** Transcript Auto-Generated**(00:00) greetings fellow Real Estate Investors seeking the truth about different strategies and markets for investing irn CTO here host of the truth about real estate investing for Canadians since 2016 my businesses and I are committed to being a beacon of excellence in the real estate investment industry because it’s dark out there thank you to everyone who’s been sending me tips and articles on who owes who people money uh it’s uh it’s a bit of a mess out there I actually had a friend messag me saying that uh she’s
(00:28) batting 1,000 investing in all the people she shouldn’t have been investing with and has hopes of regaining some of that money anyways uh that’s why the shows exists because we’re here to deliver exceptional results and pioneering investment solutions that actually work to make money to set standards new standards for performance and client satisfaction we’re here to uncover the truth on how to actually invest and make money consistently over time for anyone new here my team and I have helped Canadian Real Estate Investors complete
(00:58) close to $500 million worth of income property transactions since 2010 we’ve done next to no preconstruction condos we actually Focus mostly on small multif family and then we did a lot of student rentals and then we did a lot of basement Suite conversions then Garden Suite conversions basically we’ve done all always try to implement the best practices in order to maximize Roi on properties and this is why my clients have been overwhelmingly successful among them 45 have made a million dollars or more in their investment
(01:27) properties and many others live off of the cash flow from their rentals and that we we were able to accomplish this in Ontario it’s obviously been a fantastic run uh but what got us here won’t work for investors today personally I fear a prolonged trade war with the US uh we don’t have a proper prime minister who can lead this country um which could hurt our economy lead to further job losses and complicate an already pro-tenant environment where evictions for non-payment of rent for example our tenants lose their jobs and they can’t
(02:01) afford rent uh it could take a year or more to have them evicted if you haven’t reviewed your portfolio recently now is more the time than ever my wife and I we’ve sold off almost half of our Canadian portfolio to improve our cash position and debt position uh if you own properties with negative cash flow or you need to build up some buffer room pay off some debts I can I strongly recommend getting a professional portfolio review done my clients and I are doing the same thing and I’m reaching out to more of them to
(02:30) offer them a second set of eyes uh about 18 months ago I partnered with share uh as I was looking to diversify an American company that makes it simple for Canadians to invest in us real estate as 100% owners uh direct owners of properties in top markets that all Canadians like such as Florida Texas Arizona Ohio and more Sher is a full service asset manager as in they handle everything they Source me deals um major they they showed me every deal was actually off market for my clients about 75% of the deals are are being done off
(03:01) Market they’re providing all the underwriting from renovations to tenant placement to long-term management that’s all part of their service for fees uh the focus from this company is on single family homes and small alties which has always been how we made our money here in Ontario and in like other investment companies you uh like a Reit for example uh share only charges fees there’s no equity sharing there’s no profit splits but sh you get a perfect mix of what I consider a perfect mix of operationally passive andest investing while while the
(03:31) investor gets to Own 100% of the property and have 100% control it’s your name on title or your company’s name on title that’s it and also the morgage so I as the investor get to keep all the upside in my experience this is the dream of every part-time investor I don’t want to be a full-time investor there’s a lot more things I pref I enjoy in life uh and uh for those who looking to scale to a scale a portfolio to create a sixf figure cash flow um doing this in Canada is nearly impossible without investing a lot of time and a
(04:03) lot more money uh but in the US the yields the cash flow the financing options the mortgages and Property Management are all Superior to anything I’ve seen and again I’ve done over 300 uh interviews of this show every week since 2016 and so I’ve I’ve learned a lot I’ve seen a lot of best practices in this country and again I I can’t I can’t say I’ve seen anything that competes with what this off what I can do in the States now speaking of scaling shout out to Shane Granderson pest with the show he’s 33 years old uh mechanic from
(04:36) Montreal he already bought his second investment property a renovated TurnKey property it’s already tenanted the tent pays $1,395 per month plus utilities just outside Kansas City Missouri a great place for investment for cash flow uh for example the um the what car is manufactured there the Ford F-150 uh I think most Canadian are familiar with the Ford F-150 the number one bestselling truck in the United States for the last 46 years uh anyways just the economy should like to be stable that employer is like be stable anyways
(05:11) um so this property was bought just outside Kansas City Missouri for $175,000 so for anyone following that’s almost the 1% rule um so if you’re interested in learning more about deals like this that sh that chain just did you just simply go to I win. Shar sfr.fr you can scroll through past deals that we’ve done for clients including all the projected financials uh pictures locations uh economic stats based on the area employment employment growth price growth uh job growth population growth all those sort of wonderful
(05:47) things now why in the US for starers you can just check out the Apple’s recent announcement uh Apple announced that they’ll be investing uh 500 billion in US facilities over the next four years that investment will create 20,000 new jobs Apple’s making this investment to expand supply chain outside of China to avoid tariffs uh the investment will include a new server production facility they’re going to they’re going to manufacture Advanced servers for AI purposes in Houston Texas uh they’re creating an academy in Detroit Michigan
(06:21) to train small and Si medium-sized businesses and they’re expand their Data Center capacity in places like North Carolina Iowa Oregon Oregon sorry Arizona Nevada now I’m not a fan of anyone who promotes taxes or tariffs or anyone who wants to cause damage to our Canadian economy uh which includes my local friends with businesses and Rental portfolios and of course my tenants um but fear uh fear if it it was an acronym has two meanings forget everything and run or face everything in Rise I personally choose a ladder hence
(06:57) we’ve rebalanced my portfolio and we’re Diversified into a market and diversifying our income and portfolio and assets to be in a different Market to honestly earn US Dollars uh where in in in the US is showing exceptional economic and high paying job growth which leads to higher rents stronger C which means stronger rent cash flow for the investor and long-term price appreciation the this is this is all everything every real estate investor wants I wish this was available in Canada but it’s not not on this scale
(07:30) and that’s the truth about real estate investing now as always my team and I here are here to support our clients and our investor Community if you’re looking to network and connect with others who want to face everything in Rise I’m happy to announce that we’ll be hosting an iWin real estate event on Saturday April 26 in Oakville at our office this will be a smaller inperson event past clients will get first access to register and then we’ll open it up to those on My Weekly Newsletter if you’re subscribed to my newsletter keep an eye
(07:56) out we’ll be sending out a poll soon to see to ask you which topics you’d like to see covered here’s some potential topics off the top of my mind short-term airb be rentals basement or Garden suites selling rental properties even if they’re tenanted Property Management um filling vacant properties rent to own student rentals mortgage updates us real estate investing my personal favorite to.
(08:20) topic multif family investing uh infinite banking whatever private mortgages we’ll let you decide we’ll also be ordering lunch so that will be a small registration fee to cover seats will be Li to 30 uh we’re ordering lunch for for that many people as well because this will sell out there will be no option to pay or register at the door uh I have over 350 past clients and uh over 10,000 people uh subscribe to my email newsletter and don’t forget you my 17 listeners on this podcast you you 17 would take up half the room as yourselves now this event will sell out
(08:54) so I can’t wait to see you all live and in person as always there will be a this will be a great event focus on on making real estate profitable again on to this week’s show this week we have an amazing guest who’s been on a bumpy bumpy path uh lot of success on on both the front and the back end now I’ve known Ryan car for quite some time and uh but it was when I attended the trust your talents award Gala uh that a certain coach had been uh most had the most Award winners and thank yous and and thank you and they
(09:25) were for Ryan hence I invited Ryan Carr onto the show which he gracefully accepted now what happens when a high-powered sales executive suffers a stressinduced heart attack at the age of 38 38 for Ryan car it was a wakeup call like it would be for anyone and that transformed his life in this raw inspiring conversation Ryan opens up about how he and his wife shaali went from making nearly $400,000 a year in their corporate jobs to building a 200 door real estate portfolio all while prioritizing Health family and helping
(09:56) others Achieve Financial Independence here how Ryan overcame personal health challenges navigate an massive investment setback which included a $700,000 promissary note write off uh some of that came back uh a bunch of it was written off and became a sought after a mentor who’s helped 32 people break free from the 95 grind this episode was Master Class in resilience strategic investing uh for example uh Ryan for onario but he invested also in New Brunswick and more recently uh has been setting a SES and and implementing
(10:29) invest ing in raising capital and building properties in Edmonton Alberta and he’s creating a Life by Design please enjoy the [Music] show hi Ryan Carl what’s keeping you busy these days well uh couple of kids couple of young kids uh son age three daughter uh year old and uh you know obviously they’re a huge part of the why uh you know my wife and I were I consider ourselves fortunate that we started our business when we did we had the vision of uh raising a family but uh we were very much the the stereotypical
(11:09) story you know we uh strong income earners both of us she’s an engineer by trade way smarter than I am I will always say that she’s the brand of the operation myself I know the feeling yeah came from a background in corporate sales and you know from an Outsiders perspective everybody’s like yeah Ryan and chaali got made but this again the very stereotypical story we had sold our soul for the money and we were miserable we were stressed out burnt out and we wanted to find a different way because we knew we would have never been present
(11:35) for our kids or we would have had a nanny raising them and uh we had we had different aspirations I suppose amazing now uh I didn’t mention to you I was actually I was actually texting with Tim Sai uh the reason why I invited you on the show because Tim was so gracious to invite me to the treasure Talent award show and I got to p i personally uh judged some of the winners and so I was thoroughly impressed and then during uh award recipients when they’re giving their speeches uh anecdotally like your name probably came up the most in terms of
(12:15) the coach being thanked so I thought I need to get Ryan on the show find out what’s going on and how he’s able to produce so many happy and successful coaching clients and then just before we’re recording you told me you dropped some bombs on me too so so I’ll I’ll let you start like tell tell the audience a bit about yourself yeah um so as I kind of hinted at you know um I I had a strict upbringing and I guess that’s really what created the person I am you know my father was a mounty rcnp and although I hated it as a kid uh I truly believe
(12:52) that it made me who I am today uh I’m extra appreciative of it now uh given my father’s no longer here lost him 28 years ago to a stressinduced heart attack and um you know so I I quickly became the man of the house you know had a sister and my mother and um you know few few things that and then I watched money tear my parents apart literally it was the you know probably the biggest topic of their divorce so I I had a I still feel I have a deeply ingrained unhealthy relationship with money and um you know wanted to do everything I could
(13:24) to to work my tail off to ensure that money was never an issue and so you know got into the world corporate sales after my business degree at Lauer and uh you know worked the way up the ladder made my way into partnership at the agency I was at was making great money however you know again the the stereotypical story you know you’re you’re in the corporate world you you sell your soul for a buck and uh for a while I you know at least I was young enough I was full of piss and vinegar and and was able to kind of endure um but it gets old
(13:53) quickly you know when you’re 80 to 100 hour work weeks and 65,000 kilm a year of driving to see clients um so it was yeah it was quite an existence I I definitely earned the money I was making and uh you know when chaali and I met we were both previously divorced so we were a little bit later to the game and and and and obviously the biological clocks are ticking on both sides and but we knew we wanted a family and um so we started into the real estate game um actually kind of an interesting start because we both had homes and uh after
(14:26) we got married shaali moved in and hers became a rental and it was putting money in our pocket we thought oh well isn’t this nice and so we uh we pursued that or we explored that a little bit more and we we refinanced both places and started locally in our backyard in Kitchener water lop doing duplex conversions you know at the time you know pre pandemic it was a pretty popular strategy and you know I won’t say we necessarily did anything particularly right I like to say and I think there’s truth in it uh quite
(14:53) frankly a monkey could have made money pre pandemic with the market dynamics so we got lucky the market was going the right way and we were able to execute a few perfect burs um then we leveled up a bit uh the same realtor that we had used for those transactions we got into a big value ad triplex in Cambridge like holistic all the units the exterior facade roof Windows like big big overhaul but made out well there and although we were both strong income earners we quickly capped out in the residential space and so we wanted to
(15:26) see how we could keep going so at the time uh um we stumbled upon Legacy uh one of the old real estate investor curriculums which is now defunct in Canada um chaali honestly thought we were gonna meet Robert kosaki at the one event and I’m like well I’m not sure we will and sure enough we didn’t but anyway you know we uh I I truly do uh I’m thankful for the fact that we enrolled there I think you know the curriculum was great unfortunately I guess a poorly managed business um so they’re now defunct but uh and that’s
(15:58) where we met our Ray Salazar which U you know Tim’s uh life partner husband and um so he steered us into the commercial world and he says hey take a look here you know I think there’s an opportunity for you to keep propelling uh because mortgage ability is is kind of removed from the equation and so we jumped into the world of multif family investing and that’s really become our Jam uh over the last 5 years you know and now we have a portfolio well in access of 200 Doors um and have scaled out a business that’s uh
(16:33) you know allowed us both to retire um so you know we replaced what was effectively a almost a $400,000 household income uh through through passive income in the business and then when um know one Legacy was uh kind of going the way it was going Tim and Ray being a couple of the more prolific mentors there uh and being owed a lot of money as independent contractors by Legacy uh they um they quietly went about starting trust your talent which you you kind of mentioned there in the intro and um as as efficient and
(17:08) effective as they are you know wanting to affect as many lives as they wanted to they knew that they kind of needed a team and reached out to some of their former mentees myself being one and they said hey you know proof is in the pudding Ryan you’ve uh you’ve kind of made it happen and uh this is what we’re thinking about and honestly I did not even hesitate irn uh my my my exact answer I remember the words my answer to Ray was after what you and Tim have done for chaali and I I will follow you to the end of the Earth and back let’s go
(17:36) and um I think that the role that I came from prior I I was in B2B sales so business of business and it was very technical we did a ton of training um because we had products that were very Progressive we were in the high performance building world so energy star lead Net Zero still geek out about that stuff and and you know maybe there’s a special topic there someday for for people that like that stuff um but I always had to nurture and and educate people on on proper application and things like that and I think that
(18:11) that’s really served me well in what has become my role as a coach and Mentor at trust your talent and so my role there I uh I teach two courses for them actually I I do teach the the multif family income properties course um so how do you find them what are they you know making offers with Clauses and addendums to protect yourself cuz you know we we know that you you need to do proper due diligence you know uh looking at the numbers and the kpi conservatively underwriting I think that is crucially important we can elaborate on that
(18:42) conservatively underwriting because all too often people will stretch the numbers to try to make it work right and and I think that that has sellers don’t help but either Sellers and agents don’t help yeah yeah yeah oh wouldn’t be it wouldn’t be the first time right that a realtor would paint a property through rose-colored glasses for sure um but I think that’s that’s also what has made chaol I successful is We Are Always ultra conservative in our underwriting and when we make an ask from a perspective investor you know not only
(19:12) are we including obviously down payment closing costs uh renovation costs but we’ll often already ask for a slight top up in our contingency fees like in our slush fund and then in our in our monthly budgets before any cash flow distributions come out vacancy and maintenance is stripped off the top and socked away into the account and we never touch that you know and so as some of these more difficult times that have come about that have unfortunately you know sank some of the more amateur investors you know we have been more
(19:45) than prepared to weather the storm and uh and hang on to these properties and actually grow I think it’s been you know for those that had the proper foresight you know that operates effectively and efficiently you know it’s been a great time for growth to go back so yeah I teach the C I teach that course I teach a business fundamentals course for them as well uh being a business grad from from laor BBA because you know like we wouldn’t build a house without a proper foundation so to should you probably not build a
(20:17) business without a proper Foundation a business of a real of a real estate portfolio is that what the business looking at corporate structure looking at proper insurances to protect you looking at building out your Power Team because again I mean I don’t want to do this alone I’m not a realtor I’m not an accountant I’m not a lawyer I’m not a property manager I don’t want to try to be you’d burn yourself out right and so you know putting all of that in place and then of course my role as a mentor and I mean that has probably been the
(20:45) most fulfilling you know you know there reaches you reach a point where frankly I mean you’ve got everything you need and and and money is money is a tool money helps you buy back your time helps you have experiences and once you have enough what do you do truly what do what do you do right and so you know I I was excited to be given an opportunity to get back and and pay it forward like you know like Ray did for us and uh so I’ve been able to and and the goal with mentorship really is you know we we we ask them well we mandate we have sort of
(21:20) prerequisites you know that they make their way through the curriculum particularly this the strategy that they want to execute on and then we meet we meet them in a market well we help them prepare we help them build out an agenda you know we help them create their corporate structure but we meet them anywh in North America like I mean I’ve been into the US I did one in Cleveland last year you know uh Edmonton’s a pretty viable Market in Canada nowadays Calgary uh Ben out to St John and monton B to Saskatoon um markets really irrelevant
(21:50) right I mean what we’re ultimately trying to teach them is hey with enough diligence with enough preparation really istically in 48 to 72 hours you can parachute anywhere and and create a sustainable market right you can create a team you can have meetings with people you can turn over rocks find Opportunities we can make offers we can start doing due diligence and you know fortunately I’ve I’ve had a chance to have some success you know as I said prior to starting the show um to date my uh my Tally is I’m not saying it to beat
(22:25) my chest I’m saying it because I’m I’m proud of it quite frankly you know I’ve helped 32 people reach Financial Independence MH and um as you saw I mean as part of the Review Committee which you know I I think is is part of what makes us different right is we do have a third-party nonpartisan Review Committee for our Awards and it’s very stringent as you would know and your doc and their documents have to be submitted for proof yeah yeah an audit it’s not just like I make this much money and I think one one thing that I I
(22:57) really like to voice because it was a huge part of our conversation as part of the founding team and we see it with other coaching acmy and we won’t name names it’s not productive but we we saw that and we knew that it at least myself I I go I went and audited another curriculum after I was done with Legacy just for interest and you know they they don’t go super deep on topics they just kind of skim the surface they get you salivating and excited and then they’re like hey Ryan now that you know how to do this here’s a great deal to buy and
(23:28) it’s their deal and I’m like okay so do you have my best interest in mind or are you just trying to sell more of your stuff how it came across to me and so as we were founding tyt it was one thing we said unequivocally rule number one we will not do work with students period we will teach them to fish we will teach them to create their own sustainable business we will not hand them fish because frankly we’re in a position of power and of course they’re going to believe us right and I think I think that that’s skewed
(24:00) so you know I would take a lot of pride in in the success that we create and I think you saw that at the award ceremony I mean I don’t take that role lightly I mean I was emotionally involved with uh you know with a lot of my mentees and and I I I take I take a lot of um pride and and um you know I I really build relationships with these people so for the listener benefit I want I want to um elaborate on the uh like the coaching student doing business with their coach uh for those who don’t know the way the Securities commissions
(24:35) work is you cannot just sell uh securitized Investments to the general public so often what these companies do individuals do is they’ll sell coaching they’ll bring you in they’ll teach you something maybe teach you a lot uh and then there’s a good percentage of people who won’t don’t want to do the work and so then the coach will pitch them their own investment and so so I understand why they do it and it’s again it’s a work around for around Securities laws because now you’re coaching client you’re educating them hopefully it’s
(25:05) good quality education and that’s and I’ve been saying this a lot more has to be quality don’t just take a course take a quality course if you’re invest with someone invest for someone who has track record and has quality in a quality investment 100% right and I think you know that that’s another thing that’s foundational um with within our contract and I’ve I’ve spoken them they’re okay with me obviously toing because because it is something I think that makes us different in our IC contract or independent contractor contracts we are
(25:37) contractually obligated as coaches and mentors to continue to grow our portfolio and they have the ability to spot check at any point they’ll come and like we do for our students on Awards night submit your documents submit your title documents submit your joint venture agreements show us that you’ve grown since the last spot check M there’s danger of you being kicked off the team if you’re not growing because I think we’ve all seen that right where I know I was involved in courses over the years you mentioned quality education
(26:05) and they’re running through examples and numbers and I’m like this these numbers seem like they were from five years ago and sure enough I mean that was their last big deal so if you’re not out there as an active investor getting hit over the head and and being affected by by Law changes and and and Bank of Canada and CC policy changes and things like that effective are you realistically my view anyway and it’s a small community so this is for listeners benefit it’s a small community so it’s not hard to reference check if someone’s
(26:39) active like I literally know it’s again it’s small community so I actually I literally asked a friend of mine if they’re seeing a coach who I know is who’s who says they are very active in that market I asked a friend who I know is active in that market do you ever see them at the table offering the same buildings his answer was no I think he’s more he’s he sells courses he’s not an investor not he’s not least he’s not a practicing investor and he’s not seeing him at the deal table so then there’s nothing wrong with that it’s just and
(27:09) I’ll give you another example I saw I saw another coach Guru in his examples of deals he was saying we have this property tied up which means you have it under contract which means you don’t own it so why you marketing this as an example property like if you have it under contract you don’t even know the reality of the property true right like you haven’t seen all the units none of your team have seen all the units none of you have seen 12 months of bankroll should still be deep in due diligence at that point yeah more my
(27:42) point is if you’re going to be teaching something on multif family for example maybe use an example that you own yeah yeah because that’s a real investor and preferably have examples from you know 10 years ago on right not just a current to have things that are ongoing right because you know took go back part on my course I mean we take it stem to stern right from the basic conversations that you start having to to find Opportunities and to build your team because I mean you’re not going to find everything on MLS or Loop net right
(28:16) you want to try to find some off-market stuff so how do you do that initial due diligence making the offer you know closing stabilization refi so you know and yeah I think you’re right I mean that’s where I like to think that the right people you know like myself not that I want to toot my own horn but I mean you know we can bring value because you know we we made Acquisitions last year we’re process of currently stabilizing and then we have a large asset a 60 unit complex that the cmhc assumable debt that we took on it when
(28:50) we we we uh we closed on it in March of 22 matures in May of this coming of this year so you know we’ve started underwriting the file with our broker you know we’ve we’ve done all the capex we’ve we’ve stabilized the asset we’ve raised the noi by almost $23,000 a month you know and and we’re we’re seeing the effect of that and we get to use that as a live example you know to to help you have tied up because you can’t imp you can’t do anything to the noi when you have the property tied up sorry I’m using acronyms you can’t do
(29:25) anything you can’t improve the profitability of a property you don’t actually own it yeah 100% uh now I’ll add this other thing I’ve mentioned it many times on the show probably not enough is I don’t judge coaches on their Instagrams or their social media or what they say about themselves I judge them based on uh the results of their coaching students and before we’re recording you know I know you don’t like talking bad about people but I I’ve mentioned it before on the show I know some coaches who have uh dozens and dozens of coaching clients
(29:57) who are bankrupt right so that’s probably not someone you want to hire as your coach versus again I’ve seen your the award-winning students and I met them personally I’ve reviewed their files from trust your talent so it’s very different and that’s what that’s why I always told Tim as well that that’s and Tim always thanks me for having him on the show I say you know thank you for being one of the bright lights in our industry when there’s you know I’m always happy to shine a light on people that are going to help other people uh I
(30:27) know sounds like going ement but I get nothing for this but again I just want to see people happy and successful and I think that’s that you know we found a bit of a tribe there you know the the team you know we we we align on so many values um and and you know we all we have all reached that point I think where you know we have more than enough so then you what do we do now and and for me you know I guess especially being a father now that’s that’s my biggest goal is that you know my kids love and respect me and after I’m gone hopefully
(31:02) they speak kindly of me but maybe through these efforts there’ll be a few more people that you know my legacy lives lives on through you know they speak kindly of me after I’m gone um but I mean it’s if anything too I have found it makes me an exponentially better investor because yes being out there being active myself yeah I get I get hit over hit over the face with with issues but I I won’t I won’t pretend to know I know everything right if I think the only benefit that I may have for mentees when they come to me with some issues and and
(31:35) there have been moments where I’ve almost been a dear on headlights because I’m like H I don’t know if I have an answer for this right now but let’s work through it together and and the only Advantage I may have I always say we’re on the same path I’m just maybe two dozen steps down the path further than you are I’ve already tripped over that rock I can tell you to look out for it and perhaps I have a bigger rule of deck right because that’s that was literally my job for 17 years in corporate sales right Network like it’s your job because
(32:05) it was and so you know I I have the ability to build those relationships and you know my people are their people I always tell them that and it’s it’s interesting because I mean in some instances I also feel like I’ve bred some of my own competition but it’s it’s you know I love that because you know myself Tim Ray anybody on the team I don’t think any of us yourself incl I mean we certainly don’t have a lack mentality I’m not hey I’m going to I’m going to take Irwin’s piece of the pie I’m like I know I like pie I know you
(32:35) like pie let’s work to together and big big oh we’re in completely different markets so it doesn’t matter competition [Laughter] between now you work with your wife uh in your Investment Portfolio can you um speak to the listener on how you divide duties uh because you you come from different educational backgrounds and sounds like careers as well and how you compliment each other yeah yeah absolutely I mean it’s uh it’s always an interesting Dynamic I like to say when you’re your bedroom and business partners and and you you know sometimes
(33:10) there’s things that you yeah yeah you don’t want to bleed over into the other areas right but it’s inevitable and it’s actually it’s a really it’ll be a cool anecdote for you because we were actually seeing cherry on our mentorship with Ry when we got our first big lesson in realization so we were in there shali and I are both strong personalities she’s a she’s a very strong woman and we uh we were still newer in our relationship too like we were only together for about a year year and a bit at that point uh and we
(33:41) just decided to start growing the business um and we were talking over each other we were basically you know passively fighting with each other in in the meeting and so we get back to the car and I’m I’m driving chiali is in the front passenger seat Ray sits down behind me and he literally cuffs me in the back of the head you know gently but he says you guys look like fools in there he says I’m I’m not a marriage count so I’m not going to comment on how that can affect your relationship however from a from a professional
(34:12) perspective you guys look like fools you guys need to get your poop in a group basically and and what he encouraged us to do was you know have a candid conversation and that’s that’s carried over you know with me for for a long I love that term and I use that a lot with my my mentees now you know have a very candid conversation whether it’s with your spouse Who’s involved in the business with you whether it’s with your property manager Etc and we did we sat down and we looked at each other’s personality types we looked at each
(34:41) other’s strengths and weaknesses and we determine okay how will you best serve the business and where does the other person need to pick up the slack right so myself coming from you know the world of of business studies and and and being in corporate sales for 17 years you know I Am Naturally good at building relationships I’m you know so I I find the deals I find the money I grow I try to grow the business right and I and I create the relationships initially to build the team chaali being a textile engineer by trade with a lot of process
(35:19) refinement skills you know she’s got her lean Six Sigma Black Belt Kaizen ISO you know all about really looking at that process and how can we break it down into bite-sized chunks and refine every last piece of it you know she how she manages to find money in in some of our owner statements uh or or things that that had seemingly been done very recently and then she seems to track all of this and she’ll ask the questions hey was that toilet not replaced you know two months ago in this unit you sure that’s right or maybe that’s charged
(35:53) another unit or maybe that’s a duplicate charge and whether it’s intentional or not you never know and you never want to point fingers but who knows right I mean it’s not something that’s that’s unknown that that’s sometimes how some PMS try to make money right is by nickel and diamond with maintenance costs or they screw up or even one of their maybe even their sub screwed them over have someone like that you know um balancing you is is great you know I another anecdote or a great story we did a one of our earlier duplex conversions
(36:26) in Kitchener um if it weren’t for chaali honestly I’d probably spend like crazy often like I just hey so she keeps me in check and so this duplex conversion we went to Best Buy for our our basement suite and I bought this beautiful stainless steel appliance package frankly overspent now we now we go to scratch and D Outlets because you know who cares especially if it’s on the side you’ll never see it once it’s in love those demo models Flor models yeah I’ll take it car versus new car no one knows the differ my rent I don’t care that much she
(37:01) tracked so she had the must had the receipt I knew she had the receipt and she tracked all the model numbers and Best Buy had a 90day price match guarantee at the time and literally we were both on our day jobs at the time but day 89 and a half kid you not on her lunch she calls me we got to go back to Best Buy tonight like why she those appliances are on sale at another store plus they have free delivery and me being a sales guy like if if I perceive value in a product or a service I don’t Heckle I just pay and I
(37:35) think that’s I think that sales for the relationship yeah I think sales people make horrible customers because we you know well good for the person selling but you know bad for trying to save ourselves money and so we go back to Best Buy I’m mortified there’s no way I’m going up to the customer service desk so I go and walk off and look at some Electronics while she goes and she saved us 438 bucks and I’ll remember that story forever right because you you you need those types of people on your team and so anyway to go back it’s it’s
(38:04) yeah it’s really about candidly having a conversation with your partner and determining hey knowing what we know about each other where do we think each other is going to best serve the business and where do we think each other falls short and and and opening up that space though right because sometimes depending on your Dynamics and the relationship I mean having some of those difficult conversations and maybe pointing some fingers at each other can be hard but saying hey we’re doing this candidly we we want to be really honest
(38:34) here there’s no offense meant you know let’s just figure out how we can best Propel this business forward um and then of course you know creating some people always ask how do you get all these things done right you’re you’re a coach and Mentor you have a thriving business you have two young kids you still manage to take care of your health how what we block everything out everything everything goes in the calendar right I dropped my son off to to montor school in the morning I get back I got my first work block right 9:00 a.m. to noon my
(39:10) first work block noon to two that’s Cha’s Personal Care time she’s off to the gym the sauna whatever so it’s Daddy Daughter time for me because my daughter’s not in school yet but I love that you know we have some quality time together two so basically six is is my next block so I’ll often I’ll go to train in that block as well I train with my trainer three times a week and then the other other three days I I train on my own um so we both have time for our health and then in the evening it’s non-negotiable it’s in my calendar so
(39:39) even mentees when they’re trying to book calls 5:30 to 8:30 family time dinner together some sort of fun activity before they go to bed it’s non-negotiable it’s in there and depending on things that are going on you know if we have an opportunity we’re looking at or or or something we’re trying to do due diligence on before we close there might be a bit of an evening work block but I I try my best to be in bed by 11 so it but it’s again it’s everything is blocked out I think that’s the the the best way to to be efficient
(40:09) and to to kind of help support each other right because I mean yes you want to have time together as a family unit as husband and wife but everybody needs a little bit of their own time too I like to think right and and we managed to accomplish that Ryan I noticed um so I’ve I study both successful people and and admittedly I study business failures as well and one thing I noticed was if you take for example the folks who are in the news for going bankrupt or disappearing or whatnot uh a lot of the time they were very good at raising
(40:45) money they weren’t so great at executing the actual investment and sometimes they were just out outright lying about the investment um so what I but what I noticed with yourself and chaali is that you know like you have the sales relationship skills and chaali being a black belt which is for the listener’s benefit this is a a very high certification for process and quality um quality of process uh ge made this thing famous made that that whole concept famous Kaizen made famous by like Honda and Toyota whatnot anyways uh but yeah
(41:21) you guys compliment Each Other Well to properly execute and this is why I always preach to to to folks in general is also as well like understand who you are what you’re capable of anything you can’t do you need to find it like the concept of who not how right it’s great to know how to do it maybe you do it yourself for a little bit uh but if you get to a certain scale then you probably need to find someone else to do it and this was the Miss for a lot of these companies that went under and or like the gentleman out in Vancouver
(41:51) who ow was like 113 million of private lending again could not execute great salesperson raise money like nobody else no no one’s business but again could not execute the actual investment because um whoever know who knows what reasons why uh now I also want to bring up like you dropped the bomb on me I didn’t know about I don’t know if you’re public about it but your heart attack yeah yeah and I mean it plays into that you know bit of my intro right you know I was are you public about that do do people um not blar over your
(42:23) Instagram yeah not not not not splattered all over my my social media no but I mean those in my circle definitely no um and yeah I mean it was interesting because it was I always try to look at the Silver Lining I mean yeah obviously scared the B Jesus out of me you know could have it was October of 2022 6 about 20 after 6 in the morning I got jolted out of bed you know the sweaty Palms the pain in the chest the heavy breathing [ __ ] um and so ultimately went to the hospital you know went through the full EKG ECG went you know afterwards a
(43:00) stress test a hter monitor and yeah they found I forget the name of the the protein that secreted right during a heart attack but they found Trace Amounts of that protein which confirmed basically that that that something had happened um and then having lost my dad at 52 to a stress induced heart attack I mean it really hit home and we shaali was out of the business at that point so we really we started our journey in March of 2018 September of 2020 uh she retired from her job so we did that pretty quickly and then we had set goals
(43:32) out in place right away we said okay 10K a month she leaves 20K a month I leave and we were getting towards the 20K and I arbitrarily moved the goal poost because as I talked about before we started you know I guess frankly it was a heavy set of golden handcuffs to let go of I mean I was making great money I was making 300K plus a year and you know with what was now a young family at that point I mean that security coming in that that’s hard to let go of so I arbitrarily doubled the goal and to 40K a month and and I think that that it
(44:08) kept me in it clearly far too long and you know as we grew I mean when I joined the organization uh that I was with you know our annual sales were shy of 5 million a year when I left it was over 86 so we grew sign ific anly um over what was that 17 years um in doing that though you need to become an entirely different organization and and with that you know came unfortunately a lot more micromanagement from from the managing partners and and of course you know we attracted manufacturers that drove us harder that wanted more rep reporting
(44:50) and other metrics and so the heart attack happened and um a there were many things at play there I mean I mean you know the hours that I had to put in the the number of calls I had to make a day I mean most days I was lucky if I had time to to Quick slide through a Tim Horton’s drive-thru to grab a a coffee and a wrap between appointments so you know I probably paid for a couple employees annual salaries at Tim Horton’s every year easily um but not a healthy lifestyle whatsoever right and and very sedentary because I was either
(45:22) behind the wheel or sitting at a desk for a business meeting and uh when it happened yeah was 2 237 pounds you know nowadays I’m between 185 190 and and 12 to 14% body fat I’ve really committed to the fitness because I remember and and that comes back to to kind of some of my Reflections as a child you know my dad was was very successful as well but I looked at him and I mean he wasn’t always the picture of Health realistically and and I noticed that and I said okay what has he sacrificed and kids are a lot smarter
(45:58) than we give them credit for and I’m watching I’m starting to see that and you know as as financially successful as falling I’ve been fortunate enough to to become and create I didn’t want those questions coming up with our kids you know what did Mommy and Daddy have to sacrifice I want to show them uh and she she was another one actually that was at the annual conference if you remember Eva medc um she’s one of Brendon Bard’s high performance coaches I’ve been been working with her for a few years and one of the biggest things that she says that
(46:27) since really hit me is it can be a both end it doesn’t need to be an either or you just need to figure out how to make it happen right so like time blocking for example and so committing to my health I I want to be an example to them on all fronts right financially physically spiritually all of that you know and and I think that it’s it’s also paid dividends on the other front I mean yes obviously hopefully no more future heart attacks uh you know 53 pounds lighter than I was when I had the heart attack and you know stronger than ever and and
(47:00) confident and comfortable in my own skin um but I find it’s it’s given me other benefits like with my teaching and mentoring you know I I I I command a little bit more attention when I’m at the front of the room because of the physical stature you know my energy levels my mental Clarity my ability to cope with stress it’s all through the roof and and the interesting thing I find in our business because you know I I I try to drive the growth finding opportunities finding money in the fundraising conversations in
(47:31) particular there we go there we go yeah it was actually that was literally uh what was that the the night before my birthday so a day ago yeah yeah oh for those who are watching the YouTube for those sorry for those who aren’t watching the video version I’m on Ryan’s uh Instagram and U again he’s quite fit as as proven by the picture after moving close to 60,000 pounds over over how long uh that was about an hour and a half workout that was uh that was 10 10 by 10 so uh 10 sets of 10 squats 10 sets of 10 bench 10 sets of 10
(48:11) uh deadlifts is this daily thing that’s a lot of no no no no no that’s actually that workout now on my new program because I’m in a bit of a a shred phase um that’s actually weekly that’s every Sunday okay yeah I would I won’t be able to move till next Sunday I’m feeling it today I typically have sort of that delayed hit it’s about two days and I’m I’m uh yeah welcome to your 40s pretty much pretty much yeah some of the GM Bros there and obviously the family features quite prominently in the social media there
(48:48) you know that’s that’s a big part of why we’re doing what we’re doing too is you know we uh we want them to be students of the world right as much as formal education plays a role in in growth you know I truly think that there’s so much that can be learned from you know culture and history and so you know exposing them to to different parts of the world you know um we we were reflecting I mean every every New Year’s Day we do this exercise as a family where we uh we reflect on what our goals were for the previous year and
(49:24) we really dive deep and say okay and some some many we hit some we missed realistically some we missed and and and we need to to kind of understand why and then um we create new goals and and in reflecting on last year I real it would have never happened when I was in the corporate world like we we were fortunate enough to travel for 14 weeks last year but we created that right so you know we were we were in India for a month and we were in uh Taiwan and we were in Bali we were in Mexico on a cruise for my son’s first
(50:00) birthday or sorry third birthday I should say you know and and we uh yeah we love that we love creating the memories because you know hopefully uh when they get older and they have the ability to make their own decisions they want to come back and see Mom and Dad you know because because they’re cool we’ll see I mean time will tell on that front but um you know it’s it just it all comes together right and I mean it’s it’s such a big part of um our why for sure and why we do what we do and I think that you know if I have to say you
(50:33) know between like you said us being complimentary of each other with our skill sets but you know being family people you know when we try to search for and align with Partners on an investment front you know we always do kind of look for those values and for that ability I mean you know one of our more proud Partnerships is is a young couple that that I met met uh years ago revealing a bit of inner geek but uh I’m a competitive well I was a semi-competitive bowler 10pin and uh so I I I met some people actually met a few
(51:09) Partners there over the years and but these Investment Partners do you met Investment Partners while bowling okay and you know always you know I I find one thing I like to say is a quiet investor is a broke investor right talk to the world about what you’re doing just put it out there and and this couple I mean they have a young daughter she’s wonderful and and she really is growing and and excelling now but has a bit of a disability and in as such you know needs some needs a support worker and and needs some medications and and
(51:39) that can be pretty crippling on a young family right that gets expensive and so you know the passive income we’ve been able to help them create you know to help support those Endeavors and you know now with some of our partners them included you know we’re on round two three some four of Acquisitions you know with with the same money um because we’ve been able to to properly execute on on stabilization and refinance the I guess the the popularized bur term if you will and um you know we take a lot of pride in that because I mean it’s
(52:11) yeah not numbers and money are one thing but you know being able to help be a part in creating those stories you know whether it’s whether it’s through actively investing with them or whether it’s you know being their culture mentor to help them scale their own business out it’s so rewarding so rewarding right as we record this is January 7th so 2024 just ended and what I think is the uh the bottom the the rough cycle of the real estate cycle is probably past us uh what what are what have been the last last lessons from
(52:47) like the last two years or so it’s been a rough roughly about last two years have been a rough spot for for Real Estate Investors across Canada yeah what have what have been your observation and lessons and then after that I’ll ask you about what where you see things going forward sure yeah yeah I mean I think in the last couple of years and and we’ve seen you know a number of gurus or investors you know Fade Away in into um there’s still around that just blocked me but yeah because they know I know sorry um you know it’s it’s it’s been
(53:23) ensuring you’re always conservative like honestly real estate is not a get-rich quick scheme we both know this you know but when you do it properly with time it is a get I say get wealthy for sure right I I truly think that real estate is what helps to create long-term wealth you know to rely upon passive cash flow from properties to potentially live your life especially in your early stages as Anor I think that’s a critical mistake you know because there’s always going to be things that come up and and I think
(53:57) that that’s where conservative underwriting needs to take place from day one you know one thing we’ve always done over ask on the entry but spell it out hey Mr Mrs investor this is why we’re asking for what we’re asking for the breakdown right you’re talking a seller right no no when we’re trying to acquire a property and and enroll investors right so we say okay we need X for closing payment we need this for legal and and and all all of that uh we need this for to Kickstart some anticipated repairs and we also want to actually
(54:33) bring in a little bit to top up our flush fund to have money there and then in our monthly budget before any cash flow distributions are ever made we’re always pulling out funds for vacancy and maintenance and placing them in a joint like a corporate account that everyone has visibility on right including our partners they can see at anytime where the balance is and where it’s growing we run a a full um income and expens statement for them every month and provide that to them you know so conservative underwriting conservative
(55:02) operation but also not being a onetick pony and I think that’s where a lot of people failed in the last couple of years right we had a lot of people that were known to be flippers for example and when the market shifted and and values adjusted down in a lot of markets you know they were probably overpaying on the entry they weren’t making a lot of money in the buy they were overing and they got caught with put their pants down right so when what may be your core strategy right now is no longer viable hey where
(55:34) do you go how do you pivot right you need to be prepared to Pivot and for us for so long value ad multif family was our thing and it we still have that radar on and we’re still you know we’re still actively evaluating a couple opportunities right now for example but we pivoted because in the last couple of years in real estate in general I would say money is made when you add value I think that’s fair to say right and and the more value you add the more opportunity there is to make money so as the market became more difficult or or
(56:08) tighter we had to search on okay how do we create more value so we pivoted to purpose Bill to infills right because at that point it’s no longer an existing asset that you’re trying to stabilize you’re now creating more density which let’s be honest so many cities across the country need so we pivoted into Edmonton uh versus you know we were we were very active in in New Brunswick for quite a while um so we pivoted into Edmonton they have basically rolled out the red carpet for for small to mediumsized investors with some of the
(56:42) the rezoning um standards that were created and we started doing some infills so you know we we acquire those old well the one instance you know Granny’s old Bungalow thousand foot bungalow on a massive lot a 50 by 150 law and the city is allowing us to put up an aplex there right and so but again as we approach that we were Ultra conservative so we knew going in that on the exit with mli at a 2.
