Best Markets To Invest In For 2026

Hello and welcome back to Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian, your channel host, excited to join you live another day here in the studio. Today we're talking about some of my favorite markets going into this year and how you can find markets in your own area. I'm gonna go grab my mouse, which fell right as we started the intro music here, and we are now off to the races. As always, feel free to ask questions through any of this. I'm really excited to go into today's Uh, by the way, I'm going to also respond to some comments on my latest YouTube video on, uh, Subject To. So I'll go into both, but first let me start with today's topic and some news, uh, from the field. I always like to give some updates for Multifamily Strategy. Guys, we're still under contract for the office and it is going well. The deal keeps getting better and better. Uh, but Multifamily Strategy is going to have its own headquarters, which means you'll see a new and even cooler studio at some point. Uh, we're going to be running the podcast out of there. I'm going to be running property management out of that, but a big huge building the negotiation for that. They wanted about $5 million. The deal works based on its financials at $4.1 million. They countered with $4.4. I told them, hey, we can only do $4.1. Uh, my big encouragement to everyone— I mentioned this last week— but I decided on January 1st, or right around the 1st, hey, I think we need an office this year. It's time. I want to bring everyone in-house. We have enough employees. Let's do it. Well, 2 weeks later, we're under contract for the office. Uh, we're going through that process right now. 90 days, we'll be closing on that office. Uh, the same methods that I teach on this channel and in my community and all the stuff we do, uh, I do the same thing. I didn't have any contacts in office. I didn't have any investors just dying to invest in office. We went ahead and did the exact same steps that I teach on this channel. Now, finding a market— there's some really cool markets all over the country, and almost every market can work. Now, the rules of the game for finding your market is we need to invest somewhere where there is growing population. It is first and foremost the most important thing that could possibly happen. You have supply and demand. You're providing housing for humans. If you have less humans in the same amount of houses, pricing goes down because now you have less demand, same supply. If more people are consistently moving in, you have increasing demand. Now, in some markets, rarely, usually in large cities, in an upcycle in real estate, they'll overbuild. So if interest rates go down, construction costs go down, or there's lots of hype in a market, maybe you create too much supply even when you have high demand. Generally speaking, true 98% of the time, if you have a growing population, you will see rents increase over a sustained period of time. You'll see demand struggle to keep up, which is why I like to invest in secondary markets. So What you're going to do— the best market for you to invest in is the one that you have competitive advantage in. This could be the one that you live within driving distance of. It could be the one you grew up near, you have friends or family. If you want to compete, you want to make sure that you are not the least able to compete in your market. So look around you, and if you're near a large city, start looking at those sub-markets that are within driving range of that city. Now, I've bought deals in Houston and Seattle and DFW. I've done deals in major cities. I've done good deals. I've just done way more good deals and found way more money buying deals in secondary markets— Stephenville, Texas; Abilene, Texas; Union, Washington; Moses Lake, Washington; Ephrata, Washington. The areas that are around or within driving distance of major metros that have a few less investors, where you can come in and you can absolutely compete compete and dominate in these small to mid-size rental properties. That's where I made my first $5 million, is specifically targeting that type of asset, those type of properties. And that allowed me to move forward faster, build more relationships, and become the person in each and every one of these markets who people tend to go to for more deals. Today, 5 years after I bought my first seller finance deal, I have over 500 units. I'm a multi-market company. My property management company is getting larger every day, and it's not because I'm amazing. It's just because we followed a strategy that is repeatable. And so that's finding your market. Now, markets I find most interesting right now, of course, I'm super biased towards Texas. So if you're anywhere near DFW, not in DFW, but near DFW, say as far south as Waco, as far west as Abilene, and probably as far east as maybe Tyler, Texas. If you're in that big circle, there's so much happening. There's so much happening. Uh, there's areas of Florida that are doing really well. Just stay out of the major, major metros. If you're trying to invest in Miami right now, so is the rest of New York. They're all fleeing New York. Markets to not invest in: New York City, New York, right now. I've had some people on the podcast who had differing opinions on this. Right