In this introductory episode of the Longview, Texas series, Christian Osgood (Multifamily Strategy) and Caleb Hommel walk viewers through the acquisition and turnaround plan for a 200‑unit apartment complex purchased for $12.2 million with only $371,000 down – a fully creative, bank‑financed deal. They explain how the property is only 75 % occupied because many units are not lease‑ready, highlighting the core value‑add opportunity: rapid make‑ready work, unit upgrades (LVP flooring, simple kitchens, matching black appliances), and repurposing under‑used amenities like a clubhouse. The hosts stress that operators who can execute fast are favored by lenders in today’s market, and they outline the step‑by‑step operational playbook: building an A‑team, onboarding staff, ensuring rent collection, executing exterior and interior renovations at scale, and maintaining speed to maximize profit. Throughout, they convey a hands‑on, no‑excuses attitude, showing that even a $60k‑per‑door acquisition can become a “gold mine” when managed efficiently.
Chapters
And yes, it is 100% creatively financed out. This is yet another pool. This place is 75% occupied today. This is legitimately the problem. LVP floors, simple kitchen, matching appliances. I mean, there's millions of dollars on the line. Speed is where you make money in deals. But a project like this, gold mine. We did it! We closed 200 units. 200 units, Longview, Texas. First deal in this market. This was ultra low down. On today's video, I'm going to show you guys how we played This deal. This will start our series on Longview, Texas, and turning around a property that is currently underperforming. This is the 200-unit building, guys. First thing I want to show you, take a look at this settlement statement. I'm gonna put it right here up on the screen. $12.2 million purchase, $371,000 down. That is like nothing. That is half the cost of a house to buy all of this here. This is value-add. This is on the operations side. In the series, I'm gonna walk you through the actual operations we do. So today we're gonna go through a A few units, we're gonna start turning the units today, the day of close. I'm gonna show you what it looks like to actually make millions of dollars on one real estate transaction. This is 200 units, this is Longview, Texas. I'm Christian, this is Multifamily Strategy. Let's rock. And better yet, we close this with the one and only Caleb Hommel talking about how we found this deal. This is an opportunity that Caleb actually sourced the deal. Caleb, how did this deal come to be?
Yeah, it came through relationship, and this one was with a broker directly, and that relationship was built on accurately underwriting deals, giving consistent feedback, not wasting time and told him exactly what we were looking for. And eventually an opportunity came up like this. He asked if we'd be interested. Uh, the answer was a very astounding yes. And today we're here, just closed.
Now this bad boy is not seller financed. It is 100% creatively financed. Caleb, what is the financing structure?
The financing structure on this is incredibly creative, like Christian mentioned, but it's all with the bank. So what we've found out on this, which is a giant misconception, the most creative players in the game aren't mom-and-pop sellers. It's not small multifamily. It's actually large multifamily when the lender needs someone to come in and be an operator.
And of course, that operator is us. So the number one thing that you can do to start getting these opportunities is focus on how to buy the first deal, get a little bit of experience. And as you build momentum, more and more lenders are going to want you to take over these properties. The last generation of real estate owners were the best marketers. Now the opportunity is my favorite market condition. Operators are favored over the ability to raise capital. If you know how to operate a deal, you can raise the capital, you can close the deals, but the banks are going to fund most of these. Again, I showed you that sheet. This was ultra low down. These opportunities exist without a lot of cash needed. And check this out, just for context, this is what we're buying. This isn't some rundown property. We have a well-serviced pool, we have this little pool deck back here. There's all sorts of amenities. You'll get to see the campus as we walk around, but check this out. This is yet another pool we're buying for $12.2 million. It just happens to come with 200 apartments. I think I'm not going to jump in for this video. This is the clubhouse. This space is basically completely unused, never gets any use. We're going to renovate the upstairs. Don't know exactly what we're doing yet, but follow me. Oh dude, we'll be able to work with this. It's the little things like this unused space, make-readies that aren't made ready yet. We can turn this into something very cool and very usable. It has all the pieces. It lacked the operating plan. Let's go check out some of the units that need to be made ready.
Probably need to turn the AC up in here.
It's cold as hell. Is there a thermostat over there?
Up here it is. Old janky thermostat.
