Tuesday, December 10th, 2024
At Downtown Apartment Collective, we have the systems in place to set you up for success in building your career as a real estate agent in downtown Chicago. Many of our agents start their career as a leasing agent and get their sales license when their leasing clients start asking them for help purchasing in subsequent years. Here’s what you need to know about getting started as a leasing agent in downtown Chicago!
Our River North Office
After on boarding, new leasing agents are matched with a team leader. Team leaders are a select pool of top agents who also have strong teaching and leadership skills. The first portion of training for new agents is one-on-one with the team leader through a combination of in-office training, field training (agents shadow their team leader), and reverse field training (team leader observes the new agent with clients and provides feedback). The second part of training is becoming familiar with our inventory. We work with roughly 400 rental buildings throughout Chicago. Team leaders put together a plan to help familiarize new agents with those buildings between in-office research and site visits. We attend broker events on a regular basis as a team to build industry relationships and further familiarize themselves with buildings. The third portion of training is ongoing. We offer consistent training opportunities in and out of the office. Most of our leasing agents go on to get their sales licenses and find that leasing has given them a fantastic foundation for starting the sales portion of their career.
Our agents learn how to self-generate leads as part of training. After completing training and getting approved by your team leader to start working with clients, you’ll be eligible to work with company provided leads. Leads are distributed with priority given to whoever is in the office. We want our clients to get the service they need right away, and if you’re in the office we know you’re available to respond.
Yes, you do. However, you don’t need a license to get started or initially get hired as a leasing agent. Downtown Apartment Collective can give new hires a one time sponsor card. That means new hires have 120 days from the time they officially get hired to obtain a license. If you’re approved by your team leader to begin working with clients, you can get started under our supervision. There are other stipulations, (for example, new hires need to be enrolled in the leasing course within at least 60 days of getting hired), but in a nutshell, you do need a license to work as a leasing agent, but you don’t need a a license to get hired as one initially.
Character is always our top priority when hiring. We have record breaking retention amongst our team and the majority of our agents have been with us for many years, when the industry norm is for agents to stay at their brokerage for less than a year. We also have over 700 Google Reviews and every one of them is 5-star. We want to continue to hire people who are going to respect the other agents on our team, respect our clients, and provide exceptional service. When hiring new candidates, real estate experience is always a plus, but not a requirement. We pride ourselves on not being very “salesy”, and instead really offering a customer service focused experience for clients where they feel totally comfortable, heard, and are receiving exceptional service start to finish. Therefore, many of our strongest agents have come from hospitality backgrounds. Whether it’s putting together restaurant or fitness studio recommendations, doing some extra FaceTime tours of the neighborhood, or helping clients figure out their commute to their new office, our clients love working with us because our agents always go the extra mile to help them get their new life set up in Chicago. We would always prefer to hire great people and then teach them real estate skills than vise versa.
If you’re someone who prides yourself on professionalism, integrity, enthusiasm, being self-motivated, organization and time management skills, loves working with people, and wants to be in a vibrant office culture with a flexible schedule, we welcome you to apply!
Interested in joining our team? Email your resume to careers@downtownloop.com or contact us!
