Erwin  

Hello, my fellow real estate investors. This is the truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto. And I’ve been investing since 2005, including that much longer recession than the last one. We had pandemic recession. I’m referring to the financial crisis, the credit crisis of 2007, and 2008. With the higher probability of a recession coming, I can’t recommend enough that newer investors connect with veterans who have personal experience investing during a recession. The more real estate they had, the better. I personally had five properties with partners, and those were good times. At the time, yeah, it was a scary, but with a healthy dose of ignorance. We did just fine. And I’ll go in more into detail at our real estate meetup in May. I was I wasn’t that old. So yeah, wasn’t that smart, either. Anyway, so with things the way they are, being back to the gym is great, in my opinion, especially not having to wear a mask to walk into the gym or walking out of the gym, or, yeah, as because I’m often running late, or rushing the kids out of the car into the parking lot of the car and into the gym. It’s often very comedic and slapstick, like i got my phone in my hand and plumbing gym bag and about shrunk and probably tried to shove all this stuff in my pockets in the gym, trying to track down my shoes, and I’m holding my water balls squeezing or an arm somewhere. And while at the same time encouraging the kids to move quickly because they don’t move very fast. And they don’t understand urgency that well. So they often require a lot of loud verbal encouragement. Sometimes their gym bag gets stuck in the footwell of the car and my hands are full. So I’m having to verbally coach them on how to stuck their head stick and stuck and stick through their gym bags, their boxing gloves and stuff in the gym bag. So it’s a bit bulky. And then so on top of that we’ve never had to deal with masks too well, I’m just glad we have one less thing to worry about. 

 

Erwin  

At our last class Maz his full name is Mazimol. But he goes by Maz as the gym owner and lead instructor of our kickboxing gym that we belong to. He welcomed me when I walked in to the gym and asked if I had a minute to chat. He knows i’m late for class. So I do class too. So my kids are on time ish. But yes, he stops me. So I’m wondering, Am I in trouble to pay my gym dues, because the last thing I want to do is owe money to someone who’s won over 30 professional fights and has a dozen championship belts on display throughout the gym. So Coach Maz tells me my daughter Robin is doing great in class and is ready to test for her bronze gloves. That’s so she’ll be graduating from the belt system into what is a 2 hour exit test to exit the beginners programme. So this is again, it’s a two hour test. And my daughter’s never done, probably an hour test. So this is a two hour test. It’d be by far the most comprehensive test of my daughter’s career. And I’m like, great. So let’s talk about but couldn’t wait until after class. So I, you know, because I’m late. Maz goes on to inform me that Bruce, my son who’s 18 months younger, he’s not ready to test and asked how I like to proceed. So first, I asked him if my kids would be in separate separate classes, but you don’t want because that means twice the commuting. I don’t know how you parents do this shuttling around have kids when they’re in different programmes, because you know, my time investment, or at least our children as time investment have to be double, which is a no go for us. We’ll have to do it by mistake eventually. But try to hold off as long as we can. Maz says no, the answer’s no, they can stay stay in the same class. It’s just that they spend 50 minutes of class doing the more advanced stuffs also show them that I teach my kids that one gets what they earn. This is actually a great life lesson opportunity for me to tell my son he’s not getting a grade, which is honest. But Heads Up is appreciated, but actually wonder what other parents would do to deal with this situation. For myself. I couldn’t personally imagine arguing with the head instructor or dude who has 30 Professional wins 30 Plus professional wins, to arguing arguing with him that my son deserves to test for his bronze gloves when I can totally see he’s not ready for it. My daughter is very good at her class. She’s likely the best in her class and not just a my opinion. She’s been asked to participate as the demonstration student for the recordings of her classes. I think they’re making me making an online course or something. But anyway, it’s there, that she’s been there. Their actor I don’t know their demonstration student whatever you want to call it, but we all know that her technique is absolutely fantastic. Warning to all those who are bullies in or race bullies. My daughter will be well prepared. On the car ride home. It’s just Bruce and I in the car is Robin had to stay home that day. She’s She had a fever, non toilet related. I did the rapid test myself. I told Bruce how Robin will be testing for Brahms club gloves, which my son understands. As coach says that she’s ready, but he’s not. I asked Bruce if he’s fine with that. Bruce asked if he can attend the test with me to support Robin. That’s the response I was looking for. Apologies for the proud parent moment. 

 

Erwin  

Enough about me on to this week’s show, we have a pretty amazing story from Alfredo hermano who grew up in affordable housing. And now he’s building and developing a ton of affordable housing. He’s got three buildings on go right now, for a total of 400 rental apartments. With rents well below market, I believe he said 20% below market value for rents. And he’s got plans to grow that number to about 10 prop 10 buildings with over well over 1000 units in the short term future. These are investments and part of those investments are crowdfunded. Via Addy, we’ve had Steven from Addy on the show before, in case you’re not familiar on one of the more popular crowdfunding options in Canada, and I think it was super cool that these options are available to those who have smaller bank rules, and that they’d be able to participate in the real estate investing market. On today’s show, Alfredo shares how his company 3H Properties group is able to work with the government who provides subsidies, and he’s able to provide it to his investors in return. Pretty cool. As usual, none of this that’s shared today is an endorsement of anything. Please do your own research and due diligence past results do not predict the future. Please seek professional investing advice. Everything shared today is for educational and entertainment purposes. And I wish you all success in your investment returns. Please enjoy the show. 

 

Erwin  

Alfredo. Thanks for coming on the show.

 

Alfredo  

No problem.

 

Erwin  

What’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Alfredo  

Well, my businesses my family two young boys three and seven staying active staying healthy. Actually just before this it was nice I I got out on the Bruce Trail to just an Appleton to do a little bit of biking. Right here my head. So that was good. Keeping healthy.

 

Erwin  

Good for you. Yeah, but no golf. You Live on a golf course.

 

Alfredo  

I live right in front of a golf course. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

You could have been Tiger Woods. 

 

Alfredo  

Probably not. Tiger Woods is half half Asian. Isn’t he? 

 

Erwin  

His mother’s Thai.

 

Alfredo  

Thai? Yeah.

 

Erwin  

It’s pretty cool. Because I think Did you watch the last dance with Michael Jordan? 

 

Alfredo

Oh, yeah, that was that was good.

 

Erwin  

And how Phil Jackson teaches like meditation stuff and, and that was a big part of that was I was a part of Tiger Woods. his upbringing as well was meditation and to see a lot of winners who meditate and have strong mental mindsets for it.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, that was me. I mean, he’s he’s so well known for his his mental concentration. Right? Like, I mean, that’s an incredible.

 

Erwin  

Minus one yesterday. 

 

Alfredo  

Oh, really? 

 

Erwin  

Yeah. That’s incredible. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, people are a I think there’s big hype him going into the, into the tournament, right?

 

Erwin  

It could be your kids, man. And they’re both working that day. He just made Tiger Woods money. So we have a lot of talking about today. Cuz that’s what’s fun with this podcast is like I get introduced to all these crazy ideas, like morality and real estate investing. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. And oh, yeah. Oh, boy. We’re gonna get some people complaining about what we’re talking about today. 

 

Alfredo  

That’s okay. Controversy is good. 

 

Erwin  

So you mentioned businesses, how many businesses you got, what do they do?

 

Alfredo  

Mostly construction and development, and GC constructors, three h properties. Wooper. That main business is keeping me busy. We have a few other businesses. But you know, COVID hasn’t helped that and in the last few years, so they’ll resurrect at some point, you know, some online rental sharing programmes and stuff like that. Some some pretty cool stuff. But

 

Erwin  

I thought I was busy.

 

Alfredo  

You’re busy. You’re busy

 

Erwin  

I took four days to respond to email. I don’t know how you manage all the businesses you got. So you mentioned construction. Is that kind of how you got started in real estate? 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I started my first business out of college. Right and, and grew up pretty, pretty aggressively over the last, I’d say, you know, I’m dating myself now and close to 20 years and opened up offices in Washington, Washington State and Texas. We have our head office in Vancouver offices here in Toronto, but mostly focus on commercial multifamily construction, and boom, 2020 COVID hits and $40 million of our business disappears. And so we had to shift to, you know, make a big pivot so, so that’s why we’re doing you know.

 

Erwin  

What were these projects that just went poof?

 

Alfredo  

A lot of our businesses in the hospitality industry

 

Erwin  

Oh mercy.

 

Alfredo  

Exactly 

 

Erwin  

That’s coming back real strong.

 

Alfredo  

It’s unknown when that’s coming back. Right. And so we were building theatres commercial. They called Family Fun centres, family entertainment centres 

 

Erwin  

Like Dave and Busters.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, like those kinds of places, right. And, you know, obviously COVID Hit that. So like a puff of smoke overnight, everything disappeared, and still hasn’t come back. So yeah, challenging times,

 

Erwin  

You were able to sleep at night?

 

Alfredo  

Well, fortunately, I was, you know, when, when all this happened, it was when myself and my sisters had and my mother went to the Philippines for a three week holiday. And that three week holiday turned into five months of being locked down in the Philippines while this was happening, so it was a pretty crazy time

 

Erwin  

Because they’re still having challenges 

 

Alfredo  

still, yeah, yeah. And it was a real, real eye opener to see like how COVID was handled in the Philippines, as you can only imagine with the current president, who built a pretty bad reputation of human rights.

 

Erwin  

Were you able to eat? 

 

Alfredo  

No, no, we were safe. We were, you know, very fortunate. I have real estate in the Philippines. So we stayed at my my place there, and lots of lots of room for the kids to run around. And sort of a blessing. Because, you know, pre pandemic, I was just going bananas with business and hadn’t spent so much time with my kids. And I got to actually slow things down, you know, get a little healthy, and get some rest and spend time spent a lot of time with the kids. But business was just, you know, disappearing, like, you know.

 

Erwin  

What did you do? Like yet you have staff and salary? 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, there was, there was a bit of a tough moment, actually, at one point, when, you know, prior to government subsidies and help, there was a moment where, hey, we didn’t know how long the pandemic was going to be, we actually, you know, funny enough, we were at the house, and I was saying to my my sisters, and, you know, brother in law and stuff like that, and I saying, hey, you know, we got to prepare this is this is like, March, we got to prepare and, and potentially, this pandemic can extend to may. And so, let’s, let’s like settle in, you know, and try to make do with everything and hope. Well, we didn’t get back till August. Right. So, so life was was pretty, pretty different than what we have here.

 

Erwin  

And you weren’t even here and you’ve tried to deal with this stuff at different timezone.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. So you’re trying to try to deal with business checking in with a team, you know, you know, unfortunately, a lot a lot of layoffs had to take place, you had to really relook at the business itself, and like what business you had, and you know, your resources and all those kinds of things and, and try to make the best decision. My My decision was always like, how I built an amazing team overall, with like, very low turnover, totally total commitment, amazing people, family, right, like I consider those that work with me, you know, my business family, and to have to let people go, oh, it just killed me. So I tried to figure out ways as creative as I could, with the resources that I had to keep people as long as on payroll, as long as I could. And, you know, fortunately enough, we kept about 75% of our staff or 80% of our stuff, for the majority of the pandemic post subsidies that ended last October, you know, we’ve had to make a few more changes, obviously, but we’ve kept our staff pretty intact, which is amazing.

 

Erwin  

Slick, the projects that started, did they get finished?

 

Alfredo  

No, they they were all terminated. That’s 

 

Erwin  

Even mid project mid Build?

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, mid Build. Yeah. 

 

Erwin  

So you, you have some like, are they were to frame building more 

 

Alfredo  

They were tapered down, right? Like they, you know, for example, you’re gonna build a theatre 12 auditorium, theatre, they’re only going to do five. And we were, you know, we’d built three of them already. Right, that kind of thing. So, so things really just, you know, took a turn for the worst. And, and I mean, hate and all those businesses are still struggling today. Right. I mean, streaming has decimated the film industry. But we move on. Right.

 

Erwin  

So you mentioned a pivot, I’ll put as a happy ending to the story. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. We we three its properties. I mean, we actually launched 3h properties in 2017. But because we were so busy with all our other businesses, we didn’t actually shift to that until about 2021. So you know, we’re still trying to recover From what took place from the start of the pandemic? And also, interestingly enough, 2017 there wasn’t that much focus on affordable housing. And there wasn’t that much 

 

Erwin  

because it wasn’t a problem. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, it was.

 

Erwin  

I’m joking, I joke a lot. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah It and funding and it wasn’t in the public’s eye, right. Like people weren’t really talking about it as much as they are today. Right. And so…

 

Erwin  

The rates have been low as long as I remember. So I’m surprised no one thought about it. I remember when I was doing forecasting around real estate investing, like for interest, like vacancy rates were like, never higher than 3%. That’s probably a problem.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, no, and it was I’m not sure why must have been other policy focuses that the government had, but it was really, at the beginning of COVID, when the significant funding had been, you know, placed in affordable housing, the public’s perception, and public’s concerns about the housing problem had really been exacerbated, right, with people moving from the urban core moving to smaller communities, and those people from smaller communities who had to move out of those communities and all those kinds of things. And so, so for us, you know, the story is positive, because we were able to take all our staff reshift, you know, pivot all their efforts from what we’re doing in the commercial construction stuff, to affordable housing development.

 

Erwin  

Okay, so how do you convince people to invest in affordable housing? Because, as you say, affordable, like, oh, there’s no money to be made? Yeah. I mean, and then investors, that’s like, that’s not what any investor wants to hear.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, no, I mean, like, the way what I always say, when we meet with potential investors, if in and I asked a question, you know, if if you can invest in something that does good for the community, but also where you can do good business? Why not? Right, why not take a look at it? And so that’s what we’re trying to prove out. I mean, were the majority of affordable housing has been carried on the backs of, of, you know, one, nonprofits, cooperatives and government for how many years? And I think the the movement for private industry to get more involved is starting to increase. I mean, the US, which is a little more developed on the affordable housing side, and our first Fireside Chat with Jonathan Rose in March, where he’s been in affordable housing for the last 30 years, you know, these policies and programmes that are in there, you know, and he’s able to the law for the last 15 years, provide his investors, you know, a 6% consistent return with a 15% IRR for the last 15 years, doing 100% affordable you know, so he’s able to He’s proven out our model, basically. 

 

Erwin  

So why hasn’t it happened here? 

 

Alfredo  

Because it’s still it’s it’s still in its infancy

 

Erwin  

But problems pretty bad.

 

Alfredo  

The problem we know infant. It’s a gigantic Brontosaurus. Yeah. All right. Cool.

 

Erwin  

She’s a meat eating dinosaur. Not a vegan dinosaur, but okay. Product stores, like it would appear a T Rex. That’s helped me the problem is.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Hey, I don’t know, I can’t say why.

 

Erwin

 But you know, how we’re getting out of this. What’s that? Say? Again? You know, how we’re getting out of this affordability issue?

 

Alfredo  

Well, hey, there’s movement, let’s say, right? I mean, CMHC has this vision and goal to have by 2030 Everybody in a home? Right? That’s a big goal. That’s, that’s pretty lofty. And I’m on the phone, at least every couple of weeks with folks from CMHC. And what’s great is that you’re hearing a lot of willingness to look at different ways, looking at the housing problem, right? Different ways, investing structures, different innovative approaches, partnerships are key, you know, those kinds of things. So that’s uplifting to see such a, you know, substantial organisation have that interest. So, yeah, I mean, I can’t answer the question of, you know, is this is what we’re proposing the solution right? But I think it’s a combination of of all the things that are happening, whether it be you know, mixed use developments where there’s a portion of affordable you know, whether it’s 100% affordable like our model, it’s nonprofit or you know, there’s there’s there’s all those approaches I think are key.

 

Erwin  

Okay, well let’s focus on one of your current projects.

 

Alfredo  

Sure. 

 

Erwin  

Like the King Street one that’s about that’s like I honestly 

 

Alfredo  

Main Street 

 

Erwin  

Sorry, Main Street obviously lived like 100 metres from that location. 

 

Alfredo  

Oh, you did? Oh.

 

Erwin  

I honestly just lived up the street from there. 

 

Alfredo  

Oh, on Lock street

 

Erwin  

Yeah, just off lock just Street. 

 

Alfredo  

Okay.

 

Erwin  

Yes. Oh, man. I think I sold that house for like 600 something and I saw one of my neighbours just listed for 1.4. And that’s part of the problem like, this is this is crazy. Yeah, this is crazy

 

Alfredo  

Nuts. 

 

Erwin  

So can we use that one as your main street property as an example? What are you doing? So? Tell the listener what what it is you’re doing at? Can you share the address?

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, it’s 405 Main Street, West Hamilton. Yeah, so what we’re doing there, it’s it’s a project 96 unit building seven storeys, our model is, you know, 100% affordable. But the key to our model is we partner with nonprofits to be able to get access to grants, loans of sorry, forgivable loans, exemptions, development, cost, storage, exemptions, property tax abatement, you know, and a whole gamut of things that help our model, make it profitable. And commensurate in terms of investment with, with other real estate investment opportunities. And so for that project, one of our biggest, one of the biggest keys to our model is finding properties that are on it within the within a transit corridor, that are already zoned for our purpose. So we can find properties that are, you know, that allow for six, seven storeys, 100 150 unit buildings that are about half an acre to an acre in size. Brilliant, you know, so we’re starting out in Hamilton with this 405 project, we’ve got three others and development. And our goal, by the end of the year is to have 10 projects in the pipeline, roughly about 1500 units.

 

Erwin  

And then have your investors, they’re open to these opportunities and just the VR.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, I mean, the majority of our investors, our investors who are looking to make an impact, right, they have been involved in real estate, or they’re, you know, high net worth individuals, or, you know, they’re just folks that are really keen on taking their money and making a change in, in our future. And so, you know, one of the biggest problems that we face today, of course, is affordable housing.

 

Erwin  

And then you mentioned earlier with the other gentleman’s doing for his investors for for returns. I know you can’t tell people what the prospect of returns are, but what what idea do you give them? 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, so for for our model, because we try to maximise all the grants and loans and forgivable loans, exemptions, etc. You know, our model is one where we can provide a return of capital, pre stabilisation, post stabilisation, we’re looking at providing a six and a half to 7% return. And then and then the exit strategy is a refi, or a sale of the building. But since our model is one where the refi strategy is key for us, as our main is our main strategic position, we’re going to provide a return that is in perpetuity. So once we provide, you know, capital 100% of capital back upon refi, we’re going to still provide a return in perpetuity. 

 

Erwin  

That’s interesting. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. So it’s a so it’s basically an infinite return. So and I’ve heard it’s called the, you know, the holy grail of investing. Right?

 

Erwin  

Yeah. The rate of return on investment? Yeah. Because we’re returning their capital. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, exactly. 

 

Erwin  

So how do you are you refinancing like everybody else is doing like, you’re going to like, you’re going to a commercial lender?

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. Well, what’s unique is that CMHC also has its own direct lending programmes. But also, it also has a commercial mortgage side, right. And their commercial, their commercial side, they provide insurance to commercial lenders, that will provide terms that are almost equivalent to the direct lending programmes. And so you know, long term member amortisation, 50 year terms, lower rates, then then the market and, you know, combine that with grants and loans. And the numbers make sense.

 

Erwin  

Interesting. No. And all these people hate Justin Trudeau is this wouldn’t be possible without him.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s I mean, you look at what’s needed and affordable and government assistance is, is absolutely what’s necessary. That’s the only way the model works.

 

Erwin  

Now, because private people do this, like a regular bank won’t lend you because housing is affordable. Your rents are 10-20% well below market value. 

 

Alfredo  

Exactly. Yeah. 

 

Erwin  

That’s crazy.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. So yeah, we’re our model is a combination of what’s called Deep affordable and market affordable. And so deep, affordable tenants pay around 50% But their rents are subsidy. iodized, and the market affordable is pay, you know, up to about, you know, 15 20% of market, right?

 

Erwin  

Can you give an example? Like, do you know what your projections are for? Like, what are you building? What are you building up the four or five main street?

 

Alfredo  

So this will be a purpose built rental building 96 units, seven stories, it’ll have all the amenities that are, you know, it’ll not any old theatre, you know, floatation? No, no, 

 

Erwin  

I’ve never heard of that Macondo.

 

Alfredo  

But no, it’ll have a gym, it’ll have a community gardens, it’ll have, you know, parking, parking, and we’ll actually, in fact, have a larger laundry space to kind of treat that as a, you know, a community space as well. And, and we have a commons area where can be treated as a business centre for various programmes, or just a place for people to gather. So we’re trying to really create a community in in our, in our buildings, because not only do we want to treat our tenants with dignity and respect, we also want to create, you know, a place where they can call home, you know, because a lot of the affordable housing developments that have been built in the past have this sort of, you know, I don’t know, the best way to describe it, but not very appealing. aesthetic, right, and more of more, more of like a Soviet potentially, you know, facility, right. But there are so now with what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to create design excellence, we’re trying to create, you know, trying to implement ways to make the building look unique, you know, and and, of course, within a budget, because it’s an affordable housing project, where we don’t have the we don’t have the budget that, you know, market projects have. So we try to be creative with with the resources and the budgets that we have.

 

Erwin  

Are you looking for cost savings to via green technologies? Mr. Praveen mentioned, and I’m I don’t think I’ve heard of it before used in Canada. Is he mentioned shower water recapture? Yeah, just to redeem and recapture the heat as well. 

 

Alfredo  

Other than electricity, are you going to try to keep people accountable at all to their water usage? For example, is this one thing and like, I’m like in my condo is people kind of like, because they can’t really tie the expense back to themselves. They they find that condos, they can’t people who live in condos, I find them more wasteful.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, there’s, there’s many technologies, and that’s what’s also really unique about affordable housing projects. I think they’re very, they’re leading edge on that, from that respect, like for 405. We have, we’re trying to aim for a net zero electrical use, and that kind of thing, you know, reduces the long term operational costs of the building, which then helps separate affordable, affordable. Absolutely, exactly. And, you know, and things like solar panels, things like heat pump systems, heat recovery, pumping, nothing, heat pump, for the various units, right? heat recovery systems from sewage, and sanitary, right, and, or, you know, envelope, all there’s so many different, different approaches to ensuring the building is energy efficient,\.

 

Alfredo  

Right. Yeah, I mean, we’ll have we’re actually looking to partner with TELUS Smart buildings, and they have, you know, digital metres that help not only digital metres, but from, you know, a single mobile device, you can open and close doors for viewings you can you have, you know, as you said, water, you know, water analysis, water use analysis. So you have energy use analysis and all these type of things, which I think are important, because you’re right, there is the potential for that.

 

Erwin  

For you just like by mistake, someone leaky toilet? Absolutely, absolutely. I don’t think everyone appreciates, but if you’re if your toilet, you can hear it running. That can be a couple $1,000 a month. Absolutely. Just wasted water.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. So you have somebody helping monitor that. Right. And you have your very various options of and levels of digital monitoring, but you want to cover the basics like that.

 

Erwin  

That’s pretty cool. Yeah. And then what stages do you do you accept investor money just at the beginning? Can people buy these units?

 

Alfredo  

So just you know, so our model, I don’t nothing of other questions. Great questions. No. So our model is is all rental. We’re focused primarily on rental there is affordable ownership as well. That’s not what we focus on. We forego focus on affordable rental. And so in terms of investments, you know, we were actually launching a new project, just actually in the next week or so, it’s on Barton Street, and I’m sure you’re familiar with Barton. And 

 

Erwin  

What’s the intersection? 

