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The Portfolio Playbook

Where your operation sits against published industry figures, what the support layer looks like as you build it, what each role actually owns, and the questions worth asking before you fill one. Written for executives who have already split the manager role and are deciding what comes next.

Where Your Operation Sits

Answer two questions and the benchmarks appear. Answer more and the arithmetic sharpens. No industry savings figure is quoted anywhere here, because none is published for this industry.

Start hereThe two numbers you know cold
Two moreFrom your headcount and last year's departures
If you have itFigures from the P&L

About $3,500 per association per month.

Salary plus taxes, benefits and insurance.

Nobody knows theseAssumptions, set to round numbers until you change them

No source publishes any of these three for community association management. They are placeholders, not benchmarks, and they drive every dollar in the departures section.

The two hiresWages and employer burden

Default: national mean annual wage for customer service representatives, BLS, May 2025.

Default: private-industry benefits ($14.07/hr) over wages ($32.82/hr), BLS, June 2026.

Default: $12 an hour × 40 hours × 52 weeks.

Wages only. Replace the defaults with your own market's figures; the result is your arithmetic, not a benchmark.

Showing example figures. Change any field and it becomes your model.

Your figure for last year's departures: $53,723.

Where You Sit

Each bar is the share of management companies reporting that range. Your value is marked.

Associations per full-time community manager10.9per manager
  1. 7%1–4
  2. 20%5–7
  3. You35%8–10
  4. 20%11–13
  5. 17%14+
Support staff per community manager0.41per manager
  1. 3%0
  2. You20%0.1–0.4
  3. 25%0.5–0.9
  4. 21%1.0–1.4
  5. 22%1.5+

A further 10% answered “not sure”.

Community manager turnover, last 12 months13.6%
  1. 66%Under 10%
  2. You17%10–19%
  3. 9%20–29%
  4. 1%30–39%
  5. 3%40%+

A further 4% did not track it.

Client retention, last 12 months94%
  1. 2%Under 85%
  2. 4%85–89%
  3. You16%90–94%
  4. 26%95–97%
  5. 50%98%+

Distributions: Foundation for Community Association Research, Community Association Management Company Benchmarking Trends Snap Survey, October 2025, 94 respondents. Percentages are rounded as published and do not always total 100. And 54% of community managers list lack of administrative support as a major source of dissatisfaction: Foundation for Community Association Research, Attracting Talent to the Community Association Management Industry, 2021.

What Last Year's Departures Cost You

These figures lean on the assumptions under Nobody knows these. They are the first thing a CFO will question.

Your figure for last year

Recruiting and replacement
$18,000
Salary paid for output not yet delivered during ramp
$35,723
Total
$53,723
Associations that needed covering while those roles were open
33

What the Same Role Costs, Two Ways

One support role, filled locally or filled remotely as a direct hire. Your payroll arithmetic, not an industry benchmark and not a guarantee.

Local hire

Wage plus employer burden, per year
$66,624

Remote team member

Wage, per year
$24,960
Difference per year
$41,664 less (63%)
Three-year difference
$124,991 less (63%)

What this comparison assumes. That both hires do the same scope of work, that the local wage reflects your market, and that the remote wage reflects what the role commands at the seniority you need. It compares wages and employer burden only: no recruiting, placement or service fees on either side, and no allowance for the design, onboarding and management time either hire requires, which is real on both sides and heavier in year one. Default figures: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, and Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026.

What Sits With One Manager

Annual fee revenue attached to one manager's book
$458,182
Across the managers who left last year
$1,374,545

Read this as exposure, not as loss. No published source establishes how often clients follow a departing community manager, so this figure predicts nothing. It states how much fee revenue currently depends on one person's relationships and one person's knowledge of those associations.

What This Does Not Show
  • The cost comparison is your arithmetic on figures you entered, for one scope of work you defined. Not a published benchmark, not a quote, not a guarantee.
  • It does not establish that support staffing reduces manager turnover. The surveys show why managers leave and how heavy the workload is. They do not test that link.
  • The Foundation published manager workload and support staffing as two separate distributions and did not cross-tabulate them. Your two marks imply nothing about a typical or optimal combination.
  • The dollar cost of a manager departure has never been published for this industry. Every dollar figure comes from your inputs and your assumptions.

