Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Erwin Szeto [00:00:06] Hello. Everyone. Welcome to the truth at Real Estate. Best in show. My name’s Erwin Szeto. Did you know so many kids are struggling to get into the state market right now? It’s all over the headlines. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the number one issue for the next election. Housing affordability, portable housing, whatever you want to call it. It really sucks. I really feel bad for the younger generation and anyone who can’t get into the market. One just needs to simply check the net worth of tenants. This is just pure statistics, folks. What is the net worth? The tenants versus homeowners to know. The path to avoid poverty is to be a homeowner. The exemption from paying gains on the sale of one’s home is one of the very few tax savings that we can receive, so why not take advantage of it in a low interest rate environment combined with governments all over the world creating more and more money out of thin air? Economic theory dictates to protect oneself from currency devaluation or from inflation is to hold hard assets. Right. This is just basic school stuff and I deal hard as it is simply with self-liquidating as in it pays for itself such as real estate. When you buy a house, you rent it out that it pays the rent, pays all expenses and mortgage payments. And then in 20, 30 years or so, maybe a little bit longer, the house is paid off and then one owns a cash producing asset free and clear. Maybe you only want to own it yourself. Maybe want to pass it on to your kids. Maybe they want to pass it on to someone else after that. Not bad, eh? Many of you already know this. And you got it right. You already bought properties. Sadly, many did not. And it’s not your fault if you did it. Schools didn’t teach investing, and banks would rather sell you mutual funds than see you buy cash producing assets, specifically houses. Don’t blame the banks. Selling mutual funds is how they make money. There was even the sarcastic billboard in downtown Toronto that went up with the question Can’t afford a home. Have you tried finding richer parents? While there is some truth to that billboard, yes. Maybe first time buyers and buyers in general have been getting help of their parents. So my advice, our clients too are getting help from their parents for their down payments and even to use their credit to qualify for mortgages. I hear it all the time from mortgage agents and brokers that we work with, and this is even before the pandemic started. For anyone who’s been following me for a while, you know, all 17 of you, I know we gained about three of you over the last three months or so, but we had at least one or two who joined us about five years ago when this podcast started. Maybe one of you is on my blog that I started back in 2010. You know, we’ve predicted real estate prices will go up. Now, specifically, real estate prices on land, right? Because we’ve only talked about how 9.9% of everything I put out was based on land based housing. Been talking about it since 2010. No. Expect the prices to go up 20% over the last 12 month period. But we’ve been sharing here and I blog at that I would meetings that I host for nominal prices free for my clients that real estate is going up in price. Me personally, I’m still offering on the houses we offered on a house just last weekend. I wrote the offer myself my systems so we can make systems. We’re working. I’m not as active anymore as my insistence on never expecting to be writing offers, but cherry the kids. It was a hot, sunny day. The kids read the hot in the Pool As I should be, which for me, because I was enjoying it. Because missing out on the fun. Such is life of an investor that delays short term gratification for long term intergenerational games. My preferred investment strategy will still allow me to cash flow even in today’s market, and my team will be sharing how to execute the number one investment strategy completely free, virtually from the comfort of your home. As in, they will be in your home, but you can enjoy it from your home. We will get back to in-person free trainings once we’re allowed to. I can’t wait. I love teaching this stuff. I love seeing people’s faces. I love helping people. But for now, we’re on Zoom. We look forward to helping more people every day, especially hard working Canadians, to get ahead in life. If you’re on my email newsletter, then you’re already good. You’ll be notified of our next event. If you’re not, well, that’s just silly. Go to Pepe Dot Investor Training Dossier. Type in your name and email. Click Submit and you’ll be on your path to peace. We’ve already helped hundreds of investors already create six figure side hustles, and we’re looking forward to helping thousands more. If you don’t believe me, just ask my friend Matt Spader at how the journey has helped him as a real estate investor. It started when his dad said to him, If you ever want to get ahead in life, invest in real estate. It happened in my book when Matt was just 18 years old. That was 15 years ago. He’s now 34. I think I’m a math wrong, but he’s now 34. It was a while ago. Matt was 18. That’s also our guest on today’s show. Anyways, soon after Matt and his dad, you know, they shot out of a cannon. They started buying a whole bunch of property over a short period of time. And I remember meeting Matt for the first time at a Rockstar VIP dinner event. I remember having dinner with people at doors. There was 50 or 60 of us. Matt sharing with me how he was concerned about pain. But time is brand new. The double layered transfer tax. If you bought a house in Toronto, he bought his North Toronto, specifically Scarborough, Ontario. That was 11 years ago. Thankfully, they did the deal because what they carpeted the house is more than triple that value. Funny how investing in real estate can change lives 11 years later for that meeting. At my first meeting, that’s better. He’s no longer the 23 year old I met in 2010. He’s now a gym owner, so he’s a business owner. He’s a father of two. He’s 23 kids. When I met him, there is a father of two. He was the owner of as many as 12 properties. Now he’s currently holding seven with a significant amount of equity in them. Matt also took our Site Hacker Academy this past fall and he shares how he’s really enjoying it, which is totally awesome because I love hearing success stories and Matt and his dad Geno are gym owners. I’m quite confident they can beat me up without breaking the sweat. Anyways, here is the story of how a 19 year old math beta got started investing in real estate. I hope you enjoy it, Matt. What’s keeping you busy these days?
Matt Spada [00:06:10] Oh, great. Now, two kids at home doing online school. That’s keeping me busy, but I’ve got seven rental properties on the go axes trading and. Well, unfortunately, right now our gym business is closed at the moment. So just kind of anxiously and patiently waiting for that to reopen.
Erwin Szeto [00:06:31] So, yeah, you mean like that’s a bit of a mess for your dad. You rentals you have a business you do options trading I guess they’re selling. You’re selling mostly, right? Okay.
Matt Spada [00:06:42] Pretty much. That’s all what I do. Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:06:45] Excellent, excellent. Okay. It’s much easier and more peaceful that way.
Erwin Szeto [00:06:49] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:06:50] But your day job is to operate a gym.
Matt Spada [00:06:53] Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:06:54] Assuming it was open.
Matt Spada [00:06:56] Yeah. So, yeah, right now we’re closed. Being closed for two months now and this last round of lockdown. So sounds like it’s going to be about two more months at least before we get to reopen.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:07] And so and then prior to that, how long were you closed?
Matt Spada [00:07:11] We were closed originally for four months to the first lockdown. Then we reopened for four months. Then we were shut down for two months, then we were open for four weeks and now we’re shut down again.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:22] Do you talk to other gym owners?
Matt Spada [00:07:24] Yes, a little bit, yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:07:26] How are they doing compared to you guys?