now, New New York hates landlords like no state has hated a landlord, or I guess no city. You'd still invest in Upstate New York. They are absolutely aggressively anti-landlord. I would wait for that to blow over. This never lasts. Different markets have tried this, different countries have tried this. It never pans out, it never stays around. So if you're getting in the game right now, I would not start in New York, New York. Still expensive, even if people are selling at a discount to get out because they're scared. I don't think the risk-reward ratio is there. Even if you have an amazing deal, you're inherently at a higher risk profile. Outside of that, the only markets you're avoiding are markets with decreasing population. If you're looking for a master list of the best places to invest, there's stuff in every market. I see it all— West Coast, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, the South. I invest heavily in Texas. There's opportunities no matter where you're at. Just find the markets where the population is consistently going up and you're not relying on one employer. We've all seen those little towns where it's like, hey, there's a meatpacking facility. It's growing every year. It's like, what happens if they leave? Does the town just die? And the answer is actually yes. So, you know, use common sense. But if there's multiple employers, there's a clear reason why population's going up there, and it's a place where you might have some competitive advantage, that's your market. Stick to it, become the person there. As we've shown again and again and again, I chose a deal in my backyard. The office that we're buying, 20 minutes from my house. Why? Because it's the building that I wanted to buy. How long did it take to find this? About 2 weeks to find and negotiate, go under contract for the office that we want. It's a 22,000 square foot building. We got exactly the price and terms that we asked for. We only had to ask twice. It's not rocket science. You can invest in your backyard. I promise, no matter where you're at. I'm in the heart of DFW. It's a very competitive market. Deals getting done, uh, and not because I'm unique, because we look online, we talk to brokers, and we negotiate, and away you go. So if you're looking for the right market, it's very likely your market, or it's very likely near your market. Sticking to your geography, keep doing what you're doing. I'm going to go dive into some of these questions here. I see one here. Continue to ask them as we go, and then I'm going to talk about that last video, the Subject To video, because we got some pushback on it, and I, uh Respectfully disagree with the feedback we got. Wow, did we tee this up well for the topic. How do you find the seller finance deals? You don't ask for them. It's the most important thing. You're not asking for seller financing. If you come into a negotiation, you ask for seller financing, it is like putting a sticker on your head that says, hello, I'm new to real estate, I have no money, and I'm not going to close. Um, if you ask about financing before there's anything to finance That's like going to a car dealership and asking them like, um, hi, can I have payments of $2,000 a month? It's like, for what? You have to have a product to line financing to. It's completely wildly nonsensically out of order if you start by looking for seller finance deals. And I'll explain this. You're looking for opportunities, deals. You're looking for something where a seller has some problem they're trying to solve and they're trying to off their property and transition it to you. Now, if in their objectives seller financing makes sense, then you suggest it as a solution to a problem. So now you're coming up with a path towards giving everyone what they want. You don't open with looking for seller financing though. I think it's a huge misconception. I actually just finished the chapter of this. I'll be, uh, later this year I'm launching my first book. I'm actually going to launch two books this year if everything goes to schedule. Book 1 is on creative real estate, not just creative finances, on creative real estate. And the key topic here is like, what are the seller motivations? And you should be able to go down the list and say, hey, if I have a seller, maybe they have 5 or 6 deals, they've been playing the game for a while, they probably don't need a large liquidity event, so they may or may not want to do seller financing. I don't know, it's up to them. But if they're communicating, hey, I'm not trying to create a huge liquidity event, I'm trying to manage my taxes, okay. Creative finance is a great way to do that. I'm trying to pass the portfolio on to my kids, but they don't know how to manage real estate. Very common motivation in older landlords. My kids are going to screw this thing up. They don't know how to manage the business. It doesn't even mean their kids are losers. It just means their kids might have become a doctor or something that has nothing to do with managing rentals, and they're like, I want to pass passive income to them. I don't want to pass them a lump sum of tax— or of cash, sorry. I don't want to create a huge liquidity event. I just want to create stability for my family. Boom. That's where we find the seller finance deals. It's relationships. And