How much does a house manager cost in Phoenix?
On our estimate, a full-time house manager in Phoenix costs about $130,000 a year in salary, or about $62.30 an hour: the agencies' published 2026 midpoint scaled by the local BLS wage, 1.00 times the national figure. With payroll taxes, insurance and a payroll service the household pays about $149,000 a year, and about $175,000 in the first year with a 20 percent placement fee.
This is the Phoenix page of our research brief The Cost of a House Manager. It uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 wage data for the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ metro area and the ranges the domestic-staffing agencies publish themselves, then adds back what a salary leaves out: payroll taxes, insurance, the placement fee and the paid days you do not receive.
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Four kinds of household help, priced for Phoenix.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not survey "house managers" as an occupation, so for each role we use the nearest published occupation and say which one. Those medians describe the whole labour market, most of it outside private homes, and run well below what the agencies that place staff in private homes publish.
The agencies publish national figures, not Phoenix ones. So we scale each role's agency midpoint by the ratio of the Phoenix BLS median to the national median for its occupation. For a house manager that ratio is 1.00. The yearly cost then adds the employer's Social Security and Medicare, federal and state unemployment tax, workers' compensation, a health-insurance contribution and a payroll service, the calculator's defaults at 40 hours a week. The first year adds a 20 percent placement fee.
| Role | Salary | Cost a year | First year |
|---|---|---|---|
| House manager | $130,000 | $149,000 | $175,000 |
| Personal assistant | $154,000 | $176,000 | $206,000 |
| Estate manager | $170,000 | $193,000 | $227,000 |
| Chief of staff | $251,000 | $276,000 | $326,000 |
| Occupation | Phoenix | National |
|---|---|---|
| First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers our proxy for a house manager | $48,940 | $49,100 |
| Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive our proxy for a personal assistant | $48,800 | $47,540 |
| Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers our proxy for a estate manager | $64,290 | $69,990 |
| Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants our proxy for a chief of staff | $74,010 | $76,590 |
Phoenix ranks 17th of 26.
Ranked by the BLS median for the nearest occupation to a house manager, Phoenix is 0 percent below the national figure of $49,100.
| Metro | BLS median | House manager, estimated |
|---|---|---|
| 1. San Francisco | $70,400 | $186,000 |
| 2. San Jose | $69,080 | $183,000 |
| 3. Seattle | $67,910 | $180,000 |
| 4. Boston | $61,390 | $163,000 |
| 5. Los Angeles | $61,270 | $162,000 |
| 6. Stamford and Bridgeport | $60,820 | $161,000 |
| 7. New York | $59,990 | $159,000 |
| 8. Portland | $59,300 | $157,000 |
| 9. San Diego | $58,300 | $154,000 |
| 10. Minneapolis | $58,190 | $154,000 |
| 11. Denver | $56,700 | $150,000 |
| 12. Chicago | $51,280 | $136,000 |
| 13. Raleigh | $51,020 | $135,000 |
| 14. Washington, D.C. | $50,840 | $135,000 |
| 15. Philadelphia | $50,340 | $133,000 |
| 16. Naples | $49,230 | $130,000 |
| 17. Phoenix | $48,940 | $130,000 |
| 18. Charlotte | $48,320 | $128,000 |
| 19. Atlanta | $48,200 | $128,000 |
| 20. Nashville | $47,210 | $125,000 |
| 21. Tampa | $46,710 | $124,000 |
| 22. Miami | $45,440 | $120,000 |
| 23. Dallas | $45,290 | $120,000 |
| 24. Sarasota | $44,280 | $117,000 |
| 25. Austin | $41,780 | $111,000 |
| 26. Houston | $38,500 | $102,000 |
We will be straight about what a Chief is not.
A house manager is in the house. They meet the plumber, walk the property after a storm and manage the people who clean and cook. No software does that, and a household in Phoenix that needs a physical presence should hire one and pay properly for it.
What a PrivateChief Chief does is the other half of the job: the calendar, the correspondence, the vendors' quotes and invoices, the family's logistics, the paperwork, the reminders and the books. For many households that half is the whole of what they were going to hire for, at a price that does not carry a payroll.
A managed Personal Chief, fully hosted with nothing to install or running on a private appliance in your home. AI usage is billed separately, and fully hosted onboarding is $299. Against about $149,000 a year for a house manager in Phoenix, that is about $12,400 a month, or 84 times the membership. There is no annual commitment or cancellation fee.
House manager costs in Phoenix, answered plainly.
Every figure traces to a published source. The full list, the calculator and every assumption are on the main research brief.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 estimates for Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ (area 38060), cross-industry, retrieved 2026-09-04 through the BLS Public Data API.
- Talent Gurus, Household Staff Salary Guide 2026 and Family Office Salary Guide 2026: the national agency percentiles we scale for Phoenix.
- Internal Revenue Service, Publication 926 (2026): Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment tax for household employers. State unemployment, workers' compensation, health insurance and the placement fee use the defaults explained on the main page.
Other metros:
