Steward (Hearthfire)

A steward is an individual who offers his or her services in protecting and maintaining a homestead in.

Choosing a steward
Once a homestead includes a basic small house, the option to appoint a steward becomes available. Once a steward has been chosen they cannot be dismissed unless they die, however they can be moved to a different homestead by recruiting them as a follower, then following the same recruitment procedure at the new homestead. It should be noted that if you do move a steward to a new homestead you will NOT be able to hire a different steward in the homestead you moved them from. **There have also been issues noted with Lydia and Faendal being moved from one homestead to a second homestead but only being able to perform duties for the original homestead.

Stewards can be recruited as followers again at any time, and this will not interrupt their stewarding duties. If a trainer or a quest-giver is hired as a steward, they do not lose these roles.

Several followers are available to serve a steward and they can only be appointed to three homesteads in Skyrim:
 * Windstad Manor located near the salt marshes of Hjaalmarch.
 * Lakeview Manor located in the forests of Falkreath.
 * Heljarchen Hall located in the snowy tundra of The Pale.

Followers who can become Stewards
If a follower is in close proximity of the homestead, and they qualify for stewardship, they will initiate dialogue and remark that such a fine homestead needs a steward and will offer their services. Alternatively, a new dialogue option will appear for the follower while on the property if the follower qualifies for stewardship. Followers who qualify are listed below:

Interactions
Once a steward has been chosen, they can perform several tasks that can be considered too trivial or time consuming for a lord of a homestead. These include the following:

Housing improvements
Stewards can arrange for several additions to be added to the homestead. These include:

Buying supplies
Stewards will arrange for building supplies to be delivered to the main chest located next to the Carpenter's Workbench. These include:

Furnishing the homestead
Rather than buying materials and crafting all the furnishings in a homestead, a Steward will offer to deal with the whole process for a flat rate. If this option is chosen, the furnishing won't appear instantly as they do when crafted, rather, each piece of furniture will appear over a period of many days.

The total base cost of buying all the materials and crafting the furnishings yourself is a fraction of the cost, albeit more time consuming. Crafting the nails, hinges, locks and iron fittings also raises the smithing skill.

Trivia

 * Killing your steward will allow you to choose new one.

Bugs

 * Purchasing furnishings from a steward will sometimes say "You can't afford that", even though enough gold is on hand. This can also occur when remodeling a small home into an entryway before hiring a steward at which time the furnishings for the entryway be won't be able to be bought. There is no known fix for this bug yet.
 * Steward may not give option to hire bard in Windstad Manor and Heljarchen Hall. (A way to fix this is to kill the cow then enter and exit the house so that the corpse disappears. This will bring back the option to buy the bard. (Buy the bard before buying the cow again.)
 * Purchasing furnishings from a steward will sometimes not work and the furnishings will not appear.
 * Analysis of the game on, at Lakeview Manor:  The rate that newly-purchased furnishings appear seems to be linked to the number of times the Homestead is loaded, and not the elapsed time in the game.  Newly-purchased furnishings for the Bedroom add-on did not appear in the room while waiting (even after waiting for 20 days), but fast-traveling between Riften and Lakeview Manor 20 times eventually loaded all of the furnishings.(also confimred on )
 * Marcurio may never give the dialogue option to be hired as steward.
 * If hired as a steward, Marcurio may offer no dialogue options other than to become a follower again.
 * If hired as a Steward, Ogol at Lakeview Manor may cause the game to lock up when he is seen inside. One work around for this is to have him join as a companion, then wait outside. This bug seems to affect the adopted children also, causing the game to freeze if the children see the Dragonborn. also caused by Faendal
 * If hired as a Steward, Aela the Huntress will eventually follow the Dragonborn around the house and draw her weapon and interrupt them at any time. While she is following the Dragonborn around the property, the system treats her as a pursuing guard, preventing fast travel even though she will not attack. If she is a follower and a steward, after being dismissed as a follower, she may sometimes return to Jorrvaskr instead of the homestead where she is steward.
 * "Paid" followers may be unable to become proper stewards: they either don't offer the steward dialogue or only offer to become a follower again.
 * Illia suffers a bug in which when she is dismissed no dialogue option is presented to recruit her as a follower again(See Illia bugs section). However in Hearthfire she does atleast present normal Steward dialogue.
 * Changing the steward from one homestead to another may result in stone and clay bought from them spawning in the chest of the previous homestead.
 * If hired as a Steward, Vilkas or Ria may randomly wander back to Jorrvaskr, and may be killed enroute. If they are killed, a courier will deliver a Letter of Inheritance, and a new steward may be hired.