you get those relationships two ways. You talk to owners around where you want to buy, which is easy, and you talk to brokers, which is even easier. They're literally— look at who's listing deals in your area, talk to them about the deal, negotiate the deal. Don't just look at it as a good deal or bad deal. If you just look at a deal of, okay, where would this deal work for me, and have that conversation with the broker They'll realize you're a serious player and you know what underwrite, and magically those same brokers will start sending you other deals that are a better fit for what you just negotiated. It's not all that complicated, but people tend to do this by looking for seller financing, and what happens, to no surprise, you basically never find it. Seller financing is a solution to a problem that you uncover. It's not a, uh, you know, you're not looking directly for it. It's a tool in your tool belt that may or may not come out. Okay, I'm gonna talk about that. I see the other few questions come in. I'm gonna— I've touched on the subject 2 thing from our last video, and then I'll answer this subject too. I've talked a lot about my problems with it, and most people immediately jump to the due-on-sale clause, and I get all these arguments like, well, there's different ways to mitigate this, and you can sure insure against it, which by the way, you really can't the way that it's advertised that you can. And oh, we put all these insurances in place. The real problem with subject to as a clause is not actually the due-on-sale, even though it's a huge glaring problem of I'm not going to build financial freedom on a potentially callable note. It's like, why would I build a beautiful mansion on sand? That I did it. It is not a cornerstone key tactic for real estate. It's not an unlock free real estate. It's a way to buy dumpy, mismanaged houses with no equity. And that is the real problem. If you are going to get a seller to agree to sell you the property, keep the mortgage in their own name, continue to make the payments, and do this non-conventional thing, it's always mismanaged. It's rarely bought at a price where there's a lot of equity. You're levering as hard as you can. Uh, there's even an online guru who will remain unnamed whose like signature method is levering as far as you can subject to, and then stacking additional second position seller financing, basically coming in and levering everything to the absolute max. Here is what I have seen, and this is why I'm so opposed to subject to. It's marketed as a fix-all for getting into real estate with no money. A lot of the people who come into Multifamily Strategy— I do an onboarding call with every single mentee, and so as they come in It is like 1 out of 5. I bought a bunch of houses subject to, I have no equity, I borrowed on a credit card for them, the debt's coming due, I still have no equity, I bought 10 houses and I made $10,000 in 5 years. They now are saddled with debt, they're negative cash flow, they really don't have a lot of equity, and they got paid an average of like $2,000 a year to pull this off. They, they got nothing. Except for a whole boatload of problems, and now they have to do the maintenance and the tenants, and they're not getting paid for it. The problem with subject-to is that the type of owner or seller who will accept subject-to typically isn't the person who you really want managing the debt in the first place. That's the big glaring problem. And if you try to pull it off on a scalable business like multifamily, the bank is going to come in and call your note due. On all of my commercial loans, there's annual audits. I have to tell them who owns it any changes we made, release to them the financials. It's super easy to do unless you need to hide from the bank the fact that the property traded hands, which, trust me, if the bank wants to know if it traded hands, they can find it. That's the glaring problem with subject to. It's not even as much the due-on-sale clause. So if you guys want to argue the different methods to avoid the due-on-sale clause or the different workarounds, that's fine. I'm still not going to build a portfolio on it. I think the deeper issue is scaling subject to and actually making money— almost impossible. Now, scaling the company where you talk about subject to and helping other people do it, I can see how someone made money doing that. But actually building a business doing that successfully is high effort, high transaction volume, low income, high risk. All of those things— high risk, low reward. I'm out on that business immediately. Now, where it does work, and I shared this last video, I did a $4.5 million transaction. One parcel there had $70,000 of debt. We did subject to on a $4.5 million transaction for $70,000 with a clause that said, if this gets called, the seller has to pay it off and then seller finance the delta to me. They just add it into the note. It doesn't really affect me. And if they fail, I can afford to write the check for $70,000. I am not building a business that depends on a due-on-sale clause or a seller doing what they said they will do. I am using the pieces I have. If you use it as part of a larger transaction, that's a perfect place where, hey, it's a tool in the tool belt. Use it sparingly. That's where I'd use