** Transcript Auto-Generated**

Erwin 0:00
Happy Holidays. During my trip to Texas investor nightmare story, tenant criminally charged, threatens three other tenants who leave. This was a four Plex, still waiting on the hearing, moving to Florida buying and holding dozens of American single family income properties. All this and more in this week’s Truth about real estate investing show for Canadians. Hi, I’m your host Erwin Seto. I get a lot of great here. And because I’ve been a landlord and real estate investors is determined by a team and I have serviced over 350 investor clients for a total of $440 million worth of income properties. That’s local real estate transactions since 2010. And we currently have about 45 millionaire multimillionaire real estate investors and Mr. Clients in counting as Bill Parcells says you are what your record says you are. We have a pretty decent one. This week. I’m heading up I am hanging out, up north, working working while the kids are in ski camp. If you can see behind me there’s not much snow out here. Normally I would be skiing but there’s little to no snow so it’s not worth the cost. Blue Mountain has. I’m recording this on December 29. Blue Mountain only has two runs open out of like 43 or something. It’s really sad for skiers this year. I am planning a trip to Austin, Texas. I fly in about two weeks time. flights and accommodations are book booked horseback riding lessons tickets to Joe Rogan’s Comedy Club, shooting fully automatic weapon guns, check check check. Real Estate wise my research and my friends at share my friends who own a US investment asset management company. They tell me Texas is an excellent place to invest due to economic growth and diversification. Big growing tech sector shortage of housing landlord friendly, lonely friendly state with with no state taxes, state income taxes, massive job growth thanks to employers like Tesla’s giga factory and Samsung’s brand new not yet built your finished new microchip manufacturing plant currently under construction that will open soon and employ 2000 high paying manufacturing jobs. I’m going to rent a car and book some meetings and viewings to view. What I hope to be my next income property binding properties online. These are detached homes 150 square feet 150 Sorry, 1500 square foot houses detached three bed two bath two car garage for around $300,000. American that is that already for close to $2,000 per month plus utilities. That’s a 7% gross rent yield. That’s better than duplexes in the within the Golden Horseshoe area. And this is again, this is a big city though is Austin, almost a million people. It’s 1.7 When you include the greater greater metropolitan area with upside growth potential. Awesome has it’s based on my research, Austin’s population has grown twice as fast as the state of Texas, and four times the national average between the years 2010 to 2020. Over a 10 year period. If when I do find a property I want, if I do find one will have an Austin, I will ask share the tech based asset manager company to underwrite the deal for me in order to leverage their skills experience, that our master agreements for property management and insurance. So I can save money, and to keep this investment as passive as possible. Especially if I find something that needs a whole lot of work like 50 $60,000 worth of work. I don’t have contacts on ground. So I will leverage them because they’re going to charge me asset management fees. So I may as well make them work and get my money’s worth. I just need to list my three student rental properties and get them sold first. I’ve got cleaners going in next week, followed by photographers. And once that ready, they will be ready to be listed for sale. We should be like, Why? Why am I trading in my local investments for American ones? The reasons are endless. Just last week, I had a speaking engagement at Anna Scott’s event in Cambridge, Ontario. I ran into an old friend who shared with me how her four Plex she has a nightmare tenant who has threatened bodily harm and been charged by the police. But the other three tenants have all moved out. So one out of four units is currently occupied, but he’s not paying rent. And she’s still waiting until until January 8 for her hearings at the landlord tenant board. The neighbor tenant as again has been criminally charged by the police. How bad is that? That the Ontario landlord tenant board is still allowing someone who’s been charged by police to live in the property and has been a danger to other tenants. So what’s up Have that the investor plans to slowly sell off her portfolio and getting out the landlord business in Ontario and who can blame her? I certainly don’t. Either the either the landlord tenant board nor police are protecting her tenants nor her property rights. If the property was located in a landlord friendly state in the USA, defending tenant would be out in days and probably in cuffs in jail. The victimized tenants would be able to continue to enjoy peaceful use of their apartments, and the landlord would have already would have a new tenant moved in paying rent within probably 90 days. Alright, and there is no wonder why myself and hundreds of our local investors and VC investors are looking to looking stateside for our next investment property. If you go back to why we are real estate investors, and understand I’ve met with an interviewed well over 300 real estate investors, including our own 350 Real Estate Investor clients, the mass majority of them are in real estate investing to generate cash flow. Specifically, the goal that I hear many, many, many times from the majority of people is they want $100,000 of cash flow per year. And with that amount, most people can replace one income in the family and possibly retire one parent. The noble part is that most investors that I work with, they usually want to retire their partner spouse, so they may stay home and raise the kids. Cash flow like never forget cash flow is what buys people freedom. Sadly, including myself, I think had drunk on appreciation over the last decade or so. The equity with all the equity gains, we took our eyes off the prize. Hence, I’m doing a reset here to diversify increased liquidity. And considering market trends market trends in Ontario, I’m slowly moving my real estate portfolio set the border to landlord friendly states where there is no rent control and where cash flow is significantly better than here. And that brings us to this week’s guest Carmen de Silva, who is a Canadian who lives full time in Florida, who knows a lot more about investing and cash flow in the USA. Carmen is CFO and co founder of share. She is a CPA in both Canada and the USA. He articled for PricewaterhouseCoopers specializing in corporate income and cross border taxation, Carmen built in insurance platform that allows investment brokers to sell tax sheltered insurance, yada yada yada. Basically, she built up a business into a $500 million assets under management in just five years. And then she sold it and bought 25 single family homes back in 2008. For an early retirement. Now those were properties we’re all in Florida. She has significant, significant firsthand experience in US single family rentals, and has always recommended direct ownership and us real estate income properties to her accounting, accounting and financial planning clients, including her own children. Carmen’s 25 year old son already owns two rental properties in the USA. Currently, Carmen is passionate about combining AI, technology and real estate investing to make us income properties accessible to everyday investors, not just the ultra wealthy and the multibillion dollar institutional investors out there who are currently gobbling up all the good income properties. In my experience, it’s rare for financial planners and accountants to recommend and own so much real estate. So for you, my 17 listeners, you’re in personal retreat, we can only cover so much in the 60 minute interview. So if you’d like to learn more about us income property investing, or you want to be able to ask common questions directly, her and her team will we will be presenting at our us investing workshop on the morning of Saturday, January, January 13. In our office in Oakville, this will be hosted both in person and we’ll be broadcasting over zoom, we will cover what investment properties look like the numbers, corporate structures and counting financing property management as much as we can in just one morning. Of course, we are teaching your direct investments, I just wanna be clear about that. Understand that most influencers out there are looking to, you know, raise private funds for to borrow, or for some sort of share based investment or joint venture partner. This isn’t none of that. Not private lending nothing. This is good old fashioned Income Property direct ownership, which is in line with how I myself and my on our 350 Plus clients invest in real estate. Link to register and details are in the show notes. And so yeah, so yeah, please enjoy the show.

Hi, Carmen, what’s keeping you busy these days? Oh,

Speaker 1 9:40
well, Christmas approaching about family here and I’ve got three young adults and lots of family keeping me busy, besides of course, full time working on share and building our platform to get investors on board.

Erwin 9:55
So you’ve been you say three young adults or your kids, three

Speaker 1 9:57
children. So I’ve got two young girls and son, all in their late 20s.

Erwin 10:05
And they’re all successful.

Speaker 1 10:06
I hope so successful, I guess, first of all, from education are all university graduates, full time jobs, and I say successful in getting their wealth. Basically, they’ve started they’re planning, I guess, at a very young age for retirement.

Erwin 10:28
Because you’re sharing before we’re recording about to stop me from not wanting to share these things, you just say how your son already was planning long time ago for six months savings for? And also he owned two properties before he graduated university. Was it?

Speaker 1 10:44
Yes, yeah. So basically, what I teach my children is a term that maybe most people don’t hear financial balance point. I don’t like the word retirement because when I was doing some marketing, in the past, when I had the business, I used to get these diagrams of marketing of someone lying on the beach and doing nothing to someone with a cane. And I’m thinking that is not what I want my children to see as retirement. I retired at 40. And so what I was teaching them is what we call financial balance point, how do I get to a point in time, where my assets are giving me enough monthly cash flow? To replace my job? Okay, so to me, that’s financial balance point. So to do that, I was educating them on cash flow from real estate. So for my son hearing that all his life, parents already doing it. When he was an intern, he bought his first property in the US, giving him a positive cash flow. That’s internship money.

