Pros
About 80% of the people on the field are fine to work with. Rent discount. 401k. Health Insurance and other benefits. Employment during pandemic. Some may consider this a pro, apparently it's really difficult to get fired. If you end up with a problematic co-worker, good luck. It seems almost impossible to get fired.
Cons
The rent discount is less now. You will barely be able to afford the cost of living at their properties with their pay and discount as a Service Technician or Leasing Consultant. The health insurance options suck. There are plenty of friendly residents, but some are just nasty. Only 3 uniforms a year. Equity only cares about their investors opinions, not yours or the residents or anyone that actually knows what's going on on their properties. They are as cheap as possible. They expect you and your team to give luxury service to residents, but they don't invest in what it takes to maintain that luxury experience. They are making service and leasing teams smaller despite (pre pandemic) seeing growth in profits annually. They will stretch you and your team thin and expect you to carry out unrealistic loads of work. Work life balance is horrendous. Taking time off, vacations, personal days, or sick days just means way more work for you when you get back as the teams are too small to take on the added pressure. I signed up to work on one property and ended up working at four for on call emergencies. There is definite favoritism between the RMs. They put on a friendly front and give the minimum amount of appreciation to keep you in line, but it's all a facade. If you pay just a little bit of attention you'll see they care about money over their employees. Their ethics are questionable. They cut security without informing any residents. They have signs everywhere that they have CCTV cameras, but they don't work at many properties. You can work in Los Angeles or New York, but someone in Chicago will decide that your property no longer needs security and your team will have to be the one to explain to residents that there's no security or footage of their car break in. Goodluck with HR dealing with problematic co-workers. They demand excellence, but there seems to be no repercussions for incompetent workers. If you are sexually harrassed and no longer feel comfortable working alone and report it to HR, they will give give you a false solution and never follow through with it. The pay in my opinion isn't worth it for how miserable the job really is. They encourage their employees to write to politicians or vote certain ways for the company's benefit. During the pandemic: Their number one goal, per the VP, was to collect as much rent as possible, not protect their employees or residents. They will take your questions to "address" concerns, but they already have a scripted response to your concerns and won't change their stance and in some cases they flat out ignore difficult questions. No hazard pay. Hardly any protection. They did cut hours TEMPORARILY, everything is back in full swing now, while this pandemic is still happening. This was just what MY experience and things that I witnessed during my time with EQR.
