In this video Christian Osgood explains how traditional bank financing limited his real‑estate growth and how switching to creative seller‑financing enabled him to scale from four rental units to roughly 140 units. He recounts his early career path—college, multiple sales jobs, and a first condo flip—followed by buying a house, duplexes, and a renovated duplex that he refinanced. He describes meeting Cody Davis, a young investor who had amassed 30 units using seller‑finance deals, and how they partnered to acquire larger multifamily properties. Osgood contrasts conventional financing (20‑30% down, fixed terms, limited negotiation) with seller‑finance (price flexibility, negotiable interest rates, long‑term fixed‑rate cash‑flowing debt). He outlines a step‑by‑step framework for structuring seller‑finance deals: identify the seller’s non‑negotiable need, preserve that point, calculate affordable debt based on cash‑flow, and present offers that meet both parties’ goals. He emphasizes win‑win‑win relationships, the ability to buy almost any deal when both price and terms align, and urges viewers to learn creative finance through his channel, Instagram, and an online course. The video serves both as a personal success story and a practical guide to using seller‑finance to accelerate multifamily investment.
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Lowball, lowball, lowball. I see videos online all the time, people saying, hey, I just go for the throat on these deals. I'm like, I'm not at anyone's throat. Today's video is about why conventional financing is holding you back, and this is an exact story of how it held me back and how I changed my business to go from 4 units to about 140. Hey everyone, I'm Christian Osgood. This is Multifamily Strategy. If you haven't yet, please like and subscribe. And here we go. So when I started investing, I actually did the traditional route. I went to college, and then I got a first job, second job, third job, and a fourth job, each one scaling up my income, growing my sales career, and saving up to invest in real estate, which was always my goal. I wanted to do that from actually a fairly young age. The first investment I ever made was 6 years into my sales career. Had to think about that for a second. 6 years into my sales career, I bought a condo. I just got engaged, and my at-the-time fiancée, now wife, and I flipped this little condo in Renton. 2-bed, 2-bath. I brought in a roommate, actually, through the first year of my marriage. We shared the condo with one roommate to cut on cost. Renovated it and eventually sold it because I hated managing after I turned it into a rental. But I was able to do that through my education and my job and my income. The next thing I did is I bought a bigger house because I bought a dog who needed a backyard. And that's actually why we moved out. We bought a house specifically for my Frenchie to have a yard. And I lived there, bought one duplex, and then bought a second duplex. And we got the math just about perfect. So duplex number 1 helps get me in the door, gave me the confidence to go out and do a bigger project in Moses Lake. I actually did a full renovation. I bought it for a stellar price, got a duplex on a fantastic street for $212,000, put $50,000 in it for renovation and refinanced it, pulling all the money out. It was essentially a free duplex. However, that was it for what my money could do. I had one house that I lived in, two duplexes, and they covered that mortgage. That is something where if all my tenants moved out, my active income just from my job can cover all the real estate. It's nice that the real estate pays for the real estate, but that was my comfort zone, and that is where conventional finance killed me. At that point, I'm 8 years into my career after 4 years of college, and all I have at that point is a few units that cover my mortgage. While it's really cool, that is very limiting. That is around the time I met Cody Davis. Now, Cody Davis, at the time when I met him, was 21. He had just closed on his 30th unit. At 19, he bought a 12-plex. At 20, he bought another 12-plex. At 21, he bought a 6-plex. So it's not like he was just speeding along at, you know, 10 deals a year, but consistently buying sizable buildings. He had no W-2 and dropped out of college. That is a lot different than what my career path looked like to get me to the 4 units. The only difference was creative finance. Seller financed a 12-plex, negotiated directly with the owner, closed it, and bought it on 3 principles. And this has been what we've adopted for our entire company. Cash-flowing long-term fixed-rate debt. That was actually a 30-year seller finance note. Then he bought another 12-plex. Then he bought a 6-plex directly across the street from the duplex I bought, and that is where we connected. So while I was stuck with relatively high-income job and 4 rental units, Cody was at 30 units and no job. We got together and said, hey, that's about as much as Cody can manage, 30 units by himself. He's like, I want to take on