(57:12) 4 million as built uh value uh and 90% loan to value we’d be able to get our money out and then our appraisal came in at 273 right so now you know we only need about 79.3% loan to value so we’re not going to over leverage the property which is great so we get to retain some cash flow but of course we’re going to take the 50 or am why not right for us I think it’s it’s a mindset shift right I mean there’s that old dialogue a lot of people get work hard pay off your mortgage don’t get into debt yeah don’t get in the Consumer Debt you don’t
(57:46) necessarily need to pay off a mortgage depending on what your goals are right I mean we we don’t have very little interest in paying off the asset we just need to Rel leverage it so that we can get more but not to the extreme yeah okay you can get 95% with mli but do you want to take it because then you’re leaving yourself in a very dangerous position in my opinion which you know many people had yeah yeah so I mean we know okay we only need 79.
(58:13) 3% that’s all we’re GNA take no more right we want we’d like to get our money out and our investors already speaking the right language they said hey if we get it all out let’s just parlay it into another one wonderful that’s the ultimate compliment I feel as an investor when your partners say yeah you’ve done well by us let’s let it ride and so you know again so conservative in your underwriting um not counting on your cash your passive cash flow distributions to live your life um not being afraid to Pivot you know so whether that’s constantly being
(58:46) you know educating yourself and being you know going in search of new skill sets I think that’s crucial because if you’re not growing you’re dying quite frankly in my opinion um those probably be the the three biggest things that have helped us to bridge through um the most recent years yeah and also like you chose a market uh that is expected to lead the country in uh population growth as well so it’s not you’re not you know one of my criticisms of of some of these fails failed investment strategies was for
(59:19) example U one of them was that like Tim’s Ontario for example that has a shrinking population and a very small one is fact like ,000 population with like no no neighbor anywhere close to a decen sized population so like so for me off the right off the Hop like this strategy doesn’t make any sense uh versus again uh I’ve had couple quite a few guests on this show who are investing in Edmonton people I consider smart well I think there’s there’s some nice Dynamics going on there right I mean you have economic diversity I mean
(59:54) yes there’s still some natural resource ties not as heavily biased I would say as Calgary uh but you know you it’s it’s the capital so you’ve got government there’s a number of wonderful education institutions there you know you’ve got a budding Tech sector you’ve got a ton of Logistics in luk right you know so um I think there’s a lot of diversity there you know the the better balance between landlord and tenants is welcome as as someone that lives in say balance I think it seems pretty landlord friendly oh yeah no for sure I mean yeah the the
(1:00:29) fact obviously that there’s but but sorry that’s relative to like the rest of Canada like and where else do you not pay your bills and expect service only in Ontario Quebec BC you know I think the worst we’ve ever had out there and mind you we got a great PM out there um you know we had some nonay 42 days gone think a pretty good worst case scenario compared to what you see BC Ontario absolutely you know and and the fact that you know we have no interest in being slum landlords at in the least you know I owe you a couple of pictures
(1:01:07) as followup for for promotion in the end and I’ll get them to you but you know I’ll send you some of our units like we like to operate nice units we’re proud of our product and you know at least out there you can you can kind of get what’s do to you you know you can’t be an absolute cowboy in charge whatever you want because then of course Market Market stay vacant but at least it can be fair and and and we enjoy that about that market and for sure yeah hopefully I don’t know I should stop using the word hope and government in the same
(1:01:42) sentence but uh for those who don’t know like Edmonton’s a wonderful uh case study for U no rank control and having limited red tape for for developers because for like the long EST period like rents were very inexpensive in Edmonton because Builders were allowed to build with density uh without red tape and excessive charges and that was for the win of the tenants I I couldn’t believe that I mean we and we haven’t ourselves we haven’t done any development in Ontario and I don’t know if we ever will quite frankly how much further our money can
(1:02:21) go other places but I mean I I know developers here whether it was from my previous life because we played in that world dealt with some of the biggest builders in in the country like triell Dela manami guys like that um but I mean in Edmonton for our infields so the the one that we um just got all our permits on six months from closure on the property to all of our permits in hand six months and 26 Grand no way that would ever happen whoa right only 26,000 soft cause yeah well I guess sorry if we add our ASB bestus um inspection and mitigation
(1:03:03) in there we’re prob we’re in around 34 you need that much for how you’re GNA tear down so yeah that’s the they they need you to be clear even though you’re yeah even though you’re tearing it down I guess they don’t want it aspirated into the air didn’t make a lot of sense to me but whatever you know so we we had to make sure that we had the inspection and that anything that was found we had to mitigate yeah we were about about 8 Grand in for that so I guess consider 34 35k for our soft cost cuz you know in like Kitchener like
(1:03:34) the development charge for a garden Suite is over 40,000 compared to you got it done for less than 40,000 for an aplex months you know we’re we’re working with a great Builder who who currently has about 50 they build about a handful eight to 10 Custom Homes a year but their bre and butter is actually infill so they have about 50 these on the go so they have a number of plans that the city has seen een teen number of times and they’ve already basically kind of gotten the stamp a number of times over so that may help to FasTrack things but
(1:04:14) I still think it’s the culture of Edmonton I don’t yeah efficieny yeah and then again like end of the day it’s a win for the tenants because the the Brent like I know they’re are creeping up you but like the last like over 10 12 years rents were very flat thanks to Builder building right and that’s flat like real num sorry gross numbers real numbers are actually going down based on if you’re inflation adjusted yeah right and again that’s a win for the tenant where else do you find wins for the tenants in Canada well the fact I
(1:04:49) mean when you look at and and don’t get me wrong like mli when used properly mli select it’s a great program just again be careful not to lever yourself goes back to my point about quality Investments quality also means not overleveraging it makes you can actually make the affordability index their work because it’s 1663 bucks so our our basement Suites even at top of Market they’re below the affordability index makes so so we’re not sacrificing anything it you know I think you already answered my next question and what is
(1:05:21) the what is the plans for 2025 for investing what do you see going forward so &on development yeah I mean we definitely want to continue to grow there um we like the Dynamics of those those quick small little infills because I mean you’re 18 to 24 months from acquisition to to finish product realistically um we do want to explore a larger purpose buil because the the equity release we’re anticipating on our on that 60 unit that we spent the last St well almost three years stabilizing uh is going to be significant and so
(1:05:54) we’re actually looking at potential going either West or or into the US um no we can share notes yeah well um so we’re looking maybe a land assembly in Edmonton and doing like a 40 to 60 unit purpose build um we don’t we have actively always made the business decision we don’t particularly like anything high-rise uh we don’t like elevators big Capital costs they’re expensive ongoing maintenance so we’ve always liked sort of your your walkup model your three story walkup so we’d probably focus on something more like
(1:06:26) that um there’s so few contractors who do elevators so you’re really at their Mercy yeah so continuing to grow on emont for sure we have the radar on in in uh in New Brunswick which was another one of our large markets but um we’re not as active there uh but we are very much we have have yet to really invest in the US uh but that’s a big part of the goals that we’ve set forth for this year you know we knew uh We’ve we have a number of long a mid to long-term projects that are finally coming back to fruition so we’ll be pretty flushed with
(1:07:01) some Capital which will be nice and we knew that when we wanted to make that jump uh as you know I mean obviously the US very litigious they like the Su so we want to make sure like we’ve always done here in Canada we’ve all I’ve always said lawyers and accountants get great ones don’t ever gripe about paying them because they’re going to make you in the long run keep on insurance either so we wanted to make the proper investment to have not only our our corporate structure set up in the US properly but also all that crossborder
(1:07:35) money movement to avoid double Taxation and things like that um so maybe somewhere we can confair notes I’d appreciate that because Cherry’s gonna sit for a US CPA in a few weeks so she she her her firm is already taking it already has us clients the clients investing the US for doing their and she’s doing their tax returns okay okay now we’re running out of time and I asked you before according if I can ask if I could ask you your experience with Claire Dr so I can mention the name because it’s quite public it’s all in
(1:08:01) the news yeah yeah and then the show has always been like this isn’t all sunshine and rainbows you had a heart attack at 38 I didn’t know how this didn’t give you a heart attack as well oh you know it was it was interesting so I mean for those listening you know we’ve we’ve managed to recuperate some of it because there were some some people that that did the right thing um and when we started conversing with them directly you know they ultimately did pay us back but we stand at this point I mean I think it’s
(1:08:32) ultimately safe to say we’re going to write it off because you know there’s nothing left in the CCAA proceedings and we we were all promisory notes so you know we weren’t in second position we weren’t in first position um and we knew going in I guess at the time that that was a perceived risk however you know based on what we thought of Claire I mean she was an instructor at Legacy right that that gave her in our mind and so part of why we invested with her we we knew that that was ultimately worst case but we we could we stand to
(1:09:02) probably right off and lose $790,000 in that Fiasco um which hurts um however you know trying to always be The Optimist you know I I look at it and actually a conversation with Ry occurred and and it was it was a quite a perspective shift because he says Ryan think about 2018 you right as we were just starting the business if something that this had happened then I I I may very well have gone into the brokerage with a baseball bat or worse and and now yeah it hurts it’ll sting but it won’t sink us right because we’ve
(1:09:39) managed to diversify we’ve managed to create other wins um but I guess that’s another lesson learned is you know as attractive as those High returns can be you know at this point you know we were 177% because all of our notes were direct to lender um there’s always that risk versus reward and probably could have done a you know a little more due diligence a little more digging um and probably could have attempted to uh make demands for repayment much earlier on like I mean we let it go on for months and months and
(1:10:23) months of non-payment and then things ultimately went into to CCAA proceedings um and yeah I mean there was a time early on when when we first got news I I legitimately started thinking about uh interviewing I went back to some head hunters in my old industry and I had some great offers come up don’t get me wrong I had quar million dollar offers to go back into the the workforce however you know knowing what my previous life was like again I would I would be earning that I’d be 70 80 hour work weeks you know I’d be low guy on
(1:10:53) the totem pole again um and I want you know I looked at what we had so fiercely clawed and and and fought to create through our business to be present for our kids and I didn’t want to go back to that and I think you know one thing that I encourage anybody that I talk to as a student Mt I’m like truly understand the value of your time right look at what you know where you are currently in terms of passive income if there’s any or ultimately where you where you want to be with your business so on our case you know a goal we really wanted to hit
(1:11:28) was 50k a month so you metrize that 50k a month 600 Grand a year break it down right 52 weekends 104 days a reasonable job you’re going to get three weeks of vacation most of us are probably going to want more but if you use those numbers and you divide the numbers down effectively your time is worth about $400 an hour right and around that a little over $400 an hour right if we if we do that math and so let that drive your decisions right so one going back into the workforce yeah it was good money but it wasn’t that good and it was it wasn’t
(1:12:03) allowing me to any longer help Drive the growth in my business or other things you know I don’t mind Landscaping however is it in my best interest when my time is worth What It’s Worth to do that no I hire a landscaper at 180 bucks a month they come and do it once a month or once a week you know all our meals are pre-planned my wife and I you know all these things Buy back your time that’s another great book right um and so it was really that critical fork in the road that that CLA dra scenario kind of drove it’s like okay do I go left do
(1:12:37) I go back to the work world or ultimately and and thankfully looking back now you know said okay let’s just double down and find a way to grow out of it and it takes a certain mindset to do that of course uh but that’s when we decided to Pivot we said okay you know we’re no longer really finding opport unities in our other markets with the velocity we want we know there’s been a massive relaxation of the zoning standards in emont so let’s let’s get it done made made a trip out there made a couple trips out there you know interviewed
(1:13:08) some Builders interviewed some PMs and brought on a whole new strategy right and and you know by the end of the year we’ll probably have five or six of them on the go in the market um again hopefully maybe a larger one with the equity release from that other project so you know it was what was initially devastating and there was a lot of stress there was there were tears on my part on chal’s part um on her family’s part because we had drawn her parents in they had invested some money when they uh when they first came to Canada it was
(1:13:40) basically all they had they sold their house in India and they had put it in there and it’s it’s gone um so yeah don’t uh I guess looking back you know as I said I mean we we sort of automatically gave her clout because of you know where we had met her at Legacy and and being the I think she was the creative Finance um instructor the first time we took it second time we took it was with Tim and um yeah do your due diligence on people do your due diligence on the opportunities you know involve other people too because realistically I think
(1:14:20) at that point it was earlier in our career and frankly I don’t we we probably weren’t smart enough to properly you know pour over those those documents and those investment proposals we should have or drive by the property too I know a lot of people did not drive by the property and they never would have done the deal if they if they had or just have someone you know locally drive by yeah some the properties don’t even exist have been torn down there’s one torn down by the city going against the CCA order no sorry everyone just c t on the
(1:14:55) house the banks like we had a mortgage on this thanks I mean and I and I don’t want to wish ill on anyone um but I mean in my heart of hearts I guess the only the only thing I’ll say is I hope that Karma keep catches up with some of these people whether it’s the borrowers or you know other people right we’re over time so I think it’s a good place to leave it there uh where can people track you down connect with you where’s the best to connect with you uh social media I guess is is uh probably easiest nowadays um so
(1:15:31) trying to think Instagram um couple of pages uh need don’t know actually I should know my own handles shouldn’t I ranor car 5 uh is my personal and then um Sherry group uh is uh is the company um nothing special there if you actually look at it so chaali and Ryan that’s where Sherry comes from um so again she gets top billing because she’s the brains of the operation truly there she is there she is yeah yeah thanks so much for doing this although she’s tiny she’s Mighty yeah no thank you Eran I appreciate you uh having me on and uh
(1:16:13) and a great way to kick off the year I agree this is a great episode to kick off the year because uh you’ve gone through a lot and it’s not all sunshine and Roses but you’re pushing forward I’m sure many people will benefit from this message appreciate it and uh yeah there’s may maybe other things to talk about in the future but uh we certainly love to keep in touch and uh I think that there’s H probably an opportunity to chat with with yourself and Sherry on on the the the US setup so we should set that up up
(1:16:42) to all right all right friends that wraps up another episode of the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians hope you got as much out of this one as I did remember that whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor there’s always something new to learn and it’s always about building that practical knowledge base that gets you closer to Financial Freedom if you found value today please do us a favor and leave us a review or a rating share this episode with a friend or better yet join our community of Real Estate
(1:17:07) Investors who are taking action and making moves and hey if there’s a topic you want us to cover or have uh there’s a certain guest you’d like us to have on the show drop me a line my DMs are open on social media reply to this email let this have arrived on I’m not hard to find uh you know we’re all about getting you the unfiltered truth to help you on your journey thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode until then stay Smart Stay curious and keep building that future catch you later

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** Transcript Auto-Generated**

(00:00) happy Lunar New Year to all my listeners in Chinese we Sayo I’m can speaking sort of actually really bad KY speaking anyways uh which you’ve likely heard before you’ve likely heard gy before in all those Mandarin all you can eat buffet restaurant commercials now there’s one possible translation uh if you can be a little bit liberal uh quote unquote wishing you become wealthy which I’ve tweeted and simplified to I hope you get richer because honestly if you’ve been listening to the show especially if you’ve been with me since the beginning
(00:34) back in 2016 or if you’ve been following my blog as far back is 2010 you are or should be rich uh hopefully you’ve taken lessons tips and tricks from many of Canada’s Fest Real Estate Investors I’ve had on the show implemented many and implemented many of those uh tips and tricks and whatnot uh as such you should already be rich or you are already rich hence I hope I the term I hope you get richer along with all that other stuff about happiness and health from my family to yours goingo it’s the year of the snake and
(01:09) last year was the dragon uh though I think they were accidentally switched last year I think uh was the year to be strategic which would be which would which is the the theme of snake uh this year uh is the year to build wealth which would be more like a dragon some of my Canadian clients have already started they started early last year they are of course really happy uh they kind of got the timing pretty right as they bought in the US when they and now they’re quite happy with the US currency gains and they are of course enjoying
(01:38) that US dollar cash flow for example I sold some US dollars in my Scotia account Scotia love them and hate them they offered me they offered me actually no I took it uh I paid um sorry I bought Canadian dollars for 1.42 Canadian per US dollar that’s the most I’ve ever uh sold US dollars for have you ever been excited this so onto another different note have you ever been this excited for a federal election I haven’t because I’ve never had so much writing on this outcome provincial elections not so much I’ve seen the housing platforms of the
(02:16) of the provincial liberals and NDP if their goal was to make long-term rentals an even worse investment for landlords then they’ve hit the nail on the head uh for example the uh the Lial platform includes rent controls rent whatever policy similar to Manitoba Manitoba’s 2 2025 rental increase allowance is 1.
(02:44) 7% uh anyways uh back to uh government under under our current government both provincial and federal and Trudeau whatnot uh I know he’s gone but anyways uh housing affordability is historically bad uh I I’m not using the the last two years I’m looking at more a larger picture I usually look at real estate from like a 50 year 20 year 10e term 5e term whatnot uh not enough has been done for affordable housing I think most people know uh that the at some point in Canada we stopped investing in um in subsidized housing government housing back I think it was the 80s uh we’re in
(03:16) a recession uh in Real GDP terms absolutely and everyone’s feeling the pressure of the historic inflation uh the average rent in Canada is now $2,119 now you heard that correctly that’s across Canada $2,119 uh to give you a context that’s about enough to get you a house in Edmonton I like to talk to hoses because I’ve always grown up in houses uh now put yourself in the shoes of a young highly skilled Canadian because they do have choices I was speaking to a young electrician just last week uh in the in the germ region of Ontario uh and he
(03:51) told me all his co-workers are already talking about moving to the States now let’s dig into an example because I love examples and I love context I I often believe context everything Alabama one of the many markets that we service here at Sher uh and uh have we already have clients buying in Alabama Alabama would be the fifth poorest state in the US if Canada were to join as the 51st state uh and then Canada would in turn be the fourth poorest state it’s never Happening by the way anyways that same $ 2,19 Kon
(04:25) that gets you a host in emont would be enough to also get you a host in Huntsville Alabama a prime Investment location where NASA has a major presence employing 7,000 people plus down the road there’s another four 45,500 people working at the US military’s Redstone Arsenal including contractors from lke Martin and Boeing Huntsville population growth is expected to be tripled in the US naal average and do I even need to mention the difference in weather especially winter weather between Alabama in and in Alberta and then for fun for the cost of
(05:05) to for the cost to rent a one-bedroom condo or Vancouver you could rent an 1,800 squ foot house uh with a large lot in hun Alabama we my client our clients literally own a house just like that 1,800 foot house they paid 23 235,000 for it rents for $1,700 a month estimated annual appreciation 4.
(05:29) 3% cap rate for those of of you who are fixed no commercial investing 5.7% now the good news for Canadian Real Estate Investors this is a Canadian show after all uh the best reason news is I think you already heard it or seen it in the news the increase the capital gains inclusion rates hasn’t passed uh unfortunately the CRA is saying that we need to pay it for 2024 uh but if the conservatives win we we would likely revert back to the original tax rules before uh before former prime minister TR Justin Trudeau and Minister Christa Freeland changed them for me and my
(06:08) clients that means a much more profitable exit uh for our Ontario properties after tax uh all you investors out there I’m sure are excited about this and it’s not just investors it’s it’s so many people it wasn’t just us that were opposed to this uh this tax change uh especially doctors AC all across Canada now speaking uh of speaking of clients one of my most experienced investor clients who owns over a dozen rental properties uh is a professional proper manager as well and has been a landlord himself for over two
(06:40) decades he just called me with uh good news there’s there’s always a silver lining to all news his tenant after nine months of non-payment rent is finally getting evicted uh actually today uh she owes him over $30,000 in rent and uh plus damages uh as the belief is that she scratched the place uh Ontario’s broken landlord system so this tenant’s already been from of the landlord tenant board twice uh the first heating was mediated uh so there was a settlement for a a payment planned uh the tenant failed to pay after the
(07:15) second month of the payment plan so um the the settlement terms are broken um now so I was talking again I was talking to my client so I said oh great so you can move for eviction immediately because that’s how it used to be before covid now uh modern day landlord tener board the tenant appealed she got a stay to further delay the process and at the second hearing uh she presented her evidence that she has no money I don’t know why she got a hearing to to share that evidence uh but the adjudicator did rule for eviction and
(07:51) then there was a twoe wait for the sheriff as that seems to be how long it takes for a sheriff in Hamilton which is probably the best I’ve heard in Ontario eviction is today uh and the tenants belongs are still inside the house uh so we don’t know have an update yet on the condition of the property uh but it’s not looking good so meanwhile her rent was $3,300 per month and that’s in Hamilton it’s not the fanciest place in Canada that’s about again that’s about 50% more for than a house in Edmonton or that house in Huntsville Alabama our
(08:30) housing is expensive in Canada in general and and then if you factor in incomes it rents and prices here just don’t justify it uh Canadians are struggling I honestly weit for this country I weit for my country I weit for the younger generation there are tough times ahead there are many good things about being Canadian I am very grateful for the opportunity that I’ve had my parents have given me and the opportunities I’ve given my kids and the kindness of Canadians you know it’s it’s often it’s the leaders of countries that
(09:00) a lot of us don’t like it’s but it’s the people are generally just wonderful inflation has uh Honestly made things worse for everyone um everyone Mark rents have skyrocketed when you compare to pre-co uh many landlords are struggling out there as they can’t make their numbers work I literally have clients who have uh let their property managers go because they couldn’t afford the excessive negative cash flow they’re already negative they couldn’t afford extra being extra negative with having to pay property managers uh I a member of the small
(09:31) Ontario landlords uh group that’s solo for short small ownership uh landlords of Ontario solo for short and every time I check there is someone pleading for help uh so the one post that caught my attention today was uh to quote attendant didn’t pay rent for 12 months at the hearing he lied to the adjudicator saying he did pay now there’s another hearing so 12 months without rent uh for a small everyday investor that’s likely going to financially ruin them and they’ll likely never be landlords again uh bad tenants
(10:08) are gaming the system uh so and it’s sad it’s sad that some tenants are so desperate that they’re willing to commit fraud it’s like like the one that’s just mentioned uh today so why am I investing in the states well the the author of The Wealthy Barber uh former Dragon Den Dragon David Chilton from AO Ontario recently said don’t be a landlord uh there are alternatives that are better and this is his advice to Canadians I couldn’t agree more Life’s too short I want my investments optimal headache free I want my rental income to
(10:42) be predictable cash flow positive and backed by strong property rights what what investor doesn’t now on to this week’s show we have Kevin cosin who is the poster boy for reform being needed an Ontario as he’s doing something about it as the new chair of solo small ownership landlord of Ontario he’s fighting for the small everyday investor just like I do with this show he is the author of the book rent at ruin where he documents his ordal with his Tormentor the tenant living inside his house uh it’s an all too common story where an
(11:14) everyday house homeowner homeowner has a life change makes uh what used to be a financially pragmatic decision to rent out the house instead of selling it uh and what proceeded to happen is easily among the worst stories I’ve ever heard and that is not h uh for a sneak peek I fed the transcript of the interview to chbt and asked what crimes the tenant could have been charged with here’s the list arson vandalism theft fraud criminal harassment which is honestly the worst part oh and the victim was Kevin illegal drug
(11:53) cultivation so I’ve actually have links in the short notes as well for of Kevin walking through his burnout house with the CBC uh also on Facebook you can find solo landlord if you search solo landlord again I have links in the show notes if you want to prefer that and the website for solo is solo. O.
(12:15) C please enjoy the show do your research make real estate investing profitable [Music] again hi Kevin what’s keeping you busy these days quite a lot keeping me busy it’s been quite a week how are you doing irin just a week yeah well yeah you were just named chairman right I took over the position of uh chairman of the board at uh solo and that was January 1st 2025 and uh and my tenant just the day before passed away so that’s that’s crazy is that recent yeah it was it was really the timing was strange in a way it’s almost like a cosmic thing but um yeah and I we we had
(13:01) voted me onto the board the chairman of the board in April so this was that far ahead of time uh and uh yeah it’s been it’s been really kind of low-key with the holidays do you have a great holiday oh yeah wonderful holiday yeah I was I spent most of my time in a communist country fascinating to watch oh China yeah was it China I saw pictures of yeah that’s great that’s fascinating you have a good time there a wonderful time yeah as long as you’re not in trouble or successful entrepreneur I think it’s quite it’s
(13:33) quite comfortable in China what about the border at the border they I needed a Visa yeah and do they do they really like harass you at all or they’re pretty easygoing or yeah yeah one interesting thing was that very of so I’ve been to Hong Kong many many times so I’ve seen it before the pandemic before the Handover after the Handover back to the British so I’m used to seeing many non-asian while in Hong Kong and China and I’ve never seen so few non Asians in Hong Kong China really yeah it’s really fascinating yeah get scared
(14:12) off a lot of people well there’s stories but I uh I’ve only been to Singapore so haven’t gotten to that part of Asia yet oh it’s go I cannot recommend it enough just the uh so I’ve now I’ve seen it I personally visited at least three of the world wonders three of the seven for example I’ve visited corado in Brazil the Jesus statue so it is it is I know so it’s something to see right can you imagine people like with their like people with their bare hands got that up there right yeah I kind of I kind of felt stupid I got there I’m standing
(14:46) there I’m looking at it yeah and I’m like okay what do I do now yeah we take a picture like this well now imagine yourself at the greaty Wall of China which is 13,000 miles long and that was built by hand 600 years ago right so so this the scale is just you have to see it in person is there is there points where it breaks yeah in the chain or is it just one continuous there are some weaknesses in in it and that’s then if you read about history that’s how that’s how the wall Was Defeated because there are gaps they
(15:21) didn’t bother building that part they just kind of well it’s just like for uh just because of the train they couldn’t really continue it so it’s not completely continuous 13 Thousand Miles uh and then again it’s a funny thing about history was just and I love learning about the history because you know that’s saying uh those who fail to learn from history are do to repeat it so if you so the wall was famously defeated twice one was through one of one of the areas where they didn’t complete the wall because again the
(15:45) train and the other time uh simply the invading uh Army had already bribed the the the military that was guarding that door like in exchange for money or land or whatever you open the door for us makes sense the easiest way to get in is let you in right yeah thank you fire no bullets fire no arrows and and shed no blood like right so all that effort you don’t even need a trojan horse just walk in thanks buddy yeah well no you to give up land but it’s not your land you’re gonna the land you’re GNA give away during The Invasion and then yeah and
(16:24) then they were occupied for like 90 years after that but anyways so let’s talking about real estate yeah first sorry first off what’s Solo stand for and and what does it do well solo is uh uh well it stands for small ownership landlords of Ontario and we advocate for small landlords we’re we’re about small landlords we support small landlords we uh work to bring Justice to small landlords and we work uh pretty much seven days a week pretty much all waking hours the the the main board members we work just tirelessly to
(17:01) help small landlords in any capacity whether it be going to evictions to help them or answering phone calls uh we have a phone line that we answer it directly uh or lobbying we just we became a Lobby group and we went to Queens Park to to Lobby the uh mpps directly uh looking for change of course in the residential Tendencies out change in the LTB we directly connect to the LTB we watch for per performance indicators of the LTB you have board members actively sit during uh landlord tenant board hearings of course yeah we we observe hearings we
(17:36) have a legion of people landlords that also observe hearings uh you know we we track all sorts of LTB indicators we we keep an eye on adjudicators we have a adjudicator rating website we built rate th lb.com where people can you know go and rate an adjudicator and also in turn while you’re sitting there for three hours waiting for your adjudicator to get to your case you can look at rb.
