7 Years Part Time and $800K in Returns

Podcast Transcription

Erwin Szeto [00:00:11] This episode is brought to you by a Titan Investment Real Estate dot com. The total investment optimization company that specializes in real estate that helps regular everyday people’s financial performance. Whether you want some extra side hustle money for a more comfortable retirement, maybe help you pay for your child’s university tuition with an investment, property or two. Or maybe you want to retire spouse or yourself in the short to middle term with five, 10 or more properties, type investment Real Estate can help you with that, as well as they’ve been doing so for novice investors in southwestern Ontario since 2010. This team of real estate professionals have won their industry’s highest awards, having one real estate agent of the year for investors in 2015, 2016 and 2017 by the Canadian Real Estate Wealth Magazine and the Real Estate Investment Network. If you have listened to current clients of Titan on this podcast, they all credit much of their success to the coaching and mentoring of a Titan team, and the numbers don’t lie. Past clients investing with Titan since 2012 have earned over 400 percent on their investments. Learn how to join this exclusive club of all tricks and successful everyday people from the Toronto area. By going to WW W Dot Titan Investment Real Estate dot com, you can request be contacted and ask them how they did it. Or he could describe download. Get some of the educational materials on why certain towns in southwestern Ontario are your favorites for real estate investment. If you do always visit the website, please click on Halton Real Estate Investment Group. Where these seem successful, investors go to network once a month in Oakville, Ontario, at the prestigious Sheridan College. As the saying goes, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you want to be successful in real estate, this is the place you want to be. The Halton REI regularly hosts leading authorities in the industry, providing you the latest market and strategy updates on how to improve the probability of your success. These meetings and Bollywood titan investment Real Estate is all about making money while you sleep, because the more money you make, the more people you can help, including yourself. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, investors across Canada. My name is Erwin Szeto, a.k.a. Mr Hamilton, and welcome to the truth about real estate investing show. As always, I have the pleasure of interviewing the titans of Canadian real estate to figure out what makes them successful. We will listen to their teachings, learned from their mistakes and experiences, so we too may replicate their success. If you join the show, please leave me a review and on Apple’s iTunes and leave a comment and read every one, and I am grateful for every review. If you have some constructive feedback, please send me an email and I will endeavor to improve. Before we get started, I want to say thank you to the readers, listeners and client and my clients for making this award possible this past week. The Real Estate Investment Network have bestowed upon myself and my team the title investment real estate group. The winners of 2018’s Realtor of the Year. We are now a two time winner as we last won the award in 2015 to go along with our award wins as Agent of the Year by the Canadian Real Estate Magazine in 2016 and 2017. That’s four times in total. We are pretty happy with ourselves. Our efforts are proof that good people doing good things in business and in the community can excel in the investment industry. Thank you to the real estate investment network for this award, and to be honest, I didn’t think we would win. Considering the very, very steep competition, I didn’t know until they unveiled the names of the other finalists, but they all happened to be previous winners, including myself, and they’re all doing wonderful things in their own respective businesses and communities. I like to thank our clients for believing in us for following our advice in their pursuit of financial freedom and security for themselves and for their families. I’d like to give thank the original gangsters of REIN Dan Campbell, Russell Westcott and Melanie Tennant Reuter, plus the current leadership of Patrick, Richard and Jennifer. Thank you again to my team Tami, Megan, James, Hand Cocaine, Mary, John, Charles and Tim. Yeah, we’ve a fair sized team. Thank you to my broker owners and mentors in time and a creative rockstar. Real Estate. Thank you to my coach, Marianne Gillespie. I like to thank my kids and my wife for putting up with my attempts at a work life balance. Without their support and inspiration, this would not be possible. Finally, I like to thank my parents for uprooting their lives from halfway around the world, to come to Canada for a better opportunity for themselves and for their children and their grandchildren. Thank you for being part of the community, and this is only the beginning because we have bigger and better things planned for our clients in this business and the Hamilton Best Brigade in 2018. So please stay awesome everyone, and just do it because I believe in you. Now onto the show. Seven years, part time in a hundred thousand in returns. And that doesn’t include. Like mortgage pay down in cash flow. John, romance is back again. Here we previously had him on, I think, close to two years ago now. And upon his assistance, we opened up a 2009 Italian bottle of candy. I can’t help but think about that line from Hannibal Lecter, from the movie Silence of the Lambs whenever I hear TNT. How he ate. Someone’s liver with kidney beans in a nice bottle of candy. Anyways, we chatted about it Real Estate mindset for success. Challenges and successes. Stock investing because I asked John about how his investing changed as we had a significant stock correction in the last six months. So I asked him about how his investing changed and how his portfolio holdings are different. We talk about so much more. I know it’s a long episode, but to listen to the end of the episode till the end of the episode because we discuss what motivates John and it’s not what I expected. John is my client, my friend. He holds a CPA, an MBA, and he’s a part time instructor at Sheridan College to round out his busy lifestyle as an executive at a major coffee company and a new father for the book for you coffee aficionados. John is now a trained coffee expert. She talks about how he smells coffee and switches it around his mouth, much like you wine connoisseurs do. But anyways, without further ado, I give you John Roumanis.

