For anyone looking at small towns - this is where opportunity is most easily spotted. Added to CMHC insured take-out financing for turn-around projects this is probably the fastest path in my opinion to rapid financial independence. If the town is good, growing, has a hospital and schools...

I've often heard it said the fundamental is the spread between borrowing and cap rate on multi family. How would the math work? assume 2 million $ purchase of building generating 20K gross rents in smaller community at a 6.75 cap 85 % CMHC mortgage of 1 700 000 at 1.75 % rate = monthly payment...

Input sought on risk diversification... I'm considering taking cash overseas (legally, fully declared) and park some in a bank account for liquidity but also buy an entry level low leverage property - you can get fixed 25 yr mortgages in Europe at 2-3 % as a non-resident at 70 % LTV. Good deal...

Hi, we own an 18 unit, tried to sell property last year, highest offer was 2.5 mill. Current total debt is 2.1 million. Rent roll is about 20500, almost always full, very lean operating costs for utilities on paper but high maintenance and insurance costs due to the fact it is 5 structures...

Just refinanced an 18 unit bldg this week - the first of 3 buildings in a 52 unit deal I've been working on for the last 18 months. Rate was locked last week at 1.66 %. Broker said it was one of the lowest rates he has ever done in a 20 yr career. Why this is important - the ultra low rates...

Hello, I have about 80 units in one Maritime community now in 4 buildings. There are two telecomm providers, Eastlink and Bell. In return for preferential access to my tenants and me steering people towards Bell at move-in, Bell has offered me two free packages phone wifi TV - one in my house...

One thing we should encourage in REIN is the sharing of actual market info on real MF deals - so here goes. This purchase is East Coast in a small community of 8000 that is the regional shopping and gov't center, and one with an strong rental market. Its a portfolio purchase I have worked on...

Hello Multifamily types I'm working on a 3 bldg 52 apts deal, 2 X 18's and a 1 X 16. All 3 bldgs need major renovations. What rates would people use for underwriting as current commercial rates sub 1 mill mortgages - all 3 are separately titled, total deal price 2.05 mill. Thanks

Hi, I have been careful to try and keep the building managers as self-employed for CRA purposes to avoid all the payroll issues. That means no written contract; they pay themselves out of building revenues deposited from their own rent collection efforts; the building pays for its own phone they...

I have developed a system using mortgage brokers to pre-screen qualified rent to own candidates for a tenant first model, and a realtor to work with the candidates to find houses. There are 3 qualified candidates at this point. So far I have only done property first rent to own and had 2...

An update to earlier posts about doing a targeted mail-out (aka a yellow letter campaign). We sent out a second mail-out campaign to the 28 multi-family bldgs 12 units or larger in a second targeted secondary market with regional hospital and industrial employer within an hour of Halifax, to...

After sending out the first 107 letters and the letters starting to arrive this Friday, we have since fielded two calls in two days with more expected this week. One of them is definitely of interest - 3 homes selling as a package, all three on large half acre lots. I just did the preliminary...

Yesterday my business student and I sent out 107 letters to the owners of approx 120 commercial zoned lots on the main road in one of the two small towns we are using as a test case for how to grow wealth in small town real estate. We are excited as this is our first mail-out campaign. I will...

What are the best recommendations for software to transcribe video audio into text as the content base for web articles, e-books etc etc. We have tried a few services incl Google Voice Recorder listening to videos recorded and not found any very good at actually capturing accurately what was...

I got gov't funding to hire a business student to work in my RE investing business. The tasks he is to do is broadly: 1 develop and place all accounting and other systems on the cloud so I can invest from anywhere in the world 2 develop a list of all owners of commercial and MF RE in my two...

Hi, I've searched through myreinspace and didn't find any discussion of the impact on investors of the new mortgage changes which just took effect to force qualification of high ratio buyers through an effective mortgage rate of 4.64 rather than the sub 3 rates prevalent. Am I missing it...

I plan to start doing some private lending on low loan to value properties in my home market for RRSP and TFSA money. A mortgage broker has brought a property to me that is currently listed for 165K and needs interior updating. The single female owner has bad credit and has an 11 % private...

A partner and I are just finishing a mixed apt and townhome development (18 units total) that once refinanced will have a 264 K tax loss on the corporation's books from the development phase. The development is expected to net about 2-2.5K per month net, lets say 25K per year. Using the tax...

There is a lot of press now about how we have the lowest interest rates globally in 500 years. 10 trillion dollars of central bank debt now has negative interest rates ON TEN YEAR DURATION. People are PAYING to give their money to central banks to get the same amount or less back in 3-4-5-10...

I wanted to post this to share two key insights that I never see mentioned in the usual discussions of CMHC MF insurance. Typically these discussions focus on a) how expensive it is and b) how CMHC rarely recognizes true market value as expressed in the closing price from an open market deal...