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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Lauren Collier, a real estate expert from Colorado Springs. Lauren shares her journey into real estate, the keys to her business growth, and how she navigates market challenges. She discusses her focus on helping sellers prepare their homes for sale, her experience working with investors, and her future goals for her business. The conversation highlights the importance of community involvement, continuous education, and adapting to market changes.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Lauren Collier (00:00)
You know, our biggest challenge, like most people.was that in 2022 the interest rates doubled. That’s been the biggest challenge and that is an ongoing evolution of what to do about it. Here in Colorado Springs by the tail end of 2022 and throughout 2023 the market really stalled out because everyone selling still wanted and expected to get absolute top dollar what their home quote unquote was worth you know a year ago and the buyers on the other hand why would they pay double
and triple for a property on a monthly basis. And I have those interest rates.
Michelle Kesil (02:10)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Lauren Collier, who runs a real estate firm in Colorado Springs. So excited to have you here today, Lauren.Lauren Collier (02:25)
Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.Michelle Kesil (02:27)
Yeah, absolutely. think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching supporting your clients and helping people find their home so we can dive in.First off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?
Lauren Collier (02:48)
Sure. So I run a local real estate firm in Colorado Springs. I’m focused on helping sellers prepare their homes for a profitable, simple sale. We do excellent property marketing. We do some expansive marketing features that aren’t standard in the marketplace. So we want to make your home look awesome. We want to make the buyers fall in love with your property before they ever step foot in the door. That is our goal. So we do a lot of work behind the scenes to help sellers prepare their homes.and prepare themselves, price it right, price it to sell, and then have a really excellent process throughout to include negotiating on behalf of the seller and cashing out all of your equity.
Michelle Kesil (03:31)
Awesome. How long have you been doing that?Lauren Collier (03:35)
Sure, I got licensed in 2011. At that time, the market was very in favor of buyers, and so my portfolio was almost strictly buyers at that time to include a lot of investment purchasers, fix and flips, multi-family rentals, short sales foreclosures, all those things. So that’s where it all began. And as the market evolved, so did the business, of course. The speed and volume of sales increased dramatically from 2014 through2022
and it was absolutely busier every single year. So we are constantly evolving, constantly adding services, adding elements to our service. So over the course of that time, I transitioned a lot out of helping buyers on a day-to-day basis and primarily focusing on property owners looking to sell. And I have people that work with me to help the buyers. I stay very involved when it does come to the buyers. But as far as myself, I take the lead on all of our listings.
Yeah, so since 2011 and I opened the brokerage firm in 2017.
Michelle Kesil (04:42)
Awesome. What made you get started into real estate?Lauren Collier (05:34)
I have been interested in it a very long time. So ⁓ my story is I got an undergraduate degree in biology basically because everyone says, what do you like? You know, study what you like. And I really like biology and environmental studies as well. So I focused on botany, worked at Denver Botanic Gardens, didn’t really want to move to Denver. ⁓ There’s not a whole lot of opportunity in the Springs ⁓ with those specific credentials. So I went on get a teaching degree, master’s in teaching, did some substitute teaching.tutoring and different things like that. ⁓ The day-to-day working in the school system was not a good fit for my personality. Whereas if I had a free time…
What would I do with my free time? would be looking at Zillow, ⁓ not just for kicks, but to analyze which properties would be a good deal, which properties weren’t positioned well right now with price condition and so on ⁓ that you could make a few reasonable changes. And then what would it be worth after that? So basically planning flips, ⁓ analyzing the market for what would be a good deal. And yet I didn’t have the resources to do that myself at that time. ⁓
I
also had a very low level of trust for the people that were available to hire in the marketplace to help me with that. So I decided it would make a lot more sense for me to get my own real estate license and then I can help people. I can be the one that they trust in doing that analysis and help them make a really good real estate purchase decision. So yes, in 2010, I worked through the schooling to get my license, got licensed in 2011, kept my day job for about a year from that point forward. And 2012, I’ve been unemployed.
ever since. kidding. You know, when you have a real estate license, you don’t get a W-2, there’s no guaranteed paycheck coming in. So that is what it feels like in that first year or so. As long as you have a client, know, shopping or listed, you know, at the end of that tunnel, at some point, there’s going to be a paycheck. But up until then, you’re unemployed. ⁓ So yes, I’ve been… ⁓
joyfully unemployed ever since. I really enjoy doing this a lot and like I said it’s just been flourishing and growing every year since then.
Michelle Kesil (07:51)
Awesome. What are some of the main keys that you feel made the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and to run smoothly?Lauren Collier (08:02)
Hmm.Some of the biggest keys to help it grow and run smoothly. Definitely two different ⁓ angles there. So for growth, just related a lot of community participation. I helped run networking groups, I attended networking groups, I myself ran a podcast for five years focused on local business owners, building out the website and social media to be super helpful with blogs, all of that helped to attract business. ⁓ And then to make things run smoothly, a lot of that is an effort of continual education.
