In this episode of the Common Objections series, Christian Osgood tackles the frequent hurdle faced by novice real‑estate investors: the objection of inexperience. He walks viewers through a step‑by‑step framework for turning a lack of track record into a selling point. The video begins with a practical exercise he calls the “circle drill,” where newcomers map out every personal and professional detail that defines them. Osgood then illustrates the approach with a detailed case study of his first 38‑unit turnaround—a property plagued by a homeless encampment, non‑paying tenants, a leaky roof, and septic issues. He shows how he and his young partner framed the deal to brokers, owners, and investors by highlighting their willingness to devote intensive attention, the concrete business plan, and the experienced ancillary team they assembled. The core pitch is broken into three pillars that investors evaluate: the property itself, the business plan (including tenant remediation, repair budgets, and operational cadence), and the operating team. Osgood stresses the importance of addressing the experience objection head‑on, positioning it as a feature rather than a flaw, and aligning incentives so early investors profit before the sponsor. He warns against half‑baked pitches that ignore any of the three pillars. The episode closes with a call‑to‑action to join his Multifamily Strategy community on Skool, where members can access calculators, resources, and peer support for overcoming objections like this.
Chapters
It's the objection of actually being new. There's a homeless camp on the back of the property. We're going to buy this with or without you. If you're not a closer, guess what? You don't get a shot at the deal. You're actually going to sell the deal based on your inexperience. You're gonna find your close rate goes way, way, way up. Hello, Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian, and we are back with another episode of our Common Objections series. This one you may have got stuck on because Especially if you are newer in real estate. It's the one where it's the objection of actually being new. On today's episode, I'm gonna share exactly how you overcome this, how you build confidence in brokers, in owners, in the people that you're speaking to, in investors. But this is a very common thing when you are new and you're trying to figure out what the heck is my pitch when I can't rely on the experience and everything that I've done. Almost everyone has been there. I've certainly been through it. I'm gonna guide you through exactly what you do to frame this pitch. So when you're new, A big piece of this is telling the story correctly. What is the actual pitch when you can't rely on anything that you have actually accomplished? Very, very common problem. My goal is to walk you through this step by step. First of all, the easiest thing that anyone can do is map out the pieces that make you, you. If you've never invested in a single real estate property, write that down. It's part of your story. Where did you go to school? Where did you grow up? What sports did you do growing up? Literally just map out Spend a second. We call this the circle drill. Start with a little bubble that just says, this is me, and then branch out on the different things that make you individually you, your career, your experience. You should map this out. You always sell off of the story that is true for you. So I'm gonna give you an example, a very, very applicable example. The first deal that I ever did, 38 units. I was in my 20s. My business partner had just turned 20 years old. So it was basically a teenager and someone in their late 20s. We had never raised capital. I had invested in 2 duplexes. He invested in a couple of 12-plexes. We have this 38-unit and the thing is freaking rough. The roof needs some work. The septic needs a lot of work. That's not even the biggest problem. There's a homeless camp on the back of the property and a lot of the tenants were basically equivalent homeless people who weren't paying. It was a rough turnaround property. However, it was sitting on market for $2 million for a long time. Now in Washington State, especially in 2020, a price of, you know, basically $50,000 a door, was crazy, crazy, crazy low. But you have to be able to turn around the property. The normal objection that you would get right here is, okay, so there's a couple of young partners with very limited real estate experience. They've never done a project like this. And everyone has passed on this for the roughly 10 years the owners have tried to sell it. Why would we invest in this deal and this operating group? And so you always start with what's true for you. So I leaned all the way into the fact that we were newer in real estate and that this project was important to us. So here's a dumbed-down version, but basically the structure of the pitch. Look, here's the deal and here's the numbers, and this is why we believe it's gonna work. Like, first of all, let's start at the actual property level. This is a huge property. It's 38 units. Now here's the problem. It's been on market for a long time. In fact, this is why there's an opportunity on this deal. Everyone who's more experienced and bigger than us in this market has passed on the deal because there are different deals that they might make less money, but they're a lot less work. This property needs someone who is willing to give it the attention and work that it needs, which is why you want to invest with us specifically. Cody has limited experience doing this in an adjacent city on a 12-unit building, recently picked up a 6-unit building and has done the turnaround there. I've renovated a duplex, so we're not coming in completely inexperienced, but adjacent. Here's the thing that's different. I'm trying to retire my wife from teaching. She just got an injury. She's been in and out of work. It is really important to me that we knock a deal all the way out of the park. Cody is trying to retire his mother through real estate. We're not going to do that one duplex at a time. This is the project. We're going to buy this with or without you. We're going to buy this property. However, the reason that you would invest with us, or when we're pitching the broker, the reason we are the right buyer for this is because more than anyone else in this market, we are going to give this the time and attention and we need to make this work. How? Let me share with you the business plan. When you have a sincere objection, like I don't have the money, I don't have the experience, when you're honestly lacking something that other groups have, I lean into