** Transcript Auto-generated**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 11:44
Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 15:13
Check check.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 24:06
So 140,000 paying members.

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

Erwin 24:13
Florida inflation rates the way

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

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

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

Erwin 24:47
this is gonna do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kayla 26:31
Now they’re too afraid.

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

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

Erwin 26:57
Yeah, I gotta fix my chair

Unknown Speaker 27:25
Right Right

Kayla 29:05
sorry

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

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

Kayla 29:40
Oh my God besides for children.

Erwin 29:43
For mental?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kayla 35:08
Right? Increase? Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 39:33
you know, small community

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

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

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

Kayla 41:28
Are you getting a lower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 55:04
That’s so cute.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kayla 1:11:05
I’m there I like

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 1:17:38
times better than here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kayla 1:24:46
Run to okay,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Erwin 1:32:42
is the URL they won’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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