How ‘Build to Rent’ Is an Investment Strategy for Financial Freedom

• Brannon Potts shifted to real estate investing to achieve financial freedom in his 50s.
• He does ‘build-to-rent’ projects in Fort Worth, Texas, and has scaled up to 10 doors.
• Once he gets to 20 doors, he expects to have enough cash flow to retire early.

After years of working in banking and finance, Brannon Potts found himself behind on long-term savings.

“I was in my 40s and I hadn’t really gotten, in earnest, to saving for retirement,” he told Business Insider. “And I knew that the power of time was now a liability for me.”

Potts, 53, began his career as a stockbroker before transitioning to commercial lending. In 2006, his dad asked him to join the family business and take on the role of CFO, which he did until the business sold in 2010.

At that point, “the market was rough and I was trying to decide what I was going to do,” said Potts. It occurred to him that a pivot to real estate could be a smart career move — and help him hit a lofty financial goal: achieving financial freedom in his 50s.

When he was working on loan products for a bank earlier in his career, “I got to sit down with some people that were multimillionaires,” he said. “I would ask them, ‘How did you make your money?’ And what I found was most of them either made their money in real estate or kept their money in a lot of real estate.”

Rather than jumping straight into the investment side of real estate, he decided to learn as much about the industry by first working in sales and, eventually, starting a property management company.

“I knew I wanted to eventually own properties,” said Potts. “Why not stay in the same industry and have a company that manages my properties for me and manages properties for others?”

By 2020, with about a decade of industry experience under his belt, Potts felt prepared to invest in his first property.

The investment strategy that’s catapulting him to financial freedom: Build-to-rent

Rather than search his market, Fort Worth, Texas, for deals, Potts decided to build his own rental properties. He grew up in a home built by his parents and followed in their footsteps, constructing each of the homes that he and his wife Mindy have resided in.

“I noticed a pattern when I was building my houses: Every time we built, it had equity over and above the cost of the build,” he said. “I’m like, well, then why don’t I do it with rentals?”