For decades, one key metric our industry has been fixated on to measure efficiency and success is the number of properties each property manager manages.
“How many properties can a property manager manage?”
It’s the question I’m most commonly asked at conferences and in meetings, one of the key benchmarks agencies use to evaluate performance, and the standard against which a business measures itself versus its peers.
In 2025, we should face a simple truth: This metric is fundamentally flawed and may be actively hindering your agency’s growth potential.
Here’s an example: I recently visited an agency managing 1,600 properties with “just four property managers.”
When I asked them to draw their organisational chart, the reality emerged: a team leader, four portfolio managers, each with ‘junior’, a remote professional and a leasing agent, plus some shared administrators and a trust accountant.
All told, 18 people were supporting the management of those properties.
So, which is the real denominator—4 or 18? More importantly, which number actually helps us understand business performance? Well, the truth is it depends, and in any event, it doesn’t really matter.
My core frustration is that this metric has been around for so long because it is easy to measure. It’s easy, so it sticks. How many metrics in property management are like that?
The end result is that the “properties per property manager” metric is an increasingly useless and, in my view, dangerous metric to focus on. Yet it just keeps hanging around.
Dollars Not Doors
We should be measuring dollars, not doors.
Staff cost per property or staff costs as a percentage of revenue provide far more accurate measures of efficiency and profitability.
When you look at the numbers across the industry, the average staff cost as a percentage of potential revenue sits between 40% and 50%. But in well-run businesses, that figure can be much lower.
And that’s where the real shift happens—not just in the numbers but in the conversation.
Instead of saying, “I want each property manager to handle 180 properties” (which can sound like a mountain to climb), what if you said, “I want to be able to pay my property managers $150,000”?
These statements are pretty much identical in their business implications but vastly different in how they’ll be received. The first sounds like hard work; the second creates a growth mindset where everyone wins.
The best agencies are already making this transition. They’re creating transparent career pathways with salary scales tied to portfolio revenue.
A new property manager can be presented with a career pathway that facilitates expansion of responsibility and a commensurate growth in salary to levels traditionally thought impossible in property management.
The beauty of this approach is that staff self-select into the level that matches their ambition and capability.
This isn’t just theory – it’s working in practice. One agency I know presents this choice directly to its team: “You choose where you want to be on this scale, and we’ll work together to get you there when you’re ready.”
Moving beyond the properties-per-manager metric also forces us to be more strategic about team structure.
Let Your Growth Goals Shape Your Team
So, what’s the right number? Well, unfortunately, it depends on your strategy, your growth rates and your culture.
Your structure should always follow your growth and culture strategies, not the other way around.
For example, if you are adding 100 properties quarterly, then you need to be thinking about how you add 2 new junior team members each quarter.
A stable business will instead have challenges related to delivering career growth without agency growth.
Think of it like water flowing down a river rather than building a perfect static model. The flow is the key.
For high-growth businesses, this means creating a pyramid where junior staff can develop into senior roles, creating a natural progression that supports your expansion.
Without this approach, you’re constantly recruiting externally and facing the challenges that come with integrating new team members.
You also need to think about capacity and utilisation rates, revenue strategies and service delivery, matching all of that to your culture.
There’s a lot to that, and we have a book dedicated to the topic. I’ll leave that for another day.
In the meantime, focusing on the economics of property management and service delivery will help put the ‘properties per property manager’ conversation to bed once and for all.
There are much better conversations we can be having.
By focusing on financial metrics rather than property numbers, we create a path where business owners, property managers, and clients all benefit from increased efficiency and improved service.
The question isn’t how many properties your managers can handle.
The real question is: How can we structure our business so everyone—owners, staff, and clients—wins as you grow?