I had an opportunity to attend the ULI Fall Conference last week in New York, just a couple of weeks after the PREA Conference in Los Angeles. I decided to perform an unofficial diversity survey of the attendees. Alas, as you might expect, the results were not surprising.

The vast majority of attendees were male, and a large percentage with at least a bit gray around the edges. The real estate industry has chronically lagged general trends, and it is likely that the lopsided gap between baby-boomers who are white and males to women and other diverse professionals is going to become even more extreme.

A 2013 Gallup poll of boomer age adults who when asked at what age they will retire, the responses were 39% will continue working past the age of 66. More shockingly, by 2022, almost 25% of the workplace will be between the ages of 70-74, and 38% between the ages of 56-69. I suspect that the real estate industry will be least a couple of percentage points higher in these statistics.