The Truth About Real Estate Investing... for Canadians

Have you met Steve Phillips? He’s a member of my team, the four time award winning iWIN Real Estate. Right out of school he worked for one of the largest condo management firms in the GTA, he’s a serial entrepreneur, had a construction business, real estate runs in the family as the Mrs. is a designer. Steve is well known in the Durham region as well within the investor community having been coached by, and taken courses by Quentin D’souza.

If you know Steve like I do, he doesn’t sleep until his clients have a great deal under contract and he’ll be sharing how he’s been doing so along with the numbers behind the deals. You can reach out to steve at [email protected] if you’d like to book a call or tour.

To book a call with Steve: https://calendly.com/steve-1502iwinrealestate/30min

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iwin_on_the_eastside/

If you follow the real estate news in Canada as much as I do on paid and free sources as much as I do then you will have already heard of my guest this week in Ron Butler who started in the Mortgage Brokering business just after the housing crash happened in the late 1980s and his business Butler Mortgage is one of the largest Mortgage Brokerages in Canada.

Ron is known as the Angry Mortgage guy. His podcast is literally called Angry Mortgage where he rips on all the things wrong about real estate in Canada on both his podcast and to his 56,000 twitter followers where he has no filter so I’ll warn you now, there is some adult language not appropriate for the young ones during our episode. Ron is also a regular expert who is regularly interviewed on pretty much all the major, mainstream news outlets.

He’s here today to give you an insider’s view on why this current housing market is different than the crash of the late 80’s, who’s actually buying real estate today, advice to young people who don’t have rich parents, how he called my strategy of buying houses for my kids a sickness and ridiculous.

But before we get to Ron, I do hope you’re all having a great summer and getting ready for what will be an opportunistic fall/winter! For buyers, this will be as good as it gets before rates peak and the rhetoric from the Bank of Canada is pause and rate cuts.

For sellers, the smart, motivated, those who cannot hold on for the next year or two while rates are higher. They will successfully exit or else be stuck holding the bag till the spring.

I’ll be sharing more of my research, what our clients and I are investing in including the stocks I’m buying on the cheap if there’s interest at the September iWIN Meeting Tuesday night, September 19th for those interested in the truth about what successful, everyday investors are doing with their investments. We have a big time developer how they can still make money in this market, how folks can participate in the development and building of preconstruction without having to take possession of a property because personally, I wouldn’t want to own, rent out, pay out of my pocket massive negative cash flow.

I’d rather make money alongside the developer and only risk my investment. Unfortunately, some preconstruction investors did not realise they can lose more than their investment if the property drops more in value than their deposit.

If you’re already on our email newsletter, you’ll see we’ve already announced the event and how to register. If you’d like to be on our email newsletter like the over 10,000+ iWinningest investors in Canada are already receiving to gain that information advantage, go to www.truthaboutrealestateinvesting.ca to stay connected, be informed like a sophisticated investor should.

There’s a right way to use leverage and a wrong way and if you don’t believe me, you can hear it from the biggest real estate bear I know personally in this week’s guest, the Angry Mortgage Broker, 30+ year mortgage veteran, Ron Butler!

Again, a warning, the language used by Ron to express his opinions are not appropriate for those easily offended, nor children and they are Ron’s opinions, not mine nor that of any of my businesses. If you do offend easily please skip this episode.

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy

Website: https://www.butlermortgage.ca/

Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8vl-_vvvf7VZcxKPJ-v-Xg

In seeking any truth, getting opinions from several expert sources is ideal.

Please enjoy the show!

Greetings my fellow investors and truth seekers, this is the Truth About Real Estate Investing Show for Canadians and if you’re addicted to social media like I am, there’s not a lot of good news within our community. It’s not all bad, we just had Kelly Caldwell, Victoria Cluney, and Milena Simsic. Spencer and Ashley with their AirBnbs, Zac Killem whose company Front Lobby will thrive. In general those with healthier portfolios as in not over leveraged, focus on cash flow and operational execution are doing just fine like many past guests of this show. I was just speaking to one investor/Realtor while preparing this episode who did just that, he’s buying more multifamily buildings and completed two flips in the USA.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two past guests in significant financial trouble, one has already declared bankruptcy, the others owe a lot of people a lot of money to individual investors, not just banks. Individual investors post to social media and tell others to warn them. I know because I have friends everywhere in the community and the messages arrive in my DM’s.

Both were newer to real estate as they made the switch to full time within the last five years or so. I’ve left the episodes up because as far as I’ve know, there was no criminal intent nor are they being accused of any.

I run a real estate investment business called iWIN Real Estate where we are always looking to learn, evolve, and adopt best practices to help our clients optimize their investments and time, the only non-renewable resource. We started investing in single family, then multifamily, then student rentals, basement suite conversions, to garden/garage suites and it’s gotten unaffordable. We use Ai all through out our businesses.

