How to hire a director of property management: where to find, how to screen and what to pay

A director of property management is the operating executive behind your whole management business. Regionals report to them, site teams roll up underneath, and the job is to make every community run to one standard while the company's fee income, payroll and expenses net out to the result you planned.

Four workstreams define the seat. Operations: the standards, SOPs and inspection rhythms every property runs on. People: hiring and developing the regionals who coach the site managers. Money: the management P&L — fee income, payroll, controllable expenses — and the owner reporting that comes with it. Platform: the technology decisions, from the property management system to maintenance and screening tools, that everything else runs on.

The difference between this hire and a regional is span. A regional runs a group of communities through their site managers. The director runs the regionals, sets what good looks like across all of them, and answers to you for the operation as a business.

You need one when the layer beneath you is missing. The signals show up in your own operation: several regionals reporting straight to a principal, playbooks that differ site by site, owner relationships that depend on one person, technology decisions nobody owns, and growth that keeps outrunning the org chart.

Where the director sits against the regional and portfolio layers is an org-design decision of its own. Our staffing context guide maps the structures role by role.

For the role from the candidate's side, our what a director of property management does career guide covers it in depth. This page stays on your side of the hire.

Start inside. A regional who already knows your portfolio, your owners and your systems is the shortest path to a credible director. The gap to close is company-level scope: the P&L, the owner relationships and the platform decisions. Make the step deliberate and hand those over one at a time before the title changes.

Outside, the pool is senior. Sitting directors and vice presidents at larger operators. Regionals at firms bigger than yours, ready for company scope. Operating executives from the neighboring sectors you already compete with — commercial management, HOA and condo management, affordable housing — where the work matches your book.

Senior candidates move on their own clock, so treat sourcing as outreach. Approach people who already hold a director or vice-president title, work your owners' networks, your peers and your association contacts, and build a longer timeline into the search than a site-level hire needs.

Post the role in more than one kind of place: a board that lists only property management work, industry association boards, and the executive reach of the general boards. Our where to post property management jobs guide compares the options role by role.

Wherever you post, the pay range may be required in the ad. California requires the pay scale in job postings once an employer has 15 or more employees, and Washington requires the wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits at the same headcount. New York requires the compensation or a range when advertising a job performed at least partly in New York and the employer has four or more employees. Colorado requires good-faith disclosure of the pay or range, a general description of benefits, and the expected application close date. Confirm the current rule with your state labor department before you post.

Write the posting against the real scope: the regionals and communities the hire would run, the markets, the reporting line, what they own on the P&L, and whether the platform stack is theirs to choose. An executive posting with no scope in it reads like a senior manager job and draws the wrong pipeline.

This guide is one of the role guides on our hiring hub, and a board that lists only property management work is one of the places a director search can run alongside the general boards. For the candidate's side of the same route, the director of property management job listings show what is on the board right now.

Screen for evidence at company scale. The candidate should walk you through a management P&L they owned — fee income, payroll decisions, controllable expenses — and be explicit about which lines they moved and which they only reported. Title inflation is a risk in executive hiring, and receipts are the cure.

Regional leadership is the seam. Ask which regionals they hired, coached and, when necessary, replaced, and where those people went next. A director who has only ever led site managers is interviewing for a different job than the one you are filling.

Owner and client retention is the second pillar. Ask for a management contract they kept when the owner was ready to leave, and one they won against an incumbent. Listen for the operating story behind both, not just the outcome.

Standards are where your portfolio will feel the hire. Ask for an SOP or operating standard they wrote, how they rolled it out across sites, and how they checked it was actually followed — inspection routines, preventive maintenance programs, vendor standards and the audit habit behind them.

Technology judgment is the screen resumes hide. Ask for a platform decision they led: what they replaced, why, what the switch took, and what changed for site teams afterward. A director who has never owned an implementation will hand your next one to a vendor.

Screen fair housing judgment as a leadership trait, because their standards multiply across every community you run. Under HUD's rule at 24 CFR 100.7, an owner or management company is vicariously liable for a discriminatory housing practice by its agent or employee even without knowledge of the conduct.

Finish with systems, at executive depth. Have them open the reporting pack they actually ran — a consolidated P&L, a variance review, a board update — in the tools they used daily. Fluency shows in seconds.

