Forget delivering pizzas, washing dishes, or stocking shelves. Boston University senior Alex Hodara rents real estate. Hodara, 22, started Hodara Real Estate Group in January hoping to give college students like himself a taste of the business. With a real estate salesperson license in hand at the cusp of his freshman year, Hodara worked as a local leasing agent and at Century 21’s International Headquarters before going for his broker’s license last year and starting his own company. Now renting properties around BU, and Northeastern and Suffolk universities, Hodara is ready for the next step: launching Hodara Real Estate Academy, an educational initiative to get more students qualified and involved in the real estate business. We spoke with Hodara recently by phone.
Q. As a kid just heading to college, what made you think real estate would be something interesting to do?
A. I’ve always been extremely entrepreneurial. When I was a sophomore in high school, my dad and I won a fantasy football league for $2,000 and he said ‘You can do whatever you want with this,’ and I really wanted to start a business. The most popular thing at that point was poker, so I imported clay poker chip sets from China, brought them to American and started a website. . . . I learned a lot from the poker chip business.
Q. So, other than a seriously young chief executive, what’s your agency got that others don’t?
A. Our driving factor is experience, where most other agency’s driving factor is money. Because of that, people like to work with us because we’re less pushy than other agents.
Q. Do you find that students are more likely to rent with you because you’re one of them?
A. Absolutely, I’ve seen older people doing the same job that I’m doing and I’ve seen the reactions of students. They’re excited to work with us. . . . They don’t see us as a threat, they see us as someone who they can relate to.
Q. What’s the deal with Hodara Real Estate Academy?
A. I just got the license to open the school so we can actually pre-license people for their tests. They sign up for the class, they come in, they have 24 hours of education and I have a licensed professor that teaches the class and then after that they take a test and if they pass the test they get their real estate license. Our first class is pretty packed with students but for the future I see us gearing more toward professionals.
Q. How do your agents view the opportunity to work for you?
A. It’s opened a lot of doors for people, for me especially. Since I’ve started this, now I’m consulting for the chief operating officer of Century 21 - that was a big thing for me. One of my agents has gone to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers. . . . After they graduate from college I want them to find a new job. It’s a student owned and operated kind of thing, and then you move on from there.
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