“Christian Szpilfogel started as a hobby investor in 2005 in the Ottawa area and, with Chaunei Chan, converted the hobby into a full time business in 2017. Originally they would acquire cash-flowing Multi Unit Residential (MUR) buildings and ride the market but this has been refined into a more focused forced appreciation strategy including MUR renovations, expansions and new builds. Their early days taught them the basics of property management and as their portfolio grew they have become much more sophisticated in the management of their properties and the more intricate aspects of tenant management, especially when they pick up distressed assets with troubled tenancies. They have applied a number sophisticated methods in property acquisition, advanced financing and credit techniques, property management and tenant management. While they predominantly focus on MURs they also have about 25% of their holdings in commercial units. Christian enjoys giving back to the community and is an active participant in various landlord support and networking groups.”
Speaking of short term rentals, Mr Sve Pavic uses AirBnb as part of his repertoire in his rental hacking. He is the CEO of RentalHacker.com and LUX Rentals.
Sve’s a young man who’s already spent an extended period of time in Costa Rica with wife and young daughter while operating his rental portfolio from there. What’s interesting about Sve’s story is how he’s implemented several strategies: rooming house, AirBnb, legal suites, mini hotel and he’s getting great rent by pushing the envelope with just a small number of properties. I think Sve’s story should give a lot of young people and those just starting out a lot of hope. Plus his use of automation in his management is impressive. Get those pens and notepads ready! Without further ado, I give you Sve Pavic
On to this week’s guest!
Just wow, my mind is blown. I was introduced to Ryan Poole, Founder of Real Trade after I posted on Facebook in search of an expert on BlockChain and real estate and what do you know, Ryan’s Major Goal: To combine blockchain technology with real estate to revolutionize the real estate industry for the better and he’s rolling it out in phases including a globalized version of the MLS using Blockchain technology and a later phase for a Blockchain based currency called the Real to buy and sell real estate including fractional ownership of real estate. I’m probably not explaining it right so listen close to how Ryan explains it.
This is a very fascinating conversation I promise you. Ryan is also a friend to Canadian’s as he helps Canadians buy real estate in Florida, we even chat about best places for a vacation home, how to finance it as I know you big time listeners can afford vacation property either now or in the near future :)
Hello fellow wealth hackers!!
How do you convince someone to invest in real estate?
This was a question I was asked while on a podcast which caught me off guard as I generally don’t try to convince anyone actively as I in I don’t tell someone to their face they should invest in real estate but maybe I should because that’s my exact advice to my family.
My cousin Christopher is about to turn 19 and he’s joining the Canadian Armed Forces. I couldn’t be more proud of him. Christopher is like a little brother to me and I’ve kept a close eye on him because we lost his father, my uncle too soon to stomach cancer just over ten years ago.
Christopher is a major gear head, he’s watched every episode of that popular TV show Top Gear five times each. His video game time is spent doing simulators of trains, planes, and automobiles. So naturally, he went to college to become a mechanic and in a few weeks, he will travel to Quebec for army basic training then Kingston for job training for 30 weeks. Once he’s done training and is working, his salary is in the 60k range and he will get a full pension after 25 years of service. Not bad?
As a treat to Christopher, I allowed him to chauffeur my family and I around as part of his send off party in my new BMW. He loves cars and driving fast but he said he can’t afford the payments. I agreed with him, he should never be paying so much for a car at his pay and how cars and houses are liabilities if they don’t make you income.
This is all beginner stuffs to all you listeners how if you’re going to buy a home to treat it like an investment: you’re buying for value, the property has value add opportunities whether it be renting out rooms or the basement or the garage or a parking space etc.... the location has amenities in demand, there is demand for both rental and resale. We covered all the basics and I told my cousin to rent and not buy his home but instead buy an investment property in Hamilton. Why?
The armed forces has some wonderful subsidized housing and dining options. My cousin’s room and board and MEAL Plan is about $100 per week. To me, that’s a no brainer for a single guy and because he could be transferred anywhere in Canada for work including poor investment towns, it make sense he invest where I can keep an eye on things, where he can adopt my real estate team to manage his property for him. No need to reinvent the wheel.
That is my honest advice to my cousin in how I convince him to invest in real estate.
More generic advice for the starting investor is to invest within an hour drive of where you live. If your target area is too far, it makes management challenging and you are less likely to make that commute necessary to grow and manage your portfolio. If you don’t invest where I invest, that’s totally cool, I have referrals for London, Kitchen/Waterloo/Cambridge, Barrie, in the East: Bowmanville, Oshawa, Peterborough, Lindsay, downtown Toronto with full service teams just like I have in Hamilton, Brantford, St. Catharines, and Niagara Region.
This is your investment for your retirement or to fund your child’s education or a downpayment for their home. You don’t want to trust this process to just anyone, only settle for the best.
Speaking of the best, many of you have been asking for updates on our AirBnb property. June was great as we grossed $4300 including HST but excluding cleaning fees as that expense is a pass through. Guests pay what we pay the cleaners so personally, I leave it out for this analysis. We collected HST, AirBnb does not collect HST separately so it comes out of our revenues, and we pay HST on a bunch for cleaning, property management and all our operating expenses. We had lots of capital expenses and one party to clean up after so June was overall negative cash flow and we are ironing out the wrinkles with the property.
In July we had a breaker fail. The symptoms were: the 2nd floor lost power, flipping the breaker did nothing but it hummed when flipped on. An emergency electrical service call was needed for $150. July generated the same revenue as July but without having so many capital costs, our expenses reduced by $1900. For July we will positive cash flow about $1000 better than a single family. Keep in mind, summer months are better than other months of the year and as such, we were 90% occupied in the month of June and July.
Our bookings are over 90% for the next 30 days which is great and fingers crossed we keep some momentum for September.
Note this is just one of my properties and it made a lot of sense for this particular property to be an AirBnb. The rest of our portfolio student rental and legal basement suites. My wife and I are professional investors so we do what makes most sense with each property.
We are wealth hackers and as such I’m starting stock option trading today. My friend Omar who owns over 30 properties is going to show me how. Omar only works 30 minutes a day while options investing, he has more than me, works way less than I do and stock options is how he raised the majority of his downpayments to buy his 30+ investment properties. Omar has been telling me to invest in stock options for almost two years and I didn’t really listen to him till I found out he taught my electrician who updated the electrical in my AirBnb to earn six figures in his first 12 months. This I have to learn and I’ll provide updates here from time to time and I’ll have Omar and his business partner Matthew, both with 12 years experience options investing on an upcoming episode.
Omar and Matthew are wealth hackers and are speakers at our Nov 9th Wealth Hacker. Omar and Matthew have taught over 50 of their friends and family, funny enough, they’re all real estate investors too how to invest selling stock options. Omar makes a mid six figure income working a fraction of what I do hence we want to share this with the world.
Wealthhacker.ca for details and to get your tickets. Iamawealthhacker is my discount code for you. November 9th at the Toronto Congress Center near Pearson Airport, all the best wealth hacks in real estate investment, stock option investing and starting a small business. My friends Tom and Nick Karadza started a small business from zero and were awarded the Profit 500 award as one of the top 500 fastest growing companies in Canada for the last three years. www.wealthhacker.ca for more details and iamawealthhacker is my discount code for you listeners.