 

Alfredo  

That’s at Barton Ottawa

 

Erwin  

Yeah, we talked about that. That’s a wonderful location. Yeah. So this sick time for up and coming.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, absolutely. It’s right beside centre, mall, participates Mall. It’s Yeah, exactly. And there’s a lot of a lot of traffic on Barton street foot traffic as well. And yeah, that’s a seven storey building 164 units. Amazing design on that building, we had a little more flexibility. And I think, you know, don’t quote me, but we may be, you know, winning some awards, I think, cool. The uniqueness of our design, shout out to revel house or architectural team amazing design. But yeah, that building has been launched to investors. We did a teaser, just a week ago. And next week, we’re going officially to our investment group, and forever and making the opportunity available. So four and a half million bucks we’re raising and to do 160 in a building.

 

Erwin  

So the raise Okay, actually, the questions to ask. And then your involvement is you you’re also the like, the general contractor.

 

Alfredo  

Term is construction management. That’s we’re primarily a management company, but acting in a similar capacity as general contractor. Yeah. So we have full control. That’s one of 

 

Erwin  

You are big time, because not everyone’s allowed to do this. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, one of the things that gives us that…

 

Erwin  

I’m not allowed to do this.

 

Alfredo  

From your…

 

Erwin  

I wouldn’t be allowed to GC, there’s no lenders gonna let me be the GC on this. Yeah.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. I mean, but we’ve been in the business for 20 years dropping John. So you know, we’re building two condos in BC right now. So, but, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s something that gives us control over the whole process. So from right from the get go, you know, one of the some some of the problems that that developers face is that they get a building that their architect designs incredibly, and it’s beautiful, but then they are challenged with the budget, because, you know, the architects not focused on that. But because we’re involved right from the get go, you know, we immediately look at our design and how it impacts our budget, and make those numbers work.

 

Erwin  

Reminds me of those condos in Hong Kong, where there’s like a hole in the middle of the condo. People couldn’t live there, man. That’s not practical. It was cool. You throw you throw something big through it, but what 4.4 point $5 million raise. So how are you raising the capital?

 

Alfredo  

So we you go to our existing resource or existing investment group. And basically, we have a structure a GP LP structure, raising the LP funds, and we make it available to them for the, you know, for the next couple of weeks. Right. And, but also what we do with our projects is…

 

Erwin  

Just once like your existing investment group, these are high net worth. But really, really high net worth 

 

Alfredo  

High net worth. You know, in some cases, institutions, pension funds. 

 

Erwin  

Oh, institutions have appetite for this?

 

Alfredo  

Family offices. Yeah. In some cases, you know, institutions have now, you know, a lot of these, you know, I think we talked about it, you mentioned the ESG. Right. And so a lot of corporations have created funds, or have allocated funds to, to doing impact. And a lot of them are interested in affordable housing, because that’s an area that they’re focused on. 

 

Erwin  

Got it. Got it. And this fits their return profile as well. Yeah. 

 

Alfredo  

And you will, a lot of these organisations aren’t looking for huge returns, right. And mind you, a lot of them invest.

 

Erwin  

They’re not looking for huge returns, but they’re usually looking for low risk as well. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, they’re looking for low risk, they’re looking for, you know, stay at stable income. They’re looking for, you know, decent returns. But most of our conversations are about impact. You know, if they had a choice about, you know, if they, they had one investment that provide a decent returns, and they had another investment that provided decent returns and also had an impact, they’re going to choose the the, you know, the ladder, right, you’re saying so, and that’s those are the investors and joint venture partners that we look for, you know, those they have the same vision, they have the same values. And, and there’s a lot of them out there.

 

Erwin  

Because these investors aren’t gonna go, hey, you know, you can get 20% more rent if you rent evict this person.

 

Alfredo  

No, no, no. Okay.

 

Erwin  

All right. We’re out and wait, let’s wrap it up.

 

Alfredo  

I know you are.

 

Erwin  

So I remember reading the article. And that’s how it was when I reached out to you, because you have involved with ADDY. Yeah, because we’ve had Steven formati on the show. Yeah. Super cool concept. And then where does Addy get involved in this process?

 

Alfredo  

So good question and shout out to Addy, Steven and Mitch. So Addy like the same thing. So as soon as we we make the offering to our investment group, they’re part of that Group, they’ll commit a certain level of investment per deal. And we love bringing them in, because what they do is they make investment available to everyone. Right. Right. And right now, our investment community are mostly accredited investors. Right?

 

Erwin  

Very accredited

 

Alfredo  

Majority or all, you know, like 

 

Erwin  

family offices are not just a credit the there multiple times the requirements to be accredited, okay, sorry, continue,

 

Alfredo  

But love the fact that you can get, you know, anybody and everybody involved at at a low risk, because they’re not allowed to invest more than a certain level. And they’re basing it on, you know, the, the majority, right. And, and so, and to have them not only be our partner, but because they’re building a great reputation around, you know, focusing on more on impact. You know, that’s, you know, the same value alignment. So.

 

Erwin  

I remember, I didn’t know much about Adam, and I hadn’t had him on the show. Sorry, Steven. But he told me the max investment was $1,500. Exactly. I haven’t repeated three times. Really? Because the example I’ve given before on the show is, I don’t have our RESPs because honestly, it’s not enough for me to be interested. Right. It’s not an it’s not a significant amount of money for me to be interested in. And then I’m gonna get some hate for this. Like, it’s perfectly I completely understand why it exists and who it’s for. Yeah, it’s not for me, because I have way too much stupid stuff going on. And you know, I got a I got to learn Tik Tok, apparently, yeah. Right. And that’s somehow our priority over an Educational Savings Plan. But not me. Steven Tilly is with investors that are often I’ve seen it taught and understand why they’re often taught, you know, have one partner in a real estate venture. Okay, because it’s too hard to manage lots of relationships. Yeah. Versus and he’s got the exact opposite direction. They have 1000s of investors now was 1000s of relationships on just one project.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, they, I mean, on on 405 main street, they raised half a million dollars. And I think I can’t remember the number of investors that were in there, maybe 2000 or something like that. My work is spread pretty, pretty amazingly. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I’ve been on I’m also a member of Addy, and, you know, voting,

 

Erwin  

You’re able to invest in your own project then. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, absolutely. And so the whole platform is so frictionless you know, everything that is that is provided to an investor who isn’t, you know, well versed in real estate can really understand it, and then best.

 

Erwin  

Well, absolutely easier than doing cosi property, right? An offer when the damn offer inspections, insurance, get a mortgage.

 

Alfredo  

Up there, so you still have to manage it ensure that the value stays right. Like I mean, it’s like 

 

Erwin  

It’ll Be over five years. Yeah, magazine maintenance tenant. 5, 10 20 years

 

Alfredo  

And anything, I mean, anything can happen in that situation. Right. And it’s challenging, crazy stuff happen.

 

Erwin  

But what again, I think that is super cool. This is not endorsement by any means because they give me nothing for it. But I think it’s super cool. It was a cryptocurrency presentation. And as always, like they can’t tell you how much how much you should own. But the lady suggested by $1 Bitcoin. Hopefully she won’t get sued for giving financial advice. Okay, bye. Bye, everybody point was get off the zero don’t have zero because at least if you like break the seal, then hopefully that opens the door to a greater journey of learning more. Right? Maybe you want to get into construction. You want to get a socialised housing. Maybe you want to be a landlord. Yeah. Right. So but that doesn’t happen until you break the seal. Right. Interesting. Yeah. So very easy way to break the seal. Because my understanding is you can do a minimum of $1. But that doesn’t make any sense. Because the fees,

 

Alfredo  

The fees, yeah, I think the fee is $25 a year or

 

Erwin  

Just a year, not even a month. Yeah, so, so invest more than $25. Yeah. But yeah, that’s pretty cool. Because that is about impact. And that’s why that’s why the dude asked even three times what the maximum investment was. Because it’s hard for me to get a financial impact as an investor when I’m only investing 1500 bucks. But he meant impact more for socialised investing, essentially, yeah, you may leave space for everybody else to build to get in. Yeah, rather than just the big fish. 

 

Erwin  

Yeah, and exactly that, right. Because primarily real estate has been, you know, mostly invested in by people that are accredited or people that have wealth and, you know, to get the vast majority to get involved, as you say, you know, get the get your get your foot in the door, basically, you know, starts opening up your eyes to Other things that will help you improve your, your financial situation.

 

Erwin  

Reminds me of one share of Tesla, because it’s too expensive. So just want to share a piece of Elon, all the action, mostly to kill my phone while he wasn’t bought this year. It’s mostly killed by FOMO. Got a piece, I’m in the door. I got foot in the door. We talked earlier before we were recording about book co ops. And it was a it was a presentation that you were giving about around. Sorry, I’m jumping all over. But I didn’t notice it, which is kind of sad that I know this. But you’re talking about in the presentation, how a bunch of affordable properties will no longer be affordable probably pretty soon. Yeah. Can you explain what that is about?

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean.

 

Erwin  

If I didn’t know, there’s probably one person out there also doesn’t know. 

 

Alfredo 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is that particular example was an article that came out in January, about this year, City of Kitchener. Yeah, City of Kitchener. So there’s a cooperative or a bunch of cooperatives that have that own affordable housing. And I think there was a, I can’t remember the exact numbers, I’d have to flip back in my notes, but something around a couple 1000. And so, you know, couple 1000 apartments, apartments. And these apartments were, you know, built about, you know, 4050 years ago, on on long term mortgages, and to be kept affordable for that term. And so now, you know, of course, buildings only, or only have a life around 4050 years, and you know, the changes, major changes need to take place or improvements. And so not only do they face the end of their mortgages ending and, you know, although they have a lot of equitable value in these properties, they don’t have significant cash flow. So, you know, what do you do with these properties? And, you know, the only options are, at least at this point in time is to either sell and then it gets sold to, you know, private, private industry and private industries looking to maximise profits. And what ends up happening is you have displacement, you have all these folks that are that are, that’s a benefit on the street. Yeah, it’s, but it’s

 

Erwin  

But they’ll have stainless steel appliances, and like granite countertops and hardwood floors. And yeah, that’s not a good thing.

 

Alfredo  

No, it’s not good in the sense that you have displacement. Now you have all these these folks. And that’s happening across the country. And, you know, it’s, it’s, I think, one of the biggest problems and opportunities that we have in the future, which is under the under a category called preservation. And so it was, that was what the chat was all about, and with with Jonathan Rose, but yeah, I think there’s, you know, there’s billions and billions of dollars of assets that are all at end of life, you’re hearing some sad stories about rent evictions, you’re hearing sad stories about people being left out on the streets, you’re hearing, you know, rat infested elevators not working and all those kinds of things. And there’s currently today, there’s no solution for that. So, you know, I’m trying my best with my team and our partners to try to lobby government and lobby, you know, various institutions to get involved in trying to find a solution for preservation.

 

Erwin  

Here, you’re just talking about preserving affordable housing

 

Alfredo  

Preserving affordable housing? Yes. 

 

Erwin  

I don’t know many people are talking about this. 

 

Erwin  

No, it’s not. That’s why it there’s not many people talking about affordable housing in general. And but it’s it’s building, preservation is really, you know, it’s more of a might be more more focused on in the future as we get the supply up of affordable housing, because that’s, that’s still, you know, the challenge in the US, the majority of affordable housing development is preservation, you know, out of out of all the projects that that they did, and I think it was, you know, a year ago, they only built like, 50 to 60,000 new units of affordable housing. The rest? Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.

 

Erwin  

That’s nothing. Exactly for a population of 300,000,

 

Alfredo  

350 million people. Yeah. And they have, they have, you know, their numbers are in terms of people like in Canada, we’ve got it. You know, the total waiting list for people waiting for affordable homes is roughly around 300,000 people in the US, it’s like 20 times that it’s like six to 10 million people, right? It’s, it’s a giant number. And so, you know, preserving existing affordable is, is something that they’re focused on.

 

Erwin  

I see multiple challenges. Even for you guys. I like to call you guys. She’s another apology. I’m sorry, folks. When you’re buying property, there’s other people that want the same properties as you. How’s that working out? Are sellers, sympathetic All right, yeah, this one.

 

Erwin  

Actually. And you know, it’s been amazing. It’s been an amazing journey so far, because not only are sellers empathetic, because we’ve got a lot of problems in society today. Right. And that’s another probably podcast for, you know, but the, you know, the sellers are we’re not only not only sellers, but our consulting teams, other stakeholders, everybody is very empathetic to, to the problems and want to get involved and want to help. We had one of our consultants say to me the other day, and I said, Hey, I know you’re busy, Hamilton, Hamilton, you know, construction, and development industry is going bananas right now. And so I said to him, I go, Hey, you know, heads up, I need your assistance on a, on an environmental study on this project and the next week, because we’re, we’re closing on it. And we’re going to do go into due diligence, just a heads up. And if you could fit it in your schedule, please let me know. He’s like Alfredo, because of what you’re doing. Because you’re developing affordable housing. You’re my priority, or, and so that’s pretty consistent amongst the various groups. And so yeah, so sellers are open to finding out a way that they can also have an impact, right. But to our model is one where we’re focused on secondary markets. So instead of paying, you know, 20 25% of our total cost of a development like in the urban core, Toronto Vancouver’s you know, we’re looking at, you know, markets at a, you know, the secondary markets that have a little more affordability and a lot of available land for development.

 

Erwin  

Other than the Hamilton where else are you looking?

 

Alfredo  

St Catharines we’ve looked in places like across the country from Ontario, southwestern Ontario is our is one of our main focuses but all the way to heading west to BC. So we’ve looked at Regina, we’ve looked at Winnipeg, we’ve looked at Edmonton, Calgary, various, you know, smaller cities in BC Victoria and Nanaimo.

 

Erwin  

But you’re starting in Hamilton. 

 

Alfredo  

We’re starting in Hamilton. 

 

Erwin  

Why Hamilton? 

 

Alfredo  

Well, I live in Hamilton. 

 

Erwin  

You didn’t always.

 

Alfredo  

No. Yeah,

 

Erwin  

Like Hamilton, I understand. You’ve had some nice experiences in other parts of Canada.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. Originally from Vancouver. Moved to Hamilton in 2050. 

 

Erwin  

You upgraded I understand. Okay.

 

Alfredo  

I super happy, amazing family community. Amazing place. Still tight and strong ties to Vancouver there every couple of months. Families there. So

 

Erwin  

Yeah, that’s pretty wild. Because maybe it’s the grass is greener on the other side. But you know, I just love Vancouver. And we’re, like, you know, like, we’re going back. We’re going to Vancouver end of May. We’re going to do a real estate meetup, stock hacker meetup. I don’t have all the details yet. My wife put it in my calendar for like, like 6:30. So with the time change, there’ll be 930 our time. Yeah, I’m like, home. The kids can’t be up that late. And there’s we don’t have a nanny in Vancouver. So figure that out. Yeah. I Love Vancouver. 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. Beautiful place, beautiful place.

 

Erwin  

Beautiful People beautiful culture, like people are chill. Yeah. Great to hear.

 

Alfredo  

Well, you know, funny enough, we brought on a new controller just recently, and she’s out of Kitchener. And she was getting on boarded with our team, and in our head offices in Vancouver, and my, you know, Chief of people or is in Vancouver. And so, during this process of onboarding, there is a big noticeable difference between the different you know, from from the West Coast and, and, and Ontario. And so, yeah, definitely, definitely a lot more relaxed and chill for sure.

 

Erwin  

How many employees do you have? 

 

Alfredo  

30. We used to have closer to 50 pre pandemic, right.

 

Erwin  

And then, but then all the people on the tools they’re contracted out? 

 

Alfredo  

Oh, we don’t have Yeah, so construction management. We only have met the management team, project managers, project coordinators, development managers, superintendents, you know, the rest of the stakeholders are all all our contracted.

 

Erwin  

Parts of the construction industry have bounced back. Have they not like your I still see cranes everywhere. And I understand just from hearing what I hear on the ground, like, they can’t hire enough people.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. I mean, there’s always been a problem with skilled trades in construction. The pandemic made it even worse, because a lot of folks, you know, in the construction industry, the average age is is, you know, over. I think the average age was over 45-50. At some point, maybe it’s changing. These are old metrics. But, you know, with a pandemic, with a lot of people experiencing such despair as particularly in the commercial side of the construction industry. A lot of businesses went bankrupt or, you know, guys are saying, Hey, I just, you know, I’ve been in this business for the last 2030 years, it’s time to get out. Right. And that happened. There’s, you know, a lot of attrition. And so, you know, a lot of a lot of folks. And that’s been one of the problems also that has impacted the cost of construction.

 

Erwin  

We talked about morality and real estate investing doesn’t want in your emails in our email exchanges. Oh, what do we need morality for? So I’ll think I’ve mentioned to you in probIem, the, you know, it’s, I think you’ve, you’ve seen it, too, like the common apartment building investment model is to buy something. I know, many companies like their strategies to buy something that needs not a lot of work that’s being rented for under the under market value. And their goal is to turnover, tenants renovate, raise values. That’s not a moral investment. I don’t mean to push you. So I’ll start off by saying, when people tell me those things, then I’m not interested. So I’ll throw that out first. Versus I have friends who are trying to build something in Waterloo, like, I’m interested, you’re building, you’re creating supply, I’m interested, right? Versus again, buying something existing. And then, however, that are asking tenants to leave, or living whatever, I just don’t know, where do they go? Like someone who’s paying like $1,000? For a two bedroom? Like, where do they go? Right. And that’s why that’s, that’s, that’s for me. That’s my morality issue with apartment building, investing for that style of investing. So that’s why it’s a no for me, right? I’m not judging anyone. It’s just me. All right. What’s your what’s your view?

 

Alfredo  

Well, a little bit, a bit of background, I mean, immigrant family from the Philippines, you know, parents careers had changed dramatically when we first moved to Canada in the late 70s, early 80s. And, you know, pizza delivery driver with, you know, several income, right? 

 

Erwin  

Your parents? 

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. And so, you know, we grew up in affordable housing. And so my, my career has been about, you know, giving back because I saw and firsthand experience, you know, the having a half being in a situation, where paying rent was still a challenge, but isn’t the challenge that people face today, my parents were able to have their kids go to good schools, and then eventually go to, you know, good colleges and universities and do something for themselves and give back to the community. So that’s where that’s where it starts. That’s the base of, you know, my morality. And that’s what backs a lot of my decision making, you know, giving back to, you know, being fortunate to grow up in Canada, you know, and giving back to the community is super important. Yeah, I mean, that’s with the problem of affordable housing, you know, not only are we trying to do good, and give back, but trying to find a way to make it a sustainable profitable business model, so that we can encourage the rest of the private industry to get involved. You know, so, you know, hey, I want to I want to go to sleep at night and sleep well, and know that what I do every day is having an impact. Again, we just have so many problems in society today, you know, why not? Do why not do it, if it’s not going to be me are not going to be, you know, someone else, like, Who is it? Who’s going to be? And then you know, you’ve got young kids, I’ve got young kids, I want to see their futures be different than what we know, right now looking pretty bleak. From an environmental perspective, a real estate perspective, right? I mean, it’s, we got to make changes, we got to do something about it.

 

Erwin  

That’s pretty cool. Are your investors public about how they’re investing. I only mentioned it because there’s a lot of rhetoric about, you know, hate for for rich people. And that’s in your projects.

 

Alfredo  

Financialization of real estate.

 

Erwin  

I know that too. Yeah, I’m part of the problem. too. But then my defence is, you know, what else is someone supposed to do? This is the same. Don’t hate the player hate the game? Yeah, the game is central bank, money printing. Inflation. Yeah, we as investors, we get a lot of tax breaks for being investors.

 

Alfredo  

And really, if you’re not investing your money in contributing to the economy, the economy is not going to turn and it’s not going to turn over and opportunities and jobs aren’t created. So they’re, you know, things have to move, you know, and what we’re trying to do is to create a bit of a model that’s sustainable, because just like the Kitchener problem that’s being faced, and we don’t want that to happen, you know, 40 years from now, we’re trying to create a model that is, you know, beyond that, that, folks that had been fortunate enough to be, you know, living in the affordable projects that we develop don’t have to be kicked out at the at the end of the term.

 

Erwin  

Right! What are some of the challenges? Is that city city run affordable housing? What do they face? 

 

Alfredo  

Well, I mean, being government backed a lot of those, you know, the income model, you know, a lot of these buildings have have been affordable for so long. So the so the level of income is so low that, you know, they don’t have much room to, to make changes to make improvements.

 

Erwin  

And keep up with inflation on their rents. No. Oh, boy. Yeah, that’s a that’s a recipe for disaster.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. I mean, so that’s one thing that we do. I mean, our rents are, you know, there’s government, you know, rent control that it’s in place, and, you know, we stay within those guidelines.

 

Erwin  

So, so then your buildings will, I don’t know, if I call it That’s right to call me or buildings, but the rents will be indexed to inflation, at least.

 

Alfredo  

As I said, like, it’ll be to, you know, the the government

 

Erwin  

Got it controlled, which hopefully keeps up with inflation.

 

Alfredo  

Which keeps up with inflation. Absolutely.

 

Erwin  

Because otherwise, otherwise, these businesses, businesses, I don’t know if it’s right word for affordable housing will make it.

 

Alfredo  

No, it won’t. If it you have to be practical, right. I mean, and government money is finite. Right. 

 

Erwin  

I don’t feel that way. Bartenders are getting new pharma plans and child care and dental plans. I’m happy for them.

 

Alfredo  

Yet now in here, that’s, that’s today. Right. And but the you know, I would say that my perspective is that it’s finite. And so if we can find a way to make it sustainable, then that’d be amazing.

 

Erwin  

Any thought to making your buildings co-op? 

 

Alfredo  

No, no, I mean, our buildings are going to be you know, one of the things about real estate as well, and why I’m in involved in construction and real estate, it’s, it’s a great legacy, you know, asset to have, right and, and, you know, I think the goal for all of us is to work hard, and one day not have to work hard. And so I’m just I’m you know, part of our our model is keeping it private, and interesting. So, you know, and by having you know, over my career, develop, develop 1000s and 1000s of buildings, be able to build wealth for myself and my family and for the next generation. And well while giving back to the community.

 

Erwin  

That’s pretty cool. Because we talked about earlier about the examples that I shared before we were recording is like two well known coops failed during the pandemic mountain Equipment Co Op, which is no longer called Bad mountain equipment companies.

 

Alfredo  

I don’t know actually, I didn’t follow that what happened with them?

 

Erwin  

The C stands for something else besides coop now, this was the acronym stays, so really stays. It’s no longer coop because it’s not a coop is privately owned. So it’s still MEC. Yeah, so I see okay, and then locally, mustard seed clarity field, and just reading into MEC, like management wasn’t tight, just their inventory control was just poor is a thin the story that was given was I think, certain piece of hiking equipment, they’ve happened to find it in their storage, but it had been sitting there for like three or seven years so actually worked out. Normally you sell you know, when you have excess supply you you know, you heavily discounted put it on clearance, but thankfully, they found it. And there are the sell for you know, full list price, because you know, during the pandemic, but that was more of a an insight into how poor their inventory management was.

 

Alfredo  

How long did you say five, seven years?

