Financial Freedom Fast
130 Doors ALL SELLER FINANCED w/ Cody Davis and Christian Osgood
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Download my FREE E-Book on Scaling Through Partnerships NOW
CLICK HERE
Apply for mentorship with Matt and the FAST FI Coaching Community:
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Follow Matt online:
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The way that I did it was through Google Maps and I found that, consistently, every property I wanted to buy was on Google Maps. When I decided I wanted to go in my apartments, I looked for the big roofs in Aerial Big because I was free, I was in budget Found the big roofs, figured out who owned the big roofs. Everybody's number's on Google free. Give them a call, try and grab coffee and learn how they built their business. Everything comes down to if you want to get into the room, get to a meeting, you have to start with relatability. That's it, I guess, the simplicity of it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, the show that teaches you how to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Learn how to confidently leave your nine to five from guests who've done it themselves. Whether you want to lay on a beach, travel the world or focus on your passions, this show will give you the tools to do what you want when you want. Now here's your host, matt Emobile.
Speaker 3:What is up? Financial Freedom Fast Fan? Today is an awesome podcast with Cody Davis and Christian Osgood, a power duo that is killing the seller finance game. They got into 130 units of seller financed properties without ever going to a bank to purchase one of those properties. Amazing stories. Cody's only 23 years old, I believe, which is absolutely incredible that they have been able to build up what they've built so quickly.
Speaker 3:Guys, they give a step by step by step on what you should do to go and find your seller financed properties, to go and build the relationships with the people that you need to build them with to be able to get the opportunities to be able to make offers on these properties. So much value in today's podcast. And, guys, they have some awesome information on where you can find out more about them to be able to do that. And, guys, if you're interested in working with me and learning about what I'm doing and how I am partnering with other people to do deals, what you can do is click the link in the show notes and click on the mastermind and community link so you can check out and schedule an interview with me and see if you are a good fit for what we are doing over here. But, guys, without further ado, let's jump into the pod. Cody Davis and Christian Oz. Good welcome to the Financial Freedom Fast podcast, my dudes. What is going on, guys? Good to be here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll see you again.
Speaker 3:It's been a while it has been a while and I'm actually I am going to start off. I'll dive into this actually. So if you guys don't know, Cody and Christian, these guys are savages in the seller finance space. They got a resort. They got over 100 units, Cody's like Cody, are you 22 years old or 23? Right now? I'm 23. 23 years old and Christian and Cody partnered up and just started getting deals done, doing stuff together.
Speaker 3:I'm going to call myself out, start this podcast, Cody, and this goes out to all of my listeners. One, Cody is the guy who got me to start investing in myself and starting to hire mentors, putting money into myself and bringing other people in to teach me how I can do the things that I wanted to do. I went to Cody and Christian to get some mentorship from them and this was going to be my first suare into investing into myself and we had our first few calls and I went back at these guys. I was like I don't want to be paying that much to learn this. I feel like I should be more valuable than other people. I should have to pay less, and we kind of we disbanded from there. We cut things off. Not only, and Cody and Christian have taken off even further from there. I've been watching it, I've been loving the success. But I just wanted to call myself out publicly for that issue there and just let you guys know that I love what you're doing and I'm excited to dive in today to bring a lot of the value that you guys have locked up in your heads and you've also told a million other people your value that you have. But I'm excited to have my listeners here today. So, Cody and Christian, so happy to finally have you on my show here, guys, Glad we could make it happen.
Speaker 3:So let's dive in, guys. People can go around. They can find out exactly what the beginning of your stories were and how you started to get into seller financing. Some complexes here. So what I want to really first dive in on people love seller finance deals. They want to get these things. They see it as a way to get no money down. They don't have to go to banks. They don't have to have any credentials behind them. If somebody I'm just going to start off with a huge question man, you guys keep things very simple. If somebody wanted to start off today and they have no experience whatsoever and they wanted to seller finance a property. Is it possible for them to go out there and find an owner that would seller finance them a property and get deals done with no experience under their belt whatsoever? Without a doubt, yes, and what would you recommend as step one? We're just going to dive right into this. What is step one for the people out there today that want to go and get something like this done?
