Newbie from Cleveland, Ohio

[Brian Legg]

Hello! My name is Brian Legg and I am new real estate investing and I’m very excited! My background is business and supply chain management. I received a bachelors degree from Cleveland state university in 2012. I worked my way through college as a teller at Pnc bank for 5 years, which gave me a a solid financial knowledge foundation. Since I graduated I have worked desk jobs for several corporations. I bought my first primary resident home in my early 20’s. My wife and I painted it, and renovated the bathroom and the kitchen with the help of my father-in-law who is a realtor and project manager, so we did most of the work ourselves. I’m sure I’m forgetting about a few other small fix/upgrades. 5 years after owning the home we decided we needed a bigger house and sold it in ONE DAY (technically not even 24 hours) leaving us scrambling to find a new home, which was very stressful and not fun since we hadn’t even stated looking yet. We made a a profit on the house, which was minimal mainly due to paying a little too much but still proud of fixing it up! This gave me a small taste of what real estate can offer. Our current house is another... I wouldn’t say fixer upper but it is very out dated. We removed a lot of wallpaper when we moved in... not fun. It is currently still a work in progress but we plan on staying for ten years. Luckily we got a great deal this time and already have probably 30,000 in equity. So this sort of leads me to today. Over the last couple years I have gotten very interested in investing (mostly the stock market up till now), unfortunately it wasn’t sooner in life but hind sight is 20/20 suppose. I quickly realized picking individual stocks wasn’t my thing. Then I realized putting money in 401k’s and mutual funds is good but it isn’t going to build massive wealth for us. I read rich dad poor dad a while back which sparked my interest in real estate but nothing ever came of it. I bought Brandon turners book rental property investing and probably sat on it for a year without reading it. Mostly because my wife said “we don’t want to be landlords!” Well I feel like I made full circle and I’m back to wanting to jump into real estate and she is on board this time around and I just finished Brandon’s book finally! I am also listing to a lot of bigger pockets podcasts and reading other books. Anyways, to end all my rambling. I am very excited and always been motivated to work hard and always wanted to own my own business. I still have a lot of homework to do and a lot to learn and need to build a team and network. This is where this community comes in (I hope). My plan: Invest in small multi family homes around Cleveland, buy and hold to build a small portfolio and possibly trade up to small 5+ units. I plan to tap our equity in our home to get started when we are ready. We plan to keep our jobs and invest in addition (not a hobby) Fears: Not supported by my father-in-law who is a real estate agent. Not being able to manage with a full time job since I don’t plan on using a property manager, at least not at first. Not being able to cash flow with current market prices in a decent neighborhood. Not being able to pull the trigger to get started is probably my biggest. I will end my long into there. Brian