** Transcript Auto-generated**

00:00:08 Erwin

Are we in a buyers?

00:00:09 Erwin

Market why more landlords are converting units into short term rentals, seeing as she’s making apartment building by buying harder, especially refinance part and lessons.

00:00:20 Erwin

From Engine 30, Airbnb.

00:00:22 Erwin

All this and more on the truth about real estate investment show for Canadians. I’m your host German sito of the number 81 ranked business podcast in all of iTunes Globally. Somehow we cracked algorithm and we achieved top top like .1% status. This show is for open minded individuals who love to learn and open to questioning norms and authorities including.

00:00:42 Erwin

Whatever has been sold by influencers in and those in the investment community.

00:00:46 Erwin

I see all those emails and Facebook ads about courses for college rental, investing or short term rental or mid term rental with promises of easy 6 figure cash flow. So when I read these things I put in calls to my friends including Jonathan and my who are full time in the same space and I asked them for their experience and my search for the truth about real estate.

00:01:08 Erwin

Hence mine. Jonathan, you’re here today on the show as they managed like. Like I said, repeat it a couple of times. They want a couple and they’re total portfolio management includes 30 air B.

00:01:19 Erwin

They’ll be on today’s show before we get to them. The City of Toronto has a $1.5 billion shortfall, and if you’ve been following the news, they’re not the only missing miscibility with financial trouble. I’m seeing news across the country with above inflation, property tax increases expected, with more on the way.

00:01:41 Erwin

Town of Markham. I’m not sure why only telling Markham is, uh, making the news. I think maybe because they’re the only ones who are projecting further ahead a little bit. But anyways. And the town markets staff 2023 budget.

00:01:53 Erwin

Overview They proposed an A tax increase of 93.3%. That’s right, 93. So it’s almost 100% starting next year to 2026, so about three-year period, the proposed tax increase is almost 100% and they’re blaming the Bill 23, the more homes.

00:02:13 Erwin

Little faster act.

00:02:15 Erwin

City of Hamilton is closer to home for me is already considering a 14% property tax increase next year, which translates to about $500 per house that my clients and I own. On top of that, my student rentals went up $500.00, so that’s an increase between tax and property, between tax and insurance is the increase of $1000 per year.

00:02:35 Erwin

But cash were already tight. Many properties out there, and many people are negative, with rates already out of rent control, so we can’t pass these costs on without a lot of pain. Above guideline increases often take a couple of years, sometimes around 3:00 to get done, and even then tenants and to fight them.

00:02:52 Erwin

Following the news through our red stripes all over Toronto for above time rental increases anyways, this is a tough business to be in, hence more landlords quote UN quote. More landlords are converting units into shorter rentals. End Quote is the latest article on Bloomberg Canada and the reason our guests our guests are here today.

00:03:12 Erwin

What’s real estate?

00:03:13 Erwin

Going to do with rising costs and long term tenants rents capped naturally, they’ll pick toward the RB for the usually higher income and avoidance of the landlord.

00:03:24 Erwin

Board where my experience it takes about seven months just to get a hearing. Real estate owners, they don’t feel they have enough control and they don’t feel protected by the laws in our systems and in the same article and they kill University professor who is a chair in urban governance has reached says shows that short term rentals increase.

00:03:44 Erwin

Housing costs and recommends that cities with housing charges and short term rentals, except for those in the islands, only primary residences. What’s not mentioned by the same university professor is the effect on the 500,000 or so new international students that came to Canada last year.

00:04:02 Erwin

This year we’re looking to get over well over 600,000 international visa students and many of them attend post secondary schools like McGill U, and you better believe they have an effect on housing costs as well. In my experience, I have a couple of national students myself in houses and they’re from minor. My students are from India and they all work in the restaurant.

00:04:22 Erwin

On the street, their job is actually as cooks, similar to so the story that I see with my smiling experience is very similar to what I’m reading.

00:04:31 Erwin

Media now the testament tenant crisis is legit again, article to the Bloomberg article in the short notes on to next is seeming she is making Burr apartment strategy is much more difficult that’s buy, renovate, refinance, rent out repeat. So I can’t find anything online on this news.

00:04:51 Erwin

I spoke to three investor friends, each of whom owned millions upon millions. Several of these folks, they buy apartment buildings, they own apartment buildings, but basically CMHC on refinance wants to see the funds going into buying more rental stock or improving existing rental buildings.

00:05:09 Erwin

They don’t just want to see equity takeouts to repair shareholders or repay the real estate master. Add that one must already be with an approved approved lender in order refinance. So private lending or render take back mortgages, those investors will need to will need to be with an approved bridge lender. Often they might.

00:05:29 Erwin

Or require you to be with that approved lender for two years before you able to refinance. So leading to that is meaning more hoops and more cost. This is a big deal to many small real estate masters since cash flow is extremely limited. Think there’s actually much at all in apartment building investing since.

00:05:47 Erwin

Cap rates are low and interest rates are already high. Small investment they tend to depend on the refinance money for their to cover their daily expenses in their living. So apartment building investors please keep an eye on the space. Uh, it sounds like CMHC wants to focus more on developments that creates more housing supply.

00:06:05 Erwin

On that personal investment fund, my flight to Atlanta.

00:06:07 Erwin

Booked to tour, some properties meet with property managers. One of them has 800 doors under management, which is unheard of here in Ontario. Probably BC two, unless it’s a institutional investor like elite and it’s an in house PR.

00:06:22 Erwin

Of course, like in Hamilton, Effort Trust has something like that has 800. I don’t know thousands of doors, but they only manage their own. I’m talking about property management companies that manage for other customers. So learning what the states has been very fascinating when the laws favor the landlord, more and more law and pop investors own rental properties. So.

00:06:42 Erwin

That’s about the.

00:06:43 Erwin

Investment is very common in those states for my for my research. Hence there’s need for a lot for large property management firms and these property management firms can actually make a living, can do good business because the laws.

00:06:57 Erwin

You are not in favor of the tenants. Clientele is not at risk of being uh without rent for months while they battle things out in the land at the landlord tenant board. I do. Don’t start investing in the USA continues. I’ve printed off my old friend friends. We’ll see. Vestment network friends. You’ll remember the property gold mine scorecard. So I printed.

00:07:17 Erwin

Well, goes off. I’m going to do my diligence. The old school way, and make sure I put I check.

00:07:22 Erwin

Off all the rights.

00:07:24 Erwin

Make sure I complete my diligence correctly in again to look for the best areas to invest in the United States of America. There’s no doubt in my mind, so I love Canada. I love being loving, loving here. It’s meant so much to me and my family to be, to be Canadians. It’s no doubt in my mind that the Golden Horseshoe of Ontario will increase in price when interest rates are cut.

00:07:45 Erwin

But the same will be happening as well and if you buy it correctly in the US, So Shane and I are selling some of our properties here in Canada here locally and we allocate some of that capital payoff.

00:07:55 Erwin

Let’s buy some and then buy some houses that cash flow and and landlord friendly states using easy commercial style mortgages. So this is something that’s new to me. I did not know that these that you could get commercial style mortgages in the states. So qualification is way easier than my experience here. Institutional grade property managers exist, they’ll manage my properties for me and there’s no right.

00:08:17 Erwin

I haven’t been into 600, but real estate investing in a really long time, way more excited about this than garden suites. To be honest, we’re going to make real estate vesting great again and I’ll bring you the listener along for our journey if you like to learn more, how can other Canadians are diversified with their portfolios online? Only Island meeting is Tuesday, October 17th.

00:08:37 Erwin

We have us invest in the expert, Andrew Kim, who will be on the show. He owns properties in Sunbelt states like Florida, Texas, Georgia, New York and we’ll also have my old friends and columns. So if you’re interested in.

00:08:51 Erwin

What’s the stock worth? Stocks? My old friends in cones will be detailing how he cashed those over $10,000 per month with the proceeds of his real estate portfolio after he took profits. Like we’re doing all of its real estate in 23 one, he now earns and passive income as both a realtor and also via state Stock ETF.

00:09:11 Erwin

And high yield ETFs. So he’s gonna get into more detail into that as well as sharing about how he’s going to save a lot of his costs by being at one of these newest tech based real estate brokerages. That’s all on the Tuesday nights then following. That’s all in October.

00:09:30 Erwin

17th Tuesday night and then immediately the following Saturday morning. We are hosting our first ever investing in US real estate workshop. Our guest speakers are from share who are Canadian, so we have their Chief Investment officer and to be true we have their CFO as well. Their CFO is a Sir Charter professional accountant in both Canada.

00:09:52 Erwin

Dimitri beside Chief Investment Officer, he has experience managed acquiring and managing over 20,000 units in Sunbelt states. So and also my good friend Scott billion Loveland City who’s a dual citizen and so he’s a guy who, yes, we’re us Canadians were some mortgages on income.

00:10:11 Erwin

Properties in the US.

00:10:12 Erwin

So the costs are nominal, it’s less than $40 because my friends from share immensity are donating their time to educate all of us on how we can make real estate investing great again without rent control without the landlord tenant board.

00:10:25 Erwin

We’re almost sold at the in person.

00:10:27 Erwin

Venue. I think we maybe have three tickets left. We have a capable 100 tickets in total, so.

00:10:32 Erwin

We’re getting close to that.

00:10:33 Erwin

Already, I think we’re getting close to. I think we have sold out about 80 tickets already. So do not wait. I have links in the show notes for both the island meeting and for the US Investing Workshop. You don’t want to miss it.

00:10:44 Erwin

On since we.

00:10:45 Erwin

Show we have my old friends, my mind, the Yuan and Jonathan Lim, whose travel agency business was hit pretty hard by COVID. But thanks to their experience as early adopter B host, they were successfully able to pivot into short term rental management and ownership. Specifically, B now the couple owns and manages.

00:11:05 Erwin

A total of 30 everyday properties from Muskoka colleges, two hours north of Toronto to downtown Toronto, condominiums to recreational properties in Niagara.

00:11:15 Erwin

They have quite a bit of experience on what works, what doesn’t work, the good, the bad and the ugly. The truth about short term rentals is that they are a hospitality business. That means a lot of customer service cleaners are absolutely critical to the business. Location and amenities mean the difference between success and failure. It’s totally doable. We’ve had several guests on the show.

00:11:35 Erwin

More success.

00:11:36 Erwin

Doing this but it does come down to education and execution. Hence my Jonathan are here to share how to do it, tell like it is including the mistakes we made when they first listened, their property, their own home. Sorry, their own home on air B. It’s actually a pretty funny story. Again, they were early adopters before. Before many of us knew what everybody was.

00:11:56 Erwin

So they’re going to share how they’ve used Airbnb to fund their travel, what types of properties to buy red flags of for potential guests and games, especially scams. I’m sure you’ve read about scams in the in the paper, they’re pretty awful. And then they answer the question, should you be buying a property today for the purposes of the air?

00:12:16 Erwin

So before buying a recreational property course or property, I highly recommend you giving this episode list. Please enjoy the show all the information on the show notes the company has told Short Stay International and that’s www.short stays IMTL, which is short for international.com you can find them on Instagram.

00:12:37 Erwin

And also if you could be so kind if you’re interested in becoming a host minded post her referral link for every B which gets you which saves you some money and and it’s all the short notes please enjoy the show. Hi my. Hi Jonathan. Thanks for coming in.

00:12:53 Erwin

How did you get started? In short term property management?

00:12:57 Speaker 3

The short story of it is we actually tested out managing our own property during Airbnb years back. I would say about 8-10 years back. One day I remember I’m in the travel business and I’m always online searching for different pool apps and one day I was doing a presentation on like the online world.

00:13:18 Speaker 3

And there is the Airbnb app and what it’s doing. I think a lot of people in Canada doesn’t even know about Airbnb.

00:13:24 Speaker 3

Then and when we talked about it, it was so interesting. However, we never experienced ebb ourselves, and then I remember one day we took a trip to Montreal and we were about to. It’s a last minute trip and we’re like, let’s look at a hotel. So we went on booking.com.

00:13:39 Speaker 3

And then we’re like, you know what, what are we?

00:13:40 Speaker 4

Why don’t try?

00:13:41 Speaker 3

This Airbnb thing out every I think we should. And so we found a last minute Airbnb that was available.

00:13:47 Speaker 3

We went to.

00:13:48 Speaker 3

Montreal, we got in and the host was really nice. He owned the condo. He doesn’t live there and just throughout the whole process.

00:13:56 Speaker 3

We’re like, oh.

00:13:56 Speaker 3

This is cool. We should.

00:13:57 Speaker 3

Test it out. When we come back home.

00:13:59 Speaker 3

So but we set that, but we never thought about it. I guess a couple of years later, one day we looking to make some extra cash or we were traveling anyways, we weren’t gonna be around and then we.

00:14:11 Speaker 2

We we were traveling like every other month. We take a trip for a long weekend or we take a week. You know, we take off for a week and we only had one kid at the time, so it.

00:14:22 Speaker 2

Was a lot easier to travel and I guess.

00:14:23 Erwin

Yeah, I remember. I remember the emails like you guys are.

00:14:25 Erwin

Doing some pretty skiing and surfing with Mike Major, yeah.

00:14:28 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re doing snowboarding, skiing trips. And we, we would go on all.

00:14:34 Speaker 3

These trips and.

00:14:35 Speaker 3

We’re always looking to be out and about anyways and we thought about it and we’re all about multiple streams of.

00:14:41 Speaker 3

Income. So we’re like, hey.

00:14:42 Speaker 3

There’s people renting out their.

00:14:43 Speaker 3

Own home? I was hesitant at first, right?

00:14:47 Speaker 3

But I was.

00:14:47 Speaker 3

Like let’s test it out. You know, let’s make sure our place we had an apartment in.

00:14:52 Speaker 3

Toronto let’s just clean it up and.

00:14:54 Speaker 3

I remember I put it online while we were still living there because our plan is as soon as someone booked, we’re flexible. We’ll just travel somewhere.

00:15:03 Speaker 4

Whenever it’s someone booked again, we’ll.

00:15:05 Speaker 4

Just go somewhere.

00:15:06 Speaker 4

And that’s our.

00:15:09 Speaker 2

Life I usually find, like really good deals like last minute.

00:15:10 Speaker 2

You can.

00:15:14 Speaker 2

Deals on on flights and.

00:15:15 Speaker 3

Because we didn’t have nine to five jobs, I guess we were flexible in a way where we’re like, you know what if someone booked it then that means time for us to find some place and go. And I remember I would put it on, but back then I was not very familiar with the app. So what happened was.

00:15:31 Speaker 3

I got the listing up and then I swear to you I guess I left it there. It would be like four months gone by and I was telling John, hey, I wonder what happened to you that are listing. I should check cuz I didn’t see any notifications. I guess I had it off. I went in. There’s like 10 different inquiries about my place that I never responded to. So they end up looking somewhere else.

00:15:51

That did not. Oh my God this.

00:15:52 Speaker 3

Thing actually worked. There are lots of people seeing our listing and our inquiry.

00:15:57 Speaker 3

And obviously my response rate tanked so low and I was rated terrible because.

00:16:03 Erwin

You’re not responsive.

00:16:04 Speaker 2

I think some people had even booked and then they’re not getting any check in info and they’re like following up with these Airbnb is like they have cancelled over and and rebooked them in other properties.

00:16:09 Erwin

Right, you.

00:16:10 Speaker 3

Have to cancel them.

00:16:14 Speaker 4

So we we start off as terrible hosts.

00:16:16 Speaker 4

Right. That was like that accent, like.

00:16:18 Speaker 3

Put this listing on.

00:16:19 Speaker 3

And back then, I guess the FBI didn’t have a lot of the same regulations. Now, if things are really easy.

00:16:25 Speaker 3

And anyways, I learned so I.

00:16:26 Speaker 3

Told John all this work.

00:16:27 Speaker 3

So when we’re ready to have our placement it out, we better be like you know on the ball. Like if we’re gonna turn it back on, we have to unlist our property.

00:16:35 Speaker 3

And when we’re ready to have someone to come in, then we turn it on. And then as soon as we turned it on, we had lots of inquiries and people were coming and we were able to accept a few bookings and then basically that’s how we experience Airbnb as a.

00:16:50 Speaker 3

Host for the.

00:16:51 Speaker 3

First time and we continue to do that every time we wanted to travel.

00:16:55 Speaker 3

And then Fast forward to COVID. So right in the beginning of COVID, we had a travel business. And then as COVID.

00:17:04 Speaker 3

Everything was cancelled. Basically. Yeah, we had.

00:17:05 Erwin

Right, you have to.

00:17:06 Speaker 2

Pivot well, imagine March and April of 2020, yeah.

00:17:07 Speaker 3

Zero business.

00:17:11 Erwin

Scary telling.

00:17:13 Speaker 2

Yeah, we we were dealing. We were the people that every angry, angry traveler, you know, that lost their flight or couldn’t book.

00:17:20 Speaker 2

Or cause nobody.

00:17:22 Speaker 2

Was was paying for insurance like, you know, cancellation insurance at that time either. So everybody was calling, our phones were going off the hooks with people just yelling at us because.

00:17:26 Speaker 3

Yeah, I remember.

00:17:31 Speaker 2

You know, where’s our money?

00:17:32 Speaker 2

And you know, we can’t get this flight and we don’t want to travel and you know.

00:17:36 Speaker 3

We don’t wanna get COVID and we had a huge like anniversary group and.

00:17:40 Speaker 3

A wedding group.

00:17:41 Speaker 3

It was like imagine spending tons of time working on these groups already.

00:17:46 Speaker 3

And as soon as.

00:17:47 Erwin

It’s no money’s gonna come in.

00:17:48 Speaker 3

Right, yeah, because the way it works in the travel industry is the money is with the supplier. So back then with with Sunwing. So some wing had it and they get future travel credit. But in terms of our work, we don’t get compensated until someone travel that’s a different industry anyway.

00:18:01 Speaker 2

We were. We were we.

00:18:02 Speaker 2

Were doing destination weddings, so this is not just a family of four, this is. This is.

00:18:08 Speaker 3

100.

00:18:09 Speaker 2

A group of 100 people.

00:18:12 Erwin

Yeah. OK. OK.

00:18:12 Speaker 3

There’s no wrong. You know there’s more.

00:18:14 Speaker 3

To bankruptcy or they’re selling off, but.

00:18:16 Speaker 3

They’re still around.

00:18:17 Speaker 3

And so I remember looking at John and say, well, you know what? I guess we have to figure, what else are we going to do? Right. The travel came to a halt. And I remember I was invited to a cottage up.

00:18:30 Speaker 3

In Blue Mountain.

00:18:32 Speaker 3

A friend of mine that got a new cottage and she’s like, oh, would you be interested in managing this? It’s a bit kind of like it’s.

00:18:39 Speaker 3

An hour. So it’s not too.

00:18:41 Speaker 3

Farber is not close either. And then at that gathering, she had a friend who was a wheelchair that was around as well, too, and the realtor and I met, and the realtor said, you know what?

00:18:53 Speaker 3

We have a bunch of properties to and one of them we want to do Airbnb, but we have no time for Airbnb. We’re so busy. Right? Would you be open to taking it on? I know you share cause they were asking us what we did in the past and we share. We had experience doing Airbnb and we’re like, sure, we actually never thought about it.

00:19:10 Speaker 3

But we’re like, OK, we’ve been able to manage ours. So let’s see how this would work. So we then took on that first property in port credit and that was quite the experience actually, right. We learned quite a bit. It’s one thing to manage your own property cuz you get a say in everything, but it’s another to manage someone else, making sure they get their bottom line.

00:19:30 Speaker 3

Trigger, but there’s limitations that you can.

00:19:32

Right. Well, the.

00:19:33 Speaker 3

Do. Yeah, of course, yeah.

00:19:33 Speaker 2

Learning curve too, right?

00:19:36 Speaker 3

And now you’re trying to figure.

00:19:37 Speaker 3

A team cause you don’t want to be the one doing.

00:19:39 Speaker 3

Everything cause you wanna be.

00:19:40 Speaker 3

Able to add on more properties.

00:19:42 Speaker 3

And then from that one property, things were done very well and I guess she started referring us to other clients and then those clients started referring us. And then before you know it, I think we had about 30 properties, wow listing within like a span of a year.

00:19:58 Speaker 3

And 1/2.

00:19:59 Speaker 3

You were just calling us. They’re like, you know what?

00:20:01 Erwin

Well, that’s explosive growth.

00:20:03 Speaker 3

Yeah, that’s crazy. So there’s a lot of up and down. We kind of took on a lot of different properties, but we also learned which properties.

00:20:11 Speaker 3

Work well which?

00:20:12 Speaker 3

Doesn’t work well. What we want to do as a company, and we did some rebranding. We started off with basically at first it’s just kind of like you know, self-employed. Then we’re like, oh, we should put this under an incorporation. We should run it as.

00:20:24 Speaker 3

A property management.

00:20:25 Speaker 2

Well, we learned we learned how to be interior designers, really bad ones. We learned how to be landscapers. We learned how to be handy men and women, and we kind of wore a lot of.

00:20:36 Speaker 2

Different hats in in.

00:20:37 Speaker 3

And and cleaners. So we learned how to clean properly as well.

00:20:37 Speaker 2

That yeah, right.

00:20:41 Speaker 3

Because there’s different aspect to cleaning and air BBB versus cleaning.

00:20:45 Speaker 3

Regular house.

00:20:47 Speaker 3

Because no matter, like even we hire on other people, I feel we need to kind of know it as well too. And and here we are. So we continue with the business and it’s been interesting.

00:20:57 Erwin

I imagine you should pile it on the kilometers on your cars as.

00:21:00 Erwin

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:02 Speaker 2

Well, that time when we started, we were living downtown and you know, initially we started driving back and forth to Muskoka Blue Mountain. We were cleaning properties up there.

00:21:12 Speaker 2

We would just take the kids with us and we would just, you know, we’d hang out there for a few nights and and clean and then.

00:21:18 Speaker 2

From Mississauga, when?

00:21:19 Speaker 3

Yeah, a lot of.

00:21:19 Speaker 2

We we started in.

00:21:20 Speaker 2

Mississauga we go back and forth all the time.

00:21:22 Speaker 2

To Mississauga, there a lot. Everybody’s in Mississauga, a lot of.

00:21:24 Speaker 3

Oh yeah, and Toronto downtown too. So the interesting thing was, before we managed the port credit, we weren’t sure like how it would be in Mississauga until we start managing that, we realized that we got a lot of inquiries of people that are just moving around. They just sold their house. It’s not even travelers because you think they’re being.

00:21:24 Erwin

Demand in Mississauga, yeah.

00:21:45 Speaker 3

Then usually for people who travel into the city exactly.

00:21:47 Erwin

Yeah, I’m still on vacation. Yeah.

00:21:50 Speaker 3

But no, these are people where, like my house got burned and, you know, unfortunately, I need a place or I just sold my house and we’re not gonna move into our new house until another two months.

00:21:53 Erwin

Ohh great.

00:22:00 Erwin

Right.

00:22:01 Erwin

Which is your classic midterm rental? Yeah, a new.

00:22:03 Speaker 3

Profile. Yeah. Or they’re fixing their house and they can be in their house or we had people who were. Yeah, we were working.

00:22:03 Speaker 2

Yeah, once. Yeah.

00:22:09 Speaker 2

Contractors who, you know they’re they’re been brought in from a, you know, another city.

00:22:14 Speaker 2

And they’re there for a month or two months, setting up the new gym or school or building building.

00:22:22 Speaker 3

Building because they have exactly. I remember we had one guest who were such great guests and they stay. They’re they’re a company from Germany and their technician has to be flown in from Germany in Canada. They don’t have the same engineers. And so they have to. So it’s interesting.

00:22:36 Speaker 2

Top notch yes.

00:22:41 Erwin

Yeah. Interesting. So you you mentioned you learned quickly what you wanted to manage and what you did.

00:22:46 Erwin

What’s the property?

00:22:47 Erwin

You don’t want to manage and why?

00:22:49 Speaker 3

Yeah. So behold, our experience, there are properties and I say properties, but it comes as a package, it’s also the home owner or the investor, right? So there are properties where it’s kind of like the owner just bought it as is and just don’t want to have long term renters and but they’re not ready.

00:23:09 Erwin

So I have no idea why, but OK continue.

00:23:11 Speaker 4

Right. And don’t.

00:23:13 Speaker 3

Want to have to deal with?

00:23:14 Speaker 3

That all these aspects of being in the hospitality business, because everybody is still hospitality. It’s not just about investing. Yeah. And so they would just throw the house out there and say, hey, you get it fully booked and.

00:23:28 Speaker 3

We found it’s not the case. There’s things you have to do to upgrade the.

00:23:32 Speaker 3

House for a certain experience, for certain.

00:23:34 Speaker 3

Look right and there’s so many other houses that are empty, so why should a guest choose your house versus someone else? And so for us, we know that we have to look for the right type of client with the right mindset. They want to be good hosts. They want to invest into the experience for their guests.

00:23:50 Erwin

Right, right.

00:23:52

And their.

00:23:54 Speaker 3

No, it’s not like.

00:23:54

You know.

00:23:55 Speaker 4

That, yeah, maybe back in the days.

00:23:57 Speaker 4

When it was new and.

00:23:58 Speaker 3

You throw whatever property on Airbnb and.

00:24:01 Erwin

There still need to.

00:24:01 Speaker 4

You just get.

00:24:01 Erwin

Be furniture and.

00:24:02 Erwin

They’re not like you didn’t destroy anything.

00:24:05 Erwin

It has to be. It’s better or an.

00:24:07 Erwin

Air mattress or something? Yeah.

00:24:07 Speaker 2

At least I sailed. Oh yeah.

00:24:08 Speaker 4

Yeah, at least something. But now get.

00:24:10 Speaker 4

Some more picky.

00:24:11 Speaker 3

They want the mattress to feel a certain way. It’s no longer. I just.

00:24:14 Speaker 4

Have a bed. Ohh your.

00:24:16 Speaker 3

Mattress doesn’t feel good.

00:24:18 Speaker 3

OK, you know.

00:24:19 Speaker 3

Those are the.

00:24:19

Things that.

00:24:20 Erwin

I want a coffee maker. I want coffee. I want a wine opener, alright.

00:24:24 Speaker 2

Ohh, you gotta drink coffee.

00:24:25 Speaker 2

Machine while we want Keurig want we want pod.

00:24:27 Speaker 4

Yeah, exactly.

00:24:29 Erwin

Or whatever. No. People go to accident. You really.

00:24:30 Speaker 2

Off they thought they go. Yeah, we get everything.

00:24:31

Get that kind.

00:24:31 Erwin

Of feedback. Yeah, yeah.

00:24:34 Speaker 3

Yeah, for sure. And we get people to tell you and you know we appreciate the feedback, but it doesn’t mean you have to follow all the feedback. It has to make sense either, but they’re.

00:24:43 Erwin

I can’t believe someone.

00:24:44 Erwin

Go to the extent to say I.

00:24:44 Erwin

Need a Courier like? Well, they would.

00:24:46 Speaker 3

Prefer that or they said, you know, so you’re.

00:24:47 Speaker 2

Yeah, because that’s what they have at home or.

00:24:49 Speaker 2

Or you know, that’s what they’re used to.

00:24:51 Speaker 2

Like I don’t know how to use a.

00:24:52 Speaker 2

Filter you know like.

00:24:54 Speaker 2

It’s it’s.

00:24:55 Speaker 2

You get some interesting.

00:24:57 Erwin

Because I don’t.

00:24:58 Erwin

Know how to use a filter, right? OK, yeah.

00:25:00 Speaker 4

Yeah. Also, it’s the guests, right?

00:25:02 Speaker 3

So the more you can accommodate to all the range of guests, yeah, without going too crazy, then you know, the more.

00:25:09 Speaker 3

Chance you have.

00:25:10 Speaker 2

Right. Yeah. But we we learned that. I mean, for me at least.

00:25:13 Speaker 2

In in my.

00:25:14 Speaker 2

I don’t like working with. I would prefer not to work with an owner or an investor who likes mixed-use.

00:25:21 Speaker 2

So for example, they want long term tenants upstairs and then it’s a duplex and then they you know they want Airbnb, the basement or or vice versa a lot of times I’ve seen that when you’re trying to mix the two it they don’t tend to blend very well long.

00:25:36 Erwin

We have challenges.

00:25:37 Speaker 2

Well, the long term tenant is not used to and they don’t like that there’s always.

00:25:41 Speaker 2

People coming in and out and then a lot of times, if people are coming in and out, if they’re there for the weekend, they’re there to enjoy, you know, noise tends to be a problem.

00:25:49 Erwin

Yeah, yeah.

00:25:51 Speaker 2

And yeah.

00:25:52 Speaker 2

So I think that parking garbage, you know, a lot of those things become.

00:25:56 Erwin

Challenges because even when I have my own, but it’s my apartment. When I rented it in my home.

00:25:56 Speaker 3

And they’re not.

00:26:00 Erwin

I would deliver it, rent it to a single.

00:26:01 Erwin

Person. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:26:03 Erwin

Because then they’re not talking to somebody all the time. Yeah. Because you went to a couple or a family. Just even a couple. They’re gonna talk. Yeah. And once in a while, they gonna argue. Yeah. And then you hear it all. Yeah. Versus rent to an.

00:26:13 Erwin

Individual I’ll take.

00:26:14 Erwin

Less rent. You have less noise. Yeah. Now imagine your you have Airbnb folks.

00:26:19 Speaker 4

Yeah, like they.

00:26:20 Erwin

My family, like we’re all talking this.

00:26:22 Erwin

Four of us.

00:26:23 Erwin

Yeah, I’m sure would be disturbing to the long.

00:26:25 Erwin

Term tenants.

00:26:25 Speaker 3

And it’s different if you’re the homeowner.

00:26:27 Speaker 3

That you live up.

00:26:28 Speaker 3

There or you live in the basement.

00:26:29 Erwin

I still wouldn’t like that.

00:26:29 Speaker 3

Because you wouldn’t, but.

00:26:31 Speaker 4

There’s a lot.

00:26:31 Speaker 3

Of people who are willing to let that go because they needed the money or, you know, it helps to have that in. But because you’re the homeowner, it’s fine. But for someone else who’s renting your house long term and they’re staying there.

00:26:44 Speaker 3

They don’t care. At the end of the day they pay their.

00:26:46 Speaker 3

Rent they want.

00:26:47 Speaker 3

Their business exactly. They want their quietness.

00:26:47 Erwin

Also doing. Yeah. Yeah and.

00:26:50 Erwin

Often it’s great, I.

00:26:51 Erwin

Have five friends who that Airbnb pays their mortgage the basement.

00:26:54 Erwin

Pays for their.

00:26:54 Erwin

Mortgage, which would be a lot of money these.

00:26:56 Erwin

Days, yeah.

00:26:58 Erwin

Yeah, windy day. But these days especially.

00:27:01 Speaker 3

So because John mentioned that.

00:27:04 Speaker 3

Tend to not like where they mix it because we would get calls from both like we’re not.

00:27:08 Speaker 3

The manager for the.

00:27:08 Speaker 3

Long term rentals.

00:27:09 Speaker 3

But we get calls from the long term tenants.

00:27:12 Erwin

Saying you’re getting complaints from a non client well.

00:27:14 Speaker 2

What tends to happen is these long term tenants because we’re managing the short.

00:27:19 Speaker 2

Term, we end up managing the long term tenant.

00:27:21 Speaker 2

As well, but.

00:27:22 Speaker 2

We don’t get paid for managing the long term.

00:27:24 Speaker 2

Tenant, you know, so then you start to deal with and then the long term tenant becomes your sort of eyes.

00:27:28 Speaker 2

And ears, which is it comes in handy sometimes, but it also tends to.

00:27:29

Which is nice.

00:27:32 Speaker 2

Be like you know, they comes and complain to.

00:27:34 Speaker 3

You about everything.

00:27:35 Speaker 3

Oh, I don’t like that that new group that.

00:27:37 Speaker 3

Just came in this and that, and so we are.

00:27:39 Speaker 3

Yeah, managing everybody or.

00:27:41 Speaker 2

Because we’re so hands on the long term, 10 will be like, hey, listen, you know, I haven’t been able.

00:27:45 Speaker 2

To get in touch with such and such owner.

00:27:47 Speaker 2

Sir, can you guys, do you have anybody can you fix that? You know the toilet or can you you know can you call somebody to fix this and that?

00:27:54

Yeah, right. And.

00:27:55 Speaker 3

I think we’re just nice and we’re we’ve always been the type who’s like, you know, since we’re around anyways. Well, well.

00:28:01 Speaker 2

Well, we want to, we want.

00:28:02 Speaker 2

To keep the peace too, you know it.

00:28:04 Speaker 2

Helps our business.

00:28:06 Speaker 2

If you have a long term.

00:28:07 Speaker 2

And that that’s friendly to the, you know the.

00:28:10 Speaker 2

Short term guests.

00:28:11 Erwin

So let’s start with the say someone brings you a property. Well, how often do they bring you a vacant property versus a property that’s already furnished?

00:28:19 Speaker 3

A lot of the client come to us because I would say they either just bought a house and they just decided not to rent it out long term and so it’s not furnished.

00:28:29 Speaker 2

Right.

00:28:32 Erwin

Right.

00:28:32 Speaker 3

But they know they would have to furnish it, so we advise them we give them a checklist what to do.

00:28:38 Erwin

And so there’s homework upfront and investment, of course, yeah.

00:28:38 Speaker 4

I like that, of course.

00:28:41 Speaker 3

There’s homework and investment.

00:28:43 Speaker 3

The ones who already have fully furnished and everything I feel they’ve already done their homework and so usually most of our clients, they haven’t furnished anything. They just come to us with an idea like they have a space or a property or they’re actually thinking of buying a property and they wanted our advice.

00:28:57 Speaker 2

Right. Yeah and.

00:28:58 Speaker 2

Typically outside of the, you know the cottage vacation rentals. You won’t see anything in the in the city that’s.

00:29:04 Speaker 2

Furnished expecting to convert from long term to short term. So if somebody is renting a like if they own a property and and and it’s an investment.

00:29:12 Speaker 2

They’re not going to be prepared to do short term. It’s usually a blank canvas that we have to.

00:29:17 Erwin

Start with and then. So what’s the? What’s the capital outlay like if I if I bring you a vacant house? Well, how much should I expect to have done best in order to get it ready?

00:29:25 Erwin

Sure, it’s not easy either it’s not.

00:29:27 Erwin

Like this? Just like go on Amazon, click, click and deliver me TV to couch.

00:29:29 Speaker 3

Yeah, no.

00:29:32 Erwin

And bed and all that.

00:29:33 Speaker 3

Because we furnish a full house like on.

00:29:36 Speaker 3

Our own so.

00:29:36 Speaker 2

Five bedroom.

00:29:37 Speaker 3

Five bedroom. And so we kind of have a ballpark budget and because we also have looked into so many different type of furniture from so many different store, so.

00:29:46 Speaker 3

Do have a budget sheet that we give our client. We said look like if you’re looking to buy just all IKEA, this is the.

00:29:53 Speaker 3

So you can look between and. Usually it depends how many bedrooms you have, right? And you multiply it by the beds, the side tables and so for us I have seen where you can furnish A2 to 3 bedroom, place about 10 grand. I would say yeah. But if you want quality you can go up to 20 grand.

00:30:00 Erwin

That’s just the.

00:30:08 Erwin

Oh that’s it, eh?

00:30:13 Speaker 3

So pretty great. Yeah, right.

00:30:15 Speaker 3

So it depends, but I know.

00:30:16 Speaker 3

For us, for a.

00:30:17 Speaker 3

Five bedroom house. It was almost. Yeah. About 3030 Grand, Right, so.

00:30:19 Speaker 2

It’s about 30.

00:30:23 Erwin

So at what point did it can can you take over the proper?

00:30:26 Erwin

Like I’ve ordered all the IKEA go assemble it. I’ll see you next week.

00:30:32 Speaker 3

Most of the time.

00:30:33 Erwin

Like you know, I mean like it’s all.

00:30:34 Speaker 2

It’s all packaging we’ve done.

00:30:36 Speaker 2

It before where we’ve, you know, we’ve come in with the two of us and we’ll, you know, we’ll hire one or two other people and we’ll assemble furniture and things like that. But now we kind of realize that unless the owner is willing to pay another.

00:30:50 Speaker 2

5 grand for our time. Yeah, you know, let’s say I’m just the ballpark figure, but.

00:30:55 Erwin

That you know, that’s something that they would have to range on their own very, very yeah. Cause they can buy because IKEA will they believe they offer that as an.

00:30:58 Speaker 4

And a lot of them.

00:31:02 Speaker 3

Yeah, but I find a lot of a lot of our clients. You know, they’re very aware of their budget and they want to keep it low. So.

00:31:10 Speaker 4

They do a.

00:31:11 Speaker 3

Lot of it themselves. So what they do is they have to assemble the furniture, they put everything. And so normally what we do is we do an initial site inspection, so we come.

00:31:12 Erwin

Oh God.

00:31:20 Speaker 3

And we visit.

00:31:21 Speaker 3

The property and we give them idea.

00:31:23 Speaker 3

This then we learned from the past because we used to have to come back four or five times. I had a property where they said it’s ready when we come back. It’s not ready because they’re expectation. What ready is is not the.

00:31:34 Speaker 3

Same as ours.

00:31:35 Speaker 3

Based on our.

00:31:35 Speaker 3

Experience. So now we have a full checklist. We said you have to follow the checklist. Once it’s fully 98% complete.

00:31:43 Speaker 3

Sure, we’ll come. And if there’s any little we don’t need everything to be complete because the main important thing is we just need like the things that you can’t see, for example, like all the bats, the couch, the table.

00:31:54 Speaker 3

Because for pictures very important so that we send in a professional photographer, they take the photo. We can then create it and put it on Airbnb or whichever other sites being used. And so we can actually list the property a month to two months before it’s fully finished too. Like if it takes some of that long.

00:32:14 Speaker 3

Because it takes some time for people to start looking.

00:32:17 Speaker 3

On you know, Airbnb to start booking. And by throughout that period of time they can continue to get it ready. They don’t have to have it 100% ready, right? Just the main thing we actually have listed houses where I don’t know if this is a good practice, but we’ve done it before where we said they just bought over.

00:32:20

OK.

00:32:35 Speaker 3

Our house and.

00:32:36 Speaker 2

We’ll talk to the seller.

00:32:38 Speaker 4

We talked to the seller.

00:32:39 Speaker 3

And they give us the photo of.

00:32:40 Speaker 2

Use stock photos.

00:32:40 Speaker 4

How the house used to look.

00:32:42 Speaker 3

And we put it.

00:32:42 Erwin

So the client doesn’t own the house yet.

00:32:46 Speaker 2

You know.

00:32:47 Speaker 2

They it’s like.

00:32:47 Speaker 4

They’re gonna close in a.

00:32:48 Erwin

Couple yeah, yeah.

00:32:50 Speaker 3

Yeah, but you’re right.

00:32:51 Speaker 3

So I’m not sure how legitimate.

00:32:53 Speaker 2

The lines been you know, it’s been signed and everything, but.

00:32:53 Speaker 3

It is.

00:32:55 Erwin

We we do the same for long term rentals like.

00:32:58 Speaker 4

If they did, let’s say if they.

00:32:59 Speaker 4

Took it over today.

00:33:00 Speaker 3

Even it’s not like they’re going to.

00:33:02 Speaker 3

Have all the furniture in by next week they might, right? But we said do you have any photos? But we would have to spend time really like explicitly, right?

00:33:05

Right.

00:33:12 Speaker 3

On the description this is not how the furniture will look.

00:33:16 Speaker 3

House the frame.

00:33:18 Speaker 3

Once you know the House will be available, let’s say two months from now, it will be fully new furniture and we will update the photo for you and we will show you how it looks like. We’ve done that with one of our property and we flipped like the House looks completely different than how the House was when we bought it and we got.

00:33:38 Speaker 3

Our first two months.

00:33:39 Speaker 4

Fully booked.

00:33:40 Speaker 2

Doing great.

00:33:40 Speaker 3

Yeah, and they’re they’re ages, though, as the time come, they’re like, can you show me photos of how?

00:33:45 Speaker 3

This how it.

00:33:45 Speaker 3

Actually will look and we send it because we’re confident it will look just as nice if not better. But if you don’t plan, that’s why we’re like, we’re hesitant. Like if.

00:33:46 Erwin

OK.

00:33:54 Speaker 3

You don’t.

00:33:54 Speaker 3

And to furnitures as similar are just as Nice and I have to really spell it out. I don’t want the guests to.

00:34:01 Speaker 3

Be booking something.

00:34:02 Speaker 3

And they’re not getting what they pay for.

00:34:04 Erwin

Yeah. And another conversation we had when we weren’t recording was you’re you’re mentioning how people would disclose on something. They bought pre construction. Yeah. And now they’re they’re asking you to take it over. Is that common?

00:34:16 Speaker 3

We had a few, yeah.

00:34:16 Speaker 2

The last 12 months has been quite a few of investors who they’re just stuck. They can’t assign, you know, reassign the the title. They’re not able to sell their property. And so they’re looking for any.

00:34:29 Erwin

They play a.

00:34:29 Erwin

Lot. That’s probably gone down, I’m guessing.

00:34:30 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, I mean, because we don’t know all the terms now, we don’t know if they’re supposed to do that, cause usually I think with a lot of preconstruction, don’t they have to stay and live in that house for at least one year.

00:34:31 Speaker 2

So locked in and.

00:34:43 Speaker 3

Before they can rent a house.

00:34:44 Erwin

I’m not a lawyer.

00:34:46 Speaker 4

So I told him I’m not a lawyer either either. Yeah, so I can list it for you. But you have to figure if that’s something.

00:34:48 Erwin

Yeah, there’s SSD implications, yes, yeah.

00:34:54

You’re allowed.

00:34:55 Erwin

To get there are interesting implications, yeah.

00:34:57 Speaker 2

There, there are certain regions where we manage certain properties that it’s you know it’s on them. It’s we can do all the everything you ask us.

00:35:06 Speaker 2

To do.

00:35:06 Erwin

It’s on the, it’s on you shins.

00:35:07 Speaker 2

But if if something if there are implications.

00:35:10 Speaker 2

That’s, you know, we.

00:35:11 Speaker 2

That’s where we have.

00:35:12 Speaker 2

To bow out.

00:35:12 Speaker 3

Yeah, we advice everyone to look at.

00:35:16 Speaker 3

Legality side of things, right? Does it allow you to have a permit? Do you require a permit? And what is yeah.

00:35:22 Erwin

Alright, but you know that site already? You know if there’s one for.

00:35:23 Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah.

00:35:24 Erwin

You know you need a permit. Yeah, yeah.

00:35:25 Speaker 3

Exactly. And usually there’s townhouses or condos that they have to ask for permission, even in the city that allows you to get a permit.

00:35:34 Speaker 3

But if that townhouse association doesn’t like, for example, in Mississauga, we had a property where they got a permit from the city, but the townhouse contact them and say you’re not allowed to rent anything out less than.

00:35:48 Speaker 3

Six months even.

00:35:49 Speaker 3

Though the city approved.

00:35:51 Speaker 3

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes.

00:35:51 Erwin

Because the Donald Trump’s yeah, yeah.

00:35:54 Erwin

His condos have like rules on, like, no.

00:35:56 Erwin

Children, for example. No pets. Yeah, yeah.

00:35:59 Erwin

My dad’s condo.

00:36:00

No children.

00:36:00 Erwin

Was nice today.

00:36:02 Speaker 3

Wow. Ohh seniors, then seniors condo. You mean retirement? Condo. Wow.

00:36:03 Speaker 2

Have a family friend or adults?

00:36:07 Erwin

It’s an adults only condo.

00:36:09 Erwin

No, no child’s allowed to live there.

00:36:11 Erwin

Wow. Yeah. Is that rare? Maybe it is rare, I’ve heard.

00:36:14 Speaker 3

It seems fair.

00:36:15 Speaker 4

To me it seems fair.

00:36:16 Speaker 2

That before no children. Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me.

00:36:20 Speaker 3

Yeah, there’s also lots of different.

00:36:21 Speaker 4

Like like like.

00:36:21 Erwin

Rules in Mexico, there’s.

00:36:22 Erwin

There’s lots of resorts are absolutely.

00:36:23 Speaker 2

Ohh yeah.

00:36:24 Erwin

Can understand they.

00:36:26 Erwin

Don’t want, yeah.

00:36:27 Speaker 3

Yeah, I can understand the need for.

00:36:28 Erwin

That anyone who’s heard a baby crying on an airplane understands the need for, yeah, people. Some people want their space. It’s it’s even. It’s in legislation like RTA, like quiet enjoyment of your property. Yeah.

00:36:34

Yeah, for sure.

00:36:40 Speaker 4

So we hope.

00:36:41 Speaker 3

You we answer the questions about pre construction.

00:36:44 Erwin

Because what? What caught my attention was.

00:36:47 Erwin

How many of them are there? Not a question for you, but my first immediate, my immediate thought is it could get start getting saturated in terms of the availability of that number of Airbnbs. Like for example, when I did my first Airbnb in Hamilton Mountain.

00:36:54 Speaker 3

Ohh yeah.

00:36:59 Erwin

There was like I had, like maybe 4 direct competitors for that entire neighborhood. Wow. And that was years ago. I don’t remember the year now I think like 2018 ISH 2018 I think was and now there’s tons. Yeah, right. For example, one of my clients she used to dominate the ARBO. She had two of the five top properties on VRBO in terms of performance in Hamilton.

00:37:02

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:37:19 Erwin

So she was doing midterm rentals before anybody else. This is she had one house that was hilarious. She had one house that was like, not touched.

00:37:25 Erwin

Since the 80s.

00:37:27 Erwin

Right and.

00:37:27 Speaker 2

But people love that.

00:37:29 Erwin

Movies and TV studios rented it for that reason.

00:37:31 Erwin

Yes. Yeah. They wanted to shoot it. They had seen from the 80s. Yeah, because the house was basically frozen in time. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Hilarious. And she got tons of money for it. Yeah. Anyways, my point being is that she, she told me too the last few years.

00:37:31

Ohh yeah.

00:37:34 Speaker 4

That’s great.

00:37:37 Speaker 3

Yeah, that’s right. That’s crazy.

00:37:43 Erwin

Have been never been so hard.

00:37:45 Erwin

To keep it full right? That’s kind of partly why I have. Why do you have you here? And part of the point of the show is that.

00:37:51 Erwin

Share the realities.

00:37:52 Erwin

Of real estate investing? That’s right. Like so, for example, if my client who dominates normally and she hustles to be in contact with like, insurance companies, local major employers to make sure that if they need her place.

00:38:05 Erwin

Elbow and she’s telling me she’s having hustle. My point is, though, is that this isn’t easy money, no stuffs, not just falling on people.

00:38:12 Erwin

‘S laps no.

00:38:13

Right. Well, my.

00:38:13 Speaker 2

My knee jerk reaction to a lot of these investors who are trying to, you know, they they don’t have any other option to to flip their house or they’re by pre construction is I tend to.

00:38:25 Speaker 2

To try to discourage them from.

00:38:28 Speaker 2

Doing Airbnb because the first thing is you.

00:38:31 Speaker 2

Notice is that.

00:38:32 Speaker 2

If they’re just doing it for a short period of time because they’re just trying to, you know, by the time that one year, for example, that they need to put in or or it’s supposed to be owner occupied, they’re going to try to do the things like very.

00:38:45 Erwin

Cheap. That’s not your client.

00:38:47 Speaker 2

That’s not who we want to work with because we’re not. We’re not looking to.

00:38:50 Speaker 2

Do business for the next just 12 months like.

00:38:51 Erwin

OK.

00:38:52 Speaker 2

It’s the full time.

00:38:52 Speaker 2

Business for us.

00:38:54 Erwin

Well, people, people plan for short term trendy spend 1020 thousand on furniture, right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

00:38:54 Speaker 2

And then.

00:39:00 Speaker 2

Exactly. And then to to put in that that you know that financial investment of twenty $30,000, are you really prepared to do that for only a year and then you you have all this furniture now?

00:39:12 Speaker 2

You need to, you know, to offload. So I I tried to discourage them at first because if.

00:39:16 Speaker 2

That’s not something that they really want to do then.

00:39:18 Speaker 2

And that’s technically not really the the client we want to work with.

00:39:20 Erwin

Yeah, alright, I I got lucky with mine with Irving because when I when I sold it, I didn’t want.

00:39:25 Erwin

The furniture, right?

00:39:27 Erwin

So I just said they wanted to. Yeah, they wanted it cause a doctor was moving in from out of town. Yeah. And his mother was buying him the house. Wow. Yeah. And they wanted all the furniture because it looked great. Yeah. So they walked into a fully furnished house. I’m not suggesting that’s a good exit for.

00:39:34 Speaker 3

So you’ll find.

00:39:34 Speaker 4

The brain.

00:39:42 Speaker 3

Anyone. No, because you’re selective.

00:39:43 Erwin

Yeah. Lucky. Yeah, I got lucky. Yeah.

00:39:45 Speaker 3

It’s among.

00:39:46 Speaker 3

Smaller pool of people. A lot of people.

00:39:48 Speaker 3

Want it empty?

00:39:49 Speaker 3

Yeah, you can just put in.

00:39:49

So they have their.

00:39:50

Own stuff.

00:39:51 Erwin

Exactly the client say to me looking for a home principal residence.

