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The new CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV), Kelly Ryan, is well-placed to identify the pressures and positives that are shared in both the real estate and sporting industries.
Ryan began her role in May this year, and is charged with leading the delivery of the REIV’s organisational strategy, including its objectives of modernising its practices and ramping up government engagement and advocacy.
Having previously served as an executive for a number of sporting organisations before leaping into real estate, Ryan was asked in a recent episode of the Secrets of the Top 100 Agents how her sporting background has equipped her with transferable skills that are helping her find her footing in the new job.
Noting that there are many similarities, Ryan said members in both industries are driven by emotion and passion for their fields.
“Sport [is] highly emotional; a lot of emotions at play. No different to real estate. Selling or buying a property is possibly one of the biggest decisions you can ever make,” she said.
“[There’s] a lot of interest in both of those spaces as well. You don’t have to go far to have someone want to stop and have a conversation around sport. It’s not too dissimilar around real estate as well, especially given the state of the market.”
The importance of resilience in leadership
Significantly, Ryan observed, sports arms participants with a robust work ethic as well as resilience.
“Resilience in particular is an incredible skill that you need to have in any leadership opportunity,” she underscored.
“I think that puts me in good stead for what we’re facing at REIV.”
In the same vein, Ryan and the REIV are conducting conversations around mental and emotional wellbeing given how competitive real estate is, a characteristic shared by the sporting industry, she said.
“[Real estate] requires a huge amount of effort and energy. It’s a seven-day a week industry,” she said.
“Sports is a seven-day a week industry. It’s highly scrutinised and it’s a highly political space. I think there’s always been a bit of a persona that sporting stars or even business leaders should have a different level of mental capacity. But the truth is people are just people. We’re all human and we absolutely make mistakes and we learn from them.”
Ultimately, the REIV is a business and a member organisation (similar to sporting clubs), Ryan remarked, meaning she can glean insights from leading a sporting organisation and put them into practice in her new role.
Tackling the housing supply issue
Ryan was thrown into the deep end early in her role as she and the REIV responded to the Victorian government’s new conceptual framework titled, A New Plan for Victoria, a blueprint containing Victoria’s planning regime for the decades to come and strategies for tackling housing supply issues.
In its submission, the REIV defined two key areas for government consideration after consulting with its 7,000 members.
First, it said Victoria must consider its population’s diverse housing needs in the planning stage and deliver a “suitable and sufficient range of housing options”. Secondly, Victoria must find innovative ways to attract capital to finance the delivery of its planning initiatives.
Ryan underscored to REB that the Victorian government must optimise the use of existing housing supply by incentivising retirees to downsize so larger and underutilised properties could be freed up for younger, growing families and first home buyers.
“The retired couple that’s still living in a four-bedroom home in a great suburb that’s close to schools, that’s the type of home that we’d love to see going to a first home buyer or a family resizing due to their needs,” Ryan said.
“They will utilise that housing stock a lot better than a retired couple living in a four-bedroom house who might be then right to go into one of these apartment zones. We think there needs to be more incentives to have people shift around in that regard as one of the critical measures to work in parallel with some of the development needs that [the Victorian government] outlined.”
Stamping out the cost bugbear
However, one of the key barriers to downsizing for retirees is the cost of stamp duty, “a considerable amount of money that [they’re] never going to realise”, Ryan pointed out.
She has urged the Victorian government to implement stamp duty concessions and incentives so that retirees could overcome the cost barrier, especially as cost-of-living pressures grow and they subsist on their superannuation or government support.
“These are the times where you need your governments to step in and help provoke the necessary change to help deliver what you need to deliver in another five to 10 years’ time,” she concluded.
To listen to the full episode of Secrets of the Top 100 Agents featuring Kelly Ryan, click here.
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