The Truth About Real Estate Investing... For Canadians

Hello Halton, Toronto, Hamilton, Brantford, St. Catharines, Niagara, Welland, Thorold real estate investors!!!   Who doesn’t like live music especially when they put on THE BEST live performance.  My credo is, life is all about experiences and I recommend you catch USS if they’re ever playing a gig near you.  The both shows in Hamilton and my friends Mike Gillespie, St Catharines investor extraordinaire; John Roumanis, Hamilton investor of $600,000 in 6 Years fame; and Steve had a great time.     Here is a youtube from one of their lives shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT3KZIE27xo   With life being so short and everyone being so busy, I find my social circle continually distills down to just awesome people who are also successful in business which makes for great conversations. So keeping with living your real estate investor’s life of health, wealth, family and fun; for those who enjoy having fun along side successful real estate investors, a group of us including: Andy Tran (second suite guy), Charle

Hello Halton, Toronto, Hamilton, Brantford, St. Catharines, Niagara, Welland, Thorold real estate investors!!!   What a terrific weekend in sports for Canadian sports!! My Saturday started with spectating a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament to support my teammates from http://www.mnunesbjj.com/ who competing.  I’m still a beginner at the sport so I was there to be a cheerleader and to experience a competition as a spectator before I sign up to fight grown men in 2018.  Yup, I’m committed to competing at least once and like everything I do, I’ll take a pragmatic approach to training in both the sport, my strength and conditioning, my diet as I’ll need to lose pounds to ensure I’ll be the largest competitor in my weight class.  Just like my real estate, I prefer to have every advantage in my favour especially when I turn 40 and will be the youngest in the Seniors, 40 year old and above division :D.     Speaking of having every advantage, my clients hired me to sell their flip property, a gorgeous 2,600 square foot

We have a very interesting guest this week with my friend THE JAY WONG, who is a real estate investor but he’s more well known for his ultra successful, rated #1 Self-Help podcast theinnerchangemaker.com on iTunes.  I know if you’re listening, you may enjoy my podcast, however Jay gets 50-60 times as many downloads as I do so you can just imagine how good the theinnerchangemaker.com is.  Jay’s mission is to create empowering media that summarizes all of these great lessons covered in on his show by other successful Change makers, in hopes that these combined journeys will help business owners grow their business through online marketing and elevating their leadership.   If you’re a real estate entrepreneur or an entrepreneur in general, I know you’ll find Jay’s lessons useful in helping to build your authority and raise joint venture capital.   Jay’s past guests include leading educators in self development: Bob Proctor, Grant Cardone, and Philip Mckernan.  From the feature image for this episode, you can see

I’m excited to bring to you, all the way from Oshawa, Ontario, Ryan Carr, a trained Mechanic who was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and turned to real estate at first renovating his own investment properties and when he couldn’t scale himself working on the tools, he hired full time contractors.  If you’ve been renovating or looking to renovate like I have, you know how hard it is to get the attention of contractors with this housing boom going on.  Ryan’s solution is to hire folks full time and he’s keeping them busy as he’s purchased 20 houses in the last two years, all requiring varying degrees of renovations including the vertical duplex split.  A horizontal split would be the traditional basement apartment duplex whereas Ryan will install a vertical wall/s to divide a property to increase cash flow by $300-500/month.  Ryan will share some tips on when to vertical split and how to source 20 properties, mostly private deals not on MLS.   This interview with Ryan was an eye opener to me as are all of our

This week I’m excited to bring to you, all the way from Kingston, Ontario, Rene Masse who was been working with tenants for over 20 years as he did grow up along side them living in his home. Rene has invested for 10 years having reached the significant milestone of earning $5,000 cash flow per month from student rentals after six years and he did so investing only $14,000 of his own money!  That is a pretty good return on investment considering Rene quit his teaching job three months giving up the steady paycheque and pension and job security for the entrepreneurial life.  This is after years of University and Teacher’s College at Queen’s University and graduating with debt!!  Rene definitely has no interest in being average and is truly living life to his fullest as you’ll see from the interview where I did not ask one single question that I had prepared.  Rene also produces a series of entertaining and educational videos on the subject of real estate investing and he has extensive experience in hiring univ

