‘Vote, it is so important’: Incoming 2025 LGBTQ+ Alliance President

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The LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance, an advocacy group for gay and queer real estate professionals, hosted its third in-person conference in Las Vegas, on Sept. 25-27. About 500 of the group’s 4,000 members were in attendance.

Since its inception in 2020, the group has been vocal in fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, trying to save Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives, and exposing which candidates the Realtor Political Action Committee (RPAC), the National Association of Realtors’ lobbying arm, supports.

Most recently, in March, the Alliance launched a new anti-LGBTQ+ bill tracker that keeps tabs on anti-LGBTQ+ bills and candidates who receive campaign funding from RPAC.

At the time of this writing, state RPACs have donated more than $3.7 million over the past six years to legislators pushing anti-LGBTQ+ bills, and there are currently 356 anti-LBGTQ+ bills, all introduced in 2024, according to the tracker. 

Together, with leaders like Side co-founder Hillary Saunders, RE/MAX CEO Amy Lessinger and President of CB Affiliates Jason Waugh, the group gathered to set the course for next year, discuss topics critical to the LGBTQ+ community of Realtors and clients, and learn mission-critical tasks, like how to file a 10-5 complaint, which prohibits Realtors from “using harassing or hateful speech, epithets, or slurs based on protected classes,” according to the Code of Ethics. 

“I’m thrilled to represent Coldwell Banker at Experience: The Alliance. We have a long history of supporting the LGBTQ+ community and strongly believe that the real estate industry plays a critical role in ensuring that everyone has equal and fair access to homeownership. Homeownership offers safety, security and building inclusive neighborhoods and communities. We also need to be respectful and supportive of the thousands of LGBTQ+ real estate professionals. The Alliance plays a huge role in helping us all do so,” Waugh told Inman in a statement.

Drag superstar Monet X Change and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy original cast member Carson Kressley were also in attendance.

“I was one of their guest speakers about three years ago, and I love real estate so much and Realtors in general. I mean, I wound up marrying mine. I divorced him later, but still. And I’ve been coming back and working with this group ever since. They’re just a great group of professionals, and it’s very inspiring. I just love everything about the Alliance,” Kressley told Inman between MCing duties at the conference.

“[The LGBTQ+ community has] made incredible strides, and I’m very proud that maybe Queer Eye for the Straight Guy could be a small part of that, and certainly working now today on shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race again, where we’re highlighting and celebrating marginalized communities. I think we’ve made tremendous progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to make sure that equality is either achieved or protected.”

To learn more about what that work looks like within the Alliance, Inman sat down with incoming 2025 President Justin “JZ” Ziegler during the conference to discuss the anti-LGBTQ+ political climate, the organization’s future and how to become an ally.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you do what you do?

When I was a teenager [in the 90s], at 16 years old, I put a rainbow sticker on the back of my car. It wasn’t because I loved rainbows, or I wanted to broadcast that I was gay, but I realized that I wanted people around me to know someone who was part of the community.

I think that a lot of times, education and moving people comes from letting them see someone within the community and getting to know them. A lot of times, it’s very easy to demonize a community because it’s just something that you see on the news or at the Pride parade. But when you are faced with a brother or sister or mother or cousin or someone close to you that identifies openly, that gives them the chance to humanize that person and make a connection and realize that there is something more to it. So I love that.

As the incoming president, what’s on your agenda for 2025?

I came from local leadership. I was the president of the Atlanta chapter several years ago, and I realized that the importance of our organization is really seen at the local level. So when someone joins our organization, and they get involved, they do it because there’s an event, or there’s something that piques their interest at the local level.

We’re looking at an economy right now where a lot of real estate agents’ transactions are down. They’re not making quite as much money. When you look at who sponsors an organization like us, it’s usually an organization whose clients are agents that aren’t making as much money. So that means that a lot of times sponsorship dollars are down, and for political reasons, a lot of companies, they’ve stopped supporting DEI and other things like that.

But at the local level, where things are happening, that’s kind of where the passion happens. That’s where folks get engaged. That’s where they network. That’s where they build business connections. And that is incredibly exciting for me.

So, at the national level, I really want to work on creating more resources so that these local chapters can really do amazing things out in the community. And I’m really kind of excited to be a national leader that is looking at a local focus.

What can we expect from the Alliance this year?

In May, we do our policy Summit, and we’ve done that for several years now. Obviously, we’re a new organization, so this is our fifth year that we’re going into, and we’ve done that policy conference three times.

And this particular year, we, for the very first time ever, incorporated [Capitol] Hill visits. So we were actually going out and going into the offices of senators and representatives and talking to them about our organization. And that was a moment that was incredibly passionate for me.

I realized as I started talking to folks in these offices that when I told them that our organization grew to over 4,000 members, I watched their tone change. All of a sudden, they’re like, Oh, this is a bigger organization than we thought. It made me realize that that’s where we get a voice.

When we start growing our membership, it’s not about bringing in membership dollars; it’s not about saying that our numbers are this or our numbers are that, but it actually gives us a voice, and it allows us to do more things within the community.

So obviously, our mission is homeownership for all, and we know that within the LGBTQ+ community, the homeownership rates are probably trailing the national average by about 15 percent. Having those numbers and being able to speak to folks that will listen to us, because we can say that we’ve achieved a certain mass, that gives us the ability to have a voice and to do more things.

I get really passionate about growing membership for those reasons because it literally is the credibility that shows that what we do is important, not just to a few people, but to thousands of people.

Can you give us an update on the bill tracker?

If you’re not familiar with how it works, basically, we rely on data from the ACLU to track all of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that is identified, the tracker looks at who sponsors those bills, and then it compares it to RPAC’s donations. We can look at these different bill sponsors and be like, “Oh, I see that RPAC gave this person X number of dollars.”

So, the update really is the excitement of what I just shared, where [chapters are] taking that data and sharing it, and it’s actually working toward enacting change within the organization. But we are going into 2025, which means that we are going to start seeing a lot more bills.

One of the saddest things that I can say, looking in within our own community, is that every year, we get this number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that are being proposed. And at the beginning of the year, it’s kind of a sad moment … It’s literally hundreds every single year of these bills that are more than anything, really just kind of trying to utilize the [LGBTQ+] community to take attention off of other things, I think.

And then what I love is sometimes mid-year, we get these little updates. So like, I come from Georgia, and there was a number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were proposed in Georgia, and every single one of them did not make it through the session.

I think that it just makes people a little bit more cognizant of what’s going on. So I love that. I’m excited and terrified to see what the numbers are going to look like for 2025 as bills start getting introduced, but also, the progress that comes with it is exciting to see.

What are the most important issues facing the LGBTQ+ community in 2024?

The demonization that we’re seeing of the trans community, of folks that are nonbinary [transgender and gender expansive] (TGX). I remember, like, in the ’80s and ’90s, when I was a kid, it was kind of like just demonizing the gay community. And I think that really what I’m seeing now is it’s specifically more geared toward trans, nonbinary, TGX communities. These bathroom bills and these book bans that we’re seeing. It’s time that we stand with our TGX community and really move this forward and show support.

We talk a lot about allyship … I’m getting older. I’m in my mid-40s, but the exciting thing for me is to see how things have advanced over time and see how we progress. And I think that this is the time that we stand up for our TGX community.

In real estate, we often see hateful comments on social media and articles. How do you combat that?

I mean, at a certain level, you got to ignore it, right? And this actually happened this year: NAR posted a Pride post, and within like a couple of hours, there were [900] comments. A lot of people went hardcore in there, and it was literally at the beginning of Pride Month.

So, it kind of colored my entry into this month. It was a celebration for me, but it was also an educational moment. You know, it’s an opportunity for us to have a conversation, and I hope that we use those opportunities to have the conversations in a fruitful way.

I was recently asked to speak to a political group [Atlanta Young Republicans] that is opposite of my political views, and I chose to do it because it was an opportunity to impart knowledge on first-time homebuyers and give information to folks, not to take a political stand, but to build those bridges to other folks in other communities. And the reality is … most Americans are moderate. They’re in the middle somewhere. Obviously, the news is very polarized, but the average American is not.

What would you say to hateful commenters?

To think about if it was someone in their family, how would they feel about the comments that were being made? If it was their child, or their mother … how would it make them feel if those comments were directed toward that person?

When we look at the upcoming generation, 1 in 5 of them identify as LGBTQ+. And that means that the children of the folks that are reading those comments very well may be victimized by those comments.

It’s that idea of representation and visibility. When you start to personalize who those comments are made toward, you start to feel a little bit differently about them.

And how can real estate pros become allies and get involved?

Start by saying that you are an ally. Start by correcting the microaggressions that we hear sometimes. Start by saying something when you hear a joke that’s not just off-color, but offensive, and start thinking about what would that joke feel like if the audience was different in that room? I think that we all have the opportunity to say something. Honestly, I did AIDS activism in the ’90s, and I kind of made my own definition of what an activist is. And to me, it’s really just someone who speaks up for someone whose voice isn’t heard.

And I think that we get to that next level by having a moment where, when we see something, or we hear something, we say something, and that normalizes the conversation. And it’s an educational moment.

But the reality is it actually takes the Allies, more than anything else, to move the needle. So I would just encourage folks to become an ally … show up, have that voice and speak that voice when it’s necessary — and you’ll know when.

Especially parents … this is a perfect opportunity for the folks in our industry who are parents to be making this decision, not necessarily whether their kid identifies as LGBTQ+ or not, but the fact that they could — make that decision to be an ally, to make this industry better for future generations.

What else should readers know?

Vote. Vote. It is so important. I know that’s not real estate, but in reality, I mean, this is a major election year. I think that we need to stay focused on our industry. We’ve certainly had a lot of challenges this year, not just interest rates, but there’s been [commission lawsuits], and I think that we need to all take this opportunity to educate ourselves, to reengage, to spend time doing all those things that within our business we learn to do early in our career and to refocus on those things.

But like I said, more than anything, stay engaged within the community. Have an open mind, have an open heart, and only use your power for good.

Connect with Dani Vanderboegh via email, Instagram or Facebook.