The Truth About Real Estate Investing... For Canadians

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

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 sh

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 ap

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 i

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. To follow up with Steve: 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: Website: http://shanemelanson.com Podcast (iTunes): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-investing-advantage-podcast/id1465519313 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shane-melanson/the-investing-advantage?refid=asa Shane’s book: https://www.clubsyndic

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.

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: Our AirBnb is rocking, a single family home we would normally rent for $2,000 has booked $4,600 on AirBnb for June only, we are 77% booked so we can definit

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: 10X mindset Six figure income, 15 mins per day, options trading from your phone Earning income like the bank passively, better returns and more stable than the stock market by private lending Investing in real estate: apartment buildings, raising capital, AirBnb, student rentals, accessory apartments, land development And so much more as we confirm more Wealth Hacker experts who do, no theory BS 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

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

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

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 so

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

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 ever

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 lik

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 ar

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,

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

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