From Fearing Tenants to Working at SingleKey with MacKenzie Wilson

Welcome to the Truth About Real Estate Investing Show for CANADIANS… The little show that started as a six-episode experiment in 2016!

And after blogging every week for five years, we pivoted to podcasting. 

I used to ask guests if they preferred tea or coffee, and what they had for breakfast, along with another 80+ prepared questions to now only a handful of questions, including my favourite ice-breaking question: “what’s keeping you busy these days.”

 

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Erwin Szeto (@erwinszeto)

What’s keeping me busy is all the Strategy Calls I’ve been doing with attendees who bought them at the Wealth Hacker Conference. 

Next, I’ll be offering strategy calls to all my past clients as I’m finding that many investors are stuck and unsure of what to do next.

In general, I’m finding a lack of confidence which is fine. 

All the cons out there are by overly confident shysters who lack experience and know-how. Worse, some coaches are setting up their clients for failure.

To avoid failure, we’ve always taught our clients the risks of real estate investing one property at a time. 

We guide them through the cash flow analysis and the execution of acquiring, renovating, renting and sometimes refinancing.  

99% of our clients complete one property at a time to ensure a winning portfolio of investment properties.  

Boring, systematic, proven, predictable, low risk and profitable, just the way we like it.

We have a lot of data backing up our investment strategy, with currently over 45 self-made real estate investor millionaires among our clients, and our goal is to get that number to 200 in a few years.

Enough about investing, as all the talk about investing makes Erwin a dull boy 😄  

The Saturday before last, I attended a long overdue guys’ night out and not just any guys’ night out, but a real estate mastermind of sorts. Charles Wah is an award-winning land developer and builder, Andy Tran is a leading authority in renovating additions and has been the consultant for all of my basement apartments, and Roger, who I think owns 17 investment properties now. It’s hard to keep track.

Anyways, there was a ton of real estate knowledge out and about downtown on Saturday night, enjoying dinner twice and a couple of beverages. 

Roger even received an offer on one of his properties while we were having dinner LOL.  

Hopefully, you have a great group of real estate friends too, and as I advised one of my clients, always be looking to expand your circle of real estate friends to those with more skills and experience than yourself and those five people you spend the most time with.

From Fearing Tenants to Working at Single Key with MacKenzie Wilson

Speaking of investors with knowledge and experience, this week we have Mackenzie Wilson of SingleKey, the tenant credit and background check reporting service that recently acquired Naborly.

If you haven’t heard of SingleKey… well, they are quite popular in the circles I run in, and for you new investors, you’re so lucky you don’t have to run credit checks the old way…

Mackenzie is a very diligent investor from Calgary, Alberta.  

He shares how we went from oil rigs and IT at Telus and left it behind to start an online business in real estate that didn’t go so well, but he survived, still owns his three duplexes in Calgary and works at SingleKey as a Director.

As you’ll soon tell, Mackenzie is a diligent landlord (one of the most diligent I’ve ever met). He loves to help other landlords in Alberta out, as he’s always sharing and educating his peer group of 4,200 Alberta Landlords.

On today’s show, we talk about the difference between commercial and residential in Calgary, Calgary vs. Edmonton.  

Of course, we talk about tenant screening as it appears to be a passion of Mackenzie’s even though his properties are in Alberta and how appropriate it is his day job is now at SingleKey.

One big nugget is I asked Mackenzie, “As a beginner investor, what should I buy in Calgary?” His protip is a good one.

Please enjoy the show!

 

This episode is brought to you by me! We don’t have sponsors for this show. I only share with you services owned by my wife Cherry and me.  Real estate investing is a staple in my life and allowed me to build wealth and, more importantly, achieve financial peace about the future, knowing our retirement is taken care of and my kids will be able to afford a home when they grow up.  If you, too, are interested in my systematic strategy to implement the #1 investment strategy, the same one pretty much all my guests are doing themselves, then go visit www.infinitywealth.ca/events and register for our next FREE Online Training Class.  We will be back in person once legally allowed to do so, but for now, we are 100% virtual.

No need for you to reinvent the wheel; we have our system down pat. Again that’s  www.infinitywealth.ca/events and register for the FREE Online Training Class.

 

To Listen:

Audio Transcript

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Erwin  

Hello, and welcome to the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians the last show that could in what started as a six episode experiment back in 2016. After blogging every week for about five years prior to that we pivoted to podcasting. I used to ask guests if they prefer tea or coffee and what they have for breakfast, I was picking up their morning routine along with another 88 or so prepare to questions to now only have a handful of pre prepared questions. Actually, there’s only a little one question that’s pre prepared. My favourite icebreaking question. Now this icebreaking questions wonderful for almost any sort of networking event. Wonderful for anyone you’re meeting for the first time? What’s keeping you busy these days? The point of the question is for the person you’re asking is to choose whatever they want to share with you that’s going on in their, in their lives, saved my guests by just choose which way they want the direction of the conversation to go. So what’s keeping me busy these days is all the strategy calls I’ve been doing with attendees of the wealth hacker conference, who purchased the half an hour call. Yes, a lot of those calls went well over 30 minutes. Yeah, anyways, next, I’ll be offering those same strategy calls to all my past clients. Yes, past clients, you got an email from me on January, Tuesday 24th. That is just for clients only, I’ll be doing the same strategy calls for them that I’ve been doing for folks who paid me good money for at our hacker conference anyways, in general, I find a lot of investors are just stuff and they’re not sure what to do next are quite unsure of their next decisions, whether it is to sell an existing property or whether it’s time to buy by getting into the investment into the market for their next investment property, or some of those first investment property. In general, I’m finding a lack of confidence, which is fine. There’s a lot of cons out there. And often they’re by overly competent shysters who lack experience and know how, what’s worse is some of them are some of those coaches are setting up their clients for failure. And honestly, it’s even worse if they’re charging like 10 $30,000. To do so. That would be called a negative return on investment. To avoid failure. We’ve always taught our clients to reduce their risks by investing in one property at a time. We guide them through the cash flow analysis, the execution of acquiring, renovating, renting and sometimes refinancing 99% of our clients net, maybe 98% of our clients complete one property at a time to ensure a winning portfolio of investment properties. I would call that boring, systematic, proven predictable, low risk and profitable just the way I like it. We have a significant amount of data backing up our investment strategy. You know, again, we have been we’ve been working with clients since 2010. I’ve been investing myself since 2005. It’s a anyone has been investing for that long. Generally, you’ve done quite well. Once you’ve been through things smart. We have over 45 self made real estate investor millionaires among our clients that we help them acquire property for and our goal is to get that number up to 200 in the next few years. And after the investing. All this talk about investing these are one adult Boy, this past Saturday, I attended a long overdue, actually I helped organise it and I long overdue that guys night out. But not what is it guys, these are my real estate. This was a real estate mastermind of sorts, as we had. For example, we have Charles Wah with us. He is an award winning land developer. He’s on the board actually of the West End Builders Association, they’ll adapt so he’s a builder and developer is quite successful in real estate. He’s made a lot of money. And he trained the leading authority in renovating additions. And he’s been the consultant on my basement apartments, all of my basement apartments and the vast majority of our clients basement apartments and now carrying forward garden suites. Roger who I think owns at least some of the properties at this time. It’s hard to keep track because he’s a flip some you hold some so it’s hard to nail down what his exact number of current Holdings is. But he’s transacted on quite a few properties with his own name on stuff so active investor anyways, there was a tonne of real estate knowledge out out and about downtown Toronto on Saturday night, Enjoying dinner, actually two dinners, the ones that five and again at night. It’s typically said typically breakfast, whatever two meals were at or had within seven hours, a couple of averages. rusher even received an offer on one of his properties while we’re eating our first dinner. He had to deal with it later on in the evening while we were having drinks at another bar. Hopefully you also out there have a great group of real estate friends. If you don’t, I cannot impress upon you enough that you need to have your friends in real estate. It’s great to be able to share and chat about war stories. I advise one of my clients recently who’s newer in real estate to always be looking to expand your circle of real estate friends to include those with more skills and experience in yourself and more than those that you spend the five people that you spend the most time with. You should always be trying to grow, improve your network, and, for example, this one client, she’s telling me that her coach, not me, but someone else had five years experiences. She thought that was a lot. And I said, you know, you know a lot of my friends have more than 10 years experience. So I said, you can very easily find some friends make some friends, I have more than 10 years experience. Anyways, speaking of investors with knowledge and experience this week, we have Mackenzie Wilson of single key. If you haven’t heard a single key, they are the tent credit and background checking reporting, background check reporting service that recently acquired neighbourly, I think when neighbourly just a few years ago, nobody was dominant. But now stick with us now consume them. Actually, single keys actually made a lot of headway in the last little while, they’re actually extremely popular in my circles, a lot of people are already using them. And also, quick side note, you’re so lucky, you know, at the run credit checks the way I used to having to do on paper, having to try to read these things on their Equifax reports at the time and all these codes. Anyways, McKenzie is a very diligent investor from Calgary, Alberta. He shares how he went from oil rigs in a very nice IT job at tell us what they came with a pension and left it all behind to start an online business and real estate. That didn’t go so well. But he survived. He still owns this history duplexes in Calgary, that cashflow, and he works now works at single key as a director. As you’ll soon tell, McKenzie is a diligent landlord, likely one of the most diligent I’ve ever met and he loves to help other landlords in Alberta, as he’s always sharing and educating his peer group of 4200 Alberta landlords. On today’s show, we talked about the difference between commercial a bit of an update on commercial real estate and Calgary and how residential is doing, they’re actually performing quite differently. The difference between investing in Calgary versus Edmonton talk about the rental market in Edmonton. Of course, you’re talking about tenant screening, of course, as it used to be a great fear of McKinsey’s I guess is more like an unknown for McKinsey when he first went become a realtor. Sorry, landlord, but he’s kind of mastered that subject now. And how appropriate that it is that he now has his day job at Singularity. And one huge nugget in the show is I actually asked McKenzie, if I was a beginner investor, what should I buy in Calgary? And his pro tip is a really good one. Please enjoy the show. Mackenzie, what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

MacKenzie  

Hey, Erin, man, thank you for having me on your podcast. This is an honour and what’s keeping me busy these days, continual self improvement, I’ve been able to take the day job from where I’ve been Telecom in the past and the oil and gas into directly relates to real estate now becoming a director of content and community building at single key, the italic constant changes, by the way, so I’ll probably be different tomorrow. But having this focused in always, and I’m not gonna lie, someone told me how hard parenting was. And I really knew what the challenge was raising a three year old and a six year old currently at I don’t know if I would have done it, but man, is it ever rewarding and I wouldn’t change anything but, you know, life Life in the fast lane of what we do

 

Erwin  

these days. Can you help? Can I ask hold you hold your patience and ask my guests that?