Speaker 4:I can give stuff step one and two because they have to go together. First of all, you have to identify what it is that you want to do. So if you're trying to build $10,000 a month passive income, you need to know that before you start trying to engineer it. Once you identified what it is that you want to do say it's get to 100 units, $10,000 a month, whatever that goal is you go out and you find the people in your market who've done what you want to do and you learn from them how they did it. That is the first two steps to getting started Find your goal and then find the people who have already reached it. Those people teach you how to get there.
Speaker 3:Got it. So let's talk about finding the people who have already done what you've done. What are some of the ways that you've found to find the people that have done what you want to do? Let's say it's owning 100 units. How do I go out and find somebody that owns 100 units? The way that I?
Speaker 1:did. It was through Google Maps and I found that consistently, every property I wanted to buy was on Google Maps. I haven't found a property that wasn't there. When I decided I wanted to go and buy apartments, I looked for the big roofs in aerial view, because I was free. I was in budget and a free is in budget for everybody, so I liked the simplicity of that, found the big roofs, figured out who owned the big roofs. The reason I looked for big roofs is because the bigger it was, the more likely it was to be an apartment building, opposed to a single family house. Figuring out who owns it everybody's number is on Google, it's free. Give them a call, try and grab coffee and learn how they built their business and through that, if you want to get your 100 units, let's say you call on a 12plex figure out how they built their business. They usually show you their pieces of what they've bought, if they've built how they did it, and you can use those lessons to scale or to buy some of their own portfolio.
Speaker 3:So you go online, you're looking for these big roofs on Google and you find a big roof. Then we go out and we look up this address. We find the phone number for the person who owns this. Guys, you could do skip tracing. You can also just find numbers on Google. You could go to your state website and look up the actual tax records and they'll see filings online and be able to pull these phone numbers. You can do this free and you can do it. You could pay for it. 10 cents a lead. Either way, get the contact information of these people. Now, how does that first phone call typically go? Is it like hey, I saw you in this building. I want to learn what you did. Can we grab coffee? How do you typically take that first call?
Speaker 1:At the core of all human communication. There's a few main pieces and you have to start by, of course, doing the introduction, but everything comes down to. If you want to get into the room, get to a meeting, start to start with relatability. That's it. That's the simplicity of it. You start with a relatable point and that could be just acknowledging that you're getting started in the real estate space. They've done something you haven't done. Relatable point they can recall when they were getting started. You're getting started.
Speaker 1:People will meet with you based on their ability to relate to you and that comes down to past experiences. Once you illustrate that you've got to figure out your relatable point with these people. It could be you just moved to a new city. You're looking to get started. You have no relationships. That works with a lot of people that are in the real estate space. I found a lot of people that have been in it for a while, came from a new place it's usually a different country. They had no connections, they had no money, they had no family in the business. Relatable point just move to the city. I have nobody here. I'm looking again to the real estate space. I was curious if we could grab coffee. That is the transition of you find a relatable point that could be received by the other parties not always going to be, but you put it out there, it's genuine and then you book that coffee meeting by just asking for the sale. You're asking for the meeting at the end of the call.
Speaker 3:One of the important things about this strategy that you built up at the beginning of your career was you were using this golden nugget type mentality, where you're going out to these people and you're having these conversations with them and you're not necessarily looking for anything from them. You are going there to build a relationship, to have a conversation. You're not going there and asking for a property right away. So typically, when you go on this first, when you set this coffee meeting and you go out and meet with these people, where are you looking to take that conversation? What's the overall goal, the overarching goal in your head when you're going out there and how do you run that first meeting, if you want to call it that?
Speaker 4:The main goal is that they are owners of real estate. They're not sellers. So you're not going there to try to find a deal. You're on there to build a relationship. The goal is that you have an objective going in, which is you want to learn more of their story and how you apply it, and that you have a takeaway coming out of that meeting. That takeaway does not have to be a deal. I think that's where a lot of people get confused is they're like wait, I went through all this work and I'm not going to just buy real estate. It looks like you do. I say it's five calls a week and you book one meeting and you get coffee once a week. You go hey, saturday is I'm going to meet with a owner. You take two weeks off every year from that. You get 50 owners that you're talking about your goals and learning from. You're going to find the deals. You don't have to worry about the deal part there.