(18:00) com and see your adjudicator and see what their their Tendencies are because people will tell you well this their tender friendly or they’re they tend to do this or they don’t you know they don’t keep things under control it’s good to know the knowledge in terms of what you’re dealing with gives you a little bit a little bit of an edge right when you’re dealing with the LTB so we really get into the LTB really into the Weeds on that um and also prepare for the LTB hearings of course and we have a Wiki uh like much like Wikipedia Med for
(18:29) landlords and gets into like observing preparing for hearings dealing with the sheriff going going after fraud and that’s on solo. CA it’s uh it’s in there it’s in the menu uh it’s on our members site though we have a membership site that actually um it makes me think we should make it easier to find but we have a membership site that actually uh we have our members sign up and we vent our members as landlords and uh then they get access to all of our content whether it be a Wiki page p uh or it’s our webinars we actually do a
(19:02) ton of webinars and all of the content is in there and available to our our landlords and it’s ever expanding we actually and we’ll talk about that a little later but some of the stuff in 2025 we’re going to really try to push that and expand it more uh and we do a ton of stuff for our members and it’s all about we’re you know and we do it all for free I should point that out we you know I’m a volunteer I am the chairman and I’m still a volunteer all of our board members and volunteers are volunteers right um and we just do it
(19:32) all for the small landlord and and and we’re all motivated in different ways but I’m motivated in a way uh so what happened to me doesn’t happen to others you know we want to try to avoid uh these sorts of scenarios and sadly uh they come to us when they’re in trouble because there really is nowhere else to go to uh because well there other places to go and I I wish it was more more resource for the landlord especially the small but it’s sadly it’s not as much for me when I was looking and I was troubled and I had a a tenant
(20:06) terrorizing me honestly it was just like everywhere I went give me money give me money and then I’ll help you I didn’t even know how they would help me but they wanted money first right solo one thing is special about solo is that we don’t ask for anything you come to us we’re going to help you right away we don’t have a membership fee there’s no cost to the landlord at any point right so we we we primarily want to that’s the mission right and I will say our clients come to us and we can help them pretty far but not everyone’s knowledgeable if
(20:36) you’ve never been at landlord it’s pretty hard to coach someone through this right you know the residential Tendencies Act is a myriad of regulations and you’ve got LTB issues got you’ve got interpersonal issues you’ve got you know all sorts of damage problems you got different uh laws and contract laws and things like that and at the same time we try to build this community that is as robust as possible and you’ve seen the Facebook group you you you see what kind of comes from this sort of idea where you you take
(21:05) like-minded people put them in a in in a space and then you you do your best to control the access to that space so we actually the Facebook group like more than 80% of people that ask to join we don’t let them in because we vet everybody that comes into that group right and so that it pretty expensive the questionnaire yeah right so we we actually have uh created a space thankfully that is you know when you ask a question you get a robust set of answers yeah and often you get really good answers from people that are interested and willing to help
(21:40) and want to help you know what I mean and uh that’s the kind of communities we try to build at solo the best we can it’s not perfect and it’s really it’s been a difficult Road sometimes but uh that’s what we work on and we’re doing a ton of other things that are you know working on a building a mailing list to we about all sorts of different uh thing working with landlords to try to get fraud charges for serial professional tenants which has become a thing now is in the news again yeah you see this uh and media we’ve done so much media work
(22:15) uh really interviews on every channel every every station CBC the national we’re just trying to get it out get the story out that you know landlords are are people too and we’re struggling and in fact uh in the case where you have a tenant that wants to take advantage of you the struggle is real and they have quite a lot of advantages that perhaps maybe shouldn’t be available to them you know and that’s um that’s some of the the stuff that solo is really working hard to do uh do you mind I share about some of
(22:49) the screening questions for members to join uh yeah for a member to join the uh we of course we want your name and email and all the rest but one one uh one question we we ask that is required is uh your uh your property address the unit that you rent out so we can go and vet that we check on GE warehouse and make sure that you know you legitimately own that property and in some cases we’ll we’ll call the phone number and talk to the person and we really really care about having our members be legitimate members uh again nothing is
(23:24) perfect but we we work hard to to make sure that that is a space where uh landlords that come to us and they need help they they get that help yeah right and we want to do more we we’re ever expanding this uh this thing and we ask other questions like they’re optional though where did you hear about solo you know uh other other things like okay well if you have a pin we want to know that because it helps us vet you easier uh you know um what your business like if you’re in real estate what is your business of course yeah what’s your
(23:56) Reco number if you’re a real estate agent or what’s your uh lso number if you’re uh we have sometimes paralegals that come to us and they register too so any kind of identifying information that we can vet but um the extensiveness is in direct relation to the fact that we actually look at it and you know uh read them and and vet the people and no nobody becomes a member with like it’s it’s a uh sort of an opt-in process so if we can’t verify the member they stay unverified until we verify them right yeah yeah and and for listeners benefit
(24:33) because we don’t want people in there that don’t belong in there looking just to create cause trouble take get captures and go well yes it’s that and it’s it’s it’s mainly also it’s a resource issue right like if everybody gets in there then you know what I mean there could be yeah quality falls apart too yeah exactly you want to just kind of um uh the use of resources and and and make it appropriate so these are the people that it’s appropriate for and in other cases like the Facebook group we just want to preserve the quality of the
(25:02) conversations the best we can and uh all of those things are just take the effort of sort of pruning and working it and vetting and you know we have we have thoughts of of even pushing the member system even further and so the vetting becomes still very important and valuable uh because we need to know that every landlord is a landlord yeah right so uh because a someone who’s not landlord shouldn’t be giving any advice at a minimum some landlords even shouldn’t give it yeah uh but I was going to those I’m on other all these other Facebook
(25:34) groups as well and I’ve seen some horrific advice given it’s true and it’s like pretty much the opposite thing to do like oh go take the door off thing right go take the door off it’s the internet right and what’s interesting is that when you’re in a space that is not uh like people bullying and harassing you find that actually someone will say that take the door off and then you’ll have 10 other people that will say very reasonable responses and so it kind of evens out my but I haven’t seen this like that on
(26:05) Facebook group it actually works no the advice I generally seen is quite good especially when I especially when I when I know who the good contributors are I usually see their viice is quite good and I have nothing to say after that we we have an interesting thing where now that’s not we can’t take credit for that but I find it’s really interesting and curious that people tend to police themselves enough to to help you know landlords and I think that’s what’s that’s what’s the point you if I’m a landlord and I’m trouble and I
(26:38) need to know how to fill it an n12 or I need to know how how long a sheriff is going to take in Brampton uh I I can go there and kind of you know get my answer and that’s that’s the and if somebody is bullying or harassing they’ll report it to us on the admin level and then we can take action and we do so it helps sort of preserve that that space whereas in other groups communities online I won’t say any names but it’s it’s a it’s a more of a harassment tone yeah you know and that’s the challenge with these
(27:13) like the that Facebook groups like 8,000 members yeah 80 8,300 is right now yeah so it’s that’s got to be tough to moderate it’s not it’s not so tough we have we have maybe six or seven people that they watch them moderate and they’re you know uh they’re they’re regularly doing it and it’s not so bad once once people are you know come in and they’re tuned to how the how it works and we have a Thursdays you can poost promotional stuff but no other day and once people figure that out and then it kind of it works out okay most
(27:50) of the time I’m going back to Facebook to to see what people are talking about not the moderate so that’s knock on wood that’s good really good uh so I’ve been again I’ve been in the business for a long time so uh landlord Health he Center for example was has been was uh was a massive help uh before the internet got really big uh and then they got then sadly like under they’ve been so much of their funding has disappeared from the provincial government even under conservative government that’s a shame right there’s such a great
(28:24) resource and there’s such a great uh uh tool so much great information on their site uh I’ve been to events that they run and they’re they’re spectacular my wife but nobody showed up well hardly anybody showed I was like wow this is incredible lot don’t know about them so for again for listeners benefits landlord self-help center they are a nonprofit funded by the provincial government even though it’s been declining uh and they have wonderful resources but they’re the the people that can service is very limited like
(28:55) the people that can actually handheld handhold and help mhm um because I believe you have to be at massive Financial Risk in order for them to for for you to qualify for them to work with you or something like like that yeah I don’t know what the parameters are personally it’s a very small short list I think you might have to live in the property or something yeah but that’s a very limited number and I I I think that should be expanded of course I think there should be money there should be Dr for uh for landlords you know uh or
(29:24) sorry there’s Dr at the LTB but there should be um U proo service like Legal Aid Services for landlords available there should be these kind of things for small landlords just as much as there are for tenants right and it and and the landlord self-help is like you say it’s it seems to be declining and it’s a shame because um we would hope that that is expanding and growing right that’s the wonderful thing about solo because I find it compliments where they where their services end solo kind of picks up like it’s it’s no cost you have a lot of
(29:59) really good people helping people who know their stuff helping people for free and certainly that’s not by Design and it would be great if that was more by Design in particular where one would end in one so we would not have any redundancies uh they do webinars we do webinars they maybe there are overlaps and uh you know it would be great if the resources were all you know uh efficiently used and we don’t coordinate with them in any any respect yeah it is a little like that uh and it’s it’s par for the course where the fact that
(30:33) landlord self-help would do what they do and of course we do what we do to try to help landlords so we’re you know we’re going to be kind of like that um and maybe in the future we’d have some level of connection I I know some people there and you know like I said I’ve been to events we’re keenly aware of landlord selfhelp and we’re aware of their mission and we obviously align uh in terms of our Direct commission although landlord self-help is perhaps they they would coordinate with larger landlords at different times
(31:05) depending on their content in their uh uh their mission whereas we are Solo the small is in the name right small landlord uh well the executive director of self help’s coming on the show in a few weeks so I’ll talk to her yeah those are good questions right and I’m eminently curious about how how they operate what their focus is how they you know of course having some sort of an alignment where we kind of uh connect collaborate all of these kind of things are are Solo is all about that kind of thing because we want to uh we there are
(31:41) only so many resources out there and we want to push for justice for small landlord and we all have to be on the same page to get there and that’s that’s a very challenging and the strengthen numbers of course all of that so um it’s my observation it’s a small land that’s at the most risk especially the ones who are really casual right oh I just go buy a condo and rent it out and then it’s usually them that don’t properly screen or they trust the wrong person to prop to and they don’t properly screen and they get because it was literally in the
(32:12) news I think the professional tenant owes like four different people different landlord’s money so that immediately means no one screened them at least three people didn’t screen them yeah it’s it’s a um it’s a case where now I think that the professional tenant or tenant looking to do bad things they actively go out looking for these folks and it’s not hard to find nowadays still you know landlords are becoming more Savvy just as much as tenants are becoming more Savvy but it’s still I think for a for a bad tenant who
(32:45) is made a career out of paying first and last and then riding out a year of free rent they uh they can find that that landlord that can be sucked in or gullible or they can get their friend to p as a real estate agent and passed them off all of these things are all on the table and they just happen with such regularity that it’s uh it’s it thankfully in the media it’s becoming more more known but uh uh it still it just happens way too often we we’re we’re so busy with this it should not ever happen but it’s it’s a Non-Stop
(33:18) barrage of these kind of stories and then the Act and the board protect these people as as you know let let’s let’s be clear though the tenants deserve to be protected just as much as anybody oh deserves to be protected but people that do bad things ought to be held responsible for that landlords too have this environment where they’re not being held responsible and there are little repercussions and you can get away with things and push it and push it that’s an environment for complete Injustice for everybody because
(33:53) that that professional tenant the one has news if that’s all true they should go to jail yeah for what part in particular I wonder though it’s stealing it’s band you know there’s vandalism and that tends to be a probation charge then there’s the the idea of stealing rent which not really many people have come around to that they always think that’s a civil matter and you know what I mean uh and maybe it’s a civil matter because there’s no potential violence involved like if you steal from a bank there’s potential
(34:28) potentially violence because you got to wave a gun around maybe but when you’re stealing from a landlord there’s no violence there or at least so people think so then that’s that’s a victimless crime as they say uh you know it we’ve got to sort of change this sort of perception of landlords not being human beings they we’re we’re people a small landlord is a person they have they rent out perhaps a condo or their basement or they rent out two units or they rent out their their home because they want to keep their investment they’re they’re
(34:58) human beings they deserve uh justice just like anyone else it’s not a it’s not a matter of asking for sympathy it’s a matter of asking for basic Justice right yeah you know when I when when people ask me what would you like the LTB to do I say do your job right you’re you know your standard for a a hearing is 25 days and you’re taking five months or or or four months to get to the hearing you’re not doing your job let’s start with that you don’t have to do any kind of Earth shaking uh changes to the RTA yet just start doing your job we can
(35:35) start there right so uh a lot of this is just uh a little absurd you know a little bit of a rage bait situation but at the same time it’s also just like if we just get down the business and and get it done we we we can get there we can we can find Justice for everybody tenants wait two years sometimes for actually their their standard for some of their t2s t6s they’re they’re up there a year or more maybe two years and they’re not getting Justice either right ESP including the tenant when the landlord is at fault here they’re not
(36:09) getting Justice either and we don’t we don’t know that until the hearing but uh you know they deserve to have their hearings in a reasonable amount of time you know everybody does right yeah you know i’ I’ve watched government for so long and I’m a pragmatist so it just irks me how government functions including the LLB and I’ve told you this story before I mentioned on the show so apologies for the listener just fast forward this part but Florida for example if you’re if you want to hear in for non-payment of rent you have to post
(36:39) the rent outstanding to the trust account of their version of the tenant board lant board prove you have the money right at a minimum here at the LTB screen capture me your bank statement prove to me you have the rent and you can have your hearing right if you just want a hearing because you don’t because you don’t have the money you don’t get a hearing hey that’s a reasonable approach and one other approach so easy we thought about okay you know change it up and say if you want to file a tenant application for whatever reason whether it be
(37:11) maintenance or other concerns you need to show that you’re gainfully paying your rent if you can’t prove that you’re paying your rent you can’t file a tenant application I think that is the case in some American states I think it’s Arizona maybe uh Satur yeah and that’s an incredibly reasonable approach why not you know what I mean yeah here’s my Remy like you you want you want Justice you have to show that you’re uh you know you’re up to speed on what you’re doing and you’re paying your rent you know a lot of a lot of applications for Te
(37:41) applications in Ontario would not happen if that was the case you had to streamline the process right and we’ve asked for um you know uh written evictions of course you know this idea of not having hearings at all if this is an uncontested matter or the tenant cannot prove that they’re paying rent then it’s a written written order and it’s just like an now4 X parte order and then that’s an eviction there should be no case in Ontario where a tenant who wishes to do bad bad things thinks that they can get away with it right do you
(38:15) know why we haven’t gotten back to inperson uh ten Port heing did they sell off all the uh all the tribunal facilities like they they have all of those there as far as I understand they still have them whether they lease or or own them I don’t know but they use them for office space but what has happened is that they’ve switched they bought a Sal Sports based uh CRM software for uh for running hearings and they implemented that over the over the uh Co and uh right in the late stages of covid so they were running through that implementation
(38:49) process which created backlogs by the way they already had backlogs they created more but they went through that entire switch of their internal systems that that really became online online filing online uh hearings and they just never walked back they never went back and I think that’s a cost savings to them in the end they see it as a cost savings they see it as a potential future costing us in service removing the physical offices and then you know having all the adjudicators working from home many of them are if you watch
(39:19) hearings you’ll see them actually blur the background but you’ll see that they’re in their living room right uh so then they would get rid of all this real estate and then they would you know realize a cost savings I think that’s the ultimate goal in the end and as we know from so many different places in so many different people in-person hearings are far more efficient far more efficient they are you know there’s no uh no roll call but for saying Hey Kevin are you in the in the are you in the room and on Zoom you you watch a hearing
(39:51) and it could take up to 45 minutes to get roll call done right and that’s all hearing time they’re not there 45 minutes early so we’re we’re in this case and and nonetheless uh maybe I think the stat was something like 20% or more of uh of matters get solved in like in the H hallway yeah people kind of people probably even higher there’s this sort of a scientific thing that happens that people when they’re behind a computer and sort of anonymous they kind of uh they they kind of feel more emboldened right more uh more Warrior
(40:25) well exactly they’re more willing to fight than they would be in person when you finally get in front of a person and you shake their hand and you look them eye eye to eye things change completely it’s a human factor yeah and you remove that complete human factor from uh it’s it’s like disembodied as they say right and when you do that um you you not only slow down the process you make it more inefficient but you embolden people to fight more right so I think that you know uh inefficient we don’t have anybody yeah we don’t anybody at the LTB
(40:59) that has come to this realization certainly not in government that has come to this realization and what we’ve asked for at solo is simply just run both at the same time if you have a a if you have the parties in a hearing that are willing to do it in person then have them check a box if you will and then we run it all in person and I think we would find that you know most people would probably want to run this in person uh the only people that wouldn’t want to run iners hearings is pargal because paral leals have seen
(41:27) their revenue jump rapidly gee from the ability to run Zoom calls multiple at the same time so their revenue has increased rapidly uh as a result of Zoom hearings so certainly their incentive is not to have uh uh you know not to have in-person hearings and of course there’s a cost factor of getting people to go to single locations Elm Street downtown that’s quite a trip to go downtown to uh to a place um so there there are those factors I I think that are are involved but I think you know if we care about actually getting to a place where the
(42:03) backlog has reduced to a point where they’re meeting their their set standard we have to do something that you know justifies the process it’s not a well pre pandemic we were usually about three four months for our hearing which is than the backlog with prepandemic the backlog was growing for sure uh but you go back perhaps a year and they were they were running the you know 880,000 hearings or 880,000 cases resolved every year for at least a decade you know they were running at a at a reasonable Pace it wasn’t perfect but it was perhaps a
(42:40) month well you have the data to prove it used to work yeah well yeah we have the data you know and and here’s the thing in in the ltb’s recent work as in like three to four three to four months but in their most recent like annual uh uh report if you will or their annual Zoom they’re like we have unprecedented levels of of uh of files that have been submitted never before seen you know ever all time but yet if you look at the numbers they released it’s like 83,000 files they received for prepandemic every year they
(43:15) were receiving between 78 and 81,000 files so this unprecedented is only 3,000 more than they’ve ever seen right like it’s not like yeah milon Canadians over the last few years yeah like it’s it’s just absurd in a way because I think that you know you don’t have to address it up they they’re not doing their job and they’re not doing it well and they’re not maybe perhaps they’re not broken and that’s a bit of a touchy subject for them but you know however long you keep this backlog going it it only proves how broken it is like you
(43:51) can’t we can’t make this the normal right we can’t some of these hearings for like l2s or uh or especially Blended hearings when you have uh multiple files at once like an L1 and an L2 for damages you you can see up to a year for that still today after three years three and a half years right what institution has three and a half years to fix a back government so I’m old school right so I’ve been coaching investors since 2010 and I been through it myself uh and then the best practice I found and what I talk to my clients was when you go to
(44:28) the LTB find a mediator find your tenant negotiate something you do not want to go because because the the hearings are priorities given to the easy cases anything that needs to be contested goes to the bottom so there’s a good chance you’re not being heard that day and need to reschedule well there are two things there you know the one thing is that that’s leverage and I’ve used that leverage in a hearing by the way as I represented somebody that the fact that you don’t want to go to a hearing that’s a piece of Leverage you can use at the
(44:59) point of mediation the second thing is that the LTB they’re Kryptonite and I know you’re like superheroes the ltbs Kryptonite is any kind of complexity yeah yeah not only do they not run hearings that are complex as you said they actually literally break down when you bring a very complex uh in-depth detailed yeah uh evidence when when it gets complex whoa they just grind to a halt these guys they can’t handle it it’s way more effort for them there’s way more materials for them to review before before the hearing and all that
(45:33) sort of stuff it’s way more work for everybody yeah they’re just not built for that and so you have uh you have cases where we have one tenant that was evicted uh her name is out in public I won’t say the name but point is that she actually commanded over many of her hearings 25 hours of hearing block time because of all of her little nit you know little things big things human rights claims she actually called the adjudicator racist it was just an on endless barrage of hearing after hearing after after adjournment after
(46:10) adjournment 25 hours of this and this is 25 hours of block time that is gone to hear other matters right so this is what we see at the LTB it’s just not equipped for this so if you’re a tenant want to do bad things I I’m I’m spilling the tea as they say I’m giving it away make it complex this you know the LTB should be better at this they should have adjudicators that can stop this in its tracks we could talk about the adjudicator his name is Ebner he he really didn’t do a great job of uh uh uh stopping it or shutting it down you know
(46:47) what I mean but the the this is the problem at the LTB it’s institutionalized um I feel like a bad word is appropriate in there somewhere but it’s definitely this sort of institutionalized thinking of like you know plotting along and you know yeah we’re doing great we’re reducing the the the uh the backlog but yet when you look at the numbers it’s something like seven files a week I think something in that range seven files a week when your backlog is 53,000 are we gonna are we going to end this backlog in like
(47:23) 2065 and and where we are today in January 2025 like the work from home thing is like really minimizing like almost every company’s requiring employees to come back to office but we’re not seeing any of that for the LTB no I don’t think not even day week I’m with you I think that’s I think that’s true I think you’re I I I would not be surprised if most of the adjudicators are at home running their hearings they might come in once a week Fridays tends to be the day that they they do write out orders maybe they’ll
(47:55) come in on Fridays but but while the private sector is going back to the office right I think I think that’s true it’s a lot I well you I don’t need to argue with you why I topped out now let’s talk about your own Journey see more people are are interested in tapping out well you know we want here’s the thing though at solo we recognize that uh landlords are tapping up and they’re leaving the business but we want them to be uh in the business we want them to be small landlords to thrive we want good tenants we want the housing market to be
(48:34) a good housing market at least a balanced housing market we you know we would like to be in a place where it’s not housing crisis every time you pull up a new story we want to be part of the solution right that’s what we’re after we’re not after you know trying to convince every small landlord to walk away which they tend to walk away I’ll be one of them I am one of them that walked away and what we see is that once a small landlord comes to solo they get their issue resolved yeah and then they walk away yeah because they’re coming to
(49:04) us usually because they’re in a crisis right and then they walk away and that’s one less house on the market perhaps bought like a by by a corporate entity or maybe bought by a family who takes over that single family home and that’s not a rental anymore yeah rental the Rental Supply is gone forever right yeah so we we want a good uh healthy housing market that’s what we’re after but you you put up my book there yeah shess promotion if you’re interested in becoming a landlord let’s talk about from rent to ruin yes yes um
(49:37) what happened how did you become a landlord I became a landlord mainly because my uh my fiance at the time she had uh she had decided to move out and I decided to move in with her and we moved to uh Hamilton at the time and so my choice was either to keep my home which I have a semi- detached house in ashaa the choice was to keep the home and continue my commitment to having a a property that I purchased or you know sell it off of course and so I decided to keep it and then I kind of financially Savvy for sure you know I I
(50:14) I wanted to keep the property I intended to keep it for my my life and and pay the mortgage so I would keep it I thought okay I’m gonna I’m gonna rent it out so I somewhat reluctantly decided to rent out the property and uh and I went through a very poor well I don’t want to say poor maybe I could have done I definitely could have done better let’s say yes I could have done better at the screening and uh and this person came to me as a tenant Barry and uh as I as I write in the book uh it’s just a a string of uh problems and
(50:48) issues and he terrorized me to no end and he threatened uh he even said at one point uh in November of 2022 he would get even with me and then by January of 2023 his his son and him they burn burn the house down they burned it out completely destroyed the house which had to be completely rebuilt over a process of say I think it was 14 15 months of rebuilding uh and so this this book just describes the entire uh entire process of trying to go to the LTB trying to deal with him the the beginnings of the strange things that he
(51:27) would be doing you know I had in the least don’t smoke uh and then he was smoking in the in the backyard to just a month after he yeah and I’m like he’s smoking right right inside like right next to the house I knew that he was going to float every every single rule I had in the lease and I knew that it was It was kind of coming and then tension would rise and rise and eventually the the fire uh but yeah that’s that’s just Chronicles uh and of course there’s there’s the bureaucracy and and that’s yeah that’s
(52:01) one of the rooms where where the son he uh had a ton of graffi um so you know it it just came to a point where I’m like uh your all there’s even more like there there was uh uh perhaps uh and this was maybe eight months before the fire but he actually had his car burned burned out completely there you go you see the carire and that you I came he call he sends me an email and then I I run to the house to look at the it looked my the front driveway you ran from Hamilton to asua yeah I had to drive out there to uh to Ashawa and the the front driveway
(52:42) looked like Beirut I’m like what happened here and he says uh I don’t know uh looks like I think the drug dealers next door did it uh and I said okay well all right your insurance your insurance will cover I don’t have insurance he said on the car he’s s his car is sitting in my driveway no insurance and he’s been driving it well I I only presume he was driving it I don’t know how he got it to uh maybe he just gave up under anyway this this all these bizarre occurrences and uh Madness and it was just like a it it took like upwards of yeah that’s
(53:20) I found that under the uh I found that under the wheel when I was when I came in and looked at the car and he he seemed surprised and he found it he said he was going to go to the cops with that evidence if you will cuz it’s clear evidence that somebody started the fire right um so sorry this is soul torch a lighter but this isn’t a regular lighter what kind of lighter is this looks like some kind of li like a butane torch it’s like yeah one of those bong you light a bong bong with it or something like it’s
(53:48) like a torch you you kind of smoking something you like would this be like a would it would that be a looks like a butane torch could be but I don’t know what kind of fuel is in it but you know people in the area they actually because I interviewed them after the the house fire the big fire yeah uh they this is a torch this isn’t like a bit lighter no you’re right and they described an actual like a exploding sound like they described the fire and it was getting worse and worse and something there was like something blew blew up and it’s not
(54:20) like the movies Cars don’t blow up right and I think that that that actual torch was close to where the fire was started and eventually it got hot enough and then that reservoir of gas probably blew and that’s where people heard that the blowing sound um and that that caused quite a lot of damage it melted the siding in the front of my front of my house and it you know obviously it could have started a fire on the house or next door could have started a fire and killed somebody right um and it’s it’s impossible to know who started that fire
(54:51) I I never knew I never found out he he said the the the drug dealers did it yeah he was was he high he was the thing with my tenant he lied and I didn’t know at the time that he was such a liar but he lied about everything really was what did he lie about during the anten and application process uh he he manipulated his credit rating his credit I don’t know what exactly it was but it was easily 300 more than what his real credit was uh he lied uh that’s a lot he forged signatures on 400 versus 700 cutting ratings a B I know yeah definitely he
(55:29) you know and he had to because he wouldn’t have gotten into my place if he didn’t Forge that I should have been more um you know I I I I could have screened better and I I I learned from my mistakes there but but he lied to he lied he right out lied and he lied about his former landlord he lied about the but he forged documents yeah like this is this is stuff you can bring to the cops it’s so difficult to hold people the police will not look at a m if it’s not a Serial offender if it’s one time and you can’t prove that it’s multiple
(56:01) different landlords it’s a hard it’s a hard goal of it to take that to the police now we worked on all sorts of these matters uh and we’ve had some success but if you’re just one landlord with one tenant that you know maybe you can prove it but you can’t uh prove it with complete certainty that they’re a Serial offender they won’t they won’t press charges so it’s a it’s a long string of events that lead up to the the house being burned burned out completely and how long was the process from like tenant moving into burning down the
(56:34) property like how long are you living with this nightmare well the the and then you have to leave after the house is built well he was there about two years but um so some indicators of this is it took I think about 14 months total uh for for the eviction to get to get that done but one thing it which I find is is most absurd is that the the house fire okay the house fire made the house completely unlivable of course all the utilities are off he has to leave he’s gone into Red Cross okay at that point I needed
(57:11) another eight months to get my house back he can’t even physically live in my house and yet with the bureaucracy of the LTB I needed eight more months to get my house back legally and he was still a tenant for those eight months even though not not living at it even though there while they were building if they had rebuilt and finished in six months he would have been able to move back in Legally and he was even taunting me he would saying you know why don’t you can you do you mind if you paint the walls gray for me because it goes great
(57:39) with my furniture like he would send me emails just taunting right but the reality is that he he still had another eight months of Tennesse legally until the LTB finally gave my house uh possession as they say gave it back so this just entire absurd process uh this fire would not have ever happened if they evicted in a reasonable amount of time uh without backlogs of course uh and then uh did you have to prove who caused the fire or was someone caught yeah so the the the person that um started the fire he was thankfully he
(58:15) was caught on the day on the evening so the police came uh I wasn’t there until later later at night but uh they they must have inspected or looked at the situation he actually had uh burglarized the car uh as well he ran over to a neighbor three or four houses down broke into that car stole something out of his vehicle um did something through threw it on the on the street or I don’t know what he did before he started the fire so it was a whole thing now he didn’t get charged with the theft or vandalism of a vehicle but eventually
(58:50) they charged him on the spot for arson and they they arrested him wonder how they got him for that I think it’s pretty obvious so I think that maybe they went into the house after the fire was they went into the house and they saw this you know uh and no doubt the tenant he was trying to pin it on me he was actually trying to say it was an electrical fire trying to say that it was my fault yeah yeah right to the end he was trying to pin it on me how’ they start the fire you well it was in the basement I think you know based
(59:21) on what I saw there because I went in once the police release the scene I I go in there and I look at the it’s in the CBC report I kind of the video of me walking around but there’s this like clump of like plastic stuff so I think it looks like car parts or it looks almost like it could have been like the side like the door panel the plastic door panel on it looks so it looks like maybe he lit some plastic a pile of plastic stuff it doesn’t seem like incidental accidental it seems more like it was this stuff He piled up and maybe
(59:55) started it on fire fire and let it burn and then eventually it started burning the drywall and then it got to the ceiling and started burning and the whole ceiling the beams and everything are all burned out everything was so it feels like when I look at that it was burning for quite some time it wasn’t just it wasn’t like a kitchen fire that got out of control right it looks like he was maybe enjoying it and that’s the thing that some witnesses described to me the tenant himself he was standing there outside the house just outside the
(1:00:28) front door standing there watch watching as the smoke and the Flames was just watching perhaps enjoying it he seemed like he hated you so yeah there it’s it’s it’s a strange thing you know what I mean I understand disputes get a little crazy and then there’s hate and there’s anger uh but it’s just some point I don’t understand stand you know this guy was fueled by something something else something else I can’t uh can’t describe and uh like I said he’s he’s passed away now so he’s he’s he’s died uh New Year’s Eve passed
(1:01:14) away so uh when the house is being rebuilt how did you pay the mortgage did you have was there business Interruption Insurance yeah oh so the insurance company actually was paying me right rent as well so they actually covered you had you had good insur you had proper insurance for rent yeah I I I I even described to people how ironic it was that the house had to be burned down to finally get rent because he had he had gone by that point uh nine and a half months without paying rent and so he finally had to leave the house
(1:01:46) because it was completely destroyed and then finally I was getting rent again strange and I his his rent amounted to his rear amounted to 26,5 26650 in a re but I’ll never see I’ll never see that again and your insurance and your insurance covered the entire rebuild and they paid your rent so that you could pay the mortgage right from that point they paid the rent and they they covered the rebuild they they covered the recover recovery which is a core part of this right one of the things was to uh early on they boarded
(1:02:27) up the house which in my mind it was to keep him out but smart they boarded up the house no I think it’s the right thing to do but in general but yeah so they boarded up the house and then they uh um then they put in space heaters to keep the house from freezing because it was in January that the fire happened uh in fact maybe a week a week from now it would have two two years two years now so uh that recovery process was crucial and and probably pretty expensive at the time uh and so they covered the recovery
(1:03:01) the uh and then the disposal and then they had to gut the house you saw pictures of it gutted they ripped out everything right down to the beams yeah because they have to yeah and um and they they covered all the rebuild and everything the contractors yeah well thank God you had business Interruption insurance so I believe that that needs repeating is you know if you’re landlord have the proper landlord insurance so that you have business Interruption because if you have regular homeowner insurance they they may not pay your
(1:03:29) your rent so true and then you’re still paying the mortgage a lot of landlords don’t know that there is a different kind of insurance that is you know as they sometimes they call it the um pent Insurance maybe it’s just called business interrup in my policy it’s business Interruption Insurance because it’s a commercial policy for rental property indeed and it’s I often say to people if it’s if it’s like $80 a month and you’re not it’s not the same it’s not the right Insurance like this is more expensive that’s how you know
(1:03:57) that’s way more expensive I’m like at least like 240 260 a month for my duplexes exactly I was like 250 a month so that’s how you know you’re probably on the you can zero Inn you’re covered yeah that’s that’s just the first stretch that’s the high level keep as you look at your policy and the rest but yeah a lot of landord don’t know that about that type of insurance and how how that’s important to have uh because it protects you from what I went through and uh you know I didn’t know either yeah you know uh thankfully I had
(1:04:29) that insurance but in the early days I didn’t know about that kind of insurance until I I learned could have been dangerous we all have to learn right could you could been months with our friend well I would have been ruined months more did that the ruin part of that book didn’t come true thankfully but I could have been completely ruined and I think he was banking on that he was banking on the fact that perhaps I didn’t have the right insurance I didn’t have insurance and then that would have completely ruined me
(1:04:56) you mentioned before we’re recording he had tenant insurance so he did yeah properly he should have canceled it first and then done it well perhaps but insurance didn’t really C like it I don’t I’m not an insurance expert but I don’t think that the insurance from his side even when he was declared at fault by the the company clearly they they they saw him at fault I don’t think it covered a lot of the rebuild part of the uh process I think it and then he also made claim to some of his belonging yeah so no doubt some of that insurance even
(1:05:29) covered that right so I don’t I don’t know what the ratio of his personal insurance and like I mentioned it was the same company so you know I was like and I even said to them well why don’t you just kind of Talk Amongst yourself and decide what covers what yeah you know you guys talk directly because my understanding of insurance is that your insurance will sue him his insurance because right the is liable right and they’ll Sue because he’s got insurance so they actually have recourse but I’m not sure they Su approbation or
(1:06:01) there’s like a a process where they kind of uh lock down your uh policy or something like that and they don’t release it until they’ve decided whether they’re going to sue and uh I don’t know what they did but that that was a part of the process and uh again what I don’t know how that like would would an insurance company Sue themselves or would they kind of Sue the person personally would that be a process like if you cause they just settle or they would just cut bait and they know that they’re not going to get
(1:06:32) anything right they’ve got a they’ve got to honor their policy but then on the other side they know this guy’s a dead beat and he’ll never pay up so why why just you know that’s why that’s why has Insurance um but so I’ve actually had this from from my clients as well is that one attendant caused a fire if um my my clients had tenants the upstairs who weren’t at fault for the fire they didn’t have tenant insurance but they didn’t have the money for a hotel so then they asked my client for funds for a hotel and that’s what tenant insurance
(1:07:03) is for that’s one of the things the tenant insurance covers so could you imagine if your tenant asked you as well Hey Kevin you put me up in a hotel four stars are better it’s in the book but I I texted him I I said okay this was the next day and I said who who started the fire and he he initially said I don’t know I got a lot of things to deal with so there’s some bad words in there but uh and I said you know you can tell me who you know who started the fire who started the fire and then his response was was it
(1:07:38) you like you were in the home without him knowing gu the worst the worst at this point his son was in jail for arson and of course I didn’t know at the time that there were charges no the police didn’t tell me nobody no the the I talked to the detective he didn’t tell me I I still didn’t know I didn’t know from the victim didn’t tell you these things uh the case that went to the courts I never I never found out how it ended I I was not notified at any point during this this case why wouldn’t they want you as a witness you’re the victim
(1:08:15) I don’t know but I had no involvement and nor did they tell me or or or share any information I had to go looking for it and I eventually did get I did get the information from the courts but it was a process it’s in the book but uh you know honestly it was not uh it was not uh it was not great to think that that something like this would happen and I would be left in the dark completely about what was going on you know even at the fire at the point of the fire they posted a cop there for like two days straight to keep everybody out of the
(1:08:48) house and that cop didn’t even tell me what was going on he did you know I show up right at the point where the fire happened and I’m there the same night and the cops like like well call the detective I can’t tell you anything but you can’t go inside now what are you doing with the house now the house is rebuilt I move back into it and uh I’m living there so that’s where I’m at now uh what comes next I don’t know uh don’t basement sweet it out I don’t know if I I can do that again I’m still not quite there but uh that’s really the
(1:09:24) only option sell the house or rented you know I think number one is the are you going to do any more investments in Ontario yeah perhaps it will happen you know we I’ve been looking at uh other other properties I’ve been looking at the maybe a property closer to the city I I I would I would do it again uh I just it’s you know I’m taking time to recover and you know like to be fair I I expected him to come back I expected to see him I expected him to consistently return and and to fight and to be a problem you know I I knew his car model
(1:10:06) and his plate number and I would you know I’d scan the plate of any car that I saw that was like his car I’ve only since started to just sort of ease up on the sort of the the sort of reflex things I used to do he came well he came to the house after the fire and he he he was you know he drove up he came to Hamilton from aswa no he came to my I was in aswa and he came to the house okay okay and I don’t know why I was there at the time but uh I was working on the door he had destroyed to the garage so um so I’m
(1:10:39) there and then he drives up blocks my car blocks like blocks my car in the driveway he comes out of the car starts screaming and hollering at me he brings two other guys out of a out of a Jeep he uh he kind of comes around my car and then he there’s a box there and he kicks the box at me you know uh which thankfully didn’t hurt that much but you know continued to scream and and and act violently and uh even said that he would uh he’d be on me like for another couple years that I couldn’t get rid of him oh please no no I didn’t but at some point
(1:11:18) like I had to just kind of keep my cool I was angry and yelling too uh but you know I I I expect that to reoccur like that was like a month and a half after the fire I expected him to continue that sounds for a harassment yeah and he was scream where’s my chair where’s my where’s my uh he doesn’t even live there anymore he went where’s my rubber mats he had rubber mats in the driveway and he was screaming at me for rubber mats you stole my propane tanks well whatever is here is here you got propane tanks go
(1:11:48) get them so he told his buddies that he came that came in the Jeep and they went to the backyard and got the propane tanks because he was a big growop Enthusiast but oh yeah he was running a growop in my house as well so he had this little like one of the bedrooms in the four-bedroom house and one of the bedrooms he had this uh sort of hydroponic tent that filled the entire room and he was growing all sorts of a legal amount or well obviously a legal amount because he that that tent was probably filled with all sorts of plants
(1:12:22) and he had all this paraphernalia for growing and sting and all this uh uh uh that’s why he really bed at a lot of my inspections I didn’t know at the time but he would really got bent out he destroyed the house when I tried to inspect the house uh and that that ultimately I would learn later because that really put him out because if I inspect the house and I see this big grow up in the house that’s that’s bad for him and he had to clean that up shove it all in the in the in in the in the closet so you know I learned after
(1:12:54) the fact a lot of the really a lot of this act you know a lot of this Behavior where where sort of stem from you know what I mean he was in the wrong and he’s giving you a hard time well yeah you know sometimes you just don’t know why you know I in a lot of ways I thought his behavior was very erratic and I didn’t understand at the time okay I want to inspect I got in there I left it it took me about 20 minutes 30 minutes you don’t have to go and destroy the back sliding door he smashed the window and he smashed the door to the
(1:13:24) garage he smashed he you know he he uh he smashed the garage door sh he filed off the handle off the like you don’t have to go that far it seemed very erratic and overblown so uh yeah at some point I was um I didn’t understand that but that that that understanding would come over time when I started to fill in the blanks with some of this and writing the book kind of helped as well a little bit in a way of like okay well help help in the blanks you know it sort of prompted me to talk to people like neighbors talk to
(1:14:01) uh you know working with other people that were sort of like the the fellow that uh the vehicle he was um burglarized his vehicle before the fire he started the fire but just before that he went into that vehicle and stole um um it was a fishing electronic fishing gear thing uh so anyway I eventually managed to talk to him and we had a long discussion about what happened and what kind of played out and uh and why he wasn’t charged for that for theft and then you know Barry is the tenant but Barry eventually actually gave him a a
(1:14:37) personal check to pay for the for the device and the cops Let It Go in the moment so you know a lot of this was a process of trying to fill the blanks in right for me when when you’re like blind to all that’s going on and just trying to understand uh after the fact you know you try to understand where where does this come from how does this happen why why are those folks like they are you know I do get into a little bit of this like why what do I know about these people why would they be like that why would he be
(1:15:12) like that you know what I mean so uh it’s a it’s a process of discovery and uh I just wanted to know more and so that’s part of what the book’s about as well I want to Chronicle the experience but I want to to understand things better because a lot of it I was in the dark like you know one day there’s there’s a house and the next day it’s burned completely destroyed what you know uh for me it’s hard to just sort of accept you know I want to know I want to know more right and then you were on the CBC discussing this in your property yes of
(1:15:51) course the CBC um you bring it up uh the CBC interviewed me on the national that’s uh that’s me going into the basement so this is post fire how how long after how long just after the fire so you see all of the that’s the drywall burning and then the the beams were all burned out it primarily went out actually oh just briefly you see the uh that clump of plastic whatever this we believe the Fara started and that’s yeah it seems obvious where that oh there it is so all of the sort of clump of plastic uh burned like it seems like that he
(1:16:30) kind of made a pile of some plastic something and maybe it started that way or maybe he had a like look like that right there see see that uh it looked like maybe the piece of a car in a way but it’s possible maybe that he dropped a uh uh a candle or something or it and then it started to burn and you never really kind of stopped it or noticed it right I don’t really I can’t well end of the day they were they were convicted is that the term or they were charged with arson right so the sun was charged with arson
(1:17:08) now uh I like I said I don’t know the outcome of that that charge so weird but I feel like um and he’s in an asylum or something yeah I feel like he was committed to a a mental uh what do they call these folks the places a mental institution or something like that uh and I I would presume that you know they considered him a danger to society to society so they they they wouldn’t even let him out on supervised visits but even more strange or perhaps interesting was that the ARs inch charge came with a uh peace Bond against his
(1:17:44) father so he was ordered not to uh not to be anywhere near his father who who they live together right the father is the fellow on the book on the cover but He was ordered not to be anywhere near his father for a certain amount of time and also ordered not to be at the house so not only is the LTB taking eight months to get around to give me possession of my house legally the tenants at least one of the tenants wasn’t even legally allowed to be at the house but still was a tenant legally so it’s just all you would think that it’s
(1:18:20) you would think that if there’s a peace Bond on somebody that legally doesn’t allow them to go to that prop that that’s enough to just and the tency yeah terminate the tency it’s over nope nope do you see why I’m scared you should be I am I’m sorry to say but uh you know I don’t want to I don’t want to freak out but uh there are is a bit of a Minefield right now and you know we really want to improve this environment for everybody involved and uh same here for the betterment of our society yeah you know love to see
(1:19:02) there just needs to be basic Justice and uh and incentives need to change and we need to just you know change the behavior you know we need to uh make sure that people if they think about doing something bad they think twice so let’s start with what what are the lessons what could have been done differently with the screening What would would you B if if fast forward to today’s times because technology today is better than ever and for tenant screening tools what would you do differently today and you’re a tech guy indeed I am
(1:19:36) um first thing I would do differently is number one uh don’t just trust what people say honestly I I I I think I I’m trusting perhaps to a fault but I think that you know I don’t always just accept that people will say something and they’re not going to lie to you so I think that that was first and foremost a lot of the stuff that he showed or said I just trusted it on on on face value and people will lie to you when that happens and I think that we you know trust but verify as they say right and I didn’t do as much verify as I did
(1:20:14) trust so that’s that’s number one I think two I I would have made use of uh the the the screening tools that were available even then and there are some great robot screening tools that are available out there now anything from rent Panda to single key to front lobby they do their own sort of screening rent check all of these tools are out there and were out there at the time uh to you know take advantage of of of screening better I I accepted the um the credit report from him directly and you should never ever accept the tenants credit
(1:20:50) report you go to a you know go to a reputable place go to eifax go go somewhere and get the report on your tenant yourself and get it directly from an institution that you trust uh so that that is everything G be photoshopped of course everything assume everything has been photoshopped so how would you how would you operate differently right manipulated anything can be manipulated so all of those things also I’ve also looked at his former landlord and uh often they say go two landlords back or even sometimes even further uh and I I
(1:21:24) you know I left it at that and so there was a glowing reference and that was that was it so that’s another thing I perhaps would have done differently or or tried to improve the process uh some of this is just low Tech you know what I mean one of the one of the biggest things I could have done differently was just trusting my gut you know there were things that he did that were unusual but they serve to move the process along faster right he was eager to rent even I think in the early days in in the first initial contact he was ready to sign the
(1:21:57) lease before actually seeing the property now I you know uh I was adamant that you need to see the property and eventually he came to see the property and he for a local person that’s really odd right so that that that should have set off red flags and you know my gut was feeling something unusual about this but in in my infant landlord stage I didn’t really you know I didn’t know better but that kind of thing is like trust your gut when something feels odd don’t you know stop and think about it stop and and and figure out what you
(1:22:30) know uh so there’s these little red flags that he he kind of had to tell me told me that okay maybe there is some uh uh uh something going on and it’s totally a low Tech situation you know what I mean look at look inside their car try to go to their their property and and see how they’re living now you know what I mean meet their landlord at where they live now to verify that they’re you know what I mean do these things and sort of trust your gut you know um and that’s one thing I perhaps I could have done better you know talking
(1:23:02) to the landlord reference we did that and it went well of course you know uh another thing I I I think I I should have done better uh is get ID get get more details I I kind of left I you know I understand the idea of feeling you’re intruded upon by providing all of this information but I should have at least gotten a driver’s license photocopy or something you know what I mean that’s standard practice and I I didn’t do that so I just came back from China I feel like they’ve seen me naked I hope not to to give context uh
(1:23:37) every pretty much any uh any my train ticket uh to get into any major attraction to buy the ticket they had they required my passport and then my passport became my uh like my entry my my use how I entered so they’d had devices to scan my passport and then they that’s how they verified I had a ticket the ticket itself was useless what about the scoring system they have some sort of a score I’m just a tourist so I don’t think I so they didn’t actually affect you in any way or did you see people being scored or did you have a sort of a
(1:24:10) score attached to you somehow while you’re moving around again I’m not a citizen so I don’t think they maybe but again yeah maybe if I if I did some sort of wrong I’d start a file oh hopefully that’s not the case yeah you know but there there’s cameras everywhere interesting yeah cameras and so from like for for like that Society ask someone for their picture of their passport no right here I have it on me at all time yeah you would get in trouble I guess if you didn’t uh produce yeah in China you’re required to carry your
(1:24:39) passport as a as a non-resident yeah I think I think that’s part of the reason why they they require your passport for entering any any sort of very like for example for a Canadian if you’re going to the C the analogy would be if you’re going to the CN tower you have to have your passport if you’re a non-citizen like the citizens had their own smaller card but again they’re using their anation card to gain access to train to to the to the major trains and the uh major tourist attractions so yeah really weird a lot of uh so asking for ID is
(1:25:09) like no problem for me implications there you know tracking people and you bring all that information to the top and then they know exactly where you went every every moment they know where you are imagine your 10is social score now though I can only assume it’s low but uh yeah so those are some of the main things I would do with screening but they um and our our Wiki databases has a ton of screening uh uh screening processes that come from all different places from different uh we actually bring together a lot of different uh
(1:25:45) people that are known in the industry like a fine uh rent Panda has a really great screening heart har togman who runs rent Panda he great insights about screening and how to approach that um you know a lot of this stuff is just like trusting your gut and trusting when you see something that doesn’t fit doesn’t make sense and being patient I think what what tenants do that are when they’re professional or they’re looking to do bad things they want that process to go fast fast and you screening yes you want to slow it down you want to run
(1:26:22) you know you want to take a piece of paper like a a pay stub or something like that I should have verified his income better as well by the way but you want to take that and you want to just stop and look at it and take your time look for inconsistencies look at the date is it really out of date look at look at the uh look at the address is it the same address as the address he told you was his last you know on and on and just slow it down and focus you know what I mean yeah and call the employer yeah and call the employer of course and
(1:26:51) call and verify and you know always trust and then verify or verify then trust depending on who we talk to I just I just put everything in the hands of folks like Ren Panda all uh Hart’s been owner of Ren Panda’s been on the show Hart uh Viller has been on the show twice already and waiting for him to come back a third time Zach kilum is a good old friend of mine from front lobby yeah and they’re all great and the idea with these Services they’re amazing and to use them as a as a part of the process is important I always say to the
(1:27:25) landlords don’t really ever uh give up that active process you know what I mean use these services use your tools use open room.can the tenants but do take an active process with this you know what I mean because when you combine it all together when you have rent pan to screen your tenant or you have single key screen your tenant and then you are actively involved in screening them as well and then all of that tied together it’s going to be very difficult for a professional career professional tenant to get past that sort of uh wall and
(1:28:05) sadly the way it is now though it’s not a guarantee that they won’t get there right you know we’re still seeing people that do all the right things and still these professional tenants are finding ways to you know what I mean so we have to be extremely diligent all the time and use all the tools you can like there are there are such great tools now like rent check does some uh background checks on on people they can do that you can do criminal checks I think um is a front lobby but some of these Services now they they they offer a more in-depth
(1:28:39) criminal check and they do uh other background checks on people that can really kind of uh uh surface some things that you might want to know especially if it was an RS in charge right and things like that so you know um yeah you know use the available tools you can and then you know be actively involved you know I do want to add though that with my from my experience especially my including my clients it’s not the we uh I can’t nothing comes top of Mind where any of my clients were Expos had a had a professional tenant it was more more of
(1:29:14) the problems came from a tenant who broke mentally or health during the teny right so the story I’ve been sharing is U my client in Branford the tenant’s Health C basically just fell apart uh they were uh stuck in a bed plugged in on life support no rent was coming in uh wasn’t paying utilities but the the Utilities Company knew they couldn’t shut they couldn’t shut it off because if they shut it off he’s dead and but again now we have the private landlord bearing like Bas paying for this person to be there yeah that’s tough and
(1:29:48) there’s no and and uh and that’s what this that’s what the systems become it’s on it’s on the private landlord to support for those who can’t protect themselves right and that’s certainly a bigger conversation but it’s true it’s it’s the environment now that it’s the the the the work of social Outreach and and even uh you know housing social housing is has been put on the private landlord uh to a certain degree to extreme degrees and it’s a you know it’s a burden that ought to be footed put by the different levels of government but
(1:30:23) they have they have sort of sh their responsibility in that uh and and and even more sort of absurd as the government has started to get into you know meddling with private yeah uh the private Market interests you rent eviction bylaws and things like that whereas when when they should just stay in their Lane and focus on social housing and increasing more beds and more more uh more properties and more robust systems that allow landlords that um that are frankly just running their business allow them not to go and be
(1:30:53) ruined by an event that is unexpected don’t meddle with the private when when like you mentioned Singapore you were in Singapore I was in Singapore I think Singapore has somewhere around 200 mli sorry two around two million public housing units where the average rent is about four or 500 a month for an apartment Hong Kong the average rent is about 3400 a month for uh for a government assisted uh supported building and they have about 2 million citizens in those in those units right and why can’t we be like that why can’t
(1:31:23) we have our government all levels of government focus on social housing and then provide beds for people as as is their directive versus making us a political problem of course um but again like you know for me I’m just exiting the environment just going to an easier playing field and a lot of this is all like multiple levels right you’ve got anything from the shelters to the hosts to the uh uh the social beds to the to the temporary housing of of like hotels you’ve got the more long-term housing you got subsidized housing you got all
(1:31:56) these levels of social hotels yes all of these levels refugees in hotels and then you got the Peter BR style like um uh small sort of ouse type of houses that are transitional housing all of these things are all on the table and the government could rightly just focus on that and then do that well and become more like now certainly Singapore is not an ideal uh in a lot of ways but to be able to get to the point where we could have you know every single person we we the government has enough money from taxes it would be to get it to get to
(1:32:30) the point where the government actually is doing their uh jobs and and providing for people that need supports for housing to to get them supports for housing so then you know the the private landlord is not having to yeah don’t make us do it support freeloaders for for six eight months or 12 months you know I mean like uh we we see AAR now go over $100,000 and it’s uh uh it’s it’s crazy that the LTB is still their jurisdictional limit is 35,000 where it’s not long now to get the 35,000 even rents are dropping but it’s doesn’t take
(1:33:06) long so um that’s enough money for a house or two in the states to buy you know I I I can imagine that some professional tenants are taking that money and buying houses with them that’s not encouraged them so Kevin let’s talk about uh I think every Ontario landlord should be a solo member would you disagree yes I I I I do agree and I think that also that every past landlord should be a solo member and every potential future landlord should be a solo member so there’s a ton of home there that are possibly going to be uh renting out
(1:33:46) their basement or renting out of property or investing in a property everyone that is uh likely to in involve themselves in rentals ought to be a member learn about how our environment is in Ontario yeah and know before you go and do it you got to know as much as you can that’s so important so I appeal to anyone whether it be a homeowner or not whether it be a former or future landlord we want to have uh everybody that’s that’s that’s involved in this and has a stake in this right and we have upwards of 4 million I think uh
(1:34:20) homeowners in Ontario right now uh I think north of 600,000 landlords uh perhaps so there are a lot of landlords out there period anyways um yeah and and really just to get to the point where we can be actively involved in in in changing the course of this this Justice conversation because the government it’s been said is often uh uh worried about the tenant population because of their numbers but what’s important more voters amongst them there are way more voters that are homeowners a ton more voters they should
(1:34:57) be worried about people that own properties that could rent or will rent or might have rented in the past that is a constituency that is the powerful constituency and if we built that fear for that group of people in the government there may be a point when they start to take notice and start making real change right it’s power in numbers so regardless we we just ask uh our our our landlords or anybody that would like to register with solo to learn more about this process learn more about the RTA learn more about anything
(1:35:28) you want to learn um go to members. solo.cup you can get into our Facebook group you can get into discussions you can get into uh webinars Wiki we we do a ton of educational content and try to uh uh try to just learn from our experiences you know what I mean every single part of my experience not only went into a book it went into uh every part of everything that I learned from my experience went in you know was injected into solo and so what we have is this sort of this thing that is growing and it’s growing fast but it’s every landlord’s
(1:36:11) experience is just being brought into the solo Collective and we try to pass that on to every landlord oh you’ve got fraud charges well pass that on or you’ve you you know you built an Adu in the backyard well pass that on learn about how to do that oh you you work with the sheriff and you got possession of your property pass that knowledge on you know it took 14 weeks to get peeled to come out to uh do an eviction a possession Handover pass that on that information you know what I mean yeah so like a cloud of knowledge it’s just a
(1:36:43) very uh a growing group of people that is is building that idea of just building knowledge within the group Source knowledge and that’s yeah that’s that’s what we’re after you know we’re after landlords that come to us we help them the best we can and they come back and help us help others because through all those experiences we learn so much right I’m not saying people should only join solo I think there’s so many great organizations I think it’s just one of um and I believe every landlord should get themselves educated because they
(1:37:14) saying I I don’t know if I got it from someone else let’s assume someone else got it because I’m not not a smart but the thing was uh you either learn how TB RTA works or the tenants going to teach you which you would which would you prefer right right that makes a lot of sense and it’s it is true though you’re G if you don’t learn it that way you’re G to learn the other way and the other way is hard way the hard hard way and then the cliche a pound an inch of uh what an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the Cure and and you
(1:37:46) know so joining solo would be prevention using these screening tools you recommended would be prevention and that’ll prevent you from the tons of pain course and you know people only have so much time in the day yeah and it’s understandable you know what I mean and we can’t we can’t learn everything in a minute and we only have enough attention span for yeah x amount of information passive we we we’re very directed in what we do and we really try to hone in on what people need to know the best we can and provide you know a
(1:38:18) lot of people learn in different ways you know someone might learn by watching a video where others might learn by reading information or maybe people like to read a book or I’ve never made an audio book yet but maybe that will come people want to hear the book but at some point uh we try to offer every kind of way that people can actually get themselves into a more learned position because I often hear from people all the time I’m thinking about renting out something or I’m thinking about this or you know um had a bad experience with
(1:38:48) renting how is it how are things right now you know what I mean my friend went to lb uh uh I could I could rent my condo out I was thinking what what do you think is imp possible or a good idea all of these questions come up all the time and it’s the prevention aspect it’s the taking a little time learning a bit more learning about the market learning about your you know the environment of Ontario and learning about the risk that you you face you know there’s a lot of this Doom and Gloom but understanding really understanding the risks involved
(1:39:21) and making an informed choice you know more than anything you know you if you choose to do something I made a choice that was not an informed choice you know I rented my property and I did not inform myself in any way shape or form so when you know and then you can decide you can make a better decision you can say maybe I don’t want to do this or maybe I do want to do this I can accept the risk I can you know I got I got a little bit of savings I can you know I got a little bit of a buffer maybe $20,000 savings I can I can handle to
(1:39:54) wait for the LTB I can embark on this uh you know so each to their own but making that informed choice is just a safer for everybody in this environment right now for listeners interested in helping out solo for example it’s it not for example it is a nonprofit no charge membership right if someone wanted to help out how can they help yeah so they can get in touch with us there are several ways there’s a ton of information on the website about uh uh you know um about us and how to how to contact us maybe getting on the mailing list but
(1:40:28) more than just that you can perhaps email us at solo solo.con teers we’re always looking for people that have you know skills in particular Industries you know in in Tech or in other other avenues that can bring bring that to the table you know we’re always looking for volunteers so just open the conversation say hi you know uh I saw you on on a podcast and in the CBC or exactly so so you solo solo.