 

MacKenzie  

Oh, cool. I’m 38 Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, perfect. I appreciate that. The lack of here in the green the beard. I always have a 10 year bandage on was good in high school. Not good anymore.

 

Erwin  

McKenzie, you’re coming from telecom recover from going out to name your employer.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Tell us I mean, so Baris, I’m from Calgary. I got two diplomas both from state so technical institute one was a business administration major in management came back two years later, and oh seven graduate in oh nine with Network Information Technology Diploma, focusing in network and so essentially, I had a job where I log into these devices routers and switches that ran the internet literally the backbone some of their size or the size of the deep freezers and you know, a card and washing machine be worth 50 to 100 grand in the box be worth half a million dollars. And that was generally my job for nine years except I had a three year sabbatical where I moved into sales at TELUS got laid off had an opportunity to come back from the operation side took a package because as most of my I’ve ever seen at that point my wife bought a an RV or travel trailer which is one of my major passions is camping and all that and this actually recently got a camper van but last worked in the oil patch. So basically I went from bashing keyboards and having it fingers to sling and slips and drilling, drilling holes and roughneck and on rigs up in northern Alberta and BC.

 

Erwin  

You went from white collar it to as bluesy and get on the rig. Yeah, working on the rig.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, so I tried it once and I was 18 I lasted like, three months and then I got I don’t know what I started school or Something I don’t remember why I left to be honest with you didn’t last long. And then in 2007, I think I was twice I’m 20. I went back in the rigs for a winter made a tonne of money, was smart about it, kept it and then I travelled with my now wife. For almost two months, we did a Southeast Asia trip. And then I parlayed that into his 35 day 1000 kilometre truck and trailer chip, starting in Quincy, Washington going down the west coast and the one on one into California, San Francisco. I had a buddy who had just quit tell us and got an an engineering job at Facebook, to the Facebook campus. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is completely eye opening.

 

Erwin  

It looks like basically, Disney from an oil patch to Disney. Yeah, sorry, Mackenzie, for an ignorant Ontarian. Like myself, can you explain what like your typical day was working on the oil patch? All right. So you have

 

MacKenzie  

depends on the rotations, my role was 14 days on seven days off. But on your days off, you had to get yourself back to start your 14 day rotation. So I would drive from Calgary, up to between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John DC, which, if I’m remembering correctly is both 16 or 14 hour drive. In the winter, though it could easily go up to 18. or longer if the roads are really bad. I usually sleep halfway. So I basically had to have like three to four days off. Do you think that the travel days on both sides, and then did that for a winter and so a typical day is be discharged on nights for the first seven days from 7pm to 7am. And then depending on the rigging up, or, I mean, I was on the double. So we typically drill a hole from getting on site to completion leaving to the next site would typically be around 14 to 21 days to drill a hole from start to finish. Before they could put a service regarding actually haven’t produced whatever the the product was. Can I ask what someone makes doing this? Yeah, so I think it’s actually posted on the Canadian drillers Association, her I forget the exact acronym, but I think at that time I was 23 or 24 bucks an hour. But you have to remember, the last four hours of every shift is a time and a half. And then when you get to a certain number of hours a week, anything after that is overtime. And that’s where you really make your money. And that you can make a lot of money quickly. It’s not easy work by any means. But if you’re willing to go hard and do it. So I mean, there’s a good for work ethic. But I also know that and it’s well said you typically, you know you are of your five or seven closest peers, you know who you hang around with? And I certainly believed that to be true. And so it wasn’t a forever gig. Oh, like that? A? Yeah, there’s really good people that for sure. But then you could also get people that are just completely driven by money and perhaps don’t have the best that I use in life. And when you get a few of them and you’re working in and remote locations, they don’t really see anyone else. And yeah, it can be certainly challenging. I mean, if you keep your wits, and we work hard. I mean, I was I mean to give this context, I bounced around between a half dozen crews before I finally landed one that I had the ability to work the rest of winter with and yeah, it can be quite a little tight knit culture if you don’t fit in, right. And these jobs are still available today. Yeah, they’re still drilling actually, you know, since COVID. And then with the whole demand drop in the oil patch game, our patch is very volatile, people will come to Alberta, they love it, they get high paying jobs. And then they experience a recession or decline or the drop in the demand. And a lot of people don’t like it, and they leave and we have the cycle of people coming and going. But I’m sorry, what was the original question or not where we’re going?

 

Erwin  

If there’s still jobs in this field, because I’m trying to get there is all this talking about recession, whatnot. It’s in the headlines every day, for example, Microsoft just announced laying off I don’t know how many people 10,000. But I think that’s like 6%

 

MacKenzie  

It’s not a Yeah, 10,000 rolls, but yeah, so there are positions. Oh, sorry.

 

Erwin  

Let me just finish that thought my point was that headlines, they’d love using gross numbers, rather than percentages, because 6% of Microsoft is not that huge of a cut in the middle of the first totally absolute over relative all day long. Yeah, Amazon’s cutting another 18,000. Again, it’s concerned they’ve like, I don’t know, they’ve grown so much in the last three years. These are very small numbers. And it’s unfortunate for anyone to lose their job. What I’m trying to get to as though is that I’m consistently hearing from all my friends in more blue collar areas, who or their executives of companies who have blue collar staff. And what I’m hearing consistently is they still can’t find enough people to fill those jobs.

 

MacKenzie  

To add on to that so on the radio today, I typically try to catch the news and I drop off my kids at school and I do the morning drop off for school and daycare and they I’m the president of the residential construction association for Alberta or my bid for Calgary. Don’t quote me on that said they’re short 5000 full time. Would you call it? Red tape, Red Seal. Okay, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, all that kind of stuff to build homes. Alberta needs 5000 full time positions right now, trying to keep up with the demand to build housing, our supplies lock in our demand right now we’re finally growing something that you guys have been generally called the normal growth in Ontario for I don’t know how many years now. It’s always been a different picture. But yeah,

 

Erwin  

since like, 1990.

 

MacKenzie  

I don’t know how long Yeah. And the macro economics aren’t changing, right? It’s not going away. Yeah. So thing. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

So many years ago, and what my point is that all of us recession talk, it still sounds at the end of the day, anyone who wants a job can have a job within a week or two.

 

MacKenzie  

And if you are really there’s that scene work harder, not smarter. But there’s a, say a fine line of having good work ethic. And, you know, having some ability or talent to go with that, if you’ve got me got one of those two strong labour if you have a good mix of those, you should have no problem finding employment.

 

Erwin  

And also good or bad thing. I have friends who who hire out of India. Alright. And my understanding is that way their wage growth is going skyrocketing. I could totally see that. Because already many companies are have been outsourced. In India, they’re looking to outsource even more.

 

MacKenzie  

Oh, yeah. Tell us that huge industry initiatives around that since 2009. And we’re in Philippines as well. And yeah, I can totally see that.

 

Erwin  

So all those wages are going up. So it seems to be a mixed bag. Because again, I hear people having challenges here hiring people. And then we’re in this mix right now. But with like with hybrid at home work for not, for example, Disney announced that they want their first staff back four days a week, my cousin in the federal government in Ottawa, they’re mandating to three days back in the office week, right? So we’ll see. We’ll see. It’s a few interesting times.

 

MacKenzie  

Very much when you think about that play in commercial real estate we’ve had with our oil and gas recession, going through the mid 2015. To right into we got the bottom of our trough right, finally levelled out stabilise and then we hit COVID. And so I don’t know currently what the numbers that but over the preceding years, we’ve been in around 25 to 33%, we’ve basically been there, one out of the three major towers downtown Calgary were completely vacant for Office. So there’s been initiatives to convert them into residential, some not for profits for for shelters, and I think things are on there. And, and then trust, we’re trying to also always diversify out here in Alberta, which is good, but at the same time, too. I think the advertised timelines to phase out. Fossil fuels are so far unrealistic, it’s not even funny. So we could go into that too. And we can talk about it’d be very angry conversation and real estate career journey. So yeah,

 

Erwin  

I do want to ask, actually, about the commercial vacancy or any investors getting into it buying vacant commercial and converting to residential for profit?

 

MacKenzie  

I don’t know because it’s a wider discussion that’s

 

Erwin  

going to have to happen. Like for example, here locally, have you heard of cocheco? They’re like Rogers to like, okay, country. Yeah, their head office is completely vacant. It’s actually available for rent or buy believe, right? It’s absolutely insane. It’s a huge piece of like, probably Class A commercial

 

MacKenzie  

telco. You know, as far as telcos and some error areas, we’re probably pretty advanced. I’ve always had a work from home hybrid model from 2009, from when I came out of state and started there as a contractor to now working there full time, and it became permanent over COVID, which, unfortunately, I didn’t like because I did appreciate the ability to get into the office as more productive since having kids I found being in the office was actually better for me. But anyways, it’s that’s something that’s always been there. So a lot of our office space is super vacant, they got rid of the corporate tower in Calgary, and it’s all who rents it now. Oil and gas, but where I worked in was core infrastructure, so we could never get rid of the building. But we had empty floors upon empty floors, and some had been renovated since like the 90s. It was a little bit of nostalgia walk into some of these floors. Yeah. Cool. Creepy.

 

Erwin  

That’s a little bit like the like the shining, you know?