On to this week’s guest, young Joseph Costanza who bought his very first property at the age of 24. He’s a young hustler having a job since 16 and several side hustles as a bartender and landscaping. After graduating from university as an architect, Joseph was lucky enough to get a job in his field of study as an intern architect and quickly realized having a job did not translate into freedom hence he researched then decided on real estate.
After being referred to myself and my iWIN group, Joseph coached by Tammy Ditomaso on my team acquired his first rental property, a single family home he is turning into a house with legal basement apartment.
Joseph is here to share his experience, the importance of surrounding oneself with like-minded people and has some tips on how to measure to produce drawings as part of the building permit process. Joseph is an architect, hence he does his own drawings.
Hello Wealth Hackers and welcome to another episode of the truth about real estate investing.
Happy birthday to my partner in business and life Cherry Chan!! She’s a Super Woman in how she raises our kids, keeps me and my businesses in order and has her own thriving practice.
Quick funny story about Cherry: while she was still working in corporate, we were dating then and she would surf the MLS at work when bored (which was often) looking for investment property but she only owned her own home. After getting to know my business, we discussed investing in a student rental near Brock University in St. Catharines. My credit wasn't great at the time as I was a new agent so the house would be in Cherry's name.
I called Cherry while she was at work after I found a house in my target location, next to the only major mall in St. Catharines that doubled as a major public transit hub. I gave some vague details about the property to Cherry over the phone and we wrote the offer. We paid the owner exactly her asking as she was already discussing listing the house with a Realtor, the location and condition was A++ and any investor would want the same house because the annual rent would be over 1% of the after renovation value.
Cherry never saw the house till after we took possession and was happy with our purchase. The funny part was it wasn't till year after while reminiscing about how Cherry joint ventured on a property without ever seeing it, with her boyfriend she only knew less than a year but she wasn't concerned. Her contingency was if things didn't work out between us, she technically owned the house 🤣.
That was seven years ago. No different than our lives there were bumps, that basement flooded, a student snowboarded off the roof (he was on ODSP nonetheless) but otherwise it's been an excellent investment having doubled in value and the rents of gone up and zero vacancy the whole time.
Happy birthday again to my wealth hacker wife, to infinity and beyond. Together. 😘🥰😍
On to the subject on real estate
A kind gentleman who left a 5 star review on itunes asked me this: “my commute is 2 hours and I am taking courses to become a licensed real estate professional, what audio books would you recommend?”
My two cents: “If you're not first, you’re last” by Grant Cardone. The very same book, forms the teachings presented in part of Cardone University that he sells for a lot of money hence there is a lot of value in the book. I generally find we can all improve our sales skills. Sales is not what most thing, the vast majority of sales people don’t take the profession as seriously as folks like yourselves do.
No different than how the amateur invests in real estate vs. how a professional does. If you’ve ever been a secret shopper as a tenant viewing properties for rent or for sale vs. toured our clients’ properties, you would see a big difference. Professionals invest more in their properties to attract the best tenants who pay the best rents knowing tenants all want clean and safe. Invest more includes time and effort in marketing and screening tenants. If you read about tenant nightmare stories in the news, you’ll note the landlords never ran credit checks or a Naborly report on the prospective tenant.
You all know the hoops we must jump through to get a mortgage. It would be advisable to screen tenants similarly as a bad tenant is a very expensive mistake when you are trusting them with a half a million dollar asset.
If you’re looking to get started in becoming a wealth hacker, someone on the most efficient path to building wealth, let us know. We offer property tours in each of the top towns around the GTA which upcoming tours in Brantford and Collingwood.
We have the Wealth Hacker conference on Nov 9th, a master class on the most efficient paths to success in small business, real estate and stock options. Go to www.wealthhacker.ca for details, discount code iamawealthhacker
For those who are very serious about their success, we have my membership group called iWIN, short for the Infinity Wealth Investment Network. We are a close knit group that meets monthly to share best practices on investing in real estate, staying up on the latest strategies. We meetup quarterly for a mastermind iWIN style, we do something fun together then we mastermind over a meal. So far this summer we did a Niagara Wine Tour on bike and a separate event on powerboats on a lake up north. Both were followed by lunch and everyone had an amazing time networking with like minded people and coming away with actionable advice. For details, go to www.infinitywealth.ca
On to this week’s guest, my friend who is a member of my mastermind group, Sarah Coupland of Tag Properties (www.tagproperties.ca)
Sarah is a successful, multifamily real estate investor and one of the nicest people you will ever meet. In this interview, she took our virtual meet from her cottage afforded to her by her real estate businesses.
Sarah invests mostly where she lives, in Cobourg, Ontario where she owns several small multifamily properties. Sarah shares how she got started and how her boyfriend now husband had to help her renovate her house if he wanted to see her (yay free labour!), she shares how she sources properties off market often buying the properties no one else wants for the best value add strategies, some crazy stories of police raiding one of her rental properties, her cap rates and show she structures the financials for joint venture partners.
Hello Wealth Hackers!!
If you missed the last episode, I shared how family and I were enjoying the weather on our back deck then we stood there powerless to watch a family of five skunks scramble to hide under my shed.
I love animals as much as the next person, I’ve had two dogs before, I teach my kids to respect all life, when an electrician was upgrade the service to my home, they left a space the size of a quarter in my wall leading to mice moving into my house. We live trapped over a dozen mice. Each morning I would get the kids all excited to check the live trap, they would ask if we could keep the mouse as a pet and the answer is no. We would then release the mouse in the ravine as a family. As we kept catching mice, we got less ambitious and simply release the mice to our yard.
Anyways, to successfully get rid of the skunks, we didn’t hire professionals, if any of you are regularly having to hire folks to care for your properties, you know how the cost of labour is way up, we paid $100 for an appliance person to just look at my stove. A fridge repair was $350…
Back on topic, to get the skunks out, our fences and gates already keep out critters, it’s rare for me to find a rabbit in our rear yard but my kids left the gate open the night the skunks moved in. So step 1 was to leave the gate open so the skunks could escape.
Step 2, as shown on my instagram I ran the hose to flood the space under my shelf
Step 3, I play kids song on repeat in the shed so the skunks would have no peace. Specifically “Old Macdonald had a farm….”
Step 4, to check if the skunks were even still there, I placed a chunk of watermelon by the opening to the hole the skunks dug to see if they were still there.
Step 5, now day three, no sign or smell the skunks were still there, I blocked the opening with rocks.
It’s been a week and a half now and now sign of skunks but while I was running last night, I smelled skunk and if anyone was watching me, I looked like an idiot because I stopped cold in my tracks and ran off the sidewalk to the road to avoid the shadows and possible retribution from the skunk family. I know I would be pissed off if sprayed with cold water and forced to listen to Old Mcdonald for 24hrs straight.
On a completely unrelated topic, we have my friend Ben Oosterveld back for now a third time to the show. If you don’t know Ben, he’s previously shared how he ran away from home when very young, lived on the streets and consumed all sorts of alcohol and drugs.
He’s since gotten his life together having gone on a binge of acquiring a 50+ investment properties in a short period of time, Ben is also among the highest performing Realtors I know personally having grossed over $800,000 in a year.
What sets Ben apart from most is his ability to wow people, let people know he cares.