This week I’m excited to bring to you my friend and client Roger Auger who grew up in a poor and less than ideal household in a bad part of town.  From an early age, Roger learned he had to hustle to make money to pay his parents’ mortgage because what else should a 13 year old be doing. But he struggled in school and resorted to blackmailing his high school teachers to allow him to graduate or endure another year him back.  Roger tried college but that didn’t work out but he never stopped working hard to earn enough to buy investment property.  Now at 13 properties, he’s done quite well for himself amassing considerably more wealth than many people I know with Masters degrees and on top of that, he has a heart of gold as Roger is the co-founder of the HamiltonBasketBrigade.com, wait till you hear the story about him and Josh delivering Christmas dinners.  So without further ado, I give your Roger Auger    Web: http://www.augerproperties.ca/ Email: roger@augerproperties.ca   Sorry for the interruption during

This week I’m excited to bring to you my friend and client Kaush Nanubhai (pronounced Koh-shh Na-new-bye) who started off buying condos in downtown Toronto as a young professional Accountant as he described buying a condo better use of his disposable income than drinking and partying.  Many years later and having bigger goals in mind including more income and improved lifestyle, he’s now built himself a sizeable portfolio now at 11 investment properties, acquiring eight of them in the last four years with plans and joint venture partners for many more.  Learn about what Kaush wishes he could go back and do over, what drives an already successful professional like Kaush to do even more, how he’s created more time for what’s important, time with family and taking care of his health.  Kaush invests in student rentals and legal basement suites in Hamilton, St Catharines, Welland, and Niagara On the Lake.   Links to stuffs mentioned Durham REI: https://durhamrei.com/ Action Taker Program: https://durhamrei.com/coa

This week I’m excited to bring to you the return of Charles Wah, you might remember him from our land development interview six months ago and he’s fresh off the set of Scott McGilvray’s newest show to give you all an update on his land development projects and the new investments and building development projects he has on the go.  We’ll take a sneak peak at the behind the scenes of HGTV’s biggest star, how Charles spends his off time, and we will share our thought’s and lessons from the phenomenal Archangel Summit. It was so good, we already purchased our VIP tickets for the Archangel Summit in September 2018.  You want to know WHY this super successful and very young investor does what he does? Then stay tuned….             http://archangelsummit.com/   Register for the Halton Real Estate Investors Group Meeting Sept 23rd, Sheridan College Conference Centre here: http://www.haltonrei.ca/event-schedule/

This week I’m excited to bring to you Nick Ditomaso, he’s been investing for less than three years after 20 something years of sitting on the sidelines.  Even as a single dad, he’s been super successful with just a few well selected investment properties and with the proceeds of just one property, Nick is paying off his mom’s car loan, paying for his son’s wedding, donating to charity, and still have sufficient capital for a down payment or two for more investment properties.  Nick’s claim to fame is his ability to refinance his own home for multiple down payments, he almost did it THREE times within 12 months and successfully achieved above market appraisals each time.  Listen in on his tips on how he did so plus his advice on books to read and clubs to join.     Recommendations by Nick: Real Estate Investing in Canada: Creating Wealth with the ACRE System by Don R Campbell http://a.co/fan4HoE   Secrets of the Canadian Real Estate Cycle: An Investor's Guide http://a.co/8KE2R90   The Property Management Toolb

For anyone with a small to medium sized business including real estate investors who invest using corporations, you’re probably as disappointed as I am in Minister Morneau’s proposed changes to the tax benefits we small business work so hard to earn.  Here’s a great one line summary of the proposal: "income taxes are highly unfavourable to business owners and investors who, unlike consumers, pay tax twice: once when they earn their income and a second time after they invest it and pay taxes on the returns.” “These measures, contrary to much of the news coverage, aren’t just targeted at the “rich” but will also hit middle-class business owners, are expected to increase federal taxes by $250 million, and provincial revenues by roughly another half of that. This is just one more way to discourage entrepreneurship, on top of all the tax increases in the past two years. If the Republicans’ plan for tax reform happens in the U.S., even more young entrepreneurs will be looking to head south instead of here.“ source:

