Phoenix is expected to add roughly 1.1 million new residents over the growth next 15 years — and the real estate ecosystem – for both commercial and residential sectors – is expanding right along with it. Semiconductor investment led by TSMC, continued manufacturing and logistics relocation, and a steady wave of migration from higher-cost states are keeping developers, property managers, brokerages, and build-to-rent operators busy across the Valley. Industrial remains the strongest commercial asset class, multifamily is working through its last supply wave with vacancy easing and absorption up sharply year-over-year, and broker confidence has climbed back from its 2022 lows to a genuinely optimistic reading.

Growth, though, doesn’t automatically come with the people to manage it.

Talking with clients across development, property management, brokerage, and build-to-rent, we’re seeing the same hiring pressure show up again and again — just for different reasons depending on the company type.

 

Developers and general contractors are hiring more selectively, but for harder-to-fill roles.

With deliveries and new-construction pipelines pulling back after a few frenzied years, ground-up development hiring has cooled. But the roles still open — land acquisition and entitlement specialists, development and construction project managers, construction accountants — require deep local knowledge of Phoenix’s zoning and municipal approval process, and that expertise doesn’t scale quickly. These are relationship-driven searches, not job-board fills.

 

Commercial property management has the deepest, steadiest hiring need — and the toughest retention math.

As multifamily and commercial portfolios stabilize, the operations side (property managers, asset managers, property accountants, leasing staff) needs to keep running regardless of where the capital markets cycle sits. But the industry is fighting real headwinds: roughly 40% of property management firms saw new-hire turnover above 30% last year, and nearly three-quarters of real estate companies report difficulty finding skilled labor. Leasing and administrative talent, in particular, is increasingly drawn away by banking, healthcare administration, and corporate sales roles with clearer advancement paths — meaning property managers are no longer just competing with each other for candidates.

 

Brokerages are staring down a retirement cliff with a thin bench behind it.

New commercial agents wash out of the business at an eye-popping rate — industry data puts it at 87% to 92% within the first three years, largely because CRE brokerage is commission-only from day one with little structured training. Meanwhile, a large share of the industry’s most experienced brokers are approaching retirement age within the next decade, and the market relationships they carry don’t automatically transfer to a firm when they leave. Firms that invest in structured mentorship and succession now will be in a much stronger position than those that assume the next generation of brokers will simply appear.

 

Build-to-rent sits at the intersection of homebuilder and multifamily hiring — and inherits both sets of problems.

BTR blends single-family construction with apartment-style operations, so these companies need land development and construction talent on one side and leasing, maintenance, and community management talent on the other. The skilled trades shortage hits especially hard here: building engineers and maintenance technicians requiring EPA certification are in short supply nationally, with projections suggesting millions of skilled trades positions could go unfilled by the end of the decade.

The through-line across all four verticals: the technical and licensing bar for many of these roles — CPM, CCIM, EPA Universal, a real estate license — is real, and the transferable-skill sourcing needed to fill leasing, admin, and accounting roles is only getting harder as those candidates find easier paths into other industries. Development-side hiring will keep tracking with the capital markets cycle, but property management, asset management, and operations hiring demands continue no matter where that cycle sits — because someone has to run the buildings that already exist.

If your team is feeling this in your own hiring — whether it’s a hard-to-fill land acquisition role, property management turnover, or a brokerage succession gap — it’s worth a conversation. This is exactly the landscape we work in every day.