Erwin 11:45
So first of all, we’re all Canadians here. Yes. So you said your son was going to Western? Yeah, sighs in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, but he bought a property in the states that he bought a property in the state when he was like, 20 years old.

Speaker 1 11:58
What do you when you graduate? He’s in internships, his last year of university, so he must have

Erwin 12:02
went to occupy 1.2. Okay, so big difference from 20? Yeah. This thing states,

Speaker 1 12:10
the important part is the size of entry. Right? So entry level property is also important. Right. And so, how I got that education was years ago, when I first started in real estate, way back in 2005, I would say, is the first exposure. And the idea of buying entry level gave me the protection that if the markets went up or down, I wasn’t as affected. You know, so it was smaller price points, and easy to enter that you didn’t need a loan, you could have cash accumulation, and we were able to buy. Okay, so that’s what he saw. And that’s what he started with. When he got his first real job.

Erwin 12:47
I was sorry, before we move on from the first property. Like, what, what, where would you find this type of entry level property? And what kind of budget are we talking about?

Speaker 1 12:56
Well, at that time, I mean, for let’s go back to my background, I had a financial planning service business here in Canada.

Erwin 13:04
And before that, you were CPA, a CPA, background,

Speaker 1 13:08
I’m a I was articles at Price Waterhouse did the Small Business auditing for years moved into tax planning. And so it was with International Tax Department for a couple of years down in the saga. Eventually, when I got married, I left Price Waterhouse and joined my family business, which was in financial planning, having a guest that structural tax background, and then getting insurance license and full securities license, probably the first offices to understand product and structure. So we started teaming up with top investment advisors across Canada to support them on what we might call an integrated financial planning system. And that group, you know, for years, when I was 40, decided to focus on the family. I had three young children. I think, Matthews in grade one. Rachel was two and Ashley was in grade four. So we decided to move to Florida, right because I just wanted to work hard but I want to play hard to write enjoy life and everything Wow. So that uproot, into Florida gave us the opportunity to still continue with the work. Because a lot of my work was done by a virtual video conferencing machine at all our offices at Florida what years this was you’re doing virtual everything. Oh, yeah. It was expensive at that time. Now that you said that, like Skype? Well, we have video conferencing machines in the boardrooms of our offices, and $1,000 for ITN lines. It was expensive process. So we should be very happy with what we have today.

Erwin 14:42
Wow, you’re doing the virtual thing back there back

Speaker 1 14:44
then. Because I mean, it started when I saw my niece who moved to Zimbabwe take her little the parents took the look camera for their computer and I thought well if we could do this personally, why can’t we do this professionally and introduced the idea And that’s how we start to build our brand across Canada. So I’m saying that took us a while you did it from Florida. Well, of course, it took us national and Canada, then I was able to move and work from Florida. Okay. But because of securities license that didn’t last long, because I mean, although I had a full Office with licensed individuals, because to speak the way we did, everyone was licensed in our office. I eventually sold the business, but I thought I was going temporarily loved it enough to stay more permanently. And so that sale of the business gave me the opportunity to I say, it’s luck. Luck is when, what is it opportunity and prepare this meat opportunity and prepare this meat? So I had the money from the sale of the investment, but as prepared to kind of move into real estate for the first time or in the US. Right? So this,

Erwin 15:49
you already had so much exposure to accounting? Planning? I’ll tell you all sorts of investments.

Speaker 1 15:56
Yes, yeah. Because again, I was a full time advisor in investments. When it comes to alternative investments Only later, you know, so for me, it was more stocks mutual funds. ETS was later in our in our world. And alternative investments was more recent, that I started to see a lot of development projects here in Canada and started to get exposure to it. The only reason I got exposure to that is because I liked what I was doing with direct investments. And when I came back to Canada to introduce it to family and friends. You’re seeing their alternatives here, right, and development projects and other things. In any case, so what happened to me in 2008, when the crash, I had the opportunity of buying investments in the US at a very low price. So when you say entry level, I think at that time and at that time I went from I think I mentioned to you earlier, my first real estate opportunity was when I was in my late early 20s I bought a property in North Bay manage it myself, we went and fixed it when we had to sold it eventually because it’s too far. And then never did any real estate since then. It’s only when I arrived in Florida and had this opportunity that I really got back into real estate and at that time we bought it was all condos 25 of them I can’t remember why it was this portfolio was sold but we had the funds and we bought

Erwin 17:18
sort of what your what your as the that the by 25 I

Speaker 1 17:21
think I think around it was just after the crash and I just say around 2009

Erwin 17:26
So somebody lost their shirt.

Speaker 1 17:29
We got a great deal, but lo and today a lot of the properties so let me go from condos. We moved to more single family rentals. Right. And the reason for that

Erwin 17:42
these are houses on land. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 17:45
What does that mean on land?

Erwin 17:48
Because when the Katelyn changes talk the talk let me see usually say condo they usually mean apartment condo. So a high rise, okay. Okay. So I always have to specify, is it on land or not? So,

Speaker 1 17:59
condos, this is the three storey so it is what you mean. Anyway, so yeah, it was a three story buildings that apartments what they called apartments. Remember where I’m talking about St. Pete’s there’s most of them are like two three storeys. That’s it. Right. So that’s what we were buying. And at the time, sorry, this

Erwin 18:17
is St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Florida. So it’s just that’s close to where you live in Tampa. Yes. So

Speaker 1 18:23
I’m in Sarasota. This is between between Tampa and Sarasota, St. Pete’s. So

Erwin 18:28
for the water. I’m only getting better at my changing Florida geography lately. So for the for the listeners benefit. This is Gulf side. And pretty north in the context of Florida. Right this mid? Yeah, I know. But like when compared to like Miami, it’s, it seems really far north. Florida’s a huge state. Right? Because like, what is your How was how long is your drive to Miami? Three hours?

Speaker 1 18:53
Three hours? Yeah, it’s not too bad. Yeah. So anyways, the reason that we got out of the condos into single family is at the time even even to sell a property was difficult because I didn’t realize in the condominium world. Financing was difficult. Let’s put it this way. They didn’t want to finance a property where possibly one person can own more than 100 properties which which was happening in those condo units. They had little more control over price points, rents, fixing all that. So there was a financing issue to be able to a lot of the people we want to sell our property to couldn’t get financing because of these condo units. And I guess the management could control

Erwin 19:39
it. Or because there there are a lot of big players that were basic dominate the board. Yes, I see. I see.

Speaker 1 19:45
So then I thought to myself, I just need to get out of this space and more into single families where we don’t have those type of issues. And I personally I also don’t like condo fees. For me. It’s not as controllable and you know all of that I’d rather put my own budget to get Have an escrow for repairs and maintenance so developed over time and so

Erwin 20:04
no HOA fees. Yeah, that’s the American lingo I haven’t learned.

Speaker 1 20:09
That’s when I moved more to single family rentals. The real estate agent I was working with also had a property management company

Erwin 20:18
seems to be common, more common than the states. It’s not that common here in Canada. Okay.

Speaker 1 20:23
Well, for my knowledge, he was always saying that he had to build this property management company, because a lot of his clients weren’t happy with the ones he was referring to. And he wanted a little more control because he’s doing, you know, sales for both sides. So in the end, he had built his own property management company in upstate New York, Western New York. And he was also a real estate agent there. So got exposure to buying properties in the Niagara Falls area. side. So

Erwin 20:50
sorry, can you can you give us more context about your property managers scope of business because for example, I am backtracking what I said realtor’s as property managers not that common. It’s, it’s common in that there’s lots of condo agents, for example, who will manage the property for their client, but we’re talking about pre construction, there’s really nothing to really do really, and they have no staff, really, they don’t have tradespeople on staff. They don’t have legal teams on staff. So can you give some context about like the scale of your, your Realtors property management business,

Speaker 1 21:23
and that wasn’t a large property management company. But he did have legal and health.

Erwin 21:31
It helps, like unheard of.

Speaker 1 21:35
Today, even it helps him you know, when we need them for the eviction process as an example, but also in the sale of sale and purchase of assets. He has a local construction teams, you know, whether it was Florida or in the Niagara Falls area. So these are people on his payroll? No, no, those are contracted out. People contracted out but they were teams that worked on all his projects. So they were almost like full time on all his projects.

Erwin 22:01
So even though they’re on contract, they’re basically 100% allocated to him. I think here, you technically are an employee tax, yes.