John Roumanis [00:06:18] Going to crack. Are you going to grab that bottle open or what?

Erwin Szeto [00:06:21] Yeah, let’s do it. I don’t get it, but if we start reporting. So even John, I’m doing well.

John Roumanis [00:06:26] How about you, Erwin, whose last time when was the last time we spoke? I’m trying to remember now

Erwin Szeto [00:06:32] he’s the Winter Dispatch.

John Roumanis [00:06:34] No, no. I think it was way longer than that. Yeah, it’s got to be about a year and a half

Erwin Szeto [00:06:39] and you think,

John Roumanis [00:06:41] Oh, where do I begin? I’ve got a new job

Erwin Szeto [00:06:46] puzzle for the Dubeau.

John Roumanis [00:06:47] Yeah. So we’re in for a coffee company now. So we’re director of marketing and it’s been a lot of fun. I mean, I had been having the same company for about six and a half years, and as much as I enjoyed myself, there was looking for a new challenge and coming over into the world of coffee, I just realized how little I know about so much of the world. I mean, there’s so many different components to it, just learning about the coffee itself, learning about the industry, most of our businesses in the U.S. so it’s every day I’m coming over. My head is just completely spinning from just how much I’m learning, but that’s the way I like it. REIN nothing. It’s not good to think of to be bored.

Erwin Szeto [00:07:26] How long you been at it? Six miles. Six months. Quite a while.

John Roumanis [00:07:31] So that’s I’m just telling you the amount of content that’s there to learn is flabbergasting. They actually had quite a difficult time filling the role because they couldn’t find somebody that had the ability to be, you know, taught to understand the concepts of marketing, to understand data and information, but also have a financial background, right? So they needed sort of an accountant and marketer put it together. And who else but John REIN Erwin, the marketing guy with the CPA board?

Erwin Szeto [00:08:00] Where does the product knowledge of matter in all of this?

John Roumanis [00:08:02] Well, I mean, product knowledge is something that you’ll get over time. Like, it’s not the end of the day. I mean, there’s people. People move around the CPG industry all the time. REIN, you can be selling coffee one day. One day you could be selling yogurt. Another day you could be selling crackers. Product knowledge is, is only part of it. But with coffee though, right? Coffee goes so much deeper than other products, like if you’re in a soup industry, for example, how much do you really need to know about soup, like there’s mushroom soup and vegetable soup and lentil soup? But when you talk about coffee, you have origins, right? Is it? Is it a Sumatran? Is it a is it a? Is it a Brazilian? Is it a Colombian?

Erwin Szeto [00:08:41] It’s a country of origin,

John Roumanis [00:08:43] country of origin. Then you have different roles levels. REIN is a light roast, a medium roast and dark roast. Is it? Is it? And then on top of that, you have different weights, so the amount of coffee that you use is there. So, you know, I mean, I’ve gone through sensory training, so, you know, learning and learning how to enjoy a proper cup of coffee. It’s not even learning how to enjoy a proper cup of coffee, but it’s also learning how to prepare the session for sensory like that’s what I did in Seattle. For two days, I actually went and did a whole bunch of sensory training. So, you know, I have some ideas for wine. The people who are that well trained called Q trainers. I’m sorry the Q, they’re called Q testers

Erwin Szeto [00:09:30] because they said,

John Roumanis [00:09:32] I can’t know it’s not quality. It’s some sort of association, right? But in my company, there’s only four of them years and years and years to get back. Good to know what an excellent cup of coffee is, really.

Erwin Szeto [00:09:45] Yeah, because familiar is like, no easy either.

John Roumanis [00:09:47] No, Somali is not easy, right? You know? But anyway, so the coffee industry is fantastic. It’s super, super fun. Having a great time to learn cooking

Erwin Szeto [00:09:58] a bottle of wine? Yeah. And just wandering around wondering why we’re

John Roumanis [00:10:01] having such a social conversation. But it is what it is. Yeah, so we’re good. Some new job are very happy with that. And the oh my, my, my son is almost a year old. I think the last time we talked Erwin, he was just bored or he was going to just be born like you. We probably haven’t spoken in a year, and I’ve got to say there’s a lot that’s happened in a year and a lot. So I’m hoping that we’ll be. Your listeners are excited to get an update. But first things first, cheers to you having me over. It’s been a while.

Erwin Szeto [00:10:32] All the best. I’m happy with the coffee stuff about because you got me on Instagram. Yeah, because Abigail, Facebook, Facebook’s terrible of this especially terrible not are in the middle of a provincial election.

