It is almost four years since Freehold, the property industry’s LGBT networking forum, was founded. By chance. Property lawyer Saleem Fazal was walking along Clapham High Street on an August evening and saw surveyor David Mann drinking outside one of the area’s gay bars.
“We had been out to lunch with colleagues that week but neither of us knew the other was gay,” says Fazal, who runs Taylor Wessing’s real estate disputes group. Mann, a partner with consultancy Tuffin Ferraby Taylor, recalls: “We both looked incredibly embarrassed and, to start with, didn’t know where to look. Then we laughed.”
They introduced each other to their respective partners and within days were hatching plans to create a network that would offer a platform to property’s LGBT community. “I said we would do it only if we could come up with a clever name,” says Mann. “I was really jealous of the Gay and Lesbian Underwater Group, GLUG, and so Freehold was born.”
With 15 or so colleagues, friends and friends of friends keen to get involved, they booked a meeting room at Taylor Wessing. “By the time the day came, so many people had told others that we had 60 people who wanted to come along,” says Fazal. “It changed from a formal meeting to a drinks session. We were absolutely staggered and that is when we started realising that there was something out there people wanted.”
Membership has since swelled to 746 and is expected to hit 1,000 within a year.
Before Freehold’s creation in 2011, both Mann and Fazal were out to colleagues at work but generally not to clients. Their firms were supportive but they were less certain how the group would be received by the property industry.
“We almost had to come out to the industry to be judged by the industry. It is pleasing that we have been embraced a lot better than I ever could have anticipated,” says Mann. “When we first started to talk to people, a few of the big agents said, we haven’t got any gay employees, we haven’t got a problem. We don’t see a need for a group. It is only when people turned up for our event, and saw five people from Savills there, that they actually started to talk to each other. Building Pride, a JLL group, has been born out of Freehold, really.”
In November 2012, Cluttons became the first agent to host a Freehold event. Drivers Jonas, Savills, CBRE and JLL have all hosted events since. And both Fazal and Mann can point to real achievements in the years since launch. There is the director of one firm who three years ago didn’t want their boss to find out they were gay. That same boss is now speaking at Freehold events. Or there is the new Freehold member who didn’t want to declare the name of the firm they were joining. Mann and Fazal were able to introduce him (with mutual consent) to a senior employee within that firm who is also gay.
Not for the first time, property lags behind other areas of professional service. KPMG has had an internal LGBT network for 14 years, for instance. But Freehold’s founders are justifiably proud of how much Freehold has achieved in its short life and the warmth of its reception by the industry.
Mann says Freehold has been helpful for him in terms of self-confidence and hopes it has been so for others. “I was expecting much more of a backlash. I can’t think of anything particularly negative,” he says. “Just standing in RICS headquarters and having Louise Brooke-Smith and Sean Tompkins welcome you and acknowledge LGBT members was for me quite an emotional thing. It is an institution and has institutional issues, but it threw its doors open, which was great.”
Fazal points to the fast growth of the network as a particular point of pride. “There was point after the first year when we were booking events for 18 months’ time, which was quite a proud moment. Another was when we hit 500 members. Freehold was definitely the catalyst for me in coming out to clients and contacts and I wish I had done it sooner. I was out at work and I certainly have made better friends with my clients and contacts as a result of Freehold.”
Both men laugh when asked whether they underestimated how much time the network takes up. But they have had help. Stonewall has been supportive, not least in advising on terms of reference – “keeping us PC occasionally”, says Mann. And Freehold has a committed board that includes Shaftesbury chief executive Brian Bickell to provide further support.
One challenge has been resources. “We represent real estate professionals, as opposed to professionals in real estate,” says Mann. “We have had people in PR teams or in HR teams or in marketing or archivists want to join and we could be swamped. So we have had to define our terms of reference to just real estate professionals or someone who has a long track record in real estate.
“What we have said is, ‘There are marketing networking groups, go and join them.’ We have actually been accused of being non-inclusive for turning those people away. But it doesn’t cost anyone anything to join and we are all volunteers.”
What of the future? “Our ultimate aim is not to need to exist,” says Mann. Fazal is more nuanced. “The support side of things may dwindle,” he says, “but there will still be demand for a networking group, because that is what business is all about.”
