🎉 Celebrating 5 years with Scott!
His dedication as a Field Technician helps keep Legacy Property Management running smoothly.
Congrats on the milestone 👏 #WorkAnniversary#LegacyTeam
🎉 Celebrating 1 year with Loren!
As a Senior Property Manager, Loren’s leadership has made a strong impact at Legacy Property Management.
Congrats on the milestone 👏 #WorkAnniversary#LegacyTeam
🎉 Celebrating 6 years with Connie!
Her dedication and commitment continue to make a difference at Legacy Property Management.
Congrats on this milestone 👏 #WorkAnniversary#LegacyTeam
🎉 Celebrating 2 years with Joanne!
Her dedication as a Maintenance Specialist helps keep everything running smoothly at Legacy Property Management.
Congrats on the milestone 👏 #WorkAnniversary#LegacyTeam
Friends-
This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.
Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.
I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.
Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.
There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.
Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.
A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.
Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.
Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”
I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.
But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).
With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses
Happy Thanksgiving!
We’re grateful for our owners, tenants, and community who make Legacy what it is.
Tell us: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving tradition?
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Owner Appreciation
Grateful for the owners who trust us to protect their investments.
Our goal: higher ROI, lower stress, better results.
What are you thankful for this year?
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We handle the hard parts — so you don’t have to.
Tenant screening ✅
Rent collection ✅
Maintenance ✅
Inspections ✅
Legacy Property Management = peace of mind for East Bay property owners.
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Your first business isn't about becoming mega successful. It isn't about changing the world. You should take "scale" out of your vocabulary.
Start small and make your first business about building up your operational skills, capital, and network.
Start a low-risk company.
One where you can study companies that do exactly what you want to do. One where you don't need 1000 customers to win. You just need a small piece of the pie.
One where you can make low-stakes decisions and practice. One where you can make mistakes and survive.
One where you can improve your skills and build up your ability, bank account, and network for bigger opportunities later on.
Then once you have these three things, the world is your oyster for whatever you want to do or build next.
Buyers Beware: The House of Cards
This is probably one of the most important things you’ll ever hear if you’re a business buyer.
There are sellers out there that are predators.
They’re not looking to build a win-win.
They’re looking to offload a booby-trapped situation onto someone unsuspecting.
How do I know? Because we see it firsthand repeatedly.
We had a client looking at what looked like a great business… long history, management layer, very profitable.
On paper, it checked a lot of boxes.
The seller seemed great at first… eager, friendly, “ready to make a deal.”
Then came the shift. Suddenly, everything was aggressive.
Every term got pushed.
The seller’s attorney started acting like they were closing a war, not a transaction.
They tried to limit the asset list.
Push a broad non-compete carveout so they could keep operating under a new name in an adjacent sector.
The lease? Problematic.
Staff? Not properly covered in the sale.
And piece by piece, it became clear they were building a setup, a house of cards.
What they really wanted was simple:
Sell the business. Take the cash. Keep the staff. Start over again the next day and leave the buyer holding the bag.
They wanted our client to miss certain key assets during diligence.
To take on a business that looked fine on closing day but was destined to collapse as soon as the real-world details kicked in, things like permitted use of the property, supplier agreements, and staffing continuity.
Our buyer, thankfully, walked away.
But here’s the scary part.
That same business? It’s still out there. Still trying to sell.
Searchers bring it to me over and over.
And we got an email today, it’s back on the market.
So if you’re out there looking to buy a business, understand this:
Not every deal is what it seems.
Some sellers are not just trying to make a sale.
They’re trying to make an escape.