(1:41:02) con say I’d like to help out and then we can have that conversation and you you have opportunities for sponsors because we at share are a proud sponsor yes of course uh we have recommended professionals and our recommended professionals we do we do vetting of the professionals but we we welcome this you know what I mean and you get in front of our small landlord community 8,300 of them yeah of course and so you you know we do some vetting and then uh you know of course you can uh sponsor and be on the website and uh you know be part of the recommended professional list
(1:41:33) anything paralal we’re always expanding that list the pargal collection agency screening tools on and on and on and we have a lot of deep Integrations that we you know we’re trying to build even more on that concept because this is really what support solo at the end of the day we really you know we want to keep the lights on and obviously we have to do that with uh uh W with money and so these are avenues that we have um to to make that possible any inperson events for planned for 245 oh yeah we have uh you know uh we have
(1:42:05) an annual Gala that we run and we run that in the fall and that will uh there will be a third annual Gala we do meet and greets all the time we were looking at doing it in Ottawa uh perhaps again Niagara Falls we did one in Niagara Falls so we try to do little gett togethers as well we don’t actually have it on the on the table as as far as the date goes but we we might do two of those in in a year uh maybe more depending on if there’s local landlords that want to get together oh there are right uh High friends call yeah we do
(1:42:37) that we we love to do that and then our our board will try to get out there wherever that is you know um and we do we do events that are smaller local associations so I’ve spoken at Peterborough Landlord Association we’ve spoken at the Brampton Landlord Association so local local associations we go out to their events and anytime they have uh they they welcome us to speak or they they want us involved so we work hand in hand with those guys and we support them the best we can um and yeah we uh we’re we’re lobbying the
(1:43:08) government so we have uh Lobby days at Queens Park we did that U last last November looking to do more of that although that’s not a public uh public thing um and yeah we we in the past have done protests we don’t really see a protest happening this year but it could could come up that we’ll protest maybe a federal one well you know that’s that’s that’s what I wanted to point out that this year seems like a very uh political election year we’re obviously going to get a federal election but it’s entirely possible that Doug Ford calls an early
(1:43:41) provincial election they’re a sort of ride on the uh coils of the PC party right especially if they’re on the ascendency in the federal level so we could see to dominate yeah we could see a federal and provincial this year which would sort of be uh kind of a big transition year for political interest and especially for landlords um and what what is it going to look like uh uh Pi PF uh in the federal level will he uh will he improve the lot for small landlords or not so you know looking at that and understanding what what those policies
(1:44:18) are what you know what ramifications they are they they almost can’t get worse but yes they can get you know if Pier does nothing but kill the new capital gains inclusion rates that’d be massive I think yeah maybe you sent that to me but yeah I think it’s likely yeah it’s it didn’t pass it’s not gonna he’s going to kill all that stuff and you know you know what great news that is it it is great news you know what I mean uh less tax is always great news and uh for landlords yeah you know we’ve already had a rough go I I I just um
(1:44:54) I don’t know yeah it’s it’s it’s good it’s good news because on sh landlords are pretty much only in it for Equity gains so capital gains right so if then then you’re going to tax us so you just took away some of our benefits of being a landlord right yeah there’s been talk of like uh unrealized gains Tex this idea where they would go after won’t be under po be assessed unrealized gains but obviously PV would never do that so yeah um that can be down the road for the next govern you don’t know right you never know right PF could come in and
(1:45:26) maybe it’s not a landslide he was thinking and then you’re another minority government and then NDP is now you know holding the sway of Power with pev and maybe that Dynamic looks even more weird so you have dental care and other things that NDP is pushing just to keep him in power like you know the the unrest is the sort of the challenge I think on the federal level right anytime there’s this sort of transition time where they go back to like uh Joel Clark and you know ascending uh or uh until there’s some sort of like a
(1:46:00) normalization and then I think you had uh Mo Rooney come into the into the mix and then kind of stabilized but this sort of uh transition period where one guy leaves and another guy and then you have maybe a temporary uh person comes in like uh Kim Campbell or Paul Martin comes in takes over the spot and then he kind of loses and then that kind of unrest and uh in the environment really I think yeah spells trouble for a lot of things you inaugurated right and we have a lot to deal with we have usmca is coming up to be re renegotiated the
(1:46:34) possible tariffs there’s a lot of you know things that need to be tended to that kind of will they or will they not but this this unrest at the federal level can spell some challenges so I just hope for you know a resolution people will vote you know waiting till March I don’t know if that’s a great idea a but they will vote they will put somebody in power you know and then it just sort of normalizes the the environment where you know they can focus on dealing with the problems and dealing with what what has to happen
(1:47:06) right and then based on the current polls The New Normal is looking like the opposition party will be the block back claw and that’s not a first not a first that’s definitely interesting because their agenda is really different it’s very unusual that they don’t have a national interest agenda exactly one party is is got so much power but it’s not uh um it’s not new of course but it’s it’s kind of sad see the Paul because that’s not new yeah it would it would take everything to the right you know what I mean like every single um
(1:47:38) everything is right laning at that point NDP is like Niche the Liberals would be completely destroyed and then you know it’s a whole new candidate it’s it’s good still it’s good good though it’s good change has to happen um Kevin you’ve been really generous with your time or over time uh any final words you like to leave for like a newer investor or someone considering entering the market yeah you know I would say most important just take your time you know uh really look at what you can learn out out there in
(1:48:17) the market you know talk to people uh join solo reach out to any of us you can call our phone number 6477 N2 4951 it’s on the website just really learn as much as you can about what you’re embarking on and uh and then and then go for it you know what I mean there is uh there is no shortage of people here at solo that will do anything we can to help out whether you’re a landlord in crisis or you’re a landlord learning to be a landlord or you’re a landlord that is somewhat reluctant we’re here to help mhm so uh reach out there there a still
(1:48:56) lesson from Mo Buffett that I’ve always referred to he was actually answering Tim baris’s question about uh about being a stock investor and and Warren’s answer was uh if you’re not willing to invest 15 hours a week in researching stocks uh then you are a thus and amateur invest in the index go back to your life right and I think for someone who’s going to get into real estate investing I think is no different you should be investing at least 15 hours a week to research or else you’re going to run into into a
(1:49:26) lot of problems I agree it makes a lot of sense you know what I mean you’ve got to take on that responsibility and take it seriously right uh I perhaps maybe didn’t take it as seriously as I could and I’m not the first to share this you know we will tell you the same right the take it seriously take the time you know stock investors too take it seriously is it 15 hours or a week or 15 like just take the time to take it seriously because the the ram ifications could be catastrophic if you go wrong so just uh
(1:49:58) yeah it’s a great it’s a great thing to be guided by you know even if it’s Bitcoin even if it’s gold take 15 hours a week for a while before you get into it yeah there’s no um some people are in precarious situations maybe they’re in a in a bit of a hurry but I think most people when they’re looking at investing they’re not they’re they’re only rushed by their own personal you know need for something or they feel that the econom is in going in different directions fomo or formal foro yeah so you know don’t you don’t have to rush take your time
(1:50:28) learn understand read a few books I’m sure you have many book recommendations but you know learn learn what you’re embarking on and getting into and it is still good it’s a good environment it’s a good uh Ontario is a great place to invest you know you can be a landlord you can be an investor you can be an owner and live in your property and there are Equity gains in real estate real estate’s still really good to invest in um so uh we want a healthy market and so that’s that’s what we’re after and we just hope people take the
(1:51:00) time and take it seriously I like chat gb2 chat GPT as well for research Source I was actually messing around with it BEC after the whole uhh Trump trolling Trudeau about Canada being the 51st state and then the new y New York Post came up with an article like absolutely not we don’t want Canada some of the points where you know our lack of our we have very low GDP we’re our GDP per capita is about 70% of an American so we we we earn our revenues per do per Canadian much lower 30% less than an American um and what was it uh if Canada
(1:51:38) became a state it would be the fourth poorest state in the of the 51st 51 states below Alabama now factor in that so we’d be the fourth lowest yet our average home price in Canada is just under 700,000 Canadian Alabama’s average home price is 225,000 American it’s wild but if that were to happen hypothetically I don’t think in a hypothetical we become the 51st state do we get richer or do we get poorer those with hard assets will win it’s always the way they’ll you will if you with hard assets will definitely outperform
(1:52:20) outperform those without so this be devastating for yeah you know I uh you know we’re we’re a branch plan economy in the end economically we we’re so tied to the US in in a lot of ways we are kind of another state even though we’re not obviously we’ve we’ve struggled with our own identity as a Canadian whatever culturally you know our Reliance on on on immigration while good is is often uh been challenged by a lot of people our country especially at the top I think Canada is you know in need of an identity and to uh you know
(1:53:01) uh we always often look to our Southern neighbors for uh monetary whatever or Identity or uh or cultural interests you know what I mean all this stuff tends to bleed into us in un unusual ways we send all our comedians to them so we you know I um I don’t I think this would be in a way you could make the case that this is often just a symbolic thing he trolling because it is a trolling move because it’s mostly symbolic as a North American environment we’re so directly intertwined with 1 Point whatever billion trillion dollars of goods that
(1:53:40) go back and forth that we our our supply chains are like one big entity in in the end anyway we’re very much like one other states if you look at the amount of trade that’s done yeah exactly I’m I I’m I’m a Nexus card holder I can walk across the border like it’s like it feels illegal yeah you know what I mean largest undefended border in the world yeah exactly so you know this this environment is uh we kind of you know uh we’re we’re we’re we’re missing the real point of how you know our sovereignty sort of uh rears its head how do we how
(1:54:12) do we culturally uh abide by our own uh set of rules and how do we find our own identity within this environment where we’re overpowered by the Captain Americas of the world you know what I mean there’s no Captain Canada that is you know overtaking the US right so well there’s a captain conu I think but anyway you’re right at the end of the day I think we’re you know these are these are distractions from our real questions of you know sovereignty cultural identity identity in the end what what do we do about Media news
(1:54:42) interest what what stories are we telling ourselves what are what are we as a country what do we want to be as a country those are the real questions the the the fake questions are these you know uh pictures of you know Trump in front of a a Switzerland he’s got a picture of him on a mountain next to the Canadian flag with the freaking mountain is in Switzerland what’s he looking at not Canadian so this is often I think uh where where we’re at in the world in our sort of discourse where we’re often distracted by you know uh distracted by
(1:55:21) shiny yeah squirrly things but agree it it keeps us from our our real our real questions which are are you know fundamental like if if PF comes in and and defunds or uh disbands the CBC we have a lot of sort of cultural uh questions to have to answer yeah I’m gonna watch my hockey net in Canada well of course that’s already been bled bled into sports net and it’s starting to look like uh whatever you know you think that they’re just on the precipice of charging people no longer making accessible even on Saturdays but you
(1:55:55) know we have some very serious cultural implications that might come from losing CBC but then is it a state-run operation or is it not you know these are Big questions right so uh my hope for the future of this stuff is just so we we have those those kind of conversations unless the you know uh all the people are saying that we’re going to take over Canada at end of the day I think we all need to uh rely on ourselves to build our wealth and take care of our families absolutely of course that should always be Priority One over what what Trump is
(1:56:30) saying yeah you know it’s important to trust yourself because you know you know what’s right for you and your family and don’t let other people tell you what uh uh what’s right for for you what’s the right amount of free speech what’s the right amount of phone time you know a lot of the conversations about whether kids should have a phone until you know whatever age you know a lot of these questions are very person for for you I think the Americans going to ban Tik Tok soon so we don’t have that choice it’s it’s likely it’s going
(1:57:00) to happen but uh you know I I tend to think these things will always backfire so people will want it more and they will get it more and they’ll side load Tik Tok left and right and it will be even worse for people but one never knows right Kevin thank you again for doing this well thank you irin I appreciate you having me taking the time and uh it’s been great thank you so much solo.
(1:57:41) por show for Canadians hope you got as much out of this one as I did remember that whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor there’s always something new to learn and it’s always about building that practical knowledge base that gets you closer to Financial Freedom if you found today please do us a favor and leave us a review or a rating share this episode with a friend or better yet join our community of Real Estate Investors who are taking action and making moves and hey if there’s a topic you want us to cover or have uh there’s a certain guest
(1:58:05) you’d like us to have on the show drop me a line my DMs are open on social media reply to this email that this have arrived on I’m not hard to find uh you know we’re all about getting you the unfiltered truth to help you on your journey thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode until then stay smart SM stay curious and keep building that future catch you later

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** Transcript Auto-Generated**

Transcript:
(00:00) greetings from Phoenix Arizona uh where the opportunity sadly uh will be improved as with the unfortunate wildfires in LA and that’s not the reason I’m here I was actually here for other reasons for a workshop and Retreat and also obviously look at real estate um and the opportunity is likely great in uh the Arizona and Phoenix area anyways uh this show show this show this week’s show is titled ont rental market update with rent Panda and R rent panda is going to be sharing the owner be sharing what he is investing in himself
(00:37) where to advertise rental properties and where to look for tenants which markets are expected to outperform in Ontario for specifically tenant demand all this and more on this week’s truth about real estate investing show for Canadians since 2016 that’s right this show while not impressive in Flash is one of the the two longest running podcasts on real estate investing in Canada many shows podcasts have gone away many just just started almost no one else out there has over 300 300 hours of podcast content but uh even still this Market is forever
(01:07) changing my own investment strategy has changed based on what the market is telling me hence we all need to be up to date hence we have the founder owner of rent Panda my good friend Hart togman back on the show R Panda now manages properties all across Ontario and times uh and time the timing is uh special uh vacancies across Ontario are rising credit ratings among tenant applicants are declining inflation’s High landlord tenant board is at worse relationships between tenants themselves and tenant and staff Property Management staff is
(01:39) uh it’s all declining uh what better time to expand one property property one’s Property Management business part is obviously a good guy and he details for us his preferred investment strategy student rentals as well as which uh which which is actually a great Segway into me reading for you a chapter I just wrote and for my upcoming book the chapter is the best deal our client ever invested in it’s not what you expect it’s not one I would have ever anticipated either because I would have bought all of them the year was 2019 2013 non-conforming
(02:12) multif Family Properties were being cracked down upon in cities everywhere especially in Hamilton for a good reason tenants were getting hurt many were even unfortunately getting really hurt in fires due to lack lack or poorly maintained Fire Safety Systems uh if you’ve everone owned a property needing a window in a basement room where there previously was none or had to replace a fire escape you know the cost can be very significant uh fire escapes range between 30 to $70,000 for just just a three-story triflex University and
(02:43) colleges were growing in student population and needing more off campus hosing from private lion Lords uh student rentals uh in my experience are a best practice assessment for small landlords as the building and fire code requirements are significantly lower than that of a duplex we only have one kitchen so we don’t have the same fire risk and fire separation requirements as you would in a two or three or four family home now about the investment my property property manager and good friend Roger gave me a tip about a large
(03:11) home builder host Builder near Brock University in St Catherine’s who had new construction houses suitable for student rentals this was a high quality Builder they had won numerous awards for the nager region uh who had built now this is different this is Naga region back in 2020 2013 so the market wasn’t crazy hot uh they were actually build houses as they were sold as in they didn’t just sell it the whole plan it’s more like you know Mom and Pop would go buy a house and then they’d start building it one by one really different than the the
(03:43) world we see today and you one only needed a 5,000 total deposit 2500 upon signing another 2500 within within about a month this is over 12 years ago so so my my memories AR aren’t perfect now these were four bedroom uh four bedroom houses uh 1900 and 1700 foot semi- detached or town houses respectively uh but because we were PL buying off a plan uh working with a quality Builder who had capacity to do um custom work for us uh I was able to design the house to be an ideal safe city building and fire C compliant
(04:22) property for uh as many bedrooms as I wanted uh so I met with the vild designer and made the following changes to their plan he Shrunk The the principal bedroom formerly known as the basor bedroom to allocate more space for smaller for towards the smaller bedrooms to make them more equal in size converted the the dining room into a bedroom that I can now rent for 6,000 per year uh remove closet doors remove closet doors saving thousands of dollars these often get uh closet doors often get removed or damaged by students so
(04:55) why bother providing them and nobody complained not one finish the basement to include a three-piece bathroom that means a standup shower sink and toilet of course uh also in the basement would be two bedrooms each with an egress window which is an oversized window to allow some more sunlight and uh at the time the requirement was 4.
(05:21) 1 square feet in size which can be opened without tools for a person to climb out in case of fire uh all the walls and ceilings were insulated with fire rated sound insulation and drywall uh again these were all fire rated products we were basically following the Ontario building code as if the property was a multif family property ruins for the basement kitchen were installed uh at the time basement kitchens weren’t allowed nor will we be planning on on providing them uh to um so to limit fire risk uh but so we only did the ruins and so should the
(05:51) bylaws ever change or should our clients ever want to Suite the basement it would be extremely easy to do so uh no carpet we replaced all the pl all the carpet and the plans with uh car with vinyl plank as it is waterproof and Incredibly durable vinyl plank is basically the best practice of pretty much every real estate investor I know out there uh because it is so durable waterproof uh if there’s ever flood you can really generally just mop it up and it’s a much cheaper fromall it’s usually like half the price of a laminate and again way
(06:24) more durable than than carpet um yeah it’s just so many winds and and it’s way faster to install less tools are needed to to install vinyl plank or I old school because when vinyl plank came out it was called vinyl plank later it was called luxury vinyl plank so the acronym is lvp which I absolutely refuse to use anyways my requested change is added around 40,000 to the per to the price of the house which is a fraction of what it would cost us to have contractors renovate uh and existing house and so that would also have taken longer and we
(07:04) could have been at risk of having to get permits and of course there’s always delays in any sort of renovation project um the best now the best part here why this investment be uh became the best for that our clients have ever done was uh they can now include the cost of all these upgrades these $40,000 upgrades into the mortgage as the host would apprais for for all the work that we getting done and then and then in turn they can invest the minimum 20% down payment plus closing costs so by minimizing the investment dollars the
(07:33) return on investment ballooned as and also on the because because the investment property that costs 315 to buy $315,000 to buy these are we were renting them for $ 3,150 uh inclusive per month inclusive of utilities so that makes the gross rent yield to of uh annual rent to price at about 12% which is something you don’t see in Canada anymore so needless to say many of our clients bought these properties and of course they’re ecstatic for the returns uh the M now it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows management of student rentals
(08:10) is not the easiest for people who want to self-manage or even from property managers uh it was a rocky ride for many some didn’t make it didn’t sold earlier than ideal um but from the few who got lucky Who had who happened to u to hire what turned out to be the best property management company in town uh Shad out to Adrian kulakowski and student rentals 101 now fast forward to 2023 when our client decided to sell one of these properties uh he sold a townhouse while the market was still pretty hot in 2023 they sold the town house for
(08:45) $84,000 in multiple offers to a mom that was desperate for a house for her kid for her kid going to Brock University now on price appreciation alone the return on investment was over 400% that 10 years over a 10 year period 400% return not factoring in uh mortgage mortgage payment the pay down of the principal of the mortgage over those 10 years and cash flow now Winterberry is the name of the street back in 2012 when we first found the area it was just the road line with empty dirt Lots on both sides of the road uh fast forward to today
(09:22) Winterberry is known as the top destination for student housing for Brock students uh it’s basically a household name for Brock University students the B the bus service drastically improved which I helped as I personally lobbied St Catherine’s transit to reroute its bus service and have pickups where our our client’s properties were located uh and what we found out was the students do appreciate the newer more modern housing style bigger bedrooms bigger house stainless Ste appliances stone countertops in the
(09:55) kitchen and bathrooms uh versus the majority of the houses in St Catherine that are rented to students were built in the 1950s they’re smaller not renovated and a lot of them do not have basic Fire Safety Systems maybe just smoke alarms but none of the none of the egress windows that we have and also fire and sound separation we had in the walls and ceilings so and then that all this translated into a big difference uh as we are my clients were able to charge a premium rent premium rents have equated to above Market values for our
(10:26) clients rental properties um because inv investors indeed value cash flow uh my clients town houses and semis actually sell more than bigger houses in the same area built by the same Builder because the incs justify those prices now these are uh these are the rewards of highest and best use investing and with a little luck um we got a lot of luck uh sadly my wife and I didn’t buy any of these as we were focused on basement apartment seding strategy uh yeah I’ve always admitted I’m not we’re not perfect university student
(11:02) rentals in general is the preferred investment strategy for the small investor since students uh student non-payment of rent is very very rare in our experience hence one avoids the risk of ending up with the landlord tenant board which overwhelmingly favors the tenants uh We’ve also been lucky with all the price and rent appreciation uh regular turnover tenants as they graduate school and leave to return home uh as TS move turnover it allows us to raise price rents to Market market and that’s just beneficial to the investor
(11:32) which is not less common in regular rentals uh Rich parents signing as guarantors helps us out as well but again it’s not always Sunshine rainbows declared student rental uh Aid lender financing is basically non-existent student rentals with A- lender mortgages at A- lender rates were either not student rentals at the time the bank appraised the property or the appraiser did not for some unforeseen reason did not notice the host with six six or seven bedrooms was near a university or college for some reason they didn’t
(12:03) think that property would be used as a student rental uh my last mortgage on a student rental was 10% from a be lender maximum 65 loan to value uh and that 65 loan to value perc loan value was based on the original value that I purchased for the home they would not recognize recent appraisals uh during re during the refinance process to allow me to take back more My Equity point is from a financing perspect effective student rentals are not scalable in my experience uh investors have to be prepared to have their Capital tied up
(12:35) until they sell why because student rentals are not a recognized use by most zoning bylaws hence Banks don’t want to uh lend on them the way that we’ want them to then there is rental licensing uh which can be another couple hundred dollars per year in Cost Plus a couple thousand UPF front between licensing fees and renovation requirements to get into compliance and that is the truth about real estate Investing For for Canadians and student rentals in my experience now if you’d like to learn more about uh other best practices in
(13:07) real estate investing uh we do have two webinars coming up uh one is on September 8 sorry January 18th uh where we will be hosting a virtual tour of properties my clients and I have purchased in the states they’ll actually be hybrid so we’ll have some seats available in person and online as well also on January 25th we will be uh teaching the best practices on how to sell a tenanted property our Focus will be on Ontario as that is our experience uh but I’m sure our um our lessons and experience can be translated to places
(13:41) like a BC and Quebec where the laws favor the tenant uh but again this is a bit of a specialty of ours uh because honestly not many real estate professionals are landlords let alone have as much experience as we do in owning as many properties as we do with tenants and and um yeah it’s kind of the sad thing about real estate investing in Ontario that the best practice uh for uh selling a rental property is to sell it without a tenant and to get it without a tenant it’s uh there’s some there’s some hoops to jump through and
(14:16) again we are specialists in this area January Saturday January 25th we will be hosting a free webinar on the subject and uh hope to see you there now on to this week’s guest again Hart is a friend I refer him clients all the time for tenant location services this may sound like a paid endorsement and full disclosure heart pays me nothing we receive zero compensation for me having heart on this show and me sending him referrals it’s too bad we’re selling the rest of our Ontario our rest of our Ontario portfolio in the near future as
(14:48) I could have asked him for some favors but no nothing we get nothing which I don’t mind uh as my judgment is not clouded uh we get along well because we’re both on a mission to help Canadians get ahead in life without taking away too much time from their lives and families by streamlining their Investments that we we help we both in different ways help them sleep at night and we both volunteer for nonprofits that support landlords Hearts company rent panda is an expert on rentals providing both property management and
(15:12) tenant location services while also using the same tools that we recommend on the show like single key and front lobby any Ontario landlord not using these companies is exposing them to exposing themselves to unnecessary risks again Hart is a professional and he uses these as well uh the risks that I mentioned they’re uh these risks don’t honestly exist in landlord friendly USA but I agress you can find Ren Panda along with a bunch of free online resources that every landlord Ontario landlord needs at rent panda.com
(15:45) [Music] top I’ve got a one and a half-year-old at home I got a new baby on the way in March I don’t think I do that so yeah no I think I do that I don’t remember that none of that doesn’t matter okay you don’t have to remember everything thank you thank you yeah so we’re gonna have two under two so that’ll keep me busy um on a journey of self-development we didn’t talk about this beforehand off camera but um I’m in a new mindset of personal development is business development which has been awesome um so that’s been about a year in the making
(16:30) and uh yeah then running rent panda on the day-to-day day so all of our rental services from software Leasing Property Management paralal Services running teams figuring out new systems dealing with the Canadian real estate market and uh yeah trying to just make the world a little bit better than the day before that sounds like a good good day-to-day overview do a lot of hard yeah let’s start with the self-development hard like what kind of hard you mentioned ice cold plunges before we were recording yeah I mean this like a
(17:05) cold shower actually like this is ice buckets um so not on the day-to-day but uh we’ve got a family Cottage up in Moka so I like the winter time best because I can drill a hole in the ice and properly get in the lake um we were up there last weekend and so sauna to cold Plunge in you know November water temperature is a lot of fun and I like seeing other people fun for you yeah it’s fun for me and when I go with other people it’s fun seeing them suffer for the first time cuz I enjoy it now so you got to push to
(17:35) the next level um but I think ultimately you know probably almost 15 years ago now I got into the world of mountain climbing uh my brother who I only realized today has has seeded all of the ideas that got me into all this crazy that I do on the dayto day but my brother came up to me I was you know 20 years old 22 maybe and he was like hey let’s go climb and kill Manjaro and I didn’t know what kilan jaro was and I was like sure you know older brother asked the younger brother to do something I’m game of course I would do
(18:04) that right and uh we ended up getting intestinal parasites that they thought was altitude sickness did a 16-hour trick through the night to get off the mountain and we were sick and vomiting on the side of the trail and my brother looked at me and was like I am never doing this again and I got hooked into mountain climbing like I just absolutely loved the experience and the camaraderie The Challenge and your face says it all it’s essentially extended suffering um so since then almost every year I’ve done a mountain climb um I run a charity
(18:37) called Summit for sick kids which is raising money to uh fund the oncology department and cancer genetics research by climbing mountains um but essentially you know extended suffering is is part of my life and I think uh ultimately true growth happens in that area of suffering and the discomfort and I think Society these days is very much positioned to make things as comfortable as possible you know people are looking for better faster easier more comfortable less work order it from your phone order it from the computer and I
(19:11) very much believe in getting your hands dirty Doing Hard and suffering to grow you know it’s not masochism but you know s a good amount of suffering really pushes you out of your comfort zone and makes you uh Excel as a human how old are you again remind me 37 37 yeah so good did you say you climb a mountain every year then trably to yeah anything local or you always traveling no I mean we’re we’re in flat country here um Rattlesnake Point looks challenging yeah yeah rattles snake point is like you know I want to throw my kid on my back
(19:47) and go hiking Rattlesnake Point with the family oh I mean go vertical don’t go walking fair enough there is good climbing at rattlesnake um so the last one as an example was Wyoming which is relatively accessible from here uh um or Denver is some good mountaineering but we flew out there and then did five days in the back country through Wyoming um and the Tetons are like absolutely beautiful you understand like you fly in and people call it God’s country because it’s just flat planes where you can imagine like millions of Bison used to
(20:17) roam back in the day and then it just kicks up into these beautiful snow cap Peaks um so yeah we did some climbing there for 5 days uh the last big big climb that we did um we did one in in Ecuador we did um akaga down in Argentina we did five mountains in 5 days as a challenge in the col or not Colorado the um Canadian Rockies so that was just like out of out of B go out and for five days straight just climb one mountain every day uh but you you get a sense of um purpose when you’re in the mountains and especially with those that
(20:51) you’re with you know no one makes best friends for life or like true deep connections sitting at the spa or going for a walk or sharing a dinner you know you share a tent with someone and you climb for 5 days and you battle the elements and you suffer together and you kind of rely on each other to survive it creates really deep connection so I think it’s just this level of life that I really enjoy sucking in as much as possible you talk about like modern day we trying to make things easier yes like in my business I always tried to make
(21:24) real estate investing as easy as possible for my clients yeah and it’s never been harder in Ontario hence I’ve Tapped Out y you mentioned some good places to invest in the states no interest too easy not necessarily too easy on that front I do think there is an element especially for new investors that are are starting out you have to be conscious that there is a journey right and not to just bring it back to mountaineering which is cliche when you talk about mountains but since I’m actually climbing mountains maybe I’ll
(21:58) use it but you know when I climbed Kodi I had a different mentality I was a young Mountaineer it was all about getting to the top I got to the top and I have a picture I wish I brought it in or have it on my phone but I’m I’m it’s not on your Instagram no nothing uh maybe it’s on Instagram but I think it was pre- Instagram days but it was me and my climbing buddy Adam and you know he’s my my co-founder of the charity were kneeling at the top with our sponsor flag and if you zoom in close on me my lips are blue my eyes are glazed
(22:28) over I have no memory of that moment absolutely zero I remember climbing up we started at midnight but by the time we got halfway up my memory was gone I was hypoxic it was freezing I wasn’t doing well and we were on a rope team right so it was the guide me and Adam roped together so if one of us Falls the other two are going to save that person um and on the way down I remember sitting down in the snow and feeling warm and fuzzy and having this thought come over me as like oh this is how people die on mountains right like your
(23:00) brain convinces you like this is warm this is comfortable your brain actually convinces you you’re warm and like don’t get up and that’s it and you literally hear stories of like near-death experiences on Everest that’s how people die and your brain is wired to make you seek Comfort um but nowadays when I’m out engineering and and my point is you know I got to the top and don’t even remember it and so if you’re doing something for that Pinnacle moment you know people climb Everest they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a years
(23:29) training months on the mountain for five minutes at the top so if your whole goal is to be at the top in life in anything it’s a fleeting moment right because you get to the top and you realize you’re on a false Summit there’s actually another one behind you or you turn around from the top and you die on the way down or you suffer on the way down and I think real estate investing is is the same you know a lot of people see successful Real Estate Investors they see people with time freedom and freedom in life and
(23:59) they just want to get to that point and they suffer really badly and not the kind of suffering that I like but they suffer really badly throughout the journey every time a tenant calls they haven’t even picked up the phone and they’re sweating or they hire a property manager and every time their property manager calls they get emotional and angry that they have to landlord essentially and I think when they’re on that Journey they they forget about enjoying the journey and like what is the pur purpose of life if not to live
(24:25) every day and try and enjoy it and life is there to beat us down right and so if you can’t find a way to enjoy the journey you shouldn’t be doing it and there’s lots of other ways to make money and yeah us investing is a much more painless way to invest these days and if you think about yourself as a real estate investor you know you were Mr Hamilton right you were a real estate investor that was like I know this Market I’m in this market I’m G to make money in this market I’m going to show others how to make money in this market
(24:56) and others and as a real estate investor in person you tapped out like you said right you went this is enough this is the level of suffering that I’m willing to take and you pivoted into something that was comfortable for you and I’m sure there’s still some suffering involved and there’s still work to be put in um but you’re on a journey where you can enjoy that journey and I think so many investors are just reaching for the top and they’re on a journey that they’re really going to hate and they’re going to tap out without having seen the
(25:28) top or or seen a glimpse of the top um and that’s where I think people get into it without asking themselves what type of investor they are right and I know right now in my life I’m a student rental investor right I want cash flow with properties that I don’t care about the appreciation on I know they’re going to be a bit more painful right there’s that part of me coming out there’s going to be more calls you got to parent you know the students sometimes but it’s good cash flow and it’s setting me up for the next stage of my real estate
(25:55) investing career which may be a us property which may be more passive investment which may be private lending like you can pivot throughout but when you’re on that Journey you should try and enjoy every step of the way versus just aspiring for the top it was enjoyable for a large part of it yeah like a good I think I have about four dozen clients who have made a million or more in real estate investing y wouldn’t have been possible without Hamilton and St Catherine’s and AWC and all that yeah but uh yeah you we we we were joking
(26:26) before you were recording that I I called you a sis I believe fa cuz uh Ren Panda uh you yeah you refresh my memory because when I first met you you were already offering leasing services on top of promoting uh lease properties available for lease on rent Panda yes yeah okay so take us take us to why why did you start the business yeah it’s a good question so to my brother walking in the room and saying come climb kill Manjaro I only realized this literally today that um I was sitting in my office working in advertising at the time I’d
(27:04) been in advertising for a decade or so um and I came up in advertising doing the the standard things so I I worked for agency side doing client management and account management and i’ been working at Big Brands you know worked on General Motors Tropicana Del Monte um worked that life and then said you know I’m really sick of pushing capitalist product that people don’t need um had a little existential crisis and came back and and decided you know I had dabbled in the world of nonprofit but I realized that there was a world of advertising
(27:40) for nonprofits that was really awesome I could still do advertising and Leverage What I knew but help causes um and so I was in that world doing advertising for causes sitting in my office and my brother called me up and said hey I’m in thunderbay he had moved to thunderbay he was doing his PhD or finishing it up at UBC and moved up to thunderbay and had a really terrible renting experience where I may have mentioned this story to you but there was a website called homeseed homes and that website in 2016 was still
(28:12) based on the premise of you go on the website and see um rental listings and very very cursory rental listings you would each transfer the owner of that website $20 and then they would send you a Word document with a description of all the properties and the phone number of the landlord to call and that was the way that people rented properties on like the majority in thunderbay in 2016 so like it sounds like 2001 right it sounds like 1995 a Word document yeah a word doc for $20 on the tenant side this is not even
(28:45) just landlords paying for them to be featured but the tenants had to pay 20 bucks for a Word document of listings and so my brother called me up and my rental experience in Toronto was vi at.ca vi at.ca in 2016 the Pinnacle and that was that was it right but it was are they still around do people even talk they are still around are they still as no they’re not the same they’re not the same so they they did a few updates but they’re essentially just a little bit of a bygone rental marketplace right um just correct me
(29:17) from wrong but from my memory uh vi. was dominant for commercial apartment yes like almost every apartment building owner the reats were basically all using all their listings were Ona most small landlords as well so this was pre Facebook Kijiji was a little bit but there was essentially view.ca and Craigslist and so that’s how most people found it and view.
(29:42) ca was expensive for landlords to post on um but if if you drove they’re dominant in this if you drove around Toronto you probably can visualize their like blue and white view at.ca signs um and they were the dominant player and so in 2016 Thunder Bay was pay 20 bucks and get a Word document and Toronto was this website that PDF no no yeah we can’t be bothered to save it as a PDF no um and in Toronto view.