Take Your Results With You

Opens your email app with a plain-text summary of your inputs, assumptions and results, addressed to the email you enter.

The Same Chart at Four Stages

Nothing here prescribes how many support staff a company of your size should have. What it fixes is the line: which work moves, which never does, and what each role is measured on once it exists.

Stage

CEO / Owner

Portfolio & Community ManagersCredentialed. Holds judgment and the client relationship.

Above the line: decides, approves, signs

Below the line: prepares, tracks, documents, routes, escalates

  • Manager Support
    • Assistant Community ManagerNew
  • Resident & Compliance

    Not built yet

  • Finance

    Not built yet

  • Property & Transactions

    Not built yet

One role below the line. The manager's authority is unchanged.

What moved off the manager's desk

  • Board packet assembly — agenda, prior minutes, financial exhibits, the manager's report
  • Meeting logistics, notice distribution and attendance tracking
  • Minutes drafted from recordings, routed for review
  • The action log from every meeting, and the chasing that follows it
  • The community document archive, filed and current

What the manager still holds

Unchanged at every stage.

  • What gets said, and to whom
  • Whether something is a violation at all
  • Approve, deny or condition an ARC request
  • Vendor selection and spend
  • Waivers, liens and legal referral
  • Approval and release of funds
  • Certification and signature
  • The board relationship

What the new roles are measured on

Assistant Community Manager

  • Packet delivered on schedule
  • Action items closed by due date
  • Manager rework rate on drafts
  • Minutes turnaround
  • Items aged past their promise date

The most common place to start. Board season is the pressure every portfolio manager feels at once, and packet preparation is high-volume, low-judgment and entirely documentable.

CEO / Owner

Portfolio & Community ManagersCredentialed. Holds judgment and the client relationship.

Above the line: decides, approves, signs

Below the line: prepares, tracks, documents, routes, escalates

  • Manager Support
    • Assistant Community Manager
  • Resident & Compliance

    Not built yet

  • Finance

    Not built yet

  • Property & Transactions
    • Maintenance & Work Order CoordinatorNew

A second role in a different pod. Two queues now have owners; the line has not moved.

What moved off the manager's desk

  • Work order intake, categorization and routing to the approved vendor
  • Status chasing, and the update loop back to the homeowner
  • Certificate of insurance collection and expiry tracking
  • Bid solicitation against a written scope
  • After-hours ticket logging and next-morning triage

What the manager still holds

Unchanged at every stage.

  • What gets said, and to whom
  • Whether something is a violation at all
  • Approve, deny or condition an ARC request
  • Vendor selection and spend
  • Waivers, liens and legal referral
  • Approval and release of funds
  • Certification and signature
  • The board relationship

What the new roles are measured on

Maintenance & Work Order Coordinator

  • Time to first vendor contact
  • Orders open past expected completion
  • COI lapses, target zero
  • Bid packages complete on request
  • Homeowner status inquiries, which should fall

The second role usually answers a different pressure than the first. Vendor chasing needs no credential and consumes an afternoon, which makes it the clearest second candidate.

CEO / Owner

Portfolio & Community ManagersCredentialed. Holds judgment and the client relationship.

Above the line: decides, approves, signs

Below the line: prepares, tracks, documents, routes, escalates

  • Manager Support
    • Assistant Community Manager
  • Resident & Compliance
    • Customer Service RepresentativeNew
    • Compliance & Violations CoordinatorNew
    • Architectural Review (ARC) CoordinatorNew
  • Finance

    Not built yet

  • Property & Transactions
    • Maintenance & Work Order Coordinator

A full pod. Resident contact and enforcement now have owners, and the escalation rule is written.

