In this solo instructional video, Christian Osgood of Multifamily Strategy explains how investors can acquire multifamily and other real‑estate assets with little or no upfront capital. He begins by emphasizing why low‑down‑payment deals are powerful for multiplying money, reducing entry barriers, and preserving tax benefits. He illustrates the concept with two concrete transactions: a $50‑$60k tiny‑home purchase done with a $0 down, interest‑only payment plan, and a $1.1 million Seattle multifamily acquisition completed with roughly 3.5 % down and a 3 % fixed‑rate loan that cash‑flowed from day one. Osgood then outlines the core rule for any zero‑down deal— it must be a long‑term, cash‑flow‑positive property financed with fixed‑rate debt. He introduces the “Hommel Hack,” a technique that defers interest and payments for several months on properties that are not yet cash‑flowing but have a clear path to market rents. Finally, he shares a low‑tech sourcing method—using Google Maps to locate distressed or under‑utilized assets— and encourages viewers to visit his website, subscribe, and apply the strategies repeatedly to build a tax‑advantaged, virtually free‑cash‑flow portfolio.
Chapters
You can absolutely do deals zero to low money down. We've done this for almost 200 multifamily units. We've done deals zero down, 3.5% down. You can absolutely do the same. Here we go. So welcome back to the channel. My name's Christian. I'm going to share a couple of deals with you and a couple of strategies that you can use to actually get very, very low down deals. First, I'm going to share why is this so important. If you're trying to multiply money or you're starting without a lot of money, it is so much easier on a deal that's, say, 0, 5, 10% down, which we do a whole lot of. When it's really low down, you can buy these deals where there's not a whole lot of money in, but the same upside still exists. So if you have a project here where you can really increase the value, say you're pushing it through rents, you're going to be doing some capital expenses and repairs to the building to increase the value, whatever it is you're doing with your project, that upside is multiplying the money that you put in. Low down means lower capital raise, lower barrier to entry, much easier to multiply your money. When Cody and I put 10% down, we are making astronomically higher returns than people buying the same exact deal conventionally, 35, 40% down. So very important that you learn these skills. In addition, if you're scaling your portfolio, you have massive tax benefits because I get the same tax benefit someone who put $40,000 down. Say it's a million dollar deal, you have to put $400,000 down. You get the same tax benefits as I do putting 10% down or $100,000 on a million dollar deal. Fantastic benefits. So how do we do this? So one of the first assets we actually bought zero down, and I'm saying that there's no capital raise, there's no money traded hand at all. Was a tiny home. And funny enough, we never actually used it because the project was too small. But perfect illustration. It was a beautiful little tiny home. Someone had it stored in a city called Ellensburg. The problem they were facing was they were working on other projects and were stuck with the tiny home. They wanted a price for it that was a little bit above market, not a whole lot. It was probably worth $50,000. They wanted $60,000. So we put together a note, $0 down. Where we paid— I forget what the percentage was. Someone, someone who wants to do the math. We were paying $491 per month, every month as interest-only payments on the property. And we're putting out our resort, which we financed also fairly low down and put $0 of our own in the deal. But at that little campus, we had some mobile spots available with full hookups where you just park that and rent it out. What we found was the upstairs was too hard to get to. Our cleaning staff really didn't like it, so we ended up scrapping the plan. But that is a way where you just solve a very simple problem. Someone doesn't want a property, they have no interest in it. Happens a lot on the lower value deals where it's not a huge dollar amount, but you come and say, hey, look, I'll take it off your hands. We're going to do it at fixed payments and away we go. You can do this on any size deal, though. I've seen this done on multimillion dollar deals. Several places all over the country, even within our mentorship group. You can do these things zero down. That's one where we did another deal. I'm going to share 3.5% down. That's about as close to zero as you get. Purchase price was $1.1 million, interest rate of 3%. And that was a property that we bought in Seattle, Washington. The owner had had it a long time. This particular one had a lot of little projects he hadn't done. It wasn't a complete dump. But there was a few units that really needed to be renovated. There was a minor rat problem because it was right next to a restaurant that just needed to be addressed. These aren't major things, these are fixable issues. It wasn't like rats are crawling through the walls, they just needed to have a few rat traps and exterminator set up a plan. All simple fixes, but they didn't want to deal with them. They're ready to retire, almost no money down, We bought this thing again. It's an over-million-dollar purchase. We come in, I think it was 3.5%, maybe 4.5% down, picked up a property that cash flows day one with almost no money in the deal. You can do deals like this if you can solve a problem. Now, if their problem is, hey, I want to be cashed out, I want some money, but I'm open to holding a contract, well, you're not going to get into that deal zero down. You're not solving the problem. If you can find an issue that you are qualified to solve, if it is the issue that is right for you to come in and figure out, you can buy anything on payments. Now, what rules do you have to make? If you're buying the zero down, you can buy anything, right? We say it almost every single video. I'm going to say it again here. Long-term, cash-flowing, fixed-rate debt. When you pick this up, you can't do a zero-down deal if it doesn't cash flow because now you're making less money every month than you were. Now, if you have a ton of cash flow already built in your portfolio, you can do a project and sustain it while you raise the rents. But if you're coming into a project fresh, you haven't done this before, you don't have a huge portfolio to back it up. Zero down on a cash negative deal does not make it a good deal. This is something we see all the time on multifamilystrategy.com. People who are newer to the mentorship group get really excited, like, I have a deal. Someone wants to sell it to me. It's zero down or it's 5% down. I can get into this property. Only one problem. It loses a ton of money and I have no idea how I'm going to make it when it balloons in 7 years. Not a good deal. You got to walk from those deals. Lowdown is out there. Follow a simple, simple rule rubric. Long-term cash flowing, fixed rate. Long-term cash flowing, fixed rate. Not that hard to hit if you can figure out how to write them. So that it hits those metrics, you're good to go. I'm going to share one more tip from this channel. Someone, a really good friend of ours, he's on the channel all the time. Caleb Hommel uses this. We actually call it the Hommel Hack. We've shared it on a few videos. If you haven't seen it, check it out. But the Hommel Hack is essentially, hey, it doesn't cash flow day one. I'm going to go 3, 6, maybe 9 months. No interest accrues. No payments are made. The payments and interest start at a future date. If you have a property you're buying where the income is not high enough, but you have a very clear path to raise the rent. This could be one where you find a deal that is fantastic. It doesn't cash flow, but it's at half of market rent right now. You're going to come in and do light repairs and get it, say, 75%, 80% to market rent and it will cash flow. You have a deal like that, adjust for the risk. You can do something like a HOMEL hack and cash flow your way all the way through. So don't just throw your deal out because it doesn't cash flow on paper. There are little tweaks that you can make to it to make sure that it can cash flow. But do that basic math. If you want to know what cash flow is, it's income minus expenses. For those who are stressed about the math, make sure the property makes more after all your expenses on a monthly basis than all your expenses. If that number is positive and you can keep it positive, You have now increased your income, and if you got in low or no money down on the deal, you are taking very little money and turning it into a new positive income stream. Do this again and again and again. Combined with the tax benefits, you get a virtually tax-free— potentially consult your CPA— but you get a pretty much tax-free income stream of rental properties every single time you close one of these. The last question everyone asks, how do you find these? Google Maps. Check out our video on that one. If you go to our most watched videos, it's the one with the big pink background. It's exactly how we do it. We don't do any software, any skip tracing, and I make about 5 calls maximum a week and 1 coffee meeting. You can do this too. You can find them. They are out there. Till next time, I'm Christian. This is Multifamily Strategy. Check out our website, multifamilystrategy.com. Like and subscribe, and we'll see you on the next video.