John Roumanis [00:10:45] I just want to. I just you know that Instagram is owned by Facebook. I know that’s fine. I’m just saying, what if these people post-delivery is yes, Facebook’s become a joke.

Erwin Szeto [00:10:54] Nobody gets political on Instagram. From what I can see, it’s hard.

John Roumanis [00:10:58] It’s easy to avoid it, right? So if you receive like, I don’t know you, but I’ve been getting ads from all three political parties and but if you really want to engage in it like me, you have to go in and start reading the comments. And it’s not as user friendly as Facebook is to get really into that kind of stuff, right? And yeah, I mean, I’m. People, people tend I think I think Instagram is a younger demographic, too, so what’s happened is that Facebook is now skewing much older. And as you get older, you tend to get more political either, you know, one way or the other. Whereas young people are not as political, you what you’ll see on. I think what you see on Instagram is a lot more social justice type of conversations, right? So things about, you know, human rights and animal rights, and it’s that’s everywhere. And but politics is not nearly as much as what you would see on Facebook. Facebook, far more political.

Erwin Szeto [00:11:50] So it took Facebook off my phone. So, I mean, instagramming some stuff, I’m enjoying it much better. It’s a lot later. 11 Instagramming videos of me making bulletproof coffee.

John Roumanis [00:12:02] You know, bulletproof coffee is brilliant. OK, so like the coffee itself is nothing fancy, right? So, I mean, tell me you’re not buying the actual coffee.

Erwin Szeto [00:12:14] No, I can’t afford that.

John Roumanis [00:12:15] I’m pretty cheap to just use any coffee. What kind of coffee do you buy?

Erwin Szeto [00:12:20] I buy some sort of tropical something organic, fair trade in Glasgow. Do you know the brand? And let me show it to you.

John Roumanis [00:12:28] Yeah, sure. Fair trade organic. You. You like to pay the premium for that stuff. That’s something that doesn’t come cheap. My friend, my business partner, we’re of here together. Fair trade is unfortunately becoming a lot more popular and unfortunately not for customers or for the people who are benefiting from fair trade. But unfortunately for manufacturers, it’s expensive and what ends up happening is nobody wants to pay for the villa. Yeah, OK. Yeah, these guys, this is a pretty big deal. Yeah. So this is organic and it’s not fair trade. It’s Rainforest Alliance. There’s a difference. It’s pretty good, too. Well, the difference is

Erwin Szeto [00:13:08] I used to buy the fair trade one in the brown bag. Yeah. For any other Costco fans out there, I’m buying. I got the organic green bag, Costco. It’s the only organic coffee they sell.

John Roumanis [00:13:19] So Rainforest Alliance, basically there they have three overarching mandates. There’s the protection of the environment.

Erwin Szeto [00:13:27] There is good intention to mandate an

John Roumanis [00:13:29] addiction of the people who are involved in coffee, and there’s a third mandate. I can’t remember where they’re not as well-known and don’t have as much brand cachet as the fair trade people. Fair trade is pretty much pretty much focused on the people. So, I mean, and there’s a there’s a significant premium to fair trade coffee, significant this. This doesn’t have much of a premium in terms of cost, but if you were to go buy a trade? No, I’m good. I drink more coffee today than you can possibly imagine how much we make. I’m proud to say this. We make Nic Cafe in the restaurant, so I love the cafe brew and we have the same bun machines that you’ll find in a big cafe or a McDonald’s restaurant, and the coffee is just so delicious. I love it. Anyway, that’s my that’s my quick little.

Erwin Szeto [00:14:21] You know, we were talking about bulletproof and Instagram like I’ve. I’ve had coffee enthusiasts make fun of me like. And then also, like a lot of people don’t understand that I’m not doing it for the taste.

John Roumanis [00:14:32] So if you if you’re a true coffee connoisseur and you know, I hope I’m not offending any of our lovely fans or friends, but to kind of serve coffees and drink your coffee black, right? Like the right way to do it. I’ll tell you that the best way to bring your coffee is at home. If you have a French press, give you a medium coffee to a French president. So he’s still, yeah, great. You boil water not to boiling. You let it go right before it starts to boil. So it’s 40 200 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just a few degrees short of boiling. You pour that, you know, freshly ground coffee into the bottom of the French press poured in there. I would say about five minutes is about the right amount of time that you want to let it steep and then you pour it right. But black is the only way to drink it. Then you can really notice the difference in terms of all the subtle notes and the level of rose, the freshness, all that comes out only when it’s black, when you when you drink your coffee like a typical Canadian quadruple, quintuple or whatever it is nowadays, the Wayne