Speaker 1:There are people that I started building relationships with well before I even met Christian and we're just starting to do business with them now. It's not all instant gratification Most of it is not but eventually you find the owner, that they have the right pieces that match with yours and you can actually go out and buy their real estate. You can do a seller finance, you can do a conventional, but the relationships what matters most. Some of the relationships that I started trying to build over three years ago are finally starting to help us, based on where we're at in our business today.
Speaker 3:I love that, and being able to build these relationships is exactly what it is. We're only trying to build a relationship, we're not trying to get anything out of that. I think that's one of the most important things in relationships. I would say are probably the most important thing that we're going to build in this life. So you mentioned that now you are having some relationships coming to the table. That's helping you to build your business future into the future and building out what you have now. So before we dive into where you take that, after that relationship is built and somebody maybe offers you a property for you guys to execute, where does your business sit today? How many units do you guys own? What's your resort? Let's talk about what your business looks like today and how many times you've gone to a bank to actually get a loan on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've gone to a bank exactly zero times to buy real estate. We've repositioned two seller finance loans, so we have refinancing the bank products on 12 and on the 38 plaques, but haven't used banks to buy anything. Today I've got about 130 apartments and we've got a 20 unit resort.
Speaker 4:And I'll say this anytime that we have entertained the idea of buying something with a bank, especially in today's market where they just keep doing the rate hikes. The banks have changed terms on us mid transaction anytime we've ever attempted that, which is why I love seller financing so much. One of the many reasons is you negotiate all the terms up front and this on the original contract. There's no changes or, oh, marketing conditions have dictated that we want you to pull an extra half million dollars down. Those mid transaction things don't happen because you've already negotiated that product. The ability to close on what you agreed on is phenomenal and super underrated with the seller financing. So while we don't do a lot of banks for acquisitions, my favorite reason we don't do that is consistently consistency. I know what we're buying on the math that we did on the front end, which helps a ton.
Speaker 3:And the banks. They're going to switch stuff up. They're going to tell you I'll come in and we'll give you 85% LTV on your purchase and our rates are probably around 8% and realistically, 8% is the lowest rate that they'll give you right now if you're going to get a bridge loan. But you go in and it'll actually be a 9.5%. And at that point, once you're that far into the transaction, you're already almost locked in with this bank because you need to close, because you got a contract that's got an end date and we need to be able to get this real estate done. And right now that lender is who you were going to be working with on this transaction. They know you're almost locked in.
Speaker 3:So when you're dealing with a seller and you're creating the terms with the seller and the seller says I'm going to do this for you at 0%, 5%, whatever it is, you have the seller's word to work off of at that point and if you've been building that relationship, you have that to go off of and they're not going to go back on their word because you've been building out this relationship. So when a seller, when you're having these initial relationship, building situations with owners of real estate, are you mentioning to them? Let's go back to the beginning of your career, right? Like your first few properties, were you mentioning to these relationships that you were building that, okay, I'd like to buy something seller financed in the future? Those are my goals and what I'm trying to do here. Or was that something that you let the seller introduce to you first?
Speaker 1:I'm asking about how they built their business. But the goal is not to buy a 12 plex. The goal is to retire my mom. The goal is to take care of my family. To do that, I need to buy about 100 rounds. It's just a vehicle. Real estate is a vehicle. That's it. It's not a goal. Don't have a unit count goal. That's irrelevant. Some people that have that they forget what they're really doing it for. They get so many pieces on the board and they don't realize that what they originally wanted they could have attained if they built their business a little differently instead of focused on the unit. So we're not telling them trying to buy a deal, seller financed I'm trying to get you 100 units because that allows me to do this and this. That goal is more reasonable for them to relate to.
Speaker 3:More tangible and they want to help you towards that goal. When you're building that out with them, it comes to a point where this seller, this property owner, ultimately says Cody Christian, I want to sell you this property. I want to sell you whatever the property is, whatever size. How do you typically take the conversation from there?
Speaker 1:The initial question. If they want to sell, you could ask what are you thinking? You could also ask are you looking to get cashed out or would you like to hold a contract? That's what I've done in the past. I worked on building a relationship with a guy and he had a property. It took two years. The question was would you hold a contract or would you like to be cashed out? He didn't want to hold a contract, so he had to take it out with hard money for that specific property. But it was a great purchase. It made sense. That's where I typically start. If they want to sell, you can ask what are you thinking? Did you want to be cashed out? Would you be open to hold a contract? I'd just be very appreciative for the opportunity throughout the whole dialogue.
