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.
Advertisement
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.
Advertisement
Related stories
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?”
Potts owns one short-term rental: a beach house that his daughter named “Turtle Ransas.”
Advertisement
Courtesy of Brannon Potts
He started two “build-to-rent” projects simultaneously in 2020: a beach house in Port Aransas that he and Mindy converted into a short-term rental and a fourplex that they filled with long-term tenants. Both projects wrapped in 2021.
Over the next couple of years, the couple expanded to 10 doors. As of March 2025, they have two more under construction and expect to have a total of 12 completed doors by mid-2025. They’re all long-term rentals except the beach house. BI viewed owner statements to verify his property ownership.
The short-term rental is “just about break even,” he said. “So, in a sense, the cash flow is paying the mortgage down. And, it’s appreciated. It’s doubled in value.”
Advertisement
Cash flow wasn’t the primary objective of this project, he added: “It came down to, we wanted to have a beach house, and really the only way we could do it was if we made it a rental and stayed in it a couple of weeks a year.”
The long-term rentals have each produced positive cash flow from the get-go — “I wouldn’t do them unless they did,” he said — and, as of 2025, are profiting, on average, $330 a month per door. That’s about $40,000 a year of relatively passive income, as his properties are new builds and don’t require much maintenance or attention.
He doesn’t think he’d get close to those numbers if he bought pre-existing properties: “The resale market is a little bit harder to pencil out and work financially.” Plus, he’ll be able to pass on newer properties to his family. “If I’m building brand new and I’m leaving that legacy for the family, by the time I’m gone, these properties are only 25 to 30 years old. They’re still in great condition, versus 70- or 80-year-old properties, so that’s another factor. This is a long-term plan for my heirs.”
Investing in real estate vs. the stock market
For Potts, who set a lofty goal and was working with a relatively tight timeline, investing in real estate rather than the stock market made more sense.
Advertisement
“I had a goal to get to financial freedom in my 50s, and I knew I couldn’t do it any other way but through real estate,” he said. “If you do this well, it’ll take about 10 years. You can get to financial freedom much quicker versus using a 401(k), which is 30-plus years.”
Brannon and Mindy Potts reside in Fort Worth, Texas.
Courtest of Brannon Potts
He’s also seeing much higher returns than he would if his money was in a fund tracking the S&P 500, for example.
Advertisement
“I was wanting at least 10% cash-on-cash return,” he said. Once he finishes doors 11 and 12, “my average cash-on-cash return is 27%.”
He expects to hit financial independence and have the option to retire — he still runs his property management company — once he gets to 20 doors, which he plans to do in the next five years.
“It’s a much quicker path,” he said. “Plus, the asset produces cash flow to pay the bills so you don’t have to sell the thing that you own as equity to pay the bills — it’s producing the cash flow, versus, with stocks and bonds and a 401(k), you’re going to have to sell the stock to create the cash. And, the cash flow is usually tax-free. The IRS tax code is written for owning rental properties.”
Once he retires, Potts envisions himself spending more time at the beach and with his kids while growing his YouTube channel, Build2Rent Investing and Financial Talk, and helping others use real estate investing as a wealth-building tool. Part of the reason he fell behind on retirement savings in the first place was a lack of financial literacy, he said: “I just got it together probably in my 40s, and I feel like I really got it together well, but we didn’t do well because we weren’t taught.”
Advertisement
He’s learned the importance of holding his money “accountable,” he said. “That’s what people that reach financial freedom do. If you treat your money well, it’ll come back with friends. If you treat your money poorly, it’ll leave and go to somebody else who treats it better. So, I want to treat my money well. I want to hold it accountable to making good returns.”
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider
subscribers. Become an Insider
and start reading now. Have an account? .
Last year, Paramount said it would use $24 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar to help buy WBD.
Now that Paramount has won that deal, it won’t say whether that’s still the plan.
A key Paramount backer suggests that Gulf money would be a good thing for this deal.
We still don’t know if Paramount intends to use billions of dollars from Gulf states like Saudi Arabia to help it buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
But if Paramount does end up doing that, it wouldn’t be a bad thing, says a key Paramount backer.
That update comes via Gerry Cardinale, who heads up RedBird Capital Partners, the private equity company that helped finance Larry and David Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount last year and is doing the same with their WBD deal now.
In a podcast with Puck’s Matt Belloni published Wednesday night, Cardinale wouldn’t comment directly on Paramount’s previously disclosed plans to use $24 billion from sovereign wealth funds controlled by Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar to help buy WBD.
Instead, he reiterated Paramount’s current messaging on the deal’s financing: The $47 billion in equity Paramount will use to buy WBD will be “backstopped” by the Ellison family and RedBird — meaning they are ultimately on the hook to pay up. The rest of the $81 billion deal will be financed with debt.