For those of you out there looking to raise capital or build power teams of property managers, contractors, carpenters, etc… if you have a service based business which all of you landlords do: you are all what I call home service providers. Once you make the people you care about know how much you care, that makes doing business that much easier.
For those of you looking to level up your businesses, listen to what Ben does to wow his clients to apply to your own businesses because it works for Ben.
Without further ado, I give you Ben.
On to this week’s guest!!
She is not a real estate investor yet but she really wants to be but please don’t hate on her or my this podcast as she has many dynamo investors as best friends such as guests of this show Ian Szabo and Dion Beg, and maybe one day guest Brian Scrone who is a what I call, a centurian investor have owned over 100 investment properties in Florida.
Why I brought Shauna on this show is because she is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. It is my belief that life is all about experiences and Shauna at whatever her age she is has 10X the life experiences of most.
One week she’s having lunch and planning a women’s conference with the Dutchess of York, the next week she flies to California for a meeting and charity concert with Maclemore, then it’s off to India for another major event planning session. Shauna has hosted Gary V in front of 3,000 in Toronto, she’s hosting Sir Richard Branson in the next 12 months and expanding her events to Californation. But even more crazy is Shauna is going to 10X as she plans my event to host Grant Cardone :)
Funny enough, we investors all hustle and grind so we may one day travel more. Shauna’s Haste and Hustle is so one day she may afford a down payment on an investment property and here is her story.
Website: https://www.hasteandhustle.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hasteandhustle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hasteandhustlers/
Onto this week’s guest, my friend, client, and my go to guy on construction.
This interview was triggered by hearing interviews on other podcast by beginner developers which is totally cool. Sharing is awesome and I wanted someone with mastery level experience to come on this show to share on developing and building houses.
That brings us to Steve Ford who has 12 years experience in construction and is a Project Supervisor for a local home builder having overseen the construction of over 800 houses.
Steve is a real estate investor as well having done rent to own and long-term buy and holds but is going next level in aggressively pursuing more active income by developing land and building houses via a strategy called in-fill development in which Steve explains on the show.
Steve is a wealth hacker and a good guy. I give you Steve Ford.
Website: https://www.infilldevelopments.com/
On to this week’s guest!
For those with sights on bigger projects, Shane Melanson does exactly that! Shane started like many investors do with single family homes, did a few flips, progressed to commercial real estate including trailer parks, developing industrial condos and retail plazas.
Other than tackling these very large and complex 7-8 figure projects is Shane’s path to become a commercial expert and he’s here to share what triggered his investing, his career path before his first commercial investment and the mentorship he received along the way.
Also fascinating is how Shane structures joint venture investments with these large scale, capital intensive projects and % splits via general partner and limited partnerships.
To connect with Shane:
Do you golf?
I used to think golf was an inefficient use of time and poor exercise. I used to think of golf like fishing, or darts. It’s a great hobby to do with friends but my investor friends more and more have convinced me golf is great for networking and meeting fellow entrepreneurs so I bought a set of clubs and giving it go.
🏌️♂️But I suck at golf. Even w/ a few mulligans i shot at 139 including at 76 on the back nine at the lovely Hamilton Golf and Country Club this past Friday. Thank you to Charles Wah for inviting me out.
I suck at many things, Golf especially as I only golf 18 holes once per year but now I want to learn so I set aside time to practice, learn, I took a lesson and will take even more.
Trying new things is a challenge and as a teacher of #investinginrealestate I can draw parallels on the most direct path to success:
1️⃣ do it with friends: I’m golfing with friends who happen to be successful entrepreneurs including my wife. This makes the experience and journey that much more fun. Tomorrow I’m golfing with a successful stock investor who sells options and owns 60 units of investment real estate. His name is Omar and he’s teaching me to trade and he will be one of our speakers at the Wealth Hacker Conference in Toronto on November 9th. Omar made $500,000 in 2018 from utilizing a little known strategy and has made a living doing so for over a decade.
2️⃣ take lessons: you don’t know what you don’t know so take advice from a professional who is who you want to be and has a track record of successfully coaching others to success. Almost every investor I meet wants cash flow and that’s pretty much impossible to do where the live so they are relying on local experts to guide them to the correct investment decisions.
3️⃣Don’t be afraid to try new things, five or ten years from you will look back and laugh how you started from the bottom now you’re here. None of my multimillionaire clients expected to be here so fast in five-seven years. the next five-ten years will go by no matter what, how you spend them or rather invest in them is what will matter most. With excellent guidance and coaching, you can really minimize your mistakes and maximize your returns.
Reach out if you don’t know how to get started as a may suck at golf but few others have a system and team of coaches that produces #realestatemillionaires like we do.
This episode is brought to you by iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference:
On November 9th, 2019 at the Toronto Congress Center, we will be sharing the best secrets of the rich including:
Tickets are on sale now at: www.wealthhacker.ca and don’t delay, prices are going up and if you want VIP, we only have 100 of them and they will sell out first.
On to this week’s show! Mother of Real Estate Gillian Irving is an old friend, client, mother of four who had life pretty good yet decided to go next level, hire a real estate coach and buy a bunch of houses focusing mainly on student rentals. She also started her own successful 36,000 square foot trampoline park, she’s had her own TV show on Rogers, and Gillian shares the story of our first meeting and how she bought a property that same day. It’s been a cash flow gem and nearly doubled in price in less than five years. It goes to show Gillian’s preparation for action!!
Gillian was also kind enough to share her worst investment story in a large syndicated mortgage that included losses for her and those close to her. That is the Truth About Real Estate, not all investments are winners, this show is about sharing lessons including from losses so you may win in all of your investments.
Website: http://investinstudentrentals.com/
Training course: http://www.mothersofrealestate.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gillian.irving.79
Skyzone Trampoline Park: https://www.skyzone.com/ca-whitby
Congratulations Toronto and Canada, we are the champions!! We did it!!
History was made so I may have taken more liberties than I normally do in my conservative, boring life. I like boring, I like being at home and going to bed early, and I’m glad life can finally get back to normal with less late nights and stress replaced by more family time, more sleep, more martials arts and Crossfit. Life isn’t always boring though, I’m getting a new car soon next week my challenge to my mastermind group was to CN Tower Edgewalk, that’s walking around the outside of CN Tower at 1,168 feet high or 116 storeys. Nothing beats a low risk thrill for team building followed by a mastermind lunch in the 360 Restaurant for blue sky dreaming ideas of wealth hacking.
Speaking of Wealth Hacking, while I scroll through the pictures on my phone from the last week its been busy:
This episode is brought to you by iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference:
On November 9th, 2019 at the Toronto Congress Center, we will be sharing the best secrets of the rich including:
Tickets are on sale now at: www.wealthhacker.ca and don’t delay, prices are going up and if you want VIP, we only have 100 of them and they will sell out first.
www.wealthhacker.ca if you’re interested in the best side hustle and income replacement opportunities.
November 9th we have the rich and successful sharing their secrets on how they became rich and successful. You don’t want to miss this event.
On to this week’s show!
Officer Dave Knight is a friend, an investor, client of ours, fellow podcaster of the First Responder Wealth Network spreading the word how even for those with a pension, people need more, especially for those who risk their personal safety everyday to protect all of us.
Dave is also a bigger fan and student of Grant Cardone having taken some of his masterminds and apartment building investing mastery classes delivered by Grant himself. Dave also has insights into Grant’s strategy and lessons as to what goes into his over $1 billion dollar assets under management portfolio. This was totally not what I expected.