Speaker 3:Right? Would you say that the 100%? What is the most important piece in your business right now? Is it building relationships?
Speaker 1:The most important piece in the overall business is the way that we built the business. We built it based on cash flow for equity growth and we managed to get there because of the relationships that I started building four years ago. That is key. We couldn't be partnered the way we are had some of the original relationships for money or for deals came together. I would not have worked because the first deal we partnered on I wouldn't have had the confidence to buy that had I not been instilled that confidence from some of the first owners that taught me how to play the game. But the key piece of any business is cash flow. We just couldn't have attained it without those relationships.
Speaker 3:And what was that first facility that you two partnered on we?
Speaker 1:got a 38 unit of farm and building over in Central Washington.
Speaker 3:And what was the play on that value at? What did the numbers look like on that facility?
Speaker 4:Yeah, that was pretty heavy value add. That was their biggest issue. There was a few. That was a huge value add property. You had some electric problems, some roof problems, but the biggest problem was the tenant base. You had about 10 out of 38 tenants that were actually paying. There were 10 vacancies. So you have a bunch of vacancies that you have 10 to 20 people not paying.
Speaker 4:But when we picked it up, it's right in the middle of COVID where there's a ton of government programs that can come in and help. So the first thing we did was we got the tenants who needed assistance on assistance, which solved about 50% of the collections, right there. And then the rest of it was strategically and consistently over the next couple of years, renovating units. We completely resided the building, fixing the roofs. We did $700,000 of reno on that project and a pretty penny, but we bought it for two and the last appraisal, which was before we did a lot of the reno appraises that are out for one. So it certainly worked.
Speaker 4:The deal itself made over a million dollars on paper. It just took a lot of time and a lot of money. But that project we saw that deal and it was on market for 13 years. We saw that opportunity as the opportunity that we could take out because we had enough energy, we had the time, we saw the upside. It was the right deal for us. It wouldn't have been the right deal for a lot of people, but it's the one. That is our first deal that we made a million dollars on.
Speaker 3:That's a pretty good first deal to work on there, guys. Good work ripping that. And now I remember you put out a post I think it was on YouTube that you were calling your shop. I think it's a billion dollars of real estate by the time you were 40, cody, is that what it was? That was the video. Some type of goal Are you guys still? Is that still the goal for the business? What are your aspirations? Where do you see the business taking.
Speaker 1:It's just a made up number, as all numbers are, but without a doubt we will pass that.
Speaker 3:Right, and that is that driving you right now. Does that move you into different acquisition strategies for the future? Are you looking for larger complexes now or are you still going for the 10, 12, 15 unit facility?
Speaker 1:The overarching strategy is you find a piece of real estate you want to buy and then you figure out how to buy it and how to never lose it. How do you buy? It is a function of once you find the asset you want, you start the money, which is just a combination of debt and equity. That's it. How do you never lose? It is long term fixed rate debt with cash flow and margin, and that you could lose it even if you have margin, if you get eaten alive by catbacks. You have to be smart.
Speaker 1:But that is what we do for a business model you figure out how to buy a bunch of real estate and you figure out how to cash flow it so you never lose it. So whether it's a 10 plex, 100 unit, a 50 unit, it does not matter if it moves us forward. Now back to your original question the billion dollar mark. 10 billion dollar mark, which I believe is the number we put in that video for assets. That is not what's pushing us. What we want to do is pushing us. It's just a mathematical equation that I believe we will fresh pass those numbers.
Speaker 3:And what is that you want to do? What is the driving force?
Speaker 1:Christian wants to move to a different state that is a little less gross.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:And I would like to have a family in the next couple of years. We're both setting up our pieces to where all of our personal goals that are independent of one another we can crush. We can do it without a doubt in our minds and have mine as fair. Money is not everything, but it does help solidify your base.