I used Chatgpt to research case law when sellers accepted a higher competing offer when we had already accepted their counter offer. I’ve used Chatgpt to proof read my clauses for counter offers which saves everyone time: my clients, my lawyer, my broker.

I’m working on creating a digital duplicate of myself as I’m really busy booking calls to discuss USA investing. 80-90% of the questions are the same: what is the legal structure to own US properties, how do you get a mortgage, what are the fees like, etc... all repetitive I could have an Ai twin version of myself do.

If you think I’m crazy, check out the found of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman’s two way interview of his own Ai twin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgD2gmwCS10

For anyone in sales or customer service, if you’re not afraid for your job, I don’t know what will. This is one reason I diversify my business, use Ai tools, own cash flowing real estate.

The owner of Property Guys was on BNN talking about how 25% of Realtors in the USA will leave the industry after those historic lawsuit settlements. This August, listings will no longer display co-operating commission for buyer agents hence buyer agents must negotiate commission from the buyer. Property Guy mentioned there are two lawsuits in the works in Canada which confirms the rumours I’ve heard. The implication is the public will be more aware that Realtor commissions are negotiable, they always have been and it my experience, sellers who want top dollar when selling will continue to offer co-operating commission. Most of the professional investors do it. I do it, I actually offer above market co-operating commission and use it as a marketing tool and negotiation piece. I mean it’s worked for me, the last four houses I sold, I did so, on average in 22 days on market.

Point is, I’m a Realtor, I’ve worried for my job since 2010 and never been more worried with Ai, class action lawsuits and competition among other Realtors at their highest levels ever. If only we had as many doctors and Realtors. Imagine how good our health care would be.

For complete business and investment sense, I of course partnered with SHARE, a tech enabled asset manager that allows Canadians to be US landlords without all the heavy lifting. My 17 listeners know I’ve conducted well over 300, hour long interviews with successful and some no longer successful real estate investors work, invest, blood, sweat and tears. In terms of cash flow and overall returns to effort, I haven’t seen anything before that beats SHARE’s offering.

In short, I’ve seen how the top investors implement their real estate investment business and can separate the hype from results. Those with results did not overleverage, were in control the whole time, delivered operationally to renovate and rent as fast as they could. Those who didn’t are the ones making all the headlines in the news for declaring bankruptcy protection or bankruptcy or have their names dragged through Facebook groups for owing money.

I had a call with a newer investor who’s got a great inves...

On to this week’s show! MacKenzie Wilson is a risk adverse, smart guy as he got into investing in Calgary real estate and wisely knew that screening for the right tenant was absolutely key and that the wrong tenant would lead to a living nightmare. This coming from a Calgarian! Ask him what he thinks about the investing in BC or Ontario!!

MacKenzie Wilson is an advocate for affordable housing and reduces the risk for landlords and tenants across Canada. With this MacKenzie has created and manages the largest online community of 4,000+ Landlords in Alberta. His online presence allows landlords to learn key fundamental landlord practices, navigating the risks and challenges associated with being a landlord, and maintaining a mutually beneficial tenant-landlord relationship.

If you’re a fan of development, highest and best use investing, pay special attention to Mackenzie’s current tear down, infill project in Calgary that will qualify for the in demand CHMC MLI select financing of 95% loan to value, 50 year amortization. He’s already purchased an everyday 60’ by 100’ lot which the correct zoning for which he will intensify into eight units. Not quite 10X but 8X the housing supply on a single lot is pretty awesome.

Mac as he’s known to his friends also works at Singlekey, Canada’s largest tenant screening service. The online service I use and recommend my clients use to screen tenants. I luv how far credit reports have come, they’ve gotten cheaper, faster, digital and more user friendly.

To follow Mackenzie:

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/AlbertaLandlordCommunity

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwyyc/

We have my old friend Andrew Hines and his co-author of an all new book John Schwenker! Andrew needs no introduction and John is an everyday hero, a firefighter and recovering real estate investor.

Andrew has taken his turn sharing how he lost money investing in Ohio now it’s John’s turn to share how he made a bunch of money in Ontario, lost all his profits in the recent correction but it’s not all bad news, John’s short term rental property in the US is a winner. I’m confident you’ll agree when you hear his numbers especially when compared to his Niagara Fall, Ontario short-term rental.

In this episode, John and Andrew share their journey to writing this book so we may all learn from their mistakes and how to be successful in their book which is like Tim Ferriss’ “Tools of Titans” where other experts have contributed chapters to the book including yours truly.

To pick up a copy of the book:

“Real Estate Titans: Tools, Tactics and Wisdom for Canadian Real Estate Wealth.”

Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Real-Estate-Titans-Tactics-Canadian-ebook/dp/B0CZZZWP3Z/

To follow Andrew and John:

@theandrewhines

@john.schwenker