The Beginner’s Guide to Finding (and Funding) Small Multifamily Real Estate

Small multifamily investingHey rookies, have you ever wondered about how to get into small multifamily investments? It might sound intimidating, but it’s actually a powerful way to build wealth and a real estate portfolio.A few small multifamilies in there because I love them, and about half our midterms, half our long-terms. So that’s why we also highly recommend small multifamily. Don’t get in over your head, but we love a triplex. We love a fourplex.Today’s guests are Amelia McGee and Grace Gudenkauf, and they are returning to the Real Estate Rookie podcast today to give us a breakdown on how to successfully find and finance multifamily properties. This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast, and I am Ashley Kehr.And I’m Tony j Robinson. And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. So welcome back to the show, Amelia and Grace.Thank you.Thank youHer.Amelia, let’s start with you and then we can move to Grace, but give us a brief overview of your real estate background for our listeners if they don’t know.So if you want the full story, I was on episode 1, 1 1, but I am an investor in Des Moines, Iowa. I’ve been doing this for five years now, and I was up to 45 units at one point, but I actually am closing on the sale of my 11 unit today, so I’ll be down a few units, butCongratulations.Thank you. We actually, the day we filmed the episode for my rookie podcast one, one was the day I closed on it.Wow. So full circle.Yeah, soul selling that today I have a mix of long-term, medium term and short-term rentals. Grace and I also wrote the book, the Self-Managing Landlord. We love small multifamily, so we’re super excited to talk about it today.Okay. And Grace, why don’t you give us a little background on yourself?Hi. Yeah. I’m also a gal from Iowa, although I now invest unquote out of state because I live in Arizona, but my whole portfolio is in eastern Iowa within a 15 minute radius. And I do midterms and long-terms. I have about 26 units, a few small multifamilies in there because I love them, and about half our midterms, half our long-terms.Well, we are so happy to have both of you back. Let’s start off with why someone should get into small multifamily. Why would it be a good strategy for a rookie investor?I feel like small multifamily is actually much less risky than single family homes when you’re starting out because you can diversify your risk in the number of tenants that you have paying rent every single month. So with a single family, if that place is sitting vacant, there’s absolutely no money coming in. If you have a duplex, triplex, quadplex, you’ve got multiple sources of income to help offset your expenses. I think a lot of rookies think that small multifamily is scary and that they should just start with a single family, but I actually beg to differ. I think multifamily is definitely the way to go and is less risky. Like I said,You also have one lawn, one roof, so you get a little bit of that economic factor in there of that your money goes a lot further. So that’s why we also highly recommend small multifamily. Don’t get in over your head, but we love a triplex. We love a fourplex.You say, don’t get in over your head. Grace, and I appreciate that caveat because I think for a lot of rookies who are listening, I think we all understand in theory you can kind of mitigate your risk if you have multiple tenants under one roof. But in actual execution, the idea of the very first real estate investment that I purchased, having four or five families living under that one roof, it can feel a little intimidating both from a purchase price perspective. I feel there’s just a common belief amongst rookies that small multifamily is just going to be more expensive than a traditional single family home. And then just the idea of managing those tenants, there’s the purchase price aspect and there’s the management piece. I guess let’s talk about the purchase price first. What are some ways that maybe rookies can go about finding more affordable multifamily properties or maybe getting into multifamily properties in a more affordable fashion? Grace, maybe we’ll start with you first.Absolutely. When I’m looking at multifamily, it needs to beat the 1% rule. That’s first and foremost, and that’s because we want it to cashflow with single family. A lot of times you might be banking on appreciation with multifamily really absolutely has to cashflow, especially because once you get above fourplex, the worth of that home is based on the cap rate, which is based on how much money and the NOI, which is based on how much money you actually make with the property. So at the very minimum might be hard in a lot of markets if you’re not in the Midwest, but try to hit that 1% ruleAnd grace, can you explain what that 1% rule is?Yep. So if you’re buying a property for 300,000, you would hope that it at least rents for $3,000. And this makes sure that you have enough money to put into your pocket and also take care of your tenants for any future CapEx repairs. Maintenance vacancies, we always tell people do not buy real estate with your last dollar. And also make sure that your cashflow gives you the breathing room to pivot