At the SF Bay Summit 2019, I went to the Women in Real Estate seminar featuring Diana George, Brenda Chen, Elisa Zheng Covington, Liz Faircloth (who was the moderator). I could relate to a lot on what they mentioned. Since childhood, I had always been interested in male dominated fields ranging from chess to video games to entrepreneurship. Real estate is another domain I have been looking into more recently.
I took a few notes from the seminar to address the question – “how do we support women in real estate?” Hope you enjoy the post!
How do We Support Women in Real Estate?
Notes include a mix between the four speakers.
While all attempts are made to present correct information, there is a chance I’ve written notes incorrectly!
Statistics about women:
- Women outlive men 7 years on average
- I did not realize this! Very interesting statistic.
- On BiggerPockets, only 25% of the audience is female.
- BiggerPockets is a platform that lets you network with investors, learn about real estate through podcasts and blogs, and find deals.
- Women own 20% of the world’s land
What challenges have you had to overcome in the past?
- Fear of taking risks
- In the past it didn’t occur to Elisa that being an entrepreneur was a path she could choose.
- I guess this was never a problem for me as I grew up always wanting to be an entrepreneur. I wonder if it’s because I followed my brother’s footsteps a lot (which led me to immerse myself in male dominated fields) and it shaped the way I thought about things. I try not to let society’s view of what’s normal/appropriate hold me back.
- Social norms/ belief system – Brenda’s family/friends thought women should not be in real estate or business. This actually instilled a sense of drive and purpose for her.
- I can actually see how this is true for myself. I care a lot about gender equality and female empowerment because of society’s views of what’s appropriate.
Why are there less women in the space?
- Women generally have the mentality of using their own money on deals vs. men who are more okay with leveraging other people’s money.
- It’s true as I still don’t think about using other people’s money since it seems riskier, but perhaps there are efficient ways of doing so where all sides can benefit.
- Women don’t get as much exposure to the field and feel less support
- Some of it is cultural, some of it is education, and a lot of it is support. As more women go into the field, it will inspire more women to go for it as well.
How to support women better / how to form an internal network
- We need to create and join communities. Support each other, speak out when needed so that the conversation shifts and people feel more empowered to try entrepreneurship and real estate.
- Diana George mentioned she’s willing to have people shadow her so they can learn.
- Meet people online
- Facebook communities
- Create a mastermind group
- Visiting meetups (like on meetup.com)
Conclusion
Today’s post is a short one, but I believe it is important to think about. The conversation should extend past real estate and onto other fields. It’s great that people are hosting seminars around this topic, and a lot more conversation is happening around gender equality. Even the people on the panel have been creating buzz around this topic on their own time. Liz Faircloth has a podcast specifically for female real estate investors and entrepreneurs called the Real Estate Invest Her Show. Brenda Chen has a meetup for “girl bosses” that focuses on female empowerment and giving women avenues to network and create awesome things.
This is a video that talks about how the average girls’ self confidence plummets during puberty and beyond, and how we have this perception that “running like a girl” is a bad thing. But why can’t “run like a girl” mean winning the race?
By talking about this topic more, we can encourage and support other girls to feel comfortable doing what they’re interested in – whether it be real estate, video games, entrepreneurship, science, math, or whatever.
