Tricia Lee Riley On The Reality Of Real Estate

• Real estate has a high failure rate, with 90% of agents making under $40,000 annually.
• Securing deals requires financial expertise and extensive networking, beyond just 'gossiping and gawking'.
• Riley aims to break stereotypes about Black women's success by sharing her personal journey and challenges.

Owning Manhattan star Tricia Lee Riley is one of the faces representing real estate in the media. She sits atop the it girl professional ladder with designer bags and luscious bundles. Her industry is idolized for an ability to create wealth relatively quickly, but Riley notes it’s harder than sixty-second clips set to D-List pop tracks make it look. 

“90% of agents make well under $40,000 a year, gross, and then 98% of agents never renew their license after they get it,” clarifies the former beauty entrepreneur. “It is so many different hats and so many different skills, and it gets cheapened down.”

No one considers doctoring easy after watching Married To Medicine, but real estate gets painted as glorified gossiping while gawking at granite. Riley sees knowledge gaps when recruiting. People think real estate automatically equals getting rich quick. 

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“I think the best representation for real estate and how tough it actually is is the failure rate. The failure rate is far greater than any other industry. And until this day, 10% of agents out here are making 90% of the money. That is always the case,” she says. 

In a world where white collar careers are deprofessionalized through propaganda and misinformation, details matter. Season 2 of the Netflix series features one agent being forced to complete a complicated math on the spot to save a deal. Riley confirms this is a common occurrence. Finance knowledge is a must to be a success in real estate, according to her. Interest rate facts outrank Instagram reach.

“You cannot do this job effectively without it,” she says. “If you don’t understand the deals on a granular level like that, you don’t know what it is that we do here. You have no idea. You’re just in the room.” 

Breaking Through Barriers 

Getting something out of the room is not as easy for Black women. The Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Network reports a wide pay gap in the industry. The loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs for all women impacts realtors’ professional networks. Riley recently had a deal fall through because a client lost their job.  

She isn’t letting circumstances stop her. 

While speaking she is preparing for an event hosted by Mile and Lamborghini. Her goal isn’t creating content, it’s securing contacts. It’s one of many uncompensated tasks real estate agents do. They also query “Painters, architects, home designers, interior designers” and other professionals to maintain access for clients. If potential buyers want to know renovation costs, she parrots them off with confidence. 

Breaking Through Expectations

Riley expresses a desire to break her hustler’s spirit out of Brooklyn on Owning Manhattan. She speaks up for herself in a meeting and cinches a deal. What the viewer doesn’t see is the leg work that went into getting the client’s attention. She scoured through her contacts prior to the meeting. Getting access to information others wouldn’t think to look for set her apart in the deal. “We had to know that Armani was looking for a new location, we had to know that Emirates was looking for a corporate setup. We had to know that Apple was interested in buying buildings and putting a headquarters in the city,” she said. 

Weeks of unpaid work preceded the win we watched. 

“We had already brought Armani there before we even got the listing. That’s the level of effort and work that goes into it. Before we shot that scene, we had brought George Armani into that building with their entire sales development team to look at that building.” 

Some find it difficult to stay disciplined when direct deposits dwindle, not Riley. 

“People ask me why I’ve always done well in real estate. It’s because I was an entrepreneur already. I didn’t have a boss, I wasn’t looking for a boss. I didn’t need that direction, I didn’t need that hand holding,” she says. 

“A lot of people are entrepreneurs, but they act like employees. And that’s just not what works here.”

Breaking Through Black Excellence Stereotypes 

Related: Memphis Women’s Expo: A Movement for Empowerment and Impact

Mainstream media has ideas about what leads to success for Black women. 

Riley wanted to challenge that after a moment of personal revelation. It was important to her to not only highlight the labor involved but the different kinds of lives that could lead to success in the industry. 

She opted to share more of her personal life on the show this season. In one scene, she shares information about her family background with a coworker. “I had hidden that and I had had so much shame around it,” she said. 

Opening up let those watching reality tv with complicated backgrounds see themselves in her experience.  

Related: Rasheeda Frost Talks Bossing Up And Knowing When To Fall Back

Breaking Out Of The Professional Box 

“I felt like I was being upheld as this, like, perfect picture of success, and all while that is true, and I’ve broken my neck for the things I’ve been able to do, I wanted to make sure that I told the truth about who I am in a way that I had never done before.” It didn’t feel right to ignore the less charmed portions of her story. “I really felt a responsibility to do it on the show because I felt like, where else can you tell other young little Black girls that it’s okay to not look, live, be like everyone else,” she continued. “You still are super, super special, because of how different you are from everyone else.” 

Riley’s plans on taking her brand of special into new arenas. She respects her profession but doesn’t want it to define her. 

“I have built a brand around what I do, and I think I can do a lot more to build a brand around who I am. I think who I am is far more interesting.” 

‘Owning Manhattan’ Star Tricia Lee Riley On The Reality Of Real Estate was originally published on hellobeautiful.com