In this solo video, Christian Osgood addresses a common frustration among multifamily investors: the perception that their target market has run out of viable deals. He first offers a mindset “drill” – literally driving (or using Street View) around the market to recognize that many properties are still owned and transacting, reinforcing that the market isn’t dead. He then presents a tactical framework for generating momentum when deals are scarce. The core tactics are: (1) make 1‑2 owner/broker calls each day; (2) underwrite quickly; (3) double‑down on winning sub‑markets; and (4) expand the search radius to a 2.5‑3‑hour driving circle, focusing on 2‑6 nearby sub‑markets rather than scattering across many distant markets. He illustrates the approach with personal case studies – starting in Kitsap County (Bremerton, WA), expanding to Moses Lake (central WA) and then to multiple Texas towns (Stephenville, Abilene, etc.) – showing how a disciplined geographic expansion and concentrated scaling allowed him to acquire over 600 units. He warns against over‑diversifying across too many markets because of operational complexity. The overall message is that a combination of the right mindset, daily outreach, focused geographic expansion, and concentrated scaling will reliably produce new multifamily deals even in seemingly “dry” markets.
Chapters
All right, today we are solving some problems, a common problem that a lot of people have. I've chose a real estate market, I cannot find any deals, all the deals are gone here. Well, I'm going to give you two fixes. One of them is more of a mindset fix, but it's going to really help you put this in perspective. The other one is like a tactical way that you can actually accelerate this. Sometimes the timing is not perfect for your market to find that deal. It doesn't mean abandon the market, but I'm going to show you exactly what to do. And I think more importantly, what not to do to fix this problem. All right guys, welcome back to Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian Osgood, your channel host. Now, I bought deals in Seattle, in Moses Lake, Washington, over in Central Washington on the coast. Bremerton, Washington, and in Union, Washington. I bought in Houston, Texas, outside of Dallas, Texas, and Stephenville and Abilene. I've done this in red states, blue states, big markets, small markets. I have over 600 rental units. I've done this a couple times, and I have the answer for this particular question. There's a lot of people, I'll be like, hey, I've been looking at my market, all the deals are overpriced, I just can't get a foothold. How do you get the momentum? So first, I want you to do a quick drill, because if it's a mindset problem, this will fix it for you. Instantly. And I'm going to talk to you about like the tactical— these are the pieces that you need to do. So first of all, hop in your car and drive around the target market, assuming this target market is within driving distance to where you live. If not, hop on Google Maps and drive it in Street View. Literally just go down. What I want you to be aware of, just be conscious of, how many buildings do you see? Someone owns every single one of those buildings. They're probably not all losing money. You are not the only person who wants to own real estate. It is possible many other people in your market are doing it and buildings are transacting. There is a way. There's nothing those people are doing that make them special that you cannot do. You can play this game with or without money. So if you find the opportunities, you can break through in your market. However, there are certain markets where the timing is not quite right. So I'm going to give you a practical example from my portfolio. When I started, I selected Kitsap County. Bremerton is in Kitsap County. This is on the coast of Washington State. It's on on the water on the Puget Sound. Wonderful market. Pricing at the time was actually pretty good there compared to the rest of Seattle. You had a decent market, high population growth, beautiful area, decent pricing. I found a duplex. I knocked it out of the park with this duplex. Fantastic deal. And I was like, I'm going to double, triple, quadruple down and get set up, which has been my exact strategy through most of my investing career. Well, now I have this duplex. I've been hunting for— at the time it was about 9 months. I found zero other deals. I made an attempt at a 9-unit. I made an attempt at a 24-unit. We got close, but nothing broke through. Now, had I just kept focusing and hammering on Bremerton, within another year or two, I probably would have bought another deal, and we'll say it would have been 4 to 25 units, somewhere in that range. That's not moving particularly fast, and it does get frustrating. Now, multifamily, if you do 1, 2, 3, 4 deals a year, you move forward very quickly because you're adding a lot of rental income to your business. That being said, if you're in a market where you're just not seeing traction and you're legitimately putting in the effort, meeting owners, meeting brokers, here's how I fixed it. And you can do the same thing. I looked at more markets. I didn't look everywhere. I've seen people shotgun, like, I'm going to look in Michigan, I'm going to look in Indiana, I'm going to look in Missouri, I'm going to look in these low-cost markets, try to find something. That's not what I did. I went to the other side of the mountains, 3 hours from where I live. Bremerton was about an hour. 3 hours from where I live, town called Moses Lake. I had a friend who was buying properties there, Cody. He actually co-founded this channel with me years and years ago. Cody had 24 rentals at the time. He was about to close on a 6-plex, bringing him to 30 rentals. There's a duplex across the street from that 6-plex he was closing on. There's actually 2 duplexes. I bought one of them. His friend bought the other one. Excellent purchase, about $100,000, needed $35,000 of reno. I sold it for well over $200,000, a great deal. But I did one transaction in Central Washington and what opened up next, there was that 38-plex that we talk about all the time on the channel, that first seller finance deal. We knocked that out. 2 weeks later, 3 side-by-side duplexes. 