My Wife and Real Estate - How We Made It Work

There's a reason I married Christian. Christian is not lazy. Christian does work. Christian can match me and I can match Christian.

Take notes and do work. Do another episode of the Multifamily Strategy Podcast. Today is the most exciting episode we have ever had, at least in my opinion, because I'm bringing my favorite person in the world onto the podcast. We're going to be joined today by the one and only Dani Osgood. Not only did she leave teaching, retire from her job, and join our companies, She massively out-earns me in all of the companies. We're gonna share exactly what she does, how she does it, and what it looks like to be a spouse in real estate, to join the companies and to absolutely flourish. I'm super excited. Everyone, welcome Dani to the channel. Hello, Dani, welcome to the podcast. You're finally here. You made the commute. Thank you. Yep, all 2 seconds. We're packing the house, so, uh, we are about to move to Texas, uh, to our dream home.

Yes, we are.

There is some traffic in the hallway, a lot of boxes, a lot to get through. So thank you for making the commute down to the pod. Absolutely. Dani and I have bought hundreds of rental properties together. We've started multiple businesses together in hospitality and property management and education and sales company. We've done a lot of a lot together over the last several years. However, this episode is not about me or us. This is Dani's episode.

It's about me.

It is all about you. So welcome to the channel. Really good to have you. Danny, for those who have not seen you or heard you on any of Multifamily Strategies stuff, I know you've had a few episodes on the YouTube channel.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about your backstory. Where did you start when you first got into real estate? Did you always know growing up that you were going to be a real estate investor?

I did not know I was going to be a real estate investor. I did think I was going to house hack with roommates pretty early on in my, you know, as I was planning everything out. But then I didn't have any other plans going forward from that. I was just like, I just don't want to pay for rent, but I just wanted to become a teacher. And that's what I did. I became a teacher, got majored in early childhood development, and I'm also in elementary education. And then I got a master's in special education. And so I thought I was going to plant myself. And then Christian came home and was like, I would like to buy a duplex. And I said, sure. Just don't have us lose the house. That was my only condition. And then he didn't lose the house and he bought the duplex. And then we just did it again and again and again, but not with duplexes, with bigger properties.

Until we bought enough real estate to finally lose the house.

No.

And upgrade to a bigger house. We're just about to put this, this house on the market.

We are.

By the way, we've started this whole podcast and the YouTube channel. All these businesses really started from this little room. This is a tiny side room. In our tiny little house in the greater Seattle area.

People always come over, they're like, you do all the work in this room? I'm like, yes, he does.

The little teeny studio. If you notice the empty shelves here in the background, we are moving out. We came in with a goal. We wanted to retire you from teaching, which I, I want to dive into.

Okay.

We wanted to retire you from teaching. We wanted to build a bigger house, move out of crazy state.

Yep.

And eventually consider starting a family.

Huh, that was not my plan. Sure, that could be your plan.

We wanted the possibility of having— we wanted the option that if we had a family to not start them in Washington State.

Correct.

We've succeeded on all three fronts.

Well, you succeeded on your dream side.

We're very close to child number one, but let's talk about teaching.

Okay.

So you were a teacher, you got your master's degree, you got your— I mean, you went through years and years and years of school for this. You did. You got your kindergarten class. Yep. What changed? At what point did it go from, hey, this is my dream job to, oh no, I wanna do something else?

COVID. COVID really helped open my eyes to a lot of the political things I was trying to not pay attention to. It also, a lot of people got kind of crazy as everybody saw. And I just couldn't vibe anymore. I was like, it's time. It's time to be done. And then Christian and I came up with, I think it was a 2-year plan to retire me. Yep. And then I got hurt at work, which, um, do we want to go into that fun little story or?

Yeah. Let's, let's, let's first talk about the shutdown piece.

Okay.

So you were teaching kindergarten online from home.

Yes.

Were these kindergartners, kindergartners who were like particularly tech capable where they were like, hey, do we get the Zoom program? We are ready to rock.

Well, no kindergartner would ever be like that. It's more the family setup that makes it possible. And I had a lot of families who, they were just trying to figure it out as we all were, but they had a lot of kids in their household and they were really trying to put the pieces together. So these kids were having a really hard time and it would— nobody was learning. It was me babysitting all day long. And it was hard too, because you were also in the house working. And we were also under construction in the house because we decided, because we're idiots, we had decided to redo our ceiling, redo our floors, paint the whole house. We just decided to go full crazy. And so that was—

The things that people did with the only stores that were open were Lowe's.

Lowe's and Home Depot.

