Happy belated International Women’s Day! Shout out to all the lady investors, especially the moms, and even more so the single moms. I believe the women of real estate to be so awesome that I wrote a poem on the subject. For the first time ever on the Truth About Real Estate Investing, here we go:
In realms of brick and mortar, where dreams are built and sold,
A story of empowerment and courage does unfold.
On International Women’s Day, we raise our voice in cheer,
For the women leading boldly, year after valiant year.
Among my clients, women shine, their vision clear and bright,
Driving investments forward, with insight and foresight.
Husbands, too, in whispers confess, their admiration pure,
“The growth of our net worth,” they say, “Her genius did ensure.”
To the wives, the pillars strong, upon which futures stand,
Who with a keen eye for value, navigate the land.
Their wisdom in selecting, the right property to seize,
Shapes the fabric of success, with remarkable ease.
And let us not forget, the single mothers’ might,
Juggling life’s many roles, through day and into night.
Their resilience astounding, a beacon so profound,
In them, a well of strength and love, abundantly is found.
So here’s to you, the women, in real estate who thrive,
Your influence is boundless, helping dreams to come alive.
On this International Women’s Day, your praises we sing loud,
For in the dance of progress, you stand both strong and proud.
Your journey with these heroes, in transactions large and small,
Reveals the true essence of empowerment for all.
To every woman navigating the path of wealth and home,
May you always be celebrated, and never feel alone.
On a personal note: we spent the week of March Break up north skiing, sort of. Cherry’s injured so she worked in the chalet the whole time. I skied half the time as the ski hill is on the smaller side which is perfect for my kids. Shout out to Hidden Valley Highlands Ski camp for training and entertaining the kids. I can’t recommend it enough to any parent who wants their kids to be able to ski.
We do live in Canada hence I believe life skills include swimming, skating, and skiing. Intermediate levels are fine. I just want the kids to be safe when they’re playing with their friends. Our family friends’ teenagers has their school ski day was cut short as too many kids were getting concussions crashing into fences or trees.
I’m a hyper, over protective parent hence I’m planning ahead.
Speaking of planning ahead, I have a enough clients with adult kids where the adult kids want nothing to do with the family business or real estate investing. Vs what kids would say no to an inheritance of stocks like Microsoft and Apple.
My point is, to increase the probability of my kids wanting to learn and be investors, they’ll need something more passive than what real estate investors are doing locally to manage their portfolios.
Take Airbnb for example, earlier this week Cherry just had our worst experience with a property we booked through Airbnb.
The heat was off when we arrived so the house was freezing. Not a good first impression. No welcome email with instructions on how to operate the house, no manuals inside the house either.
I spoke to the owner’s father and he was able to walk me through how to turn on the propane furnace that was outside of the house. Even with the heat on, the radiators on the main floor and in the bedrooms weren’t heating up which stressed me out.
A fluorescent ceiling light was loose and was drooping down from it’s mount, half the closet doors were off their railings, the wood fireplace hadn’t been cleaned, the owner didn’t know how to open the flue so we weren’t going to use it.
Then at bedtime when checking the beds, two pillows, the kind for resting your head on when sleeping. They smelled like bad body odour. Some bed sheets had old blood stains. My pillow was wet so I grabbed a folded, white pillow case from the laundry room next to the folded towels and it was yellowed from out don’t know what use.
The neglect of this short term rental is as bad as I’m seen. The worst in my experience. How are we expected to relax with all these problems?
The owner came by to check on us. Her standards for operating a short rental prices at $500 per night are below mine.
We decided to cut our losses short, we didn’t feel comfortable. Once Airbnb agreed to let us cancel the remainder of the reservation but only a reduction of 30% for the terrible first day. We packed up the house which went from 15 degrees when we arrived to 26 degrees in 24 hours. The owner warned us there was no way to control the temperature hence the guests who left before we arrived shut off the furnace, I was instructed to regulate the temperature in the house by opening windows…. What a waste of propane and lack of client care.
So we packed up the house while the kids were in ski camp as the cleaner showed up to give us grief for not leaving sooner. Like it was our fault the house was gross, too hot, not maintained causing us to leave.
We drove 10 mins down the road and the view of a massive, beautiful custom home on a massive lot backing onto a pond was better than the pictures. We’ve had a wonderful remainder to our March Break. We can’t wait till next year when we upgrade to a bigger resort like Mt. St Louis, Blue Mountain or Holiday Valley. Assuming there is snow…
We hit the jackpot. An added bonus, we saved $1,700 for making the switch, though I still think our one night stay at the S-hole should have been free.
My point is, I couldn’t do what the first Airbnb owner did. Have to deal w customer complaint calls and Airbnb while the owner is probably making good money as her experience for lack of maintenance was due to the place always being booked. But to operate a like that, you have to not care about customer experience, argue with customers, and be fine as the slumlord of short term rentals. I know my kids wouldn’t do it.
Hence I choose to outsource all management of my real estate investments going forward. The heavy lifting is my due diligence which I’ve had a blast doing because I’m a real estate geek. The latest on my research is I’ve found the rental listings of one of the largest REITs in the US.
As the saying goes: R&D stands for rip off and duplicate. I have the rental listings, their addresses, pictures, I can look up what they paid and when.
Combine that with the public information of the billion dollar investments by Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments, LG, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, TSMC, GM, Siemens, Tesla, all in the business and landlord friendly southern US States nicknamed the Battery Belt for all the green, electric, and battery manufacturing investments… all of the locations are just outside major centers like Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina, Dallas and Austin Texas, etc…, all cities growing in population and identified as among the best cities for investment in the USA. So my plan is to buy houses in between the major centre and the new manufacturing company being built that will employ thousands of manufacturing employees.
I’ve mapped the new major employers out on google maps, I know my target neighborhoods, investment criteria, and I’ve partnered with SHARE the asset manager to be my one stop shop. I’ll pay them their fees to do all the landlord duties and I get to keep 100% control and 100% of the equity, this is the best joint venture setup I’ve personally seen.
If you too would like to learn how Cherry, my clients and I are investing in the USA we are hosting a How to Invest in the USA Workshop Saturday morning April 13th, we have experts in all areas including Accounting structures, Financing, Acquisitions and Management.
Note that we are keeping our investing simple and boring and only discussing single family houses at the workshop because they’re affordable: $100,000-350,000 and I can get better cap rates between 5 and 7% which beat pretty much anything here in Canada when adjusted for risk.
Link to register: https://USAworkshop.eventbrite.ca
Tom Karadza, co-founder of Rock Star R.E. on Coaching 1000+ members to Success
On to this week’s show!
On today’s show, we have one of my mentors and brokers in Tom Karadza, co-founder of Rock Star Real Estate Brokerage, Inc who in my experience is one of the best leaders and influencers in our community. If results are what matters to you like they do for me, Rock Star’s 1000+ members are well educated in investing and are among the most successful especially after you adjust for risk. No get rich quick schemes at Rock Star.
On today’s show Tom and discuss how Rock Star members have weathered the current storm, how the pandemic ruined my bitcoin gains, while Tom is laughing all the way to the bank… does that saying work when referring to Bitcoin gains?
Anyways, Tom and his brother Nick Karadza are hosting the next Your Life, Your Terms event live and in person Saturday April 6th at the International Centre near Pearson Airport.
This is likely the largest room, 1000+ attendees expected, or successful, action takers you’ve ever met where the talks are fresh, no repeats allowed, Cherry will have a booth, I’ll be networking wearing a USA Hockey jersey. If you’re a client, I have some pull so you can save the hundreds of dollars on tickets, everyone else, details and link to register in the show notes: https://www.yourlifeyourtermsevent.com/
To Listen:
** Transcript Auto-Generated**
(00:00) hello and welcome to the truth about real estate investing show my name is Erwin Szeto and I want to say Happy Belated International women’s day oddly enough uh International history of women’s month is celebrated in October in Canada versus uh the west of Russell World celebrates it in March so happy in happy women’s History Month to everyone not from Canada anyways I want to shout out all the lady investors especially the moms and even more so the single moms out there uh I believe the women of real estate are incredibly awesome I
(00:33) happen to be married to one and I wrote a poem on the subject uh from from my own experience of working with uh I’ve shared before about half my clients are women including the married couple uh half the time the wife is the driving partner of that relationship so for the first time ever on the truth about real estate investing show I’m going to read you a poem in the Realms of brick and motor where dreams are built and sold a story of empowerment encourage dozen fold on International women’s day we raise our
(01:03) voice in cheer the women leading boldly year after Valiant year among my clients women shine their Vision clear and bright during Investments forward driving Investments forward with insight and foresight husbands too in Whispers confess their admiration pure their growth of our net worth they say her genius did ensure to the wives and pillars strong upon which Futures stand with who with a Keen Eye for Value navigate the land their wisdom in selecting the right property to seize shapes the fabric of success with
(01:35) remarkable ease and let us not forget the Single mother’s might juggling life’s many roles through through day and night the resilience of astounding a beacon so profound in them a well of strength and love abundantly is found so here’s to you the women in real estate who Thrive your influence is boundless helping dreams to come alive on this International women’s day your Praises we sing loud for the dance of progress you stand both strong and proud your freedom with these heroes in transactions large and small reveals the
(02:07) true essence of empowerment of all to Every Woman navigating the path of wealth and home may you always be celebrated and never feel alone again shout out to to uh all the women in real estate investing on a personal note U my family and I including my Superstar wife Cherry we spent the week of March break up north skiing sort of uh Cherry’s got a banged at me so she worked in the Chalet pretty much the whole time while I skied half the time as the ski the ski hill it’s a it’s huntsville’s uh Hidden Valley
(02:39) Highland ski uh so it’s bit on the smaller side but it’s perfect for kids I want to shout out to uh again Hidden Valley Highland ski camp for entertaining my kids and for training them I can’t recommend it enough for any parent who wants their kids to to learn how to ski so we’ve been doing this about at least three years now where our kids spend both the Christmas holiday break and March break in ski Camp uh we do live in Canada hence I believe the life skills for a Canadian include swimming skating and skiing intermediate
(03:12) levels are just fine I just want my level kids to be safe when they’re playing with their friends uh our family friends uh their teenagers actually had their ski school day cut short as too many kids were getting concussions from crashing into fences or trees so that’s not for what I want for my kids hence uh I’m planning ahead speaking of planning I have enough clients with adult kids where their kids want nothing to do with the family business or the real estate portfolio versus what kid would say no
(03:42) to an inheritance of stock like apple or or Microsoft my point is to increase the probability of my kids wanting to learn to and be investors the need something a bit more easy a bit more passive than what Real Estate Investors are going through uh locally to manage their own port uh take Airbnb for example earlier this week cherry and I had our worst experience with the property that we booked through Airbnb uh when we showed up this is this is for our March break so when we showed up the heat was off so we when we arrived the house was
(04:14) freezing and the thermostats weren’t doing anything not a good first impression uh there was no welcome email with instructions on how to operate the house no manuals inside the house either uh so we called and I spoke to the owner’s father and he was able to walk me through how to turn the propane furnace on that was outside the house so that was the first for me I’ve never seen a furnace outside the house before but even with the heat on uh the radiators on the main floor and in the main floor bedrooms they weren’t heating
