How to Buy Apartments in a Few Hours a Week While Working a 9-5

I just got a question from one of my mentees, and it's one of my favorites, so I wanted to answer it properly for everybody.

This particular mentee has killed it in single family. He knows how to look at those deals, he knows how to close those deals, and he's done very well. He also has a busy nine-to-five. His message was basically: I'm just not getting the multifamily traction. I'm finding deals, they're not clicking, and the math is not working like it does in single family. How do I move forward efficiently when I have a massive time constraint?

By the end of this, you'll know how to find deals while burning the least amount of time possible, and why multifamily is still your best option even when you get less traction on it than you did in single family.

For context, I'm writing this from the Bahamas. My tenants are kind enough to pay their rent on time, so I get to disappear for a weekend at Atlantis every once in a while. But that freedom is the output, not the input. The input is a very deliberate system.

I'm Busy Too: That's the Whole Point

I am not someone with unlimited free time who happens to buy apartments on the side.

I run my property management company, which has 10 employees. I run a sales and marketing organization with my buddy Caleb Hommel that's growing very rapidly at 18 employees. My wife and I run a resort in Washington state with 10 employees. I run this YouTube channel as a coach. I have a ton of jobs, and I work about 80 to 100 hours a week.

So how do I have time to buy all of these properties and actually manage them? I look for the most time-efficient ways to do it. Every strategy that trades a large amount of time for a small amount of money gets cut.

That single filter is what separates people who buy hundreds of units while employed from people who spin for years and buy nothing.

Stop Hunting for Good Deals Online

The biggest thing people miss is this: 99% of the time, you are not going to find good deals online.

I've bought deals off LoopNet. It happens. But it's few and far between.

So when you're on LoopNet or Crexi, change what you're doing there. Don't run your analysis to answer "is this a good deal or a bad deal." That's a single family habit. In single family you get sent deals that may or may not work, and you sort them.

Multifamily is not a volume game.

What you're looking to do is, two or three times a week, write up a deal that looks interesting. Not a deal that already works: a deal that looks like the kind of property you want to own. Then write it up where it works for you.

Talk to the broker. Ask your questions. Have the conversation. Do the analysis. Then get back to them and say: here's how I see this deal working, I think the bank is going to lend here, and I'm able to offer you X or Y.

Sometimes you have to come way down on price. Sometimes you have a creative solution. Either way, you offer where the deal works.

Everyone Expects You to Negotiate: So Negotiate Correctly

Where most people miss in multifamily is that they're looking to find the good deal. That's not the job. Everyone in this business expects you to negotiate. Your job is to negotiate correctly.

Find a deal you know will work for you at the right terms. Be confident enough in your math that you can at least write the offer. Then ask the broker politely: "I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for. Is this an offer that's worth getting in front of the seller?"

Look at what you just did. You positioned yourself as a ready, able and willing buyer of that exact kind of real estate. And brokers tend to list more properties just like it.

So even if the answer is no, you're now in a completely different category from everybody else calling that broker.

Do this two or three times a week and you're building an arsenal of brokers who know that you call, you ask good questions, and you're able to write an offer. You move to the top of the stack.

So many people do not write the darn offer. Just ask: is this an offer we can submit?

We're not ripping out lowballs. We're not doing high volume. It is a low volume, high relationship game, and that is the biggest difference between this and single family.

Why It Has to Be Multifamily

Here's why this matters so much more in multi than in single family.

Say you're buying 10 to 25 unit buildings, or 10 to 30 unit buildings. You do four transactions a year: one a quarter. Remember, you're only writing two or three offers in a week at most. You start finding deals that work, you write them up, you close them. You're successful four times.

You just picked up 100 doors.

Not a lot of paperwork. Not a lot of capital raise. Not a lot of stress. And you can replicate it again and again and again, year over year. That's how people end up with multi-hundred or multi-thousand unit portfolios.

On top of that, you get all the efficiencies of managing them, and they make way more money per transaction. As an example, I just sold a mobile home park a couple of weeks ago that I bought for $300,000 for $1.1 million. I don't sell a lot of my real estate (I hold almost all of it) but for context, you can have deep six figures and occasionally seven figures entry to exit on a single one of these properties.

Compare the workload. Single family means finding the deal, making the offer, paperwork, signing, due diligence: all of that, over and over, for a much smaller result each time. Single family is a really hard way to stack.

One Saturday a Month: Become an Insider

There's one more thing that stacks the deck in your favor, and it costs almost nothing but attention.

Choose one meetup in your area: ideally the largest one. Get around other owners. Schedule a coffee meeting. Take that one Saturday or Sunday. I know how precious that time is when you're working a nine-to-five, but take a little bit of it and consistently take owners out to coffee.

