Keener Management was founded in 1984 with a single federal townhouse on N Street and the conviction that residential property deserved the attention of architecture. The firm has grown, but the office is still at 1718 N Street, and the conviction has not changed.
We manage more than 2,100 apartments across eighteen historic buildings in eight of Washington's most considered neighborhoods — buildings developed by Keener-Squire Properties and held by the same family ownership since the firm's first year. We don't flip portfolios. We don't sell to the highest bidder. We keep the buildings, and we keep the people.
We do not sell homes. We keep them — which, in our experience, produces a different relationship with both the building and the people inside it. An apartment we manage on behalf of its owner is not a transaction to be closed. It is a property with a history, a set of rooms that behave in particular ways at particular times of day, and a sequence of residents whose tenure we are asked to keep steady.
Our 80-person team spans four property managers, in-house preservation consultants, leasing and resident-relations staff, and the desk attendants who remember a resident's name on day one. The person you call is the person who can fix it — and the records go back to 1984.
We preserve what the building is. When we take a pre-war plaster ceiling into our care, we do not replace it with drywall; we repair the plaster. When we find original millwork, we refinish rather than strip. When a kitchen needs modernization, we modernize around the existing proportions rather than cutting into them.
We keep our word. The firm's first year was built on handshakes with the owners who trusted us with their first buildings; we have tried to earn that same trust every year since. A lease, in our reading, is a long agreement about how to live in a particular set of rooms — not a contract to be enforced.
We keep the office. The office is a physical place, at 1718 N Street, and we receive residents, owners, and the curious there by appointment, Monday through Saturday, 9 to 6.
We manage property as if we lived inside it. We often do.— Margaret Keener · Principal
Margaret founded Keener Management in 1984 with a single federal townhouse on N Street and a conviction that residential property deserved the attention of architecture. Four decades on, that conviction has not changed. She oversees the firm's editorial voice and its relationships with owners.
Arthur joined the office in 2009 after a decade in hospitality and a childhood spent in Georgetown's library stacks. He runs the leasing floor with the patience of a long letter and the memory of a neighborhood map.
Eliza oversees the firm's portfolio of pre-war buildings. A former preservation consultant, she treats every restoration question as one part archive research, one part patient listening to the house itself.
Joseph is the first voice most residents encounter and the last voice most owners consult on the small decisions that keep a household steady. He joined the firm in 2016 after managing a diplomatic residence in Kalorama.
