Beth Fernandez on what it takes to thrive in real estate

Matthew Blake: Hello, and welcome to “Houses in Motion,” part of “HousingWire Daily’s” podcast series. This is Matthew Blake, senior reporter with HousingWire. At “Houses in Motion,” we’re trying to provide a big-picture look at the issues affecting real estate, and the specific perspective of agents who have seen the profession through the years. For this episode, we spoke with Beth Fernandez, broker at Premiere Properties in Portland, Oregon. Beth spoke with us about why she became an agent, and in so doing, we looked at some questions that have vexed me as a real estate reporter. One is that almost two-thirds of all agents, at least agents who are members of the National Association of Realtors are women. Yet men occupy most of the CEO positions in large real estate franchise networks, listing sites, and brokerages. So Beth, welcome to the show.

Beth Fernandez: Thanks, Matt.

Matthew Blake: And before we talk about some of these big-picture issues, well, why don’t you talk about yourself and how you got into real estate?

Beth Fernandez: I’ve been a realtor for about 16 years now. I started when we moved to the suburbs. I had a business in the city and we moved up to the suburbs and I just didn’t know what I was gonna do with myself. I had two kids in school and my mother-in-law said, “Get your real estate license.” And I didn’t really wanna do it. I didn’t feel like it would be a creative enough business for me. I’m a writer and I wanted to do something a little more creative, but it turned out to be a really creative job for me. I got my license when my little one was five because I just didn’t know what else I was gonna do. I mean, I’d given up my investment banking job. I used to work in investment banking and finance and accounting, and I’d given that up when I had kids. And then I had my own business and I bet planning for a couple of years and I didn’t want to do that anymore. So, I mean, honestly, I got into real estate because I had nothing else to do. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I just knew it was after 9/11, and I didn’t wanna go into New York City every day and my husband was already doing that. And so, I got a job in real estate that kept me close to home.

Matthew Blake: And so, were you in New York City at the time or did you…?

Beth Fernandez: We moved to the East Coast two months after 9/11.

Matthew Blake: As an agent, have you mostly been in the Portland, Oregon area or…?

Beth Fernandez: No. I worked in New Jersey for most of my career. And seven years ago, we moved out here, which was really complicated. You leave…I left a booming business, $20 million a year real estate business, and basically started over out here. So it’s been interesting. It’s not easy to be a nomadic person and be a realtor.

Matthew Blake: Yeah. I guess, first off, how were you able to sort of initially build your business, and what were sort of the obstacles with that?

Beth Fernandez: I was so ingrained in New Jersey. I mean, I had a 10-year business there that I really built up and it sort of ran on its own. So for the first couple of years, I just lived off referrals and wrote a couple of novels and published those and sort of went in that direction for a while. But books don’t pay the bills and real estate does. And unless you are a bestseller, books don’t cover college tuition, and real estate does. And I have two kids and I’m happy to say that I paid cash for their college through a career in real estate. And well, for one of them, the other one is still to come. It’s taken me this long to get my business going again, seven years, because the first few years that we moved here, I didn’t really work a lot. I did mostly referral work from New Jersey. I even went back and listed a house back there a couple of times, but, you know, I’ve built my community up here now. I belong to a choir, I volunteer, I have my neighbors, my community, and my friends here. And that’s really how real estate agents function. You function through your network of people. So it’s taken me that long to build it back up again.

Matthew Blake: So how does that work exactly? I mean, I guess it’s sort of hard to articulate, but like you were…so you come into Portland, you already have obviously experience as a real estate agent, but is it just, you know, like you mentioned, you joined a choir. Do you like ask people at the choir, like, is anybody here looking to sell their home? Or, like, I mean, I’m being a little tongue in cheek with that, but like, how do you exactly sort of both build up a book of business and sort of earn the trust of people who are in the position to buy a home or sell a home?

