Scale Multifamily Syndication to 200+ Units | REI Club

How to Scale a Multifamily Syndication Portfolio to 200+ Units (Without Chasing Fees)

Most multifamily syndicators are playing a different game than you think. They’re not building wealth—they’re building machines. Machines that need to close three or four deals a year just to pay their own overhead.

Ashley Garner, founder of ABG Multifamily and a 40-year real estate veteran, has taken a fundamentally different approach. He started swinging a hammer at student housing properties near West Virginia University in the mid-1980s, quietly scaled from single-family homes to a 196-unit complex, and is now laser-focused on one goal: reaching 1,000 units in North Carolina by investing the way he would want someone to invest his own money.

In this episode of The Real Estate Investing Club, hosted by Gabe Petersen, Ashley breaks down every element of his approach—from conservative underwriting and lean team-building to LP communication and using AI to run forensic accounting in seconds.

Quick Answer: How do you scale a multifamily syndication portfolio to 200+ units? Start small to learn the fundamentals, then scale rapidly by targeting larger assets (200+ units), underwriting conservatively, building relationships for deal flow, keeping your team lean, maintaining investor trust through consistent communication, and always holding adequate cash reserves. The investors who scale the fastest either grow deliberately or partner with an experienced mentor to shortcut the learning curve.

What Is the Right Path to Multifamily Syndication—Start Small or Go Big Right Away?

Short answer: Most successful investors recommend starting with smaller properties to build your operations muscle, but if you want to move faster, partner with a mentor who has already done it at scale. Both paths are valid. The danger is starting too small without a plan to scale—you can get comfortable in a place that never produces life-changing wealth.

Ashley Garner’s journey mirrors the most common path in real estate: single-family, then duplex, then triplex, then a 10-unit—until one day you look around and realize the math works exponentially better at scale. His first “real” multifamily acquisition was a 10-unit property in 2013. From there, he moved to 32 units, then 35, then a 196-unit complex acquired just 11 months before this episode was recorded.

But Ashley is clear-eyed about the tradeoff. “I remember looking up—even buying one house was like climbing Mount Everest,” he told Gabe on the show. “I can’t imagine going and buying a 40-unit or a 196-unit as my first deal.”

Gabe echoed this from his own experience in self-storage: “I did start small. The first thing I bought was like 50 units—really, really small. And in self-storage, 50 units is nothing. It was actually a disadvantage because for small properties, any mistake you make will cut into your NOI and just erase it instantly.”

The takeaway from both investors? Smaller deals teach you the fundamentals. But bigger deals insulate you from individual mistakes. If your goal is to build a portfolio that generates serious cash flow and long-term wealth, scaling to 100+ units as quickly as your knowledge allows is the right play.

For those who want to compress the timeline, Ashley had one clear recommendation: “If you want to go bigger sooner, you’ve got to get a mentor or some other relationship and go with someone that’s already done it. That’s how you can really get there faster.” This mirrors exactly what you’ll find on resources like our real estate mentor guide and in our post on transitioning from single-family to multifamily.

How Does Conservative Multifamily Underwriting Differ from Fee-Driven Syndication?

Short answer: Fee-driven syndicators are incentivized to close deals regardless of quality—their overhead depends on it. Conservative investors underwrite for long-term wealth generation, not acquisition fees. The difference shows up in how many deals get passed on, how the numbers are stress-tested, and whether the GP is aligned with LP interests.

This is arguably the most important question for any passive investor vetting a syndicator—and Ashley addressed it directly. His entire business philosophy was built around not becoming a fee machine.

“I don’t want to feel pressured into closing deals just to collect fees just so I can feed the machine,” Ashley explained. “I’m here to invest for long-term wealth growth, multi-generational passive income.”

He’s seen the other side up close: “I see deals close that I would never in a million years be able to make the math work on.” And he believes the root cause is a misaligned incentive structure—syndicators who need volume to sustain their business model rather than syndicators who need quality to sustain their reputation.

Ashley’s approach: “There have been many years we’ve closed nothing. I don’t know if it’s discipline or if it’s just making sure you stick to your criteria. Whatever your mission is, just stick to the mission.”

