AvalonBay Reviews

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay full-time

Pros – Great pay, great environment, great hours

Cons – politics within management, promote based on merits, not favorites

Advice to Senior Management – Don't play favorites

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay

Pros – Good job security and growth

Cons – Compensation is fair at best

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at AvalonBay full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great culture, strong senior management that is friendly and approachable, great internal resources to provide support to developers. Great reputation with with strong balance sheet and well-established platform and procedures.

Cons – The consummate 800-pound gorilla, they are not nimble. New ideas require extensive study, and the analytic discipline can border at times on paralysis by analysis. National contracts/standards with individual providers for items like signage, naming, and creative design can be very limiting to flexibility. Somewhat of an east-coast bias with over-emphasis on pedigree.

Advice to Senior Management – Great overall place to work - just focus on maintaining balance on appropriate amount of study and research with being nimble.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – 401K, Health Insurance.....that's about it.

Cons – Low Pay for the amount of work that is done. Managers take all the praise and recognition for the hard work of leasing consultants. Leasing Consultants are expected to do everything and managers frequently delegate their tasks to the consultants. No room to grow unless you suck up and play nasty office politics. Very hostile work enviroment and main focus is on survey scores instead. Mind-numbingly boring and very slow paced. If you are looking for a boring, dead end job, then this is the perfect place for you!

Advice to Senior Management – Live up to the promises you make your employes about growth within the company or be honest with them and tell them the only way to move up is to suck up.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay

Pros – Flexible (if your going to school), great working hours during the week, Awesome benefits, amazing bonus opportunities

Cons – Takes forever to move-up in a management position

Advice to Senior Management – Best, advice if starting as a Leasing Consultant, float to other properties and get to know other operations.

Former Employee – worked at AvalonBay

Pros – Excellent opportunities for advancement based on performance. Seniority is rewarded, but performance will get you further. Ambition and an eagerness to learn will get you ahead, especially if you do not have a college degree. The company has certainly been poised to stay afloat during these trying economic times, and that bodes well for job security. I only left the company due to my fiance taking a job in another city, otherwise I would still be with Avalon today.

Cons – The transition to become more retail oriented makes the negatives of the job even more glaring. The hours and inflexibility in accommodations for weekends was just beginning to take place during my departure. This, in my opinion, makes the stress of being on-site even more frustrating as the employees have been making even more concessions for the benefits of residents. By creating "Senior" Community Managers and "podding" smaller community's, they have taken away some opportunity for advancement, but this makes certain that only the best will move ahead (which is not a bad thing).

Advice to Senior Management – Avalon is obviously doing a lot of things right, but the changes in on-site policies (re: hours) does not lend itself to holding on to great talent. Retail type environments will only lead to retail type help. Understandably, the direction seems to be heading towards less sales/management on-site and more of a complete concierge/resident service team. Otherwise, my time with Avalon was truly Time Well Spent.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay

Pros – Workday is 9-6. Not expected to work long hours. Time well spent is their motto. You don't have to do overtime. A good place for working mothers who don't mind a sleepy company without much potential for career development. If you like to show up 9 to 6 to get a steady paycheck without having to put in a whole lot of effort, this is the place for you. It's a very feminine and motherly type of job.

Cons – Too many witchy females. Kind of boring. You do the same thing day in and day out. A lot of people are petty and meanspirited.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't build crappy communities thinking that people will want to pay lots of money for them.

Current Employee – been working at AvalonBay full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Great benefits, 20% off rent for any employee, 60-100% off for upper level management/maintenance, good people, corporate office will know your name, chance to dabble in multiple areas including marketing, finance, and sales

Cons – Managers on salary will have to put in long days to get ahead, micro management with numerous spreadsheets tracking your numbers daily, monthly, and yearly, investor owned so sometimes it seems like all that matters is the bottom line, living on site can be stressful depending on property, always short staffed with no plans to change, podded communities add to lower levels of customer service because staff is spread thin

Advice to Senior Management – Create better live work balance, we get a lot of vacation time but cant take it, hire more floaters to be available to cover sick days, vacation, etc or just have more people in the office all together, stop throwing so many reports at the managers so they can't do their regular day to day job without working OT

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AvalonBay full-time

Pros – If you like to meet new people and help, you will find the day going by very fast at work!

Cons – Commissions/ bonuses are sometimes not paid out on time. Unqualified managers run the place with poor managerial experience.

Hard work is not appreciated. Don't over extend yourself!

Advice to Senior Management – Put checks and balances in place. Customer service managers should focus more on Customer service related duties not leasing to ensure residents are provided 1st class service.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AvalonBay full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Many great benefits as compared to other firms. Organization does try to remain true to hiring from within.

Cons – Action taken against employees is often very sneaky and underhanded. The wide path of the organizations policies foster a culture of taking only business minded action without considering all circumstances of the associate. While this is true of most companies, this one seems to work more frequently in this manner and associates are not given a fair opportunity to rebut or explain.

Advice to Senior Management – See above

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend