After 26 years in the property management industry, I’ ve come to appreciate just how dramatically the landscape has shifted— and how quickly those shifts continue to accelerate.
OPERATIONS
After 26 years in the property management industry, I’ ve come to appreciate just how dramatically the landscape has shifted— and how quickly those shifts continue to accelerate.
When I first entered the field, much of our work was manual, predictable, and guided by long established practices. Over time, technology began reshaping operations, regulations multiplied, resident expectations heightened, and the pace of innovation surged. Today, property management professionals operate in an environment where change is not an occasional event— it is a constant, layered, and often relentless part of the job.
While change can create progress, efficiency, and better experiences for residents and owners, it also carries a human cost. Many teams are experiencing what is now widely recognized as change fatigue— a form of exhaustion that arises when people are asked to continuously adapt without adequate time, support, or recovery. The concept resonates strongly within our industry, where the demands are immediate, the stakes are high, and the margin for error is often slim.
In recent years, I have seen the signs of change fatigue become more visible across teams and communities. Employees who are typically upbeat and engaged begin to show signs of strained enthusiasm, shorter patience, slower adoption of new tools, or a general sense of operating in survival mode. These responses aren’ t rooted in resistance to growth. In fact, property management professionals are some of the most resilient and adaptable people I know. Instead, the fatigue comes from the cumulative effect of change on top of change, each requiring mental, emotional, and operational bandwidth that is increasingly depleted.
Managers feel this pressure deeply as well. In property management, leadership roles often mean being the first to absorb information about new processes, compliance expectations, or system rollouts, and then carrying the responsibility of communicating and implementing those changes with the team. When leaders are already balancing staffing gaps, resident concerns, budget pressures, and operational deadlines, additional change can stretch their capacity to a breaking point. Leadership fatigue has a ripple effect: when managers are overwhelmed, they may unintentionally communicate less effectively, offer less support, or struggle to maintain consistency. Teams quickly feel these gaps, and a cycle begins where everyone’ s change tolerance diminishes.
Part of what makes property management particularly vulnerable to change fatigue is the wide range of areas in which change occurs. Technology is one of the most rapid sources of disruption. Over the years, I’ ve seen teams adjust to new property management software, online leasing platforms, digital maintenance systems, communication apps, virtual tours, analytics dashboards, and more. Each of these innovations offers important improvements, but each also carries a learning curve. When multiple systems change in close succession— or when updates roll out faster than teams www. aamdhq. org TRENDS FEBRUARY 2026 | 25