Craig Curelop
Craig Curelop has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Leveling Up: From House Hacking to Building An Investor-Friendly Brokerage w/ Craig Curelop
Craig Curelop, known from his BiggerPockets days as the house hacking guy, walks through how he went from a job he hated to buying house hacks in Denver, getting his license in 2018, and building an investor-focused agent team now operating in Denver, North Idaho and San Diego. He is candid about the mistakes: a lead contract that let an agent walk with clients, an SBA loan taken right before the rate spike, and having four staff when he needed one. He and the hosts also cover what an "investor friendly agent" actually does and the right way to hand off retail leads from an off-market marketing pipeline.
Key takeaways
- Craig tested quitting his job by routing three months of BiggerPockets paychecks into his 401(k) and living off agent commissions; when his checking account was still larger after three months, he resigned.
- Not putting lead ownership in his team agreement let agents leave with clients they had been handed - a mistake he calls roughly seven figures.
- Instead of firing unproductive agents, his team charges $100 a month if an agent hasn't closed a deal in three months, so people self-select out.
- When cash got tight after an SBA loan and hiring spree, the advice he got repeatedly was to cut recurring overhead; he went from four staff to one and, months later, agents had forgotten the long-tenured employee was ever there.