The Truth About Real Estate Investing... for Canadians Erwin Szeto

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 cour

This week’s guest is the lovely Kelly Caldwell, who has converted over a dozen single family houses for basement suites AND garden suites. Together with husband Jeff Caldwell, they’ve become leaders in their community, Collingwood, ON filling in the missing middle working closely with local government as such they were invited to be a part of a new HGTV inspired series called Home Suite Home where viewers can follow along as Kelly and Jeff navigate the world of accessory suite financing, design and construction.  You can catch them on Rogers Cable TV this fall as well as Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@itshomesuitehome.
 
Kelly’s journey is a wild one.  She was barely an adult when she was orphaned as Cancer took her father, her only parent away leaving her as the eldest sibling of two teenage brothers. 
 
Kelly shares about her remote investing way up north, how she managed the renovations, Kelly shares the numbers around a typical basement conversion and garden suite.  For the first time a guest talks about the benefits of polished concrete floors for both heating and finish. Fascinating stuff for real estate nerds such as myself.
 
If you can’t tell, Kelly is no stranger to hard work so please enjoy the show!



Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itshomesuitehome/, https://www.instagram.com/the_dash_investher/
Realtor website: https://caldwellrealestategroup.com/
The dash poem: https://noahwatry.medium.com/the-dash-poem-by-linda-ellis-33fe4d54a1b4
ADUSearch: https://adusearch.ca/index.html

Real estate development for it’s lack of long term tenants makes more sense which is a great segway for this week’s guest Victoria Cluney fresh off recording a show on Dragon’s Den to pitch her Tiny Home community and manufacturing of tiny houses!!  Victoria is under a hush agreement about what happens on her episode but will share her experience auditioning, getting called back and pitching to the real life Dragons for the show.
Victoria is a returning guest of this show who’s on a great journey from small landlord of long-term rentals to short-term cottage “bunkies” to AirBnb’ing a motel to building a tiny home community, manufacturing tiny homes and being a part of the solution to solving this affordability crisis we’re having in Canada.
Victoria is also co-hosting the RE Resilience Summit (https://realestateresilience.ca/) Saturday and Sunday September 28 & 29.  Her co-hosts include Meghan Hubner and Elizabeth Kelly.  Elizabeth Kelly as you know is a regular and friend of the show, she’s one of the few good ones in our industry so if you’re new or old to real estate investing, you know the RE Resilience Summit will have something for everyone.
 
To follow Victoria:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoriacluney/?hl=en
WE BILD Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/webild/?_xtd=gqFyqTMzNzkwNjIyMaFwpmlwaG9uZQ%253D%253D&from=ref
Tiny Home building & community: https://www.tayridge.ca/
 
Please enjoy the show!!
 

 On to this week’s show, as always, we try to focus on cash flow the young, lovely couple Spencer and Ashley Giles are Niagara- based real estate investors with a shared love of travel (they are literally vacationing in Nashville, TN right now, hopefully they find an AirBNB investment there as I hear Nashville is awesome), fitness, and dogs. They started investing in 2018 and have since expanded their portfolio to 13 units with a mix of short- term and long-term rentals. Spencer and Ashley co-founded Travelluxe Inc. in 2019, a short-term rental management company, which currently manages over 45 units across Canada and has expanded to the USA. We go into detail about that on the show including the numbers.
 
They were able to leave their corporate jobs in 2021 and 2022 to focus all their efforts on their businesses. Their love for travel has brought them all around the world where they are able to mix work and pleasure by creating systems that allow them to be location independent. 
 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spencerandashley/
Website: https://spencerandashley.com/
Ellicottville Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/53721048?locale=en&_set_bev_on_new_domain=1719192849_EAMTU0NWYwZTcwNj&source_impression_id=p3_1719192850_P3OWaZ8QQzOrJpJd
 

We have a special guest today who we squeezed in before her return home to Tampa Bay, FLA to warm weather, pickleball year round, fruit trees in her backyard. The reasons are obvious why Canadians love Florida. Carmen is a Canadian living in Florida, she’s Chartered Professional Accountant Tax Specialist in both Canada and the USA. She owns 70 income properties in the USA, her 24 year old son even owns three rental houses in the States too! Carmen got into investing after selling her business, then in the 2008 real estate crash and bought a portfolio of single family homes in Florida to generate cash flow and replace part of her income.
 
Carmen is a passive investor as SHARE’s property management team takes care of everything so she gets to enjoy early retirement income.
 
As Carmen is a practicing Accountant who prepares tax returns for Canadian clients, she introduced clients to invest in US based single family rentals including Andrew Kim, CEO of SHARE and together could see how involved the process from legal setup to ongoing property management but the returns are life changing hence they knew they had to create SHARE, a technology based real estate solution for anyone to become a US landlord without all the hard work.
 
I’ve invited Carmen Da Silva, CPA in both Canada and US to return to the show to focus on the most common questions Canadians have about investing in the US.  The answer is different for everyone and Carmen takes the time to explain why.
 
Friendly disclaimer, I Erwin Szeto am not an Accountant, Carmen Da Silva is an Accountant but not your personal Accountant so you still need to seek your own professional, expert advice for your specific situation.  Our conversation is for educational purposes, tax let alone cross border tax is a complicated subject.
 
With that said please enjoy the show!

Cody Yeh arrived in Canada at the age of 18 on a student visa, initially lacking knowledge in income and wealth creation. Over the past 11 years, Cody has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from a student to a full-time project manager, and eventually to a financial coach, real estate investor, and stock options investor. The skills he acquired during this period enabled him to leave his full-time job at the beginning of 2020. 
Cody now has a stock options investing program and he’s buying apartment buildings in the USA.  It’s quite the journey.
To follow Cody, his website is his name Codyyeh.com
Please enjoy the show!