ABG Multifamily’s current benchmark is 200+ units per deal. At that scale, the NOI is large enough to absorb unexpected expenses without threatening the investment thesis. “32 times $1,000 is a whole lot more than 10 times $1,000,” Ashley noted. “It kind of insulates you from some ups and downs.”

For passive investors who want to understand this dynamic more deeply before committing capital, our post on common LP investing mistakes is essential reading. And if you’re looking at the legal and structural side of syndication, our real estate syndication legal structure guide covers the GP/LP framework in detail.

Why Is North Carolina Such a Strong Multifamily Market Right Now?

Short answer: North Carolina—especially the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point)—offers strong population growth, affordability relative to coastal markets, and deep deal flow. For a focused operator, there are more quality deals available than any single team could ever acquire.

Many real estate investors feel compelled to go national to find good deals. Ashley Garner’s position is the opposite. He targets North Carolina exclusively, and not because he can’t find deals elsewhere—but because he doesn’t need to.

“There are more than enough deals right here in North Carolina that make sense as good investments—more than we could ever buy,” he explained. “I just don’t see any reason to have to mobilize a new team and travel that far just to find something when I can find it here.”

When asked to pick a single metro within North Carolina, Ashley pointed to the Triad area without hesitation: “That would be my favorite—Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point. They’re all real close. It’s like one metro area.”

This “own your backyard” approach has a strategic logic beyond convenience. When you know your market deeply, you know which submarkets outperform, which property managers are reliable, and which brokers bring you the right deals first. That’s a durable competitive advantage that national platforms struggle to replicate. According to CBRE’s US Multifamily Figures, secondary markets in the Southeast like those in North Carolina have continued to attract strong rental demand driven by net migration from more expensive coastal metros.

Gabe pointed out that this mindset applies across asset classes: “I’ve found myself in the mental trap where I feel like a specific area is exhausted and there’s no possible way I can get any more deals. But that’s just not the case ever. There are deals out there—you just have to keep working it, keep talking to brokers, keep reaching out to sellers.”

How Do You Build a Lean, High-Performance Team for Multifamily Syndication?

Short answer: The ABG Multifamily model uses a small core team (two principals) supported by three third-party specialists—a CPA, a property manager, and a marketing firm—with weekly touchpoints for each. No bloated overhead, no pressure to close bad deals to fund payroll.

One of the most practical and immediately actionable parts of Ashley’s episode was his breakdown of team structure. He and his partner Michael Cross Folio run the operation lean by design.

“Michael is what I’d call mega smart—very analytical,” Ashley said. “He can look at a spreadsheet or a deal and just pick things out that I wouldn’t see. I tend to be more like 30,000 feet—maybe even 60,000 feet—where my brain spends a lot of time. So we’re a good complement.”

Beyond the two-person core, ABG Multifamily has three key external relationships, all operating under a disciplined weekly meeting cadence:

CPA/Accounting Firm: A dedicated CPA who functions as a fractional CFO. Weekly meetings to monitor financial health across all properties.
Third-Party Property Managers: Weekly Monday check-ins. “Once we get a property that’s running smoothly, those meetings are very short because there’s really not much to talk about. When we bring something on or there’s a problem, then we tend to have longer meetings.”
Marketing Firm: Handles social media (YouTube, LinkedIn), content creation, website management, and investor portal communications through Cashflow Portal. Weekly alignment calls to keep messaging consistent.

The genius of this model is that it keeps fixed costs low while maintaining professional standards across every function. There’s no pressure to do deals just to keep a large staff employed. If you’re looking for similar operating principles, our post on scaling real estate with virtual assistants covers how to extend your team’s reach without adding headcount.

What Is the Right Way to Communicate with LP Investors in a Syndication?

Short answer: Quarterly Zoom calls with active investors, consistent outreach regardless of deal performance, and proactive honesty when challenges arise. Investors don’t expect perfection—they expect to feel like partners, not an afterthought.

One of the most underrated skills in syndication is investor relations, and Ashley’s perspective on it was shaped by personal experience on both sides of the LP/GP table.

“I’ve been an investor in other things myself as an LP and received virtually zero communication,” he said. “And I didn’t like that. I’ve got friends who are investors in our deals who have said, look, I realize I may make a lot of money or I may not make any money—but my main thing is I want you to stay in touch with me. I don’t want to feel like you just put me out in the cold.”

