Going for Broker

When Claudia Ricker and Justin Hotchkiss were looking to rent their first apartment together this spring, the going was tough. But when they eventually found a one-bedroom apartment with bay windows and a fireplace on a tree-lined street in Back Bay, the couple - she's 28 and he's 25 - got something they really didn't expect: Their realtor, who is around their age, became a friend.

Their experience is an example of how the industry is changing. Ricker, a marketing associate at a management consulting firm, and her management-consultant boyfriend, Hotchkiss, began looking at apartments in April. First they tried searching online at craigslist.org, but found it wasn't worth the work. "We're both pretty busy, so it was hard to schedule all those individual appointments," Ricker says. Then they walked into a few of the agency offices that dot Beacon Hill. "It was horrible," Ricker says. At one place, the agent was pushy, and at the next, Ricker felt ignored. "She wasn't taking us seriously," Ricker says, "even though we wanted to spend about $1,800 per month."

Ricker and Hotchkiss left on vacation, exhausted by the process and dreading coming back to start their search all over. Again, they turned to craigslist, and this time they found a listing for an apartment that sounded perfect - but the contact person was an agent. By this time, it was June, and despite their bad experiences, Ricker walked the seven minutes from the apartment she shared with two roommates on Huntington Avenue to the ERA Boston Real Estate Group office on Newbury Street. There, she met Svetlana Ho-Javakhyan, a fresh-faced 26-year-old graduate of The Boston Conservatory who looks more like a realtor's daughter than a realtor in her own right.

"I was surprised by how young she was," Ricker says, "but she was friendly and smiling and laid-back, not frenetic like the other realtors who had seemed too busy for us." Even better, Ricker says, "she got us." The couple liked everything that Ho-Javakhyan showed them and especially liked that she listened, understood what they wanted, and was diligent in looking for apartments. After just two weeks, Ricker and Hotchkiss signed an $1,800-per-month lease for a place on St. Germain Street. They gladly added on $900 of the $1,800 broker's fee (the building owner paid the other half), and Ho-Javakhyan took home $900 as commission. (This is a typical arrangement between individual agents and the listing companies they represent.) And the agent plans to attend the now-engaged couple's housewarming party this month.

Their friendship makes sense: "She was the light at the end of the tunnel," Ricker says. "I didn't feel like she had seen a million clients or judged us to be not wealthy enough when we walked in the door. I think I preferred working with a young woman because I didn't feel like she was going to try and push me around."

YOUNG REALTORS LIKE Ho-Javakhyan are opening wide the doors of the business nationally, not just in Massachusetts. According to the National Association of Realtors, the number of listing agents and brokers who have not yet turned 30 more than doubled between 1999 and 2005, says NAR spokesman Walter Molony. He points out that the entire industry grew in that period, but under-30s now represent 7 percent of the nation's million-plus realtors, up from 5 percent in 2001, and are thought to make up a larger percentage in student-heavy places like Boston.

This is good news for area renters like Ricker. T.K. Sheth was something of a pioneer when, right after graduating from Boston University in 2003, he got his real estate license at age 21. Now he manages a sales force of nine at All-Bright Realty in Allston, seven of whom are younger than 30. That's because, in a city with almost 300,000 college students (not to mention all the recent grads), his younger agents reach a key market: about 60 percent of renters and buyers using his agency are also younger than 30, he estimates. For these clients, it means a less intimidating and more relaxed search. And these new agents are transforming the industry from one dominated by brown-suit-wearing boomers working on second or third careers to one that's youthful and even fashionable. The big paychecks that busy area rental agents can earn have helped boost the job's status.

Mark Ruane, 24, entered the business as a stopgap after graduating from the University of Hartford in 2004 with a degree in English literature and creative writing. After just three months at the ERA office on Newbury Street, Ruane ditched his original plans for a career in education or publishing. That's because in his first summer, Ruane rented between 15 and 20 apartments per month. At about $700 per listing, he raked in money.

Ho-Javakhyan, who also entered the business straight out of graduate school and whose husband works in investment management, struts her earnings in designer jeans. Still, she insists that one of the things she likes about her career helping people find a home. When she makes a match, she says, "I feel like I did something really useful."

Service to society aside, there's another draw. College students have long staffed Boston's restaurants. The tips could be good, but the work was not exactly resume-building. "It's a lot better than waiting tables," says 24-year-old law student Carla Cricones, petite blond who is a leasing agent with East Coast Realty in Allston. "I've done that, and it's quick, easy money, but in the long run you don't get any new skills." While she's learning sales, marketing, and customer service, Cricones earns an average of $1,800 a month working 30 hours a week while attending Massachusetts School of Law. She pays her living expenses and treats herself to the occasional dinner on Newbury Street or shopping spree at Bebe, all on an average of just three deals month during the school year, with extra hours in the summer. "I can shop a little bit more, go out to eat, and pay off my credit card bill," she says. Friends were impressed when she vacationed at a resort in Aruba, and her family's ecstatic. "My parents think it's wonderful to do this while I'm in school, because it will prepare me for life when I'm done," says Cricones. "I had the impression myself that realtors were mostly an older genre of people. But that's no longer true."