(30:09) ca I think at the time had last been updated in like 2011 like it said you know on the bottom of the website last updated in 2011 so it’s essentially an archaic website that was running the majority of the rental Marketplace so my brother was like what is life like in Toronto what is life like in Thunder Bay and we had that you know cliche moment of there’s got to be a better way so at the time you know Tech is hot let’s build a prop Tech can’t be that hard and let’s build a better Marketplace so we built a standard Marketplace and we went out and
(30:42) stole airbnb’s Playbook when they were in their early days of getting in the door of every single landlord right they couch surfed their early airbnbs to talk to those hosts and understand you know the mentality of the host and so what we did was any one that listed on the website it was completely free we offered free photography so we taught ourselves basic crappy real estate photography bought ourselves a $500 camera and went out to every single landlord who listed on the website for free and took photos and what that did
(31:15) was not only did it give us us give us a sales platform to push them through to added value tools on the website but it helped us have conversations with landlords and understand what they were looking for and so at the time what they were looking for was being fed by us and and we asked a lot of leading questions unknowingly and they wanted more tools so we built a showing schedule or we built a screening tool we built you know background checks credit checks we built a profile for tenants you know just like
(31:42) on Airbnb where we thought down the line this is going to be a rating system um we built a lease Builder we had enform Builders and we just kept adding software to the platform thinking that if you build it they will come right and as we expanded if you add more tools we will get more people and we pushed and pushed and pushed and every time we didn’t hit the metrics of how many people we wanted on the platform which in our minds was prop Tech so it’s got to be a hockey stick or else you failed um and we we weren’t hitting those
(32:11) hockey stick curve numbers so we just thought we had to add more and we had to add more and we had to add more and I read a book and I I forget the name now but it was something along the lines of like lean customer development or customer development and it was about talking to the customer essentially and we realized that we had spent hundreds of thousands building what we thought people wanted as opposed to actually going back to those original routs and talking to people and this was a couple years span so we kind of stopped
(32:38) everything and my brother and I said our prime directive is have conversations so we had probably over a thousand one-on-one half hour coffees with all of these landlords that were on in Thunder Bay in Thunder Bay we were in gu at that point Kitchener waterl anyone who was a landlord we just tried to talk to and had one-on-one convers ations and we built this standard list of questions that we asked but what I learned from the book was the magic question at the end was you know we’ve walked you through these various things that you
(33:08) may or may not want but you know what is your problem and and they all identifi their problem as a fear of unpaid rent and tenant cause damage which is every landlord right but ultimately we said if you could wave a magic wand and come up with a solution that solved that problem what would it be and in our heads they were going to say an AI based tool that would post my property and Screen my tenants and you know give me recommendations so I can just say thumbs up right and we were thinking Tech and they looked Us in the eye and they said
(33:39) find my tenants and manage my properties right and we had this aivy moment where we’re like holy we are building product and they want service right in this realization that real estate is a people business and they just wanted technology the answer it’s the human right yeah and so Tech can make it better and faster and easier and cheaper But ultimately they just wanted to hand it off to someone and so we we did a fundamental pivot of the business and just said we are no longer a prop Tech we are Tech enabled real estate right we
(34:09) will use the technology but we will have the people on the ground to empower Leasing and property management at a quality and scale that isn’t there right now and that’s been the journey that we’ve been on for three and a half four years now see you’re part of the problem making things easy yeah people get their evenings and weekends back while you go work yep for sure for sure making society’s soft heart yeah our clients may may uh disagree but I think every everyone wants to be an investor right and doesn’t want to be a
(34:43) landlord and so I think property managers are essentially just hiring out the landlording of investing um and so if we can do that I think that there is a true way to do it that is both in partnership with investors um so I really hate when investors come to us and say I don’t know anything about landlording just do it for me right we we try and teach people how to property manage so then they can hire property managers I don’t think anyone should hire a property manager without knowing intricately what that property manager
(35:14) does you don’t have to necessarily do it yourself but you should know um but you know it’s it’s very hard to manage a client that doesn’t know what we do that doesn’t know what landlording is that doesn’t know basic RTA um so for us we’re actually designing like a landlord 101 course all of 2025 is about content development for landlord education even bite-sized because if everyone that comes through us or otherwise every other property management company every other landlord can just get a little bit more knowledge than they have right now
(35:46) I think the entire industry would be much better everyone would be more comfortable not in a bad way but um it would help and and we’re dealing with a difficult rental market and like you you alluded to beforehand we are in a rental market right now where I before we get there yeah let’s talk about let’s talk about what uh about teaching uh investors like the basics of landling or like RT residential tennessy act yes what don’t people know I me everything unfortunately um it’s my house why can’t you just kick
(36:16) them out that one yeah um what is the Ontario standard lease um is my property rent controlled like it’s it’s surprising and sad to me the amount of condo investors who’ve invested in a condo and in my head the only reason to invest in a new build condo like yes there was some good returns over the last few years but the only reason to invest in that as opposed to a single family home you have no control in a condo right you lose all control the only reason is because all of the new build condos are non-rent controlled
(36:48) right and in a city like Toronto there will likely be consistent demand for condos in the long term right now we’re going through a tough time um but the amount of condo investors that come to me and I ask if they’re rent controlled or not or our entire team and they’re like What’s rent control is it’s dumbfounding like excuse me really what excuse me yeah and people say hey should I that makes sense that’s the person who bought yeah yeah versus like I’m used to talking to very educated people like EO members for example and and like they
(37:19) express no interest in being a landlord because they understand RTA y the challenge of evicting a tenant you you don’t have control if you have aant B yeah and and I think that there’s there are more nuanced things that are standard for those who have been in it for a while but you know basic maintenance right I’ve seen so many leases which says you know the first $500 of damage the tenant has to pay for seriously yeah where do this lease come from they they come so one thing that I’m finding as things get harder is
(37:52) more um you know experts come to the Forefront yeah and a lot of people and like Facebook forums are terrible Facebook groups but you know someone poses a question right hey my tenant clogged the toilet who has to pay for that or or who has to fix it right not necessarily who has to pay for it but who has to fix it and I literally was in the parking lot of of your office before I came in and I read this forum and half of the answers were the tenant right and people will just say you know whose obligation is it to fix it well it’s the
(38:22) tenants well no it’s the landlords right the landlord has an obligation to repair and M main the property M if there is negligence that cause that damage the landlord has the right to go after the tenant for the damage but right but for the RTA it is the landlord’s obligation right and people say oh what about changing light bulbs it is it is one line in the RTA right repair and maintenance obligations are on the landlord and so all of this misinformation from people that think they know the right answer or will just
(38:54) jump at an answer to say oh you know my tenant flushed a TV down the toilet whose responsibility is it well yeah the landlord can likely go after the tenant for negligence but the answer is not that it’s the tenant’s responsibility all of the onus falls on the landlord so there’s this massive world of misinformation and we’ve just gone through an election it’s not you know Russia getting involved with misinformation it’s just people that think they know the answer that are propagating incorrect answers so i’ I’ve
(39:20) actually started a property management support group on Facebook and so this is acknowledging that like I’m in competition with other property managers I want to build a network and community of property managers who can all lean on each other and be voices of reason because when you go to these Facebook groups all of the top contributors with correct answers end up being paralegals property managers people who are you know highly seasoned investors who are trying to push positive information but are usually overshadowed by just masses
(39:51) of gray area information and incorrect so yeah I think investors these days were in a perfect storm where money was cheap people ended up investing right and so there’s way too many small landlords that got into it without knowing what they were getting into and now in this market there’s a lot of people who wanted to sell a property who think well I’m not going to get what I want from the sell from the sale let me just rent it out right and and those two groups end up being landlords without actively pursuing landlording which
(40:23) involves educating yourself on how to be a landlord and joining groups and talking to people and surrounding yourself by with with friends who are investors so that you can actually ask someone who knows what they’re talking about and we just see that all on Facebook and Reddit and the masses of crap information that’s joys of social media yeah had a joh argue with me about how Canada is great for investing and the he just he’s just he’s just spting off uh economic rhetoric right and again he’s not even fully
(40:55) versed because you know for example NE Bruns just voted liberal conservative government six balanced budgets eh no we don’t want you anymore you’re You’re gone placed for the liberal government and uh so they’re going to have rent control starting next year 3% um and so you know it’s it’s all there textbooks have it all there what happens rank control yeah right yeah and fixed term leases I mean it’s like you talk to the people in the note and there’s a few key things that have caused this situation that we’re in
(41:28) right now right fix term leases rent control just basic things that if you look at other balanced markets they don’t have them right if you if you play with an open economy things balance but yeah anyways and the politicians know because there’s no way they don’t know it’s just they do it for a short-term voteing anyways gross yeah I dig gross so how is how is the rental market going so first off how many markets do you cover uh so Tech technically all of Ontario yeah um I would say very you have you have your so you have your like
(42:03) hands in the pies of all these different markets within Ontario so you know you have a good feeling of yeah and how we’ve built the business is that we have Regional centers um and we’re transparent about our operations so on the property management side we have no humans in offices in any specific region we have teams actually across the globe so that we can be 247 with our team um everyone works from home and property manager just property manag we’re not Leasing and property managing in that way we can cover
(42:36) Property Management within every region in Ontario and you know hopefully soon to be National and maybe International um but what is needed on the ground is leasing operations and the trades uh so on the trade side we have a network of Trades and we’ve actually just partnered with bid me which is a contractor bidding platform um so that if you’ve got a leaky tap and I’m managing your property we send out that work order through bid me and we have a network of 5,000 contractors who bid on the job so we get better pricing faster response
(43:06) times and in that way they cover Ontario we cover Ontario and the two companies are aligned um so we can offer better service in that way and then on the leasing side we’ve hired key individuals within Regional centers so as an example we cover the the near North right let’s call it like Barry right but we also cover ailia and Midland and all the way out to Owen Sound if you’ve got a property in tobore we can probably get there but we may say Hey listen you know it’s not going to be the quality of service so we’ll recommend you to a
(43:38) local tobore property manager the goal is that we will cover absolutely every area but I would say 95% of where people are investing were covered with key people in a region and each person can cover you know 15 200 km radius yeah so from thunderbay in the north down to Niagara in the South and winds in the west all the way out to Ottawa in the East fabulous yeah so that’s why asking questions like of like how’s the market to to you versus someone like oh I have 10 properties in Ajax yeah and they’ll it’s even better when they say they know
(44:09) everything right let me tell you how it is out in Windsor so how is the rental market so where you want to start well I think you brought up a good point of um how is the rental market is a bad question to ask not saying you asked a bad question but it’s a great segue into the rental market is a market that is harder to make money in than it used to be right and that’s why you’re wearing the hat that you’re wearing but looking at even just the Ontario rental market versus the Canada Canadian rental market um it’s a very hard Market to
(44:47) participate in um you know money has gotten more expensive it’s getting cheaper again um but you know less properties are cash flowing properties aren’t appreciating like they used to be and and a lot are depreciating so as an investor it’s harder but also when it comes to the fundamentals of renting out a property and managing that property there are less quality tenants than ever before um so we rent we we work with single key and run all of our rental reports through them and and have partnered together we ran a report on
(45:17) the quality of tenant which is very qualitative in its explanation but it can be put down to qual quantitative metrics right so average credit scores have dropped cons consistently over the last two years um the number of collections reported per set of applications has gone up so now we’re looking at 18% of all applications have collections in them and sorry what percentage 18% 18.
(45:44) like 4% I think was the last um and Bank these people have no hope of renting something like they can’t even get a credit card yeah so I mean we see a lot of like Capital One credit cards these days because Capital One will give anyone a credit card um and bankruptcies was astonishing so bankruptcies has doubled in the last year so the the numbers so they’re not they’re not going bankrupt but that they have it on yeah reported bankruptcies um at the same time income to rent ratios have shifted quite dramatically from the age- old you know 30% and under is a
(46:17) good amount right so usually you don’t want to spend more than 30% of your income on rent or on housing costs in general um the latest St and we actually pushed our our data data provider so we work with door insight as a data provider on the secondary rental market um right now if we look at the GTA household income not just personal income we’re up to 44 45% of household income is being spent on rent and that’s the average that’s just rent that’s not utilities just rent not insurance it’s an astronomical number
(46:54) when you also couple that with a market where everything is more expensive so we touched on this before we start yeah but you know there’s there’s an affordability crisis happening across the board so when you’re spending 45 and this is average again so when you’re spending 45% of your income on rent and then you add on utilities and insurance and you know your car expenses and your schooling expenses there’s not much to live on at the end of the day and so when you go to look at your housing situation if you’re at that 35% rate
(47:26) right now and you need a bigger house for your growing family and you’re in you know a rental mindset you’re not looking to buy you’re just looking to rent do you really want to move for a little bit more space or an extra bedroom that’s then going to push you into 45% or 50% of your household income and lose your rank control right so those that don’t have to move aren’t moving so what that happens is you know we’ve got all these people with Collections and bankruptcies and lower income nowhere to go nowhere
(47:53) to go and all of those who you know don’t have to to move aren’t moving so when you’re an investor with a property that you’ve bought you know when money was cheap and you’ve put a lot into it and you need a certain number to make your numbers work and you’ve pegged your rent number and you put it out in a market where there is now an over Supply because all of these investors flocked to these markets and now no one’s moving and the quality of tenants is low you’re in a situation where you’re screwed right and now finally you know it’s it’s
(48:24) not a good thing for investors but rents are dropping right and rents have been dropping for the last 9 months and whatever the CBC says is is incorrect CU you know they still say rents are going through the roof but rents are dropping and I think it’s a good thing because rents need to stabilize and they need to balance with that affordability crisis that’s happening because a lot of investors will talk about the housing crisis right they’ll say I’m building more housing because there’s a housing crisis I should be able to find tenants
(48:51) yes we can find you tenants but they will be on ODSP and they will be struggling to make ends and they will not be A+ tenants without a lot more work and a lot more effort and a lot more time so vacancy rates are you know true vacancy rates are probably four to 5% whereas cmhc reports you know 1.8 to 2% um the time on Market again the MLS will report time on Market is like 7 to 10 days well the MLS does not capture the rental market in reality in Welland right or in Kingston so time on Market our average right now is around 42 days
(49:25) right we’d love that to be well under a month but it’s just not because to get the right tenant takes more effort takes longer and as a business we are spending more on every single contract than we ever have in the past so it’s that’s more money on Advertising it’s more time and effort more trips out to a property means more gas and gas is more expensive than it used to be and so the cost of everything is going up which means as a business our margins are shrinking and at the same time you know it’s taking
(49:54) longer even with that extra effort so investors are more emotional right because I’m an investor myself sitting on vacancy sucks so when you are sitting on vacancy longer you naturally go hey leasing team property management team what the hell’s going on the whip do more exactly and so we spend more money and then it’s just this vicious cycle and and I think it’s part of the education that I wish was out there where you know like rentals.
(50:20) ca does a good job of producing a monthly rent report I wish that there was a you know communal rent report where everyone that has data got together and it was democratized data on the secondary rental market to say here’s what the actual data shows because when you look at cmhc numbers and you listen to Realtors who are selling investment properties and trying to push investment properties everything is still sunshines and rainbows but it’s just not the case and and um you know it’s part of that property manager support group because
(50:48) it’s harder as property managers and we want to get together and say hey not only do you have a shoulder to cry on when your clients are all you know barking at you left right in center but let’s work together to re-educate on what’s actually happening out there so that we can kind of temper things and hopefully balance the market a little bit yeah that’s mouthful it is I was literally looking at a pro forma from a friend for a um a multif family in pul cor because um he he has at least nice performance so I just wanted to look at
(51:18) the numbers and you know for vacancy they had 2% for cobor sound reasonable yeah yeah so the it does sound reasonable because um digging deeper into how the rental market is doing to I didn’t even finish my last point but um how the rental market is doing is the wrong question because how the rental market is doing within a city within even neighborhoods and within an asset class in those neighborhoods is really the right question to ask um so Port curn I would say is like a tertiary Market if not like a fourth tier Market
(51:54) um and they are doing really well so if you look at um not even just like Belleville but napan right like if you go outside of the tertiary markets there’s a lot of interest in those markets interesting more and more people are moving there there’s more businesses that are moving out there because everything is more expensive you know and so when you’re living and working in an urban center as an employer you’re looking at other opportunities right so those non-urban centers are starting to grow and so from a rental perspective there’s opportunity
(52:22) there um it’s you know we’re invested in tertiary markets we’re invested in student rentals there too uh but you know Peterborough was hot a couple of years ago now Peterborough is still stable but even if you go outside of Peterboro there’s some markets that are good um or if you look at you know Welland as an example wellend is kind of oversaturated if you drop down into like Fort sorry explain oversaturated like the builders built too many the investors built too many the investors built too many um from what we see at
(52:49) least so you know a lot of people money was cheap they dropped you know they heard about wellend it was cheap to buy up a property they converted a single family home the town was easy to work with exactly yeah so they they would the permits were easy to get yeah and and from like a typical real estate perspective if you look at the numbers the you know the um the days on Market has gone through the roof and also the months of of inventory is quite high it’s not usually a number that we look at in rentals but it was an
(53:17) interesting one that we started looking at a couple months ago because as you know the the inventory started to escalate and more and more people were investing there the men never caught up and so the number of new units on the market was let’s say 100 the number of units rented that month per month right the number of units rented was 48 that happens two months in a row three months in a row four months in a row all of a sudden you’ve got three or four months of inventory sitting there which means your time to lease starts going through
(53:46) the roof um so that’s a market like wellend right now it’s starting to bounce back thankfully so it’s it’s stabilizing but if you go out outside of Welland and you look at some of the smaller markets there they’re doing quite well and so 2% vacancy in Port Port curn in a multif family actually sounds reasonable to me um you know cities like Rockville or you know Cornwall they’re little cities that are kind of not gold Minds I don’t want to like push people out there but there are cities still with opportunity um and as
(54:18) like a a stable Ontario investor talking to someone who’s been telling me to get out of Ontario for a while um I still think that within an asset class and within certain markets there’s still an opportunity in Ontario um if you understand the tenant Dynamic right and it takes more work to do it so again maybe that’s the mest to me where I’m staying in Ontario for now you yeah you are yeah but there’s I think that there’s also something to diversification of a portfolio so I probably need to listen to more of your
(54:48) style of advice and diversify but do you have any assets in US denominated US Dollars no not yet no gold no Bitcoin no Bitcoin just yet although you caught me on the steps of your building reading up a building up a book about Bitcoin so um I think in my journey of investing not just real estate investing but investing in general I’m still at the very start of that Journey because the last eight years of my life has been pouring everything possible into rent Panda and now finally I’m like hey maybe I should
(55:20) diversify outside of just rent Panda into my own stuff right um and also you know I’ve seen a lot of Real Estate Investors do really well and it’s hard to sit at the table with people who have made a lot of money while you’re being the garbage man without saying hey let me be the garbage man and the Monopoly man investor behind the scenes so I’ve started to to do both it’s interesting just think being around entrepreneurs Organization for example like I meet many people who cash flow very significant money y like you know low
(55:50) six figure half Mill Mill a year in cash flow from their businesses yeah and that doesn’t exist in real estate investing so there really is I think really there needs to be some sort of balance between the two for sure you know if you’re making a mill a year you’re going to be banking something you’re like I need to put this somewhere yeah yeah for sure and and my hope with Ren panda is that we start to scale to a point where it can be a little bit more passive for me um because I think diversification of my
(56:18) skill set and my day-to-day life is part of that personal development and so you know I’ve been on this journey of working out more thinking about mental health more thinking being a father first um you know I have this vision board now of being an active dad right like I want to be the dad that at 18 when my kids 18 I can still physically dominate him right I can drop out there on on the hockey rink or the basketball court and still be an active Dad yeah um and I think doing that now will help my business but at the same time I should
(56:48) be a business person and a dad and a real estate investor and an investor outside of real estate to make sure that me and my family and my community are are uh protected and supported yeah kids are in martial arts I don’t think I’ll make it to 18 that I can beat them no yeah we’ll see we’ll see yeah because I’m trying to make them good athletes yeah the good athlete that does martial arts is tough to beat yeah maybe just raw power though like just a little just stronger than them yeah they’re doing Jiu-Jitsu so they just
(57:21) grab they grab your foot and you’re done right there’s nothing you can do cuz you can’t even reach them in the class at that night then I’ll get hurt because I’m too old for that fascinating stuff yeah so what Mar so yeah so you’re mentioned like the Beyond tertiary markets are what’s working which is fascinating but uh I guess I guess the point is also just to avoid oversaturation by the investors because uh like the gentlemen who went went went up north I don’t know if you had much interaction with them but they
(57:50) they were in like like Timmons for example like markets with like shrinking populations but they had like 200 houses in a population of like under 50,000 people yeah and that issue is it kind of underlines the problem of over Supply or or over intensification because you know it was Tim and Sudbury Susan maray and I think Kirkland lake and also they’re all really far from a major Center like Cornwall at least is a reasonable distance to OT Montreal isn’t it and a lot of the other places you mentioned they’re all on the 401 y for sure like
(58:26) so him I think s St Marine what like they’re all really far from each other yeah so I think that that’s actually a good point in terms of the opportunity that I see out there so I’m heavily invested in thunderbay we started our business in thunderbay so we know it quite well we have a team there um we know the intricacies of the city and of investing in the city um but it’s it’s a big opportunity I think these guys capitalized on until they pushed too hard hard and too fast and flew too too much vacancy but when you go to the
(59:01) North like sus Marie is a center unto its own right and so when you’re in the north if you’re in North Bay and Sudbury and Timmons you kind of look to and maybe I’m going to get you know whipped by those who live there but sus Murray is the center um and I say this from a Thunder Bay perspective where Thunder Bay is the big city for a lot of people because if you go out across the Canada Highway and there it’s yeah it’s it’s like the transc Canada highway there by way my brother lives 5 minutes off of it and he’s just got a regular house um
(59:33) everyone comes to Thunder Bay you know it’s got the university the college the hospital all of the industry and infrastructure is in Thunder Bay and there’s a ton of small communities outside of thunderbit and they’re very very small as opposed to you know yes outside of ottawa’s Cornwall which is a significant size city in comparison to the north MH but when you go to the North or even just the near North you you get into these situations where you can really dominate a market um and it can be dangerous to do that because
(1:00:03) as they’ve shown you can own a very large percentage of the rental housing within that City and so you can start to shift the dynamic and we’re finding that in thunderbay both as an opportunity but also as a risk is like from a student housing perspective we could look at creating a small fund and buying up an entire neighborhood right our last purchase or two purchases ago was a 22 ,000 house this last one was $300,000 each of these homes will gross between four and $55,000 a month they’ll net let’s call it $2,000 a month on
(1:00:38) average if you told a Toronto investor that they were going to net 2,000 bucks a month they’d ask you where to sign they’re also in the mindset of appreciation is going to be through the roof whereas in thunderbay it’s not the case you know you’re at one and a half 2% annually maybe yeah to investors probably want everything yeah yeah and so you know it’s right for us at this stage in our Journey but you can own a neighborhood right we can turn a neighborhood into a student ghetto right or we can take a student ghetto and make
(1:01:05) it better quality student housing we can you know change the the zoning bylaw like we can work at an act advocacy level to actually make change with the city and rezone that for boarding house um so I think that there’s huge opportunities but you know we’re not looking at it as the Canadian rental industry we’re not looking at it as the Ontario rental market we’re not even just looking at it as Thunder Bay we’re looking at it as a neighborhood within Thunder Bay in an asset class for a specific tenant profile and we we’re
(1:01:36) specifically targeting East Indian International students attending usually Confederation college for it programs so like you get super Niche and you can create good businesses out of it and you know that’s where I think we’re at in this industry where you know a a Canada wide rental report is almost useless you need to really drill down to the micro to understand who you are as an investor and where you want to go and educate yourself within that that realm investors can never forget that real estate is is almost Street specific 100%
(1:02:12) as literally on stage debating vacancy rates of Memphis Tennessee right and uh and uh the other gentleman with the mic said oh the bacon is really over double DED there I wouldn’t invest there I wouldn’t recommend it right and I was just talking about my client who bought a house there yeah so then I checked with our CIO goes like we literally just had an appraisal there last week and they said the appraiser said 5% vacancy expect a tenant in one in one month right right so and but again it was a nicer suburb Y and again like every
(1:02:40) everyone’s context is different yeah someone has a Reit like they’re in their say they’re doing new builds they’re in a different neighborhood than I am yeah right so it is and then yeah so I I knew the question is how is the market wasn’t uh you know yeah but it’s the perfect question to ask someone like me because because I love to talk about the fact that um most investors ask the number one question like been at events and it’s like hey what does a three-bedroom house go for in the Niagara region what like that’s not when I talk to you I get
(1:03:18) really specific yeah exactly West Mountain three bedroom upstairs with a dishwasher and one parking spot like spefic renovate this year yeah and and our team is interesting in that you know Jack who’s our our director of leasing just wrote to me and as we do it like 11:30 last night and like hey can we do a survey of all of the tenants that come through our system which is a lot and on the website and with our day-to-day interactions and ask them you know what they’re looking for and what the value of things are like amenities and it’s
(1:03:52) something like there’s no report on the value of ameni and I’m sure you’ve been asked this question by clients a lot of like should I put a dishwasher in right or should I rent laundry or furnished or unfurnish right what percent does that move the needle and we can make guesses and we can look at comparables and and guess but no one has ever surveyed to my knowledge the tenant pool and said like hey here’s a house now here’s a house within sweet laundry the exact same what would you pay for this and how much
(1:04:23) would you pay for yeah and quantitatively mapping that data to say a dishwasher is worth 3750 a month to a tenant and I think that’s the type of mindset that we need more of in this Marketplace and I give kudos to jack for mentioning that because like to think about the rental experience as a Hospitality business is something that we’ve tried to do more and more and he’s got a Hospitality background so he’s like hey yes our clients are landlords but our stakeholders are tenants still and so we need to understand both sides
(1:04:53) of the coin and if we can Pioneer dat that helps investors and tenants on both sides of the coin let’s do that and we have the Forum to be able to so it’s that kind of cool stuff that like brings me back to the days of when we were a prop Tech saying hey if we dominate every market and we are the rental Marketplace the data set is really where we can affect change Mar I want to ask you more about your international student strategy in Thunder Bay yeah like uh paint us a picture like are these are these houses
(1:05:26) these these apartment buildings what is it yeah so we’re still on the route of single family homes turned into either multi-unit student rentals or single unit student rentals um and we’ve looked at some commercial uh and converting that into residential but right now we’re looking at single family homes mostly in this market that we can put five to nine bedrooms in um the city’s cool with this like so some will be falling under like the board in house ruling and and we’ll adhere to that in others um you know we can be
(1:06:02) non-conforming because we’re looking to reform some of that zoning bylaw and push that through um but ultimately for us it’s about building safe quality student housing for a demographic that is really in in poor quality housing right now um so youve probably heard stories of you know the stereotypical Bramton landlord that has too many people in their house right they’ve got three room room and there’s nine people all sharing a room um we actually talked to the uh the college and the university in Thunder Bay and they were telling
(1:06:34) stories of not just um you know multiple occupancy within a room or or double occupancy in a room or triple occupancy in a room they were talking about bed sharing which was the first time I had ever heard about it but if you think about an international student coming to the country they’re paying more intuition usually three to four times what a local student is paying they’re being supported by family but they’re also also pushed to work hard and move towards PR so permanent resident yeah yeah so they they
(1:07:03) are um in school eight hours a day they also have part-time jobs because they want to make extra extra money um they’re looking to build credit they’re looking to stay on the good side of the university and the community uh and they’re looking to save money and so we found cases of people flipping beds so a student will rent a bed for $150 a month month versus you know or a portion of a bed I should say and they will have it for 12 hours and you know when they’re at school and at their job someone else will be sleeping in that bed and that’ll
(1:07:36) be in a room that’s double occupancy so you’ve taken a $800 a month room cut it into 400 per bed and cut it into 200 per 12-hour cycle in that bed and so that was the situation that we were dealing with in Thunder Bay and we saw it as a massive opportunity to come in and provide quality student housing it’s profitable for us it’s cash flowing property we’re bringing up the quality of housing like the actual houses are usually Sentry homes that need a bunch of work um but they can be retrofitted into high quality student housing so
(1:08:12) that’s what we’re doing and as an example um we bought one it was $220,000 to buy we put about1 to $120,000 into it and that place is grossing 50 2 to 5400 a month um and netting around 2,000 bucks usually more but that’s $2,000 with vacancy cost in there we’re paying our own property management fees so you know Ren Panda has investors in it so I’m not you know getting property management for free so we are paying for property management we’ve got repair costs banked away in there and we’re putting that at 5% vacancy at 5% so
(1:08:50) we’re running our numbers very conservatively and that net number is after all of that so it’s it’s it’s the true net what’s different about international student rental property versus like a regular rental property so if someone want to do like what what is the property how do you cater towards this this demographic yeah so the first thing is to our conversation before making sure you are the right investor for it because student rentals in general require more handholding than aren’t you well exactly so if you hire a
(1:09:22) property manager then for all intensive purposes the only difference is higher turnover um because typically you know yes students will stay for four years but the numbers show that students were really staying for like 12 to 18 months especially when you’re doing room rentals um you rooms will turn over a lot faster than the full house but you can imagine you know four or five kids getting together getting on one lease people are going to get into fights disagree move on after a year two years the group is going to break up so you
(1:09:57) need to account for higher vacancy cost and that’s why we put ours at 5% um and then if you’re not property managing right if you if you sorry if you don’t have a property manager and you are property managing yourself you need to be conscious that not only are you the landlord and the property manager you’re also kind of a parent and so when you set up the property you need to set it up thinking about a 17 to 21y old kid living in that property yeah so you should have you know a booklet of how to live in that property and we
(1:10:29) create a booklet for all of our our rooms and our houses and that’s on the bedside table when they move in day one that’s got a QR code on the front where they can pull up a video because everyone’s on their phones and they don’t actually read anything a video of how to use everything right common area rules how to clear out a lint trap how to unclog a toilet right like what to do if the shower starts backing up all of these standard things where a lot of investors who are placing families think oh it’s a family they know how to live
(1:10:56) in a house students do not know how to live in a house and when you’re dealing with International students literally like I I can’t I have University students who don’t know how to change a light bulb right right so so they you know the age-old question how many University students to take the change of light bulb yeah none because they can’t do it right yeah they literally called us to do it yeah exactly Life Broken it’s noten right the life bul is broken yeah for sure uh yeah we get calls all the time like the toilet’s not
(1:11:27) flushing properly okay what’s What’s happen is it not flushing is it going down slow is it running like there’s no question about that so um whether you’re property managing or not like the the repair costs are going to be higher right there’s going to be more wear and tear and there’s going to be more unnecessary calls right so you may have to have a plumber go out there when there was nothing actually wrong or your handyman is going to be visiting the property more um we like to do mandatory cleanings as part of our student rentals
(1:11:58) whether that’s local students or International students I think that’s a very good thing to have in place we pass along that cost or you know in some cases we eat it if necessary depending on how the market is doing but a cleaner just like with an Airbnb a cleaner is your best eyes on the property and when you think about the high use areas of a house its bathrooms and its kitchens right so and maybe like the front entrance way so clean the flooring in your front entrance way especially in the winter time so the salt doesn’t rip
(1:12:29) into your vinyl flooring or hardwood flooring right have your stove cleaned on a monthly basis like full-on scrubbed clean because those students are not cleaning the stove ever right so a deep clean once a month replaces a standard family who’s you know scrubbing it down once a week um bathrooms should be cleaned properly and regularly and when your cleaner is there have a checklist of things for them to go through right notice any light bulbs that are burnt out flush every toilet and see if it flushes properly um clean out the hair
(1:12:59) from you know your your drains especially if you’ve got lots of girls in the house not to be stereotypical but if you got hairy people in the house clean out your drains and just hiring a cleaner without a checklist of things that they should be checking is also kind of being lazy so it’s it’s in this world of you got to work harder for it but it can be lucrative and we know lots of landlords who have appreciating properties in Toronto and Kingston and London and you know waterl as a great example who have cash flow because
(1:13:28) they’re student rentals and appreciation so I think it’s a very strong lucrative Market I know you’ve got past experience in student rentals and I think it’s like the flavor right now because no one wants long-term tenants right and and I think when we did it we saw a really big opportunity because we had connections to the university and the college we understood the Dynamics of Thunder Bay and we specifically went yep it’s East Indian students coming to the city um primarily male and that is the demographic that we can capitalize on
(1:14:02) but is also in the most need uh so it it’s incredibly important for us to actually solve a problem because back to my tech days like you build a product to solve a problem and I think that’s what rental housing is is you see the problem and you know if I was a type of landlord that really loved luxury housing right and I wanted to buy a luxury home and have an executive live in it I would not be investing right now because it’s a terrible time for you know executive luxury luxury rentals so you just have to know who you are Market yeah exactly
(1:14:34) all the short-term rentals are going to midterm yep yeah there there’s no there’s yeah there’s there’s nowhere to hide in this market for sure do do you does rent Panda do student Rental Management across the province yeah for sure so it’s actually an interesting question and maybe you’ll have an answer to this but we often get asked as a property management company if we do student rentals and I think it’s because a lot of companies out there who are property managing will just say no to student rentals yeah and for us I’ve
(1:15:01) always looked at it as a rental is a rental and we’ve built our systems with tech as the backbone so we don’t care if it’s a you know Annoying family not annoying but if it’s a needy family or a needy student or a room rental in your basement and you live upstairs like for us a rental is a rental and it all runs on the same Tech system and you know some of the the setting up of a property is different um but as a property manager a work order is a work order right a repair is a repair a call is a call an email is an email the Cadence of
(1:15:38) that may change but that just means our pricing has to change and and I think uh when we started Property Management I I hated the concept of a percent of monthly rent as a fee right because it’s just a way for property managers to make more money on more expensive property that is not more expensive to manage and if was true it should actually be that less expensive property is more expensive to hire a property manager for and that’s student rentals right some people will put a premium on student rentals um but we wanted to build a
(1:16:07) system where for us it’s flat rate management and we know how much it costs us to manage a property so a duplex per unit is easier to manage than a single family home because it’s one system right it’s one furnace for two properties or two units so that is more efficient for us to make AG you know when we need to inspect two units it’s more efficient than inspecting two single family homes because there’s travel time and there’s you know lockbox entry and all the tiny little things so we charge less per unit for a duplex
(1:16:38) versus a single family home you know a 20 unit building is a different model per unit than a single family home so we tried to change the game and make it fair and actually be transparent of you know if it costs us less to manage your property we’ll charge you less to manage your property um and so you know executive rentals people when they were big people were flocking because we could manage your $10,000 a month rental for $99 a month right versus even in Toronto people were still charging three four five% in management you go up to
(1:17:10) Thunder Bay standard is 10 to 12% in management you go short-term rentals in thunderbay you’re paying out 25 to 30% in management so um yeah I think that there’s there’s still an opportunity to innovate within the space but uh you have to build the right system for it so yes so the answer is yes so yes we do certain rentals you pretty much so what you cover pretty much every real estate strategy then what don’t you cover Airbnb like what yeah so we don’t do short-term rentals um we used to because we fall into that habit as most people
(1:17:45) do of chasing shining objects yeah um and you know 25% 30% management fees look real good especially when the Airbnb is doing well um but we found that at the time it’s a separate system it’s a different business we inject Hospitality into property management but that is a Hospitality business um one day we may parse out a division that is doing short-term rentals but for us it’s long-term and even in the midterm rental space we again started to dabble in it um and you know we push it out to those who do it full-time and proper right and
(1:18:18) there are companies out there that do that but um for us even midterm rentals when we get into tenant place it doesn’t make sense right if we’re going to charge a month’s rent to place a tenant and you’re an investor that wants a midterm rental of 3 to four months doesn’t make sense logically to pay out A month’s rent so we can’t make it sense make it make sense from a business perspective so we’re just not going to do that um we can manage a midterm rental because it’s very similar to a long-term rental but we don’t do lots of
(1:18:45) them and really I like to paint the picture of us being the rental experts for you know standard long-term residential housing and that can be a room rental in your basement or your you know 500 unit purpose built apartment um because that’s all the same within our our sector yeah right you’ve been very generous with your time anything else you want to tell us about Ren Panda I mean ultimately I I think um we’re we’re trying to build a world where everyone can be a landlord um and I don’t think it’s a world where
(1:19:22) everyone should be a landlord but truly the vision is that everyone can be a landlord and it’s just about having the right products and services and tools and team to do it and I do fundamentally think that real estate is an amazing vehicle for you know wealth generation and generational wealth and it’s it’s something that more and more people can be a part of and we’re truly on that path to do it but I I do think there’s a lot of egos that need to be shed and so we’re trying to build kind of like the Allied powers of the real estate space
(1:19:56) and bring together Partners who can do it well who have the same vision who can really help support landlords um and you know other elements of the business are adapting for this Vision so one of my my aspirations for next year is to actually invest in properties as a business and offer our employees fractional ownership of that property because you know if you’re a property manager or a leasing specialist in Cornwall you know you may not have aspirations to own a property and it may not be realistic with the
(1:20:29) salary levels in that region so as a company can we enable landlording for our staff for our clients you know can we work with rent to own operators to help tenants become landlords um and so we really do want to facilitate that as as a vision um and I think that there’s a lot of growth that the Ontario and Canadian rental industry needs and it needs to catch up to the states right and and there has to be advocacy and for that goes along with it and so there’s groups like Solo or I’m a part of the landlord self-help center board um and I
(1:21:02) don’t think it’s it’s a solution that’s solvable by one entity so my my call to action essentially is not just for the investors out there but for other uh other companies other organizations other associations out there to really have an open mind to band together and to help push this industry forward to where it needs to go because as a private sector we need to push the public sect seor and government and the individuals to to do some reform and make it better for everyone where can people learn more about R Panda uh on rent
(1:21:40) panda.com if you fill out the form on rent panda saying you’re interested I’m going to be giving you a call still so I I have that mandate now we’ll see how long it lasts for but um I connect with every single new client that we’ve got coming on board and i’ like to talk to investors too because just like this you know it’s always great to have a conversation we learn a lot from our investor networks um so rent P.
