I have been investing in real estate for over 10 years. My first real estate unit that I purchased was in 2000, it was a 4 family. The unit was located on W. McMicken in Clifton, OH. I really had no prior rental experience and minimal construction and renovation experience.

I purchased the property for about $84K and at the time, three of the units were rented and generating about $1200 a month in cash flow. I moved into the other unit and let the rent cover my expenses and still put a couple hundred dollars a month in my pocket.

After a year I had the property reappraised and was able to pull about $40K out – which I immediately used to purchase a 3 family in Camp Washington, OH.

This property after renovations appraised for about $120K, which enabled me to pull about 50K out to purchase my 3rd property in Price Hill, which was another 3 family. I continued to maintain these properties for myself while still working a regular job.

I being a person in recovery saw a need in the community for housing for individuals with substance abuse problems. My real estate success inspired me to start a 501c3 charity called, Sober Living.

It was founded with the intent to help people get their lives back together by giving them a safe, structured, and sober environment to get things back in order.

We have over the past 5 years grown from that one location with about 10 beds to 6 scattered site locations with almost 90 beds.

During this time I developed a partnership with a friend, Original Luster Investments,LLC. We started in 2007 right before the bottom fell out of the market and were almost stopped in our tracks.

Finance and Mortgage companies at that time they were still doing no doc loans. We almost had to stop expanding but in Dec 2008 we secured a land contract for a 68 unit complex on Debbe Lane in N. Avondale.

That turned the tide for us, since then we have acquired another 200+ units of rental property. We are currently negotiating a 132 unit deal and hope to close on that by sometime in the spring.

This will put us at over 400 units of permanent housing in just over 4 years.

We are very excited and hopeful for the future. Our 5 year goal is to be at 1000 units and we feel we are on track to meet that goal.

We currently own about 293 units in Cincinnati and 2 properties in Northern Kentucky. We are currently looking to acquire another 80-100 units before the end of 2011.

The biggest thing I can attribute to our success is persistence and we believe providing safe, affordable housing to everyone is just the right thing to do.

Thanks for your time and please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you know where any good deals might be.

Brian Hart
Cincinnati, OH