because real estate is, Amelia and I were just talking about this, it’s always two steps forward, one step back. So it’s not always going to be smooth sailing. You need to have cashflow.Do either of you have a significant deal that you’d want to share? That kind of gives an example of the 1% rule and what you just talked about and how you found that deal.I think all of my small multifamily definitely hits the 1% rule. I can share my most recent purchase, but I wanted to add on to Grace’s answer. I know you guys have probably done lots of episodes on how house hacking, that’s my biggest regret with investing in real estate is not house hacking right away. So if you are a new investor and you’re like, how can I get into real estate with as little money down as possible? Qualifying for a primary residence and putting down between five and 10% on a house hack is absolutely an amazing way to get started. Investing in small multifamily,Yeah, multifamily house hack.Yes,Absolutely.Okay. So my most recent deal is a fiveplex. The purchase price was 305,000. And I feel like this purchase, it has been a culmination of everything I’ve learned through real estate. So I bought it off market through my agent that I’ve closed a couple deals on. He brought it directly to me because he knows that I’m a closer and I’m going to get stuff done. So pro tip, if you’re working with agents, try to be closing if at all possible because they will get exhausted and stop bringing you deals if you never close. So I got to see it before anyone else. It was listed for three 20, but I got it for 3 0 5 and I converted two of the units right away into midterm rentals, which I love combining the long-term rental and the midterm rental strategy because again, it diversifies your income, it increases that cashflow, and I find that one bedroom and studio apartments perform really well in my market for midterm rentals. So the total rental income per month is around $4,600 on that property. And I cashflow between a thousand to 1500. I think I only put around 50,000 into the property. So my cash on cash return for that is sitting right around 19 to 20%, which I’m absolutely thrilled with.Sir, just one follow up question. When did you close on that deal?So I closed on that deal in April of 2024. So actually it wasn’t my most recent purchase, but my most recent multifamily purchase.And what was your interest rate? Just ballpark on that deal.I just looked at it. It was 6.25% and I always used small local banks and they usually get me the best percentage and they charge me no points to close. So highly recommend working with a local lender.So how can someone go about finding a similar deal? What are you guys doing right now in today’s market to actually source deals?Well, I’ll take it back to actually the first multifamily, well, the second multifamily that I bought, it was two fourplexes right next door. I posted my buy box in a local Facebook group, and that day a broker emailed me an off market deal and I signed the contract the day after. So if you dunno what a buy box is and also the buy box that I posted, I didn’t even know what that was at the moment. I just posted, I’m looking for B Class fixer up or Multifamilies in Cedar Rapids. Here’s my email, which now I would have way more information like timeline my max price, what type of value add? Is it mismanagement? Is it I’m looking for under market rent? Am I going to rehab it? But you have to be shouting your buy box from the rooftops. You just show up to a broker and say, I want to buy a multifamily. They can’t do anything with that. They’re going to think you’re a tire kicker when you can show up and say, I’m looking for an eight unit or smaller under $500,000 and I want to buy it within the next 90 days. They’re like, okay, this person’s serious. I’m really going to look for themRookies, we want to hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and we need your help. While we take a quick ad break, you can go over to YouTube and subscribe to Real Estate Rookie. Stay tuned after a break for more from Amelia and Grace.I got right guys. Welcome back to the show where we are joined by Amelia and Grace.Let’s get into the market analysis piece, and you both are investing in your specific areas, but are you niching down at all for neighborhoods? Are you looking for certain things that are drawing you to different streets or different areas of the cities you’re investing in?One thing I’ve been looking for recently is reading my city’s development plan because I know where all the city money is going and I know where property values are going to rise. And I recently bought a fourplex and a single family within a couple houses of each other on the same street that has a 10 year development plan for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars for the city to invest there. And so I was able to buy that before the development went in. So I know I’m going to take advantage of all that appreciation in all the investing that goes on there. And also I had made sure it cash flowed. One of ’em was a seller finance deal, and it was all around just a really good investment. So if all else fails, look to see where development is happening. And Amelia and I are both big proponents of just solid B class