**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Truth about real estate show. And my name is Erwin and I have a quick rant on rent control. I posted on my Facebook and Instagram just last week, an article about how 100 Plus prospective tenants lined up to view a rental property in Dublin, Ireland, their government wisely, this is sarcasm, their government wisely implemented rent control. So the rents do not keep up with inflation forcing landlords to self investment properties, the next property owner may move into the property, thus reducing rental supply or a new landlord. Typically one with deeper pockets. Some of these are massive investment funds now, they’ll want to return on their investment. Hence they’ll turn over the tenants renovate and raise rents the supply and lower and rents are forever gone. And the rich just get richer. Understand that rental developers and people who build purpose built rentals, they do not like rent control. Hence, we saw a whole bunch of projects get cancelled, when rent control was reinstated by the Ford government. No capitalist in general likes their prices to be controlled. So it’s down to the government down to the socialists to build a system of housing, that I am not gonna hold my breath. I’m gonna do what I can to take care of myself, my family and my kids in terms of rental housing. So my team at Island real estate team and I will provide an economic update and drill down into what investments we’re getting into, including turnkey properties, and you wouldn’t believe it. Thanks to this market correction, we’re actually seeing more and more opportunity for triplex conversion going from single family to three. And we’re just talking about lack of supply. My clients and I were creating supply, sometimes doubling or tripling that of one property a single family home, we’ll get into the details around strategy, renovation plans, budgets, and of course, tucking in cash flow. So you don’t want to miss it on Saturday, September 17. That Saturday morning, doors open at 830. At our offices in Oakville, Ontario, just two more meetings until the wealth hacker conference on Saturday, November 12. I’ll post the link in the show notes to register for our meeting. There’s much more fun to learn out there. And there’s always much smarter to learn. And of course, networking with like minded folks, and wealth building to be done. On the personal front, our new Tesla Model y we’ve had for about three weeks now, it has been quite an experience, the electrical quotes were steep, we had to upgrade our panel and obviously have an electrician to instal the Tesla wall unit. Just to test the wall unit just to charge her nothing fancy. It’s not a battery or anything but the charger itself is seven or $700. Or you can just you can just use a dryer outlet. If you happen to have one in your garage, which we do not we do not the learning curve of owning and driving a Tesla is really different. I would compare it to my old analogue Nokia that I had back in the year 2022 years ago, versus a modern day iPhone, it’s completely different. The technology inside of Tesla is really impressive. For example, we dropped off the Tesla to get wrapped for protection on the front end and some window times whatnot. And I was just curious if they started work yet. So I checked my Tesla app. And I could turn on the cameras within the car and it did check where it was. And also have exact GPS location. So I know they moved in the car. Also, the Tesla operates under one pedal driving, because if you take your foot off the accelerator pedal, I used to call the gas. Now there’s no gas, so they call it the accelerator pedal. So that’s one call to when you take your foot off it or ease off of it, the regenerative braking kicks in, it’s actually pretty abrupt. That’s it’s pretty hard break. That’s what it feels like to the point of that is to recover any energy wasted during the braking process. Hence, I actually rarely break anymore. So it’s pretty cool. Also really cool is the autopilot feature, which is the fancy cruise control. It’s especially good and stop and go traffic as the car will come to a stop if the car in front of you stops. And when the car in front of me goes, the car will go without me really having to touch anything. I do just have to keep my hands on the wheels wheel to let it know I’m still there. Once in a while. Charging hasn’t been that bad. And we’ve taken it on like a road trip already up to Blue Mountain Village. And the next thing was our hotel for the weekend. They had a great parking spot for our Tesla for the free charging station right next to the lobby. And again, it was free. Not that charging the cars expensive for a zero to 100% Charge. We’re talking to $8. And then for our daily usage, Jerry and I we use less than 20%. So we’re talking about the cost of a Tim Hortons double double. It’s really inexpensive to drive. Of course, we would not have never considered buying a Tesla without that $55,000 plus HST deduction for tax purposes. Thank you Justin Trudeau for giving the rich such a lovely tax benefit.

Erwin  

understand almost everything electric vehicles over 50 grand the Tesla Model y was was significantly more than that. It’s the most expensive car you’ll ever own. And we’d never do this deal without this monster tax credit. Thanks to our lovely government, you can be more of a tax implication and I would left a link to cherries article on the on a tax savings for buying a Tesla or equivalent electric vehicle. Speaking of rich people, this week, we have the very successful Quint D’souza on the show. There are tonnes of coaches and multifamily experts out there but my experience Quentin is one of the best. I know many of his past students, including Steve Phillips on on my island real estate investment team. And I know many of its investment partners. They’re all like Clinton’s legit. Let’s leave it at that. Not many have a successful track record like Clinton’s, so you probably want to pay attention to this show. He’s on the show today with cherry actually, Terry’s been delivering the interview. It’s always out hosting a golf event with fellow seven figure entrepreneurs. So Charlie and I had to quote unquote, divide and conquer. We don’t conquer anything, though. I don’t know why. You can see that term, actually prepared the questions that I wanted to ask Quentin personally about pardon building investing, investing in the US where to find cashflow these days, and what the future holds. You know, the same stuff you’d ask for someone you know, with hundreds of units in their portfolio. Yeah, quite. It’s pretty successful if you don’t know and also like the show title. Quinn has closed or real close on 177 units this year alone. He’s always looking to level up Quinn’s an old friend. He’s the chief education officer and founder of the germ Rei, a really, really great long running working group that meets monthly majorem region. He’s authored four books including the most recent the action takers, estate investing planner, and I’ve linked in the show notes to the Amazon that are going to search Amazon you can search Quentin D’souza or again the name of the book The action takers real estate investing planner. Obviously, Quentin is a big time investor. Please enjoy the show.

Cherry  

Hi, Quentin. 

Quentin  

Hey, how you doing cherry

Cherry  

Welcome to our truth about real estate investing Show and welcome to my very first podcast host duty show. I hope we will be doing okay. What’s keeping you busy these days?

Quentin  

Let’s see I’m buying apartment buildings. We closed on in March we closed on 17 unit and a 24 unit 24 unit was in Kingston 17 unit was in Belleville we’re closing on 100 units at the end of this month. Next month we’re closing on 20 unit and another 16 unit. So we’re buying apartment buildings. Keeping me that’s keeping me busy. Seems sounds

Cherry  

a little bit busy. But how’s how’s the summer How’s been? How’s been not being a baseball dad.

Quentin  

So it’s been really good. My my oldest son got on to the York bulls baseball team. So we’re going to be doing a lot of that in September and October. He has doubleheaders every weekend, my younger son is doing house league baseball, and we were really enjoying that. I did a trip to Machu Picchu or the Inca trail with my oldest son we did a week at the end of June and we and then both my son’s we did a whitewater rafting trip at the beginning of August for about four days. So we had lots of fun there. 

Cherry  

So that’s amazing. 

Quentin  

Yeah, it’s been good. 

Cherry  

Yeah, I hear baseball is worse than hockey in terms of training schedule. And then also competition schedule.

Quentin  

The definitely is a lot, a lot of time, but now that he drives and so that makes it a lot easier. So he is able to drive himself to practice. And my older son works out like every day. So he goes for like two or three hours, takes the car and goes and works out comes back. Right. So like it just it makes it a lot easier. And then we just show up to the games.

Cherry  

Yes, that is very that’s like I would say 80% of the battle. Yeah.

Quentin  

Oh, yeah, for sure. There was a lot of of chauffeuring going on between Laura and myself, just, you know, getting the kids to different events and stuff like that. And now with the older one driving sometimes you can take the younger one. Oh, that’s amazing. I hope so. Quite a bit for sure.

Cherry  

How do you like go like, I don’t know if I would ever be able to like completely like go drive the car, take the car and not worry about that.

Quentin  

Well, I mean, you still worry about them. The other thing was he’s not driving my truck. We bought another car using this. We call it the family car. Oh, okay. Right. And it’s neither my wife’s car, my car, we’re, you know, we have a third vehicle so and it’s just like, little Hyundai can’t remember. It’s just like a little Hyundai and you know, it’s great for getting from A to B and so it’s worked out well. That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s amazing. And he’s been really good about you know, we we He make sure that he contributes to the, you know, the car. So he’s paying for his insurance then yeah, and then, you know, after the first tank of gas, because that’s to get to work and to go to the different places he’s paying for anything additional to that. So want to make sure that he has some responsibilities to, you know, when it comes to keeping in maintaining the vehicle, any tickets he’s gonna pay? So

Cherry  

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So like, like going along with that line. I know, you have been an educator for many, many years before you jump into being a real estate investor full time, and you’ve got a wealth of knowledge to share. And how are you educating your kids? Because your kids are? I mean, my kids are eight and seven, they’re relatively young, maybe 10 years behind your kids? How are you educating them? And how are you developing their financial sense?

Quentin  

You know, it’s being open having conversation. So at dinner time, my wife often says that we talk about finances quite a bit. Right. And it is something that I never did when I was a kid, but I’m making sure that we talk about it now. We talk about, you know, prices, we talk about inflation, we talk about just different concepts, real estate and the purple book, right, the Robert Kiyosaki book. Yeah, we, I would have them listen to that when we did car trips. So I did I put on the, like, the audiobook version when they were younger. And when I took them on long trips, I would just put that on. And then we were talking about concepts. You know, I like definitely encouraging the older one to read books. And, you know, making sure that that he reads the books. Right. So that’s, that’s been good. The younger one, he’s still you know, he’s interested more in cryptocurrency and NF T’s and that sort of thing. So I’m encouraging. I bought one of his NF T’s. Right. So I was like, Sure, I’ll buy it. I don’t know. Yeah. Right. So I’m encouraging them to experiment. And, you know, do that. But yeah, I mean, it’s always, it’s always about sharing, and just telling them what I’m doing. Like, I’m often saying, Look, I’ve raised this, we’re buying this, this is what I’m doing, right. So I’m pretty open about it, so that they understand what I’m doing. They don’t understand the details and going into it. But if they are interested in I’m always happy to share more, right. So

Cherry  

that’s really cool, really cool. I’m trying to make Bruce do these burpees as they do, as he does burpees, he earns, like 10 cents per burpee. And so he’s doing a lot of burpees. Lately, it was by accident that we discovered that Bruce was bruises only seven years old. So he’s like quite young, he doesn’t really quite grabs the concept of money. So it was by accident, he loves to go into he loves going to the gym with me. So my trainer offered him 10 cents for burpee, because he’s always reading the book at a gym. And so he started doing burpees, he got so excited about doing burpees because of the money that I realised, hey, like, you’re actually very motivated by money, I’ll just pay you to earn that money. And then a few weeks later, we go to Niagara Falls, and we were at this breakfast place, which is totally a tourist trap. Anyway, so they charge $5 for a cranberry juice, a glass of cranberry juice, and Bruce wanted the cranberry juice. And I said, that’s fine. So you have to pay for it as $5. And then I said how many burpees? Do you have to do 500 books. He’s like linking the two and he’s regretting it. So he’s linking the two. I know, it’s not a direct kind of science to match the two, nobody is going to pay him to do burpees ever. But it’s kind of like introducing that concept. I think introducing it and talking about what you do. I think leading by example is also extremely to me, it’s extremely important. I’m trying to live up to that standard.

Quentin  

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, like they they really need to know that. Like there is different ways to earn, like money as well too. Right? So that’s, you know, time per hour. Right? And that’s definitely how everybody starts off. Right? And then there’s other ways like investing your funds in order to have your money make money for you too. Right. And that comes later on but that’s that’s great. That’s a definitely a fundamental concept for them to learn. So that’s that’s pretty cool. I like that.

Cherry  

Hey folks, his burpees So you mentioned that you have been so busy purchasing closing properties and then skelding properties to buy as well. Can you share with us where or how you’re investing in finding these deals because majority of the people are complaining like there was no deals out there. Maybe there are more deals now after the interest rate has gone up so much. But before people were complaining, like I can’t find these deals.

Quentin  

Well luckily I have a book on that top Back to finding properties toolbox. It goes into a lot more detail. But with there are a lot of different approaches to being able to find properties, particularly multifamily properties. And it’s more about the relationships that you have than it is about the marketing strategies, there are a lot of like, I get, like, every week, I get mail from realtors, from people who want to buy directly, like, who’s purchased a list and our, you know, mailing apartment building owners directly, I get phone calls from brokers asking me whether I want to sell my buildings, right. So there’s that approach to doing it. Another approach is talking to, you know, the people who are interacting daily with apartment building. So talking to property managers and saying, Hey, listen, especially because I’m not a realtor. So I can say, look, property manager, if you have, you know, of one of your clients that are looking to sell, I will pay you $5,000 referral fee, if I close on the building, and I’m happy to do I’ve paid a property manager $20,000 to close on a building, and then I refinanced all my money out of the building like two years later. But, but I mean, like having those just because I know I can do that, I do that. You can talk to trades and be able to find that. The other thing is that develop relationships with realtors and brokers who that’s what they do daily. That’s the relationships that they have are with building owners, that’s where you’re probably going to get your biggest result is developing good relationships with people who are actually in the trenches day to day dealing with the relationships that they’ve built over the last 1015 20 years to connect with other building owners. And now they’re connecting, what they’re trying to do is connect the buyer and the seller together themselves. That’s who so if you can build those relationships, those are three different strategies that you can use to, you know, be able to pick up multifamily buildings. And if you want more go pick up a book.

Cherry  

So what’s the percentage of your property purchase? Through the strategies that you mentioned? Or are they also on MLS? How many are through your relationships, or your network? And how many are really through the public MLS? I saw this list thing, like the rumour or the story that I’ve always been told is that when you buy multifamily, it’s never on MLS, those are like probably the last ones that you would look at.

Quentin  

I don’t think I bought a build apartment building off the MLS at all. I don’t think so nothing I can think of off the top of my head. No, the other 25 Plus buildings, none of them have been on MLS Wow. Not that I can think of usually, it’s relationships. Yeah. Just trying to think if there was one on the MLS or not, and no, but

Cherry  

that already gave me the all the audience the percentage that, you know, if you want to get into the game, you’re not just relying on MLS, you have to develop these relationships.

Quentin  

And that’s actually why people tend to want to partner with me is because I’ve developed all those relationships. And you know, I’ve been able to, like, have the deals that that makes sense. And I have developed partners who get deals as well. And like, all of that stuff is things that have been developed over the years, right. I often make jokes, sometimes that MLS is where good deals go to die, like, especially in the apartment building space. But I mean, if I was to list the property, I would probably want to list it on the MLS, right? Because I know that I would probably be getting the most I could for for them. Now if you develop a relationship with a broker, and they’re able to give you the price that you want. And it makes the most sense because based on cap rate and net operating income, you get the price that you want them Why even go to the MLS at the same time. Right? Does that make sense? So I don’t know there’s there’s a lot of pros and cons, I guess. But when it comes to buying properties, it’s always been based on relationships and relationships that have been developed for sure.

Cherry  

Like I have to say, early on in my career, I was very focused and very narrow minded and I would just hide myself in the home office like cranking numbers and crunching tax returns and doing all these things and it wasn’t until recently like just to be fair, I I am still at heart and introvert people don’t call me an introvert but I am at heart very much an introvert to put yourself out there to do the network and make yourself known is not my own nature. Are you an introvert? Yes, you are.

Quentin  

Oh yeah, I’m a big introvert. Well, yeah, sometimes you can see me A party’s and I’m, I’m just sitting there looking. You know, I do push myself to be able to go out and talk to people. You know, most people would call me an extrovert, but I’m not like I am. It’s just not, you know, I like to sit in think honestly, I would rather be going for a walk by myself than I would be in a party with a bunch of people. Like I would rather be hiking or, you know, camping and I’m good with being by myself. You know, it’s funny, I was at a retreat once, and people were all talking about, like, what they would like to do. And I was like, Well, I just like to be on an island by myself for a week.

Cherry  

I don’t think I’m not that extreme yet.

Quentin  

You know, I just sometimes like, you know, I, when I was in university, I did tree planting, right, and tree planting was enabled me to pay for university, and I got paid per tree, but I wouldn’t be working by myself for eight hours, just like hard labour. And that was fine with me, I was good. You know, you crave at that point, you start to crave being social with people, right? Because you’re often by yourself, but I was okay with it. Right? Like, you know, everybody’s different, you got to kind of do you do have to talk to people, you do have to do events, and you know, but it’s about pushing yourself, right? I’m a very goal oriented person, we, I like to do travelling I like, you know, I like to do, and push myself to do new things. And that makes me get out of my comfort zone. And the only way to grow is to get out of your comfort zone. So I agree. Sometimes I tell people, if you want to change, especially what you’re doing, add a zero to every deal that you do going forward. Right? And all of a sudden, you move from a $1 million deal to a $10 million deal. Totally different, right? That’s gonna push you out of your, your comfort zone, right? Kind

Cherry  

of the 10x mentality. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s

Quentin  

not for everyone, right, you have to decide for yourself if that’s for you. But if you want to grow, you need to do something different. You can’t grow by doing the same thing over and over again, you need to grow by doing something different. And then once you find something that you’re happy with, then you just you know, you can continue to get to a point. But what gets you to one place is not going to get you to, you know, a different place. You have to change what you’re doing.

Cherry  

Absolutely. So speaking of that changes and going into different markets and buying multifamily, because we talked about earlier on between us that you grew from you didn’t start buying multifamily unit, no, like 100 unit in one town. Right from the get go. There was a journey from your beginning from the beginning to now and you also quit your job focus on this full time. I want to revisit that story a little bit. Because I think to our listener here, there is a lot to learn from you. Because a lot of us are attracted to real estate because they want financial freedom and dreaming one day that hey, maybe one day I can quit my job with the real estate portfolio. How did that happen to you?

Quentin  

Well, I mean, what ended up happening was that I built a small portfolio of properties, mostly single family homes and duplexes. And I ended up with about $5,000 a month in cash flow that had come from my portfolio. This was back in 2013. And 12, I had bank, I’d been banking that money aside, and then 2013, I needed to make that decision whether to continue or not. Now, when I quit my job, I really only had that one source of income, I was running the Durham real estate investor club. And that gave a little bit of of income, but it wasn’t as much as my portfolio was. And then when I quit my job, I added another form of income, which was flipping properties, which allowed me to gain and all I was doing was the same buy fix refinance strategy that I was doing before, but instead of refinancing, I was just selling them off. I always have a backup strategy. Whenever I did those projects, I always have two or three different ways to exit a property, either refinance and hold or refinance and partner with somebody or sell which is what I was doing at that time. And I was just I was just selling them off. And what was useful about that, and I don’t think a lot of people realise this is when they quit their job, you’re not going to get financing anymore. It becomes much more difficult to do that. Now you could go to be lenders, you there are different ways to go about doing it, but it becomes a lot more challenging. So what I ended up doing once I realised that that wasn’t going to be how I continued to grow unless i i I partnered with other people who would qualify. And I did. I’ve done that before. But what I ended up doing was moving to the apartment building space where it wasn’t based on my qualification, it was mostly based on the building qualification, right. And that allowed me to scale and can continue to grow. And then as I refinanced those assets, I was able to recapture some of the equity that I could reinvest into other projects and to do do what I needed to do with that. So, you know, I think that one to four unit properties are great for people to start to create that that base layer of financial freedom. And then once they take that, they get to a point where they say, Okay, now I’m going to leave my job, you know, I’ve created this great base of income. Now it’s time to think about moving to apartment buildings, for sure. And maybe even just before you do that, to move to apartment buildings, because I think that is where you actually create wealth, you create net worth, and you’re not creating, I think sometimes the mistake is that people think that apartment buildings, you know, they’re not a great cash flow generator, the thing is, is that you have to change your thinking into how that cash flow comes to you. Because in an apartment building, you may be reinvesting all of your cash flow into the asset. But in year three, or year four, year five, you refinance all of your money out, right. And then in year six, you do it again. Yeah, right. And they really the challenge is to make sure that you’re not extracting too much equity, so that their capital gains aren’t theirs, you’ve extracted so much equity, that there’s, you can’t pay the capital gains if you decide to sell the asset, right. So that’s, that’s a, that’s a problem. But that’s not a problem with, you know, one to four unit properties, right. And so it’s a different model. And I think that as you grow in what you’re doing, depending on where you’re at, that’s when you need to decide on what you’re switching to right. I have a great chart where I show, you know, people start off in the build phase, and then they move into the growth phase, right. And when they move from the build phase, they have high leverage, right? Because you owe everybody starts off with high leverage. And then as you’re building, your leverage starts to decrease and your cash flow starts to increase. And as you get further along in your real estate investing career, you end up with, you know, very low leverage, higher cash flow, but that takes time to be able to get to that point. The issue with real estate is that you can be equity rich and cashflow poor. Yeah. Right. And so

Cherry  

lots of clients like that showing negative every single year.

Quentin  

Yeah. And the challenge is, okay, well, then how do I how can I leverage the those one to four unit properties in order to access some of that equity, and maybe you lend it out, maybe you do some some other strategy in order to create cash flow from that. But that is really a problem with one to four unit properties. In the multifamily space, it’s based on net operating income. And because I can add, increase my rents, I can increase the value of the building, thus, I can refinance the asset a lot easier, and then recapture that equity and put it to work again into more assets.

Cherry  

So what’s the typical loan to value when you refinance? When it comes down to the multifamily space?

Quentin  

It just depends on the debt coverage ratio, and it depends. So let’s say you’re going to CMHC financing, you’re probably at a 1.2 debt coverage ratio. But that could mean an 85% loan to value depending on the asset. And we just did. Was it a 17? Unit? Yeah, the 17 unit was a 40 year amortisation 85% loan to value. Wow. But the debt coverage ratio is 1.2. On the asset makes sense?

Cherry  

Yeah, if you can get 40 Yeah, that’s amazing.

Quentin  

Right. And, and that’s in the multifamily space, right. So it is very different. But could I qualify for a car loan? This makes no sense. But this is the banking system, right? Instead of taking a loan, I’ll just pay for it in cash. All right, and then that’s fine. Like it’s just a different way of doing it, unfortunately. Right. But because I don’t have a T for income in the same way. I have to make sure that my my corporate books are in order. I can show what my corporations are making, but because I don’t take it personally because I don’t need it. Right. I may not be able to even it’s such a weird I know, weird situation. Right?

Cherry  

Yeah. Yeah. That’s how our banking system work. That’s right. So in Canada, yes. So okay, now that you mentioned in Canada, so I’ve seen somewhere that you’ve invested in the States. Yes. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. How are those investment coming along?

Quentin  

So I have, I’ve got properties in Tampa in Tampa properties I bought in 2008. Team. And because I couldn’t get financing, I had to purchase them cash, right? I couldn’t get financing on them. And then I got a foreign, like, what do you call it like a foreign buyers loan or whatever. And it was like 7% interest rate at 65% loan to value, which was a real pain. But since that time, just earlier this year, I actually was able to get a loan with a financial institution that had in Canada that had an office in Florida. And so what that enabled me to do is get a 75% LTV at like a rate that made sense, which was like 4%. Yeah, the properties in Tampa, I’d actually doubled in value since I had purchased them. And you know, now it’s still cashflow is about $2,000 per month on those assets. And you know, and I’ve got different, I’m involved in different projects down in, in the US, but I see my stuff in the US as a hedge against the Canadian economy gives me the opportunity to get paid in US dollars. And you know, that’s really the main reason for investing in the US. And it’s important to, you know, from a tax perspective, to avoid double taxation. Yeah, right. Because if you’re not structured properly in the US, you could really like it can really mess you up. And I find that a lot of advice out there is bad advice, because it’s old advice that doesn’t work anymore, like use LLCs. And things like that, right, which just don’t work anymore, right?

Cherry  

It’s not just that like we had in our practice. I mean, this is truth about real estate investment show. But I can’t help to talk about some taxes. We’ve helped a few of our clients doing some structuring Layli worth their US purchases. And we found that without experience, even with the great limited partnership structure, we see some crazy number of taxes, the Combine between the Canadian and the US side is crazy, even with the proper tax structure. And it’s almost like a cost of doing business outside of Canada, that people often don’t account for. So that’s the part that I always wanted to do up sort of a presentation on eventually, one day, I’m not ready. I’m not there

Quentin  

yet. So that would be a great presentation, I’m sure Yeah, yeah,

Cherry  

absolutely. So you know, a lot of investors in different stage in their journey. And I mean, I want an I never really invested in never made a lip to invest in, I guess, in apartment building. We wanted to every time like I went to the multifamily conference, I will I see all these people taking all these massive action, I talk to Sarah, I see that all everyone’s doing all these massive action, the only hope I have is like, I have my own accounting business that I do have to take care of. And my, my husband, Irwin has his own real estate team that he has to take care of we have businesses, and how much of the involvement in the day to day involvement. Do you like how much time do you need to do this thing?

Quentin  

So that’s a trick question.

Cherry  

I’m not sure.

Quentin  

But it depends on how you answer it. So what I would probably say to you is then you partner with somebody who is somebody who does the day to day work, and you don’t take on the amount of work that’s required in order to do this and build the relationships and do all those different things. So you don’t have to be that person that oftentimes I have. I have conversations with business owners, and usually professionals like doctors, dentists, I’ll talk to just different people who are busy. And instead of being you don’t have to be the person who is the operator and do the day to day to benefit from apartment buildings. You can be a partner and it’s okay. Okay,

Cherry  

so how does that how does that number work? Tell me Tell me pretend that I am the Crazy Rich Asians I’m no. I am. But how does the number work? Like if I were to put in like $200,000 and invest it in one of your projects? How does it work?

