Ricardo H. Rodriguez
Title: Real Estate Agent
Age: 44
Experience: 11 years
In both fashion and real estate, Ricardo Rodriguez has a natural eye for what works well and looks great. He works hard to stay current with what’s happening in Boston’s fast-paced market and likes to help small and mid-sized developers design and market exactly what buyers are looking for. He says his primary job is to help developers create a strong value proposition for their project that is in line with their own brand. Then, when the right buyers arrive, it’s all about ensuring a pleasant sales experience.
Q: What did you do before you sold real estate?
A: I was doing information dissemination and social marketing for a couple of nonprofits. I helped them set up messaging for very specific programs or projects. I worked with the Multicultural AIDS Coalition, which was an organization that does prevention work on HIV for communities of color. I first helped them manage a new resource center they were setting up. Eventually, I started doing some other marketing by default, with no training. Then I started doing the same thing for United South End Settlements. Around that time I decided to turn to real estate, although at that time I was also an actor. Or rather, I am an actor. It never leaves you. I’ve also worked in fashion.
Q: Did you ever study or have any training in design?
A: No, it’s something that comes naturally to me. It’s instinctual, this whole notion of how to clearly help brand a project and how that translates into marketing the project. It comes by instinct and I’ve learned by just doing it. When I started in real estate, I decided that I wanted to go after new construction. I love the process. I like everything that goes with it, so I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in. My first listing was a 25-unit building in the South End called The Modern. I was part of a group. There were four of us. That was my first experience with real estate and ever since, it’s been a very strong connection to new construction, although I do general brokerage to keep my finger on the pulse of the market. But new construction is what gets me super-excited.
From very early on, I figured out that if I’m going to be selling real estate, I’m going to have to become an expert on everything involved with it. So to me, price point is not an issue. You’ll meet some agents who only work in certain price ranges or neighborhoods. To me, unless I’m doing it all, I have no idea what information to pass along to my clients and my developers. I can tell a developer to go in a different direction with the kitchen or the bathrooms or to increase the square footage or split this unit into two smaller units, because of what I’m been hearing. I can do it with certainty because I have my ears open and I listen to what people are telling me they want.
Q: What is your brand?
A: My brand is multifaceted. It comes from a place in which I strive for a very straightforward relationship, a very clean relationship, professional relationship. When it comes to my actual interaction with my clients, I have a strong interest in design that comes from my art and marketing and acting. So my brand is design-oriented, which helps a lot with the development work because, again, I know what is happening in real estate and I know what is happening with design in general.
I have always argued, from my first day in business, that the work I want to do is more around lifestyle. Nowadays you hear all about lifestyle, but when I started 11 years ago, nobody was talking about that. It was a very new concept. I believe that real estate is more than square footage and the number of bedrooms. It’s really about how you live. When I’m working with buyers, sellers or advising a developer, I tell them exactly how happy people are going to be when they open the door into the unit or open the door outside into the street. That really is my job. I am really selling an experience.
It has nothing to do with how much money you have to spend, it has to do with my guidance and my understanding of what you want so I can put you in the right home. That’s what I get paid for. So my brand is about that. Getting a nice, clean, linear relationship that is enhanced by a lifestyle experience and I think that’s why the new construction work resonates with me because I think it’s a different way to look at it. I know we are called salespeople, but I don’t see myself as a salesperson. My clients are selling. What I do is assist them with their marketing. I am making sure that sales experience is satisfactory. My primary job is to help people create a strong value proposition for their project that is in line with their own brand.
Q: What do you do when you’re not working?
A: I’m always working. I like to travel, but I actually do work most of the time, by choice. I like the process of producing something and being engaged. I took three days off around Thanksgiving and by the second day I was ready to go back to the office.
Five Things Rodriguez Can’t Live Without:
- His mother or his husband (tie)
- A good pair of shoes
- A nice bottle of silver tequila
- Fresh-cut flowers in his house
- Good music