subject to. If you want to try to build a business off of those, uh, you're going to be joining Multifamily Strategy in about 2 years from now with a whole bunch of problems, uh, asking how you can scale out of your problems and buy apartments. That's— and I'm not saying this because I think multifamily strategy is the best thing ever, which it is. It's really just I have this conversation multiple times a month with people who are trying to fix this exact problem, and, uh, I really don't want to have to be a subject-to strategy recovery group. I want to be a multifamily group that, uh, is working with people who are happy with all their real estate decisions. We'll help you wherever you're at, but, um, that's my public service announcement for today. Let's go answer some more questions here in the chat. What's the best way to find equity partners? Oh, easy, easy, easy, easy. Structure a fantastic deal. Like, that's, that's it. Uh, here's my promise to everyone who's watching. There are no lack of people who want to make money in real estate. You are not the only one. And so if you find a deal and you negotiate it, don't worry about the money yet. The deal makes money. You're like, okay, cool, I found a property, $2 million. It's going to be worth $3.8 million when we're done. This is my first seller finance deal. Can I find $300,000 to close it? Now that I have a deal and I know how much money it makes, I know how it's going to cash flow day one. If I'm going to make almost $2 million, can you find $300,000 to get there? And the answer was yes. And it came in, in my 20s with no experience. And then the next deal, I needed to find $90,000 to make $300,000. Can I find 90 to make 300? If I believe that it's going to make 300, is there someone else here on planet Earth, of the billions and billions of people, is there some other human who also wants to make some of that money alongside me for this already packaged opportunity that I've put together? The answer should be yes. Also, I apologize, my nose itches and we're on a live, so I keep touching my nose. We're live. Oscar, got one question. May have ran out of questions at this point in time. I, uh, I believe that Oscar's been doing a great job of, uh, contributing. Oscar, uh, keep thinking more questions because you are a, uh, recurring, uh, character who I want to keep having questions every single week. It's fun seeing you here. I always look for the Oscar questions. Learned how to underwrite, but I want to verify I'm doing it correctly. What are the industry standard formulas to run the numbers? I learned from Ken McElroy's books, but double-checking. Um, so there's a few things that you do need to know. So you need to know net operating income, you need to know cap rate, and it's the least important one to know. You need to know it for future value, so you need to know NOI. You do need to know cap rate, but it's the least important. Your day one cap rate will change at day two when you start implementing your new management plan and your net operating income changes. So least important must know. Most important must know: debt service coverage ratio. That is a true metric of your total cash flow on the deal. That is how much money you have to pay your debt and to pay yourself and investors. Your total pool of capital, your stability, is dictated by your debt service coverage ratio. You must understand DSCR. Do not buy a deal that has a DSCR of lower than 1.25 unless you have the experience and the business plan and I mean both of those, to navigate the deal and to rapidly get it up. Do not start on your first deals with a lower DSCR than 1.25. It's unbankable. You can't transition out of it. If you make a mistake, you are stuck. You should hold your portfolio at a DSCR, debt service coverage ratio, of 1.5 or higher. Many of my buildings today are sitting at a DSCR of 2.0, which means I pay myself exactly what I pay on my mortgages. Now, realize I have in mortgages about $53 million of total debt. So I pay myself the same that I pay the banks on $53 million. I'll let you guys do the math. It doesn't suck. Debt service coverage ratio is your stability. It is. If you do nothing else, understand that one. The last one I would know if you're, if you're using creative finance, you need to understand loan factor rate. That's your principal plus interest divided by your loan amount. The delta, that's your true cost of debt. So your cap rate is your cash-on-cash return on all your cash in the deal. And remember, you buy deals in cash, just some of it's levered. So all the money deployed is making your cap rate. All the money you borrowed costs your loan factor rate. The delta between the two is your spread on debt. I won't do a whole lesson on it because I don't want to overwhelm anyone who's new to the channel. But if you have a positive spread on debt, that means every dollar you borrow, you make more money. Your cash-on-cash return goes up. You always want that to be positive. So only comes into play if you get to name your own interest rate, but it's how we always name the right interest rate for every deal. We factor for all of our actual true cost of debt and make sure that the more we borrow, the more we make. It lets you get the right leverage point for the right deal. If you don't know all those things, you're