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Financing and partnerships

Real Estate Partnerships: Lessons That Cost Me Over $1 Million

Strategic vs. capital partners, what my Cody Davis buyout really cost, a $30K investment that returned $2.4M, and two partnerships that went badly wrong.

I've bought a little over 400 rental properties across 27 total partnerships. Almost all of them have gone fantastically. A few of them have gone terribly. Not one of them has lost money, which I consider genuinely epic: usually there's a point in investing where something goes wrong enough that you lose money on something. That hasn't happened yet.

The partnerships that went badly cost me over a million dollars of liquidity. These are lessons I normally work through on our Thursday mentorship calls, and they're worth laying out clearly before you choose a partner.

Like debt, equity has variables, and we hate variables. I don't want a ton of people in my universe. But the business I have today and the vision I have for my portfolio are bigger than myself, which means I need people. Here's how I think about which people, and what happens when you get it wrong.

Two Kinds of Partners: Crew and Convoy

There are two primary types of partnerships, and the best way I know to explain the difference is a boat.

Strategic partners are your crew. They're on your ship. They're in for the long haul, they have specific roles, and your goal is not to buy them out at a later date. You're on the high seas together, braving the storms and the good and the bad. If you squabble while on the water, you are dead in the water, which is not where you want your partnership to be. Be very careful who you put on the boat.

Capital partners sail next to your ship. They're headed toward the same destination, but they're not part of your crew. They bring money, you bring the deal and the expertise, and both contribute to the end outcome. Eventually you either pick a new destination together or you part ways.

Two of my strategic partners make the point well. My broker Eric has worked with me on five transactions, four of them seller financed, and I own one of them with him. He's a broker, a deal finder, and an unbelievably hard worker. Every time I fly to Washington I go to him and his wife's house. He's become a very close friend and a huge piece of my business. Todd Robinson is one of my primary lawyers and the best syndication lawyer I've ever met. I work with him on some of my largest deals, he's an equity partner, and he helps structure things optimally.

Notice what they have in common: they add unique value exactly where I'm weakest. I am not a detailed person. Both of them are. Eric knocks out the brokerage paperwork, Todd handles the legal structure and makes sure my math is good. That's what you want on your boat.

Capital partners work differently, and the important rule is that they need a defined ending point. We're working together to get to this destination; when we arrive, we either choose a new one together or go our separate ways. They're designed to be short-term.

One caution on structure: in a joint venture, everyone needs to be active to some level: you can't have a totally passive joint venture. In a syndicated structure you can have actual limited partners and general partners, so someone can come in as a genuinely passive investor.

If you try to make every partnership a major strategic partnership, you end up with too many partners pulling in too many directions. Everyone's trying to captain the ship and the boat goes nowhere. Understand what you're recruiting and why. Filling a hole in the crew means a strategic partner: more deal volume means more deal finders, legal firepower means the right lawyer with skin in the game, brokerage means finding the best broker who works like an owner and wants equity in deals. Build the team with strategic partners and be very picky. With capital partners, protect yourself: give yourself buyout options and define end points.

The Cody Davis Partnership: $2.2M Made, $1.15M to Unwind

With Cody Davis I bought a 38-plex, a 12-plex, two 10-plexes, three duplexes, two triplexes, the Robin Hood Village Resort, a mobile home park, an RV park, a single family house next to the Robin Hood, and more. Hundreds of rentals. We started Multifamily Strategy and this YouTube channel together: if you scroll back far enough, the original videos are the two of us sitting in a basement talking about how one day we're going to buy real estate together. We documented it from before we owned a single building.

The bulk of that partnership lasted two years. I still own a few buildings with Cody today.

In the course of working with him, I made my first $2.2 million: cash I was able to take personally out of the portfolio. We have other business together too, so I actually made more than that, but $2.2 million in real estate profit alone.

Buying him out of one of my companies and adjusting our pieces cost $1.15 million.

Don't read that as "made two, lost one." There were a bunch of other assets involved and a lot more benefit to partnering with Cody than the million dollars of upside those numbers represent. But I do want to be honest: it was very expensive to break up this partnership, and the reason is simple. We had no defined ending.

We came in with a goal of 100 units. We hit it. Then things shifted. My wife left her job and joined our company, so both Osgoods spent most of their time on the management company while Cody spent more time in acquisitions, and acquisitions had become a skill I'd picked up too. We started out with Cody as the acquisition king, and then both of us had the same skill. So we adjusted: Cody wanted one of his original buildings back that I had bought into, where he'd had a bad partnership I cleaned up. I traded him the building, he traded me the property management company, and the workload and the equity were back in balance.

Then came mission number two, which included the resort, and the resort was not a good fit for the two of us. My business background, my employee background and my college background made me a better fit to run a hospitality project. Hospitality is not multifamily. Multifamily is real estate. A resort is a business that involves some real estate: employees, operations, marketing. They're genuinely different.

