In 2018, Leah Coleman, who had been a licensed real estate agent for eight years, wanted to explore another lane of the business, so she created her own investment company — Real Estate Couture LLC. While continuing as an agent through broker Dodson Properties, Coleman has purchased five properties in the past two years, rehabbing and selling four of them, while keeping one as an Airbnb.
“I have always had a curiosity about real estate and the way it could work to help build wealth for a person,” she says, “as well as the impact it has one family at a time, one street at a time, one neighborhood at time.”
Coleman “curates” each home, designing the interiors with work from local artisans and selling homes with furnishings. She describes her finished projects as “affordable luxury for trendsetters.” Her property purchases and renovations are privately funded, mostly by other women investors.
Coleman’s support from women is underpinned by her four-year involvement with the Boss Babes RVA network, a private Facebook group with more than 8,000 members — most of whom run their own businesses or are preparing to open one. Boss Babes founder Christine Greenberg sought new leadership for the group in 2018, and Coleman became president that October, running it with a volunteer board of 10 other business owners and an attorney.
Boss Babes RVA, which was founded in 2014, is a 24-7 clearinghouse of business advice, a virtual brain trust that can be tapped into immediately.
“When you are starting out, you need a sounding board, especially if you are opening alone,” Coleman says. “Boss Babes is about giving other women the courage to do it, to be bold.”