Matt Spada [00:07:28] Yeah. I mean, for us, we’re in a little bit of a better situation from the fact that we were building. So fortunately, about 20 years ago, my dad had the foresight to purchase a building to house the gym and after like 17 years of renting, he decided to buy a building. So we actually paid that building off seven or eight years ago. So we don’t have that expense right now, which is really helping a lot, not having a rent or mortgage payment, other gyms, yeah, they’re struggling a lot because of that. We have no income. It’s pretty hard to pay bills.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:08] So is rent among their biggest expenses?
Matt Spada [00:08:13] Yeah. Typically.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:14] Damn. But yeah, I guess. Passionate about owning buildings. And to the point sorry for the voice of I had the conversation in my head that was like, follow your passion and you’ll never worked a day in your life. So, so buying the building was part of your passion.
Matt Spada [00:08:32] Just seemed, I think, when I was pretty young when my dad bought the building. But for him, I think it was just a logical next step.
Erwin Szeto [00:08:41] You know, logic. Oh, not following passion.
Matt Spada [00:08:44] He owned that gym for 17 years at that point, and she was also working another job, like a full time job at a factory at that time. Oh, but he decided that the gym wasn’t going anywhere, so we might as well own the building that we’re going to be in. Stone bought a building. Downtown Boulder was probably one of the best things, best decisions that he ever made for that business, which had nothing to do with fitness or anything.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:16] I think it’s my problem. I just watched my social media and too many people are just telling stuff that people want to hear or like the one I just like, you know, follow your passion. And we’re never working on a day in life.
Matt Spada [00:09:27] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:27] Sounds like you guys work. You guys showed up, you worked, you invested.
Matt Spada [00:09:34] Yeah, right. We still do that now. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:36] Park Colburn. Okay, so hang on from ignorance. I have a feeling a lot of people don’t know how important Colburn is.
Erwin Szeto [00:09:45] This is a clear word of it.
Matt Spada [00:09:46] So we’re in the Tiger region, right on Lake Erie. So kind of many say like 15 minutes from 15, 20 minutes from Niagara Falls area, not really on any major highways or anything. So it’s kind of, you know, off the beaten path a little bit. Proposed to Whelan. Whelan would be the next closest city outside of Brooklyn.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:07] I think a lot of people go well in these days.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:09] Yeah, it’s.
Matt Spada [00:10:10] Becoming more common. I got to say, it’s becoming more and more known.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:15] So interesting. Are you invested in another area besides your gym building?
Matt Spada [00:10:21] No, not besides the gym. So we own the building in Brooklyn. We have a rental property around, but nothing in Brooklyn.
Erwin Szeto [00:10:27] Interesting. Interesting. Oh, man. So many directions to go. Part of interesting story here is that, you know, many, many small businesses are suffering. Right. But you guys managed to keep your head over water and keep your head over water is the right term because how much financial hardship is this? And I don’t mean to pry, but I do want people to know.
Matt Spada [00:10:48] Okay. Well, we have no we have no income coming in. And for the majority of the past 15 months, we have had no income coming in. Even when we were open, it was always with restrictions. And, you know, we were at best 50% of normal when we were open. So yeah, it’s been financially. A challenge for sure. Like I said, owning the building has helped a lot. One other thing. What has been that we’ve always tried to do our best to keep a pretty decent cash reserve in the bank for emergencies. Not ever seeing something like this coming, but, you know, having that was huge because we definitely had to tap into that quite a bit to stay afloat. So and I mean, I got to say to the government, programs that we qualify for do help a lot, too. So, yeah, we’re surviving. That’s all we can do right now is survive. So. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Outside of the business, the gym business is we have our rentals or real estate portfolio, which, again, is like allowing some kind of peace of mind, too, because that’s doing really well, actually, through all of this. So having that as well kind of makes up for what we’re losing in the gym business.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:09] And that kind of well. All right. So you mentioned seven properties. How did this all start?
Matt Spada [00:12:13] Well, for me, it started 19 years old, I would say.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:17] How long ago was that?
Matt Spada [00:12:18] So I’m 34 now. So whatever that means is.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:22] 15 years ago.
Matt Spada [00:12:23] Ten years.
Erwin Szeto [00:12:24] Time to start investing. 15 years ago.
Matt Spada [00:12:26] Yeah. So I didn’t start quite then. But my dad planted the seed back then was he had just started something a bit he was doing buying some properties, fixing them up and reselling them. He did that a few times and I was just kind of watching and going to the properties and helping out a bit. And then one day he just said to me, If you ever want to get ahead in life, you should really think about investing in real estate. And he gave me a book to read and just left it at that. So it was up to me at that point if I was going to read it and, you know, go down that path or not. And I read it and it was something that was very interesting to me.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:09] That was the.
Matt Spada [00:13:09] Book. So that book in particular was called The Weekend Millionaire. This is like I don’t think it’s a very well-known book. I don’t know how he got it, but it was just about basically doing real estate as a side hustle, basically on the weekends. So then he had a bunch of other books in a bookshelf, so I just started picking through them and reading more. And from there he took me to a couple of rain events, that’s where. So I was still maybe 19 or 20 and I went to a couple of those and then.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:41] Oh, sorry, man. Those are pretty far away from me.
Matt Spada [00:13:44] So, like a little over an hour away. Yeah, not too far, I guess for us in Niagara, that was normal to drive there, to go to conferences and things like that.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:55] So for people to know, like you’re making the effort.
Matt Spada [00:13:58] Right? Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:59] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:13:59] You’re putting into the time to invest in yourself, to learn, get educated.
Matt Spada [00:14:03] Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:04] And you paid money.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:05] You?
Matt Spada [00:14:06] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:07] I paid more integrity to that organization. Just the membership fees.
Matt Spada [00:14:12] Yeah, we would stay there the weekend because it was. Was that so straight? I mean, nothing hour and a half drive as far but we would just because it was usually a weekend event we would just say one weekend there’s we’re paying for a hotel room and stuff like that, but well worth it.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:28] And I miss those days.
Matt Spada [00:14:30] Yeah, in way.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:31] Because I was self-employed so I didn’t have those conferences that people would go to for work. And like I said, we do that like weekends as an excuse to like to have some fun.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:41] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:42] Because we’d stay in the hotel to even like a home was or home was like 30, 40 minutes away.
Matt Spada [00:14:46] But yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:47] Say motel.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:49] Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:14:51] Sorry. You said you joined rockstars after that.
Matt Spada [00:14:53] Yeah. So my mom came across an ad in our local paper in Niagara for Rockstar Real Estate. I was back then about 24. Yeah, but we 20 so we went out to their free training class, joined them and then learned about rent and my dad said, Let’s do this as 5050 partners. You got to come up with 50% of the money, 50% of work. We’ll do it from here on out as partners. And we jumped in right away out of property right away and just kind of snowballed from there.