Quentin  

Well, I can’t really present something like that on a show like this. But like, in general, what happens is that you would take your your funds, and you would own an actual piece of the building, you’re actually an equity owner in the project. This is not like a fund, right? Like you’re actually an equity owner. So that that is shares that are equity positions in the building. But what happens is that within that within that structure, there are people who are you know, more active, those people will have a higher percentage, but they end up doing the business plan. So they’re working on you know, the day to day operations of the building. They’re all So doing the, you know, making sure that the property is going to be able to be refinanced and pull all the funds out. So usually what happens in year three to five, we’re looking to refinance the building and make sure that our partners are able to get back the funds that they invested, but they still own the equity share of the building. Right. And so if you think about that, from a return perspective, that in three to five years, that’s very lucrative. Yeah, right. And I mean, nobody can promise, you know, anything. But I’ve been doing this since 2009. You know, and I, you know, I work with people that I like, and that, like me, and I think you don’t have to be the person who is in the day to day. Now, if you wanted to be the person who is, and this is the other side, if you want to be the person that is going to be in the day to day, there are lots of great people that have courses and that that you can learn on, you know, how to do underwriting on multifamily building to make sure that you’re able to carry out a business plan, right, you need to spend time and effort into learning that business, you need to be able to develop the relationships and go out like, I’m often like, maybe once a week, at least going out for lunch or meeting somebody this morning, I was here as meeting I was, you know, I’m always meeting people in building my relationships. And that’s something that you’re going to have to be able to do, if you’re a busy business owner, you don’t have time to do that, right. So you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of things in the background that you need to do as well, you could just buy a building off the MLS, that’s definitely something that you could do. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be cashflow positive, when you’re doing that. And it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be in the position to refinance in three years. But it could mean that you still own that asset, right. So it just depends on like how you want to go about doing this, anybody can buy real estate, you don’t have to be you don’t have a PhD to do that. The problem is, is that, you know, buying the wrong asset is going to be a lot more expensive than just partnering with somebody in giving doing the right thing, right. Because like apartment buildings, like if you end up with an asset, that’s losing money every month, and then you have to put in 100,000 or $200,000, for renovations, and then you have to, you know, pay somebody to leave. And then you have the LTV issues that come up, you can be out like hundreds of 1000s of dollars, which is very different than, you know, dealing with one to four unit space. And that’s often why I say start off there, right. But I often have like we are usually, you know, working with people who want are working in the one to four unit space, don’t want to get into the commercial space, but know that that’s where they want to go. So when they saw an aside or, you know, they may work with us. Yeah, right. There’s just different ways of doing it. Like, yes, you can definitely do it how much time is really based on the amount you want to dedicate to it, right? That’s the success you’ll have, right? If you want to be great multifamily investor, expect to spend, you know, 20 to 30 hours, just like every week working on that business to a point where at some point, you’ll know what you need to do. And then you’ll be spending a lot less time doing it. Right? Just like any business,

Cherry  

absolutely. 100%. I like your when we go to events, we often get pumped up and think oh, it’s super easy. You’d like tomorrow, I the day after the event, I would hear or see my clients saying like, I’m doing this, my goal is this big. And I’m like happy for them. It’s just that at the same time, I’m looking at my own personal situation like, can I just quit my accounting job and just do this full time. And that’s not something that I can at this point I want to do. And so that’s why I’m like, I need a realistic picture in terms of how much time commitment you need, I guess with any business is the same.

Quentin  

It’s the same with your profit, like how long did it take you to get to where you are?

Cherry  

A long time? Eight years, 10 years, 10 years? Eight years?

Quentin  

Yeah. And same with me, it’s taken me that long to be able to build my portfolio to the size that it is and develop all the relationships and the business partnerships and all of that that got me to this place. So yes. Can anybody do it? Yes. Anybody can open an accounting practice. Can you? Can you be a successful accountant with a successful practice? That’s very different. Yeah,

Cherry  

absolutely. I agree. 100%. Yeah. Now speaking of all these investments, where do you think that interest rate is gonna go? That million dollar.

Quentin  

All right, first of all, I hate that question, because I get asked all the time, but I have to ask. I know. And, but the thing is, is that interest rates are just an expense. Let’s not get like people get all caught up with what’s happening in the last 30 days, and lose sight of what happens in the next 10 years from today. because if you think about interest rates in the fact that okay, interest rates have gone up, you’re probably thinking, you know, because the one to four unit market has lost 25% In the last six months, or whatever it is, you’re losing sight, the fact that in the last 10 years, that same asset would have probably tripled in price. Yep. Is it more like so let’s start to focus on whether the property cash flows that makes sense is cashflow positive, and you’re able to carry that asset based on, let’s say, 10 year rates? Can you carry that asset based on tenure rates, and that way, your stress testing, whatever you’re buying, and you’re able to hold that asset for the long term, because if you’re able to, like, if you’re able to hold that property, and everybody out there, I want you to think about, if you bought whatever property you lived in 10 years ago, what is it worth now? Right? Yeah, it’s probably worth a lot more. Yeah, right. Especially if you’re in a market that makes sense. Like, you know, we have population that’s coming to that area, we have different sorts of employment, we see governments that are investing into the infrastructure in the area, we see all of those good things that make the the economics of an area. Good, right? If we’re doing that, that’s what we should focus on. Because interest rate is just an expense. It’s just like property management. It’s just like property tax. It’s all it is, is an expense, let’s not get carried away, is what I want to tell people look at, stop thinking about what’s happened in the last 30 days and start thinking about what’s going to happen the next 10 years. And then make sure that you’re buying properties that are cashflow positive, always I’ve always said that if you buy a property that’s cashflow positive, and, and your plan is to hold it for 10 years, and you’ve stress tested the asset so that you know that you’re going to be able to withstand, you know, rates that go up, then what doesn’t matter what interest rates do?

Cherry  

So that’s such a tricky answer as well. The reason is, because then it leads to a lot of the questions that maybe I don’t get, but a lot of our clients would, would be asking that those questions. How do you find these cash flowing properties? Because it seems like it’s disappearing, like I think Durham and Hamilton Hamilton is where I invest. And I know you invest in Durham heavily, at least in that one to four unit space. So how do you find the properties that would still at least let’s not go to cashflow positive, let’s just go into like cash flow neutral? How do you at least find that properties that would be able to give you enough rent to support everything?

Quentin  

Well, let’s say prices decreased 20 to 25%. All of a sudden, you’re gonna see assets that make more sense. That didn’t make sense before. Yeah, the trick is to stop being fearful and, you know, start being greedy, because this is what everybody else is they’re being fearful. Aside from that what ends up happening over time is that you move out from from a market and you move further out. But you want to make sure that the economic fundamentals are there with whatever market that you’re interested in. So maybe instead of being in like 10 years ago, I could have bought a property in Pickering, and it would have been cashflow positive. I’m not going to buy a property in Pickering. That’s cashflow positive today, right. So I’m going out to maybe Bowmanville to be able to buy a similar asset. Now I’m still in the Durham Region. And but I’m going further east, right? Maybe I’m in Peterborough, maybe I’m in Kingston, maybe I’m in Belleville, right. And I’m looking at different markets as long as all the fundamentals are there for the market. And you you see the long term, macro economics are there. And then the fundamentals are there, that helps you to make a decision on where you’re going. I may be called the Durham Real Estate Group, but we have people from all over the place that come because it’s not about that it’s about buying cash flowing assets. So maybe what it is, is like people need to start thinking about a different area. Like if it’s if the area doesn’t make sense, right now move to a different area that does, right start, don’t get pigeonholed?

Cherry  

Well, we have, we work with a lot of clients who buy pre construction homes, and they they feel comfortable because they know and it’s like less to maintain, because it’s only a pre construction condo per se. So there was only 800 square feet to maintain. There’s only so many appliances in there. And so a lot of these people are unable to get financing. They are running into different challenges. And but they see the capital gain appreciation because they tie up your money for a number of years. And therefore there is that, I guess not forced appreciation but the market has gone up over time and then they see appreciation and they see this success. Would you say that over the last 10 years? To me I’ve seen so many different deals and some people are doing great. Some people have developed systems and I are truly successful. But there are mistakes that we may like to be honest, like I’ve seen in my own portfolio, we’ve sold a couple of properties that are barely breaking even. And I feel like we’re breaking even we’re lucky because thanks to the real estate boom, rather than, like my own success or my own decision making, I don’t like I don’t know, if I’m explaining myself well enough. I think what I’m trying to say is that real estate because of the asset class, it has been going up. And can we continue to? Can we operate smartly? And can we take advantage of the growth? Is what I’m trying to say the instead of relying on luck?

Quentin  

Yeah. And I think like, I’ve got to say, I’m not like, I am not a fan of pre construction, anything. I think that’s more speculation than anything, but this is my own personal opinion. And I, everybody does it their own way. So however you want to do it, yeah, I prefer to buy an asset that is cashflow positive from day one and continue to manage it. And you know, I think that there, you have to decide, I’m saying that from my perspective, because I don’t think it’s wrong for people to do that. You just have to decide for yourself, why are you doing it, like if you’re doing it to pass on intergenerationally a condo to your kids, and you want to be able to do that, you know, maybe that’s a great asset, or you’re looking to add net worth, or you’re just trying to make a quick buck, like whatever your reason is, are you trying to create cash flow, so you can quit your job, all of those things, kind of push you into different assets, right? Like when I’m buying, I’m not buying. But if I were to buy a pre construction, I’m betting that today’s price that I’m locking into is going to be lower than the price that it’s going to when it’s completed is going to be sold that right. And whether I take possession of that asset or not is, you know, it’s just going to depend on what I decide to do. Now, the tax consequences going to be different depending on whether you’re holding that asset or not holding that asset. Right. And so that plays a part, but not everybody talks about that, right? Oh, I

Cherry  

tried to trust me, I tried to every other videos is about assignment HST, and then assignment income, but people don’t like to hear it.

Quentin  

Yeah, well, they don’t like to. But that has to be part of that the like the thought pattern where most people, and I like to buy assets that I’m going to hold on for for the long term. I’m not looking to do quick flips. And I also think that sometimes those pre construction condos are, are marketed as quick flips. Right? And I just don’t, it’s just not me, that’s my point of view. I think that, you know, if you’re buying that asset, it’s cash flow neutral right now, I would say how can you change the way that it’s run right now, in order to change the way that the cash flow comes from that asset? Do you need to go back to your tenants and say, Listen, you know, I don’t think that this is, I’m not making any money here, maybe I can pay you, you know, a couple grand to leave. And, you know, we can end the tenancy, maybe I can, I can do something else to make sure that that cash flow is is there in that asset, you know, that, like, I think we’re only locked in because we think we’re locked in, right, there may be other ways to go about doing this. And, you know, thinking about the different ways that we can create cash flows from an asset to make it different, helps us to be able to hold on to that asset. So, you know, I understand what you’re saying. The other thing too is like, you know, there are rules that we can take advantage of, for example, if you have a unit that’s been created, I can’t remember the date is that like November 2018, or something like that, it’s built after that you’re not in rent control in Ontario, for example. And that allows you to like if you are cashflow neutral, all of a sudden you bump up or if you built a basement suite from an unfinished space, that basement suite maybe is not under rent control, but the upper unit is but that that basement unit can make maybe make you cashflow positive in a way that allows you to hold on to that asset right. So let’s like let’s be creative. Let’s think of ways that like I’m I’m a total you know I like to think of different ways to be able to do things there’s not always one way right and so like let’s you know what I would say is okay, let’s take a look at that that asset and see what we can do with it in order to make it cashflow positive. There’s there’s lots of ways to do that.

Cherry  

That’s amazing. Well, thank you so much you’ve shared so much with us today and I am very thankful to have you on our get like as my very first podcast host guest so thank you so much and if for anyone who wants to reach out to you or find out more about term Rei, how do they reach out to you Oh,

Quentin  

You can go to Durham rei.ca Or if you want to reach out to me I can I’ll do a 15 minute call if you are the right criteria if you go to Quentin D’souza dot com, and then you can we can chat and see if there’s a good fit.

Cherry  

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, again. wealth of knowledge, as always, and I appreciate it. No problem at all. You

Quentin  

did a great job to us. Awesome.

Cherry  

I just need to ask questions and have my text twist to it. That’s it. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Oh, you’re welcome.

Erwin  

Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate for the cash flow. But with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there are forgive the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more and register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself but so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Greetings, my fellow real estate investors. Welcome to another episode of The Truth about real estate investing show for Canadians. My name is Erwin Szeto, I am a Canadian as last time I checked in how much better our birthdays in 2022 than the last two years. If Cherry’s second 20th birthday is any example. It was like a party just like 9099 Apologise to the young people. It’s a older person term to party like it’s 1999 it’s a Prince song. It’s Okay, nevermind, just ignore this old man. Cherry partied hard. She went to the spa, she did some karaoke escape room, and Lady Gaga concert 50,000 other people, some stupid-expensive dinners. And the best part the part that I organised which was the host party, complete with our use of our pool, barbecue, fresh mangoes, finder page, etc, etc. They hosted a bunch of friends and their kids, including one Vallely, visiting from Dubai, everyone had a great time. And it’s our good to host everyone that our new hosts. It’s like the last two years never happened as a present. Well, I have a deviant golf town browsing in picked out a very thoughtful gift set of Black Widow, you know, the Marvel movie character, Black Widow collector golf balls for cherry. And when I brought them home, the kids were super jealous. Also, I got her a pair of golf shoes as cherries, current golf shoes are basically garbage. And they’re well over 10 years old, extremely well worn. They were supposed to be weighed, you’d never know by the look of them. The spikes on the bottom of the cleats have been all worn off. They were plastic leads, they’re all worn off. Basically, the only redeeming value of the shoe is that they’re waterproof. But yeah, there’s no grip. After this level of gift giving, I will humbly submit my application as husband of the year. Sorry, ladies from the investment world. Have you heard of Tiger 21? That is the private network of high net worth individuals, the minimum to join for application purposes. You know what the pay them law, I’m sure you pay them. But the application purposes to be accepted, you have to have a minimum of $20 million in liquid assets worth of liquid assets. The average net worth of a tiger 21 member is over $100 million. Us. Why is this important? Well for this group historically, because I’ve been following them for close to a decade, they do a survey of their members and to see what they’re liking for investments, right. So historically, based on the survey results of their members, these really really rich people. Historically, the largest percentage of their investments was in real estate. So no surprise there. I’m a small fish, but that’s where most of my money is. And what’s more, I make almost my money. But how recently that just changed. As now stocks are now their number one take the number one largest percentage of their investment portfolio, as they’re seeing real bargains in the stock market. That’s the words of the of the CEO of Tiger 21 real bargains. I’m personally a small fish. So I’ll keep the majority of my wealth in real estate, and I am deal shopping in the stock stock market. If you too want to learn more about how to invest like the ultra high net worth, we’re sharing all their secrets at the wealth hacker conference on November 12. live and in person only at the Toronto Congress Centre, we have some amazing speakers and vendors planned plenty of free parking. And just like last time, this will be the event of the year for entrepreneurs and investors alike. If you’re following me on my social media, or email or on my email newsletter, you’ll be informed of any promotions that we run. But just so you know, the price is going up as in the discounts on the promotions will be to be declining. So if you buy closer to the conference, you will be paying more money so and also the VIPs tickets will sell out. So don’t delay. Your FOMO will be realised the sooner you buy it, the more money you save. So go to www dot wealth hacker.ca For details on the event. Nonsense sweet show this week ever. We have a really interesting interview of a gentleman, also a co worker of mine at Rockstar real estate my friend Monty Dillon. He has a unique background of having worked his way up the corporate ladder, but in the financial services world, specifically in the compliance department. So his job was to follow up on complaints on their own staff. And also like we audit other compliance staff I’ve met my my my experience, they audit also what their staff own certain members of the influential industry haven’t disclosed what investments they hold to their employer. So that’s the part of the point of the compliance department. Hey, there’s so much you have saw firsthand who really makes money in the investment services world. Hence he started buying real estate.

Erwin  

Montu shares how he started like most of us do hustling hard in search of cash flow by Houses duplexes for plexes Airbnbs then later transitioned into new construction condos, for honestly negative cash flow, but way less headaches. Mar two is a bit of a trader as well has he has divested some properties near the peak, just you know. So in the last 12 months is the vastness and properties and what property types his eyes set on for his next investment may surprise you. Surprise me. Marty shares his experience in the current market of reading lowball offers and being on the receiving end of lowball offers as well. We recorded this in the middle of August so you can expect some lowballs are flying around. This is definitely a story of resilience, entrepreneurship and taking control of one’s financial future. And also if you want a free copy of Monty’s digital book, go to Dylan Realty systems.ca. That’s d h i ll O N Realty systems.ca. Please enjoy the show. may want to Hey, hey dinner, good not golfing. But what’s keeping you busy.

Montu  

You know what I have been passionate about golf for the last little while, last couple of months. To tell you the truth. I haven’t been endorsing any condo projects in the last couple of months. And that’s because I’ve seen the potential for a huge pullback in the market since like, March, April. And I’m not one to like, start a panic spread of telling people hey, this guy’s falling. gotta sell your assets. Even that’s what I’ve been thinking. But I just couldn’t tell people to start buying during the decline. So I’ve been keeping myself busy with golf. You golf?

Erwin  

Poorly, or? Anyone lately, so? No, I haven’t hit one lately.

Montu  

So I’ve been golfing for about 25 years, never? Well, I have not I’ve been a terrible golfer for 25 years.

Erwin  

Please tell me it gets easier. Five years?

Montu  

Well, here’s here it is, you gotta get professional lessons. So I went in and spoke to like a coach a couple of times to straighten myself out. And the difference is night and day. So and I have been telling myself for the last five years that when I earn it, I’m going to buy myself some custom clubs. Nice. And so I think this, this is the year this is the year getting fitted and getting myself some some finally some good clubs. And it makes a huge difference. If there’s any golfers out there listening to this, stop struggling, you know, just go get fitted, different clubs performed differently for everyone.

Erwin  

Not the same shoe fits everyone, again, showing the term professional help. Yeah, her bad idea.

Montu  

Now just just proper training, everyone’s got to get straightened out.

Erwin  

That’s a good analogy for almost everything. I’d have a business coach and investment coach, I’d like business coaches in my life.

Montu  

People are trying to like buy real estate, just watching YouTube videos and trying to figure it out when what they really need is someone who’s run the laps before and can just hold their hands and guide them through the process,

Erwin  

right? Just gonna warn you if we’re gonna shoot a YouTube video after this. So we the same schmucks that people can learn from. But we’ve run some laps, we run some laps, we know a little bit of investing. So hopefully we’d like to be the good schmucks on here. So once you have an interesting journey, and you’re in terms of real estate, because you actually come from the investments world, can you tell us about First off what year was that? And then what was your experience working in investments world because you worked in the financial investments world, like large publicly traded companies,

Montu  

the early 2000s. So I do have a background in investments, I was stocks and options. licenced that was my previous previous life. I had the plan to build up a huge stock portfolio and let that say, make a million bucks in stocks and then just collect 6% For the rest of my life. And I thought I could live off of that. Lo and behold, a lot changes in a decade. Right? So I was working with investment advisors and portfolio managers, and I was trading for myself. And I just, I had a position in the compliance department. In a couple of companies like CIBC and Dundee wealth, we’re now they’ve become Echelon partners, I found that I was able to climb the corporate ladder really quickly, especially in Toronto. I come from Montreal, where the salaries were a lot less than Toronto. So when I came to Toronto in like the mid 2000s, my salary practically doubled. And then it would jump by like 30 40% because I would just change, change locations, change careers. Now careers change employers every couple of months, right, because it was so competitive. They were offering the headhunters were like really aggressive, and they were offering immense salary increases. So my salary went from like 35,000 in Montreal, to well, almost 100,000 plus bonuses, which pass those bonuses and the insurance and the stock options. Those are the golden handcuffs. That’s what I learned. So my journey in trying to make as much money as possible and retire early, I learned that I could not break a glass ceiling, no matter how hard I worked, because I was working for somebody else, they subdued my earning potential. So there was a level that I was trying to reach a director in the company I was at. And I had climbed to the position of manager, director, Junior director was right after that, and I just could not get it done, no matter how much work I put into it, no matter how many connections I made, apparently, with this company that I worked for, they only allowed people with like an MBA to reach the director and higher level to become a VP, you had to have an MBA, which was strange to me, because I mean, I knew some directors, and they didn’t look like they had MBAs. You know, I hope there aren’t any directors listening to this. feel slighted. But I mean, there’s smart people and average people. And I learned that in the investment industry, there are some incredibly brilliant minds who have amazing analysis capability. But those are few and far between. And most of them are just average people. In fact, I think every industry is just average people. And there are only a few that really step out, that are the cream of the crop that stand out from the rest, you know, the top 9% as I like to call them, it exists everywhere, in my opinion, even in real estate, you know, even dentists, doctors, lawyers, I’m sure we all know some bad lawyers

Erwin  

is bad, and everything is bad. And everything was great in every industry, too.

Montu  

So although I couldn’t break this glass ceiling, I thought my earning should not be limited. I felt I should be making 300,000 a year. My salary at the time was 90 something 1000 plus bonuses of like 20,000 bucks. So it was just north of 100k. But I was like no, I want to Dylan is a 300k minimum earn, you know, three to 500 should be my lifestyle. I think that’s what we all want. Because that we don’t just want the money. We want the freedom that money provides. So I decided to get a motorcycle and crash it and break about 24 bones in my body. This was terrible plan. Yeah, it was it completely backfired on me. Right. So lying there for three months, not able to sleep lying down. I had to sleep in a recliner. And that’s when I realised that okay, I cannot I was dreading going back to my workplace. It was just the most horrible environment with office politics and some of the characters were just you work with troll. Yeah, at least in this office. There was a couple of trolls and I really did not want to go back to that. So I said to my wife, darlin, I have a crazy idea. Better than motorcycling better better than a motorcycle. I’m gonna be we’re gonna buy some real estate. I think that duplexes if we have a portfolio of duplexes, it’s the cash flow. If we can get a five duplexes that are cash flowing, 1000 bucks, we’re gonna replace my salary. Yeah, that’s all I was making. I was making like 5000 A month after taxes. How the hell did we survive on that? You know what I mean? So that started my epic journey. And I found us got the television personality from HG McGilvery. I found him my wife brought his book to me. And I read it and I was like, Who is this clown? He’s got his picture all over his book. This is I’m not paying attention to him. He’s so egotistical. Then I watched a show one of his shows. And I was amazed at how humble and charming and good hearted he was nothing this guy’s got it figured out. Okay, let me read his book. So read his book. And I was like, Alright, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to get some duplexes, Scotland McGilvery says, and we’ll be financially free, or

Erwin  

anything properties, income properties, it’s a suite of basements or anchor properties, for sure was all about

Montu  

and then I’ll slowly leave my job. And we can do this. And, you know, got licenced got my real estate licence, started work doing that part time and working in the financial industry full time. But in all 21 me I wasn’t doing much work full time. I was just focusing on real estate trying to figure out trying to get crack this code. And then one day, I stumbled upon income for life. Tom and Nick Carozza, Shadow Tom and Nick are our real estate Rockstar real estate and I read their book and be being a sceptic. I was I was like, telling me I was so angry and I was reading the book. I was like, this does not work. This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. This is not gonna work. And I was I was yelling at it every day to my wife. Look, look at what these guys are for. posing, there’s no way you can do a rent to own it just won’t work. By the end of the book, though, I’ve got to admit, I was sold as like, you know what, I think these guys are onto something, we got to try it, it just the It’s just math. And math doesn’t lie. So let’s do it. Let’s, let’s try, I’m gonna go to one of their free training classes. And yeah, that’s where I met Tom Carozza. So I didn’t join Rockstar brokerage right away, it was just, you know, part of my journey trying to accumulate a whole bunch of like, houses a whole bunch, you know, I bought a fixer uppers, converted them into with legal basements. So have like a two unit dwelling, I got bought me a four Plex I did one rent to own, which ultimately didn’t work out. And then, at some point, because of all the work I was doing, in my houses, I was like, I gotta get property managers, and all the tenant issues that I had the tenant profile in these duplexes, and for plexes, they didn’t really make a lot of money, and they often had problems paying the rent. So one day, someone told me that the best thing we ever did was buy a pre construction condo. And I was like, no way that doesn’t work. You know, houses land is where the money’s at, that’s what you want to get. But, you know, because I had extra assets, and I was able to get a mortgage. At the time, it’s really hard to do that. Now. I decided to go ahead and buy a pre construction condo, what ended up happening was I made like 150 or $200,000, within that timeframe, from start to finish, actually was over, just from start to closing, the value is up 200,000. And I sold it a year later. And then after all my you know, realtor expenses, and paying taxes, etc. I my profit was about $220,000. I didn’t have to fix up any houses, I didn’t have to clean up any cockroaches. I didn’t have any toilets to clean, which is what I was doing previously, you know, getting tenants into my homes, I didn’t have to do any of that. It was just I found good builders who knew how to build and deliver. And then I just started doing that over and over. I just found the pattern, made a few mistakes, figured out what the right pattern is. And then I would just go into business with those people who had the good projects. And then it was just like a sign if you checks, it gets cashed a couple of months later. And then on closing, you get a mortgage, you can either sell it but I found the sweet spot was selling the condo about a year to a year and a half after closing. Why is that? The sweet spot? Number one, there’s you know, tax benefits. You get your HST rebate, you lock that in your value of the unit with a tenant carrying it for a year. If for some reason, I haven’t figured out why but the value jumps within that first year. Lots of theories as to why because you know, the building is still in renovation, and then renovations are all done. People want new but they want now. Exactly right. Yeah. And they’re willing to pay for it. Right. So as an investor if I’m willing to carry it. And if sometimes even at a loss, these some of these units, they cashflow negative, about three 400 bucks a month. So I’m sacrificing about 4800 A year $5,000 A year. But in the end on the flip side when I sell I’m making 200 Without the struggle of having to maintain real estate, maintain houses, fix a leak in the basement, which I have tonnes of experience doing. Believe me

Erwin  

to someone to this let me apology there because there’s lots to unpack. Because you’re skim through the whole part. You worked in the compliance department in the investment industry. Sauron Konya. Yes. What did you see? What can you share? So because you saw you saw the skeletons in the closet shenanigans,

Montu  

right, so what I learned back in those days was there are good advisors and there are bad advisors. I like to surround myself only with good advisors, people who know what they’re doing. But as I manage the compliance department, I saw all kinds of shenanigans. I saw one fellow, this was unbelievable. It was just outright fraud. He would, he took his clients money, and when the market this one stock tanked, they went from $300,000 to $50,000. And clients investor clients investment their account, and he decided to create fictitious statements just on Excel. He sent them homemade Excel statements saying, Yeah, your account is fine, your money’s good. You’ve gone up. And then I remember every time we would try to have a discussion with him in the compliance department. He would say his grandmother died. So it wasn’t just me investigating him. He was other officers that were trying to figure out what’s going on with him. And then when it was my turn to investigate him, you know, and put the bring the boot down. He was like, Oh, my grandmother died. Sorry. Can I get back to you in two days? I’m like, Okay, sure. And then someone else tells me oh my god, that’s his grandmother died. That must be the third time. And I was like, oh, okay, we got a problem. So he ultimately disappeared. We think he left the country. There was a the police went looking for him. They just couldn’t find him. So, yeah, and that person’s whose account was destroyed. Luckily, the company I worked with made them whole. Wow. That’s nice. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, 100 million dollars a year profit, they could at least give them 250k back and avoid a major lawsuit. Right. But again,

Erwin  

you were in the investments industry, financial markets industry, why did you want to be a real estate investor need to be rich doing what the these investment advisors are recommending?