(04:41) up and that’s where I was sleeping so that’s concerning to me uh there was also a fluorescent light in the basement that was a ceiling light that was loose and it was drooping down from its Mount I’ve never seen that before uh half the closet doors were off the railings the wood fireplace hadn’t been cleaned uh the owner and the cleaner who came by to clean it up after we reported it they didn’t know how to operate it or how how to open the flu so we had no plan B either then at bedtime as we were
(05:09) getting ready to go to bed uh we actually looked at the beds and we found two bed pillows that uh the kind that you’re supposed to you know rest your head on when you’re sleeping they smell like bad body odor pretty gross some of the best then so then we looked closer pulled back some of the sheets and then we found we pulled back some blankets and we found some bed sheets that had old blood stains on them uh my pillow was wet to the touch uh so I just tossed it on the floor I wasn’t so lucky even when I went to go
(05:41) find a clean pillowcase as the next one I found was yellow U this is hardly a good experience the neglect of the short-term rental is as bad as I’ve seen the worst in my experience and uh how are how is anyone expected to relax with these sort of problems going on uh the owner did come by to check on us in the afternoon uh in her standards for operating a short-term rental with prices at $500 per night are well below my own uh and who do I criticize apparently she’s making the money hangover our fist um anyways we decided
(06:12) to cut our losses short we didn’t feel comfortable uh once Airbnb agreed agreed to cancel the remainder of our reservation uh but unfortunately we only got 30% reduction on that terrible terrible first day uh that that was the decision of the owner I don’t believe that was airbnb’s call to make anyways we pack up the house and uh mind you when I when we showed up at the house when we first checked in when the heat was off it was only 15 degrees inside according to the thermostats which seemed accurate and when we when we
(06:42) arrived to pack up the house it was 26 degrees it was only 24 only 24 hours that passed the owner had warned us there was no way to control the temperature inside the house and I’d gone through and and set the temperature at like 21 22 degrees on all the thermostats I could find yet yeah yet the uh the furnace was just on a runaway was running away I don’t know what would happen if we stayed any longer so no surprise the previous guests before us who left it before who left before we arrived that’s why they
(07:14) shut off the furnace and the owner instructed me to regulate the temperature inside the house was by opening Windows in the middle of early March there’s still it’s it’s a warm March but it’s still like cold outside what a waste of propane and lack of client care anyways so we packed up the house while the kids were in ski Camp uh a cleaner showed up and gave us grief for not leaving earlier uh like it was our fault the house is gross and that’s why we’re leaving and it was also too hot uh we
(07:43) drove 15 sorry 10 minutes down the road as we booked another airBNB uh and we were greeted with a beautiful custom home Mansion uh well there’s probably 4,000 I think it was about 4,000 square feet on a massive lot backing onto a pond it was even better than the pictures uh we had a wonderful remainder of our March break after our very bumpy start uh we honestly can’t wait to go Wai in next year uh while my kids are my kids are old enough now they don’t need to be in Camp anymore so yeah we hit the
(08:15) jackpot with that property uh with an added bonus we saved $1,700 for making the switch though I still think that first night’s day at that crap hole should have been free uh my point is I couldn’t do what the Airbnb owner did have to deal with customer complaint calls and deal with Airbnb uh and again the owner is likely making really good money um and her experience was that you know lack of Maintenance was perfectly fine she’s still making money hand over fist U she actually said she couldn’t take
(08:45) care of Maintenance because the place was always booked she never thought to you know block off some time so you can get some work done no um but to operate a business like that and not care about customer experience and argue with customers and be fine with being a SL Lord of short-term rentals uh I know my kids wouldn’t do it and I wouldn’t I definitely wouldn’t do it either hence I choose to Outsource all my management on my real estate Investments going forward uh all the heavy lifting it all the heavy lifting
(09:15) that I have to do for investing in in the states is my my due diligence and honestly I’ve had a blast doing it because I’m a real estate geek and I enjoy travel so I can’t wait to travel with cherry to Atlanta and Nashville and in between and uh yeah oh and then also recently I I stumbled upon uh trion’s website the rental listings as well so so they’re one of the largest reads larger reads in the states so again uh I’m enjoying what I what’s called in the in the in the industry any industry uh
(09:51) R&D you know most people understand R&D as being uh research and development uh I I Al it’s also known as ripoff duplicate so I have the rental listings of Trion which is uh and they own 36 or 38,000 single family homes in the states so I have the rental listings I have their addresses and pictures so I can look up what they paid for and when so anyways combine that with public knowledge of the billion dollar Investments being made by Intel Samsung T Texas Instruments LG Honda Toyota hyundai Tesla all in
(10:29) business friend friend L landlord uh landlord business landlord friendly Southern USA and it’s actually nicknamed the battery belt for their green electric and Battery manufacturing Investments all the locations are just outside major centers like Columbus Ohio Atlanta Georgia I know Columbus is a little bit on the Northern side but they’re they’re one of the anomalies of being landlord friendly in the north uh Rally North Carolina Dallas and Austin Texas these are all CI cities with growing population and growing economies
(11:00) and identified as among the best cities for investment in the USA so my plan is very simple I’m going to buy hoses in between these major centers and the new manufacturing companies being built that will employ thousands of manufacturing employees anyways I’ve mapped the new major employers out on Google Maps uh I know my target neighborhoods my investment criteria and I’ve partnered with share the asset manager to be my One-Stop shop to you know find me deals manage the managers Al all sorts of
(11:30) things uh I’ll pay them their fees and they get to do all the landlord duties while I get to keep 100% control and 100% of the equity this is the best joint venture setup I’ve personally ever seen if you two would like to learn how cherry and cherry my clients and I are investing in the USA we are hosting a how to invest in the USA Workshop Saturday morning April 13th we have experts in all areas including accounting accounting legal structures financing Acquisitions and of course management note that we are keeping our
(12:01) investing simple and boring and only discussing single family homes in at the workshop because they’re affordable at the 100 100,000 to $350,000 range and I can get cap rates between 5 and 7% which pretty much beat anything here in Canada when adjusted for risk uh links in the show notes on to this week’s show on today’s show we have one of my mentors in broker uh Tom Tom crit is the broker and Co under Rockstar real estate brokerage where I belong and have been since 2010 uh in my experience they are the best leaders and
(12:36) influencers in the community uh if results are what matters to you like they do for me Rockstar members uh their thousand plus members are very well educated and more importantly they are very successful especially when you adjust for risk no get- rich quick schemes at Rockstar and on today’s show Tom Tom discusses how Rockstar members have weathered the current storm uh spoiler alert it’s been pretty good we talk about how the pandemic ruined my Bitcoin gains while Tom has accumulated more than he will he’s willing to share and
(13:11) he’s laughing all the way to the bank and I I as I say that I I know the R I don’t know if that saying works when you’re talking about Bitcoin and Bank you know what I mean anyways Tom and his brother Nick kader are hosting the next your lifee terms event live and in person Saturday April thir April 6th at the international center near Pearson Airport this is likely the largest room uh a thousand plus attendees are expected uh and and these will be successful action takers uh and uh the talk is always the talks always fresh
(13:46) for example there’s speakers there speakers that they have out that they’ve never had before there’s no repeating content allowed uh cherio will have a brand new presentation and she’ll have a booth there as well I’ll be there of course networking I’ll be wearing my USA hockey jersey if you’re a client of mine uh and I do know someone who knows someone so I can save you the couple hundred bucks on tickets uh and for everyone else I have Link in the I have link and details and the link to
(14:15) register is in the show notes uh URL Fe if you have a pen handy it’s www.yourlifeyourtermsevent.com please enjoy the show hi Tom what’s keeping you busy these days I was just thinking about when I first met you and you decided you were going to get into real estate and for whatever reason I think it was a Greek restaurant in Burlington we had lunch was that where it was and uh Nick was saying something to me like you know we got to sit down with this guy Irwin he’s thinking of leaving his job and going
(14:52) into real estate and real estate investing full-time I’m like okay you know let’s go and uh Greek food I love so that wasn’t easy sell and I remember sitting down across and and I thought okay this guy’s pretty crazy like us so he kind of fits because uh he wants to quit his job I remember it was a decent job what was it I I worked for a company that was acquired by IBM okay yeah so you were you like a data analyst or something I was in product management so it was it was a nice position for me
(15:21) because uh my workers highly respected I worked between like clients and internal clients to help design product that would deliver what they wanted so I kind of like that intermediary between clients internal clients in our development staff and why what was what had gotten into you why did you want to quit again I forget I I always want to get rich in life it was always my always in me that just my nature I always want to be rich and after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad I realized it was not going to happen while working a job got it and you
(15:50) wanted to be rich and how do you define that rich in time rich in money Rich money I was young more money than marrier got it I was not even a point where like I didn’t want kids because they just getting the way of having makeing more money that was my mindset back then got it got it um I think I just watched is it true I watched something it was like a a Chinese comedian sing for New Year’s yeah I was talking to Tim about this briefly and is this is this a real thing so you don’t say Happy New Year to you
(16:22) know in on the Chinese New Year it’s not customed to say Happy New Year you say I hope you get rich it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s a loaded thing but it’s also rich in what though money Health okay so it means I wish you wealth in all facets of wealth yes okay okay he’s he’s taking the Liberty but yes but you know but again like generally Asians priority is money yeah yeah you get it like it’s po it was a historically very poor culture sure so like you know no money no eating
(16:51) right so you know you know you know croatians are have similar background as well you don’t have money you don’t you’re not eating yeah yeah I remember just the way my family I think would try to show wealth would be they had nothing so if you went to visit and this would be my family in Croatia they would put any P they had any cheese they had out any bread in an abundant way to kind of show that they were welcoming you to the house and to show you that they had something to offer you and they had no
(17:19) real Financial wealth but that was the way they kind of tried to show that they were welcoming you you know putting some food on the table Yeah weird times lots of different cultures have different ways to express that but I remember you you told us you were going to quit your job and then you went and did that took a lot of balls man do you looking back at that moment do you are you happy that you did that do you regret doing that uh so I don’t know if you remember it was a long time ago was 2010 we’re talking about I
(17:48) actually went on sabatical for 30 days okay and that’s and I had my license at that point so I give it a go so I give it a go and then I was doing all right right I think I did two or three Deals in that month and then if I extrapolated then that would be more money than I was getting paid at the job and I was enjoying what I was doing I knew that this would help me become a better investor as well so then there was more there’s more wins and also I could keep local right I was living in Burlington at the time so go train downtown you
(18:17) know and it was yeah hard Jam in there everybody was reading the newspaper yeah everyone’s reading the newspaper it’s and especially the ride home is packed like you I almost almost never got a seat so you for that’s usually me cuz I play basketball at work I was that guy but yeah like that was you know a key part of the journey and you know and it’s weird cuz I’ve only ever been at Rockstar I’ve been a realtor for since 2010 only ever been at Rockstar so this is my only context yeah wow and before we’re recording like like
