CRE Salaries Inch Up As Industry Pros Report Feeling Stuck
Compensation packages for commercial real estate professionals reflected the atmosphere of the broader industry in 2025, with small increases offering signs of hope but lacking the big jumps that come with a true market recovery.
Base salaries increased by 4.7% between 2024 and 2025, according to RCLCO’s latest compensation and benefits survey, up from 4% annual growth last year. Bonuses have remained flat or increased modestly, with nearly half of firms surveyed reporting no changes in bonus payouts and 40% increasing award amounts by 12.7% on average.
The sluggish trend in CRE pay has fostered some dissatisfaction in the ranks as a rebound repeatedly slips through the industry’s fingers, limiting career options that might have offered a pay bump in other parts of the cycle.
“There's a lot of people that are really unhappy and really upset,” said Allison Weiss, founder of CRE Recruiting. “And so it's just going to take some recovery and for the first few deck chairs to start being swapped around for a massive amount of shifting to happen.”
Companies are being more selective about who gets those bonuses, setting up a “culture of the haves and have-nots,” according to RCLCO compensation consulting principal Lucy Bertsch.
Today’s bonuses stand in contrast to the boom years of 2021 and 2022, when increases hit 20% or more as firms tried to hang on to top talent.
“It's a bit of a different dynamic right now,” Bertsch said. “It's harder for firms to justify really outsized bonuses, whether that's short or long term, given the current market environment that we're in. So even in situations where firms are increasing bonuses year-over-year, there's certainly much more modest increases, about 10%.”
Those in dealmaking roles have pushed for more guaranteed compensation in recent years as an overall lack of transactions and portfolio growth has meant fewer opportunities for bonuses and incentives to pan out, Weiss said.
The general slowness of the long-awaited recovery has led to a general feeling for many in CRE of being stuck, Weiss said.
While transaction volumes across CRE went up 3.8% year-over-year in the second quarter, according to Altus Group data, deal volumes across all sectors remain below prepandemic averages.
MSCI Real Capital Analytics found transaction volume increased in the first half of the year, but nowhere near the big jumps seen during the last recovery.
It’s especially challenging for top performers in sectors such as industrial, where their incentive plan and compensation would get reset if they jump to a new job, said Kent Elliott, principal of RETS Associates. With the rate of transactions today, that means waiting perhaps years to regain previous levels of total compensation, which makes moving much less desirable.
Both firms and talent want to position themselves for the upturn, but slotting in the right new hire or finding the right new gig is taking longer than usual, said Chris Papa, founder of Jackson Lucas, an executive search firm. They are also reconsidering priorities in a rapidly shifting market.
“There's other stuff going on, and they're willing to say, ‘I’d rather be at a place where I can grow than I need $50K more,’” Papa said.
Firms are taking longer to hire, since they’re finding it challenging to predict what they will need six to 12 months out.
It is a marked slowdown from earlier frenzies, including the war for talent in 2021 and 2022, followed by years of workforce consolidation that have led to a market that isn’t exceptionally promising for job seekers, Weiss said.
She is seeing firms test the waters, putting out job listings with slightly lower salaries and finding people are willing to “take a haircut” for a new opportunity.
Bertsch added that she has been involved with lots of projects with clients focused on keeping midlevel employees engaged as they enter the prime of their career during a tougher economic environment.
There have also been layoffs that have slowed hiring and soured job prospects, Elliott said.
Reductions in force have hit large brokerages as well as small firms. JLL let go nearly 400 workers in April after losing an Amazon contract, and CBRE has had a string of smaller layoffs this year. CBRE also made a recent announcement that it was cutting nearly 300 from its defense and government department, also as a result of a lost contract.
These aren’t big, falling-off-a-cliff moments and not as headline-grabbing as those of a few years earlier, but these small cuts that trim back office workers or impact real estate services firms only reinforce the idea that the industry has lost momentum, Elliott said.
There is latent frustration around the slowness of any recovery, Weiss said. Despite larger pickups in fundraising and rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, she said things won’t truly ramp up for CRE hiring until early 2026, when the new year brings new budgets.
“I think the last few years have been incredibly trying, and I think a lot of companies have made decisions that have cost them the goodwill and loyalty of their people,” she said. “And the only reason that a lot of these people are still in their jobs today is that there's nothing else for them to find right now.”
Featured on Bisnow; written by Patrick Sisson, posted 10/15/2025