In this recorded keynote from the Robinhood Villagers Real Estate Summit, host Christian Osgood introduces Seattle‑based investor Leka Devatha, who shares her journey from a corporate employee at Nordstrom to a multi‑million‑dollar real‑estate entrepreneur. Leka recounts how a radio ad sparked her curiosity about house flipping, leading to her first blind purchase that taught her the pitfalls of cosmetic remodels and cemented her “down‑to‑the‑stud” renovation approach. Over nine years she completed more than 75 full‑gut flips, gradually scaling from ten modest deals a year to a handful of high‑profit projects that generate six‑figure returns per flip. She describes the three‑year learning phase—mastering construction, underwriting, contractor selection, and obtaining a broker’s license—followed by a mentorship with Thatch Nguyen, who urged her to think beyond repetitive flips and focus on long‑term wealth creation. Leka illustrates several creative exit strategies: subdividing a large lot in Sammamish to turn one property into three parcels and net a million dollars; adding an extensive addition to a North Seattle home, converting it into a 10‑bedroom, 6‑bath rental that now commands $7,500 per month and could be an Airbnb at $2,000 per night; and using 1031 exchanges to roll profits into a downtown Seattle commercial building with seven office units, now appraised at $3.5 million after a $400 k renovation. Throughout, she emphasizes the importance of deep asset‑type expertise, patience, hard‑money financing, and a relentless “grind” mindset, concluding that real‑estate success is a marathon, not an overnight sprint.
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Hello YouTube, it's Christian Osgood, and today we have a special treat for you. A little while back, we ran our Robinhood Villagers Resort Real Estate Summit. Huge mouthful, however, a fantastic event. We had about 50 people come out, some amazing speakers, and our keynote speaker, Lika, shared how she made millions of dollars in Seattle buying, flipping, renovating, and holding properties. It was a fantastic speech. We actually got the whole recording for you, so this Friday we're actually going to share the recording from that event, that particular speech. Again, this is Lika, our keynote speaker. Absolutely phenomenal speech. We had a blast with it. Hope you enjoy. If you do, please like, subscribe, and follow us for more. We're running a lot more events like this. And if you ever want to check out the Robin Hood, check out robinhoodvillageresort.com.
Thanks. Hi.
Hello. Well, for those who have not yet met Lika, first of all, I don't know where you've been because you seem to be all over online. So congratulations there.
Thanks.
But serious Seattle-based investor, just absolute, absolute badass. And I don't usually swear on stage. Fantastic investor. So thank you so much for coming to speak. She's our keynote speaker today, and I will let you do the rest of the introduction for yourself.
Awesome. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for making it. We are really happy to have you.
You guys chose poorly. This is a stand-up act. Um, yes, yes. Okay, so show of hands, who's been investing in real estate for over 5 years? Cool. You guys remember the days of the no social media and like calling for and dialing for dollars? Yeah. Okay, great. The rest of you already have a leg up on us. And then who invests in the Seattle market? Okay, so you understand my pain when it comes to paying top dollar for a completely shit distressed property. All right. All right, so I started investing in real estate about 9 years ago. I've been doing this a long time. Moved here from India in 2006 and had a W-2. I worked at Nordstrom Corporate, and one day when I was driving to work, I love my job, like truly love my job, but I wasn't really giving back to the community. I wasn't creating a badass legacy, like nothing. And so I was like, okay, I've got to change something in my life. And it's funny how you put things in the universe and it just comes back. And so I was driving to work one day and I heard a radio ad for a house flipping company, and I was like, what's a flip? Like, you know, how do you flip? I've— I heard about flipping cars, couches, but houses is a whole other concept. We don't flip houses in India. We like tear it down and we rebuild from scratch. I was like, what is that? So I started digging into it and found a seminar like literally right next to my office at a hotel there. They had like a 3-day seminar which I attended, and my mind was blown. Like, blown. I was like, okay, you can buy an asset, you can fix it up, and you can actually sell it for a profit. Never thinking that a ton of things could go wrong, right? But the optimist in me was like, this is a great business model. So I bought my first house to flip. I bought it sight unseen. So complete, complete wreck of a decision. So I buy this house. The wholesaler that sold it to me said it was going to cost like $60,000 to fix it up. It really took $125,000. But it's very close. But that didn't discourage me. I had completely enjoyed, thoroughly enjoyed the process. The one thing that did happen was my faith in cosmetic remodels went out the door. So now every project that I was gonna buy had to be down to the studs, because that's what I did in my first project, was took it all down to the studs and then renovated it. And that just became my thing, became my jam. And now I've done over 75 homes that I've taken down to the studs in a pretty hot market like Seattle. I started doing 10 deals a year, making like $10,000, $20,000 in profit. And today I do like 2 deals a year and I make like well over 6 figures, like deep, deep 6 figures on just a single family flip. Even this year, like even 2 weeks ago, I made a pretty big killing on a property. So it doesn't matter the market, it doesn't matter, you know, the environment, it doesn't matter the location. I think if you know, if you go really deep into understanding one asset type and really understanding all the makings of it, you can be successful no matter what. And that's kind of what happened in my flipping business. So for the first 3 years, all I did was learn. I didn't know construction when I first started, so learn construction. I didn't know how