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it was it was in inventory for that long. And it was known as lost in inventory loss. And in freight, we found it. I don’t know, because they were looking for stuff to sell. And then just one I have questions and then wonder like, how is quality of management in a coop? Because you don’t get talented people running businesses unless you pay them? Yeah. Right. So like the whole sunshine list thing? And then like, I don’t know, people are Villa being vilified for making what they do like CEOs of hospitals, for example. But my thinking is, you don’t get talent unless you pay for talent. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that’s part of my where was I going with that? I don’t know. Like do coops and real estate work? Different things? And that’s kind of the kind of what we’re talking about with with city run affordable housing, like in Hamilton, for example, like a bunch of these properties are in house. uninhabitable? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Like I think one project I think 60 or 70% of it was vacant, because people couldn’t live it. They were being kept. Yeah.

 

Alfredo  

Right. Yeah. The the history of of like city housing and Hamilton is that actually it was what I understand it to be is that they were an amalgamation of a significant number of nonprofits that I think were actually going bankrupt. And so, city housing stepped in every day. and took them over. And so, you know, they already started with problems, right financially. But there was a lot of folks that were living there. And so, you know, what are you going to do something had to be done. And so they stepped in and, and came up with that solution. But, you know, is that the solution for the long term? You know, that’s yet to be determined?

 

Erwin  

Because I remember, within two years, I won’t say which political party I’m sure people can guess. But one of the leaders said, I don’t want to see developers making money’s money off the back of Canadians. Right. And then here, we have nonprofits, oh, leaving a whole bunch of problems for the taxpayer. So how did that work out?

 

Alfredo  

Well, not well, because there were billions and billions of dollars spent originally. So if all that gets converted to private, then, you know, look at the the lost dollars there. Right. And, and so, you know, I think that, you know, back to that comment about preservation being a potential, you know, or not potential being one of the biggest issues and, and opportunities, I think, needs to be resolved in Canada.

 

Erwin  

Are you’re working with the city on any existing affordable housing that they own, that they’re operating?

 

Alfredo  

We’re having talks about opportunities to partner up. I don’t think we’re talking about existing properties only, only because the financial model today with grants and incentives and loans, etc, that are there, but won’t support a preservation model. But they do support new construction, new builds?

 

Erwin  

Well, I mean, they should bulldoze some of these places and build high rise.

 

Alfredo  

In some some places. Absolutely. It makes sense financially to do that. And it will contribute back, you know, if you’re demolishing a 10 unit building and put it up, you can put up 300 units that will have a unilateral positive effect. But what do you still do with those 1010 10 families that are living there? You still have to be, you know, fair and find a, a solution for that.

 

Erwin  

It’s more likely three families because three of the seven of the units are in and you can’t live in them. Yeah. But yes, we do have to relocate.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, exactly. 

 

Erwin  

And that’s not easy to do. 

 

Alfredo  

No. 

 

Erwin  

Anything else you want to cover today.

 

Alfredo  

Hey, I mean, I got a few shout outs at the end, or how much time we have left, but…

 

Erwin  

Long enough to show to people you’re showing to the city at all. The city we should shout out?

 

Alfredo  

No. I don’t think I’m promoting folks in the city. But building relationships with the folks at the city. I think, you know, no, no specific names, particularly. But

 

Erwin  

I’ll have to say like the people that people I’ve dealt with at Hamilton, they’re very progressive people. Yeah, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t know their public servants if you’d write by talking to them. Yeah, they have vision. They’re not NIMBY, right. They want change they want they want density. Yeah. Right. Which is not typical of city. Municipal Employees. Yeah. Sorry, continue. 

 

Alfredo  

No, hey, that’s an interesting comment. Because, you know, that’s one of the reasons why we moved to Hamilton, having grown up in Vancouver and seeing the changes over, you know, the last 30 years and Vancouver, seeing, you know, Richmond from where, which is where I grew up in, you know, from farmland, to giant powers and see, you know, Vancouver and high income area. Yeah, absolutely. And see how, what the impact of the, what it was called the skytrain. The rapid transit, the Rev line, and all these other lines, that had just had a huge impact to the city and its growth. And, and that’s what’s exciting about Hamilton, with the LRT, coming, and all transit, the late trail transit and all the other investments taking place in Ontario, and connecting the whole grid together. I think that’s amazing. And, I mean, it has to be done. Because the population is going to continue to grow. You know, there’s the government’s bringing in, you know, one and a half million people over the next three years. And that’s a substantial increase to the population. But Vancouver, seeing, seeing how it grew, and the type of the type of the developed society, and then the regulations and all that stuff that is now in place is, is what happens over time as things, you know, become more, you know, sort of set up, right. And now, Hamilton, we’re in this growth stage, and other areas in Ontario, and it’s really exciting to see that and to have these folks at the city, be open and be willing and look at innovative techniques, look at partnerships. In all my experiences, all my conversations have been all positive. And even from the administrative stuff, they are very supportive. You know, they’re always you know, attentive to you to your files, and I think it’s been great. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

And are you even talking to the mayor as well, because he’s got to be wanting to, you know, pose in front of your buildings. 

 

Alfredo  

We’ve had conversations with with Fred and other counsellors are very supportive. So we’re getting a lot of support of, you know, whenever I asked, you know, how many private industry developers are getting involved in affordable housing, the name, you know, there’s not you can count more than, you know, the fingers that are in on one hand, that are involved in doing affordable housing. So…

 

Erwin  

I’m not sure if one knows how to give a benefit of a construction business. I don’t know. Maybe come back in another episode on how someone else can start. Yeah, absolutely. I can someone with like three properties start getting into affordable housing? Yeah, well, we’ll chat about that when we’re done recording, because I gotta let you go. Yeah.

 

Alfredo  

But, ya know, I would love to, you know, just share that, you know, we’re launching our Barton through project, I mentioned that just in the next couple of weeks. So if anybody’s interested.

 

Alfredo  

What’s the date? because I don’t know when people are going to hear this. 

 

Alfredo  

Oh, we’re launching that probably around middle of April.

 

Erwin  

Middle of April. Got it!

 

Alfredo  

And you had a couple of shout outs, I’d love to shout out to our official charity, foundations for social change. I think Praveen might have mentioned that when we first chatted.

 

Erwin  

He talks fast, dude.

 

Alfredo  

Foundations for social change. You know, it’s they’re basically a direct giving, giving model. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of that. But what they did is they did a trial in Vancouver where they gave 50 People $7,500, no strings attached. And the majority of those folks are, are stable financially. And so you know, and you think that the opposite would actually take place. And so what, you know, you’re, you know, these folks will have the money to buy food, buy their clothes for getting a job, they can now afford some food, and they can now afford rent. And so they’re not no longer struggling on a day to day basis, and are able to improve their lives and get back into the game of life, get back into society. So they’re making some pretty cool headway. And they’ve got this new programme, their Greenleaf programme, where they’re going to be raising $3.8 million. They have a control group of around 400. And they’re getting up giving about 200 of those folks at $500. Each, and and seeing what the impact is getting tonnes of support media wise, getting a lot of, you know, in various institutions interested internationally in what they’re doing. 

 

Erwin  

How you track what they do?

 

Alfredo  

That I don’t know. Yes, so that’s very fast.

 

Erwin  

I have a charity too. And logistically, running a charity is not easy. Handing over money is very easy. Understanding the results.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, there. Yeah, I think I mean, they’re, they’re very sophisticated in their analysis and their studies. But, you know, they are very simple and in the folks that they’re giving the money to.

 

Erwin  

There must be about like a prepaid credit card that they’re tracking or something. I’m not sure. I think there’s no strings attached. Just to track Oh, yeah. Just like I don’t I don’t hang them a stack of cash. 

 

Alfredo  

I know for sure. Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, for sure.

 

Erwin  

Or this is a China we’re using talking about digital currency.

 

Alfredo  

Yeah. No, yeah. So so there are official charity, as shouted out to Addy invest, as I mentioned, we’ll be bringing them into our Barton three project as well. And as well, we were doing our next fireside chat this June. This time, it’ll be with him on Novan of Novan. Developments, a developer out of California, amazing story, you know, similar situation, talking about preservation again, and what they’re doing in the US. Hopefully, we can bring in some of our I’ve been trying to get some or are CMHC partners to get involved. If that’s possible. That would be amazing. Just to get the perspective of what’s taking place in Canada, and how it compares to what’s happening in the US and and if there’s any learnings that we can take please take from that.

 

Erwin  

When you have a third project coming up to and Hamilton. Isn’t there another project as well in Hamilton 

 

Alfredo  

For us? 

 

Erwin  

Yeah

 

Alfredo  

Yeah, we have three projects that we’re working on Bourbon Street, and then we got this Queenston road project that’s taking place. Oh, we’re looking at launching another project in St. Catharines. And, like I said, we’re trying to put 10 projects in the pipeline by the end of the year,

 

Erwin  

and increasing road couple 100 units as well. Yeah, similar idea.

 

Alfredo  

Exactly. Our model doesn’t change, like that’s what we’re being disciplined about is that it’s, you know, 100 150 units, already zoned to six to seven stories, grants and loans are all similar and expected. So the returns are all the same. And so we, you know, try to we’re trying to create scale, basically, that’s one of the biggest challenges that have taken place in affordable housing. Pre pandemic, the City of Hamilton alone had only built 350 new affordable housing units when there’s 7000 people waiting on a waiting list.

 

Erwin  

That surprises that small list will be lot bigger. 

 

Alfredo  

Exactly, exactly. You know, well, that 7000 person list continues or family list continues to grow. Right. And, and so that’s not only happening in Hamilton that’s happening across the country, you know, and so, so, you know, we’ve got to do something about it. And we’re trying to we’re trying to lead by example.

 

Erwin  

And then there’s some of the ridiculousness in the media about all we don’t have a housing supply issue. We have all these houses in Saskatoon that aren’t that are boarded up things. People need to go live there. Okay.

 

Alfredo  

There is a housing supply issue for sure. I mean, you know, statistics I mentioned this during our fireside chat, is that Canada is, you know, on a housing capita, per capita basis is the lowest amongst the g7. And for Ontario, just to meet the national average would have to build 650,000 new units. Well, that’s why we’re talking over what time period? No, no, that just just not not that it’s going to happen. But I’m just saying that to get to the national average, and why are we having this housing crisis? And why are prices so high? Why rental rates so high because of that deficit. Right. So yeah, lots and lots and lots of stuff. 

 

Erwin  

We have a provincial election coming up. Yeah. optimistic. Oh, man. And another, something else to ask? Oh, so I’m trying to be an FAQ for you so that you don’t get like all these crazy emails, other than the ones that I send you, for someone to be an investor. So for someone, so you mentioned that there’s kind of like two rounds of investment. There’s the there’s the one you from your private investor group, what are you looking for there? What is so what does someone have to do to qualify for that?

 

Alfredo  

Accredited Investor? $100,000 minimum investment. You know, obviously, it’s similar alignment?

 

Erwin  

Well, they wouldn’t be investing. Exactly. You’re gonna be asking like, what’s this return? Yeah. Again, like in person? I don’t know. Dogecoin.

 

Alfredo  

And then for for, you know, as I said, we will be bringing Addy on board as well. So make that available to the, to the groups.

 

Erwin  

Amazing. Yeah. All right. Any final words you want to share?

 

Alfredo  

Well, hey, investing in affordable housing is possible. And it’s needed. So you know, if anybody’s interested on on your show, and your listeners know, please get in touch. We’d love to be we’d love to meet you. 

 

Erwin  

How can we get in touch?

 

Alfredo  

They can reach out to by email.

 

Erwin  

Okay, I’m gonna warn you. Emails are forever. This is on the internet.

 

Alfredo  

That’s a good point. You know, I’ll check out our website at 3Hproperties.com. And, you know, we have a we have an email there at info@3Hproperties.com, and you can reach out, reach out to us that way. 

 

Erwin  

Fabulous. All right, thanks. 

 

Alfredo  

Well, thank you very much Erwin for letting me share my story.

 

Erwin  

Cool stuff. You’re you’re doing more to change the world than I am. 

 

Alfredo  

You’re doing lots my friend. You are doing an amazing, thank you. 

 

Erwin  

Thank you. 

 

Alfredo  

Thank you.

 

Erwin  

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

 

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Youtube: https://youtu.be/KbeDKR7LIm0

 

Erwin  

Greetings friends, all 17 of you. This is the truth my real estate investing show for Canadians and I too am Canadian coming to you from Oakville, Ontario, just west of Toronto. I hope you’re all taking the time to connect and network with fellow like minded investors, weather’s getting better things are opening up, I don’t know actually what’s closed anymore. I do try to do these things as often as possible; to you know, spend more time around like-minded people, because you never know if things are gonna go bad. So you’re gonna need people who are like minded, have friends, so that you in case anything goes bad, you know who to lean on for support. My mom, my dad, my brother, they’re all investors in real estate or stocks, or both. I have a whole bunch of buddies plus my teams, both stock hacker Academy and iWIN real estate, they’re all investors and stocks options, real estate investing. Of course, in cryptocurrency, mainly Bitcoin. Life is short. Hence, I’m always trying to be efficient with my time and spending that time with people I can learn from or inspire me. Luckily, I’m married Cherry Chan. so I don’t go that far, to get some really good mental stimulation. We have an informal book club. For example, we’re both reading Ray Dalio’s principles for dealing with the changing world order. We’re almost done. I think we’re both almost done. I’m almost done; on the last chapter. Most people out there, they have no interest in these subjects. And they’ll call us conspiracy theorists. However, those same people could, you know, to do better off reading a book, maybe around history of the world and not just go back the last 100 years, maybe go back last like 300 years. And you’ll see that things are cyclical, and it might help prepare you for what’s to come. Cherry and I, of course, do our part to share what we’ve learned to the best that we can let the best practices are to prepare for what all the government banks are doing, like the bank of Canada, the US Federal Reserve, they all continue to create more money out of thin air, not tied to anything, not backed by gold or anything like that, just to fund the spending that they have and sadly, assets will grow in value. Something I have a lot of. At least, I think how long I can always use more. And on the other hand, they’re sadly destroying savings, people’s savings and making housing as an example more and more unaffordable to those who don’t have assets. 

Erwin  

We covered all this in our live and in person events. Yes, that’s right. We’re back to live and in person and it feels good. Feels good to be dialling back my zoom expenses. We just cut one of my Zoom accounts, we cut we cut it down by like 80% in cost or since we’re back to doing in person events. By the time you listen to this episode, we’ll have hosted a few dozen people on the weekend on an investment property tour in Hamilton to touch feel and smell some investment grade duplexes at different stages of finish. This is in Hamilton, Ontario, if I didn’t mention that. One property has not been renovated. It’s been it was just recently closed on one has just been renovated. And it was just staged. I’m recording this on Thursday, I think it was just staged on Wednesday, pictures are done. And one is an existing duplex. like to say thank you to my team and my clients for making this happen. Only one of these properties is for sale. And we used to do tours of mostly properties that were on sale but because of the way the pandemic is not all sellers want us to have a couple dozen investors run through their properties. So thanks to my network and my my team and my clients for making this event possible. Also, they’re going to have lunch together. So isn’t that nice? To have lunch with like minded people. And I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m like super grateful and like almost like nostalgic to be able to, you know, hang out with groups of friends again, be in busy restaurants. 

Erwin  

On Saturday, April 23. We have our next real estate meetup; Cherry and I’s real estate meetup. Our topics include how to renovate for ROI that’s return on investment. We have a lot of experience doing that. A recent experience on how our team won a multiple offer scenario for a client to purchase a new house integrate at great price. Plus, we’ll announce details of our new joint venture matchmaking programme. You don’t want to miss out on that, especially if you’re a newer investor, you definitely want to see the details on this. And no, I’m not looking to raise capital. I’m just looking to help people to find resources so that they can get into investment property because I don’t know a better investment for the long term and the way the world is, again, you don’t want to miss out on this. Our March meetup did sell out our first live only only live we had no virtual option. We weren’t recording it. It’s a lot more production for us to have to record anything. So we did not record it. So don’t delay registrations will be open likely shortly for those on our email newsletter. So yeah, so if you’re on an email newsletter, just check it out when we have when we announced the event and then make sure you register. 

Erwin  

This past weekend, I had a night out with a young investor buddies in downtown Toronto, a group of eight guys including myself, who like to have fun, eat great food, drink nice wine and do fun things together. We hang it up at once per quarter. We’re all investors in again Real Estate Development, what name it, just name it stocks, of course, again 6 out of 8 of us made it to this event. We don’t always make it is you know, life gets in the way, especially those with young kids. But six of us did make it out and we had a lot of fun. We started the night grabbing some drinks and then escaping an escape room have five minutes to spare the escape room allotted 45 minutes, we got it and 40 we did take one hit though, that might have been my bad. This is my first, if anyone doesn’t know I’ve done a lot of escape rooms. But this is the first one I’ve done since the pandemic started. And we did awesome as a group. Time goes by fast in escape rooms. If you’ve ever done these before, if you haven’t, I recommend it. Do it with some friends, do with some family do with your older kids. Time goes by fast when you are in an escape room. Since it’s a timed event. If you run out of time you fail to escape so nobody wants that. So time goes by fast and time goes by faster. And you’re allowed to bring adult drinks inside the escape room and even give us walkie talkies to order more Transpower within also to you know, ask for help and ask for tips. But yes, we can also order drinks, which we may have done. Next, we had to find dinner at Kost. It’s a nice restaurant downtown Toronto on the 40th floor. So it has features panoramic views of the city. When it’s warmer, there’s a pool deck as well. Food and Wine was excellent. I include some pictures on my Instagram that’s included in this post. From there on after that the details are hazy, so I’m not going to try recount any but much fun was had. Well yeah, of course, being who we are, we chatted a lot about investing in real estate cryptocurrency, how much cash we should hold, gold everything from this night out with the guys actually. So because of this night out with the guys, we’d always get together. So it’s not it’s not easy for us to coordinate make plans. But from this event, we did make plans, we’re going to visit a city in the US to scope out further look at some small development opportunities on the other side of the border. So pretty cool. For me, I think most folks know I’m heavily invested in Ontario, specifically Hamilton in St. Catharines. In Toronto, I have a property in Toronto and for for Cherry and I, there’s nothing wrong with a little diversification south of the border. And the group of people I’m going to be investing with, they’re pretty talented people, and morally and ethically solid people. So I’m excited for this. 

Erwin  

Onto this week’s show. I’m super excited to have back on the show my friend Jules McKenzie, who I find super inspiring. And unfortunately, I’m going to warn some of you right now, he is a super successful real estate investor, having owned a lot of properties way more than I did. And he’s had over 20, 30 I forget how many property over 50 properties I think. He’s trimmed that down significantly as he sold some off and paid off debts. But he’s got a good number of keepers. He’s raised millions and millions of dollars of capital to buy real estate and Barrie and Orillia, but here’s the boring part. He is a police officer with over 30 years of experience. So I think that categorises him as a legal expert. And some of you are not going to like his opinion about the protests that went happened in Ottawa. So I’m just gonna warn you that now. But if you want a professional legal opinion, his opinion on what happened there, maybe you want to listen to that part. I personally I’m open minded. I don’t care if I don’t get offended easily. Personally, I don’t get offended easily. But I know some of you out there will. Jules does share how he how he too protest is at Parliament Hill at a different time, but he protested to Parliament Hill. And his experience was very different than what happened earlier this year. With the truckers and the anti COVID mandate protesters and whatnot the occupation, what was deemed an illegal occupation. Anyways, we talked a lot about real estate on the show and in general on general, we talked on the show a lot of tips and tactics, including previous interviews I’ve had with Jules Jules is back for the third or fourth time I’ve lost count. So feel free to go back and listen to those if you’re looking for tools and tips and tactics. Today, we’re gonna more focus on the obstacles that Joe’s had to overcome being an indigenous Canadian and growing up on a reserve, substance abuse. If you’ve ever met Jules, you’ll know he’s one of the happiest people you’ll ever meet. And you’ll have no idea about his tragic past. But what I find inspiring about Jules is he refuses to live the life of a victim. And he’s living proof of how how important mindset is, as Jules has come from tougher upbringing the most and has achieved immense financial success. If you do enjoy the show, which I think you will, please look up Jules McKenzie on Facebook or Instagram and send him a message letting him know that you want to read his book, Jules is on the fence about writing a book. I don’t think he needs the encouragement, but just in case, as I believe his book will help a lot of people, not just young Indigenous Canadians, but I think he’ll help a lot of people, people who have come from who have obstacles that they think they can’t overcome. Some of them are Yeah, some of them are terrible, near impossible, but it really does still always start with believing in oneself. So I think his book will help more than just our 17 listeners. And if you agree, if you could be so kind to drop him a message. All right, please enjoy the show. 

Erwin  

Hi, Jules. 

Jules  

Hi, Erwin.

Erwin  

What’s keeping you busy these days?

Jules  

Oh, geez, I wouldn’t know where to begin. So I just finished a course at the Ontario Police College. I’ve been promoted to Detective; I didn’t even show you my badge. 

Erwin  

Oh, cool. 

Jules  

It was so cool. Because I’m not the first one to be in that position. But I don’t know. I just think it’s a it’s a really nice badge. That’s a Rhema police detective badge.Can you believe it? 

Erwin  

Wow, well, detailed. Oh, it’s really pretty.

Jules  

See that? Anybody can be the detective Erwin.

Erwin  

I’m not going to talk to that. You just had such an easy life. Born into a life of privilege.

Jules  

I was definitely privileged, my daddy gave me everything.

Erwin  

We’ll get into that because we’re not letting you off on that. But you are tanned so things haven’t gone that bad.

Jules  

Things have gone pretty good. Oh, man it was so so good to get away? We were down in Bahamas and NASA for a week.

Erwin  

Just a week?

Jules  

Yeah, just a week.

Erwin  

Was it hard coming back?

Jules  

Still got stuff to do. Like I still got a life to live.

Erwin  

Which is interesting. Because you do quite well. Yeah. Right. You don’t have to work? Well as financially you do not. I don’t think you have to work.

Jules  

We thought about I thought about cashing out a couple of times. But my chief, you know, my police chief promoted me into this position. They leased a car. I got I got an expense account and a credit card. I got a clothing allowance. And just like you keep doing this to me are making it hard for me to retire.

Erwin  

Golden handcuffs. Yeah, so funny.

Jules  

I never thought it would happen to me. Oh, if my mommy could only see me now.

Erwin  

You have an unmarked car which just so cool. Because I asked him like if so you pointed it out to us because like, oh, yeah, I’ve seen unmarked cars. I know when it’s a cop. I know I see them. I see them every rear view mirror, I see when I pass an unmarked car like but that you that yours doesn’t look. 

Jules  

There’s no way, No. That was based on CI so research that it’ll blend in. So Oh, it’s a car that I would not purchase. And it’s a car I’m not particularly proud of. I’m allowed to take it home but I don’t, I have a big beefy Dodge Ram pickup truck.

Erwin  

Well, you’re huge. Yeah. What are you 6’3, 6’4? What are you?

Jules  

Probably Probably 6’3. I think I lost an inch, maybe a half an inch off my height. As I get older.

Erwin  

Whoa, heavyweight? You’re lifting forces. It’s extra compressive my spine? Yeah. And while you’re everything else and probably don’t even have any have much knee cartilage left or whatever.

