There’s a good chance your property has a staffing problem that can’t be found on your balance sheet.
It doesn’t show up on a payroll report. It doesn’t have a title. It doesn’t take PTO or argue with its manager, and it never asks for a raise. Model employee, right? Not really, because it can consume up to the equivalent of a full-time employee’s staffing hours every single day.
This hidden staff member is your package management workload. And for most multifamily communities that have yet to invest in package management technology, it’s quietly becoming one of the most expensive line items in operations.
The Math Ain’t Mathing
As was detailed in Multifamily and Affordable Housing Business, at a typical community of around 370 units, 75 packages or more may arrive daily. This figure, which may double during the holiday shopping seasons, sounds manageable until you account for how many touchpoints are required for each one.
Every package needs to be received, verified, logged, secured, and tracked. Then the resident that ordered it needs to be notified. When the resident comes to claim their package, a staff member must retrieve it, then sign it over to them. Seconds tick into minutes across each of these touchpoints, resulting in an average of five minutes of staff time for every package that is delivered to the property. At this rate, the cumulative workload task of managing 75 daily parcels consumes more than six hours of your team’s working day. This further removes staff from resident engagement duties and hampers their ability to answer daily maintenance requests, take prospective residents on property tours, or sign new leases.
Six hours is not an abstraction. If your payroll includes just a few community staff members, that’s more than half of one employee’s entire shift, gone to packages. If your daily package haul is higher, the package management impact increases accordingly.
What You’re Actually Paying
Now that you understand the time drain created by your team’s hidden staff member, let’s put a number on what they’re costing you.
If your leasing associate earns $20/hour and is personally handling 6 hours of package management-related tasks daily, that’s $120/day in labor. Over a standard work month, that’s roughly $2,500. Over a full year, you’re approaching a sum of $30,000 worth of staff time allocated towards an activity that has nothing to do with resident engagement, leasing, retention, or anything to support your NOI projections.
And that calculation only captures wages. It doesn’t account for the ripple effects or opportunity costs of allocating a disproportionate amount of staff time on package management. The prospect call that went unanswered while someone was sorting a delivery. The lease renewal conversation that was rushed or interrupted. The maintenance request that was delayed because the front desk was occupied with a pickup request.Want to run the numbers for your property? Use the Smart Package Room Cost & Labor Savings Calculator to see how much time and money you can recover.
The Compounding Cost of “Just Dealing With It”
23.4 billion packages were shipped in the U.S. in 2025, and still, package volume isn’t going down anytime soon (if ever). eCommerce has fundamentally changed delivery patterns and the trend only accelerates. Branded delivery vehicles clog our streets, flex (gig) drivers in overstuffed sedans speed through our neighborhoods, and couriers enter multifamily properties at all times of day and night.
What felt manageable a few years ago is a significantly more meaningful burden today. Apartment communities still absorbing package deliveries manually are doing so on tighter budgets and with fewer full-time associates than ever before.
The hidden cost on the overall resident experience is harder to quantify but just as real. Residents notice when package management is chaotic and unstructured. They aren’t notified of deliveries right away and the package pickup process is confusing or laborious. Worse, their packages go missing and they have little recourse. Dissatisfaction with package pickup, an almost daily touchpoint for many residents, may lead frustrated residents to seek out other apartments when their lease is up for renewal. Resident turnover averages approximately $4,000 per unit when you account for lost rent, make-ready costs, marketing, and leasing commissions. A flawed package-related experience that contributes to even a handful of non-renewals per year is a meaningful hit to a property’s NOI.
The inverse of this scenario is also true. Residents who trust that their deliveries are handled securely are residents that feel taken care of. In the age of online shopping, this kind of consistent, frictionless and worry-free experience is exactly what drives lease renewals.
Reclaiming the Hours
The good news is, there’s a clear solution to your package management challenge that will free up your staff and provide package-related reassurance to your residents.
The Smart Package Room system handles the full package delivery and pickup lifecycle with minimal staff involvement. This includes package intake, logging, resident notification with a timestamp and photo, and self-service pickup in less than 10 seconds. Deliveries from all carriers go directly into a secure, access-controlled package room that is accessible 24/7. Computer vision-enabled tracking technology logs the location of all standard packages, while presence sensors monitor the movement of people and packages within the room. Residents receive an automatic pickup notification via text or email. They are able to retrieve their packages at their convenience, guided by laser, light and audio prompts, without ever involving the front desk.
Your management team is rewarded with six additional staff hours (or more!) every single day. Your team can spend more time focusing on leasing conversations, resident engagement, and the valuable work that drives resident retention and occupancy.
Sign up for a free demo today so our team can personally walk you through the cost savings that you can expect at your property. Because as we like to say, when you invest in Smart Package Room technology, it’s time for your hidden staff member to clock out.
Read more about the real cost of manual package management in our recent feature in Multifamily & Affordable Housing Business.
Ready to see how much you can save? Try the Smart Package Room Cost & Labor Savings Calculator →