** Transcript Auto-Generated**

(00:00) summer hard 2024 complete as in like enjoy that summer we’re back to school we’re back to learning about investing is anyone investing in long-term rentals anymore Alberta folks I know I know you love it but is anyone else in Ontario investing in long-term rentals we’ll talk about what we’ve been learning what we what we will be learning at the real estate resilience Summit Business Edition all this and more on this week’s truth about real estate investing show for Canadians I’m your producer and host Irwin CTO
(00:29) since 2016 and we are back we are finally back we’ve taken a few weeks off uh Busy Doing summering summering Hard spending time with the kids enjoying what little summer we have in Canada the Bank of Canada just made the third consecutive rate cut of .25% after what has been the quietest summer of real estate in my career um I’ve been land since 2005 been I’ve been an investor specialist realtor since 2010 I’m a real estate geek I check how Sigma often just like everybody else does I like to know what’s going on in my
(01:02) neighborhood I like to know what’s going on in the neighborhoods where I own property and where my clients own property whatnot for anyone who’s in real estate who’s a friend of mine knows I don’t shut up about real estate uh so if you are a real estate investor you know we always have much to talk about and I have many questions to ask anyways the market has spoken from my uh understanding rental properties uh as investments in Ontario are really out of favor the most I’ve ever seen in my my career and that’s across the board I
(01:33) have friends with very nice apartment buildings for sale receiving no showings I’m seeing the most lopsided investor imbalance of listing selling versus buying all the balance is on the listing selling side folks have property is listed and they’re selling them or they’re not there are very little buyers out there what little buyers out there that I’m seeing uh from the more sophisticated investor Community what I’m seeing is they’re buying mostly student rentals because uh University students naturally turn themselves over
(02:04) uh and then my point to what I was asking earlier is anyone investing in long-term rentals anymore in Alberta lots of them uh rest of the Canada not so much it seems the listings of rental properties locally has never been this slow again in my experience uh in the once popular with investor uh in the markets that were once popular with investors and and for apartment buildings uh now we’re going to be talking about Elizabeth Kelly’s uh real estate resilience Summit Business Edition and it couldn’t have come at a better time as canadi
(02:33) investors have never had a harder time of finding opportunities I have this discussion almost every day as I take calls from Canadians all across the country who tell me they can’t find opportunity I was having dinner with a coach recently who informed me that it’s been months since she’s seen a deal that’s worth putting her own money into on the flip side we had Sher uh Sher is a tech enabled asset manager who in my experience makes bill building a fully managed rental portfolio the easiest I’ve ever seen fortunately or
(03:05) unfortunately uh that can only happen in the USA thanks to the size of their economy which is the fastest growing in the G7 combined with low taxes and landlord friendliness uh I was literally telling my little cousin about a deal I was reviewing Kansas City uh he’s actually looking to invest uh he’s in real estate invest he’s in real estate his dad my uncle was a really big time broker before he retired uh last a couple years ago point is he knows a deal when he sees one and he’s my family so I everyone takes care of their family
(03:38) don’t they anyways back to the deal an off-market 1,200 ft Bungalow three bedroom one bathroom built in the 1950s most investors across Canada know this is your typical property so you typical investment property because this is the type of property of folks Target for uh basement spe conversions now um in Ontario in the popular markets for uh basement spe conversions that type of house a 1,200 foot Bungalow but cost around 600 somewhere in the high 600s to low 700s and Target investor markets like a Hamilton an ashaa Barry K Wu
(04:16) Cambridge and I know folks in Alberta do look for the same type of property as well for their for their mortgage helpers and same with folks in BC anyways back to this Kansas City uh deal in Missouri the price from the wholesaler so there’s no Realtors involved price from the wholesaler including their fee is $152,000 that’s American dollars um yeah $152,000 including the wholesale fee renovation quote on to bring the property up to being rent ready from the property manager is $220,000 projected rent $1,300 per month
(04:50) plus utilities for Canadian investors who’ve been around a while uh what like we’ve turned back the clock over 10 years on what these numbers look like uh we would we would get these types of numbers back somewhere around 13 14 years ago back in Hamilton for example which is where most of my experience is uh for cap gr for capitalization rate for those who understand commercial real estate we’re talking about a 5.
(05:13) 9% cap rate on a single family home and it’s not a very expensive property so you don’t have to come over with to pocket that much in order to do this deal I have a thirdparty home inspection report uh from a home inspector uh I have a renovation quote extremely detailed from the prodct manager uh and personally uh I can I have the Comfort level that I can do the deal do this deal from the comfort of my home I’ve personally attended a 100 home inspections for my own clients I I have enough comfort with uh home construction anyways this type
(05:47) of deal can be done as a pass as an operationally passive side hustle uh the the only thing that keeps this property investment from being uh fully passive is that the investor still has to deal with their own mortgages which is the way you want things to be you want to be in control if you don’t believe me just read the news and look at who’s losing their shirts who’s going bankrupt who’s owing 30 million to 100100 million whatever anyways all those folks have lost control I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to my investments
(06:22) anyways I do think it’s wonderful that uh my developer friends folks who do flips I think it’s all wonderful uh I personally I’m happy when I see people successful as long as not as long as they’re not hurting anyone uh but personally I don’t want to invest that kind of that much time and effort uh into those types of strategies I was literally speaking to uh a new a new friend of mine at the golf course who does uh he does kitchens and bathrooms uh so he works for folks investors who do flips in Oakville Ontario so I can’t
(06:55) even imagine the type of capital these folks are throwing around on million2 million prop proper doing flips and then like the realtor fees and and the rental budgets like holy cow anyways uh also again myself being risk adverse I personally would not choose a strategy where the uh financing uh Lynch pin is the cmhc a government institution um who has been known to change their mind from time to time for for those strategies uh I’ll have experts in those fields again I have no experience in that field of getting cmhc or or mli select and stuff
(07:28) like that but I’ll have I’ll have happily have experts in those fields as guests of my show like upcoming guest bestselling co-author Russell Wescott who’s from BC but invest in emont and he’s building he’s developing small multifamilies all the time brand new ones and the numbers sound fantastic but he also invests a lot more time money and effort than I’m willing to do uh especially being out Market anyways there’s no right or wrong in real estate uh it’s really just what fits you for for the best now I did say there’s no right or wrong
(07:59) real estate but there is a wrong losing money that is wrong I’m not saying never lose money most investors well sorry every investor who’s been around for a while has lost money on a deal or two or three or four what’s more important is over the long run they make money makes sense right now I’ll read you a quote from one of my newer clients who I’ve been trying to help coach out of a jam that they got themselves into before they ever met me this is what they wrote me this week quote hey heroin just wanted to let you
(08:28) know that every day I’m great for your wisdom and my private uh about my private lens I ignored red flags and I didn’t act fast enough so things are still quite painful but we would have been wiped out if you hadn’t shared your concerns with me thank you beyond words end quote also this week I’m I’ve been uh congratulating one of my longtime clients who helped uh who he helped uh sell their income property in the GTA and realiz over $500,000 in capital gains which everyone knows is tax better than lending interest uh you know
(09:00) interest that you earn on lending money anyways it it should be no surprise that the long-term real estate investor is winning even in this market maybe they didn’t make as much money if they sold out the peak but anyone like is anyone upset over a $500,000 plus Capital game anyways uh and and uh what I was going with is that going forward I fully expect my clients and I to translate our success uh that we’ve done in Ontario to being to landlord friendly USA my only hope is to to reach is to reach out and educate as many people as possible so
(09:38) they can be successful like my long-term clients uh speaking of Education I’m offering a free webinar uh a real estate 101 investing on September 17th 800 p.m. Eastern Standard Time anyone new to real estate investing or new to us investing should attend this so if you have friends or family interested in investing uh they need they need to attend this so they can at least compare uh any and all opportunities that they review against what a single family host uh rental property and land friendly USA can do like the property I just
(10:09) mentioned in Kansas City Missouri uh for a retail investment as an investment that an everyday investor can do I have yet to see a comparable property in Canada for a retail investment that an everyday investor can do again operationally passive uh I reveal deals all the time and on and and again my experience it’s really tough to beat shar’s offering for a fully managed uh for fully for being fully managed from acquisition to ongoing management to disposition and when compared to any condo or duplex in Canada there really
(10:42) is no comparison especially if it’s in Ontario BC or Quebec where landlords have little rights on to this week’s show award-winning investor coach speaker educator and proud entrepreneur my old friend Elizabeth Kelly uh we’re we’re old friends because she likes to tell it like it is Elizabeth shares about her wins and losses and real estate she’s been an active leader in the community for nearly 20 years and she’s here to tell us about how we Canadians uh how we Canadian Real Estate Investors can be resilient what she sees
(11:10) for our Collective Futures in real estate and she’s hosting the third annual real estate resilience a business edition of The Summit on September 28th and 29th uh that’s a Saturday and Sunday myself and Sher are proud sponsors of the summit I will be joining an expert panel on USA investing with friend of the show Glenn Southerland um I’m really honored to be uh uh really honored to be that Glenn and I are sharing a panel together uh and uh many of us consider many folks out there consider us the the leading voices on this subject and very
(11:44) grateful for the opportunity uh my wife the lovely Cherry Chan will be a speaker as well and I’m super excited for the other speakers on that are that they have planned and again uh this is business Summit this is a business Edition Summit but there are like uh the gentleman from Hawaii really interested in hearing what he has to say about real estate investing cuz he’s got a lovely portfolio in Hawaii anyways and a very sizable one too on today again so on today’s show Elizabeth shares her personal Journey from Mega real estate investor to uh
(12:13) entrepreneur adjacent to real estate the the challenges of affordability for investing in local markets even after learning the hard way back in 2010 where she where she and EMT her husband EMT bought over a 100 plus units and struggles with systems and operations this is why you need to be resilient you be to take that and what you’ll learn at the summit will be larg around systems and operations so that you can Thrive with these types of uh business businesses and portfolios anyways uh any and all investors should give this
(12:47) episode a listening to learn how to both win in real estate and avoid losing in which in my humble opinion is another way of winning for more information on the real estate resilience Summit go to real EST State resilience. CA please enjoy the [Music] show hi Elizabeth what’s keeping you busy these days not too much I’m actually taking some time off and enjoying the summer I’m uh I’m loving things how about you what are you up to trying to do the little same but it’s really busy so I kind of don’t want to take too much time off like while the
(13:25) iron’s hot you got some ex shining right which is funny it’s not that’s not the same for most of the community no it’s it’s been really quiet for Real Estate Investors surprisingly quiet Facebook’s quiet social media in general is quiet but even people taking action has been really quiet mortgage brokers are reporting it’s quiet Realtors everyone across the board investors are quiet these days what do you think they’re up to I think they all see a lot of what I see a lot of lack of investor interest uh just to give data points for example
(14:03) uh like we’re seeing vacant duplexes in Hamilton just sit which would never happen in the last 10 years this is the first time ever really uh so we used to think that vacant would would be marketable enough um but it’s not and a friend of mine posted about his kiter research showing that a tenanted property sells for $60,000 less than a tenanted property it also of days on Market from like 20 like 20 something days to sell for a non-ed property versus like 50 plus days to sell for tendent to property so that tells me the market is
(14:43) not uh interested in investment property even house hacking so my original investment theory of duplexes would be a wonderful liquid asset as as liquid as it gets for Real Estate thinking that people would always want a host hack is proven incorrect correct in this current market so what’s what’s an investor agent or mortgage person to do when investor appetite has dried up and that’s a small stuff like I think we’re we we both know lots of apartment building owners who have very slow movement uh on refinance or for
(15:19) sale of their apartment buildings so it’s it’s slow I and I don’t so I had a rent to own uh a couple of weeks ago that was a ailable and I’ve always had a lineup of people I’ve never ever had a challenge finding an investor and this run to own this was a little guy this was a mortgage of$ 450 $600 and some dollars a month in cash flow like it was a great little opportunity and I was willing to be the active partner take care of everything just come in qualify for the mortgage bring in 80k and it was a struggle just bringing
(15:54) 8K that’s it that’s it it was a struggle it was not I’ve never had so many conversations and people so nervous about taking action and I think it’s because there’s so much money that’s tied up or missing or that people aren’t confident that they’re going to get back uh right now that it just money isn’t turning over the way that it did for years and if you’ve been investing I mean you know you look at the lifespan of an investor most people think well I’ve been investing for 10 years I’m you know I’m one of the the ogs here but the
(16:29) last 15 years were a Heyday for investors and the the the downside always comes calling at some point yeah and seems we’re there doesn’t help that uh you know a lot of people are looking at interest rate renewal interest sorry mortgage renewals on their homes as well so I think the broader markets affected as well it’s it’s definitely interesting out there yeah I mean to me it means that we should be focusing on cash flow which we should always be focusing on but if you’re struggling right now with a situation where you’re not positively
(17:02) cash flowing on your investment properties I believe that it’s a great opportunity to get out there and look for cash flow from another means and what do you mean by that or or look for a different investment strategy like right now for me my apartment buildings I’ve had I’ve been socked with a couple of big bills I had a a big Plumbing bill that I had to deal with and then I had a big roof repair that I had to deal with and um you know that kind of took a good ch of my cash flow the last little while but the one the
(17:33) one investment that’s continued to grow for me has been my commercial building where I do short-term rentals and I don’t have to deal with the residential tency act I don’t have to deal with um some of the challenges of the long-term um you know when when you’re providing housing for people versus somewhere for them to come and stay for a little while while they’re in town to work it’s a a very different game and you know if things get quiet then I focus more on marketing I’ve listed some units on Airbnb as a way to increase the
(18:05) traffic in the building and have more people find out about us before they come to town and I just feel like it’s given me my control back and that’s one of my most important things the reason why I fell in love with real estate was I could buy a single family home and I could turn it into a duplex and I could force the value and then I could refinance and pull it out and and go somewhere and do it again and be able to provide homes two people that were affordable and it just it doesn’t feel it doesn’t have the same feeling anymore
(18:35) that it used to and I came through 2008 so I know what it’s like to go through a downturn this one feels heavier to me though do you see that too I think it’ll naturally be heavier because where affordability is now just because the the run up over the last 10 15 well honestly since the since 2008 we’ve been on a s serious Bull Run yeah so I don’t know how people get into the market now just because the numbers are so big now some some clarifying questions from what you just mentioned you mentioned commercial
(19:04) property so that means uh that’s a multif family right no so we have it used to be a Senior’s home in Kirkland Lake okay we bought it in I want to say 2012 it was 2012 and it had been vacant for 10 years so we worked on it and we kind of got it back up and running a lot of the plumbing was broken just issues all over the place the heating system wasn’t working and we took the spaces and we converted them into rooms so before Co we had a dance studio in there and we had a restaurant uh the hair salon is still there we’re exploring our
(19:42) options with doing other things I looked at um self storage for a while I thought that would be great I think our Market is kind of capped out for Self Storage so I’m looking for some other options but right now my bread and butter for the business is people coming to Kirkland Lake who need somewhere to stay you know for a couple of weeks or a couple of months while they’re in town working and it’s worked out so well we we have shared kitchens so people don’t have to eat fast food all the time we are a more cost-effective option than a
(20:13) hotel so people are thrilled they come and stay with us we provide housekeeping weekly housekeeping and you know Wi-Fi and parking are included so we’re kind of an all-in-one building and it works for us it works for the community it’s it’s really we identified the opportunity from analyzing the need and I think that’s often lost on Real Estate Investors because I think partly is that you know what you’re talking about is not really an investment it’s a business like I treat my invest my Investment Portfolio as a
(20:43) business I came to the decision to be a real estate investor as a business you know doing SWAT analysis strengths weaknesses opportunities threats like you know you have something that’s in high demand it’s going to generally perform well that’s that’s what business is now again like here you’ve identified business opportunity and and my point is again like many people forget that like it’s this and this was not this doesn’t sound passive at all yeah and I I don’t know that people forget it so much as when people are new
(21:14) to investing they just don’t realize it you know it becomes it becomes you know you’re focused on the concept of you know learning leverage and you know I can take the equity in my home and I can use this to generate money and they don’t realize hey guess now you have to learn Taxation and accounting now you need to learn bookkeeping and HR and you need to you know know the residential tency act inside and out you need to know how to vet people for your power team like people a a lot of people really think I mean this is touted as
(21:47) passive and especially when you’re starting out it’s not passive it’s very active yeah and then uh can you make this passive Can you hire someone to take up the day-to-day or you already done that well I do I mean with my property management company I had I don’t know I think I had 15 staff at my B bits at my biggest but then you’re just managing people I’ve done my job it’s not the easiest no if anyone thinks law is tough look at look at the employment law it’s yep it’s pretty in my experience employment law is
(22:31) generally favors the employee no different than tenant law it’s generally favoring the tenant yeah and this isn’t to say that people shouldn’t invest in real estate I think what I think what I’d like people to understand is that this is a challenging time to invest which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t and quite honestly you know there is a lot of wisdom in the saying that you know do the opposite of what people are doing so if people aren’t investing right now there are definitely some tremendous offers like there’s a house up the
(22:57) street for us that was list for almost 1.3 it finally sold at 1.01 they got a steal that house is definitely worth more than that but then there’s other people there’s someone just down the street who bought a bought a house for 1.1 and then they now have it listed for rent for 3350 a month that’s it 3350 that’s it that sounds low yeah 1.
(23:25) 1 for 3350 like there’s no way they’re making money there’s no way so if that your investment model you need to rethink it they got to flip that thing soon I don’t know I don’t know what the thought was behind it I haven’t met the the buyers but um it’s important to know your numbers and understand what you’re signing up for and there are definitely deals out there right now there are definitely people who are motivated because stuff is sitting but you have to have a plan and you have to know you’re getting into a business so you need that
(23:56) business plan for how you’re going to make money and how you’re going to make things work so the general Trend what I’m noticing is from guests on the show and this is not a popular opinion among Realtors and mortgage people is so many people are getting away from long-term tenants when it comes to Canada generally BC Ontario Quebec I don’t know much about the other provinces uh is what are you seeing I me like you know for context I think everyone knows you you have a lot of past coaching clients you’re you’re one of the best