Montu  

That’s a great question. That’s what I wondered. Like, why couldn’t I get ahead? In the investment industry? World? You’re an insider. Yeah, that was an insider who paid less commission do friends and family specials, right? So what I learned was the only people who are really making money in the stock world are the middlemen, the ones who are doing the trades, who are making the Commission, which is ultimately the house, the brokerages. Right, the the CIBC is the RBC is the big houses, they have their investment division, and all their portfolio managers have pictures of their boats on the wall. They all do. I’m like, Wow, these guys are really got it figured out. But what I learned was because their clients were not making the money that they were, I couldn’t continue with it. I believe in you know, the rising tide raises all boats. And it was only their boat that was floating, no one else had a boat, frankly, so and I couldn’t stand that it really bothered me. So I said, You know what, I don’t want to be an advisor. I think the stock market is a rigged game, where only the market makers make any money. So I said, I’m going to do something where once I figure out how to make money for myself, I’m going to help others do it. And so like my my client base, in real estate, and as you know, I am a real estate agent, specialising in condoms, my client base are the ones that I try, whose votes I try to raise. And it’s been pretty good. It’s been a really good decade, I’d say.

Erwin  

Now, not all financial planners and investment advisors are bad. We were talking about before we recording. Yeah. And I, you know, I said are some people I would never trust with their own money. You know, we’ve all lost money at something. I think some people are more talented at losing more money than so I’m not against for certain people best right. That’s the right thing to do. Let someone else manage your money. And also, same thing that’s in common new construction condos. I think for certain people, that’s the right investment for them. Right. But I wanted to ask you, for example, in your journey that you had lost single family, where would you call it resale properties? Use properties? Did that fund your condo investing?

Montu  

Yeah, well, ultimately, it’s where I started. And it was those assets that grew. Yeah. And then I was either able to refi or sell them. And then, and I just thought to myself, You know what, I’ve made a profit. I don’t want to do it again. Because it’s really messy. I want to do something where I get something brand new.

Erwin  

You didn’t want to repeat the experience. You want the grief, you didn’t want the doing the maintenance, and especially the heavy millions.

Montu  

And it’s just because I’d rather do something else with my time. Right, right. Right now I’m golfing a lot, I spend more time with my family. It’s my custom designed life that I feel I’m living. And I wouldn’t want to change that. Even for money, right. So there’s one asset that you

Erwin  

see after you’ve made all this money.

Montu  

That’s one way of looking at it. But there’s one commodity, I think that we cannot ever create. And that’s time where the time the clock is against us. So I also believe that money is the store of energy. And more than just that it’s not just power. People think it’s power, it’s freedom. I think it’s just a store of energy. And when you unleash that energy properly, you create time for yourself, which is that’s the holy grail to me time to do what you want with who you want. And remove the elements of your life that are unpleasant. People places things right, get rid of those out

Erwin  

and just see so often though, that it starts with hustle like you hustled even with 24 broken bones. You went out and hustled in order in order to find an easier investment strategy. Right? Right. So yeah, that’s my like, I mean, like, you know, that’s right for you. It’s not right for everyone. I have this weird Asian mentality that the more suffer the more money it’s crazy.

Montu  

Well, don’t get me wrong. I still have houses in my portfolio. I’m still half in half.

Erwin  

Yeah, and you still hustle I know you have you. Do you still have any Airbnbs left?

Montu  

Well, during the pandemic, I had shut them down. Right. But we are planning on reopening, right. I have long term tenants in my furnished rentals. But now it’s it’s I think it’s time to go back to the service the tourist industry again.

Erwin  

And you do it inside a Toronto condo, right? Yeah.

Montu  

It’s been a bit trickier since Toronto condos, Toronto, the city itself has shut down. Well, as soon as they shut down, they’ve limited the ease that Airbnb operators were able to operate. And before, it’s a little more difficult, but those who know the system, insiders are still doing just fine. They’re still making six 810 $1,000 a month in these condos and there are opportunities. But they’re not for everybody because it’s hard work. It’s not a set it and forget it. A lot of people have to hire property managers to run their Airbnb and PMS. They take about 15 to 20% of the gross. And then what you do you have a property manager I used to write while it was running, right? Yeah, but now I’m going I’m going to reopen it. I’m just going to manage it myself.

Erwin  

You’re going to fluff pillows and well stocked toilet paper.

Montu  

Well, well, that’s the thing. It’s so easy to hire a cleaner to do that. Okay, so you hire out with our technology, you can just press an app and someone will go to your your condo and do it all for you. But as for the guests communication, setting the prices, looking at the market, I’ll do that myself. I did it before figured out how

Erwin  

right. So you talked about limiting grief with your other investments. How do you keep an Airbnb investment with limited grief that you’ve read the same stuff articles in the media? I have, you know, raging postgraduate graduation party in two people got shot, whatever. Right?

Montu  

Well, the media likes to print what bleeds. Yeah, because it reads, yes. That’s how media works. So I have found that 98% of the time you get amazing guests, they’re respectful, they just come in, they use your place. And then they leave

Erwin  

people like me, I’m not there to cause any trouble. You have my credit card. And I’m cheap, causing any trouble.

Montu  

So what I also did was I increased the deposit required on my Airbnb, increase your damage deposit to $1,000. Ultimately, it’s just a deterrent, because if they feel they can cause the damage, Airbnb is going to side with them. And lately, Airbnb has not been making owners whole, they’ve been a bit problematic, because they’ve scaled and now they’re a publicly traded company, they, they seem to be putting less effort towards owners of properties. But that said, like 90% of the time, you’re gonna have an easy run. You’re just a hotel, you own a mini hotel, and you just send your maid in to clean it once in a while. You make all the money. And then just remember, it’s a business, treat it as a business and business and I know you have experienced you guys ran your own Airbnb. So I’m preaching to the choir here. But for the listeners, it’s a business, treat it like a business and you’ll flourish treated personally, if you get upset about what they did to your place, you’re gonna want to quit, and then you’re giving up all these potential returns that you could be making.

Erwin  

I don’t talk about enough, I call it return on my grief. So just because I naturally think analytically, the story often shares one time. I had like a small piece of roof that just goes over my front porch and when our properties well as a windstorm, like we’ve had with some crazy wind storms. So it was blowing and just hanging off, right. And my tenant has four kids, single mom, and then I couldn’t get someone to take care of it. So I drove and went out and took care of it. I got a ladder unscrewed it took it down. Or I called a buddy to pick it up because it couldn’t fit my car was too big to take it away. But you know, it took me two hours total right? To drive out take care of it. Like oh, sucks the weekends my weekend that I think about how much money I made. on that property. You think about it, right? Yeah. You know, that property? Probably appreciated rental five, six grand that month alone cost me two hours. So that’s like, you know, 2500 $3,000 an hour. Yeah. That’s worth my grief. Right. So then like, okay, I’m okay. Yeah. Right. So that’s why me like return on grief for what was going on with that because Airbnb is not always easy. And also, like you said, you can’t get up. Like you can get upset, but then go back to quantify it. I was upset for 20 minutes. And a cash flow of eight grand this month. isn’t worth it. Think of how much grief people have in a day job to make eight grand a month. Right. There’s probably a lot of grief for almost everyone, you know, commuting whatever, office bullies, right. Yeah, office trolls, as you mentioned office trolls, or was that the name of the app that you mentioned that you use for booking a maid?

Montu  

It’s called bark.com is going to bark.com I think var K var K? And then finally, maybe, yeah, you just just say, hey, I need a cleaner. And they just send, you know, you get a whole bunch of people who are saying, oh, yeah, I could, I could clean your place, this is my price. And you get some good cleaners and bad cleaners, like everything else. So then when you find a good one, you just keep them and make sure you pay them well. Right? If they if they want 100 bucks, say, Look, I’ll give you 120 to come back. And you know, I think effort needs to be rewarded, right?

Erwin  

Because they kind of like what the market is, for example, good quality people. Exact 20%. Inflation. Yeah. And to make sure that your priority, exactly right. Well, if you’re caching like eight grand a month, you know, paying a little extra for cleaning, it’s probably worth it.

Montu  

Yeah, right. And people get bogged down in the details. And sometimes they run an operation like an Airbnb hosting operation. And they’re like, Well, I don’t want to pay 150 bucks for cleaning. Come on, folks. Here, you just made $1,000. This month, just shell out the extra 150 It’s a business. Every business has an expense. If you want it that’s one thing I’ve learned in the last two decades is when you throw money at a problem, it fixes it. Don’t rely on your own expertise that are other people are better equipped to take care of your problem. And just give them money to do it. In money. Just you’re storing some energy. And they can do it faster, better quicker than you can. Like, you know, plumbers, for example. I knew a couple things about plumbing and electricity with all the houses I’ve managed. I used to do it all myself. And now it’s I just find a plumber. And they fix it permanently. Yeah, they cost. Yeah, electricians costs. But guess what, I’ve never gone back to those homes, that I botched the electrical or the plumbing job myself. So now it’s it’s you know, one and done. When you hire a pro.

Erwin  

I think part of your grief issue is that you did a lot of the work yourself.

Montu  

Maybe it’s trying to save the money. Right?

Erwin  

I said it recently, it takes a village to raise a child it takes a village to have a successful investment property. Yeah. Right. And all these people tried to do it themselves. Yeah. Same thing with raising a child to not do daycare to not you know, do schooling to Yeah, like it takes a village. Can’t do it by yourself. It’s just a lot easier if you don’t do it by yourself. Can you give us a bit of a breakdown? What percentage of your portfolio is new construction versus like everything else?

Montu  

Well, here’s the thing. My new construction is I trade it. So right now my

Erwin  

if you’re not really an investor of new construction trader, I’m investing

Montu  

during the holding period. So yeah, I mean, as you point out my new beyond one year of Yeah, because especially with, you know, the recent downturn, I advocated everyone to sell in like February, I was like, Hey, guys, I think the markets gonna pull back sell what you have while you can, I sold two properties, one last year, one this year, in March or April. And I’m glad I did because I was predicting like a 30% pullback. At the same time, I was seeing a potential increase in condo prices, because of just the laws of supply and demand. So the houses that I sold, they did come down, and I’m glad I sold them. And I think versus last year.

Erwin  

The policies were these both condos that you sold her homes, or both houses. Yeah.

Montu  

What’s it nice low rise, one in Guelph. And one in Hamilton got it. Sorry, continue. So yeah, I made out made up well with them. And now I’m sitting on dry powder, because I think that there’s a next opportunity that’s coming. So I’m a 6040 in my portfolio with new construction and resale. And I am going to be adding so I’m not a condo nut know what I mean? Like I just saw an opportunity in condos in the last seven years. And I capitalised on it. I’m an opportunist.

Erwin  

You’re not You’re not an agnostic investor. Yeah, exactly.

Montu  

And I see the next opportunity right now coming in detached homes, because I think the carrying cost for them was way too high. Everything above a million bucks, carrying costs with current interest rates is like $6,000. Right? With property taxes, insurance, all that we’re talking about six grand how many people can afford that. So I think these homes, they’re going to be coming down because the demand is just not going to be able to meet that carrying cost. Luckily, I’m one of the few people who can pick up one of these units are and so

Erwin  

you’re not an everyday investor. Yeah, that’s like clear. Just because I want to I want to I always think context is important. You can afford to do this. You have the bankroll to do

Montu  

that. Exactly. And so I think these homes and I think it’s not just me, I think a lot of other people gonna be able to do.

Erwin  

I totally agree. Because detached is what’s coming down the most in price. Exactly. And also, so my thinking is, again, it’s math, the per square foot cost of a bigger home is less than that of a smaller home, right, a two story home cost per square foot is less than a bungalow, but the rent per square foot is probably the same same, the same. So there’s a bit of an arbitrage opportunity exact so why would I buy a bigger home and turn into a triplex? For example? This was my thinking, what what was your thinking around detached home investing?

Montu  

So everything most detached, different, people are paying like $1.5 million, or at least they were like the average detached home is going for about 105 to 2,000,002 bucks. It’s insane. Absolutely nuts. And I think a lot of it was speculation and people got ahead of themselves thinking, they’re listening to the wrong people thinking, oh, yeah, it’s gonna go to three, it’s gonna keep going up to the moon. And then, you know, when when the stack starts to shake, people are going to start dumping these, these things, these assets really fast. And you always want to go against the herd against the grain. I’m a contrarian investor. And that’s, I think, where I’ve made most of my money in the shortest amount of time, by doing the opposite what everybody else is doing. So sell high, buy low, but you know, you just get that queasy feeling that you’re doing it wrong. When you get that wrong feeling. You’re actually right. Because guess what 95% of people are wrong about money. Only 5% know what they’re doing. They actually understand money. It’s not currency or paper. It’s it’s a store of energy. And once you know how to like capitalise and hold it in reserve, and then release it. So hope people sold those of you who are smart enough and sold earlier this year, you’ve got some dry powder, you should be able to release it in a couple of months. We’re sitting here in August 2022. And I see an immense opportunity in detached homes coming up in like, October, November. And I think it’s just when the news is that oh, it’s gonna go even lower, or detached homes are going to be under a million bucks very soon, that’s when we buy because most people are wrong. And most people are going to be preaching that the market is going to tank markets gonna drop even further. That’s when I jump in and buy. I understand that for a while. We never act on it. Because we hear our neighbours and a lot of my clientele, they miss out on opportunities because they’re listening to their neighbours, who say you should sell your house for this price. But no, they’re they’re chasing the market down. The house is not that price anymore, and they’re not able to sell it. So you got to listen to the experts, right? Don’t listen to the other crabs in the bucket. When you get that feeling that you are right. Despite everyone else, you got to pull the trigger. And you’ll find that, you know, a couple of months later, everyone catches up to you. And then by then it’s too late.

Erwin  

So tell me what you’re looking for. Tell me what you’re looking for in a detached home.

Montu  

Okay, this is hard to get right now. Because you know, I’m out there making lowball offers. I got some amazing stories. I’m out there making lowball offers right now on detached homes and I am offending people. Oh my God, they are. They’re taking it so personally, they respond with such vile anger. You’ll moron, you think my house is worth this. So I’m just you know, pitching lowball offers to houses that have not sold, I look for something on the market that hasn’t sold in three weeks. So after two weeks, because they’re used to things being sold in two weeks, if in the third and fourth week, if it’s dry, even sometimes two months. So I can see that it’s not selling and then me being the opportunities that I am I look for contracts that are about to expire, meaning the realtor is going to lose the listing very soon. So he’s motivated or she’s motivated to get the place sold.

Erwin  

Right? That’s also been sitting to Yes, it’s probably been sitting Yeah, three months to six months. Exactly.

Montu  

Right. So my pitch a lowball offer 300k, under ask, under what actually under what I think is reasonable. And either the price will you know, we’ll meet in the middle, or I don’t move forward. Because I have the money. They want my money. And no one else has given them money. So they’re either going to sell it to me now or they’re going to sell to somebody in three months for the price I’m asking anyway. That’s how I see it. Anyhow, right. So I’ve offended a lot of people, but I don’t care. He’s just a numbers game. And you’re a real estate investor. You know what I mean? And the worst was check this up. This is so terrible. A house appeared on my street and I wanted a house on my street because it’d be so easy to Airbnb, very easy to manage. And they’re worth about 1.4 mil. And, you know, and they looked at 1.3 because they had an unfinished basement. And there was a lot of bad media at the time. I went in, I offered like 1025 like super lowball, and of course, the sellers were offended. And I told them

Erwin  

why it’s $1,000,000.20 1,000,025 when I was just just north

Montu  

of a million, and it properly dressed this house would have sold for 1.3 It just wasn’t dressed well. The agent didn’t really do a good job. afterwards, yeah, she, she doesn’t really understand staging or marketing, right?

Erwin  

So he’s terrible.

Montu  

And I have that skill set. So I’m like, Okay, let me just grab it, I’ll pay 1.1. For it in my mind, I’m thinking I’ll pay 1.1 for it, and I’ll dress it up, and I’ll sell it for 1.3. I could even hold it for a year, put a tent in there while the market recovers, if it sinks. So in retrospect, it was a bad idea to tell them all the things I found that are wrong with the house, because that’s what pissed them off. They’re like, they took it so personally. So I found there was basement moisture, I found a crack in the foundation, I found all kinds of you know that this is dated that’s dated. And so this is why my offer is this. And they weren’t getting any other offers, right. And I knew the market was dry. So they’re either going to take my offer, or it’s going to sit, and they’ll eventually take my offer if they get nothing else. Long story short, they wanted 1.2. They said we’re not going to be lower than 1.2. A week later, they sold it to somebody else other than me for 1060. When I found that they had submitted they had another offer on the table, I went in and offered 1.1 million. I offered 1.1. And they took the 1060 because they hated me. They did not want to deal with the guy who insulted them. Right there

Erwin  

hate for you. 40,000. Assuming capital exempt came Gains Exemption $40,000 after tax money was the dollar value for their hate for you. Yeah,

Montu  

exactly. So that’s something. So now when I’m pitching my lowball offers, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m not you know, telling them but the basement moisture. say here’s my offer, you want to take it or leave it, you know, and a key is Don’t piss off the other agent as well. Because he or she holds the door to your access to the sale and if you haven’t learned I’m I’m a tough negotiator. So I N You know this about me, I call it like I see it. I don’t pull punches. If I see something wrong. I don’t keep it inside. I tell them as Okay, that is kind of dumb. Right? Don’t don’t think you’re gonna trick me. This is BS, and a lot of people. They’re so sensitive. We live in a very sensitive world. Yeah,

Erwin  

but But again, we’re dealing with individuals you’re going to find. All right, you could have found the most sensitive individuals on the street. just gotten lucky. Yeah. All

Montu  

right. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m I think there’s a huge opportunity for low rise. Detached semis talents are going to be coming up right now. It’s for detached semis in towns are still going up in value, but I think they’re going to stop very soon in pullback. Meanwhile, the more

Erwin  

started a home the more seems to be resilient. Yeah, right. Yeah. Condos are presumed pretty reasonably resilient resale resale.

Montu  

At this time in August 2022. Condos are up like 7% versus last year. Oh my lord. Meanwhile, detached homes are down 3% versus last year. So condos have bridged the gap by about 10%. Right. That’s that’s the

Erwin  

time to return detached down 3% year over year, but from Peak, we’re probably down 15 or more

Montu  

24%. Okay, so the average price from February to now. Or I should say using the July data, it’s down 24%, the average price of a home. So I figured detachment is somewhere in there. But I’ve had a lot of very smart investors who were working with me that said, Yeah, let’s sell and they got out in like February, March, April. And now they’re sitting on some dry powder. And now they got some money burning a hole in their pocket. And they’re thinking, Oh, well, what should we do? Should we buy some Kryptos or not? And I just hold on to it, you know, the opportunities coming? And don’t don’t follow the herd. There’s other people buying just wait. I know. It’s

Erwin  

weird, though. Because then you know, the 17 listeners that listen to this podcast. Sure what we’re doing? Well, everyone’s doing buying the detached, need to do something else. You know, I mean, I get that too, because I talked to like, really smart people and like, Wow, all these smart people are doing this. Am I just following the herd?

Montu  

You know, I mean, the difficult thing is there’s going to be opportunities for detached homes, and they’re still going to be six figures. So the market has shown us they’re willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for a detached house. 1.71 point 8 million is, you know, Richmond Hill, Markham Oakville, that’s what they’re clocking in at. And that tells me that the market is going to be willing to do it again, when the Fed ultimately has to cut their interest rates. We all know that they have to, you know, I don’t know if we all do.

Erwin  

We all do. Because like the people who are like fearing this, that’s the end of the world. Well, they’re the ones who know the 16% Right. They’re thinking right,

Montu  

these are the guys who are going to sell me their house for 40% discount. And once that opportunity is there and the investors are there to pick up the broken pieces they’re going to sell I don’t think we’re at the market bottom yet. I I think once the fed the US FOMC, once they start to cut interest rates, that’s when the bottom is going to be like, you can basically ring the bell. That’s the bottom decile. Nobody rings the bell at the bottom, but I’m calling it when the when they cut interest rates, that’s the bottom of the market. Some people will still be preaching that we’re going lower. But that’s when I’m going to be buying

Erwin  

any guesses when that will be? And I’m just not going to hold you to it because we don’t know what she’s doing crystal ball,

Montu  

I think spring of 2023 Not even far away. Yeah, yeah.

Erwin  

So we’re recording this August 2022, we’re talking six months,

Montu  

nine months, nine months, well see that the harvest always comes later. So the failed harvest takes about six to eight months to come to fruition. And right now, whatever we’re trying to harvest, like the supply chain issues that we have, people are getting laid off, a couple of my tenants just got laid off. So we’re in for a storm that’s coming. And to all my fellow landlords who were suffering during COVID. And Mr. Doug Ford, convinced all the tenants that, hey, you don’t have to pay rent, just buy food. You know, don’t worry, someone will pay the mortgage. Now you were in for that. Again, I think it’s coming. We’re gonna see massive layoffs coming up. And I think this is a manipulated and triggered event. I think the Keynesians they need to deflate the economy, I think the forcing us into a recession, and it’s going to be layoffs are going to be business closings, all the money that we have at all these assets, including the market, gold Bitcoin house, it’s all going to be pulled out. And it’s going to be like an exhale, and everything’s going to shrink a bit. So those of us who have assets sitting on the side, dry powder I keep talking about now,

Erwin  

but painful that dry powder with all this inflation going on. Yeah.

Montu  

So what what is inflation and loss of wealth? I’ve I’ve been pondering this for a long time, months and months. And I came to the realisation that we’re not really poor. When our assets go down, we only get poor if the things that we want go up in price where our assets go down

Erwin  

costs gone up in price. Yeah, golf clubs are way more expensive now than they were last year, year before.

Montu  

And if I if someone wants a Rolex,

Erwin  

it’s been a good investment. Or you want to hang out in Canada,

Montu  

too. So if our income and our assets like the stock market, are we listed, if that’s shrinking, and the things that we want, if I want to buy like a Bentley, I don’t have just an example. I’m not like, I’m very humble. I drive a Ford midsize SUV, right? If the things that we want are going up in value, we’re screwed. And I think that’s what we’re going to be seeing. So get that dry powder. While you can

Erwin  

refer for us we refight five houses in q1 this year, because I saw a storm common Yeah, yeah. So we don’t have debt related in dry powder. Okay, so some things unpack. I want to go back to the detached example, because I know you’re smart. You’re not just gonna buy a detached and not have like at least three options on how to make money on it. Yeah. What were your plans for how to make money on it? I think you mentioned Airbnb, you said in passing, you throw up a tent in one

Montu  

as a joke. So is that the

Erwin  

Airbnb the tents.

