I moved cross country for my husbands work in jan 2019 and applied as a “property manager” at a real estate company. The ad read more as a regional/ asset manager so the job title alone was a bit confusing.
When I met with the owner of the company he pivoted and described a new position as a community manager for 3 buildings for a new portfolio they were about to get. Since the position and portfolio were new I didn’t entirely understand the position as he didn’t have it fully fleshed out but accepted it.
A couple days in I figure out this position is in no way right for me since I has always worked more in a back of the house capacity, this was face to face interactions and leasing etc. I convinced the guy who was basically the owners right hand man to let me have the original property manager position I applied for for this new portfolio, and we hired someone for the community role.
Fast forward 6 mos and I am STILL being paid the same wage, 65k. Except as a CM I would have also been getting leasing bonuses. So not only did I take a paycut for more work, the CM was making 60k + $50 a lease. In high turnover, cheap properties it was fairly easy to make as much as me. I’ll point out this girl had no real estate experience and would ask me the most minute questions. The difference was, HE paid MY wage, whereas the owner of the buildings paid hers.
Around July we took on even more properties, these were “lease ups” aka new empty buildings we needed to fill up. The CM for these was hired at 65k + $150 per lease 🫠 Her assistant CM, who was basically a kid, was making 50 + bonuses. At this, I finally convinced my owner for a raise (it was brought up multiple times) – he raised me to 68k. At this point I was managing 11 buildings (atleast 5 being leaseups) and over 10 staff members, not to mention running the highest paying portfolio for the company and working much longer hours than anyone else.
When it came time for my annual bonus, I think it was 2k and he PRORATED IT based on my start date. I started on January 21.
I started interviewing the next week, gave two weeks notice and used all of my vacation days, and made sure to let him know my new job would be starting at 120k.
Go fuck yourself, Craig.