Speaker 1 22:10
That’s the way to me knowing that he’s managing the project and getting it done in time within the budget of what they quoted was important. And that’s what we kept saying, yeah, it never happens. And that’s the tough part, right? If you’re, if you’re doing it on your own, and you’ve got to find those people, I mean, trusting contractors to stay on budget, and on time is always critical,

Erwin 22:30
which like never happens.

Speaker 1 22:33
So and then the and then, of course, he had the operation team for accounting and keeping us you know, because they had a platform that we can go on to all in house, all in house. You remember though, when I started a lot of their statements or paper statements today, they’re all online, and we could see our our monthly income and all those things are online now. But at one time, it was all paper statements we used to get with what went into our account. So things have evolved a couple of couple of pointers though, the idea of the sweet spot was important to me. concepts I learned and I liked is what’s that price point that doesn’t fluctuate too much as markets go up and down. I had to learn that because we bought at the bottom of the market. And that was scary for all of us to think, Okay, I’m buying this real estate, what if it drops? You know, everyone’s asking that question. But in the in the REIT marketplace, the single family rental is very resilient, because at the same time when markets are dropping, you’ve also got higher demand for rents. So we’re seeing our rent go up, we’re holding on to those properties anyways. So very little fluctuation and valuations, but possibly higher rents. And that’s what got me intrigued, because I was already getting good positive cash flow. So consistent, predictable cash flow was my goal. Why? Because I’m already thinking retirement. Even though you know, young family wanted to focus there and having this income stream, it actually changed my way of thinking. Remember that I was teaching retirement planning before I got into real estate. But when I first got a monthly check into my bank account, it’s the first time I really felt retired compared to having paper assets that were going up and down and maybe dividends were going in them reinvesting but never really felt like a paycheck. Where this monthly cash flow felt like a paycheck. You know, so that’s when I started to teach this idea of financial balance point. And I use the term how many months wealthy are you? Because a lot of people are asset rich, but cash flow for investors and most people it’s North America every year right because in the end, it’s not that I own this great principal residence. How am I using it to create a cash flow for me? Okay, so what is my monthly income stream because the moment and I also have to have a target, how much is enough? And so but most people I start with their base, you know, what’s your base budget that you need if you wanted to retire? How much do you need for food hydrocolloid, you know, your basic needs? What is your monthly cash flow? When does it cover it? because then you’re at financial balance point, after that you’re going into higher mountains great and tapping for other things that you want in life, you’re gonna have more assets. But meeting, how many properties do I need to have a monthly cash flow to replace my income? Because now I’ve got that freedom to be able to do whatever I want to do it, maybe moving jobs and maybe retiring altogether, maybe, part time, whatever my choices are, happiness factor improves when I have choices. I’m not stuck in a rut, I have to be here and I can’t leave my job, because who’s gonna pay the month’s rent? Or mortgage? Right. So that’s an important key point is and calculating what that number is? How many properties do I need to give me that monthly cash flow is critical. So

Erwin 25:43
I believe that well, in speaking to investors, I guess we can investors all the time, especially when they’re when they all have that as their objective initial objective for real estate. I think people in today’s market and again, recording this December 2023. That doesn’t really seem to be an option here in Ontario, or BC, to be able to generate any sort of decent amount of cash flow, without shelling out millions and millions of dollars. On actually, let me just add to that, like apartment building investors here, like I’ve had, I’ve had REIT investors on the show, who was who pop say publicly, their cash flow event is the refinance, not from operations, right.

Speaker 1 26:22
And so you need that combination. But the point is, I’ll go when you’re saying that, I call it stretch your dollar. Right? For the same $500,000, I’ve got my nephew, he had $500,000, he could have bought his first condo when he got his first job. And I was saying to him, Why buy the condo that’s gonna give you no income, keep on renting, and whatever you’re doing as a down payment. And what did we took that 500,000 and went invest in the US, one condo, one bedroom condo here, I could buy five properties in the US, even at 400,000, say four properties with the currency. Okay, those four properties could be giving them a healthy income stream that can now replace his income, eventually help them buy that home. So I got for you, I think the order of things is what’s important. You know, what I like about this new generation is we grew up my generation, my parents struggled, and most of them had, you know, it was a struggle. And so for us, and our children don’t see that struggle, because we had the house had the car. But what I like about this new generation is because they didn’t see us struggling, they’re not, they’re not into things that aren’t experiences, they don’t mind renting for a while and traveling for a while and doing all of those. The beauty of that is they can get into investments first. And then buy that dream home, not the other way around. Because the moment you buy that dream home, you’re caught in a rut, right? Because your mortgage payment, you’ve got a lot your budget, it’s so much higher, it’s hard to invest. You have to now wait till you have enough equity in your home to borrow to invest and do all those things.

Erwin 27:56
And your costs are so high to like, here, we used to pay double tax if you’re in Toronto, well, you know, there is so much beyond the property,

Speaker 1 28:02
the tough part is the banks and the industry doesn’t allow us to think that way. It is so much easier for your first after your first job to get a first time home than it is to get an investment property. They don’t lend as easily. You know, I’ve experienced that with my own children. They don’t lend us easily for investments. So finding financing teams that will lend you based on the house and not just you not based on on your income levels and all of that it’s really key finding those investment financial instruments to be able to do that.

Erwin 28:40
So I’m gonna take a stab at who our listener is. We only have 17 listeners, by the way. I don’t need my why you’ve just wasted time on the show. So the you already you already said most people here are acid rich. There’s a lot of people a lot of existing investors who are probably negative cashflow. I have some negative cash flow properties as well. What would you be telling these people assume they have Canadian investments? Certainly like BC, Ontario, what would you be telling them? What would your put your financial planning hat on? What would you be telling them? That

Speaker 1 29:14
that’s a tougher one? Because I mean, everyone’s individual and to me, financial planning comes with understanding not just whether taxes today, but where it’s going in the future. So it’s very difficult to answer that question without really seeing the person is because if I said to you all sell all your assets, especially the negative cash flow and move into positive cash flowing assets, we got to consider tax as well in there. And so timing of the movement is going to be important. I find with tax planning, sometimes it’s not all in one year. Yeah, you might be planning at the end of the year planning is really important to our December it’s it’s really important to do some this year, some next year. So how you how you do it is going to be important, right? So the first thing is you’re looking at positive cash flow assets. So if you’re transitioning for one to the other, that planning needs to happen. Okay? If individuals have HELOC and they don’t have invested, they’ve got equity in their home. Using that as a vehicle becomes a great way of getting into the US market or any real estate market. Okay. I remember when I was doing financial planning, I was teaching a lot of people strategies of how to use the accumulated cash. Sometimes it’s sitting in an RSP. Sometimes it’s sitting in retained earnings in a company, how do I pull that out to be able to use without this big tax hit? Okay. And most of the times we were doing a strategy where we borrow on our HELOC, why are US properties, okay, and use just the interest and pull out of the RSP to pay the interest on that loan. And that’s a slow way of exiting the RSP and starting to build nonregistered a slow way of exiting the retained earnings in your business, but starting the investment in the real estate right away. Okay, so sometimes purchasing the properties this year, but exiting the cash that you had accumulated may take a few years for tax planning purposes is what I’m saying. Does that you follow that? Or is it was that complicated? Everything’s

Erwin 31:10
complicated. That’s smart. Anyways, I would just recommend to listen to this, listen to that apart again. And then watch the beginning into because we’re talking about like, you know, I hear it all the time people have fear of going to a foreign market. Which is funny, because I remember when George W. Bush, George, yeah, George W. Bush, they said the internet said overseas and he said Canada’s overseas. We’re not going over any overseas here. We’re just crossing the border for investing. But all of your all of your real estate investments on the states, right?