Fun times. And in retrospect, great times in our marriage. Yeah. So we had a 2-year goal. Yes. Which was a huge change for us, by the way. I think we were just kind of buying rentals, meandering forward financially. When you hit that 2-year goal, it's like, okay, we actually have to buckle down. I remember the whiteboard in the kitchen, writing out our plan.

Yes.

What do we actually save for a month? How would one do this with the money that we have?

Yep.

Then you got injured. What happened there?

So I got injured at work and it was we thought it was gonna be like a couple weeks I was out and then just kept progressing where I was just like, I could not get out of bed. My back was pushed out of alignment. I think it was like 4 vertebrae that was out of alignment along with my hips and my tailbone. So I could not really move a whole bunch. So you were playing doctor a lot for me. That was very kind of you. Dr. Osborne. Has a good ring to it. Don't change careers. So you were just helping me out and it It was when I went back to work and there was no appreciation or understanding. It was just more like, ah, she's back. Okay, here's your classroom that we've completely totaled. Totaled in the sense of the kids were out of control again and I had to put back the pieces because they hadn't had a consistent sub for about 2 months. So that was really hard. And then also too, just all the political climate that just had shifted around that where they were like, you can't say this because It was this kind of kid and it's just, it's like, this is not what I want to be in and I'm not being valued or appreciated. So that's where I went to Christian and Cody because you guys were both in there. It's like, okay, it's time. So we made a 2-year plan, a 1-year plan or a couple, it was a few months, less than a year.

We took, so we were shooting for the 2-year plan and we're like, what if we can accelerate this?

Yep.

Within 11 months of buying the first seller finance property. I had left work, you had left work.

Yep.

We were full on real estate.

Yep.

After we bought that, we bought a 6-plex, then we bought a 7-plex. Yep. And at that point we founded our property management company shortly after buying the 7-plex.

You had already done the property management company before I came on.

Yes.

Yeah. Because that was right when we were buying the 38-plex. Yes. Right around the same time. Yeah.

So we had just founded that company. Did you know what you wanted to do when you quit, or was the goal just to like, hey, I'm going to get out, I'm going to figure it out?

The goal was for me to build my deck with my dad. That was the goal. And then to come back in and like work 3 hours a day. Ha, that'd be great. Work 3 hours a day and just kind of like pay bills, just make sure that you and Cody behaved. And now I do a lot more than just those things.

By the way, the deck turned out beautifully. I'll post a picture over on the Instagram channel.

It does come with the house.

It does come with the house. We are selling this house. If anyone wants a house with a beautiful deck built by Dani and her father.

Mostly my dad. Yes. He gets most of the credit.

I was not as helpful then because I was busy doing the part where we have to figure out how to retire the Dani. So I was, I would work through the day and build the deck. You guys got, you had this awesome few-month break to figure out what you wanted to do. And then you joined the companies. And I say the companies, it's really hard to define your role. Yep. I think a mistake that we made is I was really worried about what is Dani going to do in the company. So as a husband, I was like, let me try to create opportunities for her, which was a huge part of us buying the Robin Hood Village Resort. I was like, hey, it has a wedding venue, it has pieces where more people can be more active.

Let's give her a job.

Yeah, let's create a part-time thing where she can stay occupied and stay engaged and help move the business forward. Um, it is easy as a husband to think that you're being helpful. I haven't pre-screened this with Dani, but I'm going to guess that that may play into the highest stupid tax paid conversation at the end of this interview.

Winner, winner.

Hey, I guessed it. Spouses, if you go into business with your significant other, your husband or wife, if you go into business with them, it needs to be as a partnership.

Yep.

If you try to bring them on as an employee, it's not gonna work. It usually doesn't work. I know people who have done that, but they're like, their spouses are like super limited and part-time and they're not super engaged. If you want an actual partnership with your spouse, you need to let it be a partnership. What you've built as your role in the company, I think is incredible. You make astronomically more money for the companies than I do by leaps and bounds because you are responsible specifically for the renovation and leaseability of all of the units.

Along with Robin Hood.

Along with Robin Hood, which is also a large business. It's not huge, but a $4.5 million resort does have actual operations and a ton of income. That is, you know, the weddings, the events. There's a lot that goes into Robin Hood, the staff. Let's talk about the PM companies, the multifamily property piece. Where did you enter the company and what does your role look like today?