00:39:55 Erwin

It’s like I don’t like this house. Like, why? It’s gorgeous. Everything you want.

00:39:58 Erwin

Fits your budget. It’s beautiful.

00:40:00 Erwin

It’s like my dining room table won’t fit. Wow.

00:40:04 Erwin

OK, you see the big oversized dinner dining room table? Yeah.

00:40:10 Speaker 2

Yeah. And so it’s like.

00:40:12 Erwin

In hindsight, that house was like 8-9 hundred grand.

00:40:15 Erwin

She waited three years and then the pandemic happened. Now that house is like 1.4 so.

00:40:20 Erwin

So that dining.

00:40:21 Erwin

Room table was a $500,000 decision.

00:40:24 Speaker 3

But that’s how we make these personal decisions that you know.

00:40:29 Erwin

It is what it is, you know.

00:40:31 Erwin

I make my decisions large with the spreadsheet. You know, people make decisions with their dining room table.

00:40:36 Erwin

Not at their dining room.

00:40:37 Erwin

Table about their dining room table, yeah.

00:40:42 Erwin

So there’s so many questions to ask, how do different pricing of of of an Airbnb?

00:40:47 Speaker 3

Great question. So I mean there is different ways that you can go about it and you can spend a lot of time doing it or you can just quickly spend a couple hours. But the first thing is you want to to do it properly, which we tested.

00:41:02 Speaker 3

And we also took a course.

00:41:04 Speaker 3

On this request you to have an Excel sheet where you actually have.

00:41:08 Speaker 3

Unbiasedly rate your property against some of the top ones that you see in the neighborhood, so there’s a whole process you actually have to do some market research on there. You have to find the local competitors to yours.

00:41:20 Speaker 3

And we say local, it has to be exactly. For example, if your 3 bedroom you narrow down, what are some of the other three bedroom in the?

00:41:26 Speaker 3

Area and then you kind of rate them on how they’re designed, how their photo?

00:41:31 Speaker 3

Right. And then after that you kind of see the average. So there is a formula that we do, but if we’re just going to do this quick, what I would do is once again go on Airbnb. So I would look for a property that’s closed.

00:41:44 Speaker 3

In the region where.

00:41:45 Speaker 3

Our property will be.

00:41:47 Speaker 3

And I’ll look to see, OK, other three bedrooms. What are they charging for this time of year for various times of year? And then?

00:41:55 Speaker 3

If I notice.

00:41:57 Speaker 3

Also, if they’re charging really high, but their calendar is empty, so I have to take that into consideration and then another property is really low, but it’s fully booked. So what we normally do do is we take an average of that and we just kind of like play that out. I guess we put that pricing initially and then we monitor.

00:42:18 Speaker 3

So we monitor for the first week we see what’s the demand like. Is there a lot of inquiries and we have to constantly adjust the price. So that is I.

00:42:26 Speaker 4

Guess the quick way.

00:42:27 Speaker 3

Of setting up the price for me, do you?

00:42:30 Speaker 3

Have other ways that you do.

00:42:31 Speaker 2

Well, it’s based on a lot of it is based on supply and demand too. So depending on on how quickly things.

00:42:37 Speaker 2

Will get booked if it.

00:42:38 Speaker 2

Books quickly. Then we’ll raise the price a little bit.

00:42:42 Speaker 2

And then if?

00:42:43 Speaker 2

It’s slow. Then we’ll we’ll lower the price. So it’s always it’s hard to determine. There’s never one price. Yeah, just there’s a lot of factors that play into and we can.

00:42:52 Speaker 2

Go even as.

00:42:53 Speaker 2

Far as studying the hotels if they’re.

00:42:55 Speaker 2

Able to like a two-bedroom unit for example.

00:42:58 Erwin

Wherever you consider your competition, yeah.

00:43:00 Speaker 3

Exactly. Exactly. And so pricing is a great question because that is one of the biggest thing that you know when it comes to getting your place really full and you know increase your occupancy rate is really how flexible and how quick you can adjust your pricing.

00:43:15 Speaker 3

Basically, just because you’re place lower sometimes doesn’t mean it’s good, because if your price is lower and you get booked really quickly, there are people who will book at a higher price if the supply is really low. So you kind of missed out on those people. And when everything is booked then they have to.

00:43:33 Speaker 3

Basically, pick another property which might be a little higher. So I find like if you kind of have faith that you’re probably is nice and it’s the way that it should be where you want a certain type of clients and you’re willing to not have to get a fully booked like six months out. I guess it depends on how you are.

00:43:52 Speaker 4

As I guess as an investor.

00:43:53 Speaker 3

The host some people are in a rush to get everything booked so they will cut down. They slash down prices, right? But based on what we learned through different, I guess pricing so.

00:44:03 Speaker 3

Where is that? There’s a strategy that you don’t need to get book right away, but you want to get booked for the right price, so your revenue will be higher, so someone can have full occupancy, but the revenue will be lower than someone who’s book, let’s say at 80%, but at.

00:44:17 Speaker 3

A higher revenue.

00:44:19 Speaker 2

And ego start to play factors there’s some.

00:44:22 Speaker 2

Clients that will rent.

00:44:24 Speaker 2

You know, let’s just say we’ll throw a price of.

00:44:26 Speaker 2

$1000 a night.

00:44:28 Speaker 2

Let’s say it’s just an average Airbnb.

00:44:31 Speaker 2

People will book that because it’s at $1000 per night and they can say I’m renting an Airbnb at $1000 a night, but you can also rent that.

00:44:40 Speaker 2

Property for two.

00:44:41 Speaker 2

$100 a night. But then, now you’re attracting a different clientele. But this clientele will will, you know, they sort of value.

00:44:50 Speaker 2

Money different than somebody who’s willing to pay.

00:44:52 Speaker 2

Higher. Yeah. So, you know, there’s a lot.

00:44:54 Speaker 2

Of different factors that come.

00:44:56 Speaker 2

You know, yeah.

00:44:57 Speaker 3

It’s interesting because for the same problem we’ve seen where we increase the price and we get like gas that comes in and they’re amazing guests. And then the same you slash it off 50% and you get guests. So you figure they’re happy to be able to book a property that’s normally double in price, but they come in and they give.

00:45:13 Speaker 3

You the most problem.

00:45:14 Speaker 3

Because they’re normally the type who can afford.

00:45:17 Speaker 3

The other so see so.

00:45:21 Erwin

Because I that.

00:45:22 Erwin

That I always remind, like novice investors, I I call it.

00:45:25 Erwin

Return on grief.

00:45:26 Erwin

Like I need to be compensated for grief.

00:45:28 Erwin

Yeah, right. So if you’re a pain in my ****, the price.

00:45:31 Erwin

Needs to be higher. Yeah, right. Yeah.

00:45:33 Speaker 3

Yeah. Which we don’t mind, right? That’s why if you set the price at a certain level, you’re gonna get certain type of people, and if they?

00:45:40 Speaker 3

Demand a lot of.

00:45:41 Speaker 3

You that’s OK because you set the price to expect those demands. But the moment you start slashing.

00:45:44 Erwin

Right, right.

00:45:46 Erwin

They’re being compensated for it.

00:45:47 Speaker 3

Yeah, exactly. The moment you’re getting slashed, all these prices, they still want the same, I guess to treatment and they’re asking for a.

00:45:57 Speaker 3

Lot, now you’re just.

00:45:59 Speaker 3

The price is so low now I have to do all this too.

00:46:01 Speaker 2

Well, I mentioned it’s much like being a realtor where you know you have a client that comes in and their budget is, you know, X amount and then you have another client that comes in that their budget is twice that amount. The person whose budget if, if you’re like, right in the middle and you have the option of selling to somebody who.

00:46:20 Speaker 2

Has twice the budget. It’s a lot easier for them to make decisions versus somebody who’s.

00:46:25 Speaker 2

At the higher end.

00:46:25 Speaker 2

Of their budget. Then they start to nitpick quite a bit.

00:46:27 Speaker 2

Right.

00:46:28 Erwin

Yeah, no different than like a. Like someone who’s selling who doesn’t have much equity or their.

00:46:32 Erwin

Negative equity, right?

00:46:33 Erwin

That’s right. Decision making is very.

00:46:34 Erwin

Different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:35

Right.

00:46:36 Erwin

It sounds like you have some some portfolio is suburban.

00:46:41 Erwin

And some is like traditional recreation. Cottage. Yeah, right. So let’s talk to the cottage market. The strictly recreational use properties. How has demand changed since since COVID mersus today, which is September 2023?

00:46:57 Erwin

The things fluctuated at.

00:46:58 Speaker 3

All. Yes. Well, we have a property in a couple of properties in Niagara and I think, yeah, in Crystal Beach, which is just the beach town, right, and so.

00:47:09 Erwin

Yeah, really quiet during the week.

00:47:11 Erwin

Yeah, and it’s, it’s.

00:47:12 Speaker 3

The winter months as well, right?

00:47:14 Erwin

Yeah, but come summer weekend car.

00:47:16 Speaker 3

There has been.

00:47:17 Speaker 3

A huge slowdown in since.

00:47:20 Speaker 3

I guess the peak of COVID I think during the peak of COVID, a lot of people.

00:47:24 Speaker 3

Traveling within Ontario within Canada, there’s nowhere else to go, so this was very well. It was good for a lot of people, not just us, but a lot of other people that own vacation rentals.

00:47:26 Erwin

Yeah, we’re stuck.

00:47:27 Speaker 2

Within driving distance, yeah.

00:47:36 Speaker 3

But I think the last.

00:47:37 Speaker 3

Year and going into this year, we have seen quite there’s not a lot of bookings and for the ones that do get booking, I feel like the pricing you have to really slash down prices compared to two years ago, right? So you’re kind of getting.

00:47:52 Speaker 3

Killed at both ends. Your voices are low, and then you’re booking. But if you don’t, everyone else around you, the prices.

00:47:53

And wife.

00:47:59 Speaker 3

Are low, so.

00:48:00 Speaker 3

If you keep it high and it’s hard, so we have seen a slowdown.

00:48:04 Erwin

Right. Yeah, I ask because I see all these people courses promoted for like college rentals or midterm rental from talking to people on the on the ground.

00:48:12 Erwin

Like yourselves it to me it didn’t sound. It didn’t seem to be a sound sound decision, but getting into it.

00:48:20 Erwin

As like as a pivot makes more sense. Yeah, like I have problems. I’m vacant. I don’t want long term tenants. I understand why.

00:48:27 Erwin

You want to.

00:48:27 Erwin

Pivot. Yes, I don’t think I’d want to go out there and.

00:48:30 Erwin

Buy cottage and jump into this at this time.

00:48:32 Speaker 2

Unless you can, unless you can afford to.

00:48:36 Speaker 2

Sit on the property without having tenants. I would strongly recommend against getting into recreational properties like for yeah, yeah.

00:48:38 Erwin

Right.

00:48:43 Erwin

Like acquiring a property for these trades because we’re what? What’s the entry point for a price point? What’s the entry price for for one of these?

00:48:51 Speaker 3

Well, it depends, but.

00:48:52 Erwin

3.7.

00:48:53 Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean.

00:48:55 Speaker 3

At Crystal Beach, you can still get in at I guess you.

00:48:59 Speaker 3

Million. Yeah, but the problem is those like, half a million properties don’t get a lot of crazy. It’s the one by.

00:49:05 Speaker 3

The water and.

00:49:06 Speaker 3

They’re over a million, right? Yeah. Now, if you’re going up to Muskoka or, you know, other regions you’re talking about.

00:49:12 Speaker 3

Past 1,000,000 for sure.

00:49:14 Erwin

Yeah, yeah, I seem to learn I.

00:49:14 Speaker 3

Like you know, 1-2 million.

00:49:16 Erwin

See lots of stuff. 2 million or.

00:49:18 Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean, we have had friends who bought, you know, cottage, but they’re well to do and they just wanna enjoy. So then they’re gonna buy because they have the money too. That’s fine. But if you’re a client, just so that you can make money off Air BI, don’t feel like it would be a good time right now to do that because the rates are so high.

00:49:37 Speaker 3

Right. And cause you used.

00:49:39 Speaker 2

To be able to like like in Crystal Beach where it was close to us. So we we get a lot of we have a lot of conversations with investors there.

00:49:47 Speaker 2

If you had bought 4.

00:49:50 Speaker 2

Five years ago, you can afford to sit on it for the whole entire year and just make enough rental income, right? You know from the summer.

00:49:59 Erwin

Well, if you.

00:50:00 Erwin

If you were really kind of perfect, you bought during the crash of the pandemic or.

00:50:02 Speaker 2

If you bought during.

00:50:03 Speaker 2

The crash. Yeah, a large percentage.

00:50:05 Erwin

Of that community is American owned.

00:50:06 Erwin

Yes. So they couldn’t even come, so they sold.

00:50:10 Speaker 3

A lot of the properties they had to sell it because they weren’t planning on.

00:50:13 Speaker 3

Coming back anyway, right? Everyone was scared.

00:50:16 Erwin

Yeah, drink it over the.

00:50:16 Erwin

Border. Yeah, and I.

00:50:17 Speaker 2

Think they created a?

00:50:18 Speaker 2

New you know.

00:50:20 Speaker 2

What is that? It’s a tax for out of.

00:50:24 Erwin

Yeah, vacant home tax and yeah, foreign buyer tax, yeah.

00:50:28 Speaker 2

Foreign buyer taxes and things like that. So it makes it very in Crystal Beach, it’s very expensive.

00:50:35 Speaker 3

I mean, if you’ve always.

00:50:36 Speaker 3

A cottage and the price have gone down compared to the peak of let’s say COVID, and this is what you really want then? Yes, but not as an investment strategy.

00:50:46 Speaker 3

To be able.

00:50:47 Speaker 3

To rent it out and make it.

00:50:49 Speaker 3

Comfortable. No, it doesn’t. Yeah.

00:50:49 Erwin

Quit your job.

00:50:52 Erwin

Enjoy your college and live for free and.

00:50:54 Erwin

No, they’re crushing my dreams seriously.

00:50:57

It’s a lot of.

00:50:57

Work too. We just put it.

00:50:58

Even if you live.

00:50:59 Erwin

Together their course so we can.

00:51:00 Erwin

Promise people you can quit.

00:51:01 Erwin

Your job and live.

00:51:02 Speaker 2

In your country, but even even then, like even if you live in the city and you’re commuting an hour, like, yeah, prices too, a lot of.

00:51:10 Speaker 2

Those things.

00:51:11 Speaker 2

Unless you’re.

00:51:11 Speaker 3

You know we we we do.

00:51:12 Erwin

Driving life from the money, I can afford a.

00:51:14 Speaker 3

Helicopter. You know, we have friends where we told them to get into the air B, but they bought their cottage long ago and they were thinking of moving to another property and.

00:51:23 Speaker 3

They weren’t sure so.

00:51:25 Speaker 3

You know, they tried it and it worked for them. They were able to rent every saying like three years ago. They made a lot.

00:51:30 Speaker 3

Of money. But it’s a lot of work too.

00:51:33 Speaker 3

For them and now see and now they’re looking. So now they just got a long term tenant, even though the money is good. But at the end of the day, after they pay everything and all the work they put in.

00:51:34 Erwin

No, no, I don’t like a.

00:51:35 Erwin

Lot of work.

00:51:44 Speaker 3

In it’s not as easy as it used to be, right? Yeah.

00:51:47 Erwin

Yeah, yeah.

00:51:49 Erwin

You tell me your experience, but my college.

00:51:51 Erwin

Friends like they all complain about the amount of maintenance there.

00:51:54 Erwin

Is. Yeah, I can live with the maintenance.

00:51:55 Erwin

In my own home I live in.

00:51:57 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah.

00:51:58 Erwin

I can’t imagine having.

00:51:59 Erwin

A second property to take care.

00:52:00 Speaker 3

Yeah, doesn’t.

00:52:01 Erwin

Of and then also I’m hearing like like my good friend with college is it’s challenging to find tradespeople.

00:52:06 Speaker 3

Yeah, for sure.

00:52:07 Speaker 2

It’s tough finding any any.

00:52:08 Speaker 4

Help I remember. Yeah, I.

00:52:09 Speaker 2

Dinners, tradespeople.

00:52:10 Speaker 3

Remember, we were managing a cottage and there was issue with the septic tank and you know the guests are there on the weekends. So you want to get.

00:52:17 Speaker 3

It done there.

00:52:18 Speaker 3

But no one’s available until let’s.

00:52:20 Speaker 3

Say a day after Monday.

00:52:21 Erwin

The city don’t don’t know how to take care.

00:52:22 Erwin

Of a septic tank.

00:52:24 Erwin

I am on the septic tank so I understand like there’s many things that can’t go in there.

00:52:28 Speaker 3

Yeah, exactly.

00:52:29 Speaker 2

And even even you have, you have.

00:52:31 Speaker 2

Cleaners that you know they don’t wanna work on the weekends, for example. They only wanna clean Monday to Friday. Yeah, and turnover days. Sunday. Usually in mess. Yeah. It’s like we have a fiber one we.

00:52:42 Erwin

Have the whole community, we have a.

00:52:44 Erwin

Time our window to clean everything.

00:52:47 Speaker 4

Yeah. And a lot of.

00:52:48 Speaker 3

These colleges are in smaller communities, so it’s not like you know, you’re able to find your cleaners. Your handyman like how you would in the City of Toronto. There’s so many, right? Yeah.

00:52:56 Erwin

Right, right. Yeah. Because you can probably if your.

00:53:00 Erwin

In days, you can probably find it cleaner within the same building. Yeah. Yeah. On the on the Facebook group for the building. Oh, yeah, they don’t know cleaner than five people. Yeah. And they’re in the same damn building. It’s so easy. Yeah. But and yeah, people forget, like, cottage country houses are like acres apart. So, yeah.

00:53:16 Erwin

We don’t have the same density. It’s not as easy, so this isn’t sound as rosy as definitely not.

00:53:23 Erwin

So what do you guys do it what do you?

00:53:25 Erwin

Guys do well.

00:53:27 Erwin

Because you have your own properties that you make that you rented a.

00:53:29 Erwin

Vacation as well.

00:53:31 Erwin

Yeah, because how you started hasn’t, like, hasn’t changed a whole lot. You still you still rent out your own properties for vacation purposes as well.

00:53:38 Speaker 3

Yeah, we you know.

00:53:39 Speaker 3

What the reason why we per se still do it for?

00:53:43 Speaker 3

That’s the one we have in Christ.

00:53:44 Speaker 3

Beach is for us. Unfortunately, we still don’t want to deal with long term renters in that in that space, right? Just the type of tenants that you would attract.

00:53:50 Erwin

I don’t know why.

00:53:56 Speaker 3

I mean we have other properties that we rent out to long term tenants, but there’s headaches with that too. And thank goodness. So far our tenants been great, but we had many friends who the tenants won’t leave like I’m sure you have many of those stories. Yeah. So you know, they’re out eight months.

00:54:11

For the next.

00:54:11 Erwin

Ago, all the tents that stay and my house is like $1200 under.

00:54:16 Erwin

Yeah, that, that’s that’s a problem too. But that too, it’s better than not paying rent so.

00:54:22 Speaker 3

Yeah, at least you changed some.

00:54:24 Speaker 3

Right. But however, we don’t know if we’re gonna keep it for long either, right? Because as a long term strategy, it’s not gonna work. Yeah.

00:54:30 Erwin

Right. So you can hedge this way, right?

00:54:33 Erwin

And and then what’s next for you? Actually, I have other questions as well around like around like qualifying good property like properties you want to manage. Are there any certain amenities or location, anything that like, what’s the secret sauce like, for example, a client of mine?

00:54:47 Erwin

I think you put it hot, hot tub. Almost every one of its properties. Of course that doesn’t work for every property.

00:54:52

OK.

00:54:54 Speaker 2

Water features are.

00:54:56 Speaker 2

Right are definitely a a big seller. So when it comes.

00:54:59 Speaker 2

Your renters.

00:54:59 Erwin

To like a lawn sprinkler.

00:55:01 Erwin

Slip, slip and slide carpet.

00:55:04 Speaker 4

If you if.

00:55:04 Speaker 3

The house already has a pool that’s great, like for the summer months, right? But hot tub? Yeah, definitely. Or if it’s near water.

00:55:10 Erwin

Hot tub.

00:55:14 Speaker 3

Like if it’s you have access to.

00:55:15 Speaker 3

Water or lake or river?

00:55:18 Speaker 3

Where they can do all sorts of water activities like we have a property in Mississauga that’s on like the. Yeah, the river. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is.

00:55:30 Erwin

Worth a fortune, then?

00:55:32 Speaker 2

Yes, I think it’s $3,000,000. House, it’s beautiful.

00:55:34 Speaker 3

Yeah, it’s a home.

00:55:36 Speaker 3

And I guess she.

00:55:37 Speaker 3

That is interested in doing Airbnb and trying it out, so we’re managing it for her and we have guests who would come in, they go fishing, they would take the kayak out and in the winter, they can go skating cuz.

00:55:46 Speaker 2

Yeah, there’s salmon in here.

00:55:51 Speaker 2

As long as.

00:55:51 Speaker 2

The temperature is cold enough, it freezes fully over.

00:55:54 Speaker 2

And they can just pave it and.

00:55:56 Speaker 2

He can go ice.

00:55:56 Speaker 2

Skating right in.

00:55:57 Speaker 2

The backyard? Yeah.

00:55:58 Erwin

And what is that place?

00:55:59 Erwin

Rent for so I believe it.

00:56:01 Speaker 3

Has right now we have just changed the price but it was minimal at least $1000 a night.

00:56:07 Erwin

And then is.

00:56:08 Speaker 2

There a minimum period that you have to have rent for minimum 3.

00:56:09 Speaker 3

Yeah, three nights.

00:56:11 Speaker 3

Night. Yeah, it was pretty booked in the summer.

00:56:15 Erwin

And then what do you expect for the winter?

00:56:17 Speaker 3

In the winter, currently for September, it’s at like 60%, right, but it still has. So we had to decrease the price down a little bit and we’re actually looking. So it’s a whole full whole house, but there’s different strategy. So in the winter, what we’re planning to do now is we’re splitting because they have actually two separate entrance. So we’re splitting the house out where we’re renting out.

00:56:39 Speaker 3

To smaller units because.

00:56:40 Speaker 3

Because people are not traveling as much in groups. So in the summer we notice people who are renting it out would be like either executives or like groups that are willing to stay in the whole house, and they’re willing to pay the price for the whole house. Yeah, but they’re they’re people that stay there for 3-4 nights and they’re paying $5000.

00:56:54 Erwin

That’s a lot of money.

00:57:01 Speaker 3

And they were happy with that. But we know in the winter time they’re not going to get.

00:57:05 Speaker 3

As many of.

00:57:06 Speaker 3

People who traveling. So we are splitting the property in half. We’re upstairs 3 bedroom downstairs, 2 bedrooms. So a smaller family can still rent it out.

00:57:16 Speaker 3

Well, and we even have properties where we even consider right now to split into room in terms of room. We have friends in Toronto who’ve done that. The challenge with that is you do need to have a.

00:57:29 Speaker 3

Local person who’s available, it’s like running.

00:57:31 Speaker 3

A mini hotel.

00:57:32 Speaker 3

Right. Like it’s, you know, just the room.

00:57:34 Speaker 3

By room and companies.

00:57:36 Speaker 3

That do room.

00:57:37 Speaker 3

By room they have to charge management fee a lot higher. Yeah. For example, yeah, like 30% minimum, 30% yeah.

00:57:39 Speaker 2

They charge a much than the fee.

00:57:42 Erwin

Like 30. OK. Yeah. Yeah. Because I I’ve seen. I’ve seen, like, the top end I’ve seen.

00:57:49 Erwin

I’ve seen like high 30s. Yeah. Yeah. For like, like luxury management? Yeah. Not single properties luxury. It’s like they’re luxury.

00:57:51 Speaker 3

OK.

00:57:57 Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:58 Speaker 4

They give you.

00:57:58 Speaker 4

Everything right.

00:57:59 Erwin

I don’t know what they do.

00:58:00 Speaker 2

Luxurious for the investor.

00:58:02 Speaker 4

Yeah. So.

00:58:03 Speaker 3

We are actually looking to see.

00:58:05 Speaker 3

We’re testing different things where we can rent A room by room, like we have a friend who rents A room.

00:58:10 Speaker 3

Room and her guests don’t even have access to a kitchen. These are just like one or two.

00:58:15 Speaker 2

You’re just there from sleep. Yeah. Yeah. In the bathroom. Yeah.

00:58:15 Speaker 3

Nights guest. But she says it’s fully booked and she’s able to, like, the income is really good.

00:58:20 Speaker 3

Compared to when she was doing.

00:58:22 Speaker 3

It as a full unit so.

00:58:23 Speaker 3

It depends, but she’s in the.

00:58:24 Speaker 3

City of Toronto. So it makes sense.

00:58:25 Erwin

Very good.

00:58:26 Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah, because.

00:58:27 Erwin

I have new research on like Tokyo Hotels and stuff and they do like.

00:58:30 Erwin

The pod.

00:58:31 Erwin

Maybe that’s your next step, where it’s just, you know, it’s really just a sleeping area.

00:58:36 Erwin

You know what I mean? Like.

00:58:37 Erwin

It’s like a tube.

00:58:37 Speaker 4

Yeah, because that’s all.

00:58:39 Speaker 3

They need, right?

00:58:39 Speaker 3

To sleep overnight and.

00:58:40 Speaker 3

Then they’re traveling out and about.

00:58:44 Erwin

Like $40 a night.

00:58:49

Much though that you.

00:58:50 Speaker 2

Know that’s great.

00:58:52 Speaker 3

Here we have to look into that.

00:58:55 Speaker 4

That’s going that.

00:58:55 Speaker 4

I wonder what the laws are.

00:58:57

It is.

00:58:57 Erwin

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw I.

00:59:01 Erwin

Saw the saddest thing, like a City Council on Twitter, posted a.

00:59:05 Erwin

Bad and it looked like the bedrooms were in a crawl space. Right? So it’s just a mattress on the floor. And then, like, really cheap wardrobe. Like, like, probably some sort of wire frame and cloth. You know, I mean, I think you can buy them. Probably.

00:59:19 Erwin

Like team or.

00:59:19 Erwin

Something like that. Yeah. But yeah, it was like.

00:59:21 Erwin

3 something a.

00:59:22 Erwin

Room a room. It wasn’t really a room. It’s like it’s like.

00:59:26 Erwin

The curtain wall and again it’s their crawl.

00:59:28 Speaker 3

Oh my goodness.

00:59:29 Erwin

Space. So like.

00:59:30 Erwin

This the their ceiling looked 4 feet in Windsor. Yeah, City Council.

00:59:34 Speaker 4

Posted it mine. That’s sad.

00:59:35 Speaker 2

Reminds me of college days. I I remember living in on campus at.

00:59:40 Speaker 2

Or Lou and two of my buddies were renting A2 bedroom apartment and I came in.

00:59:44 Speaker 2

There I walled off half of.

00:59:46 Speaker 2

The kitchen and the living room and.

00:59:49 Speaker 2

I created a little.

00:59:49 Speaker 2

Bedroom. There it was great. I woke up to them cooking breakfast every morning for you.

00:59:55 Speaker 2

No, they’re cooking for themselves. When I smelled everything.

00:59:56 Speaker 4

You know what?

00:59:59 Erwin

Need better roommates.

00:59:59 Speaker 4

I’ve never met.

01:00:00 Speaker 3

A student rental, but I’ve heard a lot of student rentals. I mean, there’s a great landlords and then there are also landlords who cram all those students into crazy spaces. So I can.

01:00:09 Speaker 3

Imagine you know.

01:00:11 Speaker 3

That would happen.

01:00:12 Erwin

Now, you may remember you talked about like your early property management experience of being RB host and things seem to have changed a lot like for example like my experience often when I make it send an inquiry like it’s really quick like there seems to be a lot of auto response tools or whatnot, yeah, to explain that like what is it like is it like this is like AI and these like built in chat?

01:00:33 Erwin

Do they give you or do you are you? Are you just sitting there waiting for our inquiries to come in with your phone?

01:00:39 Speaker 3

Yeah. No, I mean for no, for us. So as soon as you send an inquiry.

01:00:41 Speaker 2

I’m always on my phone waiting to reply.

01:00:46 Speaker 3

You can set up these automated messages where you’re like. Thank you for your inquiry. Someone will get back to you, but generally want someone on our team as soon as we see an inquiry that comes in, we will respond to the inquiry. So yes, so.

01:00:58 Erwin

You have like staff that are just.

01:01:00 Speaker 3

At the desk. Yeah. No, no, no. They’re work from home, so.

01:01:03 Speaker 3

We have, I.

01:01:04 Speaker 3

I wouldn’t say a staff, that partner, partner within our company that we took on to help us manage all the Mississauga.

01:01:12 Speaker 3

Properties, right? And so. But aside from the Mississauga properties, any other properties that we take on? Yeah, it’s me and John. Basically, we’re on the phone all the time. We’re responding to our clients, but we do plan to actually have staff that would be full time to be able to answer to everyone.

01:01:32 Speaker 3

Right now, we’re able to manage most of the responses ourselves because we find it’s how you respond.

01:01:37 Speaker 3

That’s well because the automated messages sound automated, so you can see that and.

01:01:42 Speaker 2

Yeah, you can get away with certain messages being automated, but there’s some that need the personal touch.

01:01:46 Speaker 3

Yeah. And most of the time they inquire by asking a very specific question. So you have to answer to that question before they’re continue to take the next step, right.

01:01:56 Speaker 2

Although thinking about it, I think you.

01:01:58 Speaker 2

Can use AI.

01:02:01 Speaker 3

We have to look into that one, we.

01:02:01 Speaker 2

To respond.

01:02:02 Speaker 3

Have it. Yeah, I.

01:02:03 Speaker 2

Know, but it’s like your platform.

01:02:04 Erwin

Is probably a little more difficult.

01:02:05

Yeah, I don’t know.

01:02:07 Erwin

And also at the same time, I’m sure they’re working on it just to make.

01:02:09

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:02:09 Erwin

It easier for you.

01:02:11 Speaker 3

Yeah, I’m.

01:02:12 Speaker 3

Everybody has changed so much in terms of the way that the app is and all their features. They’re constantly changing, they’re adding new features, new things, just the way it looks, the way it lays out. And so we’re.

01:02:23 Speaker 2

Just just like just like.

01:02:25 Speaker 2

You know with communicating through text a lot can get misinterpreted.

01:02:29 Speaker 2

Through text. So we’ve even used. We’ve actually I’ve used AI to reply to certain guests who, you know, maybe sometimes we’re not on the same page where they might be getting offended by the way we’re communicating and what have you. So I’ll you know, I’ll type into, you know.

01:02:45 Speaker 3

That TPT?

01:02:47

And I’ll be like, you know, like this.

01:02:49 Speaker 2

You know, we I need you to reply to this message and you know, have this set, you know, certain tone and you know, and that should be built in by.

01:02:57 Speaker 2

Now it should be it should.

01:02:58 Speaker 2

Be it should be.

01:02:59 Speaker 3

It’s not, it’s not, but yeah, it should.

01:03:01 Erwin

Me this for example I’ve I’ve communicated with people in different countries and it’s obvious don’t speak English. They’re probably using some sort of.

01:03:09 Erwin

Translate function that that.

01:03:10 Speaker 3

They do, yes. So they do have that because we have guests that are from other countries. And when they message us, it’s in English. But you can tell they don’t speak English, right? Just certain things and so.

01:03:22 Speaker 3

They message in their own language and it translates back to English to.

01:03:25 Erwin

Us. Yeah. So how about red flags? What? What are you, what are you looking for? Cause I’m sure you don’t like just let anybody run from you. I actually, I know you’ve you’ve.

01:03:34 Erwin

Had some nightmare.

01:03:34 Erwin

Stories we had to learn.

01:03:37 Speaker 3

Right. I’m the reflex for me is generally if it’s their first time on the site. So usually if someone inquires and I look and there’s no reviews and it says it’s their first trip, we always qualify the guest. And we said what brings you to the area we noticed. So you know we say it’s straight we notice it’s.

01:03:56 Speaker 3

Your first time.

01:03:57 Speaker 3

Using this platform, you’re familiar.

01:04:00 Speaker 3

You OK with all the House rules?

01:04:03 Speaker 3

And so I think those are some of the basic things that we.

01:04:06 Speaker 3

Do anything else? There’s.

01:04:08 Speaker 2

Timelines like a certain minimum amount of night.

01:04:12 Speaker 2

I think one of the big red flags is if somebody’s looking to book for one night, you know, tend to they.

01:04:17 Speaker 2

Tend to be parties.

01:04:18 Erwin

Yeah, but they’re asking, though, do you do?

01:04:20 Erwin

You allow what single night booking on.

01:04:22 Speaker 2

Your platform, we.

01:04:23 Speaker 3

Yeah, we don’t.

01:04:23 Speaker 2

Do a minimum of two nights.

01:04:25 Speaker 2

On all properties.

01:04:25 Speaker 3

But they still would they.

01:04:26 Speaker 3

Still would message and ask you like, hey, we noticed yours two nights. Minimum. Can we do it for one night and generally we say no right but.

01:04:27 Erwin

Yes, yes.

01:04:30

OK.

01:04:36 Speaker 3

So red flags for us is usually in their reviews, and if it’s their first time and I always if they have reviews, I always read through the reviews to see what the other hosts say about them, right?

01:04:46

Another thing.

01:04:47 Speaker 2

Would be their age.

01:04:48 Speaker 2

So, much like renting a car, you should be at least.

01:04:53 Speaker 2

Yeah, 25 I’ve you know.

01:04:54 Erwin

The maybe 25 are in.

01:04:55 Erwin

The car or used?

01:04:56 Speaker 3

To be, yeah.

01:04:57 Speaker 2

25 I think it is.

01:04:58 Speaker 2

So you know, I mean we’ve made exceptions because sometimes we don’t want to judge people and what have you. But for the most part, if it depends on how they reply and what have you, if they tend to be under 25, like we’ve said it as a as a a rule or what have you that when they’re booking, they have to be at least.

01:05:16 Speaker 3

25 depends on the.

01:05:18 Speaker 3

Client some of our clients.

01:05:19 Speaker 3

As they don’t care as they don’t care the age as long as you know they obey the house rules, but a lot of clients are strict on that, so we respect.

01:05:27 Speaker 3

That and so we said that.

01:05:29 Speaker 3

But yeah, we do make exceptions except when the exceptions kind of, you know, burn us and throw us back in the face. Like up we knew.

01:05:38 Speaker 3

It you know.

01:05:39 Speaker 2

And then there’s.

01:05:40 Speaker 2

Location. So if somebody lives in Mississauga and they’re renting a place in Mississauga, yeah.

01:05:47 Speaker 3

For one night.

01:05:48 Speaker 2

Well, yeah, for one or.

01:05:49 Speaker 3

Or two nights? Yeah.

01:05:50 Speaker 2

Two nights, sometimes a lot of times nowadays it’ll be just for, you know, their book.

01:05:54 Speaker 2

For, you know, they’ve started visiting.

01:05:56 Erwin

Yeah. Thanks for a wedding.

01:05:57 Speaker 3

Or nothing. Yeah, yeah, which is understandable. So I find as long as if they’re willing to communicate with you, not short answer.

01:06:04 Speaker 3

They they take their time and just have the conversation, then usually they’re pretty good guests because they want also good reviews for future bookings as well too, right?

01:06:15 Erwin

Because some places make your garbage with you.

01:06:20 Erwin

Yeah. So we didn’t have any room for garbage, so we.

01:06:23 Erwin

Said to the host, please.

01:06:24 Erwin

Charge us. We’re not taking the.

01:06:26 Erwin

Garbage, yeah.

01:06:27 Erwin

Like you, you save your $35 garbage fee. Just charge us.

01:06:30 Erwin

They didn’t charge us for us and they gave.

01:06:31 Erwin

Us a bad review.

01:06:34 Speaker 3

Let’s fix.

01:06:34 Erwin

That’s weird.

01:06:35 Speaker 3

You know there there’s.

01:06:36 Speaker 3

Both, right. There’s good hosts and bad hosts. And then there’s good guests and bad guests, right? But no, we would never do that for us. We take care of all the garbage.

01:06:42 Erwin

Which is also funny.

01:06:44 Erwin

They allow us to reboot as.

01:06:45 Erwin

Well over the next.

01:06:48 Erwin

Cancelling got something else, but it was our backup.

01:06:52 Erwin

And then on the other side, like I’m empathetic with with landlords, I don’t know why. No kidding.

01:06:57 Erwin

So actually when they actually in town for like, I’m here with like, we went to Ottawa for example, I’m here with allow know who’s coming? Yeah, they didn’t ask like I’ll be with my wife. Yeah. And my videographer, we are for work. We’re going to be doing some interviews, you know, feel free to Google my name. It’s very unique. You’ll find my LinkedIn and you’ll find out.

01:07:16 Erwin

Oh, that’s great. Great.

01:07:17 Erwin

Yeah. Again, I can. I can empathize with what you’re looking for. What you’re screaming for.

01:07:21 Speaker 3

Right, for sure. Ohh I do wanna add is if they wanna take it off of the app. Yeah, because.

01:07:28 Erwin

They explain why they want to.

01:07:29 Erwin

Take it off the app. Yeah, because.

01:07:30 Speaker 3

Back then there was a I think, last.

01:07:32 Speaker 4

Year I I don’t see.

01:07:33 Speaker 3

It as many anymore but.

01:07:35 Speaker 3

Last year I got the sleuth of just inquiries.

01:07:39 Speaker 3

It would be.

01:07:40 Speaker 3

Asian actually business owners from New York, they’re always in New York, and they’re coming to Toronto to research the market, and they are willing to pay $10,000 for a week at a property. But they need to talk to me on WhatsApp or phone first and then.

01:07:44 Speaker 2

It’s always, yeah.

01:07:58 Speaker 3

Instead of booking, they would just ask a bunch of questions and so that is also red flag for me is when.

01:08:04 Erwin

What is their objective of these serious or?

01:08:06 Speaker 2

We have no idea.

01:08:06 Erwin

Is a scam.

01:08:08 Speaker 2

We feel like it’s a scam.

01:08:08 Speaker 3

That is probably a scam. See, there are scams going on, but I.

01:08:11 Speaker 2

Well, anytime they anytime they’ve request to.

01:08:14 Speaker 2

Chat with you.

01:08:15 Speaker 2

On another platform, then, that’s all like.

01:08:17 Speaker 3

But yeah, but it’s just the way that they say it. They’re like, oh, I’m on business trip, but we have people who do want to take it off of the app to save on the fees. So you kind of have to gauge to and.

01:08:30 Speaker 3

If you’re willing.

01:08:31 Speaker 3

To take it off the app to save our.

01:08:34 Speaker 3

Fees, I mean, in the past we’ve done it.

01:08:36 Speaker 3

We’ve actually based on, I guess, our conversation. We felt like it was someone we can.

01:08:40 Speaker 3

Plus, we kind of figure a way to get on the phone and through e-mail and they pay us directly and thank goodness they left our place. Well, nothing happened, but that’s a risk you have to willing to take, right cause anything can happen.

01:08:51 Erwin

I heard this called it heard this comment in colleges cause because people are habitual, right? They want the same week. Yeah. Every summer. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just, you know.

01:09:00 Speaker 2

Repeat repeat customers is you.

01:09:02 Speaker 3

Know that that we don’t mind to do direct.

01:09:04 Speaker 2

It’s the first time we’ve.

01:09:04 Speaker 3

Like they can book directly.

01:09:05 Speaker 2

Said that.

01:09:06 Erwin

Immediately want to.

01:09:07 Erwin

Go off, OK.

01:09:07 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We never talked to them before, right. And they just.

01:09:11 Erwin

Might take off, so explain your protections as being a, B Airbnb host on Airbnb. What are your protections? What’s the benefits staying on versus going off?

01:09:19 Speaker 4

So for.

01:09:20 Speaker 4

Us well, they.

01:09:21 Speaker 3

Have the $2,000,000 damage insurance. Yeah. Air cover. So anytime a guest damaged your property or break something, you make sure you get proof. You make sure you.

01:09:32 Speaker 3

Ask your cleaners for photos or videos.

01:09:35 Speaker 3

Then generally they make you put through a claim to the guest, and if the guest doesn’t is not willing to pay and I find usually if it’s a big amount the guest just not willing to.

01:09:46 Speaker 3

Pay their be be will pay it out for.

01:09:48 Speaker 3

Them, yeah.

01:09:50 Speaker 3

Like a few 1000.

01:09:51 Speaker 3

Dollars. They will deny it, you know? Yeah.

01:09:53 Speaker 2

Well, it depends on the.

01:09:54 Speaker 2

Damage, right? Like if if.

01:09:56 Speaker 4

Like it wasn’t us.

01:09:57 Speaker 2

Group comes in and they completely.

01:09:59 Speaker 2

Trashed the place they they would cover up to 2 million.

01:10:01 Speaker 3

Dollars. Yeah, we haven’t had that happening and I don’t.

01:10:04 Speaker 3

Want to try that? But apparently.

01:10:06 Speaker 3

Yeah, they will cover up.

01:10:08 Speaker 3

The amount, right?

01:10:09 Speaker 2

But Airbnb is, for the most part, as an owner and a host, they’re probably the most accommodating to to owners and hosts. Compared to the VRBO’s or in booking dot Coms, and what have you, they’ve.

01:10:20 Speaker 3

They’re pretty quick when it comes to damaged claims, right?

01:10:26 Speaker 2

Even had a a downtown property that, unfortunately.

01:10:29 Speaker 2

The guest came in, they.

01:10:30 Speaker 2

Got bedbugs. We don’t know if they brought the bedbugs or if they were there.

01:10:34 Speaker 2

But Airbnb?

01:10:38 Speaker 3

Pay for.

01:10:38 Speaker 2

It pay for everything you know.

01:10:39 Speaker 4

Yeah. Yeah, because I think.

01:10:41 Speaker 2

And it’s hard to prove who did it right.

01:10:42 Speaker 3

Yeah, because with the bed bugs, they know, I feel it’s because they know that once you become a host on air being you’re subject yourself. Yeah. So I think it’s a smart move on them that they cover it for.

01:10:48 Erwin

Yeah, we were much higher risk we were.

01:10:49 Erwin

Way higher risk.

01:10:52 Speaker 3

The inspection because it’s yeah.

01:10:54 Speaker 3

You don’t know who brought it. It could have been the.

01:10:56 Speaker 3

Past three guests, right. You just never know.

01:10:58 Erwin

Oh no. But like, you know, just putting my if I put my insurance hat on you, you blame. And when you owned it and it wasn’t an Airbnb, the bug bugs were there. So yeah, that should be your problem. You know what I mean? Because we experienced it as landlords.

01:11:13 Erwin

We we got.

01:11:14 Erwin

Churches never had cockroaches until you moved in. Did I put the the previous 10 foot in there? Or you been living there for three years and now you have?

01:11:17 Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah.

01:11:23 Erwin

Them I wonder, put them.

01:11:24 Speaker 3

There, the people would deny if they can, right?

01:11:24 Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah.

01:11:28 Erwin

Like I don’t know where they came from. You’ve been living there by yourself for three years.

01:11:34 Erwin

And this is the first time that, yeah.

01:11:36 Erwin

We’ve never seen. They were just. Well, that’s.

01:11:39 Speaker 3

This case, like our guest, came in for a week and it’s now like at the end of the week. And they said there’s bed bugs. So now we’re like, so when you first came.

01:11:47 Speaker 3

The first day, did you not experience to see like?

01:11:48 Erwin

Yeah, yeah.

01:11:50 Speaker 3

It’s hard, right?

01:11:50 Erwin

I know it’s hard.

01:11:51 Erwin

Is it cause if for?

01:11:52 Erwin

Example they came from some.

01:11:53 Erwin

Like my, my parents have picked up at bugs in like 5.

01:11:56 Erwin

Star hotels in Europe.

01:11:57 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah.

01:11:57 Erwin

Right. And if you they, if you were the next stop, then they brought them with them. Yeah. They would have known they would know.

01:12:04 Erwin

Seems to be a higher concentration of bedbugs in.

01:12:06 Speaker 3

My luggage, but as a host, the first thing you do is you.

01:12:12 Speaker 3

Offer a full refund.

01:12:13 Speaker 3

I guess because they still can leave a review.

01:12:16 Speaker 3

Right. And it’s hard to argue.

01:12:18 Speaker 3

Even if they brought it.

01:12:18 Speaker 3

In what are you going to do?

01:12:19

But that’s where.

01:12:19 Speaker 2

You go you, you start.

01:12:20 Speaker 2

To as long as you’ve done your your homework.

01:12:22 Speaker 2

And you’ve read the reviews.

01:12:23 Speaker 2

From their previous hosts a lot of times if they’ve got a good reputation.

01:12:25 Speaker 3

And they.

01:12:28 Speaker 2

They’ve earned that for a.

01:12:29 Erwin

Right, hang on. If you give, if you return your money, are they still allowed to give a review?

01:12:29 Speaker 2

Reason, but that’s true.

01:12:34 Erwin

Yeah, yes. So I can still give you a bad review and because I see that on.

01:12:34 Speaker 4

They did, yes.

01:12:36 Speaker 3

That’s what we want, yes.

01:12:37 Erwin

Amazon, for example, yeah.

01:12:38 Erwin

This is a piece of crap I returned.

01:12:39 Erwin

To get all.

01:12:40 Erwin

My money? One star? Yes, that’s.

01:12:42 Speaker 2

Like that sounds like good customer service.

01:12:42 Speaker 3

Exactly what happens? Yeah, yeah. Yes, they can still give you review.

01:12:51 Speaker 4

I know, right?

01:12:51 Erwin

That should be qualified.

01:12:53

I know, right? I agree.

01:12:55 Erwin

That should be a qualified review like as in like when you asterisk like it cost you nothing. You stayed for free, you get your money.

01:13:01 Speaker 3

Back. Whatever. Yeah, exactly. I feel like if you get your money back.

01:13:04 Speaker 3

You’re not.

01:13:04 Speaker 3

Even right.

01:13:05

More like.

01:13:06 Erwin

So you were unresponsive. One star, your own responsive.

01:13:10 Erwin

You didn’t really lose anything. You didn’t really invest anything. You didn’t really lose anything. You get a give.

01:13:14 Erwin

A1 star review.

01:13:15 Speaker 3

Yeah. And a one star review can really impact a listing like everybody’s so strict now. They actually are spending a lot of listings that have three stars and below.

01:13:26 Speaker 4

Yeah. Wow, yeah.

01:13:27 Speaker 2

And just to give you perspective like.

01:13:29 Speaker 3

So it’s they hold so.

01:13:30 Speaker 2

Much power. The maximum you can get is five stars, and as soon as you lose or get rated, anything less than five stars, you can never have a 5 star.

01:13:41 Speaker 2

Record ever again.

01:13:42 Speaker 3

It takes a while.

01:13:43 Speaker 2

No, you can never go back to five. You can get to 499. You can never get.

01:13:47 Speaker 2

Back to five stars.

01:13:48 Speaker 4

So I guess now.

01:13:49 Speaker 3

That as a host we are very like aware of when we are traveling and booking as a guest of how the reviews really impact, OK.

01:13:57 Erwin

Post business, I think everyone asked for reviews is that things are the industry practice. How do you how do you ask for them? How do you maintain them?

01:14:04 Speaker 3

Ohh, usually in our checkout message we have an automated checkout message that says.

01:14:11 Speaker 3

You know what can we hope we’ve done everything to be able to get the five star we actually suggest to us for us to get a 5 star review. If there were anything we hope that we had it all resolved. And generally if you see if they had a great experience and nothing happened.

01:14:30 Speaker 3

That message is enough, but if there has been things that happened, then we would send out a custom message where we’re like, you know, we know this happened, but.

01:14:38 Speaker 3

We were able to solve it or resolved it for.

01:14:41 Speaker 3

You would you mind?

01:14:42 Speaker 3

So if there’s still feedback to give it to us personally, direct, but to leave a public review that you know it’s not damaging. So we would ask for that.

01:14:51 Speaker 3

And then a couple days.

01:14:52 Speaker 3

Later we send them a reminder for review, right?

01:14:55 Erwin

Yeah. When Adam, Cherry and I are being in Ottawa, the door locking system was just so difficult. Like, I understand, I’ve worked in computer industry in this my.

01:15:05 Erwin

Entire career.

01:15:06 Erwin

For previous to being full time real estate.

01:15:09 Erwin

And like it was, I couldn’t ship. No one else could have the app.

01:15:13 Erwin

But me. Mm-hmm. So the.

01:15:14 Erwin

Other guests didn’t had no access and then called me and get and get it in. And then like it was just so.

01:15:19 Speaker 2

Difficult and like the August smart lock.

01:15:22 Speaker 4

There’s some smart ones that are not.

01:15:23 Erwin

Great. Yes. And so I. And so it’s like otherwise.

01:15:27 Erwin

The place is gorgeous.

01:15:28 Erwin

Yeah, yeah. There’s no short on parking less.

01:15:30 Erwin

Than they said it was.

01:15:31 Erwin

So I chose not to leave a review.

01:15:33 Erwin

Because it wouldn’t.

01:15:33 Erwin

Been five stars, so I just chose.

01:15:35 Erwin

Not to leave.

01:15:35 Speaker 4

A review. You know what that actually is the preferred way. So for us, I’d rather.