Erwin Szeto [00:15:29] Where did you come up with your with your down payment money? Where did you come up with your 50%?
Matt Spada [00:15:33] I was working full time at the gym and living at home, so I was saving money quite a bit and I started paying for this. It’s like 19 when I first started reading those real estate books and things. So like a real kind of nice program for the investor and as well as the tenant buyer. So we jumped into that. That’s what we started with is rental homes for the first probably five years. That’s all we did and we bought seven more properties after that. In like a 15 month period. And I remember my friends thinking I was nuts because I was still living at home through all that, buying all these other houses for other people to live in. But still living with my parents. Yeah, but in the end, after that, I was able to pull out money for my own house out of that portfolio for a down payment on my own house. After a couple of years.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:32] So what were your friends doing or were you the crazy one? What were they doing that was so smart and sweet?
Matt Spada [00:16:39] Not much. I don’t want to, you know, make it sound like, you know, they weren’t doing anything, but, you know, they were buying their first houses, buying cars, things like that.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:50] The car. Those are good investments.
Matt Spada [00:16:52] Going on trips. I can’t like I was doing on those trips too. But yeah, I just took a little different approach, I guess. Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:16:59] I actually just want to raise the point is I hear this often as, you know, don’t take advice, financial advice from people that don’t make a lot of.
Erwin Szeto [00:17:06] Money.
Erwin Szeto [00:17:07] Or these friends making a lot of money. The ones that thought you were crazy, what were these guys doing that was so smart that the thought that they should give you advice, tell you that you’re crazy doing what you’re doing, buying houses for other people.
Matt Spada [00:17:20] They weren’t investing, that’s for sure. Just, I guess, investing in their own enjoyment cars and, you know, buying their own first houses and things like that. So, yeah, we just had a little bit of different approaches to getting started in life, I guess. But you’re.
Erwin Szeto [00:17:37] Dead now. And looking at looking back like you done anything differently, would you stay at home or would that the lesson is honesty apply to your kids? Would you rather them stay home and invest, or would you rather give me the boot?
Matt Spada [00:17:52] No, I think I mean, that gave me even an opportunity to get a head start so I wouldn’t change anything and I would offer that same opportunity to my kids for sure, because now looking back, you know, it’s made a huge, huge difference in my life having that opportunity and having been able to save money, to be able to come up with a down payment for these investments and let them work for me for these years.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:22] So if they say you’re you.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:24] Kid for three of these.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:27] Let’s say you’re your kid, would you make the same offer like from when you were 19? You’re like 21 years old ish would do your 5050 on your with your kid on an investment property.
Matt Spada [00:18:38] I mean, I would have to start acting because I know, like I said, I know what it did for me and it was life changing. So, yes, I would jump at that opportunity. I hope that when they’re that age that they have that interest.
Erwin Szeto [00:18:54] And I bring it up because I know there’s a lot of young people who listen to the show and they’re often asking, wondering they don’t think they have a down payment. For my clients. The first place I usually direct them to is Have you talked to your parents? Because I’m the same. Same as you.
Matt Spada [00:19:06] Okay. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:07] I would in a heartbeat help my kids. Right. Especially investing. All right, listen to me. It’s my job to pay for the education. Yeah, and yes, it’s to me, it’s my job to help fund there for their first some of their investments. Right. But I have again, I have some listeners I have some clients who don’t think to speak to their parents about investing in real estate together.
Matt Spada [00:19:28] I really actually hope that I’d be able to do that. I know that with me and my dad doing it together, it’s just even it’s created a bond even stronger. I think father and son being in business together and investing together to sort of just the normal dynamic. So I’d love to have that with my kids for sure. I’d like to see them do half work, you know, come save money and learn as learn as they go.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:57] I’m pretty lazy. I want them to do all the work.
Erwin Szeto [00:19:59] All the work, you know.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:01] It’s like, who’s picking up the credit? Were you on the mortgages?
Matt Spada [00:20:05] Yes. Yeah. Oh.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:08] Okay. So you guys are pretty you guys are pretty even down the line them.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:11] I had no.
Matt Spada [00:20:13] No, no debts, no liabilities living at home. So I’m sure that help the mortgage application for sure.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:19] Very nice. Very nice. I don’t know how you thought you were perceived within the Rockstar community, but you were the father son duo Gino and Matt, right?
Erwin Szeto [00:20:28] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:28] No one said your name. Independent of one another was like salt and pepper. Right. That’s always fun, you know. Oh, there’s salt, you know, there’s salt and salt and pepper. There’s Matt and Matt.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:39] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:41] Right. Yeah. So, yeah, you were a dynamic duo, a power, couple of sorts. Well, if he doesn’t listen to us.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:51] I’m sure he will.
Erwin Szeto [00:20:54] You’re working at the gym. You bought a game. So tell me what you bought. What year was it? Where was it? What is it? Would you buy it? Tell me what the price was.
Matt Spada [00:21:02] 29 was the first.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:05] Right after.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:06] Crash. Perfect time.
Matt Spada [00:21:09] On the study creek mountain and we bought a.
Erwin Szeto [00:21:13] Surfing lesson for listeners benefit that’s just outside of Hamilton proper. It’s technically part of Hamilton now but yeah sorry creek.
Matt Spada [00:21:19] Yep. And it was a nice brick bungalow with a detached garage and former lot within 241,000. And then because that was a rental home, we collected a like a $15,000 option payment of $15,000. That was I think that might have been at that time through Rockstar, the biggest down payment received. And now I know people are doing much, much bigger ones than that. But back then that was a big one. And yeah, we had that truck. Don’t own it now, unfortunately, but we went three years with it because the tenant buyer in there, they divorced soon they left the property. We did another rental, owns another couple and they ended up buying out at the end of their three years.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:20] So we rented for six years total as a rental.
Matt Spada [00:22:23] Oh yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:24] Remember the rents were and what you exited for.
Matt Spada [00:22:26] Yeah. We originally rented it out for 1500 dollars, went to the first tenant and then when we rented it out, it was for 1800.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:38] Who they.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:38] Loved.
Matt Spada [00:22:40] And then we ended up selling to them for, I believe, 340.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:48] So that is a still a fantastic return for you.
Matt Spada [00:22:52] Sure. Yes.
Erwin Szeto [00:22:54] You know, offhand with the return. But that’s the 100 grand and six years.
Matt Spada [00:23:00] From 240 to 340 $100,000 over six years. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:04] Digital renovator. Anything like a basement speaker? Nothing.