Speaker 3:Definitely a tool that you can help to create the life that you'd like to create for you and your family. And yeah, man, I feel you, christian, you've got to get out to some better nature and be able to be out there in the good weather. So where I'd like to take this now is, like you have said in the past, that you bought real estate just by signing a contract, and I think that's some of the power behind seller financing and what you do to be able to get into properties. It doesn't take going to a bank, giving them all your information. You, literally, you build a relationship, you get an opportunity and you sign a contract. So what does the paperwork backing side of this look like? And what do you mean when you say all I do is sign a piece of paper and that, just that?
Speaker 1:got me my real estate, Similar to how you buy any piece of real estate you've got to purchase and sale agreement. It's going to have your underlying and denda your timelines and it's going to illustrate title, escrow contingencies and where the money goes. The difference is when I buy real estate and I do it seller financed, I am just signing paper. You're just moving paper from one party to another. So the actual docs that I use for the seller financing that are drafted up by your attorney during escrow. You're going to have a promissory note and a d to trust. That is the standard method of practice that I do. There's other documents you can do, like real estate contracts.
Speaker 1:I like traditional seller financing Promissory note. You've got two parties. You've got to make her and a holder. Whoever's making the promise is the borrower. Whoever's holding onto that promise is the lender. You've got a document that'll protect them, which is the d to trust. Essentially, it's saying that I trust you're going to pay me, but in case you don't, I'm going to put a lien against title so that you cannot sell it or refinance it without paying me off. As far as just signing paperwork, I sign a promise to pay. That is the legal version of an IOU, and IOUs are only as good as what they're backed by. Might have had one as a kid, but if it wasn't backed by anything, the other party probably didn't do it. In real estate, you back it with the subject real estate or you can back it with something else, but that is up to the lender and you.
Speaker 3:Right. The lender in this case is the seller of the property. If you're doing a seller finance note, that is all up to what you negotiate with the seller and how you're doing deals. If somebody wanted to do one of these deals today and they're listening to this and saying that is the strategy that I want to go to IE, maybe they don't have the capital. They want to try and get a deal no money down or they don't want to have to go to a bank to be able to get a deal done. What are the first? First, they should go on Google Maps and start looking for bigger doors, or should they just start going out and making connections? What would you recommend as almost the fast track here to get on par with being able to get these properties in their name, possibly with a seller finance note?
Speaker 4:I think the fast track is using that Google Maps. Once you've identified what you want to do, you just find the people who own the properties and you meet up with them. I know we've said this earlier in the podcast, but that really is as simple as it is. Who's done what you want to do? Who owns the properties? You'd like to one day own Me with them and learn how they did it. That can be bolstered by going to events, but what I have found is you go to real estate events.
Speaker 4:There's a lot of people bragging about what they've done. There's a bunch of people who want to either show off or a bunch of people who want to learn, who might not be the people to move you forward. It's still nice to go to those events. It's nice to meet people, but where you really get the value is finding specific owners who've done specific things. They're probably not the people who are just showing up at meetups. They're going to be someone going about their own business.
Speaker 4:Most of the people Cody and I have bought from or learned from are just not people that you would have ever heard of, because they're not online, they're not attending every local meetup. They're running their own business and you'd have to go after them and say, hey, here I am. I appreciate what you've done. Here's where I'm at. Can you show me some of what you did to get to where you are? If you can do that effectively again and again, you will learn so much more about how to run the business in your market. You'll learn everything about everything what contractors, what lawyers to use, how they built their portfolio, different financing techniques. Whatever worked in that market for them is going to be all worked for you.
Speaker 3:Building out this strategy of obviously and it seems so, like a lot of this stuff that you guys do is and you've said it before it's obvious, it's easy, it's simple. We make real estate such a complicated thing but it is pretty simple If you just follow what logic tells you to do and go out there and do an actually take action and do the things and make the connections here. When you first develop this strategy, it is easy to run the business in good amount of just getting their money out first. And Did it just fall into place like this Because you were like I just want to go out and find what the people who are doing what I want to do, what are they doing? And you just went and connected with these people? Or was there like an underlying if I go out and connect with these people, I might have an opportunity to buy the things? What was like the motivation behind developing this strategy to get that?
Speaker 1:done. When I was getting started, I didn't have any family, didn't have any friends that were in the business, still don't didn't have any clients. I wasn't making money as a real estate agent and the thought process was I have nobody that can teach me how to play this game, nobody that can show me how to buy real estate effectively. And the thought was there are people out there that are in a position to show me how to do this. I just have to figure out who's done what I want to do, call them up, meet with them, learn how they did it and repeat it. Figure out who has what you want. Once you've established what you want, and then learn how to get it. That's the simplicity of everything. You figure out what you want, who has it, how did they get it, repeat the steps.
