Leonie Freeman has had just about every role in the property industry, apart from selling real estate. Now the CEO of the Property Council, she has a lifelong passion for property and a desire to do her bit to sort out the housing crisis.
Was working in property always the plan?
No, I kind of fell into it. My parents were both teachers and I was going to teach too. Then a careers adviser at school who was interested in getting females into jobs where there weren’t many suggested doing a property degree at Lincoln University.
I became a registered property valuer in the late 80s and I was the first female in private practice in Christchurch. I was lucky to be taken on by the legendary Peter Cook [real estate agent, valuer and former President of the Real Estate Institute] who became my mentor.
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Did you get a hard time for being a woman in a male-dominated industry?
Sometimes. I remember this one valuer who was probably close to retirement, sitting in his office puffing on a pipe and saying to me, “Oh Leonie, I can’t understand why Peter took on a female valuer.”
And there were times I’d turn up to do valuations and get asked, “Are you the administration person?"
I brushed it off and carried on and it wasn’t a problem for me. It’s good to see how much things have changed though.
Why did you move on from being a valuer?
I wanted to travel so I went off for a couple of years to do my OE and when I came back I decided to have a go at working for myself. It was risky but I set up a property consultancy business and it went really well.
One of my clients was the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand who got me to undertake research for them. It was 1995 and I could see that the internet was going to have a big impact on business. I suggested a website where properties for sale from all over the country could be listed, and everyone thought I was crazy.
Real estate agents would say to me, “Leonie, nobody will ever buy a property that way.”
I talked about the concept for five months, and I nearly gave up because nobody was listening, until I talked to Peter Cook about it. He got it and said he would stand alongside me. Because he was so well respected in the real estate industry people started to pay attention, and that led to the launch in 1996 of RealENZ.co.nz, which is now realestate.co.nz.
Are you proud of what you accomplished?
I am. It could have so easily not have happened if I’d given up. I think as well as having a vision you have to have the courage to keep going when people around you say no.
I ran RealENZ for three years, then decided I wanted my own business where I could instill my values and vision, and that I could transform and sell in a few years’ time. So I bought a small, rundown, largely residential property management company and got a similar reaction to when I came up with the RealENZ idea – “Leonie, what are you doing?”
It was scary, all of my money was invested in the business, but I was able to build a fantastic company with an amazing team of people. I sold it after seven years and needed some time off after that. I was worn out.
But you’ve kept taking on new roles?
Since then I have taught part-time at Auckland University on their property paper, been a strategic advisor in the set-up of Auckland’s super city and worked on turning the development programme at Housing New Zealand around. I wanted to bring private sector entrepreneurial skills into the public sector.
I’ve become really passionate about housing and in 2016 I spent a lot of time off my own bat looking at the housing crisis in Auckland and ways of solving it. As a result I launched an initiative that uses what’s called a collective impact approach to address social housing needs and end homelessness. It’s a framework that brings together multiple groups that are normally segmented to focus on a common goal. There have been some major success stories with it around the world and in New Zealand – the People’s Project in Hamilton is a great example.
How’s it going?
We had some great support from the private sector but couldn’t get government and council on board at the time. So I decided to regroup and try another approach. When the Property Council job came up I thought maybe that would be a different avenue.
We’ve got to shift people’s perceptions around thinking that any one group by themselves can fix the housing problem. You just have to stand up and keep talking about it, and that’s what I am going to do.
I look at my parents, who had three kids, and who scrimped and saved to buy a house in the 1960s. It was tough but they did it. And I look at comparable families today, teachers with kids, and they don’t have a hope in heck of buying a house in Auckland in this market. There’s something fundamentally wrong about that.
Do you ever get time for hobbies?
I love to box. After the first class I thought I was going to die, it was so hard. But I stuck with it. I’m not the sort of person that actually wants to hit anyone else but I did end up doing a couple of fights. I haven’t done anything harder in my life, it was a challenging mental journey as well as a physical one. I lost the first match and drew the second. I don’t feel the need to do any more fights but I box to keep fit and to help me cope with all the craziness going on.
I also like to write. I have written and self-published two books – one on building a business and the other on two of the men in my family who served in the First World War. I’m currently working on a third, about my family’s history. As you get older you realise this stuff is important, and it is good to get it down.
