In this video Christian Osgood walks viewers through the acquisition, renovation, and operational overhaul of the 13‑acre Robin Hood Village Resort in Union, Washington. He bought the historic 1934 resort for $4.5 million via seller financing, initially underestimating the scope of work and partnering with inexperienced allies, which later cost him over a million dollars to buy out. Over three years he has transformed the stagnant property into a thriving boutique hotel by (1) restoring the historic pub and turning it into a booked event venue, (2) upgrading the wedding tent with higher‑quality canvas, chandeliers, and a new arch, (3) planting 20,000 deer‑resistant bulbs to create a seasonal garden that extends the wedding season, (4) highlighting a natural salmon run and planning storytelling events around it, (5) reconfiguring cabins—removing low‑performing units, adding two new tiny‑home cabins, and converting underused spaces into a store and vending area, (6) planning future campsites and a frisbee‑golf course pending permits, and (7) replacing inflatable hot tubs with solid tubs. He also discusses the operational side: remote management from Texas, use of Logify software to track revenue across platforms, and a touchless, self‑service guest experience. Throughout he shares hard‑earned lessons about creative financing, the importance of a solid partnership structure, thorough pre‑purchase financial modeling, and community re‑engagement through concerts, farmers markets, and collaborations with local groups. The video ends with a call to view the resort’s next phases as a hub for music, events, and regional tourism.
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Several years ago, I bought a resort for $4.5 million seller financed, and I made the mistake of thinking this would be an easy project. Today, 3 years later, I own this by myself without any partners, and we are revitalizing the Robin Hood. I'm going to be walking you guys today through some of the projects that we've done and more importantly, what we are doing to revitalize the Robin Hood. This Robin Hood project is one of my favorite projects I have ever done, and I am so excited to be back here in Union, Washington. Let's check it out. Hello and welcome to Multifamily Strategy. I'm Christian Osgood. Today you are here with me at the Robin Hood Village Resort. I'm going to walk through our 13-acre boutique hotel. I'm going to share the upgrades that we're doing to turn a business that was stagnant into a thriving boutique hotel. When we bought this, it lacked personality, it lacked the operations, and it required the owners to live on site to make their model work. Today, Danny and I run this from Texas, and it runs better than it ever has in its 100-year history. First of all, history. The Robin Hood was built in 1934. It has gone through a lot of changes over those years. In the last 5 years, it had seen a little bit of a decline. There was some maintenance that was not done. The reputation of the Robin Hood was the big thing that was really hurting us. They had shut down the pub and the restaurant. This used to be a community hub, and it had lost that feel throughout the years. So we're in the Robin Hood Pub. There's about to be an event here. This used to be one of the best music venues in the greater Seattle area. It's a little own secret, but this pub used to be packed with music. Now when I bought this thing, it was just an empty space that was doing absolutely nothing. The crew here with Robin Hood Revival has leased out the space and has totally booked out the event space. So we're about to have a packed event tonight here with the local chamber. There's going to be a concert and they're prepping to take this to a whole new level. But it's really cool seeing the new renovations come in and some of the amazing artwork that they're adding here into the pub. When I first bought the Robin Hood Village Resort, I thought that it was going to be an easier project than it was. I thought, hey, this is an amazing location, we're in the Olympic mountains on the Hood Canal. So it's right where mountains meet saltwater. It's the most Pacific Northwest place on planet Earth. However, it completely lacked personality, which means we have to reimagine the entire thing. Now, we added several events. Behind me is where food trucks go at some of our larger events. We do a whole farmers market through the resort, and we have concerts on the lawn out here. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people filter through here for multi-day concerts and events at the Robin Hood, which is fantastic through most of the summer. We have our wedding season, which is usually full pretty much every single weekend. Major upgrade. We're replacing the wedding tent. This is really old. I don't know if you can tell on YouTube, but this thing is very, very, very beat up. What we want to do in here is put chandeliers down the middle. In the summer, we have all the tables all set up. It's actually a beautiful area. We're going to redo the lights and we're getting new canvas quoted right now. So we're going to bring this all the way in. Brand new canvas, all season. And I'm going to add sides to the tent. Originally we were thinking about doing a hard permanent structure. The feedback that we got is people actually really like the wedding tent look. We just want to go a lot higher quality. So we're going to completely deck out this space, enhance it. But it's these little fixes that actually make the biggest difference, especially in the event space at the Robin Hood. In the summer we run our concert series here. So off the stage we have some amazing bands. Last time we had Christian Osgood from Sugarland as our opener, but we run multi-day events. Right here. We're going to continue to upgrade this space. This is an extension of our wedding tent project. Follow me to my favorite project we're doing though. We're slow in March, April, and May. This is our ramp-up season in the year. At the back end of March is when all the bulbs come up, and we actually have some here, but we're going to plant 20,000 flowers all over the Robin Hood. We're gonna do them in patches, in these stumps, in the grass— hyacinths and daffodils specifically. Why those? Because deer don't like to eat them, and pretty much anything else the deer are going to munch. When we bought the Robin Hood, it doesn't have a really unified theme. If you see all this in here, it's all just kind of plants put here and there. There's not a real garden feel to it. We're going to tie in some of the bigger plants, we're going to do beauty bark, but the landscaping at the Robin Hood, which is already a pretty incredible space, is going to be amazing. Our target as business owners is by having the peak season with flowers, we're going to extend our wedding season earlier And on the back end, we have a creek right over here that I'm going to show you in a second. That is a huge salmon run. We want 2 months added to peak on the front end with the beautiful garden feel and an extra peak month with the major salmon run here at the Robin Hood. We're upgrading the wedding ceremony area. We are looking at doing a new arch. This thing has been here since we bought the Robin Hood and it looks beautiful when it's decorated well. However, If you look at it really closely, it's not the most stable thing that we've ever had. This is going to be one of our major upgrades. It's a focal point for a lot of weddings. We actually have some beautiful, beautiful decorations on it, but doing a permanent structure that's going to be much more sturdy is going to be a huge upgrade. And behind the arch, we get to the creek. I'm actually really excited about this project. So we have a salmon run that comes right through here every year. Massive salmon run comes up our river out of the Puget Sound. They come down the Hood Canal, roll up our river. One thing that we have failed to do with the Robin Hood is let people know how cool this little natural event is. When we have marketed it in the past, a lot of people have actually come out here and stayed. We've done a bad job of telling the story. Part of being a resort owner is correctly telling the story and letting people know what's cool about the Robin Hood. So we'll be doing a much better job of telling the story, putting events around the salmon run. There's going to be a ton of infrastructure. Stay tuned for more on this. Believe it or not, one of the most important parts of running a business is you do actually have to to make money, which means you have to know which cabins are actually working and where you're making your money. We use software called Logify. Now, Logify will help me track all of our incomes, manage my guests, push out to all the platforms— Expedia, Booking.com, Airbnb, you name it. But I know which cabins don't perform the best. The two behind me are— do okay, but they're not great. What we want to do is massively upgrade those. So one project that we're hoping to do within the next year is actually put two brand new very nice tiny homes there. So massive cabin upgrades. There are some mobiles up the hill. See if you guys can see them here up the hill. You see there and there? Those are mobile homes. We actually used to have staff live in those, but they're kind of ugly and it's not highest and best use. What we want to do is actually take these cabins, which are mobile, move them up the hill, and then put the nicer cabins here. So we'll actually have more net cabins while we shut down the Robin Hood Suite and turn it into permanent event space and shut down Cabin 15 and turn it into our store, we're going to add 2 more cabins and move them up the hill. In addition, we get a lot of requests for camping out here. However, we don't legally have any campgrounds yet. I plan to fix that. Now, like everything else, if you add anything that could make money, the government wants to know about it and wants to approve it. So we're working on the permitting to add the camp spots, but we're thinking about doing it back where our trail system is. We actually have 13 acres here at the Robin Hood behind me. I just leveled a bunch of black bushes and trees clearing this area for a landscaping project. We're actually thinking about leveling it, barking it, and turning it into one of