(24:31) known coaches in the business what are you seeing on your clientele are are is is my observation do you see similar things I do I think it’s important that if you’re going to go if you’re going to move away from long-term tenants you need to understand the repercussions of that so you need to understand that financing is definitely more challenging to obtain um it definitely the theory is it gives you more control I think it does because I have both I have both and I have a problem right now in one of my apartment buildings and
(25:03) I don’t know what’s going on with the tenant upstairs but there I don’t know if it’s mental health or if it’s you know something else but continuing ongoing disturbances and I have other tenants who are threatening to leave my hands are tied there’s really not much I can do I mean I can ask them to continue to call the cops when there’s issues but the cops don’t want to deal with it um there’s not much I can do I I just I have a very disruptive tend and who’s causing issues with for everyone else in the building and there’s no there’s no
(25:33) consequences for that and as a landlord I would shy away right now from larger buildings because the smaller ones from a property management perspective I tend to have a lot less issues in my smaller buildings because there’s just less shared space there’s less crossover there’s less common areas again that’ll be an unpopular opinion among many realtor and mortgage people I know I’m okay with being unpopular I don’t need to be liked by everyone I’m talking from 20 years as an investor and 15 years as a large scale
(26:07) property manager I find that my smaller buildings typically present less issues yeah so so when people ask me why I’m back in the single family that’s exactly why I have no tenant conflict yeah when there’s poop outside on the lawn you know exactly whose dog it belongs to right like it’s not a you know tenants all pointing the finger at each other it’s literally like you’re the only person with access to this property so it’s you yeah at had a tenant who uh has anxiety issues so he he’d regularly smoke weed in the back
(26:39) corner of the property and then upstairs tend complain like what do you want me to do he’s exercising his human right yeah yeah it’s it’s his right he can do what he wants yeah and but the point point is if if it’s only only one tenant there’s no one complaining and I think that’s another thing that beginners forget about is that they for they they don’t know what experienced investors know is that your typically your top problem is endent conflict yeah absolutely and you can’t I mean everybody’s on their best behavior
(27:09) when they’re applying that’s really the only time when you have any control over who is who is going to be in your unit and I think people get really fixated on the numbers and it’s you know go big or go home and I want this size apartment building and this scale and I want to grow to this and it’s it’s okay to be smaller and to say one building year for 10 years is going to change the trajectory of my life for me and my kids and it’s okay to sell you know if you’re in a situation where you’ve got some other stuff going on you know maybe
(27:40) your mortgages payments have gone up and you know it’s it’s you’re really being squeezed it’s okay to turn around and sell so that you have the capital to be able to withstand the downtimes the idea is not to become a property hoarder the idea is to have these little picky banks that you can access if you need to in the future when the going gets tough MH there’s no shame in selling yeah something got lost along the way like the current generation of investors like folks who started like within the last five years they they
(28:10) were not their goal was well beyond one biling per year can you talk to that because you you’ve had to pick up the pieces for a lot of these folks who belong to Guru groups I picked up the pieces from us too my my husband and I fell victim to that mentality in 2010 I don’t always we must have bought hundred and some units that year um and it just you grow so quickly and there’s so much going on that you can’t that you can’t keep up with it you can’t create the systems and processes you can’t find the people to help you
(28:46) sustain that and the cracks start to show I mean you can’t like I don’t know are we allowed to talk about live stuff ongoing stuff sure so are we allowed to are we allowed to talk about the the whole um I don’t know if you want to pause the recording and verify but are we allowed to talk about like the Dylan sudor situation and how that happened it’s up to you because it’s you have your own stories because you’ve transacted with them yeah but I think looking at it from the outside and I I don’t know these people all I know is that they bought a
(29:19) couple of buildings from us but what I found when it comes to investors is that systems and processes tell the story so if the systems and processes are not in place then it is indicative of what’s going on in the rest of the operation so if someone buys a building and it takes them 120 days or 90 days to pick up keys and tenants are calling and saying you know it’s been two months and I still don’t know where I’m paying my rent to and you know we’re drowning in snow here and there’s no there’s no one who’s plowing um you know the the heat’s
(29:57) off we’re getting disconnection not notices on the utilities like if you start to see stuff like that it means that there’s systems and processes lacking on building turnover and that probably indicates that there’s other issues that are happening as well yeah like I said there there’s smoke there’s fire sorry Elizabeth can you back up a little bit uh yeah so from your portfolio uh Dylan bought properties from your from properties of for sale of yours yeah a couple of our multis and what year was this 2022 okay so not that long long ago and
(30:30) then you tenants were reaching out to you past so not your no longer your tenants but know managing for them did did he keep you on to to manage them or he he he transitioned to no we we actually wanted to um I was happy to keep managing them because we had good relationships with the tenants we knew the buildings we knew he didn’t have anybody local in town um just to back that up as well you started your own property management company in Kirkland Lake cuz they you couldn’t find a PM either yeah we if you can’t find one how
(31:04) is he finding one well he was bringing his people in from outside like I think someone was I think uh there was someone in Timmons that he was using to manage like exer how far apart of these these cities Timmons is like an hour and 15 and again I’m just I’m trying to piece things together right like I’m I don’t I don’t know these people I don’t have their phone numbers I’m just is trying to piece together from what I saw uh from an external perspective an hour 50 per Google Maps as of right now 140 kilometers Timmons to Kirkland Lake all
(31:41) right sorry I interrupt continue that’s okay um so when you start to see things like that then you start to I mean there are times where as a business you grow very quickly and it can be challenging to keep up with your systems and processes it can be Challen in to make sure that you have the right people in place and I see it a lot with my clients who are realtors my clients who are mortgage brokers where the volume of business has to grow to a critical mass before you have the financial capacity to take on another
(32:12) staff person to take some of that load off so typically the customer service that your business is providing will suffer during that time so it’s hard to tell from the outside whether that’s what’s happening or whether it’s legitimately um hey you know we don’t have any of the infrastructure in place that needs to be there to manage all of that and growing very quickly and aggressively there’s a whole process that should happen when you buy a building there’s a ton of admin with changing all the accounts over setting
(32:42) everything up getting all the tenants uploaded into your systems and processes your software everything else so it’s not the kind of thing unless you have a big team it’s not going to happen quickly and easily so when you see people acquiring multiple buildings a month they either need need to have a really strong team or there’s the potential in the future for things to be a little bit bumpy MH yeah so you and I already saw cracks in that business before they ever made the news yeah and then noever reference checked
(33:15) with you or I I I don’t know that people and this is part of the thing like at some point I think as humans we make decisions based on our emotion and I find myself doing it you know I I looked at this rent to own and there were there were some some things that I you know kind of raised little red flags for me but I wanted to do this really badly I wanted to do this rent to own and I was I said to myself you know no matter what I’m an experienced investor I can handle this you know if if things don’t go according
(33:49) to plan I’ve got Plan B C D E and F and I’m like but wait a second just because you can handle it doesn’t mean that you should ignore those little warning signs those little red flags and I think sometimes as new investors that’s what we tend to do we get a little emotional you know we we like people we see what people are doing we get excited about it and then we fail to step back and say you know if I was doing proper due diligence on someone what should I be doing it would make sense if I was investing in a building I
(34:25) would contact somebody independently to do an appraisal an independent realtor uh an in I’d have you know somebody at least hey drive by the building and tell me that it’s there and I’m not putting anybody at fault who has invested money with someone based on trust like I’m not trying to I’m not trying to hurt people when they’re already down but I think as a community we need to do a better job of asking the tough questions and as borers which I am we need to do a better job of saying I expect you to ask me
(34:57) this question here’s full transparency this is what’s this is what it is like my commercial building I don’t have traditional financing on it an appraisal is $20,000 so I have continued to work with people who I know and care about and I have private money on my building I’ve owned it for 10 years most people could and should not do that but that’s what works for me I like working with people who I know and who I trust yeah but you have a lot more qualifying criteria to build trust then unfortunately the folks are
(35:35) out of a lot of money yeah I mean there there’s a lot going on in the world of real estate right now and um I I think we need to do a better job as investors of protecting ourselves by asking the right questions and I wish there were more of the big companies and the big organizations teaching people that that’s stuff out there it is I I feel I feel for new investors because it’s not like I mean when we started in 2005 I started I didn’t we just social media wasn’t a thing like we didn’t know then what we knew now there wasn’t this you know
(36:13) communication around the world there wasn’t this you know when you learn things you you had learned it the hard way or you had done the research or I mean now we can just we have instant access to a ton of information but now we have no way to verify on the flip side though like for example there’s a coach who’s failing out there who’s well promoted by by their Network like I I saw her deals years ago and I knew that was doomed to fail again I I think I don’t know what it is um yeah I don’t know what it is I think
(36:50) I think there’s a lot of people who can’t qualify a deal so then you got to think what are they paying all that money for for coaching if they don’t know how to qualify a deal yeah but I I think sometimes again people you know you you’re on social media and you see someone and they look like they’re successful or they look like they’re doing really well or they’re talking about how amazing they are and people go yeah okay I want to believe that I think most humans fundamentally want to believe the good in people they don’t want to believe
(37:19) that they’re going to hire someone who’s not going to teach them what they need to know about how to run their business and I think that kind of takes me to where I’m heading now which which is I want my control back MH I I I’m tired of giving away my power to everybody else and I want my control back what are you doing to get your control back I’m I’m still going to be coaching on real estate for people who want to learn but I want to focus as well on people who want to start active businesses people who want to generate
(37:52) income people who want to say you know what I don’t want to work here forever I want to transition out of my job um you know maybe I want to go on maternity leave and I want to have a side hustle so that I don’t have to go back afterwards um people who say I I know this or I can do this and all I need to do is tell people about it and then I’ll have the opportunity to be able to take charge of my income yeah wa wait till you come to Yo and I’ll introduce you someone to my friends who bought businesses it’s uh
(38:24) it’s lifechanging for many it’s a lot of money too for not to say it’s easy or that everyone makes it but man the people who make it and I’m not talking about people like I love and I admire people who want to buy businesses I’m talking about people who have a love they have a passion they have a vision and they just don’t know how to start you know they have a transferable skill set that would be really in demand but you know right now they’re trading the security of in theory anyways going into into to the office for two weeks and getting a
(38:59) paycheck at the end of it for the freedom of being able to um to work as and when needed so right now my in-laws they’re um they’re in their they’re 85 now and unfortunately their health is declining it’s declining really rapidly and we have multiple doctor’s appointments a week we get calls from them where we need to drop everything and go over and I looked to my husband I go could you imagine if we worked for somebody else and you and I were both at offices and we couldn’t be there it would be it would be heartbreaking I
(39:30) mean how many people are there who want to be there more for their families and don’t have the capacity to do that because they’re stuck somewhere that they don’t even necessarily want to be so I want to help those people a lot of people looking for help I think a lot of people just don’t even know where to start the whole buying a business so sorry you you’re but even starting a business both are complicated I actually think that they can be but I like to keep things really simple like I don’t I think we we don’t have to make
(39:58) it complicated at least initially you know once we kind of figure out the landscape you know what we’re offering where it would fit is there a need for it like there’s a lot of due diligence you should do before you even start a business and I don’t think people realize that you need to make sure that there’s a market that there’s demand that you have the right skill set there’s a lot of analysis to do even before you say okay I’m starting this business and yet you buy your domain yeah it’s like valuations for
(40:27) example is so different compared to real estate like when we’re when we’re looking at businesses to buy it’s so different and I’m having these conversations almost every week or so just friends who are looking at businesses just to evaluate their own businesses or looking to acquire businesses it is so different valuing a business compared to any piece of real estate yeah so what is it that you have seen in your experience that are the number one drivers of valuation for a business uh for example like Professional Services and recurring
(40:57) recurring revenues like if you’re a professional service that has significant recurring revenues like an accounting firm your valuation is so much higher and you have so many more buyers right which makes a lot of sense and that’s how Cherry structures her hers right where there’s a monthly there’s a monthly fee and that drives the value of the business regular curring income you know in their line of on the line of business people need to file the taxes every year so that’s people generally have to you know do it
(41:26) every year uh but then there’s like hair cutting businesses where people need to get the haircut every you know 3 weeks two months whatever that the recurring income but a lot of people can do that business so the barrier of Entry are very low so then so then that your valuation is completely different for a business like that yeah and it’s interesting because I think a lot of businesses waste money on marketing when if they put a little more time and energy into making sure their existing clients were happy yeah and converting
(41:55) that the marketing budget into a loyalty typ type program I think that they would have a lot more returning clients and a lot more happy people so they wouldn’t need to spend as much time marketing and recruiting new people yeah retention is generally I think everyone knows retention is retaining a client is cheaper than acquiring a new client uh now we kind of touched on this just briefly what start starting new starting a new business versus buying what are your thoughts I I have I mean I haven’t bought a business myself personally my
(42:26) preference is always to start fresh I feel like when you buy businesses I mean you’re buying potential problems you’re buying liabilities but you’re paying for not having to be part of that initial growth phase which is can be some really heavy lifting I personally absolutely love that feeling of seeing a vision and a plan come to fruition I find it energizing and exciting so many of my clients have done it you know they’ve started rent to own companies they’ve started property management companies um and so seeing them you know do their
(42:57) first deal it’s it’s part of it’s like real estate it’s adjacent to real estate but it’s you can create that ongoing sustainable income through you know Property Management fees and and some of the other different um the different investment models that they’ve chosen but I don’t know I I have an affinity for starting my own because I have these visions and these ideas in my head that I want to make happen and I don’t know that I would see the same thing if I was buying business tell me what you love about buying though because you you
(43:30) prefer to buy versus start don’t you that’s largely a strategic decision though no different than real estate it’s real estate winter it’s business buying winter as well a lot of people don’t have cash and credit so when when like being strategic means doing what the opposite of what everyone else is doing like you said so there’s a lot of people selling businesses but there’s like no buyers and a lot of these businesses don’t have uh don’t have plans for the Next Generation typically the kids don’t want it yes right so you have a glut of
(44:01) Sellers and if you can be a buyer then you can make a lot more you can negotiate a lot more for example like uh like Victoria who was Clooney was on the show they did a share purchase right so she bought the shares of the company so she assumes everything the employment contracts any contracts they have the debt everything but again if you’re able to negotiate you can just buy the assets and you can buy the assets for example for 10 on the dollar and not assume any of the debt and that’s I’d always prefer if I was going to buy I think I’d always
(44:34) prefer to buy a business that had real estate as part of it like I wouldn’t want to buy a business that was renting a space I would want to buy you’re buying something Ontario if you’re buying something in the Golden Horseshoe you’re paying through the nose for that piece of property and maybe and again it’s Case by case like for example if it’s office space you may not want it strategically office space is is is a very weak position in the current market or or retail depending on where for example I had a friend call me looking for a referral
(45:04) for a leasing agent for retail in Hamilton I’m like I think the vacancy for retail in Hamilton like 50% so you that may not be the piece of real estate you want but for example if you’re industrial there’s a good chance you might want it right but Industrial in Ontario Golden Horseshoe would be a lot of money so it’s not the easiest decision and pretty much I think every business owner in the industrial would want their real estate State they not may not be able to afford it yeah I think it’s easier to start
(45:33) businesses that are service-based because the startup costs are so much lower like you’re talking about retail or you’re talking about um retail and you know some of the industrial stuff there’s a lot of costs involved because you need the inventory whereas you know it it costs a few thousand dollars to start a property management company or um you know to become a mortgage broker and start your own business that way it doesn’t require the the heavy Capital that some of the other types of businesses do yeah again I think it’s Case by case
(46:05) and it depends like for example Wade um Wade was on my show Wade Graham he he was like that was years ago when he bought his float can War business float you know those float tanks and he shared how he paid Pennies on the dollar like I think like 15 cents say it’s like 15 cents on a dollar for the equipment right and he negotiated a seller seller seller takeback mortgage MH so out of the profits of the company he was able to pay off his loan right and again he only bought the assets he assumed nothing else just the lease and
(46:36) now he just recently announced he bought the bu bought the building he was in good for him so again it’s Case by case uh and again if what it’s largely strategic like for example for someone who like really wants a restaurant or a gym personally if it was me I would wait to buy a failed one you know because then you can take over their brand equity right you can buy all their equipment for like cents like 30 cents on the dollar for example right rather than starting new and again it’s Case by case depends on what people
(47:06) are interested in for business right sometimes that client list for example is worth a lot of money right maybe it’s worth a lot of money to you not worth a lot to someone else so again strategic right but starting up yeah it’s something well you know you’re starting up with no systems and operations that’s tricky too it is but I find that there’s a lot that you can replicate so for example I have a full Suite of of documents if someone wants to start a property management company that I share with my clients so it gives them a foundation of
(47:38) systems and processes um but you can take that and you can use that I find as long as you have an aptitude for starting systems and processes then it doesn’t really matter what you’re applying it to you’re just going to do it anyways yeah like I find even Evan and I are working on renovating our house and you know I take the same systems some processes okay we’re going to use Google keep we’ve got it each day of the week and we’re going to go in and we’re going to put in what we’re going to do and we have a running list of all
(48:04) the tasks that need to be done and you know if we have more time in a day and we finished all our things on our to-do list then we’re going to go down to our running list and pick something and move it up I use that same system and process in all of my businesses and I use the same transferable skills yeah but you’re out there how many people have that skill set how many people want to put in that that kind of effort too for example all these people who invested passively quote unquote passively into into private
