come next December, that history tells you exactly who you tipped last year and how much, which makes the whole thing faster the second time around.
Building staff receive 100% of their tips, with the TippingLink fee shown to residents at checkout before they pay. The fee is 3.5% of the tip with a $1 minimum, which best supports smaller tips. Paying by bank transfer adds nothing on top of that. Paying by credit card adds a 3% processing fee.
Whether your tip goes to one person or the whole staff
This is the mechanical question residents ask most, and buildings can answer it either way. A property can let residents tip individual staff, tip a single shared fund, or do both at the same time, so nobody has to pick one system for everyone.
If your building runs a pool, residents contribute to the group rather than tipping individual staff members. The property picks how the fund gets distributed: either a single payout that the property splits through its own payroll, or a set percentage per staff member that totals 100%, paid out to each person directly.
If your building offers both, you can contribute to the pool for the staff as a whole and still send something directly to the person who dug your car out in February. That’s the setup worth asking about, because it matches how most residents actually feel about the people who work in their building. Some feel general gratitude. One or two names get specific gratitude. The two aren’t in conflict.
The money reaches them without a trip to the bank
A cash tip handed over on December 18 is spendable on December 18. That’s the one advantage cash has always had, and it’s why the switch to digital used to feel like a downgrade for staff.
Tips now appear for staff in TippingLink instantly. From there, staff choose how to take the money out. A standard bank transfer is the free option and takes a few business days. A push to an eligible debit card typically lands within minutes and carries a small fee, with the exact amount shown before they confirm the withdrawal.
Thanks can go both ways
The handwritten note is the part of cash tipping worth preserving, and it survives the switch. You can attach a message to a tip, either one note for everyone or a personal line for each recipient. Staff can send a thank-you note back through the platform. Personal email addresses aren’t shared in either direction.
That second half changes the shape of the exchange. A December envelope is a one-way drop. A note and a reply is a short conversation between two people who see each other every day for the other 11 months.
If you’re the one who fields these questions
Managers and boards get some version of “what’s the right amount?” every November, along with the follow-up about residents who want to tip and don’t have cash on hand. The fall is when that gets solved, because staff enrollment and resident awareness both take lead time. A building that starts in December is already behind.
Setup for TippingLink is simple with just a few clicks. Management signs up in just a few clicks and then invites staff, which is roster-based rather than limited to particular job titles. From there, three things make the season easier on the office. Staff can link a bank account through Plaid rather than waiting on test deposits. A staff list flyer with a QR code can be generated as a PDF and shared with residents, which answers the “who else works here?” question before it reaches the front desk. And on the manager dashboard, a TippingLink widget keeps setup, staff management, and the flyer one click away during the busiest month of the year.
There’s no fee to the property for any of it.
To get it running before the holiday season, connect with a member of our team.
