Permission letter to your condo admin: copy-paste template

A short, honest letter turns a gray-area benta into an arrangement your admin signed off on. Copy the template below, fill in the brackets, and hand it to the front desk or email the property manager. A Taglish version and the five moves that make admins say yes are further down.

Updated July 10, 2026 · By the Suki Neighbors team

Why write it down at all

A condo admin permission letteris a short written request telling your building's property management or HOA that you cook food and sell it to fellow residents, describing exactly how you operate, and asking whether any house rules apply. It costs you ten minutes and buys you two things a verbal chat cannot: a paper trail, and an admin who is no longer surprised.

Admins act on complaints. When a complaint about “someone selling food on 12” lands on a manager who already has your letter on file, the conversation starts from “she told us, she follows the conditions” instead of from zero. Before sending, skim your building's actual restrictions in the house rules guide so the letter speaks their language.

The letter template (English)

Copy, fill in the brackets, keep it to one page. Print it or paste it into an email to the property management office.

The Taglish version

Some buildings run on Taglish, and a letter that sounds like the actual conversation lands warmer. Same content, same one page:

Five moves that make admins say yes

The template already contains all five, and they are worth naming because they are the difference between approval-with-conditions and a reflex no:

• 1. Frame it small.“Small batches, a few fellow residents” is honest and disarming. Admins say no to “a food business in a unit”; they say yes to a neighbor cooking for neighbors. Never open with revenue plans or growth.
• 2. No common-area selling.Say explicitly that you will not sell, display, or set up in hallways, lobbies, or amenity floors. Common-area commerce is the one thing nearly every house rulebook bans outright, so taking it off the table early removes the admin's biggest fear.
• 3. Unit-to-unit delivery only.The guardhouse is the admin's pressure point. “No outside customers, I deliver to residents myself” means zero new strangers, zero rider traffic, zero logbook headaches. This single line does more work than the rest of the letter.
• 4. Offer to follow schedule rules. Volunteering the service elevator, fixed delivery hours, or a lobby handoff window flips the dynamic: you are asking the admin to design the arrangement, not to approve yours. People approve things they helped shape.
• 5. Show liability awareness.One sentence taking responsibility for smells, waste, and complaints tells the admin you understand why the rules exist. Sellers who acknowledge the building's exposure get treated as partners, not problems.

Point 3 is also where being on an organized platform genuinely helps your case: a private Suki community is invite-code only and ordering is members-only, so “residents only” is not a promise, it is how the system works. Some admins and HOA officers even run the community themselves - that setup is covered in Suki for condo communities.

After you send it

Expect one of three responses. A yes-with-conditions is the most common: write the conditions down and follow them exactly. A request for more details usually means the admin wants to check with the board - offer a one-month trial with zero-complaint review. A flat no still leaves you the graceful options in the condo selling guide: lobby-pickup-only, or selling in a nearby community instead. And once you are cleared, the actual selling craft - taste tests, posting rhythm, group-chat etiquette - is in how to sell food to your neighbors.