Property management industry trends: owners, renters and operations

The biggest property management industry trends are growth that is harder to achieve, technology adoption that is broad but shallow, and owners and renters who judge a manager mostly on service. Those three threads run through every major industry survey published in the last two years.

This report compiles findings from Buildium's annual property management industry reports (run with Propertyware and NARPM and based on responses from thousands of managers, owners and residents), AppFolio's 2025 Renter Preferences Report, Hemlane's 2026 Tenant Insights Report and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each figure below names the study it came from, and the full list is in the sources at the end.

A note on methods: these are vendor surveys, and the companies that run them sell software to property managers. The samples are large and the questions are published, but treat them as directional rather than census counts. Where two sources measure the same thing differently, we say so.

Most property management companies plan to grow, but fewer are actually pulling it off. Buildium's 2026 Property Management Industry Report found 75% of property managers plan to grow in 2026, while only 55% expanded in 2025.

Growth has been the top priority for a long time. Buildium's 2025 report described portfolio growth as the number one priority for the seventh year in a row, with 91% of companies planning to expand their portfolio in the next two years. The same report said generating enough revenue to outpace rising costs remains a struggle.

The gap between plans and results matters. A company that wants 20 more doors but loses three owners for every five it signs is running in place. Growth in this industry depends as much on keeping owners as on winning them, which is why the service findings later in this report carry so much weight.

Property managers adopted AI quickly, but very few have automated a process end to end. Buildium reports AI adoption jumped from 20% in 2024 to 58% in 2025, while only 8% of companies have been able to fully automate any process.

That pattern is common across service industries. Teams try a tool for drafting listings or answering a question, but the routine work (routing a maintenance request, confirming a showing, sending an owner update, chasing a late payment) still moves by hand between inboxes, phones and the property management software.

The BLS notes this directly in its outlook for property, real estate and community association managers: automation of tasks such as posting vacancies and assigning maintenance requests may slow employment growth in the occupation. In other words, the federal labor outlook already assumes these tasks will be automated more over the coming decade.

Rental owners hire a property manager mainly for maintenance and judge them mainly on service. Buildium's 2026 report found 56% of owners say maintenance support is the main reason they hired a manager, and that maintenance is also their top source of stress.

Buildium's research on owner expectations adds that 74% of rental owners say customer service is their number one concern when hiring a property manager, and nearly half say they are not getting the value they expected. That combination is a warning and an opening. Owners who feel underserved are the ones most likely to switch, and the manager who answers fast and reports clearly is the one they switch to.

For a property management company, owner service usually comes down to a few repeatable moments:

• How quickly an owner hears about a maintenance issue and its cost.
• Whether approvals for repairs are simple to give (a text or a link) or require a phone tag.
• Whether statements and updates arrive on a predictable schedule without the owner asking.
• How vacancies, showings and applications are reported while a unit is empty.

Renters want fast, easy communication, digital payment and maintenance handled well. AppFolio's 2025 Renter Preferences Report, a survey of 2,002 U.S. renters fielded in January 2025, found renters satisfied with their property manager are 73% more likely to plan to renew, and renters satisfied with maintenance are 71% more likely to plan to renew.

Communication drives much of that satisfaction. As reported by Multifamily Executive, the same AppFolio survey found renters satisfied with communication are 79% more likely to be satisfied with their property manager. And 86% of renters satisfied with maintenance communication were also satisfied with their manager overall.

The channel matters too. Hemlane's 2026 Tenant Insights Report, based on a survey of more than 4,000 renters, found 84% of tenants prefer online portals, text messages or email. Hemlane also found 54% of tenants are very likely to renew, with 20% still undecided. That undecided group is where service makes the difference.

Younger renters care much more about digital service. AppFolio found digital move-in services are important to 71% of Gen Z renters, 58% of Millennials, 53% of Gen X and 34% of Baby Boomers. Gen Z also leads on prioritizing flexible rent at 77%, compared with 37% of Boomers.

Payments are still a sore point. AppFolio found 39% of renters still pay rent by cash or check, and 59% of those say online payment is not available to them. Hemlane found 80% of tenants want to pay rent by ACH bank transfer. A company still collecting paper checks is out of step with most of its residents and creating extra office work for itself.

Move-in is another gap. AppFolio found three in four renters faced challenges during move-in, fewer than 30% completed move-in tasks with digital tools, and 80% of those who did found the tools helpful.

Property management is a large, steady occupation with modest growth. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook counts 460,400 property, real estate and community association manager jobs in 2025, with a median pay of $69,990 per year as of May 2025.

BLS projects 4% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, about as fast as average, with roughly 36,900 openings each year, mostly from replacing people who retire or change careers. BLS also notes that some managers must respond to emergencies outside normal hours, which is a practical reason after-hours coverage keeps coming up in this industry.

With steady but not fast job growth, most companies cannot hire their way to the growth targets in the Buildium survey. The work per manager has to get lighter, which points back to the gap between AI adoption (58%) and full automation (8%).

For a property management company, the data points to a clear order of work: protect the owners and residents you have, make maintenance and communication fast and visible, then grow. The surveys agree that service quality decides renewals on both sides of the relationship.

Practical steps that follow from the findings:

• Measure maintenance response. Track time from request to first reply and from request to completion, since maintenance is the top reason owners hire you and a leading driver of renter renewals.
• Move routine communication to text, email and portals. 84% of renters in Hemlane's survey prefer those channels, so confirmations, status updates and reminders belong there.
• Give owners a predictable update rhythm. With 74% of owners naming customer service as their top hiring concern, a regular status message per property is cheap insurance against churn.
• Offer electronic rent payment to every resident. It removes cash and check handling and matches what most renters say they value.
• Pick one process to automate fully. Buildium's 8% figure shows how rare end-to-end automation is. Maintenance intake and routing, showing confirmations, or late-rent reminders are common first candidates.
• Cover after hours. BLS notes managers may need to respond to emergencies outside normal hours, and residents notice how those calls are handled.

Monvell designs and builds the communication and operations systems behind these steps, such as maintenance intake that routes itself, owner and resident updates by text and email, and after-hours call handling. If you want a starting point, our free digital audit reviews how your current setup handles inquiries and follow-up.