Matt Spada [00:23:08] That’s the.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:08] Only thing.
Matt Spada [00:23:10] We didn’t do a thing even between tenants. We painted in between tenants. That’s it. But our first tenant, they built a new deck. They put a fence, they caved the driveway, cleaned it, all this stuff to the property while they were living there. So everybody right.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:30] There should monitor.
Matt Spada [00:23:32] It.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:33] And they did know what the market value was even after you let it go for 340.
Matt Spada [00:23:37] What it is today or what it was when we at that time.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:39] No. Of them, I’m guessing the 340 was on the back of that at the time.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:43] It was a little bit.
Matt Spada [00:23:44] Not a ton, but it was a little bit undervalued. Yeah, got it. Got it. Okay. We lost a little bit of money on the table there, but tenant buyers, they got instant equity. So it’s nice for them. They’re good people.
Erwin Szeto [00:23:56] It’s good. Good. Well, that’s the whole point of strategy is to help people.
Matt Spada [00:24:00] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:24:01] Can you can high level explain rent to own. Sure. Because I’m sure some listeners won’t know what it is.
Matt Spada [00:24:07] It’s a program, basically ours. They tend to enter into an agreement with the landlord to have an option to purchase the property at a certain price in the future. So typically it’s about three years and you would agree upon a price one and part of their rent every month goes towards credits towards the purchase price. So they’re going to put down a deposit upfront, which is the option fee that goes towards the purchase of the property at the end of the term. And then every month they’re earning credits as well that go to that towards that purchase price. Ideally in the end they end up with close to a full down payment from their option fee and their monthly credits to allow them to buy the property. So they have to have good incomes, but maybe their credit isn’t in the right place to qualify for a mortgage. At that point in time, they get to go into a home that they had to treat as theirs that they’re going to want to buy earlier and getting earlier than they would if they had to wait and just rent somewhere and try to save a down payment on their own.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:15] Excellent. Very good explanation.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:18] To.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:19] Hazard a guess what the current market value of this House would be.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:22] The sales are maybe 750.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:27] I don’t know how big it is, but yeah, my, my first thought was Lewis double. Was it a big one.
Matt Spada [00:25:32] Yeah. Oh it was about 1500 square feet.
Erwin Szeto [00:25:37] That’s a big one.
Matt Spada [00:25:38] It was a nice house really. And like I said, a detached garage. And in that area most of the houses didn’t have garages. Lots is a little bit bigger, lot than normal, too. The garage itself was like so insulated it had its own. Like it was heated and everything and it was a nice place. Sorry that we don’t own that anymore, but what do you do.
Erwin Szeto [00:26:05] For the investor? I think that wants more surety in their investor. Different all make sense. Also, some more cash flow. Is it a run, sire?
Matt Spada [00:26:13] Yeah, it’s a great way. Great way to get started, because typically the terrain is also a little bit easier to use because they’re taking better care of the property because them.
Erwin Szeto [00:26:26] Just took care of it. They renovated for you. Yeah. That wasn’t always.
Matt Spada [00:26:33] The case with all. But yeah, that does happen because it’s just a different mindset that they have here. So you’re not getting phone calls for, you know, little repairs and things that it’s a lot easier to manage. So I would recommend it to people getting started as a good entry into getting into real estate investing. Sure.
Erwin Szeto [00:26:54] It’s like property management late because the because the time is given the game, the intention is that they’re going to own the home, that they are much easier tenant profile, easier to deal with. And again, they give you the $15,000 upfront. So of course your cash flow is better.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:08] Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:10] That’s amazing.
Matt Spada [00:27:11] You do that way.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:11] So they don’t go that way. We’ll get to that, actually. And then how many how many more rental homes do you do if you get shot at? I can end.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:19] This.
Matt Spada [00:27:20] Yeah, we did. So, like I said, we did seven more pretty fast. So in about a 15 month period and then we kind of slow down after that. But at one point we had 12 and then and then we sold some off through the tenants buying out. And now right now we’re at seven, but none of them are rent to own anymore. They’re all straight rentals.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:42] There at some point decide not to sell any more properties. We have money on the table.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:48] We’re not selling these anymore.
Matt Spada [00:27:51] I mean, I tell you one that that was really hard to let go. We had a place in Milton and those markets exploded.
Erwin Szeto [00:27:59] Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:28:00] All these things. And when we sold that one, it was probably $150,000 undervalued. But when the tenant bought that one, I think that was the that point that the market had started taking off. So like it was really hard to come up with oil prices and in fact some were leaving money on the table. In that sense, you not losing money by any means. We were still doing well, but that and then it was also getting harder to qualify for mortgages. So as we were just selling off and then we’d go back into the market to try to buy houses, we were having more trouble qualifying for mortgages. So we decided, you know, as these ones that were still on rental homes, as they were kind of expiring, that we were just going to stick with street rentals from here on out.
Erwin Szeto [00:28:53] So rational decision.
Erwin Szeto [00:28:55] Well.
Erwin Szeto [00:28:57] Can you explain a buyer price to the listener who’s not fully familiar with rent.
Matt Spada [00:29:00] Owns the buying price would be a you know create upon price upfront that we would set we typically you know when we’re doing it we’re using like CMHC kind of projections for those areas which were like 3 to 5% a year. And that’s kind of what we were doing compounding that. So for three, three years there’d be a buyer price after year one and then another 3 to 5% increase after you two and then same year three. That’s how we would kind of set our buying prices. You know, the tenant would agree to that and went in the option agreement.
Erwin Szeto [00:29:38] So in hindsight, CMHC was pretty low on their projections. Pretty low because remember, the story of the CMHC was always everything’s unaffordable, everything’s unaffordable, everything’s unaffordable. Prices can’t go up much more.
Erwin Szeto [00:29:52] 35%. Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:29:54] I remember in summer when we were filling some of these meeting with prospective tenants and they’re like, Well, what if the prices don’t go up this much? You know, like, how do you know that the prices are going to go up to this price? What happens if it’s not worth that much at that point? And I would always say, actually, I learned it from my dad, but his response was always, well, what if what if it goes higher than that? You know, do we get to hold or do we get to increase the price because it goes up more? And that’s what happened. It went up more than then. These prices were set. So but it was always a big everybody’s fear was always with rent to own was always that the price is going to be too high at the time of buying. So that was never the case.
Erwin Szeto [00:30:38] You guys are such nice landlords. I wish I read guys and I get paid hundred 50 grand. So two of the things I want to cover. Okay. So you mentioned it didn’t always go well. So this is the show is called The Truth About Real Estate Investing. Surely things don’t always go well. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows dealing with tenants and doing property. Yes, I recorded a video before this about how lumber prices are like 3% higher than they used to be.