Ask them where they're finding success. Ask what their struggles are. Ask who to avoid as property managers.

Become an insider in your market.

Here's what you end up with. Brokers send you deals because you write offers, and you write offers that work: bankable offers. You analyze quickly, you get back to them, you're at the top of the broker list. And you know the players in your market, including the people who want to network, so they keep working with you.

Related reading: How to Get Top Brokers to Actually Send You Creative Finance Deals

That combination produces a few deals a year. Maybe four, five, six. Call it 50 to 100 units stacking and stacking and stacking.

As you gain momentum, the income goes up. And as the income goes up, you get a choice: scale up, or say "I've hit my goal, I have freedom," and skip straight to the time freedom part.

Whatever your goal is, just know where you're heading. Engineer how many units or acquisitions it's going to take you to get there, and then go out and do it.

Key Takeaways

• Cut every strategy that trades a large amount of time for a small amount of money. That filter is how a 100-hour work week and a growing portfolio coexist.
• You will not find good deals online 99% of the time. Use the listing sites to find properties you'd want to own, then structure the terms that make them work.
• Write two or three offers a week, not fifty. It's a low volume, high relationship game.
• Ask the broker directly whether the offer is worth putting in front of the seller. Writing the offer is what moves you to the top of their list.
• Four closings a year on 10-to-30 unit buildings is roughly 100 doors: with far less paperwork and stress than stacking single family.
• Spend one weekend day taking local owners to coffee. Being an insider in your market is what makes deals come to you.

If you're trying to close a deal a quarter and you can do it consistently, you are going to do just fine.

Watch the full video for the whole breakdown, including how I frame the offer conversation with brokers. If you want to go deeper, you can learn about my mentorship at multifamilystrategy.com, or download our free course on getting started in multifamily investing. And if you want to be around people doing the same thing, our free Skool community is linked in original episode description and comes with a free calculator.