Have a listen, buy a timmies for a first responder when you see them in line and I proudly give you officer Dave Knight.
Have you been following the Raptors? Secretly I’m hoping all the hoopla ends soon so my early to bed lifestyle can get back to normal :)
Speaking of Raptors, my all time favourite Raptor player Vince Carter has some kinda words to share about our upcoming Wealth Hacker Conference.
Like Vince says, we including the leader of the 10X movement, Grant Cardone. On November 9th, 2019 at the Toronto Congress Center, we will be sharing the best secrets of the rich including:
Tickets are on sale now at: www.wealthhacker.ca and don’t delay, prices are going up and if you want VIP, we only have 100 of them and they will sell out first.
www.wealthhacker.ca if you’re interested in the best side hustle and income replacement opportunities.
This week’s guest after a four-five year hiatus from the public spotlight is Greg Habstritt.
Greg has spoken on many of the biggest stagest in the world of entrepreneurship including 10X for T Harv Ecker, Dan Kennedy’s Super Conference plus hosting his on his own stage: Sir Richard Branson (Virgin), Dali Lama, Stephen Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Brendan Burchard.
Prior to 2010, every attendee to entrepreneur or real estate workshops and related social media knew and admired Greg then he gave it all up and he’s here sharing his truths about real estate investing including amassing a portfolio of over $100 million to almost going broke twice, why he gave up his coaching business and his current focus.
Hello wealth hacker nation!
As our regulars know, I converted one of my single family homes from being rented to students to AirBnb after an awful experience with one tenant and then dealing with the pro tenant, Landlord Tenant Board Tribunal.
Good friends of mine who have much experience with short term rentals told me how great the tenant profile is vs. long term tenants. Guests of short term rentals or STR’s for short are happy because they have vacation, they have budget otherwise they wouldn’t be taking vacation. My property is inspected more frequently as my cleaners are there every week to inspect of maintenance and damage plus damages are paid for by the guest via their damage deposit vs. a long term rental landlord has to collect themselves, come out of pocket, possibly go to small claims court, put the tenant into collections, possibly not get paid, etc…
So is the grass greener on the other side? We will see but so far in less than 72 hours we have $3500 expected revenue for the month of June. Note that’s inclusive of HST, our first guest arrive yesterday and we had our first complaint already, LOL. Our grass is too long as the grass growing conditions have been perfect and as a student rental, we had the house mowed every two weeks.
Note I raised the rent for this weekend from $250/night to $850/night because the Canadian Golf Championship is in town so the rent is high but the lesson is to be aware of your market!! Many of my friends with STR’s did not adjust their rents as they weren’t aware of this major tourist event. Fun useless fact of the day, my guests who booked golf week are from Florida.
FYI - the upfront investment is significant for time and capital to prepare a house for rent but I outsourced it all from renovations, cleaners, Property Management, furnishing the house, all of it and I’ll be sharing how we did things from beginning to end at a future iWIN members meeting plus all the technology involved to make the process completely automated.
This episode is sponsored by our Wealth Hacker Conference on November 9 and just announced is our venue: the Toronto Congress Center - North Building next to Pearson Airport in Toronto. We also announce Pierre Paul Turgeon as one of our many Wealth Hacking Speakers. Pierre Paul is an old friend, the best teacher of apartment building investing and he grew his own portfolio from zero to 22 million in only a few years. He walks the walk and talks the talk and he’s a good person as he donated several of his apartments to those who lost their homes in the Fort McMurray Fires in Alberta just a few years ago.
Our keynote speaker is none other than New York Times Best Selling Author and leader of the 10X movement, owner of Cardone Capital with over $1 billion in real estate under management, our #1 pick and ultimate Wealth Hacker Grant Cardone.
To register go to www.wealthhacker.ca, the sooner you register the better the ticket and better the price so please don’t delay, like many iWIN events, this one will sell out too.
On to this week’s guest who is less experienced to investing. This all started when I posted on Facebook that we can make any investor who is ready and willing successful as we have 15 millionaire clients who we directly assisted with their investments. They seriously come from all walks of life. I’ll detail in a future episode some interesting statistics and observations of these millionaires.
Anyways, Joel Arndt sent me a direct message or as the young people call them, DM’s, if my statement was true and if he could ask me some questions. He shared his back story, Joel actually goes to Church with one of our super star clients and past guest of this show Evelyn and though they knew each other have taken completely different paths.
Anyways, I asked Joel if we could record our Ask Erwin Anything session for all to share as I know we have many young listeners and folks looking to switch careers or learn about investing for a side hustle and he agreed and here is the interview.
I give you Joel Arndt.
What does work/life balance mean to you?
I make it no secret that I take Sunday’s off as Sunday is recovery from Raptors Game 6 Series clincher AND Sunday Family Day!! For all you entrepreneurs out there seeking balance I have no idea what balance is. What I do know is no one likes working on Sundays so it’s a good day to take off.
Note I’ve been a young hustler for over a decade and my business and investments keep working on Sunday’s and statutory holidays so I don’t always have to work. If I do need to check on a property, I’ll bring the kids as it’s part of their education and inheritance.
Going to school will get them a job. Learning to invest in real estate let’s them level up, turn down promotions for little pay, more responsibility and worse more hours so they can spend time with my grandchildren. To me that’s balance and the definition of wealth.
When my kids look back, other than being wildly embarrassed by my antics and silliness, I hope they remember they are a priority for me.
ICYMI (in case you missed it)
Our next speaker for iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference Nov 9th is...
We identified this speaker as the top educator in the area of multi-family (5 units and above) investing during our brainstorming phase and he just agreed to participate.
Pierre-Paul Turgeon is Canada’s leading authority and insider when it comes to investing in apartment buildings because of his unique perspective on this type of investment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qin5AmB1KIc
He is a former CMHC multi-family underwriter (he analyzed the risks for an insurance proposal) and a full time multi-family investor with a portfolio of 160 doors valued in excess of $22M. As a former CMHC apartment building underwriter, he has analyzed hundreds of apartment deals in three provinces and three territories. He has analyzed more apartment buildings than most of the largest landlords in the country. Not only is he familiar with the front end of buying apartment buildings, he is also very knowledgeable about the back-end of this business (that is, when apartment deals go sour and investors default on their loan), as he also managed the default management department in CMHC’s Prairie office.
This wealth of knowledge and experience enables Pierre-Paul to invest in apartments buildings strategically to ensure a sound return for his investors with low risks.
To register for the waitlist to get advance access to tickets at early bird pricing go here: https://www.wealthhacker.ca
This week’s guest is….
Before I introduce this week’s guest, we just passed 100 episodes which is crazy.
What started as a six episode experiment, I was a never wreck with nonsensical questions for my guests, I’ll always Remember asking Julie Broad if she drank coffee or tea. Her response was do people really want to know?
Time went on, it’s been three and a half years now. It’s insane to me how a niche Canadian content only podcast made the top 60 on all of iTunes in the investment category so I want to take a moment to say thank you to all my listeners, my guests, especially my favourite guests many of whom dropped bombs on this podcast publicly for the very first time.
One was kicked out of home for substance abuse as a young teenager and lived on the streets for years only to turn it around and now they are super successful and rich.
