Hodara's First Ever Student-Run Real Estate Firm Outgrowth of WHS Businesses

While most college students are hard at work studying or at the latest party, Alex Hodara of Westfield has found something a little different to do outside the classroom: he is becoming a real estate baron in Boston.

Hodara, a student at Boston University, is likely the youngest person in the country to have founded and run a real estate brokerage. His firm takes on a different slant in that all of his agents are college students and his primary client base is college students. This isn't Hodara's first foray into the world of entrepreneurship, as he created a small business while in high school, along with a local charity.

Hodara entered the real estate game when he entered BU as an 18-year-old freshman two years ago. He decided to get his real estate license, looking for a way to earn money part time and pursue his interest in real estate. During this time, he started to see a market for college students in the college-heavy city and a way to create a real estate firm by students and for students.

"I sold for two years and saw that there was an opportunity," he said.

Hodara Real Estate Group was born in January of this year and he has brought on a staff of 12 college student agents. Currently he is focused primarily on rentals in Boston, but has done some sales, primarily to young professionals in the area. He started the business with $11,000 of his own money and says that he was able to turn a profit within two weeks of opening up.

The quick profilt turn around is a change from his first year as a real estate agent. During that year he did not have a car so he was forced to take cabs to and from client meetings and house showings. While it did not impact Hodara's ability to do his job, it did end up being one of the more expensive moments of his career. The quick profit also came in one of the worst periods the real estate market has seen in a generation. Hodara said that while the Boston market has been in a decline, the college student market has given him a steady flow of clients and allowed him to weather the storm.

Hodara has already started moving his company into more than just being a real estate agency. He has started a real estate licensing school to train aspiring agents to take the Massachusetts licensing exams. He said the idea came from seeing only one real estate training school in the area and wanting to focus on getting more students involved in the real estate business.

In addition, he has launched a property management company, aimed at managing properties for college student-based rentals. He is in the process of working on his first investment property in the area and getting the management division of his company off the ground. This will include a slight change in the way college student housing is managed. He plans on hiring one of the residents as a house manager and using this as a way to keep the houses in better shape. Hodara notes that most college houses in the area are poorly managed and left in less than desirable conditions. He hopes to use his age to change that.

"Being young and having a different perspective on the way property management is run, I see a way on how to improve it," he said.

In addition, he wants to transform the houses in his property management portfolio into environmentally sustainable buildings to save costs.

Hodara's desire to try new management tools is not limited to the property management area. He has instituted a profit sharing component to the sales end of his company. He said he had gotten tired of what he saw as a competitive environment in his previous real estate job and wanted to create a collaborative corporate culture for his firm. To do this he has divided his staff into two teams and in addition to commissions, team members receive a small bonus for every property sold or rented by another member of their team.

Hodara got his business start while at Westfield High School by creating Poker Chip King, a clay poker chip import e-commerce venture. In this business, he imported chips from China for $17 and sold them online for $100. The idea came after participating in a fantasy football league with his father, where they treated the team like a business and ended up winning $2,000, money which was used to fund Poker Chip King. While he couldn't gamble, he thought the poker craze earlier this decade would be a good way to enter the business world.

"I couldn't gamble but I saw it was a great opportunity," he said. "I am always looking at what opportunities are out there."

Hodara rolled his Poker Chip King profits into a charity, e-boy Charity Foundation, where he sold items on eBay as a way to raise money for Children's Specialized Hospital in Mountainside. Outside of this, he was also designing Web sites as a small side business while in high school, along with serving as business manager of the Hi's Eye.

"Everything was a stepping stone to the real estate business," Hodara said.

Hodara has been billing himself as the nation's first college owned-and-operated real estate broker and according to the Boston Herald, the National Association of Realtors cannot find evidence of others like him. His unique marketing strategy is winning him recognition from national real estate leaders.

"It's a brilliant marketing strategy," said Matt Phipps, communications chairman of the National Association of Realtors. "Everybody in college needs housing."

Phipps, who is 28 and a realtor in Rhode Island, told Westfield Patch that it is not uncommon for students to receive their real estate licenses to sell part time while in college. He noted he received his in college and his brother, who attends Boston College, also has one.

Phipps said he has seen younger brokers use social media sites to target younger buyers more often and this has had success on college sites. Hodara has been using Facebook and Twitter as business tools. In addition, Phipps said a younger broker can be more accepted by college students, because they can relate to the clients' needs, something Hodara has seen.

"It's surprising that no one has done it sooner," Phipps said.

Moving ahead, Hodara is looking to stay in Boston to tend to his business, but he is looking to expand his business out of Boston. He wants to start opening similar college operated realtors in other college cities, including the New York metropolitan area, since he sees a demand in the market.

"I want to take this business model and take it to other college towns," he said. "I don't see this just in Boston."