Erwin Szeto [00:15:31] Gretzky like 99

John Roumanis [00:15:33] cheeses, it’s not coffee anymore. It’s an it’s a coffee based beverage, right? I don’t know. It’s in A. It’s like, you don’t you don’t do that to wine, you don’t do that to you, don’t put wine in a watered down, you know, so I don’t know coffee. But it took a while. Even when I was a kid, I used to drink it with tons of cream and sugar, and then I eventually went to cream and then I went to milk and then I went black. And I’ve never I can go back from that. It’s just

Erwin Szeto [00:15:58] so delicious. I’ll never do the English thing because tea’s always like, who doesn’t drink English? People always put milk and sugar in this, you know, wonder what if that’s what he over to

John Roumanis [00:16:09] coffee tea is a different story when you put milk and cream into the tea and actually enhances the flavor of the tea. So it gives you a very different experience with coffee, with cream and milk, what I find is that it cuts it as opposed to enhancing it, whereas with tea, it’s actually, you know, it actually there’s a there’s a chemical reaction or something that happens within there with tea and cream or tea and milk, and it enhances the flavor, makes it that much more delicious. So I would actually put milk or cream in my tea, but not in my coffee. Interesting. Yeah. So but if you are doing bulletproof coffee, you don’t need to buy the actual bulletproof coffee itself. It’s crazy, gluten free. Whatever, dude. All coffees go going free. It’s too soon for your Roxanne free. So help me understand

Erwin Szeto [00:16:56] free people free.

John Roumanis [00:16:58] You buy greens from origin. She put her on a boat, ship them they come to a or what do you think happens at the roaster? The Roasted. That means that it’s all burned and turned brown. Problem solved. You know what I mean? Like, if you buy coffee from any reputable manufacturer, you’re going to get good coffee.

Erwin Szeto [00:17:17] Good to know. Yeah. All right. So my cheapness has been validated.

John Roumanis [00:17:23] Any other coffee questions before we talk about real estate or investing or whatever you want to talk about?

Erwin Szeto [00:17:30] David Lee Roth will leave the group beverages for now. Yeah, he’s a French press and we grinder beans every morning fresh and we sort of, yeah, countertop grinder.

John Roumanis [00:17:42] The best thing. Don’t if you’re going to buy. If you if you like a coffee fresh, if you buy pre-ground coffee, even if you put in the fridge completely waste of time, it’s a it does nothing if you buy pre-ground as soon as you open that bag. Freshness declines immediately within 24 hours if you have any sense of taste. If it’s premium was pre-ground, immediately start to degrade by your coffee and holding it. Put it in the freezer when you’re done and then and then seal it so that so that you don’t get contamination and then basically just grind it as you need it, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:18:14] Or grinder is only it was only 60 bucks on Amazon, but

John Roumanis [00:18:17] oh, you don’t need anything fancy. Just slap whatever it is a greater and, you know, pulverize it to the point where it’s just dust like 10 10 seconds, maybe. Boom, boom. Boom until it’s nice and clumpy and then get it in there and go,

Erwin Szeto [00:18:30] Oh, we’ve a bird grinder. So settings, you just said, of course, you know. Mm hmm. Yes. Like less than 10 seconds. It’s beautiful. I used to manually grind coffee. It was quite a labor. Yeah.

John Roumanis [00:18:42] So how you been otherwise?

Erwin Szeto [00:18:44] I mean, good, but you’re one of the few stock people we have on this podcast. We have to pick on that area. We’ve had a correction since we last spoke. Mm-Hmm. Yes, we have had a go for you.

John Roumanis [00:18:56] So it’s I mean, it’s been mixed. It’s funny because I think the last time we talked; we can eat. I’ll give you two very contrasting stocks, right? Canadian National Railway a couple of days ago just hit a record high at one hundred and eighty bucks a share, right? Clean National Review was on fire, right? This is a stock that I’ve owned by the first time I bought it, I can what price I paid. I know that I’m up over 400 percent on it, right? On the other hand. Enbridge, right? Enbridge. I was on fire. Enbridge natural gas. So Enbridge. So Enbridge has hurt me over the last little while, but I have faith in their company long term. And again, none of this actually be very clear. None of this is an endorsement to by any company. I’m just telling you what I hold. So I got I got hurt by Enbridge when Enbridge did as they bought, I think, spectra in the U.S., another energy holding company, and it took on a massive amount of debt and people got worried about that, right? Because, you know, companies that get, you know, they get big and they take on a bunch of deadly one by all these other companies and as a quick way to find growth, what Enbridge is also doing is they’re kind of trying to move away from a fast growing company, become more of a traditional utility, which means of a slower pace of growth and a much higher rate of payout to dividend holders, right? So I’ve actually been doubling down on my Enbridge investment because I think that the stock is way oversold and this is one of those cool opportunities to get in and get a good dividend. I think it’s like six and a half percent right now. And hang on to a good company. They actually reported their reads the recent earnings they blew out of the water and the stock still did not move. Much like people are with the, you know, analysts are just down on it, right? There’s other factors that are working against companies like Enbridge. When you have these high paying dividend stocks like Enbridge or the or a traditionally, it’s like, you know, Enbridge, tell us a few of the companies that are good peers and dividends. When interest rates start to creep up, high paying dividend stocks are high. Dividend paying stocks tend to be impacted a bit because people say, Well, if I can get a guaranteed interest at three percent or put it in the stock market at four or five percent, I might be willing to take the lower rate and sleep at night knowing that my principal is protected. So you’ll find a shift to more interest like tax in interest bearing sorts of. Mechanisms as opposed to dividend paying stocks.