(18:54) we’re we’re recording this on February 15th like there’s been all this turmoil in the industry uh like just just last week there was big news in the CBC and the globe mail a certain group with like 8 600 units in like Northern Ontario mostly like they’re Grant bankruptcy protection and digging into it it’s it’s it’s bad I don’t know how much you dug into it not much I just know that there was a bunch of stuff lent out on promisory notes and that’s really all I know the houses were
(19:23) up north somewhere well the the bigger issue well that’s a big issue part of the issue as well is like there’s 200 units that are sitting vacant that are not that are not habitable wow right and I was thinking like how far is this from Rockstar theory for how to invest oh jeez right cuz I’ll go OG on you uh cuz you always share your family story of back in the uh late ‘ 80s mid 80s late ‘ 80s and the early ‘ 90s yep can you share that story yeah I think maybe that’s what defines how we think about
(19:55) real estate over the last 15 years was that era our father was running a drywall company and then he started flipping properties on the side just like everyone starts flipping properties on the side in the late ‘ 80s it was in uh Moga just north of square one off Eglington and kind of Highway 10 and those subdivisions up there were going up in the late 80s yeah that’s gorgeous area beautiful area he started flipping properties and he did really well on a couple flips new construction bought them sold them and then 1990 hit and he
(20:22) was holding this one new construction again that he bought off paper on assignment so like it was a trailer on a gravel parking lot guy walks out buying the house my dad buys the paper from him and it was a 4,400 ft house house enormous pretty big three-car garage and back then he bought it for 750,000 and with the hopes that it would go up like like all real estate was going up and instead of it going up four months after he bought it um TD raised rates I mean the Bank of Canada raised rates but in this one month interest
(20:53) rates went up and if memory serves it was 2.9% in 30 days so it was like a 3% raise in 30 days and that absolutely decimated the real estate market and not only the real estate market it really ripped apart the highend or what I would call the luxury Market yeah 40 44 qualify yeah so that house we were looking to see if we could sell it and we would we would sell it for like 450 we thought and at the time we couldn’t afford to sell it for $450 we would lose so much that our family home in Miss Saga would be in Jeopardy so uh my Dad
(21:28) decided to hold on to it I became the property manager because my English was stronger than my father’s and we rented it out and even renting it out I remember roughly it was about $1,000 a month negative so my dad’s drywall or our dad’s drywall company was struggling because it was a recessionary time and we had this property that was sucking $1,000 and the price of it was under under what we purchased it for and then the the tenant skipped out on rent um and uh I remember going to the house and
(21:58) it was vacant at first I remember going to the house and them telling me hey just come back in a couple days and we’ll get you the rent I used to go pick up the rent I remember being inside the house when they told me this beautiful carpets baby grand piano like I remember being impressed with this house and just the way it was furnished and everything so when they said to come back I didn’t really think of it I used to cut the grass on that house and stuff and uh full service product management yeah
(22:23) what I was doing yeah I was like my old Thunderbird like I stuck in a lawnmower and I went to go cut the grass and do all kinds ofd who knows what more in a Thunderbird okay I got the image in my head yeah two car girl two car sorry two door Thunderbird with light covers and a bra on the front with a lawnmower in the back going a cut grass and uh i’ cut the I went back and the neighbors are like hey they let they moved out in the middle of the night and I’m like what they’re like yeah the house is vacant
(22:49) we’ve looked through the windows and then I went and the house was vacant they skipped out on one month’s rent and at the time one month’s rent for our family was absolutely massive like we needed that money do you remember what the rent was I don’t I just remember the negative I remember the negative was like roughly a thousand and uh I had to tell my father which was also that was just brutal had to rent the house out and renting out a larger house when times are tough took forever it was basically just us
(23:14) Executives who would rent out that house and even renting it out again in a recession not easy it was not easy no I don’t know how many months um I was in university then uh but I remember being vacant for quite a few months because I would have my friends over for some parties and I remember one of my friends jumped off the twoot sorry jumped off the garage roof he jumped off the garage roof of that house and landed on his chest on the grass and he didn’t die I remember seeing him bounce off the grass
(23:45) um so yeah we had some kind of crazy parties in that house and stuff but we eventually rented it out and uh that just taught me that you know going through that experience was really really tough and it just taught me that um when when we looked back there were some real estate or some properties that really um were the most liquid if you needed to rent them out if you needed to sell them in bad times if you needed to refinance them and it was starter homes it wasn’t these luxury properties starter homes always had a bit of a bit
(24:15) or a bit of demand M and I just always stuck with Nick and myself we like huh starter homes always seem to be like the most liquid real estate so if you’re going to get into real estate probably should just get starter homes and you should probably not do um reconstruction like our father had done because by the time you sign the paper or the time between you sign the papers and taking possession a lot can change it can kill you it the market can change it can change greatly Fin and I know that’s very conservative thinking and I know
(24:42) tons of people have made amazing money on preconstruction and I’m not denying that’s it’s like absolutely fantastic for them this is just our family story and what works for us so we always then steered Nick andai to starter homes that were resale because we thought oh well if they’re resale we know what the rent’s going to be and if it’s a starter home we can we know we can rent it out to a family regular rent we know we could do a rent to own strategy on it if it’s close to a college or university we
(25:05) know we could change it into a student rental which we had done we have a property that we ran as a rent owned that particular one didn’t get bought out we changed it to a student rental for a few years now it’s back to a single family rental so this the starter homes just have a lot of opportunity a lot of you know options there’s options flexibility to it if you want to throw a credit line on a starter home the banks are typically willing to do that so it’s just easy so it sounds pretty boring but
(25:33) we’ve just always thought resale and single family homes and when I say single family I should qualify that like we mean fully detached but you know if it’s a semi- detached town home like those kinds of properties ideally single family if we can and that just became like our our thing we would just buy resale and um yeah that’s what we learned in real estate and then when we when when we went off to start Rockstar it was really just because we had no more money to buy properties ourselves so we thought okay well we
(26:03) have these real estate licenses that we got to bypass Realtors MH and uh why don’t we just use this license to try to help other investors because this is going to sound crazy irin but in 2006 and 2007 there weren’t a lot of Realtors who worked with investors yeah I remember those days yeah there you couldn’t find anyone so most books most books taught to not work not yeah don’t even yeah yeah if it was a real estate book it was like investors asked too many questions you don’t want to deal
(26:28) with them and The Brokerage that we first went to in Oakville they didn’t they told us we were going to fail when we told them we were going to work with investors they didn’t think we were going to succeed at all well because also add to that most investor books that were training investors like write a 100 offers yeah and that was the books I WR I used to do that I used to write all those offers and I used to piss off all these Realtors to win one yeah and and I would say things like legally I know you must present my offer I know
(26:55) you must present it I legal legally I know you must present this and then I flipped and I got my license and then I dealt with these investors and I’m like oh God yeah you don’t realize the politics of of real estate is that you’re trying to keep relationships with other real estate agents so you don’t want to piss them all off with your crappy offer yeah exactly someone off they may not ever talk to you again I’ll never forget I found a single family home in Burlington that I couldn’t buy
(27:18) Nick and I didn’t have the money but it was it was a single family home in Burlington for it was I I want to say like 283 285 if you could believe it 283,000 and remember telling this investor oh my gosh I found the property it’s it this is the price and here’s what you’re going to get and rent on this property this thing is a winner and he had read some real estate investing book where he had taken the purchase price of the home and divided it by the property tax and the ratio that he was came up with he said yeah he said in the
(27:47) book that if the ratio of purchase price to property tax was this that it wasn’t a good purchase and I remember it just finally hit me I’m like wow some investors just speak with cra crazy you know some crazy ideas and then I thought oh my gosh was that me like back in the day cuz I probably said some things to realtors that just sound the 1% rule or yeah yeah well the 1% rule if you could get the 1% rule that was like that was crazy that’s what got us into student rentals because they were hitting the 1%
(28:16) and we’re like holy smokes back in the day yeah yeah yeah but anyway that’s so yeah so our personal journey is heavily influenced by the early 1990s and that real estate crash lasted property prices went down for six years so um that heavily influenced us and just guided us to starter homes the resale Market super boring and over the years people have come to our faces and told us you guys don’t really know how to make money in real estate you have some those people yeah you have to be doing this we’re now
(28:44) bankrupt oh really yeah and it just never even phased us cuz I always just thought like well this is my journey that’s your journey this is what’s working for me I’m doing the math on these things I like what this you know does and we’re going to stick with it and our accountant really early he’s since passed away but he was a mentor to us I’ll never forget he said that when he was younger him and his accounting buddies would look at businesses and as businesses would grow some of them would
(29:06) grow almost exponentially and they would always admire those people and those businesses but you know now later in his life as he reflected back with his accounting buddies they realized that it was the turtle who wins the race that a lot of the businesses that really ramped up some revenues that wasn’t really a sustainable thing it was like either they you know a got lucky or B were not doing something appropriate and they the revenues really Skyrock rocked but the business itself wasn’t built on a bed a
(29:35) Bedrock of a solid foundation and they came to learn that like oh the people who just do things at a steady Pace just year over year over year at the end of the day tend to win most often and that also stuck with us and we’re like you know what these little starter homes they’re the turtles yeah they just you know day in day out they kind of work away for you and at the end of the day they’re not the most exciting but they’re likely going to you’re likely going to survive the journey MH I was
(30:01) just reading an article about looking back on GE and that actually fits into that as well when Jack wal was like he was like the go he was he was like the Elon Musk time I remember right and then then I I remember I remember when GE Capital started and this is exactly what you’re talking about GE Capital started to finance their customers to buy more of their product yeah was that what it was yeah so it’s like inflated so like yeah we’re number one or number two in this in this and it was vertical but
(30:30) we’re we’re feeding it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s like they had control of the Monopoly board and the bank so they just threw in more money into the board sounds sounds familiar it yeah that’s that’s oh sorry I want to touch back go back to your the the the property your your father bought what is it worth today just yeah I haven’t looked I haven’t looked that in in years I guess it if I have to guess it’s at Miss Saga Road in Eglington in missa over 3 million somewhere yeah it’s probably
(30:59) something like that yeah yeah four maybe yeah I should go look years ago I kind of like blocked it out of my mind for so long because it was such a scar in our family but um yeah and the turtle would have won eventually if you could hang on yeah if you just held on and that’s the thing like if you can handle the leverage the whole key to getting ahead financially is use to me is in the existing Financial system is to use leverage and then be able to you know smartly manage leverage and if you can’t handle the leverage it’s the market
