Fab - Recensione dipendente - Head of Compliance & MLRO presso Rent Smart

Being an independent real estate agent for one of the largest companies in the city you really had an ocean of listings to work with all over the entire city of Chicago. This led to really learning your way around the city which is valuable for those newer to the area. This was also a good learning experience for how the rental market works in Chicago and once in a while there were company perks such as free food or Blueman Group tickets.

There were issues. For starters the company closed up due to running out of cash, which may be a combo of expanding too quickly and improper handling of finances by management. Secondly the commission structure was tough because in the Rent Smart system you got 25% when another agent rented a listing you put into the database, meaning if you had a client and you got a deal from a listing in the database, as the renting agent you only got 25% and the listing agent got 25%. The company encouraged agents to go out and procure their own listings to put into the database so if an agent rented their own listings they got 50% and if another agent rented their listings they still got 25% for their listing efforts. That is fine but in this industry there is such a high attrition rate that when you get a hundred or so new people in and out of the door each year, they are out there trying to get new listings and after a couple of years the whole city is literally already picked over. So new agents coming in don't really have a good chance of getting any new listings. There were very few "open listings" on the company for anyone to rent and get 50%. There was also a $50/mo database fee and very tedious paperwork involved for each deal that kept changing every couple of weeks. Honestly it was sometimes easier, quicker and more profitable to just show your client properties on MLS and deal with another agency.