This week, we’re doing something different, we do not have a guest but rather me!  My plan is to buy three houses this year and we just locked up the first of three and I’d like to detail for you the lead up to the purchase, how the purchase went, and where we are going with it.  If the listeners enjoy this episode, I’ll make a series of updates on how I invest.  Just to let you know, we have a new website where we will be posting all new and old podcast episodes, show notes, contact info for our guests. The website is www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca. Going forward, all our other websites will forward you to this website for simplicity.  If you’re a newer listener, I highly recommend you go back and listen to previous guests for lessons on investing and stories of inspiration.  Till next time, my name is Erwin Szeto, thank you for listening and happy real estate investing. If you would like to hear more about my back story, you can listen to Russell Westcott's interview of me here: http://blog.reincanada

Welcome ladies and gentlemen investors across the greatest country in the world, this is the Truth About Real Estate Investing show for Canadians where it is my job to bring you experts in the world of investing so we may learn from their experience, so we too can duplicate their success, and inspire YOU to take action for an early and comfortable retirement.  Even better would be investments to pay for your children’s education, down payments for their first homes, and to support your favourite charities.   This week we have an exceptional guest in Elizabeth Kelly who has been investing for over 12 years built a large portfolio of buy, rent and hold investment properties with her husband and co-founded a property management company based in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Elizabeth also runs a boutique Rent to Own company which specializes in providing home ownership options for families.    On the business side, Elizabeth coaches and trains investors and has done so for the last five years.  While doing so she noti

Welcome ladies and gentlemen investors across the greatest country in the world. This is the Truth About Real Estate Investing show for Canadians where it is my job to bring you experts in the world of investing to learn their expertise and experience. In our interviews, we will flush out their out their strategies and lessons so we may listen and takeaway highly tactical tips and ideas to improve our investment portfolios. We’ve had guests in the pasts from faraway lands, Don Campbell who resides in British Columbia, Pierre Paul Turgeon who’s from Alberta but this week our guest, Andy Tran is on the other side of the world in Japan visiting his wife’s family. I’ve been friends with Andy since 2009 when we met at a mutual friend’s birthday and ran into each other again at REIN. Andy was one of my first clients as I helped him purchase investment properties in Hamilton back in 2010 and have been friends since but now the tables have turned as I have hired Andy to prepare my investment property for a legal base

Welcome ladies and gentlemen investors across the greatest country in the world, this is the Truth About Real Estate Investing show for Canadians where it is my job to bring you experts in the world of investing so we may learn from their experience, so we too can duplicate their success, and inspire YOU to take action for a better financial future for yourself and those closest to you. This week we welcome one of the greatest teachers of apartment building investing, returning to the show is former lawyer, former CMHC analyst for default management and underwriter for multi-family properties Pierre Paul Turgeon.  Pierre Paul is one of the foremost experts in this area as an author, high in demand speaker at the Real Estate Investment Network and this past month at Rock Star’s Your Life, Your Terms event.   He’s back to give you an update on oil, Edmonton, Alberta, why apartment building investment makes sense for any portfolio and if you feel you need more preparation before purchasing a building, Pierre Pau

Kevin started investing in 2007 with a vacant, run down six plex that he purchased with no money down in Thunder Bay. Now a full time investor, Kevin continues to fix up and rent multi-family properties, as well as flipping single family homes. If you know Kevin, you’ll know he has a passion for learning and sharing knowledge, hence he decided to start LifeStyle Housing Radio, a weekly radio show and podcast for real estate investors, and that’s not all. Kevin being from Thunder Bay, hasn’t always been able to attend all the great real estate events in the GTA hence he started the LifeStyle Housing Summit to make great real estate education available to everyone no matter where they live. When he’s not working on a property, Kevin is skiing and coaching at the local ski resort and for the Lakehead varsity ski team. In case you haven’t heard Kevin’s LifeStyle Housing Radio show, I’m going to play for you Kevin’s very original radio show introduction so without further ado, I give you Kevin Bunzeluk Kevin creat

