Matin Haghkar, 33
BS civil engineering ’09; BS architectural engineering ’09
Principal/owner, REMAX Plus
My Greatest Accomplishment: I grew up with very modest means, against a lot of adversity, and without anything being given to me easily. I paid my own way through school and graduated with dual degrees. Since then, my greatest accomplishment has definitely been building and creating from scratch various real estate businesses. REMAX Plus has more than 50 employees and more than $50 million in sales volume per year, and it manages more than 400 commercial and residential rental units. I also own more than 60 of my own rental units and develop more than 20 projects a year. I’m also proud of my past work at Urban Engineers, where I became the project manager for the Terminal F expansion project (which had a $120 million budget) and other local large-scale infrastructure projects.
How Drexel Helped: My Drexel education and experience has been essential to my success. Going through the Drexel engineering curriculum taught me the true definition of hard work. It helped me hone and sharpen my ability to problem solve in any situation with whatever resources are provided — the true meaning of being an engineer. My education also helped me learn the organization skills I need to help survive in my pursuit of being a successful entrepreneur. Lastly, my co-op and corporate experience helped me shape the rules, policies, procedures and organization tools I use to run my businesses to this date.
Where I’ll Be in Five Years: My goal is to grow my real-estate business in all aspects. I plan to continue organically growing my real-estate brokerage by tripling the number of employees from the 50 we have now, while continuing to educate others in the industry and community. I hope to continue expanding my real estate development business by gaining even more projects and helping the local economy. I also plan on expanding our property management division to manage thousands of properties, in addition to the hundreds we currently manage, while helping others build wealth and independence through the education of smart real-estate investing. And I plan to expand my real-estate portfolio beyond the 60-plus properties I currently own.
“If I live to be 100, the change I’d most like to see in the world is…
less economic pressure on the common human being, less income inequality, a decrease in the cost of living, and less human dependence on fossil fuels.”
— Matin Haghkar