Erwin Szeto [00:31:03] Right? It’s crazy.
Matt Spada [00:31:04] Crazy, actually.
Erwin Szeto [00:31:05] Talk about all the steel in your gym is probably worth a lot of money. Even just homework and just working. Equipment’s gone up in price.
Erwin Szeto [00:31:11] I mean, I.
Matt Spada [00:31:12] Think not so much now, but I was getting, especially in the first lockdown, e-mails and phone calls almost daily for people. Are you selling equipment? Are you renting equipment? Is not.
Erwin Szeto [00:31:27] So tell me. Tell me. So you have some bad telling stories, right?
Matt Spada [00:31:31] Oh, yeah. So we’ve had some of the best tenants you could ever ask for. We’ve also had some of the worst lease you could ever imagine. So I don’t know. You want to hear, like. So, yeah, those are. Yeah. Okay.
Erwin Szeto [00:31:46] How do you find these tenants? Did you screen them?
Erwin Szeto [00:31:50] I mean.
Matt Spada [00:31:51] The one that we had that was like the worst we’ve ever had was one we inherited. So no rent to this person.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:00] But that’s actually a very common story. It’s often in here and.
Matt Spada [00:32:04] It was ver it was bad police involved and also weekly basis. She started she met our front porch on fire or this like terrible things. Terrible things. We got her out because she went to jail. So that’s how bad it become. So we’ve had people, you know, just wrecked the house. So we had to do a complete renovations. We got the place and redo the whole place because of tenants. Yeah. I mean, you name it, we’ve been through it. Other than the whole house burning down, that’s the only thing that hasn’t happened to us.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:41] Knock on wood, everyone knock on wood.
Matt Spada [00:32:46] So, yeah, I mean, that’s part of the game, too, so you got to be prepared for that.
Erwin Szeto [00:32:52] Yes, it’s part of the game. You know, I’ve had floods, for example. You know, I have insurance for these things. I have insurance, materialism. So you see, it’s part of the game. What did you say to yourself for the time that you stayed in the investing? How was the decision that you would stay in this area?
Matt Spada [00:33:08] Always kept a long term perspective. So yeah, today maybe something’s going wrong and it sucks. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s small potatoes, really. You know, these events that happen, they turn really bad. They’re not common. They happen. You know, like I said, at one point, we had 12 properties. And when you rent out 12 properties for 12 years, yeah, you’re bound to have some hiccups along the way, but for the most part it’s been very good. So that too makes it a little easier to handle it when it goes bad. Because, you know, most of the time it’s going well. You got to take the good with the bad. Like I said, I think the biggest thing is to keep a long term perspective, not to get caught up in the day to day, you know, when things are going wrong and letting that get you down and losing that long term perspective. And then over time, these things, they don’t they’re just a little blip on the radar over time. So and you learn every time you learn new things, too. So it’s a learning experience as well.
Erwin Szeto [00:34:14] It’s actually easier than ever now with your inherited tenant. That’s a tough one. I actually had a question on that. Do you remember the details on at what point could you just take over the property back over because you went to jail? Because you going to jail for a long time?
Matt Spada [00:34:27] No. So she did about three months in jail. While she was in jail, we couldn’t do anything. But she obviously wasn’t paying rent and she wasn’t paying rent before that either. No, we weren’t able to do anything while she was in jail is when she came out of jail. The reason she went to jail is because she assaulted the neighbor and the four she came out of jail. She was released back into the home, which was a duplex. So there was another family living there as well. She was released into the home, basically under house arrest. She wasn’t allowed to leave the property. She wasn’t able to go inside. It was becomes a base because the neighbor had a restraining order on her. Well, she broke out a bunch of times and the police told her she wasn’t allowed to live there anymore. So she had to move out and she was forced out by the police. Basically, she was forced to move because she wasn’t complying with her release orders. So once she vacated the property, we were able to go in and take pictures that she vacated the property. Actually, she met with us to sign an 11, basically to end the tenancy. And that’s how we she knew she couldn’t come back anyway, so she agreed to. We basically said we won’t come after you for all of the rental arrears if you sign this piece of paper because she owed a seven month’s rent, so she signed it and that was the end of it.
Erwin Szeto [00:35:51] So it’s a good deal for her. Seven months of rent. I’m a piece of paper. You believe anywhere.
Matt Spada [00:35:58] In the region? Yeah. It was one of the happiest days ever when we knew she couldn’t come back.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:09] At the end of darkness, there’s always light.
Matt Spada [00:36:11] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:12] Did you use a lawyer or a paralegal for all this?
Matt Spada [00:36:14] We got some advice. From a paralegal? Yeah. But, no, we didn’t end up needing to use one in the end because it was. It was pretty easy because she basically because she signed it, signed the 11. So there was no need. We didn’t have to, like, go to the tenant or anything for that. We just parted ways, luckily.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:34] Besides your dad, did you have any support through this process? Like, were you talking to anyone?
Matt Spada [00:36:38] Him. And then in that particular property, we bought it as a joint venture partner with him. One of my good friends, actually, he wanted to get into real estate investing.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:48] Because this one, the ones that laughed at you and your when you first started.
Erwin Szeto [00:36:51] You know, no, no, no, no.
Matt Spada [00:36:53] So he wanted to get involved in in real estate. And at that time, we were looking to buy a property, but we needed someone to qualify for the mortgage. So we partnered up with him. It was a good way for him to get a foot in the door, real estate investing and kind of have us as his kind of mentor through the process so he could learn and we were partners on it. So for him, his first investment property was it was a rough one to start with today. It’s great, but then it was pretty rough for him. He got a lot of good experience.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:28] The good thing was the loan.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:29] Home he.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:30] Made with a lot of us.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:31] He was just so sure this is.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:39] Where was this property?
Matt Spada [00:37:40] It’s in 43. So the entire region in 43.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:44] Oh, no wonder it’s different now.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:45] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:46] I know nothing about Florida area.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:47] I’m just making that up.
Matt Spada [00:37:49] A nice neighborhood in the areas. It’s called Crescent Park. It’s actually where I grew up, so. Oh, cool. Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:37:57] Never what you paid for it. 350 an idea was worth.
Matt Spada [00:38:01] Now I’m going to guess around 500. Close to it.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:06] And it’s been. How long?
Matt Spada [00:38:07] Two years.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:13] I wouldn’t call two years. Long term perspective. But you only know, as I was going to guess took longer than that. But, uh, how’s your job friend doing now?
Matt Spada [00:38:24] Oh, he’s great.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:25] Yeah, that’s.
