Top Metros for Property and Community Association Managers: New York and Los Angeles Lead, High-Paying Washington Markets Stand Out

Across the country, property, real estate, and community association managers work in a field that combines real estate operations, asset oversight, and community governance. Nationally, the reported median annual salary is $69,990, with 311,180 people employed in this occupation. National projected employment growth of 3.6% provides overall context for the occupation, but LaborCove’s metro analysis focuses on how current salary levels, employment counts, and Geography Scores vary among specific locations. Within that framework, the ten top-ranked metros in LaborCove’s results show very different combinations of pay and employment scale. Some of the highest-ranked locations have relatively small employment counts, while several of the largest employment markets do not sit at the top of the pay range within this group. The rankings and Geography Scores highlight that LaborCove’s assessment is not based on salary or employment alone. These differences matter for professionals deciding how to weigh compensation against the size of the local market and the overall metro-level ranking. The data shows that no single factor fully determines a metro’s position: the #1 metro does not have the highest pay, and the metro with the most reported jobs does not hold the top rank. Instead, the rankings represent combined signals summarized by the LaborCove Geography Score for each area.

For property, real estate, and community association managers nationwide, the supplied median annual salary is $69,990. Within this occupation, 311,180 workers are counted nationally. The national projected employment growth rate is 3.6% for this occupation. This projection describes expected change at the national level only; no metro-specific or state-specific projected growth rates are provided in this data. The metro comparisons in the rest of this article use the national salary and employment figures as context, but they do not extend national projections to any particular geography.

LaborCove identifies ten leading metros for property, real estate, and community association managers based on its Geography Score. Among these, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ holds the #1 rank with a Geography Score of 67.26. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA follows at #2 with a score of 64.64. Within the top five, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 54.91, ahead of Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA at #4 with 53.29 and Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA at #5 with 51.90. At the lower end of the top ten, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is #6 with a score of 51.38, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is #7 at 50.21, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA is #8 at 50.09, Kennewick-Richland, WA is #9 at 50.06, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA rounds out the list at #10 with 50.01. These values show that the top two metros—New York-Newark-Jersey City and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim—score notably higher than the rest of the list, and that differences among the metros ranked #6 through #10 are relatively small in absolute Geography Score terms, even though they are distinct in salary and employment.

Within the top ten metros, median annual pay for property, real estate, and community association managers ranges widely. Several metros sit above the national median of $69,990, including New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ at $96,950 and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA at $77,230. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH reports a median of $106,050, while Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA is higher at $117,990. Among the Washington metros in the top ten, Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA has a median salary of $128,710, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA is at $127,630, and Kennewick-Richland, WA is at $123,990. Within Texas and California, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX has a reported median of $62,920, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA has a median of $82,540. Comparing across these numbers highlights that some metros with very high salaries, such as Spokane-Spokane Valley, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, and Kennewick-Richland, appear lower in the ranking than New York-Newark-Jersey City and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, even though their pay levels exceed those two metros. This shows directly from the data that salary alone does not determine placement in the LaborCove Geography Score rankings.

Employment counts for property, real estate, and community association managers also vary substantially among the top metros. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA has the largest reported employment among these ten metros, with 19,780 workers, and this matches the largest employment market value noted in the supplied geographic data. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX has 15,890, and New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has 14,250. Mid-sized employment counts appear in several other highly ranked metros. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA has 7,660 workers in this occupation, and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV has 7,370. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH reports 6,060 workers. At the smaller end of the list, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA has 2,110 workers, Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA has 160, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA has 50, and Kennewick-Richland, WA has 60. These figures underline that high rankings in the top ten can occur in both large and small employment markets; the Geography Score incorporates more than scale alone.

Looking across the data, some metros combine relatively high salaries with large employment counts, while others stand out in only one dimension. For example, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ranks #1 and has a median salary of $96,950 together with 14,250 employed workers. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA ranks #2, with a lower median salary of $77,230 and a higher employment count of 19,780 compared with New York-Newark-Jersey City. In contrast, several metros with smaller employment counts appear in the top ten largely on the strength of their pay and Geography Scores. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA reports a median salary of $117,990 with 2,110 workers, while Spokane-Spokane Valley, WA has the highest median salary among the Washington metros listed at $128,710, alongside an employment count of 160. The Washington metros collectively illustrate different combinations of the three measured dimensions. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Spokane-Spokane Valley, Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, and Kennewick-Richland all rank within the top ten, but their salaries and employment counts differ from one another and from the national benchmarks. These contrasts give property, real estate, and community association managers multiple metro profiles to consider, depending on how they weigh current salary levels against the size and ranking of each local market.

LaborCove’s rankings for property, real estate, and community association managers are based on authoritative U.S. labor-market data combined with the LaborCove Geography Score. For each metro, we use the supplied median annual salary, employment count, and LaborCove Geography Score specific to this occupation. The underlying wage and employment observations come from Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data with a reference period of May 2025. The "2026" report year identifies the product/report year, not the underlying observation date. National projected employment growth of 3.6% is a separate occupational projection, used only as a national context and not applied to individual states or metros. LaborCove’s Geography Score aggregates multiple factors into a single number to support cross-metro comparison, but the detailed scoring weights and components are not provided in this evidence. Because of that, this article focuses on observable differences in salary, employment counts, rankings, and Geography Scores. These rankings are a data-based starting point; individuals should consider their own career goals and personal constraints alongside the figures reported here.