As an instructor for real estate and home builders, I spend my weeks in classrooms with realtors and builders. I get to see the temperature in the room of the industry. I hear the conversations before class starts. I see the joy, exhaustion, anticipation and the frustration, sometimes the quiet sadness that people are carrying.

The housing industry has always been good at projecting confidence. We are trained to read rooms, manage emotions, and hold space for our clients through some of the biggest decisions of their lives. What we are less practiced at is turning that same attention inward — toward what we ourselves are carrying.

This series is an attempt to start that conversation.

Over the next week, I'll be sharing a series of articles on mental health and resilience in the real estate industry. We'll talk about practical ways to cope, build community, access affordable support, and navigate difficult times — drawing on my experience as a realtor, an educator, and an MBA student studying change management, and in partnership with my husband Jordan Penner, a Registered Clinical Counsellor who specializes in working with realtors and teaching resilience.

But before we talk about solutions, we need to acknowledge what's happening because you cannot address what you haven't first acknowledged.

From the Top of the World to the Floor

Many of us have gone from some of the strongest years of our careers to some of the worst — and it wasn't a slow transition. It happened overnight. One minute, we were on top of the world. Listings had ten offers. Buyers were purchasing at full price or above. Presales were flying off the shelves.

And then the music stopped. Suddenly. We are in the thick of one of the worst real estate downturns most of us have ever experienced — possibly one of the worst in Canadian history. We didn't get to plan the transition or find a graceful way out. It was abrupt, jarring, and for many, completely out of the blue. We went from being heroes to our clients to feeling like villains. And that was awful.

Most of us agents pride ourselves on the work we do. We help families buy homes, build wealth, and create stability for the future. We help people find a place they can make theirs — not just as shelter, but as a financial asset they can count on.

And with the downturn, many homeowners have seen the value of their largest asset decimated. Rising interest rates, property tax increases, growing unemployment, a slowing economy — it's about as close to a perfect storm as it gets.

Homeowners are struggling, and most agents I know feel terrible about it. I had a call recently from an agent whose deal had just fallen through. When the offer was accepted, she said, she felt like she had done something great for her client. When it collapsed, she felt like she had let him down — even though she had done everything right. She felt helpless.

As realtors, we are exposed to and feel the pain from both ends. First, the steep drop in income and then and then the agony of watching our clients suffer. Many of us are consoling others while privately wondering how we'll make our own mortgage payment.

We know we didn't create the market. But that doesn't necessarily stop us from feeling responsible.

The Pain of Being Less Useful

There's the pain from the tangible fact of earning less. But then there's a quieter pain that we talk about even less: the pain of contributing less.

When the market was busy, the industry expanded. New businesses opened. Teams grew. Careers flourished. People woke up every morning knowing they had somewhere to go, something to accomplish, a need to fill, and a way to provide for their families. Work gave us purpose. It allows us to help others, solve problems, create value, and feel useful.

Now, many don't have enough work to fill their days. And the industry knows it has grown beyond what the market can currently support. There's a feeling of being on a ship that can only stay afloat if half the passengers jump off — but there's no other boat waiting. So everyone stands together, hoping the ship rights itself. That kind of existence takes a toll. It hollows out the soul in a particular way.

The loss of business isn't simply "I have less money." It is often "I am less useful." There's a loss of identity that comes with it. For many people, there is no immediate place for that energy to go — no obvious replacement for the work, relationships, and sense of purpose that once filled their days. And there is grief in that.

What makes it harder is that we don't talk about it. We discuss interest rates, inventory, and market forecasts. We rarely acknowledge the emotional reality of living through these conditions.

And that silence has a cost. Shame lives in the dark. It grows when we believe we are the only ones struggling. It thrives when we feel unable to admit what we're experiencing.

When people carry pain they won't acknowledge, they often try to get ahead of it. They announce new partnerships, new roles and new ventures. Scarce money is spent trying to spin a narrative of success, because if one appears successful enough, they can outrun the failure. And just maybe no one will notice the hurt underneath. It's a very human response. It's also an exhausting one.

The Conversation That Needs to Start

You may have once managed a company with hundreds of employees. You may have run a large real estate team that no longer exists. You may have been at the top of the Medallion rankings. Or you may simply be someone trying to make next month's mortgage payment. The details are different, but the underlying experience is often the same. Everyone is carrying something right now, and no one is a lesser person because of it.

Viktor Frankl wrote that fear lives in anticipation — that anything, once known, can be lived with. What we cannot bear is the uncertainty, the unspoken weight of a thing we haven't yet named.

So the first step is acknowledgement. To admit that times are tough. To normalize what we're feeling without shame. To say out loud, to ourselves and to each other, that we are worried and tired of waiting for something to change. That we are grieving the loss of businesses, opportunities, identities, expectations and security we once held.

This pain is communal, not individual. Nobody in this market is looking sideways at a colleague who is struggling — everyone is too busy cancelling their own vacation plans and looking for ways to cut cost overhead. Many people are in that grief right now. And they need to hear that it is normal, that they aren’t alone. That suffering isn’t weakness, it’s just life.

And this message is to the leadership in this industry: we can’t solve a problem that isn’t acknowledged. The first step in solving any problem is to admit, at least to ourselves, that there is pain and people are suffering. Because what is happening right now is too big to outrun, we can’t ignore this.

And more than anything, it is time for the big announcements to stop. They aren’t helping. Right now, most people would rather share an affordable cup of coffee with someone who will actually listen than sit through another announcement dressed up as good news.

What Comes Next

This stage was about empathy; it was about making space to feel your own reality. To mourn the loss of the good times. But after loss comes reality. So tomorrow, we'll move from acknowledgement to action. And it might sound a little unexpected: we're going to spend the next few days talking about becoming hilariously cheap.

We'll explore practical ways to adapt to leaner times, how to find satisfaction in simplicity, and how to shift our mindset from what was to what is. Because what once was — the abundance, the busy open houses, the social media highlight reels of fancy cars and record sales — was real, and it was good. But it was also a season. And seasons change.

While we can't control the market, we can control how we respond to it. And that's where we'll begin.