What moved off the manager's desk

  • Inbound calls and the homeowner inbox, answered inside a stated window
  • First-pass triage against a written decision tree
  • Violation intake, evidence logging and the approved notice sequence
  • Cure period and re-inspection calendars
  • ARC application intake, completeness checks and committee packets

What the manager still holds

Unchanged at every stage.

  • What gets said, and to whom
  • Whether something is a violation at all
  • Approve, deny or condition an ARC request
  • Vendor selection and spend
  • Waivers, liens and legal referral
  • Approval and release of funds
  • Certification and signature
  • The board relationship

What the new roles are measured on

Customer Service Representative

  • Answer rate and speed
  • First-contact resolution
  • Escalation accuracy
  • Repeat contacts on the same issue

Compliance & Violations Coordinator

  • Notices issued within the approved window
  • Evidence completeness at the point of challenge
  • Cure dates tracked without a miss
  • Divergence flags raised before a complaint arrives

Architectural Review (ARC) Coordinator

  • Acknowledgement inside the stated window
  • Applications complete at first committee review
  • Review-clock misses, target zero
  • Precedent correctly surfaced

This is the pod where the authority boundary earns its keep. Every role in it touches a homeowner or an enforcement record, and every one of them stops short of the judgment call.

CEO / Owner

Portfolio & Community ManagersCredentialed. Holds judgment and the client relationship.

Above the line: decides, approves, signs

Below the line: prepares, tracks, documents, routes, escalates

  • Manager Support
    • Assistant Community Manager
    • Administrative AssistantNew
  • Resident & Compliance
    • Customer Service Representative
    • Compliance & Violations Coordinator
    • Architectural Review (ARC) Coordinator
  • Finance
    • Association BookkeeperNew
    • Accounts Payable ClerkNew
    • Collections & AR CoordinatorNew
  • Property & Transactions
    • Maintenance & Work Order Coordinator
    • Resale & Transfer CoordinatorNew

Ten roles, four pods. Nothing crosses the line except exceptions, approvals and judgment calls.

What moved off the manager's desk

  • Transaction coding, reconciliation prep and financial package assembly
  • Invoice intake, matching, routing and the chasing of late approvers
  • Assessment posting, aging reports and payment plan tracking
  • Resale and transfer package assembly, and new owner setup
  • Records, mailings, meeting logistics and data hygiene across the portfolio

What the manager still holds

Unchanged at every stage.

  • What gets said, and to whom
  • Whether something is a violation at all
  • Approve, deny or condition an ARC request
  • Vendor selection and spend
  • Waivers, liens and legal referral
  • Approval and release of funds
  • Certification and signature
  • The board relationship

What the new roles are measured on

Association Bookkeeper

  • Coding accuracy by post-review corrections
  • Exception aging
  • Packages delivered on schedule
  • Audit items ready first time

Accounts Payable Clerk

  • Invoices in queue within 24 hours
  • Approval cycle time
  • Duplicates caught before payment
  • Late-fee incidents

Collections & AR Coordinator

  • Aging accuracy
  • Reports delivered on cadence
  • Payment plan compliance rate
  • Referral packages complete first time

Resale & Transfer Coordinator

  • Turnaround against the stated window
  • Packages needing correction after review
  • New owner setup before first assessment

Administrative Assistant

  • Mailings out on schedule
  • Returned mail rate
  • Record accuracy on audit
  • Onboarding checklist completion

Few companies hold all ten. The reason to show the whole layer is the shape: four pods with named owners, and a manager above the line whose responsibilities are identical to what they were at stage one.

There is no ideal staffing number on this page, deliberately. The Foundation published associations per manager and support staff per manager as two separate distributions and did not cross-tabulate them, so no source supports a statement like “at 200 associations you need four support staff.” Where a company starts depends on which queue is breaking, not on a ratio.

What Each Role Owns, and What It Never Touches

The ten support roles community association management companies hire for, using the industry's own titles. The second list in each is the important one. It is what lets you answer a board president in a sentence, and it is the half most companies never write down.