As Cody moved to Tennessee and got engaged and we went different directions, separating our pieces was monetarily expensive for me. I ended up being the more liquid of the two of us, so I took my liquidity, sold some pieces, moved things around and scaled my business to end the partnership in an equitable position for everyone. It involved the first time I ever had a liquid million dollars of cash, and I had to move it all around to get Cody a million dollars to buy him out of some buildings. That's a lot of money, especially if you started with next to nothing five years earlier.

The core of the partnership lasted about two years. The friendship will hopefully last a lifetime. Profit: over a million. Good partnership. Expensive partnership. The lessons cost me a million dollars of liquidity, and they were well worth it.

Caleb Hommel: $30,000 In, $2.4 Million Out

With Caleb Hommel, I've bought a 25-plex, a 26-plex, a 44-plex and a 76-plex. At the time of this update, we were also under contract on a 144-unit and a 51-unit. We'd been partners for two years.

Early on, Caleb needed a little help on one project that cost me personally $30,000 and probably could have been structured differently. That was the cost of Caleb being newer to real estate. Together we've already made $2.4 million and it's growing very rapidly.

Caleb is phenomenal and amazingly hardworking. He's the only other person I've ever worked with who's comfortable putting in 18-hour days back to back. If that's what needs to happen, we cut the sleep schedule, take mealtime down to 30 minutes a day, cram the calories in and grind. I don't do that often and it's definitely not healthy, but he's the only person I know who can lock in like that when it's required. I'd put him on any project imaginable, as long as details aren't required. We're both bad at detail work and much better as big-picture people. Sales, organizing a business plan, making a thousand calls in one day to get something done: he'll get it done.

He was 19 when I invested in him and he's 22 today. He's never had a job and never went to college. He came in, started buying real estate, and lives in the penthouse of one of the nicest towers in downtown Dallas. Not the lifestyle I'd choose (I'm not much of a city person) but he loves it, and he has an amazing fiancée.

I've spent more time invested into Caleb than anyone else in my entire life. When he moved to Texas, I flew to San Diego to drive with him. I attended his baptism. I'll be at his wedding. Very time expensive, and the highest return imaginable: $30,000 turned into $2.4 million and rapidly scaling. That's as good as it gets.

The Ugly: A Seattle Deal and a Friendship

Now the bad ones.

The Seattle deal was a great deal. Low money down: $50,000 down on a $1.1 million transaction. We sold it at a significant profit, and we didn't need to sell it except that the partner went absolutely crazy.

He got a lawyer and asked me to personally pay him for every month the property was vacant while there were bed bugs in a unit. That unit had bed bugs and fleas. I came in, renovated it myself, did the work, saved the LLC a ton of money. He never contributed to the accounts, never attended any of our meetings, and didn't do anything he agreed to. His logic was that because he didn't help, anything that didn't make even more money was my fault.

I tripled his money. Then we ran up $45,000 in legal bills fighting over the money I'd tripled for him, because he thought I should have 5x'd it in two years.

That deal should have made about $700,000. It made $350,000 after everything was split out. I barely made anything and I put in 100% of the work. Worse, he's the only person I ever invested with who was a dear friend before we started. That was not a business partner. That was a friend I went into business with.

The lesson: don't partner with friends or family. There is no shortage of people who want to make money in real estate. Caleb, Cody, Eric: those are all great friends now. But they're friends who started in business together, which is the opposite order.

Do not introduce a relationship you're not willing to change to money. Money in a relationship will change it, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. If you're not willing to risk it, don't bring it in. I lost a friendship and I still don't understand why. I took a little bit of his money and turned it into a boatload, he hated it, and now we legally can't talk: there's a restraining order keeping him away from me and my family. Even the judge in our arbitration said he was willing to burn money just to cause as much damage as possible.

When a Spouse Takes Over the LLC

The second bad one happened in Ephrata, Washington, and I actually structured this one correctly.

I partnered with a lender who had money, real estate experience and a need for tax benefits. We had two years of awesome partnership and bought multiple buildings: a 12-plex, a 5-plex, and eventually a 9-plex. Profit was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Partway in, his spouse, who I really didn't know, started showing up to the meetings. Early on he'd given me explicit instructions not to send her invites because she wasn't involved and didn't really understand the business, which wasn't strange: he was the one in real estate.

Then they bought out my other partner, who happened to be Cody Davis. Once they held 66% and had majority ownership, his wife suddenly had a million questions about how the LLCs were run and why we weren't putting in stone countertops and making the units look like HGTV. Her stated qualification was that her father used to renovate houses. For context: my father used to be a professional diver and I can't scuba dive. Your parents renovating a house has nothing to do with your ability to renovate and operate a multifamily building.