0:00 I just got this question from one of my
0:02 mentees. By the way, this is Christian.
0:03 I'm here in the Bahamas. My tenants are
0:06 kind enough to pay their rent on time so
0:07 I can go ahead and disappear for the
0:09 weekend here every once [music] in a
0:10 while at Atlantis. But while I'm here, I
0:13 got one of my favorite questions and
0:15 something that I really wanted to make
0:16 sure that I answered. Well, I wanted to
0:17 share this with everyone. But I have a
0:19 mentee who's [music] killed it in single
0:21 family. He knows how to look at those
0:23 deals. He knows how to close those
0:24 deals. He's done very well. He has a
0:26 busy 9 to5 and he's like, I am just not
0:28 getting the multif family traction. I'm
0:30 finding deals. They're not clicking. The
0:33 math is not working like it does in
0:34 single family. How do you move forward
0:36 efficiently if you have a massive time
0:38 constraint? So, I'm going to share that
0:39 on today's video. By the end of this
0:41 video, you're going to know how to find
0:42 deals blowing the least amount of time
0:44 and why multif family is still your best
0:47 option even if you get less traction
0:49 than you do in single family. So, let's
0:51 get started. First of all, I too am
0:55 super busy. I run my property management
0:57 company which has 10 employees. I run a
0:59 sales and marketing organization with my
1:00 buddy Caleb Hmel that is growing very
1:03 rapidly at 18 employees. My wife and I
1:05 run a resort that has 10 employees in
1:07 Washington state. I run this YouTube
1:10 channel, Multif Family Strategy as a
1:12 coach. In fact, I have a ton of jobs and
1:14 work about 80 to 100 hours a week. So,
1:16 how do I have time to buy all of the
1:18 properties and how do I actually manage
1:20 this? I look for the most timeefficient
1:22 ways to do it. The biggest thing that
1:24 people miss out on is you are not going
1:26 to find good deals online 99% of the
1:29 time. I've bought deals off Loopnet, but
1:31 it's few and far between. So, if you're
1:32 on LoopNet and you're on Crazy, you're
1:34 going to find the deals that look like
1:35 the properties that you want to buy, and
1:37 you're going to run your analysis not on
1:38 is it a good deal or a bad deal. You can
1:40 do this in single family because you're
1:42 sent deals that may or may not work.
1:44 This is not a volume game. What you're
1:46 looking to do is, I would say two, three
1:49 times a week, write up a deal that looks
1:52 interesting. Write it up where it works
1:54 for you. Talk to the broker, ask your
1:56 questions of the broker, have the
1:58 conversation, do the analysis, and then
2:01 get back to them and say, "Hey, this is
2:03 how I see this deal working. I think the
2:05 bank's going to lend here. I'm able to
2:07 offer you X or Y." Now, sometimes you
2:10 have to come way down on price.
2:11 Sometimes you have a creative solution,
2:12 but what you're going to do is you're
2:13 going to offer where the deal works.
2:15 Where most people miss in multif family
2:17 is you're not looking to find the good
2:19 deal. Everyone expects you to negotiate.
2:23 So, your job is to negotiate correctly.
2:26 Find a deal that you know is going to
2:27 work for you. Be confident enough in
2:28 your math where you can at least write
2:30 the offer and ask the broker politely,
2:32 "Hey, I know this isn't exactly what
2:34 you're looking for. Is this an offer
2:36 that's worth getting in front of the
2:37 seller?" Now, what you've done is you've
2:38 positioned yourself as a ready, able,
2:40 and willing buyer of the piece of real
2:41 estate that you're calling. Brokers tend
2:44 to list more properties just like it.
2:45 So, even if they say no, you're in a
2:47 different category than anyone else. If
2:49 you're doing this two or three times a
2:50 week, you're building an arsenal of
2:52 brokers who know that you call, you ask
2:54 good questions, and you are able to
2:56 write an offer. You move to the top of
2:58 the stack. So many people do not write
3:00 the darn offer. Just ask them, "Hey, is
3:02 this an offer that we can submit?"
3:04 You're not ripping out low balls. We're
3:06 not doing high volume. It is a low
3:08 volume, high relationship game. And that
3:10 is the biggest difference. Now, why is
3:12 it so much more important to do this in
3:14 multi than single family? Because if
3:16 you're buying, let's say, 10 to 25 unit
3:19 buildings or 10 to 30 unit buildings,
3:21 you do four transactions, one
3:23 transaction a quarter. Remember, you're
3:25 doing like two or three offers in a week
3:28 at max. You start to find deals that
3:30 work. You write them up. You close them.
3:32 You're successful four times. You picked
3:33 up 100 doors. Not a lot of paperwork,
3:37 not a lot of capital raise, not a lot of
3:38 stress. You're able to replicate this
3:40 again and again and again and again year
3:43 over year. And that's how you get these
3:44 multiund or multi,000 unit portfolios.
3:47 You have all the efficiencies of
3:48 managing them. They make way more money.
3:50 For example, I actually just sold a
3:52 mobile home park I bought for 300,000
3:54 for a million1 just a couple weeks ago.
3:57 Now, I don't sell a lot of my real
3:58 estate. I hold almost all of it. But
4:00 just for context, you can have deep six,
4:04 occasionally seven figures entry to exit
4:07 on some of these properties. You can
4:09 absolutely kill it and you're doing way
4:12 less transaction than trying to look for
4:13 the deals, offer, paperwork, signing,
4:15 due diligence. The single family is a
4:17 really hard way to stack. Now, there's
4:18 one other thing that you can do that's
4:19 going to help stack the deck in your
4:20 favor. Choose one and hopefully the
4:23 largest meetup in your area. Get around
4:25 other owners. Schedule a coffee meeting.
4:27 Take that one Saturday. Take that day
4:29 off, Saturday or Sunday. Take that
4:31 little bit of time, and I know it's
4:33 precious when you're working the 9 to5.
4:34 Take the little bit of time to
4:36 consistently take owners out to coffee.
4:38 Talk to them about where they're finding
4:39 success, what their struggles are, who
4:41 to avoid as property managers. Become an
4:44 insider in your market. What you'll end
4:46 up with, brokers will send you deals
4:48 because you write offers and you write
4:50 offers that work. They're bankable
4:52 offers. So, you can analyze, you get
4:54 back to them, top of the broker list.
4:56 You know the players in your market. you
4:58 know the people who want to network. So
5:00 they're going to keep working with you.
5:01 What do you end up with? A few deals a
5:04 year. Say maybe four, five, six deals a
5:07 year. 50 to 100 units stacking and
5:11 stacking and stacking. And as you gain
5:12 momentum, the income goes up. And as the
5:14 income goes up, you can either scale up
5:16 or you can say, "Hey, I've hit my goal.
5:18 I have freedom. I'm going to go ahead
5:19 and skip to the time freedom part.
5:21 Whatever your goal is, just know where
5:22 you're heading. Engineer how many units
5:24 or acquisitions it's going to take you
5:26 to get there. and then just go out and
5:28 do it. Again, you're trying to close a
5:30 deal a quarter. If you can do that
5:32 consistently, you are going to do just
5:33 fine. Hope this helps. Like, subscribe,
5:36 do all this stuff. If you want to join a
5:37 community of people doing the same
5:38 thing, we have a free school community,
5:40 S KOL. There's a link below in the
5:42 video. Click that. I'll see you guys on
5:45 the next episode of Multi Family
5:46 Strategy.