Christian Osgood and Cody walk through finding multifamily real estate deals by cold calling property owners directly. Use Google Maps and tax records to find owners, then call with a simple ask: coffee, not a pitch. Five calls a week at a 20% conversion rate gets you 50 owner meetings yearly, enough to build a referral network and close deals.
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If you can line up your story with their story, they're going to have buy-in. They're going to want to help you.
Today we are talking about finding deals. This is my favorite part of our 4-stage business cycle. We love build phase. Today we're talking about that.
Perfect. Hey, I'm Christian, this is Cody, and here we go. So for finding deals, there's a few pieces, and a lot of people rely heavily on the broker side on the on-market deals. It's a transactional script and it's a lot of grinding. It's a ton of calls, it's a ton of emails. We do it completely differently. I'm gonna let Cody start on this. How did we actually start learning the method that we have?
Well, we built our multifamily strategy by meeting with the owners in the market that own the real estate that we wanted to own. So we wanted to buy multifamily, and I was buying in Grant County, so we wanted to buy together in Grant County. So what we did, we looked on Google Maps, we found the big roofs, which were more likely to be apartments, found their phone number on Google. Everybody's phone number, if they own real estate, is on Google. Guarantee it for about 95% of the people. You got to give them a phone call. You can find them on tax assessor, find out what general area they live in, put in their name, the city, and then their phone number. We have a video on that link down below, but you give them a call, meet up for coffee, learn how they built their portfolio and use those strategies, which is why we call it multifamily strategy. To go out and buy your own real estate.
So crazy. So in summary, you basically find the people who've done exactly what you want to do. For us, that was people who have about 100 multifamily units or more. Meet with them in that market and go, how did you do what you did? Okay, so that's step 1. What is the actual— like, how do we book a meeting with an owner? How many calls does that take? What is the actual process?
Well, it takes usually 1 to 2 calls. It doesn't take that many. I mean, we were making 1 or 2 a day in the beginning and now like 1 or 2 a week. It's not that many owner meetings, but you're making the cold call, you do a quick intro of who you are, just first name, you don't need to do last, they're not going to remember it anyway, but share 1 relatable point about who you are, a goal, you mention a specific property that you called because of, not like you're trying to buy it, but you're calling because you want to get to somewhere similar to their position someday, and then you ask to book coffee. You just want to book a coffee meeting, and it is that simple. Don't overscript it. Ask for the meeting, then get off the phone.
So you get to this meeting. This is not a sales pitch. You're not asking them to sell you the building. I don't care if you want to own it. It may or may not be for sale. That's not the purpose of this meeting. What you're actually doing is you're just learning, and you're communicating who you are, what it is that you're trying to accomplish. So significance, relatability— we'll start with relatability. Relatability: who are you, what are you trying to do, which is your goal, and then the significance behind it, which is the reason that they actually will want to help you. What happens when you reach that goal? That takes a few sentences. The rest of this meeting is about mapping who are they, what are and were their goals when they were starting, and what happened when they got there, and what are they trying to build next. If you can line up your story with their story, they're going to have buy-in. They're going to want to help you. People in this industry love talking about real estate. That is universally true for almost every person we've met. We love real estate, we love the game, and none of our friends or family want to hear us talk about it. So if that resonates with you, if you're somebody who loves real estate, you're like, ah, no one wants to talk to me about this. That is how a lot of these owners feel. So you sit down, you actually just talk about the game. You may or may not ever buy their property, but they will absolutely help you buy future properties. They're going to hear about stuff that's not a fit for them. They're going to remember you, your story and your goals and go, this doesn't make sense for me. But it could make sense for you. That happened with us at the Robin Hood, didn't it?
Yep, absolutely. And the beauty of this deal is it only takes one person because people that own real estate know people that own real estate. And if you're calling people that own apartments, I guarantee you they know people that own apartments. That is how this game works. And so if you can get one meeting, cultivate that relationship and build it up to where it's pretty strong, you will get introduced, if you ask, to their network.
And we've done several off-market deals and several on-market deals. We're about 50/50. But my favorite deals that we've done are the ones that are off-market, direct with seller, where you have that relationship. It's fun, you keep it— the relationship alive. There's more creativity in it. Some of those people who sold us properties and did seller financing, when we paid them back, they're now the people who are just lenders for us or builders for us. Like, they go into your network as potential capital players, sources of information in the market. Our legal teams are all sourced through owners, you know, the Hey, Grant County, really hard to find a good lawyer. That's something where we just talked to the people who played the game, and that's the resource we needed. And they went, hey, don't use this person, don't use this person. Here are the two options, check them out. One of them was available, and all of a sudden we got through our evictions process. But that is what you're trying to build, is a network of people in your market who are invested in your success, who enjoy working with you. Build those relationships And again, the action step here, if you're getting started, it's not, hey, you need to make 100 calls a day, you need to knock on 50 doors, you need to send 10,558 emails or whatever it is that— whatever statistics you're seeing online for what you need to do to be successful. 5 phone calls a week. Get good enough at it where at least 1 out of 5, 20% of your phone calls result in a coffee meeting. Meet with owners 52 weeks in a year. One coffee meeting. And let's say you take a couple holidays off. 50 meetings in a year with owners in your market. You will find deals whether or not you ask for them, period.
Without a doubt. Yeah, without a doubt. That's it.
Map that circle drill. You have your, your sections there. I always call them quadrants, but it's actually third-rants. So you have your—
I'm the math guy.
You have your relatability. Who are you? Your goal. What are you doing? Your significance. Don't overtalk. You're just communicating those very simply. This is who I am, what I'm trying to do. How did you get to where you're at? Book the coffee meeting, and the rest of that coffee meeting is just about exploring that same circle for the other party, period. Don't be transactional, and you will find the deals.
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