Matt Spada [00:38:26] It’s a pretty low maintenance property now. And like I said, it’s a duplex. So there’s two, two tenants in there and they’re both great. So we never rarely hear from them. So yeah, he got a really tough first experience and now he’s getting to experience the good side of it.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:42] Very good. I think every property usually has a stabilization period. Usually it’s renovations.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:48] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:38:49] Usually it’s like a house that’s a bit older has a stabilization period. But yeah, bad tenant stories often, often inherit the tenants. It’s just again, someone else screen them for some sometimes. Actually I had one on a property like this. The tenant was a big factor of why Bacile was selling.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:05] Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:39:06] I imagine that that was the same in our case. It was never portrayed that way to us. In fact, the selling agent was like, you know, she’s a great person, you know, had nothing but good things to say. But yeah, I would have to think that that was part of the reason for selling the property. It was just so much to deal with.
Erwin Szeto [00:39:29] As well as get to talk to the neighbors. Have you been about this? So how is your investing now? Are you still active on the real estate side? Look at the stock up from selling the bet. Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:39:42] That was the last property. But it’s not. It’s been about two years since we’ve purchased another property, so we haven’t been actively buying but still actively managing still. You know, the reason we just had a vacancy on our rent, renovating the property right now to get it ready to re rent. So I’m just basically managing at this point seven properties and really trying to figure out now what the next step is, is because you’ve got a lot of equity sitting in these houses, so there’s opportunities to do something. Just haven’t really decided on what the next step is yet. So Matt.
Erwin Szeto [00:40:22] You’re a smart guy and you read stuff and you you’re pretty well versed in investing. Like, imagine if you didn’t do real estate investing, where do you think you’d be? On the other side of the question as to how much better, how much improved is your net worth having to start investing when you did or just investing at all?
Matt Spada [00:40:41] I don’t know. I mean, obviously, you’d still have the gym business that net worth wise. It’s probably have little to none. I mean, I’m sure I would have bought my own house and I’d have some equity in that, but outside of that, it’d be nothing compared to what I have now.
Erwin Szeto [00:40:59] At 34 years old.
Matt Spada [00:41:01] I guess if I were to say like take somebody that I know that I’ve known for the last four years and they didn’t invest in it. Anything except their own home. And. And look at our two situations. Yeah. Delta in net worth is quite significant.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:18] Like ten X or more.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:24] Who’s crazy now?
Erwin Szeto [00:41:28] Speaking of crazy, I understand you took up selling options.
Erwin Szeto [00:41:34] Stock options? Yeah. How’s that going?
Matt Spada [00:41:36] Thanks to your podcast. Yes, it’s going really well. I love it, actually. It’s so much fun. It can be stressful. I think it’s more it’s more stressful than real estate investing in some ways, but it’s a lot more emotional. But again, I have the same perspective or same outlook with the stock options as I do with real estate is from a long term perspective. So, you know, the day to day fluctuations, they can really get to you. But again, I, you know, whatever, I don’t care if something goes down a lot today to me, I just think it’s a good buying opportunity in ten years. It’s not going to matter that it’s down a little bit today.
Erwin Szeto [00:42:20] So I think one of the problems with where we’re following the market’s like falling stocks and the stock markets. Well, I think, first of all, we shouldn’t look at as often as we do.
Matt Spada [00:42:33] Especially, you know, like being stuck at home all the time. It’s too much. I’m on there.
Erwin Szeto [00:42:37] Too much because.
Erwin Szeto [00:42:40] This is imagine if you’re looking at a real estate like the price of your houses each day. Yeah, I think I think you probably do something rash like, oh, that’s a good price. It’s just sell it, right?
Matt Spada [00:42:49] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:42:50] I don’t think it’s healthy to see it every day.
Matt Spada [00:42:52] In the real estate portfolio. I almost never look at that because I have no intentions of selling. So once in a while I’ll check his voice box. You know, things have gone up quite a bit again, but now with the stock options like trading or selling options is a kind of a short term thing. You know, typically one or two months out that you’re selling, or at least that’s how I do it anyway, it’s one or two months out so that I guess that’s true term really. But right.
Erwin Szeto [00:43:25] Now when I think of it that I know I’m going to lose some, but it’s nice I’m going to get the majority of them.
Matt Spada [00:43:29] Correct.
Erwin Szeto [00:43:30] So over the long term.
Matt Spada [00:43:33] That’s something I learned is, you know, for the last two or three months in that is the losing part is to be okay with it. Cause I made a mistake of holding on to a loser for so long that it was just I just, you know, it’s going to bounce back. It’s going to bounce back and just get lower and lower and lower. And anyway, that was an expensive blessing. But in the end, I just look at it as a lesson is education. So, you know, I only just started the stock options in in any real significant way in January. So after taking the stock option course and like I said, it’s been great. I’ve learned a lot over the last five months. I’ve done pretty well. I would say, like in terms of return on your money, five months in America, about 21%.
Erwin Szeto [00:44:24] That’s fantastic. Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:44:27] That’s just crazy to me. Like, I came out of the gates doing really well. I was in the first two months, I was up 18%, but I went from like I quickly went from doing like safe stuff and doing well to getting riskier and riskier and getting into riskier stocks. And I was making good premiums and then everything kind of crashed a bit with those growth stocks, and I was heavy into them at that point. So yeah, I learned a lot there. The diversifying your trades, not just being all in one sector or one type of stock and.
Erwin Szeto [00:45:07] But going up, all come down.
Erwin Szeto [00:45:09] Yeah.
Matt Spada [00:45:10] I took those lessons, adjusted my strategy. You know, I’m doing well again and even those books are like, I have some paper losses that I’m holding right now, but those are coming back now and I’m able to sell covered calls against those positions and make it more premium. So it’s a great, great little side hustle and way to make an extra income for sure. The one thing I’ve that attracted me to it was even though our real estate portfolio, it does really well, it’s got a ton of equity in, it does cash flow, but we typically leave that cash flow there for renovations or vacancies like I touched on. It’s just there for when it’s needed because you always need to reinvest into these places or have unexpected tenant vacancies. So what with the stock options, it’s great cash flow. And once you close out that position, that cash. Is yours. You can do whatever you want. Reinvest it, take it out, spend it. Whatever. There’s more, I guess, flexibility with the cash flow to do what you want with it.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:19] A couple of my friends, we like sushi, so it’s joke around saying like when we do a trade that’s profitable trade like, oh, that’s the sushi boat.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:27] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:29] Well, that’s two sushi boats. So if I make, like, 300 bucks and I was like, Oh, that’s two sushi boats.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:35] Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:37] Yeah. It’s funny. It was a complete surprise when we discovered it. What do you tell your friends and your dad? What the crazy thing is.
Matt Spada [00:46:45] They tell you you’re.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:46] Crazy and talk.