ABG Multifamily’s standard is quarterly Zoom calls for all active investors—a year-end wrap-up/outlook call plus quarterly updates. These meetings create accountability, build trust, and surface any concerns before they become friction.

Gabe reinforced this from his own experience: “It doesn’t matter what’s happening. If you’re riding smooth or if you’re going through a rough patch, you need to be communicating everything to your LPs because that’s what they deserve. And also it will be easier on you as the GP if you just communicate.”

For anyone raising capital or managing investor relationships, our post on raising real estate capital without cold calling and our guide on raising capital from family offices offer complementary frameworks worth studying.

How Do Experienced Multifamily Investors Find Deals in a Competitive Market?

Short answer: Relationships win deals. The most effective deal-finding strategies all funnel back to personal connection—handwritten notes, phone calls, lunches, coffees, and consistent follow-up. Digital and marketing channels support relationship development but don’t replace it.

In an era of CRM software, direct mail campaigns, and AI-driven outreach, Ashley Garner’s answer to deal generation was refreshingly direct: “Everything to me is relationship.”

“For me, the most effective has been just good old-fashioned ways—like writing handwritten notes and calls or lunches and coffees,” he said. “Once you get to know somebody, then they’re out there working for you. We’ve bought deals with brokers, we’ve bought deals direct to seller—mailings and all the above—but it all comes back to eventually, I never closed a deal that I didn’t have a relationship with somebody.”

Ashley also noted that despite ABG Multifamily’s active YouTube and LinkedIn presence, no viewer has ever watched a video and then called to invest money on the spot. “That’s just one more way of developing a relationship, and then that relationship progresses offline and we do business after some other things.”

Gabe added a tactical tip for anyone doing direct-to-seller outreach: “I’ll call them and then I’ll ask them if they have an iPhone. And if they do, I say, ‘Hey, can we do a FaceTime?’ When we FaceTime, I’m telling you these conversations are a hundred times smoother. They can see your face. They understand you’re not a robot.”

In an environment full of spam calls and automated outreach, a face-to-face video call immediately differentiates you. For more on building a direct deal pipeline, see our guides on how to find off-market properties and off-market real estate success strategies.

What Is the Single Biggest Financial Mistake in Multifamily Investing—and How Do You Avoid It?

Short answer: Being undercapitalized. Cash flow on paper means nothing if you don’t have actual liquidity to handle unexpected expenses. A beautiful P&L can coexist with a business that can’t pay its light bill. Always hold more cash reserves than you think you need—and make liquidity a core underwriting principle, not an afterthought.

When Gabe asked Ashley about deals gone sideways and the lessons learned, the answer wasn’t about a specific market, a bad tenant, or a property that needed more work than anticipated. It was about something more fundamental.

“You’ve got to have enough cash to do what you need to do,” Ashley said plainly. “If you’re undercapitalized, you’re in trouble. You can have a year-end P&L that says you made all kinds of money, but if you don’t have enough cash to pay your light bill, you’re out of business.”

The trap is seductive. Investors assume they can fund renovations from operations—turn units as they come in, paint from cash flow. But the reality is different: “The next thing you know, you’re spending $10,000 a unit and you’ve spent a hundred grand before you can blink your eye. If you don’t have it to spend, you can’t get where you need to go.”

Ashley said his guiding word for 2026 is liquidity. Gabe echoed the lesson: “That is like one of the biggest things I think about when I’m underwriting deals—I want to make sure that we have enough cash literally sitting in the bank that we can deal with issues outside of the original capex. Cash reserves that you can use for problems that will come up. Because they will come up.”

According to National Multifamily Housing Council research, unexpected maintenance and capital expenditure surprises are among the top causes of syndication underperformance. Build your reserves before you need them.

What Does an “Infinite Return” Strategy Look Like in Real Multifamily Investing?

Short answer: Buy right, stabilize, refinance out your equity, redeploy into new deals. Repeat until you have no money left in the original deal—and it keeps paying you. This is the BRRRR strategy applied to multifamily, and it’s what creates multi-generational wealth from a single well-executed acquisition.