(48:35) mortgages right they just they just wanted passive they didn’t necessarily want a business but again that’s not your clientele well I mean I do teach private lending but I teach a lot about due diligence on private lending like I I really want to know what other assets are back there I mean I assume when I do private lending I assume I’m not going to get my money back and I work from that basic premise I don’t I’m not there going I’m going to get you know $1,500 a month this is going to be great I assume that I’m not
(49:05) going to get it back so I’m already making sure that if you know plan a doesn’t happen what’s Plan B well plan B is you know I’m secured over here and again I’m not I don’t do prom notes I don’t do unsecured lending but I’m already saying you know what happens if the market drops and my you know the the value that I believed was there when I closed is not there what are my other options and opportun unities who are these people I mean I think sometimes we get sucked in by saying oh this person has a big presence
(49:35) on social media so they must be good without actually saying hey can you show me a statement that shows me you know what properties you have in your name or what your net worth is or you know what your taxes are sometimes when you ask the right questions and somebody gets angry then that can be as much of an indicator I remember there’s somebody who was part of a a failed company um a very publicly failed company and someone went to her and asked uh for financial statements and I remember how angry she got at them and she said if you need to
(50:10) ask for financial statements then I’m not let then I don’t want to borrow your money and uh you need to go and find somewhere else because that’s not how I operate and they were so upset and they were like oh I did something wrong and I’m like you did something right yeah because then the business went under it’s like when landlords are screening tenants and they refuse to fill a credit report like that’s a good thing yeah when people self- select themselves out of your world yeah don’t don’t believe it’s because you did
(50:43) something wrong I mean it might be but maybe it’s not maybe it’s the universe looking out for you crazy so what else do you like about what else are you thinking about for getting control back uh well that’s why so uh I’ve invited uh Victoria Clooney and Megan hubner to co-host the real estate resilience Summit with me this year and part of the reason that I selected these two wonderful ladies is because they have the same vision that I do that people want to learn more about how to make better choices and whether we like it or
(51:22) not quite honestly a lot of the times we do follow what’s going on in the US maybe not politically but when it comes to you know um businesses and investing and there’s some amazing people out there like Cody Sanchez talking about how to buy businesses and how to find Value and that kind of stuff so we have gone one step further this year with the summit and we have included some speakers from us some of these people they’ve never spoken in Canada before so the information that we’re hearing is new and it’s you know what’s up and
(51:55) coming in the world of not just real estate but investing in general in being an entrepreneur in starting a business or buying a business or revamping a business um most of it being real estate adjacent but I really think you know much like you have identified the issues with investing in Canada and you’ve pivoted to the US I think there’s going to be a lot of pivots coming and I think that there are opportunities I mean I have clients who are looking at buying properties in Spain and portug Portugal um you know
(52:29) buying in the US buying in Costa Rica Mexico I think the internet has given us the opportunity to be able to identify places outside of just our own little niche here and it’s exciting to meet other people and see what they’re up to and look for the opportunities that potentially we can earn income and take control of our future MH yes I’m kind of sick of what we deal with Ontario landlords yeah and I I mean I don’t like I don’t like dumping on Ontario you know honestly I’m grateful I’m here you know it’s just a fluke that I ended up being
(53:08) born to my parents and you know they were in Canada and you know like I I still consider myself lucky to be here in Canada but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the place where it’s the best for me to be in charge of my future I’ll also qualify that with just with the assets that you and I have purchased over our time and also the time we were born generally our generation’s done very well and I M admit that completely which is why when people say are you are you moving to the states like then when they ask me that
(53:42) and my answer I want to share it here publicly is I don’t have to because I made the right decisions along the way to play this game right so I can afford to live here chairing I can afford to live here our businesses operate here I don’t have to go but if I was 20 years old old knowing what I know and no kids I’d be doing everything I could to leave this leave this country that’s just me right but I don’t know that us is the answer either to be perfectly honest because not saying it is I mean the US to me right now is kind
(54:12) of a scary place like my husband travels a lot he spends a lot of time in the US and you know he was talking about um one of the hotels he stayed I think it was in West Virginia and there were like there was huge fences around the hotel and like armed guards MH in a hotel in the US I mean when he goes to Egypt there’s armed guards at the pyramids yeah they’re not around the hotels yeah yeah yeah like the US has some some and they’re so divided I I don’t think I don’t know that the US is is the answer either it’s a big country though it is a
(54:50) big country and quite honestly I would like to just go in the middle of nowhere and be left alone to do my thing that would make me really happy and you could buy land a lot cheaper like that in the States you i’ had discussions about it you could probably buy 200 Acres so you would have to deal with any people and you probably pay like less than half a million for it yeah absolutely yeah land land is so cheap I mean you know I look at the the parcels of property we’d like to buy and we’re well into Northern Ontario to be
(55:17) able to buy the size of land that we’d like to buy yeah and the black flats will heat you eat you for half the year or the polar BS I’m kidding about the polar bears yeah there is no perfect and I I say that I’ve been seeing that regularly as well uh I it’s it’s my belief like if you can afford it I think two homes is the ideal right one one place to live during our Winters when it’s warm or it’s warmer if that’s your preference but you know I was watching the surfing the Olympics over the weekend I’m like that looks so hard I’d rather
(55:47) snowboard than drink salt water and Get Smoked by waves so so again point is there’s no perfect uh I do believe just me person that we’ll probably end up snowb biring somewhere else for the winters and and still returning to Canada for the for our summers which are absolutely lovely here yeah I mean I look at you know Europe and Spain and some of the some of the countries over there and their food is so much healthier it’s so much less processed their lifestyles are so much healthier um their populations you know
(56:19) live longer with less health issues I mean I look at that and I go what are we doing over here we’ve got all the money and we’ve got lots more Independence than a lot of other countries and yet these are some of the issues that we’re we’re having you know we got the terrific obesity rates and all the other health issues that we’ve got yeah when just living just when I was in Moka we were averaging well over 10,000 St steps just staying at the YMCA Camp because it a hike wherever you went it was a hike so yeah I I think Seth
(56:55) Ferguson has the right answer he’s one of the the people I’ve talked to and and done podcasts with and he’s on his treadmill the entire day genius just walking away on his treadmill I think that’s I think that’s the way to go for those of us who are stuck in in offices and on Zoom for most of the day he spent a lot of time in Florida and Texas [Laughter] too but it’s it’s about creating that life that we want right and I think sometimes there’s what we think we want and then there’s what we need I think you need to explore a lot of
(57:28) that too and part of it Al is you need the money to do it right for anyone yeah yeah I don’t need to go into like money is the source of all evil we’re trying to give some people something good to listen to irn We don’t want to make everybody cry I think most people listen to the show realize that that’s not the truth but money for some like money money money will amplify people’s personalities if they were evil to start with giving them more money will make them more evil right if you’re a good person armed with more money then you
(58:01) tend to do more good things right at least that’s how I like to think I find my husband is a my husband’s a pretty cynical person and he always says to me follow the money and I at first I was like that sounds so that sounds so cold but the more I talk to people who are struggling and the more they tell me who they who they’ve spoken to you’re gonna stand up now are you the more I talk to people who you know they’ve asked they’ve gone to people asking for advice and the advice that’s been given has been self-serving
(58:37) because it’s you know they they’re wondering about their insurance policy so they talk to their insurance broker and their insurance broker tells them they need more Insurance because it benefits the broker for them to buy more insurance so that’s just an example but it’s really hard for people to find out right now who to trust and I think ultimately what that means is you need to go inwards and you need to make sure that you are cultivating a voice of your own that is independent of everything else around you that is independent of
(59:04) other people’s opinions that is independent of other people’s you know you can go to people and you can um seek to learn from their experiences but recognize that just because somebody did something and it turned out this way there’s no guarantees that it’s going to turn out that way for you too I think it’s important to know who you are as a person and what you’re really looking for and the only way you find that is by going inwards you don’t find that from outward stuff I’ll disagree when all these people were running to NE Brunswick I
(59:34) called you I did not look inward I don’t have an answer why all these people go to NE brunwick I’m going to go to the most OG NE Brunswick investor I know and call Elizabeth and then I had you on the show right immediately after talk about it right but I think that you if you had gone inwards I think there was enough you went inwards enough to realize that that might not be the answer yes it didn’t they didn’t didn’t pass the sniff test to run the new exactly so there was an initial something that happened there in that
(1:00:08) process for you that you said I’m not comfortable with this I’m not happy with this now I’m going to reach out and get an external I’m going to talk to somebody and I think that as investors we have gotten bad at doing that and we become so focused on missing out so focused on opportunity is passing Us by that we do not listen to those red flags that our guts throw up that you know they they our guts are telling us something and we try and stuff that down and bury it and there’s a difference between analysis paralysis
(1:00:43) and legitimate red flags and I think that’s where reaching out to somebody can help you differentiate between them yeah I have this friend who’s who who has who has Capital to deploy and he and he looking he’s looking for bigger stuff right and like the deals he was showing me he was looking at and he was like this doesn’t feel right this doesn’t feel right like that’s fine you can be patient you don’t have to deploy your Capital right like versus like now is a good time to deploy so my point to him was there’s no rush wait for the deal
(1:01:17) you’re in no hurry right and I think that’s and to your point like fomo investing like so many people are afraid of missing this wage and I’m not I’m guilty of it too my timing of buying cryptos was horrible that’s why I’m negative the fact that I’m negative on my crypto tells people a lot about how bad my timing was uh but again my point is um but they were small bites my point though is that I made small bites right versus there are some folks who invested their life savings into some of these gurus for for
(1:01:52) fomo and now now that money is gone it’s crazy out there yeah and I think diversity is something that we’re not counting on as well you know if you have $50,000 with the world the way that it is you can buy a little bit of gold and silver you can do a little bit of you know like Addie for example invest in real estate in a smaller capacity you can invest in some businesses in a smaller capacity and you can give things a try and see what works and then analyze what works and Le a little more into that there is nothing that says
(1:02:29) that in order to invest in real estate you need to have a million dollars and you need to go out and buy a big building right yeah I’ll just throw it there that I only need I only needed 76,000 us to closeing my house in San Antonio right yeah and then for context that’s why when people ask me should I do a duplex conversion or garden Suite well those both cost way more money than me just buying a house in the states yeah yeah yeah again you don’t need a lot of money to do it you don’t need to do everything and yeah I’m sure you’re
(1:03:04) gonna cover this all the real estate Brazilian Summit what are you g to cover first of all it’s a three-day event is it not 4 day it’s two days it’s two days we found the first year was three days and people were like I’m exhausted how am I supposed to go back to work so we brought it down to two days it’s um 100% virtual we have a fantastic platform so even if you can’t make a session in real time you can go back and watch it uh there’s for 30 days everything is still live on the platform it allows you to connect and network unlike anything I’ve
(1:03:39) ever seen so you can go in and connect with the speakers and we are so honored that you are going to be one of our speakers talking about you know your transition into investing in the US some of your key learnings uh and what you need to know and start thinking about when you’re investing in other markets um and so let me see what are the other benefits oh we do uh speed networking so you’ll have the opportunity to connect with people this will be of course people are now attending across Canada and the US so you’ll have the
(1:04:09) opportunity to build your network potentially find Partners find investors learn from people who are doing the types of deals and the types of things that you want to do so you can connect with them live on the platform we have a speaker Expo so all the speakers who are joining us are going to have gifts for all of our um all of our attendees and then you’ll be able to connect live with them as well and take advantage of the opportunity to actually connect with some of these people and like I said some of these some of our speakers
(1:04:37) they’re us-based you know even if you message them on social media you probably wouldn’t get a response whereas in the summit it’s a more intimate group it’s smaller and it’s really about what do we need to know as entrepreneurs how do we buy a business how do we invest in business how do we grow a business uh we focused a lot this year on financials because we want people to understand how to do proper due diligence so we have cherry who’s going to be on talking about of course taxation we have David RoR t on talking about how to actually
(1:05:08) run a profitable real estate business you know when do you get paid how do you know it’s okay to pay yourself um and then we just have it’s it’s business and real estate mixed so if you are someone who wants to learn how to run a real EST estate business a real estate adjacent business how to invest in a business buy a business this is 100% the best place to spend two days it’s the last weekend in September uh regular tickets right now are I think they’re 247 and then VIP is 297 but with the VIP ticket you get three accountability
(1:05:47) sessions with Victoria Megan and myself as well well that’s good value and we’re working on an extra special bonus for the VIPs possibly an inperson component for the inperson VIPs it could be we’re talking about that we’re talking about it and I have to say that’s tremendous value that you’re offering thank you it’s I wanted to be able to provide and this has always been my vision with the summit as well even when Corey and I have done it the last couple of years I want to provide people with high quality information for an
(1:06:23) affordable price uh that they might not have been able to do otherwise because I don’t want cost to be a barrier and I don’t want people to think that they have to have tens of thousands of dollars to learn how to do things properly so at the end you know this is not a big sales pitch these speakers are not paid to be here at the end they get a couple of minutes to say hey I have you know this option if you want to connect with me or if you want to buy something but the vast majority of the presentations from each speaker is
(1:06:52) quality information and content it’s not sales and you vetted each of these vendors each and speakers oh absolutely like we literally start with hundreds of potential people at the beginning of the year and we spend a ton of time talking to people and saying what information do you want right now what do you need what is missing from the marketplace right now what questions do you have and then every single year we curate and cultivate the content of the summit to be the questions that people are asking and we’re finding more and more people
(1:07:21) right now are frustrated with real estate they’re chasing their taals they can’t find deals where the numbers actually work and make sense so a lot of us are pivoting to this idea of how do I generate income not just from Real Estate not just by buying a property but how can we create something like I have with my commercial building where I can use real estate to make money to actually drive income yeah people like deals are out there people just work way harder to find them you you do and so this is where networking comes in right absolutely
(1:07:59) and then uh you and I were talking before we recording about how people are going quiet as well and people were messaging me about it as well because I posted something on my DM on my uh Instagram stories last night about I think a lot of people are gonna a lot of people real estate professionals will struggle in Canada yes especially if they sell real estate Investments y it’s um I think it’s a space that is it’s become a tough place to be I think people are lacking energy I think people are feeling kind of down
(1:08:31) and they’re feeling scared I mean there are some people out there who are just doing their own thing and rocking it and I have you know so much admiration for them um and I think that there’s a portion of the population that are having a really hard time right now and I’m happy to support those people yeah like again my several my past guests are doing fantastic so I don’t want to be all Gloom Doom and Gloom like I just had Marty and uh man uh Amanda and Marty Gordon on my show they’re doing great I just had uh Kelly Caldwell
(1:09:01) on my show she’s doing greator Clooney right I had uh Spencer and Ashley like there are ways to be fine at this but I think one of the things that makes them all um what the commonality between all of them is that they didn’t try to go crazy scale at the beginning yeah or all really absolutely and I think you know I don’t know all of your guests really well but I look at the people you named and they all have a business component to what they’re doing Victoria 100% is is business focused so it’s not just about I’m
(1:09:44) buying an apartment building and sitting on it like a chicken with an egg and waiting for it to hatch yeah she’s getting I’m sorry go ahead yeah it’s I’m actively involved I’m figuring out at the very least if I was buying an apartment building right now I’d have short mid and long-term rentals in there I’d have the three different types of income so that I had control over at least portion a portion of the building yeah it’s scary out there but in order to do that you need to have a team right you don’t want to
(1:10:10) be in there cleaning every Friday afternoon when someone leaves so you need to know how to build a team and back you’re back to your systems and processes to build an effective business yes and then again I categorize that as active business active investing so I kind of think investors have been sold a bill of goods with the idea that that it’s passive yeah like let’s call it what it really is yeah I I have challenges with that I I like to say as passive as it gets because that’s closer to a proper description uh for depending like what I
(1:10:47) do like with my duplexes in Hamilton for example it’s as passive as it gets no I’m not doing anything really that active but I still have to check in on it once in a while once once every quarter or six months or dealing with talking to tenants talking to property managers yeah so I am you have to know at the very least you have to know what your property manager doing to be able to see if they’re doing a good job are they worth the money are they taking care of your property yeah I’d love to get you to weigh in on do you think if
(1:11:23) the government changes over at the next election do you think they’re going to do away with the increase in the capital gains on the sale of properties so are people better off holding off if they’re thinking about selling right now are they better off holding off to see that’s what I’m doing because with the whole capital rate inclusion thing there are some good things to it but I generally think it’s bad because the way the system is was set up was for everyone to invest in real estate it was just a no brainer to that
(1:11:57) everyone invests in real estate including your principal residents because it’s taxfree the downside of that is all these wonderful companies that are starting up how do they raise Capital when they’re competing with the real estate market and then now with this capital rate inclusion why not the distinction between real estate versus investing in a Canadian business why are you punishing people from investing in a Canadian business right why why is it not a distinction you government taxes are generally incent incented to for you to
(1:12:31) do the right thing what is the best for society and the best thing for society is that we people like you and I who have Capital invest in small businesses but why would we when we’re taxed at the same rate as our real estate with these new with the new inclusion rates right so I don’t know what this government is thinking I’m going to guess the conservatives will do something to fix some of these things to to make it more um make it do more of the things it’s intended to do right stop making real estate the best investment there is in
