In this video Christian Osgood explains the foundational rule that real‑estate owners know other owners and argues that success in creative‑finance investing comes from prioritizing relationships over chasing individual deals. He shares personal stories—starting with a modest duplex, scaling to a 100‑unit portfolio with partner Cody Davis, and leveraging contacts in Quincy, Washington—to illustrate how deep connections unlock larger, better‑cash‑flow opportunities and access to zero‑down financing. Osgood outlines practical conversation tactics (asking owners how they got started and applying their lessons), describes the tight‑knit nature of multifamily markets where a handful of owners dominate, and critiques the common “buy‑box” focus. The overall message is that building trust and a network of owners creates repeatable, creative‑finance deals, whereas a deal‑centric approach leads to endless prospecting with few results. The video ends with a call to like, subscribe, and share with anyone stuck on relationship building.
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Hello YouTube, it's Christian Osgood and welcome back to our Rules of Real Estate. I'm excited to have you here because today we're going to talk about one where a lot of people get stuck. The rule is people who own real estate know people who own real estate. However, how does this help you move forward when you're buying real estate, especially in creative finance and relationship-based sales? Well, a lot of people get stuck on the transactions. They call owners of real estate and they try to over-communicate what their own goals are. What do I want to do? What do I want to buy? Why am I a good fit for the property? And they chase specific deals. This problem runs rampant for brokers, wholesalers, and property flippers. If you're driving for dollars, you're looking for deals. If you're meeting with owners, you're looking for relationships. Now, a lot of people do get stuck here, even though they've seen on our channel, in almost every video, we say put relationships first. This is why. Sometimes if you're looking at a deal, how do you know that deal is going to be the best deal for you? Really, really hard to know. When I was first getting started, I was looking at specific deals. I ended up buying a duplex. It was a, it was a base hit, wasn't a home run, but it moved me forward. It cash flowed day one. It was a decent deal. I'm happy I bought it. I learned a lot. However, there was a— didn't know this, but there was a fourplex available in Central Washington that would have made twice as much, cash flowed 3 times as much, and gave me a better stronghold in the market that would end up being the place that I started investing. However, I was looking for the first deal to get in the game. I wasn't looking for the different relationships that moved me forward. The first big relationship I had scaling me up in real estate was my business partner and channel partner Cody Davis. See, he was 21 at the time. Just close on 30 units. I could have started with a building twice as big for about the same cost with a lot more cash flow had I invested in that relationship and listened to some of his ideas first. Now, if you are looking at scaling your portfolio, you want to do what Cody and I did. For a little bit of backstory, I started with 2 units, scaled to 4, and within a year of partnering with Cody, the two of us got a portfolio over 100 units. We're closing out a resort in the next couple weeks. We have a few more properties in the, uh, in the hopper that are really interesting opportunities. However, close your existing pipeline first before you, uh, take on new projects. Always focus on what you're doing. People who own real estate know people who own real estate. You close a deal, instead of looking for just the next deal, you just go meet new people. So meeting Cody Davis brought a few deals from his pipeline into my universe. We took them out together. Awesome. We scaled really quick. If you want to scale quickly, and you want to use creative finance as a tool, just go meet people and that's it. I had a meeting, gosh, it was almost a year ago now, a gentleman out in Quincy, Washington. This is a practical application. He had a whole bunch of stuff and he would have sold me duplexes, portfolios of houses, a whole lot of stuff. Instead of trying to learn how to buy exactly what he wanted to sell that day, I just kept coming by his office every time I was in town saying hello. Got to know some of his friends who are now contractors of ours today. Got to actually learn about his property management company. He used to do third-party management. Never would have known this, but he actually used to manage two of the buildings that we manage. And when we had plumbing problems on both of them, he knew how to solve it because he's dealt with that problem on that building before. Put the relationship first. He's introduced me to people who've helped us manage our portfolio. And do maintenance and just general knowledge on the property is extremely helpful. However, you meet with people like that, and if they don't have the deal for you, if you have a relationship, they understand what you're trying to build and you understand what they're trying to build. It's a small, tight-knit community. He knows other people in that market who are selling, who can be referred to me if I'm the right fit. And that's not going to happen if you don't have a relationship. If I went after his duplex, I could buy a duplex from him. However, build a relationship, you