I entered the company because we hired someone who was supposed to be in charge of maintenance and didn't do their job. And so then we started figuring out as owners that our work orders were not being fulfilled. So then I got into the system and found out that he wasn't getting them completed. He was just notifying everybody that they were there. So we removed him from that position. And so then I came in and cleaned it all up. I got systematized. Sorry, I got systems organized. I got contractors in there. I got vendors that I still love using. They're my core people. And it just became really systematized where I was just like, I get a work order, I'm able to assess it, handle it, send it off to the vendor. They call and then they call the tenant, the tenant schedules, it gets done, I get the bill and just goes like it's just smooth. So then once that was figured out, because that did take some time, then that's where we started to keep adding me into companies because there's a reason I married Christian. Christian is not lazy. Christian does work. Christian can match me and I can match Christian.

Take notes, man. Do work.

It's— I got bored after a while, just like you would, and then we just started adding more into each company, and now we're not bored.

Yes. Well, that's a common theme for us, is that we've hired people in positions and we've, we've tried to build, uh, the company many different ways. And what we find is that you go through a lot of people to get the right people on the bus. There have been a lot of iterations where we have built a system and we find out, uh-oh, this person does not work in this role. As an owner of a small business, sometimes you have to put your best people who are already overloaded into other roles to carry that role. That happens to me all the time, that I was the Danny all the time. That happens with other key players in our organizations. Caleb Hommel, we do a lot of business with that kid. He slots in a lot of space, probably too many spaces for a 21-year-old, uh, but his ability to put in work—

he's a workhorse.

Yep. Uh, Corey our director of property management in Washington State. She helps out in a lot of different companies. She is just a fantastic, fantastic coworker. Being able to work with core people like this, sometimes they do get overloaded because you have to swap things around. It's a common story for us. We hired someone, we had to fire them, we hired someone else. It's not just a plug-and-play thing where you're building a business. What's blown me away has been your ability to adapt. Why is— I wanted to know if you can answer this question, because I wonder this all the time.

Trick question.

Why is a school teacher with a master's degree in special education so skilled at managing contractors and systems and processes? Like, yes, I get on a high level there's a lot of systems in teaching and there's communication with children, but on a granular level, there's basically— there's no overlap between the two roles.

That's totally false.

Okay.

So my everyday is like the classroom. I have my key players, AKA my students. I have my subjects, AKA my, my businesses. It's just how would we focus on each one of them at different times of the day and have them, you know, function. Like math was very different how I ran it compared to reading or writing in class, but the kids all knew how to manage it and handle it. Just like you and Corey know how to help me with certain parts of companies. And it's just like everybody just rocks and rolls and does their thing. It's just— and then as a teacher too, a successful teacher, as a teacher, by the time it's like January, they can step out— not out of the classroom, but they can step out of the everyday holding the hand, and every— all their systems are running. And then that's where you as a teacher then can actually like put your time back into certain students or certain things. Same thing with the companies. The companies are now running. I can now jump back in into certain, certain companies and go, okay, how can I actually help versus hinder? Because I'm— I would be hindering now if I was always a part of it versus just jumping in and helping out occasionally. That's how I see it. It's just the same thing. It's just how you organize it and how you put the people in their right roles and teach people the systems.

Is that how you get so much done in the day? Is it blocked just like you have math class, then you go to science, then you have your library time, then the kids go to lunch and you do—

Pretty much.

Yeah. Is you block, you actually do go in and block like, hey, I'm doing this thing at this time and this thing at this time.

Yep.

Do you have specific tasks that you put in your calendar there or do you just go like, hey, this, this category, this time?

It's in my head.

Okay.

So when I wake up in the morning, it's immediately Robinhood. I have to check in with my head of staff, my heads. That's why I call them because they're my head housekeepers or head laundry. And I check in with them. I say, this is the day, like, what's your plan? You know, put them in their position of power because that's what they are. They're the best at their job. I'm not good at their job. And they get the day rocking and rolling. They get their plans and I step out and they run it. And then I go to the next one. I go to property management, check the work orders, make sure everything is good, send it off to the vendors, do quick emails to the vendors, getting those systems rocking and rolling. Then I usually check in with you or have a meeting. It's just like the day just keeps progressing where I know what's happening next. I make sure I eat lunch. I always forget, but I'm there just like, and then it pretty much repeats itself again. And by the end of the day, 3 o'clock rolls around. I need to check in with my heads again at Robinhood, make sure this day went well. Was there something that happened that I need to be aware about? Nope. Okay, great. Thanks for your, thanks for the great work today, team. Go home. You know, you deserve it. PM rolls around, okay, it's now time for me to check in with PM. Just keeps chunking and chewing through the day. By the time I get to 6 o'clock, where then I can look at my household and go, okay, these are things I need to do in the household to help Christian be able to have a better day for tomorrow, okay, feed him, make sure the house is clean, you know, that kind of thing, laundry's done, those magical elves. And then it just like keeps progressing. It's the exact same thing as the classroom. I know what's happening in those hours. Now, yes, things might change around. In teaching, you have a set time for things versus this, it's a little bit more flexible and fluid, but it's still the same concepts.

