Justin Gottuso

Hello! My name is Justin and I am a native of Los Angeles who moved to Columbus Ohio in March 2020 to have a better quality of life for our family and begin actively investing in real estate to achieve Financial Independence as soon as possible. As far as real estate goes, I grew up around it. My grandfather was a real estate entrepreneurer, owning 7 companies at one time (real estate, broker, construction etc all under one roof). He retired a multi-millionaire and was my first career counselor and mentor. My mom is a real estate agent for over 35 years and I grew up going to properties and observing her 24-7 sales lifestyle. My parents managed multiple properties for my grandfather so I was exposed to all the repairs and calls they would get. Ten years ago as a recent college graduate I first began dreaming of owning my own properties one day. It was not the time as I was devoted to my spiritual development and pursued a career as a healthcare chaplain, leading me to graduate school and advanced training. The past five years I have been a chaplain in the ER, ICU and Hospice. Talking with people who are sick and dying has taught me something very valuable: illness and death can come to any of us at any age and stage of life. Accidents, violence, and illnesses like cancer come to us without respect for our wants and desires. So we need to pursue the dreams in our hearts now if we do not want to have regrets when we are faced with our mortality sooner than we expected. Working a 9-5 W2 job for 7 years, even a very meaningful one like being a chaplain, taught me that I will never make the money I want to provide all I want for my family or live the dreams that are in my heart, like owning a robust real estate portfolio and being a venture capitalist and philanthropist to help other people pursue their dreams. Hence my passion for the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement and achieving it through real estate investing. Now I am 35 years old, a husband and father of two young girls. We bought our first home in 2016, a 3/1 in a rapidly appreciating part of West Los Angeles. We house hacked via Airbnb until our first child was born (our last guest was leaving when we were driving to the hospital! LOL). Then we were planning to house hack again by building a 3/2 Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), living in the new house and renting out the old one. However, despite this plan we realized life in Los Angeles has just become too stressful and challenging for our family, and we made the choice to move to Columbus Ohio. Since the sale of our home in LA we netted $250k and were able to accomplished three big goals: (1) buy a spacious house for our family in my wife's brother's neighborhood in Columbus (it’s 3x the size of our house in LA for 50% less per month!), (2) fund an emergency fund (we never had savings in LA), and (3) buy our first investment properties in the Midwest (after months of looking at deals across Ohio we landed on an AMAZING deal in Dayton, which led to another deal with the same seller a month later!). In our first year of actively investing in real estate (August 2020 to August 2021) we have acquired three small multi-family properties totaling 13 doors and $7,300 per mo gross rents and over $3,000 net operating income per month. We just closed escrow and started rehab on a four unit building that once it is rehabbed and rented will bring our gross income to over $10,000 per month gross/$4,000 net per month with a total of 17 doors. We paid cash for these properties (cash is king!), and are in the process of refinancing them to do more deals as well as establishing partnerships with various private money lenders and banks. We have excellent management in place so we can focus on finding and closing more deals and expanding our network. My short term goal is to buy an average of 4 units per month for the next 12 months, growing our portfolio from 12+ to 60+ units and our net income to grow from $3,000 to $15,000 per month from our rental properties. My long term goals are to own 400+ units generating at least $100+ per door of profit and over $40,000 per month/$500,000 per year net income to replace our combined $250k income so we can focus on quality time with our family, with the additional $250k being used to support our faith community and invest in other people's businesses and ideas as venture capitalists and philanthropists. I have been blessed beyond belief with multiple amazing mentors and friends who have helped me grow and develop so much already. They bring me deals, connect me with their network of professionals and contacts, and encourage me to keep going. I could not have come so far so fast without their love and support! I also have a growing passion to help people who feel trapped and stressed find freedom and peace spiritually and financially. I am motivated to be able to provide more than enough financially so my wife can choose not to work if she wants, and to afford to spend more time with my children as they grow up. Her parents are first generation immigrants to the U.S. and she’s had to work around the clock since she was in middle school. I also want to help people start their own real estate investment and invest in new businesses and non-profits and be an investor in their growth and development. Courses, coaching, books, public speaking are all in my future. I have learned a lot about real estate investing but I am also constantly learning more and more all the time (and making lots of mistakes, both of which I share on my Podcast – A Day In The Life Of A Real Estate Investor). I LOVE meeting new like-minded passionate people who are hungry for more growth, creative, strategic, humble, competent and want to make an impact in the world. If that is you please contact me directly. Check out my podcast for an inside look at "A Day In The Life Of A Real Estate Investor": https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xWzSNSW2sCHBICWq4pmJl