Jules  

Well, the one knee there’s no cartilage left. The other one. I just got the back half of the meniscus left. So I gotta I gotta watch that every once in a while. Yeah.

Erwin  

Cause I remember, I remember I hurt myself enough times doing whatever, mostly basketball, I’d rolled my ankles enough. And then like, enough of that for myself. That’s when I started my CrossFit journey. Thanks to some friends including like Nicaragua. And it because it’s so linear. Like, it’s like no one’s touching you first off. And again, everything’s in one direction basically. Right? either forward or backwards or sideways. Whatever. Pretty controlled. Yeah, compared to playing a sport. And I remember you telling me that you were running and I knew you had bad knees and that pained me. And I’m not gonna say anything. Right? Because you don’t tell anyone what to do. Yeah, right. Because you enjoyed it. You loved it. But would you do anything different?

Jules  

Well, funny. You mentioned that because I remember we were talking off off camera about the podcast you did with the individual from.

Erwin  

Cowan, Yeah. 

Jules  

What’s his name? Callum?

Erwin  

Callum, Cowan

Jules  

Callum Cowan. Okay. Yeah. From phenom highperformance clinic. And at the time, you were pretty heavy into the CrossFit stuff. And I was just starting in CrossFit. But I was frustrated. I didn’t feel that I was achieving the results that I should be achieveing. 

Erwin  

You were doing fantastic. I saw your videos, you’re doing pull ups like like a madman.

Jules  

But I was still seemingly overweight; I was 268 pounds at the time and felt heavy, felt sluggish, lethargic. And you know, it came down to the diet. And I remember having this conversation with my coach, my crossfit coach and I said what do I got to do to change and he just kind of sat down in front of me and the kneecap to kneecap says Jules, if you really want the results, you’re gonna have to change everything. And I said, What do you mean change everything. You have to change the way you train, you’re gonna have to change the way you eat. You’re gonna have to change the way you sleep. Because this is not serving you. It’s not it’s not going well. And I was I left that meeting equally frustrated and then I was listening to your podcast about phenom, the ketogenic diet and chain making all those kinds of changes. So I got in for an appointment with with one of the doctors there, a naturopathic doctor, we did some food sensitivity testing, and I found out I was sensitive to a lot of things.

Erwin  

And do you remember what were some of the highlights. What were you sensitive to?

Jules  

So potatoes. Big one The pastas, anything refined. I was like, essentially all the all the things we’re not supposed to have on keto, I was, I was sensitive to, for a brief period at the beginning I was I was sensitive towards eggs as well, which was torture, because it was just a steady diet of meat and vegetables. But I lost so much weight so fast. I lost a lot of strength with that as well. And I was kinda that was kind of frustrating, but, you know, it’s still slowly starting to come back now. You know, I did a one rep max 255 Back Squat, which was a lot for me. When I first lost the weight, it was relatively fast. So I’d say in about three months, I was down 40 plus pounds, and I could barely back squat 75 pounds back it was it was to the point where it’s just embarrassing.

Erwin  

Wait, wait, wait, so pre ketogenic diet, how much you could back squat?

Jules  

Pre ketogenic diet, I was back squatting, I think my one rep max was 275. Okay, yeah. And then when I lost my weight, I could barely lift off 75 pounds. But in addition to that, you’re aware that I had my knee surgeries, I have terrible meat. Well, it’s not so terrible. Now, because I got my diet under control. I don’t have as much inflammation as I did previously. And I lost a lot of strength. And I was wearing these carbon fibre braces to keep my knee stability in place. And I was having difficulty with my knees because the knee pain was was not subsiding. But I went to a really sports medicine and got hooked up with a doctor there Jason Pour. And it was kind of like threefold so I got involved with them as well, in addition to being involved with phenom for my diet, but he gave me diet counselling because it was hard to get on the ketogenic diet, because I was grazing all day long. If not into the evening, if not both.

Erwin  

On things you should be eating or things you shouldn’t?

Jules  

Things I shouldn’t. of course, come on. You know, police food. I was eating a lot of police food. Doughnuts. Oh, man, I had a reputation uphold. So working with Jason, he got me on some diet counselling. So all it all really was was I read a book by Dr. Jason Fung, who’s Oh, yeah. Oh, so. Yeah. So the obesity code. Yeah. And then he says we’re going to adopt fasting into your life. And at the time, he says.

Erwin  

That’s the name of the book? Obesity code? 

Jules  

The obesity code by Dr. Jason Fung. Excellent guy. He has got some really you got to mean. 

Erwin  

You worked with him directly? 

Jules  

No, I didn’t work. Well. Not at all. I don’t think I’ve ever met them. I might have met him at a REIN meeting. I have a memory of that.

Erwin  

You kidding me? 

Jules  

I’m not kidding. 

Erwin  

He’s famous now because of George St. Pierre. 

Jules  

Absolutely is. Yeah. But I believe I’ve met him at rain mean, if Dr. Fung if you’re out there, please don’t hesitate to give me a call sometime.

Erwin  

What a small world.

Jules  

I want to extend my gratitude. But I learned about intermittent fasting, I started to implement it in my life. And it was hard like anything, you know, you have the Keto flu. You’re you feel hungry all the fucking time. You know, you’re pissed off and edgy. But then eventually, things start turning around for you, right? Like you get you get over that hump. And I remember my first fasted workout where I could actually feel like I was just so energised and so charged. And it wasn’t so much to weightlifting, but my gymnastic ease type stuff. My callisthenics just took off. Like I was able to burpee like a madman was able to continue to do pull ups. You know, those kinds of things really took off and I just felt so so charged up and energised that now nowadays if I work out after I’ve eaten something then I feel like what I used to feel prior to all this stuff sluggish slow, kinda sleepy you know but if I go go workout fasted even if it’s a 36 hour fast like I just you know you start out and the way my coach is doing it now so I got a different coach. She’s coaching me to do some heavy lifting for a brief period of time maybe 5,10 minutes of some lifting five by five of back squats or front squats or combination of clean and jerks are power, snatch whatever the case may be. Then we take five minutes and then we go into the workout of the day, you know, which could be anything but now I do that if I do that fasted, it’s just phenomenal. If I do that after a prolonged fast and for me a prolonged fast is 36-40 hours, which is a lot. Yeah, I just I know that I’m I’m positively influencing my body’s natural testosterone level and the strength just takes off. It’s terrific. Oh, it’s just, it’s just so awesome. 

Erwin  

That’s pretty cool. 

Jules  

Yeah.

Erwin  

And just to backtrack, Dr. Jason Fong is he is.. isn’t he a kidney doctor?

Jules  

 He actually, as far as I understand he treats a lot of patients that suffer with diabetes.

Erwin  

Yeah. Yeah. So he actually went he or she tried instead of trying to fix people’s kidneys, he went to the source problem. Yeah. Which was they are overweight.

Jules  

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you don’t need to take well, I guess you could take drugs for that. But that’s, that’s not the best solution. 

Erwin  

There’s more gentle, we can Well, I’d say it’s more gentle solution to be to be intermittent fast. And to want a vacation. 

Jules  

One of the best things about this lifestyle is fasting is free.

Erwin  

You save money you saved and you save time.

Jules  

You save time, too. I love it. Yeah. So if you skip a lunch, yeah, that’s an hour extra your day that you can just, you know, be productive.

Erwin  

For me, what I love is because my kids are young, so the mornings are a rush to get them at the door. But I don’t have to worry about my own eating. So I have all this extra time to like, you know, help my kids with homework or brush my daughter’s hair. Like it’s just nice, especially at that time when it’s usually hectic for most households. Yeah, yeah. Oh, pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Obesity code. Yeah, no, he’s definitely my to read list is Hi. I’d love to get to it. But yeah, I’m already implementing a lot of this stuff. I can’t fast as long as I’m more of a more of a morning fast kind of guy.

Jules  

Yeah, I’ll do that 36-40 hour fast at least once a month, and then a couple times a week, I’ll do a 24 hour fast. So I’m basically my eating window is condensed down to six hours, sometimes eight, depending on what I got going on at work. But yeah, that’s, that’s kind of how I do it now, basically, two meals a day, sometimes one, sometimes none. And mentally, I just stopped making a big deal out of it. It’s like, yeah, so what.

Erwin  

Do you know how many calories you’re eating the day then know when you’re not roughly ballpark?

Jules  

No, I don’t count macros. I just know enough that it’s not so much the time I spend eating as much as the time I don’t spend eating. The biggest thing that scared me is because of my indigenous background. I know that a lot of my relatives have diabetes, and suffer from obesity. So I knew that every time you eat something, whether it’s good for you or not, you spike something in your body called insulin. You get enough insulin spikes, that hormone is going to take the food you just ingested, and turn it directly into body fat. So you gotta be aware of that.

Erwin  

When you do have a meal. are they bigger than what you used to eat before?

Jules  

Yeah, in some cases, yes. Okay. Yeah. Fine.

Erwin  

I’m trying to paint a picture for the listener, but you’re not starving yourself? 

Jules  

Absolutely not. No, some people look at me, it’s like, holy shit. Like you’re eating two breakfasts.

Erwin  

Yeah, yeah. So you’re kind of like you’re almost making up the calories in a single meal or two versus versus spreading it through the day. 

Jules  

That’s right. Yeah. 

Erwin  

Okay, awesome.

Jules  

So and then, and that’s predominantly to prevent insulin spikes, which is a hormone that’ll make you gain weight.

Erwin  

So Jules, you are on the show. Within two years. We’ve talked a lot. This is the third or fourth time on the show. We’ve talked a lot about real estate. Can you share what your current holdings are?

Jules  

Yeah, I can. We’re holding 11 properties. One is Angie’s beautiful bed and breakfast type property. The Kavana House; Kavanahouse.com. It truly is a bed and breakfast.

Erwin  

As in you serve breakfast. Yes. It’s weird to say Airbnb. Like, let’s remember what the last B stands for. Yeah, but no one serves breakfast at an Airbnb. 

Jules  

No, you attend this anonymous place, get your keys anonymously through a key code.

Erwin  

Sometimes you can’t tell you when the that’s why you’re there.

Jules  

Yeah. So I don’t know if that’s if that’s the kind of experience you want, have at her but you know, I know. I know. I like having breakfast. You know, getting breakfast served to me, if I’m staying somewhere nice. And this place is beautiful. So Angie got this vision when we’re down in. We went to Las Vegas. I can’t recall which anniversary it was. We were down there for four days. And we were on our way getting ready to check out and head head home and it’s like I gotta I need some more time. So we rented a car and we drove down to Phoenix, Arizona. And we stayed she found us this online Bed and Breakfast. She said let’s instead of staying hotel, why don’t we try this bed and breakfast and the host was terrific. It was a beautiful house in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona. And she was also a great tour guide. So we went to the haunted hamburger in Jerome, Arizona, which is essentially a little formerly a copper mining town on the side of Mountain.

Erwin  

Is that the name of the place? 

Jules  

Yeah. Jerome.

Erwin  

It is not a restaurant then?

Jules  

No, the restaurant is called the haunted hamburger. It’s in Jerome, Arizona, okay, if you get a chance to you gotta go. It was terrific. And it was such a fun little town to be walking around. And but yeah, that’s where she got the idea for the bed and breakfast. And we executed that during the pandemic. That was fun. Good timing. Oh, man. We had everything lined up. And then, you know, once it came time to execute, we closed our purchase at the end of July 2020. The contractor says, Yeah, we got we’re gonna have to delay this a couple of months because we can’t get materials.

Erwin  

Lumber, drywall.

Jules  

Lumber, drywall, Yeah, you name it. We couldn’t get it. Yeah. But we get we managed to get through that.

Erwin  

You wouldn’t have guests, so anyways, right? 

Jules  

No, yeah. No, no, we didn’t. I think we had our first guest early last year. And it was a doctor that was working overtime at soldiers Memorial Hospital, because we’re about 300 yards from the hospital. I remember the doctor showed up. And he said, well, where’s the hospital? And I pointed down the road. And I said, it’s 300 yards right down there. He says, oh, so I can leave my car here. So yeah, absolutely.

Erwin  

Was he just trying to stay away from his family while you work? Or was he visiting from out of town? 

Jules  

No, he was from he was from downtown Toronto. So he’s a doctor at one of the hospitals in downtown Toronto. And he was a fill in for somebody who had to take some leave some time off. And that particular doctor, which I am sure you would prefer to remain anonymous, he has stayed with us a couple of times now, along with a couple of or a another medical professional, who’s come to stay with us as a result of this doctor’s experience with us. So it’s pretty good. It’s like the Ultimate House hack. 

Erwin  

Yeah, cause you sold your home to move into this property. Yes. And you mentioned you before we’re recording, you mentioned Victorian, how many square feet? What year was it built?

Jules  

So it’s about I think it’s about 2500 – 2600 square feet.

Erwin  

Right? And how much how much is your space?

Jules  

Our space is small, but we don’t know. It’s just the two of us. All right. We’re empty nesters. So we built an addition on the house with a garage so I can have all my fitness equipment there. And we just live in the back. And we actually manage Angie’s really got a good vision and an eye for this stuff. She’s really turned that place into, you know, just a comfortable place to hang out. We have our own side porch. In the summertime, we could sit out, have coffee and enjoy the outside. If it’s too cold. In the wintertime, we have a gas fireplace in our living room, we just turn it up. It gets it’s actually really good. There is an aspect of my personality that’s introverted. Angies, you know, not a total introvert. But she likes to she likes more peace and quiet and nobody around than she does having people around.

Erwin  

Which is funny because you’re very close to your guests. Yeah. This property. Yeah. Versus your home at no guests.

Jules  

Yeah. So, you know, being cooped up and locked up during the pandemic, you know, in a beautiful Victorian home, you know, it’s kind of nice, actually.

Erwin  

Nice. Yeah. Nice.

Jules  

I almost I almost felt bad. That when it was time to start churning out guests and accepting guests. It’s like, I don’t really want to share this place. It’s too it’s too nice.

Erwin  

You will likely be slammed this summer.

Jules  

I would assume that we will be. Yeah. Any book No bookings next week for March Break? Um, I think we do have some bookings. I haven’t really checked in with Ange. See. That’s more her side of the business. Operating that.

Erwin  

Cool. Very cool. Oh, then what? Have you sold anything off? Because I think you used to have more properties. Didn’t you have 17 Last time you were here? Because she must have turned some over?

Jules  

Yeah, yeah. So it was it was 20 or 19 properties when I last was on your show. So we sold off most of our single family residential property. So all the townhouses are gone. They basically tripled in value from the time when we purchased them get profit, to the time that we refinanced them and paid out our initial investors to the time that we sold them and paid ourselves out, you know, it’s pretty good. That afforded us a really nice Victorian home and, you know, all the renovations that went into it, because it was it was substantially more expensive during pandemic to get those renovations done than if it wasn’t, but that’s okay. You know, when you have a vision, you have a clear vision for yourself and your spouse, what’s happening externally, like a pandemic, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter. So that’s one thing I learned. If you have a strong enough belief in your vision, for the both of you, there really is no hurdles or obstacles or red walls in the way you just bust through that stuff.

Erwin  

You take no prisoners. Yeah, you have no, you have no experience with being written about being resilient to you. We’ll get to that.Cause I’m not letting you off the hook. Now I asked you if we could talk about this before about the law. Yeah. because there are some in our community who have different opinions on the law. Not everyone can have an opinion. I’m not taking, I mean, turn it around. I’ll take my lawyer’s opinion. Or I’ll ask the police officers opinion on what the law is on what what a peaceful protest is, for example, right now, I’ll just let you What would you like to say is you’ve had experience with protests. Alright, you’ve, I’ve watched TV, I’ve watched lots of…

Jules  

Let me… how do I go about explaining this, I have to keep in mind that I am a law enforcement officer still active as a law enforcement officer. 

Erwin  

So that might qualify you as a legal expert.

Jules  

It might might it might.

Erwin  

Right versus someone on Instagram.

Jules  

But I will just I will just say it like this. I’m an indigenous person. And I watched my dad fighting for Native rights pretty much my whole life, you know, before he passed, he was the vice president of Indians, the Quebec Association. He was locked up during the brief period of the first Quebec referendum because the Quebec government didn’t want him influencing anybody’s decision on the yes vote the separate. That was terrifying. Watching my dad being arrested by a couple of key VP officers. And, you know, he was he was released on without charge later on. 

Erwin  

They hold them when they’re charging him?

Jules  

Yeah, of course. 

Erwin  

Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s normal. Right. Today’s world?

Jules  

Absolutely Normal, Yeah, like you’d be better be careful Erwin, You walk outta here. You might be arrested without charge for in hell for you know, a 48 hour period. I’m being facetious listeners. This was the environment that I grew up in, followed in my father’s footsteps a little bit. We were protesting some amendments to Bill C 31. During the mid 80s, when I was going to Cambrian College in Sudbury. And there was about 80 of us from I think it was from North Bay, Sioux Sainte Marie, and I believe even Trent University. There was a large Native student population down there. We went to Ottawa, to make this protest at Parliament buildings.

Erwin  

In Ottawa.

Jules  

In Ottawa.

Erwin  

On Wellington street?

Jules  

On Wellington Street, and we walked on the grass and we walked up towards the doors. And we were greeted by a whole raft of RCMP officers with their shields and their batons and they beat the shit out of us and pushed us off the lawn.

Erwin  

They came dressed and ready for you. Oh, yeah.

Jules  

We barely got set up. We barely got set up and we were pushed, physically pushed off. I remember, you know, oh, I skipped that stair. But I’m hitting this stair. I’m falling flat on my face. Here I go. And we’re more or less, you know, forcibly evicted off of the the the grounds of the permanent buildings.

Erwin  

How long were you only along were you on the grounds for I would say how long we did you set foot on the grounds until you were met with police force. 

Erwin  

This was planning of about a month in advance to I wasn’t one of the planners, but I got caught up in this thing. And I knew they were planning and for about a month, we went down on a bus with somebody. We raised enough money to rent the bus. We went down there. We probably lasted from the time we arrived till the time we were forced off probably about 90 minutes. Yeah. It was pretty quick. It was pretty brutal.

Erwin  

So we did have to go before we’re like parliament that this was not legal. So in those 90 minutes time, like they there was like, you know, I went through all seven levels of government to say that you guys shouldn’t be there. 

Jules  

It must have. Because we were threatening. We were such a threatening group of, you know, these skinny little Indigenous students that you know, had placards and phrases drafted on signs and whatnot. And we didn’t even I don’t even think I got my sign up in the air.

Erwin  

This is I’ve watched a lot of TV and I think from this the trend I noticed is that treatment of protesters have gotten softer and through the years like I literally worked at Queen’s Medina and I was still going to the office. I’m not the brightest person you know that but during during 2020.

Jules  

But dude, that was that was they didn’t take it easy on them. 

Erwin  

No, they didn’t. They didn’t. 

Jules  

There were some of them that just got clobbered. Right.

Erwin  

So that’s my context. And then I see what happened in Ottawa. Right.

Jules  

I was brutal. I mean, you know, I don’t want to speak badly about certain police leaders, but to say something along the lines of they’re too well organised. Their trucks are too big and heavy. There’s too many of them. Like, give me a break. Like there’s an obvious double standard that still exists, you know, in society, maybe just the government. I don’t know. But I know that this still is the most beautiful richest freest kind tree in the world, when an indigenous person from my backroom, you know, can amass millions of dollars in real estate, and have a beautiful lifestyle, you know, I’m still a big believer in it. It just kind of irks me that, you know, I know what happened when I went to protest in Ottawa, it wasn’t pleasant at all. And then, you know, the poor people in downtown Ottawa, had to endure, I think it was 21 days of this, you know, honking and the streets blocked and the bowling people in, you know, bouncy castles and hot tubs and just this total disregard for public order, and the law and other people’s right to enjoy their property and their businesses and their freedoms. You know, I don’t know, I was kind of I was kind of disappointed with the, the way that whole thing went down. I mean, all the prime minister had to do with this, give them 15-20 minutes of his time. Let them vent, they probably would have moved on. I don’t know, maybe.

Erwin  

I’m empathetic, both sides to because I can. We both know, people that were affected really poor, badly by the pandemic, and mandates and stuff like that. And also, like, like I was saying, before, we’re recording as a landlord. It’s, you know, part of our mandate as landlords is to provide our tenants with the quiet, peaceful enjoyment of the property. Yeah, right. That wasn’t quiet and peaceful. It definitely was enjoyment of people’s property. Who live downtown Ottawa. All right. So yeah, yeah. People aren’t punching each other in the face. But that’s not that’s still not peaceful. It needs to be more comprehensive. Yeah. Right. Honking Yeah, parked cars. Yeah.

Jules  

Impeding other people’s right to be mobile, you know, in their within their surroundings. Like, there’s people that couldn’t get their cars around downtown Ottawa, because there’s these giant trucks blocking it.

Erwin  

I don’t know, I think the lesson is, then some of these, these leaders actually thought that I don’t know if they’re serious or not. But they actually thought that because they were being peaceful. They weren’t breaking the law. 

Jules  

They knew, they knew they’re breaking the law. We know they were breaking the law, but…

Erwin  

They are telling their followers, this is okay. Hold the line. Right. If you know what you’re doing is illegal. And you tell people to hold the line, then you’re telling people to do illegal things? 

Jules  

Yeah. 100%

Erwin  

Maybe get some good legal advice.

Jules  

I remember back in the day, when I was on a line similar, there was nobody yelling hold the line. Hold your head. This isn’t gonna hurt. 

Erwin  

Mercy, or this move on from the it’s so sad. It’s yeah.

Jules  

One things is, you know, the, the, the opinions. So I don’t know how to articulate this correctly. So. And I realised that we’re on a public show, but it seems to me that with social media, the media in general, there were some people that were thinking, you know, this is not right, this is against my rights and freedoms. And there was just a select few that were thinking that but once one or two, were able to get that out vocally in the public, then other people quickly jumped on board. You know, and it created this very divisive, you know, almost like Fox News versus CNN kind of polarisation of opinions. And, you know, some people really jumped on that, like, my, my, my previous crossfit coach, you know, I feel I feel so my heart goes out to him because he didn’t want to get vaccinated. He was a successful firefighter, worked hard to get it to that position. But, you know, his premise for this was that he was a tutor, Afghan war veteran, and he earned his right, you know, to express his freedom. And yeah, he probably has, but you know, at what cost? He’s got two little kids. He’s got a beautiful home and a beautiful wife lost his job and now lost his business. You know, was it really worth it? I don’t know.

Erwin  

So I want to go I want to change things a little bit. So one of my early mentors he told me about a friend of his who was really rich right. This is how rich he was; he bought… his kid needed a car. So he bought him a seven series BMW. So my mentors asked his friend, you know, they have three series, right? And then the dad said, Why am I want to drive it once in a while? I can’t be seen driving a three series. Right, he’s that rich. And then there’s another story we asked him like, Hey, you are your dark skinned complexion, other people with that complexion, wear the headdress, where is yours? And he said to my mentor, this is Canada. That’s I want to be successful in business. I need to look more like people who do business here. Alright. He’s willing to make that sacrifice. I’m not saying right or wrong. I believe in freedoms as well. Yeah, yeah. I believe everyone should have the freedom to choose us willing to make that that sacrifice for his freedom and to become better financially successful. And that’s always stuck with me in that, what are you willing to do to be successful? I’m willing to do a lot for my family. Right? And so yeah, to each their own. 