Another lost her parents as a young teen and became homeless only to become on of the top coaches in our industry and is wealthy and successful.
Many have shared how they overcame overwhelming odds, Tahani, born in a refuge camp, came to Canada for an arranged marriage only to become a single mom, barely speaking english to go on to become one of the wealthiest people I know.
Jules Mckenzie, an “Indian” as he refers to himself born and raised on a reserve was told he was worthless by his teachers, then to have a challenging job of a police officer on the reserve, many dark days, failed investments only to turn it around and become wealthy.
To celebrate 100 episodes, I’ve reached out to several of our most popular guests for updates plus for fun a few centurian investors: investors who have owned 100 or more properties to learn their lessons so we too may learn to invest like the best of the best.
First off, we have my friend John Roumanis, an old friend now who owns lots of property but also the honour of having our most downloaded episode.
John is very well educated: MBA, CPA. He even teaches at a local college for fun. He manages tons of people at work, Canada’s largest coffee producer, he’s really smart too as a conservative stock investor choosing value plays for blue chip companies that pay dividends. He’s also really smart for choosing me to help him make close to $1million in real estate, all part time in only eight years. If you want help build and grow a real estate portfolio let me know.
Did you hear about the major happenings this week? The Toronto Raptors won back to back home games in the NBA Playoffs vs. the Goliath like Milwaukee Bucks. My wife got us tickets and took me out for date night and it was awesome.
In other big awesome news, I was finally allowed to share our big fat secret I’ve been dying to share for the last three weeks. That’s when we signed our keynote speaker for Nov 9th’s iWIN Wealth Hacker Conference. He is none other than New York Times Best Seller, the man who sells out stadiums of over 30,000, the top sales trainer and real estate investor whose company owns over 1 billion dollars worth of real estate, mr 10X himself, Grant Cardone.
Which brings us to this month’s sponsor of the show. iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference.
This all started with me putting on a free training event, I told Cherry and she wasn’t impressed. Free stuffs are not appreciated nor valued, as the saying goes “those who pay, pay attention.”
Next iteration was a 30 person event in a library or something, then we applied 10X thinking: how about a 200 person plus paid event and I’ll reach out to some of my expert friends.
Then we had an idea to hire a celebrity keynote speaker, someone from my favourite CBC business reality show. Around this time, we hired an event planner then our thinking grew another 10X. Together we did some blue sky brainstorming: who is the most in demand speaker in the world of entrepreneurship?
And we got him. Uncle G, Mr 10X, Grant Cardone is our keynote speaker for iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference this November 9th in Toronto.
Our objective for the attendees to walk away knowing they can take control of their financial future and we will give them the tools to become a wealth hacker: investors who can profit and thrive in any market and not just in real estate, we will experts share about blockchain/cryptocurrency, cannabis and options trading as well.
As always with iIWN events, the networking alone will be worth the price of admission.
We are still working out details for the events including venue and ticket prices but we have opened a waitlist at www.wealthhacker.ca. Friends on the waitlist will have first dibs on tickets at early bird pricing including VIP tickets for the best seats and the opportunity to meet my friend Grant and have your picture taken with him.
Again that’s www.wealthhacker.ca to register for access to early bird pricing and availability of tickets before the public plus we will announce speakers to the waitlist first.
On to this week’s guest, my old friend Todor Yordanov, he’s the first REIN member I ever met.
I first met Todor at a meetup at a Tim Horton’s back in 2008 before anyone knew what a meetup was. This was back in day when email distribution lists were how we communicated. A bunch of Hamilton investors organizing and communicating over an email list of like 50 people.
When I met Todor, he was investing in condos: specifically townhouse condos in Hamilton because they suit this rule 8-12%: the annual rent had to be 8-12% of the purchase price plus improvements. Todor wasn’t the only one following this strategy as this was what we were taught. These houses cash flowed but in hindsight, the tenant profile was not a good one and the condo fees were inflating at about 15% per year. The truth about real estate is when condo fees go up out of control, it negatively affects affordability and in turn the resale price.
Anyways Todor next invested in student rentals but now his focus is on condos in Toronto especially condos known as pre-construction meaning builders selling apartments in a high rise building before they are built. The strategy works for Todor as it suits his lifestyle and passive investment preference.
This is the biggest, craziest thing I’ve ever done.
Bigger than buying a house without conditions, without seeing it, without my wife’s permission while we had another house vacant and undergoing renovations.
The feeling is more like that combined with skydiving, bungee jumping, hangliding, competing in martial arts, and public speaking in front of 600+ investors.
Everything I’ve done in my life and career has been building up to this moment and I’m grateful for my team and most importantly, my wife Cherry who has been my partner in this process and putting this event together.
I honestly tell her about these crazy ideas I have and she applies her critical thinking about how we make it happen. What am I talking about?
These times we live in are hard. Housing affordability is the #1 or 2 issue all across Canada. Canadians without pensions are faced with working into their 70s or 80s to afford retirement. If you’re a parent or grandparent, you have to be worried about how the next generation can get a job let alone move out and buy a home.
If you work in corporate, are you getting ahead in life? Do you really want to keep working till your 70’s or 80’s or would you prefer to make money in your sleep?
I’ve been there, I worked in technology and survived two rounds of layoffs, once during the recession and again when our company was acquired. I’m survived only to see my friends: mom’s and dad’s walked out by HR, folks with bills, mouths to feed and mortgages to pay, grateful I survived but wondering when it was going to be my turn.
What is one to do about it? Become a Wealth Hacker. Learn to make money in your sleep in any market. Take control of your financial future.
November 9th, 2019 is iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference and we have a massive, massive keynote speaker we just signed a wired a bunch of money to bring him to Toronto.
You may or may not have heard of him.
He is a New York Times best selling author
His limited partnership fund invested in real estate has over $1 billion in assets under management
He is one of the top top sales trainers in the world
Cherry and I along with numerous Canadians flew down to Miami to his conference, hosted in a sold out baseball stadium of 35,000 attendees. Cherry and I were thoroughly impressed hence we brought him back to the great north for you all to enjoy.
His books are titled “If You’re Not First, You’re Last,” “Be Obsessed or Average” and “10X”
He is the man, the legend, Grant Cardone.
Grant reminds us all we are all capable of greatness, “SUCCESS IS YOUR DUTY, OBLIGATION, RESPONSIBILITY.” ~ Grant Cardone
Grant is our #1 overall pick as iWIN continues to bring the best speakers and education so you all can take control of your financial futures, take care of yourselves and loved ones. To become Wealth Hackers.
If you’re interested in attending on Nov 9th, iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference, the cheapest and fastest way is to get on our waitlist at www.WealthHacker.ca for the first 100 registrants who will benefit from having first access to tickets at early bird pricing. This is your least expensive option to get tickets especially the VIP tickets as we are very limited and always the first to sell out.
Take responsibility for your financial future, we will give you the tools on Nov 9th in Toronto.
This week’s guest:
The recording is from late March and right after Trudeau’s announcement on how CMHC will help out new home buyers. Unfortunately Dave didn’t have a chance to do a full review as he literally just got off a plane returning home from vacation but here are my two cents…
I’m really interested in knowing how the government plans on funding this program, FYI the deficit is huge and ever expanding under this government. What is the repayment plan going to look like and do I really want the government owning a piece of my real estate?