Beth Fernandez: Right, when you’re brand new and you don’t even know your way. I mean, when I moved to Bergen County, New Jersey, I didn’t know my way from one town to the other. And it was before navigation and I built my business. That first year, I sold 10…I think I did like 12 or 13 listings my first year. I was just immediately a listing agent. And the way I did it was by sending out newsletters to strangers about houses. So I specialized in old houses. I specialized in expired listings, even though the market was booming, there still were expired listings. And so that’s how I kind of built my business there when it really got booming…when my business was really booming, I was running a non-profit organization in town. So I knew everybody from that. My organization was in the schools. So I knew every school, every homeschool organization, I knew all of the moms on each school. So, you know, you have to put yourself out there if you want to be a realtor. The number of people you know is the number of dollars that you make. The really busy agents, their business is referral. It comes to them through their network. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Buffini. Do you know Buffini?

Matthew Blake: Yes. Yes. Why don’t you talk about Buffini for our audience?

Beth Fernandez: I’m a cult member. That’s what I call it because we are kind of cultish, but, you know, he’s brainwashed me really well and I do everything he says, and that is how I get my business. And it’s you write notes to your clients, you contact them at least once a month, and you do Popeyes. I bring my clients gifts all the time. They get fun presents for me. And, you know, that’s really how I built my business up in New Jersey and here. And that’s how most agents that I know that are doing really, really well use that model.

Matthew Blake: The Buffini model is interesting, right? Because it involves sort of a certain level of, I guess, like cultural fluency and like social capital to be able to sort of, you know, know what kind of gifts and what kind of, I guess, more aids, again, like people who are homebuyers like want. What were some of the barriers in terms of you building up that social capital, you being able to say, what does that process sort of like and how might that process maybe be more inclusive to some people, more exclusive to other people?

Beth Fernandez: I mean, first of all, really, you have to have the personality where you’re willing to put yourself out there and get rejected a lot when you’re a realtor. You know, rejection is…if you have a thin skin, you cannot be a realtor. You know, I cried like a couple of times my first year, and then you don’t cry anymore. You just understand they’re gonna beat up on you, then they’re gonna feel better later about you. They’re gonna…you know, or you’re gonna say, “Hey, I’d love to sell your house and think that you were gonna get this listing,” and then find out there’s five agents that this person knows, and somebody else is gonna get that listing. And that’s the name of the game. You know, when I first started, there were 30 agents in my office and I was brand new, and that year I was number two in the office. And the next year, I was number one in the office until that office was no longer, until I left and went somewhere else because I know how to put myself out there.

And that really is your skill as a realtor. It really is your skill, being a people person, building your networks. How does that exclude others? Well, if you don’t like dinner parties, and you don’t like having client parties, and you don’t mind taking people out to dinner, and you don’t like having coffees four times a week, and you don’t like go into lunch three times a week, and you don’t want to go for a walk with your next-door neighbor, then get an office job.

Matthew Blake: Do you think that’s changed at all with listings now being available online and also with people working more remotely? Has there been some like mechanization to the job at all or made it less personal than maybe it once was?

Beth Fernandez: Well, I mean, COVID has really, you know, exposed how little we need to be in contact with our clients. Like, I have a client who I listed her house while I was taking care of my father in California, 12 hours away. I did every single thing for the listing from afar, and then came back and listed it. But I mean, I never even went to the house and the house closed without me there. And I never saw my client during transactions, during a $900,000 listing. So, technology has changed things, but I talk to her every single day. So, you know, I think for business, we don’t really need to be in touch anymore like we were. I was listening to Livewire’s podcast on remote working, and I thought it was really interesting. We really don’t need offices anymore. I don’t go to the office anymore. I think I’ve been into my office twice because we really can do everything remotely now, everything’s paperless. The only thing you need to do is sign in person and see the house. But I’ve actually sold houses to people who haven’t even seen them.

Matthew Blake: But you do think you still need, like you were saying, the monthly check-in, the dinner parties?

