Christopher Linger has been on an incredible real estate journey from a dedicated Navy serviceman to a seasoned real estate investor. With 20 years of active duty, Chris Linger embraced the challenges of constant relocations into opportunities, buying homes at each station and cultivating an amazing real estate portfolio. Disciplined investing can turn a military career into a launchpad for extraordinary wealth and independence.
I was a landlord while moving with the military — buying a house wherever I lived. I bought a property in 2005, but when he left in 2007, he couldn’t sell it — giving me the real real estate “bug.” It was nice having the mortgage paid for and continuing a little cashflow. When I met my wife in 2017, she was already purposefully investing: buying two quadplexes at the same time.
I was stationed overseas, so I didn’t have an opportunity to buy anymore. We decided to invest together. In 2018 and bought two more quadplexes. We bought a few more in 2019, and I retired at the end of 2020, by which time we had 35 apartments together.
When I retired, we were looking at syndications as an option for us. We bought into an education program. By May 2024, we had 3,000 apartments, four mobile home parks, two self storage, and about one million dollars in notes.
The turning point for my mindset was going from a single family house to a quadplex, buying a quadplex. Three tenants pay the bills. That fourth tenant gives you extra cash, which you can use for reserves, in case something happens, but you also have your own cashflow. That was a turning point for us.
One day, my wife came to me and asked, “What about this 20-unit in downtown Austin? It’s $2 million.” I said, “We don’t have the down payment funds.” We were limited by our knowledge and the commitment we were willing to take on. We were self managing those 35 apartments from a long distance.
On that side of growth and scale, it was about education– making sure we found a mentor who could help us push ourselves. Once you have the knowledge, don’t sit on it. Don’t get Analysis paralysis, start taking action. Start executing. Have somebody walk with you through the process. Get addicted to the numbers. If I get this many units, then this number covers the expenses and this number is extra for more investment.
What is your favorite type of deal to do? What are you looking for today?
We like a balanced portfolio, so we focus on acquiring multifamily assets. It writes off all of our other income. I’m retired military. I don’t have another job. I’m a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS, and we can write off any other income using depreciation.
We also look for mobile home parks and storage because they have great cashflow. We own four mobile home parks. One closed in December, and we get 6% annual cash on cash. The other three, we’ve owned for over 18 months. We’re getting around 10% per month. It’s been a great opportunity to cashflow on those.
What is your favorite type of deal to do? What are you looking for today?
We like a balanced portfolio, so we focus on acquiring multifamily assets. It writes off all of our other income. I’m retired military. I don’t have another job. I’m a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS, and we can write off any other income using depreciation.
We also look for mobile home parks and storage because they have great cashflow. We own four mobile home parks. One closed in December, and we get 6% annual cash on cash. The other three, we’ve owned for over 18 months. We’re getting around 10% per month. It’s been a great opportunity to cashflow on those.
We’re not buying the ones with broken down cars and wife beaters. There are different classes to the mobile home parks, just for multifamily. We buy mobile home parks that are in reasonable condition. Maybe they need some upkeep, perhaps they have a tired owner, but we’re looking for something with 10% cash on cash and hopefully double our money within seven years.
Now you syndicate. You actually raise capital. Tell me about the thought process where you went from doing just your own projects to now helping others invest in projects with you.
Multifamily is not that different from running your own small portfolio, if you run it like a business. Many investors are overwhelmed walking through properties. There’s a lot to take in. We were at a point when we walked through smaller issues.
When I walk through, I feel the grade in the flooring. I know that there’s a foundation issue to take into account. It’s harder to do that on a bigger building, but you can still pick up on some of the other stuff. We were able to bring a lot of our experience from the small multifamily investing into the large to underwrite conservatively, making sure we knew our business plan advance, the deferred maintenance, our expectations for upgrades, to feel comfortable and confident working with capital partners.
Bring in other team members. We’re based out of Austin, but we own property in Dallas, Houston, Kentucky, and North Carolina. We have people who are boots on the ground in those areas, because we’re not there every day, but we do have people that can visit every week or every other day if they needed to, to check on problems.
We built those relationships over time to feel comfortable with those people that we’ll work with.
Why did you start doing deals with other people when you were having so much success on your own?
We were trapped into the location because we were self managing. We were answering maintenance calls. We were working in the business as opposed to on the business.
We want to give back more. We want to do more things for more people. My wife’s an anesthesia provider. I was an operating room nurse. I was in the military.
We have networks of super busy people. They don’t have the opportunity to work on the level that we were. We were in the trenches on these properties.
It was a great way for us to get back to our friends and our professions by saying, “We have a way to help you build your wealth. Grow more retirement cash and enjoy tax deferred growth without spending your time away from your family.”
Christopher Linger: One of the best things that we see with investing with bringing investors is that we get to like our first comment to like surgeons and other providers like that, that are super busy, they’re in the or they’re in the clinic. “I would love to get you out of the clinic one day a week or even an afternoon. Let’s start with an afternoon. What would it take?”
If we can get that on a monthly basis, we’ve done something for them. Once they see that half an afternoon to themselves, they want a full day. They eventually want a couple of days. My wife has gone 22 months without working. She decided she wanted to go back because she missed it. Others have cut back to half time in the operating room because they’ve made enough money investing and are comfortable stepping back.
Some of them have even joined us in the capital raise side, the running, running projects, doing syndications.
