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How I Bought a $4 Million Resort With None of My Own Money

A tour of the Robin Hood Village Resort and the seller-financed structure behind it: 4.5% interest, an 8-year note, and cash flow from day one.

I'm sitting on a bench by the creek next to the wedding venue at my resort, and I'm about to walk you through how we bought this (plus hundreds of other rental properties around the country) using zero of our own dollars.

This is not an ad for you to get into hospitality. But this property is a good illustration of something I want you to see: if you think you need to save your way to a portfolio like mine, or that you even could, most people can't. I have about a $100 million portfolio. I started in my 20s without any of the qualifications you'd expect. Not the credit score, not the income, and certainly not the connections.

The Deal: 4.5% Interest on an Eight-Year Note

We purchased the Robin Hood Village Resort when I was 29 years old.

The seller was ready to retire and could not find the right buyer. They wanted to move to Costa Rica. So they financed us at 4.5% interest on an eight-year note.

That's the whole trick, and it isn't a trick at all. The opportunity came from an owner who was ready to be done. We solved their problem by taking the job they had off their hands. When somebody is ready to retire and you offer to pay them $4 million to take over their job, they'll probably do it.

We're four years into that note now and we're in a position where we could refinance if I wanted to. I kind of love our interest rate, so we're keeping it for the time being.

Today, the operations at the Robin Hood are up about 47 or 48% from where we were even last year. This makes a lot more money than it did when we bought it.

What 13 Acres Actually Looks Like

I'm setting up a bunch of frisbee golf baskets around the 13-acre property right now, figuring out where I want them. There are trails on the other side that guests can walk.

We just got a new wedding tent, and behind it is the stage. We run concerts here. We're about to do a four-day music festival: a farmers market with musicians playing all day at that venue. There are individual cabins around the grounds, and cabin 15 used to be the old liquor store, which is now a huge cabin.

The pub is usually in the middle of setup for something. The backyard has the best hydrangeas I've ever seen and a gorgeous creek. Getting to stay here myself, in my own resort: it's the coolest property I own. It's cooler than my house in Texas.

These are the type of spaces you get to own when you make the decision to buy beyond what you've actually saved for.

Five Years Ago I Was Taking the 5 A.M. Bus

Was this a difficult project? Yes. This is a job. This is a resort. This is a business.

But at 34, this resort by itself makes enough money to pay for my house, my family, our insurance, and our entire cost of living. Then you stack 650 other rentals on top of it. I'm not going to say we're rich, but I'll say this is pretty sweet.

Five years ago I was working at the CoStar Group, getting up at 5:00 a.m. to take the bus into downtown Seattle for LoopNet and Apartments.com. My best year I made almost $200,000, which is a pretty good salary. The year before that I made about $100,000. So for context, I'm not a hyper high income earner. I was successful in my nine-to-five and I had aspirations of getting out of it.

When I was imagining what life could look like, it could not have looked like this at CoStar. There is no version of me finding this opportunity, saving up for it, and buying a $4 million property conventionally. How would I have ever even qualified?

I didn't have the credit score. Turned out I didn't need the credit score. I didn't have the experience. Experience would have been helpful, but I didn't have it.

Creative Finance, Creative Equity, and Stacked Businesses

As you might guess from the channel name, I'm a multifamily guy. I have 650 multifamily rentals. About 70% of them were purchased with creative finance, and the rest with creative equity.

You can stack the money however you want. You can get creative on the financing. You can get creative on who else owns the property with you. You can even use the real estate itself to buy partners out. There are a ton of models for this.

Along the way we built other businesses, mostly by accident. I built a property management company in Texas because we had a legitimate property management problem to solve. I'm not a huge fan of starting five or six businesses at the same time, but we solved the problem and accidentally built a company. It's called Brazos Asset Management, it manages about a thousand doors in Texas, and it has about a dozen employees. I get to cheat a little since I'm still its biggest client, but we started it with profit.

All of these businesses are individually profitable, and we don't have any debt on anything except the real estate itself.

The Golden Rule: Cash Flow From Day One

Here's the rule that makes all of it work. You need cash flow from day one.

If you get paid from day one to own the cool stuff you want, then over time appreciation happens, we print more money, and your debt gets devalued. All of these things happen in the background that make you very, very wealthy over a long horizon. In the meantime, you just have to make sure you're getting paid along the way. Cash flow solves that problem.

That's exactly how we structured this deal: we negotiated an interest rate where the property cash flowed, bought the resort, and stabilized it. We ran the same strategy across the entire multifamily portfolio and with the property management company.

The order matters. Negotiate the deal first. Find a debt product that lets the property cash flow. Here, that was a 4.5% seller finance note over eight years.

Fixing Things a Town Actually Needs

I'm back in my home state of Washington right now. Yesterday I was in a coffee shop we renovated: a completely failed commercial building downtown that shared a parking lot with a building I already owned. I figured, what the heck, let's do it. Matt Wang owns that coffee shop with me.

It is so cool to drive into a small town, walk into a coffee shop, and think: I own this. Not only do I own it, we renovated it and made the space possible.

