The alarming figure was raised as a key point at a Real Estate Institute of NSW conference in Albury on Tuesday.

REINSW chief executive officer Tim McKibben said the stress of dealing with struggling, close to homeless families, and landlords under increasing financial pressure, was taking a massive toll on the workforce.

Mr McKibben said the COVID pandemic, natural disasters such as the fires that ravaged the region three years ago and the drought of available properties had led to the exodus.

"I'm quite concerned with the mental health of our property managers in particular," Mr McKibben said.

"Talking to some of the property managers here in Albury, I worry about mental health issues because they're at the receiving end of a lot of frustration from people coming in saying, 'I've got nowhere to live, you've got to find me somewhere to live, I've got my family, I've got two kids - help'.

"The best evidence I have is that we lost 20 per cent of our property managers in one year.

"They just up and walked out saying 'I can't deal with it any longer, I can't deal with the stress'."

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Mr McKibben said the problem had prompted the institute to declare a national day to recognise the vital role propery managers played in helping people.

"We introduced a national celebration for property managers, we declared a day, the 24th of July," he said.

"We chose that day because 24-7 is how hard the property managers are working.

"During COVID they were on the receiving end from both sides, the tenants said 'I can't pay the rent', and then the landlords said 'Well I'm dependent on the rent to service the debt that I've got'.

"The property managers are sitting in the middle of this."

Mr McKibben said the single biggest challenge the industry faced in helping people to find homes - which trickled down to property managers - was the lack of properties available, especially in regional areas.

He said factors including the COVID pandemic, an influx of city people migrating to rural areas, and red tape imposed by councils on people trying to build homes, had led to the crisis.

"It's all about demand - to action the solution is where the difficulties arise, the solution is supply," he said. "We have a sharply increasing demand and the supply has not been able to keep pace with it. Governments will talk endlessly about housing affordability - for the love of money, there just isn't enough property."

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