An executive hire carries the same compliance surface as any management hire — pay-disclosure laws, selection-procedure rules, the FCRA and state fair-chance timing. It adds one wrinkle of its own: this role will set policy for everyone under it, so verify the judgment before the paperwork. The sequence below is a practical default, not a legal opinion. Confirm the legal steps with your state agencies and counsel.

1. Write the posting. Name the scope — regionals, communities, markets, P&L ownership, platform authority — and the pay range, following the posting rules of every state the job touches.
2. Sort for operating scope. Read resumes for portfolios run, regionals led, P&L lines owned and platform decisions made, not for title polish.
3. Interview to a structure. Ask every finalist the same core set and score the answers against written criteria. If you use scored exercises, the federal Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures govern the use of tests and other selection procedures. Keep every exercise job-related and scored the same way for everyone.
4. Make finalists show work. A written 90-day operating plan for your portfolio, or a turnaround worked from your own redacted numbers, tells you more than another round of conversation.
5. Check references upward. Talk to the owners, principals or executives they reported to. Test the two claims that matter most: the fee-income growth they take credit for and the clients they say they kept.
6. Verify licenses before the offer. Confirm what the candidate holds in every state the job touches, and where your company's own license fits. The next section covers the checks.
7. Run the background check lawfully. Under the FCRA, a report you buy from a screening company is a consumer report, and the rules attach before you order it. Give a clear, conspicuous written disclosure that consists solely of that disclosure — no waivers or extra terms on the page — and get the candidate's written authorization, which may sit on the same document. If anything in the report might cost the candidate the offer, send the pre-adverse action notice first: a copy of the report and a written description of their FCRA rights. The FTC's employer guidance says the notice must include a copy of the consumer report you relied on and a copy of "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act." Only then take the adverse action, and follow it with a notice naming the screening company, its address and phone number, and the fact that the company did not make the decision. Federal law sets no fixed waiting period between the two notices, so build a reasonable review window into your timeline.
8. Handle criminal history carefully. EEOC's enforcement guidance on arrest and conviction records was still published on eeoc.gov at our October 2026 review. It treats an arrest alone as an insufficient basis for exclusion, because an arrest does not establish that criminal conduct occurred — the underlying conduct itself can still be considered. Its targeted screen weighs the nature of the offense, the time elapsed and the nature of the job, followed by an individualized assessment. Timing is local. California bars employers with five or more employees from asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer. New York City requires the same conditional-offer timing and adds its own Fair Chance Process before withdrawing an offer over conviction history. Washington instead bars criminal-history questions and checks until the applicant is initially determined otherwise qualified. Check the rules where the job sits.
9. Keep the records. Employers covered by Title VII, the ADA and GINA must keep application forms and other hiring records for at least one year from the date the record was made or the personnel action taken, whichever is later.
10. Close the offer in writing. Put the scope, the authority that goes with it, the reporting line, the pay and bonus structure and the first-year goals into the offer letter. An executive accepts a mandate, not a job description — write the mandate down.

Anchor on the federal data, and read its label first. The BLS occupation series for the field is property, real estate and community association managers counted together (SOC 11-9141), across all industries — one series shared by every title in it. In the data we reviewed, directors are not broken out within it. This is the closest BLS category for the role, not a director-only series.

In BLS's May 2025 OEWS survey, that occupation earned a median of $69,990 a year ($33.65 an hour). The middle half of the occupation earns between $50,720 (25th percentile) and $97,910 (75th percentile). The series spans site-level managers through community association managers, so read your own market's row and weigh the scope this seat carries — a company-level P&L and every regional under it — rather than the national median alone.

OEWS counts payroll employees only, so the figures never reflect an owner-operator's income. For the state and metro tables, our director of property management salary data page carries the full BLS breakdown. Use your own market's row, and adjust for the number of regionals and communities the role runs.

Then decide how the salary sits against overtime law. The federal FLSA white-collar tests require a salary basis, a salary level and duties that fit an exemption. The salary level in force in 2026 is $684 a week ($35,568 a year) under 29 CFR 541.600. A federal court vacated the 2024 rule that would have raised it, and the DOL republished the prior thresholds in a final rule dated May 15, 2026.

