Champion athlete-turned-investor, entrepreneur builds development firm

Not everybody is cut out to be a world-class athlete. It takes decades of grueling work, hours honing your skills, commitment, sacrifice.

And, even then, after all that toiling, only a very talented few rise to the top. Now imagine working so hard and being so talented that you can reach the top in 10 different sports.

Photo by Mark Wemple

That’s what 28-year-old Maximilian Vollmer did. And then he walked away to focus on his business.

Vollmer, 28, is the founder of Vollmer Real Estate Investments.

The Tampa company, which has two divisions, builds luxury townhomes, coastal short-term rentals and large planned communities. It currently has about 65 units under construction across roughly 20 active projects, representing over $125 million in estimated resale value. There are 35 employees.

The business traces its roots to the University of Oregon where, in 2020, Vollmer and his wife, Kaitlin, started buying and selling homes.

Vollmer, a native of Stuttgart, Germany, was attending the university as an athlete, competing in the decathlon. He won three Pac-12 decathlon championships from 2019 to 2021. The decathlon is made up of 10 track and field events. Over two days, athletes compete in 100-meter, 400-meter and 1,500-meter races; the long jump; shot put; high jump;110-meter hurdles; discus; pole vault; and javelin throw.

In business, meanwhile, Vollmer says he and Kaitlin, his mentor, started out fixing and flipping homes in Nevada and Tampa. They would hire local project managers and real estate brokers and then manage projects from afar. It was complicated and they were learning. And making mistakes.

But this was in the post-Covid years when the real estate market was exploding. That provided some coverage. “If we did something wrong, we still kind of got away with it, selling and making a profit,” he says.

The couple moved to Tampa about three years ago.

Before fully dedicating himself into the business, though, Vollmer had a decision to make. College sports was coming to an end. To continue competing, he’d have to turn professional.

Vollmer couldn’t run the company and business at the same time. To be successful, each required a total commitment. If you did both, he says, you wouldn’t reach the levels you wanted in either.

He chose business.

“It was the smartest to focus on making money and providing,” Vollmer says.

“Sports is great, but it’s just so temporary. You only compete for so many years, and eventually you get forgotten. Every year there’s a new world champion, and even if you make it one year, five years down the road, nobody’s going to really remember you.”