(31:30) telling you oh you weren’t too good at this game and we’re kicking you out but if you can manage The Leverage you’re likely going to get ahead I mean you know I always look at real estate I’m like a real estate as an investor you put 20% down historically in the Toronto area real estate will appreciate at 7% a year 7% on a 20% down payment it’s 35% return and it’s a good way to financially outpace the currency depac in this country and it’s a good way to get ahead financially but if you overextend yourself with that
(32:00) leverage and you can’t manage it you get kicked out of the game mhm it’s like a reboot so it’s much tougher market today I was actually talking to a a Toronto agent friend of mine he was like he’s he’s he’s doing the math in his head he’s an engineer by trade but he’s real practice as a realtor he was telling me to cash flow on a downtown Toronto condo you need to put down 50 to 55% just to cover the hard costs so mortgage taxes Insurance condo fee I’m like that’s a lot of money to put down mhm and then
(32:28) other things happen tenant turnover lease fees bad debt right repairs and maintenance Property Management all those things happen property tax and Toronto’s increasing what 10.6 10.9% or something I think with the threat of 16% if the feds don’t kick in some money yeah what could happen yeah it’s an election year yeah they probably W yeah they’ll probably pay it’s election coming soon they’ll probably pay so so what what should investor do today based on your based on Rock philosophies I think I’ve just heard
(32:57) that story like I’m 51 years old now I’ve heard that story since about 1998 like in 1998 property prices had gone up um for two or three years and somebody told me oh my gosh like you got to be careful with the real estate you know property prices have gone up now two or three years they always go down because if you grew up in the90s you were used to property prices going down then I remember in the tech boom of the early 2000s people were like oh tech stocks are where the money is real estates way
(33:22) too hard and I was buying student rentals then and you couldn’t convince anybody to buy student rentals everybody was like you know Cisco Nell pets.com like that was the that was the era.com yeah that that was the era then that kind of crashes down greenpan lowers interest rates real estate catches a bit of a bid and then 2008 hits and people in this country were convinced real estate was going to crash we started RockStar at that time and people were telling us oh my gosh are you seeing what’s going on in the in the US it’s
(33:54) going to collapse here in Canada and then in 2017 similar things you know prices came down and right now interest rates are High um so it makes it quote unquote more difficult than in the year 2001 when interest rates were lower so I guess my message to anybody listening that’s going to go into this is you have to understand that real estate and our money game now is very cyclical cyclical every three or four years there’s a big amount of debt in the world that’s getting refinanced and and in between
(34:24) those times things get a little wonky so a lot of new debt came out in the pandemic our interest rates were really low um to kind of create a little bit’s under selling yeah a lot to create a lot create a lot of debt and then inflation gets hot interest rates go up everything gets a little kind of scary and then we’re hitting a Time whereas if I had to be a you know if I had to place a bet on where I think interest rates head in the next year it’s going to come down and it’s going to take some pressure off
(34:51) things to make that condo example that you were saying to make it cash flow a little easier because interest rates are going to come down and have no crystal ball I have no guarantee to that I just mean over the last 20 years this is what I’ve seen it’s like interest rates kind of trend up like in 200 2008 interest rates no one remembers but interest rates we were getting some mortgages in the high fives close to yeah close close to 6% and people were telling us Tom these purchase prices I’ll never forget
(35:17) this Hamilton property at $225,000 no more cash flow no more cash flow game’s over and interest rates come down prices go up and you know the party kind of rages on so I don’t know if this is the end of real estate for the Toronto condo or for the resale Market in Toronto I just think we’re in one of those Cycles where rates are high and if your formative years in real estate are 2008 onward all you know is cheap money cu the Cycles have been so so high with debt and so low with rates that that’s
(35:51) all you know and we’re finally coming to a place that’s kind of outside of the you know the recent norm and it makes it difficult for people if the numbers don’t work and you can’t handle it then I wouldn’t buy but I don’t expect that to be the case for the next 10 years there’s just too much debt in the world for rates to not come down so I got to think things are going to get a little easier again MH on the same side my friend that was telling about the condo he he Al telling also telling me that in
(36:20) downtown Toronto duplexes are on absolute fire sure right CU people are want and these are these are house hackers these are these are folks who are planning on living in one of the units and they need the income from the other unit to live and like oh God thank goodness my duplexes have taken a haircut in the last few years yeah yeah yeah yeah I think it’s just everything goes up and down like Nick and I don’t look at real estate like any property we’ve ever looked at we thought would we would we buy this if we had to hold it
(36:49) for 10 years at a minimum right even if we were doing rent to own stuff which we were ideally selling to a tenant buyer at the end of 3 years um which didn’t happen but we had to plan that it if it did we were going to be okay with it and if it didn’t we kept the property so we’re going to be okay with it so the way we look at it is like do the numbers work for us in our lives right now could we hold it for 10 years because when we were younger I needed the cash flow so the numbers that we’re talking about the
(37:16) Toronto condo and different properties around Toronto right now if they don’t cash flow it’s not really appealing it wouldn’t be appealing to the Tom that was in his 20s but as your financial situation changes someone might might want to buy a Toronto right now doesn’t matter if it’s 40% down 50% down because they might want a condo for their family for their son for their daughter for some reason they’re in a different Financial place and the number is not a big deal so I think you have to match
(37:40) the finan the conditions of the real estate market to your current situation are you in are you young willing to take on a lot lot of Leverage and a lot of risk or are you a little older and you’ve accumulated some assets and now you’re at a different place in life so it’s just there’s just no one answer but I do but I do know any investor who looks back always says it’s harder today yeah like I’ve never met the investor there still harder today it’s still harder today never even when price is
(38:08) down it’s still harder today the banks change their rules the down payment rules change the qualification changes but things always change I’ll give you an example in London Ontario where we have a lot of investors who buy student rental properties around Western they’re about to change the bylaw as we speak right now to go from five bedrooms up to allowing seven oh great so now we were in a situation where people were like oh well the numbers don’t really work yeah five bedrooms I can’t earn enough even
(38:33) though uh per room up there it’s common to get a th000 we’ve seen $1,200 a month um in student rentals but now if you can add two more bedrooms we we know a bunch of investors who have unfinished basements that weren’t finished because they couldn’t legally add two bedrooms now they can legally add two bedrooms and it’ll get another $2,000 a month on that property what’s that going to do to the opportunity there probably increase it so I just think you can’t take a moment in time and make a definitive
(38:56) answer that this is how it’s going to be forever real estate’s like a changing game so is is uh I want to get to I want the listener to know what what properties they should be looking at is the London student rental an ideal for anyone to get into yeah okay so also another thing want to clarify as well is like a high amount of Leverage is different for different people to me like to me a high amount of Leverage was 20% down cash maybe even he in a schedule in a schedule A Bank mortgage for cheap that was high leverage for me
(39:29) versus we see all these people out there with first private first private private first for 6% private second for 12% oh God yeah promisory note for like 15 177% yeah right and also I want to throw in I’ve been saying this on the show a couple times now we used to call these hard money loans we got away from it it’s true yeah we don’t use that language as much yeah because I remember a good friend of mutual friend of ours like he would use the term when he when he was building his Mansions when he’s
(39:57) he I have hard money loans versus people like BR I priv private I private borrow yeah like no it’s it’s hard these are hard money loans that’s sorry I can I digress back to uh what is a best practice investment in today’s market um so on okay so first you just give me a flashback I remember when Jim flarey the Finance Minister in Canada briefly allowed 0% down payment and 5% down I don’t know if you remember four investors for declared rental properties the cmhc fee was like astronomical but I
(40:28) can’t crap on what you just said too hard because when that came out Nick and I were like all over that we were like wait a second you can do 0% down and if the numbers worked and some numbers still did work at 0% down your cmhc fee was astronomical but anyway you just I couldn’t qualify because already had properties so they would never give that to me it it was tough yeah yep and um I I tried though yeah of course why not yeah 0% down it’s like an infinite return even five yeah um but for today
(40:57) for for I mean it’s it’s a tough question to answer today because you you know whatever answer I give has to be mapped to somebody’s short-term objectives and their long-term goals like look at your all of our short-term objectives mine and yours like look at yours right now you’re making a change in your portfolio like it always is kind of Shifting but if somebody I’m a different age and different yeah you have different things bother you in a different way at this age and at this stage of life than it did a few years
(41:21) ago so you want to adapt accordingly and you know to each their own of course but I would say that um to anyone looking at the Ontario market right now what has been popular if let me answer it that way right now has been student rentals because student rental demand is always strong and I’m not talking about the the recent massive influx of international students the big universities always have demand so McMaster Western Queens these places always have strong strong weth to yeah like Western has like last time I
(41:54) checked was 37 38 39,000 students if you add in faculty in the hospital there we’re talking at like 40,000 50,000 people and they have a college in town too to put more pressure on that market yeah Fen Shaw’s there as well you’re right so um if you can buy a property around Western in good Economic Times or in bad Economic Times there’s always students and uh those properties make a lot of sense because you also get to go to market rent quite frequently so if you rent out to a group of students
(42:23) after 3 years usually that group is moving on you know within 2 years 3 years four years usually you’re moving on to get a new group of students when that happens you can take your rent back to whatever Market rent is and as a as a way of an example my son is just leaving Western this year he rented out what I would call a slummy house we don’t own this particular house uh for $615 a month utilities included three groups of students came out for next year just a couple weeks ago they took it on the first day for 925 a room plus
(42:53) utilities 925 a room plus utilities he was renting just a few years ago we signed that leasee or he signed it at 615 utilities included right so like 50% increase over 3 years it’s massive so student rentals are interesting and now if they’re changing some bylaws and you can add more bedrooms legally in there you can do it properly and I mean making like safe clean functional properties so student rentals can be really interesting and and I would say to anyone looking at real estate that could be a way that you want to look at it or
(43:23) you want to buy a property where you can add a duplex a second second unit or a single family home on a lot that in the future you could drop in a g Garden Suite a laneway suite or change the structure of that house because going forward like look what you said about Toronto with like duplexes being on fire I think we all know there’s going to be a continued housing shortage in this area so that if you can add on to the property and add out their income streams those are huge so you know if you can go to the Niagara area right now
(43:51) and find a property where you can duplex it legally and then potentially even add a third unit on the property m at some point to me those are gold because if you look at the population growth in Canada as much as Canada has problems I don’t think we can deny like Canada has problems has government problems Canada has There’s real estate problems there’s government problem there’s problems at all levels in in Canada and all over the world too all over the world China like us us with their issue in Texas the