Jules  

Yeah, absolutely. 

Erwin  

Crazy. Damn. Could you imagine if not it’s a terrible question? I’ll ask it anyway,

Jules  

No, ask it anyways, let’s do it.

Erwin  

Can you imagine if no, it’s too bad, it’s come to terrible, it’s terrible. I’m not going to ask you this.

Jules  

I will say this, the growing up that I had, and watching my father fighting for indigenous rights back in the day, you know, I heard him say phrases like, well, that Canada US border doesn’t exist for us. You know, when I can remember a couple of occasions, we’re going down to Syracuse, New York, and my mother telling my dad, be polite with the Border Services guard, so we can cross and have a peaceful afternoon

Erwin  

May kick your ass? 

Jules  

No. not my dad, no, he had to express his opinions. And guess what, it was a quiet, quiet, quiet ride home after the fact. But, you know, I recognise the fact that, yes, indigenous people, you know, essentially, we’re here first, we have a right to be self determining, self sustaining, and a right to our own independence. But essentially, isn’t that what I’m doing now? I’ve amassed a portfolio of real estate. I’ve taken your stock hacker course. So I’m learning how to how to do that. I’m essentially self determining my future. And I’m making our family financially independent, and self sustaining. You know, and I didn’t have to impose, you know, at the time, my personal views and political views on others, to the point where I want you to have the same opinion as me. No, I was trained through the trainings that you and I have had to create situations where people can win, win win situations, and make deals, and not just make deals where one person wins, or one person loses, just making Win-Win deals, you know. So that’s the big difference between me and my dad, I don’t even know where that came from Erwin. Holy shit, you just drew that out of me. I’m not a I guess I’m not a radical indigenous rights person. I do respect that. And I do. There are still some beliefs and values I have around that, you know, but they mostly are around an indigenous person’s right to hunt and fish, I still very much believe in that. 

Erwin  

Those rights being taken away? 

Jules  

There, they had been threatened in the past. And as far as I know, they’re they’re not being threatened right now. But I still believe that indigenous people should, you know, engage in those activities to to maintain that tradition.

Erwin  

Why shouldn’t they? Yeah, you all need to eat. Yeah. And so many laws in this country are designed to protect your ability to earn an income and so like, which is like the part of eating.

Jules  

One of the things that happened that caused my dad to act the way he did in the late 70s, early 80s Was that the, in Quebec, the forestry officers were attending the homes of indigenous people and pulling out moose meat, and fish and other things because they didn’t, they were hunting and fishing without licences, when previously, we did not require licences, to in order to do this, nor were we subjected to, you know, losing all our sustenance for a year. Because essentially, we would go out in the fall, get enough meat to last the whole year, until the subsequent fall, I mean, that they do these things for conservation reasons. Indigenous people have always been, you know, had conservatory values towards the land, and the animals and the resources on it, in it. Anyhow, there I did digress a little bit. 

Erwin  

There’s some interesting people.

Jules  

But I still love the culture. I’m still a part of a small traditional drumming group. We do a ceremonial drum. We attend certain indigenous events and we certainly like to sing songs and honour those war veterans that have gone on before us. 

Erwin  

What was it like growing up?

Jules  

What was it like growing up!

Erwin  

What was the name was there is there a category for the name of this the type of school you went to?

Jules  

Just Command public school? 

Erwin  

Okay, so we’re trying to get to is like residential schools has been making massive headlines as it deservedly so. Yeah. The school that you belong to is that can’t be categorised as a residential school?

Jules  

No, sir. I was I didn’t. I wasn’t subject to that my parents were and unfortunately, my parents were from the generation where you didn’t talk about those kinds of things. Just As a listener may have a grandfather who was in World War Two, who didn’t share any of his war stories or experiences while he was overseas. 

Erwin  

So your parents never told you about it? 

Jules  

No. My father never never talked about those kinds of things. 

Erwin  

Dark days, eh?

Jules  

Yeah. So I’ve heard, I’ve heard stories from other relatives where, you know, yeah, our auntie and our uncle are buried buried in a mass grave in behind the traditional church or the church by the trading post. I’ve heard those stories.

Erwin  

Jesus.

Jules  

But I’ve had relatives that have gone to residential school. And, you know, right or wrong. That’s our history. That’s, that’s what’s happened.

Erwin  

So we’ve detailed I don’t want to bring it all back up, because I know it’s not the easiest. You’ve been through some shit. 

Jules  

Yeah, I have been, but I’ve also personally and grown and developed myself to the point where, for lack of a better term, I don’t hold resentment. I don’t hold a grudge. 

Erwin  

You’ve gone through an education system that was very not for you. Yes, absolutely. Remember, I recall someone pulled a gun on you and your home? Yep. All right. It’s threatening you in front of your father. Recall, you’ve had some substance abuse issues. Yeah. Which is not surprising being confirmed. Consider what you’ve gone through Policing is not easy today. I can’t imagine how easy it was for you and your community when you started. Right. So none of this was easy. 

Jules  

No. So then, none of it was I think that, you know, reaching out for help, and being courageous enough to reach out for help was my saving grace. You know, I seen other of my peers that had a seemingly calm, reasonably successful lifestyle. They were healthy, they were happy. And I just reached out, I said, Well, how did you do that? What are you doing that’s so different from what I’m doing? And one of the things was, well, I don’t drink. 

Erwin  

So you’re unlimited introvert. And you still reached out and asked the question. 

Jules  

Yeah, I did. 

Erwin  

But to ask the question, you have to admit, I have a problem. 

Jules  

Yeah. That was hard. 

Erwin  

You did that.

Jules  

I did that. Yeah, absolutely. I did that. It was shortly after I got on my career with the opp. I joined the opp when I was 21. And I was far too young to be a police officer.

Erwin  

And then to see what you would see. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, yeah.

Jules  

Because it was essentially my life on repeat. Because I was put into a predominantly indigenous community in Northwestern Ontario, to be part of the police department where nobody in a community trusted the police. And then my peers in the police department didn’t trust me because I was I looked a lot like them, like the people that were serving. So my whole past has blew up in my face again. Of course, I turned into a raging pissed off alcoholic.

Erwin  

Right, because who are the people you’re arresting? Yeah, who who filled the prisons and the jails? Yeah.

Jules  

And I had to add to fit in with, with my peers, you know, and do what they were doing. And I didn’t feel too good about that. But there was these three guys from the Galway police, First Nations indigenous policing. And they had this twinkle in their eye. And they had this message about, you know, living a clean, sober lifestyle. And I just remember asking them, well, how did you do that? How does that work? And in their own way, all three of them took the time to express this to me and gave me that message of strength and hope you know that I could. I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. And yeah, that was my my introduction into Alcoholics Anonymous.

Erwin  

And so are you completely sober you don’t touch this stuff at all. Don’t touch.

Jules  

stuff at all. 30 years, continuous 30 years continuous sobriety see that anybody? If you get 30 years.

Erwin  

30 years, people can do a month, people can’t do a weekend. 

Jules  

I was just on a course at the Police College. And we were staying at a hotel in London. And we went the one night we went to a place it was just this Roadhouse bar kind of thing. And they were all drinking. And I never said oh, I’m beyond that. I don’t drink. You know, I didn’t do any of that. I just I had my, my glass of water with lemon and a coffee and a big vat of chicken wings. And I just joked and laughed and had a good time like everybody else. And a lot of them didn’t even notice it. There was one that did notice  and ended up buying my supper for me. They said well, we all we all put in 20 bucks and I put in the 20 bucks as well, because there was I think there was 40 of us. So I threw my 20 bucks into the pot because they were having this big brouhaha when we’re done our course. But they said no, you you’re not drinking It’s only fair that we pay for your meal. So they, they bought my my chicken wings and my, my salad and my dessert. I did cheat a little bit, I added dessert last night Erwin.

Erwin  

I too would rather take my calories as food and through drink. Yeah, just as a generality. Like, I enjoy eating food over drink. Yeah.

Jules  

But I’ve been sober, longer alive now that I don’t even remember what the compulsion was like to want to drink. I don’t even remember what that was like now.

Erwin  

So in the past episode, you said something that was really powerful for me.

Jules  

What would that be Erwin? 

Erwin  

You don’t remember? 

Jules  

No, I’m sorry. And please, please don’t take this wrong. Wait. Like, because I seem to I seem to have this happened to me a few times. So my friends as you have a conversation, a conversation with me, after some subsequent significant events and success in their lives. And they say Jules, thanks a lot, you remember that thing? You told me? I did exactly that, and it worked out really well. So after that conversation, I’m kind of sitting around saying, Wow, what the heck did I say to them? What did I say to them that, you know, help them step over that hurdle or break through that brick wall, whatever that was.

Erwin  

It was one of your conversations with maybe it was a like you’re AA partner some like that along those lines, someone who is coaching mentoring you, you were telling them, like what your life was, like all your problems? And I think they said to you something like, wow, you sound like a victim? 

Jules  

Yes, that’s it. That was it. So the guy that I’m working with now. And he’s, he’s a, for lack of a better term, He’s a giant in personal finance and wealth planning. With one of the big banks, you’d recognise his name immediately if I shared that. But we both have an agreement that, you know, our sobriety and our personal anonymity go hand in hand.

Erwin  

I’d like to meet them. 

Jules  

So this is who I’ve been working with since and he was part of a small group in the mid 90s. That went to lamonta. Oaks, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, and brought back a series of the 12 steps from the founding fathers of Alcoholics Anonymous. So we’ve been doing the 12 steps as they originally intended to be done, which is a very deep searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. When he said, You need to stop acting like a victim, or stop portraying yourself like a victim. He knew what he was talking about. And, you know, I had to inventory a lot of things, and deal with them and get rid of them. How do you do that? Well, first, you got to admit that there’s a problem. And you’ve got to admit defeat. And then you got to be willing to change and admit that there might be a power out there greater than yourself that could restore you to sanity, because of the insanity of whatever this thing is, that is defeating you. And once you’ve got that done, then you make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of that power, be it God or a power greater than yourself, as you understand them. Not as the Roman Catholic Church understands them, not as a spiritual, indigenous medicine man understands him or her. But as you understand this power greater than yourself, you turn your will and your life over to it, then you get the work. And step four, and five, you’re doing a certain and moral inventory of yourself, you’re learning certain facts about yourself, you’re learning that there’s certain defects that these resentments have activated. And then you, you learn what part you played in that. So in some cases, it was easy for me to say, well, they don’t like me, because I’m an indigenous person. And that’s why I didn’t get the promotion. They didn’t like me, because I’m a police officer, so that’s why I didn’t get that real estate deal. You know, stop that friggin blaming, it’s not serving you. Well, you need to overcome that you need to find out what it is in yourself that’s holding you back, and overcome it, and inventory it and deal with it. And then in the subsequent steps, we learned, you know, what our defects of character are. And then we make a promise to the God of our understanding that, you know, we’ll endeavour to do the opposite of them, and carry on, you know, during the day, I will do a quick step one to nine if something comes up. And what I mean by that is, you know, you get the phone call, or somebody does something or something happens to you that activates those is the feelings that get activated. And when the feelings get activated, certain defects get activated. And that’s when you have to watch yourself because that’s, at least for me, that’s when times I’ll say something that’s awkward or aggressive, and I got to go back and apologise later So instead, in steps, nine and 10, I will pause and I’ll ask, ask what? I’ll refer back to that power greater than myself that restore me to sanity? And then I’ll just listen listen for the answer. And if I if I calm myself enough, the answers will come and I’ll do the right thing as opposed to blaming and being pissed off and jaded and all the rest of that kind of thing. It’s an awesome lifestyle and then in subsequent steps, I continue to to meditate and pray and grow and develop and take all those things that I learned in step 12 And share it when I can you know, maybe one of your listeners is feeling hopeless and down and jaded and pissed off you know, if they think that a lifestyle like mine can can help them I’m happy to to sue them in the right direction. I mean, one of our since the pandemic we’ve been doing our step studies on Zoom and we’ve had people on our steps studies right across the country it’s been it’s been tremendous.

Jules  

As much as I’m tired of zoom it’s kind of nice sometimes too.

Jules  

It really is.

Erwin  

Yeah, we could have zoomed if you wanted to.

Jules  

No, I prefer meeting you in person. I know we can zoom, I know that.

Erwin  

Speaking of, because you’re a big guy 

Jules  

Kind of big. 

Erwin  

I can’t imagine someone saying Jules, you sound like a victim.

Jules  

Though the guy that the guy that I’m mentoring right now he’s he’s got a martial arts background. So you know, and we’ve sparred, so I hope I was all bruised up. I had the time of my life. It was fun. But, you know, he’s kind of a Tai Chi, martial art type guy, very subtle. He moved in some high, high moving networks, in training, Special Forces type people. I’ve really had the benefit of some of that, as well. 

Erwin  

But someone called you out.

Jules  

Oh, well, he was he was the right guy at the right time. I mean, the old saying, so. Yeah, he’s still right. I’m still alive dude.

Erwin  

You mean you didn’t kill him? No, no.

Jules  

I’m not sure that I would win that one. But the saying goes like when the students ready the teacher will appear. 

Erwin  

That’s crazy, man. 

Jules  

And when the students ready, the teacher will appear.

Erwin  

Because I bring this up, because so many people have suffered last two years. And then you’ve suffered a lot.

Jules  

Wow, it’s not in recent history.

Erwin  

Oh, come on. Who do you know how to? So a lot of people have bad last two years. Yeah. I’m sure you’re good. Two years before you’re 18 years old. We’re probably worse than their bed these last two years.

Jules  

It was rough. Yeah. It was rough. No doubt about it was rough growing up. 

Erwin  

What would you say to those people? 

Jules  

I hope that things are better. I hope things that are are peaceful. And I hope you’re surrounded with those that you love, and you’re not harbouring any resentment or discontentment in your life. Because I know what it’s like for me to do that. And I don’t wish that on anybody.

Erwin  

How often are you working on this?

Jules  

Ah, we do studies in the fall. And then we do another one in spring we are spring one is going to start up near the end of April. So I facilitate the zoom and the technical side of that. And my mentor, our sponsor, he does heads up the study. 

Erwin  

Sorry, what does the sponsor mean in this context?

Jules  

So in a context of, for me, so my guy more or less says that, for him the in Alcoholics Anonymous, you have to get a sponsor. So this is somebody that you call on before you drink. That’s what, that’s the theory behind it. 

Erwin  

Got it. the opposite of your drinking, buddy. 

Erwin  

Yeah, completely the opposite. And there was some sort of a hierarchy approach to this. So your sponsor is up here, and you’re down there. And that’s who you look up to? Well, he didn’t want that. He said, that’s, that’s not going to work for me when I met this guy, and actually met him through a contact that I had in REIN. You know, he said that that doesn’t work for me. He said, you and I can walk a distance together. As long as you walk with me, we can immerse ourselves in doing step study work. So as soon as you stopped doing step study work, this whole deal is done. We’re done working together. So it wasn’t a condition of working together. But, you know, as I continue to learn about myself and grow and personally develop, doing the steps, more is revealed, Erwin, like more is revealed more what more of my past things that need to be inventoried and dealt with more talents and opportunities that I have to bring good into this world. You know, just more, more realisation of how much I love My beautiful wife, you know, and and want to respect her and bring joy into her life, and all those kinds of things.

Erwin  

So I’ve done some digging around on my own past, and then unpacking some things. So like, one one is like, you know, I’m Chinese, I’m a child of Chinese, you know, I thought, oh, my gosh, should I touch Chinese parents? Oh, there we go, you know, you bring home a 95? Like, where’s the five? Right time, that type of stuff stuff? And so and that’s partly what drives me. Yeah. So I understand where that’s from. Right. So when you’re talking to people, do people know, understand where they come from? Like, how they unpack their past? You know, I mean, are they even looking in their past to determine like, why why they are the way they are? 

Jules  

Which people are referring to?

Erwin  

Anyone, like these people that that are part of these semi annual events.

Jules  

Okay, so the people that get involved in a study, for example…

Erwin  

Because where I’m going is, I don’t know, if enough people like actually look at themselves a lot enough?

Jules  

No, I would, I would venture to say that you’re right

Erwin  

Because one of the biggest problems for people stopping them from being successful is their own self doubts. So like, go dig into what those self doubts are, where they come from.

Jules  

I also think it’s fear. Before there’s a breakthrough, there has to be a breakdown. So essentially, that’s what we’re doing when we’re doing steps study work.

Jules  

Painful, isn’t it? 

Jules  

It’s horrible.

Erwin  

Telling people you’re being evicted? 

Jules  

Yeah, that can be tough. And as I said, you know, I learned that from who I’m working with, you know, he says, I said, I’ve been really having a hard time inventoring, this stuff from my past. And he says, Jules, ultimately, there has to be a break down before there’s a break through. So that’s, you know, it can be unpleasant. But the rewards on the other side of that are tremendous. And you know, things things like, you know, selling properties at triple their value, things like getting promoted at work, your boss getting you a company car, and an expense account and a credit card in your own corner office, you know, those kinds of things started happening as a result of inventory and then dealing with you’re dealing with your ship for lack of a better term, right.

Erwin  

And that’s what I wanted to touch discuss on the show, because so many people, they don’t do it. Yeah. So many people have failed to start. Yeah. Like, I meet so many talented people all the time. And they say, I can’t do that. Yeah. Do what you do.

Jules  

Yeah. self doubt. Yeah. Unnecessary self doubt at that.

Erwin  

And I’d hazard a guess most of them didn’t have as hard time as you did. 

Jules  

Probably not, No.

Erwin  

Like, I’ve never had a gun pulled on me.

Jules  

Yeah. And Erwin, if you’re content with a mediocre lifestyle, then good on ya? That’s your choice. 

Erwin  

Yeah. It’s nothing wrong with it. 

Jules  

There’s nothing wrong with it. But if you want what we have, then you have to be willing to put the work in and overcome certain challenges and obstacles because everybody goes through them. Nobody is exempt. This was not handed to us. We had to work our tails off to get it.

Erwin  

We say we but you had to work harder. I’m a son of a doctor.

Jules  

Yeah, but he didn’t buy you your investment properties. He didn’t lease this or purchase this beautiful office space for you or organise what you had to get organised in order to put this show on. You did all that? 

Erwin  

Yeah. It was so much easier. You know, having my university education paid for, for example.

Jules  

 You know, as good parents should?

Erwin  

Oh, can you share what you did for your kids financially? Because they went to school…

Jules  

They went to school, so I didn’t push them. I didn’t look for the 95% and ask them where in the 5% was I didn’t push them that hard on academics. But what I did do is subject them to the audios that I was listening and read the books that I was reading and we played that cash flow board game by Robert Kiyosaki. Yeah, so yeah, cash flow, not the kiddy version. I’m talking about the regular version, and even 202 we played.

Erwin  

Oh, when did 202 come out? 

Jules  

Yeah. 202 came out around 2001 2002. Like, it was a while ago. But I didn’t push them hard on academics. And I was conflicted about that. But I see as I see them starting to develop their own path. I realised now, if I would have pushed my son, for example, you know, every every cop wants their son to become a cop and carry on this legacy of being a law enforcement officer. Because we’re a law enforcement family. And I knew, you know, from our our training, and my own personal growth and development journey, that that’s bullshit. My son is a beautiful man. beautiful, powerful man. And he’s got to contribute his gifts and his talents to the world and leave his own mark and make this a better place just as we are. And I realised that it’s not going to look exactly the way I did it. And it’s certainly not going to include pushing a cruiser or wearing a uniform.

Erwin  

Sorry, you mentioned books and audios. Can you share what those are?

Jules  

Man, I wouldn’t know where to begin, like, just looking around in this office here. I mean, I’ve read a lot of these books, just as you have. 

Erwin  

They’re just decoration. Yeah. 

Jules  

The 10x, by the way, is 10x. listening to audio word grant narrated, it’s really entertaining. I had such a good time listening to that. It was awesome.

Erwin  

He’s a wonderful speaker.

Jules  

Stephen Covey. 

Erwin  

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Jules  

Of course, I didn’t read they never read the real estate cycle book. I don’t know if they could digest that one. But, you know, they did real estate investing in Canada, my beautiful wife still hosts book club. So we do a book club one book a month, and with the kids. And now while now it’s mostly her friends, so Angie has her friends come over once a month. And they’re reading a book about something and discussing it. And it so far, it’s it’s evolved into women only. Which is fine.

Erwin  

Any recent books you like?

Jules  

Let me I was just talking about this last night, I was at a dinner after our course. And the guys were asking me what I read what they were asking me well, what’s Why are you so different? Why do you have this glow about you? And why are you still here working when you could have retired? And all and the truth is, I still really enjoy what I do. It’s a cool thing. Like I liken it to my childhood, and wondering how I could be my hero, Batman, you know, so essentially had the kind of Batman lifestyle during the day, um, this, for lack of a better term, this rich real estate investor, and a family of that has a legacy of real estate investing. And then at nighttime, I dressed in my uniform, and I’m suited up and I’m going out, you know, catching criminals and breaking down doors and seizing drugs and all that kind of stuff. There. I digress again. Oh, yeah, right here. Rethinking humanity is a book that I’ve read, I have to read it again, because very detailed, but essentially, it’s five foundational sector disruptions, the lifestyle of civilizations, and the coming age of freedom. And, for me, the author is James Arbib and Tony Seba, and it was published in June 2020, during the pandemic, and it’s their vision for what’s what’s coming. So things like autonomous vehicles. Cool. You know, this.

Erwin  

Wasn’t this guy. On on REIN recently. 

Jules  

Yeah, he was. Yeah. So I read I read the book. There is a lot of detail in it. So I have to read it again. It takes me a little longer to absorb you know, this information than the average but once I get it, man, I got it.

Erwin  

Cool. No, I started watching the, the the interview. My Tesla’s coming in June. 

Jules  

Nice. So I am allowed to buy a Tesla truck. cybertruck when it comes.

Erwin  

We don’t know when it’s gonna come out. 

Jules  

We don’t know when it’s gonna come out, But chances are sometime after June 30 2023. They will come out.

Erwin  

Maybe? I hope so. They’re still busy making the other ones and also the price. Cost materials has gone up so much. Yeah. So why wouldn’t they sell it for like 40? Grand us? Yeah, they can’t make it for that.

Jules  

I doubt very much that they will be.

Erwin  

We’ll see. So the reason I asked all these questions about like, you know, like, you sound a lot like a victim, for example, is could you amass the wealth and success that you had?

Jules  

Not blaming other people for my woes? No, there would be no way you because you’re constantly making excuses. Well, I can’t do that, you know, because people don’t like me, because I’m an indigenous person. Well, I say no, that’s not true. Like this. It’s no view to have because, you know, we both know that that’s not true. 

Erwin  

But what even like knowing you, I didn’t know until like years into knowing you. Yeah, right. I’m just ignorant. I don’t care. 

Jules  

And that’s the truth about it. Like nobody cares. Like, you’re Chinese, and nobody cares. Because really, people come to you to get mentored as an expert in real estate investing and stock hacking. You know and you just happen to be Chinese. Still don’t care.

Erwin  

Don’t care as long as you’re a good person. Yeah.

Jules  

As long as you’re a good person, you’re making a contribution. You’re doing the best that you possibly can. That’s what that’s all what real people really care about.

Erwin  

So what’s the future of your investing? We’re talking a bit about that. I know I got before we were recording.

