You have decided the household needs professional help — a house manager to own the vendor list and the maintenance calendar, a housekeeper who does more than surface cleaning, maybe an estate manager across two properties. The next question is who finds that person. Here is the short answer on cost: domestic staffing agencies charge roughly 15–25% of the employee's first-year gross salary as a placement fee — $18,000 to $30,000 on a $120,000 house manager — and some firms add a registration fee of a couple hundred dollars just to open the search.
At those fee levels, the difference between a genuine recruiting operation and a resume-forwarding service is worth five figures. This guide profiles the major firms, breaks down how staffing agencies charge, and gives you the seven questions that separate the two. If you are still deciding which roles to hire in the first place, start with our household staff guide; if the role is specifically a house manager, the house manager guide covers duties, salary tiers, and interview questions.
Domestic staffing agencies charge 15–25% of first-year gross salary, with minimums around $10,000 and registration fees of $0–$199 to start a search. Replacement guarantees run from 30 days to 18 months depending on the firm — and the guarantee, not the headline fee, is where contracts differ most. No single agency sees the whole candidate market, so the strongest searches run two or three channels in parallel. And whichever firm you use, you — not the agency — are the employer of record, with the payroll and tax obligations that follow.
How Do Domestic Staffing Agencies Work?
A household staffing agency is a recruiter for private-service roles: housekeepers and executive housekeepers, house managers, estate managers, private chefs, personal assistants, chauffeurs, laundresses, domestic couples, and butlers. That breadth is what separates these firms from nanny agencies, which place one role deeply — our nanny agency guide covers that market separately. Most household staffing firms place nannies too, but childcare placement is a different evaluation with different screening standards.
The process is consistent across firms. An intake call produces a written job specification and a fee agreement, sometimes with an upfront application fee. The firm then presents candidates in batches of pre-screened resumes, you interview the short list, and most firms arrange working trial days before an offer. Once you commit to a candidate, the placement fee is earned — typically due in full at hire — and a replacement guarantee window begins.
Two structural facts to hold onto. First, the employer pays; a reputable firm never charges the candidate a placement fee. Second, the candidate pools overlap more than the marketing suggests. Experienced private-service candidates register with two or three firms at once, so paying the highest fee in town does not buy you exclusive access to a hidden roster. It buys you that firm's screening, its negotiation help, and its guarantee.
On timelines, calibrate by seniority rather than by the recruiter's optimism. Standard roles — a housekeeper, a chauffeur — tend to fill in weeks once a firm has a real spec in hand. Senior confidential searches run months, because the best candidates are employed, discreet, and slow to move. If you need coverage in the meantime, ask about temporary staff at intake; bridging with a temp beats rushing a permanent hire you will be paying a five-figure fee on.
How Do Staffing Agencies Charge? The Fee Structures Explained
Almost no firm in this industry publishes prices, which makes the ones that do useful benchmarks for everyone else. Here is the full fee anatomy:
| Fee | Typical range (2026) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Registration / application fee | $0–$199 | HouseholdStaffing.com charges $199, valid for one year; many firms charge nothing upfront |
| Placement fee — standard roles | 15–20% of gross annual salary | Housekeepers, chefs, chauffeurs; 15% is a Northeast benchmark |
| Placement fee — senior roles | 20–25% of gross annual salary | House managers, estate managers, personal and executive assistants |
| Minimum placement fee | ~$10,000 | Common at estate-staffing firms regardless of salary |
| Temporary staff | ~30% of the employee's earnings | Often capped so it never exceeds the permanent fee |
| International placements | ~30% of annual salary | Usually requires a retainer in advance |
A newer pattern worth knowing: some firms price the guarantee itself. One published schedule charges 20% of total compensation with a 3-month replacement window, 22% for six months, and 25% for a full year. That structure at least makes the tradeoff explicit — you are buying insurance on the hire, and you can decide how much of it you want.
Run the arithmetic before you sign. A $120,000 house manager at a 20% fee is $24,000. A $70,000 housekeeper at 18% is $12,600 — and if the firm has a $10,000 minimum, even a $50,000 part-time placement costs five figures. The fee is almost always earned at hire, not at the end of the guarantee, so read what "earned" means in the agreement.
Four contract terms deserve more attention than the percentage:
- Replacement vs. refund: Nearly every guarantee promises a replacement candidate, not your money back. If the firm's roster failed you once, a replacement from the same roster may not be worth much. Ask directly whether any portion is refundable.
- What voids the guarantee: Changing the job description, adding duties, or paying the fee late commonly voids it. Get the void conditions in writing.
- Trial-day pay: Working interviews are paid work. You pay the candidate for trial days at the agreed rate, on the books, from day one — the employment-tax mechanics in our household employer tax guide apply to a house manager exactly as they do to a nanny.