it as the reason that someone would buy with you, from you, however you're structuring the pitch. Don't try to avoid it. I see that done all the time. I've coached real estate for a long time. It's one of the biggest salesmanship things that you're going to make the mistake on is you go like, okay, hope they don't bring this up. So we're just gonna glaze over it and roll on down the pitch. There's 3 things people are investing in. They're investing in the individual project, in, they're investing in So like the property itself, they're investing in the business plan for the property. Where's it at today and where's it going? So how are they getting the return? And they're investing in the operating team to get them there. And a real investor is going to look at all 3. Is this a property, a project that I'm interested in? Do I believe in the business plan? And do I believe in the operator who's in the driver's seat? If you don't address the fact that you are lacking one of the major pieces that a lot of people invest in, It's going to come up. You're going to have a really hard time getting buy-in for the deal. You're also going to have trouble getting the deal under contract. If you can't pitch this to a broker, they're not going to believe that you can close it. They're not going to believe you can put together capital. They're not going to believe you can operate it, which means at the end of the day, if you can't sell it to a bank, you can't sell it to investors, you're not a closer. And if you're not a closer, guess what? You don't get a shot at the deal. I see people get stuck here all the time. Very common problem. I don't want you to get stuck here. So my recommendation, if you do Actually lack the experience. I would've already written down things that you bring to the table, but you're not gonna sell the deal on your experience. You're actually going to sell the deal based on your inexperience. Hit it head on. It's part of the pitch. I'm young. I have very limited experience in this. However, we've put together an awesome team. This is the property management company that I'm going to be working with to get this deal done. These are the contractors that we got lined up. With the experience of this team, we've built a knowledge base on how to do this. Here's our business plan of how we're going to execute. First of all, we have a plan on the non-paying tenants. Conveniently, at this time, it was the middle of a shutdown that I'm not still apparently not supposed to name on YouTube. But there's a thing that happened in 2019, 2020 that had a significant impact on the economy. You may know what I'm talking about. And that certain thing had a lot of government money available for people who weren't able to pay the rent. So part of our plan was, hey, we're going to go door to door, we're going to talk to tenants, we are going to start the eviction process on some, and many of them were actually going to get some government support. it and get them caught up so that they can actually start making payments. On the campus, about 70% of the people who weren't paying started paying once we got them the support they needed. The rest of the people we did actually end up cycling out, but we gave everyone, hey, here's the business plan for this piece. For the roof, we already have a quote. For the septic, we're getting quotes. This is the group that we're planning on running with for the septic, and this is the budget that we've set aside. Here's what we're doing for unit turns. Here's how often we're going to be there. We basically just presented a solid business plan. If you are a broker, if you are an owner, if you're an investor and you're hearing this plan, there's coherency. It just makes sense. It's important to knock out this deal. I believe in this deal. Here's the numbers for the deal. Here's the business plan for the deal. If I've already addressed it, it's usually weird for them to go back and be like, well, let's talk about your experience again. And if they go there, that's fine. You should be prepared for it. But generally speaking, once you are the one to bring it up, and that is a feature Not a detractor, easiest way to get through it. And by the way, this same pitch works fine with the capital as well. It's like, hey, the reason that I'm knocking out this deal, I want to get paid too. And so if you structure a deal where your investors get paid a majority of the money before you, make it so that you line up the capital. I know I'm solving a second objection here, but this comes up all the time. Make sure that the objective matches the incentives. If I make a lot more money when they make more money, very easy to pitch. Look at, This is a lot of work for me. You are making a lot more money than me on the front end of this deal, because you are investing in me early. That being said, I want to make money. You have my full attention on this because I really don't make much, or in some cases, really anything at all until we have a successful project. When you're starting, make the pitch make sense. What I see too many people do, and this may be you, is you come in and you're half-cocked on the pitch. Like, I love the deal. It's an amazing opportunity. Look at the numbers. You haven't addressed the business plan. You haven't addressed anything that you are lacking. And you're like, why does Does no one want to invest in me? You haven't given them a reason to invest in you yet. Don't skip any of the spots. Get to your 3 major pitches, the property, the business plan, and yourself. If you know that you're going to have an objection cuz you're missing something like experience, let them know why it's not a problem as part of your pitch. Just build it in, address it directly. You're gonna find your close rate goes way, way, way up. Uh, anyway, this is episode 2 of our objection series. If you're not part of our community yet, check it out. There's a link below to SKOOL, S-K-O-O-L. The Multifamily Strategy Community, where there are a ton of investors all over the country and we're all learning together. Tons of resources and it costs virtually nothing. I think it's like $2 a month or something like that. Dive on in. There's calculators, tons of downloads, tons of community, and we can help you get through some of the problems that you are dealing with in your business right now, such as objections exactly like this. As always, if you guys have questions or suggestions on next topics for me to cover, post them in the comments below. I like it when you guys help write this YouTube channel. So Drop a comment below, join the school community, and we'll see you on the next episode.
