Real estate is oftentimes about location. But the business side is oftentimes about relationships. Who you know and whether you’ve worked together in the past can go a long way, and it’s hard to have a long career in the industry without them.
In 2018, a group of women working in commercial real estate in Toronto recognized this, and believed that there weren’t enough spaces for women on the transaction side of CRE — brokerage and landlord representation, primarily — to connect in a meaningful way and build those relationships.
Thus, Lyndsay Hopps, Christina Karam, Lauren Luchini, Sonya Donovan, and Izzy Lazarova founded CRE8, a grassroots networking group for women on the deal level, to fill that void.
“The commercial real estate industry has come a long way in improving diversity, fostering growth and career development for women, but the reality is that we still have a long way to go,” said Karam in a LinkedIn post after CRE8 was officially incorporated as a not-for-profit. “The purpose of this platform is to encourage women to come together, make new or enhance existing relationships, share valuable knowledge, create opportunities and ultimately empower one another to grow and advance in their careers.”
It started with a single networking event and has since grown to include regular networking events, educational sessions, and mentorship programs, with a membership of over 430 women.
One of those members is Bahareh Tabar, who was from Vancouver and was with Avison Young for a time before joining Cushman & Wakefield and relocating to Toronto, where she joined CRE8. She has since returned to Vancouver, still with Cushman & Wakefield, and helped bring CRE8 to Vancouver.
“I was a part of CRE8 in Toronto and I’m still very good friends with Lauren Luchini, one of the founders in Toronto,” Tabar told STOREYS. “When I moved back to Vancouver a couple years ago, Lauren and the rest of the Board were talking about starting a chapter in Vancouver, so Lauren asked me to find a committee of four girls so that we can get the Board in Vancouver going.”
CRE8 Vancouver, which launched earlier this year with their first event in March, is now led by Tabar alongside Karly MacRae from Cushman & Wakefield, Stephanie Yeargin from Avison Young, and Alicia Chung from Conwest Developments.
Tabar says many of them had pre-existing relationships — she worked with Yeargin at AY and MacRae at Cushman — and there was also a conscious effort to have Board members that specialize in different asset classes. Tabar specializes in retail, MacRae in industrial, Yeargin in office, and Chung in industrial on the landlord side.
The transaction side, and much of commercial real estate, has mostly been men for a long time, and they’ve had decades to build relationships. There is an increasing amount of women now, so groups like CRE8 help women get a jumpstart on building similar relationships, said both Tabar and Yeargin.
“It makes it a lot easier to get a deal done if you know you can trust the person on the other side of the transaction,” Yeargin told STOREYS. “For example, on the office side, if I have a listing, a tenant coming to me almost always has a broker representing them, and if I can ask a lot of questions about what that tenant wants and that broker representing them trusts me and is open about that, then we can work together and find the best solution for them as the tenant and for my client as the landlord.”
“It’s just difficult in every way, frankly, if you don’t know the person well, if you don’t trust them enough to share information that can help move the deal along,” she added. “You can still get stuff done, obviously, but it’s not as smooth or easy. I look at a lot of the male brokers that I work with and they have a lot of longstanding relationships, and ultimately it facilitates more business. That’s what we’re trying to create more of for the ladies on the deal side.”
If a networking group for women in commercial real estate sounds familiar to you because you’re aware of the global CREW Network, which has a Vancouver chapter, you may wonder why there is a need for an organization like CRE8. There are several reasons.
“Steph and I have both been to CREW events, I’ve volunteered with CREW, and it’s a wonderful organization, but it’s very large, there’s a cost associated, and it’s not focused on women at the deal level,” said Tabar. “Traditionally, there [haven’t] been very many women on the deal side. As there are more and more, there is a need to build that community.”
“A lot of the male brokers, they’re not just competitors,” she adds. “They’re also friends. If you’re friends with your competitors, it’s significantly easier to get a deal done. You trust each other. You can just pick up the phone and say ‘Listen, let’s cut to the case. How do we get this deal done?’”
She adds that because CREW is so large, you can attend an event and end up sitting at a table with someone who is a furniture supplier or in legal services or another field that is tangential. It’s nice to meet people, but “At the end of the day you do these organizations to support each other and help each other build business and share information so we can all do more deals and make more money,” and a group specific to women on the deal side adds much more value.
“It’s a smaller and more intimate environment so that it’s easier to get to know people,” Yeargin added. “CREW…their membership and their events are quite costly, so we want to remove any kind of barrier like that, especially right now. Everything at CRE8 is sponsorship-funded, which is nice.”
“We are in the process of planning ongoing bi-monthly events for each asset class, where everybody can get together at one of our offices and do a roundtable on either an assignment they’re working on, a tenant mandate, or a listing,” said Tabar, adding that they currently have over 100 members. “The plan is to really have a couple events the first year, build that membership base, build that community and support, and next year we’re hoping to add members and add events.”
From there, it’s up, up, and away.
Words Of Wisdom
Bahareh Tabar: “Your reputation is priceless. I think commercial real estate is an industry where you can move from the sales side to the non-sales side to marketing to brokerage to a landlord, and the community is so small. You are going to be dealing with the same people over and over again, and how you treat people and your reputation sticks with you. Leaving a bad impression on somebody, not doing the right thing, that person you haven’t dealt with in the best manner…You will face that person again.”
Stephanie Yeargin: “Take your time. I was in research for a year, then I was an assistant for two years, and I feel like I kind of shot out of the gates compared to some of my counterparts. Think about it: you don’t have any clients, you need clients to do deals, you need to do deals to make money, but it’s very hard to put yourself in front of somebody and convince them that you’re the best service provider when you don’t know anything about the business and what you’re doing. Don’t get pigeonholed into support roles, but if you do get the opportunity to take a bit more time at the start, I think it pays off a lot.”
