Byron Stuart’s first career had him jumping out of planes — including a tandem dive with a 93-year-old woman — long before he began selling homes in Denver.
“She had just been told that morning that she was cancer-free,” Stuart, 39, told Homes.com. “When we landed, she told me, ‘Out of all the things I've done in my life, I think that was the greatest experience I’ve had.’”
Though he stopped counting long ago, Stuart estimates he has made about 10,000 skydives, and he said this was by far the most memorable.
Now, Stuart works as a real estate agent with Compass.
‘The skydiving world is kind of an odd thing’
After Stuart graduated from high school, he got a summer job at a skydiving operation.
“The skydiving world is kind of an odd thing,” he said. “So, for a young kid showing up to a drop zone and trying to make sense of it, it was daunting.”
Stuart went flying with the owners of the operation and witnessed his first skydiving demonstration.
“That image of [him] letting go of the strut and falling into freefall is kind of burned in my mind,” Stuart said. “The next few months were me basically telling people they’re crazy.”
Still, Stuart was intrigued, and rather than jump out of an airplane, he thought it would be safer to learn how to base jump — “which is actually much more dangerous than skydiving,” he said.
“If I wanted to go base jumping, I had to make 200 skydives, because you need to know how to fly a parachute if you’re going to be safe base jumping,” Stuart said. So, he made his first tandem skydive, in which someone is strapped to an instructor who navigates the parachute to land.
“I remember being absolutely terrified," he said. "[We] made that jump, parachute opened, [and we] flew the parachute to the ground. We landed, and I literally walked into the hangar for the drop zone and signed up for the accelerated freefall program to learn how to skydive on my own.”
From learning to teaching
He became an instructor for a few years before going back to school and getting a degree.
But he never stopped jumping.
After putting his body through the physical hardships of skydiving, he decided to pursue something slightly different in Denver: skydiving indoors.
“At that time, it was like the pinnacle of a skydiving instructor’s career to get a job in the indoor skydiving world,” he said.
Stuart continued teaching skydiving in this space for another five years before pursuing real estate.
Dropping into real estate
Friends and colleagues introduced him to the industry, and he became an agent 10 years ago.
“I have a tremendous amount of experience teaching adults how to do something that’s very risky,” Stuart said. “I think that’s a skill that definitely translates into real estate in the way that I interact with and work with clients.”
Stuart is still a skydiver. “I don’t jump as much as I’d like to, but [I’m] still very involved in that world,” he said.
(The following has been edited and condensed.)
What’s a mistake you often see first-time homebuyers make?
I think they don’t start early enough. I think first-time homebuyers wait until they are ready to make an offer before they start the process. It’s much easier to start the process and start working with a lender and a real estate agent well before they’re actually ready to purchase.
What advice do you have for homebuyers?
They get so pigeonholed into this idea of what homeownership is and what they need to be looking for. This was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I gave up on a home I was looking to buy because of the roof. I got scared over a $30,000 roof repair. Had I had somebody in my corner who was able to really help me, I would have maybe found out that there’s a renovation loan I could have gotten. I could have negotiated better with the seller to keep that deal together. I actually ended up selling that house for the people who bought it years later, and it was worth three times the amount they bought it for. When I went to sell it for them, they had done nothing. They didn’t even fix the roof.
What are you currently binge-watching?
Funny enough, my wife and I decided that we were going to go back and watch the early 1990s “NYPD Blue.” We had gotten into a conversation about “Law & Order” and all the spinoffs. My wife works for the Denver DA’s office. She knows the court process really well and works with police and investigators.
What are your hobbies?
I’ve got four dogs: a rescue named Batman, my wife’s dog that she’s had since before I met her and then two long-haired Chihuahuas [Joey and Shilo] I just inherited, so I’ve got a full house. I did an Ironman triathlon back in 2019. I still run and swim and bike but haven’t been training for any events for a while. I’ll still kick around a skateboard from time to time.