⁓
Listening and reading a ton just absolutely non-stop books podcasts videos news Anything available that may be able to help the client So I’m like a pass-through if it is helpful to the client. I want to make sure that it reaches them ⁓
As far as systematizing the business, in a lot of ways we take it step by step and just see what makes sense in any given quarter or year for us to step into, whether that’s changing office space or adding an employee or, you know, there’s all kinds of things that you can do. I just really am kind of conservative in the steps that I take, big in terms of goals of wanting to help people and getting great results for people, but never at the sacrifice of the service that the individuals are receiving. So.
Trying to scale up our service and make it an excellent experience for everybody and once we know that we’re hitting that if there’s something more that we can do to then get more business we’ll do it
Michelle Kesil (09:33)
Awesome. And what can you expand on that? Like what are some things that maybe you’ve done to get more business and be more supportive?Lauren Collier (09:44)
Probably one of the largest things, and this has been in the last four to five years, was joining some ⁓ national referral networks that are… ⁓pretty prolific with the number of contacts that we end up with through those. So that’s actually been very good for us. A bit of a surprise for me in that, you know, if you had asked me in 2011 what I would one day do to have a prolific business, that wouldn’t have been probably among my answers actually.
I was very proud of my ability to just get referrals and make one-on-one connections. But the reality is when you’re working for people and you are already
working full-time doing that then you end up having not enough time to additionally go and meet new people one-on-one so you kind of have to shortcut something and paying for ads is one way to go and we do very little of that I run some advertising and some
local publications that I believe in and I want to support the work that they’re doing. But I’ve never been one to pay like the online portals to send buyer leads to me. just frankly I haven’t needed it. It’s never been necessary to do that. So that’s not an expenditure that I get involved in. But those referral networks have been the biggest change or difference in the business starting about five years ago.
Michelle Kesil (11:39)
Awesome. And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?Lauren Collier (11:46)
⁓ yeah, so before the show, we were talking a lot about listings because that is what I focus on. So I, I just love what we’re able to do there with a really expensive marketing package and helping people position their property just right to get the best outcome. So just the more that I can do with that, the better. So in terms of scaling, if I can help more sellers this year than I did last, that is, number one and number two, whichsort of go hand in hand with that is as you have more work you need more help. So it would be nice to add another set of hands at some point coming up. do have someone that works with me ⁓ on a lot of back end stuff and a lot of help with showings for buyers. ⁓ It would be nice for that person to transition to just being able to help the buyers because that is you know what their credential to be able to do ⁓ and then bring in someone different that can do more of the property checks.
and be a runner to go open doors for when the furnace needs service, when we need a meter roof or basic things like that on a day-to-day basis would be a huge time savings for us.
Michelle Kesil (12:57)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ What are maybe some challenges that you’ve recently overcome that now looking back in hindsight you have the lesson learned?Lauren Collier (13:12)
You know, our biggest challenge, like most people.was that in 2022 the interest rates doubled. That’s been the biggest challenge and that is an ongoing evolution of what to do about it. Here in Colorado Springs by the tail end of 2022 and throughout 2023 the market really stalled out because everyone selling still wanted and expected to get absolute top dollar what their home quote unquote was worth you know a year ago and the buyers on the other hand why would they pay double
and triple for a property on a monthly basis. And I have those interest rates.
They could just rent and save a ton of money that way. ⁓ They could just not move at all. ⁓ know, buyer doesn’t have to buy. They might love to buy. It might be their dream to buy, but they don’t have to make that choice. So ultimately, a huge contingent of people who would otherwise be buyers with great credit and great jobs ⁓ would just choose to rent because it made sense on financial month-to-month basis. So the big challenge was what to do with the situation.
honestly some of that is you just wait it out. I can’t force or encourage people to spend more money than would make sense for them. I can’t force sellers to give their homes away. Now some people have to move. They have to sell the house they they have for whatever it’s worth in the current market. So that’s definitely where I spent my focus was the people who already had a job elsewhere who were selling a property due to divorce. was state sales who did a lot of those kind of things where the owner had passed away. ⁓ There are absolutely circumstances
is in folks lives where it’s critical to go ahead and sell. ⁓ And we didn’t do price slashing by any means, but all I have to do is just get a little bit better value than the other homes around you. And for those people looking to buy who are able to, they’ll pick yours over all the other competition. So we still did really well with that. ⁓ But getting that price right, getting that preparation of the home perfect before you hit the market is really the strategy there.
Michelle Kesil (15:55)
Yeah, definitely that’s important. Do you work with investors?Lauren Collier (16:01)
I have done a ton of work with investors over time. ⁓The market is moving, dictates a lot of where an investor’s interest may lie at any given time. So in 2011 and 12 and 13 and 14, like I said, was a lot of people pick up multifamily properties. There was just a lot of supply. The interest rates were good. The financials of it made a ton of sense. So did a ton of buy and hold type transactions at that time. I’ve definitely helped a ton of people sell their rental properties when they were ready to cash out. So whether that’s 1031 exchange,
or they’re just going to cash out use of money for something else. I’ve helped plenty of people sell single family homes that were rentals, duplexes, those would be the primary things as well as triplexes. ⁓
Then as the market sort of heated up, I did a lot more transactions where people were just buying to buy. Like the interest rates are so good, why not? Prices were pretty good. You know, what you would spend on a monthly basis was significantly less than what people would pay in rent around here. So just helping people like pick a good pocket of town where you expect a lot of good appreciation over time. You expect it to be easy to tenant every time you need a new tenant.