bigger projects, but that's as far as I can go. And for where I was at, I was like, well, I know how to take out things conventionally and I know how to run businesses. I have absolutely no idea how to structure a creative finance deal. I had this crazy goal of getting to 30 units by the age of 30. At this point, I'm 29. We bought a 38-plex. That put me at 42 units. And within 1 month of closing that, I bought a 7-plex. And a 6-plex. Now, within a few months of those, we scaled to over 100 units. We then bought a resort to where we're at today, where we're just under 150 units, and we will be safely over 300. The only difference was the creative finance piece. So why does the conventional thing limit you? Well, if you're going out trying to use your money on deals that are bank financed, They're gonna usually want 20 to 30% down, which means you have to save up for a while, and it slows down the game substantially. You also can't negotiate any term but the price, because the bank is gonna dictate all the terms. They're gonna tell you, this is the interest rate, this is the balloon payment. All the terms and all the paperwork is all on their end. So all you can do is look for deals where you're getting a stellar deal on price. Which is what almost everyone else is trying to do. So on one hand, really small pool of deals because everyone's looking at the same thing. And two, you only have one thing that you're allowed to negotiate. So what about all these sellers who really want their price, especially in a market like we have today? We've seen interest rates triple, which means pricing has to adjust and it really hasn't. Sellers still want their price even though the cost of debt to buy it has gone up 2 or 3x. So what do you do? Creative finance, you get what you negotiate. If someone is stuck on their price, which a lot of people are right now, just realistically, that's the market we're in. It might not work at 6, 6.5, 7%, but the deal might work beautifully at 3.5%. I can get you your price, but you have to do my terms. And in seller financing, I can negotiate those, or we can do your terms and I can get my price. And I'm fine with that too, because those are really easy to refinance out of conventionally if you do get the price. It doesn't have to be any magical blend of stuff. It's just, hey, did I get price or did I get terms? Seller financing opens up the playing field. Few steps to this. Step 1, identify what they need. When we bought the Robin Hood Village Resort, they needed $1 million to move, leave the country, and build their dream home. So that was the down payment. That was the non-negotiable. On the most recent purchase we had, It was a— well, we closed a 5-plex, but right before that, same owner, 12-plex. It was on market for a long time. They just wanted their price. Worked fantastically at 4.5% interest. The next deal, I thought it was a little overpriced for what it was, but they were willing to do 3.5% interest, which again made it worth it. So step 1 is just figure out the non-negotiable. What are they really doing that they're trying to get out of the sale? Then don't negotiate that point. Just say, absolutely, you can have that. To do that, the deal needs to look like this. And all you have to do is, like we say in almost every single video, long-term fixed rate cash flowing debt. Income minus expenses is going to be my cash flow. Take those variables and go, okay, what can I afford to borrow? And that's going to be my interest rate. We have all sorts of videos and content on math, and we have that in our course as well. We can break that down even more, but basically you're just looking at What can I afford to do where the deal will hit these parameters? Then you write that offer. And what you're going to find is if you're always hitting their target and it always hits your rules of long-term cash flowing debt, you can buy almost every deal and you're always going to get a yes to your offers, which is much different than what everyone else is doing. In the conventional space, they're slinging out offers left and right. Lowball, lowball, lowball. I see videos online all the time of people saying, hey, I just go for the throat on these deals. I'm like, I'm not at anyone's throat. I'm working on deals with friends, mentors in markets where I've learned a lot from them. We have these great, great ongoing relationships. I'm not taking anything from anyone. They're win-win-win deals where the seller wins, I win as the buyer, and anyone who's partnering with us or lending to us also wins. It's as simple as that. But that's how I did it, and that's how conventional finance killed me for about a decade. If you don't want to make this mistake, start investigating seller finance. That can be on this YouTube channel, that could be on our Instagram. Cody's @doingcodethings. I'm @christianosgood. And then follow along. We have a course online too. Whatever it is, learn creative finance, because if you apply these, you can buy literally anything. Now the hard part is, what do you want to buy?