A lot of people don't know that the Robin Hood used to be a huge music venue. The community used this space constantly. That died under the last ownership. The events shut down, the restaurant closed, the pub went quiet, and the reviews started tanking. It stopped being a space the community got to use. In a little town like Union, Washington, this is one of the few places where people can really get together.

Making money is cool, and we do quite a bit of that. But profitably fixing problems for a city and offering things people actually need and want is a different kind of satisfying.

Today's project is picking where we're going to put 25,000 bulbs, so we can extend our peak season by about three or four weeks with a flower bloom across the whole resort just before peak. It should be the best dollar-for-dollar investment we've ever made in this space.

Key Takeaways

  • The Robin Hood was bought at 29 with seller financing at 4.5% interest on an eight-year note, with none of my own money.
  • The seller's problem was retirement, not price. Solving the actual problem is what created the opportunity.
  • About 70% of the 650-unit multifamily portfolio was bought with creative finance, and the rest with creative equity.
  • Cash flow from day one is the golden rule. Get paid to own the asset and let appreciation, inflation, and debt paydown work in the background.
  • Negotiate the deal first, then find the debt product that allows it to cash flow.
  • Credit score, high income, experience, and connections were all things I didn't have. The deal structure is what made it possible.

My goal here isn't to convince you to buy a resort. It's to show you that opportunities like this sit in markets all over the country. I've done this in red states and blue states, big cities and small ones. The dream was always real and always available: I just didn't know the game was played this way.

Watch the full tour above for the cabins, the wedding venue, the pub, and the rest of the property. If you want the structures behind deals like this one, "The Book on Creative Real Estate" walks through them, there's a free multifamily course to get started, and a free community that comes with a deal calculator. If you'd rather learn directly from me (I coach live more than 152 times a year and you work with me, not an assigned coach) mentorship details are on the site.

Read the episode transcript

Original automatic captions. Names, numbers, and punctuation may contain transcription errors.

