Category: Original Research

There are four main business models for the agents who might help with your apartment search in Chicago.

1. Paid by the landlord, work out of the landlord's office. (The "in-house agent" model)
2. Paid by landlord, live in the building doing maintenance and leasing. (The "building superintendent" model)
3. Paid by a third party leasing agency. ("Apartment locator" services)
4. Paid by a third party real estate sales brokerage. ("Realtor" services)

Today we'll be focusing on models #3 and 4 above, but it's worth remembering that all but the "building superintendent" model are paid entirely on commission. If the agent doesn't close the deal with you they get paid nothing at all. Some renters think that they will have to pay a ton of cash to work with an agent. In Chicago this is not true - the landlord pays the agent in Chicago no matter which side they represent. Other renters think that their agent will walk away from the work with the entirety of the first month's rent. This is also not true.

The reality of a Chicago rental agent's income is pretty bleak. Today we're going to figure out how many apartments you can see with one agent before you're pushing their income below Chicago's minimum wage of $10.50 an hour, or $21,000 a year.

Now we're not going to focus on what it means to be earning minimum wage in Chicago when compared to the real cost of living. We're also not going to dwell (much) on the fact that good agents are skilled laborers who should be earning more than minimum wage. We're just considering how much of your agent's time you can take before they'd have been better off working at McDonald's. Continue reading Are You Forcing Your Agent to Work for Less than Minimum Wage?

When I worked for a local property management company here in Chicago we had a staff of about 25 people. 5 of us worked in the office or as supervisors. The rest were all maintenance workers. I'm not sure how many of our crew were citizens and how many were undocumented, but I know that out of the whole company only four of us were born and raised in the US. This sort of staffing scenario was not uncommon among the other companies working at our level.

Renters in Chicago will find it very rare to encounter a maintenance worker at their apartment building without an accent. Most of those working in property maintenance who were born & raised in the US are approaching retirement age. Residential rental maintenance relies heavily on the immigrant population - a population that is now under intense scrutiny from the federal government.

Our crew worked 10-12 hour days. I'm not sure how much they were paid but I'm sure for most of them it was below minimum wage. On the last day of the month and the first day of the month those 12 hour days could stretch to 16 or more as they tried frantically to turnover huge number of apartments between renters across our many buildings. On some months those 20 guys would flip 80 apartments or more in two days, painting, patching and cleaning them, hauling out broken fridges, replacing toilets, re-tiling bathrooms. These days, 7 years after I left, many of them are still working there.

Out of curiosity I did some digging to see how Chicago's apartments might be affected by increased crackdowns on undocumented immigrants. I used the US Census Bureau's 5-year ACS data from 2006-2010 (Charts EEO-ALL01R and EEO-CIT02R if you want to play along at home), along with recent unemployment statistics for the Chicago area from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now it is important to remember that the Census statistics only count Citizens and Non-Citizens in each occupation. They do not draw distinctions between immigrants with work visas and undocumented immigrants. Continue reading Immigration Could Be Your Apartment’s Achilles Heel

When most outsiders think of living in Chicago rentals they think of skyscrapers with sleek elevators and revolving doors, lakefront views and rooftop decks. But all it takes is a glance at the city with Google Maps in satellite view to show you that most of the city is not chock-a-block with 80-story structures. Newcomers to the city may get a little culture shock when they realize that their new rental housing will probably be in a short, squat walk-up constructed over a century ago.

To save those moving to town from a little disappointment, we decided to take a look at what the statistics have to say about the average Chicago rental housing. We paid a visit to our favorite source of statistical data, the American Fact Finder provided by the Census Bureau, which we hope will be one of the few sites to survive the coming change of federal government relatively intact.

The Norm

According to the American Housing Survey last conducted in 2013, the average Chicago renter lives in a building that is 2-3 stories tall (72.5%). It has 2-4 units (29.5%) and was constructed either between 1950-1969 (24.8%) or prior to 1920 (24.3%), with a median construction date of 1961. It's a walk-up building (72.1%) with no elevator (61.0%). Their apartment is at least 2 stories off the ground (50.5%). Continue reading The Rarest and Most Common Chicago Apartments