Keep your own titles. If you already use Client Experience Associate, Community Standards Coordinator, Covenants Administrator or Client Accounting Specialist internally, use those. What should not vary is what each role owns and what it never touches.

  1. Assistant Community ManagerManager Support

    The board packet is built before the manager opens it, and nothing agreed in a meeting gets lost afterwards.

    Owns

    • Board packet assembly — agenda, prior minutes, financial exhibits and the manager's report, to a standing schedule
    • Meeting logistics: notice distribution, calendar, materials, attendance tracking
    • Minutes drafting from recordings or notes, routed for manager review
    • The action log from every meeting, and the chasing that follows it
    • Resident correspondence on forms, reservations, amenity access and general questions
    • Community document archive — governing documents, resolutions, meeting records, votes and proxies
    • New board member onboarding packets after each annual meeting

    Does not own

    • Sending sensitive, enforcement, legal or policy communication
    • Interpreting governing documents for a homeowner or a board
    • Any commitment on behalf of the association
    • Representing the management company at a board meeting
    • Final content of the manager's report or the minutes
    • Decisions about what goes on an agenda

    Scorecard

    • Packet delivered on schedule
    • Action items closed by due date
    • Manager rework rate on drafts
    • Minutes turnaround
    • Items aged past their promise date
    Who is good at this
    Someone who has run a shared inbox or a service queue against a published response standard. Written English a board member reads without noticing it. Documentation instinct matters more than industry vocabulary, which takes weeks.
    Ramp
    Shadowing and terminology in month one. Packet prep for a handful of communities under review by month two. Full portfolio coverage on the scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    Vantaca, CINC, TOPS, Caliber or Enumerate · the community portal · document archive · shared calendar
  2. Customer Service RepresentativeResident & Compliance

    A homeowner gets an answer the same day, from someone whose actual job it is.

    Owns

    • Inbound calls and the community inbox, answered inside a stated window
    • First-pass triage: resolve, route or escalate against a written decision tree
    • Account balance and payment-method questions, from the record
    • Portal registration help and password resets
    • Logging every contact so the next person has the history
    • After-hours voicemail and ticket capture for next-morning routing
    • Reporting the top five recurring questions each month

    Does not own

    • Any judgment call on an enforcement or financial dispute
    • Committing the association or the management company to anything
    • Negotiating a payment arrangement
    • Communication with a board member acting in their board capacity
    • Anything a homeowner is likely to forward to an attorney

    Scorecard

    • Answer rate and speed
    • First-contact resolution
    • Escalation accuracy
    • Repeat contacts on the same issue
    • Contact log completeness
    Who is good at this
    High-volume service experience with a real quality standard behind it. Hospitality and call-center backgrounds transfer well — this is the one role where that is genuinely the right instinct.
    Ramp
    Live on calls with a script and an escalation tree in weeks two to three, the fastest of the ten to reach the phone. Handling the queue under review through month two, scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    Phone system · the management platform · the portal · the ticket queue
  3. Association BookkeeperFinance

    Month-end stops being an event.

    Owns

    • Transaction coding to the approved chart of accounts, per association
    • Bank and credit card reconciliation preparation, with an exception log
    • Financial package assembly for board review on a published calendar
    • Budget-versus-actual variance flagging for the manager's attention
    • Reserve contribution and transfer records
    • Vendor W-9 and payment-detail collection and verification
    • 1099 preparation support and year-end audit document assembly

    Does not own

    • Approving anything, or releasing any funds
    • Bank access beyond read-only, and never a signature
    • Closing a period or approving a ledger
    • Budget decisions or reserve funding recommendations
    • Anything requiring a licensed accounting opinion

    Scorecard

    • Coding accuracy measured by post-review corrections
    • Exception aging
    • Packages delivered on schedule
    • Reconciliation prep turnaround
    • Audit items ready first time
    Who is good at this
    Bookkeeping in a multi-entity environment. The multi-entity part is what transfers — every association is a separate set of books with its own board and its own budget.
    Ramp
    Month one on coding under review. Month two on reconciliation prep. Owning a package calendar on the scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    The management platform's GL · banking portals in read-only · spreadsheets · the document archive
  4. Accounts Payable ClerkFinance

    No invoice sits in a manager's inbox waiting to be looked at.

