Managed Payroll · Real Estate and Property Firms
Fixed, graduated, and capped commission splits calculated per closing. Licensed agents treated as statutory nonemployees when the IRS test is actually met, and as W-2 employees when it is not. Transaction coordinators, leasing agents, and hourly maintenance crews paid and overtime-tested correctly. Withholding registered in every state your portfolio touches. BEG manages all of it at $25-$45 per employee per month, all-inclusive. No migration required.
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TL;DR
A brokerage or property firm has to settle commission splits, agent classification, hourly staff overtime, and multi-state withholding in the same pay cycle. BEG manages all of it at $25-$45 PEPM, all-inclusive, live in 3-5 business days with no migration required.
Why Real Estate Payroll Is Different
Income arrives at closing instead of on a schedule, the largest payees are usually not employees at all, and the same office runs commissioned agents, salaried coordinators, and hourly maintenance crews on three different rule sets.
Who We Manage Payroll For
Fixed, graduated, and capped splits calculated per closing, with referral fees, team overrides, and franchise or transaction fees netted before payout, and year-end contractor reporting produced from the same records.
Owner compensation routed by entity type, so an S-corp managing broker takes documented W-2 wages and a partnership owner does not land on a payroll tax deposit where the IRS says they do not belong.
Salaried and hourly support employees run as W-2, with exempt status tested against the actual duties rather than assumed from a coordinator or manager title.
Nonexempt hourly staff across properties, with overtime calculated on the true regular rate including leasing bonuses, and multi-property time consolidated into one workweek.
This page covers residential and commercial brokerages, real estate teams, and property management companies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the on-site side of that workforce separately as property, real estate, and community association managers. If your business sits closer to one of those edges, BEG runs deeper pages for property management companies, construction and development firms, and professional services firms.
How It Works
We map your commission split models, how agents are contracted today, your W-2 support roster, the states and properties in your footprint, and how closing data reaches payroll. You get a fixed monthly cost before we start.
We build the split logic per agent and per team, confirm agent status against the statutory nonemployee test, review exempt classifications for coordinators and managers, register withholding in every state with an obligation, and set contractor reporting alongside W-2 processing. No migration required.
Every closing payout, every pay cycle, every state filing, every new-hire report, every 1099 and W-2 at year end, fully managed by BEG. Your broker or office manager approves and nothing else.
What BEG Handles
Usually contractors, but only when a two-part federal test is met: pay tied to output rather than hours, and a written contract saying the agent is not an employee.
The IRS places licensed real estate agents in a narrow category called statutory nonemployees, treated as self-employed for all federal tax purposes, and the agency confirms the same treatment in its guidance for licensed real estate agents. Both conditions have to hold. A brokerage that pays a new agent an hourly floor while they build a pipeline, or that never executed the written agreement, has an agent who no longer fits the safe harbor. BEG reviews each agent arrangement against the test at onboarding and flags the ones that do not hold, before a state agency or the IRS does it for you.
The reporting threshold rose. Payments made after December 31, 2025 are reportable at $2,000 or more, up from the long-standing $600 floor.
The IRS instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC now set the nonemployee compensation reporting threshold at $600, or $2,000 for payments made after December 31, 2025. For a brokerage that pays dozens of agents, referral partners, photographers, stagers, inspectors, and independent maintenance vendors, that single change reshuffles which payees get a form and which do not, and the answer differs by vendor. BEG tracks payee totals across the year and produces the correct set of forms, rather than leaving your office manager to re-sort a vendor list every January.
We build the split model per agent, apply it per closing, and net the fees before payout, so the number the agent sees matches the number the brokerage booked.
Three models cover most brokerages. A fixed split holds the same percentage no matter what the agent produces. A graduated split moves the agent to a better tier once they cross a production threshold, which means the correct rate depends on a running year-to-date total. A capped model has the agent contribute until they reach a set amount, after which they keep effectively all of it, which means the cap has to be tracked to the dollar and reset on the anniversary. Add referral fees, team leader overrides, and transaction or franchise fees and every closing becomes its own calculation. BEG holds that logic and runs it, so a disputed payout gets resolved from records instead of from memory.
Almost always yes. Nonexempt hourly staff earn time and a half over 40 hours in a workweek, and leasing bonuses have to be folded into the overtime rate.
Under the Department of Labor overtime rules, covered nonexempt employees must receive overtime at not less than time and a half their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek. The trap in property management is the regular rate itself: a nondiscretionary leasing or renewal bonus generally has to be included in it, which raises the overtime owed for the weeks the bonus was earned. Firms that pay the bonus as a flat add-on and calculate overtime on base pay alone underpay every time. BEG calculates the regular rate correctly and consolidates hours worked across multiple properties into one workweek rather than treating each site as a separate job.
We register the company and run withholding and filings in every state that creates an obligation, from the first affected pay cycle rather than after a notice arrives.
