In this instructional video, real‑estate investor Christian Osgood shares the exact process he used to raise tens of millions of dollars through creative finance without relying on syndication or crowdsourcing. He begins by critiquing common online advice and then outlines his core rules for capital raising: always present a deal in the order of opportunity, security, then return; focus on cash‑flowing, long‑term fixed‑rate debt; use seller financing whenever possible; and bring on equity partners only when necessary, ensuring their capital is fully protected. Osgood illustrates the method with a detailed case study of a 38‑unit property he bought 85% seller‑financed, describing how he sourced three $100k equity investors, structured the equity split, and later sold the property for a substantial profit. He emphasizes that money is abundant but real opportunities are scarce, so the key is to have a genuine, cash‑flowing deal and a clear, concise pitch. He warns against common pitfalls such as pitching fake deals, over‑reliance on syndication or crowdsourcing, and having too many investors. The video concludes with a rapid‑closing anecdote (raising capital in 9.5 hours) and a call to action for viewers to apply the presented framework.
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I have raised tens of millions of dollars using creative finance, using private capital. I've done this without syndication, without crowdsourcing. I have seen so much content online and on TikTok and on YouTube on the absolute wrong ways to raise capital. I've seen risky structures. I've seen risky deals. I'm going to tell you exactly how you raise capital and how you raise a lot of it. By the way, if you're new to the channel, my name is Christian Osgood. I bought 100 rentals starting with $0. $0 was the budget. I did this through creative finance. My favorite tool is seller financing, but we've done it with just about every method in the book. Raising capital has a few rules. I'm going to go through those rules. I'm going to tell you how to raise it. I'm going to tell you what really I don't think anyone online is telling you how to do correctly. So first of all, when you are presenting a deal, it always goes in this order. If you follow the channel for any time at all, you've probably heard this a million times: deal, then debt, then equity. If you're starting with no money, congratulations, you found the right channel. I started with no money. Most of my friends started with no money. I didn't have friends or family in the business. So we had to figure out a way to make it work. In my mind, the hardest part was always, okay, what if I don't have the money? I have to figure out the capital first. And that makes sense, right? You don't have money. You're trying to work with money. I got to find people who want to invest in me. I got to line up the capital. And I've read a bunch of books that say to do this. And I've seen online real estate courses that say, hey, you got to get around people who have the money. You got to get around the money. If you don't have an opportunity and you get around people with money, they don't take you seriously. They're not interested in investing in you. And money is super easy to customize, opportunities are not. So if you get a certain type of money, say, hey, I'll lend to you at 10%. I can now only look at deals that cash flow significantly more than 10% if I want any chance of being paid. Now, while you can find deals that way, I'm only looking at this. Or someone says, hey, I don't really believe in multifamily. I like duplex through fourplex. And they give you all these restrictions. Well, now I have this really finite amount of opportunities. What you're going to find is that money gets printed all the time, especially in this country. Money gets printed all the time. There's tons of money. There are tons of people with money, opportunities, and people who know how to master the opportunity, present the opportunity. Those are few and far between. So you start with the deal, you customize the money. You need to understand this flow. Now that we understand the way that it works, let's actually talk about how we raise the money. So first, you— so we have an opportunity, we found a deal we want to invest in. You find the right debt product. Is it seller financeable? Seller financeable, customize your terms, try to maximize for cash flow. And now you're looking for either additional debt, or if it doesn't cash flow a lot, you're going to be looking for an equity partner. Equity partners mean you pay them— typically, you're gonna bring them on so you can pay them more, but in the future. You don't want to hit your cash flow. You bring on a partner, you share the journey with them. There's more upside on the end. It typically costs you more, but it buys you time. Rules of the game: deals must cash flow on long-term, fixed-rate, cash-flowing debt. So when you buy them, they need to make money every day from the day you buy them into the future. Positive cash flow is the lifeblood of your business. If you don't have cash flow, at some point you will eventually sink. So buy deals that cash flow. If you don't have cash flow, you're going to need to bring on another partner. The only ways you can really influence cash flow, by the way, on the front end, you borrow less money, you borrow cheaper money. So seller financing, you can affect that. If it's bank financed, you're gonna have to make sure you have an opportunity that cash flows and then pick the rest of the capital wisely. Now, a great example for this practical application, I bought a 38-plex, first deal I ever did, seller financed, seller financed. $1.7 million of a $2 million purchase. Now, that's fantastic, right? We've financed 85% of the deal. However, 15% is remaining. We bought it in a way where it wouldn't cash flow if we took on more debt. So we need to bring in more money. Here's what I did when I didn't have friends or family in the business and I'd never raised capital before. I went to a brokerage that I knew specialized in duplex through fourplex transactions. I didn't really know too many people there., but I'd worked with them before in a prior job. So it's someone, it was like a friend of a friend. I called and I asked this question, hey, is there any clients that you have who want to buy bigger deals? Because I was a duplex guy and I was like, I'm buying a bigger deal. This is really exciting. What about other people in the same boat? So I went out and I asked, hey, do you have any clients who have bought multifamily who want to buy bigger deals but don't have an opportunity? I was given from this firm 4 people who may be interested. I called the 4 phone numbers. 