(1:13:05) Canada and and to do more to support small business in Canada yeah that would be a really nice thing to see I think yeah it just makes sense right because by supporting small business that means more investment stay will stay here in Canada when we grow homegrown more of our own businesses and then we create more employ employment right and what do you think is going to happen in the real estate market in the next couple years I think it has no choice but to go up with the way things are with the with the immigration I think the number I saw was
(1:13:37) we had 200,000 new Canadians in the first six months of this year maybe not new Canadians but we have two 200,000 new people in the country so and I think the number was we had 36,000 new housing completions and they’re primarily Apartments so all those so the imbalance is still there uh but the continue problem will be just negative cash flow inflation’s really harming landlords um I don’t see how that uh how that self-corrects to make the market the way it used to be in terms of investor appetite I don’t know how it
(1:14:15) improves and especially when you throw out my messaging about investing in the states I don’t see how logically an investor would choose a comp or duplex in Canada over an income property in the states just purely logic to me yeah absolutely how tough is it to get your money back up across the border uh haven’t done it myself personally uh like I said one of the best wealth hacks anyone can ever do is marry their accountant so that’s more her problem um but again end of the day uh the overall tax implication is um my tax is
(1:14:54) the same there is no tax saving while I remain a Canadian so as long as you’re willing to pay tax you can you can have your money um but the way it is right now again based on my situation I’m probably just going to leave the money there and my intention is to grow the portfolio love it yeah and again I’m in I’m in the states almost a once a quarter now so if I’m GNA spend the money I’ll just spend it when I’m there good for you well congratulations on closing on your first property in the US yeah fun this I can’t wait to share more
(1:15:26) it it was incredibly easy compared to anything ever done before yeah and I think that’s the way things are going I think being away from long long-term rentals makes a lot of sense in almost across Canada U cash flows matters more than ever since capital gains are being taxed more so I might as well earn cash flow instead focus more on cash flow uh remove yourself from risk from from land low tener board so generally that means getting away for long-term rentals so yeah I keep thinking the government’s going to wake up and realize that this
(1:16:00) is what’s happening that landlords are leaving on mass I don’t based on legislation and Taxation it’s what they want and generally I find when you go against the government you’re generally going to be in trouble so just go with the government get a government job get a federal government job or invest elsewhere that’s what the government wants based on taxation for my experience for where I invest like Ontario is is dug forward conservative government yet we pay yet our rental increase allowed rental increases 2 and a half% the lowest in
(1:16:39) the country and our conservative government and that’s the maximum that can be that it can be that it can be because they put a cap on it yeah it’s cap on it and that’s the lowest in the country for allowable rent increase and that’s in a conservative but and again and we have a liberal government and and uh Toronto has an NDP mayor uh and it’s not so it’s not political we have problems everywhere but across the board doesn’t seem like they like landlords I agree with that yeah so so again I think naturally it makes sense
(1:17:12) to divest from long long-term rentals in Ontario largely in other places as well uh you know I was talking to a developer just before this call and like I wish you all the luck developer because we need more housing here but he too is looking to is long-term rentals here in Ontario and diversified to the states so again and that’s a real estate professional with 10 years experience so I think it’s just going to be the continued Trend within our community interesting well perhaps that will translate into some opportunities for
(1:17:40) newer younger people who want to take over and do some some management here in Ontario and um for those of us who want to go in other directions I’m so excited for the summit yeah yeah and that’s what I love about your summit is there’s lots of options out there it’s just people need to know who to listen to there are no as far as we know there’s no speakers who are going bankrupt on your stage and taking down all their investor money with them oh so sad out there no I I I try really hard to make sure that people are walking the talk
(1:18:16) and um that they have a tremendous amount of Integrity MH and then just very simple like uh just from observation anyone who started investing before last five years generally have done quite well and they’re still just fine yeah so it’s not all doom and gluma folks out there there’s actually lots of positives out there it’s just you know that’ll saying you are the average of the five people you hang out with and and like a client of mine I told her like because she was in one of these communities with a lot of lot of
(1:18:48) folks who are bankrupt I said you need to network with people outside of that Network yes right yeah you you need other opinions other perspectives other ideas you you need to spend time with people who are doing things the right way and you know what slow and steady it’s not sexy but slow and steady is not a bad thing in real estate like we need to bring back the popularity of one or two properties a year um you know making sure that you complete your renovation project and you are repositioned before you move on to your next one like that’s
(1:19:24) what’s killing people that’s what what’s killing some of the really big people is they’re buying too many projects they’re trying to execute too many things at once they’ve got too many Renos going on then the government changes the the criteria for being able to refinance and then they’re getting stuck with the money with the with the high cost money and a lot of that money is hard money some of these investors have hard money loans they call it private money I don’t know why how we ever got away from the term hard money hard money loans but
(1:19:50) they are hard money loans yeah all right well oh wait do we where can people learn more about the real estate uh resilience Summit I think it’s can I give you the email address and you can post it in the show notes I want to double check I just had a brain Gap it’s real estat resilience. CA but there’s um the website and then of course we are on uh Facebook and Instagram as well and we would absolutely love to have you join us if you can’t make it for the whole weekend you can go back and watch the recordings
(1:20:23) for the next 30 days on the platform if you are a VIP you will be given lifetime access to the recordings and of course all the contact information for all the speakers and then all the free gifts as well yeah real estate resilience. CA September Saturday September 28th 10 oh the West Coast people will appreciate that 10:30 a.m.
(1:20:48) eastern time start yeah we did it specifically for those West Coast people including Megan hubner who is a West Coast or was a West Coast person I’ve done so many events at like 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays and my vancouverite followers do not appreciate no no we 6 a.m on a Saturday we love our West Coast people so we want to make sure we include them yes because they have many of their own challenges as well yeah I’ve seen how much how expensive it is to develop I forget which city I was I was watching on on on social media the gentleman was
(1:21:22) sharing how how deals don’t pencil they they’re looking to build 1,200 units of rental purpose built rental housing and they’re going through how difficult it is based on the costs uh largely they’re talking about development charges yeah they talking about 10 20,000 per unit for development charges well I was where was I was I reading anyways um 30% of the cost of building is taxes and fees and those are all being passed on directly to the buyers so if the government waved some of the taxes and fees even a 15% drop in the
(1:22:00) new housing would make it much more affordable they to me is Bonkers when the government’s at least the municipal government collects property taxes after it’s built like you have this ongoing Revenue stream why do you have to gouge them up upfront as well yeah like you and I investors there’s so much we will do and invest to have that recurring stream of Revenue so much anyways oh you have Daniel F speaking that’s super cool yes he’s gonna talk about what he sees coming up for the next uh for the next little
(1:22:37) bit fantastic David RoR I don’t know him he wrote um um oh my goodness profit first for Real Estate Investors that’s his book I haven’t read that one I’ve read profit first yes so he he creat one specifically for obviously Real Estate Investors so he’s going to talk about how we should be allocating our money and um how to know like how to run numbers that’s super cool yeah because I really like the profit first book Cher live by it yeah all my accounts are set up that way so that that’s a great endorsement then if Cherry’s if cherry the
(1:23:18) accountant the expert accountant for Real Estate Investors loves what he said and what he’s written then having him on I think will be exciting um Daniel Kong is from Hawaii and he’s going to come on and talking talk about how he was able to leave his job he does flipping and wholesaling um uh uh Janelle Wilson who is going to be sort of our first um external speaker um she is going to be talking about Section 8 Housing and basically how she has built a tremendous business with Section 8 housing in the US fabulous but
(1:23:52) it’s available through share as well yes yeah absolutely but she’s talking about how to take adversity and turn it into opportunity which I think is a really important message for a lot of people right now because we faced a lot of adversity and how do we find the opportunity in that I’m a big fan of Glenn southernland as well I love his tell it like it is hilarious we thought you and Glenn would be amazing to share because you guys are both really real you you both share like this is where you know I’ve struggled this is where it’s been hard
(1:24:30) um this is what I’ve learned and that’s what we really want the summit to be is not the The razzled Dazzle this is not sales this is not marketing this is not this is really what you need to hear what you need to know yeah when Glenn was on my show he was very Frank about how challenging it his business is you how he earns his his Equity split of the deals yeah yeah he’s he’s been around a long time too he’s got a lot of Integrity too I think fabulous yeah he keeps it real he’s pretty OB he’s pretty transparent
(1:25:04) like he he’s pretty transparent on the show like this is my loss rate like this this is and that’s how it is and my thing is when people if anyone ever tells you they never lose money they either haven’t been in business long enough or they’re lying yeah I have um a client who’s a really successful flipper he does really well in addition to his other um investment models and he did eight flips last year and he said he didn’t make money on every single one of them but what happened was that the volume was high enough that overall he did
(1:25:36) really well but he said you know if I had only done one or two flips then I could have been underwater but it was because I had the higher volume that I um that I did so well yeah and part of that’s being resilient exactly right it’s it’s knowing that there are no guarantees that everything will turn out the way that you think it will or the way that you hope it will so you’ve got to have a couple of backup plans in your pocket yeah you have to have the resiliency to keep going because there will be losers and your financial plans have to account
(1:26:08) for account for losers is this the Melissa missa ker that is but she is everline social is what you’re looking for is her company got it yeah so she’s going to talk about marketing and how to um how to Brand ourselves how to communicate with people what’s working in the world of marketing right now because even if we’re not using marketing to attract new people into our world the reality is as an investor it’s a source of credibility and if you are not online and people can’t look you up and they can’t do their research then
(1:26:42) unfortunately you are um you don’t necessarily have the credibility that people are looking for take take a look at Janelle Wilson There session two she’s the one who’s doing the um section eight stuff she’s doing some really cool stuff that’s her yep that’s her fabulous yeah have friends with the law Section 8 hoses she’s I admire her so much she’s another one who’s just like tells it like it is I think we need more honesty in our world right now you know I talk so for those who don’t know like Elizabeth and I talk a
(1:27:25) lot in the background that that I’m sure many people would love to be privy to our conversations but yeah and part of the reality is out there is that those who pay for stages get it right those who pay to for to be on other people’s platform often they’re either they’re paying for it or they’re giving up percentage of the sales so they’re paying for it not always necessarily of the best people making it on the people stages other stages not this one which if that’s your business model that’s fine but I think there needs to
(1:27:57) be a little bit of transparency about it too oh my my she does auctions that’s amazing she’s got some really cool stories oh sorry for the listeners benefit I’m I’m sharing my screen actually on Janelle Wilson’s Instagram and and pictured is what looks like a bunch of roses that are boarded up and there’s literally a a a Power Shovel bulldozer on the front lawn of one of the properties for the folks who don’t know we do we do share the recordings on on um on YouTube so you can check us out there as well if you want to see it
(1:28:38) follow along with the visuals anyone else cover do you have time for this it’s like we just we forgot about Michael ponie like we don’t talk about him anymore who who can forget about Michael he brings so much value but everybody knows Michael Bethany laflam is another one that you might want to look at again these are people who are really crushing it in the US and I feel like we can learn a lot from them so let’s bring them to the Canadian audience let’s learn from them conscious wealth Creator she do some really cool things
(1:29:09) with sorry how do you how do you know these folks um some of these are Victoria some of these are people that I follow on um social media and I learned from them and then Victoria from her time as uh with invest her she helped to organize uh the national International invest her uh event amazing so she met a lot of these fantastic women like Bethany amazing anyone else we should profile you have time do you talk about I have time Mandy McAllister is another one Mandy buy oh I love it buying your business we should convince you
(1:29:57) oh seems like it’s a popular name there’s an actress named Annie mallister oh yes gobundance I think is her gobundance yeah interesting I think she yeah she’s official Mandy mallister oh super cool gobundance women because I’ve heard of gobundance uh for men not that it’s called that it’s just called gobundance of course and what’s she going to talk about um she’s going to talk about valuing businesses finding opportunities um what you need to know to start thinking about buying a business fantastic and again she’s American yes
(1:30:43) she’s American super cool so we’re both 5050 in terms of um in terms of split between Canadians and us um oh I like that set piece of Mind as your highest goal then organize your life around it I think I’m finally doing that yeah because you and I talk about it as well uh anecdotally I I I noticed that Health uh among my real estate friends and entrepreneur friends is is lower than that of uh my 9 to-5 friends yeah so while it looks sexy to be a real estate investor and an entrepreneur underneath a covers generally they have much more stressful
(1:31:27) lives yeah it’s funny because July um I committed to walking at least 10,000 steps a day love it and there were only two days where I missed one day I had a migraine and one day I was on the road and traveling but I feel different my body feels different literally after 30 days of hitting 10,000 steps a day that’s it are you doing that first thing or just all through the day um I generally do one walk in the morning and if it’s a shorter walk then I’ll do another one after dinner and uh now I’m putting in strength training as well I bought an X3
(1:32:06) system at the encouragement of one of my clients who has a health and wellness business so I will be starting to do that as of this week later this week what X3 sorry what’s that the X3 system so I’m not an expert on it but it is super cool because it literally takes you 10 minutes a day and it is it works with your body to um so one day is push one day is pull and it’s with bands a bar and bands love it and again it’s yeah that’s it I don’t even know how to pronounce the guy’s name but it’s super science-based and it’s about muscle
(1:32:53) fatigue with less damage to your joints I’m all about less damage to my joints is it John jaquish jaish I don’t know how you pronounce it I’ll post the little URL in the show notes but this is this is part of the power of networking right is that you know through networking I found Megan and Victoria to do the summit with and then through networking we found and vetted all of our speakers and through networking so Rachel Oliver introduced me to my client who has the cryo U therapy business which I’ve started
(1:33:30) focusing on my health and well-being with him he’s the one who actually recommended this to me and the cryotherapy that I’ve been doing has been amazing to help with my arthritis in my hips and it’s all all the positive changes that I’ve made have been as a result of the people that I’m spending time with at my networking you are the average of The Five People You spend the most time with absolutely and I betet those people with you and [Laughter] Christian absolutely this has been such a pleasure irn it is always so nice to
(1:34:10) connect with you and it’s interesting to hear that our Journeys are sort of you know we’re are even though we’re focusing we help people in different ways and we’re focusing on different things independently we’ve sort of ended up at the same place yeah boo longterm rentals I think my husband would have told you he was there about five years ago but you know yeah and then slow and boring it’s okay it’s funny because I’ve been criticized for calling things boring let’s just call it one property at a time one property a year can change your
(1:34:48) life yes remind yourself of that a and a vacant property per year will will change your life as to as well for the wrong ways so don’t forget that folks vacancy to me is like poison to a portfolio I I despise it and you feel the same I don’t know it depends I mean I’m certainly uh I’m heading to the landlord tenant board in a couple of weeks yeah yeah so there’s bad vacancy yeah there are times where I’m very grateful to have a vacant property in all honesty yes yes I’m my my lowest paying rent tenant is is is uh giving up his unit so
(1:35:27) I’m grateful for that vacancy as well yes there is good vacancy but uh systemic V vacancy not good and I I feel very fortunate that you know having been around as long as I have and having been to the landl tenant board I’m comfortable representing myself but I know that for a lot of investors they would have endured months and months of non-payment of rent the potential damages and then they’d have to go out and spend at least $800 hiring a paralal to represent them at the landlord tant board MH oh it’s sad I already know there’s a
(1:36:00) pargal on the other side I’ve already been given it that from the community legal help so I mean they they have a paralal they they have all the legal advice they need and I mean I prepared my my document uh my evidence and it was 160 Pages this is the one that’s disruptive to the other tenants no this is a different one this is one who’s actually out of the unit already and she brought a was a T2 where she’s saying that we ignored her and we didn’t do any maintenance or anything so 160 pages of all the back and forth the conversations
(1:36:35) the um the work orders the maintenance requests the um please stop harassing our staff when they’re in the property uh yeah that’s August 22nd so what does she want you have nothing to do but she’s already out of the unit what does she want just wants money she’s just how much how much that that this is worth it uh I think she’s asking for I don’t know let’s say $3,000 or something yeah be kidding me because she gets free legal aid that’s why and this doesn’t happen friendly USA I’ve already sent an email to the
(1:37:16) paralal and told them all the mistakes with all the documentation that was filed including that her husband’s name is nowhere on the lease he’s not a tenant he’s not someone that we recognize that she has sent all the documentation to the property management company and not to the legal owner of the building despite knowing who the legal own owner of the building is as per the lease the rent increases um I’ve Cent her documentation of all of the um complaints that she made and where we finally had to say to her you’re not allowed to be in the
(1:37:47) premises when we’re there completing work repairs because your harassment of our staff has been so bad MH um um and they have not withdrawn the the thing so they’re actually taking up time at the landlord in tended board somebody else with a valid issue could be heard because all that’s going to happen is I’m going to go on the 22nd and the uh the members going to look at it and say this is not a valid document the the information on it is completely incorrect you’ve named the wrong parties you don’t even have the owner of the
(1:38:17) property here like this is not valid my word but and that would save everybody time go I love the system I don’t know I’ll just show up with popcorn that’s all over zoom over zoom and and quite frankly up north we were over Zoom long before Co so crazy times one last time real estat resilience. CA thank you we’re so looking forward to having you and Glenn and everyone else join us last weekend of September it’s truly going to be life-changing yep Saturday September 28th and Sunday 29th see you all there 100% virtual so I’ll
(1:39:00) see you there too and affordable thanks again Elizabeth thanks for coming on thank you irn always great to see you take care thank you for watching if you want to learn how to invest in real estate from scratch my team teaches beginners how to use the number one investment strategy that I personally use in a virtual free training class every month go to investor training.
(1:39:24) com I publish at least two to three videos a week here so subscribe if you want to keep learning from seasoned investors like myself and my guests and if you’re just starting out feel free to ask questions and comment below and I do the best to answer each of those comments and questions myself again if you’re ready to learn the nitty-gritty about real estate investing from a professional investor register for our next virtual class that’s at investor tr.com

