Welcome to part 3 of 3 of my little series of case studies about how I grew my portfolio by 60% in Q3 of 2025. I started by telling you about the first four units—a great Supercharged Seller Financing acquisition, then about two neighboring triplexes I bought, also with Supercharged Seller Financing, then about Herbie the duplex (big surprise: also Supercharged Seller Financing).
Today, I’m excited to tell you about the last of the acquisitions, and the biggest one.
This story involves me doing two things I try to AVOID buying listed properties, and using bank loans.
I have some ongoing alerts set up for certain types of properties, like multifamily in my favorite areas. One day in early Summer, while I was laid up after knee surgery, I saw one come through my email. It was a 9-unit property right near most of my other properties on the inner East side of Portland. The problem was, it had just gone pending, but with a bumpable buyer. For some reason, I decided to reach out the broker to get a sense for how willing they’d be to bump their buyer with a non-contingent offer. Turns out they wouldn’t think twice about it.
The property had been listed at $2.295 million a few months earlier. The price had been dropping and was at $1.895 million when it went pending.
I wrote an offer for $1.7 million, contingent on bank financing and appraisal, and contingent on inspection, and sent it in. To my surprise, it was accepted and the property was in contract. $1.7 million, $300k down and $1.4 million bank loan…and with me getting a nice buyer’s agent commission.
“Where are you getting $300k down from,” you ask? Good question. I was meanwhile working on a big refinance of two other four-plexes (lots of moving parts using Supercharged Seller Financing), that was going to result in a good chunk of cash out.
We conducted our inspections, and found a few issues. We negotiated for a price adjustment to $1.628,000 and an additional $25,000 credit to lower our cash needed to close.
Getting Some Seller Financing
I called a commercial loan broker I’d worked with before. He looked at my numbers and immediately said “there’s no way a bank is loaning $1.4 million on this—probably more like $1.1-1.2 million.” That meant we were likely to need a bit of a seller carry back to cover the difference. Most banks weren’t open to that, but he knew one that would be open to it if it was secured by a DIFFERENT property (not the one I was buying).
So we began our loan process, and sure enough the bank comes back saying that their max loan is $1.1 million. That means that at our new purchase price of $1.628, we still needed $528k….and I was only preparing to have $300k (from that other refi).
I went back to the seller’s agent and asked for them to be involved with $220k of financing in the form of a promissory note, secured by a DIFFERENT (very nearby) property. It was a short-term note of just 3 years, at 6% interest. They accepted—YES!
So now, we just needed the bank to perform. Problem is, banks aren’t great at performing (cynical, eh?! 🤪 )
Pretty soon the bank comes back and says, effectively (I’m paraphrasing here), “we’ve randomly decided to say no. You are too exposed in real estate.” Let just say…I didn’t take that well. Let’s also just say, much of my “thoughtfulness” went out the door. Lots and lots of curse words were said (shouted). It was ugly, and I was a little embarrassed of my behavior to be honest.
But in a way, it worked. They decided to “reconsider” and had a couple cute little corporate meetings to talk it through. Then they came back and said, “OK, we’ll do the loan, but two things: you need a partner without as much real estate exposure, and you’ll have to resubmit the loan application.”
I didn’t love that, but I did it anyway because this deal was worth the effort. I found a partner to put on the loan app (no money for them to contribute, just helping with loan qualification, etc.), and resubmitted, then…held my breath. I didn’t trust these people at all and was certain they could randomly change their minds again.
The Final Improvement
About two days before closing, our escrow officer asked for an updated rent roll. When the seller’s property manager sent it over, we were ALL (seller included) surprised to see there were TWO vacancies. I knew there was ONE, and I had asked them NOT to fill out so I could set my own rents and place my own tenant. But the second one was a surprise, and I knew it was kind of a problem because it would delay our income needed to pay the loans. So I made a proposal to the seller’s agent: how about we defer the accrual of interest on the SELLER FINANCING loan by 6 months, to offset things. They agreed.
Then, the next day (the day before closing!), they also told us there were a couple maintenance issues that they needed to investigate further and were worried they couldn’t finish before closing. So again, I made a proposal to the seller’s agent: how about we defer the accrual of interest on the SELLER FINANCING loan by ANOTHER 6 months, to offset things. They agreed.
So we closed the deal in October, and while the bank loan began immediately, the $220k seller financing loan won’t have payments for 12 months. I believe we got a HECK of a good price on this property, and I’m really excited to finish executing our plans to get the income to where we know it can be!
Tomorrow, I’ll share Part 4 of 3 with some key takeaways from this crazy busy Q3 that saw my portfolio grow by 60%. I hope you’re enjoying the stories!