CNN calls 2023 the “summer of girl power.” The Wall Road Journal declared lately, “Women Own This Summer—The Economy Proves It.”

The billion-dollar box-office smash “Barbie” has shined a highlight on the affect and financial energy of girls. In the true property realm, although, feminine empowerment lengthy predates the 1959 launch of the primary Barbie doll by Mattel, Inc.

The Feminine Majority

Persistently because the Nationwide Affiliation of REALTORS® started accumulating information on house consumers in 1981, women have been second only to married couples as a share of the market. In 2022, single males comprised about 10% of the market. Single girls: 17%. That’s based on NAR’s 2022 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Nationwide, 10.76 million properties are owned and occupied by single girls, versus 8.12 million properties for single males, says Bankrate.

The enterprise of actual property, too, has been fertile floor for girls.

The 2023 NAR Member Profile exhibits that 62% of all NAR members are feminine, and that’s removed from a latest phenomenon. Since 1978, girls have surpassed males as a share of NAR’s whole membership. (Dave Liniger has stated that when he and his spouse Gail had been constructing RE/MAX within the early Nineteen Seventies, their potential to recruit girls brokers was an enormous a part of their enterprise technique and success.) It took just a little longer for girls to realize these numbers within the dealer ranks; 1996 was the primary 12 months feminine brokers outnumbered their male counterparts as a share of NAR membership. As we speak, 61% of brokers who’re NAR members are feminine.

A Century of Empowerment

In director Greta Gerwig’s telling, “Barbie” world is a spot the place Barbies have one another’s backs. Likewise, girls serving to girls has lengthy been a mannequin for empowerment in actual property.

The membership of NAR was 100% male when the group was based in 1908 “to unite the true property males of America.” However no less than because the Nineteen Twenties, feminine actual property brokers and brokers have supported one another in official methods. Throughout that decade, a number of native actual property boards created girls’s divisions for feminine members. The California Affiliation of REALTORS® Girls’s Division turned the mannequin for the nationwide Girls’s Council of REALTORS®, based in 1938. As we speak, California continues to steer on girls’s empowerment points; in 2017, it launched WomanUp! to assist girls’s journeys.

“When girls assist and uplift one another, it fosters a way of empowerment,” says Kerri Hartnett, WCR’s 2023 nationwide president-elect.

Since 2019, WCR has awarded Supporting Women in Real Estate grants to assist state and native REALTOR® associations with programming designed to assist girls of their enterprise and management roles. In 2023, three state associations and 7 native associations acquired grants.

“Sharing experiences, data, and assets helps girls to achieve confidence, motivation, and perception of their talents,” Hartnett says. “This encourages girls to beat self-doubt, break via societal obstacles, and pursue their objectives with dedication.”

You go, ladies!