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/truth-about-real-estate-investing…/id1100488294

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z8yd37AQfQI5DK0J0Xwzz

Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/40fe627d-dec7-4f5d-b7e5-90a550fffe46/the-truth-about-real-estate-investing-for-canadians

Audible:https://www.audible.ca/podcast/The-Truth-About-Real-Estate-Investing-for-Canadians/B08JJS91WR

Youtube: https://youtu.be/BrFbtmLN-pE

** Transcript Auto-Generated**

(00:00) a broken Canada no way we’re richer than ever but tell it to young people who don’t have Rich parents living on their own paying rent 1,800 for a basement apartment yes that’s what I’m asking for my basement apartment not just one bacon welcome to the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians where’re a little podcast that started in 2016 with well over 300 episodes we’re probably approaching 350 by now each an hour long and these days we have an unpopular opinion depending on where you stand on the future for real EST investing in
(00:31) Canada friend of the show Scott dilam owner of Len City who can broker as in he can accept referrals from other mortgage professionals to who want to help their clients obtaining us mortgages with us lenders uh beyond the Canadian Banks um appreciate that Canadian Banks still use your local credit which most of us real Real Estate Investors don’t want to because we’re all tapped out anyways uh Scott’s been on boarding and signing uh a numerous number of mortgage professionals agents and Brokers so anyways I spoke to some
(01:02) of them uh just this past last week and one of them said uh again these are veterans uh to quote to quote Bill he said I see no business case to invest in a Canadian investment property unless the parent is buying a student home for their kids to go to college or university for 10 years end quote what I love about mortgage professionals is they know numbers hence they’re fans of well Bill and uh Dory and I are on a call because they want to learn more about us income properties because they’ve seen the numbers that we off that we’re that
(01:38) our clients are doing at share o over the Canadian deals that they they’re used to looking for and uh just quick side note I’ve yet to have anyone debate me uh that uh that I’m wrong anyways uh so there so yes I agree there is good business be done in flipping on repositioning properties wholesaling developing which are all much more active businesses or Investments so it’s hardly passive so again I agree with all those things there’s tons of that to be done I’ve seen I have lots of past guests of the show who are making making hay on those
(02:18) types of businesses um if you don’t believe me just look at you know half my past guess anyways uh but again I’ve yet to have anyone disagree with me that us long-term rentals uh are better than Canadian Mones pretty much again if you PLL Canadian investors these days there’s almost no one buying something that has long-term rental attached to it uh for that reason uh I have a bad feeling for investor focused real estate uh realter and uh mortgage professionals going forward my advice to my clients uh for many reasons uh other
(02:55) than just the state of the the Canadian Market is to diversify to the US hold uh maybe even sell some of their Canadian properties if they’re unable to hold them or if they no longer serve them uh I could be wrong I admittedly I could always be wrong but the I’ve been generally right on these long-term trends uh based on the information we have right now um for example uh my colleague Tim uh Tim Hong who on my team a member of Rockstar real estate like myself uh he posted a real on his Instagram showing the difference between
(03:26) ATT tenanted three-bedroom properties uh that are are vacant owner occupied again these are three bedroom properties in Kitchen warl Cambridge he he was showing stats comparing uh tenanted or occupi sorry tenanted properties versus vacant or or occupied properties the tenanted properties were selling for an average of $60,000 less than nonr tenanted properties and they took 65% longer to sell that’s 38 days on Market versus 23 and this is just what happens to sell now that’s not these aren’t perfect comparisons but that gives you an idea
(04:02) on what the market thinks about tenant properties so uh I posted I posted uh screen capture in the link in the show notes so you can grab it there or you can follow my my my colleague I recommend that you do follow Tim Hong on Instagram because honestly he’s hilarious and he tells it like it is which is why we get along so well uh the current market is telling us that they they they Value Rental Properties less than regular properties we are even seeing the same for vacant legal duplexes in Hamilton uh my investment my
(04:31) my investment thesis was the host with the Bas in our apartment AKA in in the west they call a mortgage helper I I always thought it would be the most desirable property as it would be more affordable than a sing than a regular single dwelling home live in one unit rent out the other but uh based on the market that we’re in today the market does not want to be a landlord of long-term rentals and then in general a lot of these markets are are quite against uh airb be short-term rentals in general uh so that may be the case may
(05:05) change once we have rate cuts and the market goes back to being nuts uh but the current math is the current math income properties in the USA have better numbers with less tenant risks no rent control no landlord ten boore uh to me the more investors the more conventing investors get educated on how easy it is to invest in the USA the better uh the better for them so they can avoid honestly the troubles I’ve been through I’ve had three basement uh three basement’s flood I’ve had four visits personally where I’ve had to go visit to
(05:35) the landlord tenant Tribunal for tenant issues for nonpayment of rent for tenant vandalism uh and if you’ve never been to the LTV before that’s a short term for it it’s easily one of the most depressing places to be uh so again I can’t wait I’m having so much fun in my work I cannot wait to lead the journey for many uh speaking of we are back on September 17th with an all new free training uh a 101 of real estate investing uh style to now incorporate the best practices of both local real estate investing and the USA I’ll go into more
(06:10) detail uh about the property I just bought in St San Antonio Texas uh so on realtor.com they actually list uh my property as having 2,200 fet I paid 265 for the house for all you condo investors out there you all know square foot costs so the math says I bought my house at $120 us per square foot how’s that compared to condos which are $ 13 to $1,800 a square foot oh also my rent is $2,300 per month I’ll share that my latest economic research including which markets which Market we recently took off our list to invest in which will
(06:51) again be an unpopular opinion uh but uh we at share we have no geography bias because we basically service the entire country um so if you can service the whole country why not just cherry pick the best markets with only Mark with Market leaders in their Industries making historic levels of investment to me it’s a very pragmatic decision a broken quote a broken Canada no way were wealthier than before the pandemic end quote uh some brighter news as per for the headline that is the headline of a recent tal Star article house owners and
(07:29) those with stock portfolios are generally better off now than they were before the pandemic in terms of net worth I have no argument there I person my client vast majority of my clients and I have benefited greatly U by holding properties since the p since before the pandemic started where I disagree though is that every conversation I have with someone in the real estate Community or anyone younger than me with limited assets they all complain about the lack of affordability um for anyone who’s a parent they all
(07:59) are concerned for their kids uh due to the lack of affordability um a lot of folks know they can make more money in the states or they have friends who are already leaving in Canada or have already left because they’re make they can go make more money in the states uh they can and there’s many places in the world they can pay more less tax maybe not many but generally the conversation centers around the USA or Dubai uh for lifestyle I’m hearing more and more Canadians are going to Mexico Costa Rica or even southern Europe the grass may be greener
(08:28) on the side but the truth is we all know talented people who are investing outside Canada for sure there’s t i we have my phone won’t stop bringing FK on on folks interested in investing outside of Canada there some folks are preparing to leave some have already left I was just the I was just chatting with uh friends who had moved to Florida and the question comes back to am I leaving right now just my capital is leaving uh based on the world today the way things are in Canada today I don’t expect my kids to stay in Canada
(08:58) after University uh for the same reasons I mentioned it before uh and uh and the other thing is I’ve spoken to a lot of parents who have kids in high school and they all tell me that the good programs here in Canada at our wonderful universities they’re really hard to get into like 90s 95s High 90s to get in honestly I don’t think my I don’t know if my kids have that in them uh and also where our local kids are having to compete with uh SP uh with International students a lot of stud spots are saved for international
(09:32) students so uh the writing’s on the wall I’m at least mentally preparing myself that my kids will have to be International students themselves as in they won’t go to school in Canada uh for College University sadly uh speaking of Education oh we have a college instructor on this week’s show Brian Gordon is an old friend of mine from years ago I believe we met both I think we first messed each other at rain uh he works full-time for the largest appraisal company in Canada if not North America in a management position uh I’ve
(10:06) linked his his LinkedIn in the show notes if you want to know who it is we’re we’re not naming it because we’re not we’re not here to promote his employer anyways prior to that he works for as a senior property tax analyst for one of Canada’s largest REITs if not the biggest uh you know working for the re that is owned by one of Canada’s biggest million billionaires again you can get the details on on uh Brian’s LinkedIn uh Brian has been methodically growing his own real estate portfolio over a 7-year period consisting of a dup a collection
(10:36) of duplexes an Airbnb in Blue Mountain and more recently an 11px uh development in Branford Ontario where he’s adding two additional units so super cool um adding value that’s typically a good way to go uh as mentioned Brian is a course creator and instructor of it’s called Uh real estate investment strategies at George Brown College a comprehensive yet affordable course which is one of the big reasons why I wanted to have him on the show real estate investing is largely about return on investment and that includes what one the dollars one
(11:08) invests in one’s education Brian’s the course that Brian teaches it’s only $392 24 cents uh and I’m pretty sure there’s government stuff out there that uh that will that will help you make this even cheaper it’s a 20-hour course and it includes some private one-on-one consultation Time with Brian that Brian will in the show what an absolute steal uh I’ve got a link in the show not show notes for this course again it’s real estate investment strategies uh online and if you add George Brown when you’re Googling you’ll find it that’s how I
(11:42) found it needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed recording this episode it’s always a pleasure to speak to folks who are very very well-versed in real estate investing again he’s been in full-time his day job is working in analyzing properties for over 10 years uh so you better believe Brian knows what the deal looks like and we need more of those folks in this community so anyways we’re going to learn Brian’s tips and tricks so we may all learn uh for ourselves to add so we may improve our own businesses Brian recently returned from
(12:16) Mount Everest or yeah I think that’s right uh inde he did kgal recently as well so he he’s here to share these absolutely extreme experiences and again talk about my favorite subject real estate investing uh and of course we you want to hear about Brian’s next Investments uh what his views are on the Canadian opportunities please enjoy the [Music] show hi Brian what’s keeping you busy these days what’s keeping me busy um I’d say probably my garden Suite that I’m working on right now um first time ever doing a garden Suite you know I think
(12:59) it’s the city of Toronto um introduced it what was it last year um changing zoning so I’m working on a converting a detached garage into uh one-bedroom Garden Suite so very excited about that project it’s my first Garden Suite ever so a lot a lot of learnings with that but very excited about that project now tell us some more uh are you is it going to be two unit one unit how you financing it yeah yeah great question so it’s going to be uh one unit it’s about 400 square feet so what makes the numbers work with this particular
(13:32) project is because I know a couple other investors that are building Garden suites and have built Garden Suite but on average you’re spending about $350,000 for a garden Suite give or take I know people Sor are you’re tearing down the garage so no so what makes my numbers work and what makes it make what makes it make sense is that I’m going to use my existing detach garage got it and convert that into the one bedroom so my all-in cost is going to be approximately $160,000 and that’s hard and soft cost so Renovations the hard cost is going to be
(14:04) about $130,000 and then soft cost and then I’m going to add you know I’m building a shed but anyways there’s some other ancillary things that I hadn’t expected um to or I didn’t budget for but roughly it’s going to be about 160,000 right and this particular property it’s a triplex in Toronto the young and fut exting Triplex then the the garage will be a fourth unit exactly sorry yeah no no the garage is going to be a fourth unit that’s right and so it’s a great location I should be able to get rents upwards of
(14:34) $2,400 plus utilities um and I had one of my property managers come out to you know take a look at the property and give me their you know their perspective on rents and so on so he said anywhere from 22 to $2,400 Daisy and so it makes sense so if I’m all in at $160,000 and you know my financing is at say 6% interest only it makes sense and you know as we all know interest rates have started to come down um there’s been two what interest rate decreases in the past what month or two yeah so and two more expected this
(15:11) year yeah exactly at least two more expected this year so it makes sense what I don’t think makes sense is building a garden suite and spending $350 to $500,000 and getting 26 $2,700 for rents right um and what but a lot of people are promoting it these days a lot of people are promoting this year and I have friends that done it and what I like with what I’m doing is and that’s was a this was an idea from my property manager is I think this property the specific property will will help with that missing middle um you’re not going
(15:42) to be able to put a family in there but you’ll be able to put a couple for you know a couple one or two people and it’s going to be relatively affordable um versus you know spending $35 $33,700 for a two or three bedroom Garden Suite right so I could have built a 2 or three bedroom Garden Suite 800 ft um but that would have cost me probably upwards of $350 to $400,000 right so I opted to just stick with the shell yeah spend $160,000 that increases affordability for many people and it just it just makes more sense so it’s a lot more
(16:18) affordable and it’ll attract a lot more people and that was kind of my rationale for sticking with the existing detach garage and not tearing it down and starting from scratch any feedback from the existing tenants in yeah Sorry’s up with that yeah oh yeah great question so that’s been a challenge dealing with tenants so anyone that has invested before and has done Renovations where there’s existing tenants there’s always going to be issues and I’ve done that with my first projects about seven years ago and I promised myself I would never
(16:48) do it again I had no choice because it’s a Triplex so I’m not going to get rid of all the tenants U myself included so there are challenges so one one of the things that happened is when I was getting the trench dug to put in the piping the contractor ran over one of my tenant bikes so warped the bike yeah and so my tenant showed me he was good about it he’s like you know I wasn’t going to make it a big deal but you know it’s going to cost quite a bit so I told him don’t worry about it just invoice me go get it fixed invoice me and I’ll pay for
(17:18) it um you know my uh the again when the trench was getting dug the contractor blocked in my tenant cuz my tenant didn’t move his car yet and so my tenant’s car was there and he couldn’t use it and he had to go out so I said you know I’m a very reasonable landlord and I believe in treating people fairly so I told my I told my tenant look if you need to go out take an Uber give me the invoice and I’ll pay for it right because you want to keep good tenant relations right um so I’ve had challenges with that and you know my my
(17:47) projects already should have been done technically this week but I’m only at the point where I’ll probably be calling for inspections early next week so I’m probably halfway there so I’m way behind schedule but again that being said when a contractor tells me a Project’s going to be done in a month I budget for two months so although I’m behind scheduled based on what he projected I in my mind I’m more or less on track I’m a little behind but I’m still more or less on track and neighbors been okay with this
(18:15) cuz you have right you have right to do this absolutely by you can do this yeah by right you can do this in the city of Toronto which is awesome and my neighbors actually have been awesome so my neighbor to my right he owns there’s a sixplex on the right side um of where I live and he’s very very nice guy and you know my my contractor damaged the fence right so he was very good about he didn’t even mention it I told him I’ll fix it um and actually I got to know him a lot better which is nice um but yeah there’s been no issues with with uh
(18:45) fantastic with tenants yeah sorry was not tenants my neighbors which has been good I don’t know if we mentioned for listeners benefit you live in the triplex yeah so I live in the top unit so when I purchased a Triplex 2 years ago two years ago yeah about two years just over two years ago the main the top floor was vacant um so I renovated it gutted it um almost to the studs and refinish the entire unit oh wow so it’s a 1200t unit it was a two-bedroom unit I then converted it into a 2+ one um beautiful unit my contractor did a
(19:19) fantastic job and um yeah so I live on the top unit and the main and the basement unit are currently rented MH and because it’s City Toronto that’s why you can get at these kind of rents you’re probably not far from the subway no so I’m probably a 10-minute walk to Finch Station amazing and then probably about 11 minute walk to North York Center so yeah so that’s why I can get these great rents because you know an older two-bedroom apartment would is renting for about $2,600 whereas I just rented my basement
(19:49) a two-bedroom basement about 800 ft um for 24 plus utilities right so those rents are pretty good amazing yeah because your walk score is probably like 99 exactly exactly walking score to everything shops like you said transit entertainment very cool now we’ve we’ve talked micro I want to talk to my backup now now um what I like about you as a guest is you your entire career has essentially been in real estate including your education can you can you share about that sure so I went back to school as a mature student probably
(20:25) about 12 years ago and so I got laid off from my job I used to work for the Law Society and I knew I wanted to go back to school I just didn’t know what program I wanted to take and so I scurried through all the colleges universities real estate has always been a passion of mine since I my early 20s and I wasn’t necessarily looking for a real estate program but I wanted to finally take a program that would interest me so anyways long story short I started looking at a number of programs and I found this program that
(20:56) was offered through the University of British Columbia and senica college it was a joint program and I started looking at the courses and they all resonated with me so it was like um real estate investment analysis um property tax and Appraisal property tax and assessment uh law courses real estate law and so it just it to me it was a no-brainer it was a two-year program but because I had um previous gone to University and college before I was able to accelerate it and do it in eight months right and uh which means so l
(21:29) courses yeah so less exactly less courses it was it was still tough though I think I was taking six to seven courses a semester okay versus normal is like five yeah versus normal so you’re like 20 40% more workload exactly so it was intense like I didn’t see my family for eight months it was insane but it was totally worth the sacrifice and so with that graduated with um that diploma certificate from UBC in property tax and assessment so I’m technically a qualified appraiser I can go and start appraising properties
(21:58) if I wanted to right now I work for an appraisal company I decided not to go that route um as soon as I finished school I was hired by one of the larger reachs yeah um so a big one yeah big one so Choice proper they used to be called Canadian Real Estate Investment Trust but they were bought by Choice Properties so they’re you know gayen Weston they own all the Shoppers Drug Mars the LA Blas Etc um throughout Canada so they’re huge R um one got be one of the biggest oh yeah by far they’re one of the biggest if not the
(22:27) biggest now since the merger and so they own office Towers commercial properties they own industrial again right across Canada so they’re Coast to Coast so I used to work in the property tax and assessment uh department so I’d manage Consultants do the budgets for property tax um related I do forecasting for future um developments when they’re finished you know how much they were pay in property taxes um but what again what was cool though what I got excited about is the fact that my vice president was the vice president of developments and
(22:56) so he was in charge of all the acquisitions and dispositions so I was sitting with all the guys that were buying properties that were you know budgeting for huge developments you know $2 billion office properties commercial properties so I was in that group so I got to see it hear it and again I’ve always loved real estate always passionate about real estate so I learned a ton you know just by being there and you know being around those guys and uh yeah so from there I got recruited um to one of the companies
(23:27) that does the assessment and um um assessment in Ontario um from actually one of my former professors um she was the vice president there and I got recruited from her and then so I moved over there and yeah so I’ve been with so what what year was that mov that year was 2015 December 2015 you’re making me age myself or when um for the listener’s benefit we have we need to justify your reason to be here absolutely why did you listen so yeah so December 2015 I started at um this assessment organization and I’ve been there for 8
(24:00) and a half years in management and a senior management position now oh sorry just for the listen benefit for privacy reason we’re not naming it but it’s a big one that everybody knows yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely um you know I’m not there on I’m not here on their behalf which is why I’m not going to name it but but yeah they’re the biggest in North America okay right and uh so yeah so I is a it’s a National Organization right no provincial provincial okay so every province has their own jurisdiction and
(24:30) even some provinces it’s broken down by municipality so but again we’re the largest in North America I believe definitely Canada but I’m pretty certain in North America right and then what what kind of real estate did you assess all of it any Farm everything so every single property type in Ontario so Farm um office Towers you know TD Tower downtown Sky doome yeah so failing marks for anyone who can’t guess who this is but basically basically you can easily Google it you can easily Google me right um but yeah they’re they’re
(25:06) they’re huge and you know again so I’m I love real estate passion about real estate this allowed me to be in the real estate industry from a different perspective because I work in stakeholder relations um there but and it’s good relations and to me that’s my when people ask you what’s your superpower it’s to me it’s it’s relationship like I’m a relationship person you know naturally I enjoy people I’m able to build relationships with people very naturally easy and so that’s you know it’s no surprise at my day job I’m in I
(25:39) guess stakeholder relations amazing yeah that’s cool so yeah you’ve seen lots of stuff yeah seen lots of stuff like I said my background educational background um is in real estate assessment Taxation and of course you know I’ve been a real estate investor I’d say seriously for about nine years um and and yeah so I I have the Practical I guess and the theory mhm behind what I do and your day job isn’t it yeah and you’re paid lots of money to do this stuff yeah I get paid decent I got paid decent definitely I have no
(26:09) complaints uh sorry quick question about the UBC synica program is it still around yeah absolutely it is around actually I met with the coordinator of the program a month ago cuz I started a scholarship um at the program I started it a couple months ago actually it was one of my goals this year um in honor of my brother who passed away years ago in a car accident s so thanks so I so I started a scholarship on on his behalf and I was just met with the dean for a coffee who’s a lovely person and uh we were just catching up so because again
(26:42) the program was like you said it’s still around very beneficial did a ton for me from a career standpoint yeah um and just I I can’t see enough about the program right right because before we recording we were talking about like private education around this and coaching programs and how you know they can range from like 10 to 35,000 I’ve seen yeah per year versus like how much do you think this how much is the UBC course for example uh the program probably you’re probably looking at I don’t know maybe two grand two three grand a semester I’m
(27:13) sure inflation but still you know say you spend 10 grand for the two semesters if you do the accelerated program which is what I did you’re you’re almost guaranteed a job right basically they have like a 90% um chance that you’ll get a job when because such huge demand and it’s such a niche industry so you can either do inhouse property tax for a major re you can work for an assessment jurisdiction you can work for as an appraiser you can work as a consultant for property tax like you have a lot of opportunities and because the industry
(27:44) is so Niche there’s just not a lot of people right I actually have this conversation with a lot of investors when they like they tell me about what they’re paying for coaching whatever and then they’re they want to they want to do a development project and learn on the job I’m like yeah why not just get a job yeah and then not risk your credit and capital in like your home which is often the security for the development yeah yeah no absolutely like you can go learn on someone else’s dime and get paid for it well that’s it so but you’re right
(28:11) though right cuz it’s a it’s a win-win you’re learning you’re getting paid for it and you know most people I would argue and the best way to learn is learn by doing right and so you get to learn on someone else’s dime yeah you get paid yeah you mentorship it’s all part of the job you don’t have to pay for it exactly so to me it’s a win-win right right um and which is kind of how it worked out with me fortunately um especially at at the re right yeah so you you you have a wealth of knowledge to apply to your own