good to go. Ken teaches all of those except for loan factor rate. Oh yes, on the subject to thing, yes, there is one, one individual above everyone else who has branded very heavily off of the strategy of subject to. Um, that individual is a phenomenal Speaker, uh, very, very gifted storyteller. Uh, I— no knock on them at all. Amazing community builder, amazing marketer. I will say a lot of very positive things about the individual that I think all of us are thinking about. They branded off of a subpar strategy. It is what it is. I— what are you gonna do? That has a huge community. It's— the core strategy is a bad is a bad idea. He also does a lot of really great things really well and negotiates good deals. I'm sure you learn a lot of great things. Uh, the content is good. The base strategy that they branded off of, uh, subject to is not— don't— if there was one creative strategy in real estate that you could totally skip and just never learn, it's probably that one. It's the least used tool in my entire arsenal, and I'm so glad it is. Um, yeah, so there is an exception. There is an exception here. So bank can call the note due anytime unless specifically there's no due-on-sale clause. I actually have a seller finance note that does not have a due-on-sale clause. I can sell the property and still have the debt. The debt's not tied to the property. Very rare. Uh, it's just how we structured the note. It has a personal guarantee, so I'm still on the hook for the debt. I still owe the money., but I can actually sell the underlying asset. It's not actually the collateral for the loan. Uncommon, but in that case, subject to away, there's, there's no new risk to subject to. I keep the existing debt in place and I'll pay my debt and, uh, you take the property. I can seller finance the property. I can detach the debt from the property. So there are reasons why subject to could work. But again, that's an extremely rare debt product. It's a— the point of subject-to is not that it's a useless clause. There's a very clear use for subject-to every once in a while. It's— that's a ridiculously specific use. And that's where usually where subject-to actually makes sense is, oh, this came up and this makes a lot of sense for subject-to. Much like the Robinhood. We have a 3— at the time, $3.5 million note. $70,000 of it is subject to, and nobody cares if it gets called because both parties can pay. I know the seller can pay because I just gave them a million dollars down. Uh, I also know that I have the $70,000, so if they defaulted on their signed obligation, I can still cover them. It's all about foundation though, subject to, or any creative strategy. If you get too creative you don't want to destabilize your deal. The last thing— worse than building an amazing empire is building a fantastic business and then losing the business. You spent all the time, all the effort, you succeeded, you won, and then the business is taken from you. That is my fear of subject-to, is that that is something that can legitimately happen. More often on subject-to though, when I talk to people, time after time after time after time— I'm serious, this is just like a recurring theme of my life People call, I bought a bunch of houses subject to, they're not making the money, they haven't magically appreciated, I levered them all the way to the maximum and beyond, now I just own a bunch of houses and I haven't made any money. That is like, that is the story of subject to from someone who coaches a lot of people. I hear it all the time. I have never in my entire career— and I'm sure someone probably exists out there who's done this I have never heard anyone ever talk to me about subject-to and say, like, oh my gosh, I'm killing it. Beyond maybe they built a 2 or 3 house portfolio over a few years and they're like, these are doing well, I was really picky on these deals. If your goal is to own 3 houses and you already have a stable income, sure, but why not just learn to buy one apartment building, buy one 12-plex? You'd be 4 times farther with a third of the transactions. I just, I can't make sense of the strategy. I can't think of a good reason why you wouldn't do anything else, even if you got it to work. Okay, sorry, I'm rambling now. I'm stuck on the subject to thing. It's my, my, one of my life's missions: teach people to correctly use subject to and to not overuse it as a core strategy. It is a fringe strategy that sometimes comes out. How do you actually assess because I can read. Whether a market has become overcrowded by investors, uh, even if the fundamentals are really strong. I look at it like this: there's no— there's technically no such thing as overcrowded. It's how hard do you want to compete. If I want to compete in Dallas-Fort Worth, I'm playing against, you know, let's use sports terms. We're in NFL playoffs. I'm not really a sports guy outside of MMA, but Let's say, uh, football, NFL-level players. Your— the amount of skill and effort and time and track record that you have to put in to compete in the NFL is much, much, much higher than in other leagues or other levels of football. You're probably not going to want to play at the NFL level to start. You can compete there. There's no such thing as overcrowded. You can always come in and out compete people. It's how hard do you want to