Financing for mid-size apartments (15-25 units)

[Pete Fiannaca]

Good Morning, Folks -

Looking to see if anyone's willing to talk about how they got their foot in the door financing their first apartment building. I am a new investor (bought my first SFR in July) and am starting to realize my business goals are more cash-flow focused, instead of appreciation based. I have a background managing large properties (200 tenants+) and would love to own something of that stature someday.

Issue is, many nice places I'm looking at in my markets of choice (Dallas, Raleigh, and Rochester) are well over $1.5M. Coming from a guy who is working the BRRRR cycle on small SFRs to the tune of refi'ing and cashing out $25K-$30K at a time, I can't imagine how long it'll take to build up the equity for a down payment on $1.5-$2M. Well, I can imagine... because I can do math... but man that's a long ways away!

Anyone out there have any creative methods they used in their quest to buy that first mid-large sized apartment building? Would love to learn more!

Thanks,

Pete