That is probably true but I think is a mis-understanding of what I see as the true risks in real estate investing. We started with a 24 unit building as our first investment and by buying big you benefit from the bank and CMHC, if they get involved, acting as your out-sourced due diligence...

Call Murray Powers, he connected us to a property manager there whose name I can't remember but I did meet her before we left. She seemed fine.

I personally focus on small towns as the cashflow lets me live in the south of France year round but I only go ahead after a very in-depth process looking at the economics of a large regional area with int'l airport and transport all that stuff and then ranking the small towns within an hour to...

"Macro play means that you buy an asset plop in tenants do very little improvement and hope the economy just lifts the value of your rents and property value. As smaller property, few options to forcibly increase value and cost of exit is about 4.5% of gross value whereas a larger building it is...

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 would agree with Sherilynn that most negative comments about RTO preying on people are written by people without first hand knowledge of RTO. As an RTO operator, we had to reduce price to make our exits work, and we worked with the tenants in place to make it work for everyone, even moving...

Let me beat TB to it ... "Indeed"

Seneca was one of the wealthiest men in the Roman Empire ....

I know what you mean Cory - its a lot of work and most contacts you get are tire kickers :( but a great way to learn your market. I focus on smaller secondary markets around Halifax to get the highest cash on cash returns and these markets have much higher hit rates as the owner professionalism...

I would highly highly recommend Murray Powers. Great guy and great realtor. We have bought property through him. When starting out in RE investing we were looking at duplexes triplexes etc. Murray introduced us to an other investor who had eventually gotten to 20 plexes and he convinced us to...

Read Dave Lindahl's Multifamily Millions. Best book on real estate investing in MF there is IMHO. I think Thomas' book 80K to 80 million is a very good broader book that I refer to once in a while - conscious kaizen is a great technique. There are a few other good MF books, all out of the US...

I agree with Thomas' figure of 200/sq ft all in for something that will appeal to the end buyer. I just finished an 18 unit townhouse and apt development that mostly involved gutting and renovating existing townhouses and separately creating 8 new apts in existing structures. 200 $/sq ft is...

I should add that the financing I have in mind is commercial financing at 75 % LTV, as a self employed investor I can't get residential financing at higher LTV's anymore. Input on what others do is helpful, financing is a major challenge for these smaller assets as the banks don't want small...

Just went through all the CMHC mobile home park info and it doesn't mention financing these, so I could be wrong here. They seem to offer that for the purchasers of individual homes but perhaps not for the MHP owners as you are only renting dirt at that point. Thomas - is CMHC possible on MHP...

CMHC must finance mobile home parks - it is housing after all. There is no shortage of mobile home park info on their website. Thomas - you don't mention CMHC - I would think a CMHC mobile home park loan where you can get 85 % valuations or whatever the standard is for MHP would be highly...

Go to Altus cost guide to get your figures for cost/sq ft in markets across Canada to build for all property types. Excellent pdf resource that should be more widely circulated.

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...

The primary reason is that there is only one road in and out of town and as the town grows everything on that Main Rd should do great and with very high cashflow during the hold period. It was only the first mail-out, there will be others targeting residential, but this is a very under-served...