Jules  

So I did to kind of take a step back so I don’t know if you remember to teach because of Dr. Paul Stoltz.

Erwin  

Oh, it’s been a while since I know.

Jules  

But it was impactful on me. So he talked, one of his teachings was about climbing, and then camping, and then climbing or your climber or that camper. So, Angie and I liken that to, we’re gonna camp for a little while. So, my boss, I was taking a lot of time off to attend real estate events, and do cool things and meet investors and hold events and all that kind of stuff. But my boss kind of says, well, I need to pull you back, you know, he can’t take all this time off. So I kind of went back and concentrated on the organisation.

Erwin  

Just tell him you are looking for white collar crime.

Erwin  

Or five years from now. 

Jules  

And I could do that. I have an interest, I have an unusually high understanding of those matters. But anyhow, there we go again. Yeah, I don’t Oh, man, I’ve got 16 months to go in policing.  That’s it. I’ve lied to myself saying all these years, I’ve, since I became into this realm of investing, I’ve been saying, Oh, I have this great deal is positive cash flow. Oh, by the way, I’m a police officer as well. So you got that added security. But that job doesn’t define who I am as a person. While you know, that lie is is just that like, Yeah, I’d still do very much identify as myself as a police officer, you know, sworn in to uphold the law, protect the public, be the best I possibly can be mentor, rookies coming after me. You know, and just all around, do my part to support the team that I work with. So not really sure, well, I know that I can comfortably retire my badge, and my gun and walk away from it. I know that financially, that’s, that’s not the issue at all. But there’s a side of me, that’s going to have to reinvent myself. And I don’t know, maybe it’s doing what you do, you know, owning a big real estate firm and employing lots of people and making multiple transactions and having a show and hosting courses and whatnot, maybe it is I don’t know, or maybe I take some of those CCIM courses, and get my licence and lease or sell commercial real estate, because it’s something I’m really interested in, I really liked the idea of triple net lease, I know that there’s not a whole lot of experts in the geographical area that I’m in, in Orillia that do that kind of thing. So maybe there’s an aspect of that I can do. Or maybe I just continued to enhance my new skill that I learned from from your organisation in stock hacking, you know, because I take that much lead now. And I’m starting to realise that this probably was probably five minutes this morning to you know, to place a trade that I that I did didn’t execute it. I think it got executed. I don’t I didn’t even look. It was before trading hour started. So I just did my thing, did a little bit of research last night and executed my trade this morning and just left it. I may look at it on the weekend. I may not I may look at it, not till Monday.

Jules  

Or five years from now. 

Erwin  

When it turns into a million bucks.

Jules  

Yeah, so who knows? I know that the idea has been pitched to me several times about writing a book. Oh, yeah. Not really sure what that book would be about other than my personal experience and story. 

Erwin  

You inspire a lot of people. 

Jules  

I hope so. 

Erwin  

I think it’d be a disservice to the world if you didn’t.

Jules  

There it is. You do what you do best day. You challenge people. You see, you see, you recognise the attributes that they have you challenge them to offer them to the world and be a better person.

Erwin  

Oh, if you’re interested in the greater good. You want to be Batman? He’d do it.

Jules  

He would definitely do it.

Erwin  

Yeah. All right. All right, man, a date on it.

Jules  

Oh, do you want a date on that too?

Erwin  

Two years, two years, two years from now? Sure. 

Jules  

Okay, that’s good. That’s good timing.

Erwin  

March 11 2022. 

Jules  

So I gotta have it ready to go to the publishing in March 11 2024.

Erwin  

It’s very reasonable for you to write a book in a year. Jocko Willing says he writes an hour a day, especially for the for the importance of what what it would mean to people.

Jules  

Yeah, I’m gonna have to do some mind mapping and figure out what what this would be about what I would have to offer. And I wish I could remember some of the things I’ve told my peers over the years that they have to come back and tell me I’ve been so successful. You remember that thing we talked about? I did that. 

Erwin  

We can have that chat, another time. We didn’t talk about multilevel marketing today.

Jules  

Oh no, we didn’t, but I can honestly say that what multilevel marketing did for me was get me into the habit of reading nonfiction books, listening to audios, I mean, they were on cassette tape back in the day, and attending seminars full of like minded people. That’s what multi level marketing did for me. So while I didn’t make a lot of money in multi, I didn’t make any money in multi level marketing. What it did was create those attributes that you need, you need to learn, you need to study, you need to open to change, and you need to be a leader in those things in order to, you know, money first appears as an idea in your brain that you’re going to in order to manifest that it’s going to take a lot of education. 

Erwin  

And to get out of your comfort zone.

Jules  

And get out of your comfort zone. Absolutely. I was naturally an introvert, being a police officer.

Erwin  

And get to ask for sales. 

Jules  

Yeah, you got to do the ask. Sorry. Sorry, listeners, it really comes down to it, you’re gonna have to do the ask, you’re gonna ask have to ask that person to be your co venture partner, you’re gonna have to ask that seller to take your ridiculous offer. You’re gonna have to do those things.

Erwin  

There’s ask yourself what your what are you willing to do to be successful? 

Jules  

Yeah. Yeah, morally and ethically. 

Erwin  

Oh, yeah. Obviously, they won’t be listening to this show otherwise. 

Jules  

Yeah.

Erwin  

Jules, thanks so much.

Jules  

Hey, Erwin. It’s always a pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.

Erwin  

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

 

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Erwin  

Welcome everyone to another episode of The Truth About Real Estate Investing Show. And almost people talking about the, I’ll get to in a minute. Everyone’s talking about the slap at the Oscars. But even before we get to that, I’ve been following the story for quite some time. I know some people that have been are personally affected by the collapse of the real estate company called Epic alliances. I’ll actually do a solo episode after this one. So after this episode, I’ll release a separate podcast specific to my thoughts around epic alliances. Not my words, epic fail. Those are the words of success. spittoon mayor, but yeah, I’ll do a separate podcast just about learning lessons. And my past experience of seeing major collapses of real estate companies, and how one may avoid such problems going forward. But yeah, Sunday night, I saw the headlines about the the Chris Rock slap as well, like everyone else did, I thought was clickbait. You know, I thought it was all fake. Just do a gag, not fake, but I thought it was a joke. And then I saw the unedited footage and holy cow. And, as usual, any information I take in, I always look for one of one of the little learning lessons, what do I teach my kids about it? So I go over self defence with my kids, and I teach them show them; Should anyone approach you aggressively? Control the distance to your hands up, use the words No, and stop. Get out of there if you can. And remember your training. The important thing is that you’re trained for these situations. My kids are going through extensive training for for good reason. So I can see. All you fathers of daughters out there know exactly what I’m talking about. I can’t predict. But I’m just saying Will Smith might have had thought twice of slapping Chris Rock if Chris had a black belt or two under his belt. black belt in martial arts that is that’s not an excuse for Chris’s joke directed at Jada Smith. But hitting someone is just inexcusable, especially in such a public forum. Self defence talk on a real estate show a and sure I’m probably gonna lose some listeners. I hope you 17 committed listeners allow me some leeway as there is usually some method to my persistent madness. As I have a point front of the show Mr. Kelly has been a well renowned real estate investor and coach Elizabeth Kelly, she shared on the show around Christmas time was it that her husband was assaulted by multiple tenants, I believe it was three in their own property management office, it was pretty serious. And the dispute was overstating minor, simply monetary damages, to be paid for damages to the property to the property that these tenants have made. And, as always, I’m not here to scare anyone to show us about the truths. So I’m not pulling any punches. These are the truths about real estate investing. Not everyone’s reasonable and how they behave. And to not learn from these lessons so that these challenges are never repeated. My general outlook, as always is caution. That’s both in life and investing. I generally believe that people are doing the best with the resources they have. Sometimes those resources aren’t the best, and they behave accordingly. And for myself and my family to always be prepared for whatever is happening. As for example right now I’m preparing for what could be recession if war escalates in Ukraine, if interest if inflation continues out of control, but I am optimistic, cautiously optimistic, as I’m hoping we can return to regular inflation. The regular inflation of Central Bank’s printing money, and my real estate and stocks go up slowly as planned. I honestly think that the the war in Ukraine should hopefully go to peace, hopefully soon as both parties it’s a pretty sweet stalemates. Russia’s not doing that. Well in the war. Ukraine has done the honestly incredible job of holding their ground and rock and receive any significant outside help. So I think both parties know where they’re at. So hopefully we can have peace. 

 

Erwin  

On a personal note, Cherry and I have postponed our trip to Disney in May and replaced it with our family trip to our favourite city in Canada. No, it’s not Edmonton, it’s not Hamilton neither a beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia with all the COVID measures in place for travel and at Disney specifically didn’t seem like the best time for a massively expensive trip. And pretty much sure you cannot hug Mickey Mouse. So why would we drop all this money for the most magical place on the earth? So we’re gonna hit you know, Vancouver do the touristy thing. CapitaLand no suspension bridge, right? I’m gonna eat a bunch of wild salmon sushi. I don’t know if the kids are gonna do that’s okay. Save money. They can have chicken teriyaki, whatever. And Cherry and I are arguing who’s gonna take the stairs up for the grouse grind. So Cherry’s actually next door so I can’t speak too loudly. I don’t want to do the stairs. So I pretend I do want to do the stairs and take the gondola right up with the kids. That’s what I told her. So She made me said no, I’m going to take the stairs and you take the gondola with the kids. And just think of all the money I’ll save. I’ll probably say at least 20 bucks by cherry taking the stairs and not spending on the gondola. And you suspect that they Oh, and we’re going to be there late May. So if anyone else has suggestions on things we should be doing, we are all yours. As you know, we are pretty open minded folks. 

 

Erwin  

On to this week’s guest the path to success is not a straight line. I hope no one ever thinks it is. We’ve had plenty of guests on this show to explain it’s not. And this week’s guest is no different in  Cory Sperle. He’s the perfect example of having started a career. He worked in the oil sands. He invested in Alberta in pursuit of cash flow, instead of being close to home in Kelowna, BC. So for those of you who’ve been around, know the economic challenges of Alberta, and hopefully you know how well Kelowna BC is done. And Cory invest in Alberta, all we riding up the peak, including buying at the peak, and then the eventual collapse of the oil market. And the real estate prices with it. Of course, things are rebounding. Oil is cyclical. I can deal with that kind of drama, cyclical real estate market like they do. We talked about the differences in investing between Saskatoon and Edmonton, Corys experience investing in the East invest in 10 apartment buildings, six of which are with other investors, with having other investors put up the capital, Cory is kind enough to share his truth about real estate investing, including having to work for free because he bought real estate at the peak and things didn’t go as planned. He even had to come out of pocket during those down years in the Edmonton market. I’m sure the Saskatoon market as well. Cory is the multifamily educator with his six pillars of multifamily success programme. And he’s even getting into event planning. He hosted a virtual conference called The Real Estate outlook 2022 and beyond. That was back in March. And we go into detail how he structures joint ventures near the end of the show. And the near the end of interview and lessons doing so. So you really don’t want to miss it. Especially with all the turmoil going on with other investors. Unfortunately, doing things the wrong way. Please enjoy the show. 

 

Erwin  

Cory, what’s keeping you busy these days? And thanks for coming on. I know you’re busy guy you have all these things going on. But yeah, but what is keeping you busy these days? 

 

Cory  

Well, thanks, Erwin. You know, living in Kelowna. Right now. It’s spring break. So you know, between juggling kids and business, I’m still working on multifamily. I manage. You know, I manage six apartment buildings right now, you know, with partners. And I’m also actively involved in doing a real estate Summit. It’s my first time I’ve ever put together. So we’re, you know, we’re getting professionals from across the country to get their opinion on, you know, the real estate outlook for 2022 and beyond. So, that’s been a busy project. But you know, it’s it’s going very well. Yeah,

 

Erwin  

That’s fantastic. You weren’t busy enough?

 

Cory  

You know, I decided to hire, I hired a coach to help me out when I was, you know, I was starting to get into education and coaching. So then, oh, let’s just do a summit and do a webinar. I didn’t know what to someone or how to do a webinar. It’s like, yeah, no big deal. Piece of cake. Yeah. But then once I got into it, and realised how much work it was, but you know, it’s been it’s been fabulous and rewarding, but it has been a lot.

 

Erwin  

That’s pretty cool. Because, again, your time must be valuable. I’m sure it’s very expensive. I’m sure you pay a lot of money to save your time. Yeah, you’re going out of your way to get the word out. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. And before we started recording, we’re going over the history of your name. Sperle Right. Can you share the heritage of that name?

 

Cory  

Yeah. So I just talked to my, my 97 year old grandfather, you know, in Saskatchewan, you know, most of this Burley’s they immigrated to Regina, Saskatchewan. And I just learned that both of my grandparents, you know, actually came from Odessa, you know, around 1910. So they were fleeing the First World War. So, you know, after I learned that I realised my, you know, my grandfather who speaks German and not Ukrainian, so I always thought I always just assumed that German heritage, and yeah, to learn. So he’s, he’s really following it. And you know, at the 97 year old, he’s still you know, very much retains every memory. Yes, you know, of childhood. So I found that very interesting. And it was very personal here that right.

 

Erwin  

Crazy. Yeah, if he didn’t flee, you might not be alive.

 

Cory  

No, definitely be in a sticky situation right now. Yeah.

 

Erwin  

How grateful is he to be Canadian? Yeah, very. That’s crazy. So you live in Kelowna? BC, correct. Yeah. And it’s pretty nice place I understand.

 

Cory  

Yeah. We, I moved from Edmonton back in 2014. You know, the, the real estate market was the opposite. It was booming in Edmonton, and it was dead in Kelowna. So it was an economically cheaper move to move here. It’s the complete opposite now. But yeah, I mean, it’s a vacation destination. It’s a retiree destination. I think it’s in the last two years since the last census. It’s probably one of the fastest growing cities in the country. So it’s a little bit nutty. But yeah, it’s a beautiful place for sure.

 

Erwin  

Okay, so we’ve talked on the show quite a bit about Alberta. What caused the boom for Kelowna?

 

Cory  

You know, I think the last couple of years, I think it’s just been there’s been a lot of Albertans moving out here. You know, a lot of people were just shift work. And since the pandemic, everyone has a lot of work from home, so a lot of people are moving from like all across the country because, well, if I’m going to set up shop, I might as well be in Kelowna, that people in the Lower Mainland, you know, cashing out, you know, they have one, two and a half million dollar houses, you know, that are falling apart so they can easily cash out, throw a million bucks in the bank and buy something here. So that’s, you know, further afield the market so at least that’s kind of the opinion of the local real estate agents when I talk to them. 

 

Erwin  

Right. And so is it crazy in Kelowna? Like prices are the up like 30%?

 

Cory  

Oh, yeah, it’s not like, that’s, that’s it’s multiple bidding wars on everything. Probably not. Not uncommon to the market that you’re in right now.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, we’re doing this on March 11. But yeah, we’re starting to see some slowdown. Oh, yeah. Just just before it though, you know, eight to 30 offers was normal.

 

Cory  

It’s just a horror story for I just feel badly for these, you know, people trying to get in right now. It’s part of the reason why I’m doing this summit. Because, you know, a lot of people have just lost hope of ever owning a house, you know, especially like, first time buyers are millennials. Man, like, how do I even do this? So that was part of the motivation to do the summit.

 

Erwin  

In the areas that you focus on? Do you see the same challenges? So for example, in Ontario in Toronto, we have, you know, they must be a local phenomenon. We have this thing called NIMBYs. It’s like, it’s a local species. I don’t know if they propagate themselves to your areas. Do you have similar issues where locals are basically obstructing new developments?

 

Cory  

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. in Kelowna, it’s very, very territorial, there’s a lot of communities, you know, they’re, you know, resisting development. I mean, the mayor of Kelowna, Colin bas. And he’s decided to take the densification road versus, you know, urban sprawl in Calgary, where they just, you know, chop up huge swaths of land, you know, which is a good idea, but it obviously has huge impacts on you know, local traffic patterns and stuff. And, you know, when you can’t please everybody, you know, when you’re trying to trying to grow a city, but I mean, in the markets that I invest in for my real estate holdings, Alberta and Saskatchewan, not so much, you know, they’re a lot more, you know, I guess, welcoming of development, you know, from my experience.

 

Erwin  

So why did the decision to invest away from home?

 

Cory  

Yeah, so when I, when I moved here, had most of my, well, all of my real estate holdings, you know, we’re in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I own some single family and multifamily apartments. And it was mostly because of economics. I mean, incomes were higher, and housing costs lower than they were in British Columbia. And, you know, plus BC has rent control laws, which makes it more difficult to be a landlord, you know, get your rents up, you know, etc. And, you know, since I moved here, when I moved here, the market here was low in 2014, housing was significantly cheaper than Edmonton. And today, it’s more than double Edmonton. So, you know, in that, in that eight years that I’ve been here, you know, it’s done a complete reversal. You know, the Edmonton markets been either flat or declining. You know, it’s just kind of it’s going back up now, the last year, especially in Calgary, but, you know, the last seven years prior, it’s just been flat or going down. And you know, Kelowna, Victoria, Vancouver has just been going straight up. So I’ve kind of been sitting here watching, you know, wondering, Well, should I should I invest in Kelowna, but it’s more of a speculative nature. I mean, I always invest on fundamentals and cash flow and actual, you know, more more along those lines, then getting getting into speculation.

 

Erwin  

Okay, so again, it’s March 11 2022. What kind of investments were you looking for now? Are you adding you divesting? or holding steady?

 

Cory  

Yeah, so, you know, short answer all of the above. I mean, we just sold an 11 unit apartment building in our sorry, 12 unit in Saskatoon in November. And it’s simply because, you know, the holdings that have I bought with in joint venture agreements, you know, we had predetermined exit points. And when we’d hit, you know, either five years or so much percent return on investment. So yeah, we pulled the trigger on the sale. I’m wishing we hadn’t sold that one now. Because, you know, right now, there’s a lot of interest in multifamily, especially on the prairies, we’re seeing a lot of interest coming from, you know, places like Ontario, the Maritimes, and BC, you know, and even Alberta, so we have two more buildings, three more buildings that I’m planning to sell. So I’ve compiled a buyer’s list. You know, a lot of people have contacted me wanting information. So I’m putting packages together. But I’m kind of like, well, I want to go back to my investors and say, you know, guys, this is starting to look like 2007, you know, maybe we should hold for another year, because we’re seeing a massive increase in prices and rents. Because vacancies are coming down for the first time in like six years, to a point where we can raise rents. I mean, I haven’t raised rent on a on an Edmonton unit in over seven years. So for some people, that’s unheard of, you know, we’re given like month to month incentives just to fill units. Yeah, so selling on that point, because, you know, we’re at the joint joint venture and holding some because I have a couple of really good assets that our partners are just dead set against selling so we’re just gonna hold those and then you know, with my partner and I, you know, Mike bug, we just bought another we just purchased the seven and a 17 unit building in LaDuke, Alberta, which Edmonton, essentially by the airport in November, and I’ve been writing offers probably two offers a week ever since looking for more projects. And, you know, I’m hoping to pick up two or three apartment buildings this year for sure.

 

Erwin  

And how active is it? I mean, offers are you up against or if any?

Cory  

I try not to compete. So my strategy is kind of unique. I don’t get into bidding wars. You know, a great example of that is there is someone asked me on my I did a webinar last week on the seven types of multifamily and somebody asked me about judicial listings, you know, what about foreclosures? I said, forget it, because it’s it’s public, everyone knows about it, it turned into a bidding war and an unconditional offer way more than I would ever pay. So, you know, I, I go back to stale MLS listings, people stay off MLS, I look for motivated sellers, eventually they overpriced the properties, you know, three months, six months, they might have 2,3,4 offers fall apart because they can’t get financing. And then I put in an offer what I think is fair, and you know, at least for apartment buildings, you know, two or three, six months later, they come back to me, you know, at the price I offered. So I’m more weight, I’m much more of a patient strategy and systematic strategy, and it’s worked well for me.

 

Erwin  

And then what but your experience when you sold your 11 unit building? Was there much interest?

 

Cory  

Yeah, you know, that was that was kind of towards the end of 2021. You know, when I started marketing it, I started marketing it early in the year because I wanted to give potential buyers a chance to qualify for CMHC. Because I know the you know, the terms of CMHC are were outstanding at the time. I mean, from a period from basically from March of 2021 to or March of 20. When pandemic started to February of 21, you could have got a interest rate on a multifamily like less than one and a half percent. So that’s when people owners were refinancing their buildings like crazy, pulling old equity redeploying it. So that was the time I was I was marketing that property. But I think that maybe just Saskatchewan just wasn’t on the radar yet. I wasn’t able to generate, you know, the amount of interest I was hoping to. I hired a local realtor. I still did. Okay, I mean, we bought the building 100,000 A unit in 2016. We sold it for 123,000. So, you know, was a decent lift in five years. So it was a decent return on investment, for sure. But um, you know, you always hear people I wish I hadn’t sold that building. You know, usually hear them say, I wish I hadn’t bought that building. You know, I mean?

 

Erwin  

Well, you mentioned there were tough times, or you mentioned earlier like There’s yours that you can raise rent for the listener doesn’t know, actually, I’m sure many people don’t know what caused the economic hardship.

 

Cory  

Yeah, and this is a story I love to share. Because I’ve been through cycles, you know, I was pretty bloody. I’ll say I was arrogant and cocky when I got into multifamily. I was in Alberta 2004 to 2010 where you couldn’t go wrong. You know, everything you bought was going up. The Alberta market was going up. I bought my first building in 2008. And then I changed niches. I moved to Saskatoon in 2016. Because, you know, the rents had gone down a little bit from the oil, you know, crash, but I thought up no problem. You know, but I didn’t realise they had overbuilt like crazy in the city vacancy rate, and Saskatoon went from 5% to 20%. This is exactly what happened. And I almost went I almost went bankrupt. And I was going back to my investors and I had to eat crow like crazy. And I learned so much from this, I blew through my entire reserve fund, because a pitcher this so there’s a new build, you know, kind of in a neighbourhood close to me, they had underground parking ensuite laundry, they’re renting for like 2000 When the vacancy hit, all of a sudden they dropped the rent to $1,000. I was renting units for 1200. All of a sudden, all my 10 is left to go to these really much nicer units. And I had to spend 10,000, fixing my suite and we rented for 800 and that went on for two years. So I basically turned over every single unit. And I was doing this for three buildings and working a full time job. So every money all the money I was making at my job was going into subsidising these buildings, praying for things to turn around and swearing to myself I would never make, you know, honestly, looking back, no matter how much I planned, I couldn’t have planned for that kind of event. I mean, potash, oil, uranium, you know, the job market all caved all at the same time. Right? Sure. All fans that are in demand right now. Yeah. So I mean, it’s swinging the other way. So the benefit is I survived through that. And now I have a newly renovated building that’s performing well. So many of my peers. I know a lot of guys that went into Edmonton 2014, their mortgage just came up in 2019 with negative equity. So the bank said, Okay, you got to give us 300 grand to pay the loan down or sell at a loss. So there are owners that are still doing that. So people that took second mortgages are over leveraged, you know, so what I thought was an extremely conservative strategy at the time, you know, barely got me past. So, you know, since then, I’m always, you know, return return of investment versus return on investment, you know, so that was a very humbling experience, but I’m glad I’m glad it happened. And that was is one of many in the past 22 years of my career, so it’s one I like to share for sure.