Advertisement
Cardinale also acknowledged what Paramount has disclosed in its current disclosure documents: It intends to sell portions of that $47 billion commitment to other investors: “We haven’t syndicated anything at this time,” he said. “We do expect to syndicate with strategic, domestic, and foreign investors. But at the end of the day, that alchemy shouldn’t matter because it’ll be done in the right way.”
And when asked about concerns about Middle Eastern countries owning part of a media conglomerate that includes assets like CNN, Cardinale suggested that could be a plus.
“I think we want to be a global company,” he said. “You look at what’s going on right now geopolitically. What’s going on right now geopolitically out of the Middle East wouldn’t be, the positives of that would not be happening without some of those sovereigns that you’re referring to.”
He continued:
“The world is changing. We can stick our head in the sand and pretend it’s not, or we can embrace globalization and the derivative benefits both geopolitically and otherwise that come from that. Content generation coming out of Hollywood is one of America’s greatest exports.I firmly embrace the global nature and orientation that we bring to this from a capital standpoint, from a footprint standpoint, etc. At the end of the day, I do understand some of the concerns that you’ve raised, but that will work itself out between signing and closing because at the end of the day, worst-case scenario, Ellison and RedBird are 100% of this thing.”
All of which suggests to me that Paramount still intends to use money from Gulf-based sovereign wealth funds to buy WBD.
What I don’t understand is why the company won’t say that out loud. Does that mean it’s still negotiating with potential investors? Or that it’s reticent to disclose outside investors, for whatever reason, until it has to? A Paramount rep declined to comment.
Talks on landmark crypto legislation have hit a new impasse after banks said they could not back a compromise pushed by the White House, a development that cast doubt on whether the bill will pass this year and sparked criticism from President Donald Trump who accused lenders of trying to undermine it.
A tenacious team of finance majors, who sacrificed most of their winter break to prepare for the CFA Institute Research Challenge, took first place in that regional competition last week.
Students Hunter Baillargeon, Dylan Fischetto, Richard Opper, Philip Ochocinski and Rushit Chauhan were tasked with researching and analyzing a major utility company, and then producing a 10-page report about whether to buy, hold, or sell its stock. They chose to sell.
One of the CFA judges said both the team’s report and presentation were among the best he had seen in many years.
“As a team, we were thrilled our hard work paid off and our many hours of work allowed us to achieve what we did,’’ Baillargeon said. “What we accomplished couldn’t have been done without working with such a cohesive and collective unit.’’
“From a technical perspective, I realize how valuable true analysis is and the importance of looking where others don’t for a differentiated approach,’’ Baillargeon said.
Advertisement
The first round of competition featured 24 college teams from the Stamford-Hartford-Providence region. The Stamford team, composed of seniors all of whom all participate in UConn’s Student Managed Fund program, received its first-place award Feb. 26 in a ceremony in Hartford. The team will advance to the East Coast competition later this month.
Stamford Finance Program is Robust
“The Stamford team’s advancement in this competition reflects not only the students’ exceptional talent and work ethic, but also the rigor and applied focus of the UConn finance curriculum,’’ said professor Yiming Qian, head of the Finance Department.
“Our Stamford campus hosts approximately 200 financial management majors. The Stamford program is a vital part of the School and continues to demonstrate outstanding strength,” she said.
Professors Steve Wilson and Jeff Bianchi, who combined have 75 years of experience in the investment industry, were the team’s advisers and were supported by academic director Katherine Pancak.
Wilson said the task of analyzing a utility is particularly complex because of the company’s structure and the regulatory environment in which it operates.
Advertisement
“I believe the Stamford team stood out because of the depth of their research, and willingness to take a bold stand, including the decision to ‘go out on a limb’ and recommend selling the stock,’’ he said. “They didn’t ‘play it safe.’’’
“This clean-sweep was a true team effort. They were tireless throughout, and sleepless too often, but they never wavered from their desire to always dig deeper and uncover any information that would strengthen our investment case,’’ he said. “What a phenomenal job they did!’’
Competition in Hong Kong Is Ultimate Goal
The Stamford team will compete against Loyola, Canisius, Sacred Heart; Seton Hall, Villanova, St. Michaels, Western New England, University of Maine, Fordham and Penn State next. In total, some 8,000 students are expected to participate in various competitions worldwide, culminating in a championship round in Hong Kong in May.
Wilson said the financial industry is always welcoming of new talent. And when one of the judges told him that the Stamford team produced some of the best work that he’d seen in years, Wilson felt tremendous pride for the students.
“Finance is an open playing field. In investments, the best idea wins,’’ he said.
Advertisement
Baillargeon said he will always appreciate the whole team’s dedication.
“What I’ll remember most is the help of our advisers and our cohesive, close-knit team where everyone pulled their weight,’’ Baillargeon said. “We put in long hours, did a tremendous amount of research, and collaborated well together. I hope when I enter the workforce I get to work with a team as committed as this one is.’’
