A New Real-Estate Agency Focused on Athletes Is Ready to Play – The Wall Street Journal

“I’ve gone through it,” she says. “I am a pro athlete who experienced making money, and sometimes, especially in the African-American community, we [athletes] are the first earners of millions of dollars,” in the family, said Ms. Leslie.

Her co-founders include Rod Watson, a former sports talk show host and real-estate agent who led a specialized sports and entertainment real-estate division for Keller Williams Beverly Hills; Rob Hite, a real-estate agent formerly at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty and former professional basketball player who played with the Miami Heat in 2006; and Tomi Rose, wife of Mr. Hite’s fellow Miami Heat alumnus Mark Strickland. Ms. Rose founded a sports and entertainment division in 2013 at Florida-based Opulence International Realty, which later merged with Brown Harris Stevens.

A former Indianapolis Colts cheerleader, Ms. Rose has been the senior director of luxury sales for sports and entertainment at Douglas Elliman since 2017. The NBC “Hot Listings Miami” TV show star has previously advised and represented athletes including LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat former player Meyers Leonard, said her spokesman.

Mr. Watson said the creation of the team began in 2020, when, he said, he reached out to Mr. Hite to congratulate him on completing the sale of a $20 million Miami penthouse to his clients, English former soccer star David Beckham and his wife, former Spice Girl band member and fashion entrepreneur Victoria Beckham, that April.

“That was a historic sale and—especially for a young, African-American male—that’s never been seen before in the state of Florida and in Miami in particular. So I reached out to him, and I congratulated him, and that’s how the relationship really kicked off,” said Mr. Watson.

When Mr. Watson proposed a partnership, Mr. Hite agreed and brought in Ms. Rose and Ms. Leslie, whom he met in 2019 when she coached the winning team, the Triplets, in the BIG3, a three-on-three basketball league founded in 2017. Ms. Leslie has been a Keller Williams agent since 2017.

The founders of Aston Rose aim to expand the firm into three additional cities in its first year, said Mr. Hite. Targeting locations with at least two professional sports teams, they are eyeing Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Houston, said Mr. Watson. The group is part of a national San Francisco-based brokerage, Side, which provides marketing, legal and logistical support for its local branches, said a Side spokesman.

Sports and entertainment real-estate specialists aim to make the home-buying process as private and as painless as possible, offering concierge services and coordinating with managers so athletes and entertainers can focus on their careers, said Sharelle Rosado, founder of Florida-based boutique firm Allure Realty, founded in 2019.

Specialized brokers also say they understand celebrities’ priorities, which include proximity to their primary training location, wellness amenities, quality school districts and neighborhood safety, said former international basketball player and Los Angeles-based real-estate broker Geoffrey Frid of Compass.

Also, since public figures risk losing bargaining power when their high-earning reputations precede them, getting client’s the best deal becomes an important task for these boutique firms, said Zach Sokolow, who founded Z Lux Homes sports and entertainment division within Vista Sotheby’s International Realty in California in 2017.

“A lot of these celebrities and athletes, they don’t really get represented right,” said Mr. Hite. “Most of the time we [athletes] don’t come from money, so we don’t really understand how to make that money work and protect that money.”