The television show “Numbers” centered on an FBI agent and his mathematical genius brother who together solved crimes for the Bureau. The show opened with a narrator saying, “We all use math every day - to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas and equations. It’s logic. It’s rationality. It’s using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.”
If the world were ready for a TV show about a genius real estate agent who could sell houses in any market, the creators would be wise to consult with Realtor Andy Hodes, who appears to have a deeper understanding of money and markets than the average person.
“I know how to watch the market and analyze numbers. For example, right now, demand is up and supply is down. Supply is 20 percent off what it was a year ago, so when you see a house you like, it might already have an offer on it. This means some areas of Chattanooga are in a seller’s market, such as Normal Park School and East Brainerd. The rest is in a transitional market. But there’s a problem: Even though the market is starting to favor sellers, the buyers haven’t figured that out and are still making ridiculous offers,” he says.
As a listing specialist with Keller Williams Realty in East Brainerd, it would make sense if Hodes were pleased with the direction in which the market is headed. But he says the trend is irrelevant, as a good Realtor can make money in any market.
“Markets don’t matter to us. My numbers have been consistently higher throughout the recession except for last year. If we work our business, there’s no reason why we can’t make money in a buyer’s and a seller’s market,” he says.
Hodes has certainly figured out how to work his business. An 11-year real estate veteran, he formed a team in 2005 and has since shaped it to be able to respond to the varied undulations of the market and provide superior service to both buyers and sellers. As the listing specialist, he handles the sales of homes. Backing him up are two buyer’s agents, Emily Ragan and Kacey Sides, and two administrative staff members, Liz Zipperer and David Israel. He says his team is the perfect size – for him.
“I’m not interested in listing 100 homes; I’m interested in listing the 20 or 30 homes I can sell,” he says.
As confident as Hodes seems when he’s talking about numbers and markets, he’s quick to give credit to whom it’s due. For instance, he says his success throughout the recession has been due in part to his heeding the advice of Gary Keller, co-founder and chairman of Keller Williams. When the industry was nearly unanimously telling Realtors everything was OK, Keller published a book called “Shift” in which he predicted the change the market was about to experience and gave Realtors the blueprint for operating in a recession.
“About two years before the market turned, he started telling us it was going to happen. About a year before it happened, I started to listen. So when the market turned, I was ready; I had already changed my strategy. The most important part of that was being upfront with sellers about what their expectations should be,” Hodes says.
Although Hodes has the wisdom of a grizzled veteran, he’s been in the business only a little over a decade. A fourth-generation Chattanoogan whose great-grandfather moved to the U.S. from Russia and a 1979 graduate of Notre Dame High School, he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and then moved to New York to secure his MBA. Hodes stayed in New York to work as a risk manager for a group of hospitals and then moved to New Jersey to do similar work for a chemical company.
“Most chemical plants sit on water, and when there’s a hurricane coming, you have to decide whether or not to shut down, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or risk staying open in the middle of bad weather,” Hodes says.
The work combined numbers and puzzle solving in a way that suited Hodes well, but he grew weary of the corporate world and the inability of his employer to grasp his worth. “I was done with the person who was deciding whether I would get a two-and-a-quarter or a two-and-a-half percent raise being unfamiliar with what I did and the value I brought to the company. So I started looking for something that would allow me to make what I wanted to make based on my actions,” he says.
During this career transition, Hodes moved back to Chattanooga to be closer to his parents. He’d always wanted to be an instructor, so he looked into teaching a basic finance course at UTC. None were available, but the school did ask him to teach a real estate finance class. He accepted – reluctantly.
“I thought, ‘What do I know about real estate finance?’ I knew more than I thought I did. Half of real estate finance is straight finance, and I’m comfortable with that. I was able to learn the other half,” Hodes says.
While teaching the course, Hodes purchased a house and became familiar with the work his agent did. In time, he realized real estate offered everything he wanted besides a steady salary.
Hodes hit the ground running, and although he was disappointed with the results of his first year in the business, he could see the seeds he had planted were eventually going to sprout, so he stayed the course.
He also trained his “sphere” to see him as successful.
“Real estate is a sphere-based business. If you walk into an open house, you’ve become a part of my sphere, but you don’t know how much experience I have. Well, the company for which I was working thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, so it gave me all kinds of awards. I put those awards on a postcard and sent them to everyone I knew. I trained my sphere. And my phone started to ring more,” he says.
Today, Hodes’ team handles about 70 closings a year. Although the listing agent, he says he’d make an effective buyer’s agent, too, he’s simply more attracted to the schedule of a listing agent. “If I’m working with buyers and I have an out-of-town client coming in for the weekend, my weekend is shot. But if I have an appointment with a seller, it’ll take me 20 minutes to present an offer. It makes my time and my family life more manageable,” he says.
The math Hodes does at home is simpler: He and his wife Melody have been married 15 years and have two sons – 11-year-old Micah and 7-year-old Jonah. The four of them love to travel together and do things that, in fun ways, “teach the kids about the things that are important,” Hodes says.
Although active in the Chattanooga community since returning, Hodes has scaled back his volunteer work so he can focus on his family. He still serves the Jewish Federation as president of the local chapter and GCAR as a member of the board, among other roles. He’s also on the board of his synagogue, Mizpah Congregation.
Now in his 50s, Hodes has scaled back his extracurricular work not only so he can spend more time with his family but also to reduce stress. In addition, he no longer teaches, which seems to disappoint him, as he says it’s the most satisfying thing he’s done besides be a husband and a father. The stress reduction plan must be working, because Hodes shows no signs of wear, and like all good Realtors, excels at multitasking, especially when working with his team.
“As I get older, stress has more of an effect on me, so I’m keeping things simple. My career is complicated enough,” he says.
A part of Hodes life will always be complicated, if only because his mind requires it to stay engaged. Consulting on a television show might tip things over the edge again, though, so Hollywood will have to do without him. This is good news for Chattanooga, as it frees up him and his team to continue to provide superior service to both buyers and sellers.