The Art of Doing

Rob Withers explains how the world around him inspires his philosophy behind real estate

Born and raised in Arizona, Rob Withers moved to Colorado for college and found his home. He spent a large bulk of his life fully engrossed in all the outdoor activities that Colorado has to offer. From mountain biking to hiking to skiing, Rob took advantage of being outdoors whenever he could. The only time that seemed not to be possible was when he worked as a technology consultant for more than 25 years but discovered real estate investing on the side.

Only a few years out of college in the 1990s, Rob invested in several single-family rental homes in Arizona and Colorado. The time commitment of his family and a full-time job at a multinational consulting firm kept him from fully investing his time to learn what was necessary to attain true success and the desired returns on his investments. Leaving the investing world feeling discouraged, another opportunity presented itself that changed how Rob invested both then and for his foreseeable future.

“Around 2010, a good friend of mine who was a realtor said to me, “Lakewood Housing Authority is selling off all this inventory, duplexes, single-family homes. The income’s great. You should really look at this. I know you dabbled in real estate a while ago.” And he had the contract to sell off 40 or 50 doors,” remembered Rob. “And so at the time I bought three duplexes, and the math was totally different than it was in the ’90s. Since then, I expanded buying more rentals and developed a partnership with a builder to build single-family homes and duplexes in Denver.”

The transition from single-family properties to duplexes opened Rob’s eyes to the multifamily syndication model. Rob bought and sold a 64 unit multi-family property in 2019. Over the last few years, he’s been transitioning more of his time, energy, and financial resources to diversify his investment portfolio and develop relationships in the real estate investing community.

Attending conferences like the Best Ever Conference in 2019 was an easy decision for Rob to make, given his close geographical proximity to Keystone. He was also inspired to lean into his desire to learn and do more within real estate.

“I was impressed with the quality of the people at the conference. Many have had successful careers and are learning the business” said Rob. “But then there are others that are a little bit more mature and have been around the block a bit longer but are still very approachable and still willing to discuss deals. I feel like I learned a lot and met great people.”

When thinking about the impact of what COVID-19 has on the reality of networking in 2021, Rob believes there are definite impacts for new relationship building, especially if real estate investing is not your primary occupation.

“For me personally, I still feel like there’s so much more I could do on the real estate side, simply around networking if I didn’t have the challenge of 40 to 50 hour a week job. So that does impact me,” reflects Rob. “But there are certainly tools that can help; I think a key for a conference where there’s a larger group setting is to create a form of engagement where there can be joint participation.”