- Conversion and off-book clauses: If you hire a temp permanently, a conversion fee applies. If you hire a candidate the firm introduced — even a year later, even through another channel — the fee is still owed. These clauses are standard and enforceable; budget accordingly.
And the schedules are more negotiable than they look — especially the structure. Firms rarely cut the percentage for a single hire, but a multi-role search (a domestic couple, or a housekeeper and house manager at once) routinely earns a blended rate, and a firm quoted against a competitor's published 15% finds flexibility it did not mention at intake. Negotiate the guarantee window before the percentage: a longer replacement window is usually worth more to you than two points off the fee, and costs the firm less to give.
The Major Household Staffing Firms in 2026
These are the firms families encounter again and again in the national market — the ones with real recruiting infrastructure, multi-market reach, or a long enough track record to judge. Inclusion here is a map, not an endorsement: screening rigor varies even among old names, which is why the evaluation questions in the next section matter more than any list.
| Firm | Founded / base | Where they place | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pavillion Agency | 1962, New York | NYC and LA offices; 12 more markets incl. Greenwich, the Hamptons, Miami | Scale — bills itself the largest household staffing agency in the U.S. |
| Mahler Private Staffing | 1989, Milwaukee | National; NYC, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Aspen among core markets | Family-office placements plus staff consulting (household manuals, comp reviews) |
| British American Household Staffing | New York | NY, LA, San Francisco, Miami, plus London and Dubai | Formally trained estate staff; yacht and aviation crew |
| Household Staffing International | Northeast roots | 11 markets, New York to San Francisco | The rare firm that publishes its full fee schedule (15–25%) |
| HouseholdStaffing.com | Bala Cynwyd, PA (NYC office) | National | $199 application fee and an 18-month replacement guarantee — the longest we have seen published |
| Hire Society | 2012, New York | NYC, the Hamptons, Palm Beach | Word-of-mouth clientele; private homes plus event staffing |
| Society Staffing | New York | NYC-centered | Boutique searches spanning households and private offices |
| The Help Company | 1982, Los Angeles | LA, San Francisco, New York | West Coast institution serving high-profile households |
| The Grapevine Agency | 2005, Los Angeles | LA and NY | Founded by entertainment-industry veterans; corporate and domestic desks |
| Colonial Agency | 1963, Los Angeles | Greater Los Angeles | One of the longest-operating domestic agencies in the country |
| Heartland Estate Staffing | 1984, Missoula, MT | Nationwide, incl. LA County | Part-time through long-term estate staffing |
The estate-staffing heavyweights
Pavillion, Mahler, and British American Household Staffing are where searches for formal, multi-property, or family-office-adjacent roles tend to land. Pavillion has placed staff since 1962 and runs the broadest roster of the three, from baby nurses to estate managers. Mahler's distinguishing feature is the consulting practice around the placement — staff planning, household manuals, compensation reviews — which matters when you are building a staff rather than filling a job. BAHS is the name for formal, British-style service and for the edge cases most firms cannot touch: yacht crew, aviation staff, overseas placements. Expect senior-role fees at the 20–25% end from all three.
The transparent operators
Household Staffing International and HouseholdStaffing.com are worth a call even if you end up elsewhere, because their published terms anchor every other negotiation. HSI's schedule — 15% for standard roles in the New York tri-state area with a 30-day free trial, 20% for senior roles with a 60-day trial, 20–25% elsewhere — tells you what the market actually bears. HouseholdStaffing.com's 18-month replacement guarantee is several times the industry's 30-to-90-day norm; when a firm is willing to stand behind a hire that long, ask its competitors why they will not.
The boutiques
Hire Society, Society Staffing, The Help Company, The Grapevine Agency, Colonial, and Heartland compete on relationships rather than reach. Hire Society reports that its clientele comes entirely by referral; The Grapevine's founders came out of the entertainment industry and built the firm around discretion for high-profile principals. Boutiques often know their local candidate pool person by person — the tradeoff is a thinner bench when your requirements are unusual. Our New York and Los Angeles guides profile the local players in each market in depth.
One pattern from years of coordinating searches across these firms: the quality signal is not the fee, the office address, or the age of the name on the door. It is how much the recruiter pushes back on your job description in the first call. A firm that accepts a vague spec without question is planning to forward resumes, not run a search.
See what a coordinated search looks like. The research is the easy part. In two minutes, watch how a Beverly coordinator runs the rest — agencies, screening, and contracts — so you don't have to.
Watch: Meet Beverly · 2 min →How to Evaluate a Domestic Staffing Agency: 7 Questions to Ask
Every firm above will sound impressive on an intake call. These seven questions produce answers you can actually compare:
1. What is the exact fee, and when is it earned?
Get the percentage, the minimum, and the trigger in writing. "Earned at hire" and "earned at the end of the trial period" are very different sentences when a placement fails in week three.
