Real estate salary increases were at record-highs in 2021, but the chance to snag a nice pay raise could be fading, according to data from Macdonald & Company’s annual real estate salary survey. The survey polled 7,000 real estate professionals worldwide and revealed last year was great for pay raises. But as market uncertainty rises because of inflation, rising interest rates, and the war in Ukraine, the survey said it has lowered the chances of top real estate pay raises this year.
In the UK in 2021, the median real estate salary rose 15 percent (or £7,500), one of the most significant percentage increases in the survey’s two-decade history. Annual pay reviews and promotions over the previous two years may have been put on hold during the height of the pandemic, so UK real estate professionals were rewarded with long-awaited raises as the market stabilized again.
The survey revealed the best tactic for getting a raise in 2021 was resigning or threatening to resign. Real estate professionals who did that got an average pay raise of 20 percent, a third higher than the average increase. There’s an important caveat to the high raises in 2021, though: the industry’s ethnicity pay gap increased. The gender pay gap between men and women decreased in 2021, but non-White real estate professionals received on average salary increases of only about half of their White counterparts.