Beth Fernandez: Absolutely. I mean, I heard a statistic, something like 90% of the population says they’ll relist their house with their agent, but only 10% of the population does. You know, that number really sticks with me because I have lost clients from not keeping in touch with them. And I remember one time I saw an agent at an open house and I said, I just wanted to let you know I’m listing, blah, blah, blah. I knew that it was her client before me. She’s a seasoned agent, a professional, and she said, “It’s my fault. I didn’t keep in touch with her.” So that’s the beautiful part of the job.

Matthew Blake: So, I said during the intro that, I think 64% of real estate agents are women. Why do you think that is?

Beth Fernandez: Well, think about why I got into real estate. I didn’t know what I was gonna do with myself. My kids were in school full-time and what was I gonna do, right? I didn’t want to go into New York, so I didn’t want to work full-time somewhere. You know, it is the perfect job for a mother. You know, I was class mom, I dropped my kids off at school and pick them up every day. And I still ran a non-profit organization and did lots of good charity work, and still had this career. So it’s a 24-hour a day job. Like, you’re on the phone when you’re not sleeping, basically. And you have to answer your phone at all hours and you have to be available for your clients. I’m not one of those agents that says, you know, I’ll answer your phones at 3 or 7. I call my clients back immediately. I talk to them when they need me. My family grew up knowing that I’m gonna be on the phone, and that’s how it is. Even if we’re in the middle of a movie, I’m leaving to get the phone. You know, my clients, you know, I put them almost first, not ahead of my family, but almost first. And that’s why it’s such a good job for women.

I mean, how many jobs can a woman be cooking dinner and talking to somebody about comps? You know what I mean? Or talking to somebody about a new listing that just came on or, you know, and you can go preview listings on your own time. And the business mostly functions at night and on the weekends as far as showing houses goes, and that actually works out for women too. If you’re married, if you have a partner can leave your kids with your partner, you don’t have to pay for daycare. So, you know, it’s really a wonderful job for women. And that I believe is why so many go into it.

Matthew Blake: And have you seen this dynamic persisting like even as, you know, women have made gains in the workforce and have been able to at least, you know, have some of the opportunities men have had, obviously, not all the opportunities to men? How is the dynamic, maybe the gender dynamic, different now than say when it was when you started almost 20 years ago?

Beth Fernandez: So, I don’t think that anything’s changed in the last 20 years. I don’t think anything’s changed in the last 50 years. I think when a family has to look at their family’s situation and make it work for the kids, that one person’s always, and traditionally, yes, it’s been women. I don’t know if that’s because we want to, I mean, I guess the women who don’t want to do that anymore aren’t doing it anymore, and that’s great. But for me, 9 to 5 wasn’t gonna cut it. I needed to be around for my kids. So I don’t think that’s changed. I know young women that have gone into the business, I know a woman in New Jersey who had four young children, I’m talking like one-year-old twins, and she would run around and just kick by that real estate. She was probably making $300,000 a year with 4 little kids, right? Where are we gonna make that kind of money?

Matthew Blake: What kind of resources did you need when you started out as an agent?

Beth Fernandez: Training. And training is critical. And I always tell any agent that says they wanna get into the business, don’t start with a big company who doesn’t…you know, you just pay your desk fees and, you know, that’s it. You wanna be in a company that has really intensive training because without that training, you’re just gonna float around doing open houses. I see a lot of people come into the business and then they do one or two sales and they never do anything again. It’s accidental work. You know, they don’t know how to go out and pursue it because they haven’t been trained, or they don’t wanna make phone calls, or they don’t wanna mail letters to people they don’t know, or they don’t wanna knock on doors or do whatever it takes to put themselves out there.