    Owns

    • Invoice intake from every channel, into one queue
    • Matching invoices to work orders, contracts and approved scopes
    • Coding and routing for approval, chasing the approvers who are late
    • Duplicate and overbilling detection
    • Vendor statement reconciliation and dispute documentation
    • Recurring-contract payment calendars and renewal date tracking
    • The paid-invoice archive, filed against the right association and period

    Does not own

    • Approving an invoice at any dollar amount
    • Initiating or releasing a payment
    • Deciding a vendor dispute
    • Authorizing work outside an approved scope or a change order

    Scorecard

    • Invoices in queue within 24 hours of receipt
    • Approval cycle time
    • Duplicates and errors caught before payment
    • Late-fee incidents
    • Archive completeness
    Who is good at this
    Straight AP experience, ideally somewhere with a real approval chain and a refusal to work around it. This is a role where following the process exactly is the skill.
    Ramp
    Productive under supervision in weeks three to four — the fastest of the ten to reach useful output, and the easiest to measure. Scorecard at 90 days like every other seat.
    Lives in
    AP module of the management platform · vendor portals · the work order system · the document archive
  5. Collections & AR CoordinatorFinance

    Delinquency is tracked continuously instead of discovered at budget time.

    Owns

    • Assessment posting and payment application
    • Aging reports on a fixed cadence, by association
    • The delinquency timeline against the board's approved collections policy
    • Payment plan tracking and compliance monitoring
    • Documentation packages for accounts being referred out
    • Lockbox and payment-processor exception handling
    • Reporting which associations are drifting and why

    Does not own

    • Waiving a fee, an interest charge or a late penalty
    • Deciding when to lien, refer to counsel or write off
    • Negotiating or agreeing a payment plan
    • Any communication a delinquent owner could read as a demand
    • Bank authority of any kind

    Scorecard

    • Aging accuracy
    • Reports delivered on cadence
    • Payment plan compliance rate
    • Referral packages complete first time
    • Days between a milestone and it being surfaced
    Who is good at this
    AR or credit-control experience. Comfortable with numbers that represent an uncomfortable situation, and disciplined about staying on the reporting side of the line.
    Ramp
    Month one on posting and reporting. Month two owning the aging cadence under review. Referral documentation and scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    AR module · lockbox and processor portals · the collections policy document · the archive
  6. Compliance & Violations CoordinatorResident & Compliance

    Enforcement becomes consistent and documented, which is also the best answer you have when it is challenged.

    Owns

    • Violation intake from inspections, reports and homeowner complaints
    • Photo and evidence logging against the right lot and the right rule
    • The notice sequence, issued on the schedule the board approved
    • Cure period and re-inspection calendars
    • Hearing scheduling, notice and packet preparation
    • Fine ledger tracking against the approved schedule
    • Consistency reporting — flagging where enforcement has diverged within a community

    Does not own

    • Deciding whether something is a violation
    • Waiving a fine or extending a cure period
    • Any discussion with a homeowner about an enforcement decision
    • Legal referral or communication with counsel
    • Interpreting an ambiguous covenant

    Scorecard

    • Notices issued within the approved window
    • Evidence completeness at the point of challenge
    • Cure dates tracked without a miss
    • Divergence flags raised before a complaint arrives
    Who is good at this
    Process discipline over judgment. Someone who follows a documented sequence exactly and raises a hand at the edge case instead of resolving it. Claims, permitting, credentialing and QA backgrounds transfer unusually well.
    Ramp
    Month one learning the governing documents and the notice schedules. Month two running the sequence under review. Owning the calendar on the scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    Compliance module · inspection app output · photo archive · the governing documents · hearing calendar
  7. Architectural Review (ARC) CoordinatorResident & Compliance

    Applications stop stalling on incompleteness, and committees get a packet they can actually decide from.

