Multifamily Property Management Safety Statistics: 2026 Update

Multifamily Property Management Safety Statistics: 2026 Update

When people think about dangerous occupations, property management rarely makes the list. It should.

The men and women who show vacant apartments to strangers, walk parking structures alone, and serve eviction notices to residents under financial stress face a level of occupational risk that most industry observers — and many operators — consistently underestimate. The data tells a different story than the perception.

Here's what the numbers actually say.

The Risk Is Real — and Underreported

According to a safety survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, 40% of real estate professionals have been in a situation where they feared for their safety on the job. In the same survey, 4% reported being the direct victim of a crime while working — extrapolated across the industry, that represents tens of thousands of incidents annually.

These numbers almost certainly understate the problem. Workplace safety incidents in property management are notoriously underreported. Staff are often reluctant to escalate incidents that didn't result in physical harm, and many operators lack formal reporting protocols for near-misses or threatening encounters.

Workplace violence is also not a minor category. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 524 workplace homicides in the United States in 2022 — the highest annual total since BLS began tracking the current data series in 2011.

What 400 Multifamily Professionals Told Us

External data from sources like the National Association of Realtors and the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us about real estate and workplace violence generally. But until recently, the industry hasn't had multifamily-specific data on what staff are actually experiencing and how it affects their decisions.

In early 2026, Apartment Guardian commissioned an independent third-party survey of 400 onsite multifamily property management professionals. The methodology was blind — respondents were not told the survey was commissioned by a safety device company. The findings paint a more granular picture than the national workplace violence statistics:

• 52% of multifamily staff say that feeling safe at work significantly influences their decision to stay in their role.
• 1 in 5 women in multifamily property management has either left a role or seriously considered leaving because of safety concerns.
• 94% of female leasing agents say a personal safety device that connects directly to 911 would improve their comfort at work.
• 46% of staff at affordable and subsidized housing communities reported a safety incident in the past 12 months — compared to 35.2% at conventional multifamily.
• 28.5% of multifamily employers provide no safety tools to their staff at all. Only 18.5% provide a panic button.

The full dataset, including breakdowns by role, region, and housing type, is available in the 2026 Multifamily Staff Wellbeing Report.

Crime at Multifamily Properties Is Rising

The problem isn't abstract — it's happening at properties across the country, and the trend is moving in the wrong direction.

According to Cloudastructure's annual Multifamily Crime Poll, 52% of property managers reported that crime increased at their properties in 2024. Only 16% saw a decline. The most common concerns cited were car break-ins and theft (60% of respondents) and trespassing (40% of respondents) — but these statistics capture property crime, not the more personal danger that frontline staff face.

A 2023 study by the National Apartment Association found that 70% of property managers reported frequent unauthorized access incidents, particularly in amenity spaces and parking areas. In certain urban markets, the concentration of crime at apartment properties is striking: in Dallas, 26.4% of all crimes committed in the city over a recent 12-month period occurred in apartment buildings.

The Gender Dimension: Why Female Staff Face the Greatest Risk

Property management is a female-dominated field. The majority of leasing consultants, assistant community managers, and resident services coordinators are women — and women face a disproportionate share of workplace violence.

Workplace homicide is the leading cause of on-the-job death for women. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women account for 72.5% of all nonfatal workplace violence cases requiring days away from work, job restriction, or transfer. Their rate of nonfatal workplace violence is more than three times higher than that of men.

The scenarios that create the highest risk for property management staff — showing a vacant unit alone, meeting an unknown prospective resident in an unoccupied space, working late during evening hours — are precisely the situations where these statistics become personal. Our 2026 survey found that women in multifamily are 14 points less likely than men to feel confident working alone, and three times more likely to have left a previous role because they didn't feel safe.

The Perception Gap Between Employers and Staff

One of the more striking findings in our 2026 survey was not a single statistic but a comparison. When we asked staff and employers separately whether their company takes workplace safety seriously, the answers diverged sharply.

Employers consistently rated their own commitment to staff safety 21 percentage points higher than their staff did. In other words: the people running multifamily property management companies believe their organizations are doing significantly more on safety than the staff working on those properties believe is happening.

That gap matters operationally. It explains why turnover continues to climb at properties where leadership believes safety has been addressed. It explains why staff at properties with no tools report 14 points less confidence working alone than staff with panic buttons. And it explains why the conversation about safety, retention, and wellbeing keeps surfacing in resident services, leasing, and maintenance roles even after employers think they've solved it.

The gap doesn't close until employers ask staff directly. The gap doesn't get measured until employers commit to measuring it.

Fire, Physical Hazards, and the Broader Safety Picture

Violent crime is not the only safety risk that onsite staff and residents face. According to the National Fire Protection Association, approximately 95,000 apartment fires are reported annually in the United States, resulting in an average of 340 civilian deaths and 3,300 injuries per year.

Slip-and-fall incidents represent another persistent source of risk — approximately 85% of workers' compensation claims are attributed to employees slipping on slick floors, according to the National Floor Safety Institute. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that approximately one million people visit emergency rooms annually due to stair-related injuries.

These hazards are not unique to multifamily, but they are amplified by the operational reality of managing large residential properties with shared common spaces, parking structures, pool areas, and aging infrastructure.

What Leading Operators Are Doing About It

The data above is not meant to be alarming for its own sake. It is meant to ground a practical question: given what we know about the risk environment, what is a reasonable standard of care for the people who run your properties?

More than 170 property management companies — including some of the most recognized names in the industry — have concluded that a personal emergency device program is part of the answer. Unlike static security measures like cameras or access control, a personal device travels with the staff member into every high-risk scenario: the vacant unit showing, the parking structure walk, the late-night closing. When activated, it connects directly to 911 and simultaneously alerts other onsite employees — so help is coming from two directions at once.

The common thread in how those decisions got made was not a catastrophe. It was an operator who looked at the data clearly and decided not to wait for one.

Want the full data set? Download the 2026 Multifamily Staff Wellbeing Report — independent third-party research from 400 onsite multifamily professionals. Free.

Want to see how it works at your properties? We'll send a device to try — no cost, no commitment.

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Sources

1. Apartment Guardian — 2026 Multifamily Staff Wellbeing Report (independent survey of 400 multifamily professionals, blind methodology) — apartmentguardian.com/2026-report
2. National Association of Realtors — Member Safety Report (2021) — nar.realtor
3. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (2022) — bls.gov
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Workplace Violence 2021–2022 — bls.gov
5. Cloudastructure — Annual Multifamily Crime Poll (2024) — cloudastructure.com
6. National Apartment Association — Industry Study (2023) — naahq.org
7. National Fire Protection Association — Apartment Fire Statistics — nfpa.org
8. National Floor Safety Institute — Workers' Compensation Claims — nfsi.org
9. Consumer Product Safety Commission — Stair Injury Data — cpsc.gov