Building and Managing a Rental Brokerage: Hiring | Real Estate and ...

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Part 1: Hiring

To build a profitable rental brokerage or division, the first vital component is to develop a system to methodically hire a consistent stream of agents. Attracting enough people is the first step. You absolutely, positively have to be able to hire. Turnover is magnified on the rental end of the business which is why a successful rental operation never stops bringing in new people.

When a company hires me to consult for them, the first thing we work on is improving their system for interviewing, hiring and recruiting. The ability to hire solves a myriad of problems. I know a number of firms in New York that do very little right except hire and because of their ability to bring in fresh troops month after month and year after year they are always highly profitable. I call these types of brokerages ?churn and burn? operations. I do not favor this business model but it clearly demonstrates the value of hiring.

How many new agents do you need to hire? The answer is ?more than you think?. Rental firms need to hire a lot more bodies than sales companies. We are in an industry where three out of four people don?t last two years in the business. My model for maximizing production with a rental office is to bring in a number of new hires equal to ten percent of their total desks on a monthly basis. For example: 20 desks = 2 hires a month, 50 desks = 5 hires a month, 100 desks = 10 hires a month. A new office or rental division will need to hire even more people every month until their agent population stabilizes. The adage ?An empty desk never rented or sold an apartment? certainly applies.

I make my living teaching agents how to build long, rewarding careers in real estate with a high quality of life outside the business. I absolutely hate everything about the ?churn and burn? model companies. However, the value and importance of recruiting the amount of agents you need is one of the common denominators of successful rental brokerage firms. You must build an effective and efficient ?hiring engine?. Quite simply, you have to be able to hire.

Stay tuned to read the rest of this series, or read the rest of?Greg Young?s posts here.

Source: http://www.zillow.com/blog/pro/2012-12-17/building-and-managing-a-rental-brokerage-hiring/

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