How the Hamilton Brothers Dominate Real Estate Investing in a Small Town Market

The Hamilton Brothers (00:00)

I would just say ⁓ don’t be afraid to do anything. Just write off more than you can chew and figure out how chew it. We’ve had a real big growing year over last year with some projects that super challenging ⁓ on the investing side and on the real estate agent side. It can be done. Just put your head down and figure it out.

and we’ll be in line with you.

Olivia (01:52)

Hello, everyone and welcome to Investor

Fuel podcast. My name is Olivia, and today I’m being joined by my guests, the Hamilton brothers, Tel and Stetson. Welcome.

The Hamilton Brothers (02:02)

Hey everybody. Hi,

thanks for having us.

Olivia (02:05)

They’ve been making some serious moves in their small

town Colorado, and they’re here to share with us all of their expertise on both the real estate investing side and as being agents. I think our listeners are really going to take a lot away from how you’re both approaching the market and sharing the strengths that you have with staying strong in a small market. So let’s dive in.

The Hamilton Brothers (02:34)

Cool,

sounds good.

Olivia (02:34)

Alright,

so first off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days?

The Hamilton Brothers (02:45)

So

we run a real estate team based out of Southwest Colorado. And then over the past four years, we’ve started to dive deep into multifamily investing and single family investing. And have grown our team and one small unique aspect is we’re super rural, small town. Our town’s about 8,000 people. And Setsun and I have done everything together kind of from the beginning. And have kind of tried to adjust the culture here for investors and agencies.

Olivia (03:19)

it. So what’s caught my eye about the way that you’ve been able to remain strong and have success in a small market is expanding your networks, continuing to have a positive outlook on the market. And I know it’s not easy, especially in this climate. So what’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly for you?

The Hamilton Brothers (03:47)

Yeah, so

like Tel said, started a couple of years ago. Tel’s been an agent for I think six years now. I’m going on five, four and a half. Something that’s key for us in this small town is we are agents. So number one, running our own team, we average, you know, in our just our small market, we’re getting close to like, we’re selling about 30 properties a year as agents. So number one, we get first access to some good deals through our network, some people bring in to us.

Secondly, we’ve set the stage in the last couple of years, we’ve bought good deals when stuff was a little harder. So we kind of started to write at beginning of COVID. The first duplex I bought was in 2020. Luckily we got into it early, so we got some good equity in those first few properties. And now where we’re sitting, our market has slowed down, but that has actually opened us up some more deals. So we purchased some properties over the last couple of years. And in our small market, we don’t have a ton of competition, we do have some.

But a lot of our landlords are aging out and we’ve set ourselves up with private lenders now in our small community and as well as like lines of credit and things of those natures for ourselves that we’re really being able to excel. ⁓ When a deal does come up, because we like real cash flow, not just break even every month, we wanna cover all the cap bags and all that thing every month. ⁓ We have the ability now to jump on stuff really fast. ⁓ Like for instance, we actually just bought a flip last week.

We beat out six offers and that was purely only because we closed in about seven days. So we’ve just, we’ve been able to, as agents, make stuff quicker and like financing and things of those natures, we’re just able to out-compete the small market.

Olivia (05:29)

said you were able to close in seven days.

The Hamilton Brothers (05:32)

Yeah,

I think it ended up being because the weekend we ended up closing in in nine. But yeah, it was quick cash close with a private lender here in town. So that was a flip we just purchased.

Olivia (06:31)

I bet everyone involved was happy with that quick turn on.

The Hamilton Brothers (06:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that. Yeah, and that’s the beauty of cash, but also the beauty of we’ve done, Stetson especially has done a lot of our work for us and labored early on a lot of our projects. So we, you know, we waived our inspections, we walked in and we just knew what we needed to do. We didn’t have to wait and pay for an inspector to come up and do all that. And, know, some of it is a little bit of blissful ignorance, you know, we’re going to make it work. And so we kind of could step into these bigger projects.