Speaker 1 31:41
Yes, yes. And to be honest with you, I don’t look at any of them, I don’t see any of them. Sometimes you have to treat it just like a mutual fund, we’ve got a manager, if you’ve got a good manager that’s overseeing it. You’ve you’ve dealt with, I’ve not seen any of my properties. Okay, when I was in Florida, I did see those condos, I can’t say any of them. But I’m talking about today, as I diversify across America. It’s rare that we’re seeing properties. So recently, as an example, we took the portfolio and refinanced the New York properties that were giving us good cash flow, refinance, and bought some in Texas, the Texas Property won’t give me as much cash flow, but better appreciation. But that diversification of good cash flow properties and appreciating properties works well as a as a mix. Okay, so the first thing is, you got to get comfortable with the right team. Right? Because to invest, and I don’t mean just invest in the US even investing from one province to another, one state to another, right. So moving outside your local area, means you have to have a good team around you. Okay, one thing that’s changed from my original property manager that was local to in Florida and local to Niagara is with shear. And that’s what I enjoy about the platform that we’ve built is we’re able to use institutional grade property managers, construction teams, all the way all the way through from purchase acquisition to construction and getting it rent ready to having a tenant in there. All of those are institutional grade managers that help us get things done on time and on budget. And that’s key. Because as soon as I can trust a team like that, it’s easy for me to move any anywhere. So

Erwin 33:26
for listeners benefit more, pretty much no Canadian has exposure to what a what an institutional property managers like. Exactly. Like, for example, my context would be like an OG but I’m drawing a blank now than ever trust, for example, which is a massive, I think they own the majority of apartment buildings in the Hamilton. Right. So they have their own internal property manager, right. That’s an institutional grade property manager. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 33:53
but where are they dealing? In Ontario alone?

Erwin 33:56
Probably, yeah. Yeah. But my point, though, is that they don’t serve as the public. Okay.

Speaker 1 34:01
But even if they did, Ontario alone already stuffs me. So what I’m saying, okay, the difference is, when we’re looking at, first of all, remember that our clientele base our investors for share our across Canada, so so many provinces that we’re dealing with, and across America and properties, that’s a lot of states, right? So we got to look at concepts that are and even structures that are available to diversify a portfolio across states. Okay. So when we’re looking for a property manager as our partners, they’ve got to be able to deal in as many states as possible with all three, right acquisition, construction teams, and then your leasing and rental like operations. Right, that’s not easy to do.

Erwin 34:48
It’s not now I want to bring this to the listeners level, because I know a lot of people on social media and other you know, I’ve had guests on the show talking about apartment buildings. So when I talked to someone when because the question that you As they get are like, Oh, where are you going? Where are you investing? Like, I’m going to all these different places? Like how you gonna buy buildings and all those places? Like, I don’t want to buy a building? Because you could Why did you choose single family homes instead of like 30 storey 30 unit buildings?

Speaker 1 35:18
Well, the first thing is the the ability to diversify. Right, because remember if you’re diversifying market, so I like the idea that I’m in Texas a little bit, I mean, Florida a little bit, and I’m in New York state a little bit because, again, the first principle is to buy in the right market. Right. So when we’re buying the right market, it’s based on I’ll go rent rolls and rent increases, obviously employment and meaning there’s, you know, employability, there’s an economy in that area. So all of those things are the first key criteria for entering any market. Well, once I do that, I think for me, maybe being the planner that I am, I’ve always liked the idea of diversifying a little bit. Okay, now, I don’t like you know, we used to use the term diversify diversification. So I don’t want to be diluting my profits. So if it’s a good area, I’m not saying I’m right away buying all over the map, it’s good to concentrate for a while I understand what you’re doing. Even the idea of concentrating real estate is concentration. So I like the idea of concentrating if I like the predictable cash flow it’s giving me but I do want to diversify in various areas. Okay, the ability to buy at certain price points. And sometimes I don’t like something too big either, because I can’t sell the front yard, not the backyard. So sometimes the smaller units can then get me some liquidity if I need to, for one or two. So and so the single family rentals I find are resilient. As I said to the marketplace, that price point, what I talked about the sweet spot of price points is critical to me. And that helps me avoid that fluctuation in price on my portfolio. So all these reasons for single family rental,

Erwin 37:03
to new detail, but more about what the sweet spot is like, for example, like for for years, I’ve been focusing on startup market. So the easy math, like the general math would be about 10% less than the average price of the home in the area.

Speaker 1 37:17
Oh no. So for me sweet spot isn’t about the price point of the home in the area. I’m talking about the price of the home itself. Okay, so for me the where’s the point in time, like, I’m not buying a million dollar home where if the market drops, I’m affected by that. First of all, a million dollar home normally gets affected by that. It’s not a rentable type of home. I want cash flow. Yeah, exactly. When I’m talking about sweetspot, I’m talking about the price point of a home that won’t fluctuate heavily give me good cash. Well, because it’s a renter, when markets go down, and renters are looking for properties to rent, you want to be one of those properties, you know, sometimes my price point. So when I first started, but then prices were lower, I really buttoned 150,000, I a lot of our homes, when we first started, we actually bought them at 60 or 80,000. That today there was 400. All right, but who would have thought

Erwin 38:09
you bought for cash flow, but you got like five time.

Speaker 1 38:13
But I didn’t expect the appreciation. I never thought St. Pete’s in that area would go up like that. No one did. And so just COVID did that. It wasn’t about the appreciation, it was good positive cash flow and more importantly, entry level that I was able to enter that market. So I didn’t need a lot of money to buy a lot of properties, I can enter it at a very young age and very little money is what I’m saying.

Erwin 38:35
So today what so for someone’s entering the mark US market today, where where should they start?

Unknown Speaker 38:40
Today? You’re not gonna see those price points as easily.

Erwin 38:44
Yep, people have to appreciate how much government money has been printed and understand how inflation comes from.

Speaker 1 38:49
So today, I mean, that sweet spot, I’m gonna say is more like that 150 202 50 in that area there.

Erwin 38:57
And then what areas?

Speaker 1 38:58
What areas? Again, that’s something that I think when, depending on the marketplace, so for right now, we’re invested heavily in like Texas. Again, the other piece is tax. There’s places we can buy properties like Texas, as an example is in no taxed state. Right. Tennessee, no tax state, so areas that not only have good growth and rent potential appreciation, but also lower tax. Can

Erwin 39:24
you specify which taxes there’s low or no tax?

Speaker 1 39:27
There’s about eight states that have no tax, state income tax, yes, income tax. So we’ve got a federal tax system and then like Canada’s a provincial tax system, each state wants their share. Texas has no tax. Tennessee has no tax. Washington, Nevada, also their Wyoming South Dakota, trying to think of all the states that have no tax, but there’s quite

Erwin 39:55
a few of them. Yeah, generally the people who are tracking a lot of jobs

Speaker 1 40:00
Exactly, there’s a reason and some of those states, I mean, they’re ready for growth. Right? I love Texas when I drive there, because the infrastructure, the road systems, they’re built for growth.

Erwin 40:10
Yeah. And they have waterways as well to break down to allow for growth and cheaper transportation of goods, you

Speaker 1 40:16
don’t you don’t go far and go to them to just start. Start, start in one of those states. In the price point that you feel comfortable with the as I said, it’s looking at what assets you have here. I think what came up in our conversation earlier, is the ease of financing, right? Because before, even for my own clients, as we start to build more portfolios in the US, we could only use the HELOC that they had, which is the equity in their home. We take that equity in the home and buy their properties cat for cash. You know, a few years later, we’d refinance them and buy more and start building a portfolio that way. Today, we’ve got financing where we can buy it on more of commercial basis, it’s I think, the way you termed it, but to me, because

Erwin 41:01
here’s here, here, that’s the debt service ratio mortgages that you can get in the States is how we do apartment buildings like for you made in Napoli. Yeah. Which is the dream for investors here, right, especially if you have tough credit, or you’re self employed.

Speaker 1 41:15
There’s those reasons, I always say there’s an order to things though, the HELOC is gonna give us our best rates because it’s on a home, you know, so that’s your best rates, investment loans come out a little higher price. And then if you’re doing an a loan, where it’s based on the property itself, and not looking at the individual, it’ll be a little higher night, so the rates will be there. But now you’re able to buy as many as you want, knowing that that house is cashflow positive, and that a bank has actually assessed it for the same reasons. They’re also looking at the same things that you are. So they’re able to get their interest on the on what they’re lending you. Right. But the ability to go beyond just you and your income is huge. Because otherwise we were capped at how much can I borrow based on my income and my assets? Right? today? It’s not like that. And it’s much easier to get those type of loans and

Erwin 42:03
maintains or caps much sooner because the properties are looking at in Canada just so much more.

Unknown Speaker 42:08
Entry level isn’t there.

Erwin 42:10
I was just talking to someone from from the Vancouver area who’s looking for a two bedroom for 1.4 million.

Unknown Speaker 42:15
Yes, yes.

Erwin 42:16
I’m like, Oh my God, you should come over here. I thought Toronto is expensive.