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, it was, is different is different. But, you know, I worked with really, really good people. That’s why I stayed as long as I did at TELUS because I have amazing teams. There’s about a half dozen of us that that supported all facets of the backbone period with other telco providers and like, incredibly smart folks, and I still I always knew when I got into through that was never for everything because I couldn’t Excel to be at the level they operate at and from, from a technical perspective, so I always knew I had to switch. And funny you mentioned Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you took the training, it was one of my two catalysts that got me into real estate was was reading the book, which I imagine probably is for most people of my age group.

 

Erwin  

I think we’re about eight out of 10 people I know who are real estate investors who read the book, I think somewhere around there. Yeah. Why don’t I have another look, people that read it. This is the logical with the takeaways, the action items, the evil asset

 

MacKenzie  

over time that you directly own, and if it burns down, still has value that increases and appreciate. It’s, I think it’s phenomenal offsets while we’re talking.

 

Erwin  

But let’s bring it to the beginning, then. Because it sounds like you’re quite successful in your career. And not

 

MacKenzie  

that, you know, I was always stable and had job security, which I’ve always been very appreciative of. Yes.

 

Erwin  

And correct me if I’m wrong, you were union and pension as well, while you’re telling us?

 

MacKenzie  

No, most of the time I was managed professional, meaning that I was non union, I had a brief union role when I came back to tell us after I worked in the oil patch, just to get me back in the house, but then I went, I went back to manage professional. So does anyone get pension? And those? Yeah, definitely. There’s they still have a pension, which obviously is not as common these days. It’s even exist. So yes. Yeah, no great job security. And now that I’ve left TELUS been there so long, and I’m seeing when I tried to buy my own benefits, and go to Blue Cross this past year in 2022, and I was like, Wow, man, was I ever lucky and felt that I did not realise the quality of what we had. And,

 

Erwin  

yes, the grass is not always greener on the other side. No, you know, all the nice, you know, now you have kids to have dental and I plan Z. And

 

MacKenzie  

I said, this morning, for my oldest, two teeth pulled I feel for the guy, but like, Yeah, wow, that’s not cheap.

 

Erwin  

Let me tell you that. How much was it? Oh,

 

MacKenzie  

so I’m paying out of pocket where before, also to cover everything. And I may have a small little bill at the end. And now it’s like, I hope like this covers the percent or whatever it might be. So yeah, so start from the beginning. So yeah,

 

Erwin  

so what at what point at what point did you start? Did you get into real estate investing?

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, I had intentionally and unintentionally so I actually rented out the second time, I went back to school, my parents moved, and I stayed in that house and I rented out room by room while I was at seat. And I didn’t like it. I wanted nothing to do with it. Other than I wanted to stay in that house, because I had really good access to transit to get to sate. Or you stayed in your parents home to my parents home, they bought an acreage outside the city, I rented it out, my dad wanted to keep it and rent it. My mom’s like, now I want nothing to do with this wasn’t comfortable with it. And so once I was done using it for schooling, they sold it. And that would been in 20, mid to late 2000s. And then I intentionally got into real estate, you know what the cause was becoming apparent. My wife and I were pregnant. We had just got married, and I realised I had to not live six months in advance and plan only six months in the future, like holy cow or use more provocative words. I have another life that depends on me. And it was a complete paradigm and mind shift. And so I needed to start figuring out this, this nest egg and wanting to have a, you know, stable and secure future for my kids. So I took calles had blog, it was kind of three, Rich Dad, Poor Dad read that book. At that same time. My mom had just joined ki Speier and took me to a buyers event in Toronto, I had no idea what’s going on. It seems super cool. In hindsight 2020, looking back, it was very salesy, and a lot of value but it was the exposure to this community of people trying to better themselves and the like minded individuals that I really fit off of. And then the third thing was I discovered this podcast called tales from the trenches by a gentleman named Barry McGuire, who’s a very well known real estate lawyer up in Edmonton. In fact, just to get this guy credibility he’s been I hacked in are a full time lawyer in real estate longer than I’ve been alive. I think he’s that I do the math now. He’s got been it’s been 45 years of full time real estate, not including the education, everything else to get there. So and he really loves teaching and he’s very good at the creative side of the business, which is learned a lot just listen to his podcast. So then so we bought our primary house, which is where so currently today, and now we talked off the air talking about how there’s this expectation and training that people can buy, they they say, Hey, you can buy this will train you how to invest in real estate, you can quit your day job tomorrow and just go full time. And so I bought this house thinking it’d be a stepping stone I’d be out in two to three years and I renewed my five year is my first five year renewal on the mortgage. That would have been in 2020 21 and we’re still here right now. And you know, it’s just food for thought on that mark. But I bought this house in 2016 we legalised the He’s been sweet as a mortgage helper for the first three to four years. And then we took it over, because we needed more space with our second kid. And we had gotten a little bit stronger position. And then my wife also realised she likes to work as well. We’re both like that we both tried doing this at home parenting, which is a was very challenging. And we found it’s okay to be happy with what does work and boys, I’m rambling, I’m gonna wrap this up on my thought here. And then 2017 is when I joined rain. And I had found another, I had found a couple of buddies, we started a monthly meet up to because I wanted more of what rain was offering with those monthly member meet up meetings, and they had the presentations and I just, I knew when I got into this business, I knew nothing. I wanted to be around people and rub shoulders and learn from the more experienced individuals I had the scars and the lessons learned I had made the mistakes and I wanted to absorb that. And I did a bunch of online training how to screen tests, because I knew right away if I could figure out screen tests, the rest of the business can be easy and learn on I can learn that on my own. But I was super nervous about that part because it scared me so much to have a tan destroy a house or go into default to mortgages and be financially ruined. Like that was my biggest fear. And it still is something that even to this day, where I would definitely more well off financially, I need not to worry as much and it’s something I’m trying to work on. And finances has always been a big big sticking point for me that I try not to focus on negativity speaking negatively.

 

Erwin  

Click comment on the on the worry part, I find my experience. They worry investors are like stable investors. They don’t go big. They don’t get big. Like some of the ambitious folks like our people know my guests. Let my listeners know like, you know who I’m talking about on my shows someone like the big thinkers, receive highly confident people. But then some of these people too big do that. So let’s competent, you’ll go too fast, and they will crash and burn and declare bankruptcy and they’re living in their parents basement.

 

MacKenzie  

I’ve been around long enough. I’ve seen those stories.

 

Erwin  

They were not worried investor. So it’s not the worst thing. Maybe you’re worried investor.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, but you don’t want to control you a bit. I mean, so I’ve gotten a lot better. And so then a big thing to like 2016 and once I had my kids, I realised I wanted to just generally be better be more productive. So I started a big and I’m selling it right now. I’m very big on self improvement, self development, wherever you want to call it. Reading books, you know who not hell by Dan Sullivan. We’re talking about off air, one of my favourite books, and doing masterminds now I attended more than one one. And then so weird journey. I always thought I was gonna own a bunch of doors 10 or 20s single family detached homes fully paid off. I thought that was kind of like my end goal. Right? Well, it was my end goal I got into real estate.

 

Erwin  

Sorry, sorry. My kids just pause you there. When you sit you mentioned 2017 is a key year how many properties around that time did you have

 

MacKenzie  

so if we measure them by door, I had my primary one and then I picked up on my second and third properties that I bought that are all now legally Sweden. So I got the six doors right next door. So three properties all duplexes for first six doors. Yeah, are bungalows with the legal basement suite are two of them. Fabulous.

 

Erwin  

It didn’t Calgary offer some subsidy around basement apartments.

 

MacKenzie  

So folks, folks always listening to this, there’s still golden opportunity mind just supplies is super low right now. And even in the entry level segment, there’s multi bids going on. But a golden opportunity is

 

Erwin  

sort of traffic. As you’re saying today. There’s still multiple offers.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, we have that. So this is really weird, like, so I’m not really when it actually makes a lot of sense. We look at the macro numbers. But I was just talking to a couple of my realtor friends that I always like to get what’s going on. She’s like, anything entry level now to get into the market with qualification and a lot of stuff is a five to $600,000 house here in Calgary. I’m sure there’s could be some cheaper ones. But generally, that’s entry level now and Calgary. And she said everything’s got multiple offers, but you go to like that second upgrade kind of mid tier house, not to the high end. And like just crickets nothing going on. It’s like that 700,000 price point. So yeah, it’s just interesting to see on the market. So that’s one reason why I’ve always loved single families is because not only a single family, there are entry level products that I own. The exit strategy is really clean. And really I should build a seller’s property and cash out within 30 days if it’s priced appropriately, should move right no problem. And the fact that I have a mortgage helper in the basement helped me that I have even a bigger selection of folks, our customers too, that could qualify and buy my property. So I like that. But I don’t have to

 

Erwin  

finance a higher amount because you have more income In the house, whoever’s qualifying for the mortgage automatically has more income from the rent.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, it obviously varies by institution exactly what that number is. But you have a bit more, I think.

 

Erwin  

I haven’t heard of a financial institution who won’t count that rent

 

MacKenzie  

might not give you 100% of it. Like it depends, right? Like some some say it has to be they only count 80%. Because they take the other 20% covers, like taxes and utilities and insurance and stuff. That’s very expensive. Yeah, you typically don’t get 100%. But you add, I mean, that’s huge, right? For a lot of people. And so I like that. And that’s always been my primary investment strategy. So I haven’t gone into small multifamily or anything like that, because the exit strategy is much more complex, a little bit much longer, much easier to very, you need an investor type buyer, which is just generally a smaller demographic, especially compared to mainstream

 

Erwin  

McKenzie, you’re not going to be able to sell a 60 course on this way you invest. I mean, you need some we need to talk some big numbers and 200 doors, you know, Alberta. That’s, that’s what it’s funny. It’s when people are talking about Ontario. Code Alberta, by 200. Doors, this one building?

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, yeah. So I got in

 

Erwin  

Sorry, I just pause, just pause you for a moment when she’s mentioned about the entry level being on fire. And the level the tear above for housing being slower, and a need gets even slower, the higher up you go. And we see the same thing here in Ontario, which is why I actually tell my clients, you know, if you’re looking to trade up, now’s the time to do it. Right? Yeah, like your home, either rented, or sell your entry level home, and then trade up into something that you probably get some value out of. Right, you’re gonna get some value when you’re buying now versus if you’re gonna try to buy once interest rates start getting cut. Right?

