Peggy Olin

Olin’s journey to get where she is today was far from a straight line. She had little means of attending college once she’d left her native Peru for Miami in the early 1990s, so instead opted to start working right away to support herself. Starting as a bank teller, she eventually made her way to Northern Trust Bank’s trust and estates division, where she was inspired to earn her real estate license. Once she did, she moved to WCI Communities as a broker in the early 2000s.

But then the Global Financial Crisis struck. WCI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008, yet Olin saw opportunity: She founded One World Properties that same year with an initial focus on brokering bank foreclosures. A few years later, in 2010, she was selected by Starwood Capital to temporarily run the sales and marketing of its 10,000-unit, $5 billion residential portfolio.

Now, she’s fully focused on her luxury brokerage, and works with ground-up developers, leveraging her knowledge of the market to help inform their projects from the earliest stages. 

Olin spends much of her free time mentoring other real estate professionals, particularly young women who are new to the industry, as well as more established people jumping back into the industry after time away, or who feel stuck in their own careers. Olin finds mentoring particularly rewarding, she said, because of her own background and because it’s an opportunity to give back to an industry that has provided her so much success.

“What I often say is that consistency is a really big deal,” Olin said. “I think a lot of people in our industry, and in many other industries, are not consistent. Sticking to what you know and being consistent with your word, following through, is a big one for me. The other thing that I think is super important is connections and connectivity. To me, that means having that personal connection of always staying in touch with people, sharing information, and staying present.”