2. Is the guarantee a replacement or a refund — and what voids it?
Push past "we have a policy in place." How many replacement candidates, over what window, and does adding duties to the role void it? A firm confident in its screening will answer precisely.
3. What share of applicants do you reject?
The strongest firms decline most of the candidates who apply to register. A recruiter who cannot cite a number, or who claims to represent everyone, is running a listings business.
4. How do you verify, exactly?
In-person or video interviews, reference calls the firm conducts itself (not letters the candidate supplies), background checks re-run at placement rather than at registration, and — for driving roles — a motor vehicle record. Ask which of these are standard and which cost extra.
5. May I speak with two client families placed in the last six months?
Recent, comparable references — same role, similar household — are the single best predictor you can get. A confident firm provides them without ceremony.
6. How are trial days handled?
The candidate must be paid for working interviews, and someone has to run that payroll lawfully. A firm that suggests paying trial days in cash is telling you how it thinks about employment law generally.
7. What happens if I find my hire somewhere else?
If you are running parallel channels — and you should be — you need to know whether the fee agreement claims exclusivity, and for how long an introduction "belongs" to the firm. Twelve months is common; some agreements reach further.
Do You Need a Staffing Agency at All?
Honestly: not for every role. The fee buys three things — access to passive candidates who never answer job ads, screening infrastructure, and speed. Whether those are worth $10,000–$30,000 depends on the role.
Where agencies earn the fee: senior and confidential roles. Estate managers, house managers for complex properties, and private chefs at the top of the market rarely apply to postings; they are recruited, quietly, from other households. If discretion matters — a known name, a staffed property, a household that cannot absorb a bad hire — the agency's pre-screening is cheap insurance.
Where you can run it yourself: a first housekeeper or a family assistant hired through referrals, neighborhood networks, and job boards. The searching is genuinely doable solo; the screening, contracting, and payroll setup are where families stumble, and the 5-step hiring framework in our household staff guide walks through all of it.
The hybrid truth most firms will not volunteer: because candidate pools overlap, registering with one prestige firm does not cover the market. Families who fill difficult roles fastest typically run one or two agencies plus their own network in parallel, and let the channels compete.
What that looks like at three budget levels:
- Budget path: Direct-source a housekeeper or family assistant through referrals, neighborhood networks, and job boards, and spend the savings on a payroll service and a professional background check. Your cost is mostly hours — against a $10,000+ agency minimum, this is where self-managed searches genuinely pay.
- Mid-range path: One published-fee agency on a standard role: a $70,000 housekeeper at 15% is a $10,500 fee, with a trial period and a defined guarantee doing the risk absorption.
- Premium path: An estate firm on a senior confidential search: a $150,000 estate manager at 25% is $37,500 — justified when the candidate pool is invisible from the outside and a mis-hire would cost far more than the fee.
Beverly vs. a Domestic Staffing Agency
Beverly is not a staffing agency and does not maintain a roster. Beverly is the family's hiring coordinator — one expert who runs the search across multiple agencies, job channels, and your own network at once, with standardized screening regardless of where a candidate comes from. That model exists because of the overlap problem above: no single roster covers a market, and running three channels yourself is a part-time job.
The distinction matters most for childcare-centric roles — nannies, nanny-housekeepers, and family assistants — where Beverly coordinates across both the household staffing firms in this guide and the dedicated nanny agencies, and where screening standards for child-facing hires are their own discipline. For a purely non-childcare estate role — a chef, a chauffeur, an estate manager for a household without children in the mix — a specialist firm above is the right call, and this guide is written to help you choose one well.
The Bottom Line: Which Firm Should You Call First?
Match the firm type to the search, not the other way around.
Multi-property, formal-service, or family-office-adjacent roles: start with the heavyweights — Mahler, BAHS, or Pavillion — and budget fees at 20–25% of a six-figure salary. Their bench for senior candidates is what you are paying for.
One busy home, first household hire: get a quote from a published-fee firm to anchor the market, then compare one boutique in your city against running the search yourself with the household staff guide framework. For a standard role, the delta between a 15% fee and a well-run direct search is real money.
Childcare at the center of the role: if the hire will spend meaningful hours with your kids — nanny-housekeeper, family assistant, nanny-plus — evaluate the childcare screening separately from the household placement, and coordinate across both agency types rather than defaulting to whichever firm answered first. That coordination across firms is exactly the work Beverly does for families.
Whichever door you walk through, the contract terms — guarantee, void conditions, exclusivity — will matter more within a year than the logo on the fee agreement. Read them like the employer you are about to become.
See how Beverly actually works
Your family's hiring coordinator — one point of contact working top agencies, au pair programs, and your personal network, all at once.
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