Olympic medal-winning gymnast Alex Naddour spent some time checking out the metro Phoenix real-estate market when he wasn't competing in Rio.
The 25-year-old, who won a bronze on the pommel horse in Brazil, is also a Valley real-estate agent.
Naddour grew up in Gilbert and now lives in Queen Creek. He got his Arizona real-estate license two years ago. He’s an agent with Arizona Elite Properties.
“Selling real estate in the Valley also takes a competitive edge,” Naddour told me earlier this week as he was leaving a typical five-hour afternoon training session at USA Youth Fitness Center in Gilbert. The gym is owned by his dad and coach, Mike Naddour.
The next day the gymnast left for Kellogg's Tour of Gymnastics Champions, which will take him to almost 40 U.S. cities during the next 10 weeks.
But he doesn’t leave his real-estate job behind.
“Since you can now close real-estate deals online, I have been able to work on sales contracts when I am on the team bus or competing in other countries,” said Naddour, who got his real-estate license two years ago.
Plus, Naddour has a real-estate partner who understands the demands of being a gymnast.
Peter Weiging, a former gymnast who now judges, will fill in for Naddour taking clients through homes and holding open houses while he is on tour.
“I watched Alex grow up, training and competing,” Weiging said. “He brings that competitive spirit and discipline to real estate. Clients get excited about working with an Olympic athlete.
Naddour’s routine begins at 5 a.m., when he gets up to make breakfast for his wife, Hollie Vise, and baby daughter, Lilah.
He is in his Gilbert real estate office before 8 a.m., with a map of houses he wants to check out and meetings set up with homebuyers or sellers before noon.
At noon he hits the gym for his five-hour practice routine. He leaves at 5 p.m. to pick up his daughter and head home.
“I usually do some real-estate searches while we hang out, but it’s most important to be with her,” Naddour said.
About 7 p.m., Vise get’s home from work as a gymnastics coach at USA Youth Fitness Center. She’s a world-champion gymnast, too. The couple met while they were both at the University of Oklahoma.
After dinner, which Naddour likes to cook, he heads out for a two-mile run around their neighborhood. By 9 p.m., Lilah is fast asleep, and he’s back at his job as a real-estate agent searching for deals on houses for a few hours before going to bed.
“It takes a lot of dedications and commitment, but I love it all,” he told me.
During his most intense training weeks before the Olympics, his wife slept in another room with their daughter so Naddour could get more sleep.
Vise and Lilah didn’t travel to Brazil for the Olypmics because of concerns over the Zika virus.
But he brought something to remind him of them when he was on the mat competing.
Vise washed all of Naddour’s gymnastics clothes in the baby detergent she uses for Lilah’s clothes.
“She washed every single thing,” he said at the Olympics. “So that way, when I’m on the competition floor, they may not be there, but I can smell my uniform and know that they’re watching me.”
Gymnastics isn’t the only family business or passion for Naddour.
His mother, Sandy Ray-Burnett, is a Valley real-estate agent with HomeSmart.
“I really encouraged him to get into real estate,” she told me. “He works so hard at everything he does. I am so proud of him. He’s going to be so successful in real estate, too.”
Both Ray-Burnett and Naddour say they hope to work together as agents soon, potentially starting their own brokerage.
Also, Naddour said his dad has his foot in real estate, investing in some Valley homes during the past few decades.
The gymnast is relatively new to real estate, but many in the industry are cheering him on.
“Congratulations to Arizona REALTOR Alex Naddour who won the bronze medal for pommel horse in the 2016 Olympics on Sunday,” Michelle Lind, CEO of the Arizona Association of Realtors, posted on Facebook, right after he won the bronze.
He is the first gymnast to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team while training in Arizona. He went to the 2012 London games as an alternate.
Naddour isn’t done competing. He hopes to be one of the two “specialists” on the men’s Olympic team to go to Tokyo in 2020.
That means he won’t compete in all the gymnastic categories, so he won’t have to train quite as much.
“I’ll soon have more time to work on my career as a real-estate agent,” he said. “I want to personally invest in houses and build my business with new clients and listings.”
His website is alexsellsarizona.com.
