Financing and partnerships
Inside My $4.5M Seller Financed Resort on the Hood Canal
How I bought Robin Hood Village Resort for $4.5M at 4.5% seller financing, why I bought out my partners, and what I'd do differently on a hospitality deal.
Welcome back to the Robin Hood. This is my seller financed resort: a $4.5 million purchase, one of the first properties I ever did, and I recently bought the partners out so I own it by myself.
Related reading: How I Bought a $4 Million Resort With None of My Own Money
I'm a multifamily person. Most of my money is in apartments and that isn't changing. But this resort is the clearest proof I have of something worth saying out loud: with creative finance you can do anything. Any business, anything backed by real estate assets that you can take debt against. Seller financing works here because the collateral is great. We financed this at 4.5% interest on an eight-year note.
Here's what the Robin Hood actually is, how the events business works, why I restructured the ownership, and what I'd do differently if I could buy it again.
A Resort's One Real Advantage Over Multifamily
Behind me there's a row of food trucks and a concert area that doubles as our wedding venue. This weekend it's Hoodstock, and we bring hundreds and hundreds of people onto the property.
That's the only advantage I can think of that hotels have over multifamily: you can outperform. All of this is free marketing. People are taking pictures, visiting the Robin Hood, booking cabins. It's a revenue stream on its own, which is cool, but the bigger thing is that you get to be part of the community. That's something unique about having a business backed by real estate.
We run a few events through the year. Hoodstock is my favorite, and there's also a singer-songwriter series that's amazing. We do about 15 weddings, maybe 20 a year. It is definitely a summer town (it gets cold and rainy here in the Pacific Northwest) but we're in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains on the Hood Canal, and when the weather is good there's nothing like it.
When I was working the nine to five, there is no universe in which I imagined this could be my life. And it technically cost $0. Lots of time, lots of effort, a little bit of negotiation, but the seller financed this entire dream for me.
Events like this let us grow the resort beyond what it ever could have been on its own. None of it happens without the people in the community and without the relationships. Which brings me to the main point: real estate is a relationship game.
18 Cabins, 13 Acres, and a Three-Star Property I Want to Make Four
We have 18 cabins here, soon to be 20: we're adding a couple up the hill. As part of buying out the partners, I'm bringing more capital into the Robin Hood.
I understand exactly what this resort is. It's an epic location and a three-star resort. It's nothing fancy. We have nice mattresses, but it's a bit dated and a bit tired. I get what it is. What I want to do is push it to four-star.
The plan:
- Over $100,000 of landscaping, because we're on 13 acres of woods and I want a genuinely beautiful forest retreat
- Redone fire pits
- Solid hot tubs replacing the inflatables: the hard tubs last longer and cost less to maintain
- Brand new beds and nicer furniture
- New artwork
- Repainting the outside of the whole resort
The inflatable hot tubs have been great for what they are, and cabins with them are fully leased today. But this thing could be epic, and we're not quite there yet.
We also own the whole hill, where we have an RV rental spot and our on-site staff. It's called work camping: our director lives in an RV right there in the woods, gets paid to live in a beautiful area, runs the resort and coordinates the cleaners. Maintenance lives nearby. There's a mobile home on site as staff housing too. We run eight staff members in the summer and usually go down to four or five in the winter, though as we open up a new marketing budget we may keep more staff on this winter.
Why I Bought My Partners Out
If I could go back in time and buy this again, I would have structured it differently, without the partners.
The problem with the Robin Hood is that I brought a full team of multifamily people into a hospitality deal. It was still profitable, but we never got it to where it should be in the original partnership. There wasn't enough liquidity or enough capital raised, and we didn't have people set on a bigger vision. We wanted to operate it the way it was and grow it through basic, organic marketing. The business plan didn't really involve spending a lot of capital.
As I've gone through more business, I've realized it's better to raise all the money you need and get all the way through a project as fast as humanly possible. If I could go back, I would have bought this with an extra $500,000 in the account.
That's what I'm doing now. We got rid of the partners to reduce drag: I had more income and more capital than the partners did, and a different vision for where I wanted to take it. I've personally invested money into the resort, and I'm going to do a new capital raise to bring more money in. Instead of spending three years fixing it up out of my own income, we'll do it all in about six months: a brand new Robin Hood, new events, new marketing, and a real push.