Speaker 1 42:25
It’s because it’s Toronto and Vancouver. Some outskirts you can go into and buy. So when I get like North Bay because I’m so into cashflow, positive assets, real estate in the US. Of course, every time I come here, everyone’s trying to show me what they can do. And every time I’ve seen I think oh possibility London, Ontario, there’s some, you know, 100 $200,000 homes, I think this is great. When I look at the cash flow it was giving. It was never good. And that was in comparison. So I always say stretch your dollar compare. I’m not saying only go to the US but compare it to what you can get here. And you’ll know why you’re blind to the Yes, yes, it’s

Erwin 43:02
been to an investor just last week, who has a who has a has like two income properties with no mortgage, and a multimillion dollar home. All here and like so you have like no fixed assets in the state. It’s like no. And like, do you think you’re diversified?

Speaker 1 43:21
I mean, at the heart, the difficult part is how do you just jump into the US? Well,

Erwin 43:27
that’s that’s

Unknown Speaker 43:28
what share comes in and

Erwin 43:29
what I’m saying at least we and that’s where I was before the summer, I was like stuck, because it for forever. I’ve known their landlord friendly states in the US. But there was no fine, really available financing besides using HELOC, which is which is financing

Speaker 1 43:43
is one aspect. But there’s also no I don’t know if I want to call it handling someone to help you find the right properties in the right market.

Erwin 43:53
Who do you trust?

Speaker 1 43:54
Who do you trust, right? It’s a trust, again, is also one part of it. Because that’s only let’s call it a real estate agent for now. Which share, we’re looking at the individuals by box, what is their price points? Where did they want to buy? And then it goes sourcing those. Right? So that’s our first entry. Okay. Once you’ve done that, who’s your construction team to get it rent ready? Now you gotta go find that. We handle that as well. Yeah. Right. And then again, while we’re going through due diligence, a budgets been proposed, we’re not going to go ahead unless we still see it as a cashflow, positive asset. Right. And then we’re moving forward, that that now has to take place and then we’ve got to get it rent ready and then tenant in there. So all those processes take time and various different individuals different arms of the business. How do you put that together yourself? Who’s there to so what I like about what we’re doing a chair, which is similar to what I did in the financial planning business that I was in, is integrating all these processes. Otherwise, everything’s in silo and you as an investor are going to find it hard and Just an America you find that hard in Canada? So it’s hard here, everywhere, it’s gonna be hard to turn your own backyard. Yes, yeah, having that integrated team for that purpose is not easy to find

Erwin 45:11
people who excavated my front my front lawn in Hamilton, like he’s disappeared. This isn’t my backyard. Let’s see, I have a lot of I have a lot of leverage, right. And I still can’t execute it properly. Right. And this is, again, somebody’s backyard. So these things are people in underappreciate, like teams are hard

Speaker 1 45:29
teams teams, but it’s first of all, trusting who you’re working with. Team can execute. I was gonna say, what I’m really appreciating over time, with what we’re doing is the timeframe of how it’s getting done. And in budget, because as I said, I mean, if we propose something, I mean, remember that we’ve also put some rental guarantees in there. Some guarantees. Why? Because we’re putting, I guess, what is that money where your mouth is? And that was the phrase? Yeah, that’s right. So we are looking at due diligence in a very, in a way that we can afford to do that, because we’ve, as I said, given a budget that’s realistic and can be done. Right.

Erwin 46:09
That’s actually that’s where it’s worth highlighting. So share as an asset manager, the rental guarantee three months, is it rent?

Speaker 1 46:17
Well, again, you’d have to look at the website was 12. You know, or what, what timeframe? Not everything has a rental guarantee, because we have to remember what type of assets you buy. So a couple of things that I would like to highlight, you know, because again, sometimes I find that you talked about fear of going into the US. I if I go back to just basics and financial planning, I remember when the markets went down, Canada had put together a task force, right. And that taskforce was put together to understand why we have so much financial illiteracy in Canada. Okay. And so the first thing they’re noting is, of course, where do we get educated and money management to begin with. And I think only BC had a course in grade 10, for the provinces had nothing. So the first level was finding out the problem and then finding solutions to it. Okay. But what I found interesting about that taskforce is the challenges that they said that Canadians are having. And the biggest challenge, they said, I’ll call it behavioral finance, people’s behavior wasn’t matching their knowledge and skills. Okay, so even if I said everything I’m saying, and you have the knowledge of how to do it, and you even have the skills, you found the right partners to do it. Why are people still not behaving? And what they know? That’s the bigger question.

Erwin 47:41
What is it? I see myself to have analysis,

Speaker 1 47:47
paralysis, we all have those issues. And it’s not in the financial space alone. Health space, relationship space, personal space, we probably know we shouldn’t eat more than we exercise. We know all the rules. It’s not like we have to be taught this. And today with Google, we also have all the answers, right? So we don’t need more knowledge and more. Or even the skills we can hire those skills. Let’s say we have the right team shares their notes there. Why are we acting is the bigger question. I think, because I think you brought that up to write and I’m thinking myself, for me, when I was researching, I go to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s my go to book because I’m going to emulate successful people, what is it that I see in successful people that are making them act? Right? And so habit is formed, they say when three circles intersect, knowledge and skills are two of them. What the one that’s missing that why people aren’t acting don’t have these good habits is desire. Okay, and so a lot of, I don’t know if we call it coaching or for me when I was a financial planner, is understanding the purpose of that real estate product, because real estate is just a product. It’s not the be all end all. It could be anything that gives me financial balance point that’s given me a monthly cash flow so that I could retire. Okay, so I always say ask yourself the question, what’s important about money to you? What’s important about cash flow to you? And drill down deep on, like, if I asked you that question, what’s important about cash flow to you?

Erwin 49:21
I’ve served my clients who already know the answer. What’s the answer? First one is usually around retirement,

Unknown Speaker 49:25
comfortable, what’s important about retirement to you?

Erwin 49:29
It’s about being able to say no to more things about being on the have, like to have income so that you can make make decisions around what you want to do. Okay,

Speaker 1 49:37
so what’s important about that, what’s important about having that comfortable income to do what you want to do? Like

Erwin 49:43
for like for to be like taking off early from work and be able to see you can take the kids that are sports and enjoy those sorts of things. Again, what’s important about that, so you can be around you’d be a good parent. Your kids will like you when they’re older. Hopefully.

Speaker 1 49:57
Keep drilling down on that question because everything you’ve said is still not getting to the source of the value and the feeling you’re gonna get when you get there. Oh,

Erwin 50:05
yeah. Oh, no, I’m an Asian parent, right? The objective is to have a winning kid.

Speaker 1 50:11
Okay. Okay, what’s important about that, that’s still still you haven’t gotten down to. So the differences are stroking the ego. For me. Maybe you’ve now come to what it is. Yeah. Because how’s it gonna make you feel is the important part about money? Yeah, the real estate isn’t anything. Right? But and even the cash flow isn’t anything. But when you tell me Oh, it’s for freedom. It’s for security. And for ego. Now the feeling is what drive that desire. And everything else will come to you right now you’ll start to see why you’re doing with those tough decisions you have to make, whether it’s getting up and getting your your financials together to see where the funds are to buy, whether it’s understanding tax structures that you need to be able to go across the border, all those will become easier because you have a desire to get for purpose.

Erwin 51:01
But for all the parents out there, like like for my own, for my own experience, to see my kids win at something is like, there’s no better experience, there’s no better feeling. So you want. So if you want more of that, you generally need more time with them.

Unknown Speaker 51:15
Why I moved to Florida

Erwin 51:19
to get away from this cold, but

Speaker 1 51:24
I’m enjoying my days longer. Even in the evening, I feel like going out and playing sports. We’re here. I’m here for the first winter after a long time. It’s tough to think of putting on any jacket to go out.

Erwin 51:35
You don’t think it makes Gainesville, Florida because I’m usually finding generic names on investing in Florida all the time. Because you actually leave a letter there even while hurricanes are going out or happening. I’ve heard. So actually how I’ve knocked out I want to touch on Florida because it’s such a hot topic for Canadians. And I know I know, among our listeners as well, like, like half of them are interested in Florida investing. They want to like they want a property there and they want to live in it part time they rent it out all the time. Like what is your? Well,

Speaker 1 52:03
I mean, again, I’ve always seen the Florida I mean, we I remember even when we’re when I was here doing seminars, they’re always based on Florida properties. I think it’s because people are looking at a property that they can rent today. And it pays for itself and becomes a retirement home someday. Right? That’s a dual purpose is what I’m saying they see it as a place they could live in. I, myself, I say separate those two concepts a little bit more, you know, because then you’re buying a property. I’ll say that’s visually pleasing. Like that’s something you’d live in. That’s not always a rental property. That’s not always a cash flow property.