    Owns

    • Application intake, acknowledgement and the review clock
    • Completeness checks against the community's submission requirements
    • Chasing missing plans, specifications, surveys and neighbor sign-offs
    • Committee packet assembly with prior precedent for similar requests
    • Committee meeting scheduling and vote recording
    • Decision letters issued from the committee's recorded decision
    • The approvals archive, searchable by lot and by request type
    • Post-approval completion tracking and closeout

    Does not own

    • Approving, denying or conditioning any request
    • Interpreting design guidelines for an applicant
    • Advising a homeowner on what would be approved
    • Granting a variance or an extension

    Scorecard

    • Acknowledgement inside the stated window
    • Applications complete at first committee review
    • Review-clock misses, target zero
    • Precedent correctly surfaced
    • Closeout rate
    Who is good at this
    Permitting, planning support or insurance underwriting support — anywhere the job is checking a submission against a checklist and chasing what is missing without deciding the outcome.
    Ramp
    Month one on intake and completeness. Month two on packet assembly under review. Precedent research, closeout and scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    ARC module or forms queue · design guidelines · the approvals archive · committee calendar
  8. Maintenance & Work Order CoordinatorProperty & Transactions

    The chase stops being the manager's job, and a homeowner can be told where their request actually stands.

    Owns

    • Work order intake, categorization and routing to the approved vendor
    • Status chasing and the update loop back to the homeowner or manager
    • Certificate of insurance collection, expiry tracking and renewal chasing
    • Bid solicitation against a written scope, and side-by-side comparison assembly
    • Recurring maintenance and warranty calendars
    • Job costing records against the right association and budget line
    • After-hours ticket logging and next-morning triage
    • Vendor performance notes — response times, callbacks, no-shows

    Does not own

    • Selecting a vendor or awarding work
    • Approving spend, a change order, or anything above the board's threshold
    • Writing the scope of work
    • Declaring an emergency or committing association funds to one
    • Accepting completed work as satisfactory

    Scorecard

    • Time to first vendor contact
    • Orders open past expected completion
    • COI lapses, target zero
    • Bid packages complete on request
    • Homeowner status inquiries, which should fall
    Who is good at this
    Dispatch, field service or facilities coordination. Someone comfortable making the fourth call to a vendor and still pleasant about it. The most phone-forward of the ten.
    Ramp
    Month one on intake and routing. Month two owning the chase under review. Bids, COI compliance and scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    Work order module · vendor portals · the COI tracker · the phone
  9. Resale & Transfer CoordinatorProperty & Transactions

    A revenue line stops being capacity-bound. Requests turn around on a clock instead of when someone has time.

    Owns

    • Resale and transfer request intake and the turnaround clock on each one
    • Package assembly — governing documents, financials, insurance, rules
    • Assembling the account and compliance records a certificate is built from
    • Title, lender and closing-agent correspondence on status and missing items
    • Document version control on the official set
    • New owner intake: welcome pack, portal registration, account setup, autopay enrollment
    • Records retention, filing discipline and the audit trail
    • Resale revenue reporting by association

    Does not own

    • Certifying a balance or signing anything a closing relies on
    • Interpreting a governing document for a buyer, lender or attorney
    • Confirming compliance status as a matter of record
    • Approving a transfer or waiving a transfer fee

    Scorecard

    • Turnaround against the stated window
    • Packages needing correction after review
    • Document version accuracy
    • New owner setup complete before first assessment
    • Resale revenue per association
    Who is good at this
    Title, escrow or closing coordination — anywhere the job runs on a deadline someone else set. Deadline instinct is the whole role.
    Ramp
    Month one on intake and assembly under review. Month two on the correspondence loop. Owning the clock on the scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    Resale portal · the management platform · the document archive · email with title and lender contacts
  10. Administrative AssistantManager Support

    The small things that quietly consume a whole afternoon stop landing on people who cost more.