Now, you may have— you glazed over this because this is something I feel like a lot of people don't have. Uh, part of the reason that we're able to do all the stuff that we do in the day, where you have all these roles and I have as many tasks as I have running the company, is for all my responsibilities. Uh, you mentioned the magical elves. This is actually incredible if you don't have this. We actually have a It's amazing. We have a table in the living room.

It's currently full of boxes right now.

Yes. What's really cool though with this table is if you do anything but moving boxes, they will magically disappear. Not only will dishes come off it, they will just appear in the dishwasher, completely cleaned, done. All I have to do is if I need something clean, just go to the dishwasher. We found the same thing with if clothes land on the floor. We have 3 rugs. I believe they're from Ruggable.

Yes, don't buy them.

Clothes hit them, disappear, come back clean.

No, sometimes you get mad because they sometimes even come back folded, but you also are like, that's usually clean. Christian likes to put his clean clothes on the floor.

Also true. You never know though, but all of them at some point show up folded back in the drawers where they originally came from, washed and done. Um, if you do not have an any of these items, you do need to find them.

Um, they're gonna get in so much trouble.

Seriously though, um, with all the tasks that we do, how do we delegate the house? I think there's really an interesting topic, right? Going into business with your spouse— some people love it, some people hate it. Um, when you have this, how do you run the business and who's responsible for what things? How does that look for you?

For me, but also for us. I think it's very much like, but this is your podcast. Whatever. You're part of it. Yeah. Same last name. For us. And I feel like this is controversial cuz everybody now wants, you know, everybody needs to be participants and, you know, help each other out, which is fine for someone else's marriage. For us, it's not what we do. You are the tippy tippy top of all the works. You get to deal with all the fun things, all the bullshit, all of it. I don't have to. Sometimes I call you and I go, you're handling this, I have stuff I got. And you're like, great, thank you. So how that works is I see Christian's at the tippy tippy top and it's like, okay, how can I take off of his plate? That's my main job all day long is how do I remove from your plate so you can stay focused on the companies to honestly make the most money and also to be the most successful person that you possibly be.

Yes, must make revenue.

Yes, that's how you pay for my lifestyle, which is expensive.

So important.

Uh, so it's like, okay, Christian's at the top, he's always working, you're always, you know, focused. You do get an occasional video game in, but like, that's— you earn those, you do a great job.

And so I try to put in about 12 to 16 hours a day is about the target workday for what I would like to get done.

Yeah, and you get a 30-minute session of video games, great, you did fantastic.

Overwatch 2, let's go.

So, but I see it as, okay, Christian is still working, it is 8 o'clock at night, I could be doing stuff too. It's not time for me to sit and, you know, just to chill. So I then go and grab things and like, you know, start cleaning the house or continue for like work, or ask you my question all the time is, what can I take off your plate right now? And so then you think, okay, what can Dani take off my plate? Because you have a ton of on your plate, you could totally delegate it. It's just, it won't get done as well or done at all if I have no clue how to do it. It's the things I can actually help you with. So, um, that's really what my main role is, is taking the things off your plate so you can focus on the bigger things and handling the things that I don't want to handle.

Which I think is really important with that teacher experience that you have, where you're able to categorize things and make systems. The goal that you mentioned earlier in a classroom was a self-sustaining classroom. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you don't have input. It doesn't mean that you don't make it better.

Self-sustaining ecosystem.

Yes. It's that things run when you're not there. And if you handed it off to a sub, everything wouldn't just fall apart by the time you got back. You actually have sustainable systems that can run without your direct input on a daily basis. Yeah. You've brought that into the businesses. One of the weaknesses I think of starting as a solopreneur is I bought, built a lot of companies with one partner and then expand to a few other partnerships. But a lot of it was one or two guys working on a business with no employees. The Robinhood adds like 9 or 10 employees depending on time of year. But we bought a resort that has a lot of employees. As we started scaling property management, multiple employees, and you start getting these hierarchies. Yeah, you get to a point as an entrepreneur where it's really hard to let go of things that you've always had a lot of control of. And it's almost, it feels harder to teach someone else than to just do it yourself. By Dani asking—

It doesn't take off your plate, correct? Exactly.

By Dani asking me the question, what can I take off your plate? It's not just her being like, oh, it's awesome, how can I help? Even though it is super helpful, it's Dani asking, how can I make the business better? Like you are doing too much and now stuff's not getting done. What things can I handle to actually improve and systematize? It's amazing having a partner like that. If you happen to be married to them, it's really convenient. Next question.

