While recruitment has long been considered a fundamental aspect of real estate, businesses have been shifting their focus to retention in a bid to keep quality staff within the network.
According to MRI’s Voice of the Property Manager report, almost a third of property managers planned to leave the industry, while 54 per cent reported that their greatest challenge was around mental health and the inability to log off after hours.
In response to the industry’s high turnover rate, Housemark founder Jonathan Bell said a key way to keep property managers in the space was to reassess and redefine the role.
“Since COVID-19, one third of property managers have left the industry,” Bell told REB.
“It’s been a challenging time for real estate offices to be able to scale without the talent.”
To ensure retention at Housemark, Bell said he reduced property managers’ administrative workload by introducing executive assistants and field officers, allowing them to focus more on building and maintaining client relationships.
“We figured out what the actual role of a property manager is, and that is to build relationships.”
“Our property managers don’t do entries, exits, or routine inspections,” Bell said.
“We stripped away all of the things they don’t like, so they can have the flexibility to do what they love.”
In a recent internal analysis, Bell found that the executive assistants were performing 80 per cent of the senior property manager’s administrative tasks, including replying to tenant requests or organising maintenance.
“So that senior property managers have 80 per cent more time to do what they should be doing: calling landlords,” Bell said.
“The role isn’t to be swamped doing lease renewals, replying to tenants, and maintenance requests; it’s to build strong relationships with the clients.”
Another important aspect of staff retention was managing burnout, which Bell said was a key reason for the shift in property manager responsibilities.
“A property manager’s superpower is building relationships, and burnout doesn’t come from doing what you love,” he said.
“You get burnt out from doing the jobs you really don’t want to do.”
Industry stakeholders have emphasised the importance of technology and efficiencies to improve the number of properties under management while also reducing cognitive load on property managers.
Managed CEO Phil Tarrant said property management businesses needed to lean on technology to retain their best performers.
“Technology is one of the most powerful tools property management businesses have when it comes to retaining good people,” Tarrant said.
“Burnout in this sector is often less about the job itself and more about the administrative load – repetitive tasks, manual processes and clunky systems that drain time and energy from property managers every day.”
When it comes to implementing new systems in the workplace, Bell said it was up to agency leaders to educate staff on the reasons for adopting new technology and how it would improve their workflow.
“People think that technology is there to replace them, and then they resent the technology.”
“It’s actually there to free the team up and give them the structure and platform to do what they do best.”
“It might be hard in the short term, but if it is going to benefit them in the long run, why would we not adopt it?”
Going forward, Tarrant said that if property management agencies wanted to retain their best employees, they needed to create an environment where staff could focus on high-value work rather than administrative tasks.
“The best agencies now understand that technology is not just about efficiency; it is a genuine staff retention strategy.”
“Agencies that fail to modernise risk putting more pressure on already stretched teams, while those that embrace automation and smarter operating models can reduce burnout, lift productivity and create a more attractive long-term career path for property managers.”
“In this market, reducing admin burden is not a nice-to-have – it is a leadership priority,” Tarrant concluded.