    Owns

    • Mailings — notices, statements, newsletters, annual disclosures
    • Data hygiene: owner records, contact details, mailing addresses, tenant registers
    • Document scanning, naming and filing to the archive standard
    • Calendar and meeting logistics across the portfolio
    • Form and template maintenance
    • Newsletter and community announcement assembly from supplied content
    • Expense reports, supply orders and internal reporting support
    • Onboarding checklists when a new community comes on

    Does not own

    • Any client-facing communication without review
    • Deciding what gets communicated, or when
    • Access to funds, banking or payment systems
    • Anything with a statutory deadline attached to it

    Scorecard

    • Mailings out on schedule
    • Returned mail rate
    • Record accuracy on audit
    • Filing compliance
    • New community onboarding checklist completion
    Who is good at this
    General admin with genuine attention to detail and no drama about repetitive work. The easiest of the ten to hire and the easiest to underuse — give it a real scorecard or it drifts.
    Ramp
    Productive under supervision in weeks two to three. Scorecard at 90 days.
    Lives in
    The management platform · mail merge and print vendors · the archive · shared calendars

Retention and Your Multiple

Management fee revenue is what an association is worth this year. Your multiple is what it is worth when you sell, hand over or recapitalize, and retention is the lever that moves it. This works that out from your own book.

Your bookFour numbers off the top of your head

Decides which valuation band you sit in.

About $3,500 per association per month.

EBIT or EBITDA. Most reported margins in this industry fall between 6% and 20%.

RetentionThe number that moves the multiple

Showing example figures. Change any field and it becomes your model.

At 94.0% you are inside the band advisers associate with a premium asset,

which they put at 90% or better on gross retention and 105% or better on net. Holding that through growth is what separates the two valuation tiers.

What One Association Is Worth

This is the part that gets missed. Losing an association does not cost you its annual fee. It costs you its share of operating profit multiplied by whatever your book trades at, and it compounds, because retention is itself one of the things setting the multiple.

Enterprise value carried by one association
$64,680
Annual fee revenue per association
$42,000
Operating profit per association
$5,880
Across the associations you lost last year
$905,520

Where Your Book Is Valued

Multiples of operating profit

  • Owner-operated · under 2,000 units3–5×
  • Mid-market platform · 2,000–15,000 units5–8×
  • Platform scale · 15,000+ unitsYour band8–14×
  • Premium tier10–14×
Operating profit
$1,411,200
Enterprise value at your band
$11,289,600 – $19,756,800
Enterprise value in the premium tier
$14,112,000 – $19,756,800
What the gap is worth
Already in the premium range

Benchmark sources. Valuation multiples by size band and contract-term norms: Parkland Capital Partners, HOA and condominium management M&A advisory material, 2026. Premium-tier retention thresholds (90%+ gross, 105%+ net) and the average-versus-premium multiple split: CAM Advisors, 2025.

What This Is and Is Not
  • This is not a valuation. It is published advisory benchmark ranges applied to numbers you entered, and no two books price identically. Community mix, contract terms, geographic density, ancillary revenue and management depth all move it.
  • The multiple bands and the retention thresholds come from M&A advisers who sell these companies, not from a survey of the industry. Treat them as the market's rule of thumb, which is what they are.
  • Nothing here claims that adding a support role raises your retention. No source tests that link. What these figures establish is what your retention number is already worth, which is the reason the question deserves your attention at all.
  • No source publishes how often clients follow a departing manager. The associations-lost figure above is yours, not a prediction.

Take Your Results With You

Opens your email app with a plain-text summary you can forward to your owner, addressed to the email you enter.

If You Have Never Done This

Grouped by where people usually start. The first group assumes you have never put a remote person into your operation and are not sure you want to.

  1. What is a remote team member, and how is that different from a virtual assistant?

    A virtual assistant takes tasks. Somebody on your side still owns the queue, still decides each morning what to hand over, and still carries the consequence when something is missed. A remote team member is hired into your company to own a defined queue, with a written list of what they own, what they do not, and a scorecard. The difference is accountability, not location.

