I've been in the Architectural Industry since 1996. I started off as an intern working for the Architectural Coalition and quickly got hired on. With them, I worked on everything from single family homes to large student housing projects to office buildings to Zermatt Resort in Midway, UT. It was a wonderful experience to be able to work under Guil Rand, the owner of the Architectural Coalition. Even to this day, I still consider him a mentor and someone I want to be like.
In 2003, I started to break off and started working with Brad Olsen who owned Legacy Builders. My primary role was to design custom homes as part of our marketing package for new home buyers. It was a great fit. I brought the buyers in and designed their dream home with them. Then Brad, a licensed General Contractor and my partner, built the homes. Unfortunately, due to family obligations that Brad had in the Spring of 2004, we decided it would be best for me to do my own thing for time being.
In 2004, I started my first business, Legacy Design Group. My goal was to provide the same kind of service I had with Legacy Builders to clients and work with multiple General Contractors rather than just one. Since working with Legacy Builders, I had already put together a small home plan book and was able to re-use a lot of work. I learned a lot of things the hard way since my main focus of training had been in designing rather than in owning a business, but I've managed to survive so far.
Along with Designing Homes, I found an interest in Land Development. In fact, when I broke off from Brad, I already had my first development lined up and almost approved with the city. By the time I met Michael Porter, (General Contractor, Real Estate Broker, MIA Appraiser, and Property Investor) a little later in 2004, I had another potential project all lined up. I pitched my two projects to Michael and although he didn't feel to comfortable with the first one, we ended up doing the second one called Sandhill Court together. Unfortunately, I ended up losing the first project and watched another developer walk in and make an obscene amount of money. I ended up getting to know him quite well, however, and was able to learn a lot from him.
Once I was able to get Michael to see the vision of what Land Developing could do for us, we proceeded forward with many more projects. Once you get a taste, you never look at an empty field or an old house on a bigger lot the same way. Land Developing became the focus of my work. While my 2 brothers ran Legacy Design Group, I proceeded to create a second company called Great Oak Development to keep the taxes separate. I found that my home designing and CAD skills were extremely beneficial to subdivision layouts and finding the highest and best use of property. With the Real Estate boom, we had a great run with the things we were doing.
Currently, my focus has come back to Legacy Design Group. Land Developing isn't quite a feasible with the over abundance of available property. I've come back to my roots and my current focus has been designing and building affordable homes. The only way to survive is to adjust with the market. Our product is a new home that competes in both size and price with existing older homes. Unlike the older homes, our new homes appraise with 80% or better loan to value which eliminates the need of mortgage insurance. This means that our new homes can actually have a lower payment than older homes.
In addition, I still do consulting work for developers and am looking into some property investments while the market is ripe for buying in.
Gregory D. Brown
www.legacyhomedesign.com
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Right now, things have been pretty slow in the Real Estate world. This has given us time to work on our website lately. The plan is to create a searching system on our site that will help our clients locate the perfect plan more easily. In this "listing system", we'll also have a list of great deals on lots that we know of and prices of the plans. This will help people know what to expect as far as pricing is concerned for constructing a new home.
