All Forum Posts by: Brennan Stephenson

I’ll keep it short and sweet, leaving out the details unless necessary:

My spouse and I both have successful careers and have toyed with the idea of getting licensed to save money on investments in the future. Our RE friends are well aware of it and have invited us to join their teams if we want to make a run at it full time, but we haven’t walked down that path yet (no licenses or anything). Cool.

The tables turned recently when our most successful friend broke the news that they would be leaving the state and want US to take over their current portfolio of business (size is quite significant) for a 50/50 split. According to them, my spouse and I could handle the portfolio while maintaining our current jobs (both essentially 9-5), basically grinding our nights and weekends to boost our household income by appx 50%. Obviously, we just need to get licensed ASAP and spend time training.

The opportunity sounds unorthodox, so I’m curious what the community’s thoughts are. Is this unheard of? Are there obvious pitfalls we should look out for? Or is this really just a golden opportunity that RE professionals would salivate over?

Hi all!

I've been following BiggerPockets for a while now and finally signed up because ran into a situation that I can't seem to find info on.  My wife and I bought a deal in Denver, CO.  We jumped on the deal at the time because of the lot size (about 17,000 sqft), the zoning of the area (allowing multiple dwellings), and because there wasn't really any required work to do on the house (but many quality of life things we could do IF we wanted).  Overall, we're thrilled with the deal and think we got some amazing value.

When we bought it, our plan was to use the abundance of space to build a second dwelling and rent (or possibly AirBnB) one dwelling or the other, while still living on the property.  The market was moving so fast, we didn't really have time to develop a clear plan for how/where this dwelling would fit on the property before signing our contract (we were one of 8 offers on the table within 36 hours of listing).  However, now that we're starting to make serious plans for this second dwelling we feel like we're stuck with a few ok/good options and no great options for how to do it.  I'm looking to crowdsource a few ideas from the community- no wrong answers.  To keep it simple, let's leave building code/legalities out of the conversation for now except to say that we CAN build 2 stories and CAN build a multi-unit structure.

I attached a rough image of our property's setup.  Here are some extra bits of info:

• --The red box indicates a few things.  That part of the property is currently irrigated and has nice grass coverage.  In the backyard, it is currently enclosed with a split rail fence.  Our best idea so far is to put up a more private fence around this, rent out the current house (tenants park on street), then have the rest of the property, including the entire driveway, to ourselves. Just not sure where to build.
• --The garage was built in a way that with minimal effort, we could use the stall at the end of the driveway more like a carport and drive straight through to the back, but we would need to add at least 1 more garage space elsewhere if we did this.
• --The back of the property has a 25ft easement in case the city ever wants to add an alleyway.  Although I don't see this ever happening, we obviously can't build here.

I suppose the first question is whether we should be looking at this problem to begin with.  From a strategy point of view, we assumed that adding a second dwelling to the property would be more cost effective, but would it be smarter to just use the construction money toward a new deal on a different property instead?

Any insight you have would be most appreciated!