Okay.

Worst part about working at home with your spouse? We live in the same place, we work in the same space. There is no separation. We spend basically every working hour, like waking hour together, unless I'm off speaking somewhere, which you come with me most, but not all the time. On rare occasions, we work separately. 95% of our day. I wake up with you, I eat meals with you. We watch shows together, we work together all day. We work on house projects together. Biggest drawback to working with your spouse, what would you say?

When you are on the phone on speaker, pacing around the house as I'm trying to talk to my own vendors.

That doesn't sound right.

It does. I literally look at you and I say, go away, like mouth it. And you just look at me and get mad because I'm like, I also have an important phone call that I'm trying to make, or I'm on right now.

I have the part where we need to make revenue.

And as people have discovered, Christian's voice projects and everybody's like, what, what's going on there? I'm like, nope, don't worry about it. It's just my husband. He's, he's leaving now. And then, you know, I give you a kind smile and point and then you leave.

Talking over each other or finding space when you have a small house. We do have a small house.

Yeah.

By the way, we did the live and flip thing here. You talked about finding a roommate, building a place. Well, you found one roommate, me.

Well, so we had our friend Kyle that we lived with.

Oh yeah, well, we started with a condo that we did a live and flip on. You actually ended up doing the house hack, right? Where you had a tenant who helped pay the rent. We had a roommate even when we were married, which was crazy. What we discovered is around the time we got a dog. Yep. Not for us. So we bought this house for our Frenchie Charlie. Uh, so she can have a yard, and the garden was also for me, and a big blank canvas of a yard. Uh, we'll also post pictures on Instagram for you guys. Uh, we had a flat grass yard with an ugly shed that used to have pot grown in it, for sure, like 100%.

100%.

100%.

Um, it's gone now.

Not our pot, just to specify, not our thing.

Uh, I like lettuce, but not that lettuce.

Bought the house with that attached.

Yeah.

We tore that out. We built like a dream backyard for you because you love doing gardening. But we bought a house primarily, honestly—

For the dog.

Yeah, that was the conversation. We're like, boy, this roommate thing was working until we got a dog. Now this condo's too crowded. Bought the house, started our life in this house. One thing that I really wanted to share with other couples, if you guys are looking at getting into real estate, what has it meant for you fixing this house over 5 years? We did a live and flip. So we renovated ductwork, sewer, bathrooms, floors, ceilings, lights, electric, some windows, not all the windows. We're doing new French doors.

Very excited.

So we're getting those.

Very jealous of whoever's going to own this house.

I know, right? We're selling it.

They're going to have it.

Full landscaping, central AC, outdoor spa. I mean, you built like— oh, you built that deck. That is like an incredible deck. You really built something amazing. Uh, when you're starting in real estate, you're trying to move forward financially, how did you feel about the decision to buy a fixer-upper house, live in it, and go through these renovations over a 5-year period? I mean, that's a big sacrifice. I feel like a lot of people want to buy the nicer house or the new build. The decision to spend less and build the house over time, is that something that you would recommend other people do? Was that too much time lost? What are your thoughts?

I have a lot of thoughts now.

Yeah, live and flip.

For us, we like to pick out our finishes. We like to choose and we don't like to go builder grade. Yes, we're buying a builder grade house, but we also purposely put builder grade carpet throughout the whole house and did cheap finishes in the kitchen so we could do it later down the road. We like to pick our finishes. And so that was something I was like, I don't want to compromise. Even though we're not moving into a perfectly done house. Now, the house we did move into, it's not like it didn't have walls or something like that. Like, it was just old, outdated. It just needed— it needed some money poured into it and some love. So that's what we did. And I'm not— I was never scared of that because I also just done that with the condo. Like, we completely flipped that sucker from head to toe. So it was the same thing. Both though, kitchens never did So you owe me a kitchen.

So I have purchased you one in Texas.

Yes. We'll, we'll, we'll do that one later. Uh, so, but yeah, it was just, it was fine. I'm also not, I don't get scared by that stuff easily. It's way too small a thing to be scared about. I mean, the fact that I even get to have that worry is a privilege in itself. There's a lot of people who don't even have that. That thought. They're trying to figure out where their food's coming next or how to find shelter. And so it's just like the fact that I get to pick the house I want to live in, because I did, we drove the street and I was like, that's the house I want to move into. Only offer, we got it. That was, it was great. It was just a great experience. And like, yeah, it was 5 years, but like, I got to work towards something. That's something as well. Like, Whenever I see things in the house, I go, I remember purchasing that. I remember the, the work that it took to get that item. Even something as simple as like curtains. It's like, I remember when we were saving for the curtains and we were— because we were like, okay, we're gonna do the blinds at the same time and this is how much. And we're like pricing it out and we couldn't because we really couldn't afford it. Without saving up for it.