01:15:40 Speaker 3

That the guests.

01:15:41 Speaker 3

Don’t leave a leave a review and just give us the.

01:15:44 Speaker 3

Feedback. Yeah, if they.

01:15:45 Speaker 3

Feel they can’t be honest, like in.

01:15:47 Speaker 3

A review you have.

01:15:48 Speaker 3

To you want to be able to.

01:15:50 Speaker 3

And if you can’t leave a good review, then don’t leave it at all. So that’s what we would do.

01:15:54 Erwin

Yeah. So yeah.

01:15:56 Speaker 3

So even for guests, I mean some guests I feel.

01:16:00 Speaker 3

Like if I leave a review it might hinder them from booking for other, but some of the things they did is not terrible.

01:16:07 Speaker 3

Like I so.

01:16:07 Speaker 3

I would still give them a feedback I say in the future if you’re looking to rent again, make sure you look out for these things because it would go a long way and would help the host. We’re just going to let you.

01:16:17 Speaker 3

Know but if?

01:16:18 Speaker 3

I put it in a review and give you like a.

01:16:20 Speaker 3

4 three star it might impact right? And so just communicating to each other like human beings, yeah.

01:16:22 Erwin

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:26 Erwin

Hmm, yeah, yeah, just fixing. Changing the lock is not hard.

01:16:29

It’s quite pretty expensive too.

01:16:30 Speaker 3

No, that, that that is not hard. Yeah. Did you tell him that?

01:16:34 Erwin

Ah, it’s too busy.

01:16:37 Erwin

They’ll figure it out when.

01:16:38 Erwin

Someone else will someone.

01:16:39 Speaker 4

And also.

01:16:39 Erwin

Else will give a bad review and.

01:16:40 Erwin

Let them know well.

01:16:42 Speaker 2

That’s the thing, right? We we’ve learned that.

01:16:44 Speaker 2

There’s no coaching on how to how.

01:16:46 Speaker 2

To review people.

01:16:47 Speaker 2

So some people.

01:16:48 Speaker 2

Will be, I think, sometimes a little too honest, yeah.

01:16:51 Erwin

Like one star and you have.

01:16:53 Erwin

Your money back. Like, wow. Like that’s that’s.

01:16:55 Erwin

Harsh. Yeah, you know like.

01:16:57 Erwin

You’ve lost. You’ve lost nothing financially.

01:16:59 Speaker 3

Yeah, right. Yeah.

01:17:01 Erwin

How else do you maintain guests experience then?

01:17:04 Erwin

Because it it’s it’s it’s.

01:17:05 Erwin

Critical like for example, I don’t I on when I when I’m on Google Maps for example and I’m trying to pick a restaurant, I immediately filter for four-star now. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like it’s it’s critical to.

01:17:16 Erwin

Have good reviews.

01:17:17 Speaker 3

Besides the review, it’s what you write in your.

01:17:20 Speaker 3

Bio as a host.

01:17:21 Speaker 3

Too, like you want to share a little.

01:17:23 Speaker 3

Bit about yourself and.

01:17:24 Speaker 3

Then all your Co hosts as well.

01:17:26 Speaker 3

Do, but yeah, I definitely say the reviews and in terms of your photos, you want to make sure.

01:17:33 Speaker 3

You updated it’s nice photo, so even in the review what I notice is that even if someone gives you a bad review, you can still respond to it and how you respond to that review. All the guests will be able to.

01:17:45 Speaker 3

Take a look so for.

01:17:46 Erwin

1. So we can see it, yeah.

01:17:48 Speaker 3

Example, even if you know they weren’t happy with something.

01:17:51 Speaker 3

But we resolved it and we explained our side.

01:17:53 Speaker 3

So then the future guests can see the full picture. So always make sure you respond to all the reviews, especially if they’re negative reviews.

01:18:00 Erwin

Here, here’s

01:18:01 Speaker 2

Cleanliness cleaners.

01:18:03 Speaker 2

You know, happy cleaners and cleaners that do a really good job.

01:18:09 Speaker 2

I think a lot of.

01:18:09 Speaker 2

Times that can go a.

01:18:11 Speaker 2

Long way people that come in to to rent.

01:18:13 Speaker 2

Your property and what have you as they.

01:18:15 Speaker 2

If they come in and it’s.

01:18:17 Speaker 2

Less than perfect.

01:18:19 Speaker 2

It’s understandable to an extent, but for the most part, if, if, if they find anything that’s not clean, then it’s a big issue. So we make sure that their our cleaners get paid well and that they’re happy and you know we we have a a checklist of things that they need to, you know, to go through and what have you.

01:18:26 Speaker 3

Yeah, that’s a big issue.

01:18:36 Speaker 2

To make sure that.

01:18:38 Speaker 2

When there’s the turnover is done, the next guest comes in and they have.

01:18:42 Speaker 2

A good experience.

01:18:43 Erwin

If you’re buying a property today for Airbnb purposes, can you?

01:18:46 Erwin

Paint me a picture. What? What would what?

01:18:47 Erwin

Would it look?

01:18:48 Erwin

Like what would?

01:18:48 Speaker 3

It be sure I do have an ideal.

01:18:51 Speaker 3

Even a specific location for me, I would buy it in like I’d say, like Niagara on the lake for example, right where I know that a lot of these areas they are giving out a permit.

01:19:04 Speaker 3

And I would make it.

01:19:05 Erwin

Oh, you want to be?

01:19:06 Erwin

Legally. OK. Yeah, I.

01:19:07 Speaker 3

Want it to be legal?

01:19:08 Erwin

Oh wow, how do you what are you tweaking?

01:19:09 Speaker 3

And I would. I would have like a feat and I would have a pool. It’s either that or I would even get out of Canada and I would do something in the US like, I would go to the US and maybe not my if I’m doing Airbnb.

01:19:25 Speaker 3

I would arbitrage.

01:19:26 Speaker 3

So I might get into like a beautiful home that I can negotiate a lower lease with the landlord, and then I would furnish it. And we haven’t even looked into what area, but I would definitely.

01:19:39 Speaker 3

Want a water feature?

01:19:41

As well.

01:19:41 Speaker 2

It’s something that you can rent out all Four Seasons. You know, the challenging part of of Canadian real estate is that when winter hits January, February, unless you’re in a steel town, you know you’re not.

01:19:53 Erwin

Yeah, yeah.

01:19:54 Erwin

Yeah. Or snowballs. Snowballs. I heard. OK, maybe ice fishing. Yeah. Yeah, we’re getting a little.

01:19:55 Speaker 2

It’s it’s going to slow down.

01:19:59 Speaker 2

Maybe ice fishing? Snowmobiles.

01:20:02 Erwin

Bit more niche, but yeah.

01:20:03 Erwin

No, I don’t think no one, no one supplies snowmobiles.

01:20:06 Erwin

To do it, no.

01:20:07 Speaker 2

I don’t think so. I think that would.

01:20:07 Erwin

That’d be awesome.

01:20:09 Speaker 2

Be massive, that would.

01:20:10 Speaker 2

I think you know, you know.

01:20:11 Speaker 3

Or I would even get into tiny homes actually up in North Ontario. We have someone that was in a group, an Airbnb host group, and they had a huge cottage, was not $1,000,000 cottage and a tiny.

01:20:11 Speaker 2

That would be a cool experience.

01:20:25 Speaker 3

Home with like a spa and everything and their tiny home was booked the same amount, if not more, at the same price.

01:20:34 Speaker 3

And it costs them less because there’s just a demand for these unique tiny homes. Maybe it’s a trend, I don’t know, in a couple of years, if it still is a big deal, but people are looking for unique experiences right now. So yeah, if I have money, I would test it out and see.

01:20:50 Erwin

And then you say you mentioned rental arbitrage or rental arbitrage.

01:20:55 Erwin

Do you offer that as?

01:20:55 Speaker 3

Well, we actually don’t, but we can if someone wanted to, let’s say they or themselves, who wants to.

01:21:03 Speaker 3

Rent a property out and then get us to manage it. Then we would do it. But we’re not offering to. Currently we have I guess clients in Toronto who said can I just rent it out to you guys for a monthly fee and you guys do their B, but the pricing that they’re looking for doesn’t make sense for us.

01:21:20 Speaker 3

Right, because of the.

01:21:21 Speaker 3

Occupancy rate, when we crunch in the number.

01:21:23 Speaker 3

It’s not consistent enough for us.

01:21:25 Erwin

It’s probably a novice investor and this is a vacant home too, like not.

01:21:25 Speaker 3

To take it over.

01:21:28 Speaker 2

Unfurnished. That’s where it doesn’t really make sense in in Canada to do that where you’d have to go down to the.

01:21:33 Speaker 2

Less because it’s just too expensive to arbitrage here. There’s too much liability.

01:21:37 Speaker 3

Yeah, like if they want us to pay rent $4000 a month, right in Toronto, then you got to make sure you guarantee that every month.

01:21:46 Speaker 3

Which I guess.

01:21:47 Speaker 3

You can depend on the location, but we haven’t thought about that yet.

01:21:52 Erwin

Are you taking more clients still?

01:21:54 Speaker 3

We are currently taking clients because.

01:21:57 Speaker 3

We have to.

01:21:57 Speaker 3

Review some of the clients that we had in.

01:22:00 Speaker 3

The past I.

01:22:01 Speaker 3

Three years and we actually had to let go of some.

01:22:04 Speaker 3

Of the clients.

01:22:04 Speaker 3

Which, because it just didn’t make sense for us.

01:22:07 Erwin

Geography or just it wasn’t working or was a?

01:22:10 Erwin

Short term rental or.

01:22:10

Yeah, it’s just.

01:22:11 Speaker 3

It’s both, but it’s kind of like the caliber of the space is not really what we’re looking after. What we want to, we want to focus a lot more on kind of like a look.

01:22:22 Speaker 3

Serious feel or?

01:22:24 Erwin

Like mentioned tiny homes, just yes, luxury.

01:22:24

You mention.

01:22:31 Erwin

Nice fishing here.

01:22:32 Speaker 3

So some of the properties that we’ve done very well with are ones with the pool, with the hot top and we put a lot of time and effort into it. But the return is there. So it makes sense.

01:22:43 Speaker 2

Well, you have to identify as a as a host and as an owner. What kind of?

01:22:43 Speaker 3

For eyes.

01:22:47 Speaker 2

What kind of rental you wanna be? Do you wanna be budget friendly? Do you wanna be luxurious? Do you wanna be somewhere in the middle? Yeah, because for us, the the challenge is when we’re managing too many different styles of properties. It it’s there’s a lot of juggling, you know 11 owner will say OK. I want you to buy towels from you know.

01:23:07 Speaker 2

From Walmart or Dollarama.

01:23:10 Speaker 2

And then the other one is just like well, no, I want these, you know, I want Egyptian cotton sheets and you know, yeah.

01:23:15 Erwin

Already have that.

01:23:16 Speaker 2

That there’s some owners.

01:23:17 Speaker 2

That that want to provide that for their guests.

01:23:19 Erwin

As long as Costco sells it, I’m OK. Yeah, yeah.

01:23:22 Speaker 4

Actually, yeah. Also was great. They they.

01:23:24 Erwin

Probably do sell that.

01:23:25 Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah, they do.

01:23:26 Erwin

I’m just surprised someone says that I will design.

01:23:28 Erwin

These are my materials.

01:23:29 Speaker 2

Well, but having to stalk both is, you know, if you’re, if you’re having to stalk towels from all your guests or for all your clients, right? You know, you’ve gotta run to Walmart to get, you know, or dollar store to get cheap towels for one client. Then you gotta go, you know, Costco. And you need a membership for Costco to go.

01:23:32 Erwin

Alright, you.

01:23:45 Erwin

Right versus cost only usually stocks 2 SKUs for each category. They would probably sell 2.

01:23:47

Yeah, right.

01:23:51 Erwin

Towels versus Walmart sells.

01:23:52 Speaker 3

But you.

01:23:53 Erwin

Like a lot of towels.

01:23:54 Speaker 3

Yes, sorry, but to continue that question, so we are accepting new clients and of course it depends on the like the location of.

01:24:03 Speaker 3

The property but.

01:24:04 Speaker 3

We what I’ve noticed in the past year that.

01:24:06 Speaker 3

I’m getting a lot.

01:24:07 Speaker 3

Is that there’s a lot of people that come.

01:24:09 Speaker 3

To us, that first.

01:24:10 Speaker 3

I guess they they wanted us to manage, but then eventually they’re like, they’re wondering if they can do this on themselves, like by themselves. And of course they can’t. If you have the time, it’s a lot of work.

01:24:20 Speaker 3

But let’s say if you’re working part time or you know you’re running a business and you have time or your stay at home mom or Dad, you can do this, right? But there was still asking a lot of questions. So then what I’ve decided to do was create. I ran a bunch of workshops all the time. We haven’t. I haven’t started yet for.

01:24:40 Speaker 3

But I probably will start in October or November where a lot of these homeowners would come and they would learn. And so I would teach them how to become a host. And I see that has.

01:24:50 Speaker 3

Been working though for them as.

01:24:52 Erwin

Well, too, yeah. Yeah. Cause when when I did.

01:24:55 Erwin

Not even that.

01:24:56 Erwin

Long ago 2018, there was like very little resources.

01:24:58 Speaker 3

But yeah, yeah, there’s not a lot of resource I’m considering like I’ve had. I think about four or five now. Who actually said besides like.

01:25:06 Speaker 3

They want to.

01:25:07 Speaker 3

Know everything.

01:25:08 Speaker 3

And I said over a phone call or three hour workshop, you can’t know everything.

01:25:12 Speaker 3

So I can.

01:25:13 Erwin

Well, you’re pretty. You’re probably pretty well equipped.

01:25:15 Erwin

To set that point.

01:25:16 Speaker 3

Yeah, yeah. So I’ve actually considered putting together something where it’s like over a course of eight weeks where I’m holding their hands and then I can show them what to do as well, too. So we’ve had.

01:25:27 Speaker 3

Been in talks. I’ve been in talks with a few homeowners who wanted to learn everything but do it themselves and because they don’t want to hire a property management company. I know there’s a lot of courses out there too, but the thing about courses, as someone who’s taken courses a lot.

01:25:41 Speaker 4

Of them are very expensive.

01:25:44 Speaker 3

And I find some of it you can find a lot of it.

01:25:48 Speaker 3

Online yourself as well too, so I wanted to help people, but I want to make it affordable, so we’ll see.

01:25:54 Speaker 3

For now, maybe the workshops will.

01:25:55 Erwin

Do so. Where can people learn more information on either the course or your?

01:25:59 Erwin

Business. Yeah, so we have.

01:26:01 Speaker 3

A website, it’s called short, stays with an SINTL so.

01:26:07 Speaker 3

Extend for a.

01:26:08 Speaker 3

Short stays international so short stays INT l.com.

01:26:14 Speaker 3

If you go on there, you can enter in your e-mail and it’ll send to us or you can e-mail us directly. It has all our contact information on the website as well too. Yeah, we’re pretty.

01:26:25 Speaker 2

You can find us on Facebook and Instagram on.

01:26:27 Speaker 3

This and we can share you.

01:26:28 Speaker 3

Our contact information, if you put on the podcast and people can just message and once again it doesn’t matter if you know you’re planning to be a client of ours.

01:26:37 Speaker 3

Or you just have.

01:26:37 Speaker 3

Questions. We love meeting new hosts and other.

01:26:40 Speaker 3

People that want.

01:26:40 Speaker 3

To get into the space and just want to.

01:26:42 Speaker 3

Kind of ask some questions and to see where.

01:26:45 Speaker 3

To start, yeah. So we love to be.

01:26:46 Speaker 3

Able to help.

01:26:47 Erwin

You are a host referral URL or.

01:26:50 Speaker 4

Something. Oh, that’s a great question actually there.

01:26:52 Speaker 3

Is an Airbnb host referral URL I will provide. I don’t remember it off.

01:26:58 Erwin

Is it a hard?

01:26:58 Erwin

One, it’s not like a custom. It’s not.

01:26:58

Of it.

01:27:00 Erwin

A vanity. Nothing. It’s like.

01:27:01 Speaker 2

I think we have to be the ones.

01:27:02 Speaker 2

To invite them.

01:27:03 Speaker 4

Though no it is. It’s like it’s.

01:27:05 Speaker 3

Airbnb something slash my 80 like it’s something like that.

01:27:10 Speaker 3

And you’re right, if you become a new host, they give you, I think, $34. But they also give us.

01:27:16 Speaker 3

A few 100.

01:27:17 Speaker 4

Dollars just for referring.

01:27:20 Speaker 3

Yeah. So they we do actually have that now that you mentioned it, I will send it to you. I don’t have it.

01:27:25 Speaker 3

Memorized any final thoughts?

01:27:27 Erwin

On investing in general short term rentals, we ARBO anything.

01:27:31 Speaker 2

I think for us, so we just want to be able to create a a community of hosts that are like minded that we can, you know, share ideas with that. We can work together with and that we can you.

01:27:43 Speaker 2

Create this movement of of short term rentals with to create a great experience for for guests. Well you just trade tips and you know do you like meet together? Talk to each other for your own market research as well.

01:27:55 Speaker 4

That’s right. Yeah, we.

01:27:57 Speaker 4

For us.

01:27:57 Speaker 3

Short term rental was just another means and then it became a business. But at the same time we pivot to also mid term rentals as well.

01:28:07 Speaker 3

Too, but you know.

01:28:08 Speaker 3

At the core of it, I feel were like real estate investor at heart. So we’re always looking for different ways and it doesn’t always mean short term is the right strategy for particular.

01:28:18 Speaker 3

Home, right. So for us, we believe in long term short term everything that has to do with real estate and we’re constantly looking to.

01:28:26 Speaker 3

Learn from people like.

01:28:27 Speaker 3

Yourself or when and other investors out there as well to about this this industry. I mean, there’s so much there’s so.

01:28:35 Speaker 3

Much to learn.

01:28:36 Erwin

Yeah, I should have asked this earlier. Is there a preference between short term versus midterm rental?

01:28:41 Speaker 3

You know I like.

01:28:42 Speaker 3

Mid term rentals. Now I find because people are in there, at least for a.

01:28:46 Speaker 3

Couple of months.

01:28:47 Speaker 3

And generally, they’re good guests and they’re not. And because when you’re manage a bunch of smaller short term rentals, there’s a lot more active work that you have to.

01:28:55 Speaker 3

Be involved, right?

01:28:55 Speaker 2

And they would they would detect cockroaches a lot sooner than long term.

01:29:00 Speaker 4

But the the good thing is.

01:29:02 Speaker 3

Though with the long term, with the midterm ones, then there’s less work.

01:29:06 Speaker 3

For our cleaners.

01:29:07 Speaker 3

Our cleaners are happy when there’s more short.

01:29:10 Speaker 3

Well, work for them, right? So there’s pros and cons. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

01:29:10 Erwin

Yeah. OK. OK.

01:29:12 Erwin

So he’s planning to make it, then it doesn’t need a mix. You’re not perfect.

01:29:16 Erwin

As long as it’s legally, yeah, you’re actually.

01:29:19 Erwin

Legally able to do.

01:29:19 Erwin

It. Yeah, right. I should know. That’s that’s just good question. What’s it take to get a permit and what are your what are your what are your?

01:29:25 Erwin

Government costs to to operate.

01:29:27 Speaker 3

So yeah, so it depends on where. But in the city of Toronto, I mean, I’ve seen apartment been given in like a couple of days to a month, right and it cost.

01:29:38 Speaker 3

Yeah, not so bad. It costs $50.00 to register for the City of Toronto. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen right. Mind you, a lot of people don’t know how it’s a you just Google Short term rental Toronto permit and it pops up and you can fill out. We serve a lot of.

01:29:52 Speaker 3

People in my own.

01:29:53 Speaker 3

Community which is feeding me, who they’re not very comfortable with online and.

01:29:57 Speaker 3

English language. Then they asked our company to maybe help them guide them through on how to fill that out, but it’s so simple it would take a couple of minutes and you can get your permit I know.

01:30:07 Speaker 3

In the city of Mississauga.

01:30:08 Speaker 3

Home or up in Vaughan? It’s a different place. It probably is a few $100 and I’ve seen it in Niagara. It’s a few 100 to maybe Max in.

01:30:18 Speaker 3

Four areas like.

01:30:19 Speaker 3

1200.

01:30:20 Speaker 3

Right. So it depends. Yeah, yeah.

01:30:22 Erwin

That’s significant.

01:30:23 Speaker 3

Yeah, it depends what your government want to make money.

01:30:26 Speaker 3

From so yeah.

01:30:28 Erwin

And then limitation.

01:30:29 Erwin

Like, here’s some places like you’re only allowed to rent for like, half a year. That’s your maximum.

01:30:33 Speaker 3

Yes. So in Toronto, you’re only allowed to if you ask for a permit for.

01:30:39 Speaker 3

A full unit then it’s only 180 days short term rental cause they assume you’re living there, right? Because in order to be qualified, it has to be your principal home. So you must be living there. So how can you be renting out the entire year? You can only rent out 100.

01:30:49 Erwin

Got it, got it.

01:30:55 Speaker 3

80 days now. If you apply for a permit to.

01:30:58 Speaker 3

Rent room by.

01:30:58 Speaker 3

Room. You can rent it out unlimited because technically you can still live there and rent out the other rooms so unlimited. So when you fill out that application, make sure you choose. Is it a full unit?

01:31:08 Speaker 3

Or is it room?

01:31:08 Speaker 3

By room, what is considered a full unit? You can’t say you live upstairs and you’re renting down the basement. If it has separate entrance.

01:31:15 Speaker 3

That separate kitchen because.

01:31:17 Speaker 3

Consider as its own unit, right? So every so you need a permit for the top floor and the permit for the basement. If you have separate units like that.

01:31:24 Speaker 4

Sucker things.

01:31:27 Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, they do eventually.

01:31:28 Speaker 3

Not initially. When they give you the permit, but maybe a month later, two months later.

01:31:33 Speaker 3

Depends how busy they are.

01:31:33 Speaker 2

They’re using to send a city worker, or we’ve seen fire, fire, fire inspectors.

01:31:38 Speaker 3

Inspector. Yeah.

01:31:40 Speaker 2

And stuff like that.

01:31:41 Speaker 2

Depending on the region, is it you know what I actually like the fire inspectors coming out because they’ll check if to make sure that you’re, you know, the fire extinguishers are are up to date. Your smoke detectors. You’re it’s good.

01:31:52 Speaker 2

No2 sensors because all those things would, you know, the horror stories that you hear sometimes just because.

01:32:00 Speaker 2

Thank you.

01:32:00 Speaker 3

Yeah, like you see in the newspaper how this airbeam be broke down. Yeah. You know, things like that.

01:32:06 Erwin

In the context of Hamilton, I’ve been following the Hamilton story for forever and my anecdotal stat tracking 2/3 of who died in fires. It’s usually university students, right? So so I have no problem with fire inspections for students because.

01:32:16 Speaker 3

I know.

01:32:16 Speaker 3

That’s sad, right?

01:32:20 Erwin

You know, it’s almost 80, almost 80% of your problems here. Go ahead.

01:32:23 Erwin

And inspect them.

01:32:24 Speaker 4

For sure.

01:32:25 Speaker 3

Yeah, you want to make sure everyone is safe. Safe. Your place right at the end of.

01:32:30 Speaker 3

The day so.

01:32:30 Erwin

I know, but 8020.

01:32:31 Erwin

Like 80% of problems in.

01:32:33 Erwin

These neighborhoods, these houses, like, yeah, go after it.

01:32:38 Erwin

Yeah. Thank you so much for making the trip out. I know this is in the closest place, but.

01:32:42 Erwin

Thank you for coming in. Well, thanks for having.

01:32:44 Speaker 2

Us it’s been fun.

01:32:45 Speaker 3

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for giving us the space to share and yeah, and learn more from you.

01:32:58 Erwin

Before you go, if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already then set up the my newsletter. Find out for yourself with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell, I love teaching and.

01:33:13 Erwin

Sharing this stuff.

 

 

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** Transcript Auto-generated**

Erwin 0:00
Welcome to the truth about real estate investing show today we have the lovely Kelly Andrade, who has been advocating for us landlords since 2010. We’ll be talking about the challenges landlords face, how we can better come together and advocate for ourselves, her plans for her next investment and so much more. Before we get to Taylor, again, welcome to the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians, where we’re on this journey together to seek the truth on how to best invest in real estate. We host leaders in our community who have demonstrated repeatable investment strategies, I ask them about their tips and tricks, so we may leverage their experiences to improve our own portfolios, and in turn our lives on a path to financial peace. My name is Erwin Seto, I’ve owned over 40 properties since 2005, full time in investment, real estate and coaching since 20 1014, realtor of the year to investors, and I’m looking to pivot away from Canadian real estate, not entirely and yes, you heard that right. Terry and I are looking to divest to divest some of our properties to take profits pay off some debt on properties that don’t cashflow positive. With these higher rates, and rents were not able to increase, I have two properties that are under rented by about $1,000 each. And thanks to rent control, I’m going to sell them, there’s about a 95% chance in my experience, that’s someone who will buy them over that’s going to buy them will likely move in and they’ll move into one or both units. And then sadly removing rental supply from the system. Not that our government cares, because they knew this would happen, because that’s the symptom of rent control. combined that with the opportunities that presented themselves to me in the southern parts of the United States, where it’s landlord friendly, and the debt coverage, mortgage, sorry, debt coverage ratio mortgages are available, which is kind of commercial financing here in Canada, there’s just there’s just such a plethora of options available in the States. So debt coverage ratio means qualification of the mortgage will be based almost entirely on your down payment, which has been 120 5%. Down and the numbers of the property. So if you find a good cash flowing property, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a mortgage. Combine that with a managed service company that I’m currently doing due diligence on. For those new to the Sunbelt, USA states there is no rent control in the right, and the good ones, and not all of them looking at you California. And there’s no landlord tenant board. Single family homes are in the 102. Well, the target, the ones I’m targeting are in a 100,000 to $300,000 price range. That is US dollars in the cash flow in US dollars. The numbers are so good. We’re looking at like five to seven caps. And that’s better than most apartment buildings here with way less headaches. I don’t need to have lots of tenants. I’m totally okay to make my money passively. And again, I’m drawing myself into the due diligence process. I’m booking myself a trip down south next month, I’ll report my findings when I’m back. I have no doubt prices will go up again when the Canada cuts rates but I have no doubt that I cannot raise my rents. On practice property taxes are going up anywhere in the six to 14% range. And if they don’t crazy, literally Belleville passed a property tax increase of 5.8% this earlier this year, and Hamilton is looking at a 14% increase for next year. Also the landlord tenant board is effectively broken and left no option but to figure out how to make real estate investing great again. That’s tongue in cheek folks. You know, I’m not political. But I do like to make my investing Great. Based on the survey that we sent out. 92% of respondents are interested in a workshop on how to learn and in general, they’re interested in a workshop on how to Canadian can invest in real estate real estate. In general, you’re all interested in learning more about investing in the States in general. So you spoken and so we’re doing just that. We’re going to have more guests on the show to speak to us investing. I just booked a Florida guest for next month. And also on Saturday morning, October 21. We are offering for the first time ever, and investing in the US workshop in partnership with share SFR and lens City USA. So we will be covering topics such as that you’ve been interested in such as US ownership structures in order to optimize mortgage options, while eliminating tax and liability. The top areas for investment including everyone’s favorites, Florida, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, basically, yeah, you’re my audience. Not surprised you’re very very knowledgeable on where the landlord friendly states are. How you can improve your cash flow your portfolio and returns while investing in houses in the United States. And again, we’re talking about the $100,000 range and $100,000 to $300,000 range. Needless to say, the affordability is significantly better stateside in person Seating is limited. We’re limited to 24 seats, and we’ve already sold a bunch of them. Yes, there will be a hybrid option to attend via zoom but in person learning is always the best in my opinion, in my experience, but if you live in BC, we got you tickets or a silly honestly silly little price. To $30 Plus tax for in person and online, All proceeds go to charity. If you’re a frustrated Canadian landlord like I am, you owe it to yourself to learn how to make real estate investing great again, by investing stateside. Again, this dis education, folks, because inflation is real, you need to be able to raise your rents, and there’s plenty more inflation on the way. Just to clarify, again, we’re talking about buying property in the states that you own directly in control. You’re the only one on title, there’s no shares, there’s no private lending, none of that sort of that sort of that stuff. It’s just you owning the house. And again, friends of mine are coming, they’re gonna be talking about their managed service options. So see you there. I went to get skinny dot 10 Well, I have a link in the show notes. Of course. I win workshop.eventbrite.ca Just go to the show notes. It’s easier. And and just click on it again. $30 Plus tax and on to this week’s show. We have a longtime friend of ours and Kyla Andrade on the show. President of Ontario landlords watch a grassroots, not for profit organization. There’s almost 10,000 Facebook group members that follow along. Kayla has been advocating for us landlords ever since to her local city passed a bylaw, that if a tenant doesn’t pay their water bill said debt is applied to the landlord’s property tax. Gotta love how landlords are expected to backstop attendance debt. Kayla is here to share about best practices on how we may advocate for our rights. So we may come together to make a healthier rental rental market here in Ontario. For everyone, including the vast majority of tenants who are great. That’s my experience. I thankfully don’t have any tenants who are holding back on rent. We discuss challenges that we face, how are pausing, how she’s pausing the growth of our portfolio and, and of course, always amazing upcoming fifth annual Ontario landlord wash conference on Saturday, October 28. Doors are at 1pm And dinner is included. I’ll be there with many wonderful speakers. I should mention there is no online option because everyone’s gonna be able to speak unfiltered if there’s no recordings and no online auction so doors doors, doors will be closed. I’ll be there along with many wonderful speakers and a certain Member of Parliament. That killer announces for the first time on this show. I’ve got a link to get tickets in the show notes. So grab my you can again that’s Saturday, October 25 20 Sorry 28th Saturday, October 28 doors at 1pm. My friends from single key in front lobby will be there to I hear there’s another great tech company that will help people with their landlord forms so that they don’t make any mistakes. Please note the show I present to you Kayla Andrade

Erwin 10:24
How are you? I’m good how you doing?

Kayla 10:27
Ah, you know, chillin like a villain. I was good. It was it was not my normal buffet that I did. But still, it was like pizza that normally I give to the kids. And then we made like a chicken salad sandwich. I had a macaroni salad, some sushi. So it was it was good. It had a little bit of my little flavor to it. Usually a lot more items on there. I’m loving your food that you’re cooking, though. You keep posting those, my friend. What is he making?

Erwin 11:04
It’s funny, because it’s totally like my real estate strategy. Keep it slow and boring. Because if you go slow and boring, you take so much risk out. Right?

Kayla 11:15
Yeah, when you are getting into like, let’s let’s run with it, then you start making mistakes, right?

Erwin 11:21
Well, like if you’re like grilled steak. It’s so time sensitive. You’re over by a minute. You’re really screwed up.

Kayla 11:31
Like Hey, Siri, set a timer. Yeah.

Erwin 11:35
But even still, but yeah, but my problem is always got too many things going on. You know? I mean,

Kayla 11:40
I said that and Siri picked up how long?

Erwin 11:44
Yeah,

Kayla 11:46
now it’s picking it up on the tablet there. Good. Golly. I swear we’re being listened to everywhere. Yeah. But ya know, it’s, uh, it’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy out there right now.

Erwin 11:58
Yeah. Okay. But yeah, I want to I want to have you on. So you can talk about your conference. And, you know, kind of get an update on where you’re at in terms of like your own investment journey and how you’re supporting a wall W members. And, you know, we were talking about, if you want to talk about front lobby or anything like that, you know, me,

Kayla 12:21
you bounce them off me? I’ll answer it.

Erwin 12:26
I’ll make a list. And yeah, isn’t really a particular theme for for, for the conference this year.

Kayla 12:33
I know, we’re just Brandon is Ontario landlords watch. Because I’m going to be creating a committee after the fact. It’s going to be a private house Housing Task Force. So we have a government Housing Task Force. So let’s, let’s work our private one in there. And we’re just going to be more control of it. And then your Christian. Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll let her know that he’s been sold.

Erwin 13:01
Already did some work. Right. He already spoke in Ottawa for stuff.

Kayla 13:05
Oh, yeah. Like he’s a part of the Ontario the Ottawa landlords association that was established up there already. So it’s great to have like multiple voices in the industry. We’re trying to save some of them, you know, some of our, our landlord or regional ones from ramaa. They’re like trying to build themselves up from dust right now. So a lot of these small landlords associations are starting to die off, I John Dickey stepped down. So he’s going, he’s not going to be a part of CFA anymore. And then foco is going to the guy Tony from Volvo, he’s going to start managing both of them. So you can kind of see like, we’re we’re starting to take one leader and stretching him thin, we need to get more more voices and be more established. So that’s what the committee is going to do is really harness in what we’re advocating for him, which I have the ideas now, but we just want to write that into policy, which would be more inclined for elected officials to look at it because it’s being wrote in the way that they write policies. And then from that committee, we’re going to be utilizing that committee to go after the elected officials and be like, hey, we want you to have a meeting with our committee. So it’s not like we’re waiting to join their meetings anymore. We’re going to be saying you’re coming to us, and this is who we represent. But we need to start organizing and collaborating on how many of these landlords we represent, you know, being on Facebook with like 9600 members or having so many people on our email list, like we want to have like who you are, how many units you represent as you own or manage. You take the unit off of the long term market, you know, we want them to inform Ontario landlords watch about it. And if we can get that committee to recruit our landlords out there to do the same as well as if they have an issue with our elected officials. We want them to see see us in that letter to that. So it would be pretty good.

Erwin 14:55
I agree. Okay, one second. That’s got changed my headset. I don’t like the look of these one second.

Kayla 15:01
It looks stylish like, did you think? What’s new with you?

Erwin 15:13
Check check.

Nevermind didn’t work. No good. No good. And then we can talk about headwinds investors are getting. I heard about it. I didn’t I didn’t believe it when I first heard it, like Markham city of Markham that the rates are taxes 93% over a three year period. What are you seeing locally to you?

Kayla 15:53
We’re at 10% of the property tax increase.

Erwin 15:58
We’re looking at 14 for Hamilton.

Kayla 16:01
Yeah. And then they want to say, Hey, it’s 2.5% That’s all you can raise your rent, like the paralegals are starting to get gather information now on the government expropriating your land? And could we actually tie that into a situation where they’re technically expropriating our land without notice, and without a proper, proper compensation? Because if they’re there, they’re now refusing or delaying the eviction based on our landlords having tenants in the unit with children. Um, like, so don’t rent to children. Like

Erwin 16:38
you’re gonna do with your own portfolio?

Kayla 16:40
Mine, I’m just I’m buckling down like, I’m not buying anything. If I see if it see anything, I might turn my house that I live into like a rooming house and booger off North or go down to Dominican. I’m not too sure you

Erwin 17:01
know, but you know, tell it like it is like, for example, Elizabeth Kelly came on and she was saying how she’s recommending people for invest more on businesses that have real estate tied to it, like a motel where you own the land, you know, I mean, we own the asset as well. Well, that’s not that’s, that’s different.

Kayla 17:20
You’re definitely into like a business of real estate. But at the same time, look at our look at our hotels and what they’re being utilized for right now. They’re being utilized for, for newcomers coming to Canada, and people that are being refugee status, they’re, they’re packing them into into hotels, and even for the homeless population, they’re, they’re utilizing the hotels. So if the hotels are being taken up from the newcomers and the immigrants and the homeless, you know, where are people going to be staying when they’re coming to bring tourism into a city? You know, that was our short term rentals, but they’re no now we’re talking to short term rentals.

Erwin 18:01
Don’t know where this all goes? I could see for losing the next election.

Kayla 18:06
Yeah. And you know, what’s even scarier if he that he is going to lose based on the Greenbelt based on his ties and the corruption that was in it, but look at the next leader is for the reds, and what are the reds and the NDP abic advocating for

Erwin 18:20
we’re gonna lose our rent rent rent. Rent control exemption 2018 one we’re gonna lose that. I’ll be the first easy one to go. Oh, yeah.

Kayla 18:31
So that they’re they’re already attacking that now look, look at those those girls that are like, Oh, my rent, just skyrocket? $9,000 And it’s like, um, I would like to sit back and one find out who the landlord is on this, because, like, it seems like propaganda a in one way. Like, is it really true? Are they just trying to highlight there’s no rent control on on units built after 2018? Or are they difficult tenants? And that was him being an asshole to be like, Oh, yeah. Okay, well, $9,000 you take it or leave it because it’s gonna cost I need that much money to deal with your bullshit.

Erwin 19:07
It’s just crazy because her rent was only 3500 I think I think erased it to that, which is a good brand.

Kayla 19:12
I think it was like 25. I think it was initially at 25. Yeah, but

Erwin 19:15
they raised it to something but then it doesn’t matter. So the Turner is actually called vacancy decontrol when you can, I didn’t know that was a term for when you turn over tenant and that’s when you can raise your rent. Yeah, to see that going away to

Kayla 19:30
they were trying to do it with the when the wing government right with us. With the standard lease. What do you think? What do

Erwin 19:37
you do so when the liberals or NDP

Kayla 19:40
win for the provincial? Yeah, I hope that we still have a stupid conservative. If anyone did have to have a chance, it wouldn’t be the Liberals taking it because Bonnie is going to she’s got that little personality traits for her but guess what? She doesn’t like secondary suites in her bait in her city. That’s why her in

Erwin 20:02
the Mississauga mayor is gonna run for Liberal leader. Why?

Kayla 20:04
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Buddy crumby she got the blessing from Hazel. So she got, you know, obviously pushed into the mayor. And now her hatred towards Doug Ford and you know, having a fresh face to the to the leader of, of politics and she stands a good chance she’s she’s down here campaigning already with these potential candidates.

Erwin 20:27
Show me her job to do. Oh, she

Kayla 20:29
just took a leave of absence, or tishie.

Yeah, I think they would they do they’ll they’ll put like a deputy and

Erwin 20:36
talk about election, we talk politics,

Kayla 20:39
should we be drinking on this call?

Erwin 20:42
Like I told you, I am selling some my portfolio here to move it to the states.

Kayla 20:47
And in the States is like, you got to look at those more favorite like, obviously, things are changing there too. But at the same time, marker read where it is, right. Like, we just you’re gonna be banking on what Who do you want to be president there?

Erwin 21:05
No, no, that’s that’s I don’t know, don’t take control ranking state. It’s too complicated. The states, they usually

Kayla 21:13
state vice. They’re usually state by state, but it’s always been that way too. And here, it’s like, same thing here in province to province, everyone has their homes. They’re all looking at each other and trying to to figure out who they are. And you know, what their rules are. Some are putting in rent controls for the very first time. Some are putting it in for like a three year kind of like pilot program. But and then the other countries that are or the other provinces that don’t have rent controls are doing well. Right. And that’s what they don’t quite see that this is a symptom. What you see now with the increase is jumping so high, it’s because of that initial 2.5 Why these landlords like they’re turning good landlords bad because of all the changes that are happening.

Erwin 21:54
Right. Oh, and then Rachel Notley is, you know, NDP, former Premier of Alberta, she’s she is proposing inflation plus two, for rent control. So it’s better than us.

Kayla 22:09
We don’t even get inflation, like we’re supposed to be like, we don’t care about that. And literally, when you give tenants an increase, and like, Oh, that’s not thing, like, you know, it’s nothing that increased, nothing, haven’t recovered me for that light bulb I put in for you.

Erwin 22:26
We’re just coddling tenants, like slow to like, disconnect them from the reality of inflation and Miss government mismanagement there might Alright, we’re not using it. Alright, let’s talk about the conference. So I always lead off with what’s keeping you busy these days. Go ahead, talk about conference. Go ahead. Talk about anything that you’re up to front lobby, whatever. I’m going to ask you about what you’re doing with your own investing. What are you seeing among the community as well? Make sense. So

Kayla 22:52
they’re selling the selling them to save themselves?

Erwin 22:55
Because of overleveraged rates or just their look, you know, because everything points to real estate prices going up. But our rents don’t go up?

Kayla 23:04
No. And the tenants moving? Depends aren’t moving, and you just gotta find creative ways to get them to move.

Erwin 23:11
Yeah, let’s not talk too much about it, though.

Kayla 23:15
That’s at the conference. You got to talk about that. So yeah. Behind closed doors,

Erwin 23:21
they do that I mentioned that please. Just like because, you know, we can’t. This is released publicly. You know, neither of us want to be sued, or have tenants protests on our front lawn?

Kayla 23:31
Yeah, that’s when you call me

Erwin 23:35
to protest returns a protested on the front line?

Kayla 23:38
Oh, yeah. It’s almost like we have to do credit what the tenant unions are doing and understand, like QP is supporting tenant unions. Tenant unions are putting these tenants down a very dangerous path of not paying rent. Right. So I don’t know

Erwin 23:53
if they’re going to collect union dues? Are they going to collect union dues?

Kayla 23:57
I don’t know if they’re paying, like right now, acorn is attending union. So they they pay about $15 a month to be a member and they have 140,000 members.

Erwin 24:06
So 140,000 paying members.

Kayla 24:09
Supposedly, they said they had 140,000. But for

Erwin 24:13
Florida inflation rates the way

Kayla 24:17
and it doesn’t even like there, it doesn’t help them. It’s not paying for their filing fees. It’s not paying for legal representation. They’re just harassing the landlord on behalf of the tenant.

Erwin 24:27
Which does make them exit and then you Yeah, I mean, no one’s gonna build

Kayla 24:34
Oh, they’re like you see the projects being canceled, you know, the, the numbers don’t make sense for them or they don’t see a lot of interest now from our community wanting to buy these pre construction kind of properties. Yeah, they got to

Erwin 24:47
this is gonna do it.

Kayla 24:50
A test to see if I know what the hell I’m talking about.

Erwin 24:53
I usually like to take this little catch up and

Kayla 24:56
it’s to get you into the zone so you can answer the ask the question Just to

Erwin 25:00
make sure that we cover what you want to cover. Is there anything else we can cover? You got a book coming out or No? Anything else? No, nothing we’re working on.

Kayla 25:10
No right now. It’s gonna be the taskforce the housing taskforce I’m gonna be so we’re gonna open that up for the first time at the conference to so

Erwin 25:20
I can ask you how local politicians or how you’re dealing with pulvinar you guys are getting along?

Kayla 25:26
Yeah, I just got invited to like a little shindig breakfast thing now on the 22nd from my MPP. So to that one, make them I saw

Erwin 25:35
you on TV. Oh, that was pretty good. But that bad economist, book writer, man, he’s a socialist, like you’re a communist, bro.

Kayla 25:44
You see the show after the cameras turned off? That was the highlight. They should have kept recording.

Erwin 25:55
As he just is he just a communist? What is he like,

Kayla 25:58
he just wants to he wants to talk what people are feeling right. And even though it makes them feel good to understand that we need more rent control to think that is what people are eating, but he doesn’t have that bigger vision of how it’s going to have a triple like, you know, domino effect to that decision. So he just got his book and he’s getting out there on CBC and you know, they’re, they’re, they’re part of this whole big propaganda of trying to all the media narratives

Erwin 26:27
of a Toronto Star article open right now but also part of the problem is landlords never speak up.

Kayla 26:31
Now they’re too afraid.

Erwin 26:34
They’re worried about everyone it’s like a full time job to battle all incoming media like for example, Elon doesn’t respond anything. Did you hear like if you email him, email them for the year if you email PR at Tesla, whatever, you get an auto response with the ship emoji

Kayla 26:53
sorry, can you give me can you give me a minute I just gotta answer this call quickly.

Erwin 26:57
Yeah, I gotta fix my chair

Unknown Speaker 27:25
Right Right

Kayla 29:05
sorry

Do you show our faces when we’re doing this? Are we just voice on YouTube? Oh, okay, so I should have done my hair. Okay.

Erwin 29:23
The voice part is the by far the bulk. Some clips will pipe multicam soundbite is this from this as well? Sounds good. All right, ready? I’m ready. All right. Hi, Kayla. What’s keeping you busy these days?

Kayla 29:40
Oh my God besides for children.

Erwin 29:43
For mental?

Kayla 29:45
Oh, yeah. I remember the last one. I was pregnant at the conference. It was crazy. 18 that was I am surprised. It was like the conference on the fifth and he was born on the 25th on the 21st right on election day. So yeah, it’s it’s a He keeps me on my toes, but he’s in school now. So I am jumping two feet in to my advocacy work even more than what I’ve been doing now for the last 14 years.

Erwin 30:15
So for those who don’t, who aren’t familiar with yourself or onto your LandWatch, let’s talk about this least touch on when you started a while W. Because you’ve been doing MacKeeper advocacy work for us for a long time, and actually just was thinking in my head, how funny it is. We thought things were tough back in 2019 for landlords. Well, oh, how we were spoiled.

Kayla 30:39
We were so wrong. Well, I started off in 2010, with the City of Cambridge when they made the landlords responsible for the tenants delinquent utility bills. And that was a wide opening experience. It’s just trying to understand municipal government, what they how involved they are in the housing industry, what policies, what bylaws they can they can make. And we were going back and forth with that for like a good four years just on water billing. And then once we had a petition trying to take that matter, now to a provincial level, it was it was a different, a different beast in itself, you have to really get to know the the players, you get to know how they introduce policy, what kind of policies they introduce. And so we were bringing that petition to the province, but then more landlords were calling me and like, can you fight the Residential Tenancy Act and the landlord tenant board, and then we’re like, Okay, we got this. And like, at that I never had issues at that time, I’ve never had issues really, as a landlord, over 20 years of being a landlord. So at that time, I just started listening to what they were going through and understanding and learning the RTA and then obviously having to understand what the landlord tenant board was all about, and how they were obviously, how they provide access to justice to all parties involved. So that’s when you know, you start to get to know the issue is now you have to come up with the solutions, but aren’t my goal was to how to communicate with all of the people that I’m communicating with. And that’s why I had a Facebook group created. So every time I was on a podcast or at an event, it was like join the group ground, join the group, we need to, you know, win a war and you need warriors. So my goal is to recruit as many landlords property managers and realtors into this group so that we do have a strong and united voice. But as you know, with politics, everything changes, we’ve had so many different assistance to the Minister of Health seen, oh, my God, I don’t know how they are thinking that they’re going to create a solution with the same mindset that actually caused this problem. And then they keep switching up our leaders and the people who have been put in charge to create solutions to this. And that’s where you get setbacks, you know, through our advocacy efforts, trying to build that relationship trying to build up we are, but it’s a new year coming. And I have some some few things up my sleeve, a different strategy. And it’s going to take this entire community, for us to see the type of changes that we are advocating for.

Erwin 33:17
And the problem is even made worse because like we’re joking how the good old days of 2019. We added, we added like a million new people in this country over the last two years. So the problem is that we had problems then now they’re magnified by another million people. Well,

Kayla 33:34
if you look at you know how many rental units that were created in from then till now and then the landlord and tenant board still dealing with there, there’s so many adjudicators and they’re happy, they got you know, $6.5 million to hire 40 More adjudicators to handle tenants who don’t pay rent. So it’s like, there’s so many ways that, you know, money could be spent in order to keep people housed keeping the landlords paid to keep that relationship strong. But unfortunately, it’s just about mismanaging of you know, funds on this on this crisis. And our government is obviously mismanaged the way that they are managing their own housing supply, and now they’re attacking the private sector and if our landlords don’t sit back, smell the roses, and understand that you need to step up, learn to advocate and fight for your property rights, it’s going to get a lot worse.

Erwin 34:31
Right. And I would say that the same thing for tenants do they need to fight for a healthier LTB as well? Because people with true issues, not non payment or rent, they need their hearings heard as well.

Kayla 34:43
Yet the tenants are well, the tenants in Toronto they were obviously taking part in rent strikes, so that they

Erwin 34:50
remember Yes, yes. Well, they’re

Kayla 34:53
they’re starting to collaborate, you know, with Acorn having 140,000 members, you know, Their goal was to try to stop AGI is from happening. So they try to do a rent strike.

Erwin 35:07
What’s the what’s above the guideline?

Kayla 35:08
Right? Increase? Right?

Erwin 35:11
So these are our sorry, these guidelines above guideline increases, they were already approved at the Lego town board.

Kayla 35:17
No, they weren’t even approved yet. So they were just applying for it, which are just the application. Okay, yeah, just the application, which could take three years to go to the landlord tenant board. But because the tenants had started a movement for a rent strike and trying to spread that to as many buildings as they could, they actually the landlord tenant board actually expedited that hearing for the AGI. So that the tenants are now fully aware of what their could be expecting as an increase, if any, and help them not, you know, contribute into these tenants still going on not paying rent on that landlords. So they were able to get an expedited hearing to deal with that case. And then the tenants were upset with it, because there was an expedited hearing for the AGI. It’s like, isn’t that what you it’s justice, like, this is a way for you guys to find out if it’s approved. First of all, to be told that you need to keep paying your rent no matter what, you don’t have to pay the AGI increase until it’s been approved, but you need to pay your rent on time. And they were they were upset that and that the landlord did get an expedited hearing to have his AGI heard because of the tenants taking part in a rent strike movement.

Erwin 36:33
Right. And the landlord is following process for their application.