(44:18) whole world we’re we’re going through a moment here for sure but it’s crazy times it’s crazy it’s yeah bitcoin’s over 50,000 again these are historic times man yeah ride Bitcoin down to 16,000 or whatever it was and come back has been been a journey but on the real estate PR keep me focused here don’t don’t throw dangle at the Bitcoin topic there um the the Niagara region like if you just look at fundamentals like the population growth of Canada is going to continue whether one way or
(44:44) another through International students legal illegal whatever it is you know we’re getting more people in this in this country no way dips below half a million ever again yeah yes we’re going to have yeah so the population growth a big percentage of population growth in can of the legal immigration that I track 44% comes to Ontario so we get like a huge amount in Ontario within Ontario a huge amount of that comes to the Golden Horseshoe Niagara happens to be positioned against you know the biggest economy in the world um the
(45:12) population growth is going to expand they’re going to put a new casino in Niagara there’s two new factories going up Welland is getting a battery Factory from I believe it’s a South Korean uh company don’t hold me to to to that but there’s a new battery plant going to go in and well and there’s another new Factory that I’m forgetting the name of that um plans in thoral there’s a new golf course I believe being built in the Niagara region so you could just see like that area is going to just continue
(45:36) to expand continue to pill in population growth so if you didn’t want a student rental I would say hey check out the outskirt areas of Toronto specifically the nigar area would be an interesting way to uh to get into real estate for sure I’d throw in as well like a basement apartment strategy Garden suet strategy would be wonderful near a university as well yeah that would be great those are really hard like in my my experience those are really hard to find a lot that can handle that or a property that can handle that but man
(46:03) you got a you got basically an Ontario Golden Horseshoe unicorn if you can do that oh my gosh and I know some people who have built like nine unit student rentals by these universities as triplexes so they can convert it to like a proper Triplex or they can rent it out as three three-bedroom student rentals and with a lot big enough if they wanted to they could put something else in the back so you’re right yeah that’s a unicorn if you can find that kind of thing and the bank loves it they’ll Finance it properly yeah like versus my
(46:29) student rentals yeah well back in the day get the best back in the day yeah student rentals were not like this back in the day like especially around McMaster like do you remember going into some student rental a friend of mine had a room when I was in university we went to visit him to get to his room you went past the furnace and there was like a curtain hung off like I guess from the HVAC ducks that you kind of pushed to the side and now looking back at that time we didn’t even think anything of it but now looking back I’m like oh my gosh
(46:56) this guy’s room yeah he was on the back side of the furnace room just with some carpet and a mattress on the floor that was his room that he was renting out so McMaster area was wild it’s better now it’s come a long way I’m sure there’s some of those properties still out there I remember seeing like Bas and bedrooms with no windows yeah people had just a room there was no windows like like that’s wild wow and that was not that uncommon and the low ceiling like 6 yeah I remember the low ceilings I remember
(47:26) one bedroom in a basement that we were looking to buy this property we went into the basement and the bedroom um I think it had a window but you’re making me think maybe it didn’t but it had this little kind of doorway that was maybe only 4T tall and the ceiling was slightly crooked like it wasn’t a proper doorway and and it was maybe 4T long so it’s was 4T tall and about 4 ft long and you just kind of look down and it and you there was no door it was just this little weird hallway thing off the
(47:49) bedroom and you walk through and on the other side was a bathroom and like how did this like how is this bathroom here how does this exist exist so uh and you wonder why we have rental licensing coming fromon area yeah yeah by the way we we we dug up one of Nick’s houses by McMaster because we didn’t have the money or he didn’t have the money I wasn’t involved in this house to pay for like a Waterproofing Company so we dug it up by hand he got like six of us out there and we dug it up by hand and then uh he
(48:20) sealed it all up and we threw back all the dirt and uh you know he sealed the cracks but in one area where they punched a pipe through for something to do in the basement maybe they’re adding a kitchen somewhere or something they forgot to seal around the pipe no so a couple weeks later there was still a water leak and they had to redig back down anyway we’ve seen a lot of stuff do you guys still have that hose yeah Nick still has it yeah yeah so speaking of Nick famous quote from Nick is uh what is it those who deal with the most [ __ ]
(48:52) what is it win win thank you thank you cuz we were talking about like stages of career you talked about the you know our neighbor to the South is world superpower and i’ I’d actually argue the superpower by far with with we don’t even know how bad the evergr issue is and not just evergr anyone who’s behind evergr as well who is the number two three four building biggest Builders how many vacant homes are there in China we don’t know how bad this situation is so I think I think things are I don’t know
(49:20) all this you you read the brick talks stuff stuff too I don’t know how much you believe like bricks will actually catch up and actually be a significant thing like China has so many cracks in their economy it’s just nuts but anyways anyways end of the day not that much is going to change with the US there’s still going to be even if someone passes them there’s still going to be an incredible world superpower lots of jobs sure and so like everything combined I’ve done I’m done with dealing with
(49:44) [ __ ] right I’ve got I’ve got a B officer I got call back because she’s because she’s calling me because I have a I have a duplex that’s close to Mohawk College okay so I fall within land uh landord licensing okay got it I’m like I so I have at least I have three properties in Hamilton that will qualify into the current pilot for for rental licensing so and that’s just not worth it to me I’m I’m tapping out why do you is there a lot of work you have to do on that property no this is why I’m partly
(50:14) pissed these are legal duplexes like my my Hamilton Mountain property so why is she calling you CU because rental licensing if you’re in the W if you’re in that Ward you you have to go get rental licensing okay got it you don’t have to invest in the property you should have to I may have to do some okay got it uh but again though these my basements were done with with permits City’s already City’s already signed off on everything right I why do I need an HVAC inspection in Esa I haven’t done
(50:40) anything right and all the just all these extra costs I don’t want right so I’m done I’m done just I read too much news so I’m I’m done dealing with [ __ ] and we know where you’re going you’re wearing the Hat of where you’re going yeah yeah cuz oh man I loved it I’ve never been to Texas before you’ve been you’ve been you used had to travel a lot especially when your corporate work uh yeah y Dallas San Antonio Austin yeah I loved it my trip to San Antonio and Austin I just loved it I had no idea
(51:07) pulling up to a gas station we were just talking about this pulling up to a gas station having brisket just ready at the gas station there with picnic tables outside and going getting some fresh meat and eating it there amazing I remember being the whole the whole foods whereever Whole Foods is originally out of Austin or San Antonio I forget I think it’s Austin I don’t know but I went to whole see a lot I didn’t see a lot of presents from Whole Foods okay well we went to the Whole Foods like flagship store and their Hot Table had
(51:29) this like fresh barbecue and you know they were just selling it by the pound so you could walk up there and just say how many pounds you wanted you would wrap it in paper and you could just go outside and eat it it was like oh my gosh this is amazing yeah it was sunny and warm and uh it would be nice on a day like today it would be yeah seemed they seemed like a great place I could I could definitely see the attraction yeah cuz we’re just talking my single family homes before recording I just got an email u a property I I’d liked on
(51:56) realtor.com so that gave me a price update they just dropped their price by 25,000 from 300 down to 275 oh North atin only for 275 in Ontario not even Tim actually maybe Tim’s Ontario 275 and I think I can rent it for I may have to fix it up a little bit but I think I can rent for 1900 like these are the old these are these this is like Hamilton Mountain 10 go numbers it’d be interesting to look at the appreciation in those areas just to see and what you personally expect I think we get a strong appreciation in Canada
(52:30) because of the concentration of population around a few major centers whereas the US you just have a lot of choices even in Texas you have a lot of choices but then you can choose Florida and have a lot of choices so we’ll get to Florida in a minute yeah but it’s just I’m I’m curious to what happens to the appreciation in those areas just because we don’t get the concentr you don’t get the concentration of population like you do here um not that that’s good or bad and that might not be
(52:53) important to you but it would be something to look at like historically what happens in those areas around appreciation because one of the things I like specifically why I targeted Austin was because the prices have already come down at least 20% and realtor.com picked Austin to come down the most of the country so I’m looking at like Warren Buffett style like Austin pretty much is on almost every top 10 list Texas is obviously on every top 10 list right so this is capital tons of jobs prices are come I’ll probably get
(53:23) something from from like I’ll probably get the house if I bought something today i’ probably get like at least 30% off the peak I’m surprised to hear the prices have been coming down recently with just all the demand of people moving into Texas so what what is driving the is it just a interest rate moves there that have made affordable I think just went up too much went up too much too fast okay so it’s a bit of a correction yes this is a correction so I think okay so over 10 years it’s up just
(53:45) recently it’s down oh yeah just like about 2021 is is when the decline started yeah so probably declined in 2008 during the financial crisis came surpassed the 2007 High awesome yeah’s there’s there you been com mother sh no that’s R’s com love it it’s highly offensive as long as you like offensive comedy I love offensive comedy especially Asian jokes I just die just bring on come pick on me anyways uh but I’m uh again just I I completely agree with your point because America like
(54:19) there’s so just like greyber talks about like in the states like there’s so many cities with a population of 2 million or more in the states not like Canada shocking yeah there’s so many options for to move around to where to get a good job which is why uh the property I’m talking about that’s 275 it’s in uh Round Rock which is it’s the neighborhood North North Austin and it’s kind of Northeastern and so about 15 minutes down the road is where the Samsung plant is being built to build microchips oh
(54:48) awesome yeah so it’s a it’s a 4 billion dollar $4 billion investment they’ll have 2,000 full-time manufacturing jobs wow and Sam you know being a Korean company they’re back in Korea still recruiting suppliers to come back to come to Texas and support their bill awesome so that’s how I’m trying to defend and try to be offensive and defense at the same time makes sense so that’s and then that’s my thesis for the entire States as well so for example like Phoenix I’m looking at as well
(55:13) because that’s where Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing compan is open right the world’s largest microchip manufacturing they make for Apple you and I were both Apple people right so then that’s how yeah that’s how I’m defending mine and and and but I’m not I’m kind of preaching to the here about there’s us there’s advantages to the USA investing cuz I know you you you well before I was looking at the US you’ve been looking at the US yeah I think the way to me the biggest thing it’s the
(55:37) everyone’s going to be different to me the US presents a currency play because the US dollar to me is going to hold its value like I mean we’re just seeing it around the world that Fiat currencies are losing value one after another they’re losing them faster and faster the Euro last 10 years has been terrible the Yen oh my God the yen yeah wow for anyone wanted to go on vacation get a cheap vacation go to Japan cuz the Yen’s on sale it’s so cheap yeah I was just telling Nigel he’s got to take me um but
(56:06) uh the uh we were just there to go yeah yeah cool I would love to go um so to me it’s just a currency thing like if you look at the Canadian dollar if you have just Canadian dollar exposure and you don’t have any US dollar exposure and that’s important yeah you may want to consider especially if there’s another generation in your family that’s going to hold real estate you may want to consider getting some us exposure to some property just for the the US dollar exposure if it’s just that um there’s
(56:33) all kinds of other things you need to take into account um but to me that’s just the big picture way to look at it that if you just have Canadian dollar exposure in your life um getting a property in the US would be one way to get US dollar exposure and I think that’s a probably a really good financial decision over the next few years I’m also a Bitcoin guy as you know so to me Bitcoin is the apex predator in the room and everyone should have exposure to bitcoin but that’s a big leap for a lot of people so for them on
