Shortage of skilled labor in property management: Why the real problem is the process

Problem: Seven out of ten property management companies in Germany state that they are unable to fill vacant positions. Growth is being rejected, properties are being handed back, and entire regions are losing coverage.

Root Cause: The reflex is: "We need more employees." But the numbers tell a different story. The actual bottleneck is not the lack of staff, but the number of management units that a specialist can still process under today's process conditions.

Thesis: Anyone who wants to solve the shortage of skilled workers in property management must not rely solely on recruiting. They must reconstruct the underlying management system – moving away from reactive processing and towards standardized, digitally guided processes.

The Scale: How big is the shortage of skilled workers in property management really?

The numbers from the industry paint a clear picture:

Direct Answer: According to the VDIV Industry Barometer 2024, around 70% of German property management companies report that they cannot fill vacant positions at all or only with considerable delay. The European Education Center Report (EBZ) on skilled labor requirements 2023 puts the rate of companies with unfilled positions at around 73%. The BVI Industry Barometer 2023/2024 is slightly lower at around 61%. The order of magnitude is consistent across the industry: six to seven out of ten companies are affected.

What these numbers do not reveal at first glance: in parallel, the total number of employees in the real estate and housing industry has not collapsed dramatically, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). It fell from around 24,600 employees subject to social security contributions in 2017 to around 22,300 in 2021 (Destatis/Federal Statistical Office) – a decline that alone does not explain the perceived staff shortage.

And according to the VDIV survey, around 14% of management companies actively plan to hand back properties because they can no longer handle them with their current staff. This is the economic explosive power of the problem: not a decline in revenue due to competition, but a voluntary waiver of revenue due to a lack of scalability.

Why this discrepancy?

If the number of employees is only falling moderately, but almost three quarters of businesses complain about vacant positions, the simple equation "too few people" cannot be correct. The bottleneck arises elsewhere – namely, at the point where the volume of tasks per capita and process complexity meet. Regulatory requirements (CO₂ cost allocation, Heating Act, EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive) and increased expectations from owners generate an increase in tasks that legacy, paper- and email-based processes can no longer absorb.

The Misdiagnosis: Why "more staff" is the wrong answer

The intuitive reaction to a staff shortage is to hire. However, this reflex often leads to nothing in medium-sized property management companies for three reasons.

1. The labor market does not provide them

Qualified real estate specialists and managers are scarce in all regions. The problem is therefore structural – whoever wants to hire is fighting with the same 390,000 other companies for the same people. Even aggressive salary packages do not solve the problem comprehensively; they merely shift it from business to business.

2. New employees do not solve the fundamental problem

When a new property manager enters an existing process system, he or she inherits exactly the same mountain of emails, the same manual utility bill calculations, and the same system breaks between Excel, CRM, and accounting software. Onboarding costs are high, and productivity per capita remains identical to what it was before.

3. Fluctuation eats up the growth

In businesses with high process workloads and permanent reactivity, employee turnover is above average. Every new hire often only compensates for a departure. Net capacity does not grow.

Key message: Hiring more staff without changing the underlying processes is like pouring an extra glass of water into a leaking barrel. The structural leak is not the labor market – it is the process architecture.

The most important metric: Management units per employee

The industry association DDIV names a guiding value that surprises many management teams: according to DDIV surveys, the average management ratio is around 140 residential units per full-time employee. At the same time, digitally positioned property management companies show values of up to 330 units per employee according to the DDIV structural survey. That is not a rounding error. That is a factor of 2.3 to 2.4 with identical quality standards.

What does this spread tell us?

It says: the difference between "at the limit" and "scalable" is not staff strength. It is the question of how much a specialist can actually process within a given time frame. And this answer is largely determined by process maturity and the level of standardization.

What growth looks like in practice without new hires is shown in our article Scaling property management without new hires.

Benchmark Snippet: Digitalized property management companies manage up to 2.3 times as many residential units per capita as the industry average (DDIV). The difference lies not in the staff, but in process standardization, self-service communication, and automated data management.

How do you calculate your own value?

Take the number of managed residential units (WE) in your administration and divide it by the number of full-time equivalents in operational management (excluding accounting and management). Compare the result with the DDIV guideline of 140 WE/employee. If you are below 140, the gap to the digital benchmark of 330 is even larger – and the potential is therefore all the higher.

Calculation example: What process optimization brings in numbers

Anonymized scenario based on typical baseline values of a medium-sized German property management company. The specific numbers are rounded and serve illustrative purposes.

