When Flavio Jimenez was 16, his father made a mistake that would change the trajectory of his life.
Moises Jimenez, in an attempt to purchase his first home after decades of working for scant wages, gave a real estate agent $5,000 in cash for a down payment. The elder Jimenez, who died in 2010, never saw the crooked agent again and never did own his own home.
The episode didn’t stop Moises, however, from instilling in his son the importance of homeownership.
More than 30 years later, Flavio Jimenez, with that knowledge firmly entrenched, will try to spread to his influence throughout the country while working a newly created position with Fathom Realty, a company with a presence in 30 states.
“I remember what happened to my father vividly,” Jimenez said. “I also purchased my first home in 1998 and three months later, I learned from the bank that I had committed fraud because I had an FHS loan with no history of taxes because I had just moved to the United States. They manufactured pay stubs, bank statements and tax records.”
The owner of Source Realty in Las Vegas, Jimenez will move all 20 agents that work at his brokerage to Fathom, he said.
In his new role at Fathom—national vice president for development of the Hispanic market—Jimenez will work to expand the Latino market for the company but will also endeavor to raise awareness about the potential pitfalls of the home-buying process, and the benefits of homeownership.
“The idea for this started years ago,” Jimenez said. “For years, I’ve given seminars all over the country, teaching people how to generate wealth through real estate. Hispanics in Las Vegas generally have many of the same struggles and pitfalls as Hispanics in Houston or Chicago. There’s a lack of education and knowledge of our financial systems.”
Jimenez said the broader Latino community in the U.S. wants to fully participate in the country’s financial systems, but hesitancy remains in many circles.
Jimenez said first- and second-generation Hispanics in America often have a distrust of financial institutions, sometimes because of corrupt practices in their countries of origin. They tend to—like his father—make purchases with cash, and often want to meet people face-to-face and get to know them.
Some of those preferences fly in the face of a quickly changing technological society where young adults often do all of their banking on smartphones.
Many Latinos, Jimenez said, get taken advantage of because they don’t understand financial tools. Because of that, they incur higher costs and more fees.
“If you take a white guy who wants to buy a house for $300,000 and take a Hispanic who wants to purchase the same exact house, the Hispanic will pay more,” Jimenez said. “The loan officer will give that Hispanic buyer a higher interest rate. Also, the Hispanic buyer will often have a lower credit score because many in our community don’t understand credit. People get taken advantage of, and often these are Hispanics taking advantage of other Hispanics.”
It can mean that a Hispanic buyer ends up paying “tens of thousands of dollars” more over the life of a home loan, Jimenez said.
Part of Jimenez’s passion for financial literacy in the homebuying market comes from his belief that the Hispanic market is a sleeping giant in America.
For instance, the Urban Institute predicts that by 2040, about 70% of the nation’s net homeownership growth will be Hispanic.
It’s Jimenez’s job to wake the giant and help Fathom tap into that potentially powerful market share. While he’s at it, Jimenez will try to educate as many people as he can about real estate and pathways that can be created from homeownership.
“We recognize that there are many underserved communities in this country and it’s refreshing to see companies take more intentional steps to address them,” Fathom CEO Joshua Harley said in a statement. “However, we believe that the Spanish-speaking community is still rarely talked about in the real estate space.”
Hiring Jimenez for the newly created national position will help fill a void, Harley said.
“Our industry needs to evolve in new and creative ways that remove barriers and meet the growing needs and demands of Hispanic homebuyers,” he said.
For now, Jimenez said he will remain headquartered in Las Vegas, though that could eventually change because of possible travel demands.
No matter where he lives—or who he works for, if anyone—it’s doubtful that the California native will ever stop advocating for the Hispanic community.
“I was blessed to go through all that because I found my calling,” Jimenez said. “I was born to do real estate.”