REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-Sharing Desks Can Trim Office Expenses

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Daily Real Estate News | July 13, 2009 | Sharing Desks Can Trim Office Expenses
Real estate practitioners all over the country are choosing “hot desks” over permanent ones.

Hot desks are unadorned cubicles that are shared among several people who rely on their laptops and BlackBerrys to conduct business but stop in now and then to use a printer or hold a meeting. The phone system transfers calls to their mobile phones.

"When we were looking at the fiscal side of our business model, we realized that desk space equals dollars in overhead," says Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Real Estate Partners marketing director Adelia Mosley, where most of the 38 associates rely on hot desks.

At Baird & Warner in Chicago, one option is a compensation plan that waives the $357 monthly desk fee in favor of a home office and access to technology and conference rooms. Out of 1,600, only a handful have selected it so far, but more may end up accepting this way of doing business.

Laura Ellis, general sales manager for Baird & Warner's residential sales division, says when the company looked at its annual expenses, it discovered that the cost per desk of providing space for every associate is somewhere between $15,000 and $25,000, so cutting back provides a big savings.

"I wouldn't be surprised if more real estate companies weren't looking at this, too," Ellis says.

Source: Inman News, Mary Umberger (07/10/2009)