6 months later, 2 triplexes. Then I bought a 12-plex, a 10-plex. We moved up to Ephrata and got a 5, a 9, a 12. We took over Central Washington. I got over 100 units in Central Washington. I started in my late 20s. By my early 30s, by 31, I had over 100 rental units. I had retired my wife from teaching. All I did was expand, and I started looking at 3 total markets. I started looking at a town called Shelton. So I went 1 county south of Kitsap, and I was looking down there. I went over to Central Washington, Grant County, started looking at Grant County, and I expanded my search into King County where I lived. I thought it was impossible there, but I found a 7-plex that we knocked out of the park as We had a huge profit on it, tripled our initial investment in less than 2 years, and we were able to do that. We actually did that really low down. We did that $50,000 down on over a million-dollar purchase for 7 units in just outside of Seattle. So there's like core King County, big city. We had more success when we expanded a little bit. Now, what you don't want to do is set up all over the place and buy one in Bremerton and one in Seattle and one in Moses Lake and one up north in Everett and one down south in Tacoma, because now you need different property managers, different systems, different processes. But when you find that deal, try to double, triple, quadruple down in that market. If you're getting too much resistance, expand a little bit. Now, I copied this when I went to Texas. You knew the same thing. I was moving to the DFW area, Dallas-Fort Worth. I drew a 2.5-hour radius around that and actually used AI to do it. I said, hey, literally draw a circle of 2.5-hour driving radius. Markets in there, Tyler, Texas, Stephenville, Texas, Granbury, Texas, Waco, Texas, Abilene, Texas, Sherman, Texas. What else? Wichita Falls. Larger cities outside of the main metroplex. They're small towns, but they're not tiny towns and they're easy to access. They're all within driving distance. I looked at all of them and Stephenville is where we found that first 25-plex. I did that owner meeting. We bought it direct from the owner, seller financed. Then I doubled down in Stephenville, bought a 26, a 44, a 76. And around that time, I stopped getting momentum in Stephenville. I cleared what there was to clear that was obvious for me to buy. I'd met the other owners. I have leads for other properties, but it's not the time yet. So since that market slowed down, Abilene finally, finally came online. I was trying to push for that market from the beginning. We bought 144 there, and within 2 months of closing 144, we bought an 80-unit. We're up to 225 units. It's now the most significant market in my portfolio. Take them out one at a time, but expand your radius a little bit. I think too many people focus on just that one town, that one market. You can absolutely succeed there, but it might not be the perfect timing. Expand a little bit. Not everywhere, but I would say 2 to 6 small markets within the area that you want to invest in, you're going to find a lot more opportunity. And once you have that breakthrough, you start getting that momentum. It typically doesn't take that long to get over 100 units in a specific town. You just have to push for that momentum. So the two pieces of advice here, and this, this will fix the problem for you, I guarantee you, whatever market you're in, this will fix the problem. First of all, get your mindset right, go just drive that market and realize how much there actually is to own there. You can do it too. Other people have gone before you. You need to get that context. So if you're struggling with that piece, just get out there and do it. If you're not making phone calls to owners and brokers, you're not going to buy any real estate. You don't have to blow up the phones. Make 1 or 2 calls a day and do it every day. Easy to do. Just add it— that you have a 10-minute project to your day. It takes 10 minutes to acquire real estate. Lastly, you may be a little bit too specific. Don't look at just one market. Expand your horizons. Do that 2.5-hour radius or even a 3-hour radius from where you're at. And if there's just nothing in that market, or you're in a really difficult market— you know, I have mentees who are buying in San Diego, which is super competitive. But if you're in San Diego and you're like, I'm not finding anything, look out of state and do the same project. Hey, I'm interested in this market and this market. Let's draw that radius, choose some submarkets in there, and let's start learning the rents there, getting comfortable with the submarket, meeting owners and brokers, submitting offers, and magically you're going to go under contract for a deal. I have never seen an exception to this. When people expand their horizons correctly, there are deals to be had. There's nothing preventing you from getting them as long as you know how to underwrite a deal, buy it where it cash flows, close it, you now own more real estate. That is the simple, simple answer. But it comes up all the time on our YouTube Lives. It comes up all the time for new mentees in my mentorship. Like, I'm just not finding anything exactly in my market. 6 markets at max. And these aren't like Chicago, New York, California. I'm talking submarkets. Do that 2.5-hour radius, choose 6 markets within there, focus in those areas. You will find deals. Absolutely guarantee you it will happen. I've done this all over the country. So a lot of my students have a huge track record of this working. But that is the answer you're looking for if you're struggling to find deals in your market. I hope this helped. See you guys on the next episode.