Kayla 36:38
They’re just they’re just falling it’s a tool that they need. And I’m we’re lucky that sometimes specially for these bigger buildings, the agent infrastructure, these API’s are crucial, especially with a 2.5% rental cap on on rental units here in Ontario. So we really need to, you know, utilize these API’s whenever we can, but it’s not going to be as good as what people think it is a friend of mine had a $1.2 million building, they did $200,000 With the renovation costs, they took away heat and hot water from the tenants responsibility. And they were approved to a 7.1% increase over three years.

Erwin 37:16
spread out over three years. Over three years. Yeah, pretty minor.

Kayla 37:19
Yeah, and it’s, you know, your 200 bucks in, you got a lot of work a lot of proof of, you know, expenses and showing proof that you’ve done the work in order to apply this information at the landlord and tenant board to do it. So it does it’s not as easy as they think it is. But you know, push comes to shove with these bigger buildings, bigger buildings means bigger expenses, sometimes they need it, and they shouldn’t be trying to make a mockery of it. You know, it’s a business and it needs to be treated as such.

Erwin 37:48
These things cost money, which used to replace windows, you have to upgrade balconies, you have to repave the driveway, the parking lot, there’s all costs of that,

Kayla 37:56
the size of that roof, like come on, what are you paying for that?

Erwin 38:00
The heat loss I mean of us because you and I have our own roofs, so we have to pay for the whole thing. Like we have to share those expenses across everybody else.

Kayla 38:08
Yeah. So you get you got a lot of pushback. And we understand like there’s not all tenants are poor, and not all landlords are rich. And so it’s sad to see that we can’t try to come together as good tenants and good landlords, you know, trying to come together with a creating a fair and balanced housing system. But our main concern is that supply, you know, and if our investors are not helping the government create the supply is going to be the taxpayers paying for that supply, and if so, how much is it? And how long is it going to take for them to create that supply?

Erwin 38:48
Because everything I read points towards more price appreciation, inflation. I don’t know if investors nationally have the appetite to eat more of the inflation without be able to pass on the costs. Since rent rent controlled.

Kayla 39:03
That’s where they’re pivoting, they’re pivoting now between tenants leaving and staying into the long term rentals or are they getting into short term rentals if allowed, because obviously, they are attacking short term rentals in many different cities throughout Ontario. And

Erwin 39:17
so just for listeners benefit you even network with how many investors

Kayla 39:24
everyone who wants to talk with me?

Erwin 39:27
So how big is your Facebook group? For example?

Kayla 39:29
Um, we’re just about 9600 members,

Erwin 39:33
you know, small community

and what are what are we what are they saying? What are what are your once you have your finger on the pulse of 9600 real estate investors from Ontario watch.

Kayla 39:48
I watch a lot of a lot of the groups of what’s happening and I’m seeing an influx of the owners wanting to move out of their own personal unit or their home and wanting to move into their rent. sell units, just because obviously, those expenses have went up on that property and they have a long term tenant that obviously is not paying enough to keep up with the expenses. They are selling to save themselves. Speaking to my my paralegals in the community, a lot of our investors are in hot water based on when they bought that property. And having an A broken landlord tenant board system, property taxes are increasing left, right and center in every single municipality. And I don’t they’re trying to get out now, before those those increase take take effect. And so we’re seeing them wanting to explore other other countries and other provinces that are more investor friendly, and you can’t blame them. And this is the messaging that we try to give to the elected officials to be like, you were trying to gain 1.5 million homes before 2031. But you’re not calculating the rental units that you’re losing. Because either the landlord is just taking it off the market completely, or they have to branch and getting themselves into different forms of rentals, like the short term, the midterm, or even rooming houses. You can get about $1,000 a room now for just a room.

Erwin 41:17
Five student rentals. I know. Yeah, get that much but my house is my house isn’t as nice as yours. Is your home?

Kayla 41:28
Are you getting a lower

Erwin 41:30
market for McMaster rentals is around $700 a room? Right?

Kayla 41:35
That’s weird. Like we have our local shelter who is trying to recruit landlords to take part in their program. And they will give $1,000 per room and or $1,300 for a one bedroom. So the shelter is charging, giving out more money, I think you need to switch who your clientele is their money.

Erwin 41:56
I don’t trust government to blame me.

Kayla 42:00
Amen, brother. Amen. And that’s what I tried to tell them like they see like Ontario landlords watch, you know, hey, you know, I said, Listen, you can come and you can talk about your program, but be prepared to get the feedback that you don’t want to hear. Because what the government has done is created someone you know, creating a position, they’re gonna pay him to recruit landlords to go on this program. And yes, $1,000 Seems you know, all sudden done dandy, but if you can charge that, and to the private market and still get it, you know, what are the benefits of joining up on that program, and this gentleman is going to be spinning his wheels, and we’re spending money on a salary for him just to spin his wheels and not be productive and getting more people housed.

Erwin 42:45
I just want to finish my point, why don’t trust government with our property, so they don’t trust them? That is trust that I have my students and their parents guarantee that rent and damages, right? If it’s government, I don’t know how long it’s gonna make you only gonna be for me to get my damages back.

Kayla 43:00
You are looking at not just on students, people are looking for a guarantor. It’s a way for them strengthening their application with you know, hey, you know, my credit score is like 600. It’s not crazy good. But if I come with a guarantor, does that strengthen my application? So more and more landlords are calling upon that because now you can go after potentially to people in order to get any type of arrears because inflation and the cost of living has gotten so high? What is that bill that’s going to be not paid first. So that’s why you have to you have to be prepared and you have to learn how to work many different strategies into making sure that the rent is getting paid on time so that you don’t go underneath water and then the property suffers with that.

Erwin 43:48
So actually, before we’re recording what is your plans with your own portfolio expanding shrinking,

Kayla 43:53
I’m gonna utilize what I have. So like I have a five Plex six Plex two triplexes plus my single family home I have a basement. So I’m going to start doing some infill maybe just so my triplex I’m going to try to get a fourth unit created there. And then we have one unit that needs some renovations for the bathrooms and things like that. So maybe the the time could be where we, you know, flatten it and rebuild on that particular property, because we love our no rent control on on new builds. Yeah, when I said that, as soon as that policy came out, I’m like, Oh, thank you and flick of a pen. You could put rent control on that. No problem, guys, but like, I don’t think a lot of people were biting to it anyway. So it wasn’t too too bad. And then obviously, it’s just looking outside of the country. You know, I might just rent out my house as a rooming house and take off to Dominican or up north and live in the bush. You know, any anything right now you have to keep all your options open because we have an election to prepare for it

Erwin 45:03
Just now just to share my experience is as because we have we worked investors all the time, we have several properties for sale that are tenanted and the and there isn’t much demand for it. The demand seems to be currently for properties that are owner occupied or vacant. Right? Even Even we have listings where the rates are current. But again, investor appetite is not there. It could just be rates could be seasonality. But what your sentiment is, seems to be consistent. So I think our elected leaders need to understand that. And also whoever buys our income properties, typically, they’re moving in. Yeah, yeah. So then. So then rentals are being erased from the rental market.

Kayla 45:48
Landlords are doing it on purpose, they failing like the government, push them out with their policies to fake

Erwin 45:54
sellers will sell to anyone, they don’t necessarily care.

Kayla 45:57
Once that, oh, they’ll sell who are with with the right number, for sure. But there is that that sourness that has put on to those landlords where they’re like you want to move into it, then yeah, I want to know, you want to move into it, because I want to make sure that we’re taking it off the market. They’re very upset with the government, it’s been years of them just failed policy after failed policy. And now, we have a housing crisis that we don’t even know if actually, it could be managed anymore. Like, look at it before, we were looking like trying to help with affordable like, we’re just trying to sustain what happens. And we need big bold ideas out of the box thinking and ideas in order to get these incentives created that is working side by side with the private sector. But if you’re not listening to, you know, the private mom and pops the ones who are putting their money into this business, and just to developers and or pass pit politicians, we’re not going to see these these significant changes that will do any type of change that is going to benefit all parties involved.

Erwin 47:01
So I think you need to go after some of the sources of issue. For example, I think there’s just too many people coming. Like, for example, people, not just immigration, but for example, like international students,

Kayla 47:12
yes. Oh, my God, like, I’m glad you brought that.

Erwin 47:17
Most people don’t know that. Undergraduate tuitions are frozen. The rate, the price, the tuition prices are frozen and have been for quite a few years. Hence, colleges and universities are forced to recruit internationally. And that’s why we have so many of them here.

Kayla 47:33
40% of their enrollment fees is from international students and for international students coming over and they’re going to be paying more and I believe I was speaking with one of my landlords that the schools used to talk about, oh, I mean, we need money. You know, back in 2015, they were just hurting for the money because a lot of the people weren’t going to school. And now all of a sudden, we have way too many students that are coming in, and they’re on their city on their college and university websites, stating that residency is actually not in the private sector is more affordable than staying into residency. And so really encouraging people who are enrolling in that school to go into the private sector. Meanwhile, we’re tapped out for supply. And they continue to keep bringing more and more students over into the country, which is obviously just putting so much pressure on on the housing supply, as it is not including, you know, the war happening and people coming over to that bridge. And then they want to go back there. Back to Ukraine, because they can’t find housing here in the KW Syria, like, this is their they have multiple different levels of government handling each sector, but each sector still ropes around that concept of housing. So if you have someone in charge of, you know, immigration, and they just think that the people coming here for immigration is going to help us build more units, they’re sadly mistaken. So we do have to put, they need a cap. They need a cap, but the schools are they’re bringing in billions in revenue, and they’re passing, you know, they get to get the profits and they’re passing. They’re that type of service now to the private sector. Just like same thing with with government. There’s 855,000 People in Ontario on social assistance, and they don’t have near that amount for social housing. So they’re passing the need for housing to the private sector as well. So and the private sector is yelling at them saying, hey, you know, we can’t handle this landlord tenant board. We can’t deal with the broken RTA, we can’t handle these bylaws and these policies in the landlord licensing and the restrictions in the property taxes. You guys, they’re backing the private sector into a corner and we had to figure out why. So that’s part of like, why I was calling for Steve Clark. to step down, you know, we’ve ever we had the Greenbelt working with calling for his resignation. I was calling it for the concept, his policies were very much promoting the developer. And, and trying to get the small the small landlords out of the business or the small housing providers, private housing providers, and backing them out of the industry. So, but he’s gone. I’m hopeful. On the new one.

Erwin 50:29
It’s an impossible job like talking to any any country anywhere, or except the number of newcomers that we do. Do you ever see the Americans doing as much as we do in terms of accepting new people? Well, and just to clarify something, as well, a university co authored an article and then just pretty recently, how they are still struggling to make budget. Right, I’m gonna guess that they’re a little bit more on the ethical side, they didn’t just accept anyone. So they might think get to their 40% international students in order to make budget. So yeah, so

Kayla 51:01
Oh, they’re marketing, the marketing the international world with this dream, you know, and love it. People are selling their belongings in their homes to come here for soiling going back like, like, but it’s a stepping stone into getting their citizenship. And I think a lot of them are here to do that. Because, obviously, if they’re not happy, where they are just like the Ontario, Canada, Canadians are trying to go into other countries where, you know, the cost of living is a little bit less, which is very shocking to hear. But it’s

Erwin 51:34
often are Yeah, yeah. So we’re going

Kayla 51:37
down a very deep rabbit hole. And we have to be prepared more so now than ever, but we have to get our community or private housing sector united and organized and loud.

Erwin 51:50
being loud and uniting. Tell me about the LW conference. Is that what’s called onto your landline watch. Yeah,

Kayla 51:56
so we got the Ontario landlords watch private housing sector conference. It’s going to be on October 28. In Cambridge, Ontario, at the Armenian club, or the center. It’s almost like a wedding. So we have our easy about that,

Erwin 52:11
because I know how hard you work, you put it into these things. It’s like, it’s like organizing a wedding, isn’t it?

Kayla 52:16
So anyway, we got a three tiered cake that’s sponsored by Athena property management. We have our centerpieces at the table. We even got our little, you know, the little things that you get at the your wedding like little favor or wedding favor? Yeah, we even have one of those. And instead, tell you don’t, I’m really bad at keeping your kids not telling me. Then we’re going to be having our guest speakers we have a good 10 of our speakers to I’ve been working with throughout the years just really harming in what needs to be done what needs to be said for the education portion to help our landlords with this troubling, troubling time. And the key is going to be tenant screening, preparing them what changes are happening on the provincial level with Bill 97, that’s already been passed. We did put our two cents in which we see our mandatory rental payments, a part of Bill 97. So we’re going to highlight that at the conference to talk about what that is and what landlords need to do when it comes down to that, that that change. And of course, in Thirteen’s, you know, so how many of you investors, you know, look at a property, and you’re like, Yep, okay, I’m gonna buy this, I’m going to tell all the tenants that they need to leave, and I’m going to renovate it, and then you know, get the get the numbers up on that property, right. So, Bill 97, does impact that ability for the landlords to serve and in 13 application, so you are going to need to get approvals from a contractor to state that the tenant does need to vacate in order to do these typical changes. So we’re going to highlight what that looks like for the landlords when they are going through that and how we can work within that scope in order to still reach our goals, because we know we have a lot of aging infrastructure. All the forms that are happening at the landlord and tenant board, the advocacy, what’s going to come after the conference, we’re creating a Private Housing Task Force. So somewhere where we are going to unite ourselves with different chambers across Ontario in order to step up our advocacy efforts, because it’s now needed, more so than ever, and we just need to get organized. And so we’re gonna get I have a lot more to say about that one at the conference, and prizes. So instead of you know, bringing a present for me, because I’m not getting married.

Erwin 54:48
No renewing your vows with Eric No, no. wedding vows.

Kayla 54:53
Were actually it’s the same, same venue that we actually had our wedding reception, so he might not even like Step inside the hall. I don’t know.

Erwin 55:04
That’s so cute.

Kayla 55:05
But we haven’t we have a 10 item buffet, we have a 10 item buffet dinner. We have cookies and cake and cupcakes and fruit, that we’re going to be serving for dessert, but making sure that people are leaving with their minds and their bellies full. And I want to be able to take it offline and have it in person to build that strength of our community, and to share from these experts who have been at the landlord tenant board who’s been advocating alongside with me, and I think we’re, we’re we got the next year to really put her put her boots on and start running. Because it’s not where we have to start learning how to speak a certain language. It’s for us to move. I gotta start watching Gara. I got I got down to

Erwin 56:00
one point of clarification, that sounds so nerdy. Will this be recorded? Because I know the answer to that?

Kayla 56:06
No, no, it’s it’s definitely going to be like be here or be square, you know, we got to make sure that

Erwin 56:14
a closed door meeting for Yeah, it’s for privacy.

Kayla 56:35
I just I just didn’t want them to have that possibility of backing out or whatever. But he’s he was definitely interested. So we have to, to work him into into the conference. So he’s going to do a speak and you know, especially speaking on the federal side of of housing now being a popular topic at the federal level, we’re going to have him speaking at the conference and hopefully enlighten him on what’s happening at the provincial and municipal level that he should be concerned about. And I love his take on CMHC so he knows there’s issues with CMHC that he would like to see addressed to take I’ll see you may see you got to watch this video I gotta post it. He’s he’s definitely he’s he’s everywhere, he’s going to be a voice to you know, at least see how we can see where the federal government is coming from with their changes, because they’re obviously making some significant changes. So we need to know step up our advocacy ever levels, not only now to do it at a provincial and municipal level, we now need to reopen our federal Well, we have our my federal, Brian May, one of our conferences and we had our MPP Belinda Carlitos. And we had the mayor of Cambridge, at the last conference. So it’s great to see that they’re still coming in, they’re still listening to what we have going on. It’s just sadly, it’s this is government, and this is how slow it actually takes to see some significant changes. But as landlords we have to look at what do we want, you know, do is a privatization of the landlord tenant board what we need, and will that help landlords you know, be more willing to get back into the business knowing that they have someone that they can hold accountable for not giving the proper service of standard service that we expect with the current landlord and tenant board? And we need to remove and streamline the process of non payment of rent? If you

Erwin 58:24
don’t get it? I don’t understand why that’s a hearing. You don’t have you don’t have money, you don’t have money. Why do you need a hearing?

Kayla 58:30
Oh, aren’t you you have no idea people are they would cry to get their their cases adjourned. People are waiting seven to eight months now for an injured hearing. So they ran out of time you waited eight months, you got your hearing, they ran at a time now you have to wait another seven to eight months for an adjourned hearing. The people or tenants are stating that they are they have anxiety, they have a depression, so that way, they can adjourn the hearing or delay the eviction or demand that they can work out a longer payment plan.

Erwin 59:00
So landlords not gonna have to be depressed after that. Well,

Kayla 59:04
they’re asking they’re beside before I read this order. Is there any children in the home? And I’m like, what does that have to do with anything and like, you need to issue the order based on the rule of law, and there’s no consistency with it at the landlord and tenant board. So hopefully, we can, you know, show them that there is a better way of streamlining the non payment of rent applications, especially with Bill 97. And that mandatory rent, mandatory rent payment plan, that they’re forcing down everyone’s throat through COVID. But then that kind of went away and now they needed to kind of put it into into the act. And that’s why we have to learn how to work within that system and the different programs, the different government programs that are out there for tenants who are in hardship situations. Yes, it’s taxpayers money, but at the same time, it’s cheaper to keep people in their homes and to have them on the street. So we want to utilize those programs for these tenants. If they are are good tenants and you want to keep them, you know, start knowing about these different programs that can help them.

Erwin 1:00:04
Yeah, I actually saw a report, I think I forget what city you might have in Hamilton, we’re academics from the university, we’re seeing how it’s because there’s so much supply has been lost from the low income area like under $700. Like the politicians, they always say we just build more. And but the academics like that could take forever. And it’s really expensive. You talk about $500,000 a unit, or we give the tents money, so they can afford market rents.

Kayla 1:00:31
And they have that now with a portable housing benefit. But this is the cash. So if you have a tenant that’s waiting for government housing, that waiting list in the Region of Waterloo is 12 years. So if you

Erwin 1:00:41
if we come down to you, right, you know,

Kayla 1:00:45
you know why that list is coming down, that list is coming down, because they’re offering the people waiting on the housing list, a $350, portable housing benefit to remove their name off of the government housing waiting lists. So it makes it look like they’re chipping away at that list. And it’s not so much 12 years anymore, it’s going down a year. It is it’s just it’s it’s fabric Osteen. And you know what, sometimes if you look at who’s in government housing, they don’t need to like that should be used for people with more complex needs, I think. And everyone else just needs that little bit of a buffer, but you can’t give it to like you need to give them a hand up. You can’t be given them in a handout because no one wants to do anything for themselves. They don’t want to work. If it’s just going to be keep giving into him, right.

Erwin 1:01:32
It’s crazy. The whole comment about like, not people wanting not wanting to work like there’s so many jobs for trades people.

Kayla 1:01:39
Yeah. And then they look at how much the Reagan tax there’s a there’s a gentleman that was new to Canada, and he literally quit working because he seen how much he was taxed.

Erwin 1:01:49
Did he go home? Yeah. And then he went home.

Kayla 1:01:56
Alright, so I don’t know, man, I think we need a comedy show like this. This needs to be a definitely a reality TV show.

Erwin 1:02:08
We advocacy advocacy group help us with our property taxes. Actually, the whole everyone in the city should rise up because we’re all affected. And then just the landlords.

Kayla 1:02:20
This is where everyone has to get involved with politics, like know which level so if you have like the provincial government, they have like this little you know, NDA or EDA organization that helps you know, people become a member of the Conservatives or the federal, and then their job is to go and get people to sign up on a membership fee. Same thing with the municipal, they’re out there networking, they’re trying to get support, they want donations, like it’s always about donations, and always about support. And they always want to know that big issue that everyone’s talking about you housing is obviously the big issue. But we have to start holding these elected officials accountable. And if you look online, like our normal way of doing things was, you know, tag, tagging them in it or comment on their posts, a lot of our elected officials, especially on the housing, they’ve literally turned off commenting on their posts, because it’s very negative, you know, with Doug Ford saying that we’re going to have affordable houses under $500,000. Who’s really like, is this the Bukka? Bear thing again, like come on, you know, that doesn’t

Erwin 1:03:28
work, who’s gonna build it?

Kayla 1:03:30
Well, they’re actually saying that there’s these so many houses and rentals that are going to be built in my area, the KW C area, but it’s not going to be sold to everybody. It’s going to be a very selective like investors can’t buy them. And I’m like, this doesn’t sound like Canada anymore. Like what what is you’re buying something but only selling it to ascertain like who’s buying them? Like who’s buying the rental? Yeah, so we have a lot of a lot of stuff and especially with on social media, like we can’t get our news. So it’s really important now more so than ever for these investors to get out. And to get to any of these networking events that are out there. If they’re monthly, great. If they’re bi weekly, even better, we do need to work our networks together to get the news so that we’re better prepared and to to sharing it and to come up against it. But we can’t be too we can’t be quiet anymore.

Erwin 1:04:29
And your event you’ll be able to hear it from the horse’s mouth. 

Kayla 1:04:49
Oh, yeah, that one is a very strong one to do. And it’s just about giving them that that information that they’re not getting from, you know, the mom and pop the people with and who are in the trenches, we have to kind of say like, what are our issues, but we’re done talking about the issues, they know our issues, we need to give them those recommendations and line them up into what that looks like. Just like the conference, there’s a company called rent itis r e n t iu s.ai. And so they’ve created something where it’s programmed that the landlords can have all of their end forms for the landlord tenant board automatically populated. And it helps to avoid any type of errors. They’ve supposedly spoke with the board. And they like what he’s created. So now they just want him to launch and get the feedback from the community. So it’s going to be my first time seeing this program at the conference as well to give these these gentlemen some feedback, because it’s what is absolutely need it to help these landlords. So we need to look at the different tools and programs that are out there. But at the same time, learn to network with one another to be prepared to what’s what’s to come because landlord licensing is spreading like wildfire, it’s a cash grab. And honestly, I feel it’s a it’s an it’s an infringement on your property rights. And it’s not just about advocating for a better fair housing system. This is about fighting for our property rights now, like they’re telling you what you can do with your own property, even from you renting it out to a short term guest because you don’t live in it. It’s like, now I pay my taxes to those property folks like I can, as long as I’m not, you know, messing up or digging up anything or reconstructing they shouldn’t be as an invading on our property rights as they are. So we have to we have to do more.

Erwin 1:06:42
In Hamilton, our rental licensing is, is around actually it was a large area around the college in the university requires a electrical inspection once a year, even though if you even if you haven’t done any electrical upgrades, which I think is odd. The rules already exist when you take a permit out for electrical work. So they’re just having some sort of duplicity. And look, the fire inspection. I don’t have a problem with all right, but But yeah, but again, like the electrical part, like that’s so doesn’t make any sense in like, no other municipality does this, as far as I know, because like, for example, Waterloo has had their rental licensing program for quite a while

Kayla 1:07:23
they’re gonna get the police record, you’re gonna get a police check.

Erwin 1:07:27
I don’t think we have to do an hour so.

Kayla 1:07:31
But the electrical side of things, it’s about creating that business, we’re an electrical company to come in and do that kind of check, right? And if there’s not having any concerns, I can see the safety issue but when you have property standards that a tenant can call and you advertised on your website, you know are you having any maintenance issue did your landlord not salt or snow shovel your driveway is your heat on not at this temperature called property standards they already do that marketing because if the landlord doesn’t do it, they’ll come in to do it and they’ll put it to your property tax it’s it’s almost like a business a lot of these cities are struggling to bring in the money and their job. Their job is to look for ways to bring more money to the city and this is now a way for them to utilize again the private sector to gain more money for them to go and Miss manage it. They just had to tap into our reserves in the in Cambridge to build a soccer field. And like we have boneless cannons and people sleeping in sleeping pods. And you want to build a soccer field meanwhile, there’s a soccer field in every corner of every park and school in our inner city. But they decided to build these two big soccer fields in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s just the type of people you’re getting into into power. Like you guys need to start reading into these people’s portfolios where they come from where their stands are, and they’re going to be very cautious about it because they don’t want to come out publicly to give you their full opinion because it could really tarnish them but what’s for them as they run for the election. We have a by election happening right now for Ward one in the City of Cambridge.

Erwin 1:09:17
What’s your poverty tax going up?

Kayla 1:09:20
About at least 10% for the region.

Erwin 1:09:23
So our people are gonna be on people pissed about soccer fields.

Kayla 1:09:26
problem is they don’t they’re not there a budget time the way the budget time starts coming up now for like in the winter where people are like okay, get ready for Thanksgiving they’re getting ready for Christmas. No one’s really able to know what’s happening within budget time or they don’t have an in simple terms. So I’m hoping that we have like this tax group coming too late. They just got registered I heard in our city so they’re going to start taking that information and trying to do the best that they can of reaching that information out to the public. To be like guys like step by For this, you have to say no to some of these, these assets from some of these organizations, and also spending, like they’re spending like over $250,000 at the city to redo a wall that is supposed to have water and plants on it. The plants started dying, and now they’re going to redo the wall for $250,000. It’s like, we’re in times where like, if you’re telling us to cut our Netflix or Disney, why isn’t our elected officials starting to cut back on on them? You know, and they’re spending? Or how many elected officials we have? You know, do we really need that many elected officials? I’m gonna get someone fired.

Erwin 1:10:47
Oh, I might need a job that comes with a guaranteed pension for life. And

Kayla 1:10:52
hey, buddy, we need people like you running. Why aren’t you? I know you got Andrew. Oh, my God.

Erwin 1:10:59
You have? Yeah, you’re lucky.

Kayla 1:11:05
I’m there I like

Erwin 1:11:07
for listeners benefit. Kayla is referring to the mayor of Hamilton, who is the former leader of the NDP party for the province of Ontario. You can look into that as much as you like. Let’s get into some best practices, because you have a lot of great companies that are sponsoring your event as an example. And so yes, because these all seem to line with what you’re what you’re talking about, you need to take any tenant screen for example, like I see you have a couple of tenant screening companies in your in your sponsors of the conference.

Kayla 1:11:41
Of course, yes, we have not only one but two. So we have single key, oh, Lawson v. And we have front lobby and landlord credit bureau. These these are our CO hosting sponsors. And we have McCauley legal services. So obviously making sure that we’re fully equipped with our legal representation at this at this event, because we want to make sure that any landlord that’s going through a difficult time is that we’re giving you have the right key players to bounce these ideas off of in the right atmosphere. So we want to give a huge shout out to to all of our co sponsors, and especially our rank Titus, r e n t IUs, I’m going to talk to them about changing their name. This movie can say it sort of like, like tendinitis, or like you it’s like that’s it this tightness and like rent is.

Erwin 1:12:42
So sorry, you said earlier, they will help you prepare your, your LTV forms.

Kayla 1:12:48
Yeah, their platform is like it’s almost a way to communicate with your tenants to so you can text your tenant through the platform, and it timestamps and dated. So it really teaches the landlords about documentation of your communication with your tenants, and keeping that as a very detailed collaboration. So if you do need to go to the landlord tenant board, you now have this information that’s going to this, it’s going to protect you a little bit better than just saying it’s a hearsay situation. And then through putting this data into the information and knowing when there’s a non payment of rent, it’s going to automatically populate so that you don’t screw up the name, you don’t screw up the address, you’re not screwing up the numbers, because any type of form error on these paperwork, that’s it, it’s it’s game over for you and you have to start the process all over again. So it’s very crucial that our landlords are understanding what form does what and how to fill them out properly. And then our our friends at Glenn Gosling, he’s going to be coming and highlighting how to represent yourself at the landlord and tenant board and how to argue your case effectively if you choose to do it without a paralegal I like I like going by myself I hope I help some landlords out like it’s either a I’m like off to the side and then we mute and then I’m like

Erwin 1:14:15
oh, you’re talking to virtually Yeah, we’re always

Kayla 1:14:17
virtually now. You’re virtually for the landlord and tenant board.

Erwin 1:14:22
No one’s in person anymore.

Kayla 1:14:23
Oh, where are you? Well, you can tell you have never had an issue.

Erwin 1:14:28
Luckily, it’s been a while I’ve I’ve done like for example I use front lobby I use Linux er Bureau you know, I use companies like RAM panda just we scream like crazy.

Kayla 1:14:38
You have to and it’s good because honestly if you if you don’t then you’re gonna come into the problems and it’s not just that problem tentative. You’re gonna have the problem with the LTV. The problem with the RTA you’re gonna see all the broken loopholes within the system that does favor the tenants and not just the tenants per se but it but it favors the tenants who are abusing the system. And, and there is very creative ways into doing that. So I’m glad that you know, you don’t really know. But yeah, all of the landlord tenant Board hearings are online. And I encourage our listeners to listen to some of these hearings, just so that you can have an understanding of what’s actually happening and what tenants are out there. Who are, you know, technically abusing the system, we do have tenants that are just fell into hardship situations, but you can tell through the hearings that they’re trying to work out something very genuine with their landlord trying to make sure they they can get themselves caught up to date. And I do like that they deserve

Erwin 1:15:36
to be heard. amount of time.

Kayla 1:15:40
And then and even when you go to a landlord tenant board hearing, you have a chance to mediate. So there is a chance for for both parties to agree for a mediation. So you can go into a room with a mediator and kind of hash things out to see if you can come to an agreement. And if you can’t, then no worries, you’re back in the queue waiting for your hearing. And sometimes those those mediations can go a long way. And you can connect that tenant to obviously, these different programs that help them with rent relief, and there’s a company that actually just came out, and they’re now offering first and last month’s rent, and rent assistance, obviously for our cost for tenants.

Erwin 1:16:18
Are they a sponsor? Well, I meet them there. Well, I hate them. Yeah, they’re

Kayla 1:16:20
nice. They’re not a sponsor? I’m just Yeah, it’s like, and who can we give your number to is like, but yeah, it’s almost like a payday loan situation for tenants. Right. So you start to bring that back into the advocacy, we have local service managers, we do have regional programs. And we also now have companies coming out with situations where they’re getting first and last month’s rent, almost like a payday loan situation. single key has its rent guarantee program that they put out there for the private landlord, especially for ones where the numbers are, are very tight. But obviously, the criteria you have to make sure that the tenant is is making a good portion of of income in order to have them qualify for that for that rental guarantee program. But there is these programs that are now starting to to expand out there just because they know how broken Ontario is MBCs next species. Absolutely. They’re they’re complaining like us, but there’s still some justice. Still there. We just did a an interview with a BC landlord. They have just the much of the craziness. But it took her four months, they had a lot more steps to go through. But it still only took them four months to get an eviction. Not like Ontario or

Erwin 1:17:38
times better than here.

Kayla 1:17:40
Yeah, I’m like, Whatever, I’ll take it. That’s like, stop you’re complaining. We’ll take it.

Erwin 1:17:46
Alright. So she did things perfectly to get four months eviction.

Kayla 1:17:50
It was the tenant still pushing back, it was the tenant applying for a stay, the sheriff actually came to her property was loading up the the tenants belongings into a truck. And within that 24 hour time frame that they had, the tenant had still applied for a stay on that Supreme Court ruling. So he they actually had to give the key that they just got changed back to the tenant. Yeah, welcome to BC guys. And it’s funny is like our law is not funny. But our elected officials, they’re looking at BC that’s where this portal came in and navigate tribunals Ontario, like they started to look at what BC was doing. And yeah, so we know that they’re modeling after BC and not Alberta. But hey, Alberta. We got to help those Alberta landlords out there. They’re trying to, you know, kick up some storm with the tenant unions trying to get rent control in Alberta. Hopefully they don’t succeed, but the only way they’re not going to succeed is if the if the community of the private sector collaborates, because we may be like, oh, there’s just so many tenants, right? And that’s what people like. They just keep doing it because they have so many tenants and there’s only few landlords? Well, if you look at the landlord, you look at the contractors, their property managers, you look at the paralegals. We we are our mortgage agents, like we’re a huge industry. We just have to learn how to work collaborative to cook together in order to to step up the advocacy, and to be more opinionated. And in medias light, even if it’s a letter, you know, and we want everyone to write to their elected officials write to their media, and send us a copy, you know, so that we can try to get your voice out there as well.

Erwin 1:19:44
Jeff, I’m mostly gonna watch this one. Well, everyone’s busy. First off, my clients all have kids and work and jobs and businesses. They don’t this isn’t a priority to advocate for themselves. And then on the other side is a lot of people that are not public about the fact that our landlord cuz they don’t want to be considered rich and ostracized and have to show up at their houses and protest,

Kayla 1:20:07
except me, when I call my tenants it says Ontario landlords watch on my phone.

Erwin 1:20:12
Sorry, what is your relationship like with your tenants?

Kayla 1:20:15
Honestly, great. If you look at, like, you gotta just lay the law down, you gotta put the rules in place and be like, um, this is a business relationship. So my husband is the nice guy, he goes in, he does all the fixing, he talks to them, then he comes and talks to me. And then I’d be like, okay, like I’m doing the inspections, I come and do the inspections. And a lot of it’s going to be, here’s a writing letter, just to say like, this is our finance, this is what I’m obviously needing to have to address with you, you have a certain amount of time to address it, failure to address it will result in a potential eviction. And then I started issuing out my forms, right, like, you have to keep that you gotta Good cop, bad cop situation. That’s why some of my, my husband, when he’s like, don’t, you know, this unit number and this tenant, and I’m like, listen, I know the tenants that I need to talk to. Like, they’re the ones that get stuck in my head. But a lot of it comes down to they know they have low ranks, they’ve been in there for a very long time. And a lot of people don’t want to make noise when they don’t pay when they when they pay low, low rent. So they they’re, they’re just long term tenants that are that are there. And then if not, you go through the process of the eviction and making sure you report their unpaid rent to two front lobby, so that it gets shared to the Equifax. So I might tell them straight up, I don’t need your consent, and I don’t need an order to do it, it’s going to impact you. So you’re going to struggle looking for other accommodations with this on your on your credit. And even for what we just had a two bedroom unit $1,800 Plus utilities. And we had 118 inquiries in 24 hours and another 119 inquiries the next day. And these people who were applying for the application, both of them are making $80,000 salaries. And we had a ton of people now now you’re going okay, everything’s looks good credit, looks good income looks good, you know, what’s their debt ratio, now you’re just looking at, are you going to be a nice person to do with, right, and this is where we’re, we’re getting ourselves into renting to the potential homeowners, you know, if we have a good amount of people that are so close to homeownership, and just can’t take it to the next level, they’re now taking up that that spot in the in the housing industry for for people to, to live. So we so the people who are stuck in the rental industry, they’re having a heck of a time, heck of a time. I can’t even imagine how these like we see it in these different groups on Facebook, like little mom groups, and people are like, Hey, I just applied for government housing, how long is it going to take? Someone put down 36 years? And I was like, Okay, I don’t believe it’s not that long for you, but and they’re looking for very creative ways to get sped up on that housing list. And I’m not gonna say it here just because I don’t want anyone abusing it. But there is that, that the they’re looking they’re desperate trying to get into government housing now. And they’re going to, they’re going to lie to get themselves in there. Same thing with your application process. So many people are doing fraudulent paperwork, fraudulent credit check. So making sure you’re doing your own credit check is very, very crucial and verifying like people who haven’t seen it, yeah, they created websites to say that they work for this company, they’ve created the whole website to make it look like it’s a legit company. Like they’re desperate times call for desperate measures. And that’s what’s that what’s unfolding in this because a lot of our landlords, especially with the single families or condos, and you know renting to the big families, they’re selling and taking it over and and selling it to a homer home occupier, that you just lost the rental unit, and now that tenant now has to downsize into an apartment. So we’ve seen that right after COVID. Where, where people were selling their their single families. Or do

Erwin 1:24:15
you say as well, because investors have to naturally pay more, don’t want a house versus a homeowner. So

Kayla 1:24:22
ideally, you want to duplex it if you can, or like put a triplex in there, but at the same time, if your city is making it impossible, or the funds are just not there for it, then yeah, but push comes to shove. You gotta, you gotta let go and look out for better things.

Erwin 1:24:38
We’re running out of time. So I’d like to ask this question pretty much everyone. So say a new investor approaches you. What would your advice be?

Kayla 1:24:46
Run to okay,

Erwin 1:24:49
I’m Dominican. Actually jokingly in my head is gonna ask you what the landlord tenant rules are like in Dominican.

Kayla 1:24:56
I’m getting familiar there. Don’t you worry. My advice would be Do you follow Ontario landlords watch, you know, it’s a free group to, to be in, I answer as many phone call calls as I possibly can to help you guide you through a difficult tenant situation with my personal advice. From listening to that information, I’ll connect you to any of the paralegals that I’m associated with to make sure that you’re fully, fully protected, and you have really good representation to deal with the situation that you’re in. But you have to get, you have to advocate you have to get involved very heavily with all levels of government, no matter what city you’re in, no matter what party your elected officials from, we need you to do it. And I want to teach people how to do that. In order for us to strengthen our housing community, we just need to get our numbers and we’re going to be planning to do that with the housing taskforce after after October and make sure that we are being recognized as a voice for the private housing sector, and make sure that we can do our part and share everyone’s voice through us. Or even better, if you want to say yourself, we want to give everyone that platform to speak up because our our housing sector is under attack from all levels of government. And if you you you look at different ways to to profit and to grow your portfolio, there’s no other better way for you to try to grow your portfolio then advocate for your for your property rights.

Erwin 1:26:26
And then I was very selfish question. I mentioned before when we’re recording that I’m taking some profits here, and I’m going to reinvest some of them in the States alone, in landlord friendly, friendly states such as like, I’m looking at like the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee, again, from what my friends told me it’s for non payment of rent, or like mischief or vandalism. It’s spent 3060 days for tenant eviction. What are your thoughts on on investing in south of the border and landlord friendly locations,

Kayla 1:27:04
you’re not alone, I’ve been hearing it from a lot of our landlords moving take cashing out here going into the states going into Costa Rica, Dominican Mexico, Portugal, you know, there’s many other opportunities out there, and I applaud all of our investors who have taken the plunge, done it themselves built, built that network and are now bringing that network to back to Canada to save the rest of us. And it’s sad that we’re having this conversation because, you know, people like good, you know, then there’s gonna be more houses for the tenants to buy. And I’m like, no, just like the, the landlord was your, you know, landlord, the landlords always have their landlord, which is the banks. So we always have someone to listen to. But we do have to start. We can’t put all of our eggs in one basket. And we have to go towards the countries or the provinces that are more investor friendly. Because if you guys are on tick tock, listening to investors talking about staying away from Ontario, and you know, we’re supposed to be the province that’s open for business. And unfortunately, it seems like Ontario just evicted their their private housing sector out of out of the market. And I don’t know for what reason, unless they want to be the only the only housing providers in town. So I think they want to be the only Sheriff

Erwin 1:28:26
because they’ve done such a great job of public housing.

Kayla 1:28:29
So they can you remember when the Toronto with John, John Tory, he was excited to announce this funding for Toronto housing. And it was like, Oh, this is for fixing Toronto housing. They can’t afford to build, manage, maintain, and subsidized government housing taxpayers can’t, it doesn’t make sense. We’re asking just for, okay, we want to you to make sure our tenants have money to pay us and we will build it, we will manage it, we will maintain it. You just need to make sure that you’re subsidizing these tenants without putting us on that fine print contract. But there is there is obviously that need where they’re trying to create incentives. They’re just not quite getting it. It’s almost like they’re there. They’re trying to build something. And they’re supposed to be using tools. But they got the kids plastic tools going on. Like it’s just it’s not working for them.

Erwin 1:29:23
It’s just too hard. All right, like the NIMBYs are very vocally already against developers. Imagine it was subsidized government housing how in the NIMBYs would rise up

Kayla 1:29:33
but at the same time it’s like do you like the encampments? Do you like the tents behind your house? Do you like sleeping pods?

Erwin 1:29:42
All of it there’s no in between there’s no in the middle there’s no negotiation. There’s no mediation. This is no all of it. All of it. No.

Kayla 1:29:49
Too many people in my backyard so now just too much traffic. Have you seen the traffic on my street already? It’s like, okay, but we do have to get that sprawl. I think like if you look up in northern In Ontario, like there’s so much potential that’s still there, but people are staying huddled into into the Greater Toronto Area, Southern Ontario, but it’s going to be a change. And I think it’s that change is going to be depending on who our next government is going to be from all different levels, but everyone needs to be alert. This is our warning sign, you will not see this on the news on social media. Pay attention to your elected officials. We need we need, we need people who are experienced into dealing with this industry, and we need to call them out and tell them that they’re not experienced into dealing with it. That’s why they keep traveling to different municipalities to like, Oh, we’re in the City of Cambridge, we’re in the City of Hamilton. We’re here to talk about how we’re going to meet our goal of 1.5 million homes with who the other level of government like come on, guys. Like I don’t know what this incentive is for these municipal governments to incentivize government like they’re not building it. The private ones are doing it’s it’s comical, but hey, that’s great for it’s great for them just to ride on the coattails of it just so that they can keep getting reelected. But once I think this is the time this election, it’s going to be really, really bad for them because look at the mess that’s been created. And I don’t think they’re going to be able to find that immediate solution that people want to hear. Because they’re crying talking about how they gotta leave. Leave Canada because things have gotten way too way too costly for them.

Erwin 1:31:42
Tell them one last time.

Kayla 1:31:44
Let’s drink. Yeah. Where can you find me?

Erwin 1:31:52
Where can we find you? Where can we find it? Well, W worker we find out about your conference.

Kayla 1:31:56
So if you get onto my Facebook page, so you can look me up as Kayla Andrew, you can follow me there. The link to the conference is on my personal account as well. It’s slowly will be up on our website. But if you go on to the Ontario landlords watch public Facebook page, we have our links there. I’m also on LinkedIn and Instagram, as Ontario landlords watch. And you might even find me on Tik Tok trying to do some videos not really good at them. So don’t follow me.

Erwin 1:32:25
Before we’re recording, we’re talking about your TVO. When you’re on that TV, oh panel, would you recommend people have a look at that as well?

Kayla 1:32:30
Yeah, you can check. That was the landlord’s versus the tenants. That was when the cameras were on. You should see the show what happened after they were off. But

Erwin 1:32:42
is the URL they won’t.

Kayla 1:32:43
It was good though. It was we had like our own little video in the car after highlighting what was being said after the cameras turned off. So you can see that on my Ontario landlords watch YouTube channel as well. What was said,

Erwin 1:32:58
did it like okay, cameras are all screwed.

Kayla 1:33:03
Like, you know, this is a symptom of rent control. Like we need to get that 2.5 cap completely dismissed. And they’re like, No, we need more rent control, like rent control in between tenancies and like are you kidding me? You know that will be the death of all rentals in Ontario. Right, I’ll

Erwin 1:33:29
never be a number Postville rental built by private industry.

Kayla 1:33:33
Never I do people will get everyone out and they would try to put them in a spot where they’d be renting and sharing accommodation so it’s not underneath the RTA you know there’s there’s going to be people will rent their units and storage units for God’s sakes like the they’ll they’ll learn how to pivot for what they work with if they can’t sell it, but they obviously I’m seeing more groups postings about people selling their nine Plex and their triplex is now like that’s something that I never saw before where people were literally posting their rental units in the group. So we we created like obviously Ontario Oh LW properties for sale and rent rooms like a marketplace? Yeah, yeah, just so that people can you know, offload their what they’re selling there. But we’re seeing more people selling their properties now. And they they’re probably doing because I’m like, I’m done. I’m getting out of the industry or I’ve made it but we have that older population too. That’s fed up with it. With the increases it’ll

Erwin 1:34:26
mean a lot of money. Yeah,

Kayla 1:34:28
and they made their their money and now they’re ready to cash out before they lose it or they’re going with the same mindset as you like let’s go and get ourselves into another into another country. Yeah, so it’s it’s sad to see that happening. We warned our elected officials it was coming and I don’t know if they they’re gonna have to do something very drastic now to stop those investors from you know, continuing to do it or to come back to the market. But once your money’s gone and invested in to another place like that, it’s going to take a bet to try to get us back to a place that has no supply, and no developers who actually want to build. So we’ll we’ll we’ll see. We’ll see how this goes. But we’re going to, you know, highlight what our government has done wrong. All right, you show them that what you’ve done for your own housing stock. And now you’re, you know, starting to attack the private sector. It’s just going to end very badly for everyone involved. And, you know, we want to we do want to look for a fair and balanced housing system to all parties involved, the landlord, the tenants and the taxpayers. Because I know our taxpayers are not getting a fair shake for their taxes. And we I don’t think we can afford any more increases for the mismanagement of our money.

Erwin 1:35:48
We’ll leave it there. Thanks so much for doing this.

Kayla 1:35:53
Oh, thanks so much. I just I can’t thank you enough for having me on. I love it. I love the invitations. And seeing you and cherry tell her I said hi, as well. We’re gonna do like a to a duo. We gotta get both of you guys on there.

Erwin 1:36:09
Oh, you’re gonna divide and conquer. We’re so busy.

Kayla 1:36:13
Yeah, I that’s all my husband. He’s just like, Okay, I’m gonna go do with the rentals. You’re gonna go and deal with the children. I’m like, Can we switch thanks so much for doing what you’re doing and bringing the information and the education to, to your to your listeners. And I want to thank everyone for for listening to what I had to say from my personal advice, and just know that I’m doing whatever I can to fight back and to advocate for our property rights and to hold us on as housing providers and strengthen that voice.

Erwin 1:36:47
And behalf of me my 17 listeners, we thank you for your advocacy and your service.

Kayla 1:36:53
Thank you so much. Oh, you’re funny.

 

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Youtube: https://youtu.be/U7HqFtJ281I  

 

**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Greetings, my fellow real estate investors.

Today’s show we have someone who’s built a $100 million commercial real estate portfolio in Calgary, Alberta. But he’s now since pivoted to microdosing His name is Greg capstreet. And this is the truth about real estate real estate investing show for Canadians and I hope you’ve had a wonderful summer. So before we get to Greg, judging by how slow the markets been, well, I know I can tell many of you took time off. I know so many of my clients to take time off to enjoy the weather travel. Summer hard as it’s called. My name is Erwin Seto or I’m in real estate the four time Realtors Of The Year Two investors and host of this over the top successful podcast right at the top in the space ranked number 81 In all business in iTunes across the world. But yeah, the good times still continue to roll for investors. It’s not easy though I’m an investor myself. These elevator rates they certainly are a pain for everyone. But long term investor has still fared exceptionally well. I had this one I once one collected retired earlier this year from her day job. So she wanted to take some profits off the table on her student rental property in Welland Ontario to enjoy herself travel and strategically pay less tax tax via capital gains because she’s no longer earning a job income. 10 years ago, we helped her buy a turnkey student rental directly from the builder. The house was designed with the future in mind as a design the basement to meet the building and fire code for basement apartment, which in that included the Ruffins for a future kitchen. There is no kitchen in the basement kitchens or you know your classic fire hazard. It’s your it’s where a lot of fires can originate. And there was no kitchen in the basement.

And also just for at the time based on apartments were not legal. But again, this was 10 years ago in the city had all my clients I have several clients about same property. Several they all signed an affidavit to prepare by the city that they would not create separation between the downstairs and upstairs by adding locked locking doors. 10 years later, these turnkey student rentals were are still in high demand as the location is just about 40 minutes from campus. The house is on the newer side and more modern and finished than its competition. Hence, our clients have always been successful renting them out. And even though we’re currently in a tough market for tenant properties, tenant two properties are not selling so much these days. But because of property cash flows,our client was able to successfully sell this house for more than two times, but she paid for it. So the return on average assuming a 20% down payment is it’s it’s it’s it’s good. It’s a 500% or an average of 50% per year straight average. The great thing about renting to students is that they graduate school and they move out then allows which allows us landlords to rent the house at market rates. And with the tick the numbers actually, over 100,000 I think we’ve had about 800,000 new international students in Canada over the last two years, rents have just skyrocketed near colleges and universities. My client, of course, is ecstatic to walk away with over $300,000 in profits in just 10 years. She’s had a professional property manager as well. So the investment was as passive as it gets. If you follow the market as closely as I do, like I mentioned, tenant properties are not selling in this market right now, unless they’re priced a lesser price the best. And then the more negative the cash flow the property, or if the tenant or the rents the rents are low. From you know, just like some of my properties. I’ve had rent property, I’ve had tenants for like, you know, eight, nine years. So those rents are low. Those properties are harder to sell at the same time on so that’s on the macro level on the macro level. Our economy shrank, hopefully saw the news just last week they came out our economy shrank by point 2% in the second quarter of this year. At the same time, the expectation was to grow 1.5% So we’re not technically in a recession yet, but it’s pretty much inevitable provincial economists believe that we’re going to be in a recession for q3.

I look around I know people are feeling the pinch spending is way down the Conference Board of Canada released that Ontarians are spending like 8% less compared to last year. So many homeowners believe including myself, the Bank of Canada is done raising rates. And last time, the Bank of Canada paused and raising rates that was an early spring in the buyers went gangbusters for at least two months.

That it really didn’t that okay, sorry, but before they did another increase, so maybe we see the same action this time, because the long term economic fundamentals still screaming housing shortage, builders aren’t building. Immigration is talking to us at a fast tilt. Colleges and Universities need those international students to make budget. So I don’t see how any of this changes. But we’ll see. We’ll see. And while sales and rental properties have been slow, on the flip side, tenant showings even in August, even in August, when tenant showings are typically slow. Tenant showings were a big demand as vacant units, were they would they would they would have about 10 or 20. Something showings in a week or two. And rents continue to decline. So rents Klein, yes, because who can blame housing providers as all the operating risks in operating costs and interest rates have gone up, property taxes are going up insurance going up?

