What on site staffing actually means at 60 units, and whether it pencils

This one is worth answering plainly, because it comes up every time someone buys into a 60 unit building. On-site staffing means people whose job is that one property and who are physically there. Usually a community manager in a leasing office, a leasing agent, and one maintenance tech, sometimes a porter. The alternative is off-site or centralized: a portfolio manager covering several buildings from an office somewhere else, showings booked through self-guided tours or a traveling agent, and maintenance from a shared pool of techs who drive between properties. The reason this is a real decision rather than a rule is payroll. A full-time tech in most markets is $50k to $65k loaded, a community manager similar or more, and an office consumes a leased unit that is no longer producing rent. Call the light version of on-site $110k to $140k a year. On 60 units at $1,300 rent, gross revenue is about $936k, so on-site staffing is 12 to 15 percent of revenue before anything else is paid. That is a big bite, and it is why the industry rule of thumb has historically put full on-site staffing somewhere above 80 or 100 units. The argument for going on-site earlier is that somebody being there changes the building. Turns move faster and work orders do not sit, and residents renew because there is a face attached to the place. Centralized models save payroll and then leak it back as vacancy days and turnover. Sixty units sits close enough to the line that it can honestly go either way, and it would be useful to see how the room splits.