Erwin 52:39
Yeah, maybe too nice. Yeah. Okay, then we’ll get enough rent. Yeah. And so for me,

Speaker 1 52:45
they call it the smell of opportunity. I hate to say that, but that’s the way you have to look at it is what’s a property you can buy that you can do up that you get more value for. But for a tenant that’s going to be living in there, it’s not the place, you’re going to be going to retire to the two different concepts, you know. And so sometimes you choose the wrong way based on this idea that it’ll pay off over time, it still do that. And you could still then use that home to buy your dream home or whatever you want to live and retire someday. Right? So separate those two concepts.

Erwin 53:15
And so that’s one answer that I see. I see so many Airbnb investors who thought it’d be a passive investment. But when but then when it underperforms, I see them posting on Facebook that’s available for rent. So what was supposed to be a successful passive cash flowing investment is likely underperforming, and now you’re working. Right? And then I’ll just add to that as well, like with all the hurricanes in Florida, like, because again, I’m cheap, right? I love deals. I love deals. So I said I’d rather have I would never I would never put my asset in front of a hurricane. Because my assets are like kinda like my lesser children, but I care about them a lot. I’d never worry about a hurricane. Yeah, I’ve never put my ads in front of a hurricane. So but if I want to vacation in Florida for like an extended period, I would just follow around where the hurricane had been. Because I know I’ll get cheap rent. Okay, right. Because I’ll bet you money. I can get some cheap rent and like Fort Worth, and sorry for my buyers that area. Because, yeah, because they just got hit by a hurricane about 14 months ago, or like Cape Coral Beach getting really cheap. I know,

Speaker 1 54:17
you’re sensible and thinking that way. And therefore, you’ve got to look at Florida cautiously too, right? Because with those hurricanes come what insurance prices going up? Because I mean, for me in the past, I was at all but I’m insured because I had the same. I still have a couple and St. Pete’s we’ve got insurance, but insurance rates really went up this year.

Erwin 54:39
And you’re told me yeah, my own so do you share what percentage went up?

Unknown Speaker 54:44
I don’t remember the exact rate but it was high

Erwin 54:46
interest. Interest was almost 70%. Yeah, seven zeros

Speaker 1 54:49
went quite high. And so then you’re thinking how What does how does that affect my cash flow? Right. So unfortunately, sometimes when you’re buying a property you got to be holistic and it’s thinking even when I structure tax for tax planning, I got to be a little more holistic. I’m not looking at only one aspect of it. So sometimes I might have to pay a little higher tax, but I’m getting a better return in certain state, let’s say, right. So holistic thinking has to be there when we’re purchasing. Okay. Keep it simple, though. I mean, let’s not make it complicated. I mean, if we’re buying in a tax free zone with a good market, great entry point, a place to start with

Erwin 55:29
1000s of jobs coming. I think that I saw the I was looking at a Forbes article yesterday, just with the Evie dispute, sorry, with the the green the green funding, the buying government’s doing is creating 65,000 manufacturing jobs. Right, follow,

Speaker 1 55:47
follow that path, right. Yes, hold on to the coattails and appreciation. Exactly.

Erwin 55:52
And then to your point about diversification is we don’t know if all these manufacturers will stay in business. Right? Because you know, things go things are markets go up and down. Exactly. So again, diversify. I wouldn’t put all my eggs and basket in one basket near one manufacturer.

Speaker 1 56:06
But that’s where these price points how easy to diversify. Like you said, if you’re buying a Vancouver property at a couple of million dollars, or 500,000, or

Erwin 56:14
30 unit apartment building. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Rather diversify, because because I actually had someone asked me that yesterday, like, you know, like, like, this was talking about Michigan. But like, what if what if manufacturing fails? There? He was, we’ve seen it happen, like, exactly, yeah, diversify? Yeah, that’s

Speaker 1 56:31
what they say the economy can be of the state or wherever we’re in, it can’t be based on all these one. Like, that’s, again, if it’s all oil based, let’s say it’s really happens and, you know, your property is gonna get affected as well. So markets and where they’re at in these areas, as I said, our first critical point that we look at when we’re buying a property.

Erwin 56:52
You mentioned before we were recording how your, your kids never bothered mutual funds or stocks, they went straight to real estate,

Speaker 1 57:01
okay, but that’s, again, this is a, this is personal experience, right? For me, personally, you have to remember that my parents were good parents. My dad was in financial planning. Our for my first experience was to put away 10% Every month, or every year, what 10% of our salary was wounded. I remember at the time Templeton Growth Fund, because that’s what he promoted at the time. So mutual funds was a big thing. And that’s what we went into. Alright, that helped us save at least think of saving a part of our money, not everything was spent. When I got my first real job, then it was okay, what not, what do I do next? Okay, cap the RSP. What do I do next? I’ve got a good income. That’s how I got into real estate in North Bay, like I said to you earlier, but that’s my experience, what are my children experiencing? They’ve seen us at a different stage in life where I had already bought real estate at this entry point, lower price points, they’re seeing that and of course, I’m encouraging other people to do that to get the financial balance point using these positive cash flowing predictable assets, as the foundation of building wealth. So if they keep hearing that from me, where am I going to move them to when they’re putting their first dollars together? So very young age, they were already encouraged by giving them a property for their free university to give them the cash flow. Okay, once they see that, that’s their knowledge of investments. So for them, it was a natural thing to do to go into real estate as their first investment. Okay, I’m not saying that. They don’t none of the others, because unfortunately, they’re in a high tax bracket. So they have to have something in RSP. So they will have some, but the bulk of their investment is real estate and cash flow.

Erwin 58:44
So when your kids are buying, it’s kind of like two questions, kind of their cars for your son’s first property, for example, will be bought in the States. What were like the legal structures and tax planning around that?

Speaker 1 58:58
We tried a couple of things. So the first thing we tried was could we make it a principal residence because he has no principal residence without all tax purposes, you can have US property as a principal residence

Erwin 59:08
for tax purposes. This is in Canada, Canada capital gains exemption. Yeah,

Speaker 1 59:11
if you don’t have I had no idea. Yeah, but the problem was, the banks wouldn’t allow him to buy that without having a visa or some something that seeing it. So sometimes tax and finances don’t go together. Yeah,

Erwin 59:24
people need to appreciate that accounting, tax. Banks don’t care.

Speaker 1 59:29
Everyone’s looking at from their angle. That’s why an integrative focus is important to understand from all aspects. So he ended up doing cash deal, instead of a financing deal, first first purchase. But I remember when he first started, he went online RBC got a got a, what is it called? Approval, you know, for financing, so pre approval, pre qualified. So he knew what he could buy for based on his income level and all of that. So he had that ready for 90 days he had that he was able to do whatever he wanted to do in the States. In the States, so most a lot of the banks have that already, for one property, easy to do online pre approval, you’re done. And you know what available what available cash you have.

Erwin 1:00:10
And then is in today are people allowed to make that make us property, their principal residence for tax purposes.

Speaker 1 1:00:17
But again, yeah, there has to be a, there has to be you have to live in. And so if you’re buying for rentals, we’re not going to go down that got it. Okay. Right. So I’m not going down that path, but you’re asking me his experience. So his own experience was that and that’s when you’re the realisation if you’re doing it for rentals. But I’m saying RBC is lending for rental properties. One property is fine, is the moment you want to go into more than we use other types of loans, or other types of financing. So that’s how he got involved in his first property. So his was a cash purchase. On personally owned personally, don’t we? So at the beginning, when I first started with to put everything into a trust, but so the one piece that you have to learn very early, is a phrase called earn everything, own nothing. It’s a key phrase to not only to be able to, obviously have a good tax bracket to be and you know, because it’s all coming into your personal name, and your you’ve got no income over there. But more importantly, the protection, or, I guess, lack of even visibility, it’s owned by someone else. So all all assets are owned that way for, for them through a trust. And that way that also avoids other things, which I don’t want to go so deep into, but for family planning, marriage into divorces, all of that it’s a separate asset. It’s not theirs. They’re the beneficiary of it. But they’re not the owner of it. And so that separation helps when

Erwin 1:01:47
we’re trying to get to is that one of the barriers for most Canadians to invest in the States is they don’t understand what the process is around structures and tax to going over there. What would you tell someone who’s concerned has those concerns.