To my properties, insurance is renewed with my my broker switch to provider? I don’t think that’s under control. But under the new provider, each of those properties is $500 higher per year per year. Yeah, so that’s yeah, that’s that’s a that’s close to 20% increase on my insurance, you better believe it became these recorded. If you’ve a great insurance person out there, please send them my way. In the end, it’s the tenants all suffer the worst from this from this, honestly, probably excessive immigration, inflation. And in general Canada’s economic condition. This is one of my worst fears realized. Hence, you know, I put my money where where I thought it needed to go, which was to buy each each of my kids a house, so that they would be able to afford to be able to get into the housing market when they were old enough. Of course, these conditions are really, really sad. Prices accelerated way faster than I ever would have expected. But that’s the situation that we’re in. So but if you have kids or worried about your own retirement, I think that’s pretty much everyone, one or the other, or both. I can’t recommend enough owning a quality income property, probably a few more than that. And if you’re interested in learning how my clients, like my client just made 500% return in 10 years, how my clients do it, how my wife and I, and my wife, Sherry, and I invest, and you want to join our monthly Iowan meeting.

This one, they’re online only. And on Tuesday, September 19, my team and I will be there to share the latest in the market at both a high level and on the street level, including sale prices, renovation budgets, rents, what is the best neighborhoods to invest in, where our which is actually where our clients are investing in. Plus, we’ll have a special guest in gray Brook who in they happen to be one of the larger developers in Ontario, Karina invest in their projects, I believe cherries invested our money in about two or three projects just this year, as past does not predict the future. But my returns have been exceptional, and even better than the passive. All we do is just transfer money in right in Science Center exciting contracts. So if you want to learn how to invest like a developer, or at least understand how developers make money, so that you can, you know, evaluate your own development projects going forward, then you will want to be at this meeting.

And then the following Saturday on September 23. We will be we will be hosting the RMS renter in the Niagara region in averaging in my opinion still has been upside thanks to the now recent correction where prices have come down significantly, plus new investment via the new hospital. And the government is not in friendly investor friendly yet. So you want to learn about how to invest in these areas before the floodgates open and all investors rushing. So fingers crossed. Fingers crossed for my clients. One of my most successful clients who has been a pet guest of the show, hope fingers crossed that we were able to see his triplex conversion. So if you’re a real estate geek like me, you know, our friend, our friend and client has converted a single family home into three units under one roof within the same building envelope. So no edition, no garden suite, anything like that. Now Matt, my opinion is maximizing one’s investment, while tripling the housing on a single lot. I love it when our clients or money learn, learned earn a world class return and are also part of the solution in creating more housing that can Canadians desperately need. Make Money do social good. You really ticked up my opinion. Even the angry mortgage guy Ron Butler agrees. I’ve gotten many DMS texts comments on YouTube, about everyone’s appreciation for Ron telling it like it is you

As the guest of last week’s episode, I do share many of his opinions. Some I don’t. I’m just not nearly as vocal about it. I wonder if more people would infer that it was instead of often walking the line and being bit more political and not trying to offend anyone, but yeah, I agree. Anything’s Brent. Sorry, Ron says, but yes, our governments have screwed this up royally at all levels. It’s a sad state of affairs that buying houses rental property is a better investment than most businesses. Right? You. I remember, I went to business school, businesses generate more economic benefit than a rental property does. So the way things are going right now, that’s the sad state of affairs. But there’s two more years until our next federal election. By the end our interest rates should be much lower than they are today. There will be past the recession is my guess, and the lack of housing will still be a problem.

Oh, I’m such a bummer onto this week’s show. As always, I look forward to bring you a variety of guests to share their unique experiences and journeys. Today, we have an old friend Greg captured back on the show to share what he’s up to. After dominating the influencer scene. He’s helped. He’s hosted conferences over multiple days with like massive, massive speakers, like the Dalai Lama.

And he’s owned a is owned a while at the time it was worth $100 billion of commercial real estate, largely in Calgary, Alberta. But that was a while ago, and he’s since gone through dark times, both economically and personally.

That he invest in Calgary, Alberta, of course, you’re gonna go through dark times,to Now, fast forward today, he’s sharing about his current personal interest in finally aligning with his personal passion, which is curing mental health via medical psychedelics. Yeah, this topic is a little bit different than the usual note, Greg and I are not medical doctors. So none of this should be taken as medical advice. So please speak to your own health professional. Greg does share about it his own out of body experience, it’s flashing back to his childhood trauma, allowing him to understand his adult his own current adult insecurities so we can actually address them. This episode is not for everyone. But again, understand Greg is really bright. And he’s made a lot of money. Unifor. So I always like to listen to these folks what they’re up to. We have, we’ve had many hardcore real estate guests. On the show. Greg, again, has been a guest on the show before. So if you want to hear more hardcore things around real estate investing, and you know, when he did, he spoke more about hosting a three day conference with folks like Brendon Burchard and the owner of virgin

Richard Branson, like ease and making millions of dollars as an influencer. Go back to the previous episode, Greg, or one of the other 300 episodes I’ve had with hardcore real estate investors in conversations. But if you’re interested in being on the bleeding edge of where medicine is going, where we think medicine is going, or you want to better understand how you’re how you’re better understand yourself, or your own childhood trauma shaped who you are today. And again, this is going to likely be the next best thing after cannabis. Then you will enjoy this episode. Again. Greg is a smart dude. His website is a light mint.com That’s a play on the word alignment. Enlightenment, alightment.com. Please enjoy the show

Erwin  0:40 

Greg, how are you?

Greg  0:42 

I’m good. Let me I’m just trying to get my air pods connected here.

Erwin  0:47 

Sound okay. Sure the army can be all right. All right. Yeah. Are you doing all right, what’s up? What’s going on? What’s gone down? Summer. My kids are at camp overnight camp this week. So Jerry and I are empty nesters for a week. Nice. weird feeling. Are you taking advantage? Yeah, we’re golfing tonight. We got on Sunday. Just us to watch the watching. Just half a King Richard gets a really long movie last night. Haven’t seen it. Was it good? Yeah, I think so. We had this long because I was really unhappy with the whole Will Smith slapping Chris Rock thing? Yeah. Yeah. So I just felt the backburner than just like, like going through Netflix. There’s nothing else that was interested in me. Yeah, that was a whole weird situation. But talking about anyway, yeah. People that are injured, right. People are getting over trauma. What the hell happened?

Greg  2:12 

Yeah, well, actually, yeah. The whole Smith family is an interesting. Yeah. In the world of topic of psychedelics and stuff. Will Jada Smith or? Yeah, there’s a cheetah. Yeah, not the wife. But the to remember who was somebody so there’s a huge psychedelic conference that happens put on by maps, which is like the sort of grandfather of sort of legitimate science behind psychedelics. They did a conference in Denver, and last month and 13,000 people, the biggest conference ever, and one of the kids was there, and I remember which one it was. But anyway, they basically were on stage being interviewed, talking about psychedelics and how Jada, the mom introduced the family to psychedelics. And

Erwin  3:06 

that’s

Greg  3:08 

how it’s all sort of like, psychedelics have been big in sort of all their journeys here last few years, so I

Erwin  3:15 

wonder if it’s helped their healing process for for that very public. Event? I would. Yeah, that was just so bizarre. Anyways, yeah, she cheated on I went with a younger rap artist, right. So I’m guessing that was part of the underlying issue.

Greg  3:35 

Yeah. And I, I don’t follow the stuff that happens like or what? You know, it’s like the Kardashians. I can’t I can’t name the Kardashians and Kim Kardashian. I don’t know who they are. It’s just such nonsense, but you know, but at the end of the day, they’re just human beings trying to have a human experience. Yeah. Made a lot harder by being in the spotlight, I guess. But yeah,

Erwin  4:01 

we all got shit. We all got shit. That’s to say to my friends on the weekend, you know? I think it says I always say it partly is just being the self deprecating and being humble. As I say I am crazy. My clients are crazy. My friends. My form buddies are crazy. We’re all crazy. Which actually leads me to the point that we’re actually crazy is that normal is crazy. Yeah, everyone it was crazy. There is no normal so very, very very true. That’s I don’t like the name psychedelics I think needs to be needs to be more health based. Yeah, like it sounds like like narcotic and recreational to me again, I don’t have enough context, you know, just just like just like I don’t like the term cryptocurrency like, yeah, like it’s like I think of it as hard asset. There’s a triptych about it. Hey, when are you doing too far into it? Anyway? So I loved your email. Let me just bring it up. I closed everything else. Yeah, I loved your email. So what do you love about it? It’s It’s so true. That, I guess that like I see it in forum. I see it in yo, like, we’re all damaged. We’re all we’re all. You know, I’ve seen it in like, like Steve Jobs is a biography. Right? Yeah. So chip on his shoulder, you know, Tiger Woods, massive chip on his shoulder and living up to his parents expectations, all sorts of things right. Now watching Tim Richard, you can see how what his daughter’s had to deal with. Right? Yeah. How have you seen it? No. He saw the

Greg  5:50 

trailer. It looked it looked interesting. I mean, if it’s if it’s true to life, that’s the that’s the question I always have is like, how much of this is characterized to make a better movie and stuff, but you got to think to have to have you know, both of your daughters come out to be two of the top athletes in the category in the world. Now, there’s definitely there’s got to be something different going on in that family.

Erwin  6:15 

The doctors approved the movie as well. Yeah, yeah, they had, they had to watch it and approve it before it’d be released. But just, it seems consistent with what I’ve read about how superstars are raised. I really enjoyed. I’m a sports fan. So I really enjoyed Andre Agassi’s book as well. Have you read that one? No. Do you like sports?

Greg  6:38 

I like sports, but not like you. I mean, I’m not super into sports. Yeah, I watch them. But I like I don’t Yeah, I don’t really follow them really, really intently.

Erwin  6:52 

What I what I find fascinating is how they were raised by their parents. I’m trying to find a book on Walter Gretzky and Wayne, but it seems pretty consistent. Like the parents are just over the top. Right in the Richard he had he had Child Services called on him, which I’m not surprised.

Greg  7:13 

I’d be curious about the Walter Gretzky because I mean, everything you see, you just you never hear a story that Walter Gretzky was overbearing or difficult or noxious or you driven by ego, like it just so I’d be super curious to really know what the behind the scenes that I became, I think a lot of it has to do with Gretzky was given a gift that was just unreal. And, you know, it’s possible to nurture that and in a more positive, supportive environment, as opposed to kind of the driving relentless environment that I think most sports stars grew up in. But yeah, but yeah, I think you’re right, that would be an interesting one to read. Yeah, that’d

Erwin  7:56 

be interesting. Because that Tiger Woods information only got it because of, because it was such a big story. And so you know, there was enough money in it for folks to go do a proper interviews of people surrounding it. In the tire in the woods fairly pissed off enough people that people would talk. Yeah. Versus Gretzky’s like, you know, high up on a pedestal, you know, squeaky clean didn’t pass off anyone? Yeah. Love the email, because, you know, I see it. Yeah, we all do for freedom. It’s tough these days, too, with high interest rates. So people are being squeezed, they don’t really have the freedom that they expected. Oh, I’ll preface that by saying my clients are doing fine. Seriously, because my clients, you know, they can take profits. And they can be extremely comfortable. And they still have all their freedom. Right? Versus I speak to people who are who are limited now in what they can do because of they’re saddled with negative cash flow properties. Right? Yep. I’m sure you’ve heard that before.

Greg  9:02 

Never. I don’t know anything about that.

Erwin  9:07 

The fear. You know, like I said, like jobs. I think you have a massive chip on his shoulder being adopted. Right, just the way he treated his his biological father when he met him like this. Is this Yeah, odd. And that he himself had like an orphan daughter. Like that was messed up. Yeah, you can’t say these people are healthy. Jobs.

Greg  9:33 

You look at a lot of people in the very top echelons in almost any category. And there’s a there’s a huge shadow cast and, you know, in each of their lives, typically, I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, healthy, fully aware people that are super successful, because it’s coming from the right place, but I would say that, more often than not, that’s not the case. So, so yeah, I mean, we can be talking about whatever you want. How long will it be before this comes out? Like, when would this actually hit? I have

Erwin  10:05 

some leeway Do you want so quickly? Or we’re probably around seven weeks right now.

Greg  10:11 

Okay, I’m probably not that far. But I mean, so what I’m doing right now as I’m working on, like a site brand, like a kind of what I’m what I’m going to be focusing on, and the site’s not ready and all that, but it should be, you know, I’ll get it together in the next couple few weeks. So

Erwin  10:33 

I can release it. Just let me let me know we can release it then.

Greg  10:37 

Yeah. Okay. So we’ll talk about stuff. And I’ll, you know, I can mention stuff and website and that if they go like, if you went there right now, it’s like, placeholder, but

Erwin  10:47 

yeah, totally fine. We can just, this is

Greg  10:50 

good, because it puts a fire under my ass to actually get things done.

Erwin  10:54 

You have? You have 10 days, Greg. That’s right.

Greg  10:59 

So we can Yeah, we can take it wherever you want. I mean, we can talk about real estate. I can talk a little bit about Calgary. I mean, it’s, you know, I saw that I haven’t listened to it yet. And I wanted to get to it. I just didn’t. The one with with Calvert. This just

Erwin  11:17 

because just released. Yeah, I

Greg  11:19 

know. I saw it, I saw it come out and I was gonna listen to it, I didn’t get a chance. Because it would have been good to hear a little bit more, because they would have gotten a lot more deeper than what I’m typically looking at. Would have been just give me a quick update. But I mean, it’s, you know, anecdotally, it’s, you know, it’s it’s interesting. I mean, Calgary is definitely doing a lot better right now. It’s just it’s, it seems we’re in a position where we seem to last, like the

Erwin  11:42 

residential market. Yeah, for sure.

Greg  11:46 

Because I don’t want to have to. Yeah, I mean, I don’t I don’t, I can’t quote you a bunch of numbers and stuff like that. But that’s okay. But But it’s interesting. Yeah. So we can take this wherever you want. We talk about real estate, we talk about business, we can talk about coaching, trauma, psychedelics, whatever you want.

Erwin  12:05 

That’s another name for psychedelics. health industry. What more specific than that?

Greg  12:14 

Well, do you want to make this episode about the what? Second name of psychedelics? And like, do you want that to be sort of like part of the

Erwin  12:24 

was part of him? is largely Dr. Right. Yeah. And they’ll always throwing questions in which I’m curious.

Greg  12:33 

Yeah, I think I mean, what we can talk about is maybe, you know, around what the email was, and just how, over the years, I mean, I’ve been through a lot of different things, had businesses and built a big portfolio and scaled it down and learned a bunch of painful lessons along the way, and that, you know, a different a bunch of different things that I’ve done over the years, have sort of brought me back to being a little bit more connected with myself and being a little more authentic and being driven less by the wrong things, I guess. Okay. And for a lot of people that I mean, psychedelics is obviously a hot topic these days are so many people interested in it. We’re edging towards legalization, you know, so what does that actually mean? And for people that are curious about it, you know, we can talk a little bit about that. And because I find it doesn’t matter where I am, or who I’m talking to, if, if I mentioned psychedelics there, they start to lean in and they start asking questions like, well, what is it really? What’s it about? And then it’s, it’s a lot about trying to unlearn sort of, like the myths and the things that

Erwin  13:44 

yes, if the show, I think will work that in in terms of when we talk about your journey, for example, because you speak incredibly ambitious, yeah. driven. So we can talk about like the journey and then talking about your reasoning for like, What drove you then? Yeah. And then you can analyze it like, Was that right? Wrong? Good, bad. Yeah. And talk about your coaching in the truck now and then actually, laterally into psychedelics.

Greg  14:07 

Yeah, because what I really want to do is, is, you know, add value to the show, not just have like, an hour conversation about me, but

Erwin  14:15 

but people will take your journey for themselves. Yeah, okay. Let me because especially, I always have new listeners. So they’re like, Yeah, I went on 100 doors like I was there before to actually speaking for myself. I went on 100 doors kicked in into their, their homes and like, raise your hands. Yeah, and we don’t lose money. Seriously, when people are talking about the shit all the time, it’s like, it’s one of the things I love about yo, is because entrepreneurs I find her on much more. Their mission is very different. I want change the world add value to microphone, my customers, my employees, real estate, to find a much more capitalist. Yeah, tendency to raise rents. Or just oh, they don’t have rent control. I’m just gonna raise rents and make all this money increase like Then increase my cap rate and all that sort of shit and then take all this money. Great. What did you help? The society?

Greg  15:09 

There’s a huge there’s a human equation in there. People forget

Erwin  15:14 

a spreadsheet and like, yeah, seven cafe, I seem to raise everyone’s rents by 20% and I make this much money. Yeah. We’re human human component completely skipped.

Unknown Speaker  15:28 

Yeah. So how much? How much time? Do

Erwin  15:30 

we have an hour to get your book filled till one to 18? Okay, already? Yeah. Very Hi Greg, what’s keeping you busy these days?

Greg  15:44 

What’s keeping me busy? My family. Actually, we just got married in May. And so I’ve been with with my wife now for four years. We got married out in Tofino on the West Coast, Vancouver Island, it was spectacular. It was both of our second times around, so we kind of did it the way that we want it to, as opposed to, you know, all the pressure of like, what’s what a wedding is supposed to look like? So it’s a very small gathering, you know, like 2022 or 24 people, family and send just a bunch of really close friends. And it was it was fabulous. It was I mean, if anybody that hasn’t been in Tofino, it’s a very, it’s a very magical place. And it was very meaningful, because we actually, the officiant of our ceremony was a dear friend of mine of ours, his name’s Dr. Dan angle. And he’s the very first person that ever introduced me to the world of plant medicines, psychedelics, and he’s become a really good friend of mine. So we had a very, it was right on the beach, everybody in bare feet, it was sort of a, I would call it a bit of a modern hippie wedding. It was, it was amazing. But it was nice to be in a space and like, be grounded in what, you know, what makes us happy, and who we are, as opposed to trying to do it for, you know, the cameras and the video and all that kind of stuff. So, anyway, so that’s, and so we’ve got my son Cooper’s 15. And then we’ve got two daughters, that are eight and five, ln Anna, and so it’s summertime. So busy. Lots going on. And, you know, for me personally, like I’ve, I would say that over the last several years, I’ve been going through what you could call an initiation. And just going through a lot of retrospective thoughts and building sort of the next stage for me. And so yeah, so we can talk a little bit about that today.

Erwin  17:55 

Oh, interesting. Because as we’re catching up before we’re recording, like your wedding is almost kind of like your second wedding. Because you said how you how you described it as being the way you want it much smaller than the original than then but the majority of people do on their first weddings. And with current day meetings, it seems kind of like a an analogy for your career. Right? Because when I think Derek had Yeah, absolutely. I think of you know, best selling author. With your with your book about RSP investing because base everyone, everyone from my generation investing knows I read your book or hones in your book, right. And, you know, you hosted enormous conferences, you spoke on you spoke on stage where there are hundreds and 1000s of people in the audience and like your, your further for the real estate space. Like you’re one of the biggest folks, especially if like for young Canadians, like even on the North American stage. You are one of the most successful folks were you know,

Greg  18:57 

if you say so. I don’t know. I mean, we we had a we had a big training business. I mean, if we go back, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe a little bit more than that. I mean, I started in the mid 2000s, early, early 2000s, I sold my business that I had. I built up a business over my 20s and sold that in 2000. The year that I turned 30 and turned my attention to real estate and that was in 2001 and just focused hard on real estate, acquiring the Alberta real estate market was was pretty quiet back then. And then over the course of the next few years, you know two or three that kind of thing. I started just acquiring tons of property. And people started asking me how are you doing this? Like, can you teach this and one of the things about me is when I go into something that I’m I’m really a student of whatever I go into, so I go deep into the rabbit hole. I really tried to understand it and learn it. And so I just started teaching friends and people that had heard about me at little tiny You know, I’d get 20 people together and teach them about real estate and started building a business around training, got put on a few couple of couple of big stages in 2004 and five. And at the time, of course, Alberta was the economic Tiger. And so I’ve kind of got lucky with that, that I owned all this property. And the market absolutely just took off. I mean, I remember in 2006, the stat in Canada or in Calgary, sorry, was the average sale price in Calgary increased in 2006. By by 52%. So if you so if you owned a house that was 200,000, you the next year, you owned a house that was worth 300,000. So you can imagine what that did to like balance sheets. And you know, and rents were like, basically, effectively zero commercial rates, Calgary had the lowest commercial real estate, they can see in North America, like Office rates were 0%, you could not rent an office space and Cat and Cat Calgary. And so you know, it was a rocket and oh, 708 continued to drive, of course, our training company expanded. We were doing, you know, big events, the big event that we are sort of known for that I did was with Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, Stephen Covey, Matt Mullenweg. I mean, the list goes on it was. And it was interesting, because that event, and oh nine was kind of the start for a lot of the big guys you see out there today. So for example, a vision from Mindvalley, if you’re familiar with Vishen, Lakhiani, that was one of the visions first talks was on my stage, or Brendon Burchard. Nobody knew who Brendan was before that event. And then that sort of started him on his trajectory. And so I was working with a lot of really amazing people. And then, of course, oh, wait, oh nine happened. And at the time, you know, we had a portfolio of $100 million in real estate. And when something like a wait, oh nine comes, having a big portfolio is not anything to brag about at all. Because it just turns into a headache management company. And so that’s what happened. And so we got, we got hit pretty hard, it was very painful. Had to divest of a bunch of properties, and like, we were into raw land, and we were international and, you know, expanded probably too quickly. And I think believed the belief and PR of Alberta is going to be the greatest place ever forever. And in hindsight now, we know that’s not the case. And but it’s funny, because like the conversations that you and I could have about Alberta today, you couldn’t conceive those in 2007, you know, that, that Alberta would basically be lagging most of the real estate market. So. So yeah, so we built a big company, we had to downsize that divest some properties, but the training company was supported the operating of the of the real estate. So that’s the one thing that I would say is, had it not been for my training company, we would have probably had a really big, you know, it would have been a dumpster fire. On the real estate side. I mean, it was hard enough, but the operating income from the training company actually support the real estate. And I think that’s where a lot of real estate investors get in trouble is they start to believe their own PR, their properties are cash flowing. You know, you see it all the time that, you know, equity, you know, why would you leave equity in your property, it’s just dead. It’s just like, Why would you leave that money there, like, borrow it out and buy another one? And that all works when things are going well, but I mean, you know, we’re seeing another iteration, it’s a different version, and much less painful. But we’re seeing yet another iteration right now in the market of what happens when you assume that a certain set of assumptions are going to remain true forever. And so for a lot of people that obviously is interest rates, right? We, anybody who just started in real estate in the last 10 years has come to believe that typical interest rates are two and 3%. And that’s not how it works. And so what we’re seeing right now, I mean, this is we’re at what 22 year highs now, for the Bank of Canada rate. But that’s only 22 years. I mean, that’s not you know, that’s not the entire history of of money. And so, it’s been interesting to watch. And for me, I mean, the training company, one of the things that the flip side of the training company, for me, the the frustration was that I was coaching, I mean, I was coaching, you know, hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors. And there was only a small portion of them that actually really took action and followed through and did what they needed to do. And it got for me frustrated to the point where I didn’t feel right coaching someone and having to come back to me every three months and basically report back and nothing had changed since the last time we talked. And I took that very personally, because they felt accountable for their outcomes, which, you know, in some ways is not really healthy for a coach. I mean, I can only do so much, right. And so I just decided, you know, this is a lot of a lot of stress, I’m dealing with a lot of things with real estate. And so I shut the training company down, basically retired in 2013, because I wanted to get back into running real businesses. And so at the time, I was winding that down. And I started a veterinary company, and decided that I wanted to get back into service business dealing with, you know, like consumer clients. And so we started a veterinary company, a mobile veterinary company, and that went really well. We built that up over the course four years and sold that in 2017.

Erwin  25:45 

But medicine was a small personal interest of yours, too.

Greg  25:50 

Yeah, I loved animals. And so I saw it as the veterinary space, I saw it as an opportunity. Because if I could apply my business acumen to my love of animals, I could sort of bring together my skill set with my passion. And that’s what I did with that company. And the vet companies, or the vet vet industry is challenging. It’s it’s been consolidated. I mean, there’s one company, for example, that owns almost 2000 veterinary clinics. Now, in North America. The veterinary clinics in Calgary, more than half of them are owned by a single company. And so when that starts happening, innovation and you know, creativity just sort of go out the door, because now it’s a big corporate draw. And so we sold in 2017. And then 2018, I got separated. 12 year marriage, we got separated and divorced. And then I sold the business, of course. So I kind of went from having a very clear, solid sort of view of what my life looked like, you know, I’ve got this, you know, I’m married, and I’ve got this, and I’ve got this business. And I basically wiped all that away. And that was in 2018. And it was a scary time for me because I just became untethered to, you know, I didn’t have an identity anymore. I didn’t have a relationship, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. And so that’s sort of like, I would say, plunged me into a significant valley of introspection on my own life, and turning inward. Finally, because I had always had this sense that there were things that were driving me that were not healthy. But I couldn’t ever put my finger on it. I wasn’t really sure why. And so I started to do a lot of research into different things. So I started to pick up breathwork, for example, meditation, I did Transcendental Meditation, which, for me, didn’t, didn’t, didn’t click, I tried all these different things. And I mean, breathwork, I really enjoyed that I became certified as a breathwork. Instructor, and started doing more of these sort of internal processes. And one of the things that happened for me was, I mentioned Dr. Dan before, I met Dan, about five or six years ago now. And Dan is one of sort of the world’s sort of leading authorities in the world of plant medicine and psychedelics. And for me, or when I, I had never touched magic mushrooms in my life, I’ve never done cocaine, I never will never done heroin or any of that kind of stuff. I mean, I did some cannabis, I probably smoked cannabis, maybe twice when I was in my teens or 20s hated it. And so I’d always been counter or against drugs of any kind. And I was like, the I was a success story of the 80s war on drugs. You know, if you’ve, you’ve seen that commercial with, you know, this is your brain and it’s an egg, and this is your brain on drugs. And they crack the egg open, that that sort of campaign turned an entire generation against. You know, this, this idea that mind altering substances are just bad for you, they’re going to rot your brain, they’re going to make you kill yourself, whatever. And so, Dan gave me a new perspective on that. And when I started doing the research, I realized that what what we call psychedelics or plant medicine has tremendous potential for really two things number one, helping us understand and go back and and, first of all, identify and process and heal some of the things that that upset us or that drive us the traumas of our past. So that’s kind of one thing is it helps us heal and become more connected back to ourselves. And then the second side of plant medicines, psychedelics is it’s tremendously mind expanding in terms of creativity and innovation and ideas and things like that. And so I started

Erwin  29:50 

just to pause you there. I want to remind a little bit because I do want to expand on this as well. But before we get into kind of like the solution, like you Yeah, coached hundreds of hundreds of successful entrepreneurs and real estate investors. Because I believe it was you that said like real estate investors are really are just entrepreneurs in the real estate industry. Right? That absolutely, yeah. So what what was driving them? And I don’t have a better term for it? Was it right or wrong the way it is driven? Because you and I have exchanged some emails about this as well, like I, I’ve had friends tell me, I have a decent understanding of myself. Yeah. I’ve looked inside myself understand, like, what what largely went drives me. And you know, any Asian, or anyone with overbearing parents knows, like we were, we were conditioned to make our parents happy. Right. So I see that in a lot of myself, like, I actually see myself competing with my parents, both on on the financial level, and as a parent, right. So I understand that about myself a lot. That’s, that’s part of what drives me maybe a lot of what drives me. So my question

Greg  30:58 

is, and that’s not just an Asian thing, by the way, I mean, maybe the stereotype, but that’s not that’s not just an Asian thing, like, parents have an extraordinary impact on not just our upbringing and stuff, but the trajectory of our life, and in in ways that most of us don’t even realize, and like, I would include myself in that category as well. And so, so yeah, so to your point, one of the frustrations that I would have is, like I was saying before, is that, like, I would lay out for someone, here’s what they need to do, they would go away, and they would come back, and they wouldn’t get it done. And I would and I couldn’t understand why. And to be honest, at that time, I would say, if you asked me that question, I would have told you well, they’re just not committed enough. They’re not serious enough. They’re there. They don’t have discipline, they don’t have willpower. And it’s, if you think about it, like, you know, like the ocean, right? Like, it’s all of these things at the very top that we explain as the reasons why we do or don’t things, you know, you know, it’s like motivation, all of these superficial things, but what’s going on? Deep beneath the surface, there’s, there’s, there’s a, there’s a force that’s going on that largely we don’t see, that pushes us so think of an iceberg, right? I mean, iceberg is a great analogy, like what you see poking out of the water. Those are the things like discipline and writing a gratitude list and an action plan, and affirmations and having a business plan all these things that we that we we focus on. But no matter how much willpower you have, or no matter how good your plan is, they’re not going to move that iceberg what’s going to move the iceberg is all of that substance and material that’s beneath the surface that very few people ever dive under to see what’s going on. And so that’s kind of how I would how I would answer the question of like, what was driving these entrepreneurs, and me, and I’m using myself as kind of like the primary example here, but I wasn’t really sure I thought I knew and like consciously, I thought I, you know, I thought I knew what it was and you ask 100 entrepreneurs, and this would be this would hold very true for real estate investors as well ask 100 entrepreneurs or real estate investors? What’s your number one core value? Like why do you really do all this stuff? What is it that gets you excited, and that you’re really trying to accomplish and achieve what’s the value you’re after? And if I ask, you know, listeners to think about that, what’s the one thing that they’re that they’re, they stand for? They’re all about 98% of them are thinking right now of freedom. It’s about freedom. And every time I did did a talk, that’s what they would always say is that’s their best what they’re really seeking. That’s what they want. And one of the things that I came to learn was that as much as entrepreneurs consciously will tell you that freedom is what they’re really after. What I’ve started to realize both of those coaching clients, and especially about myself is that when I said that freedom was my number one value. That wasn’t actually true. The reason that most people seek freedom is because they’re actually seeking control. And by having freedom. That means nobody has control over you. Right? If I have ultimate freedom I get, you know, you’ve heard it before I could do what I want, what I want, where I want with who I want, whatever I want. That’s, that’s trying to like cut the thread of control from you. And most of us as children when we’re growing up, control is one of the fundamental issues that we struggle with. And so if you look at and fast forward as somebody grows up into, you know, an adult and they start a business, they tell themselves, they’re really after freedom, but what typically they’re afraid of is they want control. They’re afraid of giving up control, because quite often they have trust issues. They have abandonment issues. Use, they were taught as children that they can’t rely on other people. So they have to only rely on themselves. And what happens is these lessons that we learned in childhood. First of all, most of us don’t realize that’s what’s happening because our brain is such a powerful force at helping create blind spots are things that our ego doesn’t want us to see, because they’re so unbearably painful. So. So an example would be in this, one of the things that I’ve said for for many years is that most business problems that you have, are just personal problems dressed up in a suit, they’re really not business problems, per se, their struggles that you’re having as an individual, but quite often, you don’t even see the struggle you’re having, because it’s a subconscious issue. So as an example, let’s say, as a child, when you were growing up, you grew up in a very chaotic household, like your parents weren’t structured, you didn’t know when dinner was going to be, you would come home and your parents weren’t there. Or another night, you might come home, and there’s 50 people in the house, and you were supposed to be going to hockey that night, and your parents forgot to take you. And so chaos and unpredictability became the way that you, you know, learned the world. As you grow up, there’s going to be a lot of manifestations of that chaos that show up in your life. And so one example might be, there’s a lot of people that continue to put themselves in financial pressure or challenges or stress or risk. And on the surface, they it’s because they’re trying to like build a big empire and take risks and be this swashbuckling entrepreneur. But the truth is underneath is that that’s the only place that they feel that they have control is when there’s chaos all around them. And I know it sounds counterproductive. But these are the sorts of challenges that I saw over and over and over another one might be, for example, growing up, if you if you learned that you can’t trust other people, and that people are eventually going to abandon you and those kinds of things. Fast forward to, you know, you’re 35 year old, 35 years old running a business and you’ve got six employees, and you go to your forum, or you go to your mastermind, what’s the problem all my employees, I mean, I just can’t, they’re, they’re terrible, you can’t find good people, people that, you know, they’re not loyal, and all these things, if you really look deeply at that challenge, typically, the problem isn’t the employees, it’s that the, it’s the employer, you have a struggle trusting other people, or you have this, this predetermined expectation that people are going to screw you. So you therefore are protecting yourself and your relationships are all built on a killer be killed mentality. So you can imagine how healthy a business you know, culture is going to be if that’s the, that’s the programming, that’s the operating system that’s running you. So these are the kinds of things that I started to see. But I, I couldn’t, I didn’t have the context or the perspective to really understand what was causing it, and more importantly, how to fix it. And nowhere was this more true than in my own life. I mean, I had a lot of these same struggles myself. And so when I started down this path of sort of self realization, and really understanding what drove me, again, I used a bunch of different tools, breathwork, cold plunge, things that would sort of bring me present, and plant medicine and psychedelics became one of the one of the tools, the technologies that I used. When I started

Erwin  38:38 

doing this, I want elaborate where you are in this space, because we’re, we’re talking about like, 2018 ish around, then you’re sharing your journey. Yeah, see your life, life changes, marital changes. Just just because I wanted to provide a little more context what you sold the business, you’re sold the veterinarian business. Did you have anything else going on? Do you still have did you still have your part of your real estate portfolio? Like, oh, yeah, I

Greg  39:03 

so I’ve owned real estate the entire time. I didn’t sell it all off. You know, went from a nine figure to an eight figure portfolio. But I but I still have real estate and still do today. It’s not a huge part of my day to day. I mean, I focus on you know, I’ve got a commercial office building for example. So you know, when when we’re trying to deal with a tenant or whatever there that’s all that’s a much bigger effort than typically for a residential like for one of my houses, for example, and we’re trying to rent out you know, a basement suite you know, renting Oh 5000 square feet of office space on a five or 10 year deal, quarter million dollar, you know, that’s a much bigger focus point, but it’s, it comes in fits and starts and so all along. I’ve been doing that but it’s not a full time thing. It’s more of a it’s more of a part time. I don’t like to use the word passive but like, it’s not a it’s not I don’t focus on it every day. So at the time, I sold the veterinary business I was doing so and consulting, business coaching for a couple of different companies. And then I really started into this path for myself and created a ton of space, you know, personally, so I wasn’t, I didn’t have a business that I was running, the real estate was there to, you know, that was, you know, providing income, things like that. But I just decided I want to get, I want to get in touch with myself and what’s really driving me because I’m moving into the second half of my life. And I want to do the second half differently than I did the first and I want to be coming from an authentic place of what, you know, what drives me. And so that was in 2018 19. And then for the next several years, I did a whole series of different experiments, I would say,

Erwin  40:48 

this is like your full time gig. Now I was working on yourself. It was and

Greg  40:51 

again, I was doing some some some coaching consulting, I got involved actually be like, because psychedelics and plant medicine became such a powerful force in my life. And I saw the the healing possibilities and the power, the extraordinary abilities that could bring, I actually co founded a psychedelic company in 2020. And that became sort of a full time focus for, you know, the course of, you know, almost a year. And then I parted ways with my partners on that. And more recently with my, my wife, my wife is a trauma sensitive, she’s certified trauma, trauma sensitive yoga instructor. And so she’s opening a studio now in Calgary, to pin focused on on women, particularly coaching women. And so we’re opening a studio there and you know, I’m, I would say I’m looking at, it’s sort of like the second generation of coaching and consulting for me that I’m moving into that I’m doing now, which is taking all of the business acumen experience the stuff that I used to do in terms of coaching, but applying the knowledge of that underlying operating system, so that I can help an entrepreneur or an investor actually pinpoint what’s really going on, beyond just the superficial story that they’re telling themselves. And so that’s, you know, that’s what I’m doing now, and with my wife with the studio. You know, psychedelics and plant medicine are on the path to decriminalization and legalization, and what I see.

Erwin  42:32 

So here’s our guide. So I just get there, I think, I think the trauma thing even needs to be worked out even more because from, from my experience, like what you’re saying, like people, like I’m asking my mastermind for years. And again, those conversations are still very tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I see, I see people who are incredibly motivated by money and like scale, and like building building bigger, better, whatever, you know, my 2 million businesses to get to 10 million and then once I’m at 10 million need to be 30 million when I’m 30 million, it’d be 100 million. Yeah, I need all these clients and employees and whatnot. And again, like, like very tip of the iceberg stuff. But in my experience, for example, is with my my forum. For my listeners benefit, I belong to a private organization of entrepreneurs, minimum requirements, a million US and revenues. I get a lot of value, both in discussing business problems, but also a lot of introspection stuffs. And I should derive a significant amount of value more trying to under under an Earth. My my underlying issues to understand myself and what drives me. That’s why I think I think it’s a I see it myself, I see and others. So I want to spend some more time on elaborating more on trauma so that for the listeners benefit, so they can look into their own lives to understand what better drives them. And if they’re in mindmint, like is, are they truly in alignment? Yeah, like before, we’re just before we’re before we’re recording, I haven’t shared how there’s a whole bunch of people out there who started investing, argue that we’re speculating. And now they have assets, speculative assets that are now infringing on their on their freedom, wouldn’t want them to wish on anyone. But I think my point where I want to go is I want people to better understand who they are, what they’re doing. And if that’s in line with who they really are, like, for example, when we were trading emails I’m talking about like Dimitri Buterin, whose journey Russia is similar to yours. When he exited his third business. It’s when he went full work full time work on himself. Yeah, yeah. Do you know what?

Erwin  44:46 

Yeah, demons. Demons are very good friend of

Erwin  44:48 

mine. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So your journeys are very similar.

Greg  44:53 

Yeah, I mean, I just to be honest, I would say that I mean, that’s a huge compliment to me because Diem is such an extraordinary human being. He’s very Be wise, obviously very successful. And I didn’t, you know, give birth to a child that, you know, co invented the the cryptocurrency industry. But you know Dima is amazing. And yeah, he just decided that self realization and self actualization was his life purpose. And so if I

Erwin  45:20 

wait until, until like, I’m not sure age, but I think he’s closer to high 40s, or closer to 50, or something like that. But my point is, people shouldn’t wait that long to take action.

Greg  45:32 

If if there was one thing that I could do go back in time and talk to my 25 or 30 year old self, it would be to go back and start this journey. Back then, rather than waiting until sort of a crisis of an existential crisis happened, where, you know, I was divorced, and I sold my business wasn’t sure what I was doing next, and just felt completely lost in the world. And yeah, I think the trauma is a, it’s really interesting, because I mean, for me growing up, and even I can remember being on stage, and I would tell stories of my childhood, and you know, like, kind of the backstory and origin story and all that. And I would gloss over my child. And I would basically say, you know, I had a fantastic childhood, my parents been married, like their high school sweethearts, amazing parents would give the shirt off their back. Nobody ever hit me, I was never abused, I had a great child. In fact, it was like, you know, it was pretty boring childhood, because there’s nothing really traumatic ever happened to me. And it’s crazy, because it was so boring that I don’t even remember most of my childhood. And I remember thinking that like, I normalized that, that that was normal, that I couldn’t remember my childhood. Because it was just there was nothing to remember. And anybody that has gaps in their memory of legs, for example, you know, I mean, a lot of people now when we talk about this, and they’ll say, Yeah, I don’t remember anything before I was about 10 years old. Or I don’t remember anything like, in elementary school, I remember, like, you know, when I was four and five years old, and then I don’t remember anything in elementary school, and then Junior High starts, and then I can remember them again. And people just write that off to I guess, there was nothing to remember. And really what it is that what I’ve come to learn is that gaps in memory of experience of things like that, especially childhood, those are, that’s a classic marker of trauma. And so what’s typically happening is if you go back in time, and you look what’s going on, as a small child, something was going on that was causing you so much pain, that your ego or your protective self, I mean, egos a terrible word that we get thrown around. Because we think of ego as conceit and like being better than other people or arrogant ego really is a better way to explain it is protective. So you have this part of your psyche that is designed to keep you alive. It’s that simple. That’s your protective self. And your protective self. Its job is to keep you away from the things that it’s afraid or you’re going better, it could kill you that you can’t take. So when you’re a small child, and you go through an unbearable experience that as a small child is so painful, typically what happens is your protective self will essentially exile that memory and create a blind spot, so you can’t even remember it consciously. And I know this from personal experience, because when I started doing, you know, I did a lot of therapy, I was going to, you know, psychologists and things like that. And it was like, you know, talk therapy traditional. And it was, you know, I would start to uncover a few little things here and there. But it wasn’t until I actually started doing psychedelic assisted therapy where these huge awakenings or realizations came to be and it’s because your psyche is so brilliant at hiding them from you, because at the time, you as a small child cannot, you don’t know how to deal with the pain. It’s so unbearable. And so for example, if you’re in a situation where you’re five years old, and your your mother says something to you, that makes you feel like they don’t love you. Well, they are you’re basically their, their God in your eyes in that moment, right? And if they don’t love you, or you internalize that is there’s something wrong with you. Right, it might just be that your mum was in a bad mood in the at the moment and you were in a really vulnerable state and you reached out for compassion and for a hug and for love and your mum was on the phone and she’s in she’s just said Just shut up. Just leave me alone for a minute. I’ll be off in a minute. Just something as simple as that. that, that four or five year old child could internalize that to mean that they’re not lovable. Because their mother doesn’t love them. And that’s all it would take. And then that can start the seed of a very, very difficult journey. I mean, I know it sounds crazy, because the problem is most people think of trauma, as these big, difficult, horrible things that happened to us these overt things. So for example, being abused or molested or witnessing a horrible violence, or being in a war, or those kinds of things, right, the loss of a parent when you’re a child. And those are all, you know, obviously, very traumatic experiences. But I call those overt experiences or trauma experiences. But there’s a second part, because you can look at trauma in two ways. One is trauma is bad things that shouldn’t happen to you. So those are the things we just talked about, right? Like rape, and molestation, and abuse and violence and all of these things abandonment. But there’s a second way to look at trauma. And that is, trauma is also good things that didn’t happen to you. So there was a void of things that needed to happen in order for you to have a healthy relationship with yourself or with your parents or with the outside world. And when those things don’t happen, those traumas can be just as disastrous as being, you know, raped or going through violence or the loss of a loved one when you’re a child. And that’s hard as

Erwin  51:41 

parents don’t hook their kids.

Greg  51:46 

But again, to like to put a point on it, or when like, You’re laughing about it, like it’s no big deal. Like it’s a joke, right? It’s a stereotype of Asian families. There’s a lot of Asians that grow up, that are debilitated by that very thing. And you know, not to get too serious about it. But a lot of people laugh at away or joke about it, because it’s just all it’s, what’s the big deal. I mean, my mom didn’t hug me. Who cares, really, that the problem is, that’s the adult looking back and using as an adult. Today, I have the ability to know that my mom didn’t hug me it’s not because she didn’t love me, it’s just because that’s just that was her upbringing. We normalize it, we have excuses to make for it, when we’re adults. But the problem is, when you’re a child, you don’t you don’t understand any of that. And when you start peeling the layers back of these things that happen to us, and sometimes we’re aware of them, and most of the time we’re not, you start to realize the depth at which they cut, and how in how embedded they really are. And so, I mean, I can remember, as an example, I was I did a a journey with IDI died. I mean, I’ve psychedelics in plant medicine is something that I explored a lot. And I’m, you know, I’ve actually become now like, I’m certified as a psychedelic facilitator, and transformation coach. And the reason is because I’ve gone through the experiences, and I have unlocked so many parts of my life that explain why I was. So for example, I can remember, one of my experiences was I was doing, it’s called San Pedro or watch Houma. And it’s mescaline. And I can remember going through the experience. And it was the first time that I realized that as a child, I never felt safe. And I couldn’t even explain where that came from. But I got it I got in contact with that emotion, which which was in me, which was in my body. And that made me then start to ask questions. Well, why is that? I had another experience. What am I Alaska journeys, and I was taken aback, too. So this is, this will maybe give you a good example of what I’m talking about. So when I was about eight years old, a friend of mine, one of my best friends on the street, we were at his house in the basement, and we were playing this game. And I mean, it’s, it’s like the kind of stupid thing that you would see on tick tock now, and maybe they even do it, but we, we called it the pass out game. And all it was is basically hyperventilating. And so what you would do is, one friend would stand in front of the other, the friend standing in the front, and the other one would be behind them, they would start breathing in and out as fast as they could, as deep as they could. And then at one point they would breathe in and the friend behind would bear hug them from behind and hold on to them as hard as they could. And the friend in the front would pass out. Right it’s hyperventilation is really not anything. But for kids. It’s like this weird like this. And sub somehow this game had like, been passed from Kid to Kid to Kid. And like, even today, I talked to people that are like, oh, yeah, I did that when I was little too we call it this or that. Anyway, so this experience for me, I’m standing in my friend’s basement, and I pass out. He lets me go, I fall forward, because I’m literally passed out on my feet, I fall face forward, smash my face into the unfinished concrete floor in his basement. And I’ve always known this story, because of course, I ended up having to go through a whole series of dental appointments. And even today, I’ve got implants in the front leg, my bottom two of my bottom teeth, because they broke out, they snapped off halfway up. So the roots were exposed. I mean, it was a tremendously painful thing for an eight year old to go through and then going going to orthodontics and all this stuff. Now, intellectually, I’ve always known that story. I’ve always known that I did this and broke my teeth and everything, but I’ve always intellectualize the experience. I’ve never really understood what it meant to me. So now, this is a few years ago, I’m in an Ayahuasca experience. And I drink, and I go in the, you know, the medicine sort of comes on. And I’m transported back. And if you’ve never done medicine, and this maybe sounds a little bit crazy how it works, like with time, travel, everything, but I’m literally like, taken back to when I’m eight years old. And I can see myself in my iOS experience, I can see myself standing there with my friend on the ground, and I’m sort of up on this on the ceiling, like kind of a third eye watching this experience. And I watched myself as an eight year old pass out, fall forward, smash my face, I see my friend run upstairs, because he goes to get his mother as a sister, I can remember who was home. And I’m watching myself, and I’m feeling the feelings that I had an eight year old, but in my sort of adult experience, and I watched myself wake up after you know, 30 seconds, and there’s a big pool of blood around my head. And so I wake up, I’ve got blood dripping off me. I look around, I’m disoriented. I’m in excruciating pain. It’s an unfinished basement with like concrete floors, and you know, those like burgundy posts that hold up the foundation? And oh, you know, in basement suites,

Erwin  57:28 

we have them here on basements. Yeah,

Greg  57:30 

I mean, I look around, and I don’t know where I am. And it’s this, like, dark. There’s like a couple of windows with a little bit of light. And I’m all by myself. And I look around, and the pain that I experienced is just unbelievable. And in that moment, I look around, and I create two stories in my head as an eight year old. Number one is, I am not safe in this world. I’m not safe. And the second one was, I can’t trust anybody, because I look around and there’s no one there to help me. And so when this experience sort of played through my third eye, in ayahuasca, I came back out, and it was like, Oh, my God. That’s why. And then I could start to connect the dots of why all these things in my life. were true, and why I told certain stories to myself about the way the way the world was. And so trust became a huge issue for me, in my life, trusting other people. And again, I would sort of then also connect that dot. And I’m not saying that everybody has this kind of experience that leads to being an entrepreneur and wanting freedom to be their number one value. But now it becomes obvious why I didn’t want to have to rely on anybody else in my life. It’s because I couldn’t because I didn’t trust anybody. And I can’t rely on anybody else. So you can imagine the impact if you’re eight years old, if that becomes your truth. And that became my truth. In that moment, you can imagine how that informs all the decisions and the journey through the rest of your life. And so that happened to me, and I came out of it. And that took a lot of integration for me because it was like, everything that I believed about why I did things was untrue. And I always thought it was for the good things because I want to, you know, I want to build a big business and I want to do this and I want to do that I want to give back and I wanted to do that. And you know, I realized that really wasn’t what was driving me. And it was this. It was this fear. And I think at the end of the day, that’s one of the things that’s one of the mantras that I use all the time in my own mind that I’m talking to them when I’m talking to myself. The mantra is for I love not fear. Because what I find and again, we can we can apply this to almost every, you know, category, especially when you look at government, politicians, things like that. But celebrities, I mean, it doesn’t matter who you’re looking at. But most of the worlds they in most decisions that people are making, you’re coming from a place of fear, and not love. In other words, they’re afraid that they’re going to be judged, they’re afraid, they’re not going to have enough. They’re afraid that they’re irrelevant. They’re afraid that they’re not going to be seen as a success. And that sort of journey. And this was that journey was probably four years ago, that started to change the way that I saw the decisions that I made to start becoming aware of when am I coming out of fear, as opposed to love? So am I doing this because I’m trying to impress somebody? Or am I am I doing this? Because I’m actually terrified that I’m, you know, that there’s going to be some consequence if I don’t? Or is it coming from a true sense of love, love for myself love for the people in my life, and love for the community at large. And so that’s kind of that’s a really good sort of example of how these things happen in our lives, and we grow up. And we have no idea how important or how impactful that experience might have been. And so what plant medicine and psychedelics tend to do, and there’s obviously there’s research out

Erwin  1:01:28 

there, out there. Yeah. Yeah. Two questions, and they really, they are the same thing. Knowing what you know, now, what would you have done differently? Or the question to be What are you teaching Cooper about this? What are you teaching your 15 year old son about this?