to buy a deal, I didn't know how to underwrite, I didn't know how to walk a property with a contractor, I didn't know how to pick a contractor. So I did all that and just got really good at that. And then 3 years after I started investing, I was like, okay, I think I'm ready for the next step. Let me go be a real estate broker. And I became a broker just so that I could walk in and out of homes without, you know, waiting for a broker to take me. And then I just happened to have lunch with my mentor, Thatch Nguyen. Thatch makes $100,000 in passive income a month. A month. I'm like, that's a lot. Um, and so that said, look, you're kind of doing this all wrong. You keep buying homes, you keep flipping homes, you make great money, and then what? You just put it back in your business and you're not really building any long-term wealth. And building wealth takes time. Like, you've got to give it the time and the love that it needs. And I was like, interesting. So that sent me off a path on analyzing every deal I found differently. This is 2017, and if you remember the 2017 market, it was hot. It was like red hot. Everybody wanted to be an investor. There were no deals. Sellers would just put homes on the market and sell it for $200K over asking. So like, why is anyone selling off-market properties to flippers anymore. So I decided to— every deal that I got, I would treat it with the ultimate respect. I would look at it from many different angles and get really creative about exit strategies. So Cody and Christian talked about creative financing. What I did was creative exits. I'll give you a story. I bought a house to flip. In a pretty hot neighborhood in around Seattle. It's called Sammamish. And that house cost me— I think I bought it for $500K, 2,000 square foot split entry home on a massive lot. And I closed on this house and I was like, wait, I don't want to just flip it. Like, I can flip it and make $50K. This is 2017. But I was like, okay, let me hold it. Let me see if I can hold it. And no joke, the day after I closed on this property, I was driving around and I saw my neighbor was subdividing their lot, and I was like, maybe I can subdivide my lot. My lot was bigger than their lot. And so I started off on this path of lot subdivision, and long story short, I made a million bucks on that deal. I subdivided that lot into 3 lots Sold the house for $1 million and sold each lot for $500K. Next, I had another— I feel like all my stories have to start with a single-family home because that was what I did back then, was just buy single-family homes. So I bought another single-family home, and this was North Seattle, and I said, okay, I can flip it, and this one I could make $100K. So huge, huge bucks. So I flipped it.— or rather renovated it, put it on the market, and we got an offer right away. And I was like, shoot, I don't want to sell it. Because my stager walked the property with me and she's like, this would make such a good rent-by-room. Because it had— I bought it as a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house. When I renovated it, it ended up becoming a 5-bed, 4-bath house. So then I was like, oh, maybe I can do something else with it. It had a garage, and I said, okay, let me throw the garage out and put in an addition. Had never done an addition before. It's the worst thing ever, because when you're putting like a new structure on an existing structure, what happens is there's a lot that can happen to the existing structure— roof leaks, foundation cracks, siding repairs. Everything possible. But I did it. I stuck with it because I had started, I'd gone on this process, and I was like, I'm not giving up. I'm going to do this. So I put in an addition on this home, and today it is a 10-bedroom, 6-bathroom house which rents for $7,500 a month, which is great, but it wasn't enough. 'cause I hadn't reached the full potential of it. So I'll tell you what it's worth today. So I bought it for $500,000. The addition and the remodel cost me another $450,000, so I'm into it for $950,000. That includes financing costs, 'cause I'm not a seller finance ninja like some people here. But I was like, okay, I can go get a hard money loan, and that's what I did. It's worth about $2 million today. This is a couple years after. So that's one way to force appreciation is buying really distressed properties and really fixing it up. But last week I met with a short-term rental specialist at the house and we can Airbnb that thing for about $2,000 a night. So I just took my $7,500 cash flow or rental income and pretty much maxed it out. And I'm going to hold on to this property. I'm going to actually pay it off pretty soon. So that's another deal that just, you know, it just takes a while. Real estate is not like a one-day overnight success story. Just takes forever, but you can do it. My most favorite kind of deals are when I can exchange them, 1031 exchange properties into multi— like multifamily commercial properties. So that lot subdivision that I did and I made a million bucks, I'm like the poorest rich person I know because I just, I I'm not— I just take all my money and put it back in real estate because I love real estate and I love doing deals so much. So I took all the profit from that, that one deal, and I went and bought a commercial building. I bought a commercial building in downtown Seattle right next to Facebook, Amazon, and Google. It's pretty sick. It's a nice building, and some of you have been there. Cody and Christian spoke at one of my events there. I host a meetup there, uh, and then I have 7 office units and they're mostly rented, all leased out. Again, that wasn't a slam dunk deal because I bought it, I thought it was going to take me $160K to fix it. I think Johnny even bid the HVAC on it, maybe not, I don't know, but it ended up costing me $400 grand to fix it. But it's beautiful now, so pretty. Just got it appraised, and I think it appraised about $3.5 million. I bought the deal for $1.950,000. So it, again, that took time because it started from that single-family house that I then subdivided the lot. Then I took that money and invested in this building, which then took 2 years to remodel, and it's now getting leased out, and I get to host like cool events. Um, I think— how much time do I have? Another 20 minutes?
