Hero Story- Brad Hancock

This is How I Help Clients get on the Path to Homeownership with an Appreciating Asset that leads to the home of their dreams and eventually pass that wealth on to their children or charity.

When I graduated college, I wanted to be wealthy. From my finance studies and reading about successful people, I knew the first step was homeownership, but I didn’t come from a wealthy family, I had no job, no money saved, and student loan debt.

I think it is important to begin with my youth and bring it to the present. Understanding life’s’ failures and pains are truly blessings. My past is the strong foundation behind me building my own wealth and sharing what I’ve learned with others.

I grew up with a loving mother and father in a small suburb on the west side of Indianapolis with an older brother and 2 younger sisters. My mothers’ family had long ties to the town and we had 2 uncles, an aunt, and a wonderful grandmother that cooked Sunday dinner for all of us. My dad came from a hard life and had lost both parents by the time he was 16.

My family was blue collar, hard workers from a depression era home. They instilled in all of us discipline and a strong work ethic. No one from my mother’s family had attended college until my brother. My dad flunked out of college and was not what you would call a scholar. But he was very street smart, had a large personality, and boldness. As an orphan he was determined to give us a better life and was successful in the insurance business and as a county politician for most of his life. After renting in his young life, he built our family’s home when I was 2. Years later he told me that was the first step to becoming rich (boy did I listen to that)! I learned many things from my father among them character building qualities of confidence, competitiveness, determination, and never quit attitude.

My parents divorced when I was 12 and it was a difficult time in my life. Dad moved away, but was still a part of my life. My dear mother who hadn’t really ever had a job, had to find a way to support four kids. There were difficult times to make ends meet, but she made sure we didn’t go hungry and had a roof over our head as she too knew the value of owning a home. I did many jobs in my youth to earn money: paper route, door-to-door candy sales, farm labor: including hay baling, manure spreading, detasseling corn, dishwasher and construction work. Both parents worked to keep us in line and kept telling me to go to college. After all the labor jobs I had, I thought using my brain seemed like a good idea.

I left my little town after high school and attended Indiana UniversityWhen I enrolled, I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, but I always liked money and thought it would be a good thing to learn how to manage and account for my earnings and maybe help other people with their money management too. During the summers I worked on a construction crew that rebuilt fire damaged homes. This experienced taught me how homes are built and how to make repairs. This was Invaluable insight into what goes into building a home as we did framing, plumbing, electrical, drywall, roofing, and trim finishing.

There was one summer however, that profoundly changed my life. I sold books door-to-door in North Carolina. This experience taught me so many valuable lessons in life; persistence when facing adversity, sales skills, and thinking on your feet. After one summer I had saved $3400 and had a sense of achievement I had never felt. There were many positive attitude and life meaning quotes that I was exposed to and still smile when I remember them in my life 40 years later. The one that I think was the key to my success was “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care”.  Can I get an Amen?

Upon graduation, there were limited job opportunities in the Midwest, as the country was experiencing a recession. I decided to join my brother in Colorado, but had no money, no assets, no job, and student loan debt. I had been in Colorado the prior year for the first time and feel in love with the scenery, weather, and opportunity. This is where I would start my adult life. I wanted to buy a home as soon as I could, but had to find a steady job. After my first summer of framing new homes, I landed a real college type of job with Standard and Poor, where I used my college degree to examine income statements and balance sheets and develop my analytic skills.

During this time, I met someone and got married. She was a middle school teacher and between us, we saved to buy our first home. I was always following the real estate market and was looking for a real estate agent that could help us. We eventually found an agent that helped me find, evaluate, and finance my first home. He was great in teaching me that home buying is a process. We analyzed neighborhoods, builders, schools, affordability, financing, and location, location, location. I paid $65,000 for a 2 BR, 2 BA condominium and couldn’t have been happier. After thinking about owning a home since I could remember, I had achieved my dream and on the path to wealth!

Sounds great? We were paying the going interest rate at 14%, and two years later when we found out we were pregnant with our third child, we needed a bigger place. Unfortunately, the economy took a nose dive and our home lost half its value.

We found a buyer for our condominium (an equity skimmer as it turned out with a visit from the FBI 2 years later, but that is another story). Rich explained how the single-family home we were buying for $89,000 was a good investment because of schools, safety, re-sell value, and ultimately appreciation of the asset. After taking the time to evaluate our options, I was convinced to make the purchase. We lived in that home for several years raising our three daughters, the home value grew steadily, and we grew into the payment (just like Rich said).