Speaker 1 1:01:59
So again, let’s go back to that phrase I just used. Having a structure an entity outside of yourself, helps you look at not just tax alone. But I always say there’s three major considerations when you’re making any investment decision in real estate, and that’s Canada or us. One big considerations tax. The second one would be more asset protection, because we’re talking about rental properties now. Okay. And then the third one would be more your if you when you die, you know, your probate, your state planning and capacity, all those kinds of things, live or die, you know, so if we look at those as the three major considerations, tax is the biggest one, so the the second two, you’ve almost taken care of once you’ve set it up in an entity, right? So personal ownership is nice from a tax perspective, because America has long term capital gains rates that are more favorable than if you had it in an entity like a corporation. But you have no asset protection. So if you’ve got assets already, right, for, for my son, he has no assets, he’s on a little different boat than most people that might have a principal residence already. So once you have an asset, and you want to protect it, you do not want to have real estate in your personal name. So that’s the first big thing to remember.

Erwin 1:03:17
So it’s probably every listener on the show this show like exactly, all of them have assets. So

Speaker 1 1:03:21
you’re wanting to look at entity formation. So then, then the question is, Which type of entity then, you know, and so really, there’s two that I’ll say for Canadians, there’s a third one that I would say is non. So the one that is theirs to sell corporation, or a limited partnership, those are both entities, we can move the asset, let it hold, and then it earns the income, and then one passes it through to the individual, the limited partnership, the corporation holds it in the company. Okay, but either one of those entities is separating the asset from you. Okay, so at least asset protection has done

Erwin 1:03:57
and share can guide people to where to how to where or how to get this done.

Speaker 1 1:04:02
Yes, yes. And so at a very early stage, besides the buy box of what you’re purchasing, we do talk about entity formation. And what’s best suited for you. We do you know it because again, you have to remember we’re talking about across Canada, in many states. And but I will say that, if your plans are to build a portfolio and diversify, then you’ve got to look at a strategy that fits all states and the province of residence you’re in complicated. No, it doesn’t have to be.

Erwin 1:04:33
Well, I mean, you do it all day. So for me to to buy a property is very easy for me, but like for most, it’s complicated. Yeah, but I know he replaced me one day, I’m not that smart.

Speaker 1 1:04:45
Well, as I said, the idea of just keeping that concept in mind if I can earn everything. So I’ll go with the limited partnership as an example. It’s flowing to you the income is earned by the limited partnership and the assets owned by a only by the limited partnership for asset protection, but it’s flowing to you as an individual. Okay, so the way the taxation system works just in general, you have to remember two things were your resident of, and where’s the property resident of?

Erwin 1:05:12
Doesn’t matter by state? Yes. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 1:05:15
So So basically, you’re a resident of Canada. And so you will always file Canadian rally returns on a worldwide basis. Okay. But every state that you’re in the property and obviously once their share, so you’ll pay your taxes in the States, but you’ll get a credit in Canada, because we have a treaty between Canada, US. So they’re trying to avoid the double taxation, but you’ve got to give them their share. And if Canada’s a higher tax bracket, you’ll pay the difference here in Canada. So you’re not gonna be worse off than a Canadian filing for Canadian rental property. But it’s two returns is what I’m saying. Right One In the state that your federal and state that you’re bought the property, and then wanting your Canadian tax return? What

Erwin 1:05:53
should one budget for a for increasing the US entity?

Speaker 1 1:06:00
I would say on average, I would say I mean, around 250 $300.23?

Erwin 1:06:06
Guys, not much. Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:06:10
entity formations aren’t. So basically, there’s a fee for for handling that. And then there’s a State filing fee, maybe $100 or so. So about, I mean, at most, I’d say $500 is the full.

Erwin 1:06:25
And then what should someone budget for for like corporate filing in the States?

Speaker 1 1:06:31
Again, that depends on i That’s a tougher one again, because if you’re only have one asset, one, one entity, it’s a basic return. But the moment you start to buy a second property in there, they may charge a little more or a separate state, you’ve got to file you know, in per state. So I’d go more per state. So again, I’d go with that same figure around 250 300. But then per state, you’re adding on an extra fee. $100 extra, so pretty. Yeah, pretty, nothing, nothing is significantly high. To be to be honest with you keep if you want to keep it simple, let’s start to hear. If you want to keep it simple, you don’t have to file any returns, you can just pay a withholding tax for the income that’s earned in those states. And you’re done. You pay a 30% withholding tax, you file your Canadian returns and get that back, you know, have a foreign tax credit for that. It’s sometimes you have to weigh the pros and cons of paying a small fee to file a return to possibly be in a lower bracket by filing a return. So instead of a withholding of 30%. What if I had zero tax and I could pay nothing? Right? Remember with with with properties, besides have positive cash flow, you have depreciation on the building portion of the property, you can write off over 27 years and their Senate say about 5% a year, that reduces your taxable liability, taxable income, interest on the borrowed money, reduces your taxable income. So you may not have that much tax. So you can either keep it simple, don’t say all just pay withholding tax on the gross rents. And I’m done. And I’ll find my Canadian returns only. Or you can say you know what, I’ll pay that little extra 250 500. And Pete paid to do a return and not have to pay 30% on my gross income, pay on my net income, and it could possibly be nothing, especially those early years. You may not be filing much tax at all, especially while rates are high. Yes, yeah. So yes, we’re talking about our worst case scenario that you got to file there, and you get a foreign tax credit here. But in most cases in those early years, you’re probably not going to have a tax. Because you have write offs.

Erwin 1:08:34
Yes, you probably won’t keep it simple. Yeah, and rates are high. If you plan properly,

Speaker 1 1:08:39
you should always have that, because you can refinance when it gets too high, and your cash flow is good. Time to refinance to do it again. So really, tax shouldn’t be an issue. Because you can plan properly. And filing in the US and Canada shouldn’t be an issue for the amount that you’ll see. As I said, for the for the advantage of not filing a withholding tax on that income.

Erwin 1:09:03
So a lot of the performers that I play with from share around year three, which is about the time we put we would guess that we can refinance for like, probably bottom rates. And then the cash flow gets really tasty on properties. Like even with like 30 with only like 30% of your money in the property. I see cash yields of like, four and a half percent by year three, which is incredible. Okay. Well, it’s like that’s like bank stock dividend money, right? So say say I’m feeling lazy, I want to work less. I’m trying to find my balance point and I don’t want more property. I want to I want to play with some of this money. Then one of one of the tax implications then so say I have 10 properties. They’re all spinning off like $4,500 a month. That’s pretty. That’s pretty decent amount of money. Sorry. 4500 4500 A year 340 5000. US that’s a pretty decent chunk of change.

Speaker 1 1:09:54
So I didn’t understand the question. You asked me how you take money back to spend and live. Yeah, say

Erwin 1:09:59
wanna spend To say I want to spend it I’m a Canadian resident. I’m making like 45,000 Cash Flow year US dollars.

Speaker 1 1:10:05
So while you’re building if you’re leaving the funds in the entity, let’s call it for now. And you want to repatriate that back to you. So depends on again, which form of entity or you’ve created.

Erwin 1:10:16
Do I have to bring it back though? Can I just buy stuff my US credit card everywhere. So

Speaker 1 1:10:21
to be honest with you, though, usually your the bank will give you a debit card. And so when you’re spending on that card, at the end of the year, you’re really sitting down with your accountant and deciding how are you going to classify that. So for a moment, I’m just gonna go corporate route, because then you’ll understand that a bit more. So when I’m going that corporation route, I could say, I’m either taking that money out as money I gave in. So when you first bought the properties, there was a shareholders loan set up for your deposit your down payment. So that portion is tax free to you, you can withdraw that tax free. So at the end of the year, if you’ve got too high attacks in Canada, you might say, oh, Part of that’s my shareholders loan, I just want to draw that down. If you have a low tax here in Canada, you might say oh, no, let’s repatriate that as dividends, pay my taxes in the company and give it back to me as dividends. And that’s a taxable dividend. So you’re you’re choosing how you want to do it, okay. And it could be a mix of tax free, or taxable dividends. So once you’ve paid your taxes on the property and income itself, after tax income can be brought back or left there, whichever way you want to do it to reap. So while you’re building, you’ll probably just leave all that money there. Over time, you may take out some of you are deciding how to classify like, so this is a mix of the two.