Hello ladies and gentlemen investors from across Canada, welcome to another episode of the truth about real estate investing, where it is my pleasure to bring to you investor stories to educate, inspire and maybe even entertain.  This week we have a guest referred by a friend of the show in Amy Halpenny, she’s new to real estate investing but she shot out of a cannon acquiring five properties in just over six months in Collingwood and the Durham Region converting each of them to add secondary suites for a total of ten units. On-the-job Amy combines strategic ‘big picture’ thinking with well-honed management skills, operational know-how, and a relentless persistence to get 'er done. Previous to real estate, Amy worked in small business and start-ups for over 15 years in strategy, sales, marketing and operations. In this interview we talk about Amy’s reasons for investing, the courses she took and how it helped, how her investing strategy will insulate her from market corrections. Coaching recommended by Amy: h

Hello ladies and gentlemen investors from across Canada, this week we have a special guest in an old friend Oliver Manalese. I’ve known Oliver for many years dating back to my first year at REIN in 2008 and he no longer invests in real estate. Just to confirm, you are indeed listening to the Truth About Real Estate Investing show and one of the truths of the investment business is it’s not for everyone. In Oliver’s case, he built a successful business, made a bunch of money doing so, and later decided to change directions.   Since 2012, Oliver Manalese is a Breakthrough Coach. He coaches, consults and trains creative leaders in a process of Aligned Reinvention. Through breakthrough insights, intuitive guidance, and transformational tools, his clients create lives and businesses that reflect their deepest purpose on this planet.   His work is based in Ontology. Simply put, he looks at the different ways we are being and how it determines our reality of what is possible and not possible. In today's culture of h

Hello ladies and gentlemen listeners from across Canada! Welcome to another episode of the Truth About Real Estate Investing where it is my job to bring you lessons from the streets, provide you education on all things real estate investing, inspiration, and maybe some entertainment. This week we have a very special guest, a multiple time best selling author, the best selling Canadian real estate author in history but he doesn’t just write, he knows what he’s talking about. Don is a veteran investor, a teacher, a Philanthropist, market analyst and in his free time, Don pursues his passion which is organic farming and not just plants but livestock as in cows and such. Don has spoken to tens of thousands of people on stages all over North America, Australia, Ireland sharing his analysis, his strategies and his life philosophies. When the national media: CBC, BNN, CTV, Global News, Financial Post, Globe and Mail, Sun Media, etc… wants an unbiased comment on the real estate market, they go to Don in his role as S

This week we have a special guest in Michal Wywrot, who started out investing in real estate at the age of 17 at the same time while going to school and university, playing Poker and using the winnings to graduate university debt free. Mike travelled the world as a professional poker player on the top three world poker tours having played in LA, Vegas, Croatia, Monte Carlo.  Michael and brother Luke’s investing is just a varied and spread out having investing in new construction condos in Markham, nine student houses in Hamilton, flips and rent to owns in Brampton and Durham regions, apartment building in Etobicoke and finally, their current project, developing 30 units in Toronto. Should you want to learn more about their business or join them in a future development opportunity, go to their website at www.lch.to On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lch.to/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifestylecustomhomes.ca/ On the podcast, we talk about:   What Michal does to stay in shape and destress The boom o

That’s right, a part time investor from Toronto investing in cash flowing, Hamilton real estate improved his net worth by $600,000 in just six years.  Gross rents of $8,000 per month and John’s personal efforts to generate those revenues is 30 minutes per week or 2 hours per month, therefore his hourly rate is $4,000/hour. After over a decade of sitting on the sidelines and knowing real estate was an excellent asset class, John finally took the leap after meeting his real estate coach in Erwin “Mr Hamilton” Szeto (full disclosure, John is my client).  John, son of Greek immigrants, being a rather smart guy who has his MBA and Chartered Professional Accountant designation took the leap and purchased his first investment property, in April 2011, a single family, semi-detached for $240,000 which is now worth over $400,000 in today’s market. John has a full time, management job in Toronto, recently married to lovely wife Freda and are expecting their first child.  With busy life including teaching at Sheridan Col