 

MacKenzie  

Absolutely. And I’d say a contributor to that. Is these interest rates, right? Yeah, absolutely.

 

Erwin  

Cool. And that includes condos here, like here in Ontario condos. Didn’t not all of them are going up, but there haven’t fallen nearly as much as like a $2 million detached home prices are really different

 

MacKenzie  

here. Yeah, yeah. That’s super interesting. Okay. Prices are crazy.

 

Erwin  

Like, you know, a million dollar house in Calgary is probably over two here.

 

MacKenzie  

It doesn’t even compare. You guys are crazy. Crazy. Not that some time to spin over and turtle with with being single key. And you can come to your guys’s conferences and hear how you guys talk number like it’s different. I just then I mean, like, I know, we’ve talked about this a few times that we’ve met up talking about the macro economics at play. And I always attribute legislation that governs the RTA and Residential Tenancy Act across the different provinces is it’s like a it’s either an accelerator or restrictor, right? If it’s not, and legislation has to be, really, ideally, it has to be well balanced, that benefits both parties equally, to want to participate in that transaction. And I’m talking homeowners rent and to renters. And if legislation favours one side or the other, less people participate in that transaction, therefore, there’s less supply available and actually affects everyone overall, negatively. So I look at Calgary or Alberta. And it’s like, we’re good. It’s very well balanced. So I would attribute to be like having a really big straw and slurping on the Slurpee, it’s easy. You can just pull through it, it just goes whereas your legislations like taking a brown little coffee straw for mixing coffee, and trying to drink a milkshake or Slurpee or something you’re not going to get like it’s just it’s very restrictive. So then overall, you have this massively unbalanced market. I would love to really do to commence or commission on an official proper survey, that that’s typically correct to actually get an accurate picture of how many people no longer participate over the last 15 years or however long you guys had the time. Time. Yes. Like, I think it’s so understated that there’s a huge supply sitting on the line. So everyone like oh, we need to add more supply need to build more. And that’s true, we definitely need more supply across all the promises. But it’s not only building more is participation supply, probably willing to participate in the market that people have. And if they had better balanced legislation, more people would be in there. And generally, when we talk about small mom and pop landlords, the type of products we own ours, you know, single family basement suites, perhaps even renting out rooms really fit the mode of affordable housing, that’s the type of housing that actually has the lowest price point. And because I don’t operate at scales of economy, I’m always very price sensitive and competitive compared to a boardwalk or whatever big multifamily company down out east you guys have. They sit on 100 vacant properties. They’re going to demand an extra two to 300 bucks a month because they can’t they have the the operating down. What do I know if I take one or two months vacancy? I might as well have already dropped it two to 300 bucks and had it rented from day one by the nature of how we operate. We have to be competitive. So The major supplier of affordable housing and that definition is I hate using that word because it’s, it means so many different things to so many different people. Really, Mom and Pop landlords are the biggest player of the closest thing to affordable housing, that’s the better way to put it. And there was a CH MC,

 

Erwin  

or the society’s whose benefits most from Mom and Pop supplier of housing

 

MacKenzie  

100%. And there, there are a tonne of studies from the Canadian housing and mortgage corporation. So the one about the price difference between small and big landlords, they estimated and I think this is actually a very conservative number, I’m confident it’s higher than in reality, the estimate is like a 12% difference. And I’m sure it’s like 15% or more, because I can just anecdotally speaking from my experience, what I was charging for similar units, and to what they are. So that’s one thing, and I almost had another point I want to go with, oh, and then the market share when we look at the actual supplies in the rental stock. I know we talked about so you’re gonna probably know the answer. But I’m gonna ask you and always it’s your podcast, or what do you think when you look at our whole available rental housing stock, the percentage of market share that small mom and pop owners have versus any large multifamily players?

 

Erwin  

I’ve seen the stat a couple times, it’s actually a lot higher than I think most people think at least what caught me off guard how big it was, I don’t know 60 70%.

 

MacKenzie  

Your bank? It varies by province. But that’s 65% and 70% is what I’ve seen. And there’s not really an official study that captures it well, because when you look at the substance, the Canadian mortgage housing Corporation’s numbers, they identify Mom and Pop owners as secondary supply. And because it’s not easy to aggregate or survey or get a good feel on those numbers, they don’t include it in their studies, which is like, hey, so if the entire markets 100%. And we can only really survey efficiently the multifamily players, we’re going to call that the whole market.

 

Erwin  

And really like just when they do CMHC, the property managers of the largest apartment buildings not on pop, right. It’s easy, the large aggregator of data, not you and I

 

MacKenzie  

know know exactly. So the average landlord, I’d say across Canada, from what we’ve seen been at silky, owns around two and a half doors. Seems she just came with another Oracle knows that can I just did a rest of the least kind of trying to quantify as to they say most people only own two properties, the primary and one of the property. So

 

Erwin  

sorry, he said again, CMHC saying there’s the average how many of you

 

MacKenzie  

know it was Stats Canada, and they only looked at three provinces Ontario, BC and I think it was Nova Scotia. They said majority of orders, people who own multiple properties. So multi property owners actually only own two properties. Primary residence plus either a recreational or one rental is typically what it was. And so then we’ve got these legislation, plays and Policy and Public Policy coming out saying hey, you know, for example, I was an NDP townhall in Alberta in as the first one over zoom in October last year. I’ve been September in the fall. And they I heard a lot of really challenging stories that people are going through. And I guess on the side on the sidebar, I will understand believe that everyone should have a roof over their head. I believe that’s right, that you had your basic needs need to be covered food, water, air shelter, 100%. But when people define affordable housing is perhaps, you know, what does that really mean? And so does that mean it’s a 2500 square foot two story house with walk in ensuite bathrooms, you know, propane hookup on the deck with a hot water hot tub? Does that mean it’s only a you know, two bedroom condo? Or maybe it’s a batch or a studio apartment where there’s no bedroom? Or is it a bed down to local shelter with shared amenities like, and we haven’t even gotten to the plateau for the hundreds of 1000s of needs in the healthcare side. And we’re talking about society, which means everyone and just look at how many unique needs there are out there. It’s, um, the word affordable housing is unfortunately used a lot. And like I said before, it means different things to different people. And there’s a bit of an expectation that affordable housing should probably be, perhaps when these more expensive types of housing, which doesn’t quite work. But I mean, I’m a huge proponent and supporter of making sure everyone’s got a place to sleep at night. Because if you get your basic needs covered, then you can really excel through, you know, Maslow’s pyramid of needs, where it’s got physiological at the base layer, and then as you get up, you can do more you can get more intellectual and contribute back to society. Everyone needs that basically are covered and I believe that that’s everyone’s right to have that. The challenge is is now where do we draw the line? Can we draw the line but I listened to a really interesting podcast. It’s called The Future of it’s run by ATB financial, which is the Crown Corporation in Alberta. Credit Union. I don’t know if it’s still crown, I think stolen by the government. Anyways, Todd hearse is one of them. Is it their senior columnist? Okay, good. You know his To host and it was my number. And he had an awesome guest on and I’m forgetting, I think his first name was Richard, I can’t remember his last name. But Richard ran the this foundation, the end homelessness, and he started Alberta, but now he’s doing Canada wide. And they talked about the story where in Manhattan technically ended homelessness. And he define homelessness as less than three people living on the street for over a period of I think it’s like two weeks or a week, don’t quote me on the exact definition, but something like that. And what they did, they had treated almost this like it was a natural disaster that had a they had a pop up emergency kind of control centre. And what they were doing was they were trying to get as close to real time data points on every individual living on the street, their unique mental and health care. And if they had any unique needs, which unfortunately, people that fall into that segment typically have, you know, special or pre existing health conditions and mental challenges that require additional care and support requirements. And so what they are doing is by aggregating in near real time, many data points on individuals that are in homelessness, they’re starting to see trends that they could craft solutions to find ways to get these people off the street permanently. And they said, and this totally makes sense. And I have to say, Great, there’s someone that is living homelessness that bought dances, with the police and with hospitals, costs the taxpayers more than money and resources they tie up, then paying 30,000 Like it was in the hundreds and hundreds of 1000s.

 

Erwin  

So putting these people in the hospital, then really expensive. Yeah, so it’s

 

MacKenzie  

funny in a permanent solution with government money for these high needy individuals that have complex health and mental challenges, give them a better quality life. And they actually end up causing costing the taxpayers a whole lot less. But he said, Richard said that they you know, part of the strategy is you have to have data in near real time. And you need enough of it to paint a really good picture of this person’s needs to architect that solution that they need, because everyone, there’s just so many unique needs and housing needs that come up accordingly with it. So and I guess the one thing to take away, he’s like, Well, and the other thing, too, it shouldn’t be on the private individual to, to wear this burden. And I would have to say I agree with that, because my sister’s a nurse, and I see what she’s taken to learn all that and, and she’s a general LPN, let alone an RN, or someone that specialises in the 10s of 1000s of unique healthcare needs out there. You can’t expect an individual to provide that kind of care in a private rental residence. But society is kind of pushing that way. And some of the public policy is more forgiving, unfortunately, than actually doing good in the end. Whether or not they’re sorry, I got off my soapbox, you’d let me get on top of that one. And it’s a I get going and rant a bit. Yeah. And the story

 

Erwin  

is new to me. I googled it if I’m on CBC, and most people hate the CBC, but at least report. At least they report the news on this article. But yeah, I can’t wait to dig into it.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, dig into it, unfortunately. So that was in the summer. Last year, they solved it. And then I heard another article came out in the fall saying that

 

Erwin  

was October dated October 3, this article, they

 

MacKenzie  

now have a homeless problem again, but I mean, the fact that it’s so minimal for a decent sized Canadian city, they’re doing something right. So super cool stuff.

