Pros
-For someone recently out of college, this was a well-paying opportunity to gain experience and work in a nice facility. -Developed close relationships with other on-site employees, usually due to commiserating over awful work environment. -Commission structure, when you finally get paid, is good. -Opportunities for growth if you are able to make their system work.
Cons
Where to begin? this is a job that I was excited to start, but slowly broke me down to the point where I was experiencing medical issues due to the stress that the poor management caused the staff. -I was initially hired as a concierge for a luxury apartment building downtown. After about a month, both the PM and Senior Leasing Agent had quit with no notice. The area VP asked that I begin training to do leasing work in addition to my concierge work. Being a recent college grad, I agreed to learn a new skill. However, was thrown into the leasing position with very little training. Before long, the second leasing agent quit, leaving me as the only main leasing agent with only one official leasing training session. Yet the company continued to insist that the building meet all occupancy standards. -Would be asked to work extended hours (sometimes 9am to Midnight on Saturdays). Would often work a full day of leasing, and then have to do concierge work on top. Management okay-d me working Overtime, as was needed to keep the building running, but I did not wish to take on so many hours. -Many amenities in the building were in disrepair for the entire 18 months I worked in the building. Management refused to order supplies to fix the issues and asked that I lie when giving tours that the parts were on the way. -General understaffing, as the building had one leasing agent/concierge, one cleaner, and one maintenance person working a building withover 200 units. Nevertheless, the company still expected you to maintain the same standards as other properties with a dozen staffmembers. -Higher ups visited site often, but only to make extra demands. They were consistently reluctant to do anything to help our swamped staff or to make moves to hire people that had left. -ZERO work/life balance. The stress of being so overworked (consistenyly pulling 60 hour weeks while the property manager was there 3 days a week) LITERALLY gave me shingles and if there is such a thing as "workplace PTSD," I'd have it. I've since moved out of real estate and into a job that actually cares about their employees quality of life.
