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Erwin Szeto [00:00:11] This podcast is brought to you by the Halton Real Estate Investors Group. The goal of the Halton REI is to entice would be Real Estate entrepreneurs to get off the couch, make things happen and replicate the success of our multi-millionaire clients, such as podcast guests. Taqwa Anti-trans Evelyn coach Jerry Chant, Michael Wainwright and Tim Collins. Our track record of coaching highly successful investors is extensive, and we share our secrets, tips and tricks at the Halton REI meetings. So if you’re interested in traveling the path of least resistance to Real Estate wealth without ever swinging your hammer, then this place is the place for you. Go to Halton REI dot com slash. Sign up to register and do so quickly to avoid disappointment as we await. Listen folks, many times and seats are limited. One of the secret to success is to surround oneself with successful people, and in my 10+ plus years of attending workshops and networking events, this is one of the best places to be. So I hope to see you soon. Hello, Real Estate, investors. Welcome to another episode of the truth about real estate investing show. Happy New Year to you all. It is 2018. We have, and we have many new guests lined up for 2018, so make sure you subscribe so you to may learn their lessons to ensure you achieve your New Year’s resolutions of increased financial security and freedom. In case anyone is interested, the Real Estate Investment Network is hosting its annual weekend workshop called the Authentic Canadian Real Estate Systems, or A. for Short. On March 20, March 2nd to 4th near the Trump Pearson Airport, which is at the Pearson Convention Center. For my friends and listeners of the show, REIN has provided me a discount code and it has just now and it saves you three hundred dollars per guest. If you’ve been to any other Real Estate event that’s out there, you know that the full retail price of six hundred eighty seven dollars, which has never gone up to my recollection. I’m a REIN member, so my mission is included in my monthly fee. But anyways, the full retail price is a fantastic deal already, and my discount code of Erwin guest er w i n s GST Erwin Irwin’s guests will save you an additional $300. The link is to keep cool and slash info dot REIN Canada dot com slash Toronto Dash A. Dast Twenty eighteen include a link in the show notes. You can write that all down if you want the full A. a. experience. I recommend you plan to attend the informal evening festivities to network with the other attendees as well. To me, it’s a great time to reconnect with my out-of-town Real Estate friends who don’t make it to all the events, but they make the time to make it to A. Because it’s such a great event and this will be my 11th. A. That I’ve attended. Plus, I’ve done the at home program, so I’ve almost done twelve of these over the last five years. Haven’t missed one. Anyway, onto my 2017 year in review, I thought I’d do this for fun, just because it’s just like, just like the end of any period, you had to do a review of how the year went. And I’ve been reviewing since November because back in November, when we started planning for twenty eighteen. Anyways, here’s my 2018 2017 year in review, so we’ll start with the real estate market. From January to May, the market rocketed up. I think you all know that anyone who read in the newspaper, you know the price of discord in that bar. It was nearly impossible to purchase a property in Hamilton as it was a regular occurrence to have to compete in Dubeau due to offer scenarios on the same property with limited supply and demand through the roof from Toronto folks and locals. St. Catharines grew in popularity for us as investors, as competition was still fierce in St. Catharines, but it was nothing like Hamilton and also, we were renting properties apartments at rates close to Hamilton’s Kitchener-Waterloo Cambridge. On the other hand, well, it was crazy and it’s always been crazy and it continues to be hot. It’s one of the markets that never took a breath. Even after the new housing fairness rules and foreign buyer tax, that market continues to be hot and we continue to see multiple offers as a regular occurrence, even though fall and winter after May and after the foreign buyer tax becoming effective. Mark markets that we focus on generally slowed and including Hamilton St Catharines. That was exactly what US investors wanted. We don’t want to be competing in crazy markets, whereas in after May into the summer and the fall and early winter, we were burning to more mercenaries where it was one offer to one property ratio on there, something that was really, really nice and more turnkey. There be more offers, or if it’s something that was really underpriced, yes, there’d be multiple offers. Oddly enough, and an observation that I wanted to share was we also know that there’s less interest from investors during the summer in the fall, which was kind of interesting. I can’t really explain it other than it was a gorgeous summer and saw that weather was a distraction that we have to compete with. But I, oddly enough, that’s when we purchased two properties. We bought one in the summer and one in the fall, both at discounts from the spring market. Right now, the market feels more like we’re in balance. Slight sellers’ market. But it’s again, it’s not nutty like it has been the last four years or so, but prices remain quite high. Still, in Hamilton and St. Catharines, we’re still about seven percent higher than this. This has been the same time last year. So even though people, some people think the market’s coming down, we’re still being still well above last year’s rates and Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, as well as over eight percent higher than the same at the same time last year. As for the rental market, as