investing.Grace, you mentioned a really important point that I want to add on to, but you talked about looking at your cities or your county’s kind of redevelopment plan and Ashley and I, we have a good friend Katie Neeson, who focuses on redevelopment in her town of Bryan Texas. And that’s a big part of her strategy.She taught me this,Oh, well there you go, you learn from the best. But she had shared a deal with me where the city gave, they actually gave her money on one of the deals that she was working on to help her finish this redevelopment because it aided with this plan that they had for the city. So I literally never even thought about doing that before, but what an untapped kind of source to not only find good deals, but potentially get help from the city to complete your deals.Absolutely. I’m working on a triplex new build that has gone way longer than it should. I just know nothing about building new, but I will be asking the city for tax increment financing basically saying, will you pay my taxes for 10 years? If you don’t, I can’t do this project and if I don’t do this project, it doesn’t match your city development plan and I’m the perfect candidate to make this happen. It’s way more complicated than that, but I learned that from Katie.That sounds very Katie.Yeah, with her charming southern Texas accent. I love it. How could you say no to Katie? Amelia, what about you?Yeah, I’m doing very similar to what Grace is doing, and I’ll give you an example with this 11 unit that we sold today. One of the main reasons why we purchased it was because we loved the location and we knew that it was going to appreciate fairly quickly. There’s a large developer in the lot next door who tore down a bunch of old commercial buildings and built brand new luxury. It’s got an amazing view of the downtown Des Moines skyline. So when we purchased it in August of 2021, we bought it for 500,000 and we just sold it for six 90, which isn’t quite what we wanted to sell it for. But in three years it appreciated $190,000. I don’t know what the percentage is on that. Grace is usually a lot better at mental math than I am,Almost 33%.So that was a pretty great appreciation rate because of the location. I think the buyers are going to redevelop that area. And then same thing with the Fiveplex that I just purchased, is that neighborhood is growing quickly, it’s going through gentrification. They’re putting a lot of money into the Highland Park area of Des Moines if you’re an Iowa listener. So I like buying in those up and coming areas because in Iowa, you’re not going to get a ton of appreciation if you don’t buy in an area that’s quickly on the up and up.I want to talk a little bit about how you guys are actually finding your deals because Amelia, you mentioned that one of your deals came from a broker, it was off market. So I know you guys were a little bit more advanced in your real estate investing today, but if we go back to the Ricky versions of Amelia and Grace, what were some of the strategies you were leveraging to initially find your smaller multifamily opportunities? And Amelia, maybe let’s start with you and then Grace will hit you afterwards.I would say one of grace and my biggest strengths is that we’re not shy. We went out of our way to ask people if they were willing to sell. I specifically when I got started was a huge fan of driving or walking for dollars. I used to walk around neighborhoods with my mom and write addresses down, and then I would just directly reach out to them on Facebook or send a letter, a very targeted, I would not make a big mail campaign. I would very specifically be looking for a small multifamily that had multiple electrical meters on the outside or multiple mailboxes, send them a letter and say, Hey, I saw this property, would you be interested in selling? And I’ve gotten multiple deals from that method and I’ve gotten them to seller finance because they were all older owners that were investors themselves and understood the concept of seller financing. So don’t be afraid to ask the question. You never know.And also don’t be afraid to offer referrals. That’s one thing. I offer $1,000 finder fees for anybody who brings me an off market deal that I close on probably a third of my properties I’ve found via referral. And the fourplex I mentioned earlier, some guy who followed me on Instagram was talking to another guy at a gym, found out he was selling a fourplex off market, got his information, sent it to me, I don’t even remember what his name was, but just dmd me the information. And I ended up buying it, and I paid him a thousand dollars as a thank you because I never would’ve found that pristine off market fourplex in a highly appreciating area of my town. If I didn’t have that guy in the back of his head thinking this is going to be the easiest thousand dollars I’ll ever make, I just got to send her his phone number. And so you should absolutely advertise that. And I always tell people, a thousand dollars will never make or break a good deal, and it needs to be enough to make an ex-boyfriend call and it needs to be only paid if you close, don’t do a hundred. An ex is not going to call over a hundred dollars. They’re going to be like, that’s weird. I don’t want to talk to them. It’s