No, I think we had $5,000 of reserve when we moved into this house.

And then it went to $4,000 because our freaking dryer broke immediately. Or washer broke immediately. And that was very stressful.

When we say we built this from no money, I mean no money. We started with no money. We bought this house with $5,000 left over and saved month to month for every curtain, every, I mean, we built this It was like same with the businesses, really. We built the house the same way, one piece at a time with the pieces we can afford as we could afford them. But in a 5-year marriage, I mean, we built—

5 years in our marriage. We've been married for 5 years.

Yes, we've been married for 7.

Yes.

In those 5 years of marriage where we really started, where we bought this house, we really built the businesses the same way. We started several companies, even taking over the YouTube channel and getting this YouTube channel to where it's at. It's like this was done piece by piece with no ad budget. We just shared a story and a journey along the way. And it's been incredible with what's come of this, uh, with Multifamily Strategy, the channel, Multifamily Strategy, the, you know, the overall company and platform, uh, this podcast, just watching what this has become. It's really fun to get to share the story with other people. We did everything the same way. I think we learned principles on how to do the hard work of laying your floors, of running the electrical, I laid the floors in this room by myself. I remember that. I remember that you got this room done. This is a Dani original.

Dani special.

Yeah, Dani special.

Girls, you can do it. Just grab the tools. You got it.

Yeah. And we learned the floor is not all that hard to do. Like, once you know how to do it, then you know how to work a basic saw, it's like, okay, boom. Chop it, lay it, done. There's a lot of things that you can do. Ultimately, what happened over the course of the last 5 years is that we spent about $125,000 on renovations in this house. We plan to sell at about $725,000, which in this area, very confident that that is the price this will go for. Maybe a little bit higher, but I think conservatively, if we hit our number, we essentially were paid $35,000 a year to live in this house. If we lived in 5 years and sold it for the $725,000, after the money we put into it. That is not a horrible way to live. If you bought a house, you did a little bit of work for $35,000 a year to customize your home to exactly the home that you want with your finishes. The one other thing we got to do that at least I personally love— this place, even though it's a small little house in a state that I'm trying to leave, the house feels a lot more like home when you have a story behind every piece. I know what's underneath the floors. I know what the joists look like. I know every wire, every every inch of every piece of the house.

Yes, I'm—

we know, and we built and we improved on it. We built our little piece of the— so if you're getting into real estate, I'm all for buying bigger properties. In fact, I really encourage people, if you're looking at buying a duplex, just buy a 5-unit building, buy a 12-unit building. Uh, it will make more money and you will accelerate faster, and it's not much harder to do. But if you're looking for like, where do I live you see people push for like, hey, just rent forever. I have zero regrets leaving the house hack and not doing another house hack. I have zero regrets buying a house and fixing it up and doing all the work ourselves. I thought it was a fantastic adventure because I got to do it with you.

Yeah. I'm not doing it again though, because we'll have little dude with us and I don't want to navigate that.

And we have more than $5,000.

Yes. That's the thing too. It's also that was worth our time back then to do. Now it's not. Now our plates are too full. It's not worth our time. We'd absolutely have to hire it out.

And that might sound a little bit privileged, but I want to backtrack to say like we started with zero. Yeah. The point of this podcast is to show people different ways that different owners started from wherever they start to somewhere else. Uh, the goal is that if you're listening to this today being like, wow, must be nice to not be able to afford to flip a house anymore. You can get there in not that much time. There's nothing special about Danny and I other than I think you said the one thing, which is there's hard work. Yeah. We put in the hours, but we put together a strategy in which one can acquire properties without having money and which one can build teams to fix them up. And we found if you keep making them nicer and charging less than market rent, people keep moving into them. And if you bought 'em at the right price, they all just pay you every month and you can just do this on repeat. We built a business doing that.

Yeah.

Building the businesses, Dani, what do you think is the number one thing that you are the best in the world at? What is the thing with Dani Osgood where it's like, because Dani is so good at this, I've been able to build the businesses that we have?

Well, as we've been talking construction, I feel like.

Yeah.

You know, the functional flip. Is where we've made our money, like really truly, which is also fueled the fact that you and Cody have been able to pull out money from buildings through refis because of what those buildings look like now. It's like that's just testimony to what I'm able to do.

So what does a functional flip mean? By the way, follow Danny at Functional Flipping on Instagram.

