On December 5, 2023, Splice Realty hosted 8 high school students from Lexington Christian Academy for their annual Career Day outing. Accompanying the students were Dean of Student Academics & Enrichment Programs Jean Noh and Academic Advisor Krista Bogertman who were both wonderful to work with in the preparation leading up to the Career Day. Mike, Fen, along with the students and the teachers all met at our WeWork conference room to talk about what the real estate industry is like and to complete worksheets in pairs. It was an interactive discussion with students looking at floor plans and guessing what they thought the listing price might be. Students had submitted in advance to their teacher topics they wanted to learn more about which helped shape the discussion. Topics included 1) residential sales in cities vs the suburbs; 2) rental investment sales; 3) appraisals; and 4) property maintenance & renovations.
After the group discussion in a conference room, we drove to see two new construction properties: one was a single family home in the Cambridge Central/Kendall Square area; the other was a large condominium complex in the North Cambridge Davis Square area.
The first property we visited was a 4,646 square foot single family located at 221 Columbia Street, built by MGM Development. This 6-bedroom, 4.5-bath luxury home has a fully finished basement and 3 upper levels. Thayanne Aliduir, a partner at MGM, was kind enough to show the property to us and talk about the process of converting an old building into a gut renovated, new construction.
The other property we visited was the 97 Elmwood Condominiums, which has 34 units, built by Adam Siegel, principal of SGL Development. Adam began the tour by taking us through the garage that was located in the basement of the building, and explaining how they had to dig up the dirt there and get it tested for environmental toxins. Then we headed up in the elevator to see two units: a 346 square foot studio with 1 bathroom on the first floor, as well as a 1,346 square foot, 3-bed, 2-bath unit on the third floor. We had the students guess at what the listing prices were for those units. Special thanks to Rebecca Siegel of Loring & Siegel for helping to set up this tour!
The LCA Careers Day was a great success, with students posing many thoughtful questions to the Listing Agent and the Developer who showed us the properties. The topics for the careers change year to year, so understandably, real estate isn’t always chosen. However, Splice Realty was honored to be selected by LCA this year when they chose “real estate” as their career interest. We would be glad to host the students again in the near future.
(Permission to post photos was received from LCA)