3 of them said, you know what, I don't want to do the full amount, but I'll do $100,000. Well, I only needed 3 people with $100,000. Here's what I found. When you have the opportunity, the money will come. So find the opportunity. Now, how do you actually pitch this? One, start with the opportunity. People got excited that it was a 38-unit building. The fact that we had to replace a roof, that there's a homeless camp on the back, that we had a plan to actually increase the revenue. Being a part of that mission meant a lot to people. Get them excited about what they're investing in before you show them numbers, before you promise returns. Get a general consensus, yes, this is the type of project that I want to do. If they're excited, their odds of going yes have already moved beyond 50%. Now there's two more things we have to do. More important than getting a return, which is the first thing everyone thinks about. Hey, I have an opportunity for you to make 10% on your money, 100% on your money, whatever the number might be. Before you get there, I want to know as an investor that I am not going to lose my principal. The protection of my existing capital is far more important than the potential growth of that capital. I need to understand why my money is secure in the asset. So on this deal, hey, here's the mission. We're going to do these fixes to the property. Here's the budget. Here's why we believe this is a fantastic opportunity and why we're the team to do it. Your equity in this deal, all parties, it was me and my partner Cody Davis at the time, business partner Cody Davis, we came in, bought it together. We're the operators. We had the opportunity. Everyone got 20%. I got 20%. Cody got 20%. Each of our 3 investors all got 20% for 100% of the deal. Now, today, I structure my deals where I own a lot more equity. I didn't know better back then, but we structured it in a way where it's like, okay, you were backed by 20%. We believe this deal should be worth about $3.1 million. That was our estimate at the time. So their 20% equity stake was enough to back what they put in and more. Fortunately, 11 months in, we actually appraised for $4.1 million, pulled the money out, bought the investors out. They were happy as could be. The deal went phenomenally. But the First thing and the most important thing, are they backed by enough actual equity to, if we have a major problem, they can get their money back? That is so important and so many people skip this step. Then you get into how are we going to grow the money? In this case, it was increased collections, do the basic repairs, physically be on site, take control of the management of that property and make that community better and safer than it's ever been. When we executed on that, the payoff was huge. That was how I made my first million dollars in real estate on one deal. We found an opportunity that we believed in, then we found the capital. And the way that you're going to present it every time is present the opportunity first. So have a real opportunity, then explain how they are secured. How are they backed? Why is their money safe? And then lastly, bonus, here's how we're going to grow your money. You're going to get to go on this adventure with us. We're all going to make a bunch of money. But at the end of the day, this is a safe investment and a good thing to be on. And this is the team that you want to put your money in. Now, to date, Multifamily Strategy has never seen a deal— like, anyone in our mentorship group has never seen a deal fail ever because of capital raising. So if you're newer and you're worried about where's the money actually going to come from, I don't have these connections, neither did I, neither did most people who have joined our program. This isn't saying like, oh, you need to be a part of Multifamily Strategy. I'm just letting you know, I have looked at a lot of deals. I've looked at a lot, lot, lot of deals in our community. We've closed a lot of deals in our community. No one has ever had a deal fall apart because of a lack of capital. It always comes together because there is so much more money than there are deals. This is the way that you raise money. It is not crowdsourcing. It is not selling people into this idea. It is getting a clear presentation of a real opportunity that is happening in real time. You present an actual investment. I have seen things online, and I'll end with this. These are the things that you don't want to do. I see online people say, hey, raise your capital first, pitch a fake deal and get investors interested. Now you have your capital figured out. Now go find a deal. Stupid. Stupid idea. You're going to burn through people so fast if you're pitching them fake things. What if the deal that you find doesn't look anything like the thing you pitched them on? You have to start from scratch. Don't pitch on fake deals. That's the dumbest advice I've seen. The other thing I see a lot of people do is syndication and crowdsourcing. That is a recipe to continue to do very low equity deals. The incentives don't line up correctly for your investors, and it's a way to get a lot of investors on a deal. Now, the best way to play real estate is to minimize your variables. You do not want a lot of investors on your deal. You want the right people on your team. The fewest people, the most aligned people are going to cause you the least possible problems. I've structured everything that I've done as either 100% debt when it cash flows, or we buy the deal and we do a joint venture. This is where a few partners come together with a pool of capital. Buy a deal, you typically have operators and capital partners. You come together, you make sure that your investors have, again, a good investment with secured equity, with a path to make a significant return that fits their goals. If you can do this every time, you'll raise capital like nothing. We have raised capital for a deal, actually had a capital partner drop out. We had 9.5 hours to close. We raised the money at 12:30 at night. I called someone. We made this presentation, we lined up the money. The money is never the problem, it's always the opportunity. Then you have to be able to present an opportunity, the security, and then the return. And if you can always hit that flow, you're going to raise capital like you wouldn't imagine. Hope this helped. If you like this, like and subscribe, share this with a buddy if you want to see the best method to really raise capital. I'm pretty sure we nailed this one on the head, and we will see you guys on the next episode.
