The rental housing industry has spent years investing in its human capital. Wages are rising, compensation structures are evolving and the commitment to competitive pay is stronger than ever. Yet, onsite teams still keep walking out the door.
The 2025 RCLCO National Real Estate Compensation and Benefits Survey reveals that base salaries rose 4.7% across the real estate sector from 2024 to 2025, outpacing the 4.2% projection set at the start of that period. At the same time, total turnover for onsite property-level employees reached 29.2% during those same 12 months. For larger organizations with more than 450 employees, that number climbs to 33.4%.
The real estate sector is paying more but, at the same time, it is also losing more talent. Understanding why—and what to do about it—requires looking beyond compensation.
Wage Growth Is Stronger Than Expected, But It Isn’t Enough on Its Own
The data on compensation is genuinely positive. According to the RCLCO survey, non-exempt employees saw a 4.3% actual increase year-over-year in 2025, against a 3.9% projection. Senior management came in at 4.8% actual versus a 4.0% projection. Top executives saw actual increases of 5.0%. Looking ahead, 86.2% of real estate companies are projecting salary increases in 2026, with an average projected increase of 4.1%.
The National Apartment Association’s (NAA) Q4 2025 Apartment Labor Market Dynamics Report confirms this trend persists within the rental housing sector. Even as unique job postings across core apartment roles declined year-over-year, advertised salaries continued rising. Property managers saw the largest year-over-year increase in median advertised salary at 4.5%. Maintenance supervisor advertised salaries saw a 3.1% increase, and maintenance technicians gained 2.2%. Leasing consultant advertised salaries were slightly higher year-over-year by 0.6%.
Leasing compensation structures also reflect the rental housing industry’s commitment to rewarding performance. The RCLCO survey revealed that 81% of companies structure leasing commissions as a flat dollar amount per lease or renewal. Significantly, 82.4% of lease renewals are included in commission eligibility, aligning employee incentives with resident retention, which is consistently more cost-effective than moving-in new residents.
Employee Turnover Remains One of the Industry’s Most Expensive Challenges
Across the real estate industry, the RCLCO survey found total turnover for onsite property-level employees reached 29.2% during the past 12 months, in stark contrast to the 14.2% total turnover reported for corporate and non-onsite real estate functions. That gap reflects the structural reality that onsite teams carry more resident-facing pressure, operate with significantly less schedule flexibility and often face less clearly defined career pathways than their corporate counterparts. Voluntary turnover alone stood at 23.4%, up from 21.7% since 2024.
These patterns are especially costly in rental housing. Grace Hill's Employee Turnover Cost Calculator estimates the direct cost of replacing a single rental housing industry employee at nearly $5,000 per new hire, and that figure does not account for the productivity loss during vacancy, the burden placed on remaining staff or the impact on resident satisfaction when communities are understaffed. For operators managing several hundred onsite employees at a 29% turnover rate, this represents millions of dollars in employee turnover costs annually.
NAA’s Performance Ecosystem report adds further context specific to the rental housing industry. Staffing shortages and turnover were consistently cited as major barriers to operational performance. Operators managing 5,000 or more units identified staffing as their single most persistent pain point, with 49% naming it as their top challenge.
Why Talent Is Leaving
The RCLCO survey asked real estate companies to identify the most common reasons for voluntary resignation. The results point directly to where the industry needs to act. Compensation topped the list at 27%, which confirms that pay still matters; however, the second most cited reason, accounting for 24% of voluntary departures, was lack of career mobility and progression. Together, these two factors represent more than half of all voluntary exits.
These findings are consistent with what NAA’s own research surfaces across the rental housing sector. This means that roughly one in four people who leave are not doing so because another company offered them more money—they are leaving because they cannot see where the job is going. Career mobility and advancement are no longer optional benefits in the rental housing industry. They are essential to workforce stability and retention.
Industry research and employer surveys consistently show that when employees do not see a clear path for growth, they are more likely to leave, even with rising wages. Professional development programs, nationally recognized credentials and structured learning pathways provide employees with tangible confirmation that their skills are valued and that career growth is supported. These investments reduce onboarding time, strengthen job readiness and create momentum that keeps talent engaged long term.
When organizations prioritize continuous learning, leadership development and transparent career pathways, they send a clear message that rental housing is not just a job, but a long‑term profession where employees can build skills, advance with confidence and grow alongside the industry.
Retirement, work-life balance and personal, family or health reasons rank as the third most common driver of voluntary resignation. In rental housing specifically, NAA’s 2024 Mental Health Survey found that 50% of onsite leasing professionals and 46% of onsite management staff reported at least some level of psychological distress, while both groups reported working beyond scheduled hours more than eight times per month on average and taking only 1.4 vacation days in the prior four weeks. Nearly half of each group also reported direct exposure to workplace trauma, yet awareness of available mental health resources remains far lower among onsite staff than among corporate leadership. When recovery time is limited and support systems are not reaching the people who need them most, exits because of personal or health-related decisions often reflect structural conditions rather than individual ones. Reducing this category of turnover requires staffing models that address chronic overload, managers equipped to recognize mental health needs early and a deliberate effort to ensure every onsite professional knows what resources are available.
Onsite Teams Are Fully Present and Fully Exposed
Workplace flexibility has reshaped expectations across nearly every industry since the COVID-19 pandemic. Because rental housing is a people-centric business, workplace flexibility for onsite teams is still limited, which can impact retention. Across real estate broadly, the RCLCO survey found that 89% of onsite property-level employees work fully onsite five days per week. By contrast, only 39.5% of corporate employees are fully onsite.
Face-to-face interactions with residents and prospective residents will always be central in onsite roles. A closer look at how rental housing professionals actually spend their time, however, reveals an opportunity the industry is beginning to explore. NAA’s Performance Ecosystem survey found that, on average, onsite professionals devote 42% of their week to routine operational work, paperwork, data entry and administrative tasks. Another 24% goes to reactive work, troubleshooting, responding to service disruptions and handling urgent requests. Meaningful stakeholder engagement, which is the resident relationships and proactive outreach that define onsite roles, accounts for just 17% of the average workweek. When two-thirds of an onsite employee’s week is consumed by tasks that are administrative or reactive in nature, the job becomes harder to sustain and harder to make attractive to talented people.
Centralization and AI are changing this equation in the rental housing industry: Emerging proptech platforms are now automating routine leasing inquiries, maintenance triage, renewals and back-office processing without human intervention. Operators who have deployed these tools are documenting measurable results, millions in annual cost savings, meaningful NOI gains and steadily improving staff-to-unit ratios, alongside reported declines in onsite turnover as administrative workload lifts.
Centralization and AI provide the opportunity for companies to create the structural conditions to offer onsite staff what the broader workforce has been asking for since 2020, more flexibility and more manageable days.
What a Softening Labor Market Means for Retention Strategy
The staffing dynamics inside rental housing do not exist in a vacuum. The broader labor market shifted significantly in 2025. Job creation slowed sharply, net payroll additions totaled approximately 584,000, a decline of roughly 71% compared to 2024. Businesses announced 1.2 million job cuts over the course of the year, and the unemployment rate rose from 4.0% in January to 4.4% by December.
For rental housing operators, a softer external labor market is a mixed signal. Competitive pressure from other industries aggressively recruiting customer-facing talent has eased. But employees who feel economically uncertain don’t become less likely to leave. Instead, they become more likely to stay in jobs that feel stable, valued and worth staying for. That raises the stakes on everything compensation alone cannot buy, such as workplace culture, management quality and meaningful paths to advancement.
A Workforce Challenge with Structural Solutions
The rental housing industry has always been built on talented professionals who show up every day at communities across the country. In 2026, retaining those staff will require more than a salary increase: It will require career development programs with real credentials and visible pathways, management practices that reflect the demands of onsite work and a serious look at how technology can redistribute the administrative burden that drives talented people to look elsewhere.
NAAEI’s Career Map offers a practical resource for HR teams looking to build more visible career pathways. It maps compensation ranges, credential requirements and advancement steps for roles across the industry. Making career growth resources available to employees at onboarding, and referencing them during performance reviews, gives people a framework for thinking about their future at their company rather than somewhere else.
The 2025 RCLCO National Real Estate Compensation and Benefits Survey reveals a significant opportunity, and the tools to effectively address retention are increasingly accessible. For HR and operations leaders in rental housing, this represents a pivotal moment to prioritize retention as a strategic objective. By adopting this perspective, retention can be transformed from a recurring line item into a fundamental driver of organizational success and employee engagement.
Leah Cuffy is NAA’s Director of Advocacy Research.