Salary
Average Salary: $52,610
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,196,000
The salary for a property manager will vary depending on where you live. Say you reside in lovely Shreveport, Louisiana, home of an Air Force base and a horse racetrack you've never heard of. As a property manager, you'd make an average salary of $43,000 per year (source).
Now, say you live in Houston, Texas, which is where every young person from Shreveport goes just as soon as they graduate high school. The average salary for property managers in Houston is $53,000 per year (source). In super-expensive and crowded cities, like San Francisco or New York City, a property manager can pull in, on average, $63,000 per year.
While you won't make mad money the way a doctor, attorney, or software guru does, property managers usually get one awesome perk: a free apartment, either at the complex they manage or at a sister property. Given that a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco can go for $2,000 per month, you'd essentially be making an extra $24,000 per year thanks to that free-apartment perk, meaning your annual salary would be more like $87,000 than $63,000.
Of course, property managers also tend to get health insurance, sick time, and paid vacation as part of their benefits package, too. All in all, it's not a bad deal.