As a woman in real estate, one requires a particular kind of strength. It’s our ability to hold our ground without losing our warmth, to make difficult decisions while still making people feel heard, and to keep showing up when the demands of work and life refuse to take turns.
Anéllia Boshoff, agent from Tyson Properties Northern Suburbs, has learned that balance takes years to learn. “Being a woman in real estate isn’t easy,” she says. There is a widespread belief that there is a narrow line women are often expected to walk: be compassionate, but not too soft; be decisive, but not too forceful. “Softness gets you walked on, but firmness gets you labelled every unpleasant word imaginable.” Learning to exist somewhere between those expectations has become part of her professional education.
What she knows now is that empathy does not have to compete with authority. In fact, it strengthens her. “Empathy isn’t a weakness, it’s a superpower,” she says. It has allowed her to be kind and firm, professional and human, without having to choose one over the other.
Carry Mortonson, Double Diamond agent from Tyson Properties Atlantic Seaboard, sees much the same quality in the work she does. For her, real estate has always been about far more than property. It is about the moments surrounding a property: the first home, the relocation, the investment, the upheaval, the search for somewhere that finally feels right. She speaks about the importance of helping people find a place where they can belong, somewhere they can come home to and recharge.
That sense of responsibility is easy to miss when the finished deal is all that is visible. Behind the sold sign are the late-night calls, weekends given up, difficult conversations and the emotional strain of helping people through some of the more complicated periods of their lives.
For Carry, that reality has been particularly personal. As a single parent, she has often had to divide herself between raising her children, running her business and being there for clients who depend on her. “There have been many days where I’ve had to be everything to everyone,” she says. The polished version of real estate rarely shows the exhaustion, self-doubt or uncertainty that can sit underneath it.
Anéllia knows something about that invisible balancing act too. After a decade in the industry, she became a mother to a baby boy. A year spent caring for a 10-month-old through repeated bouts of sickness brought home a truth that the industry can sometimes forget: real estate agents are people too.
Clients may need answers at all hours, but agents get sick too. They have families. They have difficult days. Sometimes, they need to switch off and spend an evening doing absolutely nothing.
The expectation to always be available is something Heather Turner, Platinum agent from Tyson Properties Southern Suburbs, who has spent almost four decades in the industry, has also learned to question. “Do not let the hustle culture hollow you out,” she says. Real estate can be demanding and highly competitive, but she believes there is a danger in confusing constant availability with professional excellence.
Her advice is straightforward: protect your boundaries. Know when to put the phone down. “You are dealing with people’s largest financial assets, which means you need your mind sharp and your emotional tank full.”
Heather has earned the perspective to say that. When she entered real estate in the mid-1980s, the profession looked very different. It was often treated as something a woman could do while her children were at school, alongside other part-time pursuits of the era. She certainly did not begin with the expectation that she was building a four-decade career.
“I had no idea that I was building a legacy,” she says.
What began as work eventually became a lifetime of relationships. Clients became friends. Transactions became connections that lasted decades. Families she first encountered through property returned years later, sometimes with their children and grandchildren.
The market changed. Technology changed. The industry changed. Heather kept going.
That longevity has shaped her understanding of success. She has watched enough cycles to know that the market will rise and fall, and that careers will have seasons of certainty and seasons of doubt. What lasts, she believes, is reputation.
“If ever I felt underestimated, I used it to my competitive advantage,” Heather says. Rather than spending energy trying to prove herself, she turned to preparation, data and an understanding of her craft that left little room for anyone to question her authority.
It is a lesson shared by Annelia and Carry, albeit through different stages of their careers.
Anéllia remembers being underestimated because of her age, something she says has happened both early in her career and, remarkably, even as she approaches 30. Her response was never to argue her way into being taken seriously. She prepared. She learned. She let the results accumulate.
“Respect isn’t demanded; it’s earned through consistency,” she says.
Carry has arrived at much the same conclusion. There have been moments when her knowledge or ability was questioned before people had taken the time to know her. These days, she has little interest in convincing anyone through words alone. Her clients returning, referring others and trusting her with their assets is proof enough.
“I don’t take that task lightly,” she says. “It is a privilege.”
That’s the key word – privilege, runs through much of what these women have to say about their careers. For all the pressure, long hours and difficult moments, none of them speak about real estate as simply a job.
For Carry, the woman who entered the industry could not have known what the years ahead would look like. She believed she needed to have the answers and avoid mistakes. Life taught her something different. Experience, she says, is not about eliminating obstacles, it is about learning how to navigate them.
Her children were a significant part of what kept her moving forward through the hardest periods. There were days when the future was uncertain, but she had a reason to keep going. “You simply need the courage to take the next step, trust the process, and keep going.”
Anéllia’s lesson has been about a different kind of success. Earlier in her career, she equated achievement with saying yes, to every opportunity, every request, every client, at any hour. Over time, that definition changed.
Know your worth, then add tax.
Success, she has discovered, is not measured by how busy an agent can make themselves. It is found in boundaries, balance and relationships built honestly. The best agents, she believes, are not necessarily the busiest. They are the ones people trust.
That trust is something all three women return to, over and over again.
Heather describes her career as a responsibility rather than a series of transactions. She has spent nearly 40 years protecting a reputation built one interaction at a time, choosing ethics over a quick commission and adapting without losing sight of what mattered to her in the first place.
“I still love it,” she says.
There is something striking about that after four decades. Not simply that she has stayed, but that she still feels connected to the work.
Anéllia feels that same connection in the clients who remain part of her life years after a transaction has ended. She is still in touch with people she first worked with eight years ago. For her, that is the real measure of a career in property.
“People are your purpose,” she says.
It is also why she is adamant that young women entering the industry should not lose themselves trying to fit a particular idea of what a successful agent looks like. If a company or client drains you, she says, there is another place for you. There is no need to become louder, harder or less authentic simply to impress someone.
“Don’t sell your soul,” she says. Work hard. Stay honest. Keep learning. But remain yourself.
Heather would add one more warning: do not allow ambition to consume the life you are trying to build. A successful business means little if there is no room left for a successful life outside it.
For Carry, the advice is perhaps simpler: “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”
There will be quiet months. Difficult clients. Moments when the career you chose feels less certain than you imagined. None of those moments necessarily mean you are failing. A reputation is built slowly, through the accumulation of ordinary decisions: being honest when it would be easier not to be, answering the call, preparing properly, treating people with respect and doing what you said you would do.
Skills can be learned. Careers can change direction. Markets can shift.
But people remember how you made them feel at the end of the day.
And perhaps that is the thread connecting three women at very different points in their careers. Annelia is still relatively early in hers, Carry has built a career through personal and professional challenges, and Heather has had almost 40 years to watch the industry evolve around her. Their experiences are different, but their definitions of success have converged.
It is not simply the number of properties sold, the awards collected or the years on the clock.
It is the people who trusted them.
The families they helped.
The clients who came back.
The younger women they can now encourage.
The lives they built alongside the careers they worked so hard to create.
And, ultimately, the decision was made over and over again, to keep showing up as themselves.
For Heather, her career might thank her for treating it with respect. For Carry, it would thank her for refusing to give up. And for Anéllia, the younger woman she once was deserves some thanks too.
She stuck with it.
Four decades, a decade, a few years, the timelines may differ. But each has discovered that a lasting career is built in much the same way as a lasting home: patiently, honestly and with something worth coming back to. Happy Women’s Month.
This article was proudly sponsored by Abrahams & Gross Attorneys.