(57:02) their own Financial education and financial Journey if they want to get exposure to something beyond the Canadian dollar then at least consider getting us exposure and for Canadians getting an investment property in the US is like a pretty straightforward way to get it MH and I know rockar is a big fan of the build to rent model in in Florida I think we’re more a fan of the people we know like real estate to me yeah team is incredibly important yeah like again we were talking like there’s all these groups and they built poor teams and
(57:31) they’re bankrupt now it’s just completely sad yeah yeah and I think over the years people have asked us for specifically Florida just because so many Canadians vacation there um so much warmer than everywhere else yeah even especially important in the winter that nowhere else in America really is that warm yeah yeah yeah I was just down in Naples and uh nice it’s it was really yeah it makes you question what hey what am I doing up here in Toronto in the winter but anyway um the uh you get the US dollar exposure
(57:59) and uh I forgot what I was going to say there oh the team um the reason that we like Florida is we just know this you know we’ve known Jim now for 15 years we didn’t know the full scale of what he’s doing down there and uh they’re building brand new homes every year in the scale of five six 7 800 and they’re building per year and they’re building them with a tenants in mind so they’re building them so that they know they’re going to rent them out so that the property management can be the easiest thing on
(58:27) them so they’re building them with certain kitchen cabinets and certain counters and certain floors and you know they’re building them with uh roofs that have the proper tie-ins for hurricanes they’re building them at the right elevations so for a Canadian with a lot of variables to deal with when you go into Florida um this is one are a lot of variables what people expect yeah oh yeah for sure this is a a team of people that we feel we can hand off people to that are building the home they’re
(58:51) property managing the home they are handling the maintenance on the home so you’re you’re kind of covered right there’s still risk of course um but that’s what finally got us into Florida it’s like oh we finally found the team that we can say hey irn you want to go down there all right here’s the guy we trust go see him his whole team is going to take care of it they’re managing like 2200 units they got it all figured out now we went down and did a tour to check it out firsthand ourselves multiple
(59:14) times n and I have been down and uh yeah it’s been great and just to when I first saw uh the number of homes they build a year I thought it was a typo I thought there was an extra zero yeah yeah cuz they’re a home builder they’re like a home Builder that used to build subdivision homes they’ve just dispersed to do rental properties in different communities around Florida cuz to give context they would be a top 10 builder in Ontario based on their volume maybe top three yeah I don’t really know I
(59:39) guess maybe they would yeah well just think like mamy can’t build 800 c a year could they I don’t know don’t put anything past mam I don’t know I drove I drove through a madamey subdivision in Florida oh cool and they’re Canadian company yeah I didn’t know they had no idea they expanded right right right unless I miss saww but I’m pretty sure it was the same logo with the same company name on there and these are houses I removed the condo thing cuz it’s way easier to build a verticle like
(1:00:05) to like H these are house builders like that’s an incredible volume yeah building uh the vast majority are infill lots so they’re getting infill lots in existing communities and building brand new homes in there yeah because my context is Steve Ford we know a rockstar member like he builds 100 houses in the season his the Builder they works for right and that’s a whole season like so for to do hundreds hundreds yeah it’s kind of was the appeal to us is that these guys are like the real deal they’re not just building one home
(1:00:34) a year and selling it to an investor they are really doing this for that’s their livelihood that they’re in this business right yeah incredibly end to end yeah right here’s a product we’ll manage it you know it’s brand new yeah yeah yeah and then Canadians get some US dollar exposure I don’t know we’ll see how it goes I don’t know I’m question no LTB right now there’s no rent control I mean real estate you always have to like the the successful real estate investor just has to roll with the punches like
(1:01:02) as you see it with bylaw officers calling you and stuff you just you don’t know what’s coming um so yeah no rec controls the property manager we were speaking down there she was shocked when we talked about our landlord board up here she basically at one point said oh you’re California and we’re like oh is that what you would think of us and uh she said there 45 days and their cash for keys there was like $200 which shocked us but the reason it’s so low is because the tenants know they’re going to be out they don’t like
(1:01:30) to stand on so yeah they you don’t have to pay much to get a tenant out who’s not you know giving you trouble or not paying you can just go up to them and say hey I’ll give you 200 bucks and you’re they they leave so yeah just a very different Market different culture yeah the relationship between tenants I’m pretty sure I don’t know if I remember this accurately I’m pretty sure like the tenant board there like you’re going to the proper Courthouse yeah there is no tenant board you’re going to
(1:01:54) like Court same law law system as everyone else yeah and then um you know yeah there’s still stuff to learn different areas different counties and you know there’s always there’s always new things as an investor uh to learn about and the different rules down there but the 45 days um was really interesting to us and when she told us that to for a tenant to renew she had to give them a letter allowing them to renew the lease and that to me was shocking because you know here if someone goes beond Le goes to month to month and
(1:02:26) there it was directly the opposite so you know I thought that was shocking yeah cuz here as as a commercial landlord like the tenants usually like like pushing you to resign a new lease yeah right versus tenants residential like I month to month automatically yeah I I I suggest all Canadian investors speak to an American investor see the compare differences for sure right yeah cuz like Florida Texas Arizona there Georgia there always going to be the Carol it’s different there is no separate division of government or or or
(1:02:57) laws that are specific to protect tenants and as I learned more even within the state different counties can have different rules for rental property so yeah you just need an experienced team yes you do and even hear within within like Georgia for example certain counties are are they’re more backed up than others or for tenant landlord issues so yeah it’s it’s still it’s still very area specific for sure yeah yeah so can we talk about Bitcoin sure I PEX predator in the room cuz I remember when I first met you
(1:03:30) you were the first person to introduce gold to me as an as the as a a store of value not as an investment I think people need to always understand that like like is that’s how is that still how you position Gold store of value I it’s losing it to me but yeah that’s what it was it’s losing it well if you just look at the ETFs that just came out the the gold ETFs are getting uh they’re losing um investment if you look at just the amount invested in Gold ETFs as the Bitcoin ETF that were’re just five or
(1:03:57) six weeks in they’re coming down in in uh the amount of Investments they’re holding and the Bitcoin one’s like exploding right so is that just partly a shift people are like to raise money for the Bitcoin they want to divest some gold I think so like a lot of investors to me if they were investing in gold they were probably in the store of value Camp because why else would you have gold unless you thought maybe it stores your value and then there’s a to me what’s a better store of value Bitcoin
(1:04:25) comes out and now I can buy as an ETF within my 401k if I’m in the US which I couldn’t until this year just a few weeks ago I’ll reallocate like I’ve seen the you know you look at the comand annual growth rate of of Bitcoin and as January 28th 2024 this year if you go back four years it’s 46% compound annual growth rate like that’s that’s you can’t deny that that’s an incredible growth rate so like if you a sophisticated investor just looking at numbers and you had your gold and you
(1:04:56) had it as a store of value and you consider Bitcoin a new store of value you’d probably want to reallocate some of your gold into Bitcoin and I was a big gold guy because of the store of value thing for sure um but the store of value like the history of money is that to me technology is constantly changing what money is and we are at this weird point in history where technology is in the middle of changing what a good money is again and most people won’t see it until 20 or 30 years pass and they’ll
(1:05:28) look back on this moment going oh my gosh like I guess Bitcoin really did do something interesting so business case is there for it now it does seem like we’re you know since came out in 2009 we’re now 2024 I remember I thought it was a tulip and it was going to die I remember when it went yeah I thought I would dismiss I’m like what is this garbage like I’m I’ll come out with the Rockstar coin how about that you know I just didn’t understand the characteristics of Bitcoin at all I didn’t understand that there was an
(1:05:55) asset a digital asset and that it was a network so I didn’t understand that Bitcoin was really two things in one um and I just dismissed it and then in 2020 is when I went down the rabbit hole and I freaked out and I realized I was wrong and uh started paying very close to it attention to it and now I can’t stop thinking about it because I I do believe it’s the Apex monetary predator and I do believe that it’s going to be a network that sucks in a lot of value and when Network effects begin they are very difficult to stop so by
(1:06:29) way of example I would share with you Voiceover IP Voiceover IP came across with tcpip or the internet and it almost destroyed the phone companies the phone companies as they exist today the mobile phone companies only exist because they sell data they’re not selling anymore like Bell’s not selling landlines anymore so this new network came in and uh destroyed an ex existing model and those businesses all had to change like dominant businesses with with all you’re talking about Bell Canada Rogers these
(1:07:03) companies all had freak out moments that had to change and um I just see it now happening on the monetary side that there’s a network an open- Source protocol it’s permissionless The Ledger on it is immutable um it’s changing things again where now the banking system is going to have its freakout moment as more and more monetary value gets sucked into to this network and to me it seems inevitable I know for many people that would sound like it’s crazy but to me it seems inevitable and that’s
(1:07:33) why it’s kind of captured my interest and then if you look at compound annual growth rates now with some history it’s just remarkable like it’s it’s kind of it it it makes you question like what are you investing in like why aren’t you paying more attention to this thing you know the whole Jour my own journey is like your life your terms you know we talked about Rockstar and stuff but really like I just want to live my life on my own terms and leave me alone mhm and that’s what got me into real estate
(1:07:59) now there’s this other thing that’s just kind of got my attention and you can’t stop thinking about it once you kind of go down the rabbit hole or when it’s dangerous it is dangerous suck you in it’s a Time suck yeah I don’t know you’re pretty you’re pretty good defending your time but that one’s that one’s probably a tough one that one’s tough especially now cuz I must be yeah like I must be thousands of hours in now so so yeah it’s it’s a tough one it’s a
(1:08:22) tough one yeah it’s actually one of the it’s sounds stupid I say it this way it’s one of my biggest disappointments of Co because the lockdowns meant that we couldn’t all be in the gym together yeah and then when I got back in the gym you guys were already like like a couple thousand dollar ahead of me on bitcoin I’m like I’m like f i i loost i i had all this opportunity cost I I could have made so much more money if not for Co I remember when I had my moment I was sitting in the office because our office
(1:08:54) was open but it was on lockdowns but we were legally allowed to be open and it was me and Nick and one other person the three of us and I had the moment where it all just made sense for me and I ran to Nick’s office and I’m like I was so wrong on bitcoin we have to get into this and you’re right it was just at that moment where none of us were hanging out together um and so I didn’t see you to like I was so when you had that moment it probably like I was like four months behind like in back corner
(1:09:18) had gone around yeah that was a pretty important four months yeah damn it so damn you okay it’s got a lot more to go every you’re good you’re good uh where can where was where’s a good starting point for anyone to learn about Bitcoin CU I you were the one that got me to read the Bitcoin standard by yeah I guess it just depends what your background is like yeah if you are into economics and money and you have a little bit of History um reading about that stuff the Bitcoin standard by safine amuse is probably the best start