Oh, you have 30 minutes.
30 minutes. Okay, I'm gonna leave some. You can do that too. Okay, I'm gonna leave some time for Q&A, but I want to leave you guys with 3 things. Okay, first is grind. Doesn't matter if you don't have a deal, you don't have the money, you grind and everything will follow. Take your calendar and fill it with income-producing meetings. No fluff, just income-producing. That could be meetings with brokers, meetings with wholesalers, meeting with lenders, meeting with investors that can take you to the next level. Because ultimately, that's all going to put money back in your wallet. Next, social media is fucking amazing. Social media can really— it's not about putting yourself out there for the vanity aspect of it. It's about putting yourself— it's about adding value to someone's life. Create good content, you know. I love that you ate cake today. Or you went to a cool location yesterday, but add value, and that value can come back to you in spades. So that office building I bought, I bought it vacant, and I bought in the middle of COVID A vacant office building in COVID, no one was going to finance me on that. This is how I found my lender. Also during COVID I was really bored, and I said, okay, what is LinkedIn? Let me start a LinkedIn page. And so I started LinkedIn and I just started throwing content. And if you guys have— who has a LinkedIn page? Yeah, it's really hard to get any kind of interaction on LinkedIn. Um, it has to be built over a long period of time, and that's what I did. I just started to really hone in on my LinkedIn skills. And when I had this office building, I put it on LinkedIn and I said, I don't have a lender. I need a lender. I close in 60 days and I don't have a lender. And I found a small credit union that got back to me and said, hey, we want to finance this deal. So I I spoke to the bank manager of the Seattle branch and I was like, Mark, Mark's this super, super nice, super experienced older branch manager. I said, Mark, why? Why are you financing this building? And he goes, because of your social media. You really put yourself out there and I just want— I'm financing you, not the building. I love the content that you create, you know, and someone that does that is never gonna let anything happen to a project. You're going to see it to the finish line. And I was like, awesome, that's great. And that's how we got financing on this building. Another thing about social media is Who's heard of BiggerPockets, right? So I'm going to be emceeing BiggerPockets Conference 2023. Orlando, I know it's pretty sick. There's thousands of people on social media, but they picked me. I don't know what they're thinking, but I'm gonna bring it. And social media really has helped put me on those large stages. And this is how it comes back. I found the best deals off those, of, you know, just being on stage. I found incredible investors that invest in my deals. I was asked to speak at the best ever conference last year. Anyone know of the best ever conference? Yeah, okay. So the Best Ever Conference is to commercial multifamily investing, that as the BiggerPockets Conference is to single-family residential. The Best Ever Conference is the OG of conferences. They've been around for 10 years and 1,200 people show up. And these are the most high-net-worth individuals across the country. They're all in this one space. And I was talking to this group. I finished my session and come off stage, and the guy that puts this together is a guy called Joe Fairless.. And Joe Fairless is amazing. He has, I think, a billion assets under management. He's been doing real estate for a really long time and invests in other people's deals. And now he's just a passive LP on people's deals. So I was like, okay, Joe's amazing. And Joe approaches me and says, hey, I hear you're syndicating a multifamily in Seattle. Can I invest in that? And I was like, hell no, that's amazing. And I was like, I'm so sorry, Joe, but my fund is now closed. And he's like, well, just, you know, email your investors and see if someone wants to pull out and I'll invest. And I was like, I can't do that. And then I went to lunch and I came back and I was like, that was Joe Ferris. Like, I want Joe to invest in my deals. So I went back to Joe and I said, Joe, you know what, we'll take your money. Next day he wired $100 grand, all because I spoke on a stage All because I had a LinkedIn presence and all because someone saw me and said I belong on stage at the Best Ever Conference. Crazy. Okay, last thing. Have so much faith in delayed gratification. You've heard many speakers speak today. Cody and Christian Osgood, Savannah Osgood. No offense, you guys aren't rich today. You're going to be fucking rich in a couple of years. And that's because they're not buying deals to sell them tomorrow and to make short-term money. They're investing in deals to make long-term money. They're investing in deals to create legacy. I own a pretty huge portfolio in Seattle, and that didn't happen because I just kept flipping properties. At some point, I had to change my strategy and actually start holding onto properties and doing crazy things with my properties. Additions take time. My land subdivision took me 4 years. My office building took me 2 years. I still don't make any positive cash flow, but I know that if I sold that building, I was gonna— I know I'm gonna make a huge, huge amount of money. And it happened because I just let it be. I just worked on it every day, chipped away at my problems, and Got to my solutions. And building a network can help, really help solve your problems. That's it. That's all I have for you.
