In this Whiteboard Wednesday episode, Cody and Christian Osgood answer five viewer questions about their real‑estate investing approach. They explain why they are now focusing on paying down debt after reaching their personal financial goals, emphasizing an "offense before defense" mindset: once cash‑flowing assets cover retirement and lifestyle objectives, they shift to reducing leverage to increase cash flow and protect their core portfolio. They discuss how they continue to acquire new properties in separate entities while paying off existing debt, aiming for a $10 billion portfolio. The duo describes their property‑management infrastructure, using a full‑time employee, AppFolio for accounting and tenant portals, and recommending Cozy/Apartment.com for beginners. They highlight their primary market—Central Washington, especially Moses Lake—while also holding units in Seattle. For value‑add, they detail renovation tactics (painting, line striping, new roofs, electrical upgrades, garden beds, fencing) that improve curb appeal, raise rents, and lower cap rates, enabling refinancing. They contrast flipping versus long‑term hold, advising investors to align strategies with long‑term goals and to use tools like BRRRR, house hacking, seller financing, and bank debt. Finally, they address market saturation, arguing that while many are transactional, relationship‑based selling and tackling overlooked problems provide a competitive edge, and they predict cycles where relationship‑focused approaches become more valuable.
Chapters
Hey YouTube, this is Cody. I've got Christian here for Whiteboard Wednesday, where we answer 5 of your questions every single Wednesday. So if you want to see any of your questions answered here live, put them in the comment section below and we will see you next week. To kick off today and start our Whiteboard Wednesday, question number 1 from Clayton Coyle: You mentioned paying off debt. Could you talk about why you might do that?
Oh, we did mention that in a last video. So we talk about doing offense before defense. You need to score and get points on the board before you worry about defending that goal. Cody and I are really, really close to our financial goals. Our initial reason for buying real estate— Cody wanted to retire his mother, I wanted to give my wife the option of retiring, and I want to eventually relocate somewhere warmer, start a family. These goals are now covered by the existing real estate that we have. We own enough to hit all of our reasons for buying real estate, which means we're considering playing a little defense. If you get to your goal and then you pay it all off, turns out you just have a lot more cash flow. Now we'll keep acquiring new things with that, but for our existing portfolio, we want to start rolling that down and create a solid foundation where we really cannot lose it. I mean, technically we cannot pay our taxes, but assuming you pay the basic expenses We want to create something impenetrable, and we are at the point where we are considering doing that.
Now, one of our core principles is when we're going out, we don't need to protect things, and we shouldn't protect things that don't actually get us to our end goal. Right now that we've built up a portfolio that can get us there, now we want to conserve and protect. And while we're paying off the, the current portfolio, we are paying off the debt by over 5 figures a month. That is a huge priority. But at the same time, we're still going out and buying other real estate in different entities and separating those. Some are just different partnerships to keep them separate from each other. But while we are paying everything off, we are still expanding. That is a huge goal for us. We called our shot for $10 billion. We are going there. And if we just paid off our debt and played debt-free, we wouldn't be able to get there. We wouldn't be able to leverage time as much. So we still have to keep expanding, but we are looking to protect what we've built so that our foundation and our core is rock solid.
I don't want this to take away from what we say though. Do not focus on defense if you are not anywhere near your goals yet. Focus on offense. Don't worry about your debt paid down yet. Make sure you're buying cash-flowing real estate that moves you closer to your goal. If you're starting in this game, you are not at this step yet. This is a new adventure for Cody and I. We are just now reaching that with Cody at 87 units and me at 77. Um, let's see here. We have from Edward "Hey Cody and Christian, I love the content you guys put out." Well, thank you, Edward. "Would you guys do a video on how your properties are managed and what systems are in place to deal with tenant problems?" Now, we can do a full video on this, but I did want to answer some of the basic questions here. Cody, how do we manage the properties and what systems do we use for tenant problems?
Yeah, so we do have a full-time employee who's also a part owner in the property management company that we created. And out of that we use AppFolio, and AppFolio helps keep track of the books. We've got people that do daily reconciliations of all the bank accounts to make sure all the books are squeaky clean. And tenants can put an online portal request where if there's something that goes wrong 24/7, they can reach out with written, text, or email, and we will get that and handle it 24/7 if we need to get a plumbing. Plumbing issue fixed or resolved, we can get that done pretty quickly and we just make the calls out from there.
Really, really simple. If you are starting in real estate, you can't even get an Appfolio account until you have 50 units under management. So that's professional software.
It's awesome.
We absolutely love it. If you're just getting started, Apartments.com bought a system a couple years ago called Cozy and integrated it into Apartments.com. They have great systems in there to screen tenants, to collect rent. It's a great place to start for low to no money invested in your management systems. As you scale, you'll need to get more and more sophisticated.
Our next question from Jimmy. Did he say he invests in Central Washington? Like Washington State?
Ah, yes. We included a couple of questions from BiggerPockets. I was on episode 605 last week if you haven't seen that. Watch it. We'll drop a link below. But yes, a vast majority of our portfolio is in Central Washington, specifically Moses Lake. We don't always just name-drop our market, but we have a strong enough foothold there where I want more people to move into the market, and let's all compete. So if you are looking for an investment market, feel free to join us in Central Washington.
We are your neighbors.
Yeah, exactly. Let's be neighbors. That is where we drop a lot of our portfolio. We have a bit in Seattle, We will continue to expand to new markets, but I mean, that's 70 of my units are over there.
Yep.
Let's see here from Mason Mattioni. I may be saying that right, I may not. I apologize, Mason, if I said it wrong. Thank you both for providing great insight. Thank you, Mason. What problems do you look for in large multifamily properties? How are you adding value to these properties, and are you flipping them? So a few questions in there.
