Newbie from Cuyahoga Falls Ohio

[Michael Gaskill]

Hey everyone - my name is Michael Gaskill and I am a semi new real estate investor from the NE Ohio area. My story is a bit unique, although many may have done it, I still think it has been a different and slow approach into real estate.

I always dreamed of owning real estate, never had a reason why, I just thought the idea was awesome. I've been like that since even in high school back in 2006 and I didn't even read any books or anything, just always liked the idea of owning a bunch of properties. 

My wife and I have lived in 5 fix and flips over the last 6 years. We have 3 kids now with #4 on the way, so we had at least 1 living with us during these live and flips! Its extremely crazy living in a construction site as is, plus with a kid or 3 its just insane - but doable! Our plan was the same from the start. Buy a small house and sell it, then buy a bit bigger house and sell it to buy a bigger house and so on until we got to our dream home (which we live in now!)

First house I bought for 13k cash, fixed it up for just over 2 years, got a HELOC on it for 66k to buy the next house. I put abou t26k into this home.

House number #2 I bought for 32k and fixed it with the HELOC from house 1 as I still owned it (sat vacant). We lived in house #2 for less than a year. I put about 12k into this home.

We sold house 1 and 2 at the same time (they sold for about the same, as the were only a few block apart, for mid 80s each) to buy and fix up house #3 without any funding! This house we also lived in for about 1.5 years. We bought house #3 for 44k and sold it for 128k. Home #3 had about 16k into it.

This led to house #4, which was kind of a distress sell from a friend of a friend. We got it for 115k, paid in full, and sold it for 200k about 8 months later. We moved so quickly because the opportunity to buy our dream home, where we live now, came about. This home was the best return, as I put under 10k into and it was mostly cleaning and painting the place.

We flipped 2 houses in between all this moving as well, under an LLC. I created an online business in 2015 and sold it in 2018. I used the profit from their to flip the houses. That lined up perfectly with the sale of house #4 to purchase the home we are in now.

Where we are today - currently trying to get a HELOC on the house we live in. We bought it as is, put a lot down, and did about 80k to it to really gain some equity. We are hoping for 300k HELOC or in that ball park. We REALLY want to get started on the BRRRR method right away as I feel, from my experience and my area, this method is way better than just straight flipping a house.

So I am here to learn as much as I can from the BP people and the community. Ive read the book, listened to countless podcasts, and now ready to network and learn from you all!