(1:22:02) C is probably the best place there you have resources on your website as well do you know it yeah so we’ve got a rent report that we put out in partnership with door Insight um we’ve got a lot of blogs that are just educational we have all of your n forms on the website and um starting in January our Instagram is just going to be flooded with uh with educational content I’d love to release like a landlord 101 course and make it mandatory for everyone in Ontario but until then it’ll be free educational content um to to just hopefully make
(1:22:35) things better for us all you may talk a lot of condo investors out of buying a place with with education heart thanks for much thanks much for doing this thanks for fighting the good battle my pleasure thanks for being the the sadus as I called you because someone’s got to do it yeah someone’s got to do it well we we’ll go for a cold plunge one day so yeah all right friends that wraps up another episode of the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians hope you got as much out of this one as I did remember that whether you’re just
(1:23:03) starting out or a seasoned investor there’s always something new to learn and it’s always about building that practical knowledge base that gets you closer to Financial Freedom if you found value today please do us a favor and leave us a review or a rating share this episode with a friend or better yet join our community of Real Estate Investors who are taking action and making moves and hey if there’s a topic you want us to cover or have uh there’s a certain guest you’d like us to have on the show Dro me a line my DMs are open on social
(1:23:27) media reply to this email that this have arrived on I’m not hard to find uh you know we’re all about getting you the unfiltered truth to help you on your journey thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode until then stay Smart Stay curious and keep building that future catch you later

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(00:00) 25% tariffs to or secure our border futurized more on this week’s truth about real estate investing show my name is Roman CTO and I’m back sort of Almost 100% post pneumonia which was not fun uh and a whole lot of fleem I’m on antibiotics now today’s the last day and hopefully we’ll be done coughing before our trip to China for a few weeks but don’t worry The Show Must Go On uh speaking of Show Must Go On we hosted a very busy uh hybrid event last week uh a free training event on the subject of investing in real estate while I was
(00:39) feverish and weak from the pneumonia um yeah this the show went on uh a couple friends who attended laughed at me not believing I managed to host and present slpe for about 30 minutes hopefully most of it was coherent thank goodness Andrew uh Andrew Kim the CEO of share was able to carry the other half of the presentation including hosting the post event networking event uh because I and he had to lock up the office because I wasn’t staying I just went straight home to bed I am grateful uh grateful for so many we
(01:12) had about 180 folks T tune in to learn how the best practices on uh how to take care of their financial Futures and in my opinion that’s investing in real estate specifically in the US because they’re the opportunity here does not justify investment anyways uh some even shared with me how some terrible stories of uh months of non-payment rent one couple even bought a house to move into but the tenants won’t leave these are stories I’ve heard of before hopefully everyone else has so that you can Factor these into your own decisions whether or
(01:44) not where where you’re going to buy and invest and spend your hard-earned money uh the majority of Canadian landlords have little than no rights and the winds are blowing towards the us but don’t listen to me uh my friend that one of the Canada’s largest lenders said it uh one friend of mine who has a building under contract up way up North it needs a bridge loan because cmhc has significant delays in underwriting and ensuring apartment buildings the property is in Thunder Bay so let’s call this friend TB my friend who’s bought uh
(02:12) who’s got a property building uh property tied up in in Thunder Bay TB specifically asked me if I had a lender uh lender contacts as he did not want a third-party broker to avoid markups and fees adding to his cost of borrowing uh makes sense everyone wants to save not everyone needs that wants that Ser level of service now the lender is telling me that his commercial his commercial division uh does not have capacity for sub $100 million deals which is a lot of the market out there in terms of volume which I found surprising considering how
(02:47) few transactions are actually being done in the multif family space these days with rates being high and CMC delays is uh a lot of people have their money tied up and again just in my experience and talking to people on the ground there’s not many people writing offers on on apartment buildings uh so yeah my lender friend he’s telling me that business in Canada is unnecessarily harder in Canada and investing in the USA is much easier again uh these are his words and hence he was saying the winds are blowing to
(03:14) the states uh and this is been our experience as well our clients are getting commercial mortgages for under for amounts under $200,000 American so here there’s no love for sub 100 million versus we have plenty of options for sub 200,000 in the US say uh how anyone wants to continue invest in Canada doesn’t make sense to me hence cherry and I have beg searching for our second income property in the USA specifically Tech Texas where uh alongside our exist first uh existing property now but what is that what about all those tariffs
(03:47) that Trump Pro threatened us with keep in mind the threat is attached to what it’s a what if Canada and Mexico do not improve their security at our respective borders including the movement of that horrible drug F Fentanyl and now food for thought I was listening to the Global Mail podcast and the Canadian Border Services compensated 43 pounds of fentel in 2023 compare that to the U US Customs and Border Protection received over 25,500 at the US Mexico border that’s nearly 600 times more fenel at the U at the Mexico border versus the Canadian
(04:29) border and in terms of unauthorized people attempting to cross the border in the US Canada had 6 6,900 in 2023 6,900 compare that to an estimated uh higher than 2.8 million at the US Mexico border that’s about a 405 times bigger problem so me I’m G to pop some popcorn and watch how Elon deals with all this uh I for those who don’t know I am a Tesla owner so the majority of the parts in the Tesla are not from America they’re from China and Mexico so it’ll be fascinating to see how this all works out fascinating times ahead indeed in
(05:08) the end uh I’ve yet to see one expert predict the Canadian economy outperforms the American one hence my investment hypothesis does not change my kind clients in are going to continue buying American uh the world knows it too hence pretty much all the world currencies are suffering versus The Almighty US dollar and many economists predict our dollar may even get worse so if you think these are bad now it’s only going to get worse our plan is to accumulate houses over the long time so we’re we’re basically going to average cost base our exchange
(05:38) rate risk anyways and also our plan is to add to our us Holdings and US income uh which I think pretty much every financial adviser out there would advise to pretty much any Canadian don’t have all your eggs in one basket anyways uh the way I see it there is only one major world superpower uh and there’s no no sign of a peer to ever appear that was terrible anyways I know many talk about uh bricks uh you know bricks as in the acronym for uh Brazil Russia India China but Russia can’t even win a war against Ukraine uh China’s
(06:16) population is aging like that of Japan and South Korea there there’s only hope that China can can age gracefully and no chance for economic and Military dominance like the Americans uh look to the Future it’s bright for those learning and paying attention speaking of we have Canadian leaders of Technology Evolution owning fractional shares of proper real estate including expansion into the US and at the time of recording uh they have applied for their Securities license across Canada I’m talking about ADI invest what
(06:48) that means for in terms of Securities licensing uh so invest does that means that uh investor developers uh like Scott mcgil for example he can uh someone like him Can Work Direct IR ly with Addie without having to engage an exempt Market dealer uh that’s a uh an exempt Market dealer is a firm that’s licensed to trade in Securities staffed by very well educated folks usually they dress really well they have lots of letters behind their names uh and they provide service which comes with the percentage fee now I’m a realtor
(07:18) possibly the most hated professional I use that term loosely and uh we charge uh percentage commission and there’s a whole lot of people out there who uh don’t like paying um extra percentage points on their Investments my friend in TB my friend TB that I mentioned in Thunder Bay doesn’t want to pay fees either to a thir party broker and uh and again lots of people don’t so what Addie is doing is they are disrupting the investment space no different than we are share using technology to make our to make owning US income properties as
(07:49) easy as possible uh this is the future owning real estate without having to deal with tenants especially the ones that with all the rights like they do in Quebec BC and Ontario so please welcome to the show co-founder of Addie Steven Jagger I’m excited to have him if you haven’t heard of Addie before this is going to blow your mind uh likely you have heard of them before so we do talk about the advancements of uh deal offerings how how how uh the deals have evolved and on the technology will surp likely surprise you along with uh one of
(08:22) the investment vendors who went belly up so yeah this is the truth about real estate investing truth about real estate investing show so when deals do go sideways I’m going to ask about them Ste Steven Kudos does not avoid my questions and better yet they’ve actually already publicly address them I have the link in the show notes uh of of a post written by Steven’s Co other co-founder the other co-founder of Addie talking about the strength how they had to change their due diligence and again I’ve posted a link to the show notes it’s
(08:52) actually a great lesson learned for anyone who has ever screening Partners so these are the lessons learned from partnering with the the wrong folks or as the saying goes an ounce prevention is worth a pound of the Cure if they’d simply asked me for a reference check they probably could have saved a lot of headaches to connect with Stephen he’s on he’s on uh Twitter at SJ jagger.
(09:18) comom sorry the handle is s Jagger he’s on Twitter I got a link to his I have a link to his handle he’s Stephen gives his email Stephen that’s a with a pH Addy invest.com website is Addy invest please enjoy the [Music] show hi Stephen what’s keeping you busy these days hi lot lots keeping me busy um yeah which uh which aspect of keeping me busy you want to talk about oh you know whatever you want what I usually let my guest Drive where the conversation goes they say you know family young kids that usually comes up a lot you know dealing with tenants
(10:01) oh well for me it’s is what keeps me the most busy um of course the family but yeah Addie Addie is uh we’re uh it’s go time lot lots of exciting things happening over here how do you quantify Addie to people like deal number of deals assets under management can you give us an idea how many employees you guys have now yeah there’s 14 employees 50 opportunities have come on the platform so far we are Canada’s largest real estate investment platform based on transaction volume um we’ve had opportunities come on the platform in mostly Canada our
(10:43) first American Property a on the platform so as far as quantifying it it kind of depends on what people what what they’re interested in in in learning about us about some kind this employee count you’re right I think what catches most people’s attention is how little one needs to invest to start get started investing in real estate can you share that yeah yeah so we enable people to invest as little as a dollar um the dollar thing it’s not meant to be like a marketing push um or like a marketing stick it’s more
(11:20) about um the goal of the B of the platform is to eliminate barriers to entry and so if we said the minimum inv amount was $500 and you had $400 all of a sudden Addie itself is the barrier to entry for you and so for us making it $1 you can choose what you want to do like if you’ve got $400 you can choose this $50 in a property 505050 does that make sense is it 100 100 100 is it one of them it’s $400 like you Choose Your Own Adventure make your own decision pick an amount that works for you nobody is stretching to achieve some sort of
(11:58) minimum um you can just make a prudent decision for yourself um and and jump in and what I love about this is It’s become you made it so accessible especially to the young people and for a young person in Canada I think you and I both know I think the listener probably knows too what are they supposed to get into what kind of real estate investment can you get into as a young person yeah it’s a tough world out there especially like that’s kind of why how we came across the idea creating Addie was you know when I was
(12:34) 19 or 20 I bought my first investment condo my first prop I lived at home with my parents and I bought my first property which was an investment condo downtown Vancouver I think it was like $195,000 maybe it was 20 years old I put maybe 20 grand down because I’ve been working since grade eight um and I put a renter into it I remember talking to my parents about it and my dad was like nice thank you’re you’re moving out like good for you it’s like no no no I’m not moving out um I can’t AFF this an investment property I was
(13:07) like yeah food here is great I’m not going anywhere um have the rent too yeah yeah um and so yeah but like being a young person like 20 years old or whatever whatever it was early days for me $195,000 20 grand down putting a renter in it worked like the rent covered the the mortgage the insurance the strata of payment there was not a lot of wiggle room as far as you know cash flow maybe 50 bucks or 100 bucks a month maybe but it worked like I I was able to do it um and I think fast forward to today 2024 almost 2025 that same condo it’s still
(13:45) exists I don’t know any I sold it but the same thing it’s like a SE glass building downtown Vancouver it’s one-bedroom in Den it’s probably 750 Grand like if someone was 20 or 23 or 25 or whatever 35 years old today it’s it’s not the same uh experience for them to be able to step into the real estate market and get started right it’s it’s you’re saving a significant amount of money to make the math work even though rents are up from you know over the last handful of years uh it’s still you’re still putting down a significant amount
(14:20) to make it make any sense and so most people can’t do that without now without help from family or maybe you’ve got certain type of role in in Life or business or whatever you’re up to but the vast majority of people are completely locked out um of of that of that experience of being able to own real estate directly like that I even argue the math would would probably direct one to rent and if they had that kind of money they should invest it elsewhere potentially yeah yeah it depends on you know who you are what
(14:52) you’re up to what your your plans are um but yeah like to to make that work you’re you’re still you’re putting down 150 Grand 200 Grand to try and make the the math play out on something like that of a starter condo in quotes MH um it’s uh it’s it’s yeah very difficult for people today now refresh my memory on the first project that that Addie bought I remember it was still pretty expensive it was the very first property to come on the platform was the a trout lake a single family house in Trout Lake um it was the only single family house
(15:27) that we’ve ever brought brought onto the platform actually and and we were the the direct um issuer on it meaning myself and my business partner Mike bought this house because what we were trying to do was validate the idea that people would be interested like regular Canadians that we did not know would be interested in investing a smaller dollar amount into a specific address and the reason why we chose a single family house is because it was something that was attainable for us if this turned out to be a bad idea
(16:00) we could still complete on the contract to purchase the house right so we bought this house on trout lake on the east side of Vancouver backed right under the lake was an unbelievable location but again it was a tear down that we bought for $1.6 million tear down for 1.6 is a yeah essentially a tear down we rented it out for a little bit but it was like it wasn’t it was not a you know really fancy place it was a very old house that needed to needed to be replaced um but it worked we had 305 investors in that
(16:31) property we um we tore it down put a developer in place tore the property down and built a duplex front back duplex sold the the front and the back units recently few months ago and then all of the investors in that property got their return of capital and they’ve gotten their first piece of the profits and then the last trunch of the profits will come once the GST and all the sort of the final pieces are sorted out and the corporation is shut down but it worked um you know for for us and Prov that people wanted to do it and it
(17:04) worked for the investors it was definitely behind schedule probably almost two years behind schedule um some of that was just you know us and not you know totally having a grasp on exactly how fast we were able to do something where we’ve never built before and two we definitely were not expecting Co oh you can see that coming yeah did not luckily though uh we had no mortgage on the house so when Co came and everything stopped and the renter that was in it stopped paying rent um we were reasonably okay because there was no
(17:39) mortgage on the house we we had bought it in in cash um which now looking back on on the co time of you know year and a half two years of not a lot going on in the world and the renter being in the house weren allowed to evict anybody couldn’t do anything the person stopped paying like 11 months they didn’t pay rent um it all you know obviously we’d like to have that rent back would help on part of the profits of the of the opportunity but the lack of mortgage um was for sure a blessing for this unknown thing called Co that was
(18:16) coming now what are the returns that the investors received we don’t know yet we’ll know the final returns when the GST and the final shutdown costs are paid for um yeah I don’t it won’t be massive it’ll be a low double digit like 10ish per something like that we haven’t given out any numbers just because we don’t don’t know there’s some um some of the shutdown cost GST that kind of stuff that still needs to be sorted out and then once it’s sorted out and the entity is shut down the final dividend goes and everybody will know we’ll know exactly
(18:50) the numbers and we’ll publish those numbers that’s not bad for not doing anything not lifting a finger sure yeah yeah um yeah I’m you know I’m not complaining um could you know there’s like anything it it was it was uh longer longer timeline than we expected um but I think this is like anything you go rent on your house rent on your kitchen build a laneway do whatever what do people always say it’s like kind to cost you double or cost you more than you expect and take double the time or whatever it is in in development um so
(19:28) yeah as like we’re happy that people people made money we made money um and it you know overall it it it worked and it helped launch the idea of like this that Addie is the thing that that uh that people were interested in in using now you mentioned that was the only single failing you’ve done and likely the only ever now what are what are the more recent projects looking like what kind of um for The Listener has never heard of Addie what is available platform so not say only ever I hard to comment for the future but
(19:57) it’s of the 50 properties the only single family house that has come on the platform thus far the other properties have all been institutional commercial grade real estate so um the second property was a single commercial building that was built for Starbucks Canada uh with a drive-thru Starbucks tripl net leaste you know like you know a single building with a drivethru that wraps around it um we’ve got multif family buildings across the country that have come on the platform an industrial park we’ve got an 11 building Business
(20:25) Park that just did a its 16th dividend yesterday um we’ve got a handful of developments across the country we’ve got our first American property was a student is a student housing complex in Oklahoma at Oklahoma State University um we’ve got um I think what else yeah like the the developments are kind of all over the place they’ve been in Toronto Vancouver um Calgary we’ve got 40 townhous complex in airri Alberta we’ve got a handful of uh cash fling multif family complexes um there’s a commercial there’s a commercial property like a
(21:05) commercial tower on the on the platform right now in St John New Brunswick which is the first East Coast property that’s come on the platform so that’s kind of the point is is it the the goal of add is to enable not only eliminate barriers to entry but give people access to these opportunities like even if you do have the money in the normal world to be able to participate a lot of times people just don’t even know that the opportunities exist right they just kind of happen you know someone goes and brings in a handful of their wealthy
(21:30) investor friends and they invest in a building and it you know the transaction happens and a lot of those institutional commercial grade properties they trade hands without going for sale like they’re not on the MLS you don’t see them they just kind of quietly trade you never never with a for sale sign outside the building like our our old office here in Kitsilano um down the street from where I am right now we had one wealthy family that owned the building we were on it’s actually this this little building right behind me on the
(21:57) video um we were on the second floor of that small commercial building on Fourth like right in Kitsilano and a sort of a wealthy landlord you know family that owned lots of buildings like that was our landlord and then one day we got a message from low tide which is Chip Wilson the founder of Lou lemon’s his real estate arm his real estate company and we got a notice from low tide that just said hey you know guess what we’re your new landlord here’s you know here’s the details here’s the email here’s the stuff and the building traded hands
(22:25) without us we we didn’t know we didn’t know it was for sale we didn’t know the that the old family that was that owned it was putting it up for sale it just sort of quietly happened with no for sale sign like I said and we are the tenant in the building um and that kind of stuff in this in that in that sort of that commercial industrial um world happens a lot where it’s like you need to be in the no to even have access yeah one of my friends is a project manager for one of the bigger reats in in commercial reats in Canada
(22:53) and I asked her like do you ever have money in these projects she says no the owner of the company just goes to porker buddies and raises all his money there yeah yeah yeah super like super common like the normal world is someone who does this kind of thing goes and buys a $30 million building slaps a $20 million mortgage on it there 10 million of equity maybe they’ll put in two or three million bucks and they’ll go and raise seven million from Seven individual people that will cut a million dollar check each and that’s is
(23:22) it’s very common um and a lot of those guys that cut the $7 million check could do it again next month like they they’ve they’ve got the capacity and the ability to go again um and that’s the the sort of the traditional way is they try and raise as much money as you can from the smallest number of investors as possible because investors cost money to deal with the paperwork cost money the lawers cost money the movement of money costs money the tax slips cost money investor updates cost money and so you know
(23:49) essentially what Addie is is eliminating or automating all of those costs so that if you have seven investors or excuse me or 7,000 investors it doesn’t matter the software the software does all the heavy listing for all of it you know creation of subscription agreements movement of money tax slips investor updates you name it dividends um the software does does all that stuff that would eliminates all of those pains where the real estate operator like oh my God I don’t want 7,000 investors they don’t they don’t
(24:19) even they don’t see the difference now if they have seven or 7,000 it’s kind of the same yeah so you’re making you’re limiting barriers as well for folks who need to raise Capital oh 100% otherwise they wouldn’t they wouldn’t they wouldn’t bring their opportunities on of the platform so like the beginning in the early days of setting up Addie that’s where we learned a lot of the pains was on the issuer side of like what a lot of them were like oh my gosh like no I don’t want 30 investors let alone 300 to 3,000 they just they and
(24:46) they would tell you story after Story of like I don’t want up I want phone calls in the night or you know having to do all the tax slips at the end of the year or when I have to do a dividend we cut checks and we I don’t want I’m want me to write a thousand checks like and mail them all the St yeah I going to wire individual wires to people all of this stuff was the pain points and that’s literally what we did was we had um kind of like a list of all the stuff that needed to be done and we built software around all of it like
(25:21) everything like everything that you can imagine the money movement the add platform moves money in two ways EFT or or interact you can interact funds into your add wallet or you can EFT money through the you know Canada’s EFT system we had to build the tool set to enable that to happen at scale for thousands and thousands of transactions to come in and out of the system every single day at a dollar point that makes it make sense for us to enable someone to invest as little as a dollar so we had to build all of the automation around that so and
(25:52) we we have it now today we can move money at scale thousands of transactions thousands and thousands of dollars back and forth credit and debits for an unbelievably low dollar amount because we automated the entire process right it’s pretty um yeah it’s amazing it is yeah even interact people can interact money into the system and it shows up in your wallet I won’t say instantly but it’s like pretty quick seconds like the money just shows up in your wallet and then there it is and because it comes through interact it’s
(26:24) guaranteed funds so people are able to invest it right you know right away e you know takes technically takes a few days for the money to move and it’s not because of a delay on us it’s just how the EFT system in Canada Works Tak three to five business days depending on which bank or crediting you’re at for the money to actually move right when we launched our first the first American property to come onto the platform it wasn’t as simple as like oh let’s just bring on another you know enable initia or bring on another property we had to
(26:52) basically build the EFT money movement system again you know obviously copy paste some of it but then make it all work again for us dollarss in and out of the system so now we’re able to enable Canadians to move USD from their Canadian domicile Bank like US Dollar Canadian domicile bank accounts and so they can move money in and out of their adding wallet in Canadian dollars or US dollars in the same way through the Canadian EFT system um and and now that we’ve done that first American Property like I said the big piece was the heavy
(27:22) lift was getting the the US dollar EFT system working now that it’s done you’ll start to see more American Opportunity come on the platform for Canadian investors fascinating abely cool like that that the first one was that student housing complex in Oklahoma it just did a dividend the other day so I got I I don’t know what I got 20 $22 or whatever showed up in my US dollar add a wallet for me to deploy again or I can move it back to my can my US Dollar Canadian doas V I have so many questions so for for any midsize real
(27:57) estate investor understands the difficulty moving money around like for example our interact limits are like 3,000 a day there’s limits to how much we can have deposited into our accounts I don’t understand how you got around all this like how Banks didn’t think you’re money laundering it seems everyone seems well there’s there’s limits on interact for sure individuals can usually do $3,000 a day there’s some some banks will let certain retail investors or retail customers go over that 3,000 businesses can usually
(28:22) interact $10,000 I believe um again it depends on who you are and what your relationship is with your bank and then EFT EFT technically There’s No Limit you can you can have like when if you look at the the way that our software Works to move money thousand let’s say a thousand people move a hundred bucks each by EFT that money all shows up from those thousand individual transactions show up into their add wallets let’s say they all chose to invest in the same thing and then once the issuance closes the software then
(28:51) moves that amount of money through EFT again to the dealer and then eventually to the issuer so you can do it in small dollar thousand transactions or $100 transactions but you can also do a million bucks out the out the other way or 500 Grand or whatever the number is that’s going to the to the uh the the end you know the end bank account which is the issuer’s bank account um so the EFT system can move yeah it could move $1 it could move $10 million or whatever doesn’t there’s no limits and the cost is the same
(29:23) yeah we yeah because we built the software to to be able to manage all of those transactions the batch fee that we pay but the batch has got you know thousand dollar in it or a million dollars in it the batch Fe is the same that’s incredible and this is why I this is why I like you you know about the futurized like you know I read uh the price of tomorrow like that book was just Jeff’s book yeah Jeff’s book y Jeff Y and that’s and like before I recording I mentioned you like I’ve been afraid for my job for years especially after
(29:56) reading Jeff’s book and then all these other jobs that are at risk like in just book you really talk literally talked about like Radiologists for example like folks who who read like Radiology images and like those jobs are at risk because AI is coming after you and I use AI all the time in my work I ask it real estate questions all the time yeah and that makes me question why I need certain people in real estate have you played with the Google’s notebook LM what’s that I heard of that I made a video if you look on the Addie YouTube channel
(30:28) made a video of it the other day you can basically stick in a document or stick in a URL into Google’s notebook LMS call called I I stuck in the Scott mcgilvery funds 113 page offering memorandum document I stuck it into you dropped the document in it took about five minutes for Google to like process it and then it created a twers podcast conversation talking about the 113 page offering memorandum and it’s like it’s unbelievable like they’re just they sound like the the podcast the two people sound like they’ve been they’ve been hosting a
(31:05) podcast together for years um they interrupt each other they they like finish each other’s sentences they argue with each other you can hear like you know when people speak which you can probably hear us doing it you hear like the you know like people’s mouths moving before they speak you can kind of hear it does that sound so it like it really sounds real but if you find that if you find that YouTube uh YouTube link um you can watch if I made like a basically a six minute video of it of me saying like this is amazing and then I
(31:35) pushed play on it and you can hear these two people talking about this offering memorandum that it just consumed 113 page document it consumed in minutes and then and now that like I saw an update that came out yesterday I was playing with it this morning where you can now when you stick the document in or whatever you can give it notes and say hey focus on this focus on that um oh here you go so if you click on videos at the top there videos and then scroll down a touch there AI pod on on an OM the one right there I will check this
(32:13) out so that’s if you uh yeah if you check it out it’s unbelievable like I said it’s just it’s mind blowing but now like I said you can now put in um you could say focus on this or focus on that and and it can it it’ll dial in the conversation um it’s it’s like and this is today give it five months give it a year where this is going um is is pretty crazy it’s totally crazy it’s so scary this is why I think also U you know diversification everyone needs to make money needs to make money and another the different ways my first all fav was
(32:54) always been real estate so I don’t care how people get it just get it prefer that one real estate that cash flows even better now we’re talking about SC fun which actually um when we were at the keyspire event uh you you dropped a big bomb on me I didn’t know about Sher is getting their EMD license across Canada can you that we are say yeah yeah yeah yeah that pad is getting it and like to me again because I’ve been in this world for a long time like you’re that’s that’s another middle person another barrier that you’re moving for
(33:30) investors can can you explain what that means yeah so right now there’s there’s third party emds EMD is exemp Market dealer there’s third party emds that are in the atti software right now so if people are making a transaction there’s a third party EMD that would be in behind the software reviewing the transaction looking for suitability kyc basically making sure that the transaction makes sense for that specific investor um again the emds are very similar to the issuers in that when you tell the EMD because emds make
(34:01) usually a percentage of the amount that’s raised for doing the job so if someone puts $100,000 investment into some opportunity the emg’s job is to make sure that that 100 Grand from that person into this investment makes sense like if they say they’re a low-risk investor and looking for a short timeline but they’re putting a 100 Grand into a high-risk investment that’s a 20-year timeline the emd’s job to be is be like you know maybe this isn’t a good idea maybe this isn’t a good fit maybe it should not be 100 Grand maybe you
(34:27) could do two grand what whatever their job is just to make sure that it’s suitable and and it makes sense for the investor and is right yeah yeah and but in the same way that the the issuers would if we said oh you’re gonna have like would you want 30 investors or 3,000 investors the emds would say the same thing of like because they’re they they would they want the smallest number of investors for the larger checks as well because they they have to do their you know their work around understanding and dealing with the suitability and so
(34:56) the less number of people for the large checks it’s obviously it’s more effective for them as well and so we had to build a bunch of software tool sets to make it easier for the EMD to be able to manage volumes of transactions for smaller dollar investors if you look at any of the opportunities that have come on the platform we show what the average investment is the average investment is anywhere from $500 to $800 per property right and so but the job is the same if you’re putting 100 Grand and you’re putting 800 bucks in the emd’s job is to
(35:26) make sure that it’s suitable and Mak sense and Etc and so we had to build a bunch of yeah but we had to you know build a a tool set into the software to make it work for the exempt Market dealers so that they would be willing to do this right and the the the time if they had to if it would take them too much time to run through thousands and thousands of transactions the emds would be like no I just I’m not I can’t do that doesn’t make any sense the M doesn’t work so we had to work uh to make that as streamlined as possible so
(35:59) that we can you know eliminate that barrier by by streamlining it so that so that people can have access to these opportunities while also still um you know keeping the the exemp market dealer satisfied um and obviously not you know taking up a whole bunch of their time where they just say I just can’t do this I don’t want to do it um and like I said this goes on and on and on and on for the software right like the the the signature technology we had to build our own right used to use docu sign or hello sign at the beginning you pay four bucks
(36:31) per signature like that was fine at the beginning but now that we’re at scale you can’t pay them $4 per signature that doesn’t like just for the signature that doesn’t you know that doesn’t work right it’s the same way of like moving money we knew had to automate the movement of money thing very very early in early days because it just doesn’t work you can’t be paying somebody a percentage of the money movement just to move the money and and there’s a there’s a there’s a thing like that all the way through the entire process had to be
(36:59) looked at figured out um automated eliminated streamlined whatever it was um it just sort of goes on and on and on like tax slips we had to build all of the functionality to be able to automatically generate T5 t50 13s at the end of the year um now it’s push of a button for an issuer to say generate you know the system can generate 20 or 2,000 tax slips doesn’t matter it’s all all happens so for the listener who’s just to bring up the speed we’re reducing costs anded reducing barriers and we’re reducing uh touches human touches
(37:34) involved and and so there’s less people are getting paid as well making the investment cheaper for the end user and for the issuer this is and by by doing that you gain access to it because otherwise you go back to the old world where they’d say minimum investment is 50 Grand like I can’t I can’t take your $5,000 investment because I’m I’m going to lose four bucks on the signature I’m going to lose 20 bucks on the wire I’m going to lose this I’m going to lose this so it needs to be a certain dollar amount for
(38:02) those for that all to make sense Stephen understand I’ve had people say with me with a straight face minimum a million but because I like you 500,000 that’s the minimum yeah that phone call superon it’s it’s very very common and this is this to me this is why it’s so exciting for me this is a futurized myself a capitalist I so consider myself partly a socialist because I want to see this you know the underdog get ahead because they’re the one that most at risk at all this they’re the ones who need hard asset Investments more than
(38:38) anyone else right the rich the rich don’t necessarily need to get richer which Sly happens a lot well it’s like once you’ve got assets yeah you can it’s it it becomes easier you know the government drives the value of the dollar down if you don’t have any assets like the assets go up but not really going up it’s just because the the dollar is kind of going down so it looks like the oh now my house is worth $2 million but it’s like is it or is it just because the dollar is worth less than 10 years ago right the buying the buying power is off so
(39:12) people with the assets Everything feels nice you know things are going up but it’s like the people without any of the assets and are just sitting on cash your cash is worth less every single day and life gets harder um so it’s about you know enabling people to be able to participate in the asset class and invest like to you know have have access to something that the wealthy generally you know in in our case it’s a it’s a the wealthy wealthy person’s game is this sort of institutional commercial grade real estate um and like you said
(39:43) you know minimum half a million bucks minimum million bucks like that’s that’s very normal for for how this world typically operates and that’s in one project that’s that’s not a diversified investment one building yeah yeah like how we how we got to Addie I told you about that trout lake house and we were trying to figure out a proof of concept if you back us up a couple years before that an opportunity came our way Mike’s way my business partner’s way to invest as an LP investor behind a real estate developer
(40:15) here in Vancouver the guy was you know owned buying four houses on a on a on a street ripped them down and build 30 or 40 Town whatever it was and he was raising money for the development and the offer and the the the investment looked good looked interesting and he wanted a million minimum million dollar check and so Mike had asked him he like hey like I’d like to get involved but a million bucks is a bit much can I you know Syndicate it basically can I set up a corporation put a few friends money into this Corporation and then we invest
(40:44) and the developer said yes you can do that but I only want to talk to you like one investor you your company’s the investor I don’t want to talk to your buddies like I just I don’t I can’t I don’t want to deal with that and so Mike said okay yeah no problem I’ll set up this company so Mike texted me and a few other people and you know we ran through the stuff and said yes so um I put money in Mike and a few other people did and the developer wanted a minimum of a million dollars and the way The Syndicate was set up it was minimum of
(41:13) $50,000 slice to get into the million dollar slice that was going to go in and one of our employees at the time had 10 grand and he wanted to participate with $10,000 and unfortunately for him the answer was no and it was him kind of losing his mind being like what’s the difference between 10 grand and 50 Grand like 10 Grand’s a lot of money like why can’t I why can’t I do this thing that you guys can do it’s like I don’t get it like $10,000 is a lot like what what’s the problem and we got into the conversation of like wow like the notary
(41:43) or the lawyer touches it and there’s costs there and the movement of money there costs there and the tax whatever there’s cost cost cost and it’s like you know there’s a there’s a few hundred bucks that get chopped off the the 10 grand and that’s why there’s these minimums and it was literally that conversation that kicked off this whole idea of like hm like maybe maybe there is a way to build a technology platform that eliminated all of those barriers to entry and do let not only a $10,000 investment but can we drive it down
(42:11) where the business model actually works enabling people as little as $1 and that’s what kicked this whole thing off and now we’re like I said we’re 50 properties in um and kind of of and running and scaling scaling up uh the platform but that’s you know that those those large minimums are very very real they still go on today now what’s the appetite like for more us us um issuers from the Anie Community I think good um you know people like the idea around diversification diversifi you know diversifying out of the Canadian
(42:46) dollar into the US dollar out of you know Canadian real estate into US real estate earning dividends or distributions back in US Dollars I think there’s there’s always um interest there from a certain subset of of of the community um just like there’s people that always want to invest in Vancouver and Toronto and then there’s other people that will never invest in Vancouver and Toronto there’s people that like the idea of American Real Estate and there’s other people that don’t that’s kind of the whole purpose of the platform is you Choose
(43:10) Your Own Adventure um pick what makes sense for you uh but yeah people want to get access to it and it’s very difficult for your average Canadian to go and buy and invest or you know get involved in American Real Estate right because it usually if you’re doing it you get involved in having to deal with American taxes and all the extra costs that go with with doing that um unless you’ve got access to someone usually it’s a Canadian that’s buying American Real Estate but sets up a Canadian structure so that you can invest in the Canadian
(43:40) structure and they handle the corporate taxes um between the two entities over the Border um but you know it’s it’s like you go buy a house in Florida or you know Arizona or somewhere all of a sudden now you’re dealing with you know crossb stuff that you have to deal it’s not just as simple as buying a you know a house in Calgary added added complexity if you’re collecting rental income in a US property yeah you now have a crossb business yeah that’s what I mean yeah and then most people when they hear oh gosh that’s like that’s a lot I don’t
(44:14) want to do that and then you know some people definitely clearly do it but there’s a there’s a whole other chunk I’m just like nah gosh I can’t even be I can’t no I don’t want to do that and I think that’s where the the neat thing of the ID platform comes in where it allows you to to get involved in American Real Estate US Dollars um but not any of those headaches speaking of headaches what about like uh come tax season like for example uh people need their form their tax forms and whatnot and they need their bookkeeping like is that all
(44:46) available to them to your all automated all shows up in the platform so I’ve invested in all 50 properties that come on the platform I will get a T5 or t513 for every single one of them that’s that’s obligated to do so it’s all automated all automated yeah so they show up in my add account I can download the forms and I’ve got them give them to my accountant put them in my tax software whatever I do to manage my own taxes easy but again all all automated right any of these issuances have anywhere from 500 investors to 3,000
(45:19) investors um seriously and so that’s that’s all aut of me if it wasn’t could you imagine that paperwork well like I said it’s one of the many reasons why if that was not automated the issue would be like nope not doing this I can’t do it I like I’m my my my finance team or my bookkeeper my whatever what are they gonna sit there for a week creating check flips like nope no chance and that’s one of the beauties of Addie is that you have so many offerings people can easily diversify should there be losses so you know where I’m going no
(45:58) one gets way on the show without talking about uh Lessons Learned uh can I mention the name before we’re recording I mentioned the name of the company y Forge and Foster so I I’ve known them forever because I’ve been in a Hamilton investor for you know since 2005 so I’ve been in the community uh I know I know the the people involved uh and then Forge and Foster was initier on the ID platform how did that go not Well they um they got caught up when interest rates went up rapidly um they got caught with a bunch of their
(46:42) properties with variable mortgages on it and put them into some challenges put them underwater across um from what looks like a quite quite a few of their Holdings um we we put we put out so it it for sure affected uh the Addie community that chose to invest in their opportunity um or opportunities the if you look again on our on our blog back in I don’t know July or something we put out a blog post of like hey like sometimes things go wrong this is like you know this is considered high-risk investing um and what we always try and
(47:26) try and do is like how what have we learned how do we make the software better how can we improve some sort of process how can we make it you know more transparent whatever it was and so there’s a there’s a blog post that’s up on the platform that basically talked about um lessons learned and you know steps moving forward um for for for for dealing with any of these challenges that we’ve had and we’ve like like I said we’ve come across the 50 opportunities that come on the platform some of them are like challenges like
(47:56) that uh um with the forge group and other times it’s just stuff that we’ve learned around like gosh like that was a mistake not automating that and then like we we’ve dug ourselves like a manual hole that we’ve had to fix and like okay we now we fix it manually and let’s now also build software to automate that feature or like now our real estate team pulls title on every property every year and loads it into the system so that all of the investors can see the title we didn’t do that at the beginning um we just we only you
(48:26) know we we added that to the to the steps or the systems and procedures um as we learned the value of like hey there’s value for us to just pull title and stick it into the due diligence system so people can see each year here’s the title like did anything change did anything not change is it good change is that change like what it’s just like here’s the here’s the title so people can have a have a look um and there’s like lots and lots of things like that that as we continue the the system and the software gets better
(48:58) for for the community I’m just I’m just looking at the blog post now at least you addressed it I’ve just seen so many yeah like we’re pretty transparent compan no like we we we are I would think pretty transparent if you go on to our Discord are you are you in our Discord server I’m not no the Discord server for that yeah there’s like three or 4 thousand of our members that in there each property has its own channel um I would say we’re pretty transparent um about what you know what what we’re trying to do mistakes that
(49:38) have been made how the software is improved new systems and procedures tests we’ve run hypothesis that have happened um outcomes of those things like we’re the goal is to always just continue to get you know better and better how do we how do we do that how do we um how do we grow and how we learn from any mistakes and how do we make the software more helpful to not only the issuers the dealers the investors the whoever just try and try and make sure that the system is is as powerful as it can be and and a helpful tool in this in
(50:11) this journey of you know enabling people to participate in this asset class and then what is is there is it finalized yet is there an outcome with the with with the investments in Fortune Foster one of them was taken over a power sale by the first mortgage holder um one um yeah so one of them that that has happened there’s another one that is in trouble we’ve heard of others that they’ve got that the at Community was not involved in that are that are in trouble um yeah there’s been those guys had it looked like quite a
(50:54) um a book of of pro properties in the Hamilton area they brought five they brought five onto the ADI platform of I don’t know 30 plus that they had they had owned something like that don’t don’t quote me as like I know you’re recording so it’s like I don’t know 30 is accurate could be 40 could be 20 I don’t know but they had they had a bunch of a bunch of properties for anyone who’s read the book the psychology of money it’s always interesting in that like one of the questions in Psychology money is one is enough enough because they could have
(51:26) walked away both brothers with 10 million in the bank account each of them before they got to this the level of scale they got to right very safely but they just kept going so I just find that’s always interesting well and to not to be necessarily defense of anybody but like maybe you could have argued interest rates were going to go up and everybody knew that I don’t know the bank can also just said well at some point earlier of like hey go the rates are holding for for a long time like you know that hadn’t have
(51:58) happened um maybe yeah maybe they would have skated through this taking a taking a risk on what they were doing right it’s like it’s like imagine owning a strip mall with a bunch of mom and pop restaurants and Co comes and shuts them all down right it’s like what do you do all of your tenants are now closed they can’t pay rent because they’ve got no revenue and it’s like you didn’t plan on that this thing called Co happened right there’s there’s lots of things that can go on that um you know are out of your control in
(52:30) your control but I you know again at the end of the day not specific to any one of our operators but when I look at any of these opportunities like who the operator is is a big piece what’s their skill set do they know what they’re doing have they done this before how do they treat their investors um you know it’s like someone says I’m building an 80 Story Tower it’s like what first question have you ever done that before like what’s your what’s your track record in doing this um you know just like someone moving from like
(52:58) oh I’ve done a bunch of stuff in Vancouver and now I’m operating in Edmonton it’s like well how does that work what’s what does that mean do you have the same infrastructure you have the same team how are you Outsourcing stuff there now because you don’t have the same structure that you would have your you know your main city um but yeah the operator is like I think a really key piece of these op like you can have a really great operator take a a really poorly run property and make it amazing in the same way that a poor operator can
(53:24) take a great property and kind of drive it to the ground um the operator is for sure a key piece of of of each of these opportunities how many issu has come to you lots um and then how many do you take one in 10 one in 100 yeah just say one and one and 10 probably and sometimes it’s not because we didn’t like something it’s um the timing didn’t work the asset type didn’t work they they didn’t want to make minimum $1 thing [Music] um you know there there’s many many different reasons why it may or may not have made sense um you know our goal is
(54:08) to to understand the opportunity and then enable it to come out of the platform but enable it with all of the due diligence and the transparency so that the community can make an investment decision for themselves they need to be able to read the offering document review the risks um understand the opportunity and and then then they can choose and it’s again it’s like a big piece of that minimum $1 it’s like you can choose there’s no minimum 50,000 bucks and if you’ve got 40 Grand like you squeeze another $10,000 to hit the minimum that maybe
(54:39) you shouldn’t be squeezing to hit like it’s like maybe you should put $1,000 and maybe it should be 5,000 whatever your number is it doesn’t matter but the kind of I think the big benefit is that you can you can choose your own adventure you can pick an amount that works for you you can read the due diligence you can learn along the way you know you can learn about all these different operators how they do updates who’s good at doing updates who’s delayed in updates how often their dividends come do the dividends come on
(55:03) time are they what they said what’s the track record all that stuff is you know as the community grows and as these opportunities grow you can start to get a a handle on the track record of different operators and and like some people like certain cities and not other cities and certain provinces have different tax regimes like BC Ontario of um types of rent control Alberta has no rent control some people think one or the other of those is good or bad like it’s there’s a whole bunch of learning that goes on um within the platform of
(55:31) just people being able to understand how the stuff all works across a whole bunch of different asset classes um within the space before we recording you mentioned free education and you got my attention tell me more about free education available on Addie well that’s kind of what I talking about is like the Discord server is a great place to start you know Addie members once you create an account you there’s like join the chat is all through the app you click join the chat it’ll pop you over to Discord you can connect your Discord
(56:03) account into your Addie account and then within Discord there’s a channel for every single property has its own channel right then there’s like a there’s a there’s a news channel there’s a Greater Vancouver Channel there’s a GTA Channel there’s a fire movement Channel there’s a earning interest Channel there’s a crypto Channel like there’s just and so if you’re interested in chatting about stuff like there’s a whole bunch going on there and so when opportunities come on the platform or different news articles come out or whatever people are
(56:32) in there they’re running their own performance they’re questioning the mat they’re saying hey the rents for this one say in 2028 they’re going to be this but I don’t think they’re going to be that I think they’re going to be this and there’s a lot of that goes back and forth like there’s I find it super interesting and if you if you are into that and want to engage with the community and there’s lots of people that are in there but don’t engage but they just read right they’re just there we we talk to people all the time time
(56:56) in real life and we see them around and they say they’re in add and we ask them about Discord there’s a lot of people that say oh yeah I’m in there but I’ve never said anything but I I’m in there and I read it um and then the issuers are in there the exempt Market dealers are in there like it’s pretty interesting when you can ask a question directly to the issuer or to directly to the dealer and they can respond also in the same way that like we’ve had someone you know an example I came across the other day someone reported a bug in the
(57:22) software on the Android app that we have and they were they they pointed it out in Discord and our lead engineer Chris responded publicly in Discord so now you’re like you’re having a direct conversation with the person who’s on the keyboard who can fix that bug like it’s that’s pretty cool like it’s it’s pretty it’s a I think a pretty neat way to to enable the community to interact on a whole bunch of different levels and then outside of Discord of course property updates come out from different issuers all the time you know they push
(57:54) it out through their app or through through through account that shows up in the app for the investors so you can see are they on target for their whatever their projections were are their vacancy numbers sorted out is the what all this government you know regulation changed and this is how it’s helping or hurting us or whatever whatever it is and there’s there’s all these ways that people can you know get involved read learn um and see what what’s going on in different provinces what’s going on with different asset types what’s going on
(58:23) with different issuers um who’s doing a good job who’s who could do a better job that kind of stuff so I I think there’s a there’s a ton of really great opportunity um within the platform within the Discord and then of course we do in-person events all over the place where we try and do educational events where like we had the BC housing Minister come to an event where I did like a fireside chat with Rabbi Callan and just asked him a bunch of questions and we had 150 people in the room and Chip Wilson from lemon
(58:50) was in the room like you know asking all these questions or we’ve had the mayor of Vancouver show up or we’ve had other political leaders show up we’ve had um we’ve had Jeff boot um you know talk about talk about the the Bitcoin world and and what’s going on there like we just we try and do a bunch of in-person events to bring the community sort of into real life and learn some stuff around around you know a whole bunch of different topics that are related to investing real estate investing education learning that kind of Stu
(59:18) there lots of opportunities I’d like to see some events in Toronto Stephen we’ve done a few we did uh we did the Scott mcgilvery we had an event with him at the what’s that uh Club on the water called Beautiful um we had about 40 150 members come and I did a far side chat with Scott there in Toronto we’ve done a couple downtown Toronto um we definitely lean a little Vancouver heavy because we’re here we’ve done Calgary events but we will do more um spread them out especially next year we’re setting up the schedule now so we could publish it
(59:53) more in advance than we’ve done in the past now Stephen uh we’re running out of time so I want to ask you what do the future for Addie look like or even just in general the futurized yeah um so we’ve got you know lots to do now that we’ve we’ve added more opportunity types to the platform we’ve we’ve we started with Equity investment opportunities into institutional commercial grid real estate we’ve done now private credit has come on basically the debt side of institutional commercial grade real estate we’ve done our first hard money
(1:00:27) loan and we’ve let our first fund onto the platform which was the Scott mcgil fund came on um there’ll be more across those different categories um you’ll start to see a lot more on the hard money loan side where people can invest in basically home equity loans you know some homeowner that needs to borrow 100 Grand 200 Grand because they’re building a laneway house or doing a basement Renta or whatever it is that they’re up to um where people can invest in a in a secured you know second mortgage um so there there’s going to be more of
(1:00:58) those opportunities usually they’re shorter you know 8 to 18 months type type opportunities um this whole missing middle Multiplex thing is happening I think very fast is very exciting where every level of government is essentially saying let’s go let’s build let’s build that missing middle or that infill housing let’s build six plexes or eight plexes on single family lots they don’t need to be on the main road with a yellow line they can be in the middle of blocks and sort of within the communities and sort of that gentle
(1:01:31) density we are seeing a ton of um opportunity there um we’ve got a a whole bunch of opportunities like we have municipalities that are that are involved now with what we’re doing with with the atti platform of so that they can enable you know what we call the citizen Builder and the Community Capital to come together to facilitate these four six eight plexes in their in their cities um like the city of cola’s got we’ve got a few coming with them city of mission um looks like there’s G to be some Calgary Edmonton Regina like there Barry
(1:02:05) of heard Barry Ontario like we’ve got lots of that type of stuff coming and I think that’s going to be um really really exciting and it’s a it’s it’s great because the add platform can enable the Community Capital to come in and participate in the ownership and the creation of this density but also tie them into the you know the dividends and and sort of financial benefits that come from that densification um which is pretty I think pretty special normally you know developer shows up builds a tower builds whatever makes the money and then leaves
(1:02:36) and they leave behind the density and they change the bit of the community but they they they they sucked out you know a lot of the economic benefits and using the add platform enables the community to participate so that the community is is also on that side of it not just feeling the effects of the density but participating in it as well um and I think you’re going to see lots and lots of of opportunities like that where yeah like this this what we call like the citizen Builder and the Community Capital can come along and tie them you
(1:03:03) know tie together through the platform and make things happen so how does a citizen Builder get on Addie then like do they have to have a reputation do they have to have I don’t know how do they get on yeah so it’s a good question so we think of the citizen Builder let’s say it’s there’s lots of people like I’m in Vancouver so I’ll use a Vancouver example of someone who owns their house maybe their kids have moved out maybe they had no kids but they’re in a house maybe it’s a little too big for them but they’re still happy to be there they
(1:03:30) like the neighborhood they like the neighbors but they’ve got a lot of their wealth tied up in that specific property and so they they want to stay but they get it that you know maybe they could you know enable a few extra units on their property and so like a simple version of that would be is they do a deal um with with the developer or a builder who could build the mainway house you know that that can be cut off from the main property so they can move from their main house into the laneway house maybe they get that they own it
(1:04:00) outright and they get another million bucks in cash and then the developer gets the front half builds a fourplex rental and then they run the fourplex so that that couple is still in their neighborhood still on their street still in their spot but they’re now on the back of the property in the laneway house with some cash in their pocket and a smaller footprint of a property and they’ve got three four whatever renters in the front on the front half of the building and that sort of gentle densing has happened leaving them still in the
(1:04:28) neighborhood but solved maybe their cash needs because maybe they were house Houser but cash poor um and it kind of checks the boxes on a whole bunch of different angles of this of enabling three or four other families to now move into the neighborhood um and and sort of you know be that up incoming family in in that specific there’s lots of neighborhoods in Vancouver where there’s not a lot of kids running around because the like a tear down house it’s $2.