Erwin Szeto [00:21:20] So even during the rising interest rate environment,

John Roumanis [00:21:23] well, rising interest rate environment is good for gases and money market funds and all that REIN because, you know, it’s a savings account, right? When interest rates rise, your savings account rises, right? So if you have a choice between if you’re a senior right now or if you were a pension fund and you have the choice of putting money into Enbridge at six percent or gassy, let’s say hypothetically at four or five percent, you might say, you know what? I’m going to take 100 percent guarantee four or five percent as opposed to the well, I make it. I may get hit on principle six percent. So. So it’s a double whammy. So they’ve got a lot of debt. Interest rates are going up, which, you know, makes the dividend payment a little bit less appealing. But the good news is that they’re also selling off a lot of their nonessential assets, and they’ve made a commitment to shareholders to really try to work that debt down to a certain point. And there’s still, I think, committing to an eight to 10 percent increase in their dividend annually. Like, I don’t know, will you, buddy? But I’m not getting an eight to 10 percent raise at the office every year, so I’m perfectly happy with that rate of

Erwin Szeto [00:22:24] growth and no one in the country. Yeah. Not based on averages. How’s it going? Very good.

John Roumanis [00:22:31] It’s got a little. It’s got see; this is Erwin where this is where now. If you were solar year, if we had any idea of Sensorium, we’d be sitting there going in. You’d swirling around a little bit, take a bit of a sniff and you would you would slurp it because it’s most of most of sensory is actually driven by your nasal cavity, not by your tongue. So when you slurp it, I think you really create a flavor storm in your mouth, in the in the sender and the scent hits you in the night. It hits you in the olfactory area, right? But this is, you know, it’s nice. It’s an it’s got a nice sharpness. It’s very bright. And I like that. I like there to be flavor like boldness in my wine the same way that like as my coffee. Next time you go and you have a McAfee coffee, you can really feel it on the outside of your tongue and it’s got a nice brightness to it. So, yeah, it’s exciting times.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:28] It’s exciting times. Yeah. So we’ve had Michael in on this podcast previously, and he’s more of a momentum trader. He hasn’t. He doesn’t stick around too long and he’s using. Is there a name for your style?

John Roumanis [00:23:42] Well, I mean, listen, I’ll tell you, I’m a huge, huge worshiper of Warren Buffett. I love Warren Buffett, and Warren Buffett is a buy and hold kind of guy, right? And it’s funny, you know, people that I actually I actually recently read one of a biography, not an autobiography, but just a biography. And it was I was pretty. It was a significant more the five 500 pages. So it took me a bit of time to read, I think is Warren Buffett the making of an American capitalist? Excellent book. And Warren Buffett, even he has gone through his different phases through his career. In the beginning, when he bought stocks, he was looking just for cheap stocks, not cheap in that, you know, it’s a dollar or a dollar fifty cheaply relative to its price earnings ratio. And this was back before computers made it so easy for anybody to go and find low p stocks. So he would make a killing by just jumping in these stocks and then waiting for them to rise

Erwin Szeto [00:24:36] and then following in the newspaper story and following prices in the nation and following

John Roumanis [00:24:41] the news. But no, but Warren Buffett, as soon as he made a decision on the stock, he basically bought in and just sat on it and didn’t think about it. He was so busy reading financial statements that he wasn’t too concerned that once he made a commitment, he just made that commitment. Eventually, he got more to the point where he was now understanding and saying, Look, cheap stocks are harder and harder to find because computers have made it so easy for analysts to go and find those and scoop them up. So what he started doing was saying, I’m going to buy into a company where I know that the long term prospects are going to be amazing. So Coca-Cola is a great example, right? I don’t think when he bought the Coca-Cola, it was necessarily super cheap. I just think that he looked at that business. He did some simple math in his head, and he said if we if we sold this many liters of Coca-Cola every year and we were to raise the price by one penny, how many millions of dollars does that represent? And to him, Coca-Cola made sense. He said, Wow, that’s an easy business for me to understand and easy business for me to say, you know, with a lot of growth trajectory, they’re right. So I like I like to buy and hold mentality. I’ll tell you, you know, creating national railway, 15 percent of it is owned by Bill Gates. Bill Gates is a huge, you know, as a friend of Warren Buffett, there’s a relationship there, like if it’s good enough for Bill Gates, you know, for me, right? I mean, that’s a stock I’ve held onto for years and years. I’ve held onto Bank of Nova Scotia and, you know, to some degree, probably for 10 years, you know, people who trade on a daily basis or whatever it is. I mean, to use the REIN Erwin. I. Don’t really care what people do with their time or how they how they want to make their money. If they’re successful, that’s the only measure that matters, right? I have a full time job. Have real estate. I have a child. I have a wife. I don’t want to be sitting there worrying about trading during the day. Like, you know, pick my investments. I follow the investment reporter. I read it once a week. I look for information. I buy my stocks and they move on with the day I teach the Rob. I’d like to meet my, you know, in all fairness, I’d love to meet Mike one day. So I was like a really interesting fellow.