(28:41) portfolio so tell us about tell us about what are you investing sure so so this is your own portfolio yeah so my own personal portfolio that I built over the past seven years consists of several triplexes in Pickering and ashaa specifically um so you know the Ty go buy a detached property at a legal secondary Suite so I have several duplexes in again aswa Pickering I have a Airbnb in Blue Mountain that’s worked out really well I bought that about seven years ago8 minutes yet I paid $250,000 for a three bedroomroom four
(29:15) bath town home and uh 9 minute walk to the Village my actually my son and his friends are there right now sorry for the listeners benefit this is our I don’t really want to say it but it’s like a equ it’s Ontario’s equivalent to Whistler yes yeah Fair yeah fair not as nice but not as nice not not world class skiing but you know Ontario is really populated so they get a ton of people up there it’s a huge tourist destination humongous huge and so with that prices have you know more than tripled since I bought it so I I that property that was
(29:48) more luck than anything else and so I bought that with some investors so that worked out really well um I have a that Triplex that I’m converting now to a fourplex Young and Finch which which I bought two years ago I have a 11 unit building in Brandford where I bought with my partner and I we currently adding two more units so the property is more or less stabilized now which is awesome we bought that just under a year ago we bought that last year August closed on it last year August and we’re just working on like I said we have
(30:20) permits for the 12th unit we’re working on we’re getting a we applied for a minor variance for the 13th but that should go through and then we’ll be able to add two more units to that are these additions or within the existing envelope yeah so so one of them is we’re converting the washer the the laundry room laundry room thank you to a unit and then so that’s in the existing envelope and so we’re relocating the laundry room into the hallway the hallway is massive it’s a waste of space so we’ll close it off and add the washer
(30:51) and dryers there and then the other one we’re adding on top of the um existing envelope of the property so cost a bit more but okay so it’s like a top up exactly exactly how much is a topup cost so we don’t have many people doing top-ups in we’re budgeting about 160 grand for it because it’s going to be a small unit so it shouldn’t cost too much really cuz we’ll make the building is Brick but we’ll just use vinyl for this for the side we’ll put it off to the side so it won’t cost too much okay um how long does that take and there many
(31:21) contractors that do this yeah yeah so we’re we we’re still in the process of getting quotes because we’re still W we’re still waiting for the minor variants um but we got a quote for the first one I think we budgeted 70 grand for the first one because we’re using the existing envelope it’s it’s like a 400 square feet property around there and um so that’s not going to cost a lot Plumbing is already there electrical is already there it’s just about running um further plumbing and of course your framing your studs your drywall Etc
(31:50) kitchen bathroom exactly exactly IKEA style right um so that’s so that’s ongoing U my part George he takes the majority of lead on that so shout out to George and U also Sir George is more like the like the operations guy yeah he’s the operations guy so it’s interesting we so we’re both active investors and I’ve never I’ve never been a passive investor in my life so when we decided to team up to do this project you know we were talking back and forth you know who’s how do we do this right and I reached divide up the work right so I reached
(32:20) out to one of my mentors um ask him like you know you know how should we divide it how should we do it what are your thoughts and I got and he the exact same thing so the long story short is he takes most of the lead you know I provide you know my expertise in terms of knowledge um you know resources where he needed but he does a lot of the boots on the ground work which looking back at it now I’m glad I live in Toronto yeah bf’s a little far for you far for me much closer for him and traffic’s horrendous traffic’s horrendous and it allows me to
(32:51) continue working on my projects allows me to continue teaching and do all the great things that I really prefer to do yeah things you enjoy exactly and it’s a different tenant profile right and that’s one of the things what do you mean between braford and Toronto evening but even but even just the product type right so everyone touts multif family and multif family is great but you with multif family unless the property is in Toronto and even Toronto has sketchy multif family um um tenants but the tenant profile is just very different
(33:26) yeah for 11 unit in Brandford will be different than a duplex in aswa very different very different right like asosa you have workingclass people they’re not going to skip out on on your rent assuming you know you you you screen properly um I’ve never had an issue with a tenant in terms of R paying rent whereas Branford again totally different tenant profile apartment um but you’re also assuming these tenants you didn’t place them exactly totally different yeah so we got I think three or four units were vacant when we got it
(33:56) and now it’s fully stabilized which is is great we’re getting great rents um so right you know things are looking good but still different tenant profile which well an 11 unit in ashaa would likely have a similar profile to Brandford absolutely versus the duplex because the rents are in the duplex are way higher so again the price point kind of filters out your like well sort out your demographic yeah exactly price point and and and your T target audience with a duplex you’re going to get a small family one kid maybe two again they’re
(34:24) not going to skip out on on your rent you know in the middle middle of the night and do a and dash right you’re not going to get that generally speaking I’m generalizing but you’re not going to get that type of tenant profile with a duplex um whereas 12 Unit in ashaa or brenford some of those tents have probably been there forever exactly exactly so some like be on government assistance and again I’m generalizing stere for sure you get talking from my experience you get that and that’s why for me I’m decided to stick with you
(34:56) know like singles duplex Triplex because of the ten yeah and what I’m looking for in life yeah like yeah I the same thing like I think everyone should just um Define who they want as their Customer because you’re going to be they’ll be part of your life yeah so if if if certain people you don’t want to be part them to be part of your life then maybe that’s not for you agree like for example like in an 11 Plex in Branford so I’ll use my own experience like if it was an 11 Plex in Hamilton you know probably half the
(35:24) units the tend to smoke which is their right I don’t like smoke so I don’t want to be there so that’s why it’s not part of my strategy yeah and we had that same issue too when we moved in for months tenant smoking your Tri no not no not the Trix no in the uh Branford got it yeah all right so to your point my in my Triplex I have young the true definition of like young professionals just both graduated from um UFT master’s program got jobs before they graduated and working I think for celestica and oh they’re making good
(35:59) money though yeah yeah both making good money young tech people um yeah and my other tenant is an engineer yeah right so totally different tenant profile right which I prefer I want I want peace in my life yeah yeah right and again I don’t I I am passionate about real estate but I’m more passionate about traveling and spending time in family so amazing that’s my focus okay we need to take the travel but I still need to get the George Brown can I say that yeah yeah of course absolutely yeah how do you end up teaching college yeah so so
(36:30) great question something that I didn’t expect I would do too so one of my best my best friend uh we we go out once a month we’ll have dinner we’ll talk about life like everyone else business Etc and I told him that I want to create a a program and a real estate program for um new investors and I’m thinking about may maybe not sure how I’ll set it up would I do a workshop on the weekend like many other investors um but I wanted to teach it at a college and he was like yeah that’s a great idea he’s like well I’m uh you know I teach
(37:03) at George Brown and I can connect you and I’m like oh my gosh I forgot that you teach there right so the next day it’s it’s a part-time thing for him too totally yeah yeah he he doesn’t teach you anymore he actually he facilitates the the um he’s just one of the coordinators so he built um an HR program there and so he he connected me with the dean of continuing education and we had a like a three-hour conversation back in um your first conversation was 3 hours about 2 hours about a 2our conversation we hit it off
(37:35) still long yeah we hit it off really nice guy he was totally um interested and and in what I was going to going to uh offer in terms of you know the Target and George Brown doesn’t have a program like that and I don’t think any college has a program like that and um so he looked me up you know he did some research on me I could tell he went on my LinkedIn profile and obviously wanted to make sure I was credible and you know did some other due diligence and then he called me back a couple weeks later and he’s like yeah we’d love to have you
(38:02) teach so I developed the program the curriculum and uh that took several weeks and then I started teaching so the course is geared to new investors and the reason I did that is selfishly is because I know when I was in my early 20s you know internet wasn’t as readily available as it was you know I had no one to go to you know I guess the typical immigrant parents they were trying to you didn’t have a smartphone that used access the internet no not at all and I didn’t have anyone in my circle that I could use as a mentor or
(38:34) leverage and so that’s why I wanted to create this program that could be a starting block for new investors right um like someone like the 20-year-old you yeah ex exactly a 20-year-old me surprisingly enough my my the age range of the program is probably on uh probably maybe 40 right because it is done through the continuing education program okay in the evening so which is fine though because these people are more likely to take action this age group they either have a house or they’re thinking about buying a house so I just hope more young
(39:08) people would take it too some 18y olds 20y olds no I haven’t I think the youngest person in my program so far is probably late 20s right because I’m guessing they don’t get a they don’t this this credit isn’t credited to wordss or diplomas exactly exactly it isn’t credited towards a certificate program or diploma and nor do I want to build a curriculum that way way like my focus is just to give them enough tools and I try to make it as practical as possible that’s the benefit right not just Theory just practical so I provide resources I
(39:39) provide podcasts you know like so one of my slides is here are some real estate investment groups in Alberta because I have students in Alberta I had a student reach out um from New Brunswick that’s going to take my course so I find real estate groups saying Hey cuz to me one of the things that you should do as an investor is join a real estate group like that propelled me as a new invest and durh exactly durh sh Quinton yeah shout out quintona and that helped Propel my investment career and so that’s one of the things I promote right
(40:09) so I have a slide with you know a number of real estate groups in the GTA that I think are credible I have you know podcast you know one of the podcasts that I listen to right again free education so yes you are going to have to pay for certain things but you know what are what are other ways that you can educate yourself um and podcast is a great way it’s free you can listen to it at your leisure so again practical tools I try to I provide to the students and steps that they can take to start their Journey amazing how long did it take you
(40:40) to put together this course oh probably about a month and a half right how many hours do you think that was oh god of effort maybe 50 hours okay 50 hours um the good part is a lot of the knowledge I already had a lot of the knowledge it was just putting it on paper putting it on a slide deck presenting it properly making sure that I’m not using a lot of jargon and I can explain it easily to the students and then you know where I have the gaps because I’m definitely not an expert in every field I’ll bring in a
(41:16) expert in the industry right so if I want to present on short short-term rentals or midterm rentals I’ll bring in a midterm Rental specialist um if I’m really passionate about a project um or shouldn’t say a project but a strategy that I think is working right now I’ll bring in an expert on that strategy if I’m not the expert so it’s awesome because you know you have you get to obviously hear me speak and and you know try to share my knowledge but then you also have experts in the industry that you wouldn’t typically have access to
(41:46) unless you’re paying hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars for coaching or workshops Etc and so it’s it’s a huge win for the students and where can people find more information on on the George Brown course yeah so if you go to George Brown continuing education uh course you can find it there I think it’s under the business um program but I I would just type up real George Brown real estate investment strategies and it’ll come up so again just type George Brown real estate investment strategies and you’ll see the course I typically
(42:14) run it each semester so the next course starts I think September 11th and then I I run it again in the winter and I think the next course is around February and then I take the summer off because I like to spend time with family and and just relax and it’s it’s $10 to $35,000 to take this course it’s actually 26,000 no I’m kidding so again for limited time only for limited time only there’s only eight slots left run to the back of the room going back to what I said earlier I wanted to provide the education to the audience again I
(42:48) thought about myself when I was in you know when I when I was 20 years or 20 years ago and I couldn’t afford a course for 10 or $5,000 25 years ago and so I wasn’t going to even consider charging that much I wanted to make sure it was accessible and affordable for the average person so the course is around $400 and it’s eight courses for roughly three hours I think it’s two and a half hours once a week so it’s a very affordable course and what I like is that so a lot of people like you irn they’ll reach out to me on Instagram and
(43:21) say hey can I pick your brain can I take you for lunch and you know I’m probably too nice when it comes to that I will always do it and so now what I do is and you know it’s not and I’m not promoting my course but what I tell them is take the course and then I’m happy to have a couple consults with you after because I know that if you are serious you’ll spend $400 but if you’re not serious you’re not going to spend $400 and I’m frankly I’m just not going to spend time with you right yeah so that especially with like absolute begin your questions
(43:52) should I incorporate or not uh what are the top cities to invest in yeah yeah that’s that’s like the number one rookie question I always tell people that what what uh should I incorporate now or later like but yeah so it allows me to actually step one figure out how to make money basically right we’re all going to pay taxes yeah so it allows me to sift through people that are actually going to take action um which you know so so to spend $400 not a lot of money they can start to learn and then like I said I I do provide my time I tell each
(44:23) student I’ll give them three hours of free consult to help them along their Journey right afterwards for a $400 course yeah where they’re going to learn a bunch of stuff to get three hours of your time as well yeah which is insane I mean I know myself I’ve paid $400 an hour to consult with certain people yeah well our lawyers are like right and I even saying other Real Estate Investors that I respect I’ve spent upwards of $400 for an hour of consult right so you’re getting I don’t know what is it 24 hours for $400 so anyways I think it I
(44:57) think it’s a great program um especially for what you’re what you’re paying and it’s it’s a great way to start you know if you’re a seasoned investor this is definitely not for you um but for those people that want to start the process and they have they don’t know where to go they don’t have resources then this is a great way to start I always think it’s good for refresher as well especially for $400 and you can take this anytime you want you deliver it live looks like I deliver it live September’s delivered live 6 6:15 p.m.
(45:25) on Wednesdays delivered live and you get the recording yeah you get the recording right how long you get to keep the recording you can keep it as long as you want if you download it oh wow yeah which is cool yeah okay and you get you get my slides as well um but and you get to meet other people you get to build relationships with other industry folks because again I bring in a lot so what I’ve heard from many students is that one of the greatest benefits that they’ve seen is that the resources that I bring that I
(45:53) bring in right so again I bring in experts in the industry um from you know whether it’s folks in the west whether it’s folks in the East so you know if you live in the East or you want to invest in the east then I’ll bring in experts in the East that can whether it’s a real estate agent whether it’s a mortgage specialist to um you know to help people on their Journey because as you know Irwin if you’re going to become an investor you want to work with investor focused everything investor focused agent investor focused mortgage
(46:20) broker investor Focus appraiser etc etc and so these are the resources that I bring in that I make available to my students which otherwise they wouldn’t know how to do folks you’ve already vetted exactly yeah cuz I you and I both know that you can’t trust everybody oh gosh and that’s one of the things I stress on my course is that just because someone’s on Instagram yeah you know in front of a plane or in front of a fancy car means nothing yeah a lot of those people went bankrupt recently yeah exactly sadly so sadly to your point you
(46:50) know I make sure I vet the people and that you know they’re aligned with my values right it’s not all about money yeah we all want to make money that’s fantastic but like they actually truly want to help people that’s important to me yeah amazing and we before we recording we were talking about like return on investment you know if your investment for Education starts at $400 there’s a good chance your return on investment will outperform no question a lot of things yeah right no question I know I know I’ve had people on the show
(47:19) who who’ve taken like $30,000 programs whatnot I had one that took I had someone that took paid 40,000 and it was complet they said it was complete sham uh so you know negative Roi for 40,000 but again like you know this is a small bite yep small bite great way to leverage resources great way to see if you want to get started and you know one one of my first class I tell people tell my students that you know before you even consider becoming a real estate investor you need to decide what type of real estate investor you want to be
(47:53) meaning are you going to be an active partner are you going to be a passive um um investor sorry active investor or passive investor and I met one of my students um I won’t say her name but she she was actually at the event I saw you at that Rockstar event the last one actually and um she’s a doctor and she’s like I don’t need the money obviously right but I’m going to retire soon and I need someone to keep myself stimulated and so I told I told her and I met her after and I said you need to figure out what type of investor
(48:22) you want to be based on where you are and then we met her for a coffee a couple weeks ago and she said she’s like okay Brian I’ve decided I want to be a passive investor for now until I wind up my practice and then also become active and I’m like awesome you know now your next step is deciding who you want to partner with right so again everyone thinks they want to become an investor or an active investor but there’s other ways to become um an investor right like through channels like share um which we’ll probably talk about later but
(48:49) there’s different ways to still invest in real estate but not be an active investor as you know Irwin right I will say and I think always it always I always like to repeat it is uh in my experience people who get rich are generally the ones who who are somewhat active by definition they’re active and I’ll qualify by that saying U they’re they’re 100% owners yeah right it’s it’s I don’t know many passive investors who get rich going that way if they get rich if they make a lot of money like a million or more it’s typically because
(49:21) they have a lot of money to put in right exactly and they don’t need the money originally right it’s just a great way for them to diversify and on the flip side though the people who are losing their shirts were the active investors as well true so more risk right more risk more risk but then we we this the stuff that’s going on that like neither of you or I were ever touch no no like we before we were recording you were talking about and I say this all the time I do one project at a time y right like my Project’s not over until tenants
(49:48) in rent rent’s being paid and collected and properties refinance for me like again I’m very methodical and some people will say slow so part of the that my investment Club I know people are doing FES or were doing five or six Burrs flips at the same time and I’m like wow that’s fantastic but I’ve always said I’m going to buy renovate you know Place ATT tenant like you said refinance the property and once my refinance is done then I’ll take a break for couple weeks and then I’ll look for the next property so that cycle is
(50:18) usually about 8 months from beginning to end and so I you know for the past seven or eight years I’ve been buying a property about every eight months but it worked for me I have two kids I enjoy full-time job I and a parttime job and a parttime job and now I teach as well so you know my time is very precious like most of ours and I want to make sure that I’m using my time in the best way and I don’t want I don’t I don’t need to do two or three Deals you know simultaneously I don’t need that for my goals again and you know or I don’t have
(50:52) to tell you but one of the first things you should do when when you become an investor is saying you know what are my goals what are my objectives what am I trying to achieve and I didn’t that was a mistake I made I just did what everyone else was doing but um you need to decide like what are what are your goals what are your objectives and the strategy should then be determined based on what your objectives and goals are right where they should align and so you really need to determine like what are you trying to achieve with your
(51:18) Investments um so yeah that’s kind the point of the show as well is like if uh for example I have like I’ll have like stars like yourself like Thea like Ryan Carr on the show and then I extract from them like what their day-to-day looks like what what that period of life has been like for them to to You Know M build massive portfolios and now for an investor who’s listening to this like I want to be like Ryan Carr like okay understand Ryan car is like a 7 to S guy seven days a week 7:00 a.m.
(51:48) to 7 p.m. that’s how he works like oh I don’t want to do that but I want the same results like can’t have it both ways I don’t know how you get there is my point and that’s kind of the point of the show when I have people like that on right like you know and then like for me I know I’m not that so I Stay in My Own Lane agree right and again that’s the kind of the point of the show like this is how they got there and now decide for yourself where you fit into that yeah I agree with you 100% And I remember when
(52:11) I was when I was traveling with Quinton last month he said to me he’s like you know there’s times that I’m very stressed like there’s a lot of stress that comes with having a portfolio and it really made me think to exactly what you were saying like you know it’s great to be extremely successful but understand that there’s downsides right stressed um you have to be available you know so it’s in many cases you can’t have it both ways like you have to put the work in you have to put the time in if you want a mass a massive portfolio
(52:41) yeah and and uh and like we are in real estate winter right now I was talking to uh someone you know someone you know as well who whose apartment buildings to sell and I don’t even think they’re getting showings and she’s a great investor and she your buildings aren’t even getting showings yeah right I know who you’re talking about yeah so it’s whereas fast forward or go back two years ago and people were buying side on scene yeah villains were going like hot cake Hot Cakes it’s six PL I’ll write the offer right now yeah no totally I
(53:12) remember I was flying looking at look looking for apartment buildings it was it was a totally different environment totally crazy totally crazy um but you know and everyone was celebrating everyone was making money but like uh but yeah so many people have gone quiet social media right now for example yeah well it’s again it’s telling and again I tell my students yeah the war Muffet quote right yeah like when what does it go again when when the goes out yeah you know who’s swimming naked and this is what you’re seeing so I expect to see a
(53:43) lot of investors disappear a lot I expect to see only a few investors really left over the next couple years which is why I still think there’s you know there’s still a ton of opportunities depending on the strategy but a lot of people have already disappeared right you know you’ve seen the news um headlines like I have you know we’re in the Investment Circle you know we you know I hear things people that I know that have done extremely well you know they tell me about other people that have reached out to them and
(54:10) see if they see if they’re buying yeah yeah yeah I have this to sell you buying exactly so although again what people yeah we went from flying to fine building leads to sellers of of owners of apartment buildings calling you to see if you’re buying you’re 100% right people reached out to me and said hey this person’s selling their buildings they’re offloading all their buildings really but it’s it’s just a different time and you have to understand that and some of the great best advice I’ve gotten from one of my previous mentors
(54:39) was that you have to have staying power and I was like what do you mean what do you mean by that right and what he said is older guy’s I think he’s probably 60 and so he’s been through the ups and downs of the real estate cycle and he’s like you know there are going to be bad times and you you need to have you need to be liquid enough to get through those bad times and Co taught me if Co taught me anything was that from a financial standpoint was that when covid hit I wasn’t liquid um April rolled around and like
(55:14) many investors I was very concerned because we thought you know Doug Ford was telling people not to pay rent um politicians were saying not to pay rent I love that and so I was worried right that who wasn’t exactly every investor was worried everyone was sh so I’m running I’m running all these models saying okay what do I look like and I had access to you know line of credits and so on right I access a ton of line of credits but I did not have a lot of cash right right you know give God thanks all my tenants continued to pay
(55:43) but it taught me a lesson without going through the lesson was that I was not comfortable relying just on my helocs to get me through bad times so I started raising Capital right enough Capital right to to get me through the back at times which is actually the only reason why I was really able to buy that apartment building that I bought last year because I had Capital um for an emergency fund MH so you know a lot of people have have come through the situation where you know we’re all dealing with rough times