Matt Spada [00:46:47] To my dad.
Erwin Szeto [00:46:47] About it. No, no.
Matt Spada [00:46:50] I think they’re a little more so, my friends. A couple of them are interested in it because, you know, they see what I did with the real estate and now I’ve gotten into this, they think maybe I guess I might be someone worth listening to possibly. But my dad, you know, he’s had a different part in his investing journey. He does not want to get involved whatsoever. He’s just he’s very much retired and he lends a he does like private lending and stuff, but he doesn’t want to be involved in making trades and watching the markets and things like that. So I can’t get him interested in it.
Erwin Szeto [00:47:29] So I find lots of people like real estate’s. It’s quite a bit of capital to get in these days, right? So yeah, I find stock options are highly favorable. It’s, um, complements real estate investing. Well, I think is because again, it’s, we can, we can be defensive and still make money.
Matt Spada [00:47:49] Right? Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:47:50] For a lot of people they can cash for a lot more doing stock option than they can with the real estate because your situation is not similar where there there’s not much cash flow at the end of the day, like we’re the same. We leave our cash flow with our properties because we know something is going to come up. Davos Global warming again, had a flood last summer right now at that build retaining walls around that on that property, you know, so there’s always money coming out. So that’s why there is we can’t take cash flow. There’s a whole pandemic thing. Yeah, but that really hurt my student rentals, right? Yeah. So yeah. So then I need alternative sources of cash flow and yeah, this has been a bit of a gift.
Matt Spada [00:48:26] Yeah, it’s awesome strategy. I’d recommend it to anyone, really. I mean, you don’t need a large bankroll, like you said, to get started in it. Oh.
Erwin Szeto [00:48:34] And it’s kind of fun to. I just like, I still love video games, but I run time for it. So this is my replacement.
Matt Spada [00:48:42] Right?
Erwin Szeto [00:48:43] Something that I should.
Matt Spada [00:48:43] Pay and be. I mean, I never really been into video games or anything, but mainly because I just never want to go down that rabbit hole and.
Erwin Szeto [00:48:52] Same thing.
Matt Spada [00:48:54] Gets sucked in. So I kind of just stayed away from it. And but this is, I guess, yeah, the same. It’s kind of like not a game, but it feels like it almost feels weird.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:07] Like we’re talking about making money defensively and it just shows up in your phone.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:12] Exactly.
Matt Spada [00:49:13] That’s it. Dennis Strange. It’s like you hit a certain on your phone and money. You just start to do that. This was like you sorry could get in trouble with this just one end because it is so easy to just hit that button and just keep collecting premiums. And next thing you know, it’s like you’re in way over your head. It can get ugly if you don’t manage your account in your portfolio properly.
Erwin Szeto [00:49:39] So yeah, because in order for that real estate, each decision that you made to enter a property was very good, quite calculated. So I think people kind of get the kind of lose the diligence of when to enter positions, right. Because each time you bought a property, there’s a lot of things that were aligned before you entered that property. It’s no different. Should be when you’re entering a trade. Right.
Matt Spada [00:50:01] Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:02] Like I’m sure one reason why you don’t buy in Milton anymore is because, hey, it’s kind of.
Matt Spada [00:50:06] All kind.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:07] Of orbit up there. And Brazier House I bought for 400 now 900. You know, maybe we should consider another market, right?
Matt Spada [00:50:15] Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:16] Or we should wait for that price to come down. But that’s not a good analogy because I don’t think real estate prices are coming down. But like stocks they have, they fall in and out of flavor.
Matt Spada [00:50:26] Right? Yeah.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:27] So, you know, like Tesla, 900 or 800 is not a good deal in my opinion. Right. Tesla at 550 is probably a good deal. At least it’s a better deal than 800.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:39] Sure.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:39] Yeah. So maybe I should wait for 550.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:42] Right.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:43] Right. So you can actually wait versus waiting. Real estate didn’t work out well for anyone.
Erwin Szeto [00:50:48] In.
Matt Spada [00:50:49] Having that patience. Is this key? I got something I learned to because you can easily fall into that fear of missing out when the stock is moving up. It’s like it’s going to keep going up and you want to jump in there. But yeah, I’ve now learned that you always wait for the pullback.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:08] It’ll always pull.
Matt Spada [00:51:09] Back. It’ll always pull back at something. Yeah. If it’s not, you know, in the next couple of weeks, maybe in a couple of months, but there’s always other opportunities. So you don’t have to jump into these trades that are already getting ahead of themselves. Just because you think you might miss out on student loans or something, it’s not worth it. Just wait. Be patient. Wait for the pullback. Look elsewhere in the meantime, because they’re like I said, it’s always opportunity somewhere.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:36] So I got to apologize to listeners because I’m sure some of them don’t have no idea what we’re talking about. The math. So your friend does not know what stock options are when you tell them that you’re doing.
Matt Spada [00:51:45] Honestly, I have a hard time explaining it where.
Erwin Szeto [00:51:48] Everyone does the. Word, but it makes sense. Some people don’t do this. I feel like.
Matt Spada [00:51:54] It might just confuse people even more. But I try to use like insurance as an analogy that you’re selling insurance on the stock price so that you collect a premium upfront. That gives somebody else that owns the stock the ability to sell to you. If the stock price falls to your agreed upon price or the strike price falls to or below, you’ll be obligated to buy at that price. So you’re collected. You’re basically collecting an insurance premium in case the stock price falls. In which case you’d have to buy it. And you don’t have to buy another strategy. There’s other ways to manage the trade, which is great. So there’s lots of options. That’s why I mean, it’s hard to explain to people. Then the next natural question is, Well, what if it does fall below the price? And it’s when I’m stuck with the stock that’s falling, you know? But it’s not that simple. There’s so much more to it. And there’s so many strategies. Like, I’m still learning five months in. I’m still learning today. That’s something you’ve got to be willing to learn. I find it best to learn as you go. Like I did in paper trading for, like, a week. And I’m. I just got to do it and learn as I go. Like, I started with the small amount of money that if it went to complete zero, that it wasn’t going to ruin me or anything like that. So I started small and just learned as I went and then slowly added more as I got more confident and learned more. And I feel confident at this point. So I feel like even in five short months, I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, so and I’ve been able to manage through it all. So it gives you confidence after a certain amount of time.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:46] And who would you recommend this to?
Matt Spada [00:53:48] Anyone. Really? Anyone. Like I said, you have to have discipline. So if you’re a decent person.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:55] Go, yeah, you’re a serial gambler. No.
Erwin Szeto [00:53:58] This is the.
