Commercial Real Estate, Social Backwater

I've mentioned my three-year stint in commercial real estate. The company I worked for, out of its Northeast Wisconsin office, is headquartered in the Milwaukee suburbs; it's among the biggest such companies in the state. One of the aspects of commercial real estate that struck me the hardest was how incredibly racist, sexist, and homophobic the profession is. For the new millennium, it is simply unbelievable. Take a look at any of the national commercial real estate magazines, with their thumbnail photos of brokers and executives, and you will immediately note that there are very few women and virtually no minorities pictured. The reality in Wisconsin is if anything even worse. Milwaukee has been identified as the most segregated city in America, and the suburban counties that ring Milwaukee are (let me tell you) as openly racist as it gets in the North -- they were among the few suburban counties in the country to go against Obama in 2008, and this is an essentially blue state; almost all the rural Wisconsin counties went for Obama. (I spent a lot of time after the election looking at county red/blue maps, which were simply fascinating.)

My company, true to form, had (and has) few women brokers, no minority brokers, no open gays or lesbians on staff (I bit my tongue; it wasn't safe to be out), and only one minority employee in any role -- an Asian Indian on the IT staff. I swear there wasn't an African-American in that office building or anywhere within five miles of it. It's as if Jim Crow never ended.

The Milwaukee area does get bad publicity for this, but I always wondered why no one ever calls out commercial real estate at a national level. The demographics of commercial brokerage are no accident -- a highly qualified minority applicant would have zero chance of being hired by the company I worked for, one reason I was glad to leave it.