With majority interest they secretly held a meeting, voted me out as managing member, locked me out of the accounts, started commingling funds and approving contracts for work with no return, and moved tenants out of our grossest units into our newly renovated units: where those tenants proceeded to destroy the new units exactly as they had the old ones.

They unraveled two years of work and tons of cash flow in three weeks, broke four laws by my count, jeopardized the LLC, and forced me to hire a lawyer again, which is my least favorite thing in the world.

Here's how we salvaged it. I told them I would exercise my right to force a sale at a loss to end the partnership, because you cannot force me to be your partner and you cannot force me to contribute capital. I cited where they'd broken laws, but the core argument was simply that I was leaving.

Then I found two people willing to buy them out. Those partners came in, bought them out, put extra money into the account to finish the renovations the right way, and bought a third seller financed building. Today, even with that third building not completely finished, it cash flows beautifully and is one of the best dollar-for-dollar transactions we've ever done: likely three to four hundred times the money invested.

This time I cherry-picked my partners and got to know their spouses, so everyone involved understands the deal, is on board, the deal is fully capitalized, and it moves at the right pace. We also wrote in a clause: the other partners can still remove me if I'm bad at managing, but no one can buy another person's share and vote me out. Removing the managing member requires a unanimous vote, cited reasons, and a real process. I'm not a tyrant and I don't want to take over the portfolio: if I do a bad job they should be able to get rid of me. But the last thing cannot be repeatable.

Key Takeaways

  • Know which kind of partner you're recruiting. Strategic partners are crew on your ship; capital partners sail alongside you to one destination and then part ways.
  • Strategic partners should be strongest where you're weakest. My broker and my lawyer both handle the detail work I'm bad at.
  • Every partnership needs a defined ending. The Cody Davis partnership was profitable and friendly, and unwinding it still cost $1.15 million because we never set one.
  • Investing in a person can outperform investing in a property. $30,000 and a lot of time into Caleb Hommel has produced $2.4 million so far.
  • Don't partner with friends or family. Make friends through business instead, and never introduce money into a relationship you aren't willing to change.
  • Write the operating agreement for the bad day. Removing a managing member should require a unanimous vote and a real process, so nobody can buy a majority and seize the LLC.
  • Partnerships are variables, and they're not a marriage. Set a specific target, don't retrade or squabble before you hit it, everyone pulls as hard as they can, and re-evaluate when you arrive.

There's no such thing as a perfectly balanced partnership anywhere in your life. Just be a good partner, run everything you can well, control what you can control and influence what you can influence. Spend real time getting to know the people you partner with, because the right people move you forward a thousand times faster. The successful partnerships are why I own over 400 units today, why it should be a little over 600 by the end of this year, and why I was able to move my family from Seattle to Texas.

Watch the full video for the deal-by-deal breakdown, including the slides and the numbers on each partnership. There's a free course on getting started in multifamily investing, a free Skool community with a deal calculator in it, and you can learn about the mentorship where these Thursday lessons live through resources listed with the episode. If this was useful, share it with one person you're thinking about partnering with.

