For Olga M. Garza, real estate goes beyond the transaction—it’s about transformation. As a team leader and former president of the Houston chapter of The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), Garza has built her career around making homeownership possible.

Her approach combines hands-on client work with broader advocacy, educating real estate professionals about the unique challenges Hispanic homebuyers face. Her mission-driven strategy has resulted in multiple agents on the her team reaching top producer status and a record year, with her team achieving nearly 20% growth. 

Recognized as a Crusader in RISMedia’s 2025 Real Estate Newsmakers class earlier this year, RISMedia caught up with Garza to discuss her journey from NAHREP leadership to team success, her community-focused approach and how she navigates today’s challenging market conditions.

Clarissa Garza: What initially drew you to join NAHREP and how has that shaped your approach to real estate?
Olga M. Garza: Their mission spoke to me; their mission is to advance sustainable Hispanic homeownership, which I’m very passionate about. And, really, the job of NAHREP, if you’re in the organization, is not to necessarily work with the Hispanic buyer, but to educate the real estate professional on how to work with the Hispanic community; that was something that I felt was lacking, and NAHREP offered that educational component. 

A lot of our events that we host—because I’m still involved with our local chapter—they educate us on how to better serve the Hispanic community…because they do have different challenges than your average homebuyer.

CG: Your 2024 mission was described as “making homeownership possible for the first time.” Can you share a time that encapsulated that goal?
OMG: There’s so many, but one of them was a family, and it was not a small family; they were renting a small house and they had eight in the family. They had rented that house for years and years. We started working together and they had some credit challenges, and I think we worked together with them for over a year, and finally got them to the closing table, because they still had to save up for a down payment and qualify for the loan. 
It was just really special, because when we went to the closing, we had such a packed room—and then all of the pictures afterwards. So that one really stuck with me because they didn’t give up and stuck with their plan.

CG: Looking ahead, how do you see your mission evolving?
OMG: I’d say it’s continuing on the same mission—definitely growing our business as a team while still advancing and making homeownership possible. 

It’s the same year-over-year—that’s something that we’re truly passionate about, even as a team—just continue. We always celebrate that.

CG: How do you balance leading your team while staying directly involved with clients and focusing on the community?
OMG: In regards to the team, we’re continuously learning, continuously trying to better serve our community.

I’m still very hands-on. I do run the team with my husband, so he’s the one that runs the meetings, does a little bit more of the networking, but I’m still very much in production. This last year was one of our record years, my record year. 

Every agent on our team has their own production, so it doesn’t all fall under me. Several of our agents are top producers as well, which we’re very proud of. We do daily sync-ups every morning where we start with a moment of gratitude to get our workday started right and stay plugged in on everything.

CG: With all the industry changes recently, what keeps you motivated through volatile market conditions?
OMG: So in our market, new construction is very big; that’s been the saving grace for us, because we’re able to get homeowners in with the incentives that these builders are offering, which is still keeping housing affordable for them.

That’s kind of what’s kept us going, thriving, scaling—because despite being in the down market, despite being a crazy market and with all of these new challenges that we faced, we were still able to scale our business, and we increased it almost 20% from the year before, which says a lot.

We’re solution-based, so if there’s an obstacle, a problem, we try to come up with different solutions to make homeownership possible, to get that house sold.

Thank you to our 2025 Real Estate Newsmakers Sponsors:

Newsmakers Gold Sponsor
Real Estate Webmasters

Newsmakers Bronze Sponsors
American Home Shield
HouseAmp
Lofty
Realtors Property Resource

• 
• 
• 
•