can buy a whole portfolio. Another piece of practical application, a gentleman named Gary, one of the first people that we bought from, one of the first mentors that we had, he taught us how to play the game. When we were meeting with him early, he shared how to buy deals zero down. He's referred me to other people. And because we didn't just dive into a transaction, stuff that he would've sold to us 10% down, or sorry, 20% down. He's selling to us for 10% down because he trusts us and wants to move us forward. He understands our position, and because we have a relationship, he believes that we can handle that property. He'll actually write those deals for us at the point where the cash flow— so we don't start cash flow negative. Really, really helpful. All this is, is getting more contacts in your universe. If you're trying to just understand them, you're going to ask questions like, how did you guys get started? When you first bought this property, instead of going, hey, I want to buy this, let's put it together, and pushing for that sale is, hey, I'm trying to buy stuff just like this. How did you get started? You listen to their story, you learn how they did it, then you ask a follow-up question: how do I apply that to what I'm doing? That's where you start to get creative. See, if you find a listed property online and you call about and you say, hey, are you willing to sell or finance? Probably a no, or else they would have listed it as seller financing. However, If you've talked to them about how they've scaled, how they've grown their portfolio, they understand the position you're in, it's a lot easier to talk about creative terms. And if they can't do it, they probably know other people who could. And that's where you get moved along the game. People get stuck because it's hard to scale in creative financing. There's not a ton out there that's listed as creative financeable. There are now, you'll find some deals that say seller financing. Then a lot of those, they'll ask for 50, 60% down. So how are we getting these low-down deals and doing it consistently again and again and again? We're not going after individual properties. I've said this several times on this channel, but I've never actually asked someone to sell me a property before. It's not something I've personally done. It doesn't mean I'll never do it. It's just never come up. When I meet with people, I just talk to them about what I'm trying to do and what they're trying to do. I learn what they've done. I apply that and I come back to them and say, "Thank you so much for teaching me this. Here's what I learned and here's how I applied it. It helped me move forward." If you're one of the few people who actually do that, absolutely, they're going to connect you with more people. You meet enough people who own enough real estate in a given market, the opportunities come to you. And if you want to scale, that's exactly how you do this. You want to get creative? Start with a relationship. You want to meet more people? Build deep relationships with the owners in that market instead of going after individual deals. I have a few friends who wholesale and they do really well. They actually make fantastic money. However, they own very little because they wait for the perfect deal and the perfect deal doesn't exist and they're looking for deals. Deal, deal, deal, deal. There's no actual, hey, let's go build a relationship, see how this fits into my pieces. Meet other owners in the market. You're always hunting for a deal. What you end up with is tons of phone calls, driving for dollars, lots of mileage, tons of underwriting where you're analyzing everything again and again and again. There's an industry term called— people say, what's your buy box? It's my least favorite term in all of real estate. My criteria are how do I own it, how do I never lose it, and is it a big enough project to hold my interest? If we can meet those metrics, yeah, absolutely, let's do it. People look for different metrics because you're looking at deals. You hyperfocus on what's the IRR, what's the cash-on-cash return on investment, what's the cap rate going to be. If you're looking for relationships, you're meeting people and figuring out how do we move each other forward. People who own real estate know other people who own real estate, likely in the same market. What you're going to find if you play the relationship game is there's usually in a smaller market, there's 10 or 12 people who own a majority of the multifamily, and there's 1 or 2 who own a lot more than the rest of them. There's usually not a ton of players. They all know each other. That's an insider game. If you can come in and just get to meet a few of them and you get your invitation to the club, you can start progressing extremely quickly. If you found yourself making a lot of calls getting shut down very often, this is probably why. You're probably overfocused on the deal and not focused enough on the relationship. Ask them those simple questions. How did you get started? Listen to what they say. And how do you recommend I apply that to where I'm at today? If you can communicate that, you can move forward extremely quickly and play the creative finance game. Again, I'm Christian Osgood. If you're one of the 27% who's watched all the way through the video, thank you. Like, subscribe. If you know anyone who's gotten stuck on this portion of real estate where they're not building their relationships, not getting introduced to more deals, go ahead and share this with them. I appreciate it. They will too.
