Most CFOs see housing as a fixed cost to contain. The sharp ones treat it as a controllable investment that protects retention, stabilizes morale, and improves project ROI.
Let’s break it down.
When an employee can’t land stable housing near the job site, three things start bleeding cash: time-to-productivity, engagement, and retention.
Turnover is expensive. SHRM pegs average cost-per-hire around $4,700 before you even count lost productivity, ramp-up time, and manager overhead. Many benchmarks estimate total turnover cost at one-half to two times salary for skilled roles. Either way, churn triggered by bad housing support is not a rounding error. #SHRMC
Engagement has slid. Gallup reported U.S. engagement hit a 10-year low in 2024—only 31% engaged. Disengagement correlates with higher absenteeism and turnover, which you feel in project slippage and rework. Housing stress is a quiet engagement killer. #Gallup.com
Relocation failures are brutal. A domestic move for a homeowner routinely runs $80k–$90k; for renters, $30k–$40k. If the move stumbles—family can’t settle, commute is untenable, temporary lodging drags on—you risk both the role and the spend. On international assignments, a failed deployment can run into the hundreds of thousands—sometimes over $1M when you add travel, housing, severance, and replacement. #CapReloPlus Relocation
Here is the thing: if you’re not treating housing as a risk factor with a quantified cost of failure, you’re already paying for it—just in messy, untracked places on the P&L.
Housing gaps don’t just hurt people; they slow projects. Every day you’re late because the team isn’t on the ground—or is stuck in long commutes—has a price.
Construction and capital projects routinely lose thousands per day when schedules slip. One industry white paper estimated a 10% overrun on an “average size” project can wipe out $5M in profitability: at 20–30% delay (common), losses multiply fast. Construction Employers Association
Transportation and infrastructure analyses show delay costs stacking into the millions on relatively modest projects—think $96k per month of delay on an $11.4M job. That’s before you account for staff fatigue, overtime, and contractor penalties that come with repeatedly re-sequencing work because people aren’t proximate and settled. Transpo Research Library
If you’ve ever “value-engineered” housing and then watched critical headcount arrive late, churn out, or burn out, you’ve seen the opportunity cost in real time.
Static leases don’t match dynamic headcount. What most CFOs actually need is modular, on-demand inventory—furnished, code-compliant units that can scale up, scale down, and rotate across projects and seasons.
Treat it like cloud capacity for people: a committed baseline plus elastic spillover when you win a new scope, open a site, or staff a surge.
Short placement windows, consolidated billing, standardized SLAs, and verified addresses near the worksite beat a patchwork of per-diems and ad-hoc hotels—especially when hotel ADRs have risen materially since 2019. Deloitte
Central visibility (pipeline of units, expirations, lead times) lets Finance model scenarios: “What if we win two parallel projects 30 miles apart?” “What if we shift crews to nights?” You want knobs you can turn, not lease handcuffs you hope you can sublet.
What this really means is: flexibility in housing lets you move people, not just budget lines.
The cheapest nightly rate often produces the most expensive outcome.
Total cost of housing (TCO) for a role should include:
unit/lodging cost, 2) commute time (productivity loss), 3) missed start dates and onboarding delays, 4) churn probability uplift from unstable housing, 5) assignment failure risk, 6) project delay externalities.
Put simple numbers on it. A $25/day “savings” that adds 45 minutes of commute each way costs ~1.5–2 hours of productive time per employee per day. Multiply by wage + burden + schedule risk; it dwarfs the lodging discount. Now layer the probability-weighted cost of assignment failure—especially for relocations and international deployments where the downside can be six or seven figures. CapRelo
This is not about throwing money at apartments. It’s about underwriting outcomes.
What a strategic partner should deliver:
Inventory strategy, not just units. A rolling catalog near your worksites with hold options for peak periods, and the ability to reallocate quickly as scopes shift.
SLAs that map to project milestones. Move-in dates tied to mobilization, guaranteed utilities/Wi-Fi, and service response measured in hours, not days.
Data you can model. Lead times, fill rates, commute bands, cost per productive hour on site, churn deltas by housing type, and early-warning indicators (e.g., extension requests).
Consolidated risk controls. Compliance, safety, and duty of care handled once—especially important where tighter hotel markets and rising rates push teams into fragmented short-term rentals. AHLA
If the partner can tie housing inputs to outcomes—time-to-productivity, retention, and schedule adherence—you finally get a housing line that behaves like an investment with a return curve.
Baseline today’s outcomes. Time-to-start, early attrition, average commute, average nightly rate, and the number of schedule days lost to staffing or relocation lags.
Quantify failure risk. Add probability-weighted cost for relocation or assignment failure by cohort (domestic renter vs. homeowner, international assignee). Use credible ranges and be conservative.
Pilot modular inventory on one portfolio. Target a site where delays are costly, hotel rates are elevated, and recruiting is tight. Track before/after on start dates, retention at 90/180 days, commute time, and overtime. HOTELSMag.com
Roll up as “cost per productive day on site.” Compare against your status quo. If ROI is positive, scale.
If you’re not measuring housing ROI, you’re probably losing money. Quietly.
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Notes and sources: SHRM on hiring costs; Gallup on engagement trends; WERC/industry analyses on relocation costs; International SOS/Ipsos/KPMG on international assignment failure costs; AHLA/CoStar/Deloitte on hotel rate trends; and industry studies on the cost of project delays.