Montu  

what the plan is just, is to renovate it and just improve it. Because a lot of these house No one’s buying it because they’re not in good condition. So send a couple of send a team of contractors in there invest about 50 to 100k into it, and then put it back on the market properly staged and lovely. Second plan is to put a tenant in there to carry it through the storm, maybe two years if things turn bad. Get a tenant in there too. And yeah, I’ll probably be cashflow negative about 1000 bucks. Alright, I’ve run the numbers already. And Plan C is just to, you know, clean and put it back on the market right away.

Erwin  

Nowhere b b option therapy options.

Montu  

Well, yes, that’s like the tenant that

Erwin  

the long got it. Okay. You want a situation, have someone carry it? Got it. Got it. And again, this is for people who can afford these investments. It’s not everyone can afford a negative.

Montu  

Well, here’s the thing, and I think a lot of Canadians are a lot richer. Many of us have real estate that’s gone up in value. I think we have money, he locks, etc. And we have the dry powder. We just need to be fearless in releasing it. And I think a lot of people are not going to want to be wanting to release it that quickly. But other than detached homes. The other thing I’m looking at is of course new construction, but there’s certain things I look for in new construction condos. The deposit structure, it’s pretty important right now to have a favourable deposit structure, you want something around 15% with 5% occupancy, that’s what I like to see. Builder Calibre is very important. Believe it or not as an industry insider for pre construction condos, I think 40 percent of whatever was built that was ever was sold is not going to be built. And there’s going to be a lot of cancellations or delays. So you really got to do your homework and choose your builders who have deep pockets. If you want to see your project come to fruition, I’ve got my own algorithm, the old man to algorithm which, like I have a couple of things that I look for, that tells me a builder is actually going to be able to complete it. And one of those things, believe it or not, is price. If the price is too low, you’re not going to get completed. I’m sorry, if you if you bought something for less than 1000 a square foot in Toronto, the builder might walk away from it. Right? And then that’s

Erwin  

catastrophic for many people further pre construction to not close. It’s going to be common versus leaders versus my income property. Like if I’ve captured all the appreciation, right? And they just, you know, I had a friend he got he got he got interest. He got some interest money. Yeah, that was it honest that

Montu  

zondo gotta be really careful. You gotta be really smart. Oh, and just clarify Connor wasn’t cancelled.

Erwin  

They asked for more money.

Montu  

I’ll one of those deals. Yeah, wanna give us another 100k? Or we’re not gonna Yeah, Bill

Erwin  

or you can have it Yeah, right. So at least he had options better than Complete Cancellation he would have had you would have had some equity gain. We kept some equity gain if you’d come up with the money and that’s

Montu  

where the builder calibre so important, because if the builder is not one of the up and up guys, they can do that. You know, it’s

Erwin  

but everyone knows as builders downtown Burlington, you probably know that one and we won’t name names. But you know, the one I know the one right on the water downtown Burlington starts

Montu  

with an H.

Erwin  

Sorry, it’s actually public because it made headlines in the paper. So we shouldn’t trash people. Yeah, we should like why, again, like if the price is too low, I don’t blame. I don’t blame them, like you priced it wrong. It’s just like property managers. When I’ve seen property manager charge too little. I’m like, how are you going to get it? How are you going to make money at this, you’re gonna come from me somewhere else. I’d rather you just pay you here. And then you’re not going to come after me for when you like do change a doorknob charged me $100 To change your doorknob.

Montu  

And the last thing that’s very important for new construction is the neighbourhood. You want to have neighbourhood amenities, which are going to attract people to the neighbourhood that are going to float the value of the real estate. You want to have parks and libraries and commerce. The closer you are to downtown, the better protected you are from from a drop in demand.

Erwin  

Are we just talking Toronto or anything? Yeah, all cities you’d like. Do you like any other cities? Yeah, I

Montu  

1. It’s not just Toronto that I help people trade in. I like York. Vaughn. Big fan of Vaughan, Richmond Hill, big fan of Oakville. It’s why moved here. And basically everything to the west of the DVP. I’m not crazy about the east side. Not just because it’s far away, but just the demographic isn’t what I would put in my own properties. But I like everything to the west. Up to Burlington, basically, Burlington, Mississauga is getting very congested Mississauga and Brampton, I kind of avoid for my own reasons. But everything else like Etobicoke great, great city. There’s a lot of attractions to people to these areas. So So basically in downtown

Erwin  

Lakeshore corridor, all the way to Burlington, is your preferred is your preference. Anything out of province?

Montu  

No, no, I looked at it. I looked at Montreal and you know, I’m from Montreal. I have nostalgic reasons for wanting to buy their beautiful city. But i i the political environment is not great. I won’t even get into Calgary. Maybe I can touch on Calgary. I’m not a fan of Calgary, there’s a lot of Oh

Erwin  

god, we’re going into a new construction. There seems to be a lot of new construction. I might be wrong. Social media is full of ads.

Montu  

And I might be dead wrong about it. They might flourish but they’re a one industry sector. And if something happens to oil, Calgary is going to tank again. Whereas Toronto we are we have three major industries finance, technology and media, film and media. And if one industry takes a hit, there’s a what do you call a float from the other industries that are going to help people and help the economy? That’s not gonna happen with Calgary.

Erwin  

Right on all the mining head offices are in downtown Toronto, for example. So yeah, there’s lots of high paying jobs downtown Toronto. So those are two favourite things and Monteux again, you’re agnostic investor, you do everything that you do. I remember we were talking when we were golfing the you Do you still have any holding the crypto stock or options?

Montu  

i Yeah, I’m a I’m a fan of crypto. There are four big ones that I am heavily trading. I have a little bit of everything because to me I don’t know which one is going to take off and become the next next one to the moon. But not a lot but I do trade Bitcoin Aetherium polka dot and this is not advice by the way. Polygon Yes. Not financial advice, folks. Sorry, one more time

Erwin  

Bitcoin. Just a polka dot

Montu  

polka dot Aetherium of course and Paul I got those are my four favourites because they have a trading pattern that as you know, I have like a background in trading they have a trading pattern that I’ve discovered from technical analysis that mirrors, Bitcoin and Aetherium everything else is just sinks and makes a move on sensationalism, or rumour or hype. But these four there’s something also something about the technology I really like. It’s found it has a real world use. I also have a dark horse hedera I’ve looked into it, I think this one is dark, you spell it? I can’t spell it. But the symbol is h bar HB AR. The reason I like this one is it solves the problem that Bitcoin has the speed and the you know, transferring crypto assets across the world, it should be within seconds. And Hadera does that Bitcoin very slow according to today’s standards? I mean, it’s 2022. We should be I shouldn’t have to wait, you know, 2030 minutes for my funds to be sent to Australia. That’s how impatient I am. You know, back in the day, it would take 48 hours to send money to Australia. But now I want it done. Yeah, we’re in 60 seconds tops, and Hadera does that it’s, I think what these guys have come up with this brilliant, not financial advice, folks. Don’t buy too much of it. But I think that could be the next big one. And Aetherium I like Aetherium more than I like Bitcoin, just because of its real world use. And it’s got more that technology is better, in my opinion, of course. And because of the high gas fees, it has a diminishing supply. So the supply is going down. It’s not increasing. And of course they got some kind of merger going on coming up in September. We’ll see how that goes. But

Erwin  

yeah, can you share what percentage allocation of your portfolio flows?

Montu  

Well, let’s just say I only recently started digging going down the crypto rabbit hole. It’s been about a year, maybe less than a year. It’s been about a year. And I had a goal to have 10% of my net worth in crypto. I’ve decided to just because it’s untested and anything can go wrong. It could go to zero. I’m reducing that to 5%. So my portfolio is 5% Crypto 5% insurance. Little bit of gold gold is just what kind of insurance whole life dividend paying and and the rest real estate baby that’s real estate has been working for the last 14 years. So

Erwin  

there’s look at what everyone paid for anything. Funny. Side use the story. I have a friend who works for trial. He bought his for like 600 just high 600 per square foot Wow. years ago. And that’s the only one he bought like, man, you’re an insider. Right? You know, exactly. You have access to all their research in like when there’s no you know, I was just like everybody else because I’m not I’m not in that industry. right close to it. You know, when I hit $1,000 a square foot, like, you gotta be kidding me. Right? Everyone went nuts. Everyone went nuts. And there was a 1200 square foot for comparing to what you know where no one’s buying bat. Right.

Montu  

So we this, this spring and summer I was seeing resale condos selling for 1500 to 1700 square foot or they’re nicer places, right? They’re newer buildings. Of course, not the older stuff. But still it’s the resale. It’s not the new construction, new construction, we’re clocking in at 1700 square foot to start in downtown Toronto.

Erwin  

I heard some new stuff selling selling for 17. Yeah, we don’t know if it’s gonna get built.

Montu  

Well, that’s the thing is if they’re selling it for 17, that’s I think that’s reasonable with the cost of everything. And labour is very expensive now. So they have a chance of being completed. If you’re paying 1300 to 1700 per square foot for new construction, you’re safe, or I should say safe River, because you never know. But if you’re paying less than 1300 for new construction, it’s I think it’s a dice roll. Because how can they do it? It’s expensive, their construction loan, you know, they’re paying more interest on that loan. So you may not get built.

Erwin  

And then same timing for nutrition kind of when interest rates start going down again. Yeah, on spring,

Montu  

the good builders will keep doing a good job. Everyone else is going to be delayed by about a year or two

Erwin  

right now because some builders will want to protect their reputation it was build it somebody even built it for a loss. Yeah. Crazy. Good on them.

Montu  

Well, there’s there’s a storm coming. You know, there’s a big storm coming.

Erwin  

We’re talking before this, like the storm has been coming forever.

Montu  

There’s always a storm. You know, this one was just a bad one. And it’s not about waiting for the storm to pass. Right. It’s about learning to dance in the rain. And I think this is going to be what’s upcoming people are not, they’re not expecting it. And if you don’t learn how to thrive in the rain and still push forward and still have a way to get through, if you’re just waiting for interest rates to bottom out, you know, or I should say peak out and prices to bottom out, you’re not going to you’re not going to do anything very, very, you still have to be an active, active person. I always look like right now I’m pitching lowball offers, even though I don’t think the market has bottomed yet. I think we’re going lower. Because real estate is perfect. Yes.

Erwin  

Like people will take deals that are imperfect. Exactly. So that’s, that’s it?

Montu  

No look for the opportunity here.

Erwin  

Because because we were looking at a deal, for example, where the bank was gonna take back the property. So either take our deal, or you let the bank take control, or would you rather, right, right, you’re gonna be hammered legal fees from the bank. As soon as they take the start taking it back. It’s and you’ve lost complete control. Now. It’s no longer your house, you can’t do nothing. You have no power. Right? So choose, right. Is to us. To me, it was a fair offer, but oh, gee, Monty, we’re way over time. Okay. Let’s talk about your book. Oh, yeah.

Montu  

Let’s cover that real quick. So insider secrets to pre construction, condo buying, renting and selling for maximum profit. I wrote this book a couple years back, it’s when I was predicting a rise in the condo value when everyone else thought that condos aren’t going to be worth anything. So I just put my experiences and tips and tricks, not just about condos, but you know how to deal with your selling, when you have to buy pre construction, how to sell pre construction, assignment opportunities. There’s even a bit of a little bit about some Airbnb how to short term to a short term rental. In my book, it’s really for people who want a an insider’s experience in the condo investing world, and how to find opportunities, because not everything is a good deal. So I kind of outline like, what types of properties what type of condos to look for what type to avoid, how to get a good deal. What are immediate delivery condos, because sometimes builders, they have extra inventory that they’re paying to carry, and they’re eager to get rid of it. So you can go in there and making them an offer. So if they’re asking like, you know, 900k, you can come and say I’ll take it off your hand if you throw in a free parking spot for 800k. And sometimes they do that. I got a couple of deals like that actually,

Erwin  

are their deals available in the assignment market right now? I

Montu  

think, again, it’s about going against the grain, there’s going to be a lot of people selling assignments. So if there’s excess supply, where is the demand? Let’s

Erwin  

just back up and explain the assignment market. So you correct me if I’m wrong. So people who bought new construction, and for whatever reason, they’re they’re wanting to sell their contract, basically, without closing guess, right?

Montu  

Yeah, they want to hand over their contract to somebody else, that person steps into their shoes and closes with the builder directly. So there used to be that assignments were very profitable, because they’re on a rising market, right. And they’re very, very little units available. So people are just gobbling them up. But right now, I think a lot of people are worried and that they’re going to be trying to sell their unit via assignment. It’s it’s a great time to buy an assignment, because there’s very few buyers. So you will get a good deal. But it’s not a good time to sell an assignment. Because you’re just going to get lowball offers. That’s what we’re seeing, like had a couple assignment listings. And all we got were lowball offers, even though the value of the unit is very reasonable to what we’re asking. It just people are just coming in 200k under

Erwin  

alright, because did you get emotional? Receiving?

Montu  

No, I did. I was expecting it because I was that guy on the other side. Right.

Erwin  

So that’s just the most you’re willing to give and take, you know, if you’re gonna give it you’re willing to take it. Yeah, exactly. And then any update, cuz I haven’t really seen it in the news, weren’t there construction slowdowns? Like weren’t certain groups on strike?

Montu  

Yes, lots of supply issues. And then labour strikes. So all new construction condos being built were delayed by another couple of months. So I started to say all I would say like 80% Because every project that I had, in my own portfolio that’s coming up for delivery, every builder sent me a notice saying hey, we don’t know how long this strike is going to last we’re delayed, we’ll let you know. Do you know what they’re asking for in terms of like more money? More money less? I don’t know. not privy to that. Labour agreements.

Erwin  

I’m just curious because then that gives me an idea how much labour inflation will be realistic. So

Montu  

labour is the builders biggest expense. So they have concrete steel lumber all that to pay for but labour is 40% of their costs.

Erwin  

So your your to build Yes. 40% including way as part of the between the whole pie that’s what

Montu  

that’s what they tell me. Right? So I don’t see their books, but they’re telling me there’s land costs. They’re soft costs, there’s closing costs, there’s materials costs, but labour is 40%. You are paying. So if you’re buying something for 1,400,000 of that is to pay people to like and it’s not just your unit. Remember, they’re building the entire building. They’re building the elevators are building the amenities. They’re, they’re building the foundation, they’re building the garage, so yeah, stuff’s expensive, man.

Erwin  

That’s expensive. And that’s part of the reason why real estates indexed to inflation. Yes. All right. We can’t just import labour. We kind of tries to but even whatever imports still expensive, if it came here to make more money, then come here and make less money. Wow. Okay. mattoni. Any final words?

Montu  

Okay, people in time. If people want to get a free copy of my book, they can download it at Dylan Realty. systems.ca. If you spell that Dylan d h, I ll O. N real TRAALTY systems.ca.

Erwin  

And we’ll have that in the show notes, folks. So if you’re driving, it’s okay. Yeah. Well, the link in the show notes.

Montu  

And yeah, I wish people luck and fortune. Those who partner up with an expert are going to achieve their goals.

Erwin  

Yeah, especially fear. Because I talk to people all the time in real estate. And I find I often find they don’t really know much what’s going on as literally golfing with someone just this week. And they said to me, I know all these people who, who bought a property already. Now they can’t sell their home. And I’m like, well, they get some bad advice. Yeah, I certainly more What’s worse than that? Is like no one could predict this. And like, I told my clients Exactly. This could happen. Right, right. I told me this could exactly be in 2017. Again, yeah. Right. So the advice from my mouth to our clients was you know, in December, January, February, March, if your plan is to sell the next 12 months sell it now. Yeah. All right. That’s exactly what I told you. Take the risk off the table. Right. I bought a risk right. And I did a sort of the same thing by refinancing. I’m too scared to sell and miss out on the game. Yeah, for more on all sides. iPhone crypto, Bitcoin at 23 grand. Like David, I missed the 20.

Montu  

What do you think so what you’re doing my pleasure, always a pleasure hanging out with you around. If you need any other advice, and if you want to discuss what good projects are coming up, you know where to reach me.

Erwin  

I’ll be bugging you about where you can fit for golf clubs. Awesome. Take care.

Erwin  

Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate for the cash flow but with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there are forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more and register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Hello, my fellow real estate investors and stock investors, they get a wealth hackers. This is the truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto. And speaking of wealth hacking, our conference is coming up on November 12. And it will be the event of the year just like it was in 2018. And I’ll let you in on a little secret cherries second, yes, second 20th birthday is coming up. And because that’s two times 20, we have a 40% total off the price special for chairs, second 20th birthday on August 5. If you’re on my email list or social media, you’ll be informed of the promotion when it drops, please do make sure you’re there at the conference and bring those who care about because straight up, the future won’t be easy. I don’t imagine any generation pass our own will make more money than us. So you’ve hopefully you’re taking care of them as best you can. And those you care about are taking care of all their kids and future generations. So as an observation, I always have observations. Do listen to the show, you know, I always have observations. One of them is that one’s willingness to get outside their comfort zone is an indicator of future success. Unless one is taught other lessons while growing up. That’s actually a big benefit. This is an observation I made. For example, our last guest on the show comes from multiple generations of successful entrepreneurs and investors. Hence, they’ve amassed enormous amounts of wealth. So for those of you who are successful real estate investors or stock investors or entrepreneurs, just imagine all the lessons you can pass on to your your children and your grandchildren. For example, the owner by kickboxing gym, his 16 year old daughter would beat my ass kickboxing thanks to world class coaching from her father, who is a retired fighter 37 Professional winds combined with her years of hard work. Note that my ask is not that much to brag about. Thankfully, our kids have adapted to new learning. Not exactly sure what we did, right. But two weeks ago, when we dropped them off at their first week long overnight camp, they were excited leading up to the lead up to the event and the drop off. And when we did drop them off, not once did they look back, he hugs their goodbyes. And they walked off with their stuff to their cabin. We could see them for another minute or so just walked away, never looked back. It’s an odd feeling of sadness, leaving us and not caring. While we’re happy that they’re acting all independent. We also talk to our kids about money, investing in stocks real estate. My son said that you’d saved up like $80 or something, I said, we’re gonna go buy a bank stock, which pays dividends. He knows enough about passive income, that he’s all over investing also about our charity as well to help combat greed so they understand how lucky we are. And it’s part of our duty to give back to those who can’t. Because there’s many out there who don’t have money for food and clothing. I can’t say I know what we’re doing. But I feel it’s the right thing to do. Speaking of being out of one’s comfort zone, today’s guests, my old friend Ryan car, Ryan and I go way back, we actually mastermind together for about three years in the same group. So he’s back on the show, we share and we have common beliefs and values. For example, we both share the practice of seeking highest and best use of our time and capital. However, he’s more aggressive and ambitious than I am and hardworking that I mentioned that. When I think of Brian, I think of hard working. For example, just until recently, he used to work seven to seven every day. So that’s 12 hour days, seven days a week, for 10 years. He runs a lean and mean investing business. And he’s been a lot of money flipping 60 houses duplexing gardens reading several bills and development, small apartment building, Tiny House short term rental cottage has his own renovation team on payroll. He’s done basically everything under the sun almost forgot. He is one of nine. He is one of the stars of HGTV newest show on our house flippers today Rachael share how it all came about, including you share some behind the scenes experiences are working on each and HGTV show in some really gross, unsafe hoarder houses. Now, if you don’t know what a hoarder house is, it’s people who just collect stuff over the years. So if you didn’t make any, if you didn’t throw in anything for the last 10 years, imagine how much stuff you’d have in that wouldn’t be hygienic, that would be a health hazard. That could be a safety hazard too. Because these things if you have if you have belongings that stack up at the ceiling, that could potentially fall on you, and you might get buried alive. Imagine that being impaired a library or player buried by your possessions. So again, Ryan’s here to share what kind of projects he’s investing in right now. He’s also writing a book and starting a podcast on the subject of highest and best use of real estate. So you want to pay attention to what Ryan shares because in mice in my observations, I have lots of them. Beginners often get this part wrong. They’re not the most efficient because they could be with their time and money. And not maximising the returns. Please enjoy the show. Hi, Ryan. Thanks for coming in. Today

Ryan  

Hello, thanks for having me.

Erwin  

Oh, what’s keeping you busy these days? What’s

Ryan  

keeping me busy? Lots, lots. TV show, number one, still an active real estate investor very much. So number two, a little bit of personal time, which is kind of cool. Number three.

Erwin  

That’s a mouthful. People have no idea how busy you are.

Ryan  

I am an actual active investor. Yes. For real.

Erwin  

So we’ve known each other for a while and you’ve been on the show. This is probably the third or fourth time I think, as long as I’ve known you. You’ve been a seven to seven investor as in like 7am to 7pm. At a minimum, yeah. For how long were you doing that?

Ryan  

I was doing li Yeah. I’ve been investing for just over 10 years since 2012. So I was doing those hours or more for the majority of that time.

Erwin  

How many weekends? All of them, and you’re still married? I’m still married. You’re married that whole time?

Ryan  

I was married that whole time? Oh, yeah. 2020 13. So almost that whole time. Yeah.

Erwin  

And first of all, you just

Ryan  

follow me personally, personally, I had a conversation with somebody the other day, and I was at the dentist office, I was telling this. And my we got to chatting and I went to, I’ll back it up when I was a mechanic I got laid off from from doing that job. And I was on unemployment for about right. So I had a chance to go to the school where they taught you to be an entrepreneur. And I met this girl who wanted to start a dental practice. So I go to her dentist’s office, and depending on how tired I am, when I’m laying in the chair, that tells me if I’m working too hard or not like that has been my metric. So if I’m laying there, and I’m like, oh, man, this is so relaxing, I need to take it easy, then I know how I need to pull back. And if I’m laying there, and I’m a gung ho, then I know that I can give it up. And it’s just it’s just one of those ways that for me, over the years, I just, I don’t know, I just kind of adopted it. Because going to the dentist is historically not fun or not, you know, getting your teeth drilled. It’s not fun. So laying in the chair, I’m like, okay, cool. This is this is like this, this like intuitive guideline inside of me that says, hey, either you’re working too hard, or you’re good to go. And I was talking to her and I said, like, how long have we been on the school? And, and we just got chatting about that. And she said, How long have you been doing real estate? And I said, Well, just over 10 years now. And she goes, How many hours a week do you work? And I said, like, a lot of them? Right? And I said, for every one year that I’ve been doing real estate, it’s like if put in the hours for two have been doing it for 10 years, but I’ve put in the hours for 20. Right. And I do attribute a lot of the time spent to my success today.

Erwin  

Right. I think that’s a great point. On your level of knowledge, hard work, and mastery, you have the subject, because we’re going golfing after this. So the golf analogy is, you know

Ryan  

how this year by the way, so the interesting round,

Erwin  

right? And you want to golf today, you say oh yeah, golf the season? Yes. Once Yes. It’s like, you know, I’m a real estate investor, you know, say I’m three, whatever, whatever properties don’t care. I’m a real estate investor. So as Ryan Ryan has also a real estate investor. It’s not the same thing. Right. Just when we’re playing with Ron Jeremy today, yeah, he plays four times a week. Well, he’s gonna slaughter us, or he’s gonna destroy it. And I bet him money. My point, though, is also is that again, it’s we’re not the same. Yeah, right. So I think the another analogy I give is my car, my German car, and we’ll name it and JC Sumi, is, it has GPS, check the box. Right? But it sucks. I never use it. Yeah, it’s plug in my amble and your phone? Yeah. All right. But my point I’m trying to make is I see all these investors who say, Oh, I’m secured on title, I’m safe. And like, is that the only parameter that you need to determine your level of safety and security on an investment? Yeah, I just went on a bit of a tangent there. Like you measure risk, like, as an observer, one of your skills is you’re good at math. And good. Being good at math is being able to judge quantify risk. Yeah. Do you agree?

Ryan  

I do agree. Like you mentioned being on title. So like, you can be on title and the house is worth half of what you’re secured for, like you’re on title, you’ve done the thing. Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that

Erwin  

you’re safe. Exactly. And what else is on title?

Ryan  

Right. There can be 10 mortgages there and you can be the person last in line. Who knows? Like, you got to bet on the jockey not the horse, especially if you’re a lender, right? It’s Yes, it’s kind of about the asset, but like, a good investor will turn around a bad deal. The bad investor will completely obliterate a great deal. You know, so it’s the jockey not the horse.

Erwin  

I’d say it’s all because you forget, well, I’m sure we evaluate all as a quality jockey. So I’m trying to decide, okay, if you’re a top jockey, and you’re like on one of the top

Ryan  

horses, likely, right, likely, right? You’ll make good decisions.

Erwin  

If you’re on the best f1 drivers you’re likely on a good team. Yeah, right. I don’t know if I’ll say a qualify but whatever, and just throw it out there. Yeah. If you’re a great Instagram influencer, I don’t know. It doesn’t doesn’t tell me that the horse is

Ryan  

good. True. Well, you look at the fire festival, documentary, right? All of these people that had great influencer accounts at the time when they were talking about this new festival that was coming and including

Erwin  

all legitimate art. Sure. Art and music artists. Yeah,

Ryan  

like all these people are talking about this thing and This thing didn’t work out. And all of these people look bad for promoting that thing, you know?

Erwin  

And you’ve done. Do you even know how many deals you’ve done?

