A Former Stockbroker Explains How Real Estate Became His 10-year Path To Financial Freedom After Falling Behind On Retirement Savings

Texas-based real estate investor Brannon Potts builds his rentals.

Courtesy of Brannon Potts

• 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?"

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."

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.

"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."

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.

"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."

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."