Read the episode transcript

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

0:00 Hello and welcome to Multif Family
0:01 Strategy. Today we're going to be
0:02 talking about partnerships. Now, usually
0:04 I don't share all of my lessons from the
0:06 Thursday call from Multif Family
0:07 Strategy mentorship. However, today I'm
0:10 going to be sharing it for YouTube
0:11 because I have to refilm it. I forgot to
0:12 hit the record button. I figured, hey,
0:15 since I'm already just making a custom
0:16 video without any interactions, we might
0:18 as well get some of the content out
0:19 here. Every Thursday, we do a structured
0:21 lesson. Monday a Q&A, Tuesday's deal
0:24 deep dive. I'll talk to you guys about
0:25 partnerships though here on YouTube. And
0:27 I'll upload this to the course here
0:28 later today. So, partnerships, there are
0:31 two primary types of partnerships. Now,
0:32 if you are new to the channel, I have
0:34 bought hundreds of rental properties, a
0:37 little bit over 400 today in 27 total
0:40 partnerships. Almost all of them have
0:42 gone fantastically. A few of them have
0:44 gone terribly. Like debt, equity has
0:48 variables. We hate variables. I don't
0:50 want a ton of people in my universe.
0:52 However, if you want to expand beyond
0:54 your current self and your abilities,
0:56 you're going to have to bring on people.
0:57 The business that I have today, the
0:59 vision I have for my portfolio is bigger
1:01 than myself. Therefore, I need people.
1:04 How do we manage them? What types of
1:05 partnerships are there? We're going to
1:06 share that in today's episode. So, what
1:09 are we covering? Strategic partnerships,
1:11 capital partnerships, what are the
1:13 difference? How are we managing the
1:14 rules? I'm going to show you some
1:15 practical examples of actual
1:17 partnerships. And yes, I'm going to go
1:18 into details with my past partner, Cody
1:21 Davis, on what it looks like, which, by
1:22 the way, was an expensive but very
1:25 profitable partnership. I'm going to be
1:26 honest about all of it. Talk about Caleb
1:28 Palmer. I'm going to talk about a couple
1:30 specific deals and how the partnerships
1:32 went couple sideways. First of all,
1:34 let's talk strategic partners. These are
1:35 the main people who are in your
1:37 universe. They're in for the long haul.
1:38 Your goal is not to buy them out at a
1:40 later date. These are the people on your
1:43 ship. So, imagine an actual boat. These
1:45 are the crew members that you are
1:46 putting on your ship. They have specific
1:48 roles. You guys are in it together. you
1:51 are on the high seas braving the storms
1:53 and the good and the bad together.
1:57 There's also partnerships where people
1:59 will sail next to your ship towards a
2:00 target destination and eventually part
2:03 ways and go opposite directions. But I
2:05 love this analogy because when you are
2:06 in business and you are all in the same
2:08 boat until you have reached your
2:10 objective, you want to be going the same
2:11 direction. If you squabble while on the
2:13 water, you are dead in the water, which
2:15 is not where you want your partnership
2:16 to be. So, be very careful with who you
2:18 have on the boat. On the left here is a
2:20 broker that I have worked with on five
2:23 transactions. Four of them seller
2:25 financed and I own one of them with him.
2:28 He is a partner. He is a broker. He is a
2:30 dealfinder. He is a unbelievably hard
2:33 worker. And I've become very, very good
2:35 friends with him in my business. Every
2:37 time I fly to Washington, I go to him
2:38 and his wife's house. We're very, very,
2:40 very close with him as a friend, as a
2:43 business partner. He is a strategic
2:45 partner who has been a huge piece of my
2:48 business. To the right you see Todd
2:49 Robinson who is one of my primary
2:51 lawyers. This is the best syndication
2:54 lawyer I've ever met in my life. I work
2:56 with him on some of my largest deals and
2:58 he is an equity partner and helps me
3:00 structure some of the deals optimally.
3:02 He helps with so much to the portfolio.
3:05 A huge privilege to have him on the
3:07 team. But these are the people who are
3:09 long-term strategic partners. They need
3:11 to add unique value in places ideally
3:13 that you are the weakest. They're going
3:15 to come in and add their strengths. I am
3:18 not a detailed person. These two are
3:20 details people. Eric's knocking out the
3:22 brokerage paperwork. Todd's knocking out
3:24 all of the legal paperwork, figuring out
3:26 the structure, making sure my math is
3:28 good, getting a team like this. These
3:31 are the types of people you want on your
3:32 boat. This is the broker and the lawyer.
3:34 Of course, I have many more strategic
3:35 partners such as Cody Davis and Caleb
3:37 Pommel, uh Corey Whittenbar. All people
3:39 who fill individual roles very, very,
3:42 very well. Then you have capital
3:44 partners. Here's one of them right here.
3:46 You may have seen the podcast me and
3:48 him. Uh, but these are people who come
3:50 in not to add a strategic role, not to
3:52 be a long-term partner, but they are
3:54 people who have money who want to
3:56 participate in your deal. Now, in a
3:58 joint venture, I want to point out,
3:59 everyone needs to be active to some
4:01 level. So, you can't have a totally
4:03 passive joint venture. You can on a