Speaker 3:And the people that know the steps to get what you want are going to be the people that already have it. They've already got it for themselves and they've figured out how to get it. Now let me ask, based on the market today, like, obviously we're coming into a time where seller financing is going to be even more important than ever before. Possibly and we don't, nobody knows the market could change and go up the ton. Tomorrow it could collapse. Nobody knows and it's not up to anyone to make any assumptions. But with the market where it's at right now, has your strategy shifted at all? No, it has not, because it doesn't matter what. When interest rates are going up and nowadays where you're looking at going and getting a bank loan at seven, 8%, and you guys are having these conversations potentially with sellers, with owners, to potentially buy their properties on seller finance notes, does that affect the rate overall that you see that they typically offer you to buy their property at when you're discussing term?
Speaker 4:No, and the reason being is you're negotiating every step of the transaction, so our rules are consistent with every market. How do you buy it? How do you never lose it? Buy on long-term cash flowing fixed rate debt. So we're not gonna just if someone goes oh yeah, we would like to lend at 8% interest and we want to do it at a market price. It's probably not gonna cash flow. Just most deals will not cash flow at that, so the interest is gonna have to be lower. It's just not a deal that we're gonna do, or the price has to come down. The two main ways that you affect it is you either borrow less money or you borrow cheaper money. So you have to get the price or you have to get the term.
Speaker 4:Right now into days market, the main thing that gets negotiated is the interest rate, because most sellers wanna sell it last year's price. There's not an option to buy it conventionally last year's interest rate. So it makes a very simple negotiation. It's gonna need to be a little cheaper In a different market. Price could be the thing to negotiate If interest rates are in a great place. Yeah, you guys got a market interest rate, but we'll need to look at price.
Speaker 4:There's a million different ways to look at it, but when we are buying a deal, whatever we put together, it has to cash flow, with margin on long-term fixed rate debt, and we're very clear on that's what our objective is, what we're trying to build. So when we get to a proposal with a seller who we've built a relationship with, they're not flying-sided by oh, this is what the deal has to look like. They understand, they want us to win and a lot of the people we're buying from are the people who instilled these principles on us in the first place. We're basically just telling them like hey, you told us to always buy this way. If this deal doesn't work with your metrics, I don't know how we'd buy it.
Speaker 4:And we've had that conversation before. We've bought deals that way and we've passed on deals that way. We've had sellers who've sold to us before who said don't buy deals that don't cash flow. It just deals that don't cash flow. And as you know what, we can't do that because we'd be violating what you taught us. And they respect it. And sometimes deal doesn't happen. That's totally fine.
Speaker 3:And that's just the conversation that you've got to be open and transparent with. Okay, these are the core principles that you taught me to abide by, and maybe, even if they didn't teach you that, that's just a logical situation to have. Like Mr Seller or Mrs Seller, I can't. These are the numbers, given the loan that we would be taking out with you. This is our monthly payment, this is the taxes and insurance and this is what our monthly cost basis would look like. This is the rent that you know is coming in right now and this is the rent that could come in. It's not gonna cash flow, it doesn't make sense. I won't be able to hold it, I'll be under water, I won't be able to survive with this building. It won't be able to pay for itself, so I can't logically buy that. So then at that point, it's either need to lower the purchase price and have less of that, but more than likely is we just need to lower the interest rate and lower those terms, because the seller wants to see that price that comes in.
Speaker 3:On that Now a question that I have obviously and this isn't obvious maybe for some of the listeners but for a seller finance loan, the seller has to be able to fully finance that loan. There can't be. They have to own that property, likely free and clear, or there are some other strategies around it doing sub two, doing a wrap. But if we're talking solely seller finance, if there's a loan on that property, they cannot fully sell or finance that property. So do you guys ever have situations like this where they are not free and clear, fully on the property and you buy them out of the debt or you do like a wrap or any situations like that you've handled in the past?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can just make your down payment enough to clear title 38 plaques. They owed 100 and something thousand bucks on it so they needed more than that down and we borrowed that. You can have the traditional under going first, have the seller finance in second. There are certain lenders that will allow you to do that, so there's ways to go around it. But you should clear title when you buy a piece of property. That is best practice.