helping people buy single family homes that were appropriate for rentals. I did a lot of that for a long time. And then I have a client who’s a home builder and we have done all kinds of deals to include land development where you take a large parcel of land, create the plans, get it zoned and platted correctly, and then just sell the plot for the next person to build. We did some of those, which were really incredible land flips. ⁓ In more recent times, we’ve done a little bit more simple things.
finding land that’s available, very very inexpensive, go through the process with the city ⁓ for a new plot map, permits, and then resell the new construction homes. So I’ve sold dozens of new construction homes for them over the course of time. It’s been great.
Michelle Kesil (18:06)
Awesome. That’s exciting.What are some goals that you have for where your business is heading?
Lauren Collier (18:17)
Sure, so as always, the main goals are making sure clients are thrilled with the experience that they have because as long as you’re hitting that, everything’s gonna be okay. Beyond that, ⁓ continuing to do an excellent job on listings. If there’s ever something that I feel like can and should be added to our listing package, I’ll do it. So constantly learning, once again, applying our expertise ⁓ on a daily basis. ⁓ Yeah, so.Just getting more business always. ⁓ If the phone’s ringing, we’re having a good month. ⁓ Referrals mean the world to us. It’s always the best compliment that you can receive when our past clients send us referrals. ⁓ So I love to work referral business. It just feels really good and usually there’s a nice connection from the very beginning of trust and it’s very important. ⁓ As I said, I have an employee who gives me a lot of help and a hand up with the buyer.
I think it would be nice to fill his pipeline with additional buyers because I have been so focused on listings in the last few years. The interest rates are much more accommodating. People are much more used to the cost now. A lot of folks have had time to save, time to get really targeted about their goals and what they’re able to do. So I do think that we can amp up the buying side of our business this year. I’m hopeful that mortgage interest rates will give people a little bit of a break. I’m not expecting a lot, but even a little will go a really long way. So it’d be nice to build that up.
⁓ As far as the new home sales, know, if we can just keep that churning that’ll be great. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (19:53)
Awesome. And how has the market been in your area?Lauren Collier (19:58)
You know, I think a lot of that could depend who you ask and if you took a poll of a hundred realtors, I think most of them would tell you it’s been pretty bad. To be honest with you, a lot of people have really struggled. It’s not nearly the volume of business that folks got used to in 18, 19, 20, 21. I mean, everybody was busy. Everybody could get a real estate license and make money. It was just crazy. The interest rates were so ridiculously fantastic that anybody and everybody could sell a house. And it is totally not likethat anymore at all. ⁓ So I think a lot of people tell you it’s harder to sell a house, it’s a slower process to sell a house, you can’t sell just anything, you can’t get just whatever price you want. So there have been a lot of challenges. I myself think it’s a lot more sane the way that the market dynamics are now. It’s a lot more balanced between the buyer and the seller in the negotiation. So ⁓ we have continued to have consistent business. It’s been just fine for us. We had a really good
year in 2025 so I’m thrilled about that and hope we can keep doing more of that in 26. So really for us this year is great. 23 and 24 were relatively slow again due to the mean 7 % interest rate on the prices the way the prices had escalated. It was very challenging for everyone but yeah it’s been it’s been pretty plateaued in terms of home values. The Denver market almost 100 % of homes in the Denver area decreased in value last year. They said on average about
$13,000 decrease in value for the typical house in Denver. We’re in Colorado Springs. I haven’t personally seen that per se. The metrics keep indicating that prices are ticking up but just very slowly. So I think that we could see that in 2026. Usually whatever happens in Denver happens to us around a year later, so we may actually see that in 2026. We’ll have to see how things pan out. Every year can be different. So of course I don’t want that for any of my sellers. I would love for
everyone’s property to always appreciate. But we have been relatively plateaued and I definitely wouldn’t be shocked if this is the year that we actually see a slight decrease across the board on values just due to following Denver trends.
Michelle Kesil (22:11)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing your perspective.So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more. Where can people find you and connect with you?
Lauren Collier (22:24)
I’d say that’s pretty easy. you Google Lauren Collier, Colorado Springs, you’ll definitely find me. Our website is www.livedreamcolorado.com. So it’s Liv, L-I-V as in Victor, E as in Echo, livedreamcolorado.com. So you can learn all about us, about our service, about the town, about listings, all kinds of other things there on our website. We keep it really packed with information. That’ll be the easiest way. has all our contact information there. It has a phone number, it has contact forms.And of course you can find us on social media too, Facebook and Instagram is where we’re most active. Anyone really wanted to connect with me and message back and forth is welcome to reach out on LinkedIn as well. Pretty active on LinkedIn and I’ll definitely respond to you there too.
Michelle Kesil (23:07)
Perfect, appreciate your time, your story, your perspective. Thank you for being here.Lauren Collier (23:11)
absolutely. Thank you. It’s been great.Michelle Kesil (23:13)
And for those tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Lauren who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.