4:05 syndicated structure have actual li uh
4:08 limited partners and you can have
4:09 general partners. So, you can come in as
4:11 an actual passive investor. Either way,
4:13 these are the people whose boats sailed
4:15 next to yours for a while. They are
4:17 going with you to the same destination,
4:19 but they're not necessarily on your
4:20 ship. They're not part of your crew.
4:22 They're someone who you are working
4:24 with. They bring money. You bring
4:26 expertise, your deal, their capital,
4:29 gifts to the end outcome. You need to
4:31 understand what type of partnership it
4:33 is. And if it's a capital partner, it
4:34 especially needs to have a defined
4:36 ending point. We are working together to
4:40 get to this destination. at that
4:42 destination. We can either choose a new
4:44 destination and go together or we can go
4:46 different directions towards our own
4:48 individual goals. They're designed to be
4:50 short-term. If you try to make every
4:53 partnership a major strategic
4:54 partnership, you will end up with too
4:56 many partners pulling in too many
4:57 directions. Everyone's trying to captain
4:59 the ship and you end up with a boat that
5:01 goes nowhere. Understand what you are
5:03 recruiting and why. If I am filling a
5:05 hole in my crew, I need a strategic
5:08 partner. I want to have more deal
5:10 finders. If I need more deal volume, if
5:12 I want a lawyer on my team, someone who
5:14 can help really counsel and have skin in
5:16 the game, I'm going to be looking for
5:17 the right lawyer. Hence, Todd Robinson.
5:20 If I'm looking for the right brokers, I
5:22 want to see people who can work like an
5:24 owner, who want equity and deals. If I
5:26 want that on my team, which I did, you
5:28 find the best broker you can possibly
5:30 find and you add them to the team. Build
5:33 your team with strategic partners. Be
5:35 very picky with them. With capital
5:36 partners, protect yourself. Give
5:38 yourself buyout options. to find end
5:40 points for each of these. So, let's talk
5:43 a few practical deals.
5:45 Cody Davis, I have bought 38 plex, a
5:48 12plex, a 10plex, another 10plex, three
5:50 duplexes, two triplexes, the Robin Hood
5:53 Village Resort, and a few other deals. A
5:56 mobile home park, RV park, a single
5:58 family house next to the Robin, I can go
6:00 on and on and on. I bought hundreds of
6:01 rentals with Cody Davis. We started all
6:04 of Multif Family Strategy and this
6:06 YouTube channel together. If you go back
6:07 in time on this YouTube channel, the
6:09 original videos are Cody and I sitting
6:11 in a basement talking about how one day
6:13 we're going to buy real estate together.
6:14 We documented from before we bought the
6:17 darn buildings together. This
6:19 partnership, the bulk of it lasted 2
6:21 years. I still own a few buildings with
6:23 Cody today.
6:25 This one was a very expensive
6:27 partnership and we learned a lot and it
6:29 was expensive for Cody and I. We've
6:31 shared this very publicly. No one's
6:33 throwing each other under the bus at
6:35 all. I want to highlight this was a
6:38 successful partnership. Picture here on
6:40 the left is Cody and I at the Robin Hood
6:43 Village Resort in what used to be the
6:44 old restaurant hosting an event. In the
6:47 course of my working with Cody, I made
6:48 the first $2.2 million. This is in cash
6:52 I was able to take out of the portfolio
6:54 personally. Now, we also have some other
6:56 business together. So, I actually did
6:57 make more than this in the partnership,
6:58 but just in real estate, 2.2 million in
7:01 profit. It did cost to buy him out of
7:04 one of my companies and to adjust our
7:07 pieces in my liquidity. It cost $1.15
7:09 million. Now, I had a bunch of other
7:11 assets in this. So, this is not just a
7:13 straight one for one. Don't look at this
7:14 as like, wow, he made two and lost one.
7:18 There was more benefit to partnering
7:20 with Cody, a lot more benefit than just
7:22 the million dollars of upside
7:24 represented here. But I do want to point
7:25 out, it was very expensive to break up
7:28 this partnership. We had no defined
7:30 ending. We came in with a goal for 100
7:32 units. We hit it. We adjusted some
7:34 pieces. What we found is as my wife left
7:36 her job and joined our company. Both
7:38 Ozgoods spent most the time on the
7:40 management company and Cody was spending
7:42 more time in acquisition. Acquisition
7:44 had been a skill that I had acquired. We
7:46 started out where Cody was the
7:47 acquisition king. Both of us had the
7:50 same skill. How do we adjust? Cody
7:53 wanted one of his original buildings
7:54 back that I had bought into. He had a
7:56 bad partnership. I got rid of that
7:58 partner.
7:59 I traded in the building. He traded me
8:01 the property management company. Now the
8:03 workload and the equities were back in
8:04 balance. We went on mission number two.
8:07 What we found with the resort which was
8:09 part of phase two. It was not a good fit
8:12 for the two of us. My business
8:14 background, my employee background, my
8:16 college background made me a better fit
8:18 to run a hospitality project.
8:20 Hospitality is not multif family. Multif
8:22 family is real estate. Resort is a
8:25 business that involves some real estate.
8:28 One is very clearly though a business
8:30 with employees and operations and