Matthew Blake: So women are still pretty dominant and I think you’re probably right, I think certainly the numbers back up what you’re saying in terms of the percentage of agents, you know, that hasn’t changed very much, maybe in the last 20 years. Why do you think that there aren’t that many female CEOs in real estate? Obviously, there are a few and I don’t mean to diminish those who are, but why do you think that despite the fact, the rank and file is almost two-thirds women that we see the same leadership dynamics that we might see in say finance or Silicon Valley?

Beth Fernandez: I think for the same reasons that we talked about. I think that when you get to the corporate level in real estate, we’re not talking about a real estate career anymore. It’s not a flexible job. It’s a 9 to 5 job. And a lot of women or a lot of people, I should say, couples, not that the whole world’s coupled, but a lot of couples have made that decision that one person is gonna be closer to home or have less responsibility, right? And since it’s a corporate job, I think the statistics probably look like every other corporate job in America, right? But if you look, if you go back down, if you drove back down to real estate and just start at the bottom and you go from realtors to offices, you’ll see something different. A lot of the women are managers. And, you know, they asked me to be a manager and I was like, “Why would I make less money every year and have to go 9 to 5?”

It’s not even 9 to 5 because now you’re dealing with your agents instead of your clients. You’re still on the phone all day long, but you have to be in the office from 9 to 5 and make less money. Well, it’s just not as appealing to me as making my own hours. I mean, one year I worked 200 hours and I made $50,000, $59,000, 200 hours. Like, you can’t do that in management and you can’t do that if you’re the CEO. So, I think the motivation is different. I don’t think that the women who are going into real estate are doing it because they wanna be a CEO. I think they’re doing it because they wanna pay for college. They wanna put, you know, a new roof on the house. Or, you know, it’s the extra money to pay the bills. Or you’re single and you’re on your own, and that money you…I know a lot of single women that are realtors and they raise their kids and put their kids to college. Your motivation level in real estate equals your work level every time. Like, just as much as you put in, you get out every time. There’s no realtor that’s like, “I worked so hard to be a realtor and I couldn’t do it.” There’s not. If you work hard at this business, it’s like the American dream, you get exactly what you put into it, but at a higher rate than most jobs.

So, to me it’s the most beautiful job for a woman. It’s just the most beautiful job for a woman. And I love being in…you know, like I don’t go into the office anymore, but there was a time when I just loved being in the office because it’s just all women. And we got along so great, and all the stereotypes about women, you know, were just out the window because here’s this job where even the competitor realtors are your friends. You know what I mean? Like, we understand each other, I have great admiration for my competitors. I wanna be like them. You know what I mean? So, that part of it is really beautiful. And we smoked all the men in our…where I was, there was no man who did the kind of business the women in our neighborhood were doing. Here in Portland, it’s a little different. Because I was in the suburbs, the Portland market is so different. I mean, first of all, it’s way younger than what I was seeing on the East Coast. And there’s a lot more men and there’s a lot of single women.

Matthew Blake: So you were never…when you first started in New Jersey, you were saying earlier that you quickly ascended to be one of the top agents in your office, but you never thought, “Wow, you know, I could run this brokerage or I could sort of assume a position of leadership, that was never…”

Beth Fernandez: I did for a little while. Like I said, they sent me to management school at Weichert, Realtors, that was the first office that I was with, and it wasn’t for me. I wanted to make the money, you know, like there’s something really exciting about getting a $25,000 paycheck. And if you get two of them in the same month, it’s really exciting. You know, and you don’t get that with management, you might get a bonus, but you’re not getting big bucks. You know, you’re not getting a house with five offers, it’s really exciting. It’s a really exciting business, you know? When you know you’re gonna put a really hot house on, you know, and get to see everybody just love the crap out of that house and, you know, you know you priced it right because offers came in where you wanted and it’s just the best feeling. It’s the best, and to have your clients just so happy with you. I couldn’t trade that for an office job for anything. So I think a lot of us, it’s a different…I think going into becoming the CEO, you know, of a large real estate company is not the same career as a realtor. It’s just not. I think we’re seeing the same gender disparity that we’re seeing across the board in corporations, right? For an investment bank and all the men sat in the windows and all the women sat on the inside at the desks in front of the men in the windows, you know, that’s how it was. And we haven’t changed that much.

