Self-Made Houston Realtor Making Strides in Diversity, and $16 Million in Sales for 2022

When Noel Collier quit her day job in 2019 to chase her dream of opening her own real estate agency, she knew it was a big risk.

But even a global pandemic—and then an inflation-driven recession—couldn’t slow her down, and less than three years later, she’s built the Noel Collier Group into one of the area’s top teams for buying or selling a home. Collier, one of only 5% of Black-owned realtors in the U.S., is proud to announce that her agency has exceeded $16 million in sales for 2022, already topping its records for each of the previous three years.

A Houston native who grew up in what she calls a “toxic” household, Collier says, “I’ve had to overcome a lot to get where I am.” She became a single mom at age 17 but managed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class at Hempstead High School while playing basketball and working two jobs. After that, she enrolled at Texas State University, working a different job every semester to accommodate her school schedule.

“It was just me and my baby,” she remembers.

“Our only furniture was a TV and an air mattress. It was pretty much that way all through college.”

It was in college that Collier created her first business: a daycare center.

“That was literally from the ground up. I was putting flyers on cars in parking lots, and I grew that business from 12 to 200 kids in a year,” Collier says.

“I’m a hustler—I had no choice!”

Collier also met her now-husband in school: “I said back then, ‘I don’t date college boys; I have a baby,’” she jokes.

“So of course, I met my husband in college!”

After selling the daycare business and graduating from TSU, Collier ran smack into another obstacle: The “Great Recession” caused by the subprime mortgage crisis. She worked call-center jobs that “didn’t fit right” until she found a sales job at the company where a friend of her son’s mother worked. That job led to another sales position at software company ADP, where Collier realized her talent as a saleswoman.

“I did really well at ADP, but it was HARD. As hard as being a single mama,” she says.

While working in software sales with ADP and later Wolters Kluwer, Collier started “dabbling” in real estate on the side, getting her license and planning to help save for her kids’ school with the proceeds. In 2019, she went to a Keller-Williams training event.

“I was in a breakout session, and what they presented was what I did all day in my corporate job,” she says.

“That’s when I decided I was ending my professional sales career and getting into real estate full-time.”

Collier withdrew six months of savings (“one thing about people in sales: We live fast and we save horribly,” Collier jokes) and took the plunge in March of 2019.

“I had a pretty good year, but by then there were five people in my family, my oldest was getting ready to go to college, and I’d just quit my job,” she says.

“And then the pandemic hit.”

But the Noel Collier Group managed to keep growing through COVID.

“The world is in shambles. Nobody knows what’s going on, and yet, somehow, I was still killing it.” Collier topped $11 million in sales in 2020 and hit $15.8 million for 2021, and now has exceeded that total in just the first three-quarters of 2022. The company’s goal for 2022 is to hit $25 million by the end of the year.

As a top-performing Houston realtor and a woman of color, Collier is especially passionate about helping women and families find their dream homes and closing the generational homeownership gap among African Americans by helping families build wealth and knowledge to become homeowners.

Collier’s small boutique agency has generated more than $50 million in sales in the Houston area in three short years, a feat that was recognized by the Houston Business Journal who named her a 2022 “40 Under 40” honoree. The Texas Southern University grad and mother of three also volunteers her time with TSU mentoring business students, hosts free community seminars to help people navigate the complicated waters of buying and selling a home, and sponsors nonprofit organizations that contribute to the betterment of youth, the community and society.

This winter, Collier plans to launch charity initiatives to help Houston single moms and provide scholarships for students in her hometown of Hempstead, Texas.

For more information visit https://www.sellwithnoel.com.