Related reading: Why I Bought a $5.4M Resort Instead of an Airbnb
That's the lesson I'd hand to anyone structuring a heavy project. Undercapitalizing doesn't save you money, it just stretches the timeline, and a three-year renovation is three years of a tired property competing against your own ambitions for it.
The Waterfront, the Fjord, and a 97-Year Easement
Across the street we have the Robin Hood waterfront, and this is another piece we're going to completely revamp.
We have an easement there: I believe 97 years left on it. We did a hundred-year easement about three years ago, so that math works out. That cool little waterfront area is usable by the Robin Hood for the next century. We're replacing the shed, because its roof disappeared this year. And we have kayak rentals people can take out.
This is the Hood Canal, the only fjord on the west coast. It's saltwater. You'll see seals occasionally, orcas running through, and salmon coming right past. There's a water wheel, and behind it what I like to call my yacht, which came with the White House over there, which, by the way, I also bought seller financed.
By the time I got to the waterfront it was raining like crazy. That's part of what happens out here.
What I'd Tell Anyone Who Wants to Do Hospitality
If you're aspiring to do hospitality (and granted, this is not my main business) the best thing you can do is community relations.
If you can get people bought in, you can actually contribute. Make a music venue. Open up the pub for events every once in a while. Do things for the community and actually network. These projects work unbelievably better when you do.
Multifamily is different, and it doesn't matter all that much there. Provide great housing for great people, price competitively, and you'll keep your units full. That's pretty much the magic of multifamily. It's simple and it's boring, which is why I love it and why most of my money is there. I want my money to be predictable.
A resort is a much more variable project. This is the type of thing you get to do for fun, and I'd call it a luxury. That said, a stabilized Robin Hood is more than enough to retire almost anyone multiple times over: hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash flow when run correctly.
Related reading: Rebuilding a $4.5M Resort: My Million-Dollar Partnership Mistake
The old pub on site is the best example of the community piece. Historically this was a pub, and a really popular bar. The Gates family lives very nearby at their summer place, and back in the day Bill Gates used to have his Macallan 18 here. The community hates it when I share that, so my apologies to the City of Union. Today we open the pub up occasionally for music, and throughout the summer whenever we run these music events we get a huge party in there. Because our friends at Hoodstock are so awesome and we love them, we opened the pub up to them for free: they have the space to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't destroy the whole thing.
This is a one-of-one resort, which is what makes the project so fun. As I finish it out over roughly the next six months, this winter should be the last time it's all historic and unrenovated. We're still going to save all the cool things that make it the Robin Hood, but we're going to deck the place out and take it to the next level.
Key Takeaways
- Creative finance isn't limited to apartments. Any business backed by real estate you can take debt against can be seller financed: this one closed at $4.5 million, 4.5% interest, on an eight-year note.
- The one thing hospitality does better than multifamily is outperform. Events, weddings and concerts are a revenue stream and free marketing at the same time.
- Match your partners to the asset. Bringing a team of multifamily people into a resort deal left us without the liquidity or the vision the property needed.
- Raise all the money you need up front and get all the way through the project as fast as possible. An extra $500,000 at purchase would have saved years.
- In hospitality, community relations are the marketing plan. Give the community a venue and the project works unbelievably better.
- Multifamily stays boring on purpose: great housing for great people, priced competitively, keeps units full. That's where predictable money lives.
For those who have followed the Robin Hood journey for the last three years, back to when Cody and I first bought it: this is where we're at today. We're almost finished with the largest deal we did in that partnership.
Use it as encouragement. If I can do this with no money and no experience, you can do it too. Watch the full video for the walkthrough of the cabins, the waterfront and Hoodstock in full swing. There's a free course on getting started in multifamily investing, a free Skool community that comes with a deal calculator, and if you want to go further you can learn about my mentorship from the link in original episode description. We've bought about $50 million of real estate, and I try to pack every lesson from it into this channel.