Erwin Szeto [00:26:47] Yeah, very interesting.

John Roumanis [00:26:47] The Italian is a beast to I use works out like crazy, doesn’t he?

Erwin Szeto [00:26:52] Yeah, can major he had cancer, so he’s really conscientious about taking care of himself. Yeah. Did you sell anything since during the did you try to hide anything?

John Roumanis [00:27:08] No, I wouldn’t. I don’t. Outside the correct. I don’t believe in market timing. What I believe in so. So if you look at market timing, Erwin market timing is usually driven by emotion and not necessarily by rational behavior. Right? So let me give you an example. This is a great example. So Bank of Nova Scotia just reported within the last day or so. Record profit beat analyst expectations and the stock was down three percent. How is it that when a company exceeds the street, the street, the market is down through that the stock is down three percent? Why? Because there is a bit of a rumble of political hoo ha in Italy, right? And you know, people be worried about Italy for a while. I mean, obviously, their economy is a bit of a mess. I mean, it’s another Grexit Brexit situation waiting to happen. But when you have good fundamentals in a company, there is always going to be some political reason to get into or out of a stock. I don’t pay attention to that crap. Bank of Nova Scotia as an example or any one of the big banks in Canada. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of, you know, the day was good, but a whole bunch of tailwind behind them, right? So I try not to get too involved with thinking about corrections or ups and downs, if anything, corrections to me or just another opportunity to buy in. Right? But on the flip side, even when the market’s at its record highs, I still buy in at that time, too. I may review my portfolio and say, you know which stocks have underperformed relative to the market, which ones have a lower price earnings ratio and still have a long runway for growth? I mean, put my money into those stocks instead of the ones that have succeeded along with the market. But I don’t I don’t sell the sign of a bit of trouble. I only sell when a stock no longer fits my needs. So, for example, I got rid of Johnson and Johnson recently, and I bought into UnitedHealth Johnson Green Company. They just reported another great profit quarter. They raised their dividend again. But I wanted to be more in a company that was in the health services as opposed to health products. Right? Well, change is very diversified, but they’re also not growing gangbusters. UnitedHealth is on fire and I think that is a much better, longer term play with them. Again, I don’t make any recommendations, and this is just my own perspective.

Erwin Szeto [00:29:32] Sujan, if you have any problems, don’t worry me, it’s got a lot more money. No, no.

John Roumanis [00:29:38] Yeah. So the yes, I do remember the 2008 correction. People like lost their minds and I did not sell a dollar through all that. And the funny thing is, if you go back and you look at one 2008 look like it is a tiny little speed bump in what has been an otherwise amazing run for stocks over the last 20 years. It’s hilarious. The Great The Great Depression is literally you look on your screen, probably a pixel of a drop when you go and look at it right now. I don’t know. I don’t get involved in the emotion of it. To me, it should be boring. It’s hard not

Erwin Szeto [00:30:15] to like, for example, the news cycle in the last quarter has been pretty negative for Real Estate, for example. And that’s just the nature of media. They’re always looking for because I believe human behavior. Negative headlines and negative news draws more views and then views means more ad spend. Yeah, true. Which is how media makes money. They’re desperate,

John Roumanis [00:30:42] right? I think I think that the. So it’s I’m glad you brought that up because it’s very interesting that I’m

Erwin Szeto [00:30:52] going to talk about your hate for social media.

John Roumanis [00:30:54] Yeah, we’ll get to that. You know who didn’t read the news or who doesn’t read the news? And I would say to, I think, maybe one or two newspapers because of the local, this is Warren Buffett.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:06] Warren Buffett does, you know, reads no news.

