In this episode of Multifamily Strategy, Christian Osgood and a colleague walk through two of his properties—a 144‑unit and an 80‑unit building near Abilene, Texas—to demonstrate concrete, low‑cost operational tactics that can add millions of dollars in value to a multifamily portfolio. They emphasize the power of standardizing inventory and buying supplies in bulk, keeping a well‑organized storage room, and using uniform, white (or black) appliances across units. Cosmetic upgrades such as fresh, neutral‑color paint and simple cabinet refreshes (repainting or adding handles) are shown as inexpensive ways to improve tenant perception. The bulk of the video focuses on water‑conservation measures: swapping to pressurized 1.28‑gallon flush toilets, installing aerators on sinks, testing building water pressure with a PSI tester, and adding pressure‑relief valves when pressure exceeds 60 PSI. Osgood quantifies the impact, noting that saving $10‑$30 per tenant per month can translate to $360,000 annually for 600 units, or over $5 million in added portfolio value in 7‑cap markets. He also highlights the advantage of managing properties within a short drive, allowing hands‑on oversight. The video concludes with a plug for his newly released book, “Creative Real Estate,” which details the acquisition and deal‑structuring methods behind these operational wins.
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Hello and welcome back to Multifamily Strategy. I am going to be sharing a ton on how you make money in the operations. This is some of the most valuable things that I know in real estate. I'm going to do my best to do it from the field. Today you're going to join me at the 144-unit and at my 80-unit apartment building. We're talking about maintenance. We're talking about the actual strategies that we implement in my PM company and in my portfolio that make us millions of dollars. And I actually do mean these make millions of dollars. If you can save $10, $20, $30 per month per tenant as you're building your portfolio, the numbers get ridiculous. And it's the little things. So today I actually go through and I talk about some of the water conservation methods that we use that cut down on our bills, or when we're building back to tenants, cut down on our tenants' bills, which keeps tenants paying higher rent and staying around longer. Check it out.
So one of the biggest savings you can do is actually standardizing all of your items across every property in the portfolio. We're in one of our storage rooms. Everyone should look more or less like this, but you want to keep everything very organized and go through and keep all of your stuff on inventory. So in here we have our different toilet valves. I maintain, you know, different pieces for sinks, countertops, smoke detectors, but everything is always kept in stock. We buy everything in bulk. It's the little savings that allow you as a larger investor to save a lot of money. Our overall goal is over 600 units. Save $50 per month per tenant by buying things in bulk, staying on top of maintenance. Ultimately, that equals $360,000 a year, or in the 7-cap markets we invest in, over $5 million of value added through good operations. But it's the little things like rooms like this where you make the $5 million. Common question is, how do we update units? How do we know what to do when we enter a unit? The biggest things that people notice is how clean it feels. So we almost always will come in and touch up all the paint. I don't know if you can tell in this video, but the walls are all freshly painted. We go with the same neutral color every single property in the portfolio, exact same paint job. This is another fantastic example. Cabinets— we don't replace them if they don't need to be replaced, especially for a property like this. It's low income. We still want it to feel really nice. Cabinets like these are going to be perfectly fine. We may come in and add handles to more of them because I do like that. But once these get a little bit beat up, if they were looking worn or tired— obviously these look just fine— we have a darker paint that will paint them up. They'll all look beautiful. We'll renew them. We can get a lot of these things to last and look good for a really long time. And if you watch this channel for any amount of time, you know I love it when all the appliances match. It's the most important thing. So when I update a unit, white dishwasher, white fridge, white range, white microwave, This is correct. Don't do stainless steel in base level properties. So if it's entry level or workforce housing, white or black uniform all the way throughout, the little things really matter. By the way, it is finally out, the book on creative real estate. The link is below. You can actually pick this up right now, but it's how I bought deals like this one and deals all over the country. I go through the actual stories, the structures, but this isn't theory. This isn't some gimmick or a one size fits all strategy. It's the actual strategies that I utilized and how they were implemented to close every single deal. You can check it out on Amazon right now.
Links below.
All right. Well, welcome to the bathroom. Part of my project today is I'm actually going through all of our toilets. We want to make sure that we don't have really high-flow toilets. When you have hundreds and hundreds of toilets in all of your units, the 3-gallon flush is not always optimal. You also don't want to have crappy low-flow toilets because then people will flush multiple times and it ruins your tenant experience. What we're doing today is verifying all of our toilet models. What we want is a pressurized 1.28-gallon flush, which means it will feel like a normal toilet. However, it will use a lot less water. If you could substantially cut down on water, which we'll be testing water pressure and appliances today, is bathroom sinks. A small little pressurized aerator added to a unit like this one right here will actually lower the actual amount of water while increasing the perceived pressure. So the little things that you add unit by unit will actually make the one feel better, but two, cost a lot less. Huge shavings available if you do this right. This is a little PSI tester. I'll actually link this below on Amazon. This thing can make you a ton of money on any of your buildings. So what this is doing is testing the pressure for the whole building. I've had some buildings where the pressure is 100 to 110 PSI. We shut off the water, we turn it back on, blows pipes at any right angle turn in the pipe. What I'm looking for is 55 to 60 PSI. If you're over that, what you install is called a pressure release valve, which we would add right in here. You do need a license to do that, but the valves are like $300. This tester is like $10 on Amazon. Now what I'm seeing here is we're exactly at 60 PSI, which is where we want to be. So that's telling me that I do not need to do this project here. But if you implement that on these buildings and they need it, all of your appliances will work better, your buildings will use less water, and you'll have significantly less plumbing maintenance.
So in conclusion, to kick off our maintenance series is getting on site and doing the little things.
This is why I'm such a huge fan of buying within driving distance.
Now, Abilene, Texas is about 2.5 hours away. So is this in my backyard? Not really. But is this something that I can get out and touch, get my hands on and get outsized returns for my investors because of my proximity?
Yes.
It's the little things that make the big money. And at scale, the numbers do actually get ridiculous. So check it out. We'll be doing more series exactly like this on how to optimize your portfolio. If you're going to be playing the game, if you're buying real estate, we've had thousands of videos on this channel on how to buy the real estate. How do you make that real estate make the highest possible return? It's some of the little blocking and tackling like we do in today's video. By the way, book is out, the book on creative real estate. So if you want to learn more about the acquisition methods, this is real structures, real deals, some of them from the properties that we visited today. But these strategies are here documented, practical application on how to get creative on the deal. The debt and the equity. I'll see you on the next episode.