The duties have to carry it too. The executive exemption expects a primary duty of managing the enterprise or a recognized department, customarily and regularly directing the work of two or more employees, and hiring-or-firing authority or recommendations given particular weight. The administrative exemption expects office or non-manual work tied to running the business, with discretion and independent judgment on matters of significance. A salary alone never makes anyone exempt.

The highly compensated employee route applies at $107,432 in total annual compensation, including at least $684 a week on a salary or fee basis. It never covers non-management employees in maintenance, construction and similar occupations, however highly paid — worth remembering when the team under your director includes highly paid engineers and trades staff.

A housing benefit, where your company offers one, never counts toward the salary test either: the level is measured exclusive of board, lodging or other facilities.

States stack their own floors on top. California sets its exempt salary at no less than two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment — $16.90 an hour effective January 1, 2026, which works out to $70,304 a year for 2026. Confirm your state's current threshold with its labor agency before you classify anyone.

Structure incentives around what you screened for — owner retention, fee-income performance, expense control. If any part of your structure sits non-exempt, nondiscretionary bonuses must be included in the regular rate when overtime is calculated. Have employment counsel or the DOL's Wage and Hour Division confirm classification before you commit to a structure.

Licensing for this hire is a state question — and because the director's decisions reach every community, it is also a company question. Whether managing or leasing for others takes a real estate license is set state by state. BLS puts it generally that in most states, property managers must hold a property management license or a real estate broker's license, and that managers of federally subsidized public housing must hold certifications. Exemptions turn on duties, pay and who the person works for, never on the job title. Our state-by-state licensing guide explains how the rules are structured; your state real estate commission is the authority.

Two layers to check. The person: ask for license numbers during screening and verify them in each commission's licensee search where it publishes one. The company: if your hire will work under the firm's own license, confirm that license is current in each state too. The two checks are separate — confirm with each state commission which activity each license covers.

Credentials are a different thing from a license. IREM's CPM is itself not a license: IREM requires CPM graduates to hold an active real estate license only if one is required for their position in their state. Treat CPM, ARM, CAM, CAPS, CMCA and PCAM as evidence of training and commitment — preferred qualifications in a posting, never a substitute for the license check.

Rules change, and exemptions are narrow. Confirm who needs a license — and who is exempt — with the real estate commission in every state this role touches, before you extend an offer.

Set the first 90 days as a written mandate with three parts: an operating review, an owner tour and a plan. The operating review covers the SOPs, staffing, budgets and the platform stack as they actually are. The owner tour puts your new director in front of the management clients the role exists to keep. The plan is the 90-day operating agenda they write and you approve, with the metrics they will be measured on.

Hand the operation over deliberately: systems logins and reporting, the owner and contract list, budgets and variances by community, the vendor list, open capital projects, and the org chart as it really is, including the openings.

Do the federal paperwork on time. Every person hired after November 6, 1986 to work for pay in the U.S. needs a Form I-9. The employee completes Section 1 by the first day of work, you complete Section 2 within three business days, and you keep the form for three years after hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later.

Put fair housing training in week one, and document it. The federal Fair Housing Act reaches renting decisions on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin and disability, and state and local laws can add more. Under HUD's rule at 24 CFR 100.7, your company is vicariously liable for a discriminatory housing practice by its agent or employee even without knowledge of the conduct. It is also directly liable for failing to correct and end discrimination it knew or should have known about. Your director sets what normal looks like at every community you run, which is exactly why their fluency matters. Our fair housing training guide covers the employer side.

Keeping a good director matters, because the industry moves. In BLS's JOLTS data for 2025, the real estate and rental and leasing industry averaged 1.6% of employees quitting per month and 2.6% total separations per month — a sector-wide series, broader than property management alone.

The levers you control at this level are scope ones. Match the authority to the accountability you hired for, staff the portfolio so it can actually carry, review pay against the market band, and build a growth path toward vice-president or partner scope. Credit the operation's wins in front of the owners, too. Our onboarding and employee retention guides cover the mechanics.

Employer information, not legal, tax or licensing advice — confirm licensing questions with your state real estate commission, and pay and classification questions with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or employment counsel.