What does a functional flip To me, a functional flip is a flip that you don't have to pour all your capital into. You just pour enough into it where you would go in and go, I could live here myself. This is nice. I can rent this. This will make money. This will make me enough money also down the road to refi. It doesn't have to have the stone countertops or the hardwood floors or that kind of thing. It It checks all the boxes that say like, this is a great space to live in and for someone to raise a family in and be a part of. And that's what functional flipping is to me. So it's also not something that you break the bank on.

So it's creating a fantastic place for someone to live that is better than the renovations of the properties around it of the same class, but it's done in a way where it is budget friendly and you can actually charge less rent than some of the surrounding properties. We have virtually no vacancy when we occupy a building and we're finished stabilization. We don't really have a lot of move-outs. We have minimal turnover and they lease really quick when they're stabilized. And the reason is we have nicer spaces for less money and we've bought everything in bulk. We have a functional flip. You've improved it, to functionality, not to— I see too many investors buy the stone countertops, the stainless steel appliances.

They're beautiful. It's just not— you're not going to get your money returned.

Not on entry-level housing.

No.

If you spend $35,000 renovating a unit to raise rent $100, you've made $1,200 additional a year. It's going to take you a long, long time to cash flow that back. That was a horrible return on that investment, which you and Cody did that 5 times, which we did that 5 times before Danny joined the business and went like, huh, what are you guys doing? It's like, I don't know, I guess it's just the price these are.

I'm like, no, they're not. Not $35,000 per unit.

You took our— and granted, our average was closer to about $22,000. Okay, $35,000 was the big one where it was literally— there was no subfloor or ceiling.

That makes sense.

But when we did these, we were doing about $22,000 a turn. You got our average price in that building per turn to about $7,000.

Yeah, and they're nice. It's not like they're super nice.

They're really cute units.

Nice.

And guess what? They rent for the exact same. There is no difference in rent between those units and the ones we're renovating at 22. The ones at 22 might be a little nicer, but they don't rent for more. There was no additional return for the extra money. Maybe like $50, maybe some of them, maybe, yeah, maybe $100.

But still, like Christian said, it's not worth it.

Yeah, not a significant difference. Which is where we came up with functional flipping, which is something that Danny's been amazing at. And I maintain Danny makes more money in the companies than I do astronomically. Some of these properties we've had, you know, 7-figure cash-out events, and it's because we renovated and stabilized and improved them. We actually increased the NOI, which while I may have bought the deal and I may have talked about how to buy these on YouTube.

Yep.

Who was making sure that these projects are actually getting completed?

Yep.

If I can vote what Danny's best in the world at, better than functional flipping, you can just get a tattoo with the word finish. All of the projects and all of the stuff I start and all of the ideas that you have as an entrepreneur, Danny comes in and he goes, is the task done? Christian's a 95er. Yeah, I am a 95er. How long did it take me to finish the pergola?

Your parents finished it.

I built a functional pergola that worked.

Yeah, your parents finished it.

There's a last little piece where these little pieces go on the top. I love getting things to 95% complete. I'm almost done. I'm like, boy, you know what would be great? This other project. I got a great idea. I got a great idea. Danny makes sure that it's finished. If you have a unit that's 95% finished, how much does it rent for?

Nothing. It's not finished.

Exactly. You do the last 5% of all of the stuff in all of the companies Danny makes. All of the revenue for the real estate. If you don't have a Danny on your team, you need Danny. Danny, when we're learning how to play this game, you and I paid an abnormal amount of stupid tax. And I think it's because we didn't really have a mentor for any of this. You can attest to this. Like, we had some people that we learned from for sure on a lot of pieces, but we did not have one mentor or one guide through this whole process. We figured it out as we went for each piece, the acquisitions, the accounting, creative finance. As we stumbled our way through this, what was the highest stupid tax that you paid building the businesses to where they are today?

Me personally, or like joint with you and Cody?

For you personally, what was the highest learning tax for you? The goal of this podcast, by the way, is to learn from owners the biggest takeaways. I'm also buying you time to think by talking about this. So If you need to buy time, podcasters, tell a story. We started this podcast with the goal of— we built our whole business on owner meetings and meeting with other owners and learning how they built their business. I found the most valuable question was really, what is that highest stupid tax? Because that is the mistake I don't want to make. What was the most expensive thing for you? Could be emotionally, it could be time, it could be monetarily.

But when you were joining the companies, Danny Osgood, what was your personal highest stupid I think it was approving a quote and not understanding what the unit actually needed versus what the contractor wanted to do.

Do you remember how much the quote was?