More questions than actual insight but the truth about real estate is this. Every time the government introduces new legislation around real estate, the market goes nuts. In this case, I’d expect a buying frenzy when the new CMHC program goes live in the fall so if you’re actively growing your portfolio, I would buy sooner than later to avoid a buying frenzy starts.
Back to our guest who is Dave Butler of Butler Mortgages, the #1 Mortgage Brokerage in Canada and my personal Mortgage Broker. I’ve always been a fan of working with the best of the best which is why I work with Dave and Dan Patton and team.
Dave is crazy successful but he also paid the price of living as a workaholic, smoking, being overweight and pulling off 400 something all nighters resulting in a heart attack at the age of 39.
Please let this all be a lesson. If you have an inkling of a heart attack: pain, short of breath and discomfort, call 911.
Thankfully Dave is still alive and kicking to be here sharing on this podcast.
To be clear, my financial position and goals are different than most, I’m looking for 30% returns from my investments. My overriding principle is the investment you do is better than the investment you don’t. If I never lost 40-60% of my stock portfolio during the last major recession, I would never have given my full focus to real estate and the money I lost in stocks is pennies compared to the money I’ve made as a real estate investor.
Anyways, enough from me.
As someone not qualified to speak to RESP’s and retirement planning, I had my friend Kathleen van den Berg who has a lot of letters behind her name is qualified as the Truth About Real Estate Investing show continues to bring your experts in investing.
Kathleen has her Masters in Business Administration, her CFP - Certified Financial Planner and CLU - Chartered Life Underwriter, the Canadia wealth transfer and estate planning designation. She also owns 10 investment real estate properties.
Kathleen is here to explain the three buckets of assets everyone needs and which order to fill them and have even more controversial opinions to share on RESP’s LOL. Note Kathleen does fee based financial planning and one of the rare CFP’s to do so to ensure she can provide you unbiased financial advice unlike mutual fund sales people so we are really lucky to have Kathleen on the show so we may all learn.
If you are already on my email list, you will receive my type notes from the interview. If you would like to receive my personal notes from interviewing guests simply go to www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca and enter your name and email on the right.
Without further ado, I give you Kathleen van den Berg, MBA, CFP, CLU and RESP expert ;)
Have you seen The Avengers Endgame?!?
We did just last night and holy cow!! I won’t share any spoilers but I will share that I'm a superhero movie fan. I’m wearing my Iron Man shirt as we speak, I’ve watched every Marvel Universe movie minimum twice, some three or more times. I’m so nerd, I caught pretty much every inside joke intended for those who watched the past movies including Hulk a Hulka Burning Fudge and Steve Rogers’ “on your left” reference from Winter Soldier.
Or when Captain America unveils his shocking new super hero powers.
I know it’s all fiction and preposterous stuff superheroes but at the root of what they do, they all sacrifice, fight for good and the greater good. Which reminds me about investing…
I have had so many people tell me it’s too late for them to invest, not because the opportunity has passed but they feel there is not enough time to invest and capture all the benefits for themselves. I get that but let’s not forget about all those who you can help by getting started today like your kids, or grandkids, nieces and nephews, your favourite charity.
I’m actually seeing some investors buying houses and condos not for cashflow but rather to rent out till their kids need the house down the road. For my wife and I, I think we’ll move out of our house eventually and leave it to the kids while we live in a condo by the lake. Whereas many non investors I know are banking on the equity in their homes for their retirement.
Just imagine a life where you live mortgage free. I see it in friends my age and they have so much more time and freedom and travelling. I can’t wait to be there soon and that’s what I want for my kids instead of these $4,000-7,000 per month mortgages buyers today have in order to own a house. Less if they plan on living in a condo but I’d prefer to see my grandkids grow up in a house.
Speaking of buying houses, my team of investment specialists conduct tours of the elite 8 towns for investing in Ontario. This past Saturday we were in Brantford, Ontario and identified a gem of a property that was well maintained and ticked most of the checklist boxes of the Wealth Hacker Investment Funnel as it was located in a elite 8 investment town, there are several options for excellent property management services, at first look the property would be an ideal candidate for a legal basement apartment and it would cash flow quite nicely. As I speak, an iWIN member is preparing an offer.
That is the objective or our Elite 8 town tours, to have licensed real estate professional specializing in investments show newer investors around a top town for investment, these are fun networking events as well to meet like minded people, we even hosted a certified appraiser for one of the big four banks, a foundation contractor, plus all sorts of other real estate entrepreneurs on our last tour. Everyone had such a great time and great conversations, the lunch we hosted immediately after the tour went over two hours.
We have two tours already planned for May in the Elite 8 investment towns Barrie and Hamilton. To be notified of our tours, simple go to www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca add your name and email on the right side and you’ll be notified over email when the tours are available.
Note that spaces on tours are limited, we have sold out every tour we conducted in 2019 so as soon as your hear about one, don’t delay in registering to avoid disappointment or worse, missing out on a great deal.
Save the date: Nov 9th: iWIN’s Wealth Hacker Conference, all day event. We just signed our keynote speaker and can’t wait to announce who it is in the coming weeks but for now, save the date. iWIN members, your general admission is included in your membership fees!
On to this week’s guest who lives and invests in Windsor, Ontario but his full time work is flipping houses in Detroit, Michigan having started in 2018 after a much more challenging, low yielding flip where he lived in Oakville, Ontario. After tasting success in Detroit, he moved the whole family to Windsor, made lots of connections going to any and all networking events including iWIN. If you can believe it, Savio paid only $57,000 for a three bedroom house in a nice neighbourhood in detroit and flipped it for a $43,000 profit. Listen to his story of how he did it here.
How goes your balancing act with life, work, investing and charity?
Last week for us was definitely pushed our limits to the edge. My wife and I are parents to a three and five year old, Cherry is in her final stretch for tax season doing Accounting to over 100 local real estate investors, our charity for which Cherry is VP Finance and I am President had one of our three major events this past weekend fulfilling the wish lists of 32 of Hamilton’s poorest families.
Thank you to all our donors and volunteers. If you see my post on Instagram you’ll see Batman and Thor, God of Thunder were in attendance to spread some cheer.
On top of all of that, we closed on our newest investment property on Thursday and it’s one of the worst closings I’ve ever seen mostly our own fault and the general difficulty of the lending market and lots of learning lessons.
The biggest lesson here is to start your financing process earlier than we did. Most of you are on the ball as you have your financing in order before conditions are lifted. We did not have a financing condition so we let that deadline slip a bit too far. I do however want to thank Butler Mortgages, specifically Dave and Michelle as they bore the brunt of our challenges but got it done.
Also I’d like to thank Crystal at CAP Law for getting our deal closed and doing an excellent job coordinating with the sellers’ lawyers.
Real estate investing can be all things: easy, challenging, fun, challenging, rewarding, challenging yet worth it.
Tonight is game seven of my hockey team the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Boston and my favourite team, the Toronto Raptors game 5 of their playoff series. But guess what I’ll be doing? I’ll be in Hamilton with a wet/dry shop vacuum to get the water out of the basement at our newest property.