work to outcompete them. I have found that being the most talented manager and the most aggressive investor in a secondary market is orders of magnitude easier. So when I look at markets that are getting a lot of attention right now, that means big funds and big money with lower margins are competing in the space. I'm going to have to give up more to get in. So if you're looking at like, let's, let's take like Miami as an example. New York's crazy right now on the real estate front. I don't care what your politics are, it doesn't matter to me. Um, as a real estate investor, New York is crazy. Everyone universally agrees on this. I don't think there's a— I don't think there's a real estate investor who's like, wow, New York's proposals are good for us. So I think I'm politically safe making that statement. A lot of people are leaving New York, especially the rich, and they're buying in Miami. It's on the same coast, it's very business friendly. Uh, they're like, wait a second, we can have warm weather and business friendly everything? This is amazing. So they're seeing a bunch of migration. You're playing with people who can afford to overpay and beat you. However, you get a little ways out of those cities, 1 or 2 hours out of the city, opportunities start popping up again, and those same hyper competitors aren't doing this. So with very few exceptions, all almost any market you can compete in. It's figuring out where, where do you think you're going to have the competitive advantage. I know within a 2.5-hour radius of DFW I can drive to the property. I've built an unbelievably elite property management company. I'm so proud of the team that I have. I can outmanage anyone in a secondary market. I guarantee you I can put more boots on ground more experience because we specialized and we niched in exactly this. If it is anything but Class A, because I just don't do Class A investments, I don't like the risk-reward profile. Class C, Class B, all the way up to B+, I can outmanage almost anyone as long as I can physically touch and inspect the property. So for me, that's my, that's my advantage. There's no market that's too overcrowded to to be the best player in your market, but you do have to become the best player in your market. That's the, that's the key. So the more secondary and tertiary you get, the easier it will be to compete. Then you go, okay, how big of a stage do I want to play on? Which is, I think, a really personal question that'll be unique for each and every investor. Yes, structuring the deal, but who are you actually reaching out to? Brokers, uh, brokers and owners. Um, and I want to caveat this with, when I'm reaching out, not to sellers. Sellers are listing with brokers. I'm reaching out to owners of property. When I reach out to owners, it's for a relationship, it's to get coffee, it's to talk real estate. I've met— I've learned everything I've learned from interviewing owners. In fact, the podcast, which I recognize I didn't post that episode last week, I, I don't know, I didn't post an episode last week, I just didn't. Uh, but on the podcast, it's called the Owner Meeting Podcast because that's how I built my entire career. I interviewed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of investors who have done the thing that I want to do, and I gained as much knowledge as I can from them. That's why we run the podcast. That's why I run this channel. I learned by just learning from everyone I could. The biggest property managers, the biggest lawyers and law firms, the guys who took over their 30,000-person market and had 200 rentals. I learned how they built that business, and the business that these people built in 50 years, I built in 5. And again, not because I'm a genius, because they learned a lot and they gave that knowledge to me. So owners, best thing ever. Turns out they're already networked. You'll find deals organically just as a function of being around those people. Number 2, yeah, brokers. Call the brokers, talk about deals, negotiate the deal, and reach out to them. I, I don't like just the lowball everything strategy, but if they're not willing to negotiate on terms, you have to negotiate on price. And I get back to them on either the price or terms that make the deal work for me. So when a broker meets me for the first time, I clearly give them my objectives. We talk about the deal, not the debt product, not the money. We talk about the deal, we work the deal, and then I get back to them with, hey, I like this deal at this price. I'll let them ask the questions about money. The more questions you ask about the debt product or the flexibility of the sellers, the less credibility you have as a buyer. And I think that's fair because Who cares? We're not at the part where— what, what money are we talking about? We don't have a deal yet. I don't know the down payment. I don't know the expense. There's a bunch of stuff we don't know yet. So just keep everything in order. Out of the deal comes the debt products. The available debt products are available for the type of deal you negotiate. And after you get the deal on the debt, now you know how much money you're going to raise and what the projected returns are. So just keep them all in order, and you'll— what you'll find is brokers immediately recognize Oh, this is someone who