While most college students are solely focused on excelling in their classes and securing jobs for after graduation, fourth-year Commerce student Rajan Chidambaram has been laying the foundation — literally — for something greater. From reselling sneakers out of an office unit to breaking ground on his land development project and gaining over 92,000 followers on his Instagram account, he has channeled his entrepreneurial spirit into a serious real estate ambition.
Chidambaram, a Reston, Va. native, is known around Grounds for his viral fraternity and sorority house tours on Instagram. But behind the scenes, he has been building a unique real estate venture, combining his interests in business and property.
Chidambaram’s entrepreneurial journey began during his junior year of high school amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when he launched a sneaker resale business. The young entrepreneur was inspired by content creators he had followed for years, namely “Gary Vee” — Gary Vaynerchuk — whose early videos about flipping items from garage sales planted the seed for Chidambaram’s high school sneaker hustle.
“I watched a Gary Vee video, and he was showing [how] you can just go to garage sales and thrift stores and find stuff on the low and start flipping,” Chidambaram said. “And that’s how I started my sneaker business.”
Through the profits from this business — which he has been accumulating since his second year at the University — Chidambaram took his first step into the real estate space by putting a house under contract on his 21st birthday. Though this first deal did not go through, it marked a milestone that helped him break further into the field with his friend, Renzo Sanio, who is a senior at Virginia Tech. Stepping away from purchasing real estate, the two friends decided to embark on a more creative project — development.
“In November of 2024, my friend Renzo came to me with the [idea] of [a] land development [project],” Chidambaram said. “It was a two and half acre [property] in Shenandoah Valley.”
Their idea for their land development, called Royal Oak Retreat, takes inspiration from Live Oak Lake, a luxury micro-resort in Waco, Texas. Created by entrepreneur Isaac French in 2021, the seven-cabin retreat was built for $2.1 million and sold 18 months later for a whopping $7 million. Chidambaram and Sanio are following French’s blueprint nearly exactly.
While Chidambaram had some experience with buying property, real estate development was entirely new territory — but he did not let that become a block in the road.
“I kind of locked myself in the Commerce [School] for like two days [and] studied real estate development,” Chidambaram said. “At the end I was just like, ‘Screw it, let’s just go ahead and do it.’”
Just months later, they have now broken ground on their project, using funds from a substantial bank loan to work on the base of the foundation for their first cabin. Real estate investments are a weighty risk for any young entrepreneur, let alone a college student still finishing their degree. While they plan to eventually build four units on the subdivided land, Chidambaram said they are starting with just one cabin to test the waters. For all of the polish and planning behind his brand, Chidambaram admits that none of it guarantees a formula for success.
“I haven’t made a single dime from this,” Chidambaram said. “Me and my friend just took out a $276,000 loan under our names … like, we could be screwed.”
But for Chidambaram, the risk is part of the process. He knows that real estate is not just about what you build, but how you sell it — which is where social media comes in. He began his social media journey by posting content related to his sneaker business earlier in this school year, starting with unscripted videos he filmed in his office. His first major burst of traction came when he started a challenge to hit $15,000 in eBay sales in one month. While hitting this goal marked a great milestone, the real turning point came in November 2024 when he posted an Instagram reel about the land deal, which gained over 678,000 views.
“I made a video right when I got the land under contract… it’s like ‘[We] got this land under contract for $37,000, here’s our vision,’” Chidambaram said. “That's when I kind of knew, like I really want to pivot into real estate and I already knew that social media was going to be part of it.”
As his real estate content began to gain traction online, Chidambaram realized that if he wanted to grow his platform, he needed to diversify his content. That is when the idea to tour fraternity and sorority houses came to him — a concept he knew would appeal to both current University students and curious onlookers.
“[The house tours are] mainly just like more exposure [for] people in Virginia to know who I am,” Chidambaram said. “[The] end goal with every video is to get more exposure so that whenever we start looking at our cabins, most everyone in Virginia knows [about them].”
The process behind the tours is quite deliberate. Chidambaram typically reaches out through friends in the fraternity or sorority, gets in touch with the house president and sends over a draft script before filming. He scopes out the layout ahead of time so he can plan the flow of the video, and he always makes an effort to highlight each house’s most unique or eye-catching features.
“I feel like I have an eye for it now,” Chidambaram said. “I can kind of tell, like ‘This room is gonna pop.’”
Everything he posts — whether a fraternity house walkthrough, a behind-the-scenes look at construction or a vlog about his sneakers — ties back to a broader vision of not only growing a personal brand, but also building his customer base.
As graduation approaches and as his peers scramble to solidify their post-grad plans, Chidambaram is not searching for his next step. Instead, he is continuing to build his future — one cabin, video and idea at a time. Whether Royal Oak Retreat becomes the next viral micro-resort or simply a costly, but valuable, learning experience, Chidambaram is betting on himself — and grateful to have the support of his family that encourages him every step of the way.
“The funny story is … [to my dad] I was like, ‘Renzo came to me with this … I don’t know, do you think I should do it?,’” Chidambaram said. “He didn’t even understand what I was doing, he doesn’t know stuff about development … and he’s like ‘Just do it, you’ll learn a lot.’”
Read More
Embracing who I am at my home away from home
By Mai Hukuoka | 2 days agoAt the University, the hyper-awareness I had developed about having a “different” upbringing and background started to fade, and it was replaced by a stronger, more emboldened sense of belonging and pride about my culture as an Asian American.
The Strangers Project demonstrated that we are not really strangers after all
By Abby Snowdon | 4 days agoPinned to a clothesline on South Lawn, sheets of paper fluttered like silent confessions in the wind.
Body count: The stigma is outdated
By Madigan Wirkus | 6 days agoWhether you’ve been in a long-term relationship since freshman year of high school or are a master of the late night catch-and-release, if you are at all active, you, too, have a number attributed to you.