This is one of the realities of investing, the best deals are often houses with challenges, this one the basement is known to leak but it’s a very easy fix by rerouting the downspout away from the foundation. I’ve already done it but now I need to get the rain water out of the basement to prevent mould growth in our unfinished basement. I’ve always wanted to own a shop vacuum anyways and I’ll be home in time to watch the remain two thirds of the game.
If you don’t like doing any work on your properties that’s totally ok. I was just way to slow in booking my handyman to do this job and again, I’ve always wanted a shop vacuum :)
Speaking of investing being challenging and worth it, that brings us to this week’s guest Evelyn Lamarsh, our client since she was 26 years old when we met in 2011. Fast forward to today she is one of those few investors with 10 properties and living in financial peace.
Evelyn and husband Mike are living the dream. Evelyn has her dream job, Mike retired from his job in his early 30’s, they have two young children they get to spend lots of time with and they just bought a 30 foot boat to spend family time on and entertain friends and family. A boat paid for by their investments.
Financial peace and living the dream are indeed possible with some early hustle as explained by our client and more importantly friend, Evelyn Lamarsh.
What is the deal with AirBnb rentals and short term rentals?
First off I’d like to thank everyone for leaving their reviews on itunes results in this show being one of the top investment podcasts in all of iTunes. If you have any constructive feedback or questions please send them in and not write them in a less than 5 star review.
We received a less than stellar review about my lack of understanding of RESP. Admittedly, I don’t understand the nuances of RESP’s nor do I care to but don’t listen to me, my investments for my kids education plan returned only a couple hundred thousand in less than five years.
Personally, I’m a problem solver and the problem for a dad with young kids is affording their education is going to be expensive. A Globe and Mail article forecasted my kids’ education costsing $70,000 each for a four year undergraduate degree for tuition alone.
I have two kids so I need to make an extra 70k times two as I have two kids so how do I solve this problem of affording university?
In hindsight, investing in real estate has worked out quite well based on the results of equity gains in the hundreds of thousands while my kids are only five and three years old.
In asking Certified Financial Planner, Masters of Business Administration holder, investor of 10 properties and upcoming guest of this show Kathleen Van Den Berg, she informs me the nuances of RESP’s maximum grants per lifetime are $7,200 each kid. Again I don’t understand the nuances, I have shiny thing syndrome bad enough but my problem is saving $70,000 big, not $7,200 in grants.
I’m not saying don’t invest in RESP’s, I think for some they make a lot of sense but personally for my kids, I need a lot more savings and flexibility as more and more, I see tremendous quality of education for Sales, Marketing and Business to be better outside of traditional brick and mortar universities. Back we can talk about that another time.
While we are talking about my kids’ houses, one of them we have changed strategy from student rental to college kids to a short term rental and what a coincidence I had an in depth learning session, I mean interview of a full time AirBNB operator Bryan Kirow of Northern Host Kirow Management Inc with over 400 overnight stays in his units and counting.
As you can tell from the interview, he’s quite bright, upon graduating university he worked for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for our American friends listening, that’s the equivalent to the IRS in the USA. Bryan worked there till life had him move out of town and he decided to make a full time gig of operating short term rentals remotely as some properties are over 300km’s apart, and he’s acquiring more properties. Currently he owns four properties with seven units but his portfolio is doubling in size in just a few months.
His investments have worked out quite well as he’s often doubling or tripling the rental income of a long-term strategy, and at the same time avoiding many of the tenant issues from long-term tenancy. Bryan even shares the little known renovation to try and double his already tripled annual rents on his property in a vacation town. Doubled his tripled rents. I know that sounds weird but when you listen it will make more sense.
Would you like my show notes? The notes I’m taking during the interview as I know many of you listeners are pre-occupied while commuting or cooking or working out while listening to this so if you are interested, I will include my notes in my weekly email that let’s folks konw the episode is available. Like you, I’m an investor too here to learn and I’m finding typing my own notes is a good practice for learning and my notes can be yours too if you simply go to http://www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca/ and enter your name and email to subscribe.
Are you ever really sure you know what you’re doing?
I regularly check in with our investment decisions and more importantly what my wife and I are doing as parents. No different than investing, a custom approach is best and kids with their personalities is no different.
Admittedly I’ve taught my kids some controversial things and today is international bully awareness day so I thought I would share. My son enjoys hitting and wrestling, my older daughter not so much so I’ve told her to tell him to stop, if he doesn’t, walk away, if he keeps pestering you then hit him just not in the face.
I know many don’t believe in violence but from everything I’ve read on bullying and from my experience, there are people out there who don’t understand words, such as bullies so I view this as a learning experience under the safety of our home. My daughter learns to stand up to bullies and my son learns that unacceptable behaviour will result in being hit by the victim.
Even though their fighting drives me bonkers, to see how they are best friends makes it all worth it. Here they are, my daughter is riding my son’s bike because she got tired of riding her scooter and my son is copying me how I was pushing my daughter when teaching her to ride without training wheels.
My family is my motivation to work hard to afford more financial freedom and financial peace. Financial peace is a term I first heard from this week’s guest who is mega successful thanks to his TV show The Everyday Investor but he has peace as he does very little other work other than starting his own church. He has peace as he called his phone company to remove the texting function from his phone and he deleted all of his social media.
Rav was a Realtor and owned his own brokerage plus several investment properties but the lifestyle of hustle and demanding schedule did not suit him so he stopped being a broker and sold all his investment properties. Instead Rav focuses on his producing his show and others, teaching others how to invest passively in land developments. But by far the majority of his time is spent with his wife and two teenagers. Financial Peace indeed as Rav is rich yet his favourite store is Old Navy and the only car they own is not fancy and over ten years old.
Here am on as a guest on Rav’s Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzRuyalspiY
If you’re interested in learning more about investing in real estate we have upcoming Street Smart tours of two of the elite 8 towns: Brantford and Barrie.
Saturday morning of April 27th, we have the former Economic Development Officer of Brantford leading our tour of potential investment properties. One property will be ideal for the recreational investor and another for more intermediate to advanced. The tour will be followed by a mastermind lunch with fellow local investment including experts from the iWIN community.
To get your tickets: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/iwin-april-27-brantford-street-smart-tour-tickets-59267081436
Save the date: Saturday morning of May 18th, same idea for Barrie, a street smart tour led by award winning Realtor and investor of 10+ properties, John Beddome, he was a guest on this podcast just two weeks ago and has been investing in Barrie since 2007. John will be hosting a tour of properties followed by a mastermind lunch with fellow local investment including experts from the iWIN community.
Save the date for now and stay tuned for how to buy tickets which will be in the show notes at the http://truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca or get on the email list so you are emailed when new episodes are released and informed when we host events.
To follow Rav, again he doesn’t have social media:
Onto this week’s show!
I’m getting a lot of emails and seeing it all over the investor Facebook groups folks are experiencing basement leaks so I’ve invited my secret contractor, friend and client Manny Cabral on the show. Just to warn you, he’s ultra busy and selective of who he works with. He’s earned the right as he’s so busy with his own portfolio and existing referral business.
Anyways, Manny is a real professional contractor, he used to manage government renovation contracts for government buildings and schools. He’s used to large scale projects with lots of regulation and moving parts which makes him well suited to be a general contractor and investor and house flipper.
Manny plus his two sons are members of iWIN and he used to sing and play guitar in a travelling rock band. As the serial entrepreneur that he is Manny also collected Corvettes including a time when our dollar was near par where Manny was the biggest reseller of Corvettes in Canada but that’s all boring compared to leaky basements so have at it Manny!
