At YoChicago we refer to apartment rental services, also known as locators and finders, as bedbugs. It’s our shorthand way of informing you that the locators are noxious parasites that tenants should do their best to avoid. It simply isn’t that hard to find an apartment in Chicago, and you’re unlikely to find the best deals by getting in the car with a bedbug.
This is the time of the year, just ahead of the spring apartment rental season, when the bedbugs swarm the help wanted ads on Craigslist, trying to fill their high-turnover ranks with the young and the gullible. The ads paint glowing descriptions of the bedbug firms, and tout high weekly earnings potential, but don’t disclose that many of the bedbugs made nothing last week, or the week before, or the week before that. Hence the need for heavy recruiting.
Tempted to respond to one of those ads? Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
Although I’ve witnessed your arguments to the contrary (and am not about to try and change your mind about locator agencies), I’d like to point out the marketing problem when recruiting new agents: agencies with low turnover rates or with agents who earn reasonable pay at a consistent rate don’t have a prayer of attracting new talent. If I have a team of agents who reliably earn $800 a week, how am I supposed to measure up to agencies that claim their agents are pulling six figures a year?
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing this whole side of the industry is the lack of a well-trusted critic to keep the whole bunch in line.
(Incidentally, I thought you called them “maggots,” not “bedbugs.” They’re two entirely different species. Why the change?)
Chris,
I announced the terminology change some time ago.