 

Erwin  

I’m sure some are feeling the same thing and like the stock and crypto world, you know, I think I think the greatest lessons are learned from losses not from from winning.

 

Cory  

And it’s interesting you bring up crypto because I have a lot of friends that just swear by that they’re into that, and these are really sharp people. But honestly, Erwin, I just, I just don’t understand it. I mean, I don’t invest in something I don’t understand. I understand that governments are corrupt, and they’re all trying to take over and all these other things. And I’m not necessarily define that that’s true. But I mean, multifamily real estate is always in demand, I think it’s inflation proof, for the most part, you know, is as received, if rates go up really high, and housing becomes more expensive, more and more of those, more of those owners will turn to renters. So it kind of balances out as long as I think you buy at a decent price and have a healthy reserve fund, you know, I think it’s an investment that’ll keep chugging along.

 

Erwin  

You’ve got real estate if you got real estate, your investments are similarly aligned with like Bitcoin, so I’m sure you’ll be okay. Same thing with the rest of the investor community out here, many people are actually surprised the participation rate into cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin among the real estate investors because real estate investors are historically I want to be able to see and touch it. So I always make the joke like, Oh, you’re gonna pay me the Bitcoin you whip out your wallet and pay me with bitcoins?

 

Cory  

Well, your market, your multifamily market out there, I did a podcast, you know, last week with the peak multifamily guys. And you know, that the prices per door and the cap rates out there that they were telling me about. And it’s like, it’s almost like, we wish we would have paid, you know, six months ago, because now it’s even crazier, even though that number didn’t make any economic sense six months ago, and from, you know, just a simple return perspective. So it’s completely different.

 

Erwin  

It’s good to bring it up, because like, back in 2017, when we had our little housing correction here, financing became a problem for people, for homebuyers, right. A lot of people that were had jobs in industries that were affected by the pen. Sorry, let me just go back to 2020. That’s why I was trying to refer to does you saw it right, there was no effect on the ability to finance a multifamily in the spring of 2020. versus, you know, we were people who say like, Oh, it’s so easy for real estate agents back in the spring of 2020. We’d have to sell a house several times, or one house with a sell at four times. Twice it fell through on financing because the buyers had their jobs had exposure to you know, like airline or airline industries or hospitality.

 

Cory  

The way your internet was mostly affected. No, no, not to the extent the only thing that happened with Multis was the rent freeze. So we had government jurisdictions, we had a lot of politicians saying things they shouldn’t have, like, don’t pay your rent, you know, things like this, you know, this rent freezes, you know what I’m talking about there?

 

Erwin  

And Doug Ford said, Yeah, on the day, he said it too.

 

Cory  

Rent free. So suddenly you say you can’t evict your tenants, then what did they do? They stopped paying rent. But it’s interesting. You mentioned the housing because I I coincidentally just sold my house in Cologne in March because CMHC at the time was saying, it’s gonna drop 10 20% You know, so I was like, panicked. And I had a house here and I sold it. And I ended up getting what they wanted. But there was very, there was almost nothing else for sale, but nobody was buying. And immediately after that, that’s when it started to go gangbusters. So it did the exact opposite of what CMHC predicted. But imagine for a realtor at the time, if you had offers and, you know, pending deals and all of a sudden people’s incomes were affected as businesses were shuttered. Yeah, that would throw rica recap is tricky. 

 

Erwin 

It’s the same house that’s made to sell four times it to really young kids. Yeah, it’s here. The sellers are playing a pet too. So like, No, it looks easy on the outside.

 

Cory  

No, no, no, not at all.

 

Erwin  

So you’re sorry, Cory. You said you sold a house in Kelowna? Was that your home? Or is that was an investment property?

 

Cory  

Primary residence. 

 

Erwin  

Oh, man, you sold your home. 

 

Cory  

Yeah

 

Erwin  

You were homeless?

 

Cory  

No, I Well, almost. I’m actually I’ve been I’ve been renting ever since waiting to buy something else. It was a downsize move. But now I’m kind of, you know, in that position where I’m kind of, I wouldn’t say that I’m stuck because I feel that markets are gonna correct. You know, when I see what’s happening here, it’s very much like it wasn’t in Edmonton in 2007 I don’t know if you had the same boom out there in 2007. Everything went nuts. And, you know, it eventually works. It’s up works itself out. But I mean, timing wise. It was a house they didn’t really want anyways, it was a money pit. You know, some people think, Oh, I’m just gonna get a house because it’s keeps going up in value, but I don’t think it’s an asset. I think it’s a liability. I think it sucks money from you. And if you make workhouse, it sucks a lot of money from you. So, you know it was I don’t regret the move, but I sure as hell wish I would have held it for a couple more years.

 

Erwin  

So you mentioned problems that millennials and first time buyers and immigrants are facing. What are these problems?

 

Cory  

Well, kind of from the outside looking in. I mean, I’m essentially in the same boat now, because I also don’t own. It’s a matter of qualification. You know, I’ve talked to some people about different strategies like rent to own, for example, which I don’t I’m not too familiar with that strategy. But I think you need you need the qualifying income. So if someone’s just coming into Canada, I think they need two years. It’s either two years or four years to prove 

 

Erwin  

Usually about two years of income for credit purposes. Yeah,

 

Cory  

Yeah, that they’ve added this, you know, stress tests, all these other things. You know, a lot of millennials, they have the Bank of mom and dad to help them out. You know, I found a talk to a few of my neighbours, and they just decided to give their inheritances to their kids now, say, here’s the down payment for your house. And I think it’s kind of, you know, affects on that it affects keeps the housing market going up, but it’s a way for them to get in. I mean, even even Millennials now are starting young families. I’m even looking at like my daughter who’s 18 and she’s in college. You know, how the heck is she ever gonna? I mean, oh, and something. I mean, should I be buying a condo now renting it out? So things I didn’t really think about, you know, talking to him. But talking to Mike bug last week, he’s selling one of his properties in Saskatoon, his first rental property about 10 years ago. And I think it’s maybe gone up 10% in value in 10 years, which is kind of normal for how I’ve seen real estate appreciate. Like, I haven’t seen jumps like this that go 30%. So I know, I understand from the buyers perspective, I think the biggest thing they’re faced with is fear of missing out. You know, I don’t get in right now. Oh, man, next year, it’s gonna be even more. But you got to just you got to get around that right when you got to buy for what makes sense. I mean, you don’t want to buy a $800,000 townhouse in Kelowna, that was 500,000 last year. And when you tell people this thing could drop in value. They just look at you like your promoters crazy. No, no, it can never drop. What are you talking about?

 

Erwin  

Haven’t you been around the last six months? You know, I remember drop. 

 

Cory  

Yeah, exactly. 

 

Erwin  

But you actually said it, though. Already. In your in your sharing. You saw FOMO buying? Yeah, was it 2014 In Alberta? And? Yeah, that’s probably the ultimate FOMO buying, like peak FOMO buying ish.

 

Cory  

Yeah, well, we I sold, we sold the house in Edmonton 2014. It was 10 offers very similar to what you’re seeing in Kelowna here and 2007. I remember watching people bidding on I mean, I’ll just take multifamily. There was a condo conversion craze also, but multifamily buildings went from 60,000 units in 2006 to 140,000 units within a year. And it was just nuts, because they were stratifying them and selling them off to investors. Now, that’s proven to be the worst investment in the history of real estate, those individual condos in those old old walkups.

 

Erwin  

At the time it sorry, what did the investors pay for the condos? Do you remember

 

Cory  

At all? Yeah, they were paying like around 100? Well, if the buildings were selling for 140, they were paying 160 to 180. And now those condos aren’t even worth 60. So there’s companies that are actually reconverting these apartments, they’re buying up all the units from the owners and flipping them back to buildings, which is a complete reverse. You know, what was happening before so funny things happen when you get nice frenzies. You know? So don’t get swept up in FOMO. For sure.

 

Erwin  

So what would you tell… What would you tell a first time buyer today then they avoid FOMO?

 

Cory  

Yeah, I’d say just be patient. You know, and I’d say there’s nothing undignified about renting. You know, I think a lot of us in Canada we’re just so spoiled to think that we have to own, we don’t own something we don’t we don’t own a house somehow it’s beneath us or something like that. And you know, I understand being in markets like Kelowna, if I suddenly had to leave this rental I’m rents have gone up here 40%. So it’s, I understand the the anxiety for renters as well. But I mean, I go to markets like Edmonton, I could rent a two bedroom, apartment all utilities for $900 with you know, income significantly higher than the RBC. So for a lot of like, you know, new immigrants, people come into Canada, they flock to the prairies because they can set up businesses, they can make a lot of money and it’s really cheap to live, whether they’re buying or renting.

 

Erwin  

Is that what you’re seeing? You’ve seen a lot of immigrants coming into the prairies. 

 

Cory  

So my property manager in Saskatoon, Shanta, she says, you know, we have a lot in our building, the one we just sold actually, we had a I think they were maybe from Syria, but it was they had their own community. So actually had a waiting list for this building. It was fabulous. And Saskatoon has always been, it’s been always a place where we’re like new immigrants come, it’s got the university there. You know, they’ll tend to land in Quebec, but then they’ll make their way to the prairies. And especially like in Alberta, in Edmonton in places like this. I think just the taxes are maybe lower the business, you know, the business climates more friendly. But, you know, talking to Shanta, the past two years, obviously, that slowed down, because, you know, the pandemic and you know, people haven’t been able to come, but she’s saying in the last couple months that’s really been picking up. So, you know, I anticipate massive growth on the prairies, especially like in the City of Saskatoon, and a large part of that is from immigration, for sure. 

 

Erwin  

Good to hear. This whole great resignation thing. There’s a million fake job vacancies in Canada and going up, right? So for anyone who doesn’t think we need immigrants…

 

Cory  

Is it job vacancies or is it just people that don’t want to work. Are they still on pandemic relief? No, employers aren’t paying enough.

 

Erwin  

A combination of all the above. I don’t know how many people are sitting in this out. I don’t know anyone personally sitting out the job market. So I don’t have any tenants sitting up the job. No, not really. Yeah, yeah. So like, there’s talk about it. I hear of like, friends of friends that do it. But I don’t know anyone personally, who’s sitting this out because of whatever. But yeah, point is, though, we have vacancy, we need someone who’s willing to work. Oh, we sure do. And to pay for this people that don’t want to work.

 

Cory  

Yeah. Well, even Alberta that was had, they’ve had their job market gutted with the oil industry, you know, in the past, like, six, seven years. Now all of a sudden, they’re screaming for work. A lot of these projects are coming back on again. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of our investors and a lot of people are buying in Edmonton Fort Saskatchewan in these places now because I mean, also because oil prices are so high. It’s interesting because the Canadian dollar used to always be pegged to oil you know, it used to go up when when there was an oil boom, but that’s not happening now. And I think it’s a lot of the reason is because a lot of the capitalists fled to the states you know, are the loonie is not pegged oil anymore, because oil is going gangbusters and our you know, our loonie stayed the same, which is kind of added to the inflation problem. I guess that’s not the next thing that the government has to try to deal with. But yeah, yes, absolutely. There’s huge shortages and jobs.

 

Erwin  

It’ll make our oil cheaper and $4 low. Yeah, this is what the war going on flight to safety. Yeah, it’s funny to say that people but the US dollars the flight to safety.

 

Cory  

I can imagine what it’s like to imagine the cause of financial advisors are getting right now from their clients with the situation going on.

 

Erwin  

US dollars. What’s this Bitcoin stuff? 

 

Cory  

Gold Gold. 

 

Erwin  

Advice is not gonna be telling people to get buying gold. Actually, they probably will. But like, you know, if I’m buying gold, I buy physical right

 

Cory  

Now get an EFT or I can make some fees off of it.

 

Erwin  

Exactly. It’s crazy world out there. Yeah. So what about investment wise for like a first time homebuyer immigrant? Here’s an example. I finally have a family member who did rent because they live in Toronto, or it’s crazy expensive, but they own an investment property. So someone else’s payment for that. That’s not accessible to everyone. What would you say to like the newer investor, like someone who says who say has like 100 grand to invest?

 

Cory  

Well, I mean, I would just I would say the best thing is how I got started, and I house hacked, you know, I bought a, I lived in the upstairs and I rented the basement, get as many units as he can, I mean, if you have 100 grand if you can qualify for CMHC 5% down, get a duplex or a four Plex rent out the units and live in the other ones. That’s the best way to get started, you know, or use that to move in. And then after a year, I know the government’s kind of maybe changing the rules, but you can live in a place for a year moved somewhere else to keep that as a rental. And you know, move every couple of years if you don’t mind doing that. But definitely a house hack, if you can. I know there’s like generational housing now to where you know, people’s parents are moving in my neighbour here, the parents just moved in with them. So you know, we’re seeing a lot more of that as well. But yeah, for someone just coming in, and don’t rush to just buy something, buy something that you’re going to want to stick around. You know, I bought houses before it’s like, well, I just bought this because it was a hot market. I didn’t actually really want this place, you know, so be sure what you’re buying. I mean, townhouses are a good start because they’re low maintenance. You know, you don’t have a yard to look after thing, you know, things like that. The strata fees are generally lower. But, you know, condos I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about special assessments. You don’t want to buy a condo then get you know, whacked at the $50,000 expense. You know, I’ve heard a lot of stories like that. I’m not saying that’s going to happen with every condo, but definitely like I would buy a single family home that has a sweep. If I was coming to Canada right now, in not necessarily in the major centres like we’re at Toronto, maybe go someplace a little further out, like Kingston or something. Maybe it’s a little cheaper. You know, that’s definitely what I would do. 100%.

 

Erwin  

Amazing. It’s funny because house hacking, the term only came up. I only learned about the term maybe two years ago ish. And then not many people talk about it, but not before social media and YouTube and all sorts of stuff. It’s not like a housing affordability was much easier ever. I think everyone always felt the pain of it. But it just seems to be more of a common thing when people talking about it is I’ve heard attack before too. I’ve rented out my basement. The first home my parents bought, my mom was was operating a mountain air b&b, but a bed and breakfast. Right? Not illegally of course. But we had three mortgages you do what you do to get by? Yeah, right. Is this weird though, but again, I didn’t think about it. And but now it’s being talked about more house hacking. 

 

Cory  

You know, honestly, I just heard that expression probably three weeks ago for the first time. Someone mentioned it to me and I what do you what do you mean like the term itself almost Sounds kinda has a negative meaning to it, you know, and I don’t use the BRRRR one too it’s I always say value add, because that acronym just annoys the heck out of me too. So I don’t know where these I don’t know where these acronyms or words come from but I guess everybody’s using them so.

 

Erwin  

Oh this will know you further than the crypto currency when they’re making the noise of the money printing machine they say BRRRR as well. So as it has different the birth as different connotations for different for different groups of people. 

 

Cory  

That’s crazy. 

 

Erwin  

So Cory, what are you working on now these days just buying buildings? Are you buying with your own money? You buying with Michael bugs money?

 

Cory  

You know, we’re trying to, we’re actually trying to make a decision here. I’m doing education. So I’m doing private coaching in multifamily. As well, I have a I have a six pillars of multifamily online course I’m enrolling it’s coming up. April 4. I did a seven pillars course last year, great success. You know, my students, most of them, a couple of them already have bought buildings, you know, almost all of them have made offers on buildings. So I mean, I like education, I like giving back. But I want to keep buying I mean, I’m in I’m in the business, I’m not, I don’t want to I make my living, investing, not not teaching teaching is my passion. But yeah, Mike and I just bought another building, he’s we’re looking at different models, we’re looking at private money right now. Because, you know, we’re finding a lot of a lot of people have, you know, a lot of cash sitting around. And with rates as low as they are, you know, they’re not afraid to lend at four or 5%. So we can sort of bypass any conventional bank, and basically go and submit cash offers. So we’ve actually tried that a couple times, we haven’t landed a deal yet. So Mike is more of the capital guy. You know, being a doctor veterinarian, he’s got a lot of colleagues that have a lot of interest in this. So I’m more of the deal facilitator, I’m more of the acquisitions guy, I’m really good at finding the deals. But we’re also looking at going larger, doing a limited partnership, or even a REIT, because I have a lot of existing assets. You know, I have seven buildings right now we’re looking at maybe spinning nose, actually nine with his buildings, we’re looking to spin the nose into a REIT. You know, I know how that’s how boardwalk got started. So, you know, we’re looking at different ways of doing of scaling up, you know, the business that way. So we definitely want to keep working together, we want to keep buying apartments, we’re just not sure of the actual model that we’re going to go with yet. 

 

Erwin  

Question on the private the private borrowing, or private lending, or whatever. One is for 5%. Get I’m the second mortgage is that third mortgage?

 

Cory  

No. And so it’s a first, you know, we’re buying the whole thing. So it’s basically secured as a first mortgage. So this is kind of how we’re doing it. This securing it is, is a little bit trickier. I know a lot of people use promissory notes, which you know, that’s doesn’t it’s not really the same securities, registering the mortgage on title. I’ve done second mortgages on title on, you know, vendor takes with apartments. So, Mike has sort of been working with the people setting up the actual how it’s gonna work. So it’s either it’s either debt or equity, I’ve always usually just done done equity on my joint ventures, like with my partners, is it’s like, hey, look, I’m not going to pay make you guys payments, but you know, you have a percentage of the equity. So we ended up we find, we end up giving a massive amount of equity. So you know, if Mike and I can find, you know, a decent deal with this value add, we can borrow, you know, in some cases, if we’re buying it at $1, we can borrow up to 100% of the money privately, and pay out that loan in a year to 18 months with new financing. So that’s the model that we’re looking at right now. And even the deal that we just we just sort of loaded our own cash and on the Duke, we only paid 86 a door. We’re almost done. We’re in the refinance process. Now. We’re probably going to relearn a refinance at 125 door. So we’re going to be able to pull all our all of our own equity out and redeploy it into another building. So it’s the power of multifamily. It’s one of the reasons why I really enjoy doing this. 

 

Erwin  

So how do you manage this when you’re when you’re out of market? Because I don’t think Mike’s in Boise can’t be in all those markets either. Because, like, we take Luke for example. Did you have existing investments there before?

 

Cory  

Yeah, so my, that’s a great question with with niche because my niche, my primary niche was always Edmonton, I moved to Edmonton 2005, Braden equities, my property management team there who does everything from helping me to find buildings, doing walkthroughs they’re also owners so they know exactly what the price per door is, you know exactly what the repairs are. They know what COVID pricing is for materials. They do all the renovations just charge me a project management fee. So yeah, I really stick to that niche Edmonton and area. We they do manage in Red Deer and Saskatoon, we don’t have Mike and I have the same property manager in Saskatoon. They’re not nearly as strong as our Edmonton team. So that’s the main reason why we’re going there. So I still considered that my home market. It’s new to Mike so I’ve got him embedded in there. Now I’ve got him convinced this is it’s a it’s like, four times larger sandbox in Saskatoon. There’s a lot of multifamily players in Saskatoon and not very many buildings. So at Edmonton, the vacancy rates are higher. So there’s more motivated sellers right now. So this is just the location where we’re finding the deals.

 

Erwin  

I’m always hesitant to buy outside markets that I’m familiar with. Yeah, and what I mean, I’m familiar with, I mean, my team is strong. Yeah. It’s not just knowing the streets and whatnot. But if your team isn’t strong, you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble. Unless you’re willing to be an active manager, which I’m not. Is that your experience?

 

Cory  

The people, the first thing they tell me with multifamily is okay, I got all these listings. I got one in this town, one in this town, should I make offers on them? And I say, Well, what on earth are you going to do? If you actually buy that building? How are you going to manage it? Who’s gonna manage it? My first building was in like my hometown to unity 400 kilometres from where I was working. I just had a new baby. And I just started a new full time job. And it was a complete guide of a project. And I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. But I somehow managed to turn it around and make a profit. So team, yeah, I would not invest anywhere, right, didn’t have a team. And another example when I moved back to Saskatoon, because I had done very well in single family. I thought, well, I know everything I can go into Saskatoon, it’s my home market, you know, everything’s gonna be rosy. So I didn’t do enough due diligence, I started a brand new team, I had a bad property manager, you know, even my inspectors, the renovation guys I had, I didn’t know them. So it turned in, I ended up being active and hands on moving to a niche that I thought I knew very well. So I can’t stress that enough. Your your team is everything. And especially if you’re trying to, you need a very good reason to move outside of where you’re comfortable. Like you’re saying, if I was going to tell you when I want you to invest in Edmonton or Cold Lake, Alberta, you’re gonna be like, Oh, well, I need a bloody good reason why I’m gonna do that. Right? 

 

Erwin  

What? Borrow someone’s team versus Yeah, I have some friends who went to they went to Sudbury because the fundamentals are booming now because they have their major industries nickel mining. Right? We have just when the price went through the roof. Yeah. So fundamentally, there’ll be they’ll be doing great. But if you don’t have a team,  so like, literally, I have friends whose whose contractor coats have like doubled, right? These are new teams for them, even though they have team but less that that’s part of the I find too many people are think think everything in black and white, right? It’s either yes or no. Like, my car has GPS in it. Yes, check. Is it better than Google Maps? No. What do you think I’m using, right? So I paid all this money for what? Now the same thing, just because you’ve gone in Sudbury doesn’t mean they’re any good.

 

Cory  

And it takes years to get that relationship like it took me almost 10 I started working with Brayden in 2010. It took me you know, almost 10 years to realise how to fully utilise his services and the value that he could provide to me and given me rental surveys, you know, for example, telling me what this price of this building what these rents should be, versus believing what’s on the realtor pro forma. I’m not seven realtors, I’m just saying, you know, the property manager knows the market. But you can’t magically, you know, start a team or takeover and expect results instantly know for sure.

 

Erwin  

And then rinse and repeat rather than going to go try to create a new team in a different market.

 

Cory  

You’re better to find a building or a piece of real estate that’s not as good in an area where your team is then to try to go somewhere else for sure.

 

Erwin  

This is what I call confirmation bias. We disagree on everything. I’m interviewing the garbage. I’m sure you find something we disagree on. What’s your what’s your outlook? What’s your so you’re investing heavily in Edmonton. What drives the fundamentals these days? What’s what’s different? Is it still oil based? Is it I hear tech jobs are moving in?

 

Cory  

Well, yeah, that’s it. I think Alberta is finally got their act together and started diversifying away from oil. You know, tech is big in Calgary, Calgary market. I mean, the office space downtown is the towers are still 30% vacant, which is unheard of, if you can imagine that, that every third building is sitting empty, especially in a pandemic, who knows where that office space markets gonna go? Yeah, yeah, so I’m still in Alberta. I like Saskatchewan. I, I think Saskatchewan overall, probably has a little bit more going for it just because of the potash and you know, the world, you know, the world population and you know, having to feed the planet, you know, and Alberta is more centred on oil, but they are diversifying better. But I like those two markets because they’re high growth or high growth markets. They’re not the most desirable places to live people don’t go there because they go to there where the jobs are and you know, when I think of housing, you know, people tell me Oh, Cologne is never going to go down because it’s a desirable place to live. Well. I put lifestyle is number three, the number third reason why people choose to live where they live. Number one is employment. Where can you go to have the best quality of life which is the income. Second is family. You know, a lot of people they’re not going to pack up from Edmonton and move to Cologne and leave their, you know, their aunts and uncles and their parents behind in Edmonton. And you can’t move everybody. So you know, family’s the second one and lifestyle is the is the third? Sure if you’re retired or you maybe you hate your family or you know, you don’t mind you just want to get away then. Sure. But I think the outlook for BC, I think it’s going to slow down here. We’re not gonna see 30% year over year, I don’t think you’re gonna see a massive correction, no matter what happens to interest rates, I think it’s gonna pretty much stay the same or go up. I think. I think we’re gonna see about a 20% increase in residential in Alberta in the next year to 18 months. That’s my prediction. And I think multifamily is gonna go even higher, probably 30%. 