John Roumanis [00:31:09] He was very little news. He doesn’t get. He’s more interested in financials and in company fundamentals than he is in. In the news, so you so the stock market today had a Broad-Based rise after a day of just that, the New York Stock Exchange took a ship kicking the other day. It was like down 400 points. It was up almost 400 points today, so basically recovered everything, but it was down 400 points widely and broadly because of this Italy thing, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:31:36] So what’s happening in Italy? May 30th, by the way,

John Roumanis [00:31:40] there’s a lot of political stability instability in Italy. There looks like they’re going for another election. They just can’t seem to get a government that can keep itself together and get anything done in that country. It’s very much like Greece. You have a huge amount of public service workers, public servants, you know, broke. They’re broke. It’s a huge economy. That’s the scary part of Italy of grave. You had Grexit like nobody cares what Greece in terms of the economic side. I love Greece. I mean, I’m half Greek. So but from the world economy perspective, Greece is a dot. Italy is a massive economy relative to Greece. It’s, I think, the fourth largest economy in Europe. Germany, France are bigger. Maybe it’s the third largest economy in Europe, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:32:24] Italy is 1.5 sorry, 1.5 trillion U.S. dollar

John Roumanis [00:32:29] GDP in that range, I think third in the European Union. So when you have that kind of a political issue now, you know, there’s whiffs of and what would you call it, into legs it. It’s not, it’s not Grexit. It’s not Brexit would be the intellects.

Erwin Szeto [00:32:45] It just for just for comparison, Canada’s 1.5 three trillion.

John Roumanis [00:32:49] How big is Italy?

Erwin Szeto [00:32:50] One point eighty five USD.

John Roumanis [00:32:52] It’s a bigger economy than Canada, right? It’s a fairly sized. It’s one of the G8. It’s a big, big economy, right? So I think people are worried about that. But my point is Erwin, OK. You have a broad based decline on the stock market.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:07] So no, they’re almost double our population. Italy.

John Roumanis [00:33:11] Yeah, almost double our money. Well, what are they? The fifty something, right? Sixty point

Erwin Szeto [00:33:15] six million.

John Roumanis [00:33:15] 60 million. I didn’t even realize that they were over 60. Yeah. Italy’s big.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:20] Yeah, yeah. Oh gee. We’re thirty six million.

John Roumanis [00:33:25] Yeah. So they’re almost double us. But yeah, so our GDP per person is higher.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:29] We’re and they got oil. Normally, we don’t like oil marketing either.

John Roumanis [00:33:37] So, so. So help me understand like this whole in the Cuban motion, right? People are selling off because of what’s happening in Italy, giving does that does that change the fundamentals of, well, operating companies?

Erwin Szeto [00:33:48] No.

John Roumanis [00:33:49] This is seen going to shift less product because of what’s happening in Italy. Is Enbridge going to sell less natural gas? So this is something there’s so much

Erwin Szeto [00:33:59] sewage here, homes.

John Roumanis [00:34:00] It’s right. Like, see these rooms in like, are you going to turn down your heat in the winter because Italy is having a, you know, some political rumblings of no. So I don’t buy into the emotion. So you’re bringing up the whole idea of emotion in the stock in in real estate. What are you seeing as an agent out there? Like, how is it impacting sales? How is it impacting Italy? Not an

Erwin Szeto [00:34:23] emotion,

John Roumanis [00:34:23] just people. It’s the emotion around housing. But you just said that there’s a lot of negativity in the news around housing. What’s? Is it having a is it having any repercussions?

Erwin Szeto [00:34:35] Oh, I think so. But I think it’s part of it is reality and part of it is just what a lot of media does, as well as politicians and anyone who’s reporting with an agenda that is cherry picking statistics that support their argument. For example, a lot of the headlines are based around sales volume. Sales volume for this is down condo sales volume down 60 percent. Yeah. And then if you read the whole article and in the final paragraph, you’ll see prices are also having to be up to 60 percent. Yeah, right. Or prices are up like 30 percent, whatever it sounds like we’re approaching a balanced market. Yeah, prices have gone up, what, 30 percent, for example. So, yeah, supply the demand is going to come down, you know? Right? Yeah. So that’s just natural economics. It’s not a sign of a collapse of some sort.

John Roumanis [00:35:21] It’s funny that you bring up the media. I’m reading a book by an author named Steven Pinker API and KTAR. It’s his newest book. I can’t remember the name of Erwin. It’s called If you can look it up, just put Steven Pinker new book. It’s a wonderful book, OK? And the premise behind the book says the premise is very simple. It says never in the history of humanity has any time been better than right now. And what’s it called enlightenment now?

Erwin Szeto [00:35:53] I think it shared on Facebook my Facebook.

John Roumanis [00:35:56] You read this brief.

Erwin Szeto [00:35:57] I just saw him give like a 90 second talk on. Yeah, I just got a lot of history live now. Yeah.

John Roumanis [00:36:04] So the whole premise of the book says the whole premise of the book is that it’s never been better to be alive than now. And it’s not just a feel good, blah blah blah. It’s a heavy read. It’s, you know, there’s a lot of. There’s a lot of statistics in it, there’s a lot of information that’s presented, and he says like, you know, the amount of like we have seven billion people and growing and we will never need more farmland than we have today. In fact, so much farmland has been reclaimed by forests that that we’re actually seeing reforestation across the planet. When was the last time the news told you that? Never. Okay, so we’ve got

Erwin Szeto [00:36:43] some news to me. Right?