With just a little more confidence on our shoulders. Yeah, we we There’s not much that scares us now when I’m actually finishing up a like a house hack right now It was two buildings fire damage, so I’m able to walk projects now I We I I sub out most things for our projects But I’m able to walk on myself and we used to put an offer together about an hour after you know I’ve walked something so we’re pretty quick. You know in that aspect,

Olivia (07:28)

awesome and what really was a wow for me was you said that all of your learning you’ve just really done it on your own.

The Hamilton Brothers (07:38)

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Our father had a tiny bit of construction experience when he was in high school. So the first few ones like that, he helped us swing some hammers and stuff like that. you know, learn by doing we have done and a lot of the beginning ones, I mean, we did pretty much everything besides like electrical and plumbing. But now we’re able to out a lot. We still swing a little bit of hammers here and there. But like, for instance, there’s a lot of reviews will find this interesting. like in our county.

We don’t even have a bill department. So building codes are not enforced even in our county. In our city limits, they are. So we have a very relaxed, we don’t have to get construction permits, nothing of that nature. And like in the county, we just had to follow the state code, which if you’re hiring an electrician or a plumber, that happens, which we do. But that is really how easy some of this is able to circumvent is like we don’t even have a building code in our county, which has its advantages and its disadvantages.

We’ve bought some stuff that has just been atrocious, so we’ve actually had to fix a lot of other people’s mistakes.

Olivia (08:39)

I can only imagine. Would you like to share something that’s currently you’ve had to overcome?

The Hamilton Brothers (08:46)

Yeah, well actually

the flip we just bought on Monday. ⁓ basically it was a three story house, lower level basement that they converted into living space. I mean, we opened up the walls ⁓ just to get rid of some paneling so we can take some sheetrock back into it. And the framing down there was so atrocious that we ended up getting the entire basement out so we can just reframe it ourselves. Cause number one, we are a small town and something that is really bad is if you start producing bad products.

a bad review gets out a lot quicker than a good review. So, our square of influence is really where we pulled most of our clients for selling and buying as agents and, you know, if we’re selling these flips, it can get out pretty quick that if we’re producing shoddy work that people are not gonna want to buy our houses. So, we didn’t like that, for instance, we wanted to our names on it. And like this, there was an old chimney that was dotted and about 30 feet to the one wall was…

studied so poorly that it was about a foot deep of dead birds around the outside of the wall, inside the walls where birds were entering the outside of the house and getting stuck in the walls. I mean, it’s just kind of the random things we find in some of these poor projects.

Olivia (09:56)

ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next? What is the next real goal for you?

The Hamilton Brothers (10:38)

on our realtor side, ⁓ we plan to scale within the next like five years to 50 ish agents. ⁓ and we’re hoping to expand across three states or more. ⁓ you know, macro goals, 50 agents, micro in the next two years, you know, we’re hoping to get to 10. and teaching these agents, you know, everyone’s first year and it’s the goal of one cell. we’re hoping to get these guys to 10 to 15 cells every year. ⁓ and expanding ourselves as well. Yeah. Cause we do focus like in our area.

We do like luxury ranches and things of that nature. So, you know, we’re touching properties that go up to like five, $10 million sometimes. So on that side, that’s really where we can span out. We can pull agents from different, a larger demographic and a larger area. I would say on the investing side, something that is frustrating for me is being so limited in our market, just being the deal flow and things of that nature. We’re currently looking into, I would like to switch to a larger asset class that we can roam a little farther.

whether that be like small hotels in that 80 to 100 room. We have a lot of those because we’re really heavy on like national forests and national parks in our area. So I’m actively looking for a different asset class that we can get into and scale a little bit faster. And expand our markets too, especially on the investor side. There’s only so many multifamilies, there are only so many hotels in our area. We have to venture countywide. And we do that with not just our investing but our realtor side of things.

You know, an average day for us is an hour trip anywhere for showings, looking at investments. you know, we’re spending now to five, six hours out.

Olivia (12:15)

sense. Well that’s big three states.

The Hamilton Brothers (12:18)

Yeah,

yeah, because we’re running the four corners so we can hit Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. It’s all right there for us.