a real estate investor, we have two real estate markets to monitor. We have real estate prices, which I just discussed as that determines the value of our portfolio and acquisition costs when we’re buying property. Then there’s also the rental market in 2017 was a very good year for investors from the early part of the year, January to May ish. Our investors were obtaining some of the highest rents we’ve ever seen in the markets where we operate, mainly Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Hamilton and Branford St. Catharines. Now the region. In the spring, we are consistently seeing rents of 16 50 plus utilities for renovated three bedroom apartment. And we even see thirteen hundred thirteen fifty plus utilities for basement two bedrooms. Keep in mind that five six years ago we rented entire three bedroom houses for thirteen hundred plus utilities, so we are obtaining skewed significantly more rent for the same property. Of course, for having or having to renovate. Housing prices have doubled, but we’ve forced rents to be twice as much as well. The summer saw reduced demand as we were as we as I was renting property as well. We noticed our God’s views and showings were way down, but they returned to moderate levels back in the fall. Myself, I like to review my rental ads and prices every two weeks. If I need to make adjustment, I will. I’m looking and I’m focusing on price. I’ll tweak my headline or write a new headline or treat my ad copy. But usually the most effective adjustment you can make to generate more leads is the price. Well, especially when you have professional or very good pictures already or video already done. So my marketing is usually quite strong and I’m only having to tweak minor items. From the property that we purchased in the summer, I need to reduce the rent by three or four times by about 25 to $50 increments until we find a great tenant that took longer than I expected. But again, we had to, we had to adjust. Like I said earlier, the summer demand for rentals was not nearly as crazy as the spring. Again, the weather is great, so we’re seeing that tenants as well were not that interested in real estate. Yeah, that’s what it was. For the property that we closed on a more recently that was we close on December 1st knowing that we were approaching the holiday season in winter, which is the slowest market. I was ultra-aggressive by advertising our rent at 50 dollars below market value. And the way I thought of it was, I evaluated a 15 month, $.50 per month discount versus being vacant for three months. Say I was vacant December, January, February, which is a possibility if you don’t get someone for December 1st to be vacant, the cost of being vacant. Three months’ rent is about $4800. So to me, the math is pretty easy. What was my comfort level? I would prefer to offer the $50 discount than possibly giving up $4800, and we rented to a customer who attended our very first showing. I prefer to use the term customer versus tenant, and I don’t like the word landlord. It just sounds just has a lot of negative connotations around it. This is my thinking on the business side. We’ve grown considerably, helping investors transact on well over 100 properties in 2017. Our business has undergone many changes moving away from that Mr. Hamilton brand towards the Halton Real Estate Investment Group as a necessity, as we expanded our geographic coverage to of top towns for investment to pursue cash flow. It’s what we investors do. Our team has grown considerably as well in order to support the number of clients that we support. Apparently, good news travels fast, and when you do a great job helping to coach clients to financial success, they complement. They complement you with referrals of friends and family for which we are forever grateful. We grew, our team grew as well. As mentioned, Eric Spencer joined our team in late 2015, so she spent the full Sir 2016 salary and she spent the full 2017 with us. And she was a force to reckon with, even with her pregnancy and birth of her son, Erwin, in October. And she was back to work the next month. She is. She is a machine. We also had editions of cooking on a sour hanwang, Tammy DiTomaso, who you have those, if you’ve been around, have seen them. They all joined us in late 2017. Plus, we have players in Paisley Mackenzie coming on board in early 2018. This all as junior coaches to ensure our newest team members receive the same or better training that I had given. We promoted James Tiberius Max to vice president of coaching services, with all of our coaches reporting directly to him. On the personal side of things, 2017 was largely around approve, improving my health and energy levels after years of pushing myself mentally and physically for many years, even to high school, I am. I was burnt out. My body was giving up. I can continue to get by on excessive caffeine consumption and just sheer willpower. I have all tests to prove it that I was not functioning on properly. I took a double tests after seeing a new doctor, Dr. Calum Cowan. He’s a high performance health specialist. He helps pro athletes like NHL players, UFC fighters, high level executives to maintain improve on themselves. But for people who like myself who are a bit older, you know, I’ve been working been harder on themselves for a longer period of time. Repair the damage that I’ve inflicted on myself to get myself where I am today. Now, early in the year, I did a very restrictive cleanse in February and March of ordering my food sensitivities, which include many items that many health professionals recommend like almonds, egg whites, pecans. What else dairy? All those sorts of fun things. And also had to take care of a parasitic bacteria that I picked up somewhere. It could have been anywhere near my travels in Asia or in South America or even at a local restaurant. Who knows where I got