July 11, 2025 – E.B. Solomont, The Wall Street Journal
As a property manager to the 1%, Sarah Korpela’s duties over the years have ranged from mundane to whimsical to downright bizarre.
She has tuned bicycles and picked up takeout, planned parties and cleaned up parties. One Christmas Eve in Aspen, she bought a vintage Rolls-Royce for a client’s girlfriend, only to have the client skid off the road into a ditch four days later. “That was a sad moment for the car,” she said. (The client was unharmed.)
Not long after, Korpela helped the same client move out of his roughly 10,000-square-foot house and sell seven of his cars, five ATVs, seven motorcycles and a few horses. She also sold his $1 million wine collection to a local restaurant (for about $400,000)—but she put her foot down when the client asked her to ship his gun collection to him overseas. “There’s something called trafficking,” she recalled telling him. She sold the guns instead. “If it’s legal, I have done it in this business,” said Korpela, president of Luxury Estate Managers of Aspen.
Upkeep on mansions is an expensive and a labor-intensive job frequently outsourced to an army of property managers, decorators, housekeepers, chefs, landscapers and more. In recent years, demand for these jobs has ticked up as the number of ultrawealthy households has swelled. In 2024, there were 2.2 million individuals in North America with a net worth of $5 million, up from 1.5 million in 2020, according to global wealth intelligence firm Altrata.
Affluent buyers have scooped up second, third and fourth homes that are increasingly larger and more complex. Some are forming “family offices” to manage a multitude of personal investments, from staff to property to charitable foundations.
“It becomes a business,” said Jamie Gagliano, a real-estate agent at Douglas Elliman who spent nine years as a chief of staff for hedge-fund executive Larry Robbins, according to her LinkedIn profile. She oversaw his homes and vehicles, including a helicopter. In general, she said, “we’re talking about assets that are sometimes north of $10 million—each of them.”
Typically, the hierarchy of staff includes a director of residences, who can earn $350,000 to $600,000 or more a year and oversees a portfolio of real estate. Often, wealthy property owners have full-time caretakers, jacks of all trades who changes lightbulbs and handles small repairs. “We call it the ideal husband,” said Peter Mahler of Mahler Private Staffing, noting the job can pay $60,000 to $200,000 depending on location, size and complexity.
The latest “it” job among the uber-wealthy is a tech specialist—which is effectively a personal Geek Squad—who makes sure the Lutron shades, Crestron lights and Sonos speakers are working, along with all of the televisions, remotes and high-tech appliances. The person, who can make $90,000 to $140,000 a year, is also responsible for all cellphones, iPads and computers and security-camera updates and backup.
Regardless of the staff makeup, daily upkeep is constant. Even empty houses need to be inspected regularly, said Mahler, who had a client in the Hamptons whose house was left alone for four days during the offseason—during which time the ice maker leaked. Several inches of water pooled on the floor, causing millions of dollars worth of damage. “Everything was ruined, every leg of every chair, every piece of drywall,” he said.
Luxury homeowners pay handsomely to avoid such scenarios. Someone with four homes can easily spend $1 million on staff annually, said Mahler, who said demand has gone up since Covid, along with staff wages.
Here’s more of who you need to manage your many mansions.
Chief of staff
Salary: $300,000 to $500,000+
Tales from the job: During Gagliano’s tenure, Robbins renovated a home in New Jersey and added an indoor ice rink. She was heavily involved in the complex approvals process, and acting as an owner’s representative with the team of architects and engineers sparked her interest in real estate. A perk? She learned to drive a Zamboni.
Estate manager
Salary: $200,000 to $350,000+
Tales from the job: Years ago, when Kelly Fore Dixon worked for the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and managed his house in Beverly Hills, Calif., she slept with her phone by her ear. There were four other full-time staffers at the house at the time—a maintenance worker, two housekeepers and a gardener—plus private security and 80 subcontractors. The 12,000-square-foot estate had a recording studio, home theater, pool and 30 HVAC units, said Dixon, founder of consulting firm Estate Management Systems. When Allen was there, “silent and unseen was the protocol,” Dixon said.