No, I just remember it was just like, oh no, now I have to go back to my investors and to Cody and Christian and explain my mess up and how I'm going to fix it. Because that's also something is if you're paying a stupid tax, never not know how you're going to fix it or how you're going to swallow the stupid text. Because that is the biggest annoyance for people when it's like, I'm just giving you a problem. And it was more of just—

Doesn't even have to be a good solution, by the way.

Just any solution.

Have a path forward. Don't just present like everything's terrible.

Because then everybody goes up in arms. They're like, what's wrong?

What do you do with that? Yeah. Oh, I'm glad. Thank you for letting me know everything's terrible. Everything's— something bad happened and this is what we're—

this is what I would like to do to fix it. But I would love your opinion.

And it may cost us also money. It's— this isn't a positive conversation, but you don't have to come up with the next steps. Here are the next steps that I foresee. You're amazing at that.

So it's just, that was hard because for me it was not— this is gonna sound privileged. It was not around the money. It was the fact that I had to go to Christian Cody and our investors and say, I messed messed up. And that's hard because it's like Christian and I, we are very proud in the fact that it's like we don't make a lot of mistakes. It's just something we, you know, we pride ourselves in. And it's just like, oh, this is a, this is a blow.

When we make mistakes, we make sure they're expensive though.

Yes, it's the Osgood way. Um, but yeah, I just, that was really hard. Obviously everybody was like, thank you for telling me, like, let's figure it out together and stuff like that. It we did and the unit got turned correctly and we were able to move on. But it was just like, this could have been worse. This could have been a lot worse. So happy about that at least. Now the collective stupid tax was wrong for sure.

Yes. We talk about that a lot. Should not have bought hospitality when you do multifamily.

It's a totally different brain. It's a different field. It's a different everything.

Yeah. It's just a business that it just All of our businesses intertwine. Our sales and marketing work hand in hand with property management, works hand in hand with owning a bunch of rentals. Obviously, you know, if you manage your own rentals, that's kind of nice. We have Multifamily Strategy, which is teaching others the things that we wish we knew so we can avoid the stupid taxes and buy faster. We talk about creative finance in that company, which ties into everything else. It's all a nice little ecosystem. And then off to the side is The Robin Hood, a time-consuming—

She's doing great though.

Lucrative, operating well. I think someone could sincerely enjoy running that business. And if we had bought that business and a bunch of other hospitality, I think the systems would've been easy for it and the focus would've been easy and we could've scaled around that.

Christian's going to come back at me later for this, 'cause it'll also be recorded. I'm actually starting to have fun running the Robin Hood because people are in their lanes running the things, but it's still taking away from my time where I could be doing other things in the company slash getting ready for a baby. So there's a few things where it's like, and I think that's something to reflect too on, is like, even if you love every single aspect of your job, it's okay, what you might have to still give something because it's like you're still taking away from something really at the end of everything.

Final question. Since a lot of this has been about around being a spouse and a partner in business, you're about to take on a new job.

Same with you, buddy.

Yes, I am.

Not just me. Again, takes two to tango.

This podcast is about you. Being in the businesses and being an entrepreneur and being an owner in the business, an active working owner in the businesses, what does it look like for you? Becoming a mom? Like, what is that? You're moving to Texas, you're going to have a baby. Like, those are huge things. Becoming a mother, what does that look like to you while running all of these businesses?

I have no clue, Christian. I have no clue. I know how it gets here. I know how I like, you know, keep it alive, but I really don't know yet. That's going to be something I'm going to have to figure out with time.

This sounds like people may need to follow along Like, subscribe, share with a friend to follow the journey for the answer to this question. This is the part where we're supposed to plug the thing so you guys can help us support and grow this podcast and get this out to more people, because I do believe that creative finance and real estate is a way that people can massively, massively move forward. However, you can't do it if you don't know how, so get in community with people. It doesn't have to be a paid mentorship,. But join the journey on YouTube, follow the podcast, learn from all the owners that I'm interviewing, and go interview some owners in your market yourself. Uh, get out there and do it. But do like and subscribe. But we massively appreciate you helping us support the podcast. Dani, how would one find you online if they had a question for you on a renovation? They want to learn more about your story, they just want to follow the adventure. Where would someone find you? @functionalflipping on Instagram. Yep. Is there any other place? Not yet. Not yet. There we go. Stay tuned.

There's the keyword.

I hear that functional flipping may be something we're hearing more about. Stay tuned for that. Everyone, thank you for joining us on this episode of Multifamily Strategy. I've been looking forward to this episode for a very long time. Dani, thank you so much for joining. Absolutely. Guest, we will see you on the next episode.