 

Erwin  

It looks like it got higher after anything I’ll dig into anyways. Yeah, fascinating, fascinating subject. If this applies to real estate investing before the ignorant Ontarian Can you explain to me we’re friends, Mackenzie, I can’t fly to Calgary. I say hey, Mackenzie, I want to buy myself a property. What what what should I get into?

 

MacKenzie  

Well, it depends like, what’s your needs? Like? What’s your risk tolerance? What’s your duration of hold period? And yeah, okay.

 

Erwin  

This for me by for 10 years. Okay. Sure. Like if revisions do not scare me at all, I should prefer to renovate.

 

MacKenzie  

Okay. Well, right now in Calgary. Speaking of times, we’re speaking early 2023 In January, to the end of this year, and I forget exactly what it is the city of Calgary extended their programme to Godfather or give you NSC to get a legal suite built up to there’s two standards one’s a lot less in terms of cost and really what you need there’s the building code and fire code, I always get them mixed up. But right now instead of going to the more stringent standard, they will grant God farther you and allow you to qualify at the lower standard which will save you a tonne of money. So the big takeaways are if you don’t have to put a secondary heat source in which if your drywall and ran ductwork and put a second first and that’s already 10s of 1000s of dollars that’s

 

Erwin  

your standard code is secondary furnace. So you so if you’re doing a full two code duplex as yet you have to have two furnaces.

 

MacKenzie  

Yep, separate heat. sources for each rental fully self contained. Interconnected smoke alarms proper size egress windows for fire fire fire to enter the property with a Scotty air pack on their back. And there’s a few other things too and then parking requirements and so on so forth but, but right now it’s

 

Erwin  

okay, so for a permitted legal basement apartment suite I need how much parking

 

MacKenzie  

do I need in Calgary? Typically, it’s I haven’t looked at this over two years. It’s I think it’s to two spots upstairs. And an additional spot downstairs.

 

Erwin  

Totally hanging.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, I have to be on the lot itself. Now. I think that’s relaxed a bit because that’s when I first started because now they added into the fold last year as well. So here’s another diamond in the rough semi detached dwellings can now get their suites legalised

 

Erwin  

nice nice and Hamilton this did away with all parking and parking here.

 

MacKenzie  

Oh, man, that’s way better. Yeah,

 

Erwin  

that’s that’s good. We have one winner.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, there you go. I think it’s far less too but yeah, that’s kind of our sad

 

Erwin  

two furnaces. Do you need to cooling sir sources?

 

MacKenzie  

Well, AC is optional, right? I mean, no, you don’t need to cooling but it has to have proper ventilation. So if you do baseboard heats, then you need a HRV or air air recovery ventilation unit or whatever it is. Here really, yeah. So if you’re doing net new this is what you get, including the bill your built your that’s a lot of money to put in to put on the RV. That’s why there’s a great opportunity right now if you can buy the right property, it has good bones, you know if if it’s got the right size of Windows, if you’ve got the power panel and a common area, and a common access area, instead of sitting in the bedroom in the basement suite, you can access ideally, you can access the utility room without going in the basement suite. You can find good layouts like that and the way they qualify and I forget the exact copy I want to say it’s like March 2017 or 2018 Wherever the cut off the end. Can you go to city calgary.ca final the exact information

 

Erwin  

we are not fire inspectors nor building Jordans. Please go Calgary, Calgary. exact details.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah. But we’re trying to catch up to Edmonton Edmonton has been ahead of us on the legal suite page, or move in either decade at this and in terms of their like bylaws. And they did blanketed secondary suites across the whole city, long as you just met these minimum requirements, parking, needs, sources, whatever, you can do it all. And it’s awesome. So we’re trying to get there to

 

Erwin  

get started because it just surprise you. They’re at a friend of mine who lives in Hamilton invest in Edmonton. He actually mentioned to me it took him about five months to rent out his basement in Edmonton. So that’s a massive win for So Ashley started to give context. I believe he rented for well under $1,000 for a brand new two bedroom, basement apartment just outside the city of Edmonton. My point being is what you’re saying like it’s Edmonton has done a great job with their basement apartment bylaws and zoning enforcement all sorts of things. Yeah. Which is wonderful for the tenants, not so great first landlords.

 

MacKenzie  

So let me give you context on that. And that’s I’ve talked about this, and this is going back to legislation and rent controls and all that stuff. So you’re across Canada, it’s by province, that legislation that governments or industry, in Alberta with the most balanced jurisdiction, we don’t have any rent controls in the sense that you can’t raise rent more, more than once every 365 days. But you can raise it to wherever you want. Now, I’ll set up the caveat, if you do a very predatory rent increase, and you go into the RTR TDRS, which is our lower form of tribunal for mediation, or you go to the courts, they’ll throw that out, like if you go call 1000 bucks, just arbitrarily speaking, you double to 2000 or 1800. And you’re well above market rates, they’re gonna, they’re gonna throw that out. But I mean, within reason, whatever current market rates are for your

 

Erwin  

product, doesn’t they’re gonna say you can’t do that. Yes.

 

MacKenzie  

So So yes, on the legislation on paper, we you can raise rent to technically anything you want. In reality, it’s got to be within reason with what the current market rates are, which 99% of people that’s fine. But there’s I’ve seen cases that read the results of of hearings where they’ve thrown that kind of stuff out. And so I mean, so we’re, I wanted to paint this picture is, you see rent controls in Ontario and BC, where I’m sure you’ve had these conversations, lots on how they actually artificially push, push rents up because it part of the problem too, with rent controls is is also in both BC and in your guys’s province in Ontario, when a tenant moves in, they don’t have to move on until they actually have to, they want to move out. Were in Alberta, each party if it’s a fixed term, it is a fixed term, meaning that when that term is over, that lease is done, they have to move out. And I think that’s a huge kind of component to it. But let me get back to the story. So we got well balanced legislation. And then I looked at the rents last year, and I saw this was super interesting. And this is my kind of my prediction or my reading. And what I’m seeing is rents went up across the country everywhere because of inflation, right? We’re dealing with inflationary period that we’re in all the trends without Between two major cities of all the major cities in Canada, you know, only one city was substantially lower than everybody else. Now, why would that be? And I’ll give you one guess it’s an Alberta and it’s either Edmonton or Calgary, which do you think has lower rents?

 

Erwin  

Edmonton actually had really low rents as well for free period of time? No.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, no, but so when our rents went up last year and started Edmonton, I’d say I’m to basically stay at at the rate of inflation. That’s what they increased by. We almost doubled them for where our average rates rent rates were. And the reason why is a restriction on supply. Edmonton had their that are getting their decade ahead. They had their blanketed wide legal secondary suite, and they had a more affordable housing. So really, the supply has always been very well bounced in that city. And it hasn’t risen sharply. It has here in Calgary, where we’re having a challenge meeting supply needs. So what I wanted to highlight there, though, is because we had the best legislation in the country on a provincial standard, that allows more people wanting to participate in take, participate in that transaction, we got more people coming in to supply the market, as demand was going up to need it, which is great. That’s what you want to get to keep prints competitive. And then you’ve got the next restriction that’s gonna go going on for the provincial level is access and zoning hot, where can I build supply? How easy can I build supply and hands down Edmonton is Wall Pass Calgary for that, what they’ve done with their bylaws, and zoning and secondary suites and all that. So they’ve had a huge amount of supply, they have knowing that supply, a lot of that supply is very entry level very, again, talking about we talked earlier about affordable housing, the basement suites, all those kinds of things where they’re just typically less desirable that they come in and lower rent. And so I mean, if all things being equal CALGreen, Hampton should had a very similar increase in their rents from an economical perspective. But because of those things we just talked about, they are able to meet their own demands, and their rent said a lot more stable and only increase what inflation was going, where everyone’s experiencing with interest rates, mortgages, increase in insurance and so on and other costs that drive drive rents.

 

Erwin  

That’s good news for buyers and tenants? No, that’s not what I want to hear as a investor, investor owner as an existing investor owner.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah. But it’s still a good thing because your cost in terms

 

Erwin  

of Edmonton, like from what you’re telling me, I’d rather own an investor, right, as a business operator by product, I want to be in short supply. Just like Apple, right, they’re always sold out of stuff.

 

MacKenzie  

I’d rather just have stable, ongoing slow growing rents, but you know what Don Campbell’s always preached, I’d be okay to empty because then your cost to get into products is also a lot cheaper, a lot cheaper, whereas we have older Bylaw and zoning and building code that you have to adhere to at a lot higher cost point to get in. So it depends. I mean, depends your buying power and what your numbers aren’t. Well, that looks right, right. It’s not it’s

 

Erwin  

not too bad. Yes. Yeah. Different price point. Different budgets.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah. And you know what, but you look at the growth there. Their appreciation is very modelled very similar to to Calgary. And it really is the major cities in Alberta. And I liked the two major cities in the sense that were more of a balanced market when you compare the roller coasters of a single industry, small city or town in Alberta. So I’m talking about oil driven Grand Prairie, Fort McMurray, things like that, like when they make money and things are booming. They spike it’s a roller coaster up and then just as fast as you go up, you’ll come down. You tie into a major city like Calgary, Edmonton, and we’ve got post secondary agriculture in multiple industries driving the local needs of the housing stock. So if one industry takes a kick in and is going down, you might have a bit of a decrease in supply or rent, but you’re not riding the roller coaster of a single driven industry around or city.

 

Erwin  

Jared hope is a past guest of the show. He shared that you’ve never go outside Edmonton again. You wouldn’t have as an he wouldn’t go to a small town Alberta again, because I think a lot of people got whacked and they have like Fort McMurray, for example. So I want to continue with this Calgary grandfather suite example for listeners benefit at least here in Ontario, there’s so little you have to do if your units grandfathered, for example. My information is outdated. Please go to your fire department and ask for them, ask them how the laws are enforced. But when I attended a presentation from the Hamilton fire inspector, he gave a presentation to realtors. So for we understand fire code from legal nonconforming property, and at the time, it was very simple. We didn’t have to change separation between units. We didn’t do anything like that was grandfathered. The requirements were so little actually no fire escapes that was required. But for duplexes, typically there’s no fire escape. It’s just egress. The big thing really was it was really simple as an ESA natural Safety Authority certificate on your house. That was like the only not even difficult thing I needed to grant for fire code compliance for a Legal non conforming apartment

 

MacKenzie  

typically, with the fire department come by inspect a property give you this ESA

 

Erwin  

lets electricians do it. Okay. That’s again, that’s this presentation was like five years ago. Yeah, all my apartments all my apartments or permits, so I don’t do that I won’t go through that stuff anymore. But like what you’re saying is, yeah, yeah not have to put in an H vac system or an ARV system.