It’s a natural progression serving in the military, to you having the heart to help people in the operating room. Once we had this financial success, we wanted to help people in the financial world.
What tips do you have for real estate investors just starting and scaling up?
We’ve worked with wholesalers. Notes are a great option to get in to get started and build some equity, quickly, at a low entry point. Learning how to do that is cheap. Depending on the type of notes you buy, it can be discounted in comparison. That becomes an active income source.
It’s not tax deferred. That’s where the Investment side for us and real estate professional status comes in handy.
For the new person, assuming that they want to come in for little to no money involved, partner with people you know and trust. Get involved with somebody who’s already done what you want to do. Work with them, build equity with them, joint venture or work on a commission basis.
Learn a skill. You have three pillars: time, experience, and capital. If you can contribute any one of those to a partnership, you add value and get value.
You’re borrowing from the other two pillars if you only have one. The person who has a lot of time on their hands, who lacks experience and capital, just needs to partner with other investors.
If you’re military, you have VA loans. If you’re young enough, just coming into the military, buy the quadplex and self manage while you’re there. When you leave, give it to a realtor to manage it, then you get four incomes out of it. Do that every time you move.
I didn’t hear about this until I was in the military for 11 years. If you own 10 houses by the time you retire, you would be set with your military retirement and the income from the properties.
I lost out on 10 years from at least four duty stations– four other homes I could have invested in. Instead of buying a single family, I would have bought a duplex or quadplex to have that other income source while I was there to offset my expenses.
When you’re young, you may or may not have a family that’s totally needing your own space and separate environment. Having other people pay down your debt is a wonderful invention. It just makes sense.
Scaling Up
We had 35 apartments. In 2021, we sold a good portion of those. We found investors we knew for a long period of time, who wanted to get into or build out their portfolio in the areas that we were at.
They came to us one day, “Can we buy that quadplex from you? I know you guys just finished doing the renovation.” We were going to keep it long term. We gave them a number, they went to the bank, and obtained a primary loan. Because we’ve done notes, we felt comfortable building our own note.
We did seller financing for the down payment by doing a second position note on another property they had equity in. We gave them the money for the note on that other property. 24 hours later, they handed it back to us as the down payment.
They entered these properties cheaply. We recovered almost all our equity back, plus a little extra. We had any notes and bills paid off by that primary loan. The only money left in there was extra equity we had acquired during ownership. We no longer own the five properties these guys pay notes on, and they’re paying us every month.
We don’t have insurance. We don’t have to do cleaning or maintenance calls. We’re just collecting a paycheck on those products. It was a great way for us to scale because we freed up our tied up capital. We dropped it back into joint ventures and syndications.
With a syndication, it almost doesn’t matter where you’re at. You can’t put down a $50,000 down payment for an investment property. Even if it’s single family, you probably have put down at least $100,000 to $125,000. For $15,000, you can get into a syndication and get the ball rolling.
If you’re on the active side, if you’re a general partner, it pays you without cash involvement. Whatever cash you put into the opportunity is considered passive. You’re right alongside your passive investors. Your money is making money just like theirs is. The extra equity comes when you work within the process of the business plan and you’re helping the business plan happen as opposed to just letting your money help the business plan happen.
It’s probably one of the most passive ways to scale: finding operators you can trust. Placing your capital with them.
How has real estate changed your life? What does life look like for you now that you’re investing and you’re retired?
As an entrepreneur, you probably have had struggles with family who “don’t get it.” My original intention with retirement was going to be a travel nurse, wherever my kids. I have three adult daughters. I thought, “If I travel nurse to each area three or four months of the year, I can to spend time with each of them individually.” That was my original goal. When I met my wife and we decided on this real estate journey, we developed a new vision, which included freedom of time and location.
I have walked away from the operating room, I’ve retired my nursing license. This is all I do, but I can do it from anywhere in the world. We can still visit our daughters. When I first retired from the military our first grand baby was born and a month later and just before retirement, my daughter reached out and she said, “Dad, I know you’re not going to actual work, where you have to show up somewhere.” It was in October 2020. COVID was still happening. She said, “I have to go back to work because I lost my job. I had to get a different one in the process of being pregnant and I’m no longer entitled to FMLA.”
I was the nanny for my granddaughter from the time she was six weeks to the time she was six months– four and a half months. To be able to do that, is the epitome of a great life. We just have this great connection because we’re there. I’ve offered the same opportunity to my other two daughters. I may not be able to do four months, but I will still come and babysit.
When the brother was born, we babysat for a month. It gave us a quality of life where we could control our lives. As an entrepreneur, you step away from a 40 hour work week to work an 80 hour work week– that could be 12 hours a day.
We have coaching calls in the morning and evening. Sometimes the kids are there and they just want our attention. We never shoo them off. We put them on our lap and let them sit just off screen.
It’s been a blessing to help other people free up their time, and free up our time to be available when family needs us. Real wealth is about freedom of time.
To get in touch with Christopher Linger
● E-mail: [email protected]
● LinkedIn: Christopher Linger
Get started, take action. Don’t wait. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t say I’ll get to it later. Get a mentor, meet people that you can do deals with, and get started. Take action. Once you have a little bit of knowledge, think of it like school. Even if you make an investment and it fails, you acquired an education and experience from the deal.
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Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts: Ep68: From Military Service to Financial Freedom: A Veteran’s Journey in Real Estate w/ Chris Linger