Should I use revenue or profit for lifetime value?

Both, for different decisions. Revenue per door is what a buyer diligences when you sell the book. Contribution margin, meaning revenue minus the variable cost of servicing that door, is what an acquisition budget should be built on. Firms that budget acquisition off revenue overspend.

Why is my per-door revenue lower than published figures?

Usually because published figures count every line and most firms count only the management fee, which is about two thirds of the total. Leasing, renewals, coordination markup and benefit packages carry the rest. If you've counted all of those and you're still low, look at tenure before you look at fee percentage.

How much does one point of retention change the number?

More than a point of fee. At $2,530 a year per door, moving average owner tenure from four years to five adds $2,530, about 25% of lifetime value. Moving the management fee from 8% to 9% on the same door adds roughly $205 a year, or $820 across four years.

What is a door worth when a management company is sold?

Buyers price the book, not the door. Residential platforms with meaningful scale and strong owner retention have traded around 5.5x to 8x adjusted EBITDA in recent years, with smaller or higher-churn books transacting below that. Retention and revenue mix drive where a book lands far more than headline door count.

Door (property management), explained

What counts as a door

One rentable unit. A single-family house is one door. A fourplex is four, even though it’s one property, one owner and one management agreement.

That distinction matters, because a fourplex costs less to service than four scattered houses while counting the same in your total. Door count alone is a poor read on the health of a book.

What a door produces

Start with the management fee, then add the lines most firms leave out. Worked on a $1,800-a-month single-family rental with a 5% vacancy allowance, so collected rent is $20,520 a year:

Line	Typical	This door
Management fee	8% to 10% of collected rent	$1,642 at 8%
Leasing fee	50% to 100% of one month’s rent, per placement	$450, half a month spread over a two-year tenancy
Renewal fee	$150 to $300 per renewal	$100
Maintenance coordination	0% to 10% markup on work ordered	$240, 10% on $2,400 of work
Owner benefit package	Per door, per month	$96, at $8 a month
Total		$2,528

Call it $2,530 a year, of which the management fee is about two thirds.

Note the base. Fees are charged on rent collected, not rent scheduled, so vacancy comes off the largest line first: at full occupancy the same door’s fee is $1,728 rather than $1,642. The door value calculator runs both.

Why tenure beats fee percentage

Here’s the arithmetic that decides where the effort goes.

At $2,530 a year, a four-year average owner tenure produces $10,100 in lifetime revenue. Move tenure to five years and it becomes $12,650, an increase of $2,530, or 25%.

Now raise the fee instead. Going from 8% to 9% on collected rent of $20,520 adds $205 a year, or $820 across the same four years.

One year of tenure is worth three fee increases.

Tenure is also the input firms are least confident about. If you know your annual owner churn, average tenure is roughly one divided by it: 10% churn implies about ten years, 25% implies four. Books rarely behave that cleanly, because owners who leave tend to leave early, so a four-year planning figure is deliberately conservative against a headline churn rate in the single digits.

Why the next door beats the average one

Your average door carries a share of the software, the accounting, the office and the people. The next door in a building or a neighborhood you already service carries almost none of that.

A second property from an existing owner is the cheapest door on the list: the relationship exists, onboarding is short, acquisition cost is zero, and if you’re licensed to represent them in the purchase, the door arrives with a commission attached.

In the 2026 NARPM and Buildium survey of more than 3,200 industry professionals, owners and residents, 18% of management companies reported success encouraging current clients to acquire new properties. Referrals led at 30%, and acquiring another management company worked for 13%.

Run your own version with the door value calculator, or read the operating playbook for the client-purchase lever.

What the number is for

Two decisions need different versions of it.

For what you can spend to win a door, use contribution margin. A door producing $2,530 in revenue and costing $900 to service contributes $1,630, and that’s what an acquisition budget should be built on.

For what your book is worth, revenue per door and retention are what a buyer diligences. A book churning at 15% is worth less than one churning at 7%, whatever the fee percentage says.