Constructing a career in homebuilding: Who’s at the top?

By Marie Schutt

Construction has a reputation as a rough-and-tumble industry, something that Maria Wilhelm, VP of sales for Illinois at PulteGroup, can attest to.

Wilhelm got her start at PulteGroup as a sales consultant, working her way up through management until she moved into her current role, where she has 30 sales consultants in the Chicagoland area reporting to two sales managers, who in turn report to her.

“Yes, it’s a male-dominated industry,” Wilhelm says, noting that she sits on an operations board with all men. But, she says, the role of new construction sales consultant in particular is one that women dominate, and she sees a big advantage in having female sales leaders in an organization like hers.

Where are most of the women in homebuilding?

The National Association of Homebuilders’ (NAHB) 2016 member census report, published this month, breaks down its 38,935 builder members by their segment of the industry. The segment with the largest share of female NAHB members is land developers, with 11 percent. Only 3 percent of members working in multifamily are women; among commercial remodelers, manufacturers of modular/panelized/log homes and commercial builders, 8 percent of members are women; and 7 percent of single-family homebuilders are women.

In 2016, Hanley Wood Data Studio ran a story on BuilderOnline.com auditing the Builder 100 list – a national ranking of homebuilding companies by total closings and gross revenue – from the previous year to determine how many of the public companies listed had at least one “woman leader.” It turns out that 77 percent (17 of 22 companies) had at least one woman in a leadership position; at the top, Lennar Corp. was found to have five women in leadership roles, while PulteGroup and Taylor Morrison Home Corp. had four each. In its audit, Hanley Wood also looked at boards of directors, finding that there were 21 women sitting on the board of directors for 15 different companies.

In the 2017 Builder 100 list, the top four public companies (D. R. Horton, Lennar Corp., PulteGroup and NVR, in that order) remain unchanged from the audited 2015 rankings.

And when it comes to homebuilding company ownership, a 2015 report by the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), commissioned by American Express OPEN, found that only 7 percent of U.S. construction firms were owned by women in 2014; though those firms are holding their own in terms of revenue, with 12 percent of women-owned construction firms pulling in more than $500,000 per year, compared to 11 percent of all construction firms with revenue in excess of $500,000 per year. The report analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

The homebuilding lifestyle

For Wilhelm, the main obstacles for women in homebuilding are mainly a function of the timing of major events in one’s life and how they line up with the demands of the job. She says her sales team is currently about one-third Millennials, one-third Generation X and one-third “people that have been doing this for a while,” and those with children who are just starting school tend to have the hardest time with the demands of a new construction sales agent’s job.

“Once they go to kindergarten or first grade, that’s when people start thinking, ‘Is this the career I want to be in? I love selling homes but should I be a Realtor? Can I have more flexibility?’ Or so they think.”

After all, weekend work is when people make their money, Wilhelm says. In her case, she says she and her husband are equals in the household, and that having such a supportive partner is key for anyone who wants to pursue a family and career ambitions in homebuilding at the same time. Though, the flexibility of a sales role has helped, too. “I was promoted when my children started school,” she says. “I stepped into a role where I had to work a lot of hours, but not necessarily physically be in the office/sales center, and was more on-call on the phone.”

Who’s entering the homebuilding industry?

Through her involvement in recruiting for PulteGroup, Wilhelm sees firsthand who is entering the industry. Younger candidates don’t always know what to expect when they hear “PulteGroup” or “homebuilder.” “People think, ‘Hmm, are you looking for a construction manager? Who are you trying to interview for?’”

Recruits fresh out of college are “very aspirational” and often focused on moving up the ladder, but Wilhelm wonders if, once on the job, the closer exposure to the inner workings of management is enough to turn some women off of the idea of pursuing it. “I think it’s more of them choosing not to go for the role versus some kind of female stigma or that it’s a male-dominated world. I don’t think it’s that.”
In an effort to build up a more diverse workforce, she says her company is involved in diversity councils on college campuses.

“Awareness is everything,” she says. “At the end of the year looking back on our performance, we not only look at our financial metrics but also at HR and planning, to understand where we are on diversity. Where are we with hiring not just women, but also people with diverse backgrounds? Awareness is huge, that’s where it starts. We’re still learning.”

For anyone who wants to work their way up in homebuilding, Wilhelm says the key is confidence and asking for what you want. This comes naturally to salespeople who “exude confidence” and are used to asking for the sale, but for others it might not.

“You’ve got to ask,” Wilhelm says. “If you’ve earned it, why not ask for it?”

Builder states that all of its information is “aggregated from proxy filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC documentation of named executive officers, and corporate governance data disclosed on company websites.”