Ryan  

6768 over 60. Anyways,

Erwin  

any idea the dollar amount? Total dollar volume? No. Because again, there I have

Ryan  

never, I’ve never added that up. Actually dollar amount of like, you know, I think my rental portfolio at its peak was worth about 20 million like that.

Erwin  

So again, I think people that didn’t weren’t trying to make a point in trying to make is to qualify opinions and expertise and know how to qualify a horse. qualified investment property. All right, you know, I have units too. Yeah, my unit is probably worth like 10%, or one of yours. And the amount of effort to put in is play less than 10% of what you what you put. I’m just addicted with a bunch of duplexes.

Ryan  

Don’t even get me started on that.

Erwin  

Oh, I don’t like I don’t like inside jokes on the show. We’ll circle back and not come type completely back in together because I do want to talk about that that person because yeah, whatever. Yeah. Tell us what the show that HGTV is when did they first reach out to you?

Ryan  

So this all started in 2019. My wife and I live in Durham Durham Region, which is just east of Toronto. And somebody had asked me to come and speak at their seminar in like the Kitchener Waterloo area. So I did Sure I’ll come out, I’ll speak you know, we’ll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. Because I just I’m a pretty open book, right? So came out, did my speech got off stage and this person approaches me from the crowd and says, Hey, you spoke really well up there. You ever thought about doing show? It’s like, not specifically, but like, what did you have in mind? And he goes, Well, I’m a producer, with HGTV. Why don’t we keep in touch. So we did. From there. My wife and I and Kiki. We went to Corus entertainment in Toronto, which is the parent company of HGTV, Canada and a whole bunch of other networks, right? They own them. So we met with all these big execs at this, like great big table. And all these people were in here talking and asking us questions, and they’re kind of they’re feeling at our character, they were feeling at the show, we’re kind of bouncing ideas off each other, and everything was good there. And then boom, COVID hits 2020. And everything got put on hold for a couple of years. So that that was a bit of a drag, because we were super excited to do the show. It’s called hoarder house flippers. It’s finally out now, which is great. We just went through the first season. And it was a lot of fun to shoot. But yeah, that took time to get to Okay, camera go, right. Like there was three years there of waiting. And okay, we’re going and did we find the property and okay, that’s not the right property. And you know, all those things happen logistically. So, yeah, it took time, but worked out.

Erwin  

How long a time, you know, I’ll have to talk about it. Those couple years,

Ryan  

because it was all kind of under wraps for a while. I don’t know why they do that. Specifically, I’m sure there’s reasons behind the scenes that we don’t know about. But everything just kept hush hush and the show for Joe. So for whatever reasons they have I’m sure that’s that’s cool. Maybe I’ll never know. But yeah, it was all hush hush for a bit. Because I

Erwin  

knew about it. It was hard for me not to say anything, it was even hard because I think we leaked it on the show, but we edited it out. We did We did. We edited it out though.

Ryan  

We had to be so strategic to write like you knew because it was strategic. We were gonna mastermind together. And like, like, there was a select group of people that didn’t know, because I had to be on point to find properties at the drop of a hat, I had to be on point to make sure that like mentally I was in the right spot keeping I had to be on point to make sure that we were in a good place with our relationship, which we always are. So like, all of these things like our support network still needed to be supportive for that role that we took on.

Erwin  

And then, uh, how long between starting to shoot? It’s a complicated sub topic, because the scope of these properties is not easy. Right? Like, firstly, to find a hoarder house

Ryan  

man, like, all of the houses that are out there of like flipping potential, I talked to a lot of wholesalers, right, I counted the other day, I’m on over 20 wholesale lists now. Plenty. And I reached out to them and said, Hey, of all the properties that you get, whether it’s, you know, 10 a year, 100 a year. Some people get more than that. How many of these would fit the criteria of hoarder house in the area that you farm? Right? And they said less than 5%? Great. So you know, it’s not very many properties that are hoarded and ready for an off market person to purchase, but they are out there. So for anybody listening, if you find a hoarder house, we would love to film in it. You know, please don’t clean it out. Call us first. We’d love to do that on camera. You know, it makes for a great episode.

Erwin  

What stops you from just like throwing garbage to a host to convert a crappy house into a hoarder house

Ryan  

real? It’s not real. You know, people want real they want authenticity. Would you watch any of those storage shows, knowing full well that somebody planted a diamond ring in the back corner? I don’t know they do. Right? And when that stuff comes out, people are like, Oh, well, it wasn’t really real. Like it’s not that exciting. We know there’s going to be something cool in there.

Erwin  

I’m not TV expert because I watch very little people still watch wrestling. Yeah,

Ryan  

for sure. And like that’s, that’s more theatre than Fight Club. Right? But like, yeah, they want it authentic. They want it real. When we go through these houses, it’s the real deal. Like we find some stuff in there and then we go, Oh my gosh, gross stuff, fun stuff neat artefacts during an example. Anything from like, the dirtiest underwear you’ve ever ever seen to. So girls, to really cool antiques that we repurpose and like staged at home with beautiful tea cups Keke Keke starting a tea line. And in each of the two episodes that we filmed this year, she found teacups and saucers and all this stuff that we were able to stage the homes with. So that was really cool, right and she was able to put them in the kitchen cupboards behind glass and they were showcased in Episode Six, which just aired last night. We were actually able to set the entire table with these beautiful china dishes have a gold leaf in Scripture in blue. They’re really pretty. We found them in the house.

Erwin  

You read that careful taking the garbage out. Yeah,

Ryan  

there’s some cool stuff. I found like 5000 bucks worth of snowblowers and generators and lawn equipment. And one of the episodes we did here making this sound sexy. Yeah, I mean, like, like, there is a component to it. That’s super cool. And then there’s some stuff that’s like, oh, it’s kind of gross. Yeah, let’s move on. Let’s Let’s fill the dumpster with that.

Erwin  

How many dumpsters on average? Seven.

Ryan  

Home. I haven’t got seven for your bins.

Erwin  

Cheese. Yeah. What is your typical non flip? So you’re taking it down to the stud

Ryan  

down to the studs. So this isn’t even down to the studs. This is just stuff from inside the house. So we don’t

Erwin  

wait so seven just the stuff stuff plus more for the renovation? Yeah.

Ryan  

Oh my usually like one bin for the Reno. Six worth of stuff. Yeah, there’s a lot of a lot, a lot, a lot of belongings and these homes, find a lot of duplicates. We find a lot of things from 30 years ago that have been buried, you know, so it’s almost a time capsule in the house. It’s kind of fun to unearthing some of these things. I found a book from the late 1800s Of all the surveys used of Toronto, right. So it was talking about like Oshawa and Pickering and, and Belleville and all the all the surveys were in this great big book. It’s like it’s maybe two feet tall and 19 inches wide, and beautiful coffee table book in great shape. So all the pages had like that, that old mothball smell to it. You open it up and it’s just like it’s a piece of history. It was buried under all the stuff you would have never known.

Erwin  

So other than the bins. How does one prepare for cleaning out a hoarder house? Like what are you wearing? For example? Yeah, so

Ryan  

for us we’ve been able to do it in plain clothes, sometimes masks and respirators gloves, obviously. Because you never know what you find sharp stuff. But generally we’ve been okay. There has been other people that have been full hazmat suit mould, you know, wet basement like the whole bit. It’s been it’s been pretty rocky, but for us we’ve been lucky to get

Erwin  

I did have some free time attention to the show, but it wasn’t you guys weren’t on it was as a family in the States. Three, two brothers and a cousin or something like that. Montreal. They’re from Quebec. Oh, okay. Yep. I knew something was off their English. Prices were really low, though.

Ryan  

Oh, dude. I’m so jealous. So we got in the show. There’s six episodes in total Kiki, and I have to a couple from Manitoba has two. And then a couple of them are the brothers from Quebec, they’ve got two as well. So six in total. And basically in the Montreal market, just outside of the Montreal market. And then in the Winnipeg market, their houses are like a couple 100 grand. And then you come into the GTA market, and the houses are like a million bucks. Right? This is a nine day nine day difference, like the cost of their purchases, like the cost of our bathroom renovation. Like it’s just it’s ridiculous, right? It’s so it’s so different. But the essence of the show remains the same. Right? People have stuff, remove the stuff, make the house pretty. Turn it back over.

Erwin  

Are the sellers ever part of this? In terms of

Ryan  

no thing? Okay, no. So this isn’t about the people. This is about the real estate and about the house and the transformation. Right. So like there’s other shows out there that talks specifically about the people and their circumstance and all that. That’s not our that’s not our forte, we’re investors first, right? So we talk about the asset and the house and how we can transform.

Erwin  

And it’s your crew, then it’s it’s RW investments that’s doing this, and then you have your antique are the faces.

Ryan  

Yeah, so like, this is still real, like real business day to day. In essence, the camera is documenting our journey. Right? And they’re coming along for the ride. Yes, there are things that you have to do to move an episode along. Because when you’re having a conversation about a house, or when you’re actually flipping the house, sometimes there’s long gaps between progress, right? So when they’re filming, we have to be strategic as to how we bring the cameras in so that the viewer can follow. Otherwise it wouldn’t make for good TV, right? So but 95% of what we’re doing is is sequential, right? And it’s actually happening real time.

Erwin  

Now there’s some out there who criticise these TV shows are on their budgets. But you know, your numbers I do where you’re transparent with your numbers.

Ryan  

I was I was very much so so I mean like what we spend is what we spend it’s a real deal, right? If that was donated, we do get free dumpsters, which is good, but I do try to include that So like if we spent

Erwin  

on a massive budget, how much is the dumpster now

Ryan  

dumpster is like 1000 bucks each, typically, depending on the size and the weight and so on, but I mean, like, like responsive bicycle paint. So that’s kind of interesting. Sometimes we get free flooring or things like that we do get some freebies. But like, generally speaking, I factor in dollar for dollar, like, what did we spend? Let me be transparent. I think when people watch the shows, and they don’t get the full story, it gives a false expectation in the market. Right? And when I was first an investor to like, like learning how to do things, what does lumber cost? What does paint cost? If somebody says, renovations 20 grand, and then you go in the real world? And at 60? Will you start to question like, okay, am I doing it wrong? Do I what do I not know? Right? So I do try to be very transparent.

Erwin  

Oh, can you imagine the poor contractors like, oh, you should get three quotes and you quote all three contractors quoting like, oh, unless show is like, 30%. Less than you’re quoting me. You’re screwing me over. Yeah, contractors like one another one. Another AGT. Yeah. But you kept the real, I keep it real. Thanks for keeping real Welcome.

Ryan  

Welcome. I’m transparent. I always have been, I’m always just, I’m just an open book. I think you’re better to just be honest with people, right? And then, if you come on a show like this, and people ask you questions, it’s like, yeah, this is what happened.

Erwin  

This is what it is, let’s just whack because a lot of shows are not real at all. I remember watching a show when like one of the realtor realtor working with a couple of whatever. And like, wow, they get every single property, he always wins. This is not possible. There’s only one other offer was last time, we had one other offering up against the GTA, so I knew had context. And then you find out like, the couple already owns that house are just acting.

Ryan  

Yes. That’s why they wanted the house to be authentic.

Erwin  

Wow, this isn’t this is a new angle that they’re going for?

Ryan  

It’s a good question. I don’t know, I didn’t get too into. I didn’t get too into the weeds on other shows and how they function, right in terms of like, what they do, or their houses real or whatever. I just know what we’re doing. Right. And so far, the show has been really well received. And like, I wouldn’t know any different because this is our first time right? But from what people are telling us and what, you know, we hear from friends, family, people in the industry, right? From what we’re told, so I’m happy about that.

Erwin  

I’m glad because maybe that’s the the tone going forward that things should be more real things should be more transparent. Share, you know, if people have ownership in these things, or things are being donated, or just be frank with people, ya know, yeah, my trust is broken, right with for a lot of TV shows, because I know it’s not real, or other shows. They’re just feeding the cast alcohol, right? This isn’t real.

Ryan  

We don’t get to do that. We don’t get to drink beer on our show. Get dramatic. It’s funny say that. Because, you know, when we first started the show, Keith and I said, Okay, how do we want to be portrayed in that, like, we had this really real visceral conversation, and you can be like, you can be like, the disappointed wife and like the asshole husband. Or you can be the couple that bickers right, or you can be like, one person is all about the money, the other person is all about making it beautiful. And you’ve got conflict, right? Where you can be like the wholesome, genuine couple that we actually are, right? And just be real and be fluid throughout not only the show, but our life too. Right. And that’s the way we decided to pick like, let’s just be us, if people like it great. And if they don’t, that’s okay, too. You know, not everybody will enjoy everything about every episode. And we’re okay with that. But like, at least Richard, ourself,

Erwin  

is talking about Keith a little bit, when did she join the business like full time, full time,

Ryan  

so keep her in the business, I would say a couple years ago, just as the show was kind of gearing up, she was always in the background, doing like, we had done the first couple of properties together, which is cool, including a principal residence, right? When she kind of did her own thing for a bit. Then she kind of came back and then we realised, hey, you know, we really have something here. She’s got a good eye for design. Let’s come on board. Let’s make these properties. Beautiful. We’re fixing them anyways, to actually make them pretty in colour coordinate and all that stuff. We can make some extra lift here. Right? Let’s bring her on board and let’s get her. Let’s get her opinion.

Erwin  

Are she also working seven to seven? No, always keep rolling. I

Ryan  

work the crazy hours. Always keep working. She’s She’s sporadic on her hours. So she’s a little bit different. So one thing that we’ve both learned about herself, is that we operate very differently. I’m more of a morning person. She’s not she’s more of a night hawk. I’m not. Right. So like, if I get up at 6am, I’m going home like ready to go. Right? Maybe she’ll be sleeping at that point, or the sun hasn’t even come up yet. So we have to be very conscious and considerate of each other because we’re not the same, right? And that’s okay. Right? That’s okay. Knowing yourself is so important to like real estate, investing in life, relationships, whatever, you gotta know, you gotta know. And if you don’t know and take the time to know, do a test do a disc test, right? Do a Myers Briggs test, do a some kind of a personality test. I did that. And it was huge. For me. I liked the disc test just because I understand it. But like there’s tonnes out there. Just do it for yourself. And then you realise Hey, I’m more of a dominant personality or I’m more of a compliance personality or, you know, I’m a stay at home mom and this is the way that I operate, you know, whatever your whatever your thing is play into that strength.

Erwin  

So we actually disk everyone No Oliver Oliver companies, we just everyone Hello. And then we actually try to read read our clients as well so that we can better communicate with them. Yeah and understand them and also how we communicate with them. I think it’s interesting. I think I repeated myself. Can you share what your disk is?

Ryan  

Yes, I am. They asked me I forgot. I am a s. Oh, no.

Erwin  

What am I worth the D?

Ryan  

There is I think I’m a CD. You see, first CD, I’m a CD. I’m not an overly dominant personality, unless I’m in a leadership role. And I have to be a more of a more like a passive guy. I’m big on compliance, math data, stuff like this. That’s how I help justify my decisions. Right? I’m not an AI. Like, I’m not an influencer. I don’t need the flashy, whatever. For outward stuff. Sometimes I like it. Inwardly, sorry. I enjoy the things. I enjoy the flashy things for personal reasons, but not to prove anything to others. Right. Yeah. You’re a bit of a gearhead. Yeah, which is very different than having to buy you know, the convertible because you want people to see you driving down Main Street with the loudest radio, right? That doesn’t matter to me, that stuff doesn’t matter. Even being on TV. That doesn’t matter to me. Like I’m not doing it for those reasons. So people go, you know, Ryan or Kiki, you guys are amazing. We just love it like, like the accolades are, they’re cool, but like, that’s not why I’m doing it. You know,

Erwin  

it’s just just for the listeners benefit. Tony Robbins gives away the disc test for free. So just Google Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins, di es, si. You can go fill out the survey and the questionnaire and exchange for your email. They’ll email it to you. So you can find out what you are as well and compares out the Ryan. See if you’re also a CD and you’re gonna make $20 million like Ryan

Ryan  

made 20 million.

Erwin  

So I brutalised your story. When I tried to summarise your summarise you two people have a young gentleman that I’d like you to meet afterwards because you’d like to see your car. I explained to him like Ryan was a mechanic. And because he’s good with his hands, he figured out how to renovate houses off YouTube, and then just took action and worked hard. And now here he is. Yeah, we yada yada at a lot there are days, seven days a week, but you’ve slowed down a little bit. Why slow down the market?

Ryan  

Yeah, no, not necessarily. It was more of an internal thing. So again, going back to, you know, knowing thyself, going through all of COVID I realised that I’m more on the introverted side, less on the extroverted side. Even though I do like to speak and things like that and train like, I think it’s fun. I’m more on the introverted side, and I’m okay with myself. I’m okay with like, not going out on a weekend. I’m okay with these things. Right. So on the disc test personality side that really helped me in terms of what was the question again, slowing down slowing down? Yeah, so in terms of slowing down, you know, being an introvert, I was okay with like, just taking it easy. Taking a step back, really realising okay, I’ve worked really, really hard for 10 years put in enough time to call it 20 in terms of human hours, right, and it’s time to enjoy some of the some of the things that we have, whether it’s you know, we talked about cars, so like, whether it’s cars or whether it’s hobbies or whether it’s spending time at the cottage or whether it’s just like you know, Kiki and I like to have tea and pie on Thursdays completely non monetary. You know, and we’ve been so monetary for so many years trying to figure out how do we make money? What do we enjoy things like that? Let’s have tea and pie on Thursdays. It’s 12 bucks, right? Oh, you go to the restaurant sometimes we do. Sometimes we’d go home and just like you know, get a pie from like a baker’s market or something and, and make tea in the backyard. Right? Super simple, but those little moments are what changed my focus and saying okay, if you don’t enjoy life now when will you ever do it? I’m 34 now have worked really hard for a long time 10 years plus okay, let’s chill let’s take a breath I need to headspace see cut back I’ll buy a lot Yeah, I did well like one time I think the max Hi Max properties I had I think it was 15 and I’ve cut back quite a bit so like right now we’ve got a couple interactive construction which is which is plenty you know it’s easier to manage less moving parts less capital out there. The market is changing right now interest rates are up market is down the Oshawa market which is one of the markets that I primarily invested in it’s off 26% Since last year,

Erwin  

so much to unpack here but you still have any buying holds you still haven’t hold the intention to hold for forever

Ryan  

No Not forever I’m not a forever guy. So like some people say you know what is your what is your forever home or what is your I’m like, I don’t know you’re gonna be in 10 years, right? I can’t look that far. But that’s just for me. Some people can be like I’ve got a 30 year plan a 10 year plan or whatever. I’m like a one year plan two year plan five year plan. Let’s reevaluate type of guy. So for me Yes, I do have some buying holds. Do I think I’ll have a forever No, I don’t do I think I’ll have some for a long time. Yes, I do. I do like the benefits. of owning real estate, you know, whether it’s from a tax perspective or whether it’s capital gains versus active income, like a flip, like all of these things play into my my thought process, but yeah, I’ll keep some for a long time. So I’m gonna let go, what’s the makeup of your your holds right now? Primarily small. So I’ve got one, one multi unit, and then a bunch of duplexes. A couple of single families. The single families are primarily used because I’m severing land, you know, so buy the house, split the land, eventually sell the house. That’s why That’s why I have those financing is a little bit more favourable. If you’re buying a single family home on a big lot. You don’t have to close it private, you can close it with bank fine, like things like that. And then I’ve got a bunch of land that I’m developing as well. Where’s the land through? We’re gonna build what are you gonna build? duplexes, single family, semis? triplexes, things like that?

Erwin  

I mean, lots,

Ryan  

not that many, eight 810 something that can be hard.

Erwin  

Are they hard? Yeah.

Ryan  

They just take the cooperative, they take time. They take time, generally speaking, you know, barring being close to like a creek or like in some weird area, the cities are relatively supportive of infill development, because you’re using the existing services, and close to transit spines, you know, grocery stores, whatever. All of that stuff is great. On the flip side, if you’re in a part of town, where like, I’ll give you a real example. So I bought a piece of property three and a half, maybe four years ago, right? It was my first infill development project. So I bought it like older farmhouse on a double lot in town. And I went to the town said, Okay, I want to back the house down, cut that in half and build two new ones. Generally, they were supportive, except I found out six months later that I got stuck in what was called an interim control, bylaw. And interim control Bylaw is when all the neighbours get together. And they complain to the town and they say all these developers are whacking down the old houses on bigger lots and building mini mansions, right. And we don’t like that. In our area. We’re like, alright, so I got stuck in this thing for two, two and a half years. Oh, my. Yeah. When I had the shittiest tenants in this property, they rip the cabinets off the wall and they damage the place. It was just a mess. One tenant moved out, rip calves off. So I called the police I was like, Okay, so I’ve been clearly vandalised here, right? Like, this is beyond. This is beyond just like wear and tear. Like, you know, the corners are worn off because I have a big dog. Now, like the carpets were torn up. There’s garbage all over the camera. The cops come in, and they’re like, Yep, I understand where they are tenants. I said, yeah, they’re my tenant like what they did, right? And the cops are like, Sorry, can’t do anything. If they weren’t your tenants, then we can find these people to press charges. But because of your tenants, they’re basically protected. And I was handcuffed, not physically. I was handcuffed, like the property. Thank you for clarifying. Yeah, yeah. The property was like physically handcuffed. I couldn’t do anything.

Erwin  

I’ve actually spoken to a police officer in our community. And he says they can really It’s interesting. It’s just again, it’s they’re open opinion. Yeah, how much work they want to put in, I guess,

Ryan  

I guess. So like that, you know, shit like that. That really sucks and gives me mad. You know, I was really good at these people. As a landlord. I try to be really good at the tents to get people to get back to you. Right, unless they’re unreasonable people to begin with. And you just can’t reason with that. Yeah,

Erwin  

sorry. Just to clarify my case, I had a witness. No, I’m one of the random roommates. But still cops were called and they wouldn’t do anything. Yeah. But again, it depends on who you’re talking to. Yeah, yours would be tougher because he didn’t have a witness. Yeah. See, I like I like context that I keep telling me the context is everything. It is very, it is,

Ryan  

you know, you could glaze over that story and be like, Ryan buys house, Ryan takes house down builds new house. You know, Ryan keeps us long term. But like, there’s so many details in between that story of like, you know, what happened to the market? What happened with the tenants? What happened with the town? How did you push through it? The house, I built the house all through COVID? What about the price of lumber? What about the price of drywall? What about finding skilled trades during that time? You know, what about watching the government say, okay, everything’s open, okay, everything’s closed. Okay? The hardware stores are open, the hardware stores are closed, right? Like all of these things. Yeah, you have to chop through. And the margins have to be there at the end to actually make that make sense.

Erwin  

So another thing observation to have a view is that on the outside, you look like you’re calm, because everyone’s telling me one story how you you save the foundation? Because you just happened to check in and you saw and you caught the mid porn foundation and everything and it would have been a complete disaster. I was we’re not there. That was his house. This new building was so calm about it. It could have cost you like 100 grand probably or something like that. It would have Yeah, you’re just so calm about it though. Were you really calm on the inside

Ryan  

on the inside I was freaking out. Freaking out. That was the first time so what had happened was

Erwin  

and again context right? Again, like, but like quick summary that you gave. You could have had 100 grand mistake if you were not there. And not just if you were not there there or not. You had the experience and the knowledge to spot the problem. Yeah, that’s exactly what and how many people have that. Everyone the jobs they didn’t apparently didn’t

Ryan  

apparently, which was unfortunate. They dug up the municipal road, right for the listeners. They dug up the roadway. And they were putting in the water sewer and storm connection into the two lots that I was servicing. Right? Well, they went to Backfill the hole which is When I pulled up or pulled up, and they were missing the water pipe on one line, the sewer pipe on the other. I said, Whoa, like, what are you doing? And then like, What do you mean? What are we doing? What are you supposed to have three pipes in the hole and you’ve only got two? Where’s the third pipe? And they’re like, well, it’s not on the drawing. And I said, Do you think that I’m gonna go and build a house? With no sewer pipe on one and a water pipeline? Like, what? How am I going to make this house function? You’d have to dig a row back up? Oh, that makes a lot of sense. He says, Who are these people? Well, the municipal workers, they’re contracted by the government to put in the services. Yeah, like so frustrating. I thought to myself, are you kidding me?

Erwin  

I was working delegate the scale. Ryan, you guys, you missed that. You missed that hook in the motivational whatever. Yeah.

Ryan  

I was so rattled on the inside. I was. I was I was upset that they didn’t catch it. Because they were professionals at what they were doing. Right. They’re supposed to do this every day, every day, right? I don’t. I’m not a sewer guy. I don’t know. But I’m, like, bright enough to know that, you know, you need sewers, and water and all the rest of it to make a house work. So, you know, I said, Hey, put the thing in. It, put it in and they put it in. They’re like, Okay, can we Backfill the hole? I said, sure. Like so. So trivial. But that would have been so expensive to fix in

Erwin  

delay. Oh,

Ryan  

it would have been horrible.

Erwin  

I waited. You’re probably like finding the problem. Like, oh,

Ryan  

yeah, like, where’s my pipe? You would have been digging, looking for the pipe that wasn’t even there would have been horrible. Oh, cool. Yeah, but caught it. Right. another roadblock? I caught it. Move on. Let’s build the house. We’re okay.

Erwin  

I don’t want to scare people from doing these things. No, no, please. Sure. What’s tricky about real estate investing. Let’s we should at least talk about what what it is.

