There is arguably no hotter commercial and residential real estate market in America in 2021 than the Middle Tennessee area, which includes Murfreesboro and Rutherford County as well as Nashville.
More cranes dot Music City’s skyline than in perhaps just a handful of other cities around the globe. But it’s not just new development that’s red-hot. On the transactional side, as just one example: Nashville’s oldest shopping center, the 118-year-old Nashville Arcade occupying a city block between 4th and 5th Avenues downtown, sold in April 2021 for $28 million to a New York real estate firm and a group of local investors.
Meanwhile, home prices in the Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tennessee, area increased 11.6 percent from January 2020 to January 2021, according to the CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index. Talk to any real estate agent in Middle Tennessee and they will tell you they’ve never seen a better market.
On the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, college students interested in working in this hot industry don’t have to wait until after they graduate to try to figure out how to become a player in the market.
That’s because of a novel experiential program—a fully licensed, for-profit real estate brokerage established for students of MTSU that provides the complete gamut of commercial and residential real estate services in Middle Tennessee. The brokerage, spun out of MTSU’s Real Estate Program like other research and business incubators at universities around the nation, helps students obtain their licenses and get head-starts working in the real estate industry even before they graduate.
Getting a Leg Up
Some potential employers, knowing MTSU real estate graduates are ready to hit the ground running, have said the program has become a game-changer.
At the heart of the novel program is Raider Realty, a student realty company launched by Philip Seagraves, associate professor of real estate in the MTSU Jennings A. Jones College of Business, and also an independent real estate investor, developer and broker.
Through various savvy corporate partnerships, students in the program and working in the brokerage firm benefit from the mentorship of seasoned local executives like John Floyd, founder and owner of Ole South Properties, Tennessee’s largest home builder, who launched his own real estate career at the age of 23 (in 1986) and whose company today is recognized among the Top 100 Home Builders in the nation.
Working in Raider Realty, students not only achieve an education and a degree, but also earn commissions. A portion of every transaction’s commission of Raider Realty’s brokerage activities (and they are substantial) are also plowed into more student opportunities, scholarships and educational programming.
“I feel like it has put me ahead because I am working in the field before graduation, and I am doing so much hands-on learning. This is putting me in the real world before I technically am. Real estate is so much of a learning experience, and you need be put through the process to learn. Ole South and Raider Realty has helped me start my career at an age when most don’t receive the opportunity to do so,” MTSU student, Blue Raider Real Estate Club President and Ole South Properties employee Melanie Hall said about her experiences.
Raider Realty started as an offshoot of MTSU’s Blue Raider Real Estate Club, evolving into an actual realty company in 2015 when club members renovated and marketed a group of commercial properties in downtown Murfreesboro that Seagraves, in partnership with Burton Street Development, acquired and handed over to students.
“Though the primary participants in Raider Realty are students, faculty and alumni of MTSU, it is not a part of the university from a legal standpoint,” Seagraves explains. “Just like a major research university might spin off a company with investors from the outside, that’s what we’re doing.”
Evidence of the program’s success in preparing ready-to-work graduates dates as far back as 2015, when the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts sponsored the inaugural Real Confidence University Portfolio Challenge. In that competition, teams from 15 universities nationwide vied to create the best-performing portfolio from a mixture of real estate investments. Each university team chose how it would allocate $1 billion to four quadrants of commercial real estate investment: public equity, private equity, public debt and private debt. The best-performing portfolio over a four-quarter period won. MTSU finished third nationally.
Working Model
Seagraves has said the aim of the program is to supply Raider Realty’s competitors with a staff of well-prepared new employees in the near future.
“We do that by helping them to be great while they’re here,” Seagraves told MTSU Magazine. “The students have such enthusiasm for the profession, and they can learn from our knowledge, academic theory and, yes, even the bruises we sustained in the profession.”
Additionally, Raider Realty teaches students about business and entrepreneurship in general. As a for-profit business, students are exposed to the inner-workings of expenses and profits.
“Raider Realty is not a charity! Yes, the brokerage has established a scholarship fund that supports students and helps fund MTSU’s real estate program, but the program also pays out commissions, profits and wages,” Seagraves explains.
MTSU student Tyler Normand also serves on the board of Second Harvest Food Bank. Tyler is shown here with Ole South owner John Floyd and VP Trey Lewis dedicating a new Second Harvest truck donated by Ole South
Floyd, a major supporter of the program and a longtime financial supporter of the university through other initiatives like athletics sponsorships and a seven-figure donation to support student success at MTSU, says his investment in Raider Realty just makes sense.
“This is about getting laser-focused and intentional about the career path these students want to create for themselves and starting down that path while they are still in school, not the day they graduate,” Floyd said, adding that he now employs many Raider Realty graduates. “I’m just reinvesting in the community. I’ve done extremely well in this community, and MTSU in many ways represents a lot of my success.”
For more information on Raider Realty, visit raiderrealtyllc.com.