Read the episode transcript
0:00 Hello YouTube and welcome back to the Robin Hood. This is my seller financed resort. Now, while I'm a multif family person, I have this resort. It's one of the first properties I ever did. I recently had the partners bought out. 0:10 So, I own this by myself. $4.5 million purchase. Let me tell you about the Robin Hood. One of the things you can do at resorts like this is you can 0:18 outperform, which is the only advantage, the only advantage I can think of that hotels have over multif family. Behind me, you see a bunch of food trucks. I'll 0:25 be walking over to the concert area, which doubles as our wedding area. 0:29 weddings, events, when we bring in hundreds and hundreds of people over the weekend here for hood stock. This is all free marketing. People are taking pictures, visiting the Robin Hood, 0:37 booking cabins. Not only is it a revenue stream, which is cool, but you get to be a part of the community. This is something unique about having a business 0:45 backed by real estate. What I want to illustrate in today's video is with Creative Finance, you can do anything, any business, anything backed by real estate assets that you can take debt 0:53 against. The seller financing has great collateral. We financed this at 4 and a.5% interest on an 8-year note. Walk over to the concert area here. Check 1:02 this out. This is the warm-up, by the way. I'm here in the morning. This goes till 10:00 at night. Look at this. 1:13 That right cruising through. I'll show you the marketplace. We run a few events here through the year. This is my favorite one. This hood stock. There's also a singer songwriter series that's 1:21 amazing. We do about 15 weddings, maybe 20 weddings here a year. It is definitely a summer town. It gets a little cold and rainy here in the Pacific Northwest, but we're in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains on 1:30 the Hood Canal, dude. Check that out. 1:36 Full-on marketplace. 1:39 When I was working the 9 to5, there is no universe in which I imagined this could be my life. And it technically cost $0. Now, lots of time, lots of 1:48 effort, a little bit of negotiation, but the seller financed this entire dream for me. brought on a few partners, recently bought them out. Events like 1:57 this allow us to grow the resort beyond what it ever could have been. This never could have happened without the people in the community, without the 2:05 relationships. Which brings me to my main point of today's video. Real estate is a relationship game. We have 19 cabins here, 18 cabins, soon to be 20. 2:14 We're adding a couple up the hill. I'll walk you guys through that. As part of buying out the partners, I'm bringing in a little bit more capital to the Robin Hood. Uh, we got rid of partners to 2:22 reduce drag. I had a little bit more uh, income, a little bit more capital than partners. I had a different vision for where I wanted to take this. We're going to completely revamp the cabins, duck them out, new furniture, solid hot tubs. 2:33 We have all these inflatable hot tubs, which are pretty cool. I'll show you one. But the hard tubs actually last longer, are less money to maintain. So, 2:41 you have spaces like this invading someone's hot tub area fully leased today. But these things have been great for what they are. We want to take this 2:49 thing to a new level. I understand what this resort is. This is an epic location and a threestar resort. It's nothing fancy. We have nice mattresses, but it's 2:58 a bit dated. It's a bit tired. I get what it is. We would like to try to push this thing to fourstar. We're going to do over $100,000 of landscaping. Uh because we're on 13 acres of the woods. 3:09 We want to have this beautiful forest retreat. Redo the fire pits, solid hot tubs, brand new beds, nicer furniture, 3:16 new artwork. Repaint the outside of the whole resort. This thing could be epic, but we're not quite there yet. All right, check this out. RV rental spot. 3:27 We own the whole hill here as well. Uh, Nerf showed this on any of the past YouTube videos, but as you're going through the Robin Hood, we actually have 3:36 our staff on site here, which is really convenient. It's called work camping, but essentially RV here. 3:44 That's our director. She gets to live in the woods, gets paid to live in this beautiful area, runs the resort, coordinates the cleaners. We have 3:51 maintenance lives nearby. So, this is a full-on staff thing. We have eight staff members in the summer. Usually go down to four or five in the winter, depending 3:58 on how busy we are as we open up a new marketing budget for the Robin Hood. We may keep more staff in the winter this year. 4:05 That mobile and that mobile also part of staff housing. If I could go back in time and I could buy this again, I would 4:12 have structured it differently where I didn't have the partners. One of the problems that we had with the Robin Hood is I brought a full team of multif family people into the deal. And so the 4:20 Robin Hood, while it was still profitable, we never got it to where it should be in the original partnership. 