Speaker 3:Right to make sure that you actually, that you actually own that property.
Speaker 1:Yep, we know, if someone is trying to buy a property in Texas and there's potentially like a million dollar loan that's in default, that wasn't gonna get cleared. You know what I'm talking about. We're talking about the what ifs on that one deal. Oh yeah, I was like you don't wanna buy a property that has a million dollar loan in default If you're getting 100% seller financing for two million. Now you owe three on a two million dollar asset. Best of all, good, not good.
Speaker 3:But it's not man. Title issues definitely come at you. I had a property that I bought for 600,000, put 60 in it appraised at 1.25, and we went to pull out a million and or like right around 950,000. And right before we pulled that out, this past December, I was supposed to get a check for 200,000 on the ReFi over our note that we currently had at that time and it turns out that the seller sold shares of the company that owned that property two days before we closed on it and the title company did not look at the state registration the day before we closed. So now we're going through those. It delayed our refinance on almost a million dollars at debt. We were coming in at 4.75% and now at this point, if and when we get to refinance this loan, we're gonna be up in probably high sevens and that's like a ton extra interest that we're gonna be paying over time. So we're still in this dispute on title right now We've got we're suing the title company for damages on that. That's a whole big mess, man.
Speaker 3:But yeah, making sure bringing the right experts in for title is definitely right. I've definitely learned my lesson there. But, cody Christian, so much value today that we really dug into, really appreciate you guys coming on and giving the steps to go out there and create and it really is that simple. Like you, make it so simple. Just go out and build the relationships with the people who've already done the things that you want to do. Call them, meet them for coffee and just start discovering how they've done what you wanna do. I've got two final questions for you guys. My first question what is one actionable step that our listeners should take today to start on their path towards financial freedom?
Speaker 1:I would prioritize becoming intentional. Every meeting that Christian and I went into getting started, We'd go on with an objective and we'd walk away with the takeaway, and we did that until we became competent. Most people never quite get to the level of competency they need to become a professional in the space. So if I was getting started again and someone else's shoes maybe they've got a property or two. Maybe they've got a few properties or none. The intentionality that they set for the tone of their business is gonna greatly impact how far they get and how quickly they get there. So go on to everything with an objective and leave with the takeaway that is relevant to that objective.
Speaker 4:And I wanted to do that really quick. We talked a lot about setting goals and meeting people. When I talked to people about their goals, they typically have something along the lines of I want to be financially free or I want to be able to quit my job. It's these ambiguous targets with no defined timeline or no quantity of what does that actually cost or what would it look like to get there. They just have these. I'm wandering towards a vague target.
Speaker 4:Right, it's a vague meme of something. Yeah, I clarified the goal, like for me, I wanted to retire my wife from teaching within one year. It was 10 years and then it became one year because, covid, I got the school systems really messed up over here. But we got accelerated and it was like, okay, I want to do this. I want to do this fairly quickly. What moves would we have to make to build that income, to be able sustain our current lifestyle, to get her out of teaching quicker? And then we can figure out the thrive part afterwards. But it's like, how can we just get to? She doesn't have this job but we don't rely on this income. That's all we had to do. But that clarity got me from four multifamily units to I think I was in the mid 80s of units by the time she retired and that took me that one year. We did in 11 months. So to do those things, the clarity of goal is a great place to get started.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that clarity that you get there is like digging deep right. Like you want financial freedom, all right, what about it Do you want? I want to be able to retire my wife and then you have to figure out okay, what is the actual number, what do I need? What is the cash flow that I need that makes sense for me and makes us feel safe enough so I can retire my wife and be able to live, maybe safely safely at that point, wherever, wherever that is, but being crystal clear on your goal and the criteria makes you so you can actually shoot towards that target and hit that target.
