Real Estate: A Hot Sector for Women
Though the real estate market has been down in the wake of the subprime crisis and resulting credit crunch, and foreclosures across America have been way up, the news isn’t necessarily all bad. Indeed, for more and more enterprising women, real estate has presented fascinating opportunities, from fast track career advancement to the security of home-ownership as a single woman. Here, we survey some trends in the field.
Though The Glass Hammer has noted in numerous other blog postings the slow pace at which women have broken the last glass ceiling and joined the elite group of C-suite executives at America’s Fortune 500 companies, there are a few areas where women in finance have made greater strides. One area is university endowment and private foundation management, where several high profile women have bucked the trend and have demonstrated that they can successfully manage and invest billions of dollars.
As chronicled in a New York Times article called “Corner of Finance Where Women are Climbing,” women now head ten of the 50 largest endowments and private funds, and collectively manage over $60.6 billion in assets. Women manage such philanthropic heavy hitters as the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania’s endowment. A survey by Catalyst found that women occupy 15% of board seats and directorships of such companies, significantly beating the representation of women on the boards of major corporations.
These foundations tend to be more aggressive in investing in nontraditional assets like hedge funds and real estate. Thus, on a major scale, women are controlling a huge amount of buying power in the real estate sector, as they direct endowment funds into all sorts of real property investment, from undeveloped rural parcels of land to urban commercial and residential real estate.
In addition to investing in real estate, there are many women at the top of the real estate business. Top women in the real estate business include Prudential Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman, Corcoran Group CEO Pamela Leibman, and Gail Liniger, Vice Chairman of Remax International. The National Association of Realtors is also led by a woman, Pat Vreedevoogd Combs. On the government side, Sheila Blair, Chairman of the FDIC, is also an influential woman in he field.
If you live in New York City, you would have had to live under a rock (in an outer borough, and not even in a gentrified part, where they don’t even deliver the paper) to have missed out on hearing about Russian-born real estate mogul to the uber-rich Janna Bullock. The self-made millionaire real estate queen has sold several Upper East side townhouses in the $20 million plus range, and she’s just getting warmed up.
Women are not only doing real estate deals, they are writing, and in many cases, blogging about it. From big city luxury condos to on-ramping moms going back to get their real estate broker’s silences in small towns across America, these women in real estate are keeping it real. Check out this link for a list of the Top 12 female real estate bloggers for some inspiration.
Finally, the democratization of the real estate market is making it much easier for normal people to obtain access to the previously guarded-like-the-holy-grail MLS listings. That means everyone, from off-ramping moms with keen market knowledge to multi-tasking power women on their lunch break can scope out the recent listings in their neighborhood and scoop up attractively undervalued properties.
The economy might be bad, but record low real estate prices (yes, even in New York), mean that women in finance who thought they might have to save up for another bonus year in order to buy their first condo might want to consider striking while the iron is hot. You don’t need a husband to buy a condo, just a steady income, a down payment and a high credit score. Who thought that a recession could be so empowering? It’s a buyer’s market.
