In this Q&A video, hosts Cody and Christian Osgood answer the most common questions from their YouTube audience about multifamily real estate investing. They explain that the "best" city to invest in depends on population growth and stable, diversified job markets, rather than a single location. They stress the importance of developing a competitive advantage and scaling to dominate a market. The conversation covers several creative deal structures, including seller‑financed resort purchases, segmented transactions, and a rare zero‑down tiny‑home acquisition, highlighting the risks of overly complex deals. Christian outlines his journey from owning four units to managing over 100 multifamily units plus a resort, describing the phases of build, stabilization, and optimization, and noting that lifestyle upgrades (cars, houses) come after reinvesting in properties. They discuss unexpected benefits such as extensive travel and speaking engagements (e.g., DealMaker Live). Book recommendations for investors are given: Brandon Turner’s The Book on Rental Property Investing, Lonnie Scruggs’s Deals on Wheels, and Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule. Finally, they share personal relaxation habits—Christian’s hot tub and sauna routine, Cody’s nightly gym sessions—while encouraging viewers to subscribe.
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Hey, you want to buy my tiny home? Christian said no. What if I seller financed it? Christian said no. What if we did zero money down? Christian said yes.
Today we're going to be answering the most common questions from our YouTube channel.
Welcome back to the channel. My name is Cody, this is Christian, and we get a lot of questions regarding the real estate and business space, so we're going to be addressing those today. Christian, what is the best city to invest in for multifamily real estate?
Well, the best city to invest in for multifamily real estate is Moses Lake, Washington. No, I'm kidding. It's actually going to be whatever market is right for you. There's a bunch of factors that play into it. The big one for us is it's going to be somewhere where population growth is going up because you are in fact providing housing for humans. You want to be investing in somewhere where humans actually want to live. Outside of that, it depends on you and whatever competitive advantage you have in that market.
Any market that you're going to take over, you need to be able to take over. Don't just buy a duplex. You need to find a way to absolutely dominate the area and have a competitive advantage, like Christian's mentioning, to have unit counts and have the scale to where things are repeatable for you. Now, what things do you look for in a city?
In a city specifically, I'm going to be looking at job growth and job stability. I don't want to see a city where it's all dependent on, say, one military base. While I love military housing, I want other jobs around and other stability because bases do move. We've seen a lot of that in Washington State, actually. So I want multiple employers, I want stable job growth, and then like we said earlier, the population growth is pretty much everything. So Cody, what was the biggest thing in lifestyle change between when you started to where you're at today?
Well, in the beginning I saw it as just a way to buy income. It was a way to push me forward, but today I'm actually getting to actually improve the assets which is really cool. We can go in, make the lives better for the people living at our properties, which I couldn't afford to do in the very beginning. How about for you?
Not much changed lifestyle-wise. Kind of like you said, that's the first thing that you do. We have a few phases, but you have the build phase, which we've done most of. You have the stabilized phase, which we're in the middle of, and optimize, which we're starting. When you're done optimizing, you can do those lifestyle upgrades. You can get that nicer car, that nicer house, but we haven't hit that phase yet. We're still fully reinvesting into the communities and our properties. So The biggest lifestyle change is that we get to reach more people with how to buy multifamily, and we get to impact more households with renovations and just being good operators. But we're not at really lifestyle change yet. I haven't changed anything except I added a hot tub to my house. I guess that's the reward for— the reward for the millions.
What is the most unconventional deal that we've ever put together?
We bought a resort For $1 million down, seller financed, and we got creative on pretty much every aspect of it. The actual purchase of the resort was technically 3 segmented transactions. Some seller financed, some written up contract for deed. I recommend against doing that as much as you can, because if it's not simple, it's not repeatable. Cody, what else about that deal is unique and what advice do you have there?
