Your neighboorhood Marriott.

If you are a residential landlord in search of respectable tenants for your building, you might try ExecuStay by Marriott. Just ask David Lorenzo. Lorenzo, as it happens, is the vice president of ExecuStay's New York office, a company that specializes in finding temporary housing solutions for some of the largest corporations in the U.S.

"Anyone who does business with us has a resident who is going to pay the rent," Lorenzo explained. "The landlord knows that the money is going to come in. Plus, we take extra care to keep our apartments in top-notch shape We often do cosmetic touch-ups, such as painting and floor refinishing, that a regular tenant would not even think of doing."

ExecuStay got its start in 1986 in Washington, D.C., when three inventive hospitality service professionals created an amenities company -- a firm that would rent out TVs, VCRs, and the like to out-of-towners that planned to stay in the area for a long time. As the years went on, Gary Abrahams, Bob Zaugg, and Marc Kaplan found that business was going well enough to Expand into more pricey commodities, like furniture. But the most significant transformation at ExecuStay took place two years ago, when the company was bought by one of the giants of the hospitality industry, Marriott Resorts and Hotels.

Today, Marriott's rationale for buying an obscure, regional competitor is easy to understand. Although the short-term housing solutions business has been around for a while, it is usually operated on a local basis and does not bring in a great amount of profit.

"Most of our business is done by very small companies," Lorenzo explained. "They are usually mom and pop shops that specialize in certain kinds of housing, and have at most 100-150 apartments at their disposal." ExecuStay, however, got a leg up on the competition when Marriott turned it into a nation-wide business, which finds apartments specifically fitted to the needs of its customers.

"Although we concentrate primarily on luxury housing, we work with all kinds of properties," Lorenzo said. "We are very flexible and try to find apartments where our customers want to be. So we do business with every type of landlord there is out there -- from a large, national firm like Grubb & Ellis, to an individual condominium owner."

According to the vice president, there is a number of advantages to renting out apartments to ExecuStay as opposed to traditional applicants. "Because of our affiliation with Marriott, the apartments we rent out need to be very high-quality," he said. "It is in our best interest as a business to maintain a friendly relationship with the landlord, to keep the property in the best shape possible, to take care of any problems that might come up. A landlord that is developing a new building should really be my best friend, because our company will take care of tenant screening and leasing for him. He really wouldn't need to worry anymore."

And the profile of an average ExecuStay customer is important as well. According to Lorenzo, the company has three kinds of tenants -- upper and middle-class families that are relocating and need a place to stay until they find permanent housing, business executives that had been sent on a long-term assignment, and various professionals who need to come to the city on a recurrent basis for work-related reasons.

"Because of the nature of our business all of our customers are very desirable tenants," Lorenzo said. "We mainly have relationships with corporations, rather than individuals, so if the landlord feels that they are misbehaving, all we need to do is call their employer. No company that is providing its workers with housing in Manhattan wants to have an employee who is a problem.

Lorenzo's client list, in fact, includes some very notable names in the worlds of finance and e-commerce. "IBM, Cambridge Technology Partners, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and members of both New York baseball teams have done business with us," he said. "And in addition to having high-profile clientele, we are in each of our apartments every week to take care of housekeeping, so we know what is going on. As you can see there are plenty of reasons to do business with us."

Lorenzo himself is a hospitality service old-timer and having worked for Marriott for eight years prior to coming to ExecuStay, he knows how to handle tenant-landlord relations. "I have worked as a general manager of courtyards for Concord [Marriott's subsidiary] and all I can say is that I love this job," he said. "In the real estate business, you could never have too many friends, so when a landlord calls me up, I am always ready to help him."