 

MacKenzie  

It’s also to get grandfathered, there has to be pre existing prior to March of, again, I check your numbers as well, I think it’s 2017 or 2018. I can’t remember. And to prove that the way they’re doing them. So here’s some pro tips. You look at expired listings, dimensioned by the law suite or legal suite, you look at their products using the basement suite when they’re the manufacturer dates on pvc piping in the back of drywall, to give you a rough idea of when that suite was built. And if you could find some documentation, that’s how you could qualify for this grandfather programme. And yeah, it’s absolutely huge, because if you’re trying to legalise a basement suite after the fact, it’s pre existing, you’re probably just better off to buy an undeveloped basement suite wherever the undeveloped basement where everything’s open, and start from scratch. Because you’re ripping up drywall, you’re running ductwork, you’re printing a second furnace, and you’re separated from the upstairs ductwork. During your cold air returns. It’s a tonne of money,

 

Erwin  

your architect fees permits vacancy during the construction period. Yeah, this is a great pro tip Mackenzie. Yeah. 100%.

 

MacKenzie  

And I haven’t done it in a while. Yeah, so I mean, that’s the diamond the rough right now and in categories that if you can find some of these properties, and then they added in semi detached only licensee only and it’s drink COVID Or just before COVID Man Time flies. But yeah, so I mean, that’s the other opportunity right now too. So there’s a lot Yeah, well property to get in and do it right. So I mean, the big takeaway is that your properties have to have is proper size, egress windows in every bedroom, and you’re connected smoke detectors. However, you can do that to be hardwired for power. There’s a set out there that works they talk on their own proprietary wireless network that will interconnect between the upstairs and downstairs suite get to have a fire separation between floors. So that can either be done by drywall and proper button taken I think has to be five eighths to protect drywall. Again, check your local bylaws or get to put a fire sprinkler in to the basement in the utility room where you can’t really reasonably separated with drywall because it’s just the you know, the shapes of pipes and all that stuff and it’s a very challenging space to drywall out.

 

Erwin  

So my favourite, it’s much cheaper than having to drywall and also

 

MacKenzie  

messy it’s one afternoons visit for three to four hours I plugged it in and then you get your certificate.

 

Erwin  

So just for just for the listeners benefit if you drywall, then that means anything behind the drywall, you can no longer access as well. So if you need to do any more maintenance repairs, let’s all drywall it off. It’s not good.

 

MacKenzie  

Which is like right up beside the ductwork on your furnace, AC, it’s just not a very good solution. And then

 

Erwin  

it gets more expensive, the versus the sprinkler head 100% It’s probably

 

MacKenzie  

three 3x more expensive. The other takeaway night is you need to have at least three quarter inch water feed off the main some homes in Calgary are only fed by a half inch. So like you hoped. You can’t you can’t build it see why not? That’s a big, expensive kachel is making sure that water line that you tied into is fed by three quarter inch feed.

 

Erwin  

Sorry, and will previous owner affidavit work to prove the unit existed for grandfathering. I wouldn’t see why not. I haven’t tried it personally, the ones I bought had expired listings going back to the early 2000s and 2010s. Just in Ontario, our government usually wants a bit more that was preferred over what was in the listing or versus even what’s what the property is taxed as. Yes. Yeah. And like the way the for the listeners benefit. every jurisdiction is different. So municipal, we’re talking to local level. So like, local enforces, so base offence by

 

MacKenzie  

law. Right. You know, so I mean, coming back to. Exactly. So. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, and like just to kind of like I really want to I want to wrap up this kind of like journey because I think it’s I’ve taken that as you said, every time you talk to an investor, they take something very, very unique. So I pivoted I haven’t bought more properties. I did try to do the fundraising the JV thing I felt that was super challenging and awkward kind of talking about the money, but I’m good at tech and can’t build and process so so I started a company with two other guys we did meetups local meetups monthly, and we’re trying to build education and a bunch of other things. We realised quickly all great individuals, we just had very different ways of executing the business plan and we didn’t agrees we went our separate ways. So after that point, I started a YouTube channel and I think even till today, I’m still the only one had a YouTube channel called find great tenants as the only YouTube channel dedicated to finding intense because I knew how important that was. And this is about the same time I had that conversation with At rain Diamond Award winner, and I found out that I was doing things differently. So one thing led to another, I built a bunch of videos on YouTube, and style called girdle on our community, folks, if you want to look and find on YouTube, that I joined a Facebook group, I shared one of my tip videos, and I got kicked out within like six hours before I woke up, I was out of the group. And that’s actually the group that I run now. So fortunate enough that the gentleman was right at the time. Chris noble saw value I posted, he went and messaged me and we had a phone call I got in the week later. And then two weeks later, I said, Hey, Chris, let’s have a talk show about landlording. Because there’s just so many nuances in the business. And later that yours is 2020. In the summer, he gave me the group again, getting full control. And that was I was completely grateful for that. And then so I did that on the side. And I tried. I built a couple of courses and sold some here and there just only on tenant screening because that’s what I knew very, very well and some other kind of tech related daily operational stuff. And then Okay, on that. Then this summer, I tried launched in a paid membership, and I crashed and burn. I think they got tough skin because people were very, very willing to share their comments generally

 

Erwin  

good and bad. And someone tried to monetize that group.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, I tried it. I wanted to provide more value I wanted to so here’s what I have. I tried offering a paid membership, kind of like the rain model, but more just landlording because there’s a tonne of investing groups out there. I mean, you guys have got Welltok are you looking at every every major city or province there’s a dozen investing groups, because investing is cool, it’s sexy. But when you talk about alone, and we’re like the ugly, ugly stepchild, the black sheep in the room where no one wants to talk about landlording

 

Erwin  

operations, that’s someone else’s job. Legionaries here,

 

MacKenzie  

toilets isn’t broken toilets. And tenants complained at two in the morning, I want nothing of that. So. So I focused on that I was like, if I can figure out this and make this pinpoint easier for people to have something figured out. Then so. So we got some sponsors that came in in the Facebook group and actually single view was my first sponsor, I was a huge advocate of them, they get really good, comprehensive reports when when picking that tenant. And I’ve always said, tenant selection, most of your work is done up front, like 90% of it. If you find the right tenant, you do your proper due diligence, check your checks and stuff, and they’re a good fit, then the rest of the that 10 seat until they move out is generally really smooth sailing, other than just keeping maintenance and repairs up on the property. But man, if you pick that wrong person, and you got that perfect property, beside the GO train, downtown Toronto, whatever, it could add everything you need to really easily read up, if you put the tenant in, it doesn’t pay, you’re still making $0 a month, you’re losing money, you’re going through stress, and you’re probably not gonna stick around this game, because it’s a very uncomfortable, stressful ride to fix those kind of problems. So it’s absolutely critical to get the right tenant in the beginning.

 

Erwin  

So then the follow on question is, you’re a big fan of single key. And then how did you join single key?

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, so I have been trying to provide provide additional value with the space

 

Erwin  

that we should probably explain what single key does get. And it might even help you tell me again, that you’re in person from from looking outside looking in. So for example, a lot of my community is familiar with neighbourly right? And now, are you wondering the same.

 

MacKenzie  

There’s so much that happened last year, we acquired neighbourly in the fall. So neighbourly is single key.

 

Erwin  

Name going forward. A single key, though, is single,

 

MacKenzie  

we combined it into a single key brand. So I think our competitive firms our claim to fame that really helped me as an as an investor was, we have an online application that is tenant driven, meaning they fill out all the information, because previously to do a proper credit check to get all the information you need to make an informed decision. And I can talk about how to read a credit report because there’s a lots of mistakes and, and myths and assumptions that I want to be clear on that that that’s, that’s an entire conversation on its own. But the silky gave the ability for tense to fill in that information, because previously for use on LinkedIn verification services, or some of these other places, you’d have to go and punch all the information in. And then you basically pay 20 or $30 for the click. And hopefully, you’ll make a typo, or you’re trying to read the print. I mean, at this time, I was still still doing paper applications and reading people’s printing. And I would blow 25 bucks on a click because but he didn’t spell his name right or change his birthdate or whatever. But now they have to input their information online. It’s clean, you got a very comprehensive PDF. And the difference to that the credit portion of our report is on the typical person’s like five to seven pages. And you see all their financial history that trade lines and this is a were, you know, the credit score itself is great as a starting point is a quick kind of test. But it’s only an instant snapshot in time, it does not give you an idea of how they’ve been a stewardship of their finances. So if you’ve got something that’s gone through a major life event, like a divorce or a job loss, and their credit score is not the best, or it’s questionable, you’ll see that when you look through the financial history, because you’ll see a bunch of missed payments and the 3069 day buckets, laid buckets, any narrower or negative within like a three to six month timeframe. But if you see someone that’s got genuinely late payments across the board, like a checkerboard pattern from day one to now or five years, they’re just generally not very good at managing their finances. That’s the people you want to stay with. But you get someone that’s got a lower credit score, but have been very good up to a certain point in the life. And there’s a very valid reason with a good job loss for divorce. And that explains why they’ve had a rough patch. But previously before that didn’t good. That’s a great person to get into your rental property, they’ll probably be very thankful and have even a long term tenant because you’ve given the chance. So that’s why you can’t just take a credit score on the face value.

 

Erwin  

That’s a mouthful.

 

MacKenzie  

It was I do talk a lot. Let’s give you a breath here.

 

Erwin  

Yeah. Appreciate this service as well. I find especially the younger generation is completely open to this. Yeah, yeah. Which is actually probably a screening thing.

