25 Years HypZert – The first female certified valuer

25 years of HypZert - The first companions are still close to us

We take you on a journey! A journey through 25 eventful years with numerous milestones. Join us as we look back, but also look forward: What have we experienced and learned? What remains? What can we expect in the future?

In 25 years, many areas of society have changed enormously. Of course, this also applies to the working environment of real estate valuation and to HypZert. Standards have been set, new techniques established and work processes professionalised.

In our series "25 years of HypZert", we allow a wide variety of influencers, companions and other people to have their say and report on their experiences with HypZert and the changes.

Start of the series with a special woman

As you may know, the topic of "women's quota" is not an issue at HypZert. Our team consists of 8 women and 2 men. For a long time, the quota of our certified valuers was very "male-heavy", so the first lady naturally stood out. That is why we start our statement series with her, one of the first HypZert certified women: Gabriele Höfert-Voigt.

Before Ms Höfert-Voigt successfully passed her HypZert examination in 1997, she already had many years of experience in real estate valuation. In the meantime, it has been over 35 years.

Her vocational training as a construction worker, in which she learned manual skills such as bricklaying, plastering, concreting, carpentry as well as reinforcing steel processing, secured her a place early on in what is still a very male-dominated environment.

The training as well as her subsequent studies in Vocational Education in the field of construction then formed a good basis for her successful certification.

Today, Ms Höfert-Voigt runs her own valuation company and lets us share her personal HypZert journey in the following:

"It started with a beautiful bouquet of flowers that we two women received when we were presented with our first certificate in 1997 at the first HypZert Convention. There were only about 35 people present at this conference, but if you think about our last HypZert Annual Conference, with over 1,000 certified participants, you can see the enormous development.

I think of my work with analogue photography. I was a regular customer at a photo shop with 24-hour development, because I had films developed almost every day. You can't imagine all the glue sticks that had to be used to stick on the photos back then with today’s digital cameras and photo apps.

The PC support and the valuation programmes, if they existed at all, were rather inflexible and not very compatible. What a technical development there has been in 25 years!

When I think of property market reports, they sometimes consisted of only a few pages with correspondingly little information and many white spots for our work. There were no geoportals available for research work, databases were at best under construction. Analysing markets was much more complicated and required a lot of keeping own statistics. However, markets have also become more complex during this time. This cannot be described here in a few sentences.

Thanks to the training and preparation for the HypZert examination, I have expanded my knowledge, systematised knowledge and put it into context.

In the 25 years, such extensive training material, many studies on various special topics, valuation tools, many lectures given at regional meetings, conferences or seminars have been created. Such a large library of knowledge has been accumulated that even after almost 30 years of professional experience one often looks into it.

The continuing education ensured that my knowledge kept up to date. I readily admit that the obligation to do so and the recurring recertification exams meant that one had to overcome one's own laziness to deal with valuation theory, new laws, regulations and methods etc. in addition to one's daily work. And when you got a valuation back for submission to HypZert with comments, I found that a bit embarrassing for me and as an impetus to deal with the subject. All of this certainly led to a steady increase in the quality of valuation reports by certified valuers.

12 years ago, I founded my own office for real estate valuation, I became self-employed. To be clear, I could not work like this without my certification by HypZert. On the market, you are naturally asked about your qualification and you have to be able to prove it. In this respect, the HypZert seal has a recognised status for special knowledge and expertise.

Finally, I would like to mention the exchange with other colleagues made possible by HypZert, which provides such important impulses for our work, which I think we are all missing somewhat at the moment. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who made the development of HypZert possible, drove it forward, do their work at HypZert today and all certified colleagues for their contribution to the 25 years of HypZert."

We thank Ms Höfert-Voigt for describing her personal journey and very much hope that she will remain associated with us as a HypZert valuer for a long time to come.