Speaker 3:If you just throw in a dart and you don't have a dart board to throw it at, you're never going to hit a target. So you got to be able to create that target so you can shoot for it and take the steps to get closer to that target. I love that. And, cody, just curious as to what you were saying when you go into a meeting, have an objective. What's an example of one of these object objectives that, when you're going to do a meeting, you would have?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll give you an example from one of the very first meetings that I ever booked and saw all the way through to buying real estate. This guy was a developer. He went out and he built departments. He's done a lot of construction projects. So my objective was to learn the steps it would take, in his point of view, to get to that, because developers, builders they're the richest people on planet earth. Until they're not and they're not when they can't cash flow their projects all the way through, and that is just a fact they make more money than everyone else in real estate until they don't. So I wanted to figure out how he got there, and that was my objective, and my takeaway was he bought 40 cash flowing apartments and then he never levered his developments.
Speaker 3:Cody, question for you, man. How would you, when you were talking about having objectives that you would have for a meeting, what were the objectives that you would have going into a meeting?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll give you a real life example. I got started and one of the first guys I ended up calling he and his wife. They were developers and so they would go in and they would build apartments. One of my objectives was to learn how they got to that place. I ended up finding out that's not where they started. They started with cash flowing apartments.
Speaker 1:Now the reason I wanted to jump into development jump into construction of apartments was because developers are the richest people on planet earth. Problem is, they're the richest until they're not, and they're not when they can't see their projects all the way through. You can't cash flow and see it to completion. You lose everything. That's typically how they go. You win big and you lose big.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to figure out how he was doing it successfully. His business has built off of 40 cash flowing rentals. It wasn't just 40 properties, it was 40 units and the idea was, if you're going to take on an $8,000 a month mortgage to go build apartments, you should have that coming in from the cash flow of the real estate. You'll have your reserves, but this way you don't have to use them. We can use what you've built on a cash flow front to go do the super speculative deals that have the huge paydays. And you can make sure, even if you don't get the huge payday you expected, you can see the project all the way through and you'll never lose the asset. All right.
Speaker 3:So that's a good idea of what I loved it Going into these actual calls, these meetings. You're pretty intentional with everything that you're doing and if we're intentional with our lives, we can create the actual lives that we want to create. So great message to our listeners there Be intentional, have an objective, know what you're looking for and that can actually bring to you new realizations, that can help you be even more intentional and figure out what you actually want in your life. So last question I've got for you, cody and Christian what is one question that you wish I would have asked or one topic that you wish I would have covered, and how would you have answered that question or how would you have expanded on that topic?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess the question that I would have asked would revolve around how do you make sure the strategy works in every market cycle? Because what I've found consistently there's a lot of people that claim to be professionals on the internet, but their business model doesn't work in every economic cycle. I've found that ours does, and I'm not using that from just personal experience because I haven't been around long enough to know a lot about a lot, but having learned from people that have been playing the game for 50 years by just making these cold calls people I find on Google Maps they've been through most of these cycles and the strategy of figuring out how to cash flow it on long term fixed rate debt has gotten them through every cycle in the business. So I would, in your shoes, ask something revolving around effectiveness of this strategy that people use in every cycle, whether up or down. We'd love it if the rates were still low. We'd be going a little faster, but it doesn't kill our model, like it kills some people's models.
Speaker 3:It kills a lot of those people going to get bank loans when, dude, if you buy real estate at 3%, everything that you buy is going to cash. Not everything, but a good majority of what you buy is going to cash flow. Even if the prices are outrageous, it's still going to cash flow and that's what happened to our market. And now you are in a position where you can actually negotiate terms. You can't negotiate terms too heavy with a bank. When you can do that, you can manage your actual cash flow that you're going to be getting off your properties. Love it and love your business model. Cody, love the end. Christian, love the things that you guys are doing and man can't wait to continue to watch you guys continue to grow. But, Cody, Christian, what are the best places for my listeners and watchers to find you online?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're on YouTube Cody and Christian multifamily strategy, and then we've both got our Instagrams at doing Cody things and at Christian Osgood.
Speaker 3:Love it. Cody Christian, thank you for all the value that you two delivered today. I really appreciate it. It's been great reconnecting with you guys, and from the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, I'm your host, matt Amobile. Today, we add on Cody Davis and Christian Osgood and we are signing off. Thanks guys.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, the show that teaches you to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and follow us online at Matt Amobile. That's Matt AMA B I L E. Be sure to tune in Monday, wednesday and Friday for our weekly podcast drops. Thanks for listening. Let's retire together.