So project number 1, this place is 75% occupied today. And the reason that it's not occupied is because they haven't got through their make-readies. So it's not even that the units aren't leasing, it's that they're not available to lease. Pretty simple problem to solve, but we get started by getting started. So today we're going to walk these make-ready units. We're going to see how much work there is to do. I'm going to start with the ones that are the farthest along and work our way backwards. If we walk into a unit that has some junk, I brought some gloves. We'll actually just start doing the work, which is one of the most important things you can do to make more money in real estate. When you're in the field, just go ahead and do the job. No one's above doing the work. I don't care if it's buying a $12 million deal or it's picking up trash. Whatever the job is to do that day, we'll get out there and we'll get it done. Guys, these are the units that they said are unrentable and aren't made ready. Check this out. Here's one of them. Now, there are some gross ones here. This is legitimately the problem. There's a dresser. There's a coffee pot. This fan is loud and broken. That's basically it. Like, the bedroom? We got a desk. We got a bed frame. We got a mattress. That's what couldn't get done by the prior management. We're talking about easy projects. We bought this almost nothing down for what the prior owners owed on it because they couldn't do these projects. This is what is keeping the building from leasing up. Your mission is to find deals exactly like this in your market. This is a 10 out of 10, exactly what you want to happen. All right, check this out. We're in one of the units. This one's getting made ready already, so this one's farther along. But for context for what we're buying, this is what an almost finished unit looks like. Comes complete with a Caleb. What we got? LVP floors, simple kitchen, matching appliances. This is important to Christian— black fridge, black range.
We have 2 black fridges.
There we go. Yes, we do. And we got a spare one over in here. This is still getting painted, as you can see, so it's not completely made ready, but this is one that's just getting finished up. Simple layout. This one's a 2-bedroom, 2-bath. So we got a bath there, bedroom here, bedroom here, and a bathroom off the master bed. Actually pretty deep walk-in closets as we go. This is what's on market. And when you're seeing, what, $59,000 a unit, more or less, about $60,000 a door. Buying a property for this much, 200 units, this is the type of deal that you can buy. This is what units look like. Our goal is to get every unit to look like this one. Let's look at a rougher one. This is a classic case of what happened all over Texas and frankly all over the country where people bought deals, the market shifted, and they ran out of money to finish their project. So there's just a lot of— a little blocking and tackling that you get knocked out on a project like this that makes a ton of the money. But some people just ran out of steam, they ran out of partnership, they ran out of cash. Whatever it is that the problem was, this is a management play, and frankly, it's not that difficult of one. There is some management to do, but if you can run this project, there's millions of dollars on the line. I love deals that look exactly like this. And as a note, landscaping here looks pretty darn good. They are older buildings. Is this the sexiest building I've ever seen in all of Texas? No, I do own some of them. We do buy some of the most beautiful properties in all of Texas. However, this one's not one of them. This will still make a ton of money. We're going to make it a beautiful place to live. We have some awesome upgrades in store that I'm going to cover on other episodes. But a project like this, gold mine. While we walk to one of the more damaged units that's going to be more of a project, I want to break this down into practical steps. What do you do step by step on a building this size? Well, the first thing you need to do is you need to establish your team. So we hired some of the existing staff. We're going to keep some people who know what's going on at the property. Now, whether we keep them— every day is an interview when you're new to the company, so we'll see. Oftentimes it doesn't work out, though I have had some amazing employees who have transferred through. More often than not, it doesn't Doesn't work. We go in knowing that. The goal is to build an A-team. You can't run an A-game without A-players. So we're gonna make sure that we have the right people on the bus. That is mission number one. Number 2, we do the basic blocking and tackling. Onboarding. We need to make sure collections are coming in. Is everyone using the portal? Is rent getting collected? Do people understand where they're paying? There's a transition. We want to manage that as smoothly as humanly possible. With the right team built and with the tenants all on board and everything running smoothly, we start the reno project. We're doing exterior. We're swapping a bunch of these decks and we're getting the make-grades As soon as possible. We are going to hire as many teams as we possibly can at one time to get everything made ready so we can get it all online and start ripping through the project. Speed is where you make money in deals. You can't get sloppy when you get fast, but if you can execute at a high level very, very quickly, you can do more projects. If you do more projects that all make money, you make, you guessed it, a ton of money in real estate. But that is the main objective here. Management plays mean building a management team that knows what it's doing. That takes effort. That is not a free task. It's probably one of the hardest This is real estate. If you nail it, you get to do opportunities like this. And when you nail it and get opportunities like this, you make a lot of money. This is all multifamily. And yet another unit that is just not made ready. Now this one's a little bit grosser. As you can see, there's trash all over the place. I brought my gloves today. I'll haul a lot of this out. This is what we're talking about though. This isn't a hoarder unit. There isn't bugs everywhere. This isn't a failed deal or a huge reno project. We just spent $60,000 per door. To get an almost rent-ready building up and ready to go. Is this annoying that people leave their apartments like this? Yes. Is this a reason to get rid of a property and just not lease the unit? I don't think so. We're gonna make some money on this thing.