knows what they're doing. Boom, they send you more deals. I, on my office hunt, I, I happened to go under contract for the first office I really wanted, but they showed me 5 other offices. I walked 5 other buildings. I actually went through the entire process. I shopped, but I landed that first call. I stuck to my guns on what I thought it was worth. They're like, cool, this is a real person who's really putting in a real offer. And then we shopped some more stuff. They're like, it opened up a ton of deal flow. So don't just call brokers and ask them for deals. Work the deals they have. Suggest how you'd make them work. They will recognize talent. And if you don't know how to underwrite a deal, that's your next step. Tyler, uh, referring to, uh, equity partners. So when structuring a deal, but who are you reaching out to? Uh, oh yeah, well, looking for— if we're looking for equity partners, equity partners are literally anyone. So I'll give you examples. Um, when I was 29, first raise ever, didn't know any of the people we raised money from at all, never met them before. Um, I talked to a— uh, it actually happened to be a broker. I talked to a broker who specialized in duplex, triplex, fourplex. He said, hey, I have a few clients who may be a good fit for this deal. They're looking for bigger deals and haven't found anything, and I haven't found anything for them. We called 4 people, 3 of them said yes. Capital raise done. Uh, next deal, we go under contract, 10% down, 3 side-by-side duplexes. They only want $90,000. I don't have $90,000. I'm still 29. I just raised $300,000. I spent it all on the building. I'm broke again. Next day, it literally next day, so within 24 hours of going under contract, I'm at Starbucks ordering an everything bagel and a vanilla latte, 12 ounces. And I hear someone in the restaurant talking to me or talking to someone else about losing money on a flip. And so I just kind of ease my way into their conversation because they're sitting at a big long table. And I was like, oh, I am also in real estate. Tell me more about this flip. And we just started talking. Turns out he made money on a flip, lost money on the second one, made a lot of money on the second flip, lost most of it in his fourth flip. And now he's sitting here being like, he's like, dude, I have a high-income job. I just want to double my money in real estate every 5 years. And I was like, dude, crazy. I went under contract for a deal that actually is interesting here. So here's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to retire my wife from teaching, so I'm looking to maximize my cash flow right now in my career. I don't care about the upside of this. I would love to be a multimillionaire, but right now I'm trying to build $10,000 a month. Crazy idea, but what if you had the upside of this deal? I buy you out at $180,000 in 5 years or less, and I get the cash flow from this deal day one. So I'll take the income for the first 5 years, you take the appreciation for the first 5 years, and if I fail to pay you back, I negotiated an amazing deal here. I'll surrender all of my equity to you. You just get to walk with the property. So you get the equity and the future cash flow. He said yes, deal closed. 2 weeks under contract, 24 hours to find the investor. That is— people like making money. It's not— when you have product that makes money, it's not too hard to find people who also would like to make money, is just the honest answer. It's anyone and everyone who has money, and there's a lot of money out there. If you notice, we keep printing it. I love that you network with current owners, um, and suck that knowledge out of them. Well, I don't know that I like the, the analogy of sucking the knowledge out of them. I want to think that there's a little bit of a give and take somewhere in there. But yeah, you are going to learn. Like, they give more to me than I, than I give in those conversations. It's absolutely true. Uh, my mission is to pay for the coffee if they will allow me to. Sometimes it's important to them that they pay, and just respect it and thank them. Uh, but most of the time I am buying them coffee. I am respectfully asking them questions about their business, and I'm meeting with people who are excited to talk about the business they built. I don't know if you guys have been around real estate people, but we love talking about real estate. Like, true real estate people, just like, they won't shut up. Their family is mostly not interested in them talking about real estate. When they have someone to listen to them and take an interest in their business, most people really appreciate that. I, I know I do. And naturally, yeah, as a function of that, they hear about deals too, they pass them my way. Oh, okay, here's a real question for the channel. Thank you. Okay, love MMA, only for a while. Who are your favorite fighters? So I've been, I've been watching. So, so I started, just for context, I started UFC in the Uriah Faber era. So like early UFC, this was back when like shows like The Mask were on where they're like they're recruiting fighters like Cowboy Cerrone out of like backyard fight clubs. So I mean, I've been watching MMA, uh, forever. I also have a black belt in taekwondo. I've done like— martial arts has actually been a— like, I've done this for 20 