8:32 marketing and the other one is running a
8:34 rental portfolio. They are actually
8:36 different. For us to separate out and to
8:38 divide our pieces as he moved to
8:40 Tennessee, got engaged as we went
8:42 different directions. The actual
8:44 monetary cost for me was relatively
8:46 high. I ended up being the more liquid
8:48 of the two partners, which makes sense
8:51 cuz that's where I started. as I took my
8:53 liquidity and sold some pieces and moved
8:55 my pieces around and scaled my business
8:57 to end that partnership in an equitable
8:59 position for everyone. I do want to
9:01 point out that Cody and I are great
9:02 friends and ended in a grief place. It
9:05 involved really the first time I ever
9:07 had a liquid million dollars of cash. I
9:09 had to move the pieces around to get
9:10 Cody a million dollars to buy him out of
9:13 some of the buildings. That is a lot of
9:17 money, especially if you started with
9:19 next to no money in real estate in a
9:21 five-year period. The core of the
9:23 partnership lasted about two years. The
9:25 friendship hopefully will last a
9:26 lifetime. Profit $1 million. Good
9:29 partnership. Expensive partnership. The
9:32 lessons learned here cost me a million
9:34 dollars of liquidity. Well worth it
9:36 though. Cody's awesome. Caleb, there was
9:39 a picture here, I promise. But just
9:41 imagine a beautiful 76 that we just
9:43 purchased. uh that I apparently
9:45 accidentally deleted before making this
9:47 video. Phil and I have bought a 25plex,
9:50 a 26 plex, a 44plex, and a 76 plex.
9:53 We're under contract as of the filming
9:54 of this video for 144 unit and a 51
9:57 unit. I have bought a lot of real estate
9:59 with Caleb. Caleb I'm part with for two
10:01 years. Caleb needed a little bit of help
10:04 on one project that cost me personally
10:06 $30,000 that probably could have been
10:09 structured differently. It was it was a
10:11 cost of Caleb being newer to real
10:13 estate. Together, we have already made
10:16 $2.4 million together and growing very
10:20 rapidly. Caleb is phenomenal. This guy
10:23 is amazingly hardworking. In fact, uh
10:26 he's the only other person I've ever
10:27 worked with who is comfortable putting
10:28 in day in and day out 18our days. If
10:31 that's what we need done, we'll just cut
10:32 the sleep schedule down. We'll take the
10:34 uh meal time down to, you know, 30
10:37 minutes a day. just cram the calories in
10:39 and just grind. I don't do that often.
10:42 It's definitely not healthy. He's the
10:44 only one I know when we have to do it.
10:46 He can lock in and get it done. He is
10:49 incredible. I will put him on my team on
10:51 any project imaginable as long as
10:54 details are not required. Both of us are
10:56 very bad at detail work. We're more big
10:57 picture people. If it involves sales,
11:00 organizing a business plan, if it
11:02 involves making a thousand calls in one
11:03 day to get something done, he will get
11:05 it done. Absolutely incredible.
11:08 partnership. Look at that return. I
11:10 invested in that at the time.
11:11 19year-old, he's 22 today. 21. No, 22. I
11:15 got that right. He has never had a job,
11:18 never went to college. He just came in,
11:21 started buying real estate, and he lives
11:23 in the penthouse of one of the nicest
11:25 towers in downtown Dallas. Not the
11:28 lifestyle I would choose. I am not a big
11:29 uh city person, but he loves it. He has
11:33 a amazing fiance, soon to be wife. He
11:37 did the entire thing without any work
11:39 experience whatsoever. Return on
11:41 investment in heavily investing in that
11:43 young guy. Uh I personally made over $2
11:46 million on a total capital investment of
11:48 30K. Worth noting I've spent more time
11:51 invested into Caleb than anyone else in
11:53 my entire life. When he moved to Texas,
11:56 I flew to San Diego to drive with him to
11:59 Texas. I attended his baptism. I will be
12:02 at his wedding. Very time expensive.
12:04 highest return imaginable, 30k into $2.4
12:07 million and rapidly scaling. Great
12:10 partnership. That's as good as it gets.
12:12 Let's talk about the ugly. There's a
12:14 Seattle deal that I did with a partner.
12:16 Again, these slides, I put them together
12:18 relatively quickly. It's not $35,000
12:21 million. I edited a previous slide. It's
12:24 35.
12:26 Let me try again. 57K and 45K. Uh,
12:30 ignore the the million here. Seattle
12:32 deal. This was a great deal. Bought this
12:34 deal. blowdown. It was $50,000 down for
12:36 a $1.1 million transaction. We sold this
12:39 at a significant profit and we didn't
12:42 need to sell it except that the partner
12:44 went absolutely crazy. He actually got a
12:47 lawyer and asked me to pay him
12:49 personally pay him for every month the
12:52 part the property was vacant while there
12:54 was bed bugs in the unit. There's a unit
12:57 that had bed bugs and fleas. I came in,
13:00 renovated the unit myself, did the work,
13:04 saving the LLC a ton of money, and he
13:06 said, "Hey, for every month, because
13:07 you're the property manager, you owe me
13:10 money for all of our vacancy, never
13:12 contributed to the accounts, never
13:14 attended any of our meetings, did not do
13:17 anything he agreed to." And his logic
13:19 was because he didn't help, anything
13:23 that didn't make even more money was my