Unknown Speaker  1:01:46 

So two questions. So what would I? What would I have done about that experience?

Erwin  1:01:52 

There’s no knowing what you know. Now, having gone through that four years ago, like well discovered that four years ago, how would that change your 25 year old, your 3030 year old self?

Greg  1:02:03 

I think for one thing I would have uncovered, I hopefully would have uncovered that truth, much earlier in my life. Like, for example, if you when you’re eight years old, and you learn the lesson that whatever lesson, it could be that somebody learns, right? That

Erwin  1:02:25 

that’d be mortified. That was my son. Like, that’s what the world was?

Greg  1:02:30 

Well, let’s see. And to put a point on that, too, is none of this was my parents fault. No, it wasn’t right. And so I don’t blame my parents. But at the same time, most of us want to be Allegiant and loyal to our parents. So we don’t want to look at it and say, What did our parents do that contributed to where I am today? Right. And that’s, that’s a big sort of entanglement that people get in this work. But if I went back, like, if you let’s say that, like, you’re, you’re a woman, and you watch your mother get get separated and divorced, and then she starts dating a series of violent men. Terrible, you, you could quite easily develop the truth that men are bad, right? Well, if you go through the rest of your life as a woman, believing in your heart, that men are bad, but you don’t know that that’s the story that you’re telling yourself, you can imagine that you know how that’s going to impact your life. But if that woman waits until they’re 50, or 60, and then uncovers that truth, well, they can then start to change the path they take going forward. But if they would have done the work when they were 25. And were able to uncover and unwind some of these truths that they learned, well imagine how much different their life would look. So that’s I’m sort of answering the question that if I was 25, and I was doing this work, I probably would have uncovered a lot of these stories much earlier, which would have allowed me to make much more authentic decisions to who I truly am, as opposed to being driven in fear. So in terms of what I tell my son, Cooper, he’s aware of everything that I do. He knows, like, if I go to an Ayahuasca ceremony, he knows where I’m going. We have very open conversations. I mean, Cooper, and I have a very good relationship, I believe. And there’s not much that he won’t talk to me about. And we’ve had the conversation about, you know, drugs and medicine and psychedelics and plant medicine, all that. And he knows that if he ever has any questions, he can come to me and I’ll be honest with him, I’m never going to prohibit anything. I’m never going to tell him don’t you do that? Because, you know, you tell a teenager that all that does is fuels their interest in curiosity, and, and my goal with him is to try to educate them as he wants to be educated. You know, I don’t sit him down and like run lectures on plant medicine and psychedelics and stuff but what I have taught him, I think the most important thing that I’ve taught him has it as a child growing up is of how important it is to just be yourself. And it’s going to be difficult to do that, especially as you get into your teen years is to is to basically just walk your own path. Don’t do it for other people. But Cooper’s, that’s what he does. And he struggles sometimes with that, because sometimes friends turn away from him because he’s not willing to cave in to peer pressure and things like that. But I’m super proud of him for doing that. And, you know, years ago there i another vision that I had was kind of this parable of the difference between an owl and a fox, and we don’t have time to go into it. I’ll tell it told that to another day. But really what it comes down to is, are we all have an inner owl? And the owl like, what, what question does the owl ask? Right? Yeah. And this is, I mean, it’s a kid story. But the owl is always asking who? And so it’s a way of thinking that your inner owl is always asking yourself, Who are you going to be? Are you going to be yourself? Or are you going to be accepted? Because that’s the fundamental decision that children start to learn, they have to make from very small in childhood, because they start having to do with their parents as well. They want to be accepted. So they say things or do things they don’t really feel like are who they are, but they do it to be accepted, rather than to be themselves. And as a parent, the more that you can give your child, the container and the space to be themselves as opposed to doing the thing that gets them accepted. You’re putting that child on a very healthy path as they grow up. Because in this in today’s society, it’s very difficult to be who you truly are, and not worry about being accepted. And most of us go through 2030 4050 years of life, working to be accepted, only to come to a point where I realized what the hell am I doing. And that’s typically called a midlife crisis, or an awakening, or whatever you want to call. And it’s crazy, because we spent 40 years going through our life. And then we spend the next 40 years trying to like, unwind all the things we’ve been doing for the first 40 years. And so, you know, that’s what I would do is go back to my 25 year old self and try to, and try to instill the lessons in the work to be who you are, as opposed to doing it for external reasons. And that’s, that’s kind of like one of the paradoxes of life is that most of us are doing things, the purpose for which is outside of us, you know, as much as we tell ourselves a story, oh, I’m doing this for me. And it’s really what I want. Nobody’s building a 30 or 50, or 100 million dollar business for themselves. Like that’s, I mean, that’s just ridiculous. You don’t need a $50 million business to be, you know, to be at peace with yourself. So anytime you’re looking outside of yourself, for something that’s in itself, an indicator that, you know, there’s some work to be done there.

Erwin  1:08:08 

This is fascinating shit. The listeners enjoying this as much as so let’s get into let’s get into the medicine. Now, one thing I want folks to understand is that, like, for example, I follow them Tim Ferriss stuff, and he’s been talking about this stuff for a long time, but also, the, but you always talked about micro dosing, because there’s a difference between abuse of substances and micro dosing, probably a fraction of a small usage for actual medicinal purposes. Can you elaborate on that just again, so we can educate the audience?

Greg  1:08:42 

Yeah. So very, very briefly. So first of all, you’ll hear me you won’t hear me talk about these as drugs, I will only refer to them as medicine because that’s just the language. That’s my, that’s my perspective of it. Really, the difference to me, between drugs and medicine is intention. Intention is a very important part of anytime you start to go down this path, looking at whether it’s micro dosing or macro dosing, whether it’s psychedelics, or whatever it is, it’s all about intention. And when you look back in the history, back then it goes back into the 50s and 60s of research going into using MDMA, LSD, magic mushrooms, for therapeutic, beneficial reasons. So for example, in the 50s, in Saskatchewan, they were doing research on curing alcoholism, using psychedelics in the 50s. And the 60s came and everybody knows what the 60s was all about, right? Like free love and make love not war. And it was all like the it was the renaissance of the hippies and psychedelics were became a huge component of society, and the government at the time realized they were losing control of society because Nixon tried to send a whole bunch of young kids to Vietnam. And a lot of them basically said no. And they didn’t like that. So that was one of the reasons that Nixon declared war on drugs. And it’s been a horrific experiment, failed experiment. I mean, the War on Drugs has created a massive incarceration problem, disproportionately against minorities, and indigenous people. I mean, that’s a whole nother conversation. But the point is, they shut down all the research that was going on with these medicines. And only recently has the government started to open the door here in there with possibility. And there’s now a ton of real like, it’s a boatload of research now that shows that these medicines when they’re used with proper intention, in the right container, and with the right integration after that, the results that they have for anxiety, PTSD, depression, pain management, even OCD, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, these medicines are having not just incrementally better results, but like multiples. So for example, one of the most recent studies that PTSD study with MDMA that maps is working on right now clinical trial, long story short, they did these, these were treatment resistant PTSD, victims, they basically tried everything else, and they could not get away from PTSD, they, you know, suicidal ideation, everything else, they went through the clinical trial. And a year later, 69% of them were cured. Now, they don’t like using the word cured. But basically, they had no markers for PTSD 69% of them a year later. Now, you look at this positional treatments, the traditional treatments, or are going to be in the 10 to 20 30% range, maybe. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of those people would have sadly, committed suicide, but you know, within a year later, so the point is, I’m trying to draw attention to the fact that this, this isn’t just about taking drugs and feeling good and having fun, right, there’s this is going to be I think, this 10 years from now we’re going to look back, psychedelics are going to become one of the staples in the mental health fight to all of the conditions that we’ve got, you know, the second, this, this, the psychological world hasn’t really changed in 40 or 50 years. And how many people do you know that are on SSRIs, and antidepressants, it really doesn’t help for the most part, it might make make life a little more manageable. But there’s so many side effects. Now we’re seeing case after case now where somebody does psychedelics in the right context and setting and they have one or two treatments, and their depression is gone. And science is having a hard time explaining it. So in terms of like, psychedelics, for the rest of us, psychedelics, the word itself, is it comes from it was the name, the name comes from it, what it what it means is manifesting the mind. And really what it means is starting to uncover what’s unseen, in your, in your mind or in your psyche. So back to your question about psychedelics and micro dosing and stuff like that. Micro dosing, the theory is taking a very, very small dose, which is typically between 1/10 and 1/20. Of what would be called a macro dose. So a macro dose would be like, if you were to take mushrooms, for example, a macro dose means that you’re taking enough that your vision is affected, your thoughts are like it’s you perceive like things are different.

Erwin  1:13:48 

You’re high.

Greg  1:13:50 

You’re high. Yeah, that’s that’s how you you’re in an altered state. A micro dose is taking a substantially like an infinitely small amount of that. So like, let’s say, if you’re taking three grams of mushrooms as a macro dose, then that would be 150 milligrams of four micro dose. And the idea of of microdose is that you shouldn’t actually perceive that you’re that it’s there. Like, they call it sub perceptual. But, but what they’re finding is, and again, there’s various studies on this, and there’s some people are saying microdose is placebo. But I know personally, and from my experience, and a lot of people that I know that micro dosing, certain medicine, certain medicines, can help alleviate things like anxiety, depression, negative thoughts, sleep problems, you know, sleep issues, things like that. So there’s micro dosing, and then there’s macro dosing, and there are two very different sort of things. And you can do it with different kinds of medicines. Most people like I think that become curious about psychedelics, they start with micro dosing because it’s, it’s, it’s a lot more accessible so quickly. sample, when you’re microdosing, you can drive a vehicle you can go to work, you can do interviews, you can go on sales calls, like nobody’s gonna really notice that you’re it because you’re not high. There’s, it’s it doesn’t affect, it doesn’t impair your judgment or your abilities. But what’s interesting is during the day of it, you won’t really notice anything. But the next day, this is where the power is, if you look back at the day before, and you look at some of the interactions and things you did, you can start to realize that wow, you know, I ran into that neighbor of mine, who I can’t stand, they always drive me crazy. And somehow, like, they didn’t bug me yesterday. That’s really weird. And when you start to realize it, you notice that the micro dosing is having an influence on you. But it’s not a perceptual one. But But what typically happens with the medicines is they make you more compassionate, they make you more aware, they make you more grounded. And so they have these positive implications. And again, it’s different for everybody. Some people will try micro dosing with, let’s say mushrooms, and they don’t really feel anything, they don’t notice any changes. And you can, you can play with the dosage in that you took the most common things to microdose are mushrooms and LSD. Some people might microdose other things like some people microdose, Ayahuasca or mescaline or other things as well. But mushrooms and LSD are the two most common ones. I know a lot of people, for example, that use LSD, and they’ll use it in very small doses. There are studies now showing that if you use a small dose of LSD, and we’re talking about, you know, maybe 20 3040 micrograms, which is, which is very, very, very small amount of medicine, that it can really expand your creativity and innovation. So I’m working on a project right now with an associate of mine, of offering a program to executives, at high level companies, that are a bit that’s based on creativity, innovation. And this is one of the tools that we’re looking at utilizing, because what it does is it opens up the channels in your mind, it tends to break the patterns that you have the way you think. And it connects new synapses in your mind. And neuroplasticity is a real thing, right? And they’ve shown that when you when you undertake, let’s say like a, like a full journey of of mushrooms. There’s rewiring that actually happens inside your brain and like different different threads are now being connected that weren’t otherwise connected. So you can see things differently. You can think of things differently. So I don’t know if that answered your question. But I mean, this in itself could be a, you know, another conversation. But what I would say the fundamental is psychedelics are becoming now mainstream. It’s why you’re reading about them all the time. It’s why we’re on the cusp of legalization in the US we’re expecting next year, MDMA and LSD, MDMA and psilocybin are going to be decriminalized and legalized to the point that psychiatrists and psychologists will be able to start implementing them into therapy. And that’s why we’re seeing this massive wave is because the science is saying and proving how powerful these things are. And so to bring it back to entrepreneurs, and investors and things like that, the fact that entrepreneurs tend to have my thesis and again, this is something that I observed in a lot of my clients. My thesis is that entrepreneurs have a disproportionate amount of trauma in their past than the average person. And in part, for reasons we talked about before, that’s why they became an entrepreneur. And that’s one of the reasons is because they wanted to break away from feeling like they were under control, or that they had to rely on other people. That’s why people that become entrepreneurs typically get stuck. They can’t get past that point of being the technician in their business. But they are more comforted by the fact that at least that way, they’re not relying on other people. And so, for entrepreneurs and investors, if that’s true, that there’s trauma, there’s things that are holding them back, or that are causing them to make decisions that may not be the healthy decisions. That’s why looking at understanding psychedelics, and plant medicine, as maybe a tool to consider can be a very, very powerful thought. And again, I’m not I also want to put it make it clear, I don’t see psychedelics as a magic pill. Like it’s not like you take the pill, it fixes your problems and you move on. But what it does is it it sort of pulls the veil back and allows you to see the stuff that you’ve never been able to consciously see before. And then the work starts, that’s when you can decide, okay, well, I’m going to investigate this belief that I have, figure out where it came from. See if it’s true, and maybe I can install a new thought or a new belief and And that’s been the story of the last five years of my life is doing these very things. And all I can tell you is is I mean, a lot of people that know me from 510 years ago, and I sit down with them, I haven’t seen them. And they’re like, man, you’re so different. Now what happened? It’s like, well, I don’t really anything different. I’m just more of who I am now. That’s, that’s how I feel.

Erwin  1:20:20 

Greg, I think that’s a great place to leave it. Over time, thank you so much for being generous with your time. Now, I’m not a doctor. I don’t know if if you if you, you can, you know, I always feel like I have disclaimer, everything. But I’m not a doctor. This is not medical advice from me. Where can people learn more about this?

Greg  1:20:40 

Yeah, and I’m not a doctor, either. I mean, I’ve done a lot of work I’ve done I’ve done a lot of training and things like that. But at the end of the day, you know, medical, and this is something you know, that I’ll mentioned very briefly, like if somebody is on antidepressants, or they have, you know, a family history of psychosis and things, there’s, there’s a lot of counter indications that mean, you should not pursue this. But becoming educated, educated is really the first first start. So, I mean, if anybody is interested in learning more, I mean, I’ve got a couple of things, I wrote an overview of micro dosing and like, what is it? Why would you do it? What are the benefits? What are the risks, that kind of thing. It’s just a free download, if somebody wants to learn about micro dosing, and then I also wrote a PDF, and it’s called psychedelics for the rest of us. And this isn’t for people that want to be journeying to Peru, every two months, and going on a on a, you know, 14 day deatta in the jungle, but it’s for the people that were trying to live actualized fun, healthy, productive lives. Is there a place for psychedelics in that world, and I know, I believe for some people there are. So that’s another download, it’s a little bit more generalized, it talks about psychedelics, a bit of the history, the different kinds of medicines, some of the risks and all that but it’s basically it’s intended to be a primer of is psychedelics, something that I should start paying a little more attention to. And, you know, people can download that from my website, the website is the company is the name is alignment.com. So it’s kind of a combination of alignment, and light. And really, what it comes down to, is, when you become aligned with who you truly are, that’s when you can allow your brilliance to really shine from within. And so that’s what my coaching consulting company does now. So it’s called a light mint. So a li ght m en t.com. And you can start start the journey there. There’s resources there. And I’m gonna be starting, I’m gonna be doing a podcast, this fall sort of on some of these topics, because I get so many questions about I’ll get you on there. And then we can talk about your

Erwin  1:22:59 

baby, I can do a Laker dose journey before I before I come on. And for my listeners benefit understand, I think there’s about three at least 300 companies that are pursuing this all in just Canada alone. The yeah, there’s just no one no one really talks about no one hears about it, but I have friends in the industry. And there’s a ton of investment going into this. Just again, you know, just because of the times now, not a lot of people talking about it with the, with the way the economy is, but yeah, they’re there as well.

Greg  1:23:26 

In 2020, and 21, there was an explosion of money that went into psychedelics, partly because people saw it as cannabis 2.0. And if you missed cannabis, this is your second chance. It doesn’t work out that way. So it’s been a tough place for the capital markets for psychedelic companies, a lot of psychedelic companies have gone broke, because they’re having a harder time figuring out how are we going to monetize this thing. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, because I don’t really see, you know, these medicines, largely, especially if you look at like iOS, or mushrooms or or peyote, mescaline, these have been used by indigenous cultures for hundreds or 1000s of years. And some of these companies are trying to figure out, well, how do we extract this molecule, that molecule to make a better molecule, and then we can patent it and sell it? I’m not sure that that’s the right path for this space for the medicine because, you know, my belief is we don’t need to improve on the medicine. That’s just a typical human Western civilization construct of how do we take something magical, and make it better?

Erwin  1:24:29 

And then capitalize on? Yeah,

Greg  1:24:32 

1. But yeah, and I was involved in that space, because, you know, we founded a company we got we got some financing from a public company. And so I went down that path and learned a lot about it. But yeah, I mean, anybody that’s interested in hearing more about my story, or whatever, or learning more about what we’re talking about microdosing just go to the site and get on the list and, you know, I’ll send you sort of education every now and then I don’t sell a lot of stuff. That’s not my thinking. More so I just love talking about this because it’s it’s changed who I am. It’s allowed me to live a lot more healthy, aligned whole life, and I’ve watched it do the same for so many people that I love. And so I just love kind of spreading the message.

Erwin  1:25:17 

I like mint.com Greg Simon, thank you so much for doing this. I thought this was Thank you. I hope the listeners enjoy

 

 

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**Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Erwin  

Hello everyone, welcome to the truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto host and producer and whatever else there is to the show. I am a full time realtor Of The Year Two investors than investing since 2005. done alright, we have a large number of successful clients that we have over 350 clients, we’ve helped them amass somewhere around $280 million worth of real estate. And among our clientele, we have about over 45 self made millionaire real estate investor clients. So those are investments that excludes their principal residences. We have a special treat for you today in my new friend Bruce Firestone. He’s a second generation commercial real estate investor developer. He’s very successful and extremely experienced. He’s built 1000s of homes, dozens of office buildings and shopping plazas. Bruce is best known for the founding of Ottawa as NHL franchise the Ottawa Senators are mortal enemies of Toronto fans were mortal enemies with everyone who’s who was more successful than us. Yeah, whatever.

 

Erwin  

He had to build their arena as well. He’s former chairman and part owner of the CFL Ottawa now call the RedBlacks. They were called the Roughriders. Back then, which was kind of weird because we had two teams out of like nine teams that were all called Rough Riders. He’s kind of a legend in the Ottawa community. He’s even a member of Ottawa, US Sports Hall of Fame. Before we get to Bruce, what a fascinating real estate market to be a part of, it really depends on people’s situation, if they bought right if they hold that have a lot of cash. You know, it really depends on what situation they’re in, quick update the entry level vacant or owner occupied properties. They make up the bulk of transactions these days. I think I mentioned last week visiting a friend of mine, there across the street neighbour that request trust scrubbing. This was in Georgetown, Ontario. So that’s north Milton. Think exactly part of the GTA anyways, they’re across the street from them, was asking 1.6 million for a four bedroom house backing onto Metro space, and it’s sold for 1.7 million. So it’s over $100,000 over mark over asking in 30 days, so there’s still a lot of business going on. So it’s not dead for everyone. tenanted properties these days are scaring away buyers. I’m hearing all this all of this from my own team. And I reached out to my old school investor specialists realtor friends in Barrie, Oshawa in downtown Toronto, everyone’s basically having the same experience that we are here. Now in real estate. Every day buyer investors are taking the summer off. Investor sellers, there’s more of them than ever, even of quality turnkey properties. But if they are tenanted they’re likely sitting for now, unless they’re priced appropriately, let’s do the best deal out there. They’re like they’re sitting. The market changes quickly though. And also I’m talking about like, I’m recording this August 18. Right, we’re in the middle of the summer, interest rates are high. So I like to get higher pitch on that in the second. Half the market changes quickly. And I’m anticipating a busy September October, as investors returned from vacation, they’re gonna see all the great deals available. sellers who can’t afford to hang on, they’re gonna be selling, but much depends on what the Bank of Canada does. The bond market anticipates right now, based on what the bond market’s doing, they’re anticipating a 29% chance that rates will be higher by point two 5% in September, and a 71% chance that the overnight interest rate by the Bank of Canada will be higher in December. So it’s either going to come in September, or it’s gonna come in December or a month after that. But the market overall does expect there to be rates to be higher 25% higher than it is today. And then after that, that that should be the peak based on the bond markets doing those already. Many are already feeling the pain. And they’ll feel even more as rates go up. But expect the rhetoric from the Bank of Canada to pivot as they’ll start saying, like, we’re now expecting the pause. And they may even start alluding to the eventual rate cut, which we’re just right now expected to be late 2024. And then once that happens, once the rhetoric changes, and you’ll see more buyers into the market, I’ve had conversations with some of our listing clients. Listing clients means like their clients who have properties listed for sale, the conversations are all around. But if their plan is to sell then really needs to happen this fall, it has happened September or October, or else there’s a chance that they’re holding that property to the spring. So, you know, Terry and I are holding all of our rental properties. So we can hold this whether or not other people can hold. The nice part about my clients properties is that they’re all houses, as in house. It’s not a condo, and they’re on land. They’re not up in the sky. They’re on land, as they are typically rented somewhere between 3000 to $4,400 a month somewhere plus utilities, so they generate significantly more rent than say a single family home would or let alone a condo And that really helps cash flow and weathering the storm. On the flip side, for those who were of the more preconstruction persuasion is just brutal out there, prices are down 20% or more depending on where depending on what some buyers are fire selling, giving up their deposits, which can be 15 to 20% or lower in returning the units to the builder for giving up in forgoing also the deposit which can be 15 20%. The builders then in turn, can go sell that property to the open market. I literally have a friend that mentioned that shared it with me the other day. That’s exactly what they did. They they bought a property directly from the builder for truly much what the buyer while the previous buyer walked away from less about 20%. So yeah, so this is really bad news for anyone who’s trying to sell via the assignment market. As FYI, they are competing with the builder. And it’s it’s already bad enough to be competing with the number of assignment sellers out there. investing in real estate is tough enough when researched and done professionally with skill and sufficient capital. But when folks skip steps or they’re not educated properly, they take their eye off cashflow, and speculate that words worked for a really long time, like since the like early 90s. But not in today’s market. Many of you invested in single family homes between the years 2020 and 2022. Are they’re really hurting if they never properly researched what what the highest and best use strategies were or how to actually like find ROI and balancing cashflow and markets that are more affordable, where you actually can find cashflow using strategies that cashflow. Well, they’re feeling the pain right now, what’s sad is that many of them made mistakes. Unfortunately, they got really bad advice from watching television or false influencers and condo salespeople, you know, follow salespeople that are doing their job, their job is to sell condos, you have to understand what their motivations are. And there’s a lot no novice coaches out there. I think it’s difficult to call yourself a real estate coach when you have like less than two years experience as an investor yourself and having no previous coaching client experience. Anyways, I hope for you and my 17 listeners, that you’re getting educated and networking with actual successful real estate investors. So if you’re looking for great quality and great value, I am biassed, obviously. But our online, I run meetings in our in person inside the property, our mastermind tours are simply outstanding. That’s the feedback we continue to get. That’s why they all have their all traffic quite heavily. We get hundreds of people register for our island mastermind, are in meetings, which are all online. And our in person tours, they all sell out there we sell out at our Tuesday, September 19 meeting, which is a virtual IP meeting, my team and I will be sharing the latest in the market. From a high level like a macro economic level and also at a street level update with sale prices for specifically two properties that we that we target for investment purposes, what kind of renovation budgets, we’re seeing the rents that we’re getting, and also, of course, the best neighbourhoods to invest in. And these just happen to be when we get all this client from information from working with our clients. Plus, we have a special guest and one of the larger developers in Ontario, cherry and I invest in their projects directly. And we’ve been provided exceptional passive returns. So you don’t want to miss this. The following Saturday, September 23, we will be hosting the island mastermind tour in the Niagara region. Niagara region, in my opinion has big upside thanks to the recent correction, new investment in a hospital that’s supposed to open up pretty soon, I think. And the government there currently is not investor friendly. But when they do pivot as they’ll need to do can because we’re currently in a housing crisis. I’m willing to bet that we’re going to have different leadership at the federal level in probably about two years time. And so you’ll see a lot more pressure coming from higher levels of governments on municipalities to be more investor friendly. Because, yeah, we’re in in a housing crisis. So allow the private market to do something about it. And when they do, when they do pivot, you’ll see a whole flood of investment. But as a sophisticated investor should do, you should get ahead of the rush. At least get ahead on the education part, not do what everyone else is doing. If you wanted to do what everyone else was doing, maybe buying pre construction condos and mutual funds and not getting rich. To register. If you’re receiving my emails, you are good to go. You will be informed of when we have events when we announce new podcast episodes when we have new deals available. If you’re not receiving my emails, then you’re missing out on over what 10,000 plus of the eye winningest investors are doing out there in Canada because they’ll have an information advantage by being on my email list. If you would like to become to have a better information advantage simply go to www dot truth about real estate investing.ca Again, it’s www dot truth about real estate investing.ca enter name and email address on the right side and you’re good to go. Information is power. information was shared with our 45 plus something self made real estate The Millionaire investor clients is even better up to see at a future event. On a personal investing front, I’m often asked what are we currently buying during this housing market correction? The answer is sadly, nothing. We’re holding our residential rental properties. We’re happy with our portfolio the size that it is. And we’ve actually got our capital and our time and our our bandwidth kind of tied up as we bought a new business, which is an accounting practice. It’s sort of based out of Ottawa, but they actually have no physical office. The owners are located in Ottawa, all the staff and the accountants they all work virtually across Canada. We closed the deal about a month ago. Cherry is as you can imagine, really busy but the transition while I’m being that supportive husband in the background, running around and driving the kids that our camps and extracurricular activities. I’ll share more about the new business that costs us more than our house. Hence, you can appreciate why we can’t I can’t get my four Plex had loved to still be able to buy that four Plex, but when the decision came down to four Plex or buying a new business, well, you can guess who won on to this week’s show. The Ottawa Senators recently dominated the hockey headlines as has been reported they sold for around $1 billion US dollars. US dollar so sold for over a billion Canadian that’s safe to say well, Bruce and Firestone is no longer the owner of the Ottawa Senators. I’m sure he’s proud of what he started that has since ballooned into a massive financial commercial success. Imagine that the SENS had kept the future Hall of Famer defenseman Zdeno Chara, are you the fans know exactly who he is because he beat the crap out of us every time we were in the playoffs. But anyways,

 

Erwin  

if the sands have kept them, they probably would have hoisted the Stanley Cup by now and well before the leafs. But I digress. As I mentioned before, Bruce has built a 1000s of homes, dozens of commercial plazas and office buildings. For fun and to give back to the community. Bruce was the entrepreneur in residence at the University of Ottawa Business School. Telfer School of Management, prepares Wikipedia. Yeah, Bruce has a Wikipedia profile. Unlike almost all my other guests, Bruce was a university professor and as he does have his master’s in engineering and PhD in urban economics, Bruce now focuses more on coaching real estate investors today these days as he finds the work really rewarding. So he’s here today to share the journey of his own super successful career. He has some tips on how to be a successful leader or CEO, how he overcame much opposition to build an NHL arena on farmland, what his everyday investor coaching clients are doing to create extra cash flow in their portfolios. There’s one particular commercial, industrial land, co sharing garden shed workshop strategy that is particularly fascinating. understand all those words fit into one property. Pay particular part two attention to that that investment strategy that I just mentioned, as the property is actually now for sale for several millions of dollars. So yeah, from startup, blue collar investor. Now he’s going to be a multimillionaire. To connect with Bruce, you can find his information on his website, www dot Bruce M, the letter M. Bruce M. firestone.com. Please enjoy the show. Hello, Bruce, what’s keeping you busy these days?

 

Bruce  

Well, or when I’m so glad to be on your show. And I’ve heard so much about you. And when I got to know you a little bit, I realised how much you’ve accomplished in such a short period of time. These days. I’m focused mostly on coaching and consulting work. I coached about 2500 people in the States and Canada, a few overseas because mostly in the States and Canada. And I got into it about a decade ago. And I’ll tell you a little story. My dad before he passed away, everyone said, you know people should never retire. What are you gonna do sit around watch TV all day, that would be terrible. And I hate golf. So I’m not going to go. I gotta go. And so I was getting ready to retire from the University of Ottawa where I was the entrepreneur in residence, I was turning 60. And I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. So I actually hired a life coach and she she was fantastic. I worked with her for a number of months. And towards the end of that period, she got to know me better. She said, you know, Bruce, I think he’d make a good coach. You know, you build 1000s of homes, dozens of office buildings and shopping plazas. I built an arena, you know, where they call it the Canadian Tire centre where the Ottawa Senators play, you know, I’ve got some education and background in real estate, you know, so she said, why don’t you do real estate investment and business coaching? Well, I kind of liked that idea. You know, for my third act of my life, and when I hear a good idea or whether it’s mine or not, doesn’t matter. Within a day or two, I probably had a primitive website up and I you know, I had you know, Bruce Firestone real estate investment and business coach, you know, call me if you, email me reach out If you need some help, and about 2500 people over the last decade, you know, not all one on one, but some of its one on one one on to some, you know, times groups of 2040 5060 70, that kind of number. And I’ve super, super enjoyed it. And when I got into the coaching thing or whatnot, I was wondering where I could make a contribution. You know, if you have a real estate portfolio, and you’re thinking about reducing costs somehow, I don’t know improving insulation, you know, reducing your energy costs, I wouldn’t be the right coach for that. So what I did instead was I said, I’m going to focus on the revenue side of this business, because not a whole lot has been done on the revenue side of the business, in terms of real estate anyway, in the last 30 years, or maybe longer. So I’ve been focused very heavily for a decade doing research and work and experimenting with what I call animation, not Disney Animation, but animation, which is adding new revenue streams to real estate projects, new and, and old. And it’s been a tremendous ride. And we we’ve changed cap rates, and we moved them up and we’ve changed lives. And I’ll give you a quick example, if I may, please. Yes. All right. So my wife and I own a triplex, we own some real estate and one of them is a triplex. And this young woman Her name is Maya came to see me and she wanted to rent an apartment, she was a single mom, she’s a yoga instructor, and she had one child, a lovely young woman in her mid 30s, I think, when I looked at her earnings, she was making about $42,000 a year as a yoga instructor back then. And you know, I said to her, my, it’s just not enough money, you know, half of your your earnings are gonna go in rent, you still have to pay for food, and you know, free clothing and whatever else you need for your kid. So I said, I probably can’t rent anything to you. It’s just I wouldn’t be doing you a favour. And then I thought about it for another few seconds. And I said, Oh, my God, you want to come in the backyard with me? Or something I want to show you and she she said, Sure. So we go in the backyard. And we had this about 850 square foot detached garage in the backyard. And it was quite nice. You know, it was big, it had high ceilings, it was insulated, had electricity at a heat. And I said to her that we went through it. I said, Maya, do you think you could run your own yoga studio? And she said, I don’t know. I said, you probably would make more money doing that than just working for somebody else, you know, you know what my students call A J. OB, they don’t call it a job they call a journey of the broke. And I learned that for my students. And so I said, maybe you could consider that. And then if you were making decent money, then you know, maybe you could afford to pay more rent. So what I did was we rented her the workshop, and she set up her own yoga studio, this would have been 2017. So about six years ago now. And sure enough, the next year, you know, she cleared over $100,000, which is a big change in her personal circumstances. So we rented the workshop to her and an apartment. It was a one bedroom apartment, but still. And so you know, you know, Mr. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, right? He says, your houses or your apartment is a liability because it takes money out of your jeans and your job or whatever you have, you know, a duplex or whatever it might be in real estate terms is an investment because hopefully it put some money in your jeans. But if you think about it, am I had a workshop, which was the asset and she had the apartment, which is the liability, you put those two together in a live work condition. Then I said, Well, this is great. And then I guess I’ve got my real estate licence. So I’m armed a dangerous. You know, I realised you can search MLS in Canada, the United States for detached garages. So a lot of my clients that people I’m coaching now they’re looking for properties that already have or can have a detached garage in the back. And they’re doing this live work condition, which is very popular. And I don’t have to tell you or any of your listeners or viewers, there’s been an explosion in side hustles I think millions, maybe even 10s of millions of people in in the States and Canada have side hustles. And so if you can provide kind of a live work situation. That’s a powerful combination. That’s a form of animation. And it also happens to drive up our cap rate up a little bit.

 

Erwin  

To agree with you more our own clients are we’re feverishly looking for detached two car garages with a with a healthy parking pad underneath it. And because we’re converting them into apartments,

 

Bruce  

yeah, you got it then I mean, you don’t need any coaching for me.

 

Erwin  

But what’s interesting is you have like, bring decades of real estate experience on enormous scales. Like I can’t even wrap my head around building a hockey arena. meant at NHL standards.

 

Bruce  

That’s you know, it was easier than you might think. Okay, sure. Because even back then Even back then this is now 25 or 30 years ago, even back then, or when I was thinking about animation, and we did some things with the Canadian Tire centre back then was called the Palladium. But if you’ve got five or $6 million a year, we’ll change it to, you know, the Zeto arena, if you want to name it, but back then when we were designing the palladium, what we did was we wanted to really optimise the revenue potential. So we did some things that really made a difference. And I’ll give you some examples. What we did with the building was we took the Canadian Tire centre, the plating, and we put half of it in the ground. So when you walk up to the plate, and it’s more human scale, so from a architectural point of view, and from an urban form point of view, it’s kind of a little bit more human scale. But that means it’s not like Rocky, if you remember rocky running up the steps, right or at the Philadelphia spectrum back in the day, you know, where you have to go up, you know, I don’t know, 50 steps or more to reach the front door, you can put the front door basically at a grade you can roll right in. By doing that, you have what’s called a double loaded condition, which means you can have stores that face the inside restaurants, merchandise, you know, bars, nightclubs, whatever that face the insides when the arena is live, you know, people on the inside can approach that store. But on the days when it’s dark, you know, they have doors to the outside a window in the world, so to speak. And so they have far, far more volume, right. So the the retail operations are all around the Canadian Tire Centre at grade, they’re double loaded. And so they’re busy, not just when there’s a game on or concert, they’re busy also all the time that they’re open. You know, that was sort of one thing. And I think we were one of the first arenas maybe to do that. Or maybe we were the first I don’t, I’m not sure, but we were among the first. And we did some other very simple things. Like for example, I talked to our architect, his name was genome Zeti, who had done the palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit for the Detroit Pistons. And I talked to him about architectural signage. And what I mean by that is I wanted you know, because he was a genius. I mean, he was brilliant. I asked him, Where do we put signs? You know, like, if you have a score clock, you put a sign next to it, right? So it draws the eye. And I remember getting a call a few years after the Palladium open from Tony divaris, who was running what was then called the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. We all get NHL reports, and we share them amongst the owners and staff. And Tony calls me up and says how was it possible that the little Ottawa Senators in a small town like Ottawa, you know, are outperforming the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, in probably the richest County, the United States Orange County. And, you know, we were outperforming them in many ways, and signage was one of them. So I said, Look, Tony, why don’t you send your crew up here and spend a few weeks with us and we’ll show you what we’ve done. And we did some other things too, which I can claim no credit for whatsoever. But Gino was Eddie was walking around, went on his first assignment to build an arena or stadium he had not done that before. And this was with the owners of the Detroit Pistons. And he went to the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit and he looks up and he sees you know those sweets, you know, the private sweets that you see in so many stadiums today? Well, he says why are the people who are paying the most money the furthest away from the ice or the court? And the the owners of the piston said, Well, I don’t know us always the way it’s been done. And the reason they hire you like this, I think ruin you like new stuff. The reason they hired Gino was because he had never designed an arena or stadium before. They didn’t want to go to people who had already done it because then they would get what was already done. They wanted the owners wanted something different. So

 

Erwin  

fresh, a fresh set of eyes, someone with no context, someone know exactly

 

Bruce  

what it was. He immediately pulled out his sketchbook and great architects carry sketchbooks with them everywhere. I mean, yes, computers and tablets and everything else is fantastic. But the sketchbook is still a really important part of what say somebody like Mr. Resetti would do, pulls out his sketchbook and he says, What if we had a ring of sweets, 12 rows from the court or the ice and another row, you know, maybe 2426 seats up from the ice and a final row at the top. And what he did with that was he completely reinvented the stadium and the arena design business because what we did, for example, here in Ottawa was we had 142 Private suites that we leased to 142 Different companies, you know, Royal Bank of Canada, you know, bail Canada, I mean, the people who have resources, and you know, they would pay, I don’t know $200,000 a year plus food and beverage and anything else but they would have a lease of $200,000 a year say and if you multiply that I gotta use my calculator. But if if you multiply 140 times 200 times 10 years those were the 10 year leases, it means you have like $284 million in committed monthly recurring right revenues. You know, CMR is the holy grail of any business technology service, real estate doesn’t matter, committed monthly recurring revenues. So if you have $284 million of committed revenues, just from those suites, you can finance a lot of building.

 

Erwin  

I see. Got it. So if you can demonstrate that you can generate so much revenue.

 

Bruce  

It’s much easier to go to a lender and say, Well, yeah, by the way, you’re not really financing. Bruce, you know, my credit score, maybe it’s seven or 800. I don’t know, your financing the Royal Bank of Canada, Bell Canada and a bunch of other Rogers communication, you know, and they go, Oh, this is great. Where do we get get? Can we give you the check now?

 

Erwin  

Was that what it was like? No, it was that easy to get money. Gets us the show is about truth about real estate investing. And a consistent message from developers, like you have a extensive development experience. consistent message right here from developers and even see in the media is how much how expensive it is to develop. Versus in the States, for example, reading your Wikipedia that you face is significant resistance just to build the arena.

 

Bruce  

Yeah. First point. I mean, we talked about the arena in the second, but I’ll give you an example. One of the young men I coach in North Carolina, had to do a rezoning to get one of his projects unlocked. And he went to the town north. And he calls me up and said, Look, I’m here in town, and they want me to file an application. And I said, I hear you. I think it was a zoom call. I said, you know, in Canada, most cities and towns when you apply for a rezoning, it can take one or two years, it can cost several $100,000 To do a rezoning when you add up all the studies and fees. What are you facing down there? He said 500 bucks, and it will take six weeks. Okay. Yeah, they just I mean, so what I’m getting at is, in many parts of the United States, not all I mean, there’s their towns that where it’s very, very tough to do a project, Portland, Seattle, Boston, there’s towns that have just processed just as that as we have in most cities in Canada, but there are many, many, many towns in the United States where you file a minimal fee. The town does most of the work themselves, the planners do it. They show up in front of Council. It’s a very informal kind of process, and they approve your project a few weeks after you’ve applied if you’re in Canada, projects can take a decade to get through the process. And if you want to know why we’re not producing enough affordable housing and not enough industrial space, that’s why

 

Erwin  

let’s go to the winner phrase as an example. Like how, how long did it take from the beginning of the process to actually shovels getting in the ground.

 

Bruce  

So we bought the site. We bought 600 acres of land in Canada, which is the west end of Ottawa, and we needed about 100 acres for the building itself. We applied for a rezoning. And it was approved by the city of Canada, which doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not just Ottawa but it was approved by the City of Ottawa and the regional Miss pouty of Ottawa Carleton. In votes, I think about 25 to one, I think there was one counsellor who was not not in favour, but the rest were so it was quite a strong vote. I met with the premier of the province of Ontario at the time, his name was David Peterson. He was a liberal Premier, I don’t belong to any political party, you know, I never have. And so I met with Mr. Peterson and he, you know, I asked him for for three things. One, I said, we have to build a new interchange, Mr. Peterson on the major highway in Ottawa, which is called the Queen’s where the highway 417. And I said that it’ll be about a $35 million cost. I think that’s something that the province should do, because the day after interchange is completed, you know, whoever builds it, they have to give it to the province. So I can’t finance that, right. Be like me putting a mortgage on your house or when you probably wouldn’t be too happy with me. So he said, Well, okay, that’s one what’s number two? I said number two is we’re going to go down to Palm Beach in December. This is December of 1990. And we’re going to tell the NHL all kinds of great things about me and about the City of Ottawa and how much we love hockey and about the province of Ontario and Mr. Premier, I’d like you to come with us said okay. You said I’m not going to agree to anything until here, all three of your requests. I said I understand. So the first one was the interchange. The second one was coming down to Palm Beach and in December Palm Beach has better weather than Ottawa or Toronto. So I thought he might enjoy that and we would use his company on in the presentation. The third thing I asked him, as I said, we expect to go through the process of like in Ontario, you go through a municipal process, but then there’s the provincial process as well which is separate and different or can be and I said I’m not asking For any shortcuts at all, we’ll do all the studies that are required and we’ll go through all the hoops. I’m just asking the government of Ontario and the various ministries to give it a priority. I said the Palladium is Ottawa Carleton, Ottawa was sort of Honda motorcar plan. It means as much to Ottawa as getting a new automotive plant, you know, in southern Ontario. I mean, it’s it’s important for us and I think for our community, but those are the three asks, and right away, David was, you know, he never smoked in public, but he was smoking in his office, right. And he was smoking cigarettes. And he said, You got a deal. But that was great. And my one of my attorneys was there with me, Jerry Dennison. We took a note, and we exchanged notes. Then what happened was, I think in the fall of 1990, Mr. Peterson, called an election two and a half years early, oh, boy, no premier has ever done that before. And I can tell you, if the province of Ontario lasts another 200 years, no buddy will ever do.

 

Erwin  

So a year and a half into his term, he caught an election. He did,

 

Bruce  

and two and a half years early, and the people of Ontario punished him and his party. They were very high in the polls. But as soon as he called the election, they dropped like a stone. And the NDP under Mr. Ray, Bob Ray came to power I think they had 34% of the votes. So between the NDP, the liberals and the conservatives, it broke down perfectly, so that the NDP could become the first and maybe the only time the government of Ontario. And so Mr. Ray had, I don’t know 10 910 11 NPPs from the Hamilton Wentworth area. And when we applied for a franchise, there were a bunch of cities competing. Ottawa, Tampa, Hamilton, the walk Seattle, Portland. Yeah, the two that were successful was Tampa and Ottawa. But Hamilton was one of them. Applying it, Mr. Ray met with his Hamilton caucus, what can I do for you, because he had one MPP, one lonely MPP in Ottawa, like nine or 10, or 11. In Hamilton, they said, Put the, you know, spoken in the wheels of the Auto franchise, and oppose the construction of the Palladium. So that’s what happened. And so we went through a 13 and a half week Ontario Municipal Board hearing against our own provincial government. And, you know, when the franchises were granted to Firestone and Ottawa, and Phil Esposito and Tampa, I remember getting a call from Phil Esposito, he said, a famous Hall of Famer in the National Hockey League. And he said, Bruce, if you got to hear how I came back to Tampa, I got a call from the governor of the state of Florida congratulating us, what can we do to help make a new arena happen and all this cool stuff? How was your research? Not quite the same, Phil, we got a lawsuit from our government.

 

Erwin  

That really accelerated Hamilton’s ability to get an NHL franchise.

 

Bruce  

Not at all. You know, what is really, really ironic about it is we did go through a 13 and a half week hearing, I was on the stand being cross examined for three and a half girl and days. And we want to do it at this age. But I was much younger than of course. And what’s really ironic about it is I am a great supporter of having nine NHL teams, Canadian teams in the NHL, I would like to see that team in Hamilton, I’d like to see one return to Quebec City. And I been a supporter for 30 years. And it’s much much smarter. I thought for Mr. Ray, and for Ron Joyce, who was representing Hamilton to build bridges to me, because I’m inside the tent. If you understand what I mean, let’s say you had a private golf course. And I wanted to be a member, you know, if I knew somebody that was close to you, or when, and he or she spoke highly of me, maybe you would consider me as a manager,

 

Erwin  

right? rising tide raises all ships, right?

 

Bruce  

I would think so. So I just thought it was very petty and cost us millions of dollars, legal fees, and planning fees, millions. And you’re able to laugh about it now. Well, it’s 30 years ago. Now, what are you going to do? If you’re going to be an entrepreneur you are and you would know this? You have to have a short memory.

 

Erwin  

So I don’t know how to ask this. But dharma centres are in the news a lot lately. You know, like Ryan Ryan Reynolds was it wasn’t part of the bid process. A lot of other celebrities were part of that process. Yeah. What can you comment on? You know, we’re discussing before we’re recording it recently sold for just over a billion, like, what do you think about that? Is you exited? you’ve exited quite a few years ago?

 

Bruce  

Yeah. Well, I actually did a little spreadsheet. You know, we bought our franchise for 50 million US dollars, and we paid for it in 1991 and went to about a billion this year. 2023. So that’s about a 10% compounded interest over that time. And you know, 10% is The compound is pretty good number. You know what Albert Einstein said about compound interest, right? It’s the most powerful force in the universe. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s powerful. So So it went from 50 million to a billion in professional sports franchises. A billion dollars is considered to start a franchise, like the Washington commander’s just sold in the NFL. Just Sold for six or a little over $6 billion. I mean, so a billion is a starter franchise. It’s like training wheels.

 

Erwin  

I don’t know if it wasn’t the most fun journey either. Have at least fan so it’s painful. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.

 

Bruce  

Oh, well, wait a second. If you’re a Leafs fan, I can help you out with that. When was the last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup?

 

Erwin  

That’s what was it the 40s 60s 1967

 

Bruce  

before I was born, yeah. Wait a second. When was the last time the Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup? I know. I know. Yeah. 819 27. So when Lee fans and I sympathise, I’m not kidding, Toronto has the best fans in my opinion in the league. And I love Audible fans. They’re great. But Toronto fans are with their team. They travel with their team their back that team, they bleed blue, they don’t have red. In their veins, they bleed blue. One of my son in laws is a passionate belief fan. And we’re rivalling with my grandmother where there she wears a Sans hat or leaves. But all kidding aside, audible fans have waited

 

Erwin  

even longer. Can you comment on what you thought about the sale? Was it worth it?

 

Bruce  

I think it’s excellent. One of the things that I’ve said many times, I don’t know Michael andlauer, who is the prospective new owner, personally, but I know many people who have talked to him and know him well. And they speak very, very highly of him. And there are only probably three responsibilities that an owner really has. The first one is to set goals. The new owner of Las Vegas, Golden Knights said that he would want his team to challenge and win a Stanley Cup within six years. And they won the Stanley Cup this year. In their sixth year he set that goal. When I acquired the expansion franchise, the SENS I set goals. The first year I wanted to get 22 or more points. That’s not very many points. But the reason I set it at 22. And we ended up with 24 is because the worst ever team was the Washington Capitals, I think in 19, early 70s. Anyway, who got 21, I didn’t want to be the worst ever team and we got 24. So we avoided that. The other thing is I said we will make the playoffs within five years. And in our fifth year, we did. And I said we will challenge for a Stanley Cup in seven to 12 years, which we did, we got to the finals, and we challenged with a cup. Unfortunately, we did not win it. Great team, you had a wonderful team, they opportunities I thought to win. And unfortunately, they were unable to do it. So setting goals. I mean, whether you’re the CEO of Facebook, or Google or whatever, you know, set goals is very important. So that’s number one, job number two is to have a very, very close relationship with the fans, not just with the fans, but the business community, the sponsors, the political community, and by political I mean the small political community. That is a very, very important function. And I’m sure Michael will have an excellent relationship with the fans and the greater community. Because the living beating heart of an owner in the building every day, or almost every day is very, very important. All right. So that relationship is crucial. And the other thing, which certainly the Golden Knights have demonstrated abundantly, clearly, is to have little or no tolerance for poor performance. This is a cutthroat business. When it comes to competing on the ice off the ice, the owners of major league sports teams, most of them cooperate very, very, very well with each other, whether it’s off the ice or off the court off the pitch off the field. But when it comes to competition on the field, every owner will lie to you. They’ll say oh, yeah, you got to take everyone off my hands. You know, we’re giving MJ even though he’s got one leg. He’s gonna be your best player

 

Erwin  

I saw Moneyball. I saw Moneyball. For listener, pets movie.

 

Bruce  

Yeah. Yeah, it was great. But off the ice, they will cooperate. But the Golden Knights and American owners generally are tougher. Americans generally are tougher in technology and in real estate and banking services. They’re tough business men and tough business women. They’re a no nonsense they will not accept poor performance. In Canada, we tend to be a kinder gentler version of our American cousins. And that might serve you quite well in some respects. But in a professional sports, not so much.

 

Erwin  

The number three was a little tolerance for us. You mentioned there’s three responsibilities for an owner.

 

Bruce  

The third one was has no very little tolerance if not a tolerance for poor performance, whether it’s a coach or general manager, a train or a ticket taker, somebody serving you the beer, a player, I mean, there’s no loyalty at all. They want performance, and they want it now.

