Newbie from Denver, Co

[J.R. Gutierrez]

Hello Bigger Pockets community! 

My name is J.R. I'm originally from California and just this past January; I relocated to Denver to experience a new city. So far so good. I have been in the construction industry for 8 years now running all aspects of residential contracting. My first job was with a custom cabinet manufacturer who also served as a GC. I was brought in to coordinate/schedule all their remodels and immediately fell in love with residential construction. Weird, I know. I learned how to coordinate jobs to run efficiently. Shuffling 8-12 jobs a week with 3-5 in house crews and several subcontractors was challenging yet fun. After 4 years, I moved on to a new role as Operations Manager with a different GC. I spent 4 years with this company until they unexpectedly closed the business. In these 8 years I've developed plenty of great working relationships with reliable tradesmen, handyman, suppliers, and designers. Currently, I manage a cabinet manufacturer that specializes in multi-family renovations. 

Now that I'm approaching age 35, I want to take all the knowledge and contacts I've gained in the past 8 years and put it to work for myself! Real estate investing has always been something I've wanted to get involved in but, like many, I didn't know where to start. That led me to searching and finding Bigger Pockets. And I'm glad I did! I look forward to learning anything and everything I can from the site and the community.

I look forward to using the resources on here to make big things happen!

Thank you for reading and sorry for the long post :)

[Phillip Bicker]

@Brodie Leggett  I just wanted to briefly touch on thoughts of legalization of marijuana in other states and the what we expect from the perspective of many Realtors going forward.  

After many states have slowly been adding legal recreational use (now including California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, and Maine) with an additional 20 states allowing medical use only, we have seen very little, if any slowing in our market due to this change. We continue to see double digital year over year appreciation rates in Denver, but many believe that the home affordability will eventually push these incredible increases down to a slow crawl. Instead of seeing double digit growth (like we have for the past 3-4 years) we will likely see appreciation rates more in line with general inflation/wage increases, including the mandatory minimum wage increases, which will finally get us to a more balanced market. For current residents, the change from 10-15% growth to a mere 2-5% growth will feel like homes are losing value or our market is weak, but this is still a strong market and will likely continue at balanced pace as soon as we get to a balance in affordability. See a great article in the Denver Post (even though it is now a few months old, still very applicable):

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/24/what-is-high-...

Anyways, there are my two cents. 

Those looking to house hack have a great opportunity in Denver with 26 duplex, 6 triplex, and 10 fourplex units currently active on the market.