John Roumanis [00:36:44] So we’ve had it. We’ve had literally billions of people over the last couple of decades come out of despair and poverty across places like China and Africa. And I think I think in the book, he says it’s overall something like 100000 people a day are coming out of poverty into like, you know, you know, coming out of this despair. Is the news telling you that every day? No, right? What the news does sensationalizes things like you hear about the number of people who die in a tornado, but more people die from asthma attacks on an annual basis in the United States than they die from tornadoes. Why are they talking about those 4000 people who die from asthma versus the 50 to 100 who die from tornadoes? It’s not interesting. In REIN

Erwin Szeto [00:37:30] shark attacks, we were interested in people being dying from because

John Roumanis [00:37:35] we challenge with the news. My challenge with my challenges, with watching the news too closely or believing in the news is that it paints a bleaker picture of the world than what the world is actually. And when you talk to people like, I mean, just talk to the average person, right? They think that crime is we are evil. The average person will tell you, crime is up, murders up. It has never. I don’t think there’s been a safer time in the history of humanity to be alive than it is today. Right? And I’m not just seeing that because I’m like some, you know, grass smokin hippie. I’m telling you that based on the statistics, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:38:13] It’s funny because when you were talking, it’s actually I actually Googled crime rate in Toronto because I remember when I was younger.

John Roumanis [00:38:20] The 90s were brutal,

Erwin Szeto [00:38:22] used to consistently over 100 homicides in Toronto. Yeah, but we are considerably larger city. Yeah. And the homicide rate is actually down way down. And that’s the method. That’s the total number. Yeah, the homicide per capita has played even more down. Yeah, I mean,

John Roumanis [00:38:38] Toronto, those a million people, Ray. We’re talking about the city of Toronto, the four one cities of almost three million people. So I mean, it’s this this is this is my problem with the news, right? I mean, you know, if it bleeds, it leads are and it’s all about sensationalism. So when we’re making decisions on investments, you have to take emotion. The idea is to look at the fundamentals of what it is that you’re investing in. Does it make sense? Does that house cash flow? Does your mortgage rate work? And you know, or is in a good neighborhood in a city where there’s where there’s good employment? And this is this whole idea of the Canadian housing market. It drives me nuts. There’s no such thing as a Canadian housing market. There is no such thing as an Ontario housing market. Are you telling me that the housing market in Thunder Bay is the same as the housing market in the junction in Toronto or the Annex or downtown or in Hamilton? How can you even make the comparison here? You can’t even compare Toronto within Toronto. Are you telling me the housing market? And Jane and Finch is the same as the housing market in Scarborough Bluffs. So the media not only sensationalize those things are lazy. Right? So I mean, I’ve been investing in Hamilton for the last seven years and I’ve had my ups and downs, but generally it’s been great. And I’ll tell you what I mean, I’m turning 42 in know a month and a half. I’ve got a long runway, which the Liberal Party. I don’t know what this party concept is, but I think that skews the globe and go to bed at 9:30 every night won’t be that night.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:16] You know you’re talking about Hamilton best in seven years. 42 soon. Sorry, blue.

John Roumanis [00:40:21] I feel great at 42 was so would sort of apologize about the knowledge behind me. Larry, what are you? Thirty nine

Erwin Szeto [00:40:27] this year? Thirty nine year old men do so.

John Roumanis [00:40:32] Health investing. 42 Long runway, my friend, long runway. I’m very patient. I don’t need their money. Maybe I’ll need it when I’m 70, but I don’t need it today.

Erwin Szeto [00:40:41] Before we can deal with the Real Estate conversation, I asked you this last time, so I just want to reiterate they can walk. Honey, what’s your portfolio split between asset classes between stock and real estate? And when I went on, I was going to talk about net worth on the silver lesson you invest in.

John Roumanis [00:41:00] Oh, I mean, my investments are broadly across basically two areas equity in real estate. That’s it. Like, I don’t want to. I don’t hold any metals or anything else like that.

Erwin Szeto [00:41:12] Like, if you’re Greek, no, they’re like buying. Mac computers to hold in laundry machines to hold value in Greece.

John Roumanis [00:41:22] Oh God. Well, I mean, that’s this is

Erwin Szeto [00:41:26] a, you know, the media headlines. We can have a whole conversation the far end of the curve of the store of value Georges.

John Roumanis [00:41:34] We can have a conversation just on Greece, right? Long story short. If I had to like if I look at it from a net worth perspective, I will say probably six to 535 Real Estate to stock that high.

Erwin Szeto [00:41:56] Sixty five. Thirty five. Sorry, that low. Well, I’ll give that my stock. Yeah. Is it a fair amount of real Estate? Yes. And then when you split in Profits, have you ever looked at that?

John Roumanis [00:42