(1:09:46) the first four chapters or 72 pages of that book laid down in a beautiful case uh for it if you want a shorter thing there’s uh a medium article by VJ boyapati and it’s called the bullish case for Bitcoin so if you just Google like the bullish case for Bitcoin VJ um you will find that Medium article he actually turned it into a book now as well but it’s it’s originally a medium article that is an easy read that lays out a wonderful description of what Bitcoin is both the digital asset and the network component of it and how to
(1:10:17) think about it so I think that would be like a really really good entry point into it and then of course Jeff Boo’s book really kind of connected the thoughts for me because he doesn’t talk about Bitcoin but in his book the price of tomorrow he starts outlining um technology productivity gains and how that works in a Fiat based debt-based money system and once you read that book it really connects a lot of things together and uh that that to me is if you’re not into the money side of Bitcoin but you just want to understand
(1:10:48) what’s going on in the world with technology yeah with technology Tech yeah that that would be a good read so if you’re a tech guy yeah me too but again it’s it’s more of like a macro book in general yeah totally y I think he us word this is why we get along yeah yeah for sure yeah macro understand macro you read this I think that’s why I like Bitcoin so much is like there’s just so many layers to it it just uh yeah it’s a remarkable thing like I really feel like fortunate to be able to be here at this moment in
(1:11:18) time for sure and Bitcoin standard I thought was a wonderful history lesson of nothing else even if you don’t like the Bitcoin orrect just history of money yeah it gives you like a context or a framework of how to think about things seashells yeah uh copper coins Stones silver how silver got killed by gold yeah stock to flow ratios how do they work yeah how and the the ultimate like you know there can only be one yeah there’s a line in that book it’s page the the top sentence on page 34 is this your Bible you have like all highlighted
(1:11:46) and yeah probably yeah I’ve read it a few times the top the top uh I think it’s there’s a new edition so it might not be page 34 anymore but page 34 the top sentence on that page basically the sentence uh the you know the idea behind the sentence is you can ignore Bitcoin but it’s at your own Peril because the hardest form of money always wins yeah so it’s like you can why I said there can only be one yeah so like you can choose to ignore Bitcoin and laugh it off but just know that your purchasing power in Bitcoin
(1:12:19) terms is dying over time so you can ignore it but you’re doing yourself an injustice at this to IGN it and we’re not saying load up no you should have some exposure yes everyone should have a little exposure yes you’re laughing you’re smiling at me yeah what whatever’s right for you have 2% 5% something I don’t know it’s just everyone’s different like like we said it’s like real estate everyone’s different what’s right for me is not right for you it’s not right for
(1:12:46) whoever’s listening it’s just you’re everyone’s on their own path you know so yeah yeah I’m I’m yeah I’m a I’m a bitcoiner now can we talk about marketing sure because part so again I told I told you I I like I study both how to make money and how people lose money so I I I dig into how these like recent bankruptcies I dig into I I research like what happened what did they do how did they raise all this money sorts of things so for example like the the folks who are in Northern Ontario who recently uh going
(1:13:23) through bankruptcy credit bankruptcy protection uh like for example it’s quite obvious just actually just a little bit of clicking that they for example they bought hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers oh jeez right okay so stuff like that and like to me like I’ve been around long enough to know when someone’s bought just when they have absurd numbers of of whatever followers I guess or or yeah or some even if someone even old old school is someone that had like an enormous email database but they didn’t build it
(1:13:53) themselves I know I know they bought it right this no different but you know ever since I’ve known you and then you introduced the world the world of Dan Kennedy to me which I greatly appreciate someone just recently complemented my Marketing Systems which awesome which I largely borrowed from yeah from yourself and and this fits into the whole your whole abundance mindset I don’t know if I said on the recording yet did I say on the recording yet like dreams so big that everyone else’s dream can fit
(1:14:19) within yours right because yeah you and Nick are incredibly transparent and everything you do is basically available to we try to be yeah yeah yeah and where was I going oh yes so I’ll just say like you guys seem to have done everything the right way you only have 20,000 Instagram followers yeah yeah I know how hard you have to worked for it you didn’t buy that no no and that’s largely my son who’s taking our content and doing stuff with it but yeah yeah no we didn’t buy it no and I don’t want too much too much attention
(1:14:53) on Instagram cuz just from my own experience my email database is what converts sure for sure yeah can we talk about that is that is that still where things are is that still is still building the email database is that still a priority or is it should you focus on your Tik Tok okay so when it comes to marketing the way I think about it is remember my life’s kind of motto is your life your terms I want to live my life in the way I want to live it and marketing so why we talk about real estate and that I’m a
(1:15:22) Believer in real estate is because the leverage of real estate gets me Financial gains that are enough that are going to allow me to live life or help me at least live life on my turns the reason we talked about Bitcoin is similar reasons the reason I like marketing so much is because if you understand marketing you can build a life on your terms because I found in business very few people know how to get a new customer they have an idea they can rent a place they can create letterhead they can create a website so
(1:15:52) if you understand the principles of marketing you are like going to do what really well in whatever business you’re going to open whether it’s a car wash a restaurant or real estate investor and the principles of a marketing are to your email question to build a database of people that have in some way shape or form raised their hand and identified themselves as someone that’s kind of sort of interested in you and what you have to offer and the best way for me to get people to raise their hand and
(1:16:20) identify themselves is by getting them to share their email address with you so yeah to answer your question email is still amazing because you own the email address on Instagram Twitter Youtube Tik Tok those companies control the users that are subscribed or are following you whereas an email you own that email address so you get to email it you have to might be fight with a CRM system to like get your email out and there’s like spam complaints and different things if you’re doing it incorrectly But
(1:16:49) ultimately you own the email that’s a very powerful thing to me in business the relationship that you have have with your database is the most valuable thing you can have because there’s going to be some people who love Irwin and what Irwin talks about so much that it doesn’t matter if irn goes and starts a business that’s you know you can go start a restaurant tomorrow but you’ve established a relationship with the people they trust you and if you’re going to start a restaurant they’re
(1:17:15) going to come and eat at your restaurant because of who you are and what you represent to them so the a business owner’s relationship with their database is the number one asset that they can have it’s not the office space they’re in it’s not the name of their company it’s that and so few people understand that and an email address is the best way to build it then you can layer in physical mailing addresses phone numbers if you want to start texting people you can start doing all these weird weird
(1:17:40) and wonderful things but email is an absolutely critical way it is the best thing to be building because if you get shut down of Instagram you’re still going to have your email addresses or when uh musically when that went down I remember that was a huge such not a music guy but sure okay I believe you was but then was was what was Tik Tok before musically was sorry was Tik Tok musically before I think that’s what happened I think what that but then all these influencers they’ve lost their million subscribers or whatever yeah and
(1:18:11) then it’s on you once you have a database the onus is on you to prove to prove that you are sharing valuable information like if everyone just sped out to your email list garbage people are eventually just going to unsubscribe and you’re gone so like now I like that relationship share part it’s like oh the onus is on me the business owner to share such good value that people are going to keep interest in me and then every once in a while you’re going to ask to do business and because you consistently offer good value people are
(1:18:38) eventually going to come to trust you and with trust they’re going to come to like you and when you make an offer to do business with you some people are going to raise their hands and say I’ll take the next step and I’ll proceed to do business with you and it’s just to me the most wonderful way to do business is that build a database of people who are in your topic or area of expertise offer a lot of value follow up consistent consistently with that comes trust and the uh the person who’s reading your
(1:19:05) information or following you they’re going to like you then the ultimate sale is easier so it’s it’s just like a beautiful thing and to me marketing once you understand the principles of marketing you can go to Texas tomorrow use the exact same principles that you’re doing Irwin here in Ontario to build what you want to do in Texas and it’s going to work M just like real estate has principles to it marketing is going to have principles to it so it’s total freedom like it’s it’s it’s the
(1:19:31) biggest thing and nobody believes me and understands it and it seems like in the real estate World everyone just runs around on Instagram trying to get followers and everyone just yeah it it just seems like everybody you know what I guess the way to look at it is there are principles to anything there are strategies and tactics and in the marketing world everybody plays with the tactics everybody does like the quick new thing on Instagram that’s a tactic the quick new thing on Tik Tok that’s a tactic the quick new thing on Twitter
(1:19:59) it’s a tactic very few people have a strategy around their marketing and very few people understand the principles of what they’re doing and I think what Nick and I have done over the years is we tried to understand the principles of what works in marketing then Implement a strategy for it and only then choose the tactics we’re going to use in that strategic implementation I think the I think that where people most fail is like anything we like we call it the content treadmill yeah like the regular communication with your email
(1:20:29) database minimum a week yeah uh I think we’re two I think you guys are like three times a week and that’s that is the content trial you have to keep MH keep in touch with your database and then some some of these people you call as well so like oh that’s work like yes it is work but this is how you get results yeah it’s called sales yeah if you have a business like if I had a Subway sandwich shop that was next to subway station that was was really busy I probably didn’t have to do the content
(1:20:57) Triad Mill because people are going to be walking by every day and some of them are going to be hungry and they’re going to sell them a sub that’s something corporate has done your marketing for you yeah there’s that there’s that to yeah so but let me but even if I wasn’t to go to the corporate level if I was just a noname sandwich shop in front of a busy place I’m going to get some business but when you’re a service-based c uh company and you don’t have potential customers walking by your
(1:21:20) physical location well then you better be doing something to get attention and that’s why you have to produce content so you do a really good job at this you’re putting out emails and podcast I know you are in videos and you’re hosting class and you’re doing all these wonderful things and that’s how you get people to see what you’re doing so it is a Content treadmill in business especially service based businesses but there’s no really other way to get people to kind of walk by your store
(1:21:45) unless you’re putting out content if you’re putting out content you have people kind of walking by your store just virtually mhm you know so yeah it’s tough but I mean the opportunity for anyone listening who does the content is incredible because no one’s really doing it yeah everyone’s just kind of like half people can’t stay with this no like how many podcasters we know just even our in our friends group who haven’t made it past a year yeah let alone six months yeah yeah are there a bunch yeah
(1:22:14) I don’t even track yeah yeah but I guess that makes sense people start and then kind of give up on it yeah and that’s where there’s a there’s a time and place for giving up but those who can or just even just keep like keep shifting like for example no no different than my my investment Journey like it started with single families did some non-conforming multies and then the city was cracking down so then we went to student rental because we could get it done pretty easily and we can conform with all with