Most states tax wages for work physically performed inside their borders, and thresholds, reciprocity agreements, and local taxes differ in every one of them. A property management company that takes on a portfolio across a state line acquires on-site staff in a new jurisdiction in a single transaction. BEG maintains registrations and filings in all 50 states and allocates wages by work location instead of defaulting everything to the office state, so expanding the portfolio does not quietly open a compliance gap.
Then the general classification rules apply, and the relationship gets tested on behavioral control, financial control, and the nature of the relationship, not on the paperwork.
When the statutory nonemployee safe harbor does not fit, the IRS falls back to the common law test built on behavioral control, financial control, and the relationship of the parties, and the Department of Labor is direct that a 1099 or a signed independent contractor agreement does not by itself make someone a contractor. Salaried inside sales agents, in-house showing assistants, and unlicensed staff who are paid a piece of a deal are the arrangements that fail most often. BEG surfaces those before they become a back-wage and back-tax problem stretched across three years of filings.
What You Get
Common objection: "Our payroll is downstream of our transaction and property management software."
BEG does not require you to change platforms. We operate as your managed payroll team inside your current system, so the closing and property data your firm already captures keeps flowing where it flows today. If you want to move to isolved for stronger multi-entity and multi-property reporting, we can manage that transition, but it is never a requirement to get started.
Common objection: "Every provider we call makes us sit through a sales call just to hear a number."
The $25-$45 PEPM rate is published, not gated behind a form. It covers commission split calculation, agent classification review, multi-state registration and filing, exempt status review for support staff, contractor reporting, new-hire reporting, and year-end W-2s and 1099s. One number, one invoice, everything included.
Common objection: "We call our payroll company about a commission dispute and get a script reader."
Your BEG payroll specialist is your ongoing contact, not a ticket queue. When a team changes its override structure, when the firm takes on a portfolio in a new state, or when an agent arrangement starts looking like employment, one message gets it explained and handled.
Getting Started
15 minutes. We map your split models, agent agreements, W-2 support roster, and state and property footprint, and give you a fixed monthly price.
Agreement signed, system access granted, agent contracts reviewed against the statutory nonemployee test, support-staff classifications pulled for review.
Split and cap logic built per agent and team, multi-state registration and withholding opened, overtime regular-rate handling and contractor reporting configured in your existing system.
Your first fully managed payroll run and closing payout cycle. BEG executes, your broker or office manager approves, we handle every filing behind it.
The Math on Waiting
Neither problem announces itself. An agent paid partly on hours accrues employment tax exposure every month the arrangement runs. A leasing bonus left out of the regular rate underpays overtime in every week it was earned, across every property, for every nonexempt employee on the roster. Both are cheap to correct in the current period and expensive to unwind across three years of filings. This is the tax on growth that real estate firms pay without ever putting it on a budget line.
Your Next Transition Window
BEG transitions take 30-60 days end to end and the payroll itself goes live in 3-5 business days. Firms that move before their next listing wave avoid carrying an undocumented agent arrangement or an open state registration into their heaviest closing months. For a fraction of the $60,000 to $100,000 a firm spends on an internal payroll hire, this becomes invisible and handled, delivered remotely nationwide.
See your exact monthly and annual price on screen. No call required.
FAQ
Yes. Agent payouts and employee payroll run through one managed process, and year-end 1099s and W-2s are produced together rather than in two separate scrambles every January.
No. The IRS statutory nonemployee treatment applies only when substantially all pay is tied to sales or output rather than hours worked and a written contract states the agent will not be treated as an employee. Both conditions have to hold.
For payments made after December 31, 2025, nonemployee compensation is reportable at $2,000 or more, up from $600. BEG tracks payee totals across the year and produces the correct set of forms for agents, referral partners, and vendors.
Yes. Graduated tiers key off a running year-to-date production total and caps are tracked to the dollar and reset on the agent anniversary, with referral fees, team overrides, and franchise or transaction fees netted before payout.
Usually yes. A nondiscretionary leasing or renewal bonus generally has to be included in the regular rate, which raises overtime owed for the weeks it was earned. Calculating overtime on base pay alone underpays those weeks.
BEG registers the company and runs withholding and filings in that state from the first affected pay cycle. We maintain registrations in all 50 states and allocate wages by work location rather than defaulting to your office state.
No. BEG operates as your managed payroll team inside your existing system. Migration to isolved is an option if you want stronger multi-entity and multi-property reporting, never a requirement to get started.
Everything: commission split calculation, agent classification review, multi-state registration and filing, exempt status review for support staff, contractor payments and 1099s, new-hire reporting, year-end W-2s, and BEG support. One rate, no per-filing add-ons.
From signed agreement to live payroll: 3-5 business days. We build split logic, review agent agreements, and open any missing state registrations during configuration rather than after the first run.
Related pages
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