 

MacKenzie  

There’s always a bit of a demographic out there that think credit checks are too invasive to rental property. Yeah, I want to rent to them. That’s fine and to use their own but we’re renting out six figure assets as collateral just like a bank does a personal line of credit, as a car dealership, or lease or sell your brand new car, we now are ya fitting $1 cell phone with the $200 plan a month or not even 100 on plan on Monday to Live plan, check checks. So we basically have given the mom and pop landlord the same tools of the trade, that other institutions that lend out high value assets used to qualify individuals, and rightfully so. And newer tenants actually, like a younger demographic of the people that have no problem isn’t simply appreciate because I as an individual don’t get or receive the sin number of the tenant, it’s all managed to the same grade security that online banks use to manage your online banking, we do the same thing at seal key to protect that personal information. So it’s actually treats the tenants a lot better, you’re not given a lot of your company information directly to the landlord. Now granted, we still we still see a lot of that, but things like the cin number aren’t shared with us. But you can still get the information across the qualify for the rental. So it’s a it’s a very smooth platform. It’s online, it takes like 10 minutes to fill out an application. And we’re bringing in and now we’ve got rent collection. So it’s pre authorised debit the same way you’d pay your utility bill have a checking account, we can collect rent for free up to three transactions a month. So if you’ve got three leases, do it for free through us. You don’t have to follow up with forgetful tax. free. It’s free right now. Yeah, it’s kind of like a lawsuit. It’s a way to get in and use our ecosystem. And then something I wish we had back in the day when I first started is a rent guarantee, which is it’s kind of like insurance, but essentially, as it sounds will guarantee your rent up to the first fall months or $60,000, whichever comes first, we’ll cover about $10,000 in tenant damage and vandalism. And should worst case be that you need to evict this individual have to go down that path will cover up to $1,500 in legal fees typically covers most evictions. And that same thing, and that’s yeah, I mean, this is my sales pitch guy. So what will stop the sales part from here but, and that’s either depending if you pay monthly or you pay annually, the premium, it’s either four and a half or 5% of the gross rent. But you know, I think it’s a really good product. If you’re brand new, you want to sleep at night and not be stressful and stay in this game for a long time. It’s a great must have product or if you are in a more higher risk jurisdiction like the BCS and the Ontario’s where there’s rent controls and the eviction time is crazy, like half a year or more. And if you sue me you don’t make any mistakes on all your paperwork and you execute perfectly on the eviction process. If you make any mistake, you just doubled from eight months to 16 months which I don’t know I don’t know how someone survives loan to mortgages, insurance everything utility bills and have tried to evict someone that in that kind of timeframe is just it’s not fair to anyone it’s not fair to the landlord and certainly not fair to the tents that they’re living in in a subpar unhealthy not to, you know, the provincial health regulations or property they have an unresponsive landlord it affects both parties negatively.

 

Erwin  

So it deserves highlighting rental guarantee covers 10k of damages 12 months of rent $1,500 for legal fees

 

MacKenzie  

or legal yet legal eviction costs and conviction costs. Yeah, the rent coverage is 60,000 or 12 months, whichever comes first. Yeah,

 

Erwin  

we’re selling I believe we have a discount for my clients, my clients. So apologies listeners, but McKenzie was tough negotiator. They will only offer a discount to my clients.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah. And you’re one of our exclusive providers. So talk to her and he’s got a little bit different taken those numbers for you. I’ll let him do his marketing on that side. But he’s got a a discount offered on what we just talked about. So yes, for the

 

Erwin  

listeners benefit realtor definition customer is everyone basically, I talked to client is someone who’s actually signed a contract or agreement with me. It’s very clear line drawn the same who my client is. So another benefit of being my client. Okay, I’ll stop selling.

 

MacKenzie  

No, that’s good. Yeah. So like, I love how you asked. I mean, I mean, I’ve been trying to wrap up my entire podcast or my venture. But so then I tried this year, 2022 was a big year, I quit my tails job of nine years in a row, the focus on trying to offer a premium to your membership, and still maintain the free thing. And I was also trying to move the Facebook group off Facebook, because I’m on Facebook’s territory, it’s their thing. And I know at some point, it will change and I will lose access to the 4000 plus members that we’ve built up today. That’s one another reason to get off it. But anyways, I had my mistake here was when I tried launched it in July, I had offered I had simplified it, I only offered a premium membership for the intentional investor, the landlord, which was a minority, I call him like 35% of my of my membership is people like you, me that want to be in this game. Want to get multiple properties intentionally chosen to pick real estate as a, an investment vehicle. But I didn’t Oh, sorry, what

 

Erwin  

was the other what was the other 65% It’s an

 

MacKenzie  

accidental landlords, you know, life and circumstances are forced to rent out a property and they don’t even want to be there. They just they just need to know enough. They don’t make any major mistake, cost them a $10,000 eviction or more. And they just need to know what they need to know, to operate without spending more time. And they’re the majority of our group. So like the one off investor, yeah, the one off or, I mean, yeah, one door or they don’t like again, accidentally don’t even want to be there. I guess there’s two sub demographics. But so I launched the programme, I only had a premium tier and a premium offering. But then I made the mistake of telling people I want to move off Facebook and force that hand, and it blew up because that wasn’t serving the majority of the people’s needs. I only had the one property and I got a link in that I tell you so we kind of put a pause on that. And then at the same time about take away my free stuff. And then I came on board with TELUS are still key. A month later, I actually talked to a number of my sponsors in January, I said, Hey, like if I was to leave TELUS, would you guys hire me? And I had got favourable responses from from all of them. So I was like, Okay, it’s amazing. Yeah, it was it gave me the confidence to quit the job security of my day job that I had worked with really good people, but I hated the actual, like my daily responsibility. I just, you know, accounting, the clock kind of thing. And so did that. And so I tried to do my own entrepreneurial thing kind of crashed and burned, took some lessons away. I’m still working on making a 10 inch screen course, I’m coming back again, it’s take a little bit longer because I want to do it right. But again, I also have the issue of perfection over action. I’m trying to correct that as well. So that now we’re here. And then the other thing too is I got hit up in the media with the Edmonton journal in June in July, as well across a couple of articles, I would say, unfairly portraying the story that these Facebook groups were affecting people’s ability to rent homes by a Korean do not rent to lists and unfairly targeting individuals. I can speak to that to a whole nother segment. But yeah, anyways, we had made the decision years before I came on in 2020, not to maintain, I do not rent to this because there was no proper checks and balances in place for other people to get off these lists. But when I

 

Erwin  

Google reviews, Facebook reviews, there’s tonnes of checks and balances.

 

MacKenzie  

Right, right.

 

Erwin  

Listener that’s complete sarcasm.

 

MacKenzie  

Yes. Well in like, just to provide I’m gonna provide a little bit more context was so we had we had at that point in time in 2020. I think we had around 2000 members. And there’s a great database online called the Canadian rental housing index, I think it’s called I can I’ll share the link with with Ervin so you can put in the show notes after but it tells you that, you know, it tells you how many renting households are in each province. And at that time, there’s about 420,000 rental units in the house. This could be you know, one two bedrooms, one bedroom suites, two bedroom suites, a full house, a basement suite whenever main floor is just called renting households. Now, going back to our numbers, right we’re talking about earlier is roughly 67% of all the rental stocks hold like private monopod landlords. So if I take 420,000, I’m going to do this exercise because the big point here weren’t 20,000. I divide it or I only take 65% of that, because that’s to say that’s how much is because mom will probably take out the big multifamily players, that drops down to 273,000 rental units in Alberta. Now, on top of that, I know the average landlord in farms I’ve seen owns about two and a half doors, but divide that by two and a half doors. That’s 109,000, approximately landlords, private, individual landlords in Alberta, and I had less than 2000 landlords on my page. And I was being roasted in the media saying that I was taken away people’s ability to get affordable housing because they had been unfairly blacklisted. And we weren’t even doing that. So it’s actually to be truthful, up to 2020, we did have a list. And then on it came in, I had talked and I was bringing on sponsorship, I had some great conversation with some industry players, talk to some lawyers, and they highlighted the fallacies that the article talks about where there’s no checks and balances. And we totally agree with that. So we stopped doing that in 2020. But then in 2022, in June, July, I got put into this news article, like we were still doing it as of last week. And what this report found, she got into my Facebook group undetected for about a month. And some posts, there was a tag that you could click on to filter posts about people warning other landlords about really challenging tenants. And by the way, these are generally the worst of the worst, the bad apples of the group. Now, granted, it could be a couple of people that got caught in this list. I don’t know. Because again, there was no checks and balances. But we stopped maintain that list. But she said because I had this this filter that I wasn’t even where it was still there. That was allowing people to filter a list of posts in Facebook, she called that a list. And so she said that we’re still doing it. So we deleted her family once we realise we still had it. But yeah, she wouldn’t talk to us and I offered a hop on a recorded call like this, you can ask me anything. But it has to be recorded. Because I’m I want context because it’s so important to have context around quotes to not have been taken out of context. Anyways, yeah. So I learned a lot in that kind of brush with with mainstream media. And it just now like I always knew, like, you look at a story there’s, there’s always context missing to it. I knew that I’ve always not. But now, I probably really greatly underestimated how often that happens. So

 

Erwin  

pieces often are just taken out of context. Yeah. You said this back in 2004. You’re, you’re racist. We need to cancel you. Yeah. So anyway, lyrics, you’re obviously a racist.

