In this episode of the Corporate vs. Entrepreneur series, Cody and Christian Osgood discuss how each secured their first real‑estate investment despite limited income. Christian, earning about $40K a year, bought a $185,000 two‑bedroom condo in Renton with roughly 5% down, using a roommate to cover most of the mortgage. He saved $10‑15K in six months by living frugally with his parents, performed modest DIY renovations, and sold the property after just over two years, pocketing an untaxed $80K profit thanks to the primary‑residence capital‑gains exemption. Cody, with virtually no income, pursued a larger opportunity: a 12‑unit multifamily building priced around $1.1 million. Unable to obtain conventional financing, he negotiated seller financing, securing the deal with a 10% down payment and raising $125K for closing costs. The property generated about $10K in monthly revenue against $9K in expenses, providing cash flow and capital to later sell and roll into even larger assets. Both emphasize the importance of finding a first deal you love, using creative financing, and leveraging that initial success to scale toward bigger investments.
Chapters
Hey YouTube, this is Cody and I have Christian back for this week's video of Corporate vs Entrepreneur. This is our new playlist that we will be playing once a week, and today we are talking about our first deal from different perspectives of having stability and not a high income at the time. He wasn't making— he wasn't making six figures, right?
No, I was probably making about $40,000 when I bought my first property.
Okay, so he was making $40,000 a year, $3,300 a month. And then I will be talking about how I got started on my first deal with about zero income, which odds are, if you're watching this, you had a higher income than I did at the time, and you probably had a little bit more money than me because I had a whopping $0 beginning. So Christian, if you'd like to share a little bit about your first deal.
Yeah, well, thanks, Cody. I love this segment for anyone looking at how do I do my first deal, because I think the way both you and I did this is just so vastly different., but anyone can do it. And I think the point of this whole segment for me is just do your first deal. Mine, I was making about, again, about $40K a year, first job, and I found a condo in an up-and-coming area near Seattle, a city called Renton, but it was $185,000 for a 2-bed, 2-bath condominium, about 1,000 square feet. And just needed to be updated. They had gross carpet and they had this disgusting red accent wall. It was a little dated, but other than that, a fine place to live. So for me, I bought the property knowing, hey, I want to start in rentals, but I don't really have money. I do qualify for a house with an extra room. I can have a roommate, which is a lot like having a tenant. I think the mortgage was about $1,100-ish a month. Tenant rented for $800,000. So he covered most of my mortgage, made it very, very cheap to live, mostly paid for the place. I think about 5% down.
So what did that cost you out of pocket?
I want to say, gosh, it's been a little while, but is it $10,000, $11,000?
Okay.
Maybe the closing costs, maybe up to $15,000 that I actually ended up having to pay to acquire this place.
How long do you think it took you to save that, making $40,000 a year?
Uh, let me think. It took me about— honestly, it took me about 6 months. I had the advantage of living with my parents at the time, so I was able to save everything.
Okay, living a very frugal life then.
I think I paid for my cell phone, a gym membership, and I pretty much lived off burritos and bagels at that point. So while chubby, I could save well. Picked that up, lived very, very frugally for 2 years, got married in that time. So moved, my wife and I kept the roommate for a while. I helped us pay down the place. And as we hit 2 years, you have this awesome tax benefit, which is when you live in a property for 2 of the last 5 years, you can sell without having to pay capital gains tax on up to I believe it's half a million in appreciation when you're married. So you can sell it and take all that appreciation. And that time, I knew it was going to be a little bit of a fixer. Fixed some plumbing issues, updated cabinets, just, you know, paint, handles, redid floors, redid my bathrooms. Simple stuff that anyone can learn to do on their cell, you know, just basic, basic carpentry and plumbing. And sold it 2 years and 1 day later for about an $80,000 profit, which was not taxed, straight into my bank account, which got me rolling on my capital for my first, really upgrades in my next house and gave me leftover capital to put into my first multifamily property. That's awesome. Yeah, not a bad deal when you're starting with little money. Little income, you look at what you can qualify for and how do you justify paying for it. In this case, it was having a roommate and even while married, keeping that roommate around for a little while while you figure everything out. But figuring out, find the property that makes sense and figure out how do I buy it. For me, I started small. I was able to do it. I could wrap my head around it and I just pulled the trigger and made it happen. Cody, you opted to start A heck of a lot bigger.
