Diversity simplifies real estate sales

Spanish and English aren’t the only languages spoken at Providence’s RE/Max New Horizons. The company’s 14 real estate agents are all bilingual, speaking languages ranging from Laotian to French to German, while the company’s Web site is posted in both English and Spanish.
Multicultural attention to customer needs is what make the company attractive to minorities in the Providence metro area, said owner Sussy DeLeon, who came to the United States as a Guatemalan immigrant in 1993.
For DeLeon, multiculturalism has become an award-winning business strategy. For each of the last five years, she’s been named one of the top five brokers in the state. Other honors include being U.S. Realtor Hometown Hero in 2003, the 2007 Realtor of the Year from the Providence Board of Realtors and being named to the Providence Business News 2007 40 Under Forty.
Because she created a home for the “niche” minority market, her business started to boom as soon as she took over, she said.
“I think Providence is one of the most diverse cities and clients feel comfortable working with someone who understands them better,” she said. “And of course, there are some basic steps toward purchasing a house that, when you understand the culture a little better, you understand” what clients are looking for.
Having bilingual agents that come from the Providence community, for example, helps curb problems with loans – including explaining to clients the risks of questionable practices, like subprime mortgages, DeLeon said.
“One of the problems we have right now, why so many people got into problems with bad loans and are going into foreclosure, is because a lot of Realtors do not explain the basic process of buying a house with good financing,” she said, adding that she goes through a step-by-step budgeting with potential buyers. “And that will help me, the agent, find a house on that budget.
“A lot of times, people will do that and then decide they can’t afford a house right now,” she said.
Aside from the agents, DeLeon’s employees are all from Cranston and Providence, near her 390 Broadway office. “All of them are bilingual … because you get a lot of bilingual, especially Spanish, clientele in our neighborhood,” she said.
RE/MAX New Horizons is part of a growing minority business community in the state. According to a 2002 study compiled by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency – the latest study the agency has put together – the number of minority-owned enterprises in Rhode Island grew by 48 percent between 1997 and 2002.
According to the report, minority-owned businesses accounted for 8.35 percent of the state’s total businesses by 2002. During that same five years, the minority population grew 55 percent in the Ocean State.
In Guatemala, DeLeon had studied business administration but she found that her language skills were a barrier when she immigrated to the United States.
“Obviously, my language wasn’t very good at that time, so I had to do all different types of jobs until I found out that I liked real estate,” she said. “You have to speak the language to get a job in an office, so to do what I was doing back home wasn’t very easy. When I got here, I couldn’t do anything similar – not even a receptionist job.”
But by 1997, DeLeon had become a real-estate agent and, by 2001, was ready to strike out on her own. “I was surprised when the owner, my own broker, said he would sell me his franchise,” she said.
That 2001 deal – for which DeLeon took out a home equity loan for the business and a bank loan for the building – made her the first minority owner of a RE/MAX franchise in New England.
“There were other RE/MAX franchises around the state, but none of them owned by minorities, or women who are a minority,” she said. “So I became the first one.” •