I am going to attempt to be as objective as possible with this part of my review. When I go on Yelp I always disregard the reviews that are either too fluffy or too negative. It feels like those folks have an ulterior motive. My goal is to give you the straight dish without the emotion.
Pay:
The company touts that their Agents are paid better than most Agents in the industry. This may be true, but the study never goes into the amount of work that is required to earn that pay. I've been both a traditional agent and a Redfin agent, and the fact is that about triple the work is required to earn the same amount of pay.
The pay structure is set up like this. Agents earn a salary (salaries were cut across the company about a year ago) and then bonuses based on closings, price point of the house, and customer satisfaction. The company is very proud of the fact that it pays on customer satisfaction and would like customers to believe this is the primary way we're paid. Up until a year ago this was true. However, now the company pays most of the bonus based on the price of the home and closing the deal rather than on customer satisfaction. There are goods and bads to this change, but it feels disingenuous to me to claim that we're paid on customer satisfaction since the majority of our bonus is not based on this.
Agents can also earn additional money by taking clients on tour.
On average, I would guess low level Agents probably gross about $40K - $50K a year (salary, bonus, plus tours), mid-level agents $70K - $80K, and high level agents/team leads $100K - $130K a year. This varies from market to market, and I expect that these numbers are lower in areas where the cost of living is lower.
Work Load:
There is no way to say this lightly. The work load is horrendous. Expect to miss family events, Church, Synagogue, your Sister's Wedding, your Child's Birth - you name it. You will work a lot of late nights and nearly every weekend. There is no system for relief either, so you are literally working every day of the week. Once again, I say this in my most Tom Brokaw objective tone possible - you will work every day of the week, often 10 - 14 hour days.
The only way to truly get time off is to take a vacation. Redfin does give generous vacation time - about 2-4 weeks a year depending how long you've worked there. The problem with this is that everyone is so busy with their own workload your deals get dropped while you're on vacation; and since some of your Bonus is based on Customer Satisfaction, taking a vacation will directly affect your pay. On average, my bonuses decrease by about 20% for deals that take place while I'm on vacation. There simply is not the staff to properly cover for people who are away and this results in lower customer satisfaction ratings from clients.
The work load has gotten worse over the last year when Redfin implemented it's 80/80/80 system. This means that each agent needs to go on 80% of their first tours, see 80% of homes before the client makes an offer, and attend 80% of closings. The goal of this program was noble and was designed to make the customer experience better; however the implementation was flawed.
Prior to 80/80/80 Redfin's Field Agents handled all face to face interactions with clients, and the Agents negotiated the deals, handled the escrow, gave pricing advice, etc. This allowed Redfin Agents to handle a very high work load, probably 6X what most traditional agents handle. With 80/80/80, Redfin hired additional agents in order to reduce the client load by about 40%. The problem is that the additional appointments nearly doubled the time required to be spent with each client. The net result was a significant increase in work load.
I've grieved over the work load issue, both for Redfin and myself. I grieve for Redfin because we are losing some of our most well respected knowledgeable agents to the traditional real estate world where they can earn more money doing less work. I also grieve for our clients because frankly they are getting a lower level of customer service. This is not because they are dealing with bad agents. They are just dealing with extremely overworked agents. It's even more sad in this market where homes are selling quickly. The fact is some Buyers are losing homes because their agent just isn't available to write an offer for them. For myself I grieve because I've missed precious moments in my children's lives. Last year I missed trick or treating with my kids while I was stuck on the phone. School plays, soccer games - you name it. I've missed these for Redfin and these are things I will never get back.