Well, I tried, but no, to Christian's point, the most important thing is finding a way to get started. You find an opportunity, you find a deal, and once you've got that deal, just like Christian had his single-family, he had that one door, he found a way to monetize it, a way to bring in income, and he found a way to buy it. He had stability from his job, he was making $40,000 a year, a little over $3,000 a month, and he was able to use that $3,000 a month to go qualify with a traditional lender. And that's something I didn't get to do. So I had to go look a little bit bigger because I needed more income to justify having to come up with money for a down payment because I didn't have it. And so that led me to looking in a little bit less conventional areas to where I was looking originally. I am born and raised in Tacoma, so I started looking at duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. That's how I learned to analyze properties, and that was in the Tacoma market. It was around Tacoma, Port Orchard, Bremerton, and I ended up drifting my focus over to Central Washington, and that's where the prices were a little bit lower. And I ended up finding a 12-plex. It was a small multifamily apartment building. And again, I didn't qualify for a commercial loan. And since it was above 4 units, I didn't get access to conventional financing. And so what that meant was I had to either raise all the money and pay cash, I had to syndicate it, which I didn't know how to do at the time, and I still am not doing that to this day, or I had to go and do what's called seller financing. And seller financing is where the seller is acting as your bank. They don't owe any money on it, or they owe very little money on it, and my down payment will give them enough cash for their little mad money. They can go to the casino if they want. It'll pay off any debts if they have any, and it allows me to take over the property. So I found a 12-plex apartment building. It was a little over $1.1 million, and I negotiated down to 10% down. Originally they wanted 20%, and That's where some people can get discouraged. They're like, well, I don't have 20%. Well, see what you can get it to. If you knew you could close the deal, how low down could you get it to? How convinced could you get the sellers that you were their guy or you were their gal? And see, maybe you can get it down to 5%, even lower than I did. But I got it to 10% down. I ended up having to raise a total of $125,000 to pay for all the closing costs, the down payment, And with a signature, I got a cash-flowing apartment building that made about $10,000 a month, and I had to spend about $9,000 a month to keep it. That was all in, paying for the down payment interest, paying for the loan, paying for taxes and insurance. And I am now, just today, selling that apartment building and rolling the capital similar to what Christian did, and I'm going to buy even bigger buildings. So that's an example of what your first deal can really lead to in a few years.
And again, I think the most important piece of all of this is the finding a deal that you love and figuring out how to make it work. And there's a— I'm sure there's going to be other topics that we cover on how we analyze deals, how to look at a deal. But once you know I love this deal. This deal is going to make sense, and you commit to that. You can figure out how to make the deal work. It could be terms. It can be price. It can be, hey, this is a place— I have to have a place to live, so maybe I put myself in it for a while. But however you utilize it, do your first deal is by far the most important thing. You can leverage that into— for me, it was a bigger house and spending capital for my next investment property. Cody, it was just trading up to a 38-unit building. Whatever you do with it, you can't make plays in real estate if you don't have property. So figure out what makes sense for you and where you're at, whether it's 1 unit or it's 12 units or it's a 100-unit building. Figure out what makes sense, fall in love with it, commit to it, and figure out how to make it happen.
All right, well, that is this week's video for Corporate vs. Entrepreneur. Christian will be back next week. We will film another video. I don't know if he's going to be out of town, we might have to go virtual, but we will find a way. As Grant Cardone says, creativity follows commitment. So until next time, have a great week and go get your first deal.
