Tommie Wehrle on making a more diverse and inclusive brokerage

Today’s HousingWire Daily features a crossover episode with RealTrending. In this episode, Tracey Velt, editorial director at RealTrends, a HousingWire sister company, interviews Tommie Wehrle, who is the co-chair of the LGBTQ+ REALPRIDE Realogy employee group, a Coldwell Banker Realty instructor and broker-associate, and member of the LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance.

During the episode, Wehrle discusses some of the common issues encountered when serving the LGBTQ+ community and how to combat them by building a more inclusive and diverse brokerage team.

Here is a small preview of the interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Tracey Velt: I think that when serving the LGBTQ community, there are some common issues. And so I want you to talk about those and how to handle them. What advice do you have for brokerage leaders and team leaders to help them better serve this community?

Tommie Wehrle: If I were to talk to brokers, I’d say, create a mission statement and make sure your mission statement includes diversity and inclusion so that you’re training your agents. We have an opportunity to lower the number Fair Housing violations, because there are a lot of them.

Train your agents to be inclusive. Sit down with them and talk about instances where people may think something is funny, but it’s actually offensive. Make sure they are aware and don’t say things like, “I don’t care who you sleep with.” That is just the weirdest thing when somebody says that to me. What do you mean who I sleep with? And they think they’re saying that to be like, “Hey, I’m fine with you.” But agents and managers shouldn’t talk like that.

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