 

Erwin  

Crazy. 

 

Cory  

Yeah. Just to catch up to everywhere else. Right. 

 

Erwin  

And then so if is the diversification going to support Alberta long term? Or is it also one of the fundamentals of oil? And how important is the oil in the future for Albertas economy?

 

Cory  

Yeah, you know, I was just in Jasper on the weekend, and I drove drove basically from gas Moodle. Yeah, I went there to get freedom because in BC, we’re still full restrictions here. Pandemic in Alberta, there’s nothing so it was a nice vacation. But just right on that drive. From there to Kelowna, we drove along the trans mountain pipeline. So you can see the amount of construction that’s going on there. I mean, I don’t think the world can transition off of oil right away, I think especially what’s going on right now, if the situation with Russia, people are realising that Canada has a safe, safe supply of energy, if we can find a way to get it to market. I look at the oil sands because I worked in the oil sands, I worked in the oil industry, I drove a service truck. That’s what I did while I was living in Edmonton. So I worked there, I went to basically every oil sands site, we’re talking about a trillion dollars of investment up there. Now, if you put that in perspective, it’s about the same as the entire Apollo space programme, or the entire interstate highway system of the United States. So that’s the scale of the of the size of investment up there. And as of a few years ago, a lot of those projects, they hadn’t even started chugging no oil yet, you know, some course, you know, their their new their newest mine, and some of these, a lot of them scale back. A lot of them sold out. So now we basically you’re down to three owners you have well, two, I think it’s just Suncor and CRL, which have basically kind of conglomerated on everything. But if that starts to produce it the potential that it can, it’s it’s absolutely enormous. I mean, I don’t I don’t think they’re going to revitalise Keystone. That’s a very political issue in the States. But obviously, you know, you can hear Joe Biden, now they’re talking about buying from Venezuela, and Iran, Iran, and all these other countries, you know, instead of Canada, you know, the he ripped up the contract for Keystone on his first day in office. So I don’t think oil is going anywhere. anytime soon, I think LNG is going to be big LNG is going to start, you know, really growing in the next few years. I mean, LNG Canada off of BC is going to start going, they’re going to start on the East Coast. I think it’s gonna be a good replacement, you know, energy. And I think nuclear, too. I think you’re gonna see a lot more nuclear, especially now in Europe, trying to get off energy dependence from Russia, I think. And that’s going to play well in Saskatchewan, because they’re the largest uranium suppliers in the world. So Commodity wise, I think, Canada, we’re still going to have that shovel economy. I think the oil industry is going to add to our Papa, we’re not going to be as reliant on it before. I think Alberta has diversified enough. But I think in the next 10 to 20 years, I think oil still gonna play a very vital role in our economy.

 

Erwin  

It definitely doesn’t change overnight, especially if it’s cheaper, especially if train gas and internal combustion engine cars are cheaper. Yeah. Cory, sorry. You mentioned you drove service trucks and the oil sands. And now you’re a full time apartment building investor. Yeah. So that’s the best path.

 

Cory  

Well, I’m an instrumentation technician by trade. So I worked. I worked in uranium mining, kind of from 1998 to 2004. I worked in I worked at a gold mine overseas in Central Asia. So you know, I did a lot of shift work. And up until 2019, actually worked in the diamond mines up north. So I worked in the diamond industry for eight years. But my my time at Spartan controls from 2007 to 2012 was interesting. The oil industry was very, very unique to work in. It was interesting, for sure. 

 

Erwin  

And then why the transition?

 

Cory  

To real estate?

 

Erwin  

You worked in Gold and uranium, those industries paid well, don’t they?

 

Cory  

Yeah, so yeah, I got away from gold’s. I mean, I was working a four week on four week off shift in Central Asia, I was working, you know, 4000 metres above sea level. So I developed you know, health issues with altitude. So, you know, I was forced to leave that job. And then, you know, I just moved to Edmonton. So naturally, I wanted to, you know, to be closer to home, so I took the job, you know, service truck, because I was home for the most part, I was home every night. I wasn’t gone for weeks at a time, which was better on the family. So that’s how I got into the oil industry. But all through it, I use my same trade my same ticket. I just got to work in a variety of different industries. So and then what got you started into real estate? Yeah, I mean, Have the people interviewed yesterday? It’s funny. Yeah. How many how many of us read the dreaded purple book? You know, rich rich dad poor dad Kiyosaki, right? The older you. Oh, that was 2001. So I would have been 2728 Not sure when the book was written. But yeah, so I had already house hacked. Then I bought my first uptown duplex, well single found with the suite in 2000. That was my first investment 22 years ago. And then I read the book and I started to get into multifamily passively because I was working overseas, I was live actually moved to Central Asia, I moved to the Kyrgyz Republic. So I just started investing in other people’s joint ventures in in Edmonton, and that’s how I got into multifamily. And then it just grew from there. Till I bought my first building in 2008. Then about another one in 2010, first JV in 2012, another JV in 2014. And then I think six buildings after that, and then just investors just became repeat investors and brought new ones in. And that’s how it really started to grow.

 

Erwin  

Can you share with the listener? What, what’s the size or portfolio now? Doors or dollars? Whatever you prefer? 

 

Cory  

Ah, yeah, so I guess the total was 10 buildings over so it was like, basically 25 million, I think I raised something like a raise something like 12 million from from investors have private money. So six of those buildings that didn’t put any of my own cash in. So we still own six buildings, no five buildings today. So we’ve we’ve sold off, you know, about half of them as, as the joint ventures have come up as we’ve reached our exit points. You know, I know a lot of these syndications, they don’t have an end date, they don’t have a divorce. They just keep keep chugging along. But you know, for me, it’s important that there’s a divorce because you know, people’s needs change, they want to buy a house, get married, go on a trip, whatever. So retire. Yeah, retire. So I think the exit strategy is very important.

 

Erwin  

Can you give some ideas on what their structures are for joint venture partnerships. Yeah. So anywhere, because often beginners need to do the need to offer equity to raise capital.

 

Cory  

Yeah, so what I did, I can say what I did, and what I would do now, if I was doing one on one deals, you know, keep it a simple Corporation, a unanimous shareholders agreement, basically, you know, it’s a 20 page document, you know, with all the clauses of what happens if a partner dies, you know, how do you sell your shares, you know, all these, all these kinds of things. So, you have that. And then you basically by the, by the building, you have Class A shares as as the owner, and then you have Class C shares, which are non voting for the investors, and then you split the equity that way. So I didn’t take any fees. You know, I felt that all the money had to be out there working hard. And I would, I would take it at the end, I would get paid on the back end for doing a good job. And, you know, I thought if I did a poor job, I would make nothing but did a good job, I would do very well make a lot of money.

 

Erwin  

Sorry, I’m sorry. Yeah. You got paid nothing during the deal to the to the end?

 

Cory  

No, no, none of my joint ventures I was working at the time I had a job. And I just thought, you know, I looked at some of these syndications that, you know, they’ll take a 3% acquisition fee. But then if you look at that on a on a thorough four levered investment, that’s 12% of the funds raised. And the investment has to make 15% return just to get back to zero. So I thought, I’m not going to put us underwater immediately, because we already have to spend 50,000 to close on this. So that’s, that’s cash, we have to make back to just to get back to zero. So I thought, you know, in order to meet upstanding investors, we can probably do 50 to 100% return in five years, that was my prediction. And I’ve been able to deliver that so far. And a big part of that was by by not taking fees. But today I’m saying you need to at least take a 1% fee, and take some kind of annual management, because you have to get paid something because the amount of work to find a building to buy a building, get it under contract, get a management setup is enormous, right?

 

Erwin  

I’m sure you’ve probably lost some sleep along the way. Over the years as well.

 

Cory  

I just told you what my 20% vacancy Saskatoon experience, and I was. And not only that, not only I wasn’t getting paid, I wasn’t going back to my investors cash calls. I was putting on my own money that I wasn’t making any interest on. So I took it even a step further. So that was some it was some stressful times. I’ll tell you,

 

Erwin  

Your wife couls have been happy. 

 

Cory  

No, no, but we survived, 

 

Erwin  

Man. So I always say I make the joke. And I’m semi serious when I say you have a little bit of ignorance going into real estate investing, because he knew everything you might not do it.

 

Cory  

No Exactly. And you know what every everyone if you’re in real estate long enough, it happens to everybody, you know, markets Correct. something bad happens. You have a deal that goes bad one of your investor partners wants out. It’s inevitable. It happens to everyone, no matter how much you prepare for it.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, I think that’s part of it. To add to that, I think part of it is that you have to you can’t just bank on one property or bank on one tenant. Like you need lots of you need a larger portfolio with some scale in order to absorb losses. Right.

 

Cory  

Yeah, that’s that’s a good point. And one of the mistakes when not mistakes, but one of the strategies I have going forward is I’m going to get more singles in my portfolio right now, I don’t have any because you can’t just all of a sudden sell a multi if you need money, you know if I owned a few townhouses if I, you know, short I could just sell off one of the townhouses, you know, to pay my bills. So that’s important to diversify, not diversify too much. You want to keep your eggs in one basket, but not that many eggs, right?

 

Erwin  

So you’re gonna buy things that you’re gonna buy single families for cash flow purposes.

 

Cory  

I’ll tell you in looking at in Edmonton right now where I could buy a condo, the townhouse I’m sitting in right now is worth 800,000. I can buy the same townhouse in Calgary for 200,000. And it can it’ll it will cashflow very well so I can build it for that. I hear ya. I just looked on MLS the other day. And that’s you can buy a nice townhouse for 200. And, you know, I have a buddy, he just built a brand new single family house with a garage suite. So this is a new phenomenon in Edmonton. So get the house, you get the detached garage, then you have a suite on top of this, though, I think he’s getting like something like 4000 a month for rent on this thing. And the whole build everything to build it was around 500,000. So very decent cash flow on a new build. 

 

Erwin  

So hang on 4000 for the whole thing? 

 

Cory  

Yeah, I think he’s getting something like something like 2500 for the house and then 1500 For the garage space. 

 

Erwin  

Got it. 

 

Cory  

I’m not sure if he’s renting the garage space separately, but it’s for the whole basically lot with everything right. But he can’t find cashflow deals like that in Kelowna. You know, it’s our it’s very difficult. 

 

Erwin  

Yeah. From what you tell me a Kelowna it sounds a lot similar to the Greater Toronto Area. Yeah, it’s tough. It’s really tough to cash flow. Yeah, very cool. Well, Cory, thank you so much for your time, and anything else to share or other recordings available for your conference? Yeah, so unfortunately, for listeners benefit, like Cory mentioned, by the time this comes out, this will be after after Summit.

 

Cory  

There’s definitely going to be recordings available. So I’ll make sure I have the link for you. It’s just, it’s just the real estate outlook.com is where you can go to find it. So the replays are going to be available. And yeah, so there’s gonna be a lot of good speakers. So anybody if they want information, or if they’re curious about where the housing market is going, I’ve got 12 Great speakers, 12 different, completely different perspectives on where the housing market is going to go in different strategies, you know, all the way from, you know, from rent to own, I got people doing new builds, I got presale pre sale construction, some people are getting in pre sales, because that’s another way to get in, you know, creative, you know, be creative is the is the advice now, you know, it’s you’re not just going to go to MLS and, you know, find a property, there’s definitely different ways to go about it. I still believe hiring a realtor to represent your best interest is the best way to go when you’re looking. But I mean, you have to be creative these days. You know, it’s not the same market as it was. 

 

Erwin  

You have anyone bearish on on the market, among your speakers, maybe you can find CMHC maybe you can go get the unsettle president of CMHC they’ll tell you what’s what.

 

Cory  

Yeah, no kidding. They’re all pretty pretty bearish, actually. Mike, Mike is Mike is really bearish too, especially on Mike bug on Saskatchewan. Definitely. But I mean, Rachel Oliver, she does rent to own in Ontario. And she’s very bullish on the market as well. You know, nobody thinks we’re gonna see an outright crash. We’re gonna see things change, just because we’re expecting so many new Canadians to come in Looking for housing, 

 

Erwin  

Million job vacancies? 

 

Cory  

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That too.

 

Erwin  

And rising a million and rising for the next 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. So so when people? Yeah, so even your circles when people complain about immigrants, like, you know, you know, when you go to the hospital, they don’t have enough staff? You know, that’s problem. We’re gonna find these people, right? 

 

Cory  

Well, the government needs to do more to recognise their, their foreign credentials. You know, like, yeah, that’s crazy. My wife went through that she she actually got her, she came from the centre of Central Asia, and she got her certifications recognised, and then became employed with the Alberta government, but a lot for a lot of careers. If you’re in the medical industry, for example, it’s it’s very hard, you basically have to take your education, you know, all over again. So I think the government has to really step up and start recognising foreign credentials if they’re going to fill these vacancies. I think that’s a huge problem.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, for example, like a 20. Year nurse, I think we need to teach them your processes, but the stuff that different. Yeah, right. 

 

Cory  

Now, good example. 

 

Erwin  

Maybe they could learn a little bit on the job. Maybe they can have some less sensitive jobs, and then our Canadian Nurses can have the more sensitive jobs.

 

Cory  

Yeah, yeah. Definitely huge shortages there.

 

Erwin  

It’s not going to change until we have immigration. And yeah, you know, it’s called The Great resignation. I’m sure some people are sitting at sitting at the south sitting out the workforce. But yeah, the lack of immigration over the last during the pandemic, I think is what really hurt us. And then hopefully, I can catch up. Calm down some of this inflation, 

 

Cory  

A great resignation. Let’s get right to it, doesn’t it?

 

Erwin  

Yeah, sounds so dramatic.

 

Cory  

But the great reset

 

Erwin  

Oh, Let’s not go there. Actually, do you want to talk about that your Summit? Sorry, is there any talk about great, great reset at your Summit?

 

Cory  

No, no, we’re just, it’s basically, you know, how we how we give people hope, you know, and I talk about people’s the success they’ve had in the last two years, because a lot of people don’t know other people’s stories. So everyone has had a lot of success in real estate doing a variety of different things during the pandemic. So it’s okay, what have you done? And what would you suggest to someone just coming in now, what would work either to get into the housing market? Or what would you invest in? So that’s kind of what it’s based on? Yeah. 

 

Erwin  

Anyone who just held a piece of real estate should have done pretty well. Anything, anything, you had to be better than nothing.

 

Cory  

Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, I wish I would have done that here. But I mean, the advice going forward, I don’t know if that’s gonna work out at least as well as it has. But who knows?

 

Erwin  

Cory? Have a great weekend. Thanks again for doing this. 

 

Erwin  

Yeah, thanks, Erwin. And I appreciate you having me on your show. 

 

Erwin  

Thanks again.

 

Erwin  

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

 

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Erwin  

Greetings real estate investors!

 

Erwin  

This is Erwin Szeto bringing you the truth about real estate. And I got a question from the social internets. I get these questions time to time. I don’t mind them, I feel this is one way I can give back to the community that’s meant so much to me. And it’s let Cherry and I to each build a seven figure real estate business, hers mine in real estate. You know, I have a practice of six Realtors now. And Cherry obviously has an accounting business that lottery focuses on real estate investors and realtors. It is called Real Estate Tax Tips for a reason. And aside from that, we also own a bigger real estate portfolio. My real estate business that iWIN real estate transacts on over 100 properties per year; 90% of those are for investment purposes. And if you know us, we’re very close with our clients. Since we as we provide coaching services to ensure their success. The point I’m trying to make is we’re we have our fingers on the pulse of the real estate stuffs. Investing personally, I’ve had my personal interest in over 40 plus properties since 2005. So while I don’t know everything I know a little enough to be dangerous and happy to share my experience in case that helps anyone out there. 

 

Erwin  

This week we have Duncan who asks, When in your real estate journey did you decide to engage a property manager to be able to focus on other aspects of business and investing? 

 

Erwin  

So my answer is long. This is a podcast it’s a bit longer format, which hopefully you will allow. This won’t be the hour long format interviews that don’t really do this only took a couple minutes. So let’s start off. 

 

Erwin  

So early days 2005. Because he asked about my experience. My experience is back in 2005. We self managed, my now ex wife was our point person, her and her family owned a home renovation company and we had us not a big portfolio, we grew to five investment properties. But they all happen to be very close to where the rental company was situated in the suburb of Hamilton. So property management was done all in-house. Because again, proximity was close. We had the skill sets all in-house. And because we could do it all in house, it was cheaper than going external. As I worked downtown Toronto at the time, and based on my own skill set. So I’m naturally analytical. And I enjoy geeking out on learning about the business of real estate economics, those sorts of things. So I do all the virtual work. So, for example, I would do all the financial analysis of properties, I would rate rental ads, I’d help craft offers, I should know I did most of the work for crafting the offer. Because our realtor at the time did not understand investing. So I had to write the offers in terms of getting terms that were favourable to an investor. Again, I would review tenant applications and of course, credit checks. Because back then like like we’re talking, you know, mid late 2000 credit checks for like the old way. So it’s all codes. It’s not it’s not easy, like it is today, where things are coded colour coded, you’re given just a number, which makes things really easy. And then after my divorce, which was around 2010 ish, somewhere around there, apologies. I have my own personal great reset and my real estate portfolio. And so I no longer had all those resources available to me in terms of skills and skills and resources. So I immediately hired outside help to maintain properties and to have boots on ground. For example, one of the first properties I bought during my own recruit reset, I just stopped using great reset, and the reset of my portfolio was in St. Catharines. And at the time I was living in Hamilton. So that’s an over half an hour drive. So to me, that’s a little on the far side. So what I did was I was referred to handyman, who was a very, very good handyman. He did many things, contracting for me, and he became my property manager of sorts. We paid a monthly retainer to a property management fee. Not too much. It was under $200 a month to maintain the property and to provide customer service to our tenants. Cherry and I based on our strengths we found that our our handyman wasn’t qualified, nor did he have the skillset to do the right ads and tenant screening stuff like that. So we still did that. Mainly me because that’s what I was good at. And Cherry would deal with the rent collection issues.

 

Erwin  

My clients who have the time skill they do self manage. Understand that they do Have a time as in one of the so often my clients are married couples. So 1 of the one of the partners in that relationship doesn’t have a full time job. So that’s why they would have time. And they just haven’t behind us paying the people as well. So they so that’s the profile my clients who self manage, who still self manage, after like 5, 10 years, but they are the minority among my clientele. So that’s not not even 10% of our clientele, the rest of them, about 90% of them use full service property management. And don’t just use any property manager. They will they generally take our referrals, we let them know who that we use personally. And those property managers in my opinion, are the best in that operate in our cities that we operate. In before anyone asks Are Niagara in health and property managers operate on a referral basis only. And they’ve actually specifically requested to only work with our investor clients, folks who invest the right way. Not slumlords far from solid words to people. If you need Kitchener or Waterloo referrals, no problem, happy to recommend you to Diane de Dominica. It’s not the easiest to be a property manager and either a couple have recently closed the doors. I know a couple who have sold off over the years. And then just recently, one property manager and Barry closed the doors. And I’m Kitchener, who was just on the show, closed his doors, and another property manager in Kitchener Waterloo, Cambridge, I’ve personally hired and fired over four, four or five property managers over my career. And that’s just in Hamilton. So it’s not easy. And before you invest in any city, make sure there’s at least three high quality property managers, that’s this is my own opinion, in my experience, I wouldn’t invest in the city unless there’s at least three quality property managers, that would be happy using because again, in my experience, you’re not going to stay with all of them. Back in the again, he asked some more questions, he’s worried about cost overruns, as a part. So again, from my experience as a professional real estate investor, and my ex, you know, I wasn’t like I’m an ex owner, somewhat, you know, again, my ex wife owned a renovation company. And so we did lots of significant renovations to our properties at a very high standard. So I know renovations quite well, and what they cost because I’m in the busines. A good property manager will save you time and money. Mark, the property manager I use they have internal staff internally that are on salary. So they’re handyman stuff. The turnaround time is fast. And it’s often cheaper because again, their salary people and often these are not licenced professionals. For example, if I have a leaky tap, I don’t need to send a licenced plumber for that a handyman can often deal with that for a fraction of that cost. So again, I’m going to save on time and money. And simplicity as well, in terms of booking someone to go fix stuffs my attack from my tenants. So then everyone’s happier, right? No one, I think everyone wants repairs done sooner than later. To save all time, all parties involved included. So that’s myself a tenant in my property manager, I’ve instructed my property managers if the cost is under $300, it makes the tenant happy and to go ahead and do it. This saves me from having to be a bottleneck to approve really minor things such as pest control, or a gas leak. Another business outliner but it’s it’s an odd thing to have to be to have to authorise dealing with a gas leak, broken door locks, types, those types of service requests. I tell my PM,  property manager, in no world can I say no to these requests. And if I did, I would expect to be fired as our client. We’ve literally received a rule a couple of years ago, was on a Monday that our property our sorry, our handyman/property manager, which he texted us, called there was a mice problem at x property and asked me to buy property on the weekend. But I took care of them. Right? That’s so he took care of them without asking us, which is what I expected. He told me on Monday that everything’s taken care of. Isn’t that perfect? To me, these are provide providing basic services to one’s tenants. It does take time and money. So you can choose to do these things yourself. I choose not to because my weekends are packed with kids stuff. So I don’t have the time to deal with these low paying tasks that I don’t generally have skills for, you know, I can pay between 20 to $80 an hour for these types of tasks to deal with. And again, I don’t have the skills to deal with these problems.

 

Erwin  

So I hope that helps. I hope that helps Duncan and a couple others of you out there. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly leave me a review stating so. And I’ll keep doing these episodes because between in between our regular weekly interviews, because this is a bit of work for me to do, I don’t mind answering questions. But it’s not a value that No, I’m not gonna do it. But if it isn’t value, then let me know, right? Drop me a review on Spotify or iTunes, or even shoot me a DM on any social media platform. Alright, so next time, hard assets for the win. 

 

Erwin  

Thank you for watching. If you want to learn how to invest in real estate from scratch, my team teaches beginners how to use the number one investment strategy that I personally use in a virtual free trading class every month, go to investor training.ca/youtube To register for our next class. That link is also in the description as well. I publish at least two to three videos a week here. So subscribe if you want to keep learning from seasoned investors like myself, my guests, And if you’re just starting out, feel free to ask questions in a comment below. And I do my best to answer each of those comments and questions myself. Again if you’re ready to learn the nitty-gritty about real estate investing from a professional investor register for our next virtual class at that investor training.ca/youtube Thanks again for watching. See you in the next video.

 

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

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On Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy50cnV0aGFib3V0cmVhbGVzdGF0ZWludmVzdGluZy5jYS9mZWVkLw

Youtube: https://youtu.be/UVQuUEqOyww