Epic Fail, 500+ Home REI Company Collapses, Tens of Millions Lost

Erwin  

Hello real estate investors! This is Erwin bringing you the truth about real estate investing show and this is not a normal episode either; This is a solo podcast. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with just me today. I wanted to do solo because I shared an article on my Facebook my Instagram last week from an article from the CBC about epic alliances collapse. The link to the article you can google real estate company collapses 500 homes affected 10 million from investors across Canada missing. Again, it’s an article from the CBC. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here’s some points from the article. The founders of epic Alliance, Rochelle aplomb and Lisa Thompson they were everywhere podcasts, webinars, real estate groups, real estate groups you and I know I don’t belong to you, either of them. I know many people that do. Quick side note. Neither Rochelle or Lisa has been featured on anything that Cherry and I have hosted not my read up groups moment not my podcasts ain’t like that. I agree. They were everywhere and on the show. We I do I put my own guests and I deliberately don’t book guests who’ve been everywhere. Bad and also I reference check everyone that I don’t know everyone that I know personally. In the art world has mentioned of affordable housing in Saskatoon which I find odd. Again, side note, there’s a pretty decent size Reddit string on on the on the story of a client’s one person’s example is to achieve the cash flows that they’re promising. The rent would have to be over $1,500 month on a property worth just over $200,000. So it sounds great for the investor. I’d invest in stuff like that doesn’t sound exactly affordable for the people of Saskatoon. In January, the whole founders hosted a 16 minute zoom call. So January this this past January, they hosted a 60 minute zoom call to investors to let them know the business have collapsed. And the private the borrowed money was gone. And blaming the local Securities Commission the provincial Securities Commission for further reason that the money was gone. Provincial Securities Commission issued a cease and desist order. It was temporary back in October 2021. And accounting firm has since been appointed to investigate. They’ve been appointed by the courts and they’ll report their findings later this month in April, over 500 properties are affected. I see varying numbers, just over 500 Some like five or 20 or so properties, it’s a lot of properties. And there’s numerous out of province investors involved again, again, this is me not only articles, they I know which organisations they were close to the theme of real estate. The event organised real estate investing is I find most people, most people generally stick with the groups that were they learned how to invest. So if he had sampled the popular groups would be like, No, this is Rich Dad, there’s T spire there’s rain, there’s Rockstar, right? There’s all these communities that are out there and in most stick to their own groups. Just because that’s you know, those the people they came up with I know epic Alliance was promoting it one of the other groups as well. And they’d likely got a lot of their investors. They’re very, very sad. I first learned about epic alliances, public alliances problems back in December. So if you follow the show, you’ve learned something good. On December in December, I had the gentleman from the financial independence garage on the show. If you heard that show, I had the mechanic and the accountant on I can’t remember which one of them one of them so they have pseudonyms, right? You saw the names because they still have day jobs so they don’t want their employers to know that they’re about their investments. And so anyways, they want privacy. But one of them did share with me how they were having issues with their investment with epic Alliance. He didn’t go into details but just didn’t go into details which is fine. But I put that away in my mental database for red flags, red flags, hopefully all 17 of you listeners did the same thing. Because personally, I’m I’m extremely risk averse. I have new I have the luxury of having opportunities come my way every week and I’ve been around for a while I know exactly how the best of the best invest thanks to my decades plus some networking interviewing a successful folks in the here on this podcast you know I mastermind a lot with other six eight figure entrepreneurs investors with a eight 910 figure net worth. Remember, I had Grant Cardone on the show, I’ve looked at his CARDONE CARDONE investing model. You know, I’ve had some great apartment building investors on the show.