Olivia (12:25)

Do you have like an end date, a goal in mind for projected date?

The Hamilton Brothers (12:31)

I think the macro of the three states, 50 agents, is like a five year plan. ⁓ That’s where we’d like to be 20, 32-ish in those areas, have that bigger reach. Yeah, we have multiple agents right now that are actually getting to join the team. ⁓ We have three that we’re coaching right now that should join us in the next quarter. ⁓ Things are moving along well, but I’m sure we’ll hit some major hurdles when it comes to actually getting to 50.

Olivia (12:59)

So it sounds like you’ll be able to handle it just fine.

The Hamilton Brothers (13:03)

We hope so. Yeah, we’ll find out.

Olivia (13:08)

Well, now I know a lot of people that are listening are either earlier in their journey or they’re looking to level up. And I think that they’d really benefit from hearing this when it comes to building relationships and growing your network. What is the biggest difference for you?

The Hamilton Brothers (13:08)

you

I would say

number one, your reputation is everything. For us, for instance, in our smaller market, we’re finally at the place now. We’re getting calls weekly like, we hear you buy houses. I have this. Are you interested? We just make that connection. Really, your reputation is everything. So do everything to uphold that. Don’t cut corners. And do everything to the best. And that includes treating tenants with respect. We have…

⁓ Within our tenant base, we do blend over into like section eight and that in our small town, because it is actually pretty profitable in our corner. ⁓ We have tenants that if, we have inherited tenants that if we took over and if they moved out, would seriously be homeless. So they’re in their units, been in their units for 10 to 15 years. We have a great property manager. We’ve actually helped them get onto section eight. We’re able to raise their rent. They actually pay less.

They’re great candidates for it and we get to keep them in a home and take care of them. So that’s number one on the investing side from our opinion. Yeah. And on the age, would say reputation is just as important. ⁓ One beauty thing for us is we’re a fifth generation family here. So we walked into, thank God, our parents were good people and are good people. But we just tried to said, uphold kind of standard. One big thing is we work consistently with a lot of charities. We run our own

toy drive every Christmas where we’re getting six, seven hundred kids toys. So we’d like to give back because we know, you know, like it’s a big piece of pie and we want to share the wealth with everyone.

Olivia (14:56)

guys have big hearts. That’s great.

The Hamilton Brothers (14:59)

Thank

Olivia (15:01)

Yeah, and relationships are everything in this space, Reputation. And I’m sure if you’re taking care of the community like this, that it’s not going unnoticed.

The Hamilton Brothers (15:12)

Yeah, it does

go a long way. Yeah, and we don’t do it, you know, just to get more business, we like to tell us that we have the ability to do it.

Olivia (15:17)

Yeah, I feel it’s very genuine. You guys seem like great people.

before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate, work with you, learn more about what you’re doing, what is the best way for them to reach you?

The Hamilton Brothers (16:15)

So across all platforms YouTube Instagram Facebook, it’s pretty simple. It’s the Hamilton Brothers team our website the Hamilton Brothers team and Know we love to chat, you know, so yeah message our phone numbers actually on there So we’re easy to reach so, know, if you’re looking for real estate in Colorado hit us up and then yeah Send us a message. We love to talk about it.

Olivia (16:36)

Thank you for that. Is there anything else that you wanted to add that maybe we missed today?

The Hamilton Brothers (16:43)

I would just say ⁓ don’t be afraid to do anything. Just write off more than you can chew and figure out how chew it. We’ve had a real big growing year over last year with some projects that super challenging ⁓ on the investing side and on the real estate agent side. It can be done. Just put your head down and figure it out.

Olivia (17:02)

some advice. Great. Well, perfect. ⁓ I appreciate your time, your stories, your perspective. We definitely need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. Thanks again for being here.

The Hamilton Brothers (17:17)

Thank you.

We appreciate it.

Olivia (17:20)

And for those of you tuning in, if you’ve got value from this, make sure that you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like the Hamilton brothers who are out there building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.