In fact, many are still in college. You only need to be 18 to obtain a Massachusetts real estate license, and realtors say that the rental business is increasingly populated by undergraduates leaving behind traditional minimum-wage jobs like checking out library books for much greener pastures.

The summer after her junior year at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Cricones took a $200 weekend crash course - not so different from studying for midterms - to cram in the 24 hours of classroom time the state Board of Registration requires for realtors. In doing so, she qualified to take the three-hour licensing test, though she delayed that step until her first year of law school. (The licensing exam costs about $100, and realtors must pay a $93 fee every two years to renew their licenses.)

Michelle Ogunti, a 2006 Wellesley College graduate, got her real estate license the summer after her junior year. She skipped the rental market and lined up an informal internship with a Coldwell Banker agent in her home state, New York. When she returned to Wellesley as a senior last fall, she found a job in mortgage consulting. Working part time selling mortgages, she made $15,000 in eight months. "It all went toward tuition," she says. "Well, and my car. And I did manage to save some to go to Jamaica for spring break."

Ogunti, now 22, says she became a popular resource on campus her senior year. "My friends were all going into the real world, and they would ask me how much they should spend on an apartment and how to budget for it," she says. "I should have charged them for it." She believes that the work she does in this student job will continue to serve her after graduation. "It's important to have experiential knowledge. It gives you an edge that other people don't have. Everybody needs to know how to buy a house someday. And it's very profitable." Ogunti even enjoyed the training class - she took a weekend crash course, too - saying it was more engaging than sitting in a typical lecture, and in her senior year, she signed up for a popular real estate class taught in the economics department. "Owning a home is the American dream," she says, sounding more like someone whose diploma has been yellowing on the wall for years rather than a newly minted graduate.

AT WELLESLEY, PROFESSOR KARL E. CASE HAS BEEN TEACHING undergraduates about economics and real estate for 30 years. Case says that every semester, several students, like Ogunti, come to the class already licensed. During the term, students pace all the steps they would take if they were buying a home: attending open houses, working with realtors, and calculating a budget and researching mortgages and lenders. They also learn about commercial real estate, covering how to research vacancy rates, property taxes, and corporate financing. "It's more practical than the average college course," Case says. "But you can't understand the economy today without understanding the real estate market."

And, he says, today's economy is increasingly driven by real estate. This may be one of the factors pushing young adults into the industry, according to Michael Carucci, a 23-year veteran of Boston's real estate industry and president of ERA Boston Real Estate Group. He says that for many young agents, real estate is not only an attractive college or first job, it's become an enticing long-term career choice as well.

Getting licensed in Massachusetts is a breeze, he says, and it's not much harder in other states. That ease has long kept real estate from being viewed as a desirable profession, he says. If it's that easy, after all, how hard, or rewarding, could it be? But along with a market that has grown, according to the National Association of Realtors, the industry is at record employment highs.

Still, Carucci was surprised when, a few years ago, he started to get resumes from new college graduates. Through professional affiliations, he hears it's happening all over the country. "What we're seeing," Carucci says, "is the emergence of real estate as a viable career coming out of college. Ten years ago, if a college senior said he was considering real estate as an occupation, he'd be laughed at" by his peers. Now, Carucci says, their reaction is "Cool."

National Association of Realtors spokesman Molony says that younger agents have an advantage in the market over older people looking to reenter the workforce or to enter the field mid-career. They catch on and can ramp up faster. "Younger agents bring high-tech skills that are now crucial to the industry," he says, including a familiarity with creating websites and small tasks like taking and uploading digital photos. "There's a big learning curve for a lot of older lenders."

Another possible reason for growth of under-30 realtors, Molony says, is that younger agents can more easily absorb the costs of being a rookie - possibly making less money at first and working untraditional hours. "Younger agents might be more flexible," he adds. "Most don't yet have family commitments."

Many don't even have training that would point them toward real estate. Ho-Javakhyan, who studied viola, didn't take a single business class while she was in school. In her first month of leasing rentals, back in June, she made about $3,000. "For a classical musician," she says, "that's a lot."

Now Ho-Javakhyan has started working on more-lucrative property sales in addition to rentals, so her income should keep shooting up. And if she's making all of her clients as happy as Ricker and Hotchkiss, she'll be able to afford a lot more of those designer jeans.

Though Ho-Javakhyan is moving on to sales, the new young agents starting out in rentals just keep coming -- and with good reason. "A college student can make as much as $20,000 in the summer doing this," her colleague Mark Ruane says, "and still squeeze in beach time."

Janice O'Leary is a freelance writer in Boston. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com.