got to be a thousand. If you’re in a big area, it might need to be 2000, 3000.That’s some good guidelines to follow by to pick your price point.I would need significantly more money to call my ex.That’s always the question. Some people would do it for free. Yeah, exactly.Well, once you’ve found the deal and you found the lead, what is your due diligence process? So what are the things you’re doing before you actually get the deal under contract? And then maybe is there more due diligence you’re doing once it’s under contract?So this is a tricky question for me to answer specifically because I’m always buying fixer upper properties. I guess I shouldn’t say always, but 99% of the time I’m buying a fixer upper. So I’m waiving inspections. I’m going in knowing that everything’s going to need to be done to it. I kind of know what I’m getting into as a more experienced investor. But if you’re just starting out, you’re going to want to get that inspection report even for just your own knowledge. And there could be a possibility where things come up and you can negotiate the price you need to get really good at running the numbers and understanding will this property cashflow or am I walking into a terrible deal? Grace, what else do you think a new investor should doWith multifamily? The odds of having inherited tenants are significantly higher. So you need to sign in a stoppel agreement. That’s something we’re always harping on our community about is sign an estoppel agreement even if you feel like you have the tightest lease that has been given to you by the previous landlord. Because the estoppel agreement makes sure that you reverify everything in the lease. And also if there’s any special handshake agreements, for example, the fourplex I was just talking about, one of the tenants has a side deal to do the lawn care, but it’s not on the lease. How am I supposed to know that or honor that or account for that in my projections if I don’t know about it? So an estoppel agreement is going to save youAnd you can find just by Googling estoppel agreement. Yeah,We got to spell it for the people because I didn’t know how to spell estoppel when I first heard that word. I was like, what language are you speaking? Right? So E-S-T-O-P-P-E-L, I believe there’s two L’s, right? So look it up. Go find one of those agreements. So those are some good initial due diligence pieces. I guess. What do you guys see as maybe some common issues in multifamily that Ricky should be looking out for as they’re going through their due diligence? Obviously inspections are going to show certain things. Grace, you mentioned one about making sure you understand what the lease kind of entails. But I guess what other issues might come up that Ricky should be considering with multifamily specifically?A big one is permitted multifamily properties. So I’ve heard of this many, many times where sellers are trying to sell the property as a triplex, but it’s only zoned for and permitted as a duplex, and you don’t want to buy something that is going to cause you a lot of issues down the road. Another thing that Grace and I won’t buy is what we call, or I call a Frankenstein house or a monster house. Basically it’s a single family conversion that’s been converted into a multifamily that’s very common here in the Midwest. We are in an older market. Those just come with a lot of issues. They’re wonky, they’re kind of shamble together a lot of time. They have a shared HVAC system or a shared water meter, which just adds another level of management to the property. So those are two big things that I would look out for right off the bat.Amelia, I guess one follow-up question to that, the Unpermitted additions, why is that a potential issue for a Ricky who would end up buying that deal?Can I answer that Grace? Go ahead. We just had a girl in our wire community post about how she bought a triplex where it was level one, level two, level three, level three had something funky with the stairs where the permitting on her inspection came back where this set of stairs can’t be locked. Well, if I can’t lock the back door to this top triplex unit, I literally can’t rent it out. And so her options, I explained that terribly. Basically, it was set up really weird, and she got it inspected by the city because most cities require inspections sooner or later, and they basically told her, you either have to build an entire other staircase to the third level, which is incredibly expensive, or you just can’t rent out that third unit. So she bought a triplex. And what do you know? It’s really a duplex, your third of your income right there, just poof. Unless you want to pay for a very expensive remodel.A great example, and I’m glad you could just kind of have in your pocket grace, but to just kind of reiterate for the rookies, the dangers of buying some of these properties with unpermitted units is that you either have to pay to rectify whatever should have been done correctly the first time, or you cannot use that portion of the property. And that now, obviously there’s maybe an opportunity the city doesn’t catch on, or you can just kind of keep rolling with it if you want to roll the dice in that way. But as these things happen, you might be the person who’s caught when the music