Erwin  

You know, when you’ve looked at a lot of things, the term, it’s all relative, it means something, because I’ve looked at a lot of deals. And I’ve looked at a lot of deals since I started being a part of organised real estate since 2008. And I’ve, so I’ve looked at a lot of deals, and again, it’s all relative. If you look at a lot of deals, you’re not gonna do them all you’re gonna do, you’re gonna cherry pick the best ones. And that’s kind of what I felt I’ve done. Anyways, since 2008, I have witnessed some epic collapses of real estate investment companies, some small, you know, to be an investor with like 135 properties. Sometimes even one I’ve seen, I’ve seen Yeah, in this real estate market, can you imagine still failing on a single property, there’s gonna make mistakes. People can be blinded by greed and make mistakes. Some of these, some of these collapses are still in court for hundreds of millions of dollars being deemed it’s being disputed and hopefully can find it. There’s several private lenders out there. Even mortgage brokerages who originate private lending have had deals go bad. I know people personally that are problem. Which leads me to think of the Warren Buffett quote, only when the tide goes out. Do you see who’s swimming, swimming naked? So my first exposure to an epic collapse was a a husband, wife, investor a couple. It was mostly the the husband that was driving that business. So we’ll focus on them. We’ll name him, we’ll call him Mark. Mark had an over 50 property portfolio with mainly almost entirely with joint venture partners. It’s hard to have that many properties on your own. I’m sure over 40 of them were with joint venture partners, Margaret speak from stage of his experience and how to in raising capital and investment. This was in Hamilton that he was investing in our contributed to an organization’s joint venture education programme. That organisation sold a binder and educational binder with lots of materials and samples. Mark’s own materials were featured in that doc in that binder. And it wasn’t very expensive. So it was more of like a volunteer thing, I think. Anyways, then as Warren Buffett describes it, the tide went out. This was in 2009, during the financial and credit crisis in recession. That then the swimming naked moment was what everyone found out, sadly, was market taken out a blanket second mortgage on many of the investment properties. And he used the lawyer who was the sponsor of the organised real estate networking group. Can you believe that? You believe what a what a violation of trust that was. So this was 2009. So pretty early in my career of being a professional investor. I started to invest in real estate started investing really seriously in 2008, even though he owned a couple properties with my partners. This event opened my eyes to how even influencers cannot be trusted. Right? Like I’ll listen and listen and again. So it’s not all sunshine and roses. I don’t think everyone tells the truth on our successes and losses. In speaking with friends who hadn’t personally invested with it before it’s the these these passive investors are now actively scrambling to take control of their properties, their experiences working with sorry, so back to back to Mark’s story. The passive investors they meant they didn’t have to scramble they had they have their own title as per being joint venture partners. So the the mortgage money probably all went bad partner that was paid and their experience in But then semesters shared me with working with their experience working with Mark was. And I’ve seen it repeated many times, investors and business owners, business owners, lots of great ideas and visions. Executing small, like 510, even 20 properties is doable. Obviously, the bigger you get, the harder it gets. Because you add tenants, you add contractors, you add staff, or each of those variables are a challenge in itself. It’s not easy to be a general contractor, it’s not easy to be an employer, it’s not easy to be a landlord of 510 20 different tenants. Add to that the time and cash flow pressures. So for example, if you are a private, but if you are a private borrower son have made this mistake of starting the interest payments, starting the clock for when interest is starting to be earned. When the private mortgages are signed, that places a lot of pressure on the borrower to be doing business. That’s no different than having salaried staff or salary contractors. The lesson is to only start the interest clock, when there’s actually a deal in place.

Erwin  

And I’m sure all general contractors would like to do the same thing. They’d like to have their salary staff start getting paid once there’s actually a job to be done. So yeah, not the easiest thing to do. Put yourself in the place of a private bar, private borrower. Understand like, you can see the pressures. There’s many big investors that I know they’ve shared, shared with me the pressures of needing constant deal flow, constant properties that they have to work on, so that they can keep their salaried staff busy, their salary contractors. And some of them will even take on a break even project just to keep their staff and to keep them busy. So that they don’t leave, they leave their teams go working elsewhere. Right. That’s just the reality of things. That’s the truth about real estate investing. This is the truth of having a scale where you actually have employees doing work for you. And add in, you know, it’s not like it’s been easy to last two years adding tenant problems and the pain related pandemic tenant problems and supply chain issues. And think of how it would tell it would take to scale to a 500 plus portfolio property portfolio. Like epic alliances, you have a lot of moving parts. In chatting with the with the flipper client of mine, he flips in Hamilton, he flips only a handful of properties like less than six in a year. I told him I was telling him about epic alignments. And how Rochelle, one of the owners of epic line shared on her Instagram, how in one day, she bought 10 houses in one day. I flipped her friend could not wrap his head around that. And he didn’t given he flips for a living. So he makes a living. You have trouble getting his head around how many trades you will need to pull that off. If you’ve never done before, it’s probably not that easy to understand. But if you’ve ever done a significant renovation before, like say like your kitchen in your house and see a tent never had any of 10 kitchens to renovate, how easy would that be? And the thing with tradespeople are? If you haven’t I think everyone almost everyone has had had trouble hiring people for anything. For anything landscaping fence deck anything trades people were in the middle of the housing boom, this housing booms are going for a while tradespeople are in high demand. And they can go get great jobs with great benefits working for any union, any local union. Right? It’s not an easy time to be a general contractor. So Oh, and also just to note, this property is that epic Alliance, they’ve advertised that they’re usually need work. From the articles I’ve been reading some some of these have been boarded up. Right, so they’re not even occupied. No one’s taking care of them. They’re not tenanted either. No one’s paying rent. So I’m not saying it’s not impossible. I never want to step on anyone’s dreams. Maybe you can be the one that go do it. I just don’t know anyone personally who could pull this off. And I know quite a few people operational. Needless to say, operational excellence would absolutely absolutely be needed. And that’s rare to have without exceptional talent, often high priced talent. I know because I pay these high priced out. If anyone wants to trade places with me, I pay several six figure salaries on this from operating this business. So from friends who’ve shared with me their experiences, working with epic lines, one, one investor sold a property to them. They sold it to them privately for under $200,000. And then add a Curia curiosity, they wouldn’t pull title to find three mortgages that total to over 30% more than he had just sold the property to sell the property for two epical lines. Sounds like a red flag. As an investor that’s enough for me to know I don’t need to learn any more. I’m not I’m not. I’m not saying anyone’s guilty of anything. I believe in innocent till proven guilty, but for me too. You know, spend my time to research and investment or to put up, let alone put up money. This is that’s enough for me, another client of ours, a new stock hacker, she shared with me that she had joint ventures on a house with epic lines. And then when, you know when the tide went out, she felt deceived by the appraisal that she had received. That was 20% above market value on a house that was boarded up, non tenanted needs a lot of work. She’s now having to take over control the property in the town of Saskatoon where she’s never been before. Not the easiest thing to do. And again, there’s, I don’t know for sure, but from the articles I’ve been reading online, there’s 200 or more properties that are not tenanted within this portfolio, and they’re all pretty close together. And understand like Saskatoon is it’s just over 200,000 population. So it’s not even that big a town. So to hire staff to take care of all this, the hire contractors take to take care of the whole this will not be the easiest project to do.