Ashley’s favorite deal of his entire 40-year career isn’t the 196-unit complex. It’s a 10-unit property he bought in 2013 in rough shape when the market was still recovering from the global financial crisis.

“I bought it and fully renovated it,” he explained. “It may not be worth 10 times what I paid for it, but it’s definitely worth eight or nine times what I paid for it. It’s allowed me to do cash-out refinances maybe three times. I’ve taken that cash, bought other properties that I’ve fully cycled—bought and sold, made a bunch of money—and I still own some of them, all from my one little personal ATM machine, which is this 10-unit property.”

The result: he now has zero of his original capital in the deal, and it still generates returns. “I have no money in it. That’s the infinite return. That’s the magic of real estate—that’s what it’s all about.”

Gabe noted this strategy doesn’t get discussed nearly enough: “That’s the BRRRR strategy—cash out refi once you flip a property—and it just never comes up on the show. It is such a good strategy, and something I feel like I should do more often with properties that I’ve already kind of stabilized.”

For a deeper look at how this strategy works across different financing structures, our guides on infinite banking for real estate investors, creative financing strategies, and scaling real estate without banks are worth your time. You can also explore how to diversify across asset classes and the capital stack to see how these refinance proceeds can be strategically redeployed.

How Are Smart Real Estate Syndicators Using AI to Run Their Businesses More Efficiently?

Short answer: AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are being used right now for forensic financial analysis, marketing strategy, investor portal management, and even deal underwriting. The investors who integrate these tools thoughtfully are compressing weeks of work into hours—giving them a measurable competitive advantage.

Ashley Garner is a self-described AI enthusiast, and his team’s use cases are both practical and impressive. “100% yes, I use AI,” he said. “Right now we’re using ChatGPT and also Perplexity.”

His most striking example: “I took 10 separate spreadsheets that were 10 exports from 10 different bank accounts. I put them all in there and said, ‘Find all of the intra-company transfers, related transactions and everything.’ And literally before I could close my eyes after I hit enter, it had designed a spreadsheet and found all of these [connections]. Forensic accounting that would have taken weeks to find.”

Other AI applications ABG Multifamily uses:

Marketing strategy: Target customer demographics, messaging frameworks, where and how to reach prospective investors
Deal underwriting: Their investor portal (Cashflow Portal) has a built-in underwriting widget. Upload an offering memorandum and get a preliminary analysis in minutes. “It saves hours and hours and hours of time,” Ashley said.
Performance dashboards: Building internal tools to track occupancy rates and key metrics across the portfolio

Gabe added his own AI use case: creating interactive LOIs. “I made this template, this prompt, and I’ll throw it into Lovable—it creates the LOI but it’s literally a website. It’s interactive. It connects to all my company’s info, the podcast, everything about me. Credibility baked in.”

For more on how real estate professionals are implementing AI tools, see our dedicated guides on AI real estate investing tools in 2025 and AI tools and strategies for real estate investors.

Key Takeaways: Ashley Garner’s 40-Year Multifamily Playbook

Here’s a quick summary of the principles from Ashley’s episode that you can put to work immediately:

Scale deliberately. Start where you are, but always plan for the next level. If you want to skip steps, get a mentor who’s already at the destination.
Underwrite for yourself. If the math doesn’t work, pass. Never close a deal to feed an overhead machine.
Own your market. There are more quality deals in any focused geography than one team can ever acquire. Deep local expertise beats national volume.
Run lean. A two-person core with three specialized third-party relationships can operate a multi-hundred-unit portfolio professionally and profitably.
Communicate relentlessly with your LPs. Quarterly Zoom calls aren’t a formality—they’re the foundation of a long-term capital-raising business.
Hold more cash than you think you need. The word for 2026: liquidity. Undercapitalization is the silent killer of otherwise good deals.
Use the infinite return model. The BRRRR strategy—buy, renovate, stabilize, cash-out refi, repeat—is how a single 10-unit deal can fund an entire portfolio.
Embrace AI now. Whether it’s forensic accounting, marketing plans, or deal underwriting, AI tools are already compressing weeks of work into minutes for operators who are paying attention.

You can reach Ashley Garner and learn more about ABG Multifamily’s investor opportunities at abgmultifamily.com, or find them on YouTube and LinkedIn under ABG Multifamily.

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