(1:04:52) 5 million right so this and it hurts everything hurts the school the Little League Baseball hurts everything because it’s just not like there’s not enough kids in that in that neighborhood and so stuff like this I think it’s going to help with that of of enabling you know the the restaurants to survive and all that sort of the little retail that’s in these communities a lot of them struggle because there just not enough people running around so it’s um so that’s anyways that’s what we think of as the citizen Builder is like they own the
(1:05:18) property they own the land and they don’t know how to necessarily build but there’s lots of these midsize builders that can build um and then usually a big problem with the everything I just explained is there’s usually a capital piece that’s missing of like maybe the developer you know need you need an equity partner for 500 or $750,000 it’s not a massive amount of money but there is a a chunk of money that is needed to make this thing happen or a chunk of money that’s needed to make it happen so that that midside
(1:05:47) developer can do two or three or four of them usually you know many times they can do one or two but they can’t do number three because their money is still tied up in number number one and so it slows them down so by enabling the Community Capital to participate with that citizen Builder and the developer tie it all together and you can do you know a a bunch more of these things quicker um and you know start to solve some of the the housing affordability by creating you know more of that gentle density not not the big towers in the
(1:06:19) neighborhood it’s just four six eight plexus that s pretty awesome yeah where where can citizen citizen developers learn more about how to get on Addie and then and then after that how do how do investors want want to be part of AD invest yeah so if you go to add invest.com or whatever and for borrowers people are looking to do home equity home equity loan um yeah there’s the Scott mcgil event but yeah for issuers for uh investors for borrowers those are kind of the top three places to start um and if you’re if you’re interested in
(1:07:04) learning more there’s there’s a whole bunch of different ways that you can engage with us email us at supported invest.com join the Discord you can find me in there um that’s Thomas berer that’s Thomas berer yeah he’s brought two properties on the platform very cool yeah because I’ve had a lot I’ve had a couple people on the show who want to you know build like five plexes or eight plexes after they buy a single family home tear it down five Plex eight Plex or turn a building their fourplex add a laneway suite for the fifth or the
(1:07:36) six and maybe a basement for a six and this this would be for them yes and the realtor like we think about it the realtor the realtor is the one doing the deal like so like if I’m going to buy a single family house in Hamilton and you’re my realtor right you get paid your commission and your clip on the deal but then you’re kind of out you’re just you’ve done it you’re on your way and now I own the single family house that maybe I’m going to rip down with a builder partner and do my thing in the atti world you could take a percentage
(1:08:07) of your commission that you just got Circle it back through the community capital and now you’re able to invest in that opportunity of that of that property that you just sold so you as the as the realtor can can participate on the Community Capital side the Builder can can participate the the trades like the individual people on the tools they can participate in the ownership of the building that they’re building the Carpenters the plumbers the tyers all of those people can participate right it’s not the the sort
(1:08:35) of the old way is that the the developer usually the person at the top makes the money yeah and they pay their pay their trades their Fair wage and whatever and those people get get you know their paid for their their time of their work but in in our world of being able to participate on the Community Capital side you can also not only do the work but also get a piece of The Upside because you’re invested in the opportunity in the same way that any large investor would be just the platform enables you to participate at a
(1:09:03) dollar amount that makes sense for you lots of our issuers come to us for that main reason is they don’t need money they’re not interested it’s like not a problem for them they’re trying to figure out how do they enable their employees to invest in the opportunities that they’re the building of the buildings or they you know how do I get my tenants to be able to invest in the building that they are the tenant in right and there’s like it’s it’s stories like that when the issuers show up and like this is what I’m trying to solve
(1:09:27) for and I think your platform can do it and for us the answer is yes like you can enable the tenants of the building or the the you know the the people on the tools all the way down to the whoever onsite security guard could technically choose to be able to participate in the opportunity pretty powerful this wow this really is empowering the small investor including the the community Builder and the all having challenges with this yeah yeah that’s if you think of that 468 FX there is there is small medium-sized Builders
(1:10:08) every in every single municipality everywhere there’s not a lot of builders that can build an 80 story cement Tower you know that’s that’s that’s a a big developer game not a lot of like your regular siiz developers go do that um but there’s tons of those small and Med medium siiz builders that can build small apartment buildings six plexes you know or they’re customed to doing single family houses like custom single family homes you know they’ve got the skill set to do a fourplex instead of a single family home they just need they just
(1:10:38) need a couple extra pieces some of it’s just in little little Community Capital to help them sort of get the equity sorted out and the other side of it is they they need that that citizen Builder someone who might already own the land or own the property wants to stay but doesn’t know how to build but owns the proper like just it’s just putting those pieces together and that’s what platform does we can we can facilitate the different parties to participate together and this is why these municipalities are reaching out to us
(1:11:03) because they see it and they’re like oh my gosh this is amazing if we can plug the add platform into what we’re doing of of changing Zone like the city of Colona changed the zoning on 1300 single family houses that if you use one of their designs you’ll get a building permit 10 days right and and if it’s one of those 1300 single family lots and that’s their goal it’s like let’s go we need we need four six8 flexes let’s we we need them let’s let’s get moving and they’re trying to simplify it and they get one of those
(1:11:29) constraints is the is the capital constraint of you know this 500 Grand 600 Grand 700 Grand of equity that needs to go into these things to kind of make it all tie together and that’s where the Community Capital aspect of the Addie platform can be of assistance all right Stephen one last time where can people get more information on Addie add invest.
(1:11:57) com account you can start your investment Journey on the platform reach out to me I’m happy to answer any questions so people reach out to you on Twitter I follow you on Twitter it’s called now Twitter’s fine discord’s fine my email is s Jagger add invest.com and it’s also s Jagger on Twitter as well this was this wow you have a lot of followers I didn’t know you were an influencer you almost have 700 followers on in on LinkedIn fantastic Stephen thanks so much for doing this thanks for the work that you’re doing you know keep fighting the good battle
(1:12:37) like you must get uh this work must feel rewarding you would you wouldn’t have got into this otherwise no yeah no it’s great I think the like the stories we hear from the community are unbelievable like we get we get great messages we get when people show up at the event like like we we’re yeah it’s I think it’s what keeps us motivated moving forward is we’re yeah the goal is like I said is eliminate barriers so everybody can participate just even it out for everybody amazing thanks again for doing this Stephen no problem thank
(1:13:13) you all right friends that wraps up another episode of the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians hope you got as much out of this one as I did remember that whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned investor there’s always something new to learn and it’s always about building that practical knowledge base that gets you closer to Financial Freedom if you found value today please do us a favor and leave us a review or a rating share this episode with a friend or better yet join our community of Real Estate Investors
(1:13:38) who are taking action and making moves and hey if there’s a topic you want us to cover or have uh there’s a certain guest you’d like us to have on the show drop me a line my DMs are open on social media reply to this email that this have arrived on I’m not hard to find uh you know we’re all about getting you the unfiltered truth to help you on your journey thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode until then stay Smart Stay curious and keep building that future catch you later

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** Transcript Auto-Generated**

(00:00) seven figure losses anti- renovation bylaw in Toronto $1 trillion passing from Boomers to Millennial kids and new federal government programs for developers all this and more on this week’s truth about real estate investing show for Canadians my name is Eran CTO I’ve been a landlord since 2005 a dedicated investment property specialist realtor since 2010 with close to half a billion dollars in transactions proudly I can count on one hand how many preconstruction condo deals we’ve done as I’ve never been a fan of that
(00:29) strategy I am a four-time realtor of the year to investors in Ontario since 2016 I’ve conducted over 300H hourong interviews on this show with Canadian Real Estate Investors uh on this podcast and we’re still going uh over the years I’ve developed a few personal personal immutable laws of real estate investing I don’t private lend I don’t join Venture I don’t invest with office investors I don’t borrow at expensive rates I don’t invest in small towns with poor economic fundamentals All the Above is too much risk for me and effort and friends of
(01:02) mine were recently burnt I have friends who lent to a high-profile investor with projects west of the west of the greater Toronto area and in Florida if you check the investors’s Instagram youd think they’re living the dream I thought they did I was like what am I doing wrong um you know they had uh they lived in mansions they have an enormous Cottage they fly private a sixf fig luxury car uh private school tuition fees but behind the scenes they’ve lost millions and millions of dollars including a few uh seven figure private mortgages for my
(01:35) friends um confidence among them is low that any of that money will ever be recovered uh some lenders are even posting about it on social media as a PSA so others don’t lend this this investor who’s run into tough times uh one of my friends has actually taken over several of those failing projects uh this highlights one of my biggest hurdles of with private lending one of my red flags uh as a private lender like I want my investments to be as passive as possible uh I genuinely enjoy my work that I do and value my time with my
(02:06) family uh but private loans when they go bad plan B is to usually take control of the project uh which can include forcing sale or taking taking control whatever means uh that means again getting handson uh can mean also coming out of pocket to fund working capital or pay off other creditors ahead of you uh Cherry would murder me if this ever happened and hence we don’t lend or joint venture with others and then you add in the market like it is today high interest rates low very low buyer buyer interest um and lock and
(02:39) combine that with lackluster projects uh then you have plan C that comes into play litigation or heavy involvement uh managing development Renovations getting Hands-On uh hiring contractors managing contractors uh even running a business if it’s a hotel or recreational property like getting involved with the business now you’re now you’re an entrepreneur versus the play with a passive investor uh for my friends many of these properties are in small town Ontario requiring long inconvenient commutes to places I never even heard of before I’ve
(03:09) been in real estate since 2005 and there’s still cities in Ontario towns in Ontario names I’ve never heard of before and they keep coming up um and that’s again those are places I would never invest in I mean to say never but they would not be my top 1,000 places to invest anyways it’s a sad situation for everyone involved including the the the invest there’s a group of investors out there as well having to power of sale a portfolio out New Brunswick where and and keep in mind New Brunswick they just replaced their conservative Government
(03:40) after six balanced budgets and elected a liberal majority led by a university Professor that promised a 3% rank control for next year but 3% is better than what we have from Ontario’s conservatives who set the rent uh cap at 2.5 the lowest in Canada among conser conservative governments socialism seems to be growing here which is bad news for investors generally uh admittedly I’m not immune to losses either uh just been reviewing some of my stocks I’ve lost money on many things and anyone who and generally I find
(04:17) anyone who claims they’ve never lost money I would never believe a word they say uh personally stock tips have been my Achilles heel leing me with PTSD as I always plan to own more Tesla shares and adding to my Bitcoin which never did thanks to PTSD uh from again losing the money on stock tips and now compare that so I’ve lost money on tenants as well don’t get me wrong I’ve had two tenants with those with significant non-payment of rents one trash my property flooding it but that total loss is somewhere around
(04:47) 50,000 and a lot of headache a lot of headaches and fights between you know my partners and I anyways so yeah my loss from Real Estate again we run a pretty tight ship I’ve we’ve implemented best practices every step of the way 50,000 isn’t too bad compared to a lot of people out there that’s just reading a gentleman Windsor Ontario is is out of month out of rent for 16 months and the Tenant just got a stay order so no end in sight when this landlord will be uh get his property back anyways lesson learned stick to what’s always stood the
(05:19) test of time for me uh that’s long-term real estate investing based on economic fundamentals and cash flow just not here because I see no way we’re here uh will get us where we got us to where we are today so hence we’re pting pivoting to the United States and should there be there shouldn’t be any surprise because the city of Toronto just passed a renovation bylaw so that a Land If a landlord needs to evict a tenant even temporarily to complete a renovation the permit is $700 per unit uh one the landlord has to provide proof the unit
(05:52) would be uninhabitable during the renovation and rehome the tenant uh who is being temporarily displaced with comparable hous in at similar rents or Monies to cover the rent difference this all means it’s going to be really expensive for the landlord Hamilton and London Ontario have already passed a very similar renovation bylaw and I predict more municipalities will pass the same legislation keep in mind this is Ontario we’re talking about well actually even just these three cities there is so much old housing stock out there properties
(06:25) that were built like 50 years and long older like they have tons of T backs that needs to be done like Plumbing like knob and two wiring like H anyways I don’t envy those landlords hence more reason that I’m getting out of this uh getting out of being an onari landlord next week I’ll tell you about how the interior liberals what they have planned they’ve actually just uh they have a private members uh Bill uh I think it’s Bill 163 uh no rent increase and no evictions for landlord’s own use including if a buyer’s buying and wants
(06:59) to move in for 2025 uh this likely won’t pass but just to give you insight into what the Ontario liberals have planned for you should the Ford government ever fail what’s a real estate investor to do for those interested in learning more about what I consider the best practice for investing in real estate I want to personally invite you to a free hybrid training uh we’re going to talk about how Canadians can leverage us real estate for Passive scalable and tax efficient income streams on Thursday nov November 28th this is hybrid so folks in
(07:30) person doors open at 7:30 p.m. uh it’s 800 p.m. Standard Time for folks online we’ll start we’ll start on time at 800 p.m. eastern Time online so folks for anyone who’s not surprised uh or is surprised I’m speak to Real Estate Investors from Quebec tons of from investors from Quebec BC Alberta Winnipeg Winnipeg Manitoba people who want to invest in the states so we are off again we’re offering this on on hybrid as folks if you’re local to my office in Oakville please come in person love to see you in person for those
(08:05) folks who can’t make the drive U or flight or whatever what have you 800 PM Eastern Standard Time online no Thursday November 28th this is a free training I’ve always been a fan of democratizing Education as in making education as inexpensive and accessible as possible so that you can protect yourselves and your family from there’s going to be more inflation if anyone doesn’t believe me then don’t listen to this call don’t tune in anyways we’re going to we’re going to learn what you can expect to learn is where to invest and capitalize
(08:34) on a trump government how our clients are making money on the buy as in where our clients are buying Under for under Market uh executing perfect burs buy renovate refinance repeat uh without ever leaving home last month’s episode was literally Shane from Montreal who did not leave home for his perfect bur in Memphis Tennessee uh diversifying to the US for better cash loan returns and landlord rights let’s not forget that if you’re an Ontario BC investor or Quebec investor we don’t have any rights uh in land friendly USA it’s completely
(09:08) different now for those of you with deeper Pockets that want to be developers closer to home I applaud you because that’s what our country Society needs more housing and we have someone here can help you with that my old friend Pier proon he’s returning to the show as a former industry Insider as an underwriter at the CC uh he’s an active investor he owns multiple buildings uh he’s an expert obviously in the space he’s analyzed hundreds of large lucrative multif family investment deals all over Canada and as a good Canadian P
(09:40) Paul wants to help more Canadians build housing as he believes it is the developers in Canada who have the greatest potential for success financial success um millionaires become millionaire status as he said to make millions and he’s here to share about the latest Federal programs for developers no one is talking about I never heard of these programs before for so if you are a developer Builder or plan to be you’ll have to give this episode a listen developers are who the federal government wants to support
(10:08) because they build housing that we so desperately need landlords not so much to connect with Pier Paul you can email him at ppon mayoki M AO ki. CA links in the show notes or his website which is easy to remember multifamily investing canada.com again that’s multifamily investing canada.com where he offers free online resources and also he’s got a very in-depth course on apartment building investing please enjoy the [Music] show while you’re up here Paul uh happy birthday thank you I can’t believe you made time on your birthday sances to be
(10:55) on this podcast where nobody listens to I did it for you I did it for circumstances is like you know I don’t come back to GTA too often so uh you know so this is you you know at the event Rockstar event I wanted to come to and I had a uh the real estate conf Forum in Ottawa so went to Ottawa first from Calgary then a little back uh back West to Toronto to see you and a bunch of people and uh yeah and my son by the way have a son in uh Toronto oh that’s right and before we’re recording can you share what his rent is yeah poor kid 26
(11:26) years old uh he lives in a dog crate as uh Ron Butler would say 2,100 bucks a month you know no balcony uh no utilities included so yeah a good chunk of his income going towards his rent right sad for uh it’s a newer it’s a new building it’s right uh I haven’t been to it but near Front Street like literally where all these new condos are it’s a nice location it’s a nice location that’s why he wanted that place cuz his work he can walk to work within uh five minutes and he’s in carbon trading pretty cool uh he studied uh um um uh
(12:01) what did they study environmental Sciences MH and got a job uh good kid I think you met him anyway he’s gonna he’s going to be around this weekend Oh fantastic I look forward to meeting with the r yeah no he’s sharp he’s sharp he’s very sharp showed up had never been to tono unlike me right you know I studied here years ago 40 years ago at UFT but uh knew what he wanted to do uh which was carbon getting into the carbon trading market and uh had done his research one of those scientific guys you know and showed up in person well nobody was
(12:35) answering his calls or his emails when he was making inquiries showed up at the company uh and this this is a few years ago so still a lot of people working at home so there’s only one guy in the office it’s a cool story because I’m very proud as a dad you you’re really to the having two kids there’s only one guy there uh he speaks French he’s black from France I think or maybe some French country and my Sun started so as soon as he detected a French accident they switched to French and started asking questions about the company and this and
(13:06) that and asked for the contact of uh the owner of the company it’s called clear blue and uh then uh this guy was kind enough to show him around the office and then when the owner heard about it he said if this guy’s half smart you hire him just because of the attitude like you and I like me I grew up not grew up but I went to school and spent quite a bit of time TR it’s it’s an impressive City for a kid to show up in downtown and didn’t have a place to stay uh so and he got the job and now every time he the the owner of the clear blue sites my
(13:41) son as a as an example pretty proud that’s pretty pretty proud of my son yeah pretty cool so he makes lots of money to afford this rent right um no he does not no he does not yeah well but yeah it’s pretty cool I’m sure your kids are going to the saying my kids are have been off the payroll the family payroll for a long time extremely well uh managed with their money and you know we’ve talked about that over the years like kids don’t get financial education but my kids my goodness sir when again I I won’t take all the credit they’re
(14:14) smart my daughter just finished her Masters in uh uh cognitive Sciences hoping to get into med school I don’t have to give them any money it’s been like that for years years fantastic very cool fantastic very cool yeah just thank you for having me you good to see you my friend good to see you too uh just because we’re both landlords of course different scales yeah uh based on his rent and that he has to come pay for utilities he needs at least about $7,000 salary a month I did I I I don’t know a month I don’t know how yeah like I said
(14:46) I’m not involved with his finances but uh I think he makes 80 grand oh yeah no no okay so you’re not coming out of pocket toao no no absolutely not like I said my my children have been off my payroll for a long long time years obviously like you we we had money for their studies uh but even my daughter her Masters we she had several jobs uh while getting her master’s done so no it’s uh it’s pretty cool very very very cool to see your kids do well and imag but it’s sad at the same time that they can’t have a proper life because so much
(15:16) money is going towards their ENT that’s wrong right that’s that’s extremely wrong I’m going to guess they’re going to inherit some assets though I’m working at it we’ll talk about that I do have a legacy plan for my my children of course I do of course right everyone otherwise what you know what’s what what do they have what are they’re going to have unless they have a pension they’re screwed yeah you believe I am I have a pension from CC yeah I can’t believe that and I forgot to claim it it’s pocket money seriously I forgot to claim it for
(15:46) a year and then they sent me something oh you should claim it so I got a big check because I didn’t claim it when I turned 60 right isn’t that funny but it’s cool to say hey just pocket money traveling money okay so we should uh for listeners benefit tell us a bit about the journey how did you arrive to here oh Journey continues but uh you sharing how old you are today oh I don’t mind that at all I’m 62 today I’m born in 1962 I’m 62 today so no it’s been great journey I think life is either a daring Adventure or nothing at all said
(16:17) the Helen Keller remember her she was a blind yeah got it blind and death exactly but for the purpose of this podcast so uh well I’m I’m well educated to well educated I guess so to went that to school lawyer was it exactly so I got a degree in political science from here in minor international relations from u a law degree and a teacher degree from aou so that’s uh yeah spent too much time how old were you when you gradu when you finished your last I was old I don’t want to go there I was too old too long at school I agree but you know what I’m
(16:51) a curious person so I think that would explain that yeah uh but uh then so studied political science International ations I travel a lot have traveled all over the world pretty much with work or pleasure or both both uh started traveling when I was 14 that was a lifetime uh dream of mine to travel um but I got a job uh for CCC way back uh doesn’t exist anymore had an international division MH very cool stuff uh the mission was to export Kenan housing Technologies right so we had a guy that was a kind of a had a a
(17:29) building um like construction Builder uh experience and how to sell our systems like with frame structure and all of that um and then it took a different uh uh tangent we were approached by the World Bank uh and the international Finance Corporation which is a subsidiary of the World Bank to assist other countries providing uh Consulting advice on how to set up mortgage default Insurance what samich does right Sam is a mortgage default insurer and so I joined that team it was it was extremely exciting I I got to travel to places
(18:03) like Africa to Gabon got to go to Europe Romania China obviously a couple of times China am I missing anything oh of course it’s quite in the news right now uh the West Bank in Gaza because I I helped create pmhc Palestine mortgage and housing corporation which obviously is not active in Gaza needless to see uh but I believe it might still be active in in uh other uh Arabic countries like uh Egypt uh so yeah I was in Gaza City on behalf of CC a couple of times uh while I go to at land in the um Tel Aviv and go to Jerusalem stay in Jerusalem uh
(18:42) so yeah very cool career uh so basically we were working with these foreign countries to set up mortgage default insurance and at that time my job was more like as a contract negotiator managing these projects and the Kenan International Development agency was involved so uh but right away I wanted to be on the delivery side of those consulting services so learning cmc’s core experties which is mortgage default like underwriting and all that jazz so and of course I was I’ve always been a mountain person love the mountains so I
(19:14) asked for an assignment out west in Calgary um initially I started doing some uh single home underwriting for a few months then they said I was kind of in a position doing rotation between different departments to to kind of become a manager manager uh so I started in single underwriting then they moved me uh to default Management in real estate for 4 years so I had a small Department anything or default def so there the default management is one component and real estate so the default management of what of apartment
(19:43) buildings okay good news being that apartment buildings rarely default even though it can be tough you and I talked about a former student Dem mind that you had on this show uh I I yeah yeah yeah more than me yeah anyways but um yeah they rarely default I was bored out of my mind so but my job was to get the Aras report uh every three months and see if something was getting out of line because you know the lenders have that responsibility to monitor uh whether you know a project is going towards in a default situation so they have to uh
(20:17) report every year I have to provide my financial statements to the lender and they can see the the health of the building the project whether it’s uh it’s going to be in a default situation so that’s one side the real estate side is what we know when people lose their homes lenders have the responsibility to try to dispose of them if they’re unable then eventually those houses would come back to C so I had a a small Department of manager a couple of Staff across the entire country just the regional office the Prairie so that’s Alberta uh
(20:47) saskatchwan and Manitoba and uh Northwest Territory and later on Yukon so you looked at a lot of real estate yeah yeah yeah well that’s how I did but uh and so but but yeah but on the default side there was nothing being defaulting right to this day I mean like I said my former student we won’t name him but uh it can be tough at times it’s real estate investing but by and large they don’t default it’s a cash cow for cmec like the the the premiums you know we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes depending on the size
(21:19) of the project right friend sharing with me his cash load is quite significant yeah so so so that’s what it is that’s what enables you survival yeah but I was bored literally and it’s a good thing like apartment buildings it’s less risky than what you do or when you know that because you got one home and whereas I’ve got multiple no but you know what I’m saying in my case we have multiple sources of income right so if you have a vacancy you still have the rest of the building bringing in cash so from that perspective it’s less risky than buying
(21:47) smaller like a single home it’s different right it’s yeah I was able to exit anything okay for that perspective you can dispose of your properties but anyway so I was bored there was nothing there were no defaults in this those were great years especially when I arrived in Calgary like 2002 Alberta was on fire people uh that own multif family properties like I bought one building from a couple an African couple and they sold it to me four years after purchasing it they made a million cash in equity values shot through the roof
(22:19) back in uh 2002 and 2006 during those years MH so I was bored out of my mind there were not not too many defaults to manage ended up going to uh well I said I want to transfer to the multif family underwriting Department which I did for four years so that’s sort of How I Learned the ropes and I saw how much again money people were making so sry for people for the for the noice explain what what the C underwriting does yeah so underwriting means just it’s the risk analysis what are the risk factors property Market valuation and the Bor
(22:51) borers are risk factor and just go go through the fin financial analysis of these risk factors and deter mining what is the appropriate loan amount that c is comfortable uring uh and you got to keep in mind C is there for the benefit of the entire all Canadians right it’s a CR Corporation so uh the threshold the tolerance for risk is not that high to be honest with you well it’s taxpayer money should taxpayer money exactly but but it serves the country well like it it enables and we’re going to talk about that I got a recipe for people who want
(23:22) to become millionaire with the event you know with opportunities in Canada but it it is a good system as you know you pay lower interest rate by about 1% yeah and because of that because it the loan is insured the Lander’s risk is nil 100% covered by CC the event of default and then it cost the investors Less on carrying exactly 1% because then the lenders between themselves compete more to be able to to get to your business because they know everybody you know when your loan is insured with CC you pay one roughly 1% uh lower interest
(23:52) rate what is significant it’s on your on your income yeah on your return on investment for sure so what roughly what percent market share does CC have of the mortgage default I wouldn’t know that I’ve left so long ago but it’s must the multif family it’s yeah absolutely it’s the majority there’s no doubt right why would you not go through CC it’s a pain in the butt to get get the insurance Certificate of Insurance but uh yeah the returnal investment is significant so it is a great M majority unless you don’t
(24:21) know because I over the years yeah because people don’t I remember seeing some olderly people landlords didn’t know all I don’t to pay is premium that’s because they don’t understand the system they’re probably not aware that you pay a lower interest rate because the loan is insured very novice yeah but generally speaking Yeah any any large resits all that everybody goes Sam insured uh mortgages course because anyone who does some basic networking absolutely but these people still exist but anyway yeah so that’s it is
(24:50) definitely the share and it makes sense but you got to be aware that you know it’s it’s a bureaucracy so there are challenges uh turnaround times all the documents rules that you got to be on top of that and I think more rule changes are going to be coming yeah but it’s the majority yeah it makes definitely sense yeah and then you jump shipped at some point yeah four so I saw how much money people were making and I said okay well I want to do that when I grow up so I grew up pretty fast and I left my job it’s uh and you
(25:20) know it’s one of those day moves that you just got to be completely convinced you jump without a parachute back then my kids were younger much younger I have three kids but you were already investing before you left you you had a significant proof of concept I had two buildings right at that time yeah okay but mind you one of them was a dog I mean it’s not like you said earlier before we started recording everything’s perfect we all have uh we all make mistakes it wasn’t a huge mistake we didn’t lose any money but I did have a
(25:45) dog one of the the first building of course was not ideal but I took action and you know sign was that there’s nothing such it’s perfect no to learn no no it wasn’t a big lesson but uh yeah and I my my shareholders didn’t lose too much money so I was happy with that because I had two siblings well one brother-in-law and one brother so I family as partner they better you know it’s the same as everybody right everyone we’ve all been through this my point my point is that you had a proof a concept yeah before you I had every day I could see Irwin
(26:19) like back in those days people became millionaires overnight M uh I’m obviously I was underwriting in Alberta and so it’s the reality here it was it was rents were going through the roof one thing that your listeners need to understand there’s an exponential Factor when you move to the multif family World which is five or more units the income is a driver of the value and there’s an exponential factor for every dollar an increased net operating income and why depending how compressed cap rates are your property can appreciate 15 to 25
(26:52) bucks for every dollar an increased uh revenue and net Opera income like Toronto downtown Toronto when you give a rent in increase you’re making hundreds and millions of dollars like o overnight just by increasing your noi as long as your your expenses remain constant you know what I’m saying but uh it’s it’s it’s exponential so in those years I yeah I saw it’s 2008 I was an underwriter multif family underwriter IR when I saw people make so much money millions and millions like by refinancing taking Equity out buying
(27:22) more apartment buildings exceptional years uh obviously we’re we’re not in an environment where this would happen even in Alberta things have calmed although they’re pretty hot I mean you know a lot of people from GTA are out and from everywhere to be honest with you are coming to Alberta because we still don’t have rent control and uh yeah you can still make a buck we still uh you know was look at your chart here in your training room uh yeah US versus Canada definitely specifically on Teran BC though yeah yeah but you had the US
(27:51) right us is still uh we are more like the US in that regard we still uh it’s a great place to be we’re still from mentality people entrepreneu people work people business friendly people want want to make a difference and people are Dynamic uh yeah Alber is a great place to be absolutely but uh yeah it you can still make money and it’s not perceived as uh as a bad thing which is a major issue in this country you’re rich or bad hey you’re a landlord or especially bad you’re a bad you’re taking advantage of those poor
(28:25) tenants that’s painful here I I hate that I hate that right and You’ so you’ve also been an educator or M depart bu yeah yeah so I’m not sure where I’m at with that so I had the last Workshop as you know is well rated um it it teach so it was called the uh Canan multif family investing blueprint program 3D very intense extremely intense um how how to underwrite well I’m this stuff is this is serious stuff serious money you better be diligent and I should say something I want to scare people off but because I even have a short a story to share with
(29:02) you I just dumped a client yesterday and I’ll tell you why because you got to be you got to be true to yourself but it’s a different world you can’t the mistakes are not permissible much I mean especially if you have investor money especially if you have invest your money because you’re talking about a lot of hundred thousands of dollars but yeah it’s the world of the multif family is a lot smaller there’s not as many lenders there’s not many Realtors and everybody has to be a and if you screw up you’re going to be
(29:32) blacklisted and I had this client talk huh we all talk yeah yeah oh yeah oh yeah reference check we reference check oh yeah absolutely and this guy this guy’s an old guy came to me a couple months ago before I took off from my vacation Quebec at the beginning of August and he wants to build an aplex so I said look uh here’s what I need and this is where I I as a as a you know like put my legal background my underwriting background I’m very point pointed like I like to cross my teas and up my eyes and as you this is the kind
(30:02) of business that this is this this is a strength I said the guy here’s the list I need an appraisal you want to build something what is it going to be worth that completion uh you want to build it what are G get me your your construction cost vetted by a professional cost consultant I go on vacation three weeks I come back I still don’t have that he’s asking me all these questions Tire kickers but I I felt sympathy or empathy whichever both I guess I felt for him he’s an older guy like listen he was giving me his numbers you know a
(30:32) notebook with the Rings like to hold the sheets together and all handwritten I’ve been there before this is not new right mom and pop but my mission by the way I haven’t spoken about my mission my mission when I was I created my program is to democratize the access to multif family invest in Canada right and we are we are wealthy we’re we’re lucky people mind you we had to work for for it but so I saw this guy reminded me of my dad he a bit disorganized but I could see he had quite a bit of skill which still I’m
(31:02) not clear what they were other than what he was telling me but show me the money kind of thing because I asked him what’s your boore structure who you who’s going to build right and all that stuff and I it’s two months later I didn’t get anything so I said okay okay my heart I said okay I’m going to try to help this guy out that’s what I do uh so I what what are your numbers so I looked at the handwritten numbers and I went in my spreadsheet and we have pretty cool spreadsheet that’s something I really like about the brokerage firm that I’m
(31:31) with but uh it shows all the financing cers at a glance you put in the numbers income expenses and all that then you get mli select which is the thing of the day although I have something else to tell you about uh and you know 100 points 50 points 70 points and then what loan amount you can get then cmhc standard which is the regular CMC program or conventional right non same Mach shirt but whether these numbers hold water or not until I get something I can’t and then he goes beyond that still hasn’t given me what I asked him I
(32:03) said look man I I I I could see that it was would be too honorous he doesn’t know what he’s doing he’s kind of I wouldn’t say belligerent but unwilling to to play like not play but to give me the documents so I dumped them yesterday uh the point is there’s great opportunities tremendous opportunities we have a housing crisis uh everyone in my my opinion and you know so my studies given my studies I’ve studied history a lot I’m revisiting history and actually history repeats itself not in good ways um well it’s not good history yeah well
(32:38) what’s we’re talking we’re joking about Canada being socialist uh you just go what happens after you know the war the second world war right so um so I just uh if you want to succeed you need to be a pro there’s a housing crisis that is the biggest problem this country has faced since the second war for the because of the economic impacts the social impacts that we’re talking you and I about like you know uh oh another example obviously my son that we talked about like a young professional that has hardly any disposable income after he
(33:13) pays for his rent well and he got a deal yeah you tell me that I didn’t know that I don’t know the market enough are you kidding me wow that’s that’s unbelievable well I think he’s going to get a better deal in the Years time don’t you think potentially why about the market crashing anyway you can talk about that but uh what I was going to say just to finish that point I also mentioned that landlord is probably bleeding money yeah he is bleeding money he is bleeding money yeah probably probably I’m going to guess at least a
(33:36) thousand oh for sure for sure for sure so it sucks for both the renter and the landlord yeah but just to so that people understand how dire the housing crisis is I I picked up a radio show and it was a bunch of uh inmates that were uh were freed were getting out of jail had nowhere to live in no Nova Scotia New Brunswick somewhere like that because of the housing shortage places too see what I’m saying so this is and then we talked about people at the divorce you know you want to move out of the the home you don’t have anywhere to go you
(34:05) got to live together imagine the tension in the household you’re off duplexing it you know yeah there you go that’s an option but you know and you talk about the encampments all across Canada so it’s sad it’s so sad it’s very sad in Ottawa like I you know I went to Ottawa you for my law degree wow along the canal R all these tents so but you know we’re bus business owners our job is to identify in these crisis opportunities and uh yeah we got to build Supply mhm but uh yeah and now you’re a builder not yet not a builder
(34:39) I’m a mortgage broker but I so the goal there well that’s what I want to specialize in yeah I uh I so building obviously requires even more sophistication in terms of numbers higher risk obviously as well during construction and until construction risk which you didn’t have as exctly no exactly yeah different business model right uh so yeah so the focus as a mortgage broker and I think I didn’t get to that so for me it’s a it’s a logical continuation I uh my kids are gone they’re off the payroll as I was telling
(35:09) you I I’m sure you look forward to the day your kids are going to be off the payroll uh no don’t look for it’s sad when they’re gone I miss them crazy that’s why I’m also here to see my son it’s hard uh don’t blink it goes fast but uh no I just see the opportunity uh like I said in my opinion this is the biggest problem that Canada’s faced since the Second World War um so we need to build so for me as a mortgage broker I don’t do Residential don’t call me for residential I don’t do that uh because it’s not my expertise
(35:37) and I have no interest in it but uh I want to focus on uh multif family con building apartment buildings and the investors are very sophisticated and uh there’s new programs that’s the recipe if you want to be millionaire I know why you and friends of mine many friends of mine like I said I just came back from Ottawa there they have a fund in the US they’re in Houston I understand why you’re doing it that there’s no more money to be made you’ve got rent control it’s just uh moving economy yeah yeah exactly right R
(36:05) control landord friendly business friendly like Alberta but I I I I took a a training you remember Dereck clobal right yeah so I took his uh development course over the winter it’s Way Beyond what I need to know as a as a as a mortgage broker as a commercial residential mortgage broker but the reason is I my job I’m not a mortgage broker by the way Irwin let me take that back still in training how I identify myself I am a mortgage advisor the reason being that uh I am already an investor multif family I have legal
(36:39) training you know I’ve got all the cmhc background that I have when I sit across from a client I’ll give the warning I’m uh you need to go and talk to your own lawyer your own accountant but I I so once I’ve said that then I can go in and well may I suggest you do this and this and that right and it’s uh for whatever reasons so that’s how I look at myself and going into construction you’ve got more sophisticated uh investors and in order to solve this biggest crisis that Canada’s facing since the second world
(37:15) war our governments all three levels of governments will have to step in they are not you know that we’re building less this year than we are uh and and it’s only getting worse people aren’t buying it’s so unaffordable it’s it is but so so we need so but obviously rates are coming down but more program one of them that I want to talk to you is called the aclp but what I’m saying before we get to that’s it’s called the apartment construction loan program it’s one of the first good I’ve heard of it no well most people haven’t and that’s
(37:42) why that’s my job to be honest with you I I I’m still you can see my marking I’m still assimilating it so I can teach it right and explain it to my my my clients but let me before I go there the the first culprit of the housing crisis I think are the municipalities oh yeah all the construction cost and all that stuff and the length and all that in their blocking development exactly you know what happened you know that about GTA right with the housing Accel fund yeah the billions that they got from the federal government from CC they turned
(38:12) around and increased development cost by 40% that’s good this is no joke yeah ask Ron Butler that’ll send investors this is no joke you know that this happened the last couple of years this is ridiculous how come nobody’s stepping in that money was designed to speed up construction on the small scale I think most listeners can can relate to a gentleman out in Kitchener he’s building uh he’s building Garden suites small scale development Garden suites he posted development charges 40 to 70,000 that’s what I’m
