Leasing consultants do not get competitive pay for the industry. I left and am making $3 more per hour at a different property management company, who also offers better health and PTO benefits.
Most Bell owned and managed sites are now centralized, which means that onsite staff is now 2 instead of 3. This makes more work for the onsite team no matter what Corporate tells you on how it makes your life easier, especially if one staff member is out sick or on vacation. Now it's one person doing all of the work.
They care about online presence, but not the quality of what you post. They expect you to pre-schedule at least 4 social media posts per week and have them pre-posted out TWO months ahead. Because, yeah, we have time for planning and creating that far out, even when we don't know our events for that month yet.
Oh, and thier communication is lacking for mandatory events. Last year we were told mid-October that in November Bell would be having a Resident Appreciation Week in November. The first email said "more details to come" and then 2 weeks before the theme and requirements of what was expected was sent out. Clearly people in the Corporate Office have never worked on site or have any clue how a property budget works when it comes to resident events. By the end of the year, most of the event budget is gone and what is left is usually put towards a holiday party. The property I worked at had it's November and December events budgeted and planned for. Now we were required to host a full week's worth of events with no additional money given to us in 2 weeks. Due to this we were no longer able to host a holiday party for our residents. Good job Corporate.
They also want you to push all tours to be a self-guided tour. We were required at one point to be 100% self-guided. They did back down from that number, however, we still need to push each tour that booked a guided tour as well as a walk-in to sign up for a self-guided tour. This always takes more time assisting people to do this, and most don't want to do it.
Finally, quarterly meetings. Four times a year they have a mandatory meeting for their employees in the region (for me it was in the DMV). This means that you have to drive somewhere far away from where you work. Will it be in VA or MD? We haven't done DC yet. All of the Leasing Consultants and Assistant Community Managers go for half of a day, until about noon. Lunch time. No lunch is provided. Since most of us have to drive at least an hour (some people more) to these sites, not having lunch, even just to grab and go, is a pain. Then when you get back to the office, you have to punch out for an hour for your lunch. It takes time away from the day and the meetings are never useful. It could be a Zoom meeting.