Matthew Blake: Yeah. That’s super interesting because I think that for me as a reporter, like, you know, I try to make sense of, you know, this economy and this world. And so I look at things like brokerage and I look at like, who are the heads of brokerage? And it’s like, there’s a man who’s a CEO of Realogy or HomeServices of America or Zillow. I mean, it sounds like what you’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that it’s kind of like two parallel career trajectories that are pretty different from each other. Like, it sounds like what you’re saying is that like you being the CEO of like Keller Williams or wherever is almost like, yeah, it’s sort of related to what you do, but it’s actually pretty different.

Beth Fernandez: Right. We’re salespeople, we’re sales force and we’re not, I mean, unless you want, you know, like I used to work with this guy in New Jersey and he started at the same time as me and he excelled at the same level I did, maybe he even did a little more sales, but then he went and took over a brokerage and I was like, “Why would you do that?” Well, then he opened two Keller Williams. Now he’s got to Keller Williams. He’s number two in Bergen County or maybe number one. You know, that was what he came from business, and that’s what he wanted. And that’s what he did, but that’s not what a lot of people want. You know what I mean? And those people who are like that are always gonna be like that, but it’s a different business.

Matthew Blake: I mean, I guess, not to be beat a dead horse, but I guess like the example you gave, I mean, are there more men who are maybe groomed by the brokerage or more inclined to sort of then slide into those leadership roles that way?

Beth Fernandez: I don’t see it that way. I really don’t. I think any woman that wants to excel in real estate can. I know a lot of them that have, I know a lot of realtors that went into management and then they became regional managers. I know this one woman who she was just always gonna be a manager. You know what I mean? A lot of times the managers are okay salespeople, they’re not great salespeople. They don’t pick the $20 million person in the office to become a manager. When they asked me to be a manager, it was the beginning of my career, I was only doing like $7 million or $8 million a year. Those are the people they want because it doesn’t take too much out of your returns, right, your profits to pull that person out of the pool. And maybe that person doesn’t love selling real estate. They get it and they’re good at it, they don’t want to pound the pavement all the time, right? They can move up and they do, and most of the time it is women in that situation. I mean, I gave you that reference to the RE/MAX guy. But, I mean, my broker I’ve always worked for a woman my whole career. Mostly the same woman, I followed her. And she is now in charge of like three or four offices. I don’t think those people are ever the CEOs of Zillow. I think the CEO of Zillow was probably the CEO of Campbell Soup before that. You know what I’m saying? They don’t need to be real estate agents.

Matthew Blake: Yeah, no, that’s a really good point. Actually, literally the CEO from Zillow, Rich Barton, I believe came from…did a stint at Microsoft before returning to Zillow.

Beth Fernandez: See. Yeah. He wasn’t out selling. Yeah. But there is a disparity in the media I’ve noticed, like, I don’t know exactly how many because I only turn the show on a couple of times, but that Million Dollar Listing show, I noticed a lot of men on that show. And I was like, “Why are there so many men on this show?”

Matthew Blake: I guess, I wanted to sort of give you the floor to talk about kind of any issues right now for you as a real estate agent that are kind of paramount concern to you and other agents that you speak with, like, what’s kind of top of the mind right now in your profession?

Beth Fernandez: For me, top of the mind in the last year has been diversity in real estate. When the Black Lives Matter Movement really hit and my eyes started to be open to the amount of institutional racism, that’s where I had to look at real estate and go, “Whoa.” Like, the National Association of Realtors is so great at educating us about redlining and all of the things that happened in the past that got us where we are today, but they haven’t done anything to repair that. It’s more like, “Don’t do this,” but what about the fact that we did that, right? And not only did we do it, we still do it. When I really started thinking about it, there’s this little neighborhood where I used to live that used to be all black servants for the bigger houses. And as time went by, they ended up buying those houses and it became a black neighborhood in a very white suburb, right? Tiny, like two streets, one cul-de-sac and two blocks, okay?

