OPI – A New Acronym for Collaborative Investing

OPM. The old acronym..

In real estate school, one of the most valuable lessons I learned was about how sophisticated investors build wealth using a smart strategy known as OPM—Other People’s Money. It flips the traditional thinking around paying cash and investing. Instead of relying solely on paying cash to buy one property, savvy investors learn how to leverage borrowed funds—to purchase real estate and multiply their returns.

I remember reading a book (though I can’t recall the author or title) that shared a perfect example of this in action. Imagine a man named Mr. Gavin Handsome. He borrows $100,000, and rather than buying cash for just one property with that money, he uses it as down payments for 10 different properties—allocating $10,000 to each one. With financing covering the rest of the mortgage, he’s now diversified across ten properties instead of just one. He’s maximizing cash flow potential, increasing his exposure to equity growth, and controlling more real estate—all because he understood how to leverage Other People’s Money (OPM).

From that example, OPM was executed by a single investor. It’s a solo strategy, driven by one person seeking to multiply his individual portfolio. And this is where the inspiration for something new came to me.

Introducing OPI: Other People’s Income

With my per capita income mindset, I began thinking—what if we looked at this through a new lens? What if, instead of focusing solely on leveraging money from institutions or hard-money lenders, we created a system that empowers everyday people to leverage each others income in a safe, structured, and intentional way? If you read my past blog about how mortgage lenders combine income when underwriting pre-approvals. This is how our new acronym OPI plays out. OPI is about leveraging shared income between multiple co-borrowers to collectively achieve property ownership. It’s a shift from OPM individual leveraging to cooperative wealth-building through real estate.

In this model, individuals who may not qualify for a mortgage on their own—due to income limits (income ceiling)—can come together, align financially and legally, and co-purchase property. Through our system and method, Co Borrower Hub, we facilitate this relationship matchmaking process—helping people find their relationship ‘OPI’ complement.