Erwin  

Yeah, so now there are many lessons to be learned. And questions. I always have questions. That’s what keeps me up at night. I always have questions. I do believe again, I do believe in innocent until proven guilty. But again, one red flag is enough for me to say no to learning more about an investment, let alone invest. So like, like Warren Buffett says, this is a different quote, I promise. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation in mere minutes to destroy it. Some of my questions we get would be as follows. securities laws are quite clear around not soliciting investment from from the public. Unless you’re licenced. Right? Speak to your lawyer about this. And then the next question is, how’s sorry, the question is then how, as a company with 500, plus plus properties, not listening to good legal advice. I imagine that a lawyer must have said something. And if it didn’t, if not the best lawyer, maybe a different lawyer. How many investors have never inspected these properties. So I’m not going to poopoo just on Epic alliances, the investors at the do level of due diligence as well. So how many of them out of these out of how many of these out of province investors actually went to see the property. I personally have passive investments. I invest in a REIT using registered funds. And I personally toured three of their apartment buildings, I think they only had 11. At the time, I knew where they all were to because they’re mostly in Hamilton. I personally toured three of the buildings after I’ve been friends with the owners for over 10 years. That’s, that’s my level of trust. And also, I only invested what I was willing to lose. I’m also told that in epic lines advertises This and other marketing as well, a lot of the properties that they do that they transact on they’re done privately, as in they’re not on MLS or realtor.ca, which can be great for saving commissions. But those who participate are doing so without the help of licenced professionals represent who represent their best interest. So not just realtors. But what about the appraisers? For example, when myself or my client goes, goes to a mortgage gets a mortgage from a bank? The bank chooses the appraiser. And these private deals and private borrowing, who chose the appraiser? I don’t know the answer. But I think someone should look into it. And also, if you ever dove into one of these deals with private lending deal, which was the appraiser can you trust them? Can you send your own? If I wanted to know, for example, for example, if I know so I’ve hired a priest, you know, I’ve had appraisals done on brown properties. And the bank never lets me choose. And that’s for done for a reason. Again, I don’t have all the details. But there’s more than enough red flags for me to ever invest in a project like this, any of these projects like this. And again, a lot of due diligence needs to be done. Over this, many of the people learn their lesson here. As I said, if repeated several times for charity night, our investing will remain the same boring, predictable stuff will mostly own duplexes or sells with or without partners. Cheering I have enough clients in our lives. We don’t need investment partners to be married to some we have some passive investments in our registered accounts and land development and apartment buildings. We stock hack for cash flow, we also invest in dividend stocks, dividend paying stocks, for our stock hackers in 2021. If they’d followed the shared trades to a tee, they would have received between 12 to 15% cash on cash returns, as of course does not predict the future. But that’s pretty safe, boring stuff, especially in relation to a lot of real estate stuff I see out there. And also this is not the market. I really won’t be over exposing myself. I’m already very exposed to the real estate market. If you see any sort of if you see any sort of slowdown, it’s not really a market. I want to be getting to For private lending on flips, I know this all sounds slow and boring. But I’ve never found a more repeatable path, repeatable path for myself and my clients to get rich and for retiring for planning to retire comfortably. If you’d like to be educated on slow, best practice, best practices to get rich, I can’t recommend I recommend enough that you’ll be on our email list newsletters, and attend our events, real estate or stock hacking. Take your pick your future you will thank you. And that’s enough for me. Hopefully, it wasn’t too boring. And if you don’t like these shows, we have plenty of more interviewed guests coming up. And if you’d like to hear something else, or you have another show topics you’d like to hear me talk about, reach out, and we’re happy to do it. All right, stay safe out there.