13:25 fault. Now, I tripled his money. And
13:27 then we got 45,000 legal bills fighting
13:30 over the money that I tripled from him
13:31 cuz he thinks that I should have 5xed
13:33 his money in 2 years. He did no work. He
13:36 violated our operating agreements. Worst
13:38 legal battle ever. Even worse, he is the
13:41 only person I ever invested with who was
13:43 a friend, a dear friend before we
13:46 started this project. This was not a
13:50 business partner. This was a friend who
13:51 I went into business with. So what I
13:53 learned here, I barely made any money on
13:56 this deal. I spent most of it in legal
13:57 fees defending the LLC and him from
14:01 derailing everything and costing
14:02 everyone money. Total waste of my time.
14:06 This deal should have made about
14:08 $700,000. Instead, it only made $350
14:10 after everything was all split out. I
14:12 barely made anything and I put in 100%
14:15 of the work. The lesson here, don't
14:18 partner with friends or family. There is
14:21 no lack of people who want to make money
14:22 in real estate. and my dear friend
14:24 Caleb, Cody, Eric, all those people that
14:28 I just listed here in all the previous
14:29 slides, they are great friends. I spend
14:32 a ton of time with them and we are
14:34 friends who started in business
14:35 together. Do not introduce a
14:39 relationship you're not willing to
14:40 change. Don't introduce it to money.
14:43 Money in your relationship will change
14:44 it sometimes for the better, sometimes
14:45 for the worse. But if you're not willing
14:47 to risk it, don't bring it in. I lost a
14:49 friendship and I still don't understand
14:51 why. I took a little bit of his money
14:53 and made it into a boatload of Andy
14:56 hated it for me and now we can't talk
14:58 legally. I have a restraining order
15:00 against him and I cannot get anywhere
15:02 near me and my family. Crazy. Even the
15:05 judge in our arbitration said he's crazy
15:09 and he's also willing to just burn money
15:12 to make sure that he causes as much
15:13 damage as possible. Crazy things. Crazy
15:16 things.
15:17 afraid of Washington.
15:20 I did a deal here, multiple deals,
15:21 seller financed. I partnered with
15:23 someone who I really liked. This was a
15:25 lender. This I did correctly. This was
15:27 someone who was looking for some tax
15:28 benefits. They wanted to do a project.
15:29 They had some money. They had real
15:31 estate experience. And we had 2 years of
15:34 awesome partnership, multiple buildings
15:36 purchased. There's a couple there. These
15:38 are them before we did the renovation.
15:40 Uh 12plex, 5plex. Uh I eventually bought
15:42 a 9plex in this policy. Profit was
15:44 hundreds of thousands of dollars.
15:46 partway in
15:48 his spouse, this is years, his spouse,
15:51 who I really didn't know very well,
15:54 started showing up to the meetings. Now,
15:56 they had given me explicit instructions.
15:58 Hey, my wife is not involved in this.
16:00 She doesn't really understand a lot of
16:01 this. Please do not send her invites to
16:04 the company meetings, which isn't that
16:07 weird as I don't know his wife. He's the
16:08 one in real estate. I'm like, "Okay,
16:10 this is comfortable. I, you know,
16:11 someone who I know and we've worked
16:12 together for years. We had the meetings
16:14 and we ran the LLC and it made money and
16:16 it was all cash flowing.
16:18 They bought out my other partner who
16:20 happened to be Cody Davis. Once they got
16:23 66% ownership, so they got majority
16:24 ownership, his wife suddenly had a
16:27 million questions about how the LLC's
16:29 were run and why we weren't putting in
16:31 stone countertops and making these
16:33 places like HD TV. In fact, her logic
16:37 was, "Well, my father used to renovate
16:39 houses, so I'm a pro at this." For
16:41 context, my father used to be a
16:42 professional diver. I can't scuba dive.
16:44 Uh, your parents renovating a house has
16:47 nothing to do with your ability to
16:49 renovate and operate a multif family
16:52 building. That is just a fact.
16:54 Well, when they got majority interest,
16:57 they voted me out of the LLC uh as
16:59 managing member and started comingling
17:01 our accounts and started approving
17:03 contracts for work that should not be
17:05 done on buildings with no return. and
17:08 they move tenants from our grossest
17:11 units into our newly renovated units
17:13 where the tenants proceeded to destroy
17:15 the unit as they had the previous unit.
17:19 They unraveled 2 years of work and tons
17:22 of cash flow in a grand total of 3
17:24 weeks, breaking, as I counted four,
17:27 possibly more laws, completely
17:29 jeopardized the LLC, and causing me to
17:32 once again have to hire a lawyer, which
17:34 is my least favorite thing in the world
17:35 to do. How did we salvage this? I told
17:40 them, hey, uh, I'm going to go ahead, as
17:42 is my right. I'm going to force us to
17:44 sell this thing at a loss to end this
17:47 partnership because you can't force me
17:48 to be a partner with you. I cited where
17:49 they had broken laws, but at the end of
17:52 the day, my main thing was I'm not in
17:54 this partnership. You cannot force me to
17:56 contribute capital are not in DOA.
18:00 Uh but yeah, they secretly held a
18:01 meeting as majority stakeholders and
18:04 voted me out of my own LLC management,