(1:22:39) all bylaws and whatnot and then duplexes CU like oh because student rentals the financing was difficult so then legal duplexes oh completely clean for financing then do that and then like oh do is cash flow enough oh we got a garden Suite now right so but again sticking with you got to roll with the punches yes yeah and then but I’ve been punched too hard so I’m going going south yeah yeah well you’re just changing your approach and I’m sure there’s listen there’s going to be punches for you in Texas
(1:23:05) let’s face it it’s like real estate like there’s always punches I mean no worse guns yeah yeah yeah I never really thought about that we were talking about it earlier yeah I don’t know I’m not too scared of the guns you brought up the guns in Texas I don’t know I’ve researched it too much you dig into Vic I dig into my personal safety okay I do have to admit the last time I was in Florida I Hon the horn at somebody and I just then I remembered I was in Florida I’m like holy [ __ ] duck I don’t know
(1:23:30) what’s going to happen but uh they have a gun in their cuz when I was in Texas like I did not see anyone carrying a gun law enforcement so I was thinking I was thinking about it like if it was me it be such a hindrance to like to like wake up every morning and Holster up or whatever and then like there’s all these private businesses that don’t allow open carry right so you can’t you’re not supposed to carry the gun and so so yeah I guess everyone’s gun is in their glove box I guess I remember going into a
(1:23:55) restaurant long time ago at a marketing conference in Scottsdale Arizona and the restaurant said I I don’t know if that’s a conceal in K State or whatever you call it but the restaurant the entrance said this is a like a No Gun Zone please leave your guns like in the car or at home or not in the restaurant and I’m like this is wild I’ve never seen this kind of sign as you enter a restaurant before so uh I guess I guess in that state maybe you can have concealed weapons on you um recently I was
(1:24:23) somewhere was it last year I was in Arizona maybe it was in Arizona I saw somebody holstering a gun walking around but uh yeah different uh we we need to talk about the conference your sorry your member event it’s not even really a member event because you do allow Outsiders yeah we kind of usually have like about 50 to 100 tickets for people who aren’t clients of ours so not many no yeah no um so it’s uh yeah it sounds like a lot to some people but there’s sometimes over a thousand people yeah
(1:24:49) last time was our biggest one we hit 1100 people um this started you like this started with our account you know how this like started with our accountant who would come out and just talk about like a tax tips for Real Estate Investors and someone was like can you do that again and it just rolled um so it started with 50 or 60 people at the Holiday Inn in the basement of the Holiday Inn at Bronte in qw in Oakville but anyway uh yeah Saturday April 6 will be the next one we haven’t released the the um speakers yet but um there’s going
(1:25:15) to be a thousand people there and the sponsors are always uh great people and uh yeah because you don’t let anyone sponsor I know yeah yeah yeah yeah it’s it’s yeah we kind of are a bit chosy on that and uh yeah it’s fun so the next one’s Saturday April 6th and if you’re following us in any capacity you’ll hear about it because we make a big uh Big Show about it um and yeah we’re excited for it it’s nice to get everyone together it’s like you know how it is with Real Estate Investors we don’t all
(1:25:40) get together it’s not like going to the gym every day where you cross path with people or the your favorite restaurant you see the it’s a bit of a reunion where we can all sometimes just commiserate like about interest rates and like the tenant board and sometimes it’s like a support network you know when things are going great you’re cheering and when things aren’t going the best you’re kind of just supporting each other so to me it’s an important event and uh we have fun with it you know last time we had Jeff Booth
(1:26:05) out there that was a really good talk and uh this time I I think we have some great people and uh I’m just not going to share just because we haven’t put it out yet but yeah Saturday April 6th you’ll hear about it yeah if anyone enjoyed this podcast for example like what we just talked about today you’ll do basically in a longer format that day we’ll talk about macro I’m sure we’re going to talk about Bitcoin yeah we’re going to talk about development or like yeah we’re going to dive into the
(1:26:28) Ontario Market pretty deep this time yeah and also very micro level you’re talking about specific markets correct like what specific rental properties are doing correct right you get you know go from the again you go from like the global all the way down to the property right yeah numbers profile neighborhood yeah right yeah and I think we like to have fun with it I think this this this time the theme is going to be Indiana Jones last time Matrix is it I haven’t seen anything yet I can’t wait not yet
(1:26:52) we haven’t released anything but Anthony on the team has an old motorcycle that kind of remind us of an Indiana Jones kind of motorcycle so we think we’re going to try and tell the hall that it’s not operating even though it totally is and it’s just a prop we’re going to try and bring the motorcycle to the event I want to see you Nick crack the whip on stage I want to hear it from the back of the room like oh my God yeah yeah yeah we’ll have some fun with we are ordering some whips and some Indiana Jones hats for
(1:27:17) those are toy ones I want to see a real I don’t know is it a bull whip I I want to hear it I want to see someone crack it on stage even better if you have a Target to hit with like a oh man and everyone I just want to thank you like thank you for supporting us and being part of this you know Journey you’ve uh you know you you came on um and have done your own thing in an incredible way so it’s been awesome for us to watch what you’ve done as well so congratulations on everything you’ve done and it’ll be uh when you’re the
(1:27:45) mayor of Austin or San Antonio or whatever you’re going to have to let us know I don’t want to get shot at but you guys took a flyer on me because I don’t think I’ve mentioned that in a long time cuz uh at the time I was the only person to join the team who was not a member mhm yeah yeah wow really was that the case and I think I’m the only one that’s worked out yeah maybe anyone else is it CU actually it’s a rule it’s a rule now you may not join the team unless you’re a member yeah we
(1:28:09) have some people on the team that have been friends of mine uh that have joined Rockstar now over the years that’s different you didn’t know me yeah no we didn’t yeah yeah yeah you’re right you might be the only one irn yeah set the president set yeah cuz again like many people didn’t stay I think almost nobody stayed so yeah I probably G gave the wrong expectation let’s let everybody else in oh my God this is terrible it’s not a numbers game no yeah yeah y yeah we’re kind of choosy who we yeah we’re not a
(1:28:42) bro Rockstar is not a brokerage that is looking to attract a lot of Agents we’re kind of consider ourselves a boutique place that’s doing a pretty specific activity and um yeah and certain people fit into it and certain people don’t but we’re not trying to get like a million real estate agents that’s like the last thing we want right we’re really trying to work with investors and and you know build something and we’re not just trying to talk about real estate we’re trying to talk about all aspects of Life how to
(1:29:09) make it all work yeah and it’s a complicated business and there’s lots of rules and stuff we have to follow I can’t imagine having to hurt all these cats and lots of personalities yeah lot personality Tom I like to give my guess always the final word like anything in general you want to say anything anything don’t e just don’t say don’t eat the ell you know what you saying that you you mentioned something about dreaming big and stuff earlier I somebody had a big impact on me once I was a author and then I I um and I
(1:29:39) forget the name of the book and uh in the book it basically said if you want to have a big impact in your life then you need to impact your community and if you want to have a big impact on your community you need to have an impact on your Province and if you want to have an impact on your Province you need to have an impact on the whole country basically saying that like if you really wanted to leave a lasting impact of what you’re doing you have to think bigger and Beyond yourself one level higher and
(1:30:16) it’s kind of always stuck with me like what can we do as a business or in life with my relationships where I can impact people Beyond me directly and it’s just something we try to live by by doing different little things and it might sound cheesy but to me it’s like you know we’re trying to impact people and we’re trying to do it at a level that’s beyond us and it’s forcing us to think a little bit big in our small little business we are trying to think big you know so it’s something that stuck with
(1:30:46) me yeah I think you had a lot of impact yeah you probably have a couple hundred million years in your among your clientele like so that’s that’s like how many people can say that yeah yeah yeah but thanks everyn appreciate it man thank you thank you thank you for watching if you want to learn how to invest in real estate from scratch my team teaches beginners how to use the number one investment strategy that I personally use in a virtual free training class every month go to investor training.com my guests and if you’re
(1:31:25) just starting out feel free to ask questions and comment below and I do the best to answer each of those comments and questions myself again if you’re ready to learn the nitty-gritty about real estate investing from a professional investor register for our next virtual class that’s at investor tr.com
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UPCOMING EVENTS
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with! Build connections with empire builders and trailblazers at our iWIN events.
BEFORE YOU GO…
Before you go, if you’re interested in what kind of properties I am looking at in the landlord friendly states of the USA please go to www.iwin.sharesfr.com for what I consider the best investment for most Canadians, most of the time.
I’ve been investing in Ontario since 2005 and while it’s been a great, great run. I started out buying properties in the 100,000s and now it’s $800,000 to $1,000,000. How much higher can it go? I don’t know
To me, the remaining potential for appreciation does not match the risk hence I’m advising my clients to look to where one can find rental properties that are affordable range of $150,000 to $350,000 US$, with rents that range from $1,400 to 2,600/month plus utilities. As many Canadians recognize, these numbers will be positive cash flow and are night and day compared to anything locally. Plus the landlord has all of the rights, no rent control, and income is US dollars which are better than Canadian dollars.
If you don’t believe me, US dollars are better than Canadian dollars, go ask 100 non-Canadians which currency they prefer to be paid in.
So to regain control of your retirement planning. Go to www.iwin.sharesfr.com and check out what great cash flow properties are available in the USA.
The best part is, my US investments will be much more passive compared to by local investments as I’m hiring an asset manager called SHARE to hand hold me through the entire process. As their client and shareholder, Share will source me quality income properties, help me with legal structure and taxes, they manage the property manager and insurance provider while passing down to me preferred rates so I save both time and money.
Share will even tell me when to strategically refinance or sell. SHARE can even support investors all over the country for proper diversification hence my plan is to own in Tennessee, Georgia, and Texas. Share is like my joint venture partner but I only have to pay them fees while I keep 100% ownership and control.
If your goal in investing is to increase cash flow, I don’t know of a better strategy for most Canadians most of the time. One last time that’s www.iwin.sharesfr.com to see what boring, cash flowing real estate investing can look like on your path towards financial peace.
This is how I’m going to make real estate investing great again for my family and hope you choose the same. Till next time!
Sponsored by:
This episode is brought to you by me! We don’t have sponsors for this show. I only share with you services owned by my wife Cherry and me. Real estate investing is a staple in my life and allowed me to build wealth and, more importantly, achieve financial peace about the future, knowing our retirement is taken care of and my kids will be able to afford a home when they grow up. If you, too, are interested in my systematic strategy to implement the #1 investment strategy, the same one pretty much all my guests are doing themselves, then go visit www.infinitywealth.ca/events and register for our next event.
Till next time, just do it because I believe in you.
Erwin
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Disclaimer:
As a committed advocate for transparent and responsible real estate investment, I want to openly share my involvement with SHARE SFR (Single Family Rental) as an Advisor. I hold an equity position in this company and receive a referral commission for clients I introduce to their services. My endorsement of their business model – focusing on direct ownership of positive cash flow income properties – is consistent with my own personal investing since 2005, is based not only on a professional assessment but also on my personal experience and belief in their approach. Please note that while I stand behind my recommendations, it is crucial for each individual to conduct their own due diligence and consider their unique circumstances before making any investment decisions. As always, my priority is to provide you with honest, insightful, and practical real estate investment education.
