New Investor from Denver Colorado

[Luke Werkmeister-Martin]

Hi everyone! My name is Luke Martin and I'm a new investor in the Denver area. I've been an avid listener of the Bigger Pockets Podcast for a while now and I'm excited to finally start interacting with the community. Being in the early stages of my real estate journey, I've spent a large amount of time researching all the different niches that are available to a new investor. I'm always eager to learn and was hoping to gain some perspective on picking a strategy in the Denver area. I hope to connect with you all and would love to grab coffee or lunch sometime to talk real estate! 

[Jeff White]

@Luke Werkmeister-Martin Welcome to Denver!  It is a great place to be here on BP. You will find lots of information that will help you on your investing career. 

As for strategies, I'm a big proponent of house hacking since we all need a place to live. 

Here are the best strategies in the Denver metro market today from best ROI to worst:

1) House hack a large single family house (5+ bedrooms) and rent by the room. You won't get the luxury of living in your own space or unit, but you will generate the highest cash flow and ROI since you get way more per room than per unit. Using this strategy, you can live for free and make money while living there.

2) House hack a single family with a basement apartment and rent the basement on Airbnb and rent out the spare rooms upstairs. This will get you the lucrativeness of Airbnb with the rent by room tenants as well, so you will get to live for free and probably cash flow a little by this strategy.

3) House hack a townhome/condo and rent out the other rooms. Similar to top strategy but on a smaller scale. With a lower barrier to entry by price point, this strategy will also work, but it will probably be more breakeven than anything else. 

4) Buy a 2-4 unit and rent out the other units. This strategy is the most popular one recommended on BP, but it doesn't work as effectively here in Denver due to the high costs of most multifamilies and most of them have lots of deferred maintenance.  It isn't a great place to start unless you have deeper pockets. 

Personally, I've invested in single families that have unique layouts with separate entrances, basement apartment apartments, etc. I have done rent by room, Airbnb, Section 8, normal units, and multifamily investing.  

Large single family houses work great because it gives you lots of flexibility to maximize your ROI while you are living there. I've done all the strategies above, and you can combine different strategies to suit your needs (ie. live in the basement and rent out all the rooms upstairs to get more rental income).