Baseline situation:

• Managed residential units: 2,800

• Operational property managers (full-time equivalents): 16

• Units per employee: 175 (slightly above DDIV average)

• Vacant positions for 12 months: 2 (unable to fill)

• Planned property reduction due to lack of capacity: 180 units per year

Goal: Scaling to the digital benchmark range (250–330 units/employee) without additional full-time positions.

Lever combination:

• Introduction of an owner portal → Reduction of telephone inquiries by approx. 50%

• Standardization of the 10 most common processes (billing, damage reporting, minutes, dunning process...)

• Central property file instead of fragmented data storage

Result corridor (conservatively estimated):

• Time saved per manager: 6–10 hours per week

• New capacity per capita: +50 to +100 units

• Total capacity with 16 employees: 3,600–4,200 units instead of 2,800 units

• No property reduction, instead absorbing up to 800 additional units with the existing team

Direct Answer: A typical medium-sized property management company can increase its capacity by 30–50% without filling a single additional full-time position – if they implement self-service communication, process standardization, and centralized data management in combination.

Lever 1: Process standardization

The biggest productivity killer in property management is not a lack of staff, but variance. Every owner inquiry is treated as an isolated case in many businesses, even though 80% of inquiries fall into a few standard patterns: payment reminders, heating utility bills, damage reports, requests for meeting minutes, payment receipt inquiries. Anyone who maps these patterns into standardized process steps with clearly defined responsibilities and tools significantly reduces the processing time per case.

What specifically happens when you standardize:

• Onboarding time for new employees decreases because there are clear guidelines

• Cover during absences becomes easier because every task is documented and replicable

• Turnover decreases – those who do not have to improvise daily stay longer

Lever 2: Self-service communication

According to data from the University of California, Irvine (Gloria Mark), a knowledge worker takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds after an interruption to return to full concentration on the previous task. In a typical manager's day with 30 to 50 incoming calls and emails, this adds up to a loss of productivity that far exceeds the official working minutes.

An owner portal where tenants, owners, and advisory boards can view their billing status, minutes, and open points independently 24/7 reduces this wave of inquiries measurably. In practice, management companies report a 40 to 60% reduction in telephone inquiries. These are exactly the minutes that were previously perceived as "non-existent staff."

Lever 3: Digital, centralized data storage

The third, often underestimated source of inefficiency is data fragmentation. If master data of a property is located in the management software, the Excel spreadsheet, the email inbox, and the physical folder, a specialist spends a measurable portion of their working time just searching for the "correct" version. A central, cloud-based platform eliminates this loss of time. It is also a prerequisite for Levers 1 and 2 to work at all.

Core Insight: The shortage of skilled workers in property management is real, but in its operational impact, it is primarily a process problem. As long as a business manages 140 units per capita even though 330 are technically possible, every hire is merely fighting symptoms.

Our Position: Anyone who wants to make their management future-proof should first invest in process design, self-service structures, and centralized data storage – and only then in additional positions. In this order, every specialist multiplies their contribution.

All overarching levers for increasing efficiency are explained in the Complete Guide to Increasing Efficiency in Property Management. The Steerability Scorecard shows where your business stands today.

Economic Outlook: The property management companies that carry out this reconstruction now will, over the next three to five years, take over the properties handed back by the remaining reactively operating businesses.

How many property management companies in Germany are affected by the shortage of skilled workers?

Depending on the source, between approximately 61% (BVI Industry Barometer 2023/2024) and 73% (EBZ Skilled Labor Demand Report 2023). The VDIV survey states around 70%. In this order of magnitude, six to seven out of ten German property management companies report vacant positions.

Is the shortage of skilled workers in property management a demographic problem or a process problem?

Both play a role, but the greater leverage lies on the process side. According to Destatis/Federal Statistical Office, the number of employees in the sector fell from around 24,600 to 22,300 between 2017 and 2021 – not enough to explain the perceived staff shortage on its own. The main bottleneck arises from the increased complexity of tasks per unit while processes remain manual.

How many units can a property manager realistically handle?

The DDIV orientation value is around 140 residential units per full-time employee. Digitally positioned management companies reach up to 330 units per capita according to the DDIV structural survey – with the same or higher quality standards.

Is hiring still worth it?

Yes – but only if the processes are established first. Hiring into a system without standardization finances existing inefficiency on a higher scale. Those who standardize processes first and then selectively fill key roles raise the productivity of the entire team.

What concrete first measure is recommended?

A bottleneck analysis: where specifically do the most inquiries, search times, and system breaks occur? Standardize the top 3 processes with the highest volume first – this usually yields 60–70% of the total potential. Read more about all efficiency levers in the Guide to Increasing Efficiency in Property Management.