4:25 There wasn't enough liquidity or enough capital raised. And we didn't have people set on a bigger vision. We wanted to operate it the way it was and grow it 4:32 through basic marketing, organic. We had this business plan that didn't really involve spending a lot of capital. As I've gone through more business, I realized it's better to raise all the 4:41 money you need and get all the way through a project as fast as humanly possible. If I could go back in time, I would have bought it with an extra 4:48 $500,000 in the account. That's what I'm doing now. I've personally invested money into it. I'm going to do a new capital raise, bring more money into the 4:55 Robin Hood, allowing us to instead of spending 3 years fixing it up out of my own income, we'll do it all in about 6 months, have a brand new Robin Hood, 5:02 bring in new events, new marketing, and really push this. By the way, we are in Washington, so it is raining like crazy. 5:09 It is part of what happens out here. Let me take you guys all over to the waterfront. Right, guys? Across the street on the other side of the street, we have the Robin Hood waterfront. 5:17 In addition to the hot tubs, the creek that runs through the Robin Hood, the events, the food trucks, all the stuff that we get to do here, we also have some kayak rentals. This is another 5:25 thing that we're going to completely revamp. 5:28 So, on this, we have an easement. I believe it's for the next 97 years. We did a 100red-year easement about it for 3 years. That makes math. Uh but you have this cool little waterfront area. 5:36 This is all usable by the Robin Hood for the next, you know, century. Uh we're replacing this shed as it's uh the roof disappeared this year. You have all these kayaks. People can come out here. 5:46 This is the fjord. This is the hood canal, the only fjord on the west coast. 5:51 This is saltwater. You'll see seals occasionally, orcas running through this. We have salmon who actually come right through there. Do you see that water wheel? That's actually my yacht in 5:59 the background that came with the White House over there, which by the way, I also bought seller financed. When I started this video, there was a lot less water. I'm going to be pretty soaked by 6:07 the end of this. To anyone who's aspiring to do hospitality, and granted, this is not my main business. For anyone aspiring to do hospitality, the best thing you can do is community relations. 6:16 If you can get people bought in, you can actually contribute. Make a music venue, open up the pub for events every once in a while, do things for the community, 6:24 and actually network. These projects work unbelievably better. 6:28 Multif family, it doesn't matter all that much. Provide great housing for great people. Price competitively and you'll keep your units full. That's pretty much the magic of multif family. 6:36 Multif family is simple and it's boring, which is why I love it and why most my money is there. I want my money to be predictable. This is a much more variable project. This is the type of 6:44 thing you get to do for fun. I would call this a luxury though. Stabilize the Robin Hood is more than enough to retire almost anyone multiple times over. 6:52 Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash flow when run correctly. All right, I'm going to get inside. 6:56 freaking barbecue back there. This is epic. 7:08 You don't have a 10 by 10. 7:10 Hello. How are we doing on extra-L large uh gray hoodies? I believe that would be appropriate. Yes. 7:15 Uh this one or do we have we have I think the gray one's actually awesome. Right. Here you go. 7:20 Thank you very much. The And after all that, welcome to the old pub. Historically, this used to be a pub. In fact, the Gates family lives 7:27 very nearby in their uh their summer resort. By the way, the community hates it when I share that. So, I am sorry, City of Union. That's fun fact that back 7:34 in the day, Bill Gates used to have his Macallen 18, I believe it was, here, but this used to be a really popular bar. 7:39 Today, occasionally, we'll open it up for music. So, we'll have musicians here, I'm sure, tonight. Uh throughout the summer, whenever we run these music events, we usually get a huge party in 7:48 here. Because our friends at Hoodto are so awesome and we love them so much, we've went ahead and opened up the pub for free for them. So, they have the 7:55 space to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't destroy the whole thing. But yeah, this is a a oneofone resort, which is what is really fun about this project. Um, as I finish 8:05 it out over the next uh, you know, roughly 6 months, uh, this winter should be the last time that this is all historic and unrenovated. We're still 8:13 going to save all the cool things that make it to Robin Hood, but we are going to deck this place out and take it to the next level. I am so excited. For 8:20 those who have followed the journey for the last 3 years of Robin Hood, back when Cody and I first bought this, here's where we're at today. Thank you 8:28 for following the journey. We have made it through and we are almost completed finally with the largest deal that we did in that partnership. A $4 half 8:36 million seller finance purchase. Use this as encouragement. If I can do this with no money and no experience, I'm not that smart. You can do it, too. Like, 8:43 follow, subscribe, do the thing. We share a lot about all the deals and I try to do everything I can from the field. We bought about $50 million of real estate. So, if you want to take $50 million of lessons and pack it into one 8:51 YouTube channel, you found the right place. See you guys on the next episode.
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