Abodies Teach Real Estate to Palmer Scholars Scholarship Recipients

Recently, a few of the Abodies partnered with Palmer Scholars, a local non-profit whose mission is to help underserved populations (i.e. black and brown students) the opportunity to go to college. Where Palmer Scholars differs is they implement a cohort model that begins during the junior year of high school, and goes through the senior year of college. They also provide community member mentors for their scholarship recipients. The mentors sign-on to mentor the students for the entirety of their college experience.

Melo Hogan explained how the partnership came to fruition, “A person from Palmer Scholars reached out to me on a totally unrelated topic. I took the opportunity to ask them if they are in need of Realtors to talk with the scholars about real estate and the conversation evolved to having a training for the scholars about the importance of homeownership.”

The Abode agents shared their expertise with the students about real estate and how to buy a home.

During the talk, Derrik Shockman, Ian Broadie, Melo Hogan, Jordan Cain, and Maia Liloc Rice explained the ins and outs of home buying, the conditions of the market, how to prepare to purchase a home, and much more.

Jordan Cain was taken aback by the engagement they received from the students. “It was really cool how interested and engaged all the scholars were. They were asking the right kinda questions and were really trying to learn which was dialed in,” he said.

Ian Broadie, whose wife is currently an educator, took the role reversal in stride as he enjoyed his time. “I had a blast, it made me more excited to do more stuff like that. It was a lot of fun, and it was a conversation about my favorite topic. The opportunity that these kids have is phenomenal, we talked about home buyer assistance programs, down payment assistance programs, etc.”

Derrik Shockman broke down the importance of their presentation, and how it impacts students. “Real Estate is one of the key ways individuals and families build generational wealth. Due to systemic racism it wasn’t always attainable for people of color to purchase real estate and still to this day is the driving force behind the wealth gap between whites and blacks. It’s our obligation is to shorten this gap. Education and information is that first step.”