James is a featured contributor to the 2022 Guide to Colorado Real Estate Investing Strategies book. In it he writes about Hybrid investing, his 2021 goals, results and lessons learned. Then he dives into 2022 goals which include building relationships, leveraging short and medium term rentals and helping investors.
To save you time and money you can simply scroll down and read the chapter below.
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James Brown’s Colorado Real Estate Investing Strategy 2022
About Me
James Brown (aka “The Hardest Working Man in Real Estate!”) uses his knowledge of real estate to create a lifestyle and prosperous future for himself and others through home ownership and investing.
Connect with James at [email protected] or HybridRealEstateInvesting.com
About My Strategy
My main goal is to become financially free to be able to decide what I want to spend my time doing. That includes being able to donate time and money to charities that are desperately in need of support.
There are many strategies for building a financial future through real estate as you can see from this and previous editions of this book. It took me awhile to identify my personal goals and create a plan that works for me. It has changed over time, becoming more focused, but also identifying new opportunities.
My main focus and passion is helping people that can’t get financing get into homeownership without waiting to be fully approved by a traditional lender. We call this the Hybrid strategy. I work together with many other realtors, lenders and credit repair professionals, giving the buyers time and help to fix any issues that are holding them back. I let them pick out a home and approve it if it would make a good investment. I buy it for them and either lease it with the option to buy or offer them seller financing. I get cash now, cash flow and cash later when they buy typically in 1 to 3 years. Cash now means that I get cash up front in the form of a non-refundable option fee before closing on the property. That also means I don’t need to sink a full 20 percent or more of my cash into the property. The cash flow and purchase price in the future is also known and agreed to up front so I don’t have to guess what I can get for rent or the final purchase price. There is no vacancy because the tenants are ready to move in after closing. And none, or very minimal, property management is needed because the buyers have an owner’s mindset and treat the property like their own because it will be eventually. I make solid returns with way less of the downsides that come with regular renters that only have a small security deposit. I love the model because I’m helping people that were turned down by traditional lenders and thought they had no other options. I will build wealth through doing these deals myself as well as helping my investor partners benefit from the same strategy.
2021 Goals, Results, and Lessons Learned
My goal last year was to close an average of one deal per week but I didn’t quite get there. I helped a handful of people out of state and then spun my wheels with some more complex but also more profitable deals here in Colorado. It didn’t bother me too much because I filled in the gaps by helping people buy and sell primary residences as well as other types of investment properties. One of those investments was a sober-living home that is helping people in recovery and providing amazing cash flow. Along the way I learned that I needed to streamline my processes.
2022 Goals
This year my goal is basically the same as 2021. To get there I am going to focus on building more and stronger relationships with other realtors, lenders, credit repair and wholesaler partners. When we work together to help tenant-buyers we all make more money.
I also will leverage short-term and corporate rentals for myself and my investors. We can get even more creative by combining our Hybrid strategy if we don’t have the ability to get additional loans right now but want to pick up more investment properties. Personally, I am looking to buy a new primary residence where I can short-term rent a portion with a separate entrance. I also want to pick up other properties where they do not need to be a primary residence like they do in Denver County. I’ll be looking in the front range as well as coastal vacation destinations where my friends and I can go kiteboarding (Google it if you don’t know what that is!).