stops playing. So appreciate that example, grace.Yeah, and I want to add on to Amelia’s point about the utilities, as in, I think it is way better to have a multifamily that has separate utilities. So really going through and make sure each unit does have their own utilities. And then I also like that each person has access to their own mechanics. So the furnace, the hot water tank, things like that. I’ve had properties before where the person who’s on the first floor has access to the basement, but all the mechanics are in the basement. So if the upstairs tenant has an issue with their hot water tank, we have to bother the downstairs. People who aren’t having an issue aren’t submitting a maintenance request just to get to the other person’s hot water tank. So just for ease of convenience, really understanding the utility separation and where the mechanics are all located within the property too, I think can make a big difference and the management piece of things and less headaches that way.Yeah. One other thing is tenant management is just going to be more because now you have tenant sharing walls, sharing driveways, sharing mechanicals maybe. And so you have to walk a really fine line of providing a really great safe place to live, but also providing a boundary to your tenants that you are not here as a sounding board for conflict management. They are neighbors. They need to figure it out. And Amelia and I both started in real estate so young that we just learned this through getting burned and trying it, and maybe a tenant yelled at us here and there. And you just have to have good boundaries and good expectations when you do buy the property or place a tenant of this is how things are going to go. And then I’d also say to mitigate some of that is like, just hire out lawn care, hire out snow removal. Don’t try to have tenants do it or share it. That’s just a recipe for a fight.Yeah. So Grace, any other final thoughts, just from your perspective about maybe some other common issues that Ricky should be looking out for as they’re looking to buy their first multifamily deal?Just keep in mind that you’re going to have more tenant management. Make sure you completely understand which utilities are shared and which aren’t shared, and the rest. Amelia, can you think of anything else?No, no.One thing that I would say is a parking situation too, that you understand the parking.Oh, and just regular things like how old are the mechanicals? How old is that? That’s with any property though. Not specifically multifamily. But yeah, keeping that in mind because we talked to so many investors in our community that they buy a property and then they have 30,000 in expenses that they weren’t expecting in the next year, and that can really cause a deal to go underwater. So keep that in mind.Well, you guys have shared a tremendous amount of what Ricky should be looking out for. I want to get into maybe some strategies you guys are using to finance some of these deals. But first we have to take one final ad break so we can hear word from today’s show sponsors. We’ll be right back with Amelia Grace right after this.Okay, let’s jump back in.Alright guys, so we’re jumping back in with Amelia Grace here. So we’ve talked a little bit about your acquisition strategies, your due diligence. I want to talk a bit about the kind of creatively financing opportunities you guys are using because I think both of you have mentioned different strategies. So I guess what are some of the ways you’ve financed some of your multifamily properties aside from just, Hey, conventional, plop down 20%, and Amelia, maybe let’s start with you on this one.Grayson, I have a running joke that my buy box is seller finance triplex from 70-year-old white men because I’ve purchased my third of these at this point, and it’s my favorite way to purchase. They’re all Burr properties. So basically I’m finding all three of them off market asking them, Hey, do you want to sell this property? When I get them in person, I’m saying, Hey, do you owe anything on this property? Even though I know they don’t, when they say no, like, Hey, would you be willing to sell or finance so you can spread out your taxes over multiple years? Old farmers in Iowa love to not pay their taxes, pay as little taxes as possible. So they love this, right? Yeah. Basically just presenting the offer to them. There’s a little back and forth, usually on interest rate percentage down, how long it’ll take for me to pay it back. But it all starts with just asking the question first. Hey, are you even interested in selling this is an off market property? And two, okay, you’re interested in selling. Are you interested in selling it to me through seller financing?I also think we should add here that Amelia got one of these deals in a roundabout way through our self-management book.Well, you got to tell us that story because Ash and I have gotten exactly zero partnerships from our partnership book. So we did something wrong. You just got to tell us what happened.I’ll give you a short story of it. Basically, I had a guy contact, he was the one, he came to me, he said, Hey, I know of you. I know you’re a really good landlord. I have this triplex I want to sell it for. I think he wanted to sell it for like 200,000. This is small town Iowa. I was like, Hey, I just can’t make that work. Sorry, I think I scheduled a showing. I saw the property, whatever, whatever, we couldn’t agree on a price. I said, the numbers don’t work out. He wasn’t willing to sell or finance it at the time, even though it was completely paid off. Keeps emailing me every couple of weeks with random questions about how do you handle ratio utility billing Again, what property management platform did you say you’re using?
