Property employers are planning for growth, but many teams are already struggling with capacity.

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Edge Recruitment's 2026 market data shows 65% of property and real estate teams plan to grow, while 62% describe themselves as under-resourced.

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Those figures reveal an important distinction.

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Headcount growth is a future intention.

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Under-resourcing is a current operating problem.

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And the two do not automatically cancel each other out.

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Broader industry research shows similar workload pressure across property and facilities functions, with recent surveys indicating that significantly more professionals expect their workloads to increase rather than decrease.

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For property leaders, the question is not simply how many people the team intends to hire.

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It is whether capacity is increasing quickly enough to match the work being asked of it.

Growth plans do not solve today's capacity problem

A business can be growing and under-resourced at the same time.

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In fact, the two often occur together.

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A larger portfolio creates more administration, stakeholder contact and operational issues.

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New projects increase coordination requirements.

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Winning business creates additional customer expectations.

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Growth itself creates work before the corresponding recruitment is complete.

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That creates a timing problem.

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A position may be approved in March but not filled until May.

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A new employee may then require several weeks or months before reaching full productivity.

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Meanwhile, the rest of the team has already been carrying the additional workload.

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Growth plans therefore need to account for the lag between recognising the need and creating usable capacity.

Under-resourcing changes how existing teams operate

A property team rarely stops functioning because a role is vacant.

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The work is redistributed.

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Property portfolios become larger.

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Managers handle more escalations.

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Administrative tasks move to other team members.

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Lower-priority projects are delayed.

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People become highly effective at keeping the immediate operation moving.

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That can make the underlying capacity problem less visible to leadership.

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But work being completed is not the same as workload being sustainable.

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Recent employer research has found increased workload for existing employees to be one of the most common consequences of hiring delays.

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Property leaders therefore need to look beyond whether deadlines are technically being met.

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How much additional effort is required to meet them?

More headcount is not always the same as more capability

If 65% of teams plan to grow, recruitment strategies also need to become more specific about what growth means.

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Adding another person to an overloaded team helps, but the biggest capacity constraint may exist in a particular skill set.

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A team might need stronger facilities expertise.

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Another may need a senior property professional capable of managing complex stakeholders.

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Others may need administrative capacity so experienced managers can focus on higher-value work.

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The distinction matters because simply replacing the last person who left may recreate the same team structure that became stretched in the first place.

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Before recruitment begins, review where work is actually accumulating.

Workload pressure can affect retention as well as hiring

Under-resourcing creates a second recruitment risk: losing people already inside the team.

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When vacancies remain open, existing staff frequently absorb additional responsibilities.

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Initially that may create development opportunities.

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Over time it can become unsustainable.

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Workplace research consistently identifies unmanageable workload as an important contributor to burnout and greater employee turnover intention.

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This creates a dangerous cycle.

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A vacancy increases workload.

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Higher workload contributes to fatigue.

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Another employee leaves.

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The team becomes harder to stabilise precisely because it has been operating without sufficient capacity.

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Recruitment and retention cannot therefore be treated as separate workforce issues.



Recruitment priorities need to start with the capacity gap

Property businesses planning growth should begin with a capacity audit rather than simply a hiring target.

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Where are workloads already too high?

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Which functions regularly rely on overtime or managers stepping in?

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What work is being postponed?

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Where would losing one additional employee create serious operational risk?

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Which skills will the business need as the portfolio grows?

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Then determine which gaps require recruitment, which could be addressed through systems or process changes and which may require internal development.

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The 65% of property teams planning growth represents confidence and opportunity.

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The 62% already describing themselves as under-resourced is the warning sitting beside it.

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If future growth is layered onto teams already operating beyond comfortable capacity, recruitment becomes reactive.

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The stronger approach is to deal with the capacity gap before growth magnifies it.

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For property leaders, workforce planning is therefore not only about how large the team needs to become.

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It is about making sure the existing team has enough capacity to reach that growth without being stretched beyond it.