 

Erwin  

So as you’re just as we were talking about the three responsibilities, I was actually already in the real estate world, would you say these responsibilities are in your real estate world in terms of your brokerage or portfolio, your developments? I’m guessing it’s something similar? Well,

 

Bruce  

the real estate world today is very, very difficult. I mean, we’re going through a time where interest rates have doubled, or even tripled, where we’re coming through a pandemic, where lumber prices, I think, doubled or tripled, supply chains were disrupted. You know, I’m doing a little bit of development manager work, basically, for friends of mine. And to keep me busy. I’m helping a local vet veterinarian, build a small 5400 square foot clinic a property you already own. So we’re into the third year now trying to get our site plan approval. So that’s really big. Yeah, I won’t bore you with all the details, because we’d be here for a couple hours. But, you know, you know what a critical path schedule is, right? Yeah, well, you cannot build a critical path schedule, when on the construction side, your supply chain is bumped up, you just can’t. We’ve got a number of buildings, my wife and I are developing couple of downtown. And you know, you can’t get your HVAC system functioning, because you’re waiting for deliveries from China or the United States. And they say, Yeah, it’ll be there in six weeks. And then, you know, three months later, you’re still waiting, what are you gonna do, you can’t open your building, without heavy ventilation and air conditioning system. So

 

Erwin  

sorry, purchase deposit their failures is a critical path critical path has actually caused people in our community to go bankrupt, like, for example, like flippers, right, under percent, they couldn’t finish on time, for whatever reason, Labour like not being their materials not showing up on time. And then they ran out of cash. You know,

 

Bruce  

I’ve had many, many, many people ask me to coach them in the typical flippers, and I refuse that I will not do because everybody flips until they flop and almost everybody fails. So I’m not interested in that at all. That’s not a model that I think has legs. I think the

 

Erwin  

general thing is like there. In your experience, do you have extensive experience? Is there fast money in real estate? Because that’s what people want. That’s what people see on HGTV and they want to be a flipper.

 

Bruce  

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I’m so glad you brought that up. Or when what do you see on HGTV is wall to wall BS? It is wall to wall BS. You know, I know some of the people who do those shows. And they leave out, for example, the fact that the crew, most of the crew are not paid to do that show, you know, if you and I are doing a project, we’re good, we’re gonna pay our labour referring to you, because you’re such a star. You know, they won’t do it for me. And the other thing is, many of the materials are donated. No, it’s like, if you were sued on a sports cast, you know, you get a little bit of a, you know, you get a bit of a commercial from it, when they say you know that these guys bought it for 750,000, a put $75,000. And it’s now valued at 950. And left out $200,000 Or costs. And also, they show that they did it in five weeks. Well, certainly during the pandemic, and even now, even the most minor renovations taking five months, if not nine months or longer. We did like I said, we brought one historic building back that had fallen on hard times is not a big building three storeys, it was supposed to take a year and a half. And it was about a two and a half million dollar budget for the rental. Well, we’re now close to you know, two and a half years into it. We’re like at least a million and a half dollars over budget. So it is what it is right? It’s becoming very difficult. And going back to your statement about how difficult it is to build not only on time, but also on budget, you know, certainly in Eastern Ontario, it is now costing $600 a square foot to put up a 30 or 40 storey concrete, multi res tower. And when you do the economics on the cap rate, it just isn’t working. Comes out maybe you break 4% Maybe. And if you’re if your interest rates are six, seven or 8% forget you’re gonna lose money gobs of it, so don’t do that.

 

Erwin  

Right, which is what leads us to the conundrum that we’re in like builders have stopped stalling continue to grow in terms of population.

 

Bruce  

Oh my gosh, yeah. Right. Yeah. So what I’m doing is

 

Erwin  

again, because as a guest you have a lot of context like your second generation investor per your bio, know how accurate it is. Can’t believe everything you read on the internet. But have you ever seen it as challenging in real estate in your extensive career. And

 

Bruce  

after that I did a little walk before we did this, it just clear my head. And I said, I bet you everyone asks me that. So I got a story for you on that too. All right. All right. I got five kids and one of my daughters, but half double. Okay, she paid $345,000 For this nice half double. Sorry, explain what a half double is? Oh, yeah. So you’ve got a house and it’s got two halves. You know how duplexes usually like this house that split down the middle into tiny houses, but it’s really a house that split into so she bought half of the half, okay. And she paid $345,000 for it. It was a three bedroom, two and a half baths, single car garage, half double. And when I walked onto the site with with near him, that’s her name. I said, Mary, this is the one you’ve got a bunch is why this one dad, because we’ve looked at a number together. And guess when you walk down around the back, and the ground sloped away. And down at the back, there was an existing big window, and the door was a walkout condition. You know what that is right. And I said, I mean, it was just a basement. There’s nothing there. But I said Miriam, you’re gonna buy this because you’re going to have the house up here. And you’re going to have a one bedroom apartment down here with a walkout condition. The door already exists for the lockout don’t already exist. Got it. It was a walkout basement condition is that this is the one you’re going to buy her. And so she did. She put in $5,000 in the bank of mom and dad put in 120,000. She puts her hands on her little hips. And she says to me, yeah, but it’s still 5050. Right that. And I said

 

Erwin  

to her, she was the American tough negotiator.

 

Bruce  

I’m gonna get into trouble. But I said, Miriam, that’s girl arithmetic. And she burst out laughing. And I said, don’t worry about that. I said, we’re joint tenants that we show up as owners as joint tenants, which means that after I pass away, and her mother passes away, we’re simply deleted from land titles, you’re going to end up owning 100% of it. So don’t worry about that. Oh, she’s on 100 presented us it? Yes, you will, honey. Yes, it well, I don’t lend money to my children, you know that I don’t want to have a commercial relationship with my kids. So anyway, what happened was, so she bought it. And for another $80,000, we put in a one bedroom apartment. And she rents that for some some amount of money. So she and her husband and their two children are able to live in our own house after paying for everything, including mortgage and internet and utilities for about six or $700 A month after taking into account the rent. Now that’s a pretty good deal. And 2022. So last year, she gets it appraised at $807,000. Up from you know the original price, which was 345. So she calls us Dad, let’s sell it, let’s sell it. I said, but I mean, in five or six years, it’s gone up from whatever, to whatever. I said, Why would you sell me Can you imagine when you’re my age, what it will be worth. And when you’re young woman she can’t ever imagine being 71. You know, that’s too hard to imagine. But it’s someone that you will be, you know, and as long as I’m on title, and as long as I’m alive, you’re not selling? Well, what happened this year is the appraised value of her home dropped by 10%. So it’s now valued, I think at about 735 cents down. So now she’s upset. But wait, she gets her mortgage renewal after like five years, which was like 2.9% or something like that. They want over 6%. Now she calls me up crying on the phone. And I said Marian, there are many reasons to cry in this life. There are there there are tough times. But this is not one of them. You have two beautiful children husband you love you have a lot to be thankful for the fact that your mortgage rate just doubled is not a reason to cry. We got to figure out how to do it. And she’s willing just to hope to facilitate. I said, Wait a second, if your dad teach you to buy high and sell low, no, that we’re not doing that. And I tell this to all the people I coach now this is a story that’s going to have it’s going to grow in and change I’m sure over the years. But I said what we’ll do is we’ll change the amortisation rate she had a period she had, I think 17 or 18 year amortisation, she wanted to pay it off that we extended that to 30 years to reduce her payments. And we renewed for three years at 6% or whatever. Because she’s just gonna have to grin and bear. And then the other thing that happened was the basement apartment became vacant, and she was able to raise the rent from 1200 to $1,600 a month. And in addition to that, she picked up a few more hours at work, so she had a little bit more revenue coming in. She sped out her payments a little bit more and she raised the rent and that’s what people are doing because everybody in Real Estate right now is in a box. And you asked a great question. I’m 71 years of age. This is the toughest I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been through the recessions in the 70s 80s, early 90s 2008 2009. This is much more difficult. I understand that. But don’t try to over look for solutions.

 

Erwin  

Where do we go from here?

 

Bruce  

Well, I think animation is one of the things that’s really really important. One of the things I’d like to do with Miriam is I’d like to, there’s a company here in Can I mention the company’s name? Is that okay? As long as you’re okay with it? No, I’m fine with it, because I’m giving the plug I suppose. But they’re, they do fabulous work. They’re called North Country sheds. They’re based in a little town called myth, false myths. Smiths falls. Outside Ottawa, right? Yes. Not far north country sheds, okay. It’s called North Country sheds. They make these beautiful workshops that are unbelievable. They’re like almost style workshops with metal roof that lasts at least 40 years, I’ve got a few of them and, and some of them are over 40 years of age, and they’re still very surface serviceable. And so what I’d like to do is I’d like to put one in the backyard of Miriam’s place, as well as a bunch of other properties, and create a live work condition right where you could have, you know, the yoga studio or if you’re RMT registered massage therapist, you’re a physiotherapist, you’re a hairstylist, you’re running your nail book, you’re running a coaching practice, you’re a realtor, whatever. And so North Country sheds builds these things. For under $20,000 like $40 a square foot, you can’t build anything for $40 a square foot we talked about a concrete building, you know, 40 storeys high as $600 a square foot all in 40 bucks a square foot you all you have to do is put down the gravel pad, they charge 250 bucks to deliver it, they’ve delivered as far as Thunder Bay, for goodness sake, I don’t know if you know where Thunder Bay is. But

 

Erwin  

even that’s like five hours for you or more, isn’t it? Oh my god. Sorry, Thunder Bay is on the list like the left side of the lake, Winnipeg.

 

Bruce  

I’m trying to Winnipeg. And they probably charge more than 250 bucks to do that. But still, they are fantastic. And so let’s say you bought something for $20,000. And you put, you know, maybe a propane heater in there, added the electricity, you can rent that thing, you probably know that you can now put a workshop in your backyard, that’s 166 square feet, right without a building permit. So you could probably get 166 square foot, the workshop. And you could probably rent that for probably $650 a month. So if we just multiply 650 times 12, you could probably get about seven or $8,000 in revenues from a building that will probably cost you when you put the heat to it. And electricity probably cost you about 20 or $25,000, including the gravel base. And your cap rate would probably be something like about 20% on that. That’s an animation, right? And unfortunately you asked is, in my opinion, real estate is get rich, slow. People always ask me, you know, can you help me get rich fast, Bruce and I always go I’m so glad you asked me that? Because the answer is no. Because if I knew that I would do it for myself. Real Estate just get rich, slow. But one more thing I should have. About 10 years ago when I got into this coaching practice, I did a little bit of research on the 100 richest families in Canada, and 61 out of 100 had all or substantially all of their wealth invested in real estate, almost two thirds and they must know something. And you know real estate has a number of different returns, which I’m sure everybody knows you hope to make some cash flow returns. You hope that it over time it will go up in value and you hope that your tenants will help you pay your mortgage down. So you have three different types of returns. And the wealthiest people in Canada figure that out. They’ve been doing it in Europe for hundreds of years in England for hundreds of years in Asia and Japan for probably some of them a couple of 1000 years. The Holy Roman Catholic Church has been for at least 2000 years

 

Erwin  

yeah the the golf course I was playing it last week. I won’t name it because I don’t think it’s accurate. I haven’t I haven’t fact checked it but I was told that the Western family and Mike Leach and own it and and this is the last year it’s an operation it’ll be it’ll be a construction zone next year starting

 

Bruce  

Yeah, golf courses are an environmental nightmare. You know you have to put water to it. You have to cut the grass you have to put insecticide fungicides fertiliser, they consume a lot of energy and resources and they pollute our waterways and plus on top of that I hate golf.

 

Erwin  

However moving on

 

Bruce  

I’m gonna get some bad email now. All the golfers might wonder my son was a very good golfer he he’s gonna kill me if he hears this

 

Erwin  

And it’s actually funny because just to continue on the Gulf vein for just a second, like you’re a big hockey fan, like a lot of hockey, law hockey players enjoy hockey as well. Like it seems to be lost skill transfer between the two.

 

Bruce  

Yeah, there’s no question about it. I played lots of hockey as a younger fellow, but I’m no good at golf. So really, that wasn’t a very fair statement by me because I’m really bad.

 

Erwin  

Going back to the bunkie. Now I’m on their website. And this sounds amazing. Fantastic. And you already have clients doing this putting in shop? Oh, yeah,

 

Bruce  

absolutely. I can tell you that. One of my favourite new business models is to buy some industrial land. If you have sent you a gun for screens, there are one type up another one go to long yards, long yards, just the way it sounds long. yards.com Oh, no. Try calling long yards.ca Okay, let me try that long, long LNG yards. dossier should should be able to see it

 

Erwin  

should play by the.com. There we go. I think.

 

Bruce  

I think he does have the.com but maybe something happened. I don’t. But anyway, this is a young

 

Erwin  

hours more than storage. Yeah.

 

Bruce  

So let me explain. The model is very simple. You buy a piece of industrial land, you cut it up into small yards because every contractor needs a place to put his or her equipment loaders, dozers, trucks, dumpers, whatever, right. You can’t park here, but you can start to see what’s going on here. So these are small contractors who need a yard. And this is young Chris Long, who’s the founder of long yards, right? It’s last name is long. And this is this is one of his locations in Canada. He’s got a few in the United States as well. So what you do is you Oh, if you want to play that one, how long is it was a minute and 40? Well, we could play that one.

I started long hours because I was a contractor. I didn’t have enough space in my house. House. Like a junkyard I had three trailers, tools, equipment everywhere, light bulb went off, Hey, how come there’s no storage for the big stuff. We love to offer our clients a high level of service with a lit up facility, text OpenGate cameras read watch everything all the time, a locked in screen in yard. And they always know that their possessions are safely locked away. It just creates such a better environment for your business knowing it’s in a professional atmosphere, not at home. From offering loading docks, a small business community that helps each other shared offices, mailboxes, and it’s allowed many businesses here scale and seek growth. We’re seeing this business expand everywhere through Canada in the States. Most of our colleagues with long as it’s our business focus entrepreneurs, real estate investors, they know the cap rates, they know what’s involved. You want to know that the money you’re putting in is working for you long years, and it was storage. That’s what we do. We put their money to work and get you a great return. And we’re in control. We’re seeing this business, expand everywhere through Canada states. We can take vacant land that’s sitting, not doing much and turn it into income producing plan. You buy a piece of property, you throw up some fencing, with a good brand and a good marketing package. We can help your facility get filled up, you’re quick to market. If you’re interested in long hours as a partner or investor or looking at your own location, please reach out to us at info at longer stock COMM And we’d be happy to work with you.

 

Erwin  

All right, that was a Chris was me coming on the show for promoting.

 

Bruce  

But I’ll tell you Chris’s stuff backstory if that’s okay. Herman. I think your listeners and viewers will enjoy it. So Chris came to me when he was a young man, he was a carpenter making $18 An hour and he was a single dad became a single parent when he was still I think, a teenager and he brought up a beautiful young daughter, who’s now of course, well into her teen years. This is about a 10 acre industrial site in auto, the one that you just showed. And I say, Chris, you’re gonna buy this. I got no money. I said, Well, okay, we’ll figure it out. It was a, you know, a difficult time. And, you know, we’re in a difficult time, but there’s opportunity, even when there’s a recession, right, there is opportunity. This particular 10 acre industrial site was owned by a couple of men from Syria. And they had some, you know, some urgent needs I suspect family needs and so I went to them on behalf of Chris as his coach and as his realtor and his case as well. And I said, would you sell this to Chris and would you give him 90% finance you know what seller take back finance.

 

Erwin  

I’m sure your listeners benefit the seller is providing the financing. Yeah, let’s see aren’t the bank in this in this case?

 

Bruce  

They are the bank just with Chris You know, making 80 bucks an hour be hard to go and borrow half a million dollars from a Chartered Bank. Right. So they agreed they wanted to monetize Never Land. So I said, Chris, we got to find you about $50,000 worth of equity to buy this place. And he was doing some work for me on a bunch of Philips and I was adding some micro suites and basement apartments and stuff like that for me. And I said, I’ll just give you an advance on the work you’re doing anyway. So he was able to put a little bit of capital together and close the deal. And then we borrowed from a private lender, about a million to 1,000,003 to put the gravel down the fence again and all the technology that you saw there, and as fast as he could build those contractor yards, he could lease them. Well, so by that time, he had about 1.6 or 1.7 million invested in it. And we got it reappraised at 3.6 because the cash flow was so strong. If he calls me up super excited. He said, Prince, can you imagine me? You know me a millionaire? I said, Yeah, again. He said, Well, there you go. And now he’s living in Florida. He’s remarried. He’s got a bunch of more kids. And and he’s building them all over the state. So it’s a great success story. But what I was gonna say is these business models changed, right? That was the original model that Chris used the contractor yards model, but now and you saw in that video there, see cans there. And now there’s going to be these workshops that I talked about, and North Country sheds, right. So you put them in there, you rent them to the people who have a yard. So now they have a little office, they have a see, can they have a yard? They’re good to go? Sorry, sorry,

 

Erwin  

let’s see can

 

Bruce  

see containers, right, like, you see, oh, trucks, they’re, you know, they’re come across on the big ships and shipping containers. And so they come in 20 footers, or 40 footers, and you see them on the rail cars, too, they stack too high.

 

Erwin  

For listeners benefit, we generally import way more than we export. So we have a lot of sea containers. A lot of extra shipping containers in Canada. Shipping today. Yeah. That’s super cool. But but even Yeah, shipping containers, I think, I think they’re around like four to 6000 to buy. But that’s like that’s like stock, there’s nothing done to it. You still have?

 

Bruce  

Yeah, well, let’s see, can a shipping container and that’s a good way to refer to it. You can get them if you buy them in bulk for three or three and a half 1000 Oh, hell a lot you can do with I mean, you rent them to your clients and make a little bit more money. And then we’re gonna do the same thing with the workshops.

 

Erwin  

This is amazing. And then who’s using the workshops, these are small businesses or just people just want to a workshop, like build their model car or whatever.

 

Bruce  

Let’s say you are heating, ventilation and air conditioning guy, okay? You’ve got all kinds of equipment and inventory, you’re going to store it in the yard. You can’t put your loader or your dozer or your dumper in your driveway in suburbia, the bylaw officer, the ordinance enforcement officer be knocking on your door within a couple of days, neighbours will complain. So you got you got to have it in the yard. And then you want to have some of the material of the weather, you can rent a sea Canada shipping container and you put material in there and keep it away from the weather. The next thing you’re going to ask is, gee, I need an office, right? I’ve got a couple of maybe I got an admin, I got a bookkeeper, I got an accounts receivable person, where am I going to put those so you have these little North Country sheds, you can just put, uh, you know, on 166 Square feet, if they have, you know, 60 square feet, you can easily put two or three people in there. And if you buy some of the bigger ones that North Country sheds has, you can probably have four or five staff in there. The other thing that we get asked for now a lot is can I move a tiny home in there and live there? Yeah, I was gonna get to that. Well, the answer is so far. No. As you know, cities everywhere are really bogged down by and constrained by some planning rules, which are obscurely difficult. And, you know, I do speeches all over the States and Canada, like I said, a few overseas. I’m not the most popular guy in cities and towns because I recommend they burn their zoning codes. There was a study not by me, but by the University of Chicago, that if the planning rules and the zoning rules were as relaxed as they were in 1965 and 2009, the US economy would be 40% Bigger. That works out to 80,000 US dollars per family per year. That is an unimaginable increase in public welfare before we started this conversation on and recorded and we were talking about you know, Star Trek and and unlimited energy and basically free money. 40% is extraordinary. 40% of all buildings built in Manhattan could not be built today because of their zoning codes. I’m not saying that we should have people living next to an armaments plant because they blow up every muscle on or next to oil refinery. because they light on fire every once a while, or a fireworks battery, you know, I get that or an avatar, or chemical plan. Sometimes they leak and they would kill you. So there there are very good reasons to have zoning rules, but not to prevent, you know, like one of my daughters, she has literally a cabin in the woods a tiny house. And right next to her, maybe 100 feet away, she has her workshop, she runs her own business, very successful fashion business. You know, she has a tiny house and she has a small workshop. Well, there’s no reason why we can’t have that.

 

Erwin  

Yeah, it’s just yeah, well, we I know why it’s NIMBYs don’t like them. And then they vote and, and they’re motivated. Wow, this is fascinating stuff. Do you know the owners in North Country sheds as well. I do, again, probably want to talk to them.

 

Bruce  

Just listen, if if, if any of your your friends want to know more about this model, that probably nobody knows this model better than I do reach out to me at anytime you’ve got my email address, that’s the best way to get ahold of me. I’m on that 24/7. So they can reach out to me and I’ll be happy to put them in touch with whomever they need. Okay.

 

Erwin  

Okay. First, we do have a number of listeners. Do you want to share? Should we share your email? Should we just share your website?

 

Bruce  

share by email, that’s fine. You know, I get a lot of email, but I can handle that. And what I can handle is I can have handle a lot of phone calls when you have about 2500 clients. If everybody called me once a day, you can imagine how much work I get done. So I asked people to either text me or, or even better email me, so I don’t mind sharing it. It’s Bruce at Bruce M. firestone.com. So Bruce had Bruce and you got to put the M in there. Bruce at Bruce and firestone.com. That’ll get to me. I mean, I love hearing from people I hear from former students of mine from 20 years ago, many of them very successful. And it’s just one of those things that gives me great joy, to be honest. So first,

 

Erwin  

I want to I want to really go over this workshop, garden shed strategy again. So this is what you’re seeing people do successfully in like an area all over all over North America.

 

Bruce  

Yeah. So all over North America, and many, many jurisdictions not gated communities are. But in many jurisdictions, many cities and towns are the states and Canada, a home based business is legal. Right. So let’s say I was a young mom and I had one kid and I had a workshop in the backyard, I could run a small daycare there. In Ontario, they changed the Planning Act to allow workshops or sheds in the backyard, up to 166 square feet without a building permit. And if you’re going to build something bigger, you need to go get a building permit, you can do an awful lot with 166 square feet. And of course, like I said, if you need something that’s two or 300 square feet, I’ve got some of that are 850 square feet with a building permit. And they are fantastic. So home based businesses are illegal in most jurisdictions. Again, if you live in a gated community or a condominium, they have a lot of rules. And so condominiums you can’t really animate them, or at least not very easily. And gated communities have, you know, homeowners associations, and they have a lot of rules. So probably the lot of the animation ideas that we’ve talked about on this call, don’t apply in those two circumstances. But for everybody else they probably do.

 

Erwin  

And then try to get into the nitty gritty a little bit. Do these

 

Bruce  

have washrooms. So in the case of my daughter, for example, what she’s got a beautiful little tiny home, it’s very small, but she’s got the tiny home here, and she’s got a workshop here. The workshop has power, heat and air conditioning, but it does not have water, and it does not have a bathroom. But the tiny house does. So she has to go use the bathroom she just wants. So that’s why it’s a live work condition. And that’s why it’s a home based business. You got the home and you’ve got your workshop or your backyard office or whatever, but you need to go the bathroom you just you go to your apartment or your house.

 

Erwin  

Somewhere you mentioned like you had an early triplex example, we had the laneway garage or get the garage in the back is yeah, it was quite a big one to for these. The workshop shed strategy, do you have a name for this strategy?

 

Bruce  

I just call it the live work conditioning. Our conditioning is hugely popular. And like I said, and you already knew this, you could search MLS in the States and Canada and filter by for properties that already have backyard garages. And you could convert them into a coach house, a little backyard coach house, but it’s very, very inexpensive to create the workshop. And then a coach house is much more expensive, you know, because you got to connect it to the water system and the sewer system and then you know, Coach houses are not cheap. I’ve just building one now and one of my properties and it’s like 330,000 bucks for a two bedroom coach has

 

Erwin  

for us as I mentioned earlier that we’re targeting has was detached garages to car because we’re able to do that for you’re able to do those conversions for like 110 to 130.

 

Bruce  

Yeah, well, that’s very, very good 110 to 130 is excellent. If you can do that, that’ll that’ll pay for itself. But if you were to convert it to a workshop, it would be a lot less.

 

Erwin  

Yes, of course, then which why, which is why? It’s the first time I’ve heard the strategy of sort of, I’ve heard of the strategy for like Pure Storage, in terms of like offering just really just a storage shed to your tenants for maybe a few 100 bucks.

 

Bruce  

But I like that strategy, too. But the workshop is one step above. And like I said, we’re

 

Erwin  

in between now we’re in between the tiny home and garden suites and distortion.

 

Bruce  

If you have somebody like baya who’s running a very successful yoga studio neighbourhood studio in her backyard and has an apartment, she’s likely to stay quite a long time. There’s something else you need to you need to know about that.

 

Erwin  

Being an Ontario lock, you’re the one there tends to stay longer.

 

Bruce  

No, but there’s something that you need to know. Are you ready?

 

Erwin  

Yeah, I’m ready.

 

Bruce  

I have a legal opinion from a very well respected lawyer on my computer somewhere. When I did that least remote work for the studio in the apartment. We did it as a commercial lease for the backyard workshop with accessory residential. And I was explaining Wait a second, I explained to Maya, I said, Maya, this is a commercial lease, you are paying HST on this. And HST for a building owner is your best friend. But wait a second, it gets more interesting. If it’s a commercial lease with accessory residential, it is not covered by the Residential Tenancy Act. And the reason for that is this is a carve out that the Planning Act or the Residential Tenancy Act, excuse me, has created. So let’s say Erwin, you and I owned a $300 million industrial building somewhere. And we had an site superintendent department so that he or she, they could look after a building, but then we find out our site superintendent is an alcoholic drug taking fiasco, you can walk in there and escort him or her them off the property and five minutes, because you can’t have somebody who’s dealing drugs or doing drugs, looking after a $300 million asset that they just, you just can’t say for everybody. It’s not safe. And it’s a bad idea. And it does happen. I’ve had that situation exactly happened to me, like one of my properties. And because it was considered excessive residential, there’s no over holding provision whatsoever. So I said, my, if you do not pay your rent, you know, it will not be a four to six month process and an end 12 For you to you are going to be leaving, I’ll give you 15 days. And she said I understand. So I said you’ve got to be really committed to this because you don’t want to be an entrepreneur, unless you’re really committed and she was super committed. And she has been super successful. I think this year she’ll break 130,000 an income. You know, there’s some things that your listeners and viewers will have to learn. And they should get their own legal advice because I’m just a lowly engineer.

 

Erwin  

Engineer. Sorry, this is I want to keep harping on this on this on his live work condition, dear killing my apologise, naturally need to learn things. Can you

 

Bruce  

one of the things I don’t know you will know new for little over an hour but I really respect the fact that you’re drilling down and you’re looking for the detail and you want to make things where the people are most successful in business and you know this Erwin is somebody who finds a model maybe this model and they just repeat it’s like making sausages you know this the people who make the least and I’m guilty of this make the least amount of money is you do whatever you want. Like I’ve been Aki guy been a university professor and then a real estate developer a real estate coach, what the hell am I right?

 

Erwin  

And science fiction author? Apparently? Not apparently you are.

 

Bruce  

Oh, for sure. First Book was actually made into a short film by the way. No kidding. People been asking me for the other book. I’ve written any books over at the but the one I wrote about the sands in the National Hockey League. It’s called don’t back down. They want to turn it into a TV series but I said not until I die. Oh yeah.

 

Erwin  

You don’t want to see it.

 

Bruce  

I don’t. I’ll leave that to my kids and grandkids to decide what to do with that.

 

Erwin  

That’s too bad. Last Last sports. Sports stories have been making making Netflix and like the recent movie.

 

Bruce  

This was the same guys who did Letterkenny I don’t know if you know that series.

 

Erwin  

I’m pretty sure many love fans and hockey fans would like to see it but yeah, okay, sorry. Just go back to the labour condition. Do you have any examples you can share from like the Ottawa area like what it costs to deliver it in what you’re getting for rent for for for Workshop? Yeah, I’d

 

Bruce  

be happy to do that. So my wife and I, we own something called the barndominium.

 

Erwin  

That’s our website.

 

Bruce  

A lot of the stuff that I do you know, if people say do you have a website and Facebook page, you know, Instagram, Snapchat, just in my smile I built, it’s got to be 25 years ago now, one of my friends, he’s a developer had this beautiful, beautiful Amish style barn, if you know what I mean, it’s huge ceiling height, 30 feet. It looks like a church in some ways. As beautiful and his name was John colletta. He’s now passed away. I said to him, because he was going to develop that. So what are you going to do with this bar? And I said, I got to these three young guys, they’re gonna come here with a high Oh, knock it down. Said what? Such a beautiful building. Yeah. I said, How much are you paying them to knock it down and take the stuff away? I have about 3500 bucks. I said, How about I bring a crew down myself. And I do it for free. He said, Bruce, are you crazy? That’s a lot of people think so. He said you got a deal. So I went with my crew. But we didn’t knock it down. What we did was we dismembered it. And we lettered and numbered each piece, right. And I had a property about 12 or 13 kilometres away beautiful property with a lake on it and all kinds of cool stuff. And so we laid down a concrete pad and we rebuilt this thing. And it was really it’s huge. It’s like 4500 square foot feet with a 330 foot ceiling height. And, and we had a large screen TV in there. And my kids, it was a playpen for my kids. Basically, I had my summer office there, my cottage there, we own the lake, some about 165 acres in total. So we had this beautiful bar, and, you know, large screen, we used to watch the Blue Jays and whatever. And the kids would have sleepovers like for 35 Friends, right? So it’s fun. And we can have dances and parties in there. And one of my daughters got married, and their kids have a nasty habit of growing up. And now they do. And so it sat empty for I don’t know, 567 years and kids weren’t interested anymore. You know, my oldest son’s living in Australia with his family and one daughters in Toronto. I mean, you know, they’re all over the place. So I said to my, well, what the hell are we gonna do with it, it just sitting there empty. So we decided this was before the pandemic began, based on, you know, my own experience that we would turn it into about 10 workshops that we did. And they range in size from 200 square feet, which is tiny to 400 square feet, 800 square feet, I think the biggest one is 1000. And oh, my God, as fast as we could fit them up. People came and read it, though. I mean, it’s incredible. If I had 45,000 square feet instead of 4500. And it’s this most wonderful community, we got an old dude in there, he makes cigar box guitars, you know, with a cigar box guitars, he buys these cigar boxes, they’re actually it makes guitar, it’s a thing. And they’re beautiful. And oh my god, they sound beautiful. So he makes cigar box guitars. I’ve got a young fella His name is Ahmed he is he makes in designs and builds his own kitchen cabinets and bathroom cabinets and instals them very successful woman in there who’s a fashion designer, another woman in there who makes handmade soaps and sells them to stores across Canada, the United States. I mean, I got a group in there that trains dogs, actually, they train the owners. But anyway, they do dog training. I mean, we’ve just got a wonderful group and timber frame are in there a carpenter in there, and we just have a hobbyist in there who’s just got more stuff than he knows what to do. So the demand for these workshops was off the charts. And so for a 200 square foot, you know, workshop, we could I think 600 bucks a month, plus a contribution to power plus a contribution to cleaning. Parking is free because we get lots of land. So that works out to, I don’t know, 30 or $35 per square foot per year gross plus contribution to power. And we have in our lease because we don’t have them separately metre. If one of them has maybe exceptionally has a lot of power needs, then we can raise their we can change their rent. Now the next thing that happened was sure enough, a lot of these people asked whether there’s apartments nearby that they could rent, because it’s a fabulous community. And unfortunately, there aren’t any, but we have rolled a few tiny houses onto our property. And guess what we do they, you know, because we got lots of land 165 acres, they can live on the sites. And they don’t pay much for that. But they roll their own tiny homes on the site. If they have one or they go buy one. And they can roll it on our site. They can hook it up to our power and our septic system and our well. I think they pay like 500 bucks plus HST to park and so that’s kind of the model. It’s very simple, and we just love it. I like visiting them because they’re such neat people and they run very successful businesses. Oh, we have we’ve got a registered massage therapist there, too. She does a RMT work.

 

Erwin  

How many people do you think you have living on the property now?

 

Bruce  

Right now. So we’ve got 10 workshops, and I think four of them are currently living on site. And there’s at least one or two more who would like to so I might buy a couple of times. In fact, I actually contracted for a couple more tiny homes with local company, small living company. So we might have two more this year.

 

Erwin  

Purse had no idea the conversation would go here.

 

Bruce  

Christian, as Bill Vogel asked me to do it, and I was happy to do it. Your reputation precedes you. You’re an amazing individual.

 

Erwin  

Oh, I appreciate it. You have way more stories than I do.

 

Bruce  

I’m also about twice your age. So there you go.

 

Erwin  

Do you have extra time? I know we’re over time. Do you have time?

 

Bruce  

Well, I do have something I have to do at 1230. So I’ve got you know, eight more minutes or something like that. I got a little bit of coaching. I coached a couple of guys in Long Beach, California, who by the way, are doing this workshop model

 

Erwin  

Madhavi back, but I do want to ask you about you. So you’ve been you’ve probably been exploring AI longer than pretty much anyone else in the real estate community. Yeah. Talk to me about AI.

 

Bruce  

I wrote a trilogy on it. It’s called Quantum entity and quantum entity. There’s a trilogy. The first book is we are all one. And the second book is American spring. And the third book is I can’t remember. That isn’t the title. I can’t remember. I just can’t remember right now. Let’s see. i Oh, yes. The third one is called the successes. It’s a trilogy. And it’s about a young man looks a lot like you actually. He lives in Toronto. And he’s a brilliant mind. He’s a physicist. And that’s one of the

 

Erwin  

comparisons and yeah.

 

Bruce  

Well, he’s very handsome. And he’s a neat kid. In my mind, he does look a lot like you like the character I had in mind. I mean, I’m watching him on the screen here. He takes what’s called the iPhone 40. This was in Britain 10 years ago, right? So he takes the iPhone 40. And he hacks them. And he adds something to them, which is a bit of a surprise. And so what happens is, you get your brand new iPhone 40. From quantum computing Corp, that’s his company, cucc, quantum computing Corp, you get your, and the moment you boot it up, this kind of apparition shows up out of phone, it’s sort of like, kinda like what Mark Zuckerberg was talking about with the metaverse, but it just sort of pops out of the phone. And if you know what a familiar is a familiar is an animal that becomes very close to a witch or Warlock. But in this case, the quantum entity sort of pops out of the phone in 3d, and bonds with you. And you know, initially they’re very primitive creatures, but they learn about, you know, Irwin, or they learn about Bruce or Mary or Betty or whatever. And they become your familiar, they become like your alter ego, when you go to sleep, they can work on your income tax, right? When they go to sleep, they can be editing one of your videos, their quantum computing. And as soon as this happens, he starts to take them to the next level, they become quantum phones. And the one thing that he’s basing his theory on which is is a valid theory in physics, is that when you create two particles that are related, no matter how far apart, they get, they are still communicating with each other. So you could have quantum phone here and a quantum phone on Mars. And there would be no time delay between the two of them. Right? And unlike some people like Elon Musk, who believes that AI could be the end of humanity, and it might be these quantum entities, the question will become in the first book question is, at what point does an artificially intelligent creature have human rights? Right? And there’s a whole chapter in the book where this question is brought before the Supreme Court of the United States? And have these quantum entities developed intelligence? Are they conscious? And do they should they be protected entities by the US Constitution, or for that matter, the Canadian Constitution? And should they have rights, human rights, and it’s my belief that, that we will see intelligent creatures, that they will be mechanical of sorts, and that they will sleep, they will dream, they will fall in love, because the only way to know you’re conscious or in love is to be conscious or in love, right? That is the only way we have no other definition that makes any sense. You know, I think therefore I am. That is the only definition of consciousness that we makes any sense the Turing test is is Fine, but it doesn’t go far enough. The other way to determine consciousness is early on when you ask yourself a question, just when you’re sitting there and thinking, what am I going to do? What am I going to have to eat tonight? Is there a voice inside your head that says, that answers you? The answer is yes. That’s consciousness. I think we will see a quantum computing at some point. And we will see artificial intelligence agents, basically, that will exhibit all of the symptoms, if you will, of consciousness and may from that dream, and like I said, sleep and fall in love. And these quantum entities that are in your phone, your iPhone 40, there is a lot of affection between you and your QE is crazy. And that’s kind of the beginning of the story.

 

Erwin  

Back Back to back, we’re going back to the Star Trek Next Generation, we know that they’ll legally be people because Lieutenant Commander data was ruled as people are life conscious.

 

Bruce  

I love data. I do. He was my favourite character in that. And I remember fondly him saying, I remember who it was, I think Commander Riker comes in, and he looks at data and data is pouring water, measuring it very carefully into a flask and then boiling it and then doing it again. And commander record says to data, what are you doing? He said, Well, I’m testing this theory that the watch pot never boils. But no matter whether I look at it or not, it is boiling. And exactly the same time my internal chronometer tells me that and command director then says, Turn off your turtle chronometer and try it again. That Riker understood, or the writers understood that that is the beginning of consciousness and, and, and the ability to go beyond pure, you know, binary code.

 

Erwin  

Are you afraid of AI or, or as locus control? I spoke to a gentleman gentleman he said, look, look that’s gonna troll is not within me. So I’m not stressing about it.

 

Bruce  

Speaking personally, anything can be used in a negative manner, right? I mean, you know, fire of humans, mastery of fire was very, very, very important. But fire was also the precursor of all of all of our metallurgy. Metallurgy led to many things, including guns and cannons, many other things implemented jets that bomb people. So, you know, it’s been used in warfare for for a very long time. So, so but I would rather have mastery of fire than be freezing in a cave somewhere in France. So I think AI could be used for very, very nefarious purposes. For example, when this quantum era begins, all passwords are useless. I mean, my QE could read your your bank account while we’re doing this. Now, Kiwis have the you know, one thing that Damien Bill who’s the young physicist I mentioned, one thing that Damien did for him with his Cuvees is he tried to give them a sense of you know, like the Isaac Asimov rules, right, do no harm basically, I

 

Erwin  

like the lawns idea that make the robot weak enough that a human can overpower it. First, thanks so much for doing this.

 

Bruce  

I really enjoyed it. And will you give me a link at some point

 

Erwin  

I when we release? Yes, well, we will send it to us and

 

Bruce  

thank you for everything you’ve done today. I’ll see you soon. Thanks.

 

Erwin  

Before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already then sign up for my newsletter. Find out for yourself but so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell I love teaching and sharing this stuff.

 

 

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**Transcripts are auto-generated.

Erwin  

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the truth about real estate investing show we have an awesome episode, we’re gonna talk about recreational property investing. And we’re talking about a couple properties, four or five properties that and to give you an idea of the scale, we’re talking about hundreds of acres, hundreds of acres, hundreds of RV sites, even in a hotel and a restaurant in there and a golf course with Darvin Zurfluh, who is the owner and founder of Pinnacle wealth brokers. Before we get to that this is the truth about real estate investing show for Canadians. It is one of the top ranked podcasts on business and investing per iTunes. Since we’ve been around since 2016. Doing an episode a week. My name is Erwin Szeto, I’m a real estate investor since 2005. And we’ve been around for a long time podcasts been around a long time I’ve investing since for nearly two decades, I’ve coached over 250 clients, and among our clients, we have about 45 self made millionaire investor clients, this market is a wild one with interest rates being really high. And looking like we might have another increase, there’s a decent chance maybe one in five chance, it might be higher that we have another rate increase later this fall later this year, while there’s many speculators out there who were honestly feeling a lot of pain. And actually, I find that a lot of people are feeling various levels of pain. But it’s the speculators who are holding multiple negative cash flow properties that are really feeling it. We checked our own numbers. Our clients are taking profit as well. Our clients have been selling some properties over the last six months. And we checked. So just to give you some averages, the properties our clients are selling, they’ve held them for an average of 5.2 years. And among those properties, they receive an appreciation price appreciation alone of $313,000. So that’s how much in minimum profits they’re taking. These are all small multifamily detached homes. Yeah, so they’ve invested smart invest well, and they’re being rewarded with again, on a 5.2 year hold on average, average price appreciation alone is 313,000. Not bad. And we know what they paid for these properties. And because we helped them buy them and they bought and they bought right. The real estate market means many things to many people, folks with houses on land and bigger markets are just fine. For example, detached homes and Treb are actually higher than last this time last year, and the price in July. So Toronto real estate board, Toronto regional Real Estate Board Treb just released our August numbers, sorry, July numbers. And July prices are basically in line with June. So prices are holding, they’re being resilient, versus on the other side. But people who are really feeling it, where we see a buyers market is in the pre construction market and cottages. Those are complete buyers market because who has a lot of money sitting aside for a recreational property, a secondary property. And for folks who are in pre construction, I hear the demands from buyers are very high. You know, it was always dangerous in my opinion to be because the pre construction properties I would see that came through my email, the price per square foot was higher than the resale value on that day. So for example, I was seeing pre construction condos, the price per square foot would be $1,600 a square foot versus resale condos were going for like 1200 square foot. So in my opinion, it didn’t make sense to rift that much. In general, not condo investor in general, I like more control my properties. But again to buy new versus used it didn’t really seem to make sense. Here. It’s all these investment options are likely to be fine in the long term, but the long term but you know, if you’re vacant, it’s gonna be painful, especially when the rate increase and we have a new housing minister, our new federal housing minister was previously responsible for immigration. So I you know, I’m I’m a family I come from immigrants. So I believe in immigration, I believe in control the amount of immigration. I don’t know what the number is. But it seems like you know, the fact that we’ve I remember when Stephen Harper was in government, the number was more like 245,000 immigrants a year. Now we’re over half a million. So something may break along the way when you double your immigration anyways. So my point is that long term likely be fine housing market will likely be fine. But again, it’s all about weathering the storm. I was speaking to one Airbnb property manager in the Niagara region who shared with me that more supply has come on come online in the market. The new construction owners as they can’t cash. They know they can’t cashflow. These are single family homes. They’re buying but they know they can’t cash with long term tenants. So they’re choosing to do run an Airbnb. And they’re hiring these friends of mine to manage for them. So short term rentals. And I’m hearing from many sources that short term rentals for long time. Airbnb investors are not performing as well as they used to a friend of mine who has been operating Airbnb for several years and was able to quit his job from his Airbnb income four or five years ago. I’ll share it with me this his Airbnb ZZ are not performing nearly as well as they did pre pandemic and they are in very ideal vacation areas. That’s for long term rentals. Our clients are doing just fine. I was just talking to one of my coaches, our client that has a try plaques that are now rented for just over $7,000 a month. You know, our clients may be vacant for a month or two, while testing record high rents. That’s the commonality between my clients that are vacant for a month or two, my last vacancy, which was just two months ago, I had zero vacancy. When my tenant gave me notice, we immediately found a tenant to move in the first of the month. So anyways, the long term rent market is doing fantastic and the markets that we operate in like Kingston and Hamilton, speaking to Coach D Phillips on my team earlier this week, and he shared with me that how in Kingston, his client to sign a tenant for $2,600 for a three bedroom main floor apartment in Kingston, Ontario. And we have a client that just rented out, they’re close to signing a lease, and maybe I’ll hold on to that number, but they’re closest signing a lease for their brand new garden suite. This was the first of probably, it’s probably the first garden suite. Well, this is the first time suite to be rented among our clients in Hamilton. So I’ll wait until at least a sign to release that number. On the other hand, small market, novice and landlords appear to be struggling based on the conversations I’m having with investors who have been reaching out they’ve been taking us up on our portfolio review offer. Small towns that are far away from the GTA, which were darlings of real estate in the early pandemic, are not correcting. Is this not new, normal? Long term, everything will hopefully be fine. If they can find tenants. In the short term, we’re we put out that request for folks to send in their what they have for sale, because we do have some clients that are looking and writing offers. Still, of course, our clients are being very picky because they can, as you know, there’s a lot of motivated sellers out there. So if sellers aren’t that motivated, then our clients aren’t interested. But my point is that we are seeing some wonderful turnkey deals in bigger markets. So markets work, you know, over 150,000 population. Why is that important? bigger cities, and turnkey a moving ready small multifamily to me means lower risk. I think that means to everybody that means lower risk. One mistake I find new investors make or maybe two mistakes is that they believe that what they see on HGTV that money in real estate is fast and easy, which it isn’t. It can be further from the truth. The other is that more work and effort means more returns. For example, I mentioned earlier, some of our clients are taking profits and pay no deaths while rates are high. Well, the best performing property among those was a turnkey property we bought from a builder, I sat with that builder to design a house that would be the perfect student rental. And it was the house was built with safety in mind. We had a lot of building code requirements for duplex built into that property even though we had no second kitchen. Each of the basement bedrooms had egress windows, I had the builder do a lot of fire rated drywall and rocks on safe and sound. So there was a lot of fire separation and ceilings and mutual walls. And that house along with other similar houses that our clients owned, they got the highest rents in the market, and there are no renovations required. It was incredibly turnkey, it was just put up the rent for sign and rented out to students. That client after seven year hold, the client walked away with $489,000 in price appreciation alone 489,000 After seven year hold, that’s nearly half a million dollars from just one income stream and then good cash flow and cold good mortgage pay down. My point is that turnkey small multifamily can be a viable option. So don’t just count it. And thinking that you have to buy an ugly property that requires months to renovate plus hundreds of 1000s of dollars and renovation budget. And who knows how many permits or zoning change or use change or variances. Again, from my experience our clients experience you can make a lot of money just buying turnkey as a sophisticated investor. One should always look at all the variety of options available to you and make decisions holistically. I’ve had several calls with novice investors considering investment options as far as like four hours away, or they have to get on a plane. Because the property is out of province versus I tell clients all the time, it’s not that hard to make money closer to home. If you can’t make money in your own backyard, then what makes you think that someone can be successful in a market where they have no contacts and or no relationships. It’s obviously possible past guests of the show have done so. But not everyone is willing to put in that kind of full time effort. Nor do they have a partner or spouse earn six figures to pay the bills and put food on the table. Ember cashflow is important. In my experience, having worked with over 350 successful real estate investors, investing within our drivers is can return world class profits. And it can be done as a side hustle over 9% my clients, they still have their day job. They do real estate investing as a side hustle and they’re doing incredibly well with the real estate portfolios. They didn’t do so investing in pre construction condos, they don’t flip they don’t do any sort of these high high effort high risk strategies a provider that require private borrowing. That’s speaking to another investor recently who has a very successful Airbnb, but they cannot get a mortgage. They’re stuck paying 12% on a private mortgage. So yeah, there’s many options. Again, you should be using a spreadsheet to make your decisions Just to understand all your options 20 Fat investing can work, it just seems to take more savvy, the pockets, risk and effort when keeping it simple, tried and proven works just fine. In my experience, at least, the sad thing was with housing is that with prices so high, it’s only gonna be the rich are gonna afford deals in the current market and going forward. Even more sad as the situation will only get worse when the rate cuts begins sometime next year, based on what the bond market’s doing, because when you see that first rate cut, you’re gonna see all the rest of the buyers get off the fence and push this seller’s market into a further seller’s market. If you don’t believe me, it’s already sold market. The June Toronto real estate board Charl real regional Real Estate Board, their days on market was 24 days. It took an average of three and a half weeks to sell a property that to me screams seller’s market that’s also down from 29 days from a year ago, and not a very good market. You know, check out the stats for yourself, you know what to believe me necessarily. And then price wise in Hamilton were up 5.5% Average Price year over year. I understand that’s a wonderful amount of appreciation. Because if you bought right, and you cash flow at least neutral if you’re at least neutral in cash on cash flow this time last year. And so you put down 25% Right, that works out to a 22% return. That’s an incredible return. And again, what do you think is going to happen when interest rates come down as are expected to mid to late 2024. We should see prices climbing. And we’re gonna continue sharing how our clients continue to earn world class returns via our online monthly meetings and in person mastermind tours. So don’t miss out through mine. Our in person mastermind tours do sell out. We sold out our last one which was in Kitchener, Ontario. We have upcoming ones in Kingston, Ontario. And we’ll have one on the west west of the GTA as well you’ll either be held in Agra. So the best place to stay informed and be aware of when we have when we host these events is to be on our email newsletter, along with the 10,000 other high winning yes investors in Ontario in Canada. Many of my rich friends are taking advantage of the opportunities presented by this market. So find out how you can to sign up for our email newsletter at www dot truth about real estate investing.ca Let me slow down WWW dot truth about real estate investing.ca Enter your name and email address on the right side and you’re set to become a very well informed sophisticated investor. So speaking of simple tried and proven Cherry, the kids and I just returned from a week long vacation in Muskoka. No, we didn’t stay at some luxurious cottage, but rather we stayed at a family camp at the YMCA on this huge property that someone some lovely person donated to them to the YMCA 110 years ago, there was lots of greenery, an incredible amount of lakefront and most importantly, the camp counsellors were wonderful as they entertained our our kids via their programming. So each day, our kids would do all sorts of activities, treetop trekking while climbing, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, sailing, nature, walk hikes, arts and crafts, archery, all sorts of fun things that people do at camp. In the afternoons. We could do the same activities as a family. We pretty much did them all.

