The Going Rate
What the surveys say, what the market is paying, and why the two don't necessarily match
Every year about now, the emails, calls and texts start coming in:
“What should we be paying a …?”
It's a sure sign that budget season and year-end planning have begun.
The reason we get these questions when there are a number of excellent surveys available is timing. A survey may be real estate specific, sector specific, or even position specific, but even the best ones still run a year or more behind the market. What a live executive search practice records — the offers made, the counteroffers, the number that finally lands a candidate — is a real-time read. Across the hundreds of search assignments we conducted this year, the pay it actually took to close the roles firms compete hardest for consistently cleared the published numbers, and the searches that stalled were most often the ones priced to them. These numbers are moving faster than any survey can track.
Most salary conversations this budget season will reach for a national figure, and this year it is about 3.4%. The major cross-industry surveys put total U.S. salary increase budgets near 3.4% to 3.5% for 2027, with merit around 3.2%, roughly flat for a fourth straight year (Mercer, WTW, Salary.com). It is a useful benchmark, but it's not the real estate number.
Real estate has consistently run ahead of the broad market. RCLCO and CEL's industrywide survey has put average increases around 4.2% in recent years, and CoreNet Global found corporate real estate base pay up 4.8% on average from 2023 to 2024, after roughly 6% the year before. For 2027, we're expecting it to run in the low-to-mid 4% range, moderating but still above the cross-industry average. But it's important to remember that very few of the roles will actually land on the clean, budgeted average. The market can look steady in aggregate while compensation for specific positions is highly competitive, and a firm that budgets to the average will be close enough across most of its roster and badly short on the two or three roles that decide whether it successfully executes its 2027 plan.
What employers are doing with the money
This year's surveys are more telling for what companies plan to do with the money than for the headline figure. Across the market, employers are spending less on across-the-board raises and more on specific people. About a third report hiring at higher salary ranges (36%), making greater use of retention bonuses and spot awards (34%), and raising starting salary ranges (32%) to hold onto employees they cannot afford to lose (WTW). In real estate, where the average already sits above the national line, that targeting is even sharper.
The gap by sector and skill
That extra targeting shows up where real estate is hiring hardest. Seniors-housing operations and acquisitions talent, affordable-housing professionals who can genuinely structure LIHTC and bond deals, industrial and data-center executives who understand power and infrastructure, and capital-markets and recapitalization specialists across every sector are all clearing well above the average. One of SCI's own sector surveys illustrates this pattern inside a single property type: SCI's 2026 Student Housing Compensation Update found pay shifting toward the roles that create value through operations, with asset management up about 5% and property management about 3%, while development lagged and its bonuses fell roughly 17% as new starts stalled. The money moved toward where the work was.
The pay that sits outside base salary
Budget season tends to fixate on base salary, because base is the line leadership approves. But in the roles CRE is fighting over, base is often the least active part of the package. The movement is elsewhere. Sign-on bonuses pull in executives who were not looking and close the gap when a candidate already earns more than your range. Retention and stay bonuses are usually the cheapest competitive move available, and the one firms neglect until a rival is already talking to their people. Starting-range resets become necessary when a range set eighteen months ago no longer clears the market for a skill in demand. And promote or carry participation lets platforms compete for dealmakers without permanently raising base.
How far base understates the package depends on the role. SCI's 2026 Homebuilding Compensation Report makes the point plainly: for senior operating and finance roles, incentive targets run well over 100% of base, and above 200% at the top — the bonus is the larger half of the package, not a top-up. Little of that lands cleanly in a budget percentage, yet it is where most of next year's pay decisions actually get made.
Comp is a talent decision
The parts of real estate hiring hardest are the ones where demand for specialized talent is strongest, and that pressure shows up in pay first. The same money, aimed well, funds the discipline that builds a strong bench while competitors wait.
A moderate budget does not get in the way of that. Spent with intent — deciding ahead of time which roles need a premium to fill or keep, and which can sit at the average — the same 4% that looks like standing still is what lets a firm move first. The budget is roughly the same for everyone in the sector. Where it goes is a choice, and in a tight talent market it is one of the more consequential ones a firm will make this year.