years now. My favorite fighters right now were both on the last card. I'm actually really enjoying Paddy Pimblett, mostly because he's freaking hilarious. Also He's really good. I like watching a young fighter going through the ranks. It's fun watching him, him run. Uh, I'm also enjoying watching Sean O'Malley, even though I've been less impressed with him lately. Even his last fight, he won, but it wasn't like— there was a, there's a moment where it's like, oh my gosh, could this guy be the next McGregor? He doesn't have the same knockout power. He's a great, very, very, very accurate fighter. He's a smart fighter. Uh, but, uh, those are, those are my favorite. Michael Chandler's obviously awesome. Uh, there's a lot of great, uh, great fighters, but that last card was actually really fun. If you guys missed that fight, uh, I am excited about this because I am a money guy. I don't like spending a ton of money on fights even though I can afford it. Uh, the fact that's on Paramount Plus now and we just get UFC for like It's just, that was really cool, uh, getting to watch a fight and be like, hey, this is part of like an inexpensive subscription and we just have this now. And oh my gosh, they just rocked it. One of the best main fight, uh, main card fights I've seen in a long time was the, uh, uh, Pivlet fight. Though I, I'm really not a fan of the eye poking that was going on there. So anyway, you guys will get me nerding out on MMA. It's the only sport I care about. I'll watch the Super Bowl Only sports team I care about is the Seahawks outside of MFA, so, uh, kind of fun that, uh, our Hawks are back and get a shot at redemption against the Patriots. Sorry, sorry East Coast, not sorry. Uh, really, really want to see the Seahawks just absolutely dominate this week. Um, but other than that, it's UFC for me. Also met Dana like 6 or 7 times. I love Dana White, one of the best people I've ever met. As far as, like, just business genius, hyper-focused on— really, really, really cool individual. If you ever get a chance to meet him, do take the time. Dana is worth getting to know. And just go through these. Oh, there we go. Yeah, no, I— martial arts, super fun. Highly, highly recommend. Good. Just good. Uh, one of the things I actually found— I'll close on this today— one of the things that I found that really helped me in real estate and business is I don't sleep well. I never have. Is optimizing everything else as much as I can. I stopped drinking alcohol completely a while ago, and Love it. I highly recommend. You can function with it. I don't think you should, just personally. You'll be more productive. You'll sleep better too. Uh, work out regularly. Find some sport that you do at least once a week with other people. Uh, more for mental health than physical health, but if you move and just do general basic discipline things, it makes doing the rest of real estate much, much easier. Uh, put yourself under stress, challenge yourself among all sorts of things. MMA is a great way to do it. Martial arts, but even pickleball. I mean, just choose something, get active and get around people. Highly, highly recommend. Um, okay, I'll close on this. I am running a webinar tonight, uh, as I tend to do on Wednesdays, and we are going over the basics. It's the creative finances, creative real estate structure. Uh, it is at multifamilystrategy.com/workshop. It's like all meat. There's not a— I'm not getting to like, like, oh, but we're gonna hold back like 6 or 7 secrets. And you have— it's an actual training. So I'm going to talk about like deep dive seller financing, give you deal examples with images, with numbers. Here is how this works. I'm going to talk about how to buy with a bank, $0 out of pocket. You can actually look through the deals. Here's how the deal works. Here's how the numbers were structured. This is why it works. This is how it works. Works. We're going to get into how to pay yourself to buy real estate. I paid myself last year $280,000. You can have that same active income while you're building your passive income. I'm going to show you the exact models and paperwork that we do to do exactly those things. And no, I'm not talking about acquisition fees. Uh, so you guys can check that out. It's multifamilystrategy.com/workshop. It starts at the top of the hour. I'll be in this room talking about all these things. So You guys are invited to that. Welcome to join that. Just register. I don't think I even put a link on this, so just— I'll say it one more time. Multifamilystrategy.com/workshop. It is an actual training. It's like 90 minutes, so budget your time correctly, but I would love to see you all there. Other than that, you guys have a fantastic week. Join our free school community if you want to get plugged in with more people buying more deals. We're seeing more capital raisers than ever. Start to join the group. So I'm seeing not just deal flow, I'm seeing more money flow through that group. I, I think this year— last year was $44 million transactions. This year I think we're going to top $100 million in transactions of just people networking on that platform. So if you're not plugged in there, it's completely free on SKOOL, S-K-O-O-L, Multifamily Strategy Community. Other than that, we'll see you guys next Wednesday. Have a fantastic week, stay safe out