Matt Spada [00:53:59] Way it is. It can be addicting and it can get you know, you can get in over your head if you start taking on too many trades or, you know, you just you just you’re attracted to that premium. And it’s like I said, it’s so easy to just slide that button over and money pops into your account. It’s nuts. So, yeah. But if you’re a decent person, you have a long term perspective and you can, you know, you’re not somebody who’s going to get really emotional about these short term ups and downs, because if you got to get to you, I think it could really be a negative a negative thing in your life when things go bad.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:38] I would agree.
Matt Spada [00:54:39] You have to be able to manage fine.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:41] And you need a level head.
Matt Spada [00:54:42] Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.
Erwin Szeto [00:54:45] Matt, thanks so much for doing this a bit over time. Appreciate your time. I know you’re busy. You have two kids at home online schooling. I always like to allow my guest to give final words without any direction for myself. What would you like to share?
Matt Spada [00:54:59] You know, I think we talked a lot about investing and investing into the future. Long term perspective, things like that. I come from a background of health and fitness, and I think just one thing to consider as part of this investment is to invest in yourself and invest in your health and keep yourself healthy and able bodied so that when these investments pay off in the future, that you’re able to enjoy yourself and enjoy your life and then do the things that you want to do and do the things that you love to do. I think that you can take care of yourself physically and take care of your health just to enjoy yourself through the whole journey. Awesome. Matt.
Erwin Szeto [00:55:40] Working folks for you. I know you’re not big on social media. You don’t even have my own picture on your Facebook.
Erwin Szeto [00:55:46] I only have these on.
Matt Spada [00:55:48] The James Facebook page, and I’ve never used social media outside of that Facebook page in my life.
Erwin Szeto [00:55:58] What’s this like? The gym? What’s the gym? What’s the website?
Matt Spada [00:56:02] It’s JDM fitness icons in G and M Fitness. There’d be a place there that you could, you know, through the Contact US page if you want to get a hold of me or something. I mean, you can look on Facebook. I’m there, but I’m not active. It’s not theta. So let’s put your dad’s.
Erwin Szeto [00:56:22] Book working for your dad’s book.
Matt Spada [00:56:24] So he hasn’t it isn’t over yet just because of the whole pandemic thing. His main target is mainly our members.
Erwin Szeto [00:56:32] So but the first book, the first book was again also.
Matt Spada [00:56:36] His two books. First of his on nutrition. And it’s called Be Smart. He often eats small. And so that’s just about eating for a healthy body weight and that you can find anywhere, even on our website, actually. So if you go to gym fitness dot com, you can actually get that for free there. And you can also buy a physical copy Amazon Forever chapters. And then he has a new book coming out. It’ll be probably in the next few months. Whenever we’re through this lockdown and everything, it’s all ready to go. But that’s called start, right? And that will start right. The definitive guide to joining a gym for the first time. So it’s for people looking to get started joining a health club. It’s everything about what you need to join the gym, what you should looking for in joining a gym right down to what exercises to start out with how to do them. It’s a lot of strength training and how to get the most out of your workouts as a beginner. The things you need to know as a beginner to just make sure you’re getting the most out of your time in the gym. So that’ll be available at some point through our website, as well as Amazon and anywhere else you can buy books.
Erwin Szeto [00:57:54] So your gym owner I’ve been to, you know, commercial gyms and do used to laugh at people that have no idea what they’re doing.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:03] I mean.
Matt Spada [00:58:05] That.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:06] Right.
Matt Spada [00:58:08] And.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:09] You know, my when I start laughing is when they have no idea what they’re doing and they refused to get any sort of training happen.
Matt Spada [00:58:17] Yeah. Or even like free advice that was given and they still ignore it. But yeah, actually that happens. There is a lot of people that I mean, unfortunately we have some members that, honest to God, have been members with us for over 20 years and have made no progress because they’re not doing the right things. And that’s unfortunate and they don’t want to listen. But if you get this book, start right. Even if you’re somebody who’s not a beginner but maybe aren’t sure if you’re doing things properly to get the most out of your workouts, then pick up the book for sure.
Erwin Szeto [00:58:55] Fantastic. All right, Matt, thanks so much. And for doing this. The parties do it again.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:02] And have.
Matt Spada [00:59:03] Fun. Thanks for having me.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:05] Obviously, in the real world, when we start doing our meet ups.
Matt Spada [00:59:08] I can’t wait.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:10] Like you said, like it’s like especially with such a tough and almost even bounce ideas off of people like, yeah, you know, I did this on this date at this price and like, you know, I’d be like, you did what?
Matt Spada [00:59:22] Like I said, I really like the idea that you’ve been doing these kind of just kind of pop up meetings now with Tony and Diane. They help a lot because, like you said, we get together to bounce ideas off each other. So just, you know, even getting together once in a while over Zoom, it’s been helpful. But I am looking forward to being in person.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:49] And I’m sure even people would appreciate hearing yourself. I do like to have a long term perspective. I don’t mind owning this.
Matt Spada [00:59:55] Right? Yeah, right.
Erwin Szeto [00:59:56] But people are freaking out that if you’re a small paper like this.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:00] Yeah. I had on Disney and on and on Disney.
Matt Spada [01:00:04] So what’s wrong with that?
Erwin Szeto [01:00:06] But some people would panic.
Matt Spada [01:00:08] Oh, yeah.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:09] They’re, you know, made some good money. Yeah, cause I was.
Patient.
Matt Spada [01:00:12] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My intent is not to warm the stock if I don’t have to, but if I have to, it’s not a big deal.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:20] Awesome. All right. Thanks for doing this. Okay.
Matt Spada [01:00:22] Thank you.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:23] Have a good weekend.
Matt Spada [01:00:24] You should write.
Erwin Szeto [01:00:33] Before you go, if you’re interested in learning more about an alternative means of cash flowing like hundreds of other real estate investors have already and sign up for my newsletter and you’ll learn of the next free demonstration webinar I’ll be delivering on the subject of stock hacking. It’s a much improved demonstration over the one that I gave to my cousin Chubby at Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He now averages 1% cash flow per week, and he’s a musician by trade. As the real estate investor myself, I got into real estate for the cash flow, but with the rising costs to operate the rental business. It’s just not the same as it was 5 to 10 years ago when I started. Never forget that cash flow reduces your risk. The more you have, the more limbs you can absorb. And if you have none or limited cash flow, you’re going to be paying out of your pocket like I did on a recent basement flood at my rental in St Catherine’s, Ontario. If you’re interested in learning more for free from my newsletter at WDW dot Truth About Real Estate Investing Dossier into your name and email address on the right side will include in the newsletter when we announced our next Free Stock Hacker demonstration. Find out for yourself with so many real estate investors are doing to diversify and increase our cash flow. And if you can’t tell, I love teaching and sharing the stuff.