But life changes and my wife and I divorced after 15 years of marriage. I was faced with starting over and agreed to buy her out of our home that had appreciated to $230K. It was during this time span, that my dad, who was a great inspiration in my life, passed away at the age of 63. In addition, I was suffering from 2 major sports injuries, my step-father passed away, and my good paying corporate job evaporated from the aftermath of 9/11. It was a low time in my life. Thankfully, my upbringing taught me that life isn’t always fair or easy. I wasn’t raised as a quitter and dad would be disappointed if I let life’s challenges defeat me. I also came to know GOD and knew things would get better.

I felt the financial setback a divorce brings. Giving up half my net worth was painful and being middle aged, how would I make it up? My dad was an entrepreneur and always pushed me to be my own boss. With his passing I obtained my Real estate license and began my real estate career as a hobby/secondary income. My first client was a close friend and I applied what I observed so many years before when I bought my first home. Over time, and with the help of several experienced colleagues I learned about real estate investing, and how to create and grow wealth through rental properties. I sold my home, paid off my ex-wife, and stretched myself to buy 2 new homes; one as an investment rental home, and a new primary home. The rental property gave me a little extra cash flow to buy a larger and more expensive home for my residence. As I had learned, it is better to gain appreciation on a higher value asset (home) than a lower one, and if you can leverage 1 into 2 assets, that is a good strategy too.

I was determined to grow my wealth and one day gain financial freedom. My father had passed on his wealth to me and my siblings and I wanted to be able to do the same for my daughters, who were getting ready to enter college.

My goal was simple. First, pay off debt by putting more of my savings into my mortgage. I had experienced the stress with losing a job and almost lost my home. The thought of having to sell my home and downsize was overwhelming. I dug deep into my real estate career and started to finally gain back my net worth. The divorce set me back financially, but I was overcoming that. Then the bottom fell out of the local real estate market in 2007-10 and found myself unable to sell listings or help people purchase a new home. With 3 kids in college, I went back to a stable job in sales as a wholesale parts distributor with Chrysler and was forced to leave real estate.

I had met Peggy in 2003. She is a warm, loving, smart woman that had been in a bad marriage. I wasn’t sure I would ever get re-married, but over several years, was convinced she was right for me and married in 2010. We share many of the same attributes and where I fail in my character, she excels in making it up. We share similar goals in life and I never met anyone that has a better work ethic than her.

About this time Chrysler filed bankruptcy, and was out of a job again. We were fortunate that my new wife had a good paying job to make ends meet. I however, was struggling what to do. She encouraged me to go back into real estate. With her support I started buying, renovating, and re-selling homes (i.e. flipping houses). My construction and real estate background were critical in determining a home’s value, and I was able to make a profit with several of my projects. However, flipping homes was stressful as the real estate market was changing and it seemed like everyone that saw a TV show thought they could do it. Home prices started to increase and the numbers were getting harder to make work. Moreover, I had project partners and a couple couldn’t or didn’t live up to their commitments and I lost $90,000. Another setback.

My real estate license had expired and so I returned to studying to re-instate my license. I had lost contact with my previous clients when I accepted the Chrysler job, and had doubts about resurrecting a career in real estate. I passed my test and started with a small brokerage, slowly rebuilding my career. My background in finance and home valuation helped me be a better Realtor and I continued to get new clients. After a year I switched to another brokerage that provided support and training to help grow my business. It wasn’t anything new to me, but I had forgotten what was important. Once I started focusing on my client’s needs and helping them find homes and build their wealth, my career took off (people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care).

My mindset was tuned to helping people get on the path of homeownership or leverage their gains and keep moving towards their forever home. In 2020, my best year ever, I applied my experience and knowledge in helping 23 individuals/families achieve their goal. Seven were first time home buyers, two were divorced fathers trying to rebuild their net worth,  one family I helped with loaning them money to do the necessary repairs to their home so they could sell it, another was an investor where we evaluated rent prices and made a fantastic purchase, a young family selling their home and using the equity to leverage into their forever home,  a widow who needed to sell her home to move back with family,  another widow that bought land to build her dream home, another young family that sold their home, used their equity and moved to a large acreage home they had been dreaming of, and several more. All have seen unprecedented appreciation of their homes. The one common denominator is that they listened to my advice and experience and made informed decisions.

Achieving my goals was a wonderful feeling. As I look back I used a quote from my book selling days: “you can get everything you want if you help enough people get what THEY want”. By advising and helping my clients over the past several years I’ve been able to make significant additional payments to my residence, catch up on my retirement savings, and be debt free.  I owe this accomplishment by focusing on my client’s needs while using my experience, knowledge, and intelligence to help them with their goals.