(56:13) now because of interest rates but you know a lot of people are overleveraged they have no Capital available and no liquidity they have no liquidity right no credit no credit no liquidity and sorry I’ll clarify credit like they’re credible it says lenders ain’t lending lenders aren’t lending you know they have to exit deals like we were talking about with private money um you know I raise private money for this this uh duplex s not duplex this building that we bought fantastic deal we did a vtb and then a good friend of mine led us to
(56:49) rest privately um but I made sure that I had like threee btb right because I knew this wasn’t going to pass anytime soon soon um and so so far it’s working out extremely well but I told people if you’re going to do a btb now or private funds you better have it for at least two to three years at a minimum and this was about a year ago yeah get through real estate winter get through real estate winter but um but yeah so it’s tough times you know I don’t wish ill on anyone I hope everyone’s able to make it through this you know this downturn but
(57:21) that’s not going to be the situation no it’s going to be pretty bad yeah yeah it’s going be this is going to be the worst correction I’ve seen because um you I I saw some people go belly back in 0807 0708 but the commun the investment the community is way larger now yeah and there um and The Leverage that people took on was way higher than back then yeah by far Yeah by far by far so we are going to see way more Carnage here cuz a lot of it was hard money loans in this current time versus back then it was people with people it was largely equity
(57:56) deals back then yeah yeah but the cash flow just yeah well the credit ran up credit problems cash flow problems and that that put people under but like all the this current generation they never learn from those mistakes because they’re brand new y yeah and they never like I said experience there’s one thing you know when you when you teach Theory or you listen to Theory but you really learn through taking action and actual practical experience and a lot of these folks have never been through a downturn yeah right so they don’t know how to
(58:24) react yeah 2008 was a credit crisis meaning there was no credit so your portfolio should be stress tested against what if you can’t get more credit yeah and most people don’t even understand that right so again I stress tested my portfolio I don’t know I can’t tell you how many times over the past three years right whereas you know newer investors I mean you upwards of five years they probably don’t even know how to stress test their their portfolio properly because they they can just continue to raise money right right or
(58:51) or or interest rates not interest rates or values continue to go up so it’s you know it’s good times and you know even myself included I got pretty comfortable in that prices were just going up right um but you know it’s unfortunate but again I think there’s going to be more opportunities because there’s going to be a lot less investors right in the next for people who have capital and credit exactly for people which we’ve always known yeah you have capital on credit you will win Agreed 100% now we Al you and I have also talked about a
(59:19) bit about the states as well what what are you seeing I think most people know where our standpoint is yeah I think most people and like I said recording I don’t want to drink my own Kool-Aid no no no but I so here’s there’s a couple reasons I like the states I think Canada you know and I love Canada I was born and raised in Canada is on an economic decline right like even if you don’t understand money and I spend a lot of time understanding money money supply um the history of money and how money works and so on
(59:50) right but even if you don’t understand that and you know you’re not really into that Canada has has and had a a productivity problem right we’re just not productive which is interesting considering that we bring in and I was thinking about this on the way here we we bring in record numbers of immigrants and especially way more per capita than the US oh yeah then you ask yourself why is Canada not as productive right because a lot of the productivity The Innovation the entrepreneurship comes from immigrants right at least in the
(1:00:23) states and some degree here too so why musk was an immigrant yeah so so why do we have such a productivity problem right and we could spend hours talking about that but the reality is Canada is on an economic decline um our productivity is like the lowest I think in the G7 and the bright spot of Canada right now is Alberta because of oil of course um but and they’re attracting all the talent of people and they’re attracting all the talent absorbing it from everyone else and they have aord housing so where does that leave the rest of
(1:00:59) Canada um we live in Ontario you know you probably know Ontario has the highest sub sovereign debt in the world meaning if Ontario was a country they’d be the most indebted in the world most people don’t know that so think about that for a second yeah and while our services haven’t improved hasn’t Ser has healthare and education haven’t improved so what does that mean Irwin it means that governments have to raise taxes which they did which they did and will continue to raise taxes um it means that it will be tougher for
(1:01:29) landlords or rental providers going forward investors period investors period there’s no question in my opinion so if you believe those things which I do I think it’s prudent to look elsewhere so and I also realized too and a friend of mine was telling me this when we were traveling it’s like he said he owns a number of properties in the States because a him and his wife were thinking about moving there wintering there but also he never has to change you his Canadian currency when he travels to the US and I’m like that’s a
(1:02:02) fantastic idea if nothing especially at today’s rates especially at today’s rates they were like 72 cents right now yeah especially after the most recent announcement uh interest rate announcement yesterday and so you ask yourself where are you going to go right you know we we border the the country that has the largest um the largest economy in the world or is almost everything right and that has similar property rights which are important to Canada yeah and that’s still very productive and still has the the world
(1:02:42) Reserve currency sure it’ll be gone in 20 30 years but yeah yeah we’ll be dead i’ probably be dead by then I may be dead by then no maybe not yeah but but I’ll be well set up for it exactly that’s my point that’s my point right so I’ve started doing some research I started talking to different people i’ I’ve had a couple calls with Sher I started doing my own macro research um no different than what I teach in you know my course and we should have lunch and talk about it totally should so I’ve narrowed down my search to Atlanta oh
(1:03:12) that’s where I’m going to buy and I started researching the neighborhoods the only thing I don’t know with is am I going to go with am I going to get use share to support the process for the first couple properties and go on my own or do I just go on my own and just start buying so that’s that’s where I’m at right now I want to take a trip to Atlanta either this month MH or next month just deciding on life because I may have some Life Changes soon so if that does happen then I’ll probably go in mid August um if not I’ll go in I’ll
(1:03:42) go September and do boots on the ground and and just to get a feel I’m a very visual tactile person so I like to see touch and feel and I find taking a couple trips out there um just to get a feel of communities and so on make sense but I’m I am my focus after completing this Garden Suite in Toronto will be the US um single family homes yeah yeah and I I keep having to CU Canadians are generally marketed courses around much more advanced things I find CU because there’s no cash flow in single family homes condos single
(1:04:15) detach duplexes really y so almost everyone comes to me like oh I’m on a garden Suite I’ll buy a apartment building like in your they’re a complete novice and they’re like why are you buying single family home in the states like so like literally my house in San Antonio is a 5.1 cap rate Wow versus duplexes for my math for like Osa Ottawa Hamilton roughly about like a 4.1 to 4.
(1:04:40) 3 yeah and think about it right if you could buy a single family house in a GTA you would go nuts and just start buying single family homes right the least tenant issues yeah at least tenant issues um you’re not dealing with multiple tenants you don’t have to split the utilities split you’re getting a higher profile tenant your property manager loves you property manager loves you it just makes sense so you can go to the largest economy in the world in great neighborhoods beautiful homes oh they’re so nice and cash flow or break even on a single
(1:05:15) family house yeah yeah why would I complicate it I’m a simple guy Irwin so to me it just makes sense from a currency diversification standpoint a geographic diversification standpoint and like I said unfortunately things are going to get worse in so many different ways in Ontario again whether it’s it’s um increased taxes U more Pro um tenant legislation anti- landlord anti capitalist sentiment anti- capitalist sentiment anti- bus sentiment at some point people are just going to give up investors right and seen well yeah you
(1:05:56) see it I’m sure you saw the same stats the same stats I saw where they said there were record outflows of capital um in Canada record right B Canadians Canadians aren’t investing locally Canadians aren’t investing locally and although people will always hate on landlords but the reality is you know there are small landlords like us or rental providers like us that are you know that own one to 20 units we’re the ones that are responsible for producing like 80% of the housing in Ontario by adding one two or three Suites so if
(1:06:29) people like us are leaving and I can’t tell you irn there’s not a there’s not a real estate meeting or real estate session that goes by where I speak to an investor that either has left or they’re thinking about leaving mhm yeah wait till I talk to them honestly so not everyone’s going to leave and don’t get me wrong I still think there’s opportunities here from like small development intensification yeah but I think you really I think if you look long term the opportunities are going to dry up in the GTA yeah in the next I don’t
(1:07:08) know three four years yeah like even just simply like my my uh cash to close in my house in San Antonio is 67,000 American wow right like that’s your hard cost on your garden Suite or 130,000 Canadian I paid I paid what did I pay I paid I think I paid like 25,000 land transfer tax oh my God on this Triplex I bought two years ago was insane some ridiculous amount Hey cuz it’s Toronto yeah CU of Toronto you’re paying double land transfer tax but you know I I think it’s prudent to start looking at other options yeah
(1:07:46) my advice to my clients is um you know you don’t have to sell everything but your your next purchase you have to compare to what we’re doing in the States agree agreed and and I’m not going to like there’s a couple properties I have I don’t I don’t usually buy new construction at all but I did buy a new construction um in Georg and Bay I paid 600,000 for 2200t end unit town home on a golf course sounds amazing yeah fantastic deal it’s gone up hundreds of thousands of dollars and they keep pushing the closing which is
(1:08:17) fantastic for me um but I also own a property in Blue Mountain with investors that property the property in Georgia Bay I won 100% And but I I’m not going to keep both properties right like I don’t need two I don’t need both properties so I’ll sell one of those and I’ll divert that cash to the states um but I will sell one or two properties and invest there and right now I’m just in the process of raising capital and I’ll use some of my own to make my first purchase but I think you have to look outside of Ontario or Canada I think you
(1:08:50) we’re we’re at a point now where it’s not a nice to have it’s a I think you almost have to start looking outside to me I think it’s a baseline I think I think a share of property for everyone in that and you know obviously I’m biased but Al straight up I make more money selling a local property in commission wise than I do in in the states not even close uh but yeah so my bias my professional opinion is a share of property should be everyone’s Baseline and compare everything against that yeah both in terms of cash flow return and
(1:09:22) effort and capital out outlay right like we know many people who are shelling up 300 350 to build Garden suites yeah right 350 I know a friend of built the 350 I know someone who spent 500,000 yeah and you get no land with that right and because we in real estate cuz we want hard assets yeah I get I have a large lot in the state I’m getting my San Antonio property but but it’s a good point though because if you spend 350,000 on a garden Suite you 200,000 yeah but let’s say you’re going to be conservative you wanted to dip your feed
(1:09:54) in and you bought it cash 300,000 like I don’t know or like it said buy two properties spit it I don’t know I just think at that at this point now a lot of investors are looking for ways to continue to invest and until something changes with Garden suites the math doesn’t make sense because if you spend $350,000 you’re better off lending it at 10% ideally using two tfsas so you don’t pay taxes and then you pay tax on the other because interest interest interest income is taxed high and but otherwise like it it doesn’t make
(1:10:29) Financial sense I’m generalizing to build a garden Suite yeah I agree with that right I don’t even think it makes sense for a basement Suite no because if you spend say you spend 80 grand on a basement Suite 90 oh that’s a cheap one okay yeah I mean if you’re if you don’t have connection you’ll spend 130 but I would probably end up spending about 90 right it’s still worth it because 90 so you do that in Ashawa you’ll get $1900 rent it’s still worth it now if I know people a friend of mine she just finished a
(1:11:01) basement she spent 180 Grand for basement and some cosmetic finishes at the top so at some point it doesn’t make sense but it doesn’t make sense because the purchase price is too high so whether it’s whether it makes sense to spend the money on a basement apartment you can’t buy the house to spend the money on the basement apartment because prices are too high so it doesn’t make sense dup the duplex formula is gone that ship has sailed years ago it doesn’t make sense which is why people are you know pushing Garden suites but
(1:11:30) Garden suites also don’t make sense unless in my opinion you can use a detached garage to do it yeah do with in an existing building exactly but otherwise Garden suites don’t make sense yeah yeah so I’ll throw in at the other pieces uh my current observation of the current market is that the market we uh for example I believe there’s six legal duplexes in the in sitting in Hamilton that aren’t selling they’re vacant wow so the market is telling me that buyers don’t want rental property like there’s a cuz my original
(1:12:01) philosophy with buying doing basement suiting duplexes was that people would want the mortgage assistance from having the rent being able to rent out part of the house M but the the current market is telling me that’s not not wanted anymore interesting right the the the uh the market is telling me that like being a landlord is like a basically a stigma no one there the market does not want to be a landlord so that part that plays into my decision why would I invest all that money if buyers don’t want it now
(1:12:31) that’s a snapshot of this current market I don’t know what’s going to happen a year from now but based on what I know today this is where it is and and if the LTB doesn’t improve how does this how does this change well we know that’s not going to improve and and well you know what it’s funny because my students I’ve had a couple students reach out to me and and they don’t want to buy an Ontario at all they’re just not interested they won’t yeah buy an Ontario and it’s because of they don’t want to be landlords because they’re afraid of
(1:12:59) they don’t want exposure to the LTB exactly which is reasonable which is very reasonable and so they’re looking at other options so even new investors which I mean most new investors they want to invest close to home it’s familiar you know they feel it’s easier money though right which is more money but even new investors now which is interesting they’re not they don’t even want to invest in Ontario so it tells you how bad things are mhm mhm right and even my one experience is being a realtor uh is converting rich people to
(1:13:30) become landlords in Ontario really difficult oh yeah yeah because they don’t to them it’s not worth it no because they’re rich yeah they’re rich they value their peace and they don’t want the headaches y yeah so again so that plays into my decision my my own current theory that it doesn’t make sense to basement Suite or garden sweet yeah and as you get older too or as I get older you know my my needs change right so I’m not going to yeah do some of the things that I did when I started 79 years ago right oh yeah this is fluid
(1:14:03) I want is fluid right I want more peace right so to more to me single family homes in great markets makes sense yeah I was just in I was in Atlanta just uh two months ago for uh a networking meeting among seven figure entrepreneurs and I met a rapping manager there who who manages 800 units wow I’m like oh you have a qualified what are you buying next single family homes okay okay you just more of my own Kool-Aid but again qualified opinion right yeah no agreed agreed all right we have to talk about Everest because
(1:14:38) you’re crazy sure let’s talk about Everest what do you want to talk about what L you the people die wait did you see bodies no well we saw we saw a shrine so let me backtrack so I’m sorry I’m just getting right into it let me backtrack so why did I do Everest let’s backtrack so I climbed kilamanjaro last year and the reason I did it was because my my mentor at the time as we were planning out I think 2023 he he wanted me one of the things he wanted me to do was he wanted me to do something that was going to challenge me physically and
(1:15:13) mentally and make me uncomfortable yeah you could go run a 5k right could you could but so this was December 2022 and I had just come back from a trip with a couple Durham REI members and I remember Quinton saying that he was going to he was going to climb Kil Manjaro and when he told me I kind of gave I kind of just did the whole IR roll thing cuz I was like yeah good for you right and um you know I moved on and then when I sat with my my mentor at the time I was like okay and I so anyway I went back and I messaged Quinton and I
(1:15:43) was like hey is there a room for me right cuz I was like oh that’s going to make me uncomfortable I’ve never even camped before I’ve never slept in I’ve never slept in a sleeping bag before I’m not an outdoors person nothing so I knew this would make me a hardcore city boy yeah I’m a city boy right I mean sure I go to a cottage but I’m in a nice Lake I’m sleeping indoors airing air conditioning yeah yeah the weather’s not going to kill you outside no no not at all so I knew this was going to challenge me mentally physically push me
(1:16:11) make me uncomfortable and anyway long story short I I you know I went on that trip to uh to kilamanjaro how hard is that oh it was very hard the last night I got very sick I could barely I so we started we started our Trek about 12:00 in the morning and it was a 10-hour Trek to get to the peak so it was- 20 um it was you’re wearing so you’re wearing five layers B bottom and top I felt amazing I started walking ear than I kid you not within 50 minutes of starting you know the ascent 12:00 in the morning I felt sick I started
(1:16:47) getting hot flashes I thought I was going to pass out so I I needed to sit what was this altitude sickness food poisoning was it altitude sickness that that got you no yeah altitude sickness and long story short so for the next 15 20 hours going up and down I struggled I could barely walk I was literally taking four steps pausing for I don’t know two or three minutes the uh our Sherpa thank God they were were awesome they were literally feeding me my protein bars because I was so weak it was it was absolutely it it was the most difficult
(1:17:24) thing I’ve ever done in my Life by far hands down um wait hang on how much harder is Everest then so the difference I find with Everest is most of kilamanjaro was manageable except the last night right Summit night so the last 36 hours that was absolute hell the difference with Everest is every day was difficult it was manageable but every day was very difficult so I think overall Everest was harder than kilamanjaro um you know but everyone has their own opinion but the views with Everest were absolutely stunning but again very
(1:18:04) mentally tough you know physically tough but it’s worth it it’s worth it so I’m a big believer in pushing yourself making yourself uncomfortable I think those things build resilience when things go bad like they are now with you know many Real Estate Investors and I think it makes you it just makes you a better person father husband wife because it builds resilience if you if you purposely put yourself in uncomfortable situations you’re going to build that experience experience on how to deal with uncomfortable situations right so
(1:18:34) when they actually occur um involuntarily you have that experience and you don’t bury yourself your head in the sand so to me it’s it’s it’s done wonders for me I think over the past couple years I know it sounds crazy and I’m not a like I’m people are like oh you’re a hiker I’m like no I’m not a hiker I mean I like it but I’m not a hiker I just do it to push myself and you meet amazing people which has been pretty awesome did you get sick wait how do you prepare yourself for altitude so when I was climbing Killy I went to a gym
(1:19:06) downtown Toronto called altitude and they can simulate the loss of oxygen mask and so you can simulate different elevations so I did that um to train and then for Everest it was just regular training you know strength training cardio um hiking up Mountain ski hills in Toronto they have a couple ski hills in Toronto and so i’ you know walk up and down the hills um how how many months was prep for Everest so Everest I prepped for four months I started January and serious May yeah so four months and yeah so it’s you know it’s a lot of
(1:19:43) training you have to walk you should walk at least three or four hours a couple times a week just so your body gets used to walking that long cuz generally you’re walking 6 to 8 hours a day uphill sometimes just steps which I was expecting so you could walk 3 hours up a up a hill just step after step after step you know in 35° weather so it’s brutal sorry 35 Fahrenheit or Celsius 30 Celsius it was hot yeah hot so the first couple days it’s very hot oh yeah yeah first couple days it’s very hot because you’re at sea
(1:20:15) level right okay and then and then once yeah once you start ascending it gets colder and colder and colder and colder right so like where that picture was taken that was a base camp and you know so there’s glaciers off to the side you can see glaciers and just um yeah absolutely incredible for the listeners benefit we’re looking at uh Brian’s Instagram uh acquiring wisdom base C 5,000 almost 5,400 meter elevation yeah so about that’s what uh it’s probably about 16 17,000 feet above sea level what’s the equivalent in Canada would
(1:20:52) that that’s Canada we’re probably at sea level so maybe like would would B be close to that elevation no not even close not even close nothing nothing in North America nothing North America no okay nothing in North America South America has a couple mountains that are huge AK in kagwa um but nothing close to this would you recommend this experience absolutely I re so here’s what I tell people you don’t need to climb a mountain uh most people won’t that’s fine but just find things that are going to push you and make you uncomfortable
(1:21:22) so if you’re afraid of heights you know maybe do the Tower um walk outside I think you did that right did you do that done three times doing a. this summer yeah so do that right it’s going to make you uncomfortable it’s going to push you do whatever is that you know is going to make you uncomfortable it’s going to push you because there’s lots of local options there are a lot of local options but one of the cool things is again we were talking about I’m a relationship person and you meet people from all over
(1:21:48) the world yeah right and which we all stay in contact we have a WhatsApp group so a lot of the people that I climb kill them on J are the same people that I climbed Everest with right and we’re all we’re it’s an experience of travel you’re you’re all bonded for life exactly exactly and you know we stay in contact you know we message each other all the time so it’s very cool and you know we’re planning our next trip we’ll see where that takes us but it’s awesome Atlanta Georgia there’s mountain to climb there but yeah I’m I’m just a big
(1:22:20) believer in pushing yourself amazing right all right all we’re running out of time Brian I always like to give some um some open air to my my guests anything we haven’t covered or you want to share um not really just take action in life be intentional about life regardless of what it is if you want to build wealth take action if you want to become a better father be intentional you know I book date nights with my daughter you know I book you know date nights with my son just be intentional put it in your calendar and just be
(1:22:51) intentional about life whatever that is for you whatever important to you be intentional amazing uh Instagram acquiring wisdom search I’ll have the George Brown Link in the show notes but what can they search George Brown George Brown College real estate investment strategies course amazing yeah so if you’re thinking about getting into real estate this a great first option right ridiculously affordable um feel free to message me if you want some more details or you just want to B some ideas off me and learn more about the course maybe
(1:23:21) some people should even just sign up their adult children for it yeah actually I met uh I was meeting who did I meet with a couple weeks ago and they’re actually oh my one of my co-workers and she’s uh she’s going to do that um pay for adults on to do it amazing yeah any us component to this course so I actually I do have a us I had a US speaker last time someone who invests in the US because it’s this is what people want right it wasn’t my intention but people are inquiring about investing in the US because
(1:23:50) unfortunately they’re afraid to invest in Canada it’s kind of sad actually yeah if you need Carmen Demetri or Andrew I’m sure we can set that up yeah yeah for sure well my next class like I said starts September so we’ll have you guys on Amazing happy to assist awesome because I I feel like we’re like I feel every day I’m doing a public service by sparing Ontario landlords cuz hard assets we still need it still need hard assets absolutely yeah yeah yeah if if like you you you mentioned like if the US dollar fails in 30 years that the
(1:24:25) US Canadian dollar had already failed somewhere along the way exactly well that that’s how I look at it right the Canadian dollar will fail way before the US dollar yeah yeah way before so we we need diversification outside of Canada even if the Canadian economy was doing well relative to its peers we still need diversification outside of Canada yeah yeah hard assets yeah take your pick yeah exactly you and I have our favorites obvious yeah all right Brian thanks again for doing this no glad to be here and hopefully people saw some value in
(1:25:00) it thank you for watching if you want to learn how to invest in real estate from scratch my team teaches beginners how to use the number one investment strategy that I personally use in a virtual free training class every month go to investor training.com guest and if you’re just starting out feel free to ask questions and comment below and I do the best to answer each of those comments and questions myself again if you’re ready to learn the nitty-gritty about real estate investing from a professional investor register for our next virtual
(1:25:37) class that’s at investor training.com