And I was told by several people not to show my client’s houses there when I first got there. I was like, “Why?” And they’re like, “It’s bad neighborhood. You just don’t want to sell houses there.” You know, it’s still out there. We’re still dealing with that. And, you know, I noticed here when I got here, somebody said to me, “Don’t show houses…oh, you don’t want…don’t put them on the other side of 82nd.” It’s steering. What are you saying? You know what I mean? Like let’s let the client pick their house and pick their neighborhood. We’re still not doing that. So that’s one thing that really bothers me. And then the other thing is just the lack of diversity of agents. I mean, if real estate is such a great job for women, we need to get black women into the business as fast as we can. Because I have a friend who’s making…I had dinner with her in Florida in February and she’s single mom and she made $250,000 already in February. She’s gonna make a million dollars this year. I want more women to make a million dollars. I want more black women to make a million dollars. It’s just been top of mind. I’ve been interviewing people, talking to people, trying to learn what the best way to do it. Like, let’s give more real estate scholarships.

And I think that’s really the answer to a lot of this because we need black agents in black communities selling houses to black people. We need black agents in open houses so that people don’t walk in and wonder what they’re doing there. People need to get used to seeing black faces everywhere in real estate. There’s none. I know one black agent in New Jersey and I know one here.

Matthew Blake: So, well, this has been really helpful and interesting. I wanted to close just sort of asking, you’ve been in Portland now for, I think, eight years you said, what is unique about…I think people have an idea of Portland, Oregon, you know, very outdoorsy, you know, sort of alternative culture, a place that’s become more expensive over the last several years. What is maybe a misconception that the rest of the nation has about the Portland housing market or just maybe something that you would like people to know about the Portland housing market? And we can close at that.

Beth Fernandez: I think what I’d want people to know is that we are not on fire. The market is on fire, but we are not on fire.

Matthew Blake: Okay. That’s good to know.

Beth Fernandez: And we have beautiful, safe neighborhoods. Portland is not even really a city, it’s like a network of little neighborhoods that are woven together. And so, you see the images of downtown being a mess, but we are so much more than that. Like we’re, I think 13 miles wide, we’re huge city. Really geographically, I think 300 square miles or something like that. It’s a lot of land and there’s a lot of beauty in every little neighborhood. Like, we have so many cool little neighborhoods. It’s amazing. And you can still get affordability here. I think if I was going to tell you what was really like, kind of weird about Portland compared to New Jersey, the number one thing would be that like when you show a house in Southeast Portland, there’s almost always a grow house or a grow room like there.

And so, I’ve had to learn that all those outlets on the floor, that’s why they’re there. Like, there’s really weird little quirky things about growing that I’ve had to learn. Because I would say like one out of four houses on the East side has a grow, some grow facility that, you know, now they’re all getting converted into ADUs. So that’s one thing. And then the other weird thing about Portland, it’s not weird, but it’s the reality is you have to know a lot about water. You have to know what’s going on under the house and the roof, because there’s so much water here that it’s every single house, has water problems. So that’s a little different than the East Coast where we have like snow issues and, you know, but we don’t have non-stop rain.

Matthew Blake: That’s really interesting.

Beth Fernandez: It’s a great town. I love living here. I’m never going back.

Matthew Blake: Yeah. Never going back to New Jersey. Great. So, Portland is figuratively on fire, flooding…not flooding, water issues I should say. And yeah, Beth Fernandez, Premiere Property in Portland. Thank you so much for coming on and answering some really tough questions. I really appreciate it.

Beth Fernandez: Thanks for asking good questions.