Ryan  

Yeah. Like, there’s positives and negatives to anything. Same thing with stocks, stocks go up, stocks go down, you hit the buy button, instead of the sell button, you know, trouble. You hit the sell button instead of the buy button. Maybe you save yourself who knows? Right? But educate yourself move forward, figure out the solution. Put $1

Erwin  

I see all these investors who are just, it’s not that common with this incredible ambition right out of the chute. Right? They’ll take on Orion car sized project on like their second deal. Or the by vacant piece of land off realtor.ca. Like, holy cow. What did you find? What did you see in this property that no one else saw that largely looked at this?

Ryan  

You wouldn’t believe I get like people call me from time to time and say, Hey, can you help me with this? And so I’ll try and help them right. And I talk more people out of doing deals than doing deals, because they’re too ambitious, as you say, I can’t reasonably see a positive outcome. Right? And they have no idea what they’re talking about. And I’m like, Hey, you might be missing this. You might be missing this. You might be missing this. You ever thought about that? And they say no, I have it. Right. And I’m like, there’s more deals that are bad deals than are good deals. And most people don’t understand that. All right.

Erwin  

Well, lots of good deals never see the light of day. So yeah, I think the folks need to understand that. Like, if it’s on realtor.ca, then that, or IC X even is IC X even around? I don’t think it is. I think you’re right, the commercial version over the last. If it’s made it there. A lot of people already looked at it. So you’d be like, have your guard up. Yes. All right. Be extra critical. Yep. Yeah, crazy. So tell me about the deals or the other deals the work that you’re currently active on? Yes. Because you’re known for do highest and best use. What are you doing that’s highest and best use on these are these just ugly houses.

Ryan  

A lot of ugly houses. But I mean, land 70s are big rezonings you know, cutting corner lots kind of backyards, off corner lots. That’s good. Tear down rebuilds rezoning for higher density. That’s big coach houses are kind of like the new big thing. So I’ve got a couple of those in the pipe. I might convert them to try Plexus instead of coach houses just because it’s more cost effective to build.

Erwin  

So how do you what’s the triplex? Can you paint a picture for me?

Ryan  

Yeah, sure. So buy big infill lot. Cut the lot in half, take the house down, build a triplex on the left and a triplex on the right.

Erwin  

Oh. So what is it like

Ryan  

three, three units in one building? small apartment building?

Erwin  

So basement unit main floors unit, the second floors unit? Yep. I tried to

Ryan  

build them as a raised bungalow, or like a raised basement style. So the basements four feet in the ground, right? Everybody has nice big natural light in the bottom. And then the second floor is elevated a little bit third floor even more so. Right. Right, right. And then because, excuse me, there’s more stairs to get to the third unit on the top level. Right? When it’s when it’s raised a little bit, we try to incentivize that top level unit. So maybe give them 10 foot ceilings or vaulted ceiling. So when you get up there, it’s like really beautiful, or they have a nice balcony. And that helps offset the pushback when people say oh, that’s a good tip. I don’t want to go that high.

Erwin  

How deep do the poor arrays bungalow?

Ryan  

Well, depends on the answer is four feet. Right, which is your typical frost coverage. Okay. Right. But I mean, it depends on your area. So like in Florida, they don’t freeze. So you’ve got less, less of less flooding coverage there. But here in Ontario, we’re about four feet. Are you seeing more deals available now? I’m seeing more volume now. But that doesn’t mean it’s a deal. So just because it’s inexpensive, more things

Erwin  

are coming across your desk, right? Because like the 20 wholesalers and the threats like

Ryan  

stuff is happening, things are moving in the market because the market is coming off. So people either want Say face, or you know, claim profits or whatever. But like whenever you get a market change, things come out of the woodwork.

Erwin  

I don’t even know to ask next. You mentioned Florida. So that book came to mind. Are you doing anything out of out of country or province thing?

Ryan  

Nothing? No,

Erwin  

come on, Ryan, there’s gotta be some shiny things you can chase. I know, it’s more than an hour drive from your house. I’m

Ryan  

trying to I’m trying to not do that actively. Like there’s, there’s an opportunity in so many areas that I could that I could reasonably foresee a positive outcome. Right, so many areas doesn’t matter what it is you could you could you own a better restaurant? Or could you have a better a cotton farm? Or could you have the, you know, the best piece of real estate? Or could you? You know, like, I went all the stock hacker stuff. Right? I took the course. But I never did actually do it. Right. And I thought the course was fantastic. And I thought you guys nailed it. Right? But I knew after I took the course, that I couldn’t have a split focus between real estate, and being great at that. And doing stocks and being great at that. For me. That doesn’t mean nobody can do it. I’m sure there’s less people to do. Right? I just need it for me. If I split my focus, I would split my results and I couldn’t do it. Right. Maybe when you’re retired, maybe yeah, maybe we truly

Erwin  

retire. You make you make so much money being so active in your business and you’re so good at it seems like it’s your highest and best use.

Ryan  

It is I just I’m able to see opportunity. Very, very like that, you know,

Erwin  

because the direction that stock hacker Academy is now is where I see challenges in the market for people are all these people who are private lending who are taking away too much risk for a fixed return. Yeah, right. And so the analogy often to them is like, you know, a TD Bank and payment will pay me over 4% dividend. Yes, taxpayer for preference. Yeah, I can say I can do something really simple. I’ve covered sell cover calls on it. Yep. And I don’t think I’m gonna lose that much money on TV, nor will it go to zero versus we know people that are losing lakhs of money in like the promissory note market and some REITs that are at risk out there like newer REITs. So yeah, I just I just wanted to put something out there that the risk and the reward was more in line with at least what our conservative than the massive amounts of risk I see people taking. Yeah, you know, I agree with your with what you’re doing, especially with how busy you are, back to the triplex. Now, I don’t know where I want to dig into one of these strategies. Okay, because we have a lot begins on the show. Yeah, which of the strategies that you’re currently work doing is something more something out beginner can bite off a seven build Severn, triplex just a basement suite,

Ryan  

I think the entry level stuff is always a basement suite. I mean, I cut my teeth on doing basement apartments, really, you know, 10 years ago, when I got started. And like a lot of the same, a lot of the same techniques you need to do basement hold true for a lot of development. So like getting a building permit learning that process doing a set of drawings, learning that process, understanding what a site plan is where we put in parking, how deep is the backyard, you know, what is a setback, right? A setback is how far you are from a lot line from your structures, all of these things matter. Right? So when you take that, that concept, and then you bring it over into infill development, right, the same thing applies, where are you putting the house? You know, how do you get your blueprints done? What are your setback, all of these things are the same, right? It’s just on a basement apartment. It’s easier because you have a defined space you’re working with on an infill lot, it’s a little bit more tricky, because you’re trying to deal with a town or something new. Right basements or existing construction. So basement apartment, that’s the answer. That’s the easiest entry level point.

Erwin  

Is it your own crews working on these on these projects?

Ryan  

Sometimes? Yep. So like, I think at my peak, I had three, three crews on the go. Right now I have one, sometimes two, but mostly just one full time staff T for employees. I’ve had them for years, right. And they’ve been awesome. I attribute a lot of my success is to having full time staff because they push me to be better because I want to be better for them. Not because I want to be better for me. Right? I’m always working six months ahead of my my guys, my staff, because it takes time to find the house close on the house, finance the house, whatever, plan the house so that they can come in and do the construction. Right. And that evolved naturally. I used to be the guy doing the construction. That was great. But you can’t scale your physical labour, you can only scale your thoughts. Other people’s labour. Right. So that’s that’s how that came about. But like yeah, I can confidently say that if I didn’t have full time staff, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. Because I wouldn’t have pushed in the same manner.

Erwin  

Now having full time staff has so just, again, not many people have full time staff. So that’s some questions around it. I hopefully it benefits the listener. How much are you able to outsource and delegate to that full time staff? Are you able to be like, go golfing? You can explain it? How involved are you on with the construction since your full time staff

Ryan  

last year. So now, more so in the beginning, right. So when I when I kick start a project, we’ll call it every project when I start one. I’m a little bit more evolved at the beginning because I have to steer the ship, right? I’m the maestro to the orchestra. I have to say okay, the tuba goes here. The trombone goes here the violin now it’s your turn. Right whereas after that is set and the sheet music is written. They just have to play it. And I say just have to play it like kind of tongue in cheek because there is still some technique there, and they still have to be good at their job. But like, what I didn’t understand when I first started my business was I was just looking for people that were inexpensive, because I just wanted to write and a lot of people go through this, they don’t want to pay and whatever. Now I need people that come batteries included, no assembly required. Because I have to be able to delegate a task and say, Okay, you go hang the drywall, I’ll be over here. When you’re ready, then we’ll go on to the next task. I can’t spend the time to show you how to hang the drywall. Otherwise, I would just have to do it myself. Right. So that was a big takeaway for me, as I continue to grow, and now I’m less involved, right, I do still start the project, like I mentioned, as we progress through the project less or so. Right? And the final 10% is always the hardest, because then I come back in and I say, Okay, we got it still got to do this. Still got to do this. Okay, now we’re ready to go.

Erwin  

So part of the challenge was investors is, is they want to be as passive as possible.

Ryan  

That’s horseshit. I’m telling you right now, anybody that wants to be like, super hands off, and I don’t want to know anything about the problems, and you know, just call me when it’s done. And here’s the keys and whatever, that only works later in life. It only works later in life. That’s been my experience. Right? I think that’s been a lot of people’s experience. I can’t speak for every scenario, but anybody that says, I don’t want to know anything about it and right, fair, fine, but you will pay for that. One way or the other, like, something will come back. It’ll bite you. Yes, it’ll be bad, right? But it’s the wrong way to go about it. If you can’t see yourself in that business long term, right? I personally don’t believe that you should start because something will happen. And you’ll get frustrated, and you won’t want to be there. And you won’t have the foresight to work through the issues

Erwin  

and just wait for the person that thinks like, oh, Ryan works 77, I can fix that I can answer some delegate, I’ll hire an in house Operations Manager, for example. Does the model work with the full time staff between you and the project? So you don’t ever have to go on site? Maybe sometimes it does. Maybe someone sometimes your projects usually pretty have good meat on the bone?

Ryan  

They do. They do. So like if you have a tonne of margin, where you can make all the mistakes, and you can hire all the people and stuff like that everybody that’s just just like, oh, just delegate that delegate that delegate that. Well, eventually, when you get to the end, and there’s nothing left, but you delegated everything, what have you done it for? Right? So you gotta be really conscious on where you’re spending your money. You could lose so much in operational inefficiency, that like there’s like the project is a zero or a negative at the end, and you’ve just put in all the time, even though you’ve outsourced it and got your time back. Right? It’s all for naught. So you do still have to look at the margin.

Erwin  

Right? And it’s the thing that I see a lot of books talk about is like, oh, yeah, just just outsource and delegate everything. Yeah, my experience is similar. You just so much, you can’t,

Ryan  

you cannot, it’s very hard to delegate vision, right? It’s very hard to delegate, like a one off chore. It’s very hard to delegate art. It’s very hard to delegate anything that isn’t clearly repeatable.

Erwin  

Like Simon cynics book, for example, lead from the front. I don’t know if he can inspire people, if you’re on the golf course. And like not doing like any work, or you’re just doing cutting or cutting checks and signing checks. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s necessarily inspires your staff? No, I mean,

Ryan  

I wouldn’t think it would. That’s why, you know, I talked about this in the book, which, by the way, is coming. It’s been the longest, it’s been the longest book really supposed to

Erwin  

announce today.

Ryan  

It’s been the longest book release ever. And at first, it was like the production side that I was kind of getting held up on. And now it’s clearly just my fault. Like, it’s just clearly my fault. The book is written, it’s been proof read, right? And there’s still a few things that need to be done. And it’s just like, I am the bottleneck in that process. And speaking of outsourcing, I can’t outsource a couple of the things that need to be done because it’s coming for me. Right? So I’m the bottleneck. This is like real world entrepreneurship. I’m the bottleneck. This is it. Right? But like, you know, I talked about some of these things in that book, where you have challenges in the business that it’s got to be to fix it.

Erwin  

I did hire someone to read my book. Yeah, you gotta want to stay in forever too. It is out though. But again, the audio books not out yet but it’s hilarious because like it’s like the the guy who reads it. Very professional doesn’t stutter like I do.

Ryan  

I love it. Cool. I can’t wait to read it or listen to it.

Erwin  

I heard I heard a sample and Sherry’s book also we hired someone a woman at least Yeah, but yeah, like to hear like a professional speak versus cheering with their accent.

Ryan  

Yeah, this is hilarious trousers, very articulate with the word very delicate.

Erwin  

Because for me, whenever I read chairs, writing, I hear her voice in my head. So the hearsay throws me off.

Ryan  

We talk about the car. We can we can you like cars. I do like cars forever. Forever. Yeah. As a kid, I was always very mechanical. So like, before I got into being a mechanic I was, you know, like doing go karts and mini bikes and welding and stuff like this. All through like public school in high school. I was more into sports and public school and then I gravitated towards work with my hands even more. So you know, when I was like 1314 and then it just always stuck around.

Erwin  

And there wasn’t any cars particular brand and everything like was it on your vision board

Ryan  

or any Going for Absolutely. So I didn’t even know what a vision board was when I was a kid. But I always had little toy Ferraris, right. That was always my thing. It was my brand. They were red, and they’re fast, and they’re fun and they’re sporty. And that always stuck with me. Then going through, like all of this real estate stuff and making some money and like having successes. I said, okay, like, if I’m never gonna buy a sports car, or a Ferrari like, now’s the time. Let’s do that.

Erwin  

So we did. What was the time? What was the time, the trigger event? But it was like, now’s the time to buy it. Yeah,

Ryan  

so the school story. I always said to myself that I wanted a Ferrari, but I never wanted to pay full price for it because I was buying equity in real estate. I want to do the same thing with cars. I said to myself, when the market falls apart, luxuries go on sale, and that’s when I’ll buy it. Right and I did just that. So over the number of 60 some odd deals. I saved up a couple grand here a couple grand there just kind of put it aside forgot about it. That was my car fun. Right? And I got to the point where COVID came in. The market fell apart. luxuries went on sale was a very short time period. But there was the opportunity. There’s this window, I found the perfect car. Bought it right there.

Erwin  

rest is history. Keisha Keisha how you how you found it how you found the car. Yeah, so

Ryan  

I actually did Kijiji Facebook marketplace Auto Trader like all the online like all the online ads. And I did a we buy Ferraris fast for cash programme right in amongst that I had like

Erwin  

you had your the ad you had Yeah,

Ryan  

just like people do. We buy houses and Senate flyers I did like a I put one on Kijiji

Erwin  

so instead of like house pictures or house logos, you put a car. Yeah. Ferrari. Yeah. So Ferraris

Ryan  

like red with nice rims and like all this stuff, right? Put it up there. I think I put it in like Microsoft Paint. Like it was a cheesiest ad like we buy Ferraris for cash, call me. And in amongst that campaign where I was a waiting for inbound leads to come in, right and be reaching out to people saying, Yeah, you know, I see your cars for sale. If it doesn’t sell, give me a call, like things like this. Right in amongst that campaign. I came across the car that I wanted. There’s two particular models. And the rest is history. I bought it right there. I bought equity. Right? The person who bought it from us fantastic, like really great guy still have a relationship with that person today. And I love the car.

Erwin  

Right? He doesn’t feel slighted how much you made? No,

Ryan  

no, you know what he was thrilled, I think. And I all I can do is insert myself into the way that I feel he was thinking at the time, right? I called him he didn’t pick up. He called me back like a week later. And I figured, well, this car is pretty reasonably priced. Like and it’s really pretty. It’s probably gone. So I just kind of wrote it off. Well, he called me back a week later. Hey, I’m so and so whenever you’re available. Let me know. I’ll get the car down for you. He’s down. Yeah, that’s where I sit. Down comes down. Berry dough from okay. So I roll up and he takes it down off the hoist and takes it out into the driveway. And it’s all nicely polished, recently serviced all the owner’s manual service records the whole bit. And the car was really beautiful. It has everything that I want it and a guy was awesome, too. He’s like, come on into my home. We had a coffee, talk a little bit about it. I met his wife like, like really great. Just Just a great people. Right. And not only did he get the car, but he got the relationship. And I think that’s really

Erwin  

cool. So he called off your ad or they posted an ad. I reached

Ryan  

out to him. He posted an ad in my campaign of inbound and outbound. You know, trying fine. Right. I had reached out to his ad. And he called me back. There was a price on the end. There was oh, there was so I got a little bit of a reduction. Right, which is great. I also got an awesome car.

Erwin  

Any idea if he any other any serious inquiries or inquiries? He did?

Ryan  

He did. I again, I can only guess based on my interaction with him there. I think he sold it to me, because he liked the relationship too. That’s my guess. That’s my guess.

Erwin  

Can you give a percentage? How much has gone up in value?

Ryan  

Oh, yeah. That car went up in value. I think I bought it about 60 cents on the dollar. So it’s probably gone up 40% or more?

Erwin  

Is it $1 than or $1 60% of your 40% of 60 cents? You know, I mean, so I went up 20% 2628 cents.

Ryan  

It’s heavy math. I don’t know. We went up I went up my half the value of the car.

Erwin  

Okay, yeah. Okay. Oh, then it’s over. It’s over the dollar. That mountain. If you paid $1 on the dollar, then you know, you’re over.

Ryan  

I paid 60 cents for what the car was worth. And then it went up a bit. I don’t know it just went up.

Erwin  

Did you make money? I made money and you’re happy I’m very happy you ever gonna sell it? That’s dumb question.

Ryan  

Like it’s again for me it was more of the emotional buy like this wasn’t a this isn’t a flashy thing and like posted on social media like it doesn’t I get it every time I go somewhere people are gonna take a picture of the car and make sure right but like I’m gonna post this stuff like I’m not a flashy guy doesn’t mean that stuff doesn’t mean anything to me. emotionally. I wanted it for me, not for others. And the fact that other people enjoy it, I think is great. How’d you feel?

Erwin  

How do you feel about it?

Ryan  

I love it makes me feel good. Right? It just get in. It’s tight. It’s fun. It’s sporty, I take it to the track sometimes, you know, it looks great.

Erwin  

Park near you, right? You’re lucky. Yeah, this track is nowhere near here.

Ryan  

So the Ferrari dealership, they called me and said, Hey, we’re doing a track, they wanted to come out. So we went out. And like there’s, there’s a guy like with the espresso machine, it’s like, it’s all like a nicely done day, a whole bunch of people with other cars. And it was a really cool experience to be able to take my own vehicle to the track. And I did a little video on the way there, I never ended up posting it. But I did this little video. And I was like, I just sent it to my family. And I said, Hey, you know, big day, I’m going to the track today. And the coolest part is that I get to take my own car. Right? And you know, I sat next to people at lunch that sold their companies to American Express for like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, here’s me like little rental portfolio to cover the duplex. That’s right. That’s right. So it was a really cool experience to know that there’s people out there with, with more money or more experience or, or better cars or faster cars. And, you know, I was able to compete with that and hang out for the day.

Erwin  

And are you able to you’ve done any business with these people? Like, is it? Is it a good networking opportunity?

Ryan  

I haven’t done any business with anybody car related. I imagine it would be a good networking opportunity. But I don’t really use it like that yet. It definitely does, though, because I’m part of a few other car clubs. It definitely does open the door before you even open your mouth. Right. It’s just a visual representation of, you know, some success that you’ve had in your business career. And people automatically attribute that to Yeah, this guy probably knows what he’s talking about. Right. So that is really cool.

Erwin  

That’s cool. Now we’re running out of time. So I want to ask you, you’ve done a fair amount of education, hired coaches and stuff. Any particular favourites? Any favourites? You’ve probably you’ve put, you’ve dropped a lot of money on coaching.

Ryan  

I have Yeah, I probably spent, I don’t know, over 100 grand anyways, coaching. But that’s returned to me by I don’t know how many folds, but several times even just just negotiating with tenants and stuff like that, trying to figure out, okay, I want to put a house on the market or on the market. What does that mean? How can I parlay this to the tenant so that it’s advantageous for both of us? Right? How do we work on that? So just the way that you use your words is important. Any particular favourite right now I really love Alex for mosey he’s on. He’s on YouTube. He’s got some podcasts and stuff. He’s great. He’s not a formal coach of mine by any means. But his content is terrific. Very, very good.

Erwin  

See the former gym owner? Yeah, lots of German. Yeah, always disciple of Russell Brunson.

Ryan  

Is it? Okay, I know he did a bunch of stuff with him. I didn’t know that he was like a descendant of okay,

Erwin  

any of the paid ones, then you have the paid real estate coaching that you’ve done that you want to shout out to?

Ryan  

Specifically? No, no, like, I just I really do. I really do appreciate when people share information with me. And I do appreciate paid or free content. Right. And I just think that, if you’re able to digest that, and then use it in the market, it’s worth the money because you’ll get it back. I’ve said it for a long time. Education is like a stove, buy once and use it forever. Right. And like, that just rings true for anybody who’s active and actually doing the doing, if you’re not doing the doing, like, don’t read the books, because it’s just not worth it. Don’t take the courses don’t do the weekend training because it’s just not worth it. Like who said that quote was like, there’s no difference between a person who doesn’t read and a person who can’t read? Is it Mark Twain? I don’t know if it was somebody like Mark Twain or Jim Rohn. I don’t know one of these guys. But like, it’s true. You know, why learn to play pool? If you’re never gonna play pool again? Right? Why would you why would you go to a weekend course to play pool billiards, right? If you never play with your friends, or if you never go to the bar and playing League,

Erwin  

or for my case, why learn golf when you suck someone? There you go. So we’re running out of time. Right? I want to ask some final thoughts. Like we’re in the middle of a declining market in everything.

Ryan  

Stocks, everything.

Erwin  

So is it time to like, pull the chute and, you know, sell everything or? We think

Ryan  

I’m short term bearish long term bullish. Right. I think I said this in the downturn, somewhere in 2017. We talked about on your show. I was short term bullish long term or short term bearish long term bullish there. Right. And I feel the same way. Now. I think we’re gonna go through some choppy waters for the next couple of years. I don’t think anybody saw what happened with COVID happening, because interest rates are so low, and they printed so much money with shot the market like straight to the moon. So I mean, yeah, I still think that we’re going to be in a short term, tough time. I think we’re long term bullish, because at the end of the day, it’s inflation that the government’s all want, right? They target 2% Inflation is like the goal, right? Because if we don’t have inflation, consumers get very bearish and they don’t buy because they know tomorrow, it’s going to be worth even less. Right. So to kickstart the economy, they keep a 2% hedge knowing that Okay, right. Next year is gonna be worth more which means consumers will shop two percents the goal, so long term, I’m still bullish short term, I’m definitely bearish, right, but that brings opportunity,

Erwin  

right. So then immediate term, you’re still buying stuff if something makes sense to you,

Ryan  

if you buy equity I’ve been like that and in a good market and a bad market, right? The strategy still rings true. Obviously, you don’t want to catch a falling knife. That’s like the going term. You know right now, but it’s true. Like if you buy something for 100,000 today and the market falls 20% it’s only worth 80 Tomorrow, right if you bought it for 60 Well, you’re still up. You still good. So obviously it

Erwin  

fantastic. Brian, thanks so much for doing this. Thanks for making the drive out. Thanks for bringing the car. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, hopefully we have some fun golfing. I agree. All right. Awesome. Thank you.