On to this week’s guest!!
Sadly the truth is there are few people I like in the real estate industry and even fewer in the real estate investment industry. John Bedomme is not only of the good ones, he’s one of the great ones.
John is a licensed real estate professionals, he listens to what his clients want and get them exactly that. The job is to guide investors as best as possible with the highest possible return on time and investment and John delivers exactly that.
When I was checking John’s references (I check references for guests of the show :) I was informed the client was showed seven properties by John and the investor bought five of them because John listened and found them exactly what they wanted.
John is also an investor, a top 10% investor as one of the few who achieve double digit investment properties at 12 having started in 2007. Even more important is what a good man, husband and father he is but I won’t spoil it for you here, he shares at around the midpoint of the interview that had me choked up.
Finally John is an original member of iWIN and member of the League of Extraordinary Real Estate Professionals that I personally endorse. After you have a listen, you will understand how John qualifies.
Without further ado, John Beddome
On to this week’s show!!
In 1964 a comic strip called “Wizard of Id” was published
In the first panel the diminutive tyrannical King character addressed his subjects from the balcony of his castle and emphasized the need for “peace and harmony”.
In the second panel the King continued by stating “We must all live by The Golden Rule”.
Traditionally, the golden rule is to do unto others as you would have done onto you. That’s what nice people do. The tyrannical King, the central character to the Wizard of ID is not nice so you can imagine the confusion by both the reader and the audience before the king.
In the last panel the jackass king character states “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.”
In today’s real world, the banks have all the cheap money, cheap money all us investors want and on the show we have my old friend Dion Beg who specializes in mortgages for investors and he just so happens to belong to the #1 mortgage company in Canada, Butler Mortgage.
I’ve always believed in working with the best of the best and bringing you the best of the best hence I asked Dion to give us all an update on the mortgage markets specific to us investors and across multiple investment strategies.
Pay special attention near the end when Dion explains the break down of his client tell between recreational, intermediate and advanced. I may have many super stars on this show but as Dion shares, you don’t need much to build a healthy sided retirement nest egg. If you’re new to investing, start there. Because no one else is going to give you a pension for this little effort.
Without further ado, I give you Dion Beg.
Do you remember your favourite experience doing charity work?
I’ll always remember my favourite moment as a Basket Brigade Volunteer.
It was Thanksgiving and jacket weather, the sun was out so it was warm enough that we didn’t need gloves.
My brother Tony was driving his company car since it’s an SUV and well, we’re doing god’s work so someone else can pay for the mileage 😛 hahaha
He pulled off the main road and into a townhouse complex right off the main road. As it goes with affordable, high density housing, it’s often right off a busy street with four to six lanes of traffic. The houses are close together, the lots are maybe 20 feet wide, single lane driveways. We drive slowly going over speed bumps as I’m looking for the house numbers.
We find the house and pull into the driveway, it looks like all the rest of the houses but with toys on the front lawn, the grass is that shade of yellow and green. This complex looks to be a condominium as they all look the same and built in the 1980’s. They’ve been maintained OK but they haven’t been painted in a while and I can see some tattered window screens.
Our list of deliveries details the family as two sisters sharing a house each having kids for a total of five kids, the oldest is nine, youngest 24 months.
Single moms have a special place in my heart as statistically, single moms have the highest chance of living in poverty of any household. I’m a parent too and know how hard it is, I couldn’t imagine being on your own with a single income.
My brother Tony and I grab boxes and bags of groceries including a turkey, fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, butter, eggs, everything you need to entertain family for Easter dinner. We carry the groceries from the trunk, walk up to the front door, knock and are greeted by yelling children. They are excited to see who’s coming and are jumping up and down with smiles to greet us.
One of my the mom’s comes around the corner to greet us and say thank you. She’s dressed comfortably in sweats as everyone does on weekends and she looks tired and has a kind but tired smile and says thank you. Mom hugs both my brother and I. The kids are looking through the packages we brought. They box and bag we brought are heavy so the kids are grabbing items, lifting over their heads and yelling what it is before carrying it off to the kitchen. We inform her we still have more and need to make another trip to the car.
My brother and I return with more groceries and some used kids books that were donated by another volunteer. One of the kids screams “pie!!” and “oh look! BOOKS!!” Two of the kids help themselves to books and go outside to read in the sun, the other kids run outside to play on the lawn too.
We exchange hugs with mom and again and wish her a Happy Thanksgiving. Tony and I return to the car and sit in silence for 30 seconds before turning on the engine. Taking in the experience of making a difference for a single mom and kids who are so grateful for so little. My brother says something along the lines of how great it feels to help out this family. I say nothing as I’m not good at expressing my feelings. I’m the passenger/navigator so I check the list and key in the GPS for our next delivery.
A simple act on a fall day with my brother and I’ll never forget it. Life is about experiences after all.
This was the moment I knew we were onto the best volunteer experience ever and I got to share it with my big brother. I knew we had to bring it back to Hamilton.
This was six years ago and with the help of many others went on from being a volunteer to building and presiding over the biggest operating budget for a Basket Brigade charity, the only Basket Brigade that operates Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas anywhere in North America. People need help and we will be the change they need.
This Easter, 32 of Hamilton’s poorest families will have their wishes answered. Our volunteers are sending home wish lists for the families to fill out and our volunteers will receive completed wish lists with the family’s story and contact information to go shopping, we budget $100 per family member.
On April 20th, we throw a party with pizza, hot dog cart, DJ, Batman, free giveaways, all for the families. It is here our volunteers will arrive early to wrap presents and hand them over to the families. Those families who can’t make it in person, will have theirs delivered by volunteers but can you see many families missing out on this party??
For details, the best place to follow along is our private Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HamiltonBasketBrigade/. We are considerably slower with email 😛
April 20th, we will be the change we want to see in the world.
We will have an Easter bunny, Batman, Marvel Avengers Thor and Valkryie, pizza, hot dogs, DJ. It’s a party for 32 of Hamilton’s most impoverished families and our volunteers.
April 20th, starts at 10 am, families arrive at 11am. We are done by 1. All in Hamilton
For privacy reasons, full details are on our private Facebook group and for registered volunteers. Go here to register (and donate): https://www.hamiltonbasketbrigade.com/
This week’s guest is an old friend who is the newest member on my team Paisley Mackenzie!!
I first met Paisley back in 2011 when I started looking into Brantford as it was and still is a top town for investment. A best practice when learning about a new city is to meet with the Economic Development Officer and at the time it was Paisley Makenzie.
FOR FREE, I was able to bounce residential investment opportunities off a local expert with over 20 experience of business and real estate in the city.
We hit it off immediately since Paisley is kind and very helpful. In me, Paisley could tell I was not like other real estate agents as few out of town residential agents ever come to meet with her looking for the best opportunities for their clients.
Paisley is now the former Economic Development Officer with 28 years experience in that role. Her job was to work with investors and businesses invest in Brantford and she’s now doing the same as a member of my Titan Investment Real Estate as a coach to guide and teach others to invest in Brantford, Hamilton and surrounding areas. Her knowledge of commercial and industrial is second to none but enough from me, I’m proud to present to you Paisley Mackenzie.
Paisley on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paisley.mackenzie