Erwin 1:11:34
And so this is all preferred tax treatment versus like your salary.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:40
Dividends is a preferred tax treatment. My

Erwin 1:11:43
point is, if I was making 45,000 American salary, I’d be paying way more tax. Oh, okay. Let’s say I had a job like T four T for income versus taking a dividend or even repeating repayment of shareholder money.

Speaker 1 1:11:58
But then again, that’s after tax money. So I can’t I don’t have true, right, you’ve already paid your tax on the money that you put in there. So it should be free to you did. You can go spend that you just decided to invest it. So you can still bring it back? Because what I’m saying? I

Erwin 1:12:11
know, but that’s a technicality. But I’d made money. I think

Speaker 1 1:12:15
what you’re trying to say is that after you’ve stopped working, if all your income came from those sources, would you be in a lower tax bracket and start to know, this? You first of all you can? I think the bigger answer to that because it’s tough to say because is that you can plan you can plan as to how much you want to take out and what tax bracket you want to be in salary can’t certainly is fixed and you whatever you get your pay tax on where once you have it in a let’s say a corporation or some entity, you can choose how you’re paying yourself is what you’re saying.

Erwin 1:12:47
So you talked about like financial behavior, was it? Yeah, behavioral finance, behavioral finance, I hate I hate how our government spends our money. So it’s like my taxes go to pay for McKinsey consultants. I don’t want to I don’t want to pay more tax. I want to do other things with my money.

Speaker 1 1:13:05
I mean, tax planning has to be the biggest focus. But as I said, sometimes looking at diversification, making more money is probably a good place to start. And one sometimes doesn’t match the other. So it’s a balance.

Erwin 1:13:24
All right, so we’re running, still running out of time. So we talked about folks having the desire if they’re listening to this podcast, which is like no, no frills podcast, I think they have some desire. So I think it’s more about next steps. Maybe it’s that maybe that’s the next thing. So we do have, we do have a thing to plug. We are doing our US investment workshop on January 13. And you’ll be there as well. And we have this one midnight so people can bombard you with their personal tax questions. I’m joking you won’t be because you have a life you’re very successful. So here and you’ve no grandkids yet no grandkids. Yeah. Yeah, but it’s the holidays and and you’re staying in town for this

Unknown Speaker 1:14:08
first winter that I’m here was

Erwin 1:14:10
the last time you’re here for winter.

Speaker 1 1:14:12
I don’t remember. It’s been a long time

Erwin 1:14:15
cuz you’ve been living in Tampa was 20 years. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:19
At least in the winter.

Erwin 1:14:23
How good is it? Love it.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:26
Miss my pickleball outdoors.

Erwin 1:14:30
If you want to pick up a blog to launch your rocket club, that’s another matter system so I get some between you and I. It’s between you and I in terms of location.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:40
Okay, so let’s say you’re asking about next steps.

Erwin 1:14:42
What other than taking go into our workshop because that will answer a bajillion questions that people have. What are the next steps for someone interested in diversifying to US income properties?

Speaker 1 1:14:53
I think on online there is appointments that you can book Just to understand the process, not only understand the process, but to have a conversation on what you’re looking for that Buy Box is important. Because then at least you’ll know that the cash you have available, we can buy in the in the area you want at those price points with that return. Because that’s your first criteria. You know, once you have that you’re also discussing at that time, once you’re ready, and you have proof of funds, you’re now talking about entity formation, until those two go hand in hand, and then you move forward.

Erwin 1:15:28
I don’t know if it fits into the term of Buy Box. But I find because I want to be passive. And I don’t trust myself to buy an apartment building, I’ve chosen to work with share and with their property managers, because I can’t find anyone else who will do all this work for me without taking a percentage. So I think investors need to understand that as well. Share does want focuses on one thing, and that and that’s the reality of things, people will not work super hard for you without taking your percentage. Like to me in my experience, I haven’t seen any model like share before, where I get to control 100% The asset or 100% the asset without giving a percentage of the property. That’s

Speaker 1 1:16:14
and that’s a key to me, building with share this concept was for direct ownership. Because many times I’ve been asked why can’t you do all of this through a REIT? Because we are doing everything from buying to construction to you? Why are we helping you? Why are we helping each individual by their own rather than doing it ourselves? And you just invest in that get that percentage? And to me, it’s exactly what you said is having that direct control of the asset in your name. It’s all in your titles all in your name.

Erwin 1:16:43
And for Canadians, now we can ask those things in like the 152 50 range. For first, I bet you I don’t even know what the average price of a house in North Bay is. Like bet you it’s a reformer get North Bay, I bet she was over 14,000 The average price of a house. I was just goofing around an average house in Thunder Bay. It’s 357,000.

Speaker 1 1:17:05
Speakers stuff that have to take is not just the price point. But what’s your read? What’s your cash flow on that property?

Erwin 1:17:12
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:17:13
What’s your tenant profile? Like? Right, right? Because in the end, it’s the combination, it’s nice price points, but it’s also good, healthy rental income. And

Erwin 1:17:23
not just that, when people look at their cash flow, they need to project out 510 years. Because the problem with Ontario bc we have rent control. Oh, yeah. Okay. And what do people think is gonna happen with inflation and our expenses over time, they only go up, right, but our rents are capped. Let’s

Speaker 1 1:17:40
see. That’s the other thing is, and that’s where share comes in. In the past, you rely on the property manager, you’re hoping they’re increasing the rent, everything’s going. We are like the overview on top of that, like we are asset managers, making sure that you know, at a certain time we’re talking about rents and what we expect rents to be based on what we’re seeing and discussing that rent increase. We’re looking at what kind of upgrade should we do at this point, if any, to improve that rent? Is it worth putting in that money to get a higher rent? Those are all considerations that you don’t have to worry about? I mean, you do because we’re going to discuss it, but we’re bringing it up. Right? So those are huge pluses in understanding how that portfolio is going to grow not in just size of properties, but in the property itself. Overall, you know, doing well,

Erwin 1:18:30
you have real estate experts with you know, your folks like Demetri who exactly manage portfolios of 20,000 units. So that’s overlooking your portfolio,

Speaker 1 1:18:38
the operations on the on the side of it. Yeah. So they’re going to

Erwin 1:18:43
renovate for ROI, eight, zero, which many, which many novices have real difficulty with?

Speaker 1 1:18:48
Yeah, so that’s so as much as like you said, there’s complications, we are hand holding. A lot of them are helping in a lot of those areas. So

Erwin 1:18:57
then people can get back to their lives. Yes, no, go play pickleball.

Speaker 1 1:19:02
Do whatever they enjoy doing. Unfortunately, a lot of it is work most of the times here. We don’t live life in North America. It’s too much work and not enough play.

Erwin 1:19:13
It’s really important. Comment. Any final last words for the audience? No,

Speaker 1 1:19:17
I enjoy being on the show. I always say that, you know, as I said, really focus on two steps. One is what’s important, but money to you. And then what is that benchmark to replace your income those two alone and keeping that as the I guess, the attention, you know, I mean, like, put your attention to that. The rest of come, especially as you find someone like share, who you can trust to build that and help you build it together. And

Erwin 1:19:41
just plug and play the link. www dot iWin dot share sfr.com And I’ll have all the links in the in the in the in the show notes. Yeah. And then come to our workshop. US us investing workshop January 13. Saturday morning, in our office in Oakville. We’re doing a hybrid as well. So it’s available on Zoom. I’ll have a link before, we’re only charging 30 bucks plus tax and tip, so it’s super cheap. And I’m pretty sure you bill a lot more for your time. Thank you, Carmen. Thank you for watching. If you want to learn how to invest in real estate from scratch, my team teaches beginners how to use the number one investment strategy that I personally use in a virtual free training class every month, go to investor training.ca/youtube To register for our next class, then links also in the description as well. I publish at least two to three videos a week here. So subscribe if you want to keep learning from seasoned investors, like myself and my guests. And if you’re just starting out, feel free to ask questions and comment below. And I do the best to answer each of those comments and questions myself. Again, if you’re ready to learn the nitty gritty about real estate investing from a professional investor register for our next virtual class. That’s at Investor training.ca/youtube. Thanks again for watching. See you in the next video. Bye

 

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

On Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=87335&refid=stpr

On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Z8yd37AQfQI5DK0J0Xwzz

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

Youtube: https://youtu.be/FRaYCGi0bmw