We have additional down payments of $225,000 every single year. So we have to be able to stack cash. Not a huge fan of that. I don't want to put more money into a deal than I have to, and typically that's just the down payment. Problem with this one is we have a down payment every single year. We also bought a tiny house zero money down. Someone reached out to Christian, said, hey, you want to buy my tiny home? Christian said no. What if I seller financed it? Christian said no. What if we did zero money down? Christian said yes.
Yeah, we got it for roughly what it was worth. There's like a market rate purchase and it's gotten no love. I still need to do super light renovations to lease it out, but we have so many bigger projects, it didn't make any sense to have a tiny little thing. We had just never done a deal that was truly zero down. The lowest down we'd done was 3.5%. And so I was so excited of like, wow, we can actually— this would be really fun and we'll get to tell people about our zero down deal. Doing something because it's exciting doesn't mean it makes any sense at all. To date, it has made $0 because I have not plugged it in yet. If you could live in any of our multifamily properties for a year, which one and why?
Pelican Point. Yep. Pelican Point is probably our nicest asset today. It is a very, very cool duplex built in the late '90s. Two-story townhome style, two-car garages that are detached. Very nice building, very cool location. Christian, what is one real estate myth that you'd like to debunk?
A real estate myth that I'd like to debunk is that you need money to do a deal. Now I am all for investing your own money in real estate. Like if I have liquidity, I want to put that in an asset that is illiquid, that will stay in place, will hold value, and not just hold it, increase in value over time. So when I have money, 100% invested. However, you don't have to stop there. That got me to 4 units. The difference between 4 units and the 111 multifamily units that I own uninclusive of the resort, the difference between A and B was astronomical. You don't need money to move forward. When you have it, use it. When you don't have it, you have to adjust all the other variables and continue to expand. What's one of the most unexpected benefits from this whole multifamily journey that we've been on?
Got to do a lot of traveling. That was a lot of fun.
That was fun. We recently just went to Tennessee for the first time. That was, uh, I've never been.
That was a good time.
Yeah, it's fun to put new pins on the map. I didn't think we'd be getting to do that. We made a decision early we're going to tell our story whether people care or not was never a factor. It's actually a huge privilege to get to share this both here on our channel and traveling. I know we're going to be speaking at Michael Blanc's DealMaker Live. I actually have a discount code that we can put in the chat for this, but if you guys want a little bit of money off for that, we'll be in Dallas June first through third. But having adventures like that, had no idea that's a route that life would take. I 100% agree, that was a huge, huge boon. If you had to partner with any celebrity on a multi-family deal— I don't know why we keep getting this question— but if you could partner with anyone, who would it be and why?
Well, I wouldn't partner with any celebrity because I don't trust them with money. They're going to flaunt it for their views, and I, I just don't want to put my faith in any of them. What are the top 3 books for real estate investing?
Well, if you're just getting started, I actually really like Brandon Turner's book, The Book on Rental Property Investing. I love that he named it that because now I can say I literally wrote the book on rental property investing. Very clever. But it just breaks it down very simply. That was the first time I read a book on real estate and got done with it and went, I can absolutely do this. And that's what got me started.
Another solid book, Deals on Wheels by Lonnie Scruggs. That is a creative finance book that got me started.
And lastly, a book that we both love. This is not real estate specific, but The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. The mindset there, love the guy or hate the guy, the mindset in that book is the single best book I've ever read on mindset. That type of thinking got me from 4 units to over 100. That got Cody starting on bigger buildings than just buying the house. That got him started on 12-plexes instead of houses. Massive, massive difference in thinking. That book is a must-read for everyone.
What is your favorite way to relax after a long day of working?
The only one thing that I did with the money from multifamily is I bought a hot tub and I built an inexpensive little sauna in my backyard. And that is the one thing that I do literally every single day. My wife and I hop in the hot tub at night and I completely unplug for about 20-25 minutes. How about you? What do you do to unplug?
I go to the gym. I do that every day. I'm too lazy to do it in the morning, so I do it at night. We appreciate all your questions and we really appreciate you sticking through this whole video. Video. If you haven't already, hit the subscribe button, and we'll see you next time.