our campsites. As you go through the Robin Hood, we have this whole trail back here that will go off into the woods. We're installing a frisbee golf course back here, which I just got in, so I'll be working on that project later today. But as you go back in here, there's a few different locations that may work as long as the city doesn't think we're too close to our river that runs through over there. If you would have told me before I started my career that buying a $4.5 million resort was something that anyone could just do and you can do it on creative financing, I would have thought you're insane. That being said, I don't recommend starting with hard hospitality projects as your first deal. There's a lot of unknowns and boy, did I learn that the hard way. Another little project we picked up. We found a leaky pipe down here, so we're fixing it right now. But picked up this little excavator. This is $6,000 at Walmart, brand new. Not too bad. We're in cabin 15. This cabin is a problem. So this used to be a liquor store. They converted it fairly poorly into a cabin. This does less revenue than any other cabin in the Robin Hood, and we have a fix I'm really excited about. So right now we're all touchless, no contact resort. So it's almost like an Airbnb. You come in, you go directly to your cabin. There's no person here or lobby. We're going to add vending machines, high-end with good food in here, and Robin Hood apparel. We're going to put a big TV either on that wall or possibly over here on this wall that will cycle through the different events you can do, introduce you to the Hood Canal, and otherwise just greet you for Robin Hood. So you come in, this is your first stop. You can get food, apparel, coffee, All of that will be held right here on site. This will be an amenity instead of a space that is underutilized and put together really weird. Also, these beds are weird and too close together. This causes tons of problems for us. These are kind of cool, but they're about to be very cool. These hot tubs at the Robin Hood Village Resort, they're pretty nice. They're about $700, but they're not super fancy. They're high-end inflatable hot tubs, as high-end as inflatable can be. We're going to switch these with solid tubs. So one at a time, we're bringing in nicer tubs. We're talking jets, hard tub, way easier maintenance. The beautiful thing is this actually makes us more money. Not only is it a better user experience, but when we replace these, they'll last a lot longer and they're easier to repair.
Biggest mistake I made was the wrong partnership structure, and it cost me over a million dollars personally to buy out the other partners. Now, on the flip side, I do own 100% of the resort. It's going to get about another $500,000 $500,000 of renovation. This is going to include interiors and everything we showed here on the video, improved wedding spaces, potential campsites if we get them approved. We've already done the restoration work on the pub and we're expending that massively. We're going to do interior cabins. It's going to be a brand new resort. But I want to point out this took a lot of money and we started with $0 in the account, which was a huge mistake. So if you're going to do a similar deal, get the right partners if you're using partners, or if you're going to fund this yourself, really calculate the full cost. The Robin Hood is one of my favorite projects I've ever done. It's also been the most painful because of the way that we set it up. And now here I am in my third or fourth year of operating the Robinhood, finally getting to the projects I would have liked to do in years one or two.
So let this be a lesson to you if you're investing in these projects.
Come up with the entire business plan and the cost before you buy it. This should be obvious. It's what I preach in multifamily. I failed to do it correctly in the hospitality space. I massively underestimated the work and aligned partners who had no experience in this space. If you're watching just because you're excited about the Robinhood, the good news is It is going to become progressively more epic. It is already a beautiful place. We are done with phase 2 of our community improvement. We want to reengage Union Washington and the greater Hood Canal in a way that the Robin Hood used to do and more. Working with Robin Hood Revival to bring the pub back to the community is a huge win. We've also worked with Rob Hill and Hoodstock separately to run multiple multi-day concert events in the summer. I have a few more projects that I'll be announcing soon, but this is stage 2 of 4 of our community re-engagement our goal is that the Robin Hood remains a hub for music and events, and we're going to be doing some cool things to continue to expand that.
Well, thanks for watching.
This is another episode of Multifamily Strategy, even though we didn't talk about multifamily at all today. If you enjoyed this or want to know more about how we're running business, how you can do these projects, and how you can utilize creative finance to do deals with a better structure than I chose for this deal, like, subscribe, and I'll see you on the next episode.
