Episode Details

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 Brantf