(38:44) saying right so that’s so municipalities culprit number one of the housing crisis you got provinces like rent control gez I mean there’s research on this that it kills the market you know and then of course the federal government but I find my former emper and the federal government uh this is uh one kind of Avenue that’s worth exploring this aclp apartment construction loan program is uh lowc cost funding for construction so the emphasis is uh you know it’s $30 billion okay aclp right $30 billion okay and it’s
(39:20) designed um to put a little bit less emphasis on affordability you still have you know the mli select affordability uh Energy Efficiency and accessibility uh but a little less emphasis on that still is part of that but more on construction like Supply issue that we’re dealing with okay uh and and the key difference here it’s cmhc this is key I’m going to pause make some effect on your podcast c is now becoming a lender again oh yeah cmhc used to be a lender years before my time at cmhc I have no experience living at
(39:56) that yeah now you’re too young puppy yeah I know you’re not 62 I am no but I know the history of CMC right it’s I always like history so CM used to be a direct lender what happens is when you’re the direct lender you control the outcome you’re only going to get the financing if the out the desired outcome is achieved that’s what we need my prediction and I have high respect for drik Lobo and uh you know I follow everything he does what he said is Western societies like Canada sooner or later like he agrees with me this is one
(40:25) of the biggest problems we’ve had since the second world war Western societies always end up solving Solutions like that right we’re very slow now we don’t have good leaders in place but sooner laders are going to catch on and I think something like this where you have specific financing that’s very surgically targeted at getting what you want which is Supply in this case low cost to money because it’s the CNB program like the bond Canan bond market so and and it’s listen I mean it’s uh it’s uh so it’s only for con Market
(40:56) housing it’s not for uh um single home occupancy or retirement homes it’s really to increase the supply but you get a 10-year term okay um 50-year amotization Whoa by the way folks who are listening this is the recipe for Success not for everybody but I I just want to backtrack and sort I’ve thought about our conversation what I wanted to share with you like I said I just came back from friend’s house in Ottawa where they’re doing exactly what you’re doing at a larger scale they’re buying multif Family Properties in the US for the
(41:28) reasons and I I completely understand why you’re doing it right because the market here is doesn’t take you anywhere um but I think people in Canada we need also people smart like you and me to say hey we are Canadians we have a good life let’s be part of the solution of building so for me it’s my I wasn’t sure how to frame it when I was going to be sitting across from you it’s not my final Act I’m 62 but I’m I’m strong as a horse I still put my 40 pound back back over mountains like I did when 20 no difference on intentionally right I I
(42:03) stay fit right I don’t have a big belly you see me I mean I have gray hair but the point is let’s yes look at opportunities in the US but let’s also look at how we can transform ourselves to become Builders this is one example this is the best one I can so far know that’s is occurring where if you do this the kicker here is yes you’re getting up to 100% loan to cost Irwin yes pause for effect folks listening this can make millionaires you take advantage of that you build your team uh Builders and you know it’s it is
(42:39) a skill and of course You’ got to try to achieve economies a scale we know what happened to construction cost the last few years they they’ve shot through the roof over 40% the last 40 years um I think inflation is coming down although I don’t think prices are coming down that much so I’m not sure to what extent but this can make millionaires just like M selected the beginning before they tweak some of the rules I said people made a lot of money people made a lot of money so yeah and so interest only uh financed by the loan during construction
(43:07) through occupancy permit so principal and interest payments are due uh after 12 months of stabilized effective gross income so you can build take your money out build another one what I’m saying is this is the first program where I see this a real tangible possible solution to the housing crisis unfortunately I don’t see see anything happening at the municipal level I don’t see much at the provincial level this is kind of the kind of example if you want yeah some people are going to get rich in the process but we need to solve this
(43:39) housing crisis before it becomes it becomes a a revolution a social upheaval right but so what municipalities would you recommend for this program then no no but they get money for example we’re just talking about the uh the accelerator fund from CC that was given to GTA and then construction cost you know there’s got to be uh accountability you’re supposed to use that money so but they need to come out like maybe the money comes from obviously the federal government I think it has probably I mean this is something Beyond me but I’m
(44:08) sure at least the idea is to be able to develop programs like that that achieve the result that you want and give incentives to business owners and developers to do it which as you know they have none right now right but for the everyday investor where should they so so if we solve at least the financing piece they still need to find some land to develop where should they be looking well so that’s that’s an issue that’s you know we just saying how municipalities are not that Cooperative no well there are some there are some
(44:37) yeah well so this is a societal issue irn I don’t know if we want to go there or not this is where we’re becoming too commies too too socialistic here it’s got to stop it’s not it’s it’s it’s damaging this country right municipalities have to cooperate so I I think it’s and it’s a problem with housing as you know it’s it’s not Trudeau got plaque for saying that it’s it’s not a federal jurisdiction mostly it isn’t we know that and it’s it’s a challenge also that made this really painful though yeah but so I I I we need
(45:09) we need we need to get all parties municipalities the provinces the federal government to get together to find solution ASAP uh so to answer your question I don’t have a magic Bill I’m just saying I’m just trying to in my own thinking process trying to come up with Solutions that’s part of it you’ve got to have programs like that that are specifically targeted and of course you got to open up land right which is you know I was telling you before we started recording the podcast that uh yeah we keep talking about Supply but what’s
(45:37) been forgotten is urban planning and saving land uh in in especially large centers like GTA Vancouver Toronto Montreal that that that that that can remain affordable instead of putting it into on the market and then there’s been speculation like sometimes the land is worth more than what you build on top of it and so that was completely best no and it was completely neglected now you have people that are cannot afford like poor people living in downtown large cities so yeah it’s just food for thought I I’m not pretending
(46:08) here sitting here but I know this kind of program as the cost of money goes down which we know it started and they will continue to do so in the next year or so this is the kind of program that needs to be put in place to to encourage Construction in my opinion uh so it’s pretty excit I’m pretty EXC tears a lot of weight was that I think your opinion carries a lot of weight but it’s just uh you know it’s it’s it’s it’s that that’s part of it you know but you have to create incentives to build and uh governments have the key role to play in
(46:39) that but CMC direct lender so that’s something I’m very excited about and uh so I was saying I was trying to figure out which act is this because as you know I’ve had many iterations of my life like you have uh my kid had many many many as well and so for me the way I look at this my my and I’m saying this publicly uh my kids are gone I have a nice portfolio of apartment buildings I can do whatever I want in life I could retire I’m not retiring why I want to be part of the solution I love Canada always did very proud Canadian quebecer
(47:14) all of that is part of it and Alberton now uh I want to be part of the solution yes I want to make money I’m not embarrassed to say that this is not an embarrassment like you know christop is telling us that’s BS that’s how the world has evolved and has progressed and has become wealthy we’ve got to go back to some of these values and yes I I uh I want to help people out and I want to help my kids I see that the potential in construction world is uh so tremendous I see my two sons in a couple of years joining me in my brokerage firm that’s
(47:44) what I see but uh yeah I I my goal as a final kind of career move I don’t think I’m going to reinvent have another act after this one is to be the best uh multif family broker I can’t can be and multi family huh and development of multi family Absolut development of multif family of course you got to take out the people I get help out but my focus is on construction focusing only on that and I think so again this apartment construction loan program is one good uh good program we need more like that and it’s going to get very
(48:19) complicated when the cities and the the provinces wake up and federal government this is a first good attempt but when they wake up you saw there’s been rule changes in June right for for mli select and stuff like that people were livid yeah exactly well there was a major Rush then everybody sent their files before the change uh the changes occurred but I want to be a specialist when all these new rules are coming in place I have the expertise the wherewithal to stay on top of it and help people that that want to
(48:46) make money nothing wrong with making money like I like the way I see it is I don’t want my kids to be landlords I think the most noble real estate investor is the developer yeah people who are crean Supply because you’re solving you’re solving problems now yeah yeah you’re solving the hardest problems for the and those problems are for the betterment of society and and that’s like you heard this is part of my goals to be part of the solution but at the same time making money there’s nothing wrong with that I
(49:14) just I just find you know that that we’re landlords we’re bad people I’m tired of that that’s that’s BS that’s it’s got to stop it’s not doing Canada any favor you’re not encouraging people to develop no you know why we’re we’re we’re becoming a poor country people I Ur I urge your listeners we are becoming an impoverished country this is not a joke you know our productivity situation per capita is dismal yeah dismal yeah uh Ben I saw Benjamin tuls speak just a few months ago and his words were along the lines of uh we are
(49:44) in the recession in terms of real GDP oh yeah we are we are absolutely are yeah which is a very important metric yeah right yeah no it’s uh it’s uh so I’m excited you know what I’m excited I’m I’m healthy like I said don’t take life for granted right uh lost a nephew uh who was one of my best friends lost two brothers lost uh uh two years three years so you you got to live with purpose and you got to you know you got to give back and you have been very good at giving back I have been like that that’s I’ve helped a lot of people get
(50:15) into the multif family world and I want to help people get into the the the the constructional world and be part of it and partner up with Builders I’m open for business folks listening if you want to build let’s let’s uh Play Let’s Build let’s make money and let’s help uh solve the housing crisis so it’s very cool uh to be in a place like that you and I were talking about keeping balance I have a fantastic life I still travel abroad I hike I hunt I ski I uh I’m present being present because you just don’t know what’s going to end like life
(50:43) you know like I said my my nephew 42 years of age left two kids Behind didn’t take care of his life had a heart issue to begin with but uh he knew better or should have done better but didn’t but the point is sometimes you can die in a car accident my gosh you’re traffi you’re in GTA oh my gosh I I prepare myself you won’t die in SL traffic though yeah oh my gosh when I come here every when I’m think okay I’m in drono now man you get cut off like oh my gosh it’s something else I am happy on my acreage looking at the Rocky Mountains
(51:12) looking my chickens and my chicken CP or the the deer that come into my uh on my land nice lifestyle do you know exactly why antarians are much more stressed up than other Canadians cuz we live in traffic you know have fond memories I like coming back back here and but been there done that moving on moved on so I want to go to like the everyday investor like take Adam For example yeah like Adam’s like in his 20s still what what what would what would your advice to be to like Adam how do how do you get started I love that question uh so I was
(51:45) at the Ottawa real estate Forum uh just uh yesterday uh I saw a lot of young guys as another group in Montreal like uh they were volunteer at the real estate forum and I thought it was so cool they were probably Adam’s age and I started chatting with them I said man you guys are smart so even Adam smart to be here with you learning from you um volunteering attending volunteering Adam are you volunteering I won’t I won’t put you on the spot uh no but you know what I’m saying that to to have that open mindness and thank God I know your kids
(52:20) are like that minor like that the world is their oyster and so have an open mind uh as you do and you know find mentors whatever you’re trying to do that’s uh that’s important but yeah start sooner now my bag is multif family you do single homes um there are advantages and like pros and cons but there is no perfect right no but there’s no doubt it’s it’s multif family has you have economies of scale right if you have the market right but again again you can always mitigate your risk right you just you don’t have to
(52:55) borrow a you know a 95% loan to value if you don’t want to so it’s finding that balance but yeah to be open-minded but start early uh you know don’t don’t be a spander on on stupid things and stuff like that and and yeah find a mentor find uh but yes start early that’s I don’t have regrets in life because everybody has their own path and I come from a poor family in the mining town Northwestern Quebec you know I’m number nine of family of 12 kids I think I told you that typical French Canan family so didn’t grw up uh with a lot of kids it’s
(53:23) too many it’s too many it’s ridiculous but didn’t grow up um being taught uh financial management or any of these Concepts so I came to that very very late in life so but for young people start early get a good Financial education read books there’s so much stuff now right and groups like you and I belong to rain and stuff or training like yours or mine uh that’s what I would recommend to do but do it early and don’t rely on the government for your well-being and your wealth my kids know where I stand on that you cannot we
(53:55) are going to see stuff so again I’m a student of History having traveled all over the world I read like avidly about everything macroeconomics we are witnessing significant changes in humanity not not even mentioning the geopolitical situation so uh yeah I I sat down you don’t know this but I so now hanging out with Brokers being a broker myself went to a Brokers conference in Whistler in February one of the keynote speakers was uh Steven poas former you know governor of the be of Canada yeah pretty cool is a smart
(54:28) guy down to earth like this so I cross from me at the same table and chatted with him uh wrote a book the next age of uncertainty and I think next age of uncertainty so that’s a that’s a good title yeah well because I think the initial book by the former um Economist I I one of those famous economists that escaped me I don’t know if F galb or something like that it was the the the the age of uncertainty so his book is the next age so picking up where GB or whatever whatever other economists but it’s all these
(55:01) revolutions the industrial revolutions the invention of the steam engine and all that and now where we’re at with AI I I love the book well uh he’s a fantastic guy and it’s a good book you know so that’s we’re witnessing yeah I I’m an optimist I know I Got It Made for what I’ve got and I’m a developer I need to tell you about that uh well my land my own land but uh you don’t really on the the government for your well-being and your wealth you need to protect yourselves you can’t uh people this is what a deplored since the
(55:32) second world war our society’s became very wealthy and the government taking care of you but I find that the ability of the government to take care of people is uh is coming to an end or maybe not a complete end but we are asking too much from our governments and they’re taking too much uh space too much room in the economy and that’s not good that I mean you can see the results we’re going down the drain so I’m saying stop relying on the government for everything build your own independence right living on your terms your life on
(56:01) your terms that’s that’s why I connect with uh you know with the guys Rockstar Tom and nicks that’s part of my own values uh but yeah we’re witnessing some significant changes in humanity Ai and I love AI I love chat I can’t live without it anymore yeah see I’m still I’m I’m I’m going there and myself SL slowly I can show you some things after we’re done yeah no I’d be interested to know that way how you use it for sure for example simple thing I do is when I have a guest on the show because I know you so well we can just have a conversation
(56:32) but if a guest I don’t know well I’ll take their bio give to chat gbt chat gbt already knows who I am okay already knows I have a real estate based public cast so I say prepare me questions oh yeah okay boom beautiful yeah no it’s uh and we have to use it but it has some uh hazards as well like you know ethically uh we have to look at that but it’s very cool Bill Gates has a new series on Netflix hey he does yeah very cool so one one one episode is on AI um and the other episode actually uh it starts to show that episode starts hey Bill are
(57:06) you are you too wealthy and you know he’s got the pledge thing where all these billionaires are pledging their money but yeah but there’s what else I think it’s worth it he’s uh I like people forget he’s already he’s the world’s biggest philanthropist yes right huge huge oh yeah he’s giving most of his money away you you’ll hear that in the episode but today as I think as of today he’s one of the top philanthropist world oh yeah absolutely so but yeah don’t rely start Young Adam start young and uh you know pay attention read educate yourself yeah
(57:38) Adam started young he has a basement apartment in his his place yeah he has hacks good for you good for you yeah but if someone wants to be a developer or in construction what what what kind of steps should they take any any like tangible like higher realtor find a wholesaler go door knocking oh uh so I I’m going to be I’m going to be honest I I well you need you need so I don’t have the skill to build um I’m I’m decently handy but it’s not my thing clearly so uh well to build eight units would be even a big effort yeah I I
(58:11) think it’s to find somebody so for me what my goal is is to associate myself with uh professional Builders my job is going to be to get the financing done and all of that and you know in exchange for a portion of the equity and and look for opportunities and interpret all these new programs are going to be coming out to solve the housing crisis uh joining the local Builders Association so that’s stuff like that uh yeah that I absolutely that’s stuff like that that I want to do actually I’m I’m do I’m here that’s partly what I’m doing
(58:38) here trying to plug myself connect myself tomorrow I’m meeting with a uh uh an energy consultant partly he’s been on my uh workshop and all that but he’s got contacts in that world so if you have any contacts but that’s with the building uh world and uh uh but yeah it’s just my first Tri to Ontario cuz I’m licensed in Ontario in Alberta but yeah I want to connect with the developer world in in Ontario but find somebody that has economies a scale everyone right it’s like anything else the more you do it you have better
(59:08) systems uh the only cave out I would say and we I was hearing that at the uh Ottawa real estate form uh a lot of Builders take shortcuts you know that even on the condo world like uh they take shortcuts when they build them they’re poorly built so you got to be careful about that yeah my dad was my brother just bought a house it was about 20 years ago and then the day he moved in some a breaker BR broke my my son’s girlfriend and downtown drone same difference she moved into an apartment brand new brand new it’s it it’s flooded
(59:40) the wall the inside the wall she had to leave her apartment and the the landlord wouldn’t compensate her she just a brand new she is the first tenant one of those projects downtown what leak the leaked inside the wall the the bathroom I think I don’t have all the details but she had to but someone above not no no in in her unit oh so quality right how you do anything is how you do everything that’s uh what’s who said that what’s his name John asraf how you do anything how you do everything anyway Tom was the one
(1:00:09) that told it to me the first time okay well I teach that I’m sure you teach that to your kids and and and it was in the context of vetting people yeah like if someone had if someone had done some shitty business with someone else yeah then you can expect them to do the same to you so it’s like a so that’s why I’m like a red flag and yeah we we can be friends we want do business together yeah and and we need to return you know so I’ve got this for for your audience here I’ve got a two things I car with me every day so I carry this gratitude Rock
(1:00:37) I don’t need it anymore but I like it I picked it up from the shores of lake tiak on a big uh hiking trip to matchu picu with my older son who lives in Toronto now so every day I I put in my pocket that beautiful Rock I don’t need it to be grateful I now it’s obviously clearly habit the other thing I car is a is a coin says Moto Mory uh which is a stoic philosophy of remember your mortality has a skull and has an hourglass and and a flame you know The Hourglass means time is passing by life uh goes on right so make sure you live
(1:01:08) well and the flame is symbol of life but um it’s it’s important to to to to again to live with purpose and and be able to to leave a legacy but also to have value in doing things well and I find we’re losing a lot of virtue it sounds like an oldfashioned word but you know to to to to to do the right thing when it counts we’ve got to go back to some of these core vals and I’m not particularly religious but uh I find the stoic had this kind of understanding of you know sometimes it’s good to suffer uh one of the reasons I like to put on my backpack
(1:01:46) going to the mountains or even traveling I do both I will do the high-end traveling with luxury and all that but I I like it’s one of the things when I liked about the mountains is my Place put on your backpack your body has to carry all of that weight up mountains you know up in higher altitude and it’s it’s its simplicity at its core while the stoes were like that sometimes it’s good to suffer to go and work with the peasants and to to remember what it’s like and I come from humble beginnings where we weren’t we were a poor family
(1:02:16) so it’s important but to to to have the sense of appreciation and gratefulness but also when you do something like if you’re going to build something build it well build it to last not just to make money just for the profit like yes I want to make money but I I want to be proud of what the end result is going to be so for me I’m looking for people who have similar values that uh and I’m going to give it my all I’m at a place or when like unlike you I don’t have my kids are gone I can I choose to do this and my goal so that’s the public
(1:02:45) commitment that I’m making to be the best mortgage advisor for people who want to build housing in Canada that is and I have all the time in the world to do this all the luxury to do that so pretty cool pretty cool I’m very excited to be where I’m at uh today you know and uh being part of the solution because it is the biggest challenge that Canada has faced since the second war it’s getting worse by the day uh just hope our leaders wake up they’re too slow to act I saw I was at a conference on the weekend there were a lot of Builders
(1:03:15) there and I was telling them how everyone should be thanking wom Builders I said that to them I said my gosh yesterday I said you are so lucky you’re in the right place at the right time conditions still not completely right right yet because the cost of money and inflation construction material but uh I I I’ve said this exactly some something similar yesterday the one of the last uh speakers that we had was the mayor of Ottawa and I was sitting at a table with Builders and I said man you I wish I had your skills but like I said I’m going to
(1:03:46) help people who have the skills to do it you know and partner up with them that’s my goal it’s uh yeah and yeah that’s pretty much uh my my my bit for where I’m at in life yeah but Builders and developers that we we really need them yeah that’s why I say everyone should be thanking them yeah I’m I’m I’m using the word interchangeably developers build it that’s what I mean yeah oh no we need them yeah because without them who’s going to build it who’s going to create Supply the social pressure is increasing so faster when it is like I said it it
(1:04:18) it should be declared a a a a war effort where all three levels of government need to get together mun ipal provincial Federal probably utopian to think that that can happen I don’t know but uh that’s what needs to happen and um the biggest flaw when I looked again I’m thinking of the US and I go to the US one of my best buddies is from the us and we get together regularly and I go U my wife now has a new job so she’s leaving for Atlanta on Sunday she was in Chicago last week for work she’s a card deck nurse so she attends all these uh
(1:04:54) these conferences uh we need to go back to a place where people are accountable uh the lack of accountability at all levels especially Civil Service talking about government here I’m talking about the government that has to stop that has to stop I it’s it’s it’s it’s it is and these people who are and I used to be one of them right at CC I like I told you I I get a pension I can’t believe that since I turned 60 um they need to understand they’re privileged they don’t have to and we need to reward risk so we need
(1:05:27) accountability and we need to reward risk that has to stop and and people have to wake up it it’s not going well for us in Canada we’re becoming an impoverished country and uh a homeless impoverished country on top of that so that’s that’s that’s very worrisome very worrisome and um seems so many people are unaware of that you know so anyway it’s it’s yeah so anyway that’s my bit to try to solve that being a mortgage advisor and helping people uh do it that solve the housing crisis how are conversations going so
(1:06:03) far with like with the builders and whatnot with this new program oh this is brand new by the way this when was it announced huh when was it announced this program so this is the problem it’s it’s not being announced that much it it there used to be a program called and it’s funny because I met at the again the conference yesterday in Ottawa the real estate conference real estate Forum um two representatives of cmec I said I told them about said this is a great program this is what we need more of this and uh but there was another
(1:06:32) program that used to be called rcfi uh rental construction financing initiative and I said is it pretty much the same they said yes we’re just repackaging it so they’re going to announce it but again yeah it’s not being announced it’s it’s already begun this is in place but in June the first person of her talk about it no but that’s my point that is I just I’m very deliberate by here coming here to you and like I said I’m putting together presentation on this program and that’s going to be sort of U my Flagship presentation and say hey
(1:07:01) let’s let’s use this no there there’s not a lot of announcements it’s it’s a shitty marketing job on the part of the government most people haven’t heard of it but I don’t it sounds it sounds I cannot explain it to you I cannot explain it to you Irwin you’re valid question you’re asking me I cannot explain it to you and we got training on this that’s why I’m saying uh but this this again this will make millionaires somebody who’s a builder 100% loone the cost being funded right with low cost money through the Canada
(1:07:31) mortgage Bond uh securitization MH you build it you take your money elsewhere because we see in the states where they have excessive building and then rents come down values come down yeah creat more affordability well du you know that’s the issue you see significant subsidized housing in in Asian countries yeah so people can live on minimum wage yeah people have rent between like $500 a month yeah right yeah but this program the model exists yeah no I mean like I said all coexist and like I said the issue with large
(1:08:05) municipalities like GTA Vancouver is they they they there was poor urban planning to preserve some land for affordable housing and that’s uh but I mean I you know I know this part this portion of the pie from a financing point of view but surely people in governments have more access to more information but I yeah it’s bonkers like you look at our like we’re in Ontario so you look at our GO train stations yeah they can build parking lots why are we building condos on all these parking you’re right next to the GO
(1:08:37) train station you have freedom to go wherever I’m I’m truly alarmed at the fact that we don’t hear more about uh like that yeah housing is on everybody’s mind but how long have we been talking about it like the federal government only started in the last year or so two years I think at the most right the federal government and trudo and Company but very little is still getting done and time is running out and the social situation the social pressure is increasing I’m I’m flabbergasted then again probably I shouldn’t be its
(1:09:04) government like trudo built like bought that pipeline Keystone right no it got canceled Keystone got canceled sorry the other one trans um Trans Mountain Trans Mountain so we had all that money for that but we didn’t build any housing we have natives without water Orwin natives without water poble water Irwin how is that possible but pot is legal now woohoo that was a big uh big uh big priority right he’s anyway we don’t want to go there because I rant against trudo is my favorite sport it’s but to easy it’s too easy okay but I’ll
(1:09:39) say this much I I want to say this I been involved in politics since I was 16 I do have a degree in political science with the minor international relations from EFT when Pierre Ludo I’m guilty as charged did retire I was a delegate for the liberal party with my mother in Ottawa to to choose his replacement so I used to vote liberal uh I don’t anymore I’m a card member of the conservative party I donate money um when Arin OU previous uh leader of the Liberal Party retired uh I was I voted for to to replace his his
(1:10:21) successor I did not vote for pier P I voted for Jean but this is the two solitudes in Canada right classic has always been like that why voted for Jean share he’s perfectly bilingual left Quebec with a surplus okay when he was there I never liked Pier P I still not too fond of him uh I I think he first of all he’s a career politician so that that doesn’t score too high in my book when you’re you know you don’t have a lot of real life experience and running a business which makes a whole difference uh but nevertheless you know so he got elected
(1:10:58) as leader um when I go back to Quebec do you imagine I you know they put in Trudeau Quebec in a large extent and some writings here in GTA as you know right uh I have to be very careful talking about politics and when I try to have a conversation I’m still not fond of Pier p i don’t vote for the man I don’t vote for the individual the human being I vote for the values and the general directions I don’t spend more than how much is coming in you know like we have to stop spending just common sense you know yes I believe Canada is
(1:11:28) broken very very badly broken so I just urge people to get more involved I have a brother he doesn’t vote I said he’s older than me I said but that’s the problem that’s a different problem I could be in that category right I got gray hair I’m kind of a the last uh the younger cohort of the Boomers these Boomers have got so much money I know they all came and bought the houses and cam where sold their houses here in in in GTA and bought those house $23 million in camore uh missed a Market there and I can still afford it but I
(1:11:57) don’t know if I want to do but the point is they have so much money they’re sitting so much on money that I feel that they’re kind of giving up on social activism and and and being involved because they’re so privileged financially I think that’s wrong I think that’s wrong and so he’s one of those right he’s a a little bit older than me but uh eight nine years older than me he’s got his pension and is not getting involved anymore so that that’s we got to get back involved we’re all paying the price at the end of the day and
(1:12:23) younger people the younger generation they’re screwed they’re screwed big time that’s why you and I are in a position to help our kids otherwise because we I the way I see is I benefited from all the government not so good policy yeah so it’s only to me it’s only fair I give back to my kids because they got screwed in this I think it’s part of our Humanity if you don’t give back so another quote uh success unshared is failure Michael dejor I think he billionaire as well but that’s the quote uh yeah success unshared is failure and
(1:12:59) to me it’s part of my Christian values I don’t go to church but brought up as a Catholic but yeah I I want to be part of uh yeah you know on your deathbed you said I helped others I lived a good life um you know I I loved yeah I I and I I lived I don’t know that’s that’s my philosophy you can’t need money to do so though no you have to have money money is is is you have to have money and and and I always think earning money through altruistic things makes it even more enjoyable oh absolutely and now would categorize development being or being a
(1:13:32) builder one of them not to say it’s easy yeah no no but if you can provide value and make money at the same time that’s that’s what an entrepreneur is right that’s what it should be you build someone’s home that’s you create you create value and it’s it’s it’s yeah and it’s the problem with our civil service it’s too large and it’s too inefficient 40% since Trudeau you know that the federal civil service yeah Federal and they’re not doctors and they’re not doctors Teachers Health Care nurses fire police they’re not
(1:14:01) that CRA I’m going to leave you with that so I like history I studied it when I was here at UFT 40 years ago the Wars all the wars the colonization and all of that jazz uh I see a lot of similarities where slowly personal freedoms and rights were taken away we are witnessing that in this I I know it sounds like some kind of conspiracy it’s not you just have to pay attention MH uh it it is happening we are we’re having our our our rights and freedoms slowly being taken away people who who make money who take risk uh are being um you know are
(1:14:40) being looked at negatively uh it’s very scary I don’t know if I showed you this but this is a book I read have you heard about this book I have heard of it yeah it says it’s uh the author is Carol Roth uh it says you will own and then a bunch of things have been crossed out you will own a house it’s been crossed off right because it’s hard to buy a house you will own a car it’s been crossed out you will own a business it’s been crossed out you will own stocks it’s been crossed out you will own your life it’s been crossed out
(1:15:08) so at the end you will own the only word left that’s been not been crossed out is nothing and it it’s real examples and can is cited in this book you know how we are slowly having that’s got to stop it leads to Revolutions history repeats itself every when if we don’t pay attention it’s is happening to our country Canada I can’t believe I’m I’m saying this to you but it’s factual not an opinion Pier Paul has any anyone who studied a little bit of history and studied any sort of country or country that’s failed or had an
(1:15:39) economic collapse which is coincides with currency collapse like it doesn’t it’s not pretty no right which is why she’s own hard assets absolutely that’s what you and I are doing that yeah absolutely absolutely and I want some US Dollars yeah it’s it’s that’s how the world evolve people who create wealth you know you need wealth to bring the rest of society upward but so you productivity that’s what I’m saying absolutely you need to you need to encourage that well it’s a fundamental need so we screwed up on that
(1:16:13) one now uh can we talk about your course still no no but we can talk no not for the time being I to be honest with you I put it on pause but if people want a mortgage broker so you kind of get a sense what my values are where I’m at MH uh uh all I am is a mortgage adviser specializing in commercial residential and construction financing with an emphasis on construction financing you can find me at uh my email is PP Turon May so it’s spelled the away it is m a o ki.
(1:16:48) CA PP I mean you’ll get my uh P at and um cuz I love the acronym because means PowerPoint yeah oh yeah anyway you can’t get me off PowerPoint Apple slides no guy PP but yeah so PP t p at Mei and uh yeah but get your together if you want to work with me I I want to work with Pros it’s it’s not you know how does one learn to be a pro though that’s why we need to talk about the course yeah well the course yeah I for for this fall Irwin yeah reach out to me there’s a way list you can go to my website it’s the easy website multif family investing
(1:17:28) Canada Mick multifamily investing canada.com Mick uh and I should have one after Christmas but not this fall this fall I’m just you know working on focusing on my uh mortgage advising portion of the business you want Pros you need to produce some pros cuz you can wake up and become a pro but the only difference win so it’s a game right getting financing is a game I know what they want that’s why I was able to teach it all these years uh and it is my pet peeve and again my legal training makes it that I need to have it as perfect as
(1:18:02) I can so that my loan is approved right off the bat because if especi you need your money you need your money exactly especially if you’re building right so it’s even more stressful so you know yeah but no I I’m I’m happy to give people a a free half hour to get you started what I need and stuff like that but it’s All About Numbers what’s your income so if you want to if you buy an existing property what’s your income uh what are your expenses and that I’m pretty good at as well cuz being a an owner myself but what are your numbers
(1:18:29) give me numbers and then I can run I can run so half hour free consultation right if you have some documentation um I can produce a spreadsheet and like I said that’s a fantastic tool that we have it if shows all the financing options whether you go mli select conventional or uh you know C standard um a fantastic uh visual I’m highly Visual and this is what we’ve got in our office and our office only does multi we don’t do Residential we’re under the multi family residential multif family residential yeah yeah well it’s five units or more
(1:19:03) let’s be clear it’s five units or more right below that is is residential if you will right so no no strip malls industrial just residential 5 minuts up yeah what what is mayoki is it an acronym for it is oh no don’t ask me I’m not us I’ve got the definition somewhere but not here with me but yeah it’s it’s got a meeting I I should have known that I I’ve got I asked that when I joined the firm yeah sounds like the name of a whale or something it’s it’s got a meaning I apologize I’ll send it to you or when when I go back today I’ll send
(1:19:31) it to you uh but um one thing I want to stress about this team why did I join this team aren’t you you haven’t asked me that question they they’re from Montreal okay and I could I’m still being uh approached to work with other people in western Canada MH but uh it’s a it’s a number of reasons I I read a book when I got my licenses I’m licensed in onaran in Alberta Dustin woodh house he was president of mortgage Architects which as you know does residential only and um I read his books and he kept saying ah you can reach out to me if you
(1:20:07) want to chat I did I said well I just got I told him my credentials worked at samhc I have a portfolio of apartment buildings and uh what do you think where where should I go you got pretty high up you got pretty high up on the website I got the perfect guy for you talk to David mer and uh he used to be I think with bimo his mom worked at bimo and what I liked about this firm what I still like uh first of all I get back to my French K culture and David our main broker is also licensed to Naran Albert like me uh I go I I I interact in French
(1:20:43) as well in the financing multif family financing world I like that I’m not not going to suffer from Alzheimer my brain is still constantly going but you don’t have to use a lingo in both English and French I love that that’s a nice mental uh exercise but I would say it’s it’s uh it’s the underwriting Department as well that I like when I teach my pet peeve is like exactly for me that’s why I created a course because I know exactly what’s required to get your deal approv right away because if you have delays even if
(1:21:12) it’s just you’re buying an existing property and you got you got a wave condition and it’s stressful right even more so if you’re building so make it perfect up front my pet peeve is presenting remember I had a presentation that rain was the perfect financing application because I know exactly what button needs to be pushed that’s the value those guys some lenders I don’t know how much more time we have but uh it’s very interesting as pressure mounts to solve the housing crisis oh yeah I definitely want to talk to you about
(1:21:40) that until I became a mortgage broker I didn’t have direct access to lenders right because when I was at CC the financing route was already decided upon by the investor and uh borrower and the bank or mortgage broker mhm now why I’m a mortgage advisor is I have to figure out what’s the best way to finance your project whether an existing property or a construction so together we figure out a way to do it okay and uh when I teach I I I put a lot of emphasis on making sure that this is how it’s on it truly you know I’m I’m a foodie I cook a lot I
(1:22:15) know you do too uh it’s a recipe follow the recipe okay there were lenders in the last little while with all these changes like large lenders I’m not going to name them but but they’re the big ones okay just read between the lines that were had their wrists slapped by CMC we’re talking since Christmas big big you see all their ads by CC because they didn’t have their together we we our files never had that because they were perfect so this is the kind of value that this firm has and then you get speed you get speed speed
(1:22:46) we don’t get issues we don’t get issues with CMC when our go through yeah it’s has to be and it has to my job when I teach is always make the job of a cc underwriter as easy as possible same thing I used to do as a lawyer top of the list right same thing I used to do as a lawyer does when I was a lawyer Irwin I’d go to front of the judge you know I was a litigator and I had a binder with tabs and my job was to take the judge by the hand lead him or her to my decision that my client should win same idea you take the the hand of the
(1:23:18) under writer and you give them exactly what they want and it’s a recipe it’s not complicated it is an expertise I’m not going to deny that but uh that’s why I like these guys the the underwriting department is is spot on we have now with technology we are integrating technology you know uh a CRM system whereby I know what’s your birthday uh what religion you are at and you know we can make make sure that we treat you as a client uh properly and efficiently and uh I pretty cool pretty exciting big learning curve well that’s I’m beyond
(1:23:48) that now but it was a beginning to learn all that but that’s why mayy our reputation is extremely good uh with the the the lenders and you know CC so want to keep it that way that’s why I joined them uh one last time where can people reach out to you so ppon may. phone number I’m going to give you a different number that will work as well but 403 966 931 again I’m more than happy to spend a half hour with anybody who wants to either buy an existing property or build one um try to have something tangible so that it’s it’s a
(1:24:23) you know it’s a worthwhile call like if you have some numbers if you want to buy so that’s something I’m going to be doing I after this interview uh somebody wants me to run some numbers I can run some numbers but if ideally have some numbers if you can uh hopefully that hold water and I can give you an idea what kind of financing you can get and construction well then it’s more complicated make sure you have ideally what your construction costs are validated but the point today I know and even you and I this message for you as
(1:24:49) well I know what your business model is but we should all consider switching to to construction because more programs like the aclp are going to are going to be needed and coming out and that’s kind of a conversation I had with Derek clobo when I took his development course uh they will that we have to solve this housing crisis so I’m just pointing you know planting the seed in people’s mind it’s yeah there’s opportunity the us because it’s a more liberal Market but uh we are going to have tremendous opportunities here in Canada I may just
(1:25:18) wait till the kids are out the house that’s wise no and you don’t want to miss that part you know I was there work from home like Q I was extremely present that that yeah do that first P Pa thank you so much for spending your birthday with us yeah well you know we all happy birthday no no you can pass on that I think everyone just hit St well thank you for having me here when always a pleasure you’re a gentleman and scholar and uh yeah I I look up to you you you made you make a difference in people’s lives and I think we’re you and I are we
(1:25:50) share similar values it’s important and you know because we’ve made it I mean it’s always it’s always in progress making it right it’s never an Ending Story but we’re in a place of privilege and we need we need to give back and I you you and I share similar value and I appreciate you for that and having me thank you all right good stuff thank you everyone all right friends that wraps up another episode of the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians hope you got as much out of this one as I did remember that whether you’re just
(1:26:18) starting out or a seasoned investor there’s always something new to learn and it’s always about building that practical knowledge base that gets you closer to Financial Freedom if you found value today please do us a favor and leave us a review or a rating share this episode with a friend or better yet join our community of Real Estate Investors who are taking action and making moves and hey if there’s a topic you want us to cover or have uh there’s a certain guest you’d like us to have on the show drop me a line my DMs are open on social
(1:26:42) media reply to this email that this have arrived on I’m not hard to find uh you know we’re all about getting you the unfiltered truth to help you on your journey thanks again for tuning in and we’ll see you the next episode until then stay Smart Stay curious and keep building that future catch you later

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