  2. Who employs and pays the person?

    You do. This is a direct-hire relationship rather than a managed seat rented from an agency. We confirm the delivery entity and the worker's jurisdiction against your situation before answering tax and employment specifics — we do not improvise those.

  3. What does my manager actually have to do differently?

    Hand over a queue and stop taking it back. That is the whole adoption problem, and it is where most attempts fail. The first weeks need the manager to route work to the new hire rather than absorbing it out of habit, which is why the escalation rule is written before anyone starts.

  4. Do we have to change our software?

    No. The role works inside whatever you already run. Platform familiarity helps and we screen for it, but the constraint in this industry is ownership of work, not software — companies on every major platform have the same problem.

  5. How long before it is worth it?

    Once your hire starts, the standard is thirty days on terminology, systems, the authority matrix and escalation, sixty on supervised queue ownership, and ninety before anyone is judged on the scorecard. Nobody should promise you productivity before then.

Authority, Risk and the Board

  1. Can they touch resident data or money?

    Only inside documented permissions. Preparation and tracking sit apart from final approval, bank authority and release of funds. Least-privilege access, a named approver, no shared credentials, and logged offboarding.

  2. What do we tell a board president?

    The short version: she prepares your board packet, drafts the minutes and tracks follow-up; she does not make decisions, approve invoices or interpret your documents — your manager does, and that has not changed. Then offer the one-page list rather than waiting to be asked for it. The answer only works if the list exists before the question.

  3. Are there licensing issues?

    Possibly, depending on your state, your management agreements and the work in question. We define the work first and licensed judgment stays with your authorised role. If no safe supporting role remains once those boundaries are drawn, we will say so rather than force the fit.

  4. Our management agreements or boards restrict offshore access.

    That boundary controls the design rather than ending the conversation. We identify restricted data and restricted decisions first, then build the role around what is left. Sometimes that is a narrower role. Sometimes it is no role at all.

  5. What security standard do you follow?

    We explain the controls we actually use and map them to your requirements. We do not hold SOC 2, ISO, PCI or HIPAA certification and will not imply otherwise. If a certification is your real requirement, say so early and we will tell you honestly whether we fit.

  6. What happens to the knowledge if they leave?

    It stays, which is most of the point. A documented queue with a written owner and a scorecard means a resignation is a staffing event rather than a client event. A replacement guarantee applies to the placement itself.

Whether This Is Even Your Problem

  1. We already broke the role apart and hired coordinators locally.

    Then the hard part is done, and most companies never get that far. The question is not whether the work should have an owner. It is what it costs to keep filling those roles at local rates, and what your board would need to see for you to fill one differently. Which of those roles is hardest to keep filled?

  2. We tried a virtual assistant and it failed.

    That usually says something about role design, selection, onboarding or authority rather than location. Roughly a quarter of this industry has tried it. The common failure is that nobody wrote down what the person owned before they started. What specifically broke?

  3. We are solving this with AI.

    Good. AI removes work and speeds it up. It does not own a queue, resolve an exception, coordinate people or carry accountability for follow-through. Firms in this industry running their own named assistants are still hiring. The question is what still needs an owner.

  4. We already use another provider.

    We would not assume replacement. The useful question is where repeatable work still returns to your managers — role architecture, manager adoption, a missing function, controls or integration. If their setup is working, keep it.

  5. What if our constraint is not a person at all?

    Then we should say so. Sometimes the answer is process, sometimes automation, sometimes a local hire, often a combination. A thirty-minute conversation is usually enough to tell which, and we would rather tell you it is not us than sell you a hire that does not fix anything.

The Guides Behind This Page

Take them with you: three printable guides for community association management companies.

  • Community Association Staffing Guide

    Which role to add next, and what never leaves the manager's desk.

  • Community Association Job Descriptions

    All ten roles with owns, does-not-own and scorecards.

  • The First 90 Days

    Onboarding and retention: how to bring a new support hire in, and keep them.

Start With a Conversation, Not a Pitch

Thirty minutes on which queue is breaking, what your board will ask, and whether a remote role fits at all. If it doesn't, we'll say so.