Rebuilding and selling in Denver.. Need input

[Greg Cotinola]

Hi. I’m in need of some advice. My wife and I are currently living in Denver and are looking to get out of the Rat Race and get into real estate investing. She is an Accountant and I’m an electrician looking to start this investing journey. We currently live in a popular up and coming neighborhood. It’s an old neighborhood in Englewood near South Broadway but what’s happening is investors are buying properties with old houses (like ours) knocking them down and rebuilding 2 townhomes. 

In the last 2 years we had our neighbors on both sides sell their home to investors. They sold for $350k each. The Houses were leveled, 2 townhomes were built, and each sold for $675k each. Our neighbor on the other side did the same but each sold for $750k. So now we are an old house in between 2 brand new amazing townhomes and we don’t wanna give the opportunity away to an investor, when we feel competent to do the same. We are getting offers for $350k which we bought our home for $225k 2 years ago. 

It sounds like a good idea for us to start from fresh, level out our house, rebuild with townhomes, sell, take our earnings and really start investing with a larger amount of money. 

With that we currently have a mortgage, and were calculating possibly building comps for around $600k, which is a bunch of money. At the thought it sounds like a great idea but how do we get funded? We don’t wanna go through the banking system and have considered getting investors or peer to peer lending but for the amount, is this doable? I feel like we can make a nice return on this. Is this a good idea? Does it seem logical to go this route? We are having a hard time getting started and just need some advice on what to do. Any input is welcome. 

Thanks,

Greg and Amber