If you don’t fit within the mold of the service sector you’re in, you’ll be squashed. VAS understands bank appraisals and not much else. The Company claims to support and encourage the establishment of specialized teams within service sectors, however in practice seems more inclined to break up any and all teams that delve into anything the Company doesn’t fully understand or finds risky. Throughout the Pandemic, there has been significant turnover of both producers and administrative staff. The result is a toxic work-life balance and burn-out culture within the Company. Despite having less people on a team and having centralized Admin support that’s so lackluster you’re made to spend 50% of your working hours doing the Admin work yourself, you’re nevertheless expected to exceed your/your team’s specified budget.
The VAS service line encourages quantity over quality—they’d rather you rush a $5,000 “widget” assignments for a bank client every week in a given month than two $10,000 more complex appraisals in a given month.
If being a cog in an appraisal machine is not your life’s goal, avoid and/or get out. If you pride quality over quantity, this is not the place for you.
Pay is far below competitors, and base salaries are laughable. The problem with the pay structure is that a large portion of your annual pay is paid out as a “bonus” or “incentive”, and that bonuses are paid out once a month rather than as a lump sum at the end of the year. This is not tax efficient; withholding on your “bonus” or “incentive” is assessed at 45% no matter your actual tax bracket. The result is that the amount you take home after tax and other withholding deductions is insufficient to afford a comfortable lifestyle in California’s cities.
CBRE as a whole is—at the end of the day—a Brokerage house. That’s where the money is made. The more money you make for the company and your manager(s), the more respect you’ll have. If you are a top producer—especially in Brokerage—you’ll be treated like royalty. If you’re anywhere below the top, anything you ask for will be lost in the ‘black hole’ of a stockholder-focused corporate bureaucracy.