Oh my.
What problems do we look for? Well, how are we adding value and do we flip?
A lot of the properties that I buy don't have great books. Could be low rent collection. I'm doing a lot more low rent collection today than I used to. Day one, my deals had to just produce extra cash flow in excess of what I'm doing today. I'm buying some more deals that have some upside beyond what they're actually producing today. And some of them break even, some of them lost money. The 38-unit was losing money. It was negative cash flowing for a little bit, and we were able to get the rents up, and now it's just starting to cash flow, and that's getting better and better every single month as we are increasing rents. And then second question, how are we actually increasing the value? Mm-hmm. Well, we're increasing value, number one, by doing some renovations, little things that we've done, you know, painting lot lines as far as where people are going to park, all the parking spaces, all the lines just vanished. Getting those all redone outside does a lot for the exterior curb appeal. Getting the building repainted can go a long ways. Right now we're doing a brand new roof and replacing all the electrical panels. We're going to put in garden beds for all the tenants and fence off some of their units so they have more exterior living space. Our goal is to increase the quality of living for the people living there. And through that, not only do rents get to go up a little bit, but the cap rate goes down because it's a more stable investment. With a better quality of living. And when cap rates go down, prices go up. They're inverses of each other. And as an owner, I want cap rates to go down. As a buyer, I want high cap rate, you know, buy high, sell low. I want to buy a high cap rate and hold it on a low cap rate because then I can refinance, pull some money out, and improve the property.
When we're renovating, the biggest thing for us is that we're not just slapping paint on stuff and calling it good.
Paint over the cockroach. There's a meme on that online.
Yeah, that is— that's not what we do. We eliminate the cockroaches. We put on the new roofs, new electric. I mean, we really do invest heavily in these properties, and that's really important to do. If you're going to do it, it is worth doing it right.
And we don't want to flip, to put that out there. Turns out that's just another sales job. Oh, we gotta buy low price and sell it at a high price. We could sell some of our buildings, pay off all the debts associated with it walk away with a couple of 7 figures and be done. But then, you know, what's the money for, right? If you want to own real estate, you're just going to take the money and buy more real estate. So why not instead keep the real estate you got, use the cash flow as your base, and if you want to solidify it, pay off the debt because the cash flow will do that over time, or just keep expanding, buying more real estate. And if you want to do flips, go flip properties that don't fit your long-term investment strategy. For me, I don't want to own a whole bunch of houses. So if I wanted to get a little bit of cash, I could go flip houses, take the cash and put it into apartments. But it has to be aligned with what you want to do for the long term. And flipping for us, as far as apartments go, it's not our thing. And our last question for the day from Miso. Can you do an episode? Oh, if you guys think the real estate investing space is saturated. In other words, do you think the real estate space is saturated?
All right. Yes and no. Yes, there are a lot of people in real estate, and I believe that question also asked about people trying to get a house hack a little lower than that. Yeah, it is very, very, very crowded if you are trying to wholesale, if you are doing syndication. That does not mean that those are not strategies that have their place and work. So if that is your business, awesome, good for you, I'm glad it's working. However, it is a very crowded field and there are very few people who are at the top of that. If you're going into what we do, relationship-based selling, there are not as many people in that pond. When you have a solid relationship with a few owners that not everyone has, it is not that crowded, it is not that complicated. You can do the house hack, seller financed, conventional bank debt— any of the strategies work within the relationships that you have. The more relationships you obtain The more pieces you have, the more deals you will do. It's not that hard. In relation to the house hack half of that question, is it difficult to find a house hack? I think for a lot of people it is right now. For myself, I just bought a house and then I bought 2 more duplexes that covered the mortgage. I'm effectively house hacking, but I just own my house and bought other real estate. There's a lot of other ways to do it. If you're just going after a house hack and that's all you're trying to do, it's one strategy. You should have more tools in your tool belt. And I recommend looking into BRRRR, house hack, seller financing, bank debt. Look at all the tools in your arsenal and find the right deals. The goal is to pick up real estate.
Yeah, and it totally is saturated. The key piece to this is look what everyone's not willing to do and go do that. Everyone wants to be transactional right now, and so the key to playing the game is to build relationships and prioritize that over the transaction. You're not going to get rich overnight, I'm sorry. And I mean, maybe you invest in speculative meme coins and you get rich and you made it, that's phenomenal, but that's not realistic. And our goal is to keep it simple and realistic. So in this case, yes, it's saturated, but look for the pieces that people are not willing to touch. One of the reasons I buy a whole bunch of real estate off the MLS, some people see problems with that I see opportunity. I'm willing to do the stuff no one else will do, and because of that, I've got phenomenal upside on the projects. Mm-hmm. Look for what people are not willing to do, which right now is building relationships, quality relationships. Prioritize that before the transaction, and you're going to be better off for it.
And it will shift. There'll be a time where everyone is calling to book a meeting instead of trying to buy a property. These things come in waves. Right now, relationship-based selling is just not what people are doing. People are not forming relationships. They're trying to out-market and using social media. That's fine. There'll be a point where everyone's calling to book a coffee meeting, and owners can't do 15 coffee meetings a day. There'll be a time where mass marketing and asking for the sale will probably do amazing, and you won't have as much competition. Today, that method is really, really saturated. That's not where I would start if you're not already established. Call some owners, book some coffee meetings.
There's—
they're not getting that call that often.
But that is it for today's Whiteboard Wednesday. If you have more questions you want answered next week, put them in the comment section below. Like and subscribe if you haven't already, and we'll see you guys next time.