0:00 Friends, I'm on a bench at my creek next to my wedding venue at my resort that I'm about to walk through with you explaining how we bought this and
0:09 hundreds of other rental properties around the country using zero of our own dollars. Now, this is not an ad for you to get into hospitality. However, I will share a lot about this project and the
0:17 other projects that we do. If you think you need to save your way here or that you even could, most people can't. In fact, I have about a $100 million portfolio. I started my 20s without any
0:26 of the qualifications to get here. Not the credit score, not the income, certainly not the connections. I'll show you how the games played as we tour the Robin Hood. So, uh, welcome. First of
0:34 all, let me walk you through these. Just set these up. Figuring out where I want to actually put them, but got a bunch of little Frisbee golf things to go around the 13acre resort. We got trails over
0:41 there that people can walk through. So, going to set them up strategically.
0:44 Behind me here, we just got a new wedding tent. See if you guys can see that. Uh, that is the stage. We have concerts. We're about to do a 4day music
0:52 festival. We're talking farmers market, musicians playing all day long. uh at that venue there and you'll walk through
0:59 a bunch of the cabins as I'm walking around the back of the Robin Hood here.
1:03 We purchased this when I was 29 years old. Seller was ready to retire. Could not find the right buyer. So, they
1:10 financed us for 4 1/2% interest on an 8-year note. Now, today the operations of the Robin Hood, we're up about 47 48%
1:19 from where we're at even last year. This makes a lot more money than it did. The opportunity to buy this came from just simply an owner who was ready to tire.
1:27 They wanted to move to Costa Rica. Uh we solved their problem by taking the job that they had off of their hands. And for a lot of people when you're ready to retire, if someone will pay you $4
1:36 million to take your job, you'll probably do it. Now, as you may have guessed from the channel name, it's multi family strategy. I'm a multif family guy. I have 650 multif family
1:43 rentals. A lot of them, 70% were purchased with creative finance. The rest of them with creative equity. So, you can stack the money however you want. You can get creative on the
1:51 financing. You can get creative on who else owns it with you. You can even use the real estate to buy them out. There's a ton of models for this. What I want to highlight in this video though is there
2:00 are opportunities like this. What's this one actual property? There's opportunities like this all over the country. There's multi family all over the country. I've done this. Red states, blue states, big cities, small cities.
2:08 You can do this, too. Let me walk you through the pub. There's a bunch of people setting up for an event there.
2:11 So, be a little bit quiet, but check this out. Look at that. Setting up for Hoodto.
2:20 Isn't this just the the coolest? These are the type of spaces that you get to own when you make the decision, hey, I'm going to buy beyond what I've actually
2:29 saved for. Would this a difficult project? Yes, this is a job. This is a resort. This is a business. However, to be 34, to have this resort by itself,
2:38 making enough money to pay for my house, my family, [music] our insurance, our entire cost of living is covered solely
2:45 by this operation right here. Then you stack on top of it 650 other rentals.
2:50 I'm not going to say we're rich, but I'm going to say this is um this is pretty sweet. 5 years ago, I was working at the Co-Star Group, getting up at 5:00 a.m.
2:57 to take the bus into uh downtown Seattle working for loot apartments.com. My best year, I made almost $200,000, and that's
3:04 a pretty good salary. Uh the year before that, I made about 100. So, for context, I'm not a hyper high income earner. I
3:12 was successful in my 9 to5. I had aspirations of getting out of the 9 to5.
3:16 Oh, by the way, check this out. This is our backyard. Best hydrangeas I've ever seen. There's a gorgeous purple creek right there. Getting to just stay here
3:24 myself in my own resort. It's the coolest property I own. It's cooler than my house in Texas. We just have this beautiful, beautiful space here. When I
3:32 was imagining what life could look like, it could not look like this at the Co-Star Group. There is no iteration of me being able to find this opportunity
3:40 to save up for it to buy a $4 million property conventionally. How would I have ever even qualified? However, doing projects like this, you get to do some
3:48 pretty unique stuff. Well, I got walk you guys all through the part that uh no one never gets to see. This is my tool shed.
3:56 I know it's like an honest to god commercial operation. There's something amazing when you get into business. I get to walk your own properties and just
4:04 realize, wow, we actually own this. We did the thing. And the amazing thing for me is that the dream was always there.
4:10 It was always real. We always could have done this. opportunities like this sit in any market around the country. Did not have the credit score. Did not need
4:18 the credit score. Did not have the experience. Uh experience would have been helpful, but didn't have it. Closet.
4:26 Used to be the old liquor store is now cabin 15. Huge cabin. Got these individual cabins over here. But we
4:34 built an entire business out here at the same time. I built my PM company in Texas. Now, I'm not a huge fan of starting five or six businesses at the
4:41 same time. We had a legitimate property management issue that we had to solve.
4:44 So, we solved the problem. Accidentally built a company along the way and now manages about a thousand doors in Texas. It's called Brazos Asset Management.
4:52 Sweet company. We've stacked all these businesses. All of them are individually profitable. And we don't have any debt on anything except for the real estate
4:59 itself. Now, the rule, the golden rule to do all of this, you need to have cash flow from day one. If you get paid from day one to own all the cool stuff that
5:08 you want, what usually happens over time, appreciation happens. We print more money. So, debt is devalued. You
5:15 have all of these awesome things that happen that make you very, very wealthy over time. In the meantime, you just have to make sure that you're getting paid along the way. Cash flow solves
5:23 that problem. So, we structured this deal with an interest rate where it cash flowed, was able to buy the resort, stabilize it. We did the exact same
5:31 strategy with the entire multif family portfolio and with the property management company. Got to cheat a little bit cuz I'm still my biggest client. However, we started that one
5:39 with proper with with profit. So, we have a debt-free company manages a thousand doors. It has about a dozen employees at it. Going around not just
5:48 the state I live in, Texas going around the country. I'm back in my home home state of Washington. I was in a coffee shop yesterday getting to check it out.
5:56 Commercial building that we renovated.
5:57 It was a completely failed building [music] downtown. It shared a parking lot with a building I already owned. I figured, what the heck? Let's do it. It is so cool to drive into a small town,
6:05 go into a coffee shop, and go, "Hey, I I own this." Not only do I own this, we renovated and made this space possible.
6:11 We've contributed to the communities around us as a business owner. Making money is cool. Don't don't get me wrong.
6:17 And and we do quite a bit of that. But profitably fixing problems for the city and offering things that people actually need and want. A lot of people don't
6:24 know this, but the Robin Hood used to be a huge music venue. People from the community used to use this space a ton.
6:31 That died over the course of the last ownership. A lot of the events shut down. Uh there used to be a restaurant, the pub used to be active. They were all shut down. The reviews started tanking.
6:41 But this was no longer a space the community got to use. In a little town like Union, Washington, these are one of the spaces where the community can really get together. Speaking of the
6:49 Afraid of Project, Matt Wang owns that coffee shop with me. We better run before it gets to us. But no, I was just kidding. Uh, but this is the type of
6:56 stuff you get to do. You [music] can do it regardless of the income that you currently have. Negotiate the deal first. Find a debt product that allows you to cash flow. In this case, for us,
7:05 it was 4% or 4 1.5% seller finance note over the course of 8 years. We're already 4 years in in a position where
7:12 we could refinance if I wanted to, but I kind of love our interest rate right now. So, we're going to keep it up for the time being. Uh today project that we're getting to do is I'm picking where
7:20 we're going to put uh 25,000 bulbs so we can extend our peak season a little bit by having this unbelievable gorgeous
7:27 flower bloom over the whole resort. A little bit before our peak season. So extend that by about 3 to 4 weeks. Uh should be actually probably the best
7:36 dollar to dollar investment we've ever made in the space. But having the privilege to get to do this is something that you can do too. Wanted to share this as a little behind the scenes with
7:44 me and an encouragement. And now if you if you want to learn how to do this uh there is a link below to check out our community multif family strategy. I coach more than any other human being
7:53 online. I is me live 152 times a week plus email, text support, the whole
7:59 whole nine yards. There is no mentor who is as active as I am in buying real estate and in spending the hours coaching the real estate. If you want to
8:07 actually work with me, not just the coach I assign you to, uh you can check out that link below, talk to my team, see if it's a good fit for you. Uh, but this, regardless of where you're at
8:15 today, this is possible. See you guys soon.

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