How To Find Owners and Be The MOST QUALIFIED Buyer

That is a synopsis of exactly how I went from no money to a couple hundred rentals. Today we're talking about how to find real estate owners in your market and what to do when you actually meet with them.

Now, welcome back to the channel. I'm Christian. This is Cody. This is the exact strategies that we used to go from zero to hundreds of multifamily units in a relatively short period of time. Cody started about 4 years ago in his investing journey. I really started getting into multifamily about 3 years ago with a small single-family investment prior to that. But this is the strategy that took me from 4 units to 200. This is the strategy that I really— this is where you started.

This is how I started.

This is how you went from 0 to 12 with basically no money at 19 years old.

Now let's talk about how we actually find these people. There's a magical map called Google Maps. And if you've been watching us for a little while, you've probably seen our video, How to Contact Any Property Owner Ever.

And of course, you subscribe to the channel.

Yep, that you did. And if you haven't, you did it now. You can find anybody on Google Maps. You can find their number on Google. That's convenient. Those are basically the same places. But when it comes down to actually finding these people, you find a big building on Google Maps. You love the look of it and the aesthetic of the complex. And you give them a phone call. You actually get through the phone call and you meet up for coffee. A lot of people get stuck and say, okay, what do we do next? Mm-hmm. When you get to that conversation, Christian, what are some of the things that we have to map out?

Yeah. So there's part one, right? You know, you've gone through, you've got your coffee or you got your phone call, you've booked the meeting. This is where everyone gets stuck. You're exactly right. So when you're in this meeting, there's a few major points. First of all, you're going to recap your goals. You may have already done this on the phone call in a 30-second format, but now you have I would say safely a 2-minute period, still short, brief, but dive a little deeper into, hey, thank you for meeting. This is what I am trying to build specifically. So when I'm starting, it's, hey, I'm trying to retire my wife from teaching. We'd also like to move and get a house in Texas. It's been a dream of ours to leave the rainy state. I've been here for 31 years. That's what I'm trying to build. I'm trying to do it in multifamily and I have 2 duplexes right now. One duplex at a time, turns out, does not buy you financial freedom in any reasonable amount of time. I've learned this, and now I've looked at your business. I saw this building and I have no idea how to take out something this size. You have a little bit more time to elaborate than you do on a phone call. But again, very short, very simple. This is what I am trying to do. The reason you're wording it this way is you are just adding clarity to the reason that we're meeting. You're not coming in, hey, I want to buy your property. There's no ambiguity of when's the other shoe dropping.

You're just simply setting, this is why we are here to meet, and you're sharing your goal. People work with you based on the goals that you share. If they like your goal, they're more likely to work with you. Most people will get confused because they think they have to be super relatable when they're at this meeting. That's not the case. When I was 19 and I was calling up people that I had never met before, I couldn't relate to them, I didn't know who they were, so there's no point trying to be relatable. I had to share what I was trying to accomplish, and in return, they offered to sell me a lot of real estate over a long period of time. And fast forward 4 years, I bought a lot of their real estate.

Now, there's one question that you want to ask in this meeting every single time, regardless of where it goes. So functionally, you start with your intro, which is your goal. You're going to spend most of the rest of the time, about 80% of the meeting, is talking about how they built their business. So you're just listening. For almost the entire thing, asking good questions, but keeping the conversation going. You're going to close on some iteration of this question. Given where I'm at and what you've done, what advice would you give to me as a next practical step? And you could word that more efficiently, I'm sure.

To summarize it, you know my pieces now. I'm familiar with yours. How do I go about best repeating what you've done?

Love it.

That is a synopsis of exactly how I went from no money to a couple hundred rentals.

Now, this is the most important part. What does this actually look like in practical application? There's a million courses out there on how to make, you know, your 500 phone calls a day, how to knock doors.

That's not fun.

There's all these different ways, though, to buy real estate. In this model, why do we believe not only is this the most fun, but it is actually the best way to do deals? Um, the one of the first people you ever bought from, we as a partnership have gone full cycle. And granted, I want to be clear, this is primarily Cody's relationship in that he started this first. This is one of his first deals. And while the other owner knows, likes me, and wants to sell to me, this is because Cody did those first meetings.

And every single time we meet up with him, he's very clear about that.

He's like, I like you, Christian, excited to work with you, but Cody's my boy. Every single time. It's funny, but this is, this is why it's so important that every individual is doing these meetings. If you have a partner, and I think this is extremely important, you don't just have one partner who goes out and does the owner meetings for you. This is a skill that every single core person in your partnership needs to be doing on an individual basis. The Robin Hood Village Resort was a relationship that I primarily started. Now, Cody jumped in and lived there and built a very strong relationship But that is one where I sat down and did the owner meetings. We have other deals. We're working on a fourplex right now where they actually— like, Cody brokered a deal with them forever, or almost did, where it didn't come together. They happen to like me more. Different people are going to relate to different people.

Fact.

Yeah. Make sure that you are doing this stuff regardless of what your strengths or weaknesses are. You have to get this down. What does it look like on this one? Because this one, I know you know who I'm thinking of, and this is one of my favorite stories because of how it built our business together based on that initial meeting to where we are today.

