Pros
There are no pros to working with Homestead.
Cons
The lack of support from corporate is unlike anything I have experienced in the past. The GMs are asked to meet unrealistic goals within a short time frame which always led to the failure of goals being met and the evaluation of employees by upper management. The corporate office preaches support and whatever the site teams needed, they would get. However, that was never the case. After stating from the beginning of the leasing season that rates were too high and were not going to work within the market, my concerns were ignored and the property fell behind very early on and continued to stay behind. This was a property that was new to the Homestead portfolio and had never had an issue hitting 100% or goal each year prior. We were asked to do things that were not encouraged within leasing such as approve leases without a guarantor by automatically (without notice) opting the primary into a third-party guarantor program called LEAP. There is a difference between getting crafty to get leases and borderline breaking leasing protocols within the state and country. There is also an extreme lack of structure within the company as well. There is a consistent divide between site teams and corporate. For example, the regional managers would give the site teams instructions for leasing or Entrata measures, which would then end up not being correct and had to be reversed because they did not check with the Entrata Manager for approval of any changes to the leasing process. For instance, part-time employees approving leases was the expectation if a full-time employee could not but that was against company policy or Entrata policy - they did not confirm this before making this an expectation. The site teams are expected to work on weekends to "get numbers on the board" even though this does not affect the overall number of leases if they wait until Monday morning to complete. You are either ahead the following week or behind the week before, however overall, the number will remain the same. This was a concern I had brought up on several different occasions and once again, it was ignored and followed up by "its company policy, all properties are expected to do this". The list truly does go on for the cons. I would highly recommend looking elsewhere before siging your contract here.