A former lettings agency owner turned author and property entrepreneur has heavily criticised the estate agency sector for its ‘casual sexism’ and dangerous working conditions for women.

Samantha Collett (main image), who has run several property firms including a property management firm based in Stoke-on-Trent in the past, has written an excoriating column for The Daily Telegraph detailing some of both hers and other women’s chilling experiences, but also called out sexism within the industry, calling it “endemic and institutionalised [and] also just accepted as normal”.

“Every day women working in property up and down the country show home, carry out inspections and meet strangers. And often they do it alone,” she writes.

“It is a scary and sometimes risky business when you don’t know who you’re meeting and what they’ll be like.”

“It is a scary and sometimes risky business when you don’t know who you’re meeting and what they’ll be like.”

Recalling one concerning interaction with a criminal tenant and his threatening behaviour during a property inspection, Collett says that “when you’re a petite woman like me – I’m 5ft 2 and a half inches – you find different tactics to survive”.

Collett also calls out the sector for the number of firms where most of the coal face workers are women, but managers are male, but also celebrates the fact that being a woman working in estate agency means she can “present a different point of view or way of doing things,” she adds.

“Men and women’s brains are wired differently, and by working together, we can end up with a better result”.

Read her column in full.

Pic: Shutterstock/Evening Standard