Erwin  

Before you go, if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate for the cash flow but with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there are forget the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more likes you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out your pocket like it did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more and register for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself what so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Greetings my fellow wealth hackers. Welcome to another episode The truth about real estate investing show. Today’s show is titled failing grades fighting at school, but ended up graduating university in the top 10 in class, and 11 properties at the age of 21. Sorry, 27. With Antonio young before we get to Antonio a little wish my wife happy anniversary, her birthday is coming up. But right now, it’s happy anniversary to my wonderful wife, cherry Chan, who is my life in business and investment partner. It hasn’t always been easy. I think most people know relationships are not easy, but they’re also important for long term happiness and success. One thing that’s worked out well for us is we share so many values, including how we raise our kids, we both are planners and want to prepare them for all things. I tend to lean towards what I’m worried about, for like 10 years from now, when they’re all growing up, for example, my kids are switching from martial arts later this summer next month, actually from kickboxing to Brazilian jujitsu. For anyone who’s watched UFC, mixed martial arts, you know, those are pretty much the top two styles among that are the most important. It’s almost interchangeable, which is more important, but my plan is for kids to have both. Hence, again, they’re switching, they’re switching to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is, in my opinion, the most effective martial art for self defence anyways. And also this week, we signed up the kids for more golf lessons, as in my experience, golf is an important skill for business. It’s funny, they don’t teach that business school, I think they should. Don’t ever hire me to teach anything to business people. This is just my own experience. The networking opportunities from golfing are among the best I’ve seen. And even better for good golfers. Plus, it’s an activity that takes a long time that we can do as a family. So I look forward to the kids when they don’t want to hang out with us. And talk to us that bill even when they get older, they’ll open up to us because there’ll be stuck with us for four hours. So they better talk to us while we’re golfing. It’s well known and documented that Tiger Woods his favourite memories of his dad were when it was just the two of them playing golf together. That’s something that Terry and I focus on, is building memories. collecting things like houses is more of a means to an end. We teach our kids about that as well, to invest for the long term and provide us our financial freedoms. Because as great as it is to be a business owner, we don’t have pensions, and statistically those without pensions about over two thirds of about two thirds P folks without pensions will never retire, which is basically the opposite of financial freedom, not what I’m looking for. Speaking of financial freedom, we have a young investor, today’s guest Antonio young, he’s 27 years old, and he’s already owned 11 properties. He doesn’t own the law currently, as he’s rotating his capital from Ontario to Alberta. He’s here to share about that, and also about his broken childhood, as he was the child of hard working blue collar immigrant parents. Both of his parents worked 60 hours a week, just to put food on the table. His story of how he turned it around, as is full of lessons for anyone out there wanting to turn around their own fortunes or for those for those of you who are parents with troubled teenagers, and did Antonio ever, ever turn it around? He got around better, better folks. His parents switched schools and got them about better kids were focuses more around academics versus violence. Antonio actually ended up graduating for a really good school, Laurie’s business programme in the top 10 in his class, and he got top club placements, which are highly competitive, and great jobs and offerings after school is a student of some of the greatest investors out there. Warren Buffett Ray Dalio. He’s been in private equity for the Ontario teachers pension, learning from some of the best investors out there, and currently works for one of the big five teaming banks on Bay Street. Like myself, Antonio is not loyal to real estate. He’s an investor who happens to refer real estate for highest returns and best investments. This is a pretty cool episode. In my opinion. It’s been quite a journey for young Antonio. And if you know me troubled younger people, you may want to share this episode with them. Please enjoy the show. Hello, Antonio,

Antonio  

what’s keeping you busy these days? Just just work. Right now what I’m doing is I just ran a marathon on May 1. That was really, really tough for me. And then now I might my next fitness goal is I’m looking to get to 10% body fat. And so that’s what I’m working on right now. And then I also have a business partner named Kathie Lee. And right now we’re in progress of discussing with lawyers and different folks on how to build a

Erwin  

REIT fantastic, and you’re gonna do all this before breakfast. It’s a tough pile mine but I’ll try. Alright, a lot to unpack there. Look, listen and oh, how old are you?

Antonio  

I am 27 I just turned 27, seven days ago, and you have how many properties? For me, I bought and acquired 11 properties. So I actually sold maybe 12 properties. I sold six properties in the last two years. And then what I’ve been buying is in over in Alberta, so I have six properties in total right now. Awesome. And what’s your strategy? I’m Alberta, my strategy out in our Mirta was, so my strategy in Ontario was always the first strategy, because that makes more return than anything that I can ever find. And Alberta is a little bit trickier because I don’t know contractors there. And working with contractors is the hardest piece because managing them and then managing them from a distance is a little bit harder. So my strategy was just to buy under market value properties that don’t need too much renovations. And then really just rent them out because it cash flows in unvented.

Erwin  

That’s pretty crazy. And sorry, when you’re Bert, what kind of properties reboring single family homes, apartment buildings.

Antonio  

The properties I was burning was more so duplexes, I had some triplexes

Erwin  

sorry, really already duplexes, and triplexes when you got them when you turn them into. I didn’t

Antonio  

turn those into I was looking into that strategy, actually, in Kitchener. And then I was like, these numbers don’t make sense anymore to do them. So mine was really just buy things. And then some I had to cut, and then some more just lipstick renovations. Right, right. My strategy was always if I can buy low enough, there’s value here. And sometimes you can even burn things without doing major renovations.

Erwin  

That’s actually a really good point that you bring up. And I think, especially novices needs to understand that to do a conversion is extremely expensive and time intensive. And obviously, if it goes through government for it, yeah.

Antonio  

Well, I was I was talking to a lot of novice investors. And I’m actually really scared because I’m going to these real estate networking events. And I’m asking them for their numbers. And I’m like, Hey, where are you investing in this specific market? I’m not going to name the market, Ontario. It’s not Yeah, somewhere in Ontario, like in the suburbs. And like far out in the suburbs, and they’re just

Antonio  

so far, like tertiary or like, we’re talking about a five hour drive. Oh, my, okay. You can probably guess it now. But I was asking that was like Aubrey

Antonio  

was asking them, I was like, what’s the fundamentals there? What’s the different thing? They were kind of telling me? Hey, I’m investing there because this person is investing there. And the numbers work in the cash flow. But in my mind, I’m like, Oh, the fundamentals, like you got to invest based on fundamentals. They were telling me the numbers, and they were like, Yeah, I’m gonna buy this property for about 300k. I’m gonna put 100k in renovations, and the ARV is going to be 375. I’m like, Wait, so you’re putting in all this money, and you’re actually gonna lose money. It’s like a negative or, right? Because you’re putting a 400k. Like, all together, I think a property is only worth 375. And that’s when I got really, really scared. And I was like, I need to get at it. Ontario, and invest in Alberta.

Erwin  

Yeah, I know. A lot of people are struggling with it or properties in Sudbury. Yeah. Like, like you mentioned, contractors and then as far away so they’re managing from distance. Yeah, that’s Yeah. And you know, the funny thing is, so there’s gonna be some people who are upset that we’re talking about Sunbury people are losing money there was called The Truth about real estate investing. Hopefully people understood that when they read the title of the show, we don’t pull

Antonio  

punches. I’ll be transparent and stuff because I always desire the truth. Because as an investor, it’s like, once we have the truth, we can figure out the optimal solution. Yeah, that’s why I really liked the name, the truth of real estate investing.

Erwin  

Yeah, like this is kind of like a like a pocket mastermind here. We’re just trying to share best practices and also things that don’t work and so that people can, you know, learn from it and make better investments better because there’s a lot of trap investments out there. It just made headlines that pick alliances for those who don’t know, there’s a Real Estate Group company that you know, that completely collapsed and, and surprise surprise, one appraisal company got almost all their business.

Antonio  

Actually, I was actually looking at their businesses in one of the the conferences they were in, just like they’re offering me 15% returns almost guaranteed. I was like, almost guaranteed. Yeah, almost guaranteed. And I was like, Oh, maybe I should invest with these guys. It seems so passive, but I’m glad I didn’t feel sorry for anyone that did because I feel like there are some questionable

Erwin  

people. There the findings of the investigations have not been good. And I feel terrible for people I understand. Some people put their life savings into it. So and that money’s gone. Not only the 15% didn’t happen, but that money’s gone. There’s their their investments gone. Yeah,

Antonio  

they just don’t know what’s what’s gonna happen with all those properties? Because from my understanding, they owned a lot of properties in that market. And if they put that in a small market, like a smaller market like Saskatoon, simply that’s where they are, it’s gonna flood the market and tank everything. Right?

Erwin  

So you’re smart, you actually look at fundamentals. And not just what a lot of people are doing.

Antonio  

Show you a book. My idol is actually Warren Buffett. So I’ve read like all the shareholder letters of Warren Buffett when I was in university, and that’s where I learned how to invest. And recently because things have been dropping, I needed to educate my mind again, and read all his shareholders again. So there’s this thing called the essays of Warren Buffett, and it’s all his shareholder letters in here. You can read it and see how one of the smartest investors of our time thought.

Erwin  

So once you write about, is it more theory? Because I thought I would think that more shareholders reports, it’s more like tactical for that time. It’s like being more time sensitive stuff, or is it is that when he’s writing more evergreen,

Antonio  

it’s more so of he’s writing for like every year. So based on a what he’s seeing from those years. And Warren Buffett is the thing with him is he will invest where the returns make the most sense. There’s a period of time when Warren Buffett was like, I can’t outperform the market. I’m just gonna invest in bonds. Yeah, because bonds were giving like 10 I think 10 to 12%. Yes, please. Please, like, Oh, by these all day, the thing is, even though it was like written about that time in that specific periods, I remember

Erwin  

the year during the year, he was just talking about 10 11%. On bonus, and

Antonio  

in the 1980s. Because I think interests were fed fund rate was like 22% in the US around that time.

Erwin  

And in your recently important, like, I to me, I’m agnostic to investing that people think I’m just a real estate bowl. No, I will do what will make me the most money. That’s where That’s where my money flows. Yes. If bonds are paying today, 11 or 12%. Better imagine I’d have a bunch of it. Yeah.

Antonio  

As long as our interest rates were continuing to go up. Yes. Aaron, I think that’s the thing that a lot of real estate investors don’t understand, is like, they’re like, Hey, real estate, my uncle or someone told me that real estate is the best asset class. Sometimes we bought just keep buying and buying and buying. But like you said, if bonds return 10 or 12%?

Erwin  

Yeah, basically the risk free? Yeah, exactly. As risk free as you can get interest rates that high might not be the best investment at that time. Yeah, exactly. I definitely want to have some because I think getting some cash flow. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So Antonio, you have an interesting background. I don’t know how to say it. But I’ll say it. You’re Chinese, but your name is Antonio. You’re but you’re Peruvian.

Antonio  

This is complicated. Yeah. I always tell people I’m like I have the opportunity to learn three most spoken languages in the world. Spanish and Mandarin. And I was like, I barely know English. Like, you can probably like anyone could probably speak more than me and other ones. Oh, so your parents speak Mandarin, as well. My parents were born in Guangzhou in China. So they speak Cantonese. But they also Mandarin.

Erwin  

Okay. For folks who don’t know Guangzhou is, is part of Southern China in southern China is generally Cantonese speaking. But yeah, if you want to get further ahead in my speaking Mandarin is important. Yeah, sorry, continue. And so we had the end up in Peru, it’s pretty far apart,

Antonio  

China and Peru. So I think at that time, my mom and my dad, other parents were like, You need to get out of China because it’s communist. Even if you build something for yourself. Like, it can be taken away at any time. So what they were seeking was freedom. So for them, it was just like they had some relatives over in Peru. So they flew over to Peru. And I don’t know if that was much better, because once they like in Peru, they opened up a restaurant and they didn’t make money off of the restaurant. And there was a lot of robberies in Peru. So people would go into your restaurant, rob you. And then I remember my mom calling the cops or she was telling me she was calling the cops. And then once you call the cops, the cops actually come in and they rob you as well. And they don’t do anything. So in there in Peru is actually like a tighter community. So it’s like you bond together with all your neighbours and everything so that they help you out instead of police enforcement.

Erwin  

That’s crazy. Yeah, I have a friend who’s Peruvian and explained to me that their gun culture because it is so high crime is so high. I believe he told me that gun owners ship on private citizens, not only like an ownership of concealed gun ownership was, like among the highest in the world for assault for self protection. Yeah. Well, if the cops are not protecting you, you need something to do. Yeah. Well, he told me his mom carried a gun in her purse. Yeah.

Antonio  

It was a scary time there. I had a lot of cousins in Peru and they lived there until they were like 16 to 18. And, yeah, when they got here, they look like thugs. They’re not like that anymore. But yeah, well, it’s crazy.

Erwin  

They stick out like a sore thumb and in a dangerous environment. high crime. Yeah. Right. So you came to Canada, but I hear I’ve heard all these bad things about Canada lately that we’re we’re turning to communists and also freedom. So that’s so you’re gonna you’re gonna go back to Peru now. Right?

Antonio  

I got I do have my citizenship there. So I have Canada and Peru. So I just need to renew and I can go back over there. Where I don’t know exactly how that works. Because in my mind, I’m like, if I was born there,

Erwin  

I should be able to get back. Do you want to go back?

Antonio  

There was a lot of corruption there. But I want to go because they told me that the food is really good. And I want to go to my check.

Erwin  

Not to live there. That’s badass. You run marathons during probably good enough shape to do it. Then you can do the height. You can do the you can do the Inca Trail. Yeah, I understand that trail. But yeah, I’ve heard that if you’re not in good shape. It’s much tougher to do the to do the Machu Picchu. That’s cool. And then your parents are in Canada now.

Antonio  

Yeah, they’re they’re in Canada. They’ve been here for about 25 years. 26 years actually now. And yeah, they don’t still don’t speak a lick of English. Wow. Yeah. Where they live. They live in Scarborough.

Erwin  

That’s where that’s where we grew up as well. So we were we were we started in were specific Ontario. Shepherd in East Side. Forget Exactly. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, certainly in French. Yeah. We weren’t far from you know, my dad’s office was brilliant Shepherd. Okay. But you know how it is like when our parents didn’t know didn’t have guidance on where to buy. So our first home was, you know, next to a lot of high rise government housing. Oh, so my brother got jacked for his the Optimus Prime. And the school wouldn’t do anything about it. So. So we moved

Antonio  

a couple of times over in Scarborough, too. So. Yeah, so a good thing you move away from here. Hopefully no one pulled a gun on you. Good. Someone did pull a knife. Not a gun, though. Prefer the

Erwin  

knife for that gun. So it sounds like it’s an improvement over Peru.

Antonio  

Well, if they didn’t have a knife or gun, I’d be like, Okay, well, we’ll fight for it. But the moment they pick, pull out a weapon, I’m like, okay, okay. I know who’s the boss? Here’s my money. How much money are we talking? Well, like that was? That was when I was in grade 11. And the robbers were smart here. They’re like, okay, the people have Chinese New Years, and you get red pockets for Chinese New Year. Yeah. So I’m carrying cash around. So they’re specifically targeting Chinese people for Chinese New Year’s. And I had about 150 bucks in grade 11 At that time, and I was like, that’s a lot of money. Right. And yeah, I in my mind, I was contemplating, do I fight these guys for it or not?

Erwin  

So you get into a bunch of fights. God, I gotta call my dad after this and tell him thank God we moved on to Scarborough. I wasn’t actually in Scarborough when I was younger, though. I was in near Woodbine station. Sorry, Woodbine, which station.

Antonio  

Woodbine station was close to there’s probably like a 15 minute walk around there. Okay.

Erwin  

Is it near the mall? Is that nearby mall Mall? Like near the horse track? A horse? No, no, not not near? Yeah. Okay. You wrote in before we did this call, so you didn’t have the easiest childhood.

Antonio  

So what happened? Well, it was just like, I’m sure if you can relate for like immigrants, it’s just like, the parents are working all the time in order to survive. And then for me, it was just like, running around as like a little kid. It’s no one to guide me or figure anything out. And a lot of times, it’d be wearing like me down clothes with like, holes. And like, I’d be wearing I remember I was wearing boots that were for females. And it got made fun of that funnel for that. So for me, it was just like, I was really, like, reserved, and I didn’t want to talk to people because as like, a MBA made fun of all the time. Like, I’m just going to do my own thing. And then afterwards, I just, I didn’t know my ABCs until like, grade two. And every time people would go around and sing their ABCs I’d be like ABCD and then I’d mumbled the rest. But I’d be so embarrassed that every time that song came up, I just like sent shivers down my spine where you know, like if a teacher calls up on you, and then you don’t know what Answer. That was the feeling that I got. And for me, it was just like, I feel like I was scared all the time because it was just like, man, people are like, geniuses out here like, how do they know their ABCs? How do they know how to behave as a human being? So I was thrown into ESL. And when you’re thrown into ESL, you’re like, is your English is your second language, which was mine, for there is just

Erwin  

to clarify, folks because I went to ESL too. So just to clarify for listener for people who didn’t who spoke English as a second language, public schools. Well, my understand my experience, public schools have separate programming for folks who didn’t speak English, that well, it’s extra schooling that we have to do. So. Yeah. Sorry, continuing, Antonio. Yeah. So

Antonio  

for when I was put into easy as l programmes you actually labelled by the other kids, where they’re like, Oh, that guy’s weird. He doesn’t speak English. He’s part of another programme. And so, for me, it was just like, I wanted to accelerate something, right? Because I was like, I’m doing terribly at school. So what I found out was like, I’m stronger, and I’m faster than most of these kids. So what I started to do was a people made fun of me, I started punching them in the face. And I was like, cool, this is a much cooler, this is much better than trying to learn math and English and geography and things because I was like, that’s not relevant. It’s like, it’s not gonna get me ahead in life or anything. So at a very young age, it just started punching people in the face. And then our school was, we weren’t in the best school, we probably ranked, like if you ranked each way to score, like, there was probably 1370 schools, we were ranked as 1340. So we’re like the lowest ranked school. And because since we were great, one to five, we didn’t get a lot of fundings. So you get a lot of problem, children in this neighbourhood. So all of us was like, really good teachers probably don’t want to work there. So we’re just like punching each other in the face, which was just like, that was cool. It was just like, no one really cared. No one said anything. And then it’s just like, everyone wants to fight each other. And so we tried to fight to see who was the top. And then if you beat up the wrong person, their brother’s, like two or three years older, they’d come after you. So we, although I punched people in the face, I also got my ass kicked. Yeah. And that was from raid one to six.

Erwin  

So when did this turnaround, because he has other difficulties. Like, for example, you mentioned you mentioned in your in your bio that you got lost in gaming.

Antonio  

Yeah, let’s turn it round, which was really good for me was in grade seven, when we actually moved up to Scarborough, because what happened was, where school was one to five. So we got into, we started to emerge schools. And when you have kids that are just problem children, there’s another rise that’s up top. So you had grade six and sevens like they started carrying weapons, because like, if you couldn’t beat someone up, you’d have to use like a tool. So talking about 11 and 12 year olds, yeah. So then, for me, it was just like, this is getting scary. But at the time, I didn’t know it was just like, as a kid, you’re like, Oh, we’re just playing. Like, that’s what we thought. And so afterwards, I moved over. And I heard afterwards, like my three closest friends, once one became a drug dealer, one got a national arrest warrant for murdering someone. And then the other one became like a teenage dad. So those were my three closest friends. And after I moved here, we’re in a school, which was predominantly Asian. And so the cool thing to do here was to study for me is just like, if I was a very angry child, so if someone looked at me the wrong way, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna beat this guy up. But quickly, if you try to beat someone up, or you hit someone, you just get detention, or you’d be labelled as, oh, this person’s that angry kid, that weird problem child. So that no longer became cool. And then because I was so far behind on my studies, I was just like, Okay, I got to excel in something again. So I shifted towards video games. And I played this game called Maplestory, which thought a lot about entrepreneurship, as oh, let’s just call Hang on. What’s it called? As most people are heard of it? Yeah. It’s like online PC game. And it’s kind of like, you can think of it as like World of Warcraft, where there’s its own economy, its own different thing. And it’s like its own little world. Yeah, it was a very popular game at my time. But you can, you can buy things for low and sell them for high, which was a really useful skill that I learned.

Erwin  

When is this actually like a, like a good learning tool? It was a good, great learning tool for me. Okay, so this is a description on the website. Yeah. Live it up in Maplestory. The original sidescrolling That’s an acronym at Don’t know what it means MMO RPG

what is what is an MMO RPG? I just didn’t know what it was a kangaroo. Remember, multi

Erwin  

is like multiplayer role playing game? Is this actually a good tool? Like would you recommend it to like your kid nephews and nieces to do this to learn about life and money. I see cartoon characters walking around with humongous swords.

Antonio  

This game actually taught me a lot because it was just like, you can’t imagine that you’re living life, but you’re in like a virtual world, right? But you still want to get to the top, you didn’t want the best items, you want the best tools, you want to kill the big bosses and stuff. So if you were competitive that in the game, you had to figure out strategies in different ways in order to get there. So it’s very simple problem solve,

Erwin  

right? Yeah. I don’t know if it’s underrated. But I’ll just say, I believe it’s a very underrated skill is to get the problem solve. Sorry, continue.

Antonio  

So I would recommend it to people that to play these role playing games, rather than the shooting games that we have. Because in shooting games, you there’s literally nothing you learned, except for how to shoot people. But this game was just like it had his own economy and everything there. So I really enjoyed it. It’s not as popular now. But it was one of the top games back in the days.

Erwin  

So had its own economy as in like, you could start a business or you find stuff and sell it like Yeah,

Antonio  

yeah, you could sell anything. The objective was you kill monsters in the game, these monsters would drop weapons and loot. And then you would try to get the best items and everything and level things. So it was just like, kind of like life where it’s just like, you level up your fitness, your mindset, your wealth, spiritual, all of these different things. But they’re just different stats.

Erwin  

Right memory. I just add to that. I think generally, I keep the two kids away from my kids, because I don’t think there’s that many redeeming qualities. But those like things like, like those games that teach you to grind. Yeah, right. I think that’s a redeeming quality. So understand that the more you grind, more returns, you get? Yeah, right. I

Antonio  

actually, for me, I felt like I actually learned more out of that game than in school, because school didn’t really teach much relevant things. And then for me, it was just like, school. Yeah, I was there. Like 6am might start waking up and start grinding all the way to 1212. And for me, I kept trying to think of ways to accelerate improve. So there were millions of people playing this game. But I had ranked to one of the top players like the server just because it was grinding so hard.

Erwin  

Interesting. Yeah. Did you find ways to be more efficient?

Antonio  

Yes. Because there was just like, there’s different ways where you’re just like, how do you kill a boss? Right? How do you make alliances with different people so that you can take down monsters together? What’s the best weapons and different things that cost the least amount of money. And so once you figure out all these small tips and things, you can put them all together, and you can have a massive advantage over.

Erwin  

Now my concern with video games is also I’ve seen too many young people, they fail to progress, the next step, they get lost, they become lost in the games. How did you avoid that?

Antonio  

It’s like the modern danger. So for me, I was playing from grade seven all the way till grade 11, I was addicted. And so for me how I started to get away from it was I was just, I knew in the back of my mind, I was just like, I’m not going to be successful doing this. And because for me, there was something always in the back of my mind where I was like, I need to be wealthy, because I saw my parents. And I was like, there, these guys are working all the time. They had no time for me, I don’t blame them, because I probably would have done the same thing. And then I was like, I want to be there for my kids. I want to be there. So I can take them to soccer practice, teach them and do other things. So I was like, I need to get wealthy. So I started to opt out of Maplestory and rebuild myself where I was just like, not wanting to play the game of life. And so that’s when I started looking into, okay, what’s the formula that is going to make me successful. So I listen to my parents, I’m like, start working really hard in school, get a good job, and then save money, and eventually you’ll have a good life. So that’s the formula that the only formula I knew. And that’s the formula that I followed.

Erwin  

And this is what changed because these are the things your parents taught you don’t get to 11 properties.

Antonio  

So for me, it was just like, I started to grind harder in grade 11 and 12 for school because I was so far behind and every one because I just never did homework or anything. So then I started to grind harder. And I was just like, Okay, I’m actually good at school, I can do things in different things in school. So then for me, I started to get good grades. And I was like, Oh, this is actually possible. And so far there is actually I went to a school, where Laurier for business that one of my friends were going to, and before I was actually, I didn’t want to go to university because I did a calculation where I was like, Okay, I’m gonna make more money as a electrician than going to university. Yes. And so my friend was like, Hey, I’m going to university, it’s good to go to university, why don’t you come with me? So I went to the same university as him. And then afterwards, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna change my life, because I’m in a new place. Now. I’m no longer at home. And I’m with all these new people. So for me, I just worked really hard in school. So hang on,

Antonio  

let’s try one second. Antonio, did you have a mentor this time, or you’re just this is all just you talking to yourself? It’s just me talking to myself. Okay. Okay. I didn’t read a single book until second year university, like a single real book, like a self development or something like that. Okay. And for me, it just like, I feel like, I’m lucky. I’m very lucky. I know. I mean, relatively lucky. Most people have not gone down the right path. Yeah,

Antonio  

I think for me, it was an overly energetic kid. So for all my relatives, and all my family and stuff, they never saw anything in me. They were just like, Oh, this guy’s a troublemaker. He’s gotta be like a gangster. One day, I was banned from all my uncles and aunts house, because every time we go to their house, we break stuff, because we had cousins that were like, 10 years older than us. And we just like, I want to take him down. If I take him down, I’m gonna get better at fighting, which is applicable to my fighting in school. So that was practice for me. And you could never beat them, even if you had like five kids on them. But if you rally five kids, things will break. So for me, like no one ever saw anything. And he was just like me, this troubled kid that was playing video games all the time.

Erwin  

You’re marksman good, because you’ve gone to Lauria coop, which is not an easy programme to get into.

Antonio  

Yeah, for me, it was just like I was getting, I was hanging around the right crowd of people were my friends. They ended up getting into med school and some of the hardest programmes in university.

Erwin  

So these, these are the friends that you went to, you went to Laurier with, like, from high school to Laurier, or people you met from high

Antonio  

school when I was getting my act back together, because I was so far behind in school. So a lot of them were actually tutoring me. And so for me, it was like free.

Erwin  

So the kindness of their heart. Yeah, it’s just like your we played,

Antonio  

we played Maplestory together, so I’d help them in the game. And then they’d helped me in school. That was the trade off. And yeah, for me, it was just like, I didn’t have much family that knew what they were doing. But I had really good friends

Erwin  

that put me in the right path. And there’s really good friends followed you. And you have really good friends in Laurier, because you did incredibly well in school, it seems.

Antonio  

Yeah, there was one friend that actually applied to university for me, because he’s like, Antonio, let’s go to the same school. And I was like, I want to be an electrician. I don’t know, I don’t want to apply for things. So he applied for university. For me, we got into Laurier together. And he’s a really hard worker, which I always admired. And he was also very intelligent as well. So together, we were just like, hey, let’s do really well, in school together. Both of us actually graduated, near the top of our class, I graduated at the top in finance, in my class amongst 330 people.

