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Twenty years ago, when commercial real estate was very much a man’s
world, a small group of St. Louis women formed an organization they
called Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) to help women persevere
and advance in the industry. Today, St. Louis women are recognized
as leaders in the industry, even in those branches in which men
may predominate.
Patricia Nooney, for example, senior vice president of American
Spectrum Realty, Inc., is president-elect of the national Institute
of Real Estate Management (IREM), a 60-year-old organization of
15,000 property managers, asset managers, and facility managers.
American Spectrum Realty is a publicly traded, diversified real
estate investment and management company that owns 35 office, warehouse,
apartment, and retail properties totaling approximately 3.8 million
square feet in California, Texas, Arizona, South Carolina and the
Midwest.
Lynn Schenck, vice president of Grubb & Ellis/Krombach Partners,
is set to become the first woman president of the Society of Industrial
and Office Realtors, the leading professional commercial and industrial
real estate association with members in 450 cities in 20 countries.
Marian Nunn, chief operating officer of THF Realty, Inc., is a 2002
recipient of the YWCA Special Leader Award for outstanding performance,
leadership and the example she sets for women in life and in the
workplace. THF is the 11th largest privately held real estate developer
in the nation. Amongst all real estate developers, public and private,
THF Realty was ranked 26th largest in the nation in 2001 by Shopping
Center World, an industry magazine.
Diane Davis, the vice president of planning and operations for The
DESCO Group, led the preparation that has put The DESCO Group in
position to develop facilities for up-and-coming biotech companies.
Wendy Timm is the chief operating officer and chief financial officer
of Conrad Properties, which is widely regarded as the preeminent
luxury condominium developer in metropolitan St. Louis.
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF CHANGE
One thing that everyone agrees on is that commercial real estate
is a relationship-driven business; as such, it can be very hard
for someone new to break into. It could be particularly hard for
women when the relationships underlying the business were formed
in boys-only high schools, clubs, and on the golf course. When CREW
was founded, the industry “had a reputation as a good old boys network,”
Nooney says.
“Gender is irrelevant [to success in the industry].
The qualities you need are: you have to be good at
dealing with all kinds of people, you have to be persistent,
and you have to have the ability to pay attention
to details.”
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Patricia
Nooney
senior vice president,
American Spectrum Realty, Inc.
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CREW, however, emerged just as radical change began to sweep through
the industry. The growth of institutional investors— pension funds,
insurance companies, and real estate investment trusts—altered the
industry. National owners typically were free of the bonds of clubs
and high schools that might influence who a local owner hired or
did business with.
CREW was perfectly poised to take advantage of that change. The
founders of CREW had the vision to create a unique organization:
an industry-wide organization instead of an organization limited
to one profession. CREW included everyone from engineers, architects,
and construction managers to appraisers, bankers, brokers, lawyers,
and property managers. This gave women a network of relationships
nationally and through every branch of the industry, which allowed
them to better serve a client’s business needs. This is not to say
that men did not have such networks, they did, but CREW helped level
the field for women.
St. Louis women were in the lead then, just as they are now. They
founded St. Louis CREW four years ahead of the founding of an East
Coast CREW, and five years before the creation of a similar network
on the west coast. St. Louis CREW preceded the foundation of National
Network of CREW by seven years.
Davis believes strongly in the value of such networks. “I’ve never
perceived myself as a woman versus a man, but I live by bringing
others up with me,” she says, and listed names of other women now
in senior management positions at DESCO or Schnuck Markets that
she had recruited.
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT A GOOD STARTING POINT
Davis, like Nooney, entered the commercial real estate business
because that was the family business. Davis entered the industry
in 1980, when “it was a male-oriented family-business” dominated
industry. Her father had asked her to give the family real estate
development firm a try. She wasn’t really interested at first. She
had just graduated from the University of Denver, and wanted to
stay in Colorado. It was not a great time to be looking for a job,
however. July 1980 was the trough of the first dip in what turned
into the double dip recession of 1980-1982.
DIANE
DAVIS
vice president of planning and operations, The DESCO
Group |
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She worked as a property manager in the family business for eight
years; then, looking for something more challenging, she answered
a newspaper advertisement and got hired as a real estate administrator
for Schnuck Markets. She was made a vice president of DESCO when
it was spun-off as a separate company in 1993.
“From a practical standpoint, property management is a wonderful
starting point, because it exposes people to all the other areas
of real estate,” Davis says.
Nooney entered the commercial real estate business 25 years ago
through the real estate investment firm started by her grandfather.
She also began on the property management side, and then moved over
to accounting—she had a degree in accounting from the University
of Miami—then ran the whole business. A series of mergers and splits
eventually led to the senior vice presidency at American Spectrum
Realty when it went public.
Nooney believes barriers to women have come down in the last four
to eight years. Now, she says, “Gender is irrelevant [to success
in the industry]. The qualities you need are: you have to be good
at dealing with all kinds of people, you have to be persistent,
and you have to have the ability to pay attention to details.”
UNCOMMONNESS AS AN ASSET
Schenck recalled that the first commercial real estate company she
went to for a job 24 years ago told her ‘“No, no. You have to start
out selling houses.”’ She persisted, however, and 14 years ago she
made vice president at Grubb & Ellis/Krombach Partners.
“It
is a difficult profession to get started in, but if
you are confident, if you have the ability to listen
and to strategize what you hear to fulfill client
needs, and you are willing to work hard, you can make
a very good living.”