How are you listing the unit? Where are you listing it at? And finally I said, Hey, it sounds like you’re really done being a landlord. You’ve owned this property for a long time. I know that you aren’t really keen on dealing with tenants anymore. I can either buy it, sell or financed, or you can buy my book, the Self-managing landlord. So it wasn’t really because of, but I said, I can’t basically keep answering your questions. You clearly are not really wanting to be a landlord anymore. And so he’s like, okay, fine. I’ll sell or finance it to you. And so then we worked it out.He’s like, I’m not reading it. Yeah, he’s like reading, no can-do.I hyperlinked it in the email, just go buy my book. But yeah, he was like, I’m done. I’m ready to sell or finance it to you. So I think we landed on one 50 is the purchase price.So he was willing to give up $50,000 instead of paying $25 to read.But the thing was, when I talked to him in person too, before we ever landed on a deal before, I said, no, this isn’t going to work out. I knew his pain point was managing tenants. I knew that’s what, he didn’t need the money. He literally told he doesn’t need the money. He’s got great investments. His thing was, I’m tired of being a landlord and I was able to solve that problem for him.Before we kind of wrap things up, let’s go into that management piece. At what point in time did you guys ever think that you were scaling too fast, scaling too much? And what would be your advice for rookies for putting their systems and processes in place when they are a self-managing landlord?Oh gosh, absolutely. Amelia and I both went, bye bye. Bye. Bye bye. Do everything yourself for two years. A lot of people did during covid when rates were 4%, then we started to realize, holy crap, we have a lot on our plate. This is actually a business. I have nothing written down. I have no systems, no SOPs, no organization. And so we had to figure it all out from scratch. And now looking back on it, and we talk about this in the book systems and processes, even if you have one property, you are the CEO of your real estate business and you need to act like it. You need to write things down. You need to track things, and you need to be organized. And probably the best thing that you can do as a self-manager is get on a platform like Rent Ready. I know BP works with Rent Ready.
It might be, I don’t know, what is it, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, doesn’t matter. That in and of itself is going to keep you so freaking organized as you continue to scale, it’ll allow you to automatically charge late fees and probably get you an ROI on whatever you’re paying for that platform right then and there. And it just keeps you organized, systemized. And then the next thing you need to do is keep checklists of how do I rent? What are my screening requirements? How do I find enlist properties? And you’re going to thank yourself as you grow because things are written down and you can reflect on them, and you’re not just running around like a chicken with your head cut off, which we’ve both done.Yeah, I love the idea, and you said CEO mindset, even if you have one property. And I think that’s a concept grace, that Ash and I have touted a lot on this podcast that we are real estate investors, but we’re also business owners. And oftentimes people don’t realize that becoming a real estate investor also means that you’re starting a small business and we have to treat our real estate investing as a business. And I just love that way that you framed of having that CEO mindset, because I know for us, we scaled pretty quickly also from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021, we went from three properties to I think 15. So it was a crazy year, and we had nothing written down either. And it became so much more of a chore. So many more headaches, so many fires to put out because we didn’t have things documented. So I love that you guys are talking about systems and processes. Obviously, if our listeners want to learn more about that, you guys wrote a phenomenal book, Self-Managing Landlord. You guys can pick it up at the BiggerPockets Bookstore.Well, Amelia and Grace, thank you so much for coming back on to the Rookie podcast. Amelia, where’s the best place for someone to reach out to you?Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. That’s where I’m most active. My handle is Amelia Joe, REI, and then Grace and I also have the Wire Community, which is Wire community on Instagram. And then Grace, I’ll let you share where people can get in contact with you.Same place Instagram, I’m Grace Investing.Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today and for sharing your knowledge with the rookies. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.