18:07 locked me out of accounts. It's the
18:09 worst thing that could happen. How we
18:11 solved it is I said, "Look, you guys are
18:13 looking at total loss of capital and
18:15 we're going to go ahead and uh lose the
18:16 building if you guys keep doing this." I
18:19 did find two people who were willing to
18:20 buy them out. Those two partners came in
18:23 and not only bought them out, put in
18:25 extra money into the account to finish
18:27 the renovations the right way and buy a
18:30 third seller finance building. Today,
18:33 even with the third seller finance
18:34 building not completely finished, it
18:37 cash flows beautifully. It is one of the
18:38 best dollar-dollar transactions we ever
18:40 did. And I cherrypicked my partners and
18:42 got to know their wives to where
18:44 everyone involved understands the deal,
18:47 is on board with the deal, the deal is
18:48 fully capitalized, and it is moving
18:50 forward at the right pace. We also put a
18:52 clause. The other two partners can still
18:54 get rid of me if I suck at managing, but
18:56 as managing member, no one can buy the
18:58 other person's share and vote me out. It
19:01 has to be a unanimous vote. They have to
19:03 cite certain reasons. There's more of a
19:05 process to remove the managing member. I
19:07 am not a tyrant. I don't want to take
19:09 over the whole portfolio. And if I do a
19:11 bad job, they should be able to get rid
19:13 of me. But we made it so that we cannot
19:16 have a repeatable last thing. I have the
19:17 most experience. I have done projects
19:20 like this. I have the contractor
19:21 contacts up there. My wife and I have
19:24 the ability to make us money and have
19:26 the ability in our operating agreement
19:28 to make sure that none of the other
19:30 partners get in the way of everyone else
19:32 making money, which is what happened on
19:33 the first iteration. New partnership is
19:35 a 10 out of 10 uh profit, total profits
19:38 to be determined as we're still
19:39 renovating one of the buildings
19:40 completely. Total gut job. It's awesome.
19:42 I'm so excited about the project. But it
19:45 will be hundreds and hundreds and
19:46 hundreds of thousands of dollars of
19:47 return. probably about a three to 400x
19:50 return on the money invested. That's
19:52 what I have for you on partnerships.
19:53 Those are actual stories. I do want to
19:54 point out for me personally, I've had a
19:57 ton of partnerships. I mean, I've had a
20:00 ton of partnerships. Almost 30
20:02 partnerships. They almost all have gone
20:05 fantastically. And to date, none of them
20:07 have ever lost money, which is epic.
20:10 There's a certain point in investing
20:11 usually where something goes wrong
20:13 enough where you lose money eventually
20:15 on some investment. Of the last 27
20:18 deals, none of them have lost money.
20:20 Partnerships, even though some of them
20:21 have been close, like the derailed
20:24 Seattle one, uh, they have all ended
20:26 profitably. Partnerships can be awesome.
20:28 Partnerships allowed me to the
20:30 successful ones have allowed me to buy
20:32 hundreds and hundreds, over 400 units.
20:34 By the end of this year, it should be a
20:36 little bit over 600 rental units in a
20:39 relatively short period of time. I have
20:41 made liquid millions of dollars. It
20:43 allowed me to move from Seattle to Texas
20:45 in a big beautiful house, raise my
20:47 family where I want to. There's been a
20:48 lot of things that have been allowed
20:50 specifically because I allowed partners
20:52 into the universe. The core lesson that
20:54 I want to impart to you here,
20:56 partnerships are variables. People are
20:59 variables. There's a hundred other
21:02 stories I could share with you on the
21:03 good and the bad of partnerships, but
21:05 you need to understand the goals of the
21:07 partnership and realize that
21:08 partnerships are not a marriage. You
21:09 should have a defined goal, a specific
21:11 target, and when you hit that target,
21:13 re-evaluate. And before you hit that
21:14 target, don't retrade and don't
21:17 squabble. Just get to the darn goal.
21:19 Everyone pull as hard as they can.
21:21 There's no such thing as a equally
21:23 perfectly balanced partnership anywhere
21:25 in your life. Just be a good partner. Do
21:28 a good job of running everything you
21:30 can. Control you can control. Influence
21:32 what you can influence. really spend the
21:34 time getting to know the people that you
21:35 partner with because if you can partner
21:38 with the right people, you will move
21:39 forward a thousand times faster.
21:42 I hope my over a million dollars of uh
21:46 of paid experience here has uh shared
21:49 some insights that will positively
21:51 affect your business. Either a
21:53 partnership you don't get into or a
21:54 partner that you find who fills the gaps
21:56 in your business in a way that you
21:58 didn't imagine was possible. As always,
22:00 like and subscribe to the channel. I
22:01 appreciate you. I can share so much more
22:03 if you actually like and share the darn
22:05 video. So, do me a favor. Take this
22:07 video, share it with one friend who you
22:10 want to partner with or who is looking
22:11 to partner and expand their portfolio. I
22:13 appreciate you. I'll see you on the next
22:15 episode.

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