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/truth-about-real-estate-investing…/id1100488294

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z8yd37AQfQI5DK0J0Xwzz

Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/40fe627d-dec7-4f5d-b7e5-90a550fffe46/the-truth-about-real-estate-investing-for-canadians

Audible:https://www.audible.ca/podcast/The-Truth-About-Real-Estate-Investing-for-Canadians/B08JJS91WR

Youtube: https://youtu.be/ruJmwZQLHbs

** Transcript Auto-Generated**

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/truth-about-real-estate-investing…/id1100488294

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z8yd37AQfQI5DK0J0Xwzz

Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/40fe627d-dec7-4f5d-b7e5-90a550fffe46/the-truth-about-real-estate-investing-for-canadians

Audible:https://www.audible.ca/podcast/The-Truth-About-Real-Estate-Investing-for-Canadians/B08JJS91WR

Youtube: https://youtu.be/yS79M32o9Ws

** Transcript Auto-Generated**

On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/truth-about-real-estate-investing…/id1100488294

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z8yd37AQfQI5DK0J0Xwzz

Amazon Music:https://music.amazon.ca/podcasts/40fe627d-dec7-4f5d-b7e5-90a550fffe46/the-truth-about-real-estate-investing-for-canadians

Audible:https://www.audible.ca/podcast/The-Truth-About-Real-Estate-Investing-for-Canadians/B08JJS91WR

Youtube: https://youtu.be/S8JGDlNMA0g