Yeah, well, in, in Moses Lake, I ended up buying 12-plex, and I started learning from this individual. They started teaching me how to play the creative finance, how to seller finance our way into real estate. From that point on, I bought a 6-plex from them, and they kept teaching me more and more about cash flow. Building up equity. And through that relationship, not only did I buy a bunch more real estate and start learning about development, but I got introduced to more people that own properties adjacent to it. And they've sold us some of our most stable assets. And just over a period of 4 years, having bought that first property, having met with them standing outside the 12-plex, not only have I learned how to build a cash flow model that is scalable, but I learned how to build up equities and cash positions through development and through keeping things occupied, when to do renovations. And that's really been the foundation for everything that we have at Multifamily Strategy. It would have been cool to, uh, just have bought a couple rentals at a time, but because of this meeting, because of that relationship, whenever I've needed an opportunity or needed money or just needed advice, I've never been told no. They've always offered to help me out and move me forward, which then started moving us forward and really built out what everything that we have today.

Now, one of the really important pieces here that I think a lot of people miss is they get that initial meeting, they get that initial takeaway, and they go out and they might even do a deal with that individual like you did. What they miss is the part where you actually go back and you continue to develop the relationship, because that's what it is, it's a relationship. This isn't a transaction. So one of the things that they recommended very early was not now, But when you have the capital or the equity, you should put a pitched roof on this property because it had a butterfly roof. It's a valley roof that just basically traps snow in the winter.

Yeah, because when it snows, it ice dams.

It's awful.

And if you want to build a relationship at the highest level, it's really important to get a takeaway, apply it, and let them know that it worked. And so that's exactly what I did. Fast forward 2 years later, put a pitched roof on it. Cost a lot of money. But I got it done and they offered to sell me a bunch more real estate and that moved me forward and moved us forward. And they're going to be helping us develop. And that is a big step in the right direction for every goal that Christian and I have set out to do. We want to go build a bunch of real estate so we can have more cash flow and pay off all of our real estate that we have today. And we are well on our way of making that happen. Just from one relationship, just from one meeting, and following up and letting them know everything that they taught me worked.

And in just about every market, you have some players— and this is someone who has, I believe he's in the 70s for multifamily units right now, and a lot of them paid off. Yeah, and by the '70s, I mean, I mean, they're built in the '70s. Actually, a lot of them built in 2017, but he has 70 multifamily units free and clear without partners. He would not just sell that whole thing to anyone because if he's seller financing, he's basically saying everything I built, I'm going to convert into payments and I'm going to leave. He recently made the decision, hey, I'm ready to call it quits. I'm ready to travel the world. I've actually made my money. I've hit my goals. It is time to pass it on to the next few people. These opportunities come up a few times. There's another group of investors in the same town who are doing the same thing.

They're less—

yeah, they're a lot older. They have about 100 units and they're doing the same thing. Hey, we're going to unwind these. I have a 5-year plan. Let's sell them on a contract. You only get those opportunities when there's trust because both of them like to do relatively low interest. We're talking anywhere from 5 to 7%, 5 to 10-year notes, both of them 10% down on just about everything. You're talking low down, low to medium interest rate, long-term fixed rate debt for hundreds of units. Two of these relationships can absolutely retire you. One of these could absolutely retire you.

Yeah. If you get 100 units, average rent, like in that one case, average rent of $1,900, that goes a long ways for a lot of people.

If you're pursuing a transaction, you could get a transaction from any of these people. If you're pursuing the relationship, opportunities like these will appear where you have life-changing deals where you can buy things that no one else could have bought on a deal that no one else could have structured. The reason they'll do this is because you listen to them, you built their business around their principles, you automatically become the most qualified buyer for everything they have. And if they want stability and cash flow into their retirement, the person who they trained up to do exactly what they did is the most obvious buyer. And we have found that to be true again and again. And it's not just us. We've had, uh, Vlad was one of our early mentees. He has a relationship over on the other side of the country.

Caleb, Chuck, Ethan, Eddie. Yeah, they're wheeling and dealing.

Yeah, we have— and then we have a whole bunch of people in other markets. I just got— yeah, I got a message from one of our past mentees who I didn't even know bought a, uh, bought a piece of real estate. Just said, hey, hey, I apply these principles, just bought a huge mobile home park.

Logan.

Yeah, yeah, it is super fun to watch these, but those relationships You only get the big relationships, the multi-transaction relationships, with a well-structured relationship where there's actual trust and operational efficiencies.

Now, all that said, if you're still curious about a deeper dive on this, you can check out multifamilystrategy.com, and we've got a free course down below.

Oh yeah, this is a great way if you want to dip your toe or see what this is all about, how we actually structured the strategy and what it looks like after you get that deal in front of you. Click the course. It's 10 minutes long. It is absolutely free, no strings attached. Click that link down below. It's labeled free course and, uh, learn more there. Otherwise, just follow this channel, learn what you can, and we'll see you all on the next episode.