Easy streets

Back Bay broker: A cool job in a hot market

by Michelle Chihara

In a vacant studio apartment on the third floor of an old Newbury Street building, a prospective tenant -- we'll call her Linda -- is on the verge of tears. Linda, who has long brown hair and is wearing a loose black silk suit, isn't comforted by the built-in bookshelves that line the exposed brick along one wall, by the ornamental fireplace and the hardwood floors, or by the light streaming in from the four tall windows that look out over chic boutiques and restaurants. She purses her lips as she swings out of the small bedroom. "Will this even fit a queen bed? It won't, will it? There's no way." She throws open a door. "Is this the only closet?"

Paul Gleason, the real-estate agent showing her the apartment, nods.

"Oh, I'm gonna cry," Linda says.

Gleason, in a slightly crumpled white shirt and black pants, sways his hips slightly from side to side, and works the keys to the apartment between his fingers. He's been renting apartments in the Back Bay for 12 years now, and as frazzled as Linda might appear, he's seen people far more desperate. When he talks, it's with an air of patient understanding. "Eleven hundred is very good for the Back Bay," he says. Linda paces unhappily. "What's your range?"

---

Also, Jason Gay examines why the red-hot rental market is out of control.

---

"Eleven, twelve hundred is my range, thirteen if I really fell in love with a place. But I'm not going to. Does this have central heat? AC?"

"Noooo . . . " Gleason says slowly. He mentions a large studio on Beacon Street with central heat and air conditioning. That studio is going for $3400. Linda sighs.

"I'm leaving a place that's 1700 square feet. My bedroom alone is bigger than this room. It's got central AC, everything." Linda's voice inches up, a pitch closer to hysterical.

"What are you paying?"

"I can't even tell you. Half this."

There is a pause. Gleason and I blink expectantly. Finally, he asks, "Well, why are you leaving?"

"They're selling the building!" Linda blurts, shrugging helplessly.

Gleason starts nodding again. "All I can say is good luck, girl."

---

Linda has to sign a lease in the next couple of days, which makes her miserable. It also makes her an ideal client for a broker. No broker wants to deal with someone who's "just looking." And in a red-hot rental market, in the city's most sought-after neighborhood, there's no need for brokers to bend over backward.

"I'll ask them, 'Have you seen anything in the Back Bay yet?' " says Gleason. "Or, 'Where are you living now?' And if they say, 'Oh, I'm living in a two-bedroom in Newton for a thousand dollars and I thought I'd see what was out there in the Back Bay,' well, then you kind of know what you're dealing with. So I tell them, 'Go see what's out there. Educate yourself.' "

"If they say, 'I'm desperate, there's nothing out there,' then they're an educated consumer," Gleason says matter-of-factly.

Meanwhile, with Linda, Gleason is giving a little refresher course on the market. "You won't touch this. Go out and look. . . . You're up for a rude awakening."

Linda peers into the bathroom, squints at the mirror as if even she, in this space, is not as attractive. "Oh, I'm gonna cry," she repeats. She spins around to me. "This is not fun. Not fun. Put that in the paper."

When she's gone, I ask Gleason if he thinks she's going to take the apartment. "You know, for what it is, in the location it's in, that's a very good apartment . . . but I don't know if she'll take it," he says. "She used to work in real estate, I think she was letting me know that a little bit."

He does not seem worried.

---

Back at Fairfield Realty, where Gleason works, is Charlie Peabody. He's a 22-year-old student, actor, musician, and rental agent. He's also a Fairfield tenant. He rented a studio from the agency earlier this year, and the lease-signing process was evidently so genial that Gleason offered him a job. Almost every rental office has a few guys like Charlie (and they do, in an unscientific survey, seem to be primarily male) -- students or recent grads making extra cash, living in one of the office's units. After one weekend crash course for his license, Peabody is making better money than he could have made at almost any other temporary job.

Rental agents tend to work on straight commission, and Peabody says that on his busiest days in July he showed an apartment almost every hour. (Now, in late August, there's a lull before the small storm of panicked last-ditch efforts in early September.) Neither Peabody nor Gleason will say exactly how much he makes, but a typical agency arrangement is a 50/50 split: the agent gets half the fee, the agency (the "house") takes the other half. That means that if, on a good day, Charlie rents one $600 studio, one $900 studio, and one $1200 one-bedroom, he probably makes about $1350.

Of course, not every day is a good day. For brokers, the stress comes not from finding tenants, but from finding them first. Some landlords with lots of property who have multiple units on the market will fax their listings to dozens of brokers all over the city. In the Back Bay alone, four or five brokers might have the same listing, which can create a frenzied rush to get the fee by signing someone. "It can be a rat race between the brokers," says Gleason, "where everybody's trying to force-feed you a rental."

Deals for these "open" listings are signed on a first-come, first-serve basis. For brokers, that means taking the keys to the apartment in question and using them energetically until the fee is theirs.

Once a tenant has agreed to sign, there is still the possible complication of bad credit -- an issue even in the Back Bay. "One woman was really insulted by the fact that she needed a co-signer for the apartment," says Peabody, at Fairfield Realty. "Whatever. She lived in Beacon Hill, one of these Beacon Hill status-hungry yuppie freaks. She said she felt 'patronized.' I said, well, it's the landlord's policy, we run credit checks.

"People get upset about having to have co-signers, but a lot of people have bad credit. These are people making a lot of money -- six, seven figures. They call, saying 'I just bought a house in the Hamptons, whaddya mean I can't rent an apartment in Back Bay?' I've been flipped out on a few times. People are looking to vent."

But dented egos aside, there are harder jobs these days than renting apartments in the Back Bay. ("There wasn't much to master," Peabody says of learning the ropes.) The people at Fairfield may be salesmen, but they have little need for the hard sell. They don't waste their breath pretending that their apartments are spacious or packed with amenities. The neighborhood sells itself. Says Mona Hanson, the third agent in the office: "Living here is the Boston experience." In other words, you may not have room for a full-size fridge, but you're near the T, near the Armani Café, and your building's façade is gorgeous. Sure, inside your place may be tiny, dark, and rickety. But if you don't want it, your buddy Charlie's got 20 people talking to his answering service who probably do.

As we're leaving his office, Gleason says pensively, "I feel for people coming to this city."