Erwin  

Is it arts and crafts, I usually like a little more excitement meals were provided which so we didn’t have to cook and clean our accommodation with a cabin with 10 bunk beds. So very simple accommodation, the same cabin that the overnight that the normal regular overnight campers, kids use. So it’s no frills, no air conditioning, no bathroom. The bed was not built for someone my size. We had a blast. The beds could have been better for my back in my sleep, but the kids had a blast. The camp counsellors were amazing. We enjoyed the meals, the campfires and the sick related singing and performances and just being disconnected from technology in the city. Now, this was our second visit to the YMCA family camp, our first since the pandemic and we plan to be there back there next year. A simple vacation. Camping is tried and proven to be fun for kids and it works. Now on to this week’s show. We have my friend Darvin zoo flew, who has a huge private equity brokerage, it’s actually in terms of the capital raised, they are the largest and they have the largest network of brokers as well as called Pinnacle wealth brokers. If you’ve been around the investor community, you’ve been attending events, you’ve likely seen them around. But today we have the founder of the company joining us from Calgary, Alberta. If you’re not familiar with private equities, all you need to be as a good private equity is part of the reason why you hear me say things like today’s time is the best time to be rich as the options for investing and never been so good and available. I was introduced to Darwin when I asked my own Pinnacle wealth broker representative, Steve Wozniak, I asked Steve for if you knew anyone who did large scale recreational properties to be a guest on my podcast. That’s how we can I got connected with Darwin. We’ve since become friends because we share so many things in common. His recreational properties are much bigger than mine. And also because I know so many of our listeners are interested in Airbnb and recreational cottage investing, he’s been in the investment industry since 1997, when he started up at the bank, and he since progressed to only a couple of 100 acres. Darvin shares how he recently purchased about four or five properties that total several 100 acres, including among those properties, there’s hundreds of recreational vehicle RV sites, dozens and dozens of cabins and campgrounds, and there’s even a hotel and a golf course in the mix. Darvin details the story behind that purchasing like golf course property, the analysis and the value add strategy that goes into it, which I think I find it particularly fascinating. So I hope you do too. In general, this is a fascinating interview into entrepreneurship in the private equity real estate investing space at a large scale. Again, Pinnacle wealth brokers has raised over a billion dollars in capital, Steve tells me it’s closer to like 1.6 or 1.7 website currently says 1.2. It’s one of those numbers they offer passive investments to middle class investors to participate in passively active or passive investors will appreciate this interview. And so if you do enjoy it Darvin is our confirmed desk for the online only November 21 monthly Iowan meeting. At that meeting, Darwin will go into more detail and also have slides and whatnot to show us what private investment equity investments are. He’ll go into the numbers behind the story and the numbers behind these recreational property purchases, hopefully, including the Golf Course. So if you’re on our newsletter that’s already received by over 10,000 of either winning US investors in Canada, then you’re set if you’re not on our email list, newsletter, go to www dot truth about real estate investing.ca and get on our newsletter. As we are discussing securitized investments, please enjoy the show, and the legal disclaimer to follow as required by the island legal department. If you do want to learn more about investing with Darwin’s company Pinnacle wealth brokers, Steve lazy acts, who is my own broker at Pinnacle wealth, his contact information is in the show notes. Please enjoy the show. Hi, Darren, what’s keeping you busy these days?

Darvin  

Quite a lot. Actually. You are busy in the fund investment world focused on real estate. I just got back from a trip to some of our RV resorts. So we had a charity weekend actually this weekend with the Starlight Children’s Foundation. So a really fun weekend hosting a bunch of families at all of our resorts. And yes, I just got back from there back in Calgary now in our home base and just just about to head back into the office for the next couple of weeks before we hit the road again.

Erwin  

So hang on, you hosted families via the starlight charity at your resorts. Yeah, the

Darvin  

Starlight Children’s Foundation, if familiar with them. No, I don’t know if they’re out this way. Yeah, they’re quite a large organisation that work, work with hospitals work with sick children, people from all different backgrounds. And we partnered with them to look for maybe children that don’t have the opportunity to get out into the county and kind of experience. So we hosted them and their families that are different resorts and just you know provided a food and activities and a bunch of laughter and then ultimately all of our staff at our resorts have had a great time as well. So it was a win win for everybody.

Erwin  

Amazing. Yeah. Your kids all this?

Darvin  

Yeah. Well, a couple of my kids were a little older, and they were working but yet my youngest son was there working hard, making the resort look good and hosting people on the boat. So my wife is there helping cook and we had a couple other staff at our resort. And then like I said, we were doing, we were doing six different resorts. So that was a great time.

Erwin  

Philosophers benefits, how you say Darwin is a bit of a big deal. But we’ll get into it, we’ll get into it. So backstory is how you got on the show was I asked my friend Steve, our mutual friend, I said, Hey, recreational properties or has a hot item, you know, like, who’s the best person who’s the best person to speak to recreational properties? You know, a lot of people are talking about short term rentals Airbnb ease, you know, so then he introduced me to you. And yeah, you know, I mentioned before we start recording, you’re the only person I know who’s who owns a golf course. But yeah, let’s let’s start from I don’t know, how did you start your career? Like, let’s start there. What was like your first job out of university?

Darvin  

My first job when he seven years ago working for one of the big banks, and my second job was working for one of the other big banks and then and then my third job going into work for one of the largest insurance companies. So yeah, I started my entire adult life working with investments and ultimately in the financial industry and my early years were kind of a training ground and took all the courses that I could take and tried to move my way up within the ranks and he’ll eventually went more independent and got into the business owner side of things, which was kind of what my aspirations can always worse. Since going to business school, that was my goal. So, yeah, I learned a lot about with banks and how they operate. And you know, how they make money and how they tell their advisors, you know, these are the different investments that make us make us the money. And this is your report card on how well how well you’re doing for making the bank money. Ultimately, I wanted to find other investments and other ways for people to make money than just what what the bank was providing. So I ended up moving more into the independent channel where I had a little more say, a little more choice than just searching for these investments or slogan at Pinnacle wealth has been, you know, continually seeking unique opportunities to find how to create wealth for investors. And by doing it on our own, and having our own team of people that look for these great opportunities, we have the freedom to choose what we believe is best not necessarily what a big corporation feels that we shouldn’t be pushing on investors. You know, that was that was the beginning of my career, though the banking world and looking at all the different products that the bank had. And then, you know, taking courses through the Securities Institute, and, and, you know, the fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute, and more I learned about investing in the public markets. The more I realised, though, this is not something that you can predict. And it doesn’t really matter how good I get, I have no, there’s no ceiling here where I can say, now I’ve know what I’m doing. And I can really make a tonne of money for myself and investors. Because really, the more I knew, the more I realise, I’ll never know, like, right, like Warren Buffett, you know, he’s by a great company that Hold on, don’t try and trade stuff, don’t think that you can beat the market because Because ultimately, you can’t. And so that was less challenging for me than when I realised I can’t become a guru in space. So that’s where I started to lean more towards the real estate side of things. Because I do think you can control you can control your own market a little bit better, you can predict where the markets going without it turning on a dime. Whereas in the public markets, it turns earlier, or an earlier, you know, before we hear about something happening in the public markets, the big money’s already moved out of it. Right. Like it’s it’s happening so fast now. And it’s so sophisticated, that there’s there’s really no no fun in it, right? There’s no because he can’t You can’t beat it. So yeah, coming into the private world and investing in private companies became my focus. The private companies don’t have that turning on a dime, you know, the news comes out and all of a sudden the share price as a as a massive change. Normally, the the valuations are dependent on what, what’s the income being generated for the company? What’s the outlook for growth in the company, and what’s the sector look like? And so, back to more normal investment fundamentals in the private side, and more specifically, in the real estate side, like I said, there’s a little bit more predictability. And I really, like hard assets. And so, you know, going into into the private side, we focused pretty heavily on hard assets. Just, you know, for reasons that you know, and I’m sure most of the listeners really liked about real estate.

Erwin  

So that’s my fault. Darren, thank you. So a good friend of mine was he worked for one of the big banks as a financial advisor. His clientele was like, I think 3 million and up and assets under management. So like he was decent, and one of his including he had a major real estate influencer client as well. Like, I mean, he says it’s private, obviously. And so I go I go, you’re like, Oh, that’s awesome. What kind of cool stuff can you offer? I’m like private stuff like stuff I can’t get. It’s like nothing. No private equity options, everything that you know, like 10 million assets under management guy, I can get all access to the same stuff. And it’s all you know, all stuff people are note were aware of GICs mutual funds ETFs like what do you guys do different than so what what was your experience like? Was there many hard asset options or real estate options for not working for public financial institutions?

Darvin  

Nothing at all back then. Yeah, like bank

Erwin  

offers I can buy gold from my bank but it’s really expensive. The fees they charge are ridiculous.

Darvin  

Yeah, there’s no options it was it was actually quite disappointing in what you can provide to clients so having to look for something something different you know, they’re they’ve missed out I think they missed out in a big way over the last 20 years. I think they realised that and today I think they’re still trying to figure out how do they do it? How do they get into space and so there’s there’s going to be a slow change over the number of years but right now the options are still very limited. That’s how I protect the wealth. Did

Erwin  

you did you buy it? Did you start it? Yeah, I

Darvin  

found it a pinnacle wealth. So like, like you were saying, the way it came to be founded was was Most by by accident, but when you talk about how you ask a broker, like, can you invest in real estate invest in private, there was no option. So I started doing that for my clients when I left the bank and the insurance company was looking for these private options as an independent, you know, and as a business owner didn’t intend to have brokers at the time, I just want to be able to offer Publix and privates to my client base. And what I found was a lot of my new clients were actually financial planners that worked at the banks, or they worked at a large mutual fund broker. And I’m like, why you guys, my guys buying your RSPs for me like it just like it just really clicked when I was driving on the road from a road trip, signing up a bunch of clients on flow through shares, you know, because flow through has a very short window of season when you get in to get your tax deductions. But again, most of these clients, again, were financial planners, they understood these investments, they couldn’t sell them to themselves. And ultimately, some of them were asking, Hey, can I work with you? Can I do what you do. And so ultimately, we had a broker network being formed. And back in 2009, we were raided by fast 50 Girls number one fast 50 growth company in Alberta, and, you know, continued on that path, and did some rebranding and ultimately went national with Pinnacle wealth brokers, in 2010. And it was a unique time in the marketplace, with regulations and a lot a lot of regulation changes kind of came into place. Because our regulators province by province, we’re seeing the demand and the change for for private investments and what they call

Erwin  

Jarvan. You’re having to be regulated under every province are regulated under that sounds like a pain in the butt versus like versus a single regulator. Wait, because I believe in the States is just one regulator. There’s one one national.

Darvin  

That’s right, one, one national regulator. So yeah, it’s something that’s a little disjointed in Canada having our provinces of 10 different provinces that pinnacle wealth brokers is regulated.

Erwin  

Felt like a lot more expensive, unnecessary. I obviously have to do it. They write the rules. So

Darvin  

our compliance department is their biggest department because you go from one insurance regulator, Canada, they do their routine reviews, and then the next province comes they all have the responsibility to oversee the activities happening in their province. And

Erwin  

the clients budget must be millions.

Darvin  

It’s expensive, it is expensive. The cost of doing business for sure.

Erwin  

Right. So not because it’s not a business you start overnight.

Darvin  

No know, it takes time to build for sure. And it’s not it’s not the easiest business to be in for sure.

Erwin  

So how I got introduced to pinnacle, I don’t think Brian Paulus was mine that I share was, this was years ago, so a friend of mine, Brian pulis, of course, investments, he was one that introduced me to pinnacle, because he was telling me how he wanted to be on the on the best, you wanted to work with the best. And that’s how he ended up with you guys. I know and I heard it was long process. You guys are just from what I hear you guys are not you guys are quite picky. The diligence period is long, like a couple of years. But yeah, but that’s that’s how I got it for sure. There’s just the pinnacle. And that was like, a long time ago.

Darvin  

Yeah, Brian and Poulos been one of the the REITs that we’ve been raising money for for for many years now. And, you know, they’ve they’ve done very well and been a successful investment for us as as most of our REITs have been. But we do get approached quite often. And so we do have to have a very detailed selection process that our corporate finance team goes through from, you know, the finance side, the legal side, the client side, and salability what’s unique about them and let them sell in a portfolio. So

Erwin  

because what I’ve heard is, you know, if you want to be bigger, raising capital is either a full time job for yourself, and that’s several others, or you can work with someone like Pinnacle wealth. So can you can you explain to listener what Pinnacle wealth brokers does?

Darvin  

Yeah, we we bring private investment opportunities to market to the retail channel across Canada. And we’d look at, we try to look at a wide variety of investments so that people are properly diversified. We have dealing reps and all the provinces in Canada are the main provinces. And so we’re coast to coast and those DNA reps are financial advisors, really advising on private investments. In Quebec, they’re also able to become mutual fund licence if they wish. And some of them are life insurance licence and so really there and they refer to portfolio managers on the public side, if they if they’re not offering that themselves. And so we’re a portfolio manager as well. So there’s different register duration categories, but we offer public investments. But our niche is really just bringing these private opportunities to market helping get the offering memorandums created, so that we can go raise capital in client manner. And then ultimately we we stay up to date on the investments that we’re raising capital for, and, and work with them if on the financial side and monitor the investments as as they grow. And, and ultimately, we see the benefit of them growing and becoming successful. investments like century and we brought to market through a company that we had acquired when they were new. And they’re they’re one of the largest REITs private REITs in Canada today and 2.6 billion, I think they’re gathered a few different funds. Now it’s adds up to about $6 billion. Right.

Erwin  

So that because the is it, the president or the owner, he has a wonderful newsletter. So for listeners, like if you’re interested in geeking, out on what someone consumes and thinks about real estate, who made that who manages 6 billion? Check it out, check out his newsletter. And so Pentacles quite large. Are you not like your national? I can’t imagine many EMTs or national? Yeah, we

Darvin  

I think we, we have more dealing reps. So more presence than anyone in Canada where we have about 7078 Dealing reps, from coast to coast right now raised about 1.3 billion in retail dollars into the exempt market products that we offer. And like I said, we’re growing growing on that side. And I’m also trying to reach out to the financial advisor network, they said the work in the public companies and then just show them like as part of our goal in the next five years to really show them that they can have access to because they can come and offer what we have to offer and what they can still offer what they have to offer so they can properly diversify their clients. Yes, proper diversification,

Erwin  

I think the key word there. And so for the newer listeners, or the smaller investors, from what I see is when when say like an apartment building investor wants to scale up. Generally, capital is their biggest issue, assuming but most of them are quite talented at finding good deals. But you know, you kind of need to focus on one thing, most of them seem to most will go to someone like you to try to raise the capital for them. So who so I imagine you get a lot of people asking you to do their capital raising for them? What do you think it is, like 10 to one, like asked to actually get on your shelf as an offering hundreds of one?

Darvin  

Yeah, I know, we used to track that a little bit better. It’s about one a day that approaches us. And lots of those don’t even have an offer. Yeah, they just have an idea. Some of them have a full operating memorandum already done. But we want to make changes. But yeah, we only had six to eight new kind of offerings, or maybe less than that maybe less than six offerings a year. Now. The ratio is certainly very, very challenging for an issuer to try and get onto the show got to have a track record, you got to really have a strong team behind you. You got to have really good corporate governance, and you got to be in the right sector, you got to be offering something unique, can’t just be raising capital so that you can buy something to grow for yourself. It has to be like how do you really provide extra opportunity for investors to provide that above average? So we’re looking, you know, and we look at risk adjusted return like So ultimately, that’s what it’s about, like if the risk can be higher return for investors has to be hired to

Erwin  

sadly, I find the understanding of risk adjusted returns is lost on many people. Like for example, I’ve seen like promissory notes for like 17% So unsecured loans for 17%. And then like, you know, the credit your credit card will want like 20 to 30% for that same kind of security risk that you’re taking on? Why would you give it away for 17%? Anyways, moving on. So how many products can you give us like a high level of number, give us listener a high level understanding of like, what kind of products you guys offer opportunity offer? Because I talked to Steve and it’s like it’s currently varied. You’re telling about like you have some like you have some like music one as well.

Darvin  

Yeah, we look for something like unique opportunities to increase wealth, right? That’s our mandate. And so a lot of stuff you’ll see will be a little bit different than what you find. So Steve mentioned music royalty fund. So through ICM, they they have the investment business and they have a REIT but they also accumulate the music royalty for I brought some talented people together to buy, you buy songs that have a long standing track record of being played and you get a royalty. When those songs are played, it goes into back to the owner of the of the song, what we like about it is it’s very diverse, it’s not correlated with your stocks or bonds or your real estate. And so, you know, just a very unique opportunity that provides a consistent return as the song could stop being played. Right? You look at the the friends soundtrack, or whatever that was on the TV show Friends, wherever that one went up for sale. And as long as it keeps getting played the there’s there’s royalties coming back.

Erwin  

And so that’s why you have ownership in the friend zone.

Darvin  

We didn’t know our fund didn’t buy that one. But people have like, they have different kinds of songs that you can buy, I thought that one went for like $300,000. And then you kind of own the royalty. So it’s not not super expensive. The goal for the for this music royalty fund is, is to buy ones that they believe will continue to be played, right or have an increased amount of what they’re being placed. So

Erwin  

I’m trying to time it, I would sell it for the seasons, the series is over.

Darvin  

Yeah, there’s a lot that goes into into their business, for sure. And the key again, good, great management team with that, understand what they’re doing and understand the business and very prudent on the financial side. It’s easy to get excited about something but you got to make sure it makes long term financial success.

Erwin  

And you mentioned you have Centurion which is incredibly boring apartment buildings. 6 billion, just apartment buildings.

Darvin  

Yeah, but some of the very best managers in the space. Right? So they’ve provided us double digit returns, you know, for a long time now. So last years,

Erwin  

we my mom’s invested in the the carwash fund.

Darvin  

Yeah. We thought, well, what’s the unique aspect where you can get into real estate, but maybe they can generate a little bit better return than than typical real estate? And so carwash, you have the business side, you got the real estate side. So we liked that asset class, and that was probably closer 2015. When we got into that, then after that it was storage facilities like can you consolidate or build storage facilities where there’s high demand, so that was nationwide that started doing it. And closer to that in Vancouver, you know, instead of going by cheap land where the storage is spread out, they thought, let’s go more vertical, and be more walkable and closer in proximity because there was high demand for that. So that’s just one other real estate kind of asset class. We have stuff. It’s not real estate at all. We built a fund we called Pinnacle institutional access fund, and it’s access to Blackrock as a money manager. And so they they invest into private companies that are much larger scale than other companies, you would see on the pinnacle wealth brokers shelf. So they’re investing in the United States and Europe and Asia. And so the only way that is one of the funds that is very unique to us, we chose not to use their real estate funds do we have lots of real estate, but they’re, they’re buying secondaries funds, funds in private companies that may be large investors need liquidity, so they might need to sell the private fund that they got into your five years ago. And so now they sell a pool of private investments and our institutional blackbrook fund those managers of Blackrock to money, largest money managers in the world, decide which ones they want to get into it and get out. So that performs very well. It makes up a good chunk of my registered plan portfolio than then. Yeah, we have lots of different kinds of unique opportunities that don’t without being out, but it gives you kind of a general scope of like, what we do a pinnacle wealth brokers.

Erwin  

That’s why when I explained to someone new to the space, I say, you know, this is the way I explain it, is the analogy I use is it’s like a mortgage broker who has access to many different types of mortgages and lending products. You guys are a broker of different investment opportunities in the private equity space.

Darvin  

As writer. Yeah, we exactly. That’s a really good way to explain what we do. Your job is to quarterback which we think is best for the client. And including diversify you can one can diversify across many funds. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket, that that’s key. Choose whatever, right? Yeah, you said it before, right? Diversification is key and it’s easy for anybody else. losses, investors might favour a sector, right? We might favour apartment buildings. And maybe you win on apartment buildings, or you have one on them, but you don’t know what the future holds. And that’s why financial planners always tell you to diversify. And that’s the job of our brokers is to make sure what’s an investment, what’s in your investment portfolio is suitable for you. Your timeframe matches your risk tolerance, and the diversified, you know, over concentrated just into one sector.

Erwin  

And I believe my mom’s returns on Polish was 14%. Last year, so she’s quite happy with that. Predict the future. This is not financial advice. Don’t sue anyone. Now, I want to ask about your own personal investing. Because if we started off the show, we’re talking about like recreational property. Yeah, please like, like you were talking about Warren Buffett, for example, like Warren Buffett, of course, correct. So along the way, like 10 years ago, did you ever think of you buying recreational property?

Darvin  

For me, like I have been in like, I’ve always had a bought a cottage at a young age, I grew up what are the competition water skier, and so our family was always on the lake. And so I like that space, we have a recreational property for 15 years in Honduras. And, and so I think a lot about it, I think both the pros and the cons. And ultimately, when I had some money coming back from some of our exit market products, I needed to deploy, redeploy. And I wanted to think of something that I can hold for the long term, like, what do I really believe in? What sector can I just, you know, have a 10 plus year time horizon that I can invest in. And ultimately, we thought the campground space hasn’t really been touched by big investors. So what you’ve seen happen with apartment buildings, or even office space has already happened in this space yet. And we happen to be living in Alberta, and we spend our time in British Columbia, those are the two best places in North America to invest in this space. So I made an investment with my own money to try it on the first fund, I call it and it worked out really well. And so we thought, well, let’s see if we can replicate this and do some other properties and start inviting investors in. So I although invested in all the properties that we have. There’s only two that was kind of myself and my business partner. That is just us. And now we’re doing a fund that is for everybody.

Erwin  

So before we’re recording, I mentioned that I think it’s I think it’s the right thing to do is to cut your teeth, your own money, if we will you and your business partner. But yeah, he was he was active on this, too. He has needed each other. I think it’s I think it’s the appropriate thing to do your own teeth with your own with your own money before going to use other people’s money to invest, especially especially when it’s something that hasn’t been done before. That’s how I was going with my next question. My next question is actually can you speak from your own experience the importance of using recreational property? Because like, you know, you went from, you know, university to owning a national nationwide poker network. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. didn’t happen overnight. Wasn’t a four hour workweek wasn’t

Darvin  

read the book, loved it. Great concept. But yeah, getting down to 40 Hour Workweek still still a goal. So yeah, how did they get to recreational space is your question.

Erwin  

Like, what’s your experience? Like? How important is recreational space to your to yourself? Because again, like your journey has not been easy. I’m sure there was your business building. You know, you had a startup. All right. I’m sure that’s stressful. If you have four kids, or kids, or kids yeah. Busy, busy.

Darvin  

Yeah, so I guess you know, from my family aspect, getting into the recreational space seemed like a good way to start finding balance. You know, it’s one of the slogans we use the pinnacle lifestyle, it’s, you know, finding balance. Getting out of the desk, for me was a big thing, spent a long days in front of a computer and eventually that catches up with your knees, your back your neck, you know, either your forearms, your typing. And so, health and fitness. I grew up being more athletic than I found myself as an adult because it wasn’t getting out enough. Playing enough sports. And so yeah, but this I realised that’s when you’re happy too is like after a workout usually feel better, right? After going to play hockey with your friends or going to do any kind of sport. You feel good getting out in nature. One of the things that really astounded me was an article that came out when we’re starting the pinnacle lifestyles as doctors now prescribing prescriptions to go for a walk in the park and it’s like, wow, that sounds so crazy. And the more you read into into nature, the more healing you realise that it does for you, and so in some cases, it can replace entities depressants, but ultimately it does. It does make you feel good releases endorphins to be out in nature and just hear the creek, the water running through the creek and the birds chirping. And just to get outside hiking and walking in the park is really good. So for me, it was a feel good thing. It was healthy for me looking for what’s healthier for me in the future. And, and how do you help others, we know that there’s a big problem with technology really consuming our time and our minds, especially kids. And that was a concern for me and my kids was, was seeing how these, you know, these all these new apps really have their attention and, and their mood, right their mood after spending time not to pick on anyone but Tiktok or Instagram or something for a couple hours, their moods not the same. Right? As you go you play baseball with your kids, and they see what their mood is after it’s just a night and day difference. And so I have a pretty big passion now of trying to encourage people just to get out and and to be more active and live that lifestyle. So yeah, it’s a bit of a feel good investment for sure.

Erwin  

This is I love where this conversation is going. Because I find many real estate investors. Like, you know, I never grew up thinking I wanted to be a landlord. And so what I find a lot investors are new and veteran, as they’re always trying to figure they’re trying to figure out where can they find their passion within real estate. And then you’re a living example that you’re doing exactly that. Right, you find your passion. So tell us more about about I don’t know, maybe the first two projects you got you started doing with recreational wise. Yeah,

Darvin  

well, we always look at investment fundamentals. I mean, we’re an investment brokerage, we looked at 1000s of opportunities. And so the one stat that came out that really, that Tom brought, to me who’s my business partner, was there’s 20, recreational vehicles or RVs, for every place to plug an RV into in British Columbia, and an 18 RVs for every place to plug an RV into in Alberta, then you go into Ontario, and it’s more like six to one, you know, and a lot of United States a lot lower. So it’s just a it’s out of balance. There’s not enough RVs especially service derbies, there’s some dry land count more dryland counting, probably than a lot of places where people can go that they don’t need any services. And so there is counting opportunities, but we know where the trends going. People want electricity, right? People want running water and services. So we look at that as a very solid investment fundamental to base our location of business on right because with real estate, its location, location, location. So when we get asked why we’re not in all these other places, I just go back to the number one fundamental that made me want to start this business and then we looked at it from from different angles, like how do we do better than what an average campground owner gets? Are they getting a cap or a 10 cap on their investment where you know, apartments or maybe going down and cap rates so you know, there is there is opportunity to take a campground and increase the revenues, I think we’re well over 40% in the first year of of our operational campgrounds that already have to service RV sites in there, and being able to increase the revenues from it. So there’s there’s lots of little things you can do as a company to be strategic to get more customers coming and take advantage of off season. Take a business it’s actually profitable in two months of the year because we’re in Canada, right like they these campgrounds make their money in July and August. You might have a long weekend or September long weekend, but you don’t make money typically in those months. And so from an investment side we go in and say is this something we can make money in and more than two months going forward. And so we’re looking for those ones like fishing resorts, while April May are really good fishing months in September and October really good fishing months, but they’re also on beautiful lakes. So you know, white lake fishing, we have a fishing Resort at White Lake and the shoe shops in British Columbia where it’s top 10 Rainbow Trout fishing lake and so it gets a much longer season and it’s just a great investment with consistent cash flow and people are spending more on fishing so we upgraded our old owners residents and making a fishing lodge and we’d like to keep evolving that into into providing more services to people that maybe want to have fishing guides the future so we’re not there yet, but we are seeing boats

Erwin  

I mean Oh that sounds awesome. I need a fishing guide. I don’t know anything. Yeah. I don’t like putting a worm on my hook. Hook beaver

Darvin  

fishing is a really cool thing. Again, it’s not a sport that’s getting your your your endorphins out as much as as most sport but when someone gets a like this weekend with the Starlight Children’s foundation we had a few kids to catch a fish for the first time in their life. You know, some of these kids are 1617 years old, you know a smile on their face is just priceless is a fun sport for people of all ages. And you know, something that I’ve grown to like more and more I did a lot when I was young and I hadn’t done it much less

Erwin  

you know, I can recall every memory of fishing with my kids. I’m sure you created some amazing memories with across your six resorts for those poor children.

Darvin  

Yeah, yeah, I mean they did they all had a good time. We got some positive reviews from I think all families, but even just our regular campers right like just it’s just one smile at a time right? That’s our goal for our staff and all the different resorts help great smiles.

Erwin  

So for the listeners benefit like me my benefit to how do you describe like six out of six resorts? Like how many campgrounds is that? How many RV? Do you can you host like how do you quantify that for somebody just so they can understand the scale?

Darvin  

Yeah, well, they’re all vary greatly in size. And so we have where I have my cabin and I bought it more just because it’s where I want it to be. It’s very small 1.4 acre campground 20 RV sites, five other cabins to rent out. And

Erwin  

that alone is pretty big for somebody. Five cabins 1.4 acre 20 RV sites. Okay, that’s that’s, that’s more than the mouthful. Okay, so that’s one.

Darvin  

We have one in Edson which is the first one that I bought with Tom and it was 143 fully serviced RV sites. We got a privately we got a couple suites like condo style suites and and a cabin on that one. And we have like 100 acres of expansion room. So we’ll keep building RV sites on properties like that. We have the Golf Resort Kokanee springs and coot nice, and that one is 432 acres. So it didn’t have any RV sites. We bought it and then we put on RV sites. So we just were just launching like I said beginning of June like 36 RV sites for for rent and then 26 RV sites for sale and we have nine new cabin lots that we’ve constructed on that property.

Erwin  

I’m sorry other cabins for gonna be for like Airbnb or your hotel or

Darvin  

it’ll be the it’ll be ownership. So if somebody wants to have their own cabin for ownership, and then Pinnacle lifestyles actually has a management company and it’s through our same investment fund that we manage will rent those out. So if you want to rent yours out, we’ll do all that work for them. We’ll advertise that we provide the cleaning and come in and get them rent ready for everybody in between customers. Amazing. And then going on to other resources may have Revelstoke and Sitka moose. Guests we have about 180 sites and our Revelstoke campground and I think it’s 86 sites and the second most campground we have gold that I did, that’s not one of our six campgrounds because it’s just it’s 200 acres of riverfront property that’s not developed yet. So it’s nice beautiful treed property actually on the Columbia River on both sides of the Columbia River and it actually owns on both sides of the way a bit Creek so there’s kind of a where two rivers can join we own all around this, this beautiful junction of of two gorgeous rivers. So again, fly fishing and, and the trails ATV trails and stuff from there are quite wonderful. One of the tights it’s right across the road from the staging area for sweaters and snowmobilers. So again, it’s one of those places that we can make a 12 month of the year season, close to the ski hill and golden and but beautiful summer and winter and fall and spring destination release. So that one we’ll put on a few 100 RV sites like we will with the coconut springs golfers or we’ll put a few on like three or 400 on each of those properties. So yeah, that kind of gives you an idea of the size of the properties but the investment horizon continually being able to develop more lots in a resort that is already popular and attractive, and then allowing people to either rent or allowing them to buy. We have both options. And I think we’re the probably the only unique company that does this in North America where you can come in and you can kind of do both can have multiple properties. So you can move around from from different locations if you wish. We were allowing people to invest, invest in a fund that owns all of these different resorts and we do have three different funds that own those ones that I mentioned. Fund three is the one we’re on now and everything going forward will be in this political lifestyle. It’s been three, but they own the management company so they own the rental revenues. They only golf course they’ll note we have a 62 room hotel that’s at that golf resort so they would own that And then so they get the they get the fees from the restaurant revenues, we have a marina at the White Lake fishing resort. So they would own part of the marina and the boat rentals and the gas, the only it’s only gas station on the lake. And so there’s multiple streams of income and what we have as one different investment, one investment, very unique Pinnacle wealth brokers to invest into the sector. And it’s a sector that I don’t think many people have in their in their investment portfolio, and it happens to be RRSP eligible. So, you know, if you want to buy with a TFSA, these are your registered plans, you can do that as well.

Erwin  

I mean, that was a mouthful. How much? How much did it cost to acquire all these properties? And over what period of time? Like, you know, one of them is one of those a personal property or cabin, unlike all the other ones that were bought strictly investment purposes?

Darvin  

Yeah, cool me the exact numbers, but we’re in for about 17 million on on the equity on these properties. Yeah,

Erwin  

over what period of time over the last three years. Okay, so on average of 6 million to deploying in every every year.

Darvin  

And that’s the reason we went to full investment offering for accredited investors to allow accredited investors to get in. But in order to, to get the velocity of building all the amenities and campsites and the cabin sites that we want, does require for a fairly high amount of equity. And then so we also use some debt, but we’re very low leverage and this time of higher interest rates. So we prefer equity for sure in this space.

Erwin  

So I can speak to the listener, like you’ve said, You’ve dropped many golden nuggets. Like for example, you mentioned you’re trying to extend beyond just the summer season because like, generally for Airbnb, this candidate generally Airbnb, for example. Most all our friends, even my own experience was the summer killed, Christmas killed, but then maybe Thanksgiving. But you know that there’s a lot more to the year than that. So you mentioned snowmobiles, if that’s the property snowmobile near SamMobile trails that will be popular emission fish, and that’s a new one for me is is hearing about like the fishing opportunities within for that property, make it more marketable as well it gets more rentals because I literally have friends who rent the entire winters. And like Muskoka, for example, to some old dealers, when normally you get nothing else like if you’re not if you’re a three season cottage, then you don’t get that business. But if you do, then if that’s available, right, every

Darvin  

property we have actually is close to fishing and every property has close to snowmobiling. And and I think all of them are not that far. It’s it would be the farthest from a ski hill right from a world class like ski destination in Revelstoke. We’re in the city of Revelstoke. And it’s the tallest vertical of any mountain in North America, right golden has one of the most popular ski hills and we got three that are about an hour drive from the Kokanee springs destinations, they’re all

Erwin  

ski so now, if you’re unsure, you’re in Blue Mountain, you’re telling

Darvin  

ya know, four of our properties are kind of in the Rocky Mountain area. So we’re, you know, golden being the heart of the national parks, you can go in all directions and find a national park within the Rocky Mountains and golden. And so from that standpoint, you see people coming from eastern Canada, you see people coming from Asia, you see people coming from Europe, because they want to go to the Rocky Mountains and they want to want to own a piece of that right. And so I think in the future, we’re gonna see a lot more people wanting to own, you know, in the national park close to the National Parks you can’t own in a national park like bath is the closest beautiful mountain destination for us in Calgary but you got to drive paths down and then you can go to Lake Louise and then Golden’s next so it’s one of the closer destinations we can actually have ownership to these

Erwin  

kinds of properties. Are you seeing much action from Americans in Kokanee we’re

Darvin  

starting to see them come back again for the Golf Resort. They through COVID that had slowed down a little bit but also increased in people that were more local. That didn’t have to travel as far so we’re seeing that we’re seeing and Revelstoke for sure we just have tourists because a lot of our properties around there and Highway One, you know Revelstoke and sick of moose and, and white lakes off highway one so you get a lot of people coming from the United States and also from Europe. A lot of people come from Europe and rent your campervan and they’ll stop it all these properties along the way between Vancouver and Calgary it’s a very public route if I don’t have a snowmobile can I rent one from you? Yeah, we don’t rent them but with knowing soon we work close with a company called stomping ground and so they do they do a TV show actually and they’ve done that filmed the TV show at all of our different resorts. And they’re big snowmobilers in ATV years and so they have all the fun toys and equipment and so I think it’s As part of their future will be opportunities to to get into solo deals and they do so. Yeah, that’s awesome. Pancho Yeah? Oh,

Erwin  

can you share the story of the how? Just for someone cuz I’m sure for the listener this sounds all massive it is because of this big. Can you share the story of how you bought the the golf course in Kokanee? Like what was the story behind that? How much can you share?

Darvin  

Yeah, that’s that’s good question that’s unique. It’s a Golf Resort, it’s been there for well over 50 years very mature trees in just a gorgeous property. It had different owners over the past and like most golf courses, would you build a golf course very expensive. And then you got to build a customer base, that’s hard. All the golf courses that we’ve really looked at, they’ve had a history of running out of money, because they spend so much money on building it developing it, and then they bring in new investors or a new group buys it. And then you know, that usually happens two or three times when a developer is being established. So I, I’ve always wanted to stay away from golf courses. But this one was quite special and unique. The last owner group, and this was nine different investors. And they’d been in it for about 30 years, and Done, done a great job with the resort itself. Like it’s nice as golf course that I’ve golf that like it’s just absolutely beautiful. They were all successful business owners in different regards. So you know, some real estate, some not real estate, some oil and gas, and they put a lot of money into this Golf Resort. And they’re all retired and that in that age, I think the youngest was 72 or 73. And, you know, the oldest was was well into their 80s. So it was just time for them to move on. They actually approached us because they said you know what this resort needs, it needs Pinnacle lifestyles, and it needs our unique 30s It needs cabin they wanted to create, it actually had the vision that we’re rolling out for Kokanee springs. And so you can see some beautiful pictures. Kochi springs.com, or Pinnacle lifestyles.ca. But it’s, it’s a gorgeous resort that just needed more people. It’s in the Kootenays, which is crossed from Nelson on that lake, the Kootenay Lake, beautiful lake again for fishing and boating, but six hour drive from Calgary a little bit more than that from Vancouver. And so in order to make the golf course really successful, we need people to come and stay longer. And to make the resorts successful, we need to be more than a golf resort. So we are building a small private lake on the Golf Resort. So people could swim and paddleboard and it’d be right in front of our restaurant and bar where we can play music. And, you know, Pinnacle lifestyle is all about creating community. So we want to bring the people in from their cabins and their v’s and get them out and then do fun activities. And we already have a beach just like that with the privately gather Edson property and get weekends going in our hot summer days. And it’s just it creates that community where they’re making new best friends and adults are doing the same thing. And being kids again. So they ultimately their vision sold us on like you right, this is this is a golf course I would consider it takes time to build that community. They have a long standing customer base, we come golf one or two or three times a year. But we want to figure out how to get them to stay there longer and how to increase the population in the area with 400 acres. We’ve got lots of room to develop on. So that’s a bit of the backstory to like, how we came about that that one resort.

Erwin  

I was talking to a friend of mine this morning about she she’s considering selling her house in Muskoka. And I was saying, you know, with climate change the way it’s not the direction it’s going is, you know, for example, I just saw a bunch of my friends just get back from Florida, because they do not want to be in Florida for the summer. Because it’s it’s already uncomfortably hot there. Right? And with climate change, they imagined swing and keep getting warmer southern states, even northern US states and I imagine more and more than will come to Canada, especially with the strength of the dollar, just to avoid the heat.

Darvin  

Yeah. I agree. And that’s another aspect of this space, right is that it gets people out into nature where they if you’re conscious about the environment, we’re super conscious about the environment and our resorts and use top tier septic systems because we’re not usually connected to city sewer conscious about the amount of water we use, but Cocconi springs itself is an inland rainforest, kind of only one of its kind in North America, is that that area around Kokanee and it’s people are attracted to that because they realise the amount of nature in there is increased like it’s a crazy amount of wildlife that you see, but it also just feels good to be in that slash rainforest type of a zone. So yeah, but I totally agree with that. lot of people will be coming, coming north and coming to beautiful nature properties right in the Rocky Mountains being one of them or like Muskoka. Those are popular places. And I think in the long term, those are going to climb up in value more than your typical city destination.

Erwin  

Hopefully, you guys have a whole host of investor events or something that discounted rates for investors.

Darvin  

We knew Yeah, investors get discounts so we have a concierge service, we’ll help them provide their tours to our different destinations. So yeah, and our big investors kind of get a golf for life that cocaine springs and but we do we do various investments online for people to see what’s provided in the lifestyle has been

Erwin  

amazing. Yeah, so that’s how you buy golf. I met need to share how much you paid for the golf

Darvin  

course. Yeah, you bet. It’s in our offering documents. So we we actually had I think was 11 point 4 million somewhere around there was the the actual tax assessment on it, but we only paid 5.4 million for the property. And the old owners did roll in 1.4 million. So we had to write a check for $4 million for for this property. And like I said, we got 62 room hotel, as well as the golf course and, and some other sweets and lots of equipment and golf carts and stuff that we’re seeing in the restaurant. Lots of extra acres to develop on. So fantastic buy. When you look at value investment there.

Erwin  

My timing might be off, but like golf course you bought it late pandemic, am I right?

Darvin  

Yeah, we bought it. Our possession date, I think was October, coming up on two years. Now, this year will be two years. So yeah, that would be the later middle pandemic.

Erwin  

Alright, so but at that point, like golf was on fire. Was there multiple offers, like was it a competition? Well, there was

Darvin  

there was lots of other people looking at it. And with different views of what they wanted to do with it, there would have been probably higher bidding on it if it had been like six closer to a mean centre. And that’s part of the reason why the price was was more favourable, but the owners also wanted to deal with us because they like the vision of where we were going to take it, they really care about this property and the whole neighbourhood around there because like I said, they spent last three years there, their friends are there. And they’ve been there, the biggest employer now were the biggest employer kind of that area. So it was important for them to see that area thrive and create more employment and so I believe they could have gone a little more selling it to somebody else, but I think they you know, they made a good decision and in partnering with

Erwin  

which is your favourite property?

Darvin  

Yeah, that’s a that’s a tough one. Like I said, coconut has been the place that the nicest golfers that have ever golf that they feel like you’re in a different world when you’re there, you’re it’s a total slow down laid back kind of community and rain forest that, you know, so it’s I think that is my favourite place just to be where my cabin is. And the second moose area, it’s houseboat capital, Canada, I grew up is like waterskiing. And so that’s my favourite Lake is where I’m Mara Lake, which is similar to White Lake, they’re close to each other. So those are my favourite lakes for sure. So I’m torn between the two. Like a good question. I like to spend time at both those destinations.

Erwin  

How does someone get to the golf course you mentioned, it’s far from our major centre.

Darvin  

You can fly into Creston. And it’s an hour drive from from Creston, British Columbia. So questions fairly close to the US border. So it is fairly so. And so that would be your nearest airport that you can fly into? Well, what else do you look for

Erwin  

when you got into this? This sector real estate, you mentioned that the complete imbalance in the demand, the number of RVs out there in places they can plug in one of the one of the things were you looking for, in terms of how to make money in the sector,

Darvin  

real estate in general location, right was big. So one of our other themes is just buying in World Class destinations. So there’s a lot of campgrounds out there, which campgrounds are going to do better if campgrounds aren’t doing well, you know, I think you got to be one of the nicer campgrounds, it’s got to be very beautiful. And it’s got to be accessible. And so like I said, Highway One is where a lot of our properties are, because it’s super accessible. But we look into like in the future where do people want to be and where will value go up and we think boating as well Harvey’s, the amount of sales from our V’s the amount of sales for boats have been on a pretty steady incline. And and so having lakefront access was another big thing that we looked for, and also having marinas because you can imagine the in today’s day and age how hard it is to go get a marina approved or how to get harder just to get any development approved on the Lake Park gas station. They find a way So we’re not, we’re not looking to buy stuff like that, where we have to go get approvals. We avoid that, right? That’s one of the things just stay away from because it’s pretty bureaucratic world out there when it comes to getting those kinds of approvals. And it could take years, you could spend millions of dollars, and you could never get there. And so we want stuff that has approvals or in like the golden situation where we’re golden property is, there is no zoning on there yet. And there’s so there’s no, there’s no body overseeing or restricting what we can do. And so we have the ability to develop a new campground just the way we want it. Based on today’s market demand, we’re looking at doing geodesic domes, just to create the buzz and getting people out there, right above the river and then continuing with the fly fishing that they do off in the river. But we can do that because there’s no restrictions. So we would avoid it if there was a need to get get a rezone on a property because that can be difficult to do.

Erwin  

I want to ask as a lot of beginners and like even veterans, they’re always looking for partnerships. Now I can tell you how to build their teams. So you came from a finance background, your company raises money for living. Who else did you need on your team to make this happen?

Darvin  

On the wealth broker side, like to raise

Erwin  

no on this record on this portfolio of six vacation recreational properties, you’re not doing this on your own?

Darvin  

Yeah, well, we have 25 full time staff that run like the headquarters and oversee everything from we need people in charge of marketing, we need people in charge of sales, we have a planning officer, we have a development officer. So you know, we have obviously a fairly large accounting team because we’re reading books for lots of different companies and destinations. So you know, there’s there’s human resource manager. So there’s quite a quite a large team that oversees all you can imagine we have a lot more staff in the summertime, we get busy, so you’re well over 100 100 people kind of running the resorts. So we started with the top, you know, getting a board of directors together that had experience in these areas, especially in development in real estate. And and that had capital and ran different businesses. So that’s the kind of the mature group has been through multiple recessions. And they know like how to plant and how to get through all different kinds of market environments. And then from the board level, we looked at the executive level. And again, people that can operate people that have the pisser vinegar to go out and actually the passion to work that the hours that it takes to work because it’s not, it’s not a business that runs itself, I haven’t found that yet, in any of the businesses that we’ve looked at, and it’s something that we’re building, we’re not buying to operate what was there, we’re buying to take it to a totally new level. So every property we buy, it’s got development on it, and it’s got more marketing, we’re bringing in more customers. And so buying or building the team is critical. And Pete finding the people with the passion to to run and operate, lots of times we get lucky because we buy a resort that has people that just love it and they don’t ever want to do anything else. And so we get to keep that the on site staff that are there and we’ve gotten really lucky with that and a couple of our resorts we have human resources to go out there and find people that are passionate about that to bring in all the different roles we need for seasonal stuff.

Erwin  

Now what about your business partner Tom? What What What’s his job in this and what is his experience or background?

Darvin  

All right, he’s good he’s a very talented young man that does Master’s in real estate so he his background, I would say is a combination of of real estate and investment banker so he’s worked for big investment banking shops, small investment banking shops, when you’re doing the different kinds of investment that we’re doing, you need that talent of somebody he was my head of corporate finance at Pinnacle wealth brokers. So he spent a couple years looking at all these different private investments and learning what makes them successful where are the risks and and what to avoid and so very talented man with a with a really bright mind and and understands that the numbers sides so he’s really trying to make this work as an investment and he does oversee the development and the operational team and he’s always making sure that the numbers make sense for everybody from an investment standpoint.

Erwin  

You mentioned numbers and where risk where the risk is like before recording I mentioned like there’s there’s investors going belly up over leveraged likely variable mortgages and rates have gone against them. I think guys mediate know how do you manage your risk?

Darvin  

Yeah, we mitigate risk. With a debt level. That’s that’s our biggest thing like we we will never go over 60% loan to value but in general, we’re we’re under like around a 40% loan to value and we want to keep that lower during times of uncertainty. And so we can because we have an investment dealer, like one of the biggest risks is like we start spending money on development. And if you don’t finish the development, you don’t have renter’s, you don’t have your customers coming in yet. And so we see that as a big risk in real estate. And we avoid that by being able to raise money, because we’re an investment dealer. So if we need more capital, we can raise more equity, we don’t believe we’re going to run out of the equity needed, but we also are avoiding too much leverage, especially because interest rates are higher. So the lower the interest rate, the more we’d be willing to do and will slide up the mountain leverage, as we’re putting in a whole bunch of new RV sites with intention that we’re only gonna put in what we think we can sell over the next 12 months. So that means that leverage is going to drop back down again, in the short term, we’re not leveraged over the long term, and our model has under 40%. Leverage.

Erwin  

And correct me if I’m wrong, when you’re raising capital, you’re raising equity. It’s not debt that you’re paying interest on.

Darvin  

That’s right. We’re raising equity only. Yeah, yeah, we do have we do have some financing and BDC finance, but two, we have a private lenders, finance been three that we hope to move over to some some, like bank financing next year. And so there’s debt that way, but we’re not raising capital for the debt side.

Erwin  

You mentioned that you’re you mentioned that everything that you touch has approvals, for example, already. So that’s a that’s a risk that novice investors miss out on is that its path of least resistance would be the beyond side with whatever government wants all levels. How is government for you that like fed municipal, provincial? Are they on board with what you’re doing?

Darvin  

I think they, they want it right. They want what we want as far as like getting people outdoors and when you’re creating jobs. You’re definitely creating jobs, a lot of jobs, and a lot of environmentally friendly development. But I can’t say I mean, they have a process to follow. So when you’re dealing at a municipal level, they have to they have to check all the boxes like they do for anybody, whether they like them or they don’t like them, it’s the same process. And, you know, we found with our Revelstoke project to be really slow in getting the ability to build a cellar are a lot and we get it, it’s just we waited a year and a half to kind of get the answer that we wanted and that was just just their process that they go through and they get opinions from everybody and and ultimately we got full support. So yeah, we were not stuck on anything on that level. Like I said, we were not asking for a lot we’re not asking for rezoning or we don’t need rezoning and second was we are asking for it. We don’t need it. We get it it’s even better for the project. But we don’t buy somewhere where we we need it because that would be that would be too risky for our investment mandate.

Erwin  

Firemen this has been a blast. I learned a lot. Oh, my lesson learned a lot. For anyone interested in following along or learning more about Pinnacle wealth, or these recreational funds, where can I get more information,

Darvin  

you can go to Pinnacle lifestyles.ca Pinnacle wealth.ca for other options that we have at Pinnacle wealth brokers, my emails, Durban at Pinnacle wealth.ca var vi n at Pinnacle wealth.ca

Erwin  

The internet is forever.

Darvin  

Give out a cell phone number of my my branch managers, your friend who introduced me to use Glazier. He’s one of our dealing representatives that if you’re looking at investing into a fund, he’d be happy to talk to you direct and I think he gave permission that hey, if you’re interested in the call so Steve, please Yaxha 416-464-3085 It is email Steve lazier get Pinnacle wealth.ca.

Erwin  

And for listening, I’ll have this on the show notes. So don’t worry if you’re driving or cooking or I don’t know what else people deal with and listen to podcasts sleeping already and thanks so much for doing this. I understand. I know you’re really busy got like $1.3 billion to manage and six properties of hundreds of acres to develop.

Darvin  

there and I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show and get in front of all your listeners. So yeah, appreciate it. And hope everyone has a great day.

Erwin  

And ah, sorry, I’ve had to always ask my guests like any final thoughts you want to share?

Darvin  

I just I thought it was super, super interesting. I love your podcast and I am starting to listen to it now. Especially your your Mexican fishermen one that you had sent me. I’ll be thinking because yeah, that’s That’s again like you knew that that was a connection that I’d have. It’s like a think about how to get to what you want in your life and be able to do what you want to do and it’s not always about money. It’s about being able to do what you want to do. So Chase the dollar raise a dime. The cool thing about like folks our age, just because we’re not at your level, but many of us who have been around for like 10 years like they’re all now having the Mexican fishermen conversation because they have enough now to for for now super retirement but a pretty good retirement. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thanks, Sundar for doing this and I gotta run. Okay, thanks everyone have a great day

Erwin  

before you go if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already, then sign up for my newsletter. Find out for yourself what so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell me I love teaching and sharing this stuff.