 

MacKenzie  

I think we may had read a 400 people on the old list that got thrown out when I took over in 2020. And in a ways if, if I’m 2000 members, and there’s 109,000, landlords in Alberta have an average tune outdoors. We were not impacted the majority of society’s ability to get rentals not even close. Close.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, but the media wants know me. Yeah. Generate hate and trigger.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, no, it was good. It was a good way to. And I’ve always approached this too, like when we have conversations in the private Facebook group, or I do these conversations or the shop talks. I always spoke with the context of mine, that everyone these words spoken, we become public one day, or always will be public. So I want to speak in the same way that I would, in a private say into it was selling the same way if it’s really starting to media. So I think you got to approach it that way too. Because the relationship between tenants and landlords is mutually beneficial, I get we need. tenants and tenants need good quality landlords, they want a great place to call home, we need someone who’s willing to pay the rent to cover the cost to do this business of investment rentals. And the vast majority, I’d say 95% Are folks exactly like that? It will say 90%. The other 5% are folks that want to be like that, but they’re in financial trouble and they’re having trouble getting rentals. And then that last 5% are the bad apples that are the ones that cause the problems for everybody else that has these eight months waits at the LTV and on that same a core to a lesson learn. I read or I probably spent unhealthy amount of hours that following weeks when I got into the media, reading every form every Facebook group had posted that article I read every comment, just I wanted to get a sense and what I learned out of that was the majority of landlords and tenants were all in favour of a do not rent to list. They said if people are sticking it or being predatory and they’re attacking tenants or landlords and they’re bad, let’s ban them from the industry and kick them out or whatever. And it was that was the general consensus. I got a couple couple 1000 comments and I thought that was really interesting that and I think I totally actually kind of agree with that statement. To really solve this problem. We need to get rid of the slumlords and I use that word very sparingly and the professional tenants do They’re both damaging livelihoods. Either you ruin someone financially that took a decade or longer or century to build up a nest egg to retire on. And that can get destroyed overnight by by burning down a property or whatever right by completely ruining a rental property. And by the same accord tents deserve a great quality places to live. And there’s, there’s unfortunately, bad apples and there’s bad apples everywhere. And I’ve never not said that. There’s landlords that don’t are slum Lords that don’t provide all the necessities. People need for basic living standards. So there’s a really good podcast is by CBC I’m also not a huge fan. But this was investigative reporting. And it was called slum town is about this high profile criminal up in Edmonton that had a tonne of properties. He actually got murdered last year. So he’s, he’s no longer around. But the first episode I wanted to kind of pay attention to is this journalist I’m forgetting her name, which is I said that, but she did. She kind of highlight all these different jurisdictions around the world combine bad landlords, so it was talking about Scotland, Baltimore, and a couple of these places. And anyways, they’re banning landlords from owning properties that had a bad track record. So you know, they’re intentionally slumlords they had to get their properties commandeered, auctioned off, and then the proceeds would go towards combat in s’mores and maintain that. So I thought that was brilliant. I’m totally on favour of bringing legislation in that will remove landlords from the property to the point that they’ll lose the property and remove all that motivation to be cheap to just make money, that they can actually do it and actually get banned from owning properties in the city or province. And then the same side, if someone’s been predatory, and as a professional tender has a track record of destroying people’s livelihoods and properties. They should be flagged in an online database, just saying that same thing with the slumlord, and people should know about it, and just make it difficult for them to do the evils that they’re doing that they don’t participate anymore.

 

Erwin  

Essentially white collar crime. That’s their stealing. But quick question to single key screen for people who have been convicted of crimes?

 

MacKenzie  

It does, yeah, we have a online source that does over like, if there’s a huge number hundreds or 1000s of databases, but the caveat is I’m gonna start putting the picture here. While it does do big search, not all jurisdictions release criminal records, or they’re not all public or publicly available, that can be scanned online. So yes, we provide that. But I always say do your due diligence, you know, for example, in Alberta, for evictions from RT GRS, you have to go down to the local courthouse to do an in person search. So take out the grain of salt, but any any criminal convictions and things that are in our public records will appear that are available online will pick them up. When you

 

Erwin  

see a gap in someone’s income for like, the year the time they were incarcerated.

 

MacKenzie  

Yeah, well, I mean, it just goes back like going back to tents being up front is a form skip, you should be using. There’s very select questions you should be using. And one of the biggest tips I always give away people kind of look at me cockeyed. Like why that makes no sense. But I tell them ask the same questions. repeatedly. Ask them when your first contact on the phone call. Ask them during the viewing and ask them on the follow up call. If you ask it to centre questions three times you should have a very similar answer every time. If that’s changing, and the details are slightly moving. Well, chances are someone’s lying. And the folks that lie that try to get past you can’t keep their facts straight. And you’re gonna see red flags. And you can dive into that further. And I always tell people, right on the phone call, I do background and credit checks. I know we’ve been talking for a long time. This is gonna be like a two hour episode.

 

Erwin  

But I’m excited to have you back. Set to go through how to add a screen attendant and and probably a separate one on how to write your credit report.

 

MacKenzie  

Yes, 100%. Anyways, you ask these questions, and you want to make sure that the store is consistent. If it’s not red flags, dig into it further, you might be getting fed some inaccurate information. But lately,

 

Erwin  

we tend to thank you for so much for going over time. Again. I think we will rebook you for how to run a single key report, do tenant screen and probably a separate one completely on how to read report. That should be one. Yeah.

 

MacKenzie  

And I’m thrilled next week to have you on a podcast I’m launching. You’re going to be my initial binge launch series and my binge watching. We’re gonna do about five episodes. episodes on the launch here, February 1. Hopefully I can execute on that deadline because I have to relaunch and it’s for rent conversations, the better the rental industry. Thank you.

 

Erwin  

For listener all the links will be in the show notes as long as Mackenzie gets them to me by tomorrow. Since this, this pod episode drops. I

 

MacKenzie  

hope you’re right. On Monday. Yeah. And I will help you out and I’ll give you a bio and all that stuff, too. I read your sheet started the podcast. So

 

Erwin  

just like getting the forms wrong. Don’t trust me to write everything down correctly.

 

MacKenzie  

Absolutely. Let me let me know source all that information. And you guys can find me on LinkedIn, Mackenzie Wilson. I’m on Facebook as well. Arkansas, this Facebook group. My pleasure. And thank you so much for having me on your show,

 

Erwin  

I had to google it, fewer than 5% of people can possibly lie or pathologically. So, hence your advice to ask the question three times 95% of people cannot beat it.

 

MacKenzie  

Think of it this way, too, I think honest, people will lie. If you’ve got some of the really tough situation, perhaps someone fleeing domestic violence, or, you know, they have no money. They’re between jobs. And they normally wouldn’t, but under very challenging circumstances, they’ll change a bit of facts to look a little bit better to get the rental, would you? Unfortunately, I if I was in those situations, I would probably I probably fudge the facts. So I look I shine a degree or two better than what I normally do if I didn’t have that kind of pressure on me. Those people,

 

Erwin  

those people, just,

 

MacKenzie  

yeah, and so I mean, there’s that part two, exactly. I mean, I could go on forever, but essentially, they out there, they wouldn’t normally do it. They had all good intention. But if someone’s in a challenging enough adversity, you know, they gotta do what they gotta do to survive. And where can people get more information on single key single key.com complex? Is it appropriate to call it like formerly known as neighbourly is now

 

Erwin  

part of single key.

 

MacKenzie  

Accurate? Absolutely neighbourly is now a single key, we’re one in the same, so yeah, and if you guys are curious about checking Alberta, go check out the Alberta landlord community.ca. It’s a private forum, the moving towards from the Facebook, but there’s also on Facebook, the same name, you can find our Facebook group as well. Awesome. Thanks so much McKenzie.

 

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. 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 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.

Subscribe on Android

To follow Mackenzie:

Website: singlekey.com/

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/mwyyc/

Alberta Landlord Community: albertalandlordcommunity.ca/

Two recent articles Mackenzie recommends

https://www.singlekey.com/blog/how-can-landlords-spot-fake-application-documents-from-tenants/

https://www.singlekey.com/blog/airbnb-arbitrage-should-you-let-your-tenant-rent-out-your-property-to-short-term-renters/

HELP US OUT!

Please help us reach new listeners on iTunes by leaving us a rating and review!

 

UPCOMING EVENTS

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with! Build connections with empire builders and trailblazers at our iWIN events.
 
CLICK HERE to check out what’s coming up next.

 

BEFORE YOU GO…

If you’re interested in being a successful real estate investor like those who have been featured on this podcast and our hundreds of successful clients please let us know.

It is our honour to give back and educate others on how we build cash flowing real estate portfolios using all the best practices shared on this podcast, from the lessons of our hundreds of clients and of course our own experience in owning investment real estate.

If you didn’t know already, we pride ourselves on being the best of the best real estate coaches, having the best property managers, contractors, handy people, cleaners, lawyers, accountants, everyone you need on your power team and we’re happy to share them with our clients to ensure your success. 

New investor or seasoned veteran investor, we can help anyone by providing our award winning coaching services and this isn’t all talk.

We have been awarded Realtor of the Year to Investors in 2015 by the Real Estate Investment Network, 2016 by the Canadian Real Estate Wealth Magazine and again in 2017 because no one told the judges no one is supposed to win the award twice but on merit, our peers deemed us as the best.  In 2018, we again won the same award by the Real Estate Investment Network.

Hopefully being the most decorated team of Realtors in Ontario will make you consider us for your first or next real estate investment.  Even if you don’t invest in our areas, there’s a good chance I know who would be ideal for you. 

I’ve been around for a while, some Realtors are talented at servicing investors there are many with great ethics.  The intersection of the two, talent and ethics is limited to a handful in each city or town.

Only work with the best is what my father always taught me.  If you’re interested, drop us an email at iwin@infinitywealth.ca.

I hope to meet you at one of our meetups soon.

Again that’s iwin@infinitywealth.ca

Sponsored by:

Infinity Wealth Investment Network – would you like to know how our investors returned 341.8% on positive cash flowing real estate over the last five years? On average, that was 68.4% per year.

Just imagine what winning in real estate could do for you.

If you would like to know how we did it, ask us how by calling 289-288-5019 or email us at iwin@infinitywealth.ca.

Don’t delay, the top markets we focus in are trending upward in price, so you can pay today’s price or tomorrow’s price.

Till next time, just do it because I believe in you.

Erwin

Hamilton, St. Catharines and Toronto Land Development, Real Estate Investor, and soon to be builder.

W: erwinszeto.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/erwin.szeto
IG: https://www.instagram.com/erwinszeto/

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *