What the job costs #
Salary is the part everyone quotes and the smallest part of the decision. Here is the employment cost at the national median, using the rates in force for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.
£28,294
Median salary
ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4159
£32,450
Employment cost a year
Salary, employer NI and minimum pension
£19
Per hour worked
37.5 hour week, 46.4 working weeks
| Item | A year | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Median salary | £28,294 | ONS ASHE 2025 (provisional), SOC 4159 |
| Employer National Insurance | £3,494 | 15 per cent above £5,000 |
| Minimum workplace pension | £662 | 3 per cent of qualifying earnings |
| Employment cost | £32,450 | About £19 an hour on a 37.5 hour week |
Recruitment, equipment, software seats, training and cover for holiday and sickness all sit on top, and they vary too much between businesses to put a number on here.
If you want to run your own figures, the true cost of an employee tool does this with your salary, hours and on costs.
What the week is actually made of #
Here is the job as it usually runs in a business, split by whether the work follows a fixed pattern or needs a person to decide something. This split is our analysis, not a survey, and your version of the role will differ.
Runs to a pattern (9 of 12)
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Register applicants and match them to available properties daily
Criteria matching against a database.
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Book and confirm viewings daily
Calendar plus template.
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Prepare tenancy agreements and prescribed information weekly
Standard documents with merged fields.
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Register deposits with a scheme inside the deadline weekly
A hard statutory deadline and a fixed process.
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Chase gas safety, EICR and EPC certificates weekly
Expiry dates and a contractor list.
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Arrange check in and check out inventories weekly
Booking a clerk against a date.
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Process rent receipts and chase arrears weekly
Matching payments and triggering reminders.
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Log maintenance reports and raise jobs to contractors daily
Categorise the fault, send the job.
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Keep the property database and portal listings accurate daily
Same data pushed to several places.
Needs a person (3 of 12)
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Run referencing and right to rent checks weekly
A legal check where getting it wrong carries a fine.
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Serve notices and renewal paperwork on time monthly
Wrong notice, wrong date, and the case fails.
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Answer landlord and tenant questions daily
Two parties who often want different things.
What to do before you advertise #
The question is not whether to hire. It is what the person will be doing on a Tuesday afternoon in March. Two things are worth doing first, and both take less effort than writing the advert:
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Count the week you are about to buy
Write down the jobs this role would pick up, how long each takes and how often it happens. The cost of admin time calculator adds it up and puts a cost on it.
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Separate the pattern from the judgement
If most of the hours sit in the first list above, a hire will absorb the pressure rather than remove it, and the same pressure returns when the business grows again.
Plenty of businesses do both: automate the repeated half, then hire someone to do the half that needs a person, often part time or at a level that keeps them interested. That is a better job than the one the advert usually describes.
Where this role usually sits #
This job turns up most often in lettings and property , and the admin around it looks different in each.
A note on the pay figure #
£28,294 is the median for full time employees in SOC 4159, Other administrative occupations n.e.c., from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2025 (provisional). ONS publishes a coefficient of variation with every figure, and this one is 1.2 per cent, which ONS treats as reliable.
It is a national figure covering every employer size and region. What a specific business pays depends on where it is, how specialised the job is, and what else is on offer nearby.