Erwin  

So let’s I mean, the top 10% or so,

Antonio  

there was a I graduated top of finance in my class, but I graduated the top 10 within 330 people. So top for finance. I didn’t know how many people there were in finance, but I’d say top 3% super smart

Erwin  

guy. What got you. And you’re in your co op placement you told me was because you said private equity before we’re recording. Yeah. Which is a usually a highly touted spot.

Antonio  

Yeah. What did you learn? What did you learn from being in private equity? So I actually had the opportunity to work in one of the top private equity shops in Toronto, which was in there. And what I learned was these guys made the same returns as Warren Buffett, which was one of the people who

Erwin  

What do you mean, they take on a bunch of risk, like private equity is very different than what Warren Buffett buys.

Antonio  

But the thing is, the return was Warren Buffett’s return all time was around 20% year over year, and then these, this firm was all So 20% return year over year, so incredibly smart people, and then they were buying in private equity, you don’t buy like things on the s&p 500, or the stock market, you buy private deals. So what they do is they buy a distressed company where they feel like they can add value to it. And then they actually go into this company, fix it out with consultants or anyone that they hire, lay off any of the access, they can. And then they they either refinance or sell this business or keep it in their portfolio, it’s very similar to real estate in the burst strategy, where you buy under market value, you generate the value in that property, which ever way like evicting tenants or doing strategic renovations, and then you can refinance it, sell it or hold it. So exact same model. And the birth strategy was actually the most basic form of the private equity model. And it was actually taken from the private equity firms.

Erwin  

So before we go into more real estate, even a fresh grad, and private equity usually makes quite a bit of money to show the listener what what kind of range that would be for entry level at a private equity firm.

Antonio  

So usually, you can’t get into private equity right out of graduation. And the thing was, even if I had graduated, I’d have to go into investment bankers, investment banking. So all of the people that I work with actually went into investment banking over in the States. But typically, what they would make would be around 100 to 150k. Us, yeah,

Erwin  

how many hours? Do they have to work a week?

Antonio  

70 on the best possible week, if there’s like live deals, or they’re doing a lot of work, they’re probably clocking close to 95 to 100 hours. That’s not much right. Not much in the when you account for the hours you have

Erwin  

to work. So is that the path you went? What did you do them out of university? Where do you go for work?

Antonio  

So for me, I actually worked in a new department of RBC, whereas more so of like venture capital. And so at the time, it was this new department where there was only 30 people. And now there’s more than 400 people. But yeah, I ended up going over there. How’s that worked out? It’s working out really well. I’m actually, I got promoted to senior manager this year. And so now I’m leading the operations of one of the partnerships for a prop tech company.

Erwin  

So prop tech meeting, it’s a real estate based technology.

Antonio  

Yeah. It’s like kinda like how sigma. But we’re not ranked as high as them yet. But the plan is we will

Erwin  

cool crossing is pretty popular. Yeah. Fantastic. And so tell us what you’re doing investing wise now. So you say you’re focusing on Alberta? We see. We’re cities, Edmonton, in trends as well. So

Antonio  

Let’s wrestle, let’s cut. No, I actually don’t know who he is. What? Yeah, you know, all the heavy hitters. I know all the people that are starting now. Who would you rather know? Would you rather know? I would rather know. I’d rather know both. Right, because I like giving back to like, the younger investors and stuff. And anyone that has hustlers

Erwin  

investors younger than you, your 20s then your investors, the newer investors, okay, okay. So they can be like 45, but they’re new to investing.

Antonio  

If they ever asked me and they reach out on Instagram, and I see the hustle, I actually groomed them through the cycle without any costs. And I probably shouldn’t say that. So now people are gonna reach out to me, what’s your Instagram not working? We’ll find you. A, so it’s a and then Y O U? N G. So it’s young, the word young and then money, and then underscore,

Erwin  

the underscore? Was there already a Young Money?

Antonio  

I’m actually really stupid. So I actually created an Instagram account. I lost the password for that. So I couldn’t create that at a young money anymore. And then I had to put an underscore.

Erwin  

Okay, so you’re because that’s a common practice for like scamming accounts, is to just add just to tweet something right. But you had to tweet something because you couldn’t get your account back. Yeah, I should probably change it so people won’t think I’m a scammer. So a Young Money underscore,

Antonio  

in Young is spelt like young as a young age. Yeah. And it’s a play on words, because my last name is like y o n g. So it’s young. So I changed it to young. So what are you doing in Edmonton? Single Family, still single family burrs. When I was my intention of going to Edmonton was we actually were raising capital. So we actually had committed capital. And the idea was, I flew out there this year in March, and I stayed there for about two months. And I was one Looking through multifamily, so we were looking to acquire things from 15 units all the way to 30 units. But the thing is, we just couldn’t make the numbers work on a lot of these deals. Even those Edmonton, like commercial Realtors would tell us it’s a six cap, I’d run the numbers and I’m like, this is a forecast.

Erwin  

And what numbers don’t jive? Yeah.

Antonio  

I was like, Okay, well, these don’t work. But we have committed capital. And Kathy and I business partner, we don’t want to close on a bad deal. So even though I spent two months over there, I flew back empty handed with no multifamily buildings.

Erwin  

Choosing no deal is still a decision. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Antonio  

Yeah. So we ended up, what we found out was that duplexes and fourplexes the cap rates or the returns on those was so much better than these multi families. And what people the misconception people make is like, a multifamily is you get higher returns and stuff, that’s not the case, you can make a high, much higher return on your money for like smaller, like assets, like it’s easier to generate, it’s easier to double your money if you have $1. Right? It’s harder to double your money if you have a billion dollars. So the higher level you go, you actually work with more sophisticated people. Right. So then the returns actually become less.

Erwin  

And Tony, do you know Jason Mattern? If you don’t, I’m gonna connect you. Okay, I’m going to connect you after this. I appreciate that. He’s my realtor friend and Edmonton. So he does lots of duplex for like six bucks, eight bucks. New construction. Yeah. To me, it sounds like a brilliant model. Because I’d be doing that here. If I could do a new construction, small Maltese. I do it all day and fall lambaste?

Antonio  

Yeah. Well, I actually bought about four properties over there was they came in empty handed with Maltese, but it was like these smaller Maltese actually make a tonne of sense. So I bought four properties. So I was like, I gotta leave with something.

Erwin  

These properties part of the REIT or this read something completely separate.

Antonio  

The REIT is something that can still early days, but Kathy and I are talking about things just like we want to do bigger things, because what happens is, we can generate like 1,000%, or infinite return on I mean, like, these small group properties, but compounding, like $1, right? In the grand scheme of things, if that goes up, 10,000%. That’s still not material. But if we can do bigger things, the absolute dollar amount is actually more and it’s a material impact on are

Erwin  

pretty cool. Oh, I wanted to ask, so not many people who go to school for business to end up in real estate. Yeah. How did how did you find your way to real estate?

Antonio  

Well, it was just like I was telling you before, and I was following the formula. Whereas like, Hey, do really well in school, get a good job. And you’re going to be wealthy, you’re going to make it like people are going to love you afterwards. And so for me, I was just like, I’m doing the getting the good marks and doing the getting the good jobs. And I was finally there. And I started computing on like Excel sheet, hey, when am I going to be wealthy and stuff? And the the answer was just like too long, 50s or 60s. And I was like, I don’t want to wait that long. And so there was a period of time where I was just like, my reality and expectations, just like shattered. And I was sitting at home and I felt really depressed at that time. So I was just like, I don’t know what to do with life or anything. Because it was just like, what the game plan I was following was not the right game plan. So it was like I was following a map of Toronto, but I was in New York. And so for me is shattered to break that into reality. So after three months of being sad, I just went like how do I become wealthy? And the book that came out Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that book who gave it to you who gave it to you?

Erwin  

I just searched on the internet and bought it. What do you mean what did you search you search rich that poor dad and search what

Antonio  

I researched how to become wealthy being recommended for that. And so I was like, Okay, let me buy this book. And at the time was just like, anyone in like, I had a negative perception of real estate where you’re like talking about flippers and you know, people talking about zero money down on things as just like, oh, this is just like all scammers. But once I understand the industry, I was just like, Man, this generates higher returns than anything that I’ve ever seen before. Yeah, and then so after that, I started reaching out to everyone I knew about real estate. Most people in the GTA were investing in condos. And I was like, This is not what you’re not buying land. And, and you know, buy like this negative cashflow three $400 a month. So for me it was just like, I’m trying to help these guys with their portfolios.

Erwin  

Oh don’t ya don’t document these people. When you’re like

Antonio  

21 year old trying to argue with people, they’re just like, dude, this guy’s crazy, like, yeah, that’s funny, I’m making my condo. They’re like, Get out of my face and then Okay, what else do I know about real estate and I was giving up because I talked to like five people went to lunch and dinner with them. And I was just like, well, if I buy this, I’m gonna, it’s gonna be working even harder at my job. And so I went over to Kitchener with a guy that I had night classes with. And he was seven years older than me. And I’ll never forget this got his kindness, because he had three or four properties at the time. And for me, I was just like, I was talking to him about real estate is like, I want to get in and different things. But I don’t have money right now like, different things. And he’s like, hey, it’s only a we can do a deal together. Right? And I was like, how I only have 15k. And he’s like, Listen, I have another friend that we can loop in, he’s interested in real estate as well. And we could put a 5% down on a house with some renovations, and we’ll split it three ways. It will work and I was just like, but like, what value do I bring to this guy. I’m like, I don’t live in Kitchener, or Cambridge at that time. I still don’t because it’s an hour drive away from me. He does. He knows real estate. And he has the money to do it all himself. And I was just like, I don’t bring any value. So in my head going on either this guy scamming me. And so, but I believed in his character, because I had followed his journey for so long, that I was like, This person is a kind person. And for me, I went with my gut. Whereas just like, if I lose everything, I could probably make it back. Right. And it would be like a lesson learned. So we bought a place in Cambridge together. And this was a duplex. And we split it three ways. And that was the greatest learning experience of my like thing because they pulled the trigger. And even though the closing date was thing, I still had the logical mind where it’s just like, I don’t understand all these things. thing. And I was just like, I told them, I was like, I want to back out of this deal, because I beat and they’re like, listen, Antonio, like, this is a really good deal or blessing you with this, okay? Just just stay in this. Like, what will hold your hand will guide you through it. And at that time, I was just like, okay, and then we bought the property and then six months afterwards, I was still having cold feet is like I was like, oh my god these these guys. I don’t really no, though. Ya helping me out. But afterwards, like, he was my first mentor. And honestly, one of the people that I always go in chat with him, and anything he ever needs there for him. You want to shout them out? Danfa topless. That’s his name. I don’t know Dan. He smells last name. FOTOPOUL. O S was impossible Greek names. I took me a long time to pronounce it. And so I have heard this duplex. You said right. How did it work out? It worked out well. While we actually Airbnb, the front and crazy. We are being deed, something five years ago. And then afterwards, we had a grandma in the back. And we didn’t have the heart to kick her out. And so we just kept her there. And we said, hey, we’re going to Airbnb, the front. Are you okay with it? She was okay with it. So we actually, this place was really close to the Cambridge mill, which a lot of people go to for their wedding. And so then we had a lot of guests from the US and different things come into our Airbnb, and we actually did really, really well. But the thing was, we didn’t understand the optimization or anything for this Airbnb. So every year, it was just like there was more and more competition for Airbnb s. So the first year we made 3x of our rent. Then the second year, we made 2x of our rent. And then the third year was just like, hey, it, long term rental makes the same amount of money. Because we weren’t improving. We didn’t have the mindset to scale it into business. So yeah, that’s what we ended up selling the

Antonio  

place to. Well, how long did you hold it? We have held it for about four years. Can you share? Actually, I usually ask my guests about their numbers on their first deal.

Antonio  

You know them I don’t know the numbers for this one. Would you pay for it? We paid about 320 for it. What do you rent two for? We rented it for rents a little bit hard because your air b&b? Yeah. So in the another unit, we rented it out for what 1k. And then to the grandma, and then the front was, we made like 4.5k for Airbnb and long term rent would have been like 1.5. So,

Erwin  

three 3x two, Airbnb. Yeah.

Antonio  

who manage the Airbnb. Does this work? One of my other partners, his name was Tyler. And he is a realtor. And so he got his VA to manage it for us.

Antonio  

Yes. Do you still have to go in and clean and stuff? We got a cleaner to clean for it. Got it. And the VA the VA coordinated all that? Yeah. Fantastic. And then what you sell for? We sold it for 685. Oh, my God. Yeah. So what was your return? We had a very high return on that, because we only invested about I think in total, we probably only each one of us invested about like 16k Well, initially, we invested 12. And then we spent some money on maintenance and buying furniture furniture. Yeah. Yeah. CMS is 16k each. Yeah. Those 48k Yeah. For an over 300 grand returns. Yeah, we did well on that one. Why sell? Just one turn. You wanted to turn money over? Our partners were

Antonio  

in different stages of their life. And then we also didn’t believe in the Ontario market anymore. Oh, sorry. Was this recent that you sold it? Yeah. So we sold it last year? Yeah. Returns look great on paper. But if you consider the market going up, all those years that we’ve held it?

Antonio  

Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I know when we illustrate. Yeah. Okay. So can you share what your numbers are looking like in Edmonton? Yeah, we I can share the most recent project that we bought. Yeah. Tell us. Tell us about it. It’s an Edmonton is it? Can you name a neighbourhood? Yeah. So this was summer Lea. So this is I would say summer Lee. Summer. Yeah. Summer. Liesa. Summer and then we l e a one word? Yeah. Okay. Summer, late summer, Leah and admins.

Apologies to the Edmonton investors on this summer for more for mispronouncing no hate. We

Erwin  

love everyone. All right. Sorry, summer Lea, Edmonton, Canada. Yeah. What kind of house? What kind of property is it?

Antonio  

This one was, and I don’t, I’m not going to know the numbers as well as my partner on this one. Because this one was actually I was guiding someone where they wanted to get into real estate. And then they were like, I gave them a really good deal where it was just like, hey, I don’t have time to get in to the real estate because I’m working full time. And I’m doing a tonne of things as like, I’m willing to contribute half the capital, and you contribute half the capital. If you’re willing to contribute the work, I’ll guide you through the deal. And who’s doing the mortgage? He was getting the mortgage. But I know that number is very high level. It’s so we bought it for about 370,000. And this is a duplex. How old is it? Out the health the construction of the home? So this is a bill 1982 1982 syllable 40 years. Yeah,

Erwin  

this is a bungalow or it’s like a side by side duplex.

Antonio  

It’s up and down duplex. Okay. Yeah. And high level numbers, rents. Current rents are we’re renting the top for about 1750. And then the bottom we’re renting. The tenant just moved. But before Previously, she was renting for 1200. Those are pretty good numbers. Yeah. But this place is we would say that it was a kind of like a unicorn deal. Okay. Yeah. Because what happened was, I think that the seller needed to sell this place. So he listed on the market. And his offer date was actually April 14, which was right after the interest rate announcement of 50 basis points.

Erwin  

Sorry, hang on, you have to understand. A lot of people don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the world or economics. So yeah, yes, these things happen. Yes, I do. So I’m really I’m really picky. I’m timing. So Sorry, continue April 14, right. Which was like ever. Anyone who pays attention knew the market would go soft

Antonio  

that day. And so what happened was these guys listed it extremely low. So we knew they needed to sell it. Right. And it wasn’t like people were listening. There’s offer extremely low in Edmonton it wasn’t like Ontario is more of a balanced market. So, the property we, the comps we got to was this property was worth 430,000. That’s what we arrived at for our comps and our realtor told us that this was actually a really good neighbourhood. So every day couldn’t even find comps, like the single families are selling for, like 490 in the neighbourhood. And so, but this was a smaller house than everything else that was selling, it was kind of the worst house in the best, like a really good street. And so I told my partner is like, let’s hit them with a really low number, see how they react because interest rates just went up. So we told our realtor, we’re like, hey, let’s hit them with 370. And they’re like, dude, I’m not gonna put in that offer for you. Like, that’s just, you’re literally spitting on their face. I was like, put it in interest rates are up, we put in the offer. And there was like, 20 people that viewed this place, and no one put in a good offer. So the seller actually accepted our offer. So we’re like,

Antonio  

What is wrong with this place? Yeah, what’s wrong with our realtor? Yeah, I was like, what, what’s wrong? the selling side, not

Antonio  

yours. They accepted. I’m like, Okay, we’re like, Okay, this place is probably going to fall apart. Like the foundation’s probably screwed. Like, we’re like thinking of all the worst case scenario. Home Inspector goes wrong. Someone died in it. And they tell us places really clean. And I was like, What is going on here? So we, we close it. And we’ve we’ve had it for about a month now. And it’s a great property. Yeah, that one we’re actually like, there is a person that reached out to us that does Airbnb arbitrage. And he’s like, Hey, man, like if you let me Airbnb arbitrage to play a premium for this, and I was like, Oh, great. We don’t have to pay for property management and you know, manage all of it. You’ll be a great tenant. Okay. Sure. Someone in Edmonton or someone? Yeah, in Edmonton. Okay. Yeah, cuz it goes. Yeah, the key thing for me in Amazon was building relationships. So I built relationships with a lot of people that just did a lot of things in Edmonton

Erwin  

in real school. Yeah. I just met a gentleman on the weekend. Who has 100. Airbnb doesn’t own any of the property. So same business model. Yeah. And he’s doing extremely well. So I hope to have him on the podcast soon. Yeah, he’s out of Nova Scotia. Oh, nice. But yeah, let’s let’s strategy that everyone’s walking towards now. I know. But all these municipalities are cracking down. Yeah. But the thing

Antonio  

is, we have to keep in mind it’s like, once everyone flocks to one market, or one strategy, like it compresses margins and profitability goes down.

Erwin  

Yeah. I posted about on Facebook yesterday, someone says I do middle term rentals. And I’m like, and you’re gonna have a whole bunch of competition soon. It’s all the short term is being regulated out. Yeah. All right. Like you said, you take away one thing you can’t do. So this specifically, this was London, Ontario, you can’t do under 30 days now. So now the market for over 30 Day rentals is gonna go off the supply of

Antonio  

it was crazy. It was just like, even for me it was just like the people on during markets. I was started investing in Cambridge in Kitchener. No one was there. Like you can pick up things and then I was just like, Okay, now it’s really hot. So then I was like, Okay, I’ll go to Branford now. Then bought in Bradford, then people start flooding that market. Then I went to London, Ontario. And I was like, okay, that and then I started going to Windsor. And I was like, I don’t believe in the fundamentals here. And then I just couldn’t and I were to tell burdens that.

Erwin  

All right. So you’re a smart guy. What do you what do you like about Alberta in Edmonton? Economic fundamental wise.

Antonio  

Well, the thing is, if I told you that Edmonton and Toronto had the same house price, average house price, at one point, would you believe me? 1.0 a year? What year? Well, you were talking 1916 eight months? Yeah. So they had the same house price? No way.

Erwin  

Physical blip somehow. Yeah.

Antonio  

So what happened was, Edmonton stayed stagnant. But the GTA went up 3x. So I was like, okay, something’s not bad enough here. So then I knew why that was because of oil and gas. So I was talking to a lot of my oil and gas friends in the finance industry. And they were saying that oil and gas is people are under estimating it like people are still going to use oil and gas because demand is going up every year. So I was like, okay, Alberta. There should be a good play here. And then I was also looking at incomes. So Alberta actually has the highest income out of any province in Canada. So it’s like, okay, well, you have high income here. And then the prospect is really high. And then also, what you’re getting is housing affordability. Everyone’s actually moving over to Alberta, because they’re the top growth province, because the housing is affordable. And they’re starting to diversify away to renewable energies, and also tech. So I was like, Okay, well, they’re not only reliant on oil and gas anymore because they’ve been burned so many times why Edmonton is because people think that Calgary is actually the capital city of Alberta, but it’s actually Edmonton. So there’s a lot of government employers there. And so even when things dip on oil and gas, Edmonton is the fastest city in Alberta to actually recover. So I was like, this is very, very solid. And then I went there, and I was just like, hey, this is a really good market. And when I went there, I flew out there last year, and I bought a duplex there because I wanted to test the market to see if my thinking was right. It was a very scary time, because no one was there. Like there was no one that was buying there. Maybe Calgary but not me. And so I was like, okay, things make sense. But maybe I’m wrong somewhere. So I bought that property held it. And then the reason why I flew out was because people started to, like, things started to go up again, like things started to go up. And when I was there every week, like the market would be shifting upwards. Right now Edmonton and Alberta. They’re holding strong for their things. So year over year, sales activity is up like 3%, whereas the rest of Canada in May is like down like 22%. And in the GTA, it’s actually down. I think 70% or 60%

Erwin  

capacity. So would you ever move out there to live? Honestly, like I do. The winters are great. The winters are not great. Because before we were recording, your work is virtual. Your work allows you to be anywhere, right?

Antonio  

Yeah. So it’s virtual right now. And they have hired people from Alberta because there’s a lot of tech talent there. So for me, it’s just like, I would live in Calgary. Like that’s beautiful over there. Even though they have some harsh winters. Right maintenance is like

Antonio  

it’s like a London, Ontario but just bigger. So colder. I imagine. I went to school in London, so we didn’t plug in cars for winter.

Antonio  

Yeah, they actually have pickaxes to get rid of the ice over there on their cars.

Erwin  

I’m not touching my current pitter axe. So yeah. Is that something you’re considering as well moving out to Alberta Calgary.

Antonio  

So for me like I my family is all in on Ontario. So I want to one of the key things is I want to be there for my family and stuff. So I never actually move over to Alberta. Unless I can move all of them out there. But for me, I’ve built enough relationships and Power team that I can manage from a distance. Yeah,

Erwin  

fantastic. I hear about people moving to Alberta, but I don’t know anyone personally does because the weather’s harsh. The winters are harsh.

Antonio  

Yeah. Well, the U haul stat is in 2021 It showed that Alberta had the highest one way destination moves. Yeah.

Erwin  

It’s crazy. So there’s a lot of inflow of people over there. Yeah, I don’t know. But when I when I hear U haul I hear that I think do it yourselfers so then that means if it’s a do it yourselfer no different than a do it yourself renovation that these are people generally have a lower scale of income disposable income All right, so that’s how I imagined going out there like I I’m completely open to seeing other data to show me tell me that sort of higher income people moving out there. Yeah. And also I wonder where immigrants are going well well immigrants from China in India, which tend to be our main sources of immigrants will they go to

Antonio  

you know, what n n u haul is like the people I’ve seen that are using U haul is just people that don’t trust movers in the moving industry is really things but it’s a lot of people that just do a u haul truck. It’s it’s not lower income people. It’s just like, they’re actually more sophisticated than people that actually hire cars because they want the control for themselves. They don’t want their they want to manage the movers that put their things into the truck and they want to move things properly. That’s what I see. But you might be right that there’s a certain cohort that does do that.

Erwin  

They’re young though. Wait till you’re 30 and see how your friends move. I don’t think any of my friends use u hauls they all use hard hard movers probably like premium people like to move as well. No, no, it’s It’s brutal. It’s because we’re old. We don’t want to lift shit.

Erwin  

Young hustlers like you who run marathons for fun? will be like, Oh, it’s a good workout. And some beer. Yeah, that doesn’t convince me to do anything pizza and beer. Pay me to eat pizza and beer.

Erwin  

I will, I’ve had the benefit of being in the market a long time. So, Antonio, thanks so much for doing this. Any final thoughts you want to leave, leave the listener with?

Antonio  

I think the final thought is, there’s two things where I live my life is just like, be kind to others. Don’t be a jerk, and just work really, really hard to get good results. That’s one of the things the second thing is always be questioning everything. And figure out the truth for yourself. Because the truth is sometimes hard, but it will lead you to the optimal solution.

Erwin  

I noticed that in your in what you’ve shared, is that you you ask a lot of questions. And I wish a lot more people ask questions because I feel like people who didn’t ask questions are the people that are hurting right now in anything crypto stock, condos, pre con, anything? They didn’t ask enough questions. They didn’t ask questions like, What happens if the market falls apart? Yeah. What happens if at the assume ownership of this property and rent it myself? Yeah, right. And all those people that are having challenges these days, so Yeah, wonderful advice. I’m naturally inquisitive. Not as inquisitive as you. But it’s get me out of a lot of trouble. Thank you, Antonio. Again for doing this Oh, and then you have a Facebook as well. Hey, see this Malabar properties kill. Let’s say that right? Yeah, you did. Now where is the money tree? Oh, yeah. Malabar properties on Facebook, these search and find it and a Young Money underscore on Instagram. Yeah. Antonio, thank you again for doing this. Congratulations, all your young success. I have a feeling you’re gonna be very successful in life. And good luck with read.

Antonio  

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Erwin. I am a big fan of your podcast. And this is one of the things that I definitely wanted to cross off my bucket list to actually be one of the ones that are speaking on it. So thank you.

Erwin  

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing by hundreds of other real estate investors have already then sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As a real estate investor myself, I got into real estate for the cash flow. But with the rising costs to operate a rental business, it’s just not the same as it was five to 10 years ago when I started there. Forgive the cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more lumps you can absorb. And if you have none, or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my student rental in St. Catharines. Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more, but it’s true for free for my newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca. Enter your name and email address on the right side. We’ll include in the newsletter when we announce our next free stock hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell me I love teaching and sharing this stuff.