Sijo Vadakkan spent years selling hundreds of homes a year across Central Texas. Now, the high-volume Austin Realtor is making a foray into hotel development.
Vadakkan, who leads Trinity Texas Realty, is developing two limited-service hotels through his new company, Trinity Texas Hospitality, with projects underway in the Austin and Dallas areas totaling roughly $44 million, the Austin Business Journal reported.
The Austin hotel, priced at about $26 million, is expected to start construction in April near Samsung’s massive semiconductor plant in Northeast Austin near East Palmer Lane and East Yager Lane. An $18 million hotel is already underway in McKinney, north of Dallas. That hotel will be a dual-branded La Quinta and Hawthorn Suites adjacent to McKinney ISD Stadium and offer about 100 rooms.
The pivot comes as residential brokerage sales slowed after years of pandemic-era velocity. Vadakkan’s team ranked second in the Austin Business Journal’s 2025 list of top Realtor teams, posting $121 million in sales in 2024, but he said deal flow has softened enough to push him toward more diversified income streams.
“I have to pay salaries,” Vadakkan told the publication. “Only doing residential brokerage does not work for me.”
He’s hardly the first agent to look beyond commissions, as across Texas and other Sun Belt markets, brokers with capital and deal experience have increasingly branched into development, private lending and property ownership to smooth out cyclical swings, the outlet reported. Vadakkan said hospitality offered scale and longer-term stability.
Financing and permitting proved to be the biggest hurdles, he told the outlet. Both hotel projects are backed by Louisiana National Bank, and Vadakkan credited his internal management team with helping navigate unfamiliar territory. The hotels add to a growing portfolio under the Trinity Group umbrella of companies, which already includes a property management arm and a broadcast channel — Flowers TV USA — which Vadakkan markets to Indian nationals living both in the United States and abroad.
Vadakkan said that he is already in early planning stages for another Austin-area hotel and eventually wants to move into low-income housing development.
— Eric Weilbacher
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