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Lynn
Schenck
vice president,
Grubb & Ellis/Krombach Partners
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“It’s more open to women now, but men are still in the vast majority,”
she says. Consensus estimates are that while women make up 40 to
50 percent of property managers, they make up only 10 percent of
brokers.
The brokerage side of commercial real estate is not for the risk
averse. Historically, you work on commission only, and the typical
deal cycle takes more than six months, Schenck says. It is a difficult
profession to get started in, “but if you are confident, if you
have the ability to listen and to strategize what you hear to fulfill
client needs, and you are willing to work hard, you can make a very
good living,” she says.
Real estate brokerage is a good profession for women, or anyone
wanting to spend time raising a family, she adds, “Since you are
an independent contractor, you can come and go as you please.”
Schenck says that being a woman has helped her in the business:
since women brokers are so rare, she stands out and is easier to
remember. “You have to understand you are a minority and not make
it an issue,” she says. “Make it a benefit. Accept it graciously,
so that people remember you.”
Real estate always has been part of Timm’s life. She grew up watching
her father pick out locations for Convenient Food Marts. “I remember
when I was five or six looking at locations with him, and finding
out what made a good retail location,” she says.
In college, the University of Illinois– Champaign-Urbana, she pursued
a degree in real estate and urban planning. After she graduated
in 1977, she went into the appraisal business. “It was a reliable
income,” she says, “but it also turned out to be a good foundation
for learning different property types and different real estate
disciplines.”
She was still in appraisal, working at Community Federal Savings
and Loan, when a boss told her that, because of her interest in
people skills and her broad knowledge of real estate, she should
get into the transaction side of the business. She did. She became
the first woman commercial banker in St. Louis when she went to
work as a commercial banker for GMAC Financial. After 10 years there,
she started her own firm, Timm Real Estate Consultants, because
“it was convenient for a working mom with three young children.”
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WENDY
TIMM, chief operating officer and chief
financial officer, Conrad Properties |
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Timm likes to say she’s had three careers in commercial real estate:
appraisal consulting, mortgage and investment banking, and real
estate development. The latter “encompasses all those disciplines.
I handle all our property, I handle all our acquisitions, and I
oversee the sales force.”
Like Schenck, Timm believes being a woman in a man’s industry may
have worked to her advantage. As long as you know what you are doing,
she says, “they remember you because there are not many women.
“Relationship is key,” she stresses. “I learned a lot about it in
the mortgage banking business, because all my clients were out of
town. So, I was a link to them to understand beyond what you would
underwrite, to understand the character of the investment and the
locational dynamic. I worked very hard at establishing rapport and
trust, so there would be ongoing confidence in me when recommendations
were made, and multimillion dollar transactions ensued.”
BALANCING PARENTHOOD AND WORK
Nunn entered the world of commercial real estate in 1997, when she
joined THF Realty as chief operating officer. A certified public
accountant, she had worked in fast growing entrepreneurial companies,
and THF is another rung on that ladder.
“There
is nothing gender-specific about technical competence,
emotional intelligence, enthusiasm, open-mindedness,
energy, or being able to recognize and fit into a
particular corporate culture.”
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Marian
Nunn
chief operating officer,
THF Realty, Inc.
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Nunn began her professional career at an accounting company, but
moved to CyberTel Cellular Telephone Co. in 1986, to take the position
of controller and director of administration. She managed two acquisitions
and the company’s eventual sale to Ameritech.
In 1993, she joined Sight & Sound Distributors as chief financial
officer. She handled capital restructuring issues, a private debt
placement, and investor and lender relations.
In 1997, Nunn began casting around for new challenges. “I wanted
to find an energetic company where I could make a large contribution,”
she says. She met Michael Staenberg and Stan Kroenke, and the rest,
as they say, is history.
“I joined THF because I liked what Michael and Stan wanted me to
do, which was to build an operating structure for the company sufficiently
elastic that it would allow for significant organizational growth.”
Nunn says that the barriers women face in commercial real estate,
or any industry, are related to family, not gender.
“There is nothing gender-specific about technical competence, emotional
intelligence, enthusiasm, open-mindedness, energy, or being able
to recognize and fit into a particular corporate culture,” she says.
“People with those qualities will thrive on a development team,
in any company, in any industry. People—men or women—who lack them
will fail.
“The biggest barriers to a woman’s success in commercial real estate,
or in any field, are some women’s inability to find a happy balance
between their home and business lives, and some men’s unwillingness
to let that balance remain where women strike it. Being a mom and
a COO at the same time is a challenge. Knowing what the cool treats
are for a soccer snack is every bit as important to me as knowing
the words that will close a multi-million dollar transaction. The
good thing about THF is that Michael and Stan agree with that value
system.”
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Commercial real estate is an exciting industry for anyone to be
in, in part because it is a relationship-oriented business, Nunn
says.
“Real estate is made up of high-achieving, very motivated, smart
people. Every deal is different; there are constant challenges and
changes. There are always enough deals and enough opportunity to
go around, so relationships become even more important.”
“It is a good industry for women,” Timm adds. “I very passionately
believe there are no limits. If you are capable and successful,
and have a long-standing reputation, there are no boundaries as
to how far you can go and how much you can earn.”
“Women can go anywhere they want in the industry,” Davis agrees.
“At DESCO, women are in business development, property management,
leasing, development, asset management, legal, architecture, engineering,
and project management. How many industries can you go into where
you have such an array of opportunities?”
Peter Downs is a St. Louis-based freelance
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