Hidden Gems: Meet Chelsea Scott of Envision Real Estate Advisors

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsea Scott.

Chelsea, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It seems that ambition and working hard have been driving forces in my life. In high school, I became active in school clubs and organizations. I was a member of DECA, the student government and the honors society. In college, I was an active member of Delta Sigma Pi, a business fraternity with the primary purpose of building ethical leaders equipped throughout their lives to achieve maximum impact in their studies, careers, communities and civic engagement.

After college, I went into business consulting in Cambridge, MA, working for a venture capitalist. After four years in the Boston area, I realized how much I missed Colorado and started making my way back to Denver, applying for a master’s degree at the Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver in real estate finance and the building environment. This degree truly sculpted my future career path and built my network.

After graduate school, I took positions in commercial loan servicing, land acquisition, market analysis for affordable homes and market-rate multifamily projects. After about ten years working in these roles, I left my job, reactivated my real estate broker’s license and started building my own real estate portfolio of investments to become a real estate investor.

Along the way, while acquiring properties, I built a process to analyze real estate investments and found a brokerage that specializes in real estate investments. After a few conversations with the founder of the brokerage, we started discussing a gap in the market for small to mid-sized investors just starting out purchasing a property or a handful of properties. This gap was in analysis, advising and building a roadmap to provide investors with a way to set up a portfolio of real estate to meet their passive income goals and build toward financial freedom. From that conversation, I started building spreadsheets and models to start advising real estate investors with the most efficient way to acquire multiple properties to build their real estate investment portfolio. We named the process, Portfolio Analysis.

Portfolio Analysis organizes, tracks and optimizes investor’s portfolios utilizing spreadsheets to analyze real estate investments and has sculpted the advising process to share the strategies and methods with other real estate investors. Since launching the process, we have worked with over 100 clients in just over half a year.  We found that investor’s found great value in the advising session, and visualizing their investments in the spreadsheet alongside future investments that would allow them to meet their goals.

The story continues as we build the business to span single-family, multi-family and commercial investments.  Additionally, we are working on web-enabling the process allowing our clients to login to view their real estate portfolio, goals and performance.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been many challenges along the way. Of all of the challenges, the greatest one has been being patient. The patience part is difficult because I want things to happen quickly.  Yet, growing a business and investing in real estate requires patience and waiting. This also means that I need to exercise discipline, waiting for the right opportunity to come along or waiting for an investment to mature.

The second greatest challenge has been navigating a new business model and finding a way to explain it to the community.  When building a new business model, it takes time to get the messaging out in a clear, consistent and concise manner.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I help investors find financial freedom. I work with individuals to source, acquire and analyze real estate deals as investment vehicle.  Once somebody has purchased a home, condo, house hack, or real estate investment, we start the Portfolio Analysis process.

Portfolio Analysis is the process by which I organize, track and optimize real estate investments, by entering them into a spreadsheet to understand, track and increase performance. Then, together, we set goals for cash flow, valuation, overall passive income and a number for financial freedom or retirement.

This unique service has several facets including tracking an investor’s real estate both individually and side-by-side as a group of investments to figure out how they can meet a client’s financial goals. Clients can use the spreadsheets to hand off to a lender as part of the documentation phase of lending, to a CPA for tax purposes or to an attorney to aid in estate planning.  Moreover, Portfolio Analysis is a way to share all the information about a family’s real estate investments with other members of the family.

The ultimate outcome of Portfolio Analysis is build a relationship with a client as their advisor and walk with them through their investment journey.  It’s a service that isn’t readily available to small investors.  Since starting this in April of 2020, the client response and feedback have been wonderful, allowing us to grow and continue to better the process.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I have a strong work ethic, a drive to succeed and an analytic mind.  Combining those three attributes have been a powerful combination to build out the Portfolio Analysis process and advise others on their real estate investment journey.

I think of myself as professional, prepared and a good listener. Those are qualities that make the advising piece fulfilling and I really enjoy working with others to build their future!

Contact Info:

• Email: chelsea@envisionrea.com
• Website: www.envisionrea.com
• Instagram: cscott_r.e.advisor
• Facebook: facebook.com/chelsea.scott2
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQo5FESnWn8&t=1s

Image Credits
Livvy List Photography