Christian Osgood and Brandon explain how to start investing in real estate: buy a property, don't overthink it. Brandon's first condo made $150 a month. One investor with 16 units generates $14-15k monthly. Buy every 12-18 months, target cash flow, not unit count, and you'll reach financial freedom in five years.
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Hello YouTube, it's Christian Osgood. We are back. It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another episode of Multifamily 101. Today will be a short video but extremely important. This is on the actual mindset and how you buy the first property mentally. It happens in your head before it actually happens on paper. Again, welcome back, Brandon.
Thank you.
Yeah, to the channel. So the easiest way to become a real estate investor is in fact to buy real estate. Most people do miss this. It took me a long time when I got to started originally. I decided in— what was it— 2015, 2016, I want to be a real estate investor. In 2020, I finally bought a duplex.
Awesome.
It took me a while.
At least you bought a multifamily.
At least I bought a multifamily, but this big roundabout way of— I worked for CoStar and I worked for land.com and all these real estate things. I was like, I'm building my way there, I'm in real estate. Uh, you don't have to add all those steps. In fact, that's part of why I originally partnered with Cody, because I met the one teenager who was already buying 30 units. Like, he skipped the whole step of, you know, why add steps? Let's just go for it. So, uh, Brandon, yeah, yeah.
And Cody and I actually— I don't know if you mentioned before too— is we had a 78-unit in Lexington under contract at one point.
Wow.
You two connected. Uh, then we had a 16-unit, um, under contract in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Yes, I heard about that one.
Uh, that was, uh, kind of a shit show. But we got out there and the agent felt bad. And I'm actually still in contact with that same broker that Cody introduced us to. And, um, we may have an 8-unit still on the table out there, but it's kind of small. But anyway, it's good to make those connections.
Yeah, but you have to, you have to make that decision in your head. Like, Cody did it really young. It took me a little while. Brandon, how old were you when you finally got— I've never actually heard your backstory of like how you started. When did you decide you want to go into real estate? When did you actually buy real estate?
I would I was 30. My buddy and I were looking at— we were going to Vegas all the time and he hopped on Zillow and saw a condo for like $30,000. He's like, dude, we could put this on a credit card. Let's just go over there and look at it. Turns out it was a total piece of crap, right? And the agent we connected with showed us a condo for $80,000. And at that time we could, we could buy it for 10%, 10% down. So $8,000.
Yeah.
And it was going to cash flow like $150 a month. So we bought that and it, it worked, and we should have probably cookie-cuttered in that over and over, you know. But, uh, anyway, lesson learned on multifamily versus condo investing.
But the main thing is you got in the game.
Like, you got in there, you pulled the trigger, we went over, we took action, we made offers, and we bought something.
How long after you bought your first property did you buy your next property?
Uh, I'd say about, uh, 18 months. Okay, 18 months.
And then did it snowball after that, or was it pretty consistently every year to 2 years.
Well, there's a little interesting story.
So my—
your partner's Cody. My main partner is my brother. Yeah, a little bit of yin and yang. I would be buying something every week if the opportunity came up, a good opportunity. My brother's a little more hesitant, a little more cautious, so he keeps me in check. And we've been steady as we go. You've mentioned— I mean, I've mentioned before, I'm up to 30 doors.
Yep.
Well, behind you guys, and, uh, this is about 5 years in the making, so it's a little slow for us.
Well, and that's just fine, and caution doesn't, doesn't hurt. Like, it's not easy to buy a ton of real estate and manage all the stuff that we to do, right? Um, I'm on the very back end trying to line up the last of our cost segregation studies and our tax stuff and partnership returns, and it's not an easy way to do it.
You guys went light speed.
That's great. Yeah, but, uh, you take some pain with that. The main thing is though, you basically, you set your goal and you need to know what that goal is. Then the goal is beyond the unit count. The goal is cash flow.
Absolutely.
Dion McNeely, who's on this channel all the time, he has 16 units. He cash flows about $14,000-$15,000 a month. I mean, that does it for most people. You're done. He doesn't have any LLCs, no partners, all 30-year fixed-rate debt. That's a great place to be.
And I think what I learned too, Christian, is once I stopped focusing on unit count and focusing on the cash flow, I made better decisions and took that burden off. I need to get to 200, 300, 1,000 units. I just need to get to my passive income goal and who cares what limit count is.
Yeah, I think if we're doing rules to get into these, uh, to get into multifamily, get started, the first thing you make the decision in your head what you want to get to. And I found the best thing to do is that is a monthly cash flow number. What, what dollar amount do you need to make on a monthly basis? Some people go like, I want to make like $150K a year. Really think about what do you spend monthly, what do you want to be able to spend monthly. Create a plan to that. Like Cody and I get a lot of attention for buying a lot of stuff But my goal is to teach people how to do this and show people what's possible. I'm trying to push the limit because that is my— that is all I do, right? That's not for most people. If you buy a property a year, a property every 18 months, you scale strategically, slowly, you're going to have a lot less pain, a lot less time invested, and you can get to the same place in 5 years that Cody and I got in 1. It all starts with 1 rental though, and you have to get that first one. So once you set your goal, just go buy a cash-flowing property. It does not have to be a home run. We've shared that many times. It just has to be a property that makes sense for you. And if you can do that, I think you're going to be just fine.
The level of confidence you will gain just by taking that first step, that first— buying that first property, how you'll, how you'll feel, uh, going forward is, is amazing.
So yeah, it's, it's absolutely addicting. It's super fun. You can do this with or without a lot of money in your pocket. But very, very excited for you if you're about to take this journey. Don't do what I did and add a bunch of steps. You don't need to be a licensed broker. You don't need to be a loan officer. You don't need to have a job in real estate. You need to know how to evaluate a deal based on basic addition, subtraction, and division. Okay, what, what does the property bring in? What are the expenses? Does it cash flow day one? Can I get it in long-term debt? If you can do that, buy that property. It could be a duplex, it could be a 38-plex, whatever it is for you. That first one, within the next 5 years, I guarantee you, you can have financial freedom. That is, uh, Michael Blanc, Law of the First Deal. Absolutely. Yeah, totally true. But that's the encouragement for today. Again, short video, so appreciate you if you're still watching here. Like, subscribe. We're gonna have more videos and longer videos in every subsequent week.