The house contained $50 million worth of artwork, including a Monet that was inadvertently sprayed with soda. “The art contractor came in for an annual inspection and said, ‘What the hell have you done to the painting?,’” Dixon said. They pulled security footage to find the culprit. It was Allen.
Housekeeper
Salary: $60,000 to $150,000+
Tales from the job: “People are passionate about how their pillows look,” said Korpela. “Do they like sheets ironed? Pillow straight or karate chopped? What’s on the bedside table?” One client prefers toiletries placed in the identical position in multiple homes so that she can reach into a drawer without thinking.
Healthcare entrepreneur Rob Vadas, who has homes outside of Cleveland, and in Naples, Fla., said his housekeeper in Florida works four hours a week to keep their $3 million condo dust-free even if he and his wife, Bonny Vadas, aren’t there. Before they arrive, she strips the beds and changes the sheets. If there is less than half a tube of toothpaste, she replaces it. “It’s spic and span,” he said.
Interior Designer
Salary: Project-based fees. Graybill’s rate, for example, is $1,000 an hour when he returns to a project.
Tales from the job: When owners have multiple homes, they typically appreciate having the same exact mattress, linens and towels in each place, said Andrew Sheinman of Pembrooke & Ives. “It’s the creature comforts,” he said.
The closet layout may also be the same across multiple residences so it’s easy to find things. To help maintain the look, some housekeepers travel with clients for consistency (i.e., to help unpack and set up the house per their exact preferences).
Sheinman said he once had a client who showed him a photograph of a Moroccan-style chair that he liked in Architectural Digest, and said to him: “You see the chair? Now build the house.”
Chef
Salary: $100,000 to $300,000
Tales from the job: “Before we know what food they do like, we really want to know what food they don’t like,” said chef Mike Shand, co-founder of Elite Private Chefs placement agency who has cooked for Beyoncé and Adele. He said chefs keep copious notes on client preferences.
Christian Paier, founder of Private Chefs, once had clients who insisted he buy three one-kilo tins of Beluga caviar for a 70-person Christmas party—about two cans too many. Sure enough, the guests didn’t finish a single can. At the end of the night, the staff was eating caviar by the spoonful to avoid throwing it out. “Of course I left them a kilo in the fridge, but who is going to eat that much caviar? It’s impossible,” he said.
Landscaper
Salary: Varies
Tales from the job: Some of MacMullan’s clients spend up to $300,000 to keep their grounds pristine. “You don’t just mow it and take a hedge trimmer to it,” MacMullan said. “They’re paying for the fact that we know the difference between a Hosta and a crabgrass.”
The offseason is packed with tasks like pruning and building stone walls, pools and patios. A “spring wake-up” typically includes weeding, mulching and planting, followed by clipping and pest management, said MacMullan, who once replaced $25,000 worth of flowers for a client after a rabbit mowed them down. (Mainstay covered the cost as a gesture of goodwill for the client.)
A few years ago replanting wasn’t an option when a client’s hydrangea buds were ruined during a cold winter snap. The client wanted blooming flowers for his daughter’s wedding so MacMullan sprung for fakes.
Driver
Salary: $100,000 to $225,000
Tales from the job: Rob and Bonny Vadas learned the importance of good car care the hard way. A few years ago the couple neglected to put a dehumidifying car bag in their white Bentley, which they left in Naples over the summer. The humidity took a toll and they returned to green mold on the white leather dashboard and seats.
“If you’re going to live there, you have to have a caretaker, a window guy, a car guy,” Vadas said. “You have to pay to play and that’s the truth.” Despite a thorough cleaning, the Vadases traded in the Bentley. “I just felt like there was mold in there somewhere,” said Rob, who disclosed the fungal fracas to the dealer. “They laughed and said, ‘You’re too honest.’”
Read the original published article here.