it and how I was doing all this while competing in the CrossFit Open? Also, one of them. One of the big changes I also made in 2017 was I started going to bed earlier. As your parents and entrepreneurs know and entrepreneurs know, we can only control what we can control and we can’t control our children. But what I found is my mood and energy is simply better with more sleep. My kids and my family, my clients, my business deserve the best of me. So I started tracking my sleep with wearable technology called a WAP and the app that comes with it to ensure my I have peak performance. Of course, I can’t be perfect every day, but you know, five days in a seven, I’m pretty good at getting my peak sleep requirement, which is usually between seven and a half to an hour and a half hours of sleep. And that’s net sleep that doesn’t. Apparently, when you when you sleep every night. It’s not uncommon to lose 30 to 30 to 60 minutes of sleep just through unrest. So that’s net sleep that I’m talking about when I say seven and a half and half in and half hour sleep. So with all these changes, the quality of work has also improved, my mind feels rested and clearer. When I work, I’m able to train more often as well. I often train three to five times a week, which is more than I’ve ever trained, and I and I don’t have to take as many afternoon naps as I used to. And when I do take afternoon, naps are shorter than I used to. And the best part is I’m less cranky with my wife, my kids. So everyone wins with me, getting more sleep. Dr. Cowan happens to be our guest speaker for the January Jan Halton REI meeting on January 13th to register for the meeting. You don’t want to miss this. First of all, his talk is held. Feel better, function better. Become a phenom. And if you see him speak before, that’s OK. The doctors promised updates as the science of health is ever evolving. He actually just recently had me do a genetic test called 23 in me, so I learned what I learned from it was of some more background on my ethnicity. It’s in the genetics test, so I get to learn more about my ethnicity. I’m only ninety two point five percent Chinese, apparently anyone. Everyone’s welcome to guess what the rest of me is and also what the tested was. It prescreen me against all the other like known genetic disorders, you know? And, uh, you know, also confirmed a couple of things for me. For example, it said the test results told me that I’m likely, um, I’m likely lactose intolerant. I’m not celiac, so I don’t have that concern as we like some people do. And also, Dr. Collins is going to take the raw data. Its front is interesting because you can download a text file after doing the text. After doing that, if you did your test results and it’s almost six megabytes of text data. That reason might that that gives you my genetic makeup. Interesting. But that’s a lot of data to six megabytes, a straight text data. So Dr. Collins able to take that data and do some whatever magic to it. And we’re going to learn some more about how I function best. Or something else that I learned was, and I’ve kind of known this through practice is I am better at as an athlete. So for those of you who like to train, I know it’s like, for example, one of you, something you like to run, something you like to do triathlons or marathons or ultramarathons, or you just like do like powerlifter weight lift or whatever it may be. We all are better at something, at some things than others. And based on my genetic makeup, I’m better. I’m a better power athlete, meaning short distances sprints heavyweights for four small amounts of time. Which is why I’m not very good at CrossFit for anyone who knows me well, and they’ve seen my pictures or whatever I post on Facebook and social media. I’m not very good at it because often it’s more than seven minutes long and that’s when I start to fade. That’s also why I’ve never run anything more than a 5K. I’m not designed for distance and designed to sprint in, but as also, this was just embarrassing information to me. I like to have science to confirm my understanding of stuff. Oh yeah. So if you’re interested in attending the meeting Halton REI dossier, there’s a button there you can click onto to register for the meeting. Now we also will be hosting a guest panel of investors on the subject of raising successful kids featuring our friend. Friends of Halton REI, Carol Diaz, Margaret Robert Ross and Charles Wahl and Mary Clements. They’re all successful in their careers as investor and as investors. And they’re all happy to share the lessons so we can all achieve one of our ultimate goals, which is to be parents of successful children. So you don’t miss it. Hope that was, uh, I was pretty sure of you. If you have any questions on Real Estate in general or anything else that we discussed about 2017. Feel free to send them over. If you receive this podcast, I think you know how to get in touch with me whenever your contact forms almost all my websites and yeah, or just reach out over social media will be doing. We have two guests coming up immediately in the short term candidate Karen Vander Velde and Vanderburg, Sorry and Don Campbell. And with Don, we’ll be talking about predictions for 2018, so you don’t want to miss it. All right. Thanks, investors, and I’ll talk to you soon. And four final words. Just do it because I believe in you. Thank you for listening. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe on Stitcher, Google Play or iTunes, however you’re listening to this, or I can send you an email when each episode is published right to your inbox. Simply go to truth about real estate investing dossier, and it’s your email address, and I will continue to deliver to you stories of inspiration, success and lessons to help you on your journey to financial freedom. So next time this is Erwin Szeto telling you to just do it and I believe in you. We.