S&K Estate Agents aka Smith & Ken has filed for bankruptcy leaving its 80 employees out-of-work.
The bankruptcy was filed last Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 1AM which caused for its Dubai and Los Angeles office to become inactive and the whole company to shut down. According to the agency "[the company] has been handed to liquidators in a process to pay back creditors, with all 80-plus employees having lost their positions."
S&K Estate Agents' shareholders released an official statement regarding the company's current state. They said that they have no other choice but to hand over all of the company's assets and profits to their liquidator. The company's profits for the first half of 2015 are not enough for all the expenses and operational costs of the company.
Despite of the company's attempt of saving the organization by providing training and incentives to new agents and finding experienced agents causing for the company to shell out considerable amount for their recruitment drive, their efforts were not enough to make the company recover from its losses. According to their official statement, one of the reason their company isn't doing well is due to "poor service levels provided by the brokerage led to a number of complaints from clients, which deterred repeat business opportunities and created a poor reputation for the company, which is the graveyard for any serviced-based company." Their financial status also worsen because of increasing advertising expenses and internal issues that kept on occurring within the company. Also, high costs of licensing and visas added to the company's burden.
Another factor that made their profit to dive is the competition with smaller brokerage firms. Small companies tend to lower their fees one percent per year to attract more clients leaving the larger ones to stay on their current prices to maintain the suitable profits for their company to run.
S&K Estate Agents leave the closure and bankruptcy procedure of the company to a liquidator that they have appointed.