For as long as I’ve been in this industry, the conversation about property management has run on the same loop. We can’t find good people. Everyone’s burning out. The workload is unsustainable. Nobody sees a future in their career.
None of it is wrong. But until now, none of it came with evidence. It was anecdotes traded at conferences and in Facebook groups, and the industry has made expensive decisions off the back of it.
That’s why Kolmeo’s new State of Property Management report matters. It surveyed 411 PM professionals1 across Australia, property managers, senior PMs, department heads, operations leaders, and had the data independently analysed by Kantar.
For the first time, we can separate what the industry says is driving people out from what the numbers show actually keeps them in.
And the two are not the same. Not even close.
The uncomfortable finding
Here’s the headline that should stop every principal mid-scroll: nearly two in five property managers say they’re unlikely to remain in the industry within two years.
It’s the worst among the under-35s, the very people who are supposed to be the future of your rent roll. Sixty-three per cent describe their workload as overwhelming.
So far, so familiar. But then the report does something the industry conversation never has: it tests which factors are actually associated with people intending to stay.
Portfolio size? No consistent relationship. Agency type, independent versus franchise, boutique versus corporate? No meaningful difference. Which software do you run? No consistent link either.
Read that again. The three things agencies most commonly blame for losing people; the size of the book, the structure of the business, the technology utilised, turns out to have almost nothing to do with whether people stay.
What actually keeps people
Four factors stood out in the data, and every one of them is within an agency’s control.
A visible career path. This is the single strongest lever in the study. Of the people who can see a long term future, 77 per cent intend to stay.
Of those who can’t, 17 per cent do. That’s a 60-point gap, the widest of any factor measured.
And here’s the kicker: showing someone their future is a conversation, not a budget line. The easiest retention tool in the industry has been sitting in front of us the whole time.
Fair reward. People who feel fairly rewarded stay at 73 per cent versus 45 per cent for those who don’t.
The confronting part is that only around a third of PMs currently feel fairly rewarded at all. For junior and midlevel property managers, pay is the number one driver of intention to leave.
Leadership scope. Retention climbs steadily with the number of people someone leads, from around 60 per cent with no reports up to 87 per cent among those trusted with larger teams. Responsibility, it turns out, is a retention strategy.
Systems that work. Two in three PMs report work “falling through the cracks” because of process or system gaps, and it’s worst among the most experienced people, the ones you can least afford to lose.
Those with no system issues stay at 71 per cent versus 56 per cent for those fighting frequent errors.
Where the role goes next
The report’s bigger argument is that the property manager’s job itself has to change. Today’s PM is a reactive, task-driven operator drowning in compliance and correspondence.
Tomorrow’s is closer to a relationship director or investment adviser, someone who talks to owners about yield, rent positioning and hold-or-sell decisions, while technology carries the administrative grind.
I believe this shift is already underway, and I say that as someone building for it. Across our group we manage more than 3,000 homes, and the pattern in our own data mirrors the national picture exactly: the admin load is what breaks people; the trusted advisor work is what energises them.
The survey found PMs see the biggest automation opportunities in compliance tracking, maintenance coordination, inspection reports and routine correspondence.
No one wants AI to replace them. They want it to take the work that’s grinding them down so they can do the work that made them choose this career: property, people and problem solving.
But the data carries a warning for principals who think a software subscription is a retention plan. Technology platform adoption on its own showed no consistent link with retention.
Posture did. Agencies actively exploring, piloting or using AI hold their people at around 70 per cent; agencies that have stopped considering it altogether sit at 41 per cent. An interest in innovation is really a marker of a forward looking culture, and that’s what people stay for.
What to do on Monday
If you lead a PM business, three moves cost you almost nothing and start this week.
First, map every team member on two axes: performance and flight risk. Know who you cannot afford to lose and who holds knowledge nobody else can cover. Every single point of dependency is rent roll value sitting in one person’s head.
Second, have the career path conversation, one to one. Every person in your team should be able to describe their next step in your business. If they can’t, that’s not their failure, it’s yours. Remember the 60-point gap.
Third, ask your at-risk people what would keep them. The data shows leavers name it specifically, most often pay and compliance burden. The cheapest research you’ll ever do is that conversation.
And if you’re a property manager reading this: the grind is what technology takes first. What replaces it is a more valuable, better rewarded trusted advisor role. Ask your principal to show you the path to it. The evidence says seeing a future is the thing that makes people stay – so ask to see yours.
The housing market depends on this profession. For years we’ve responded to its pressures with sympathy and generic software. Now we finally have the data on what works. The agencies that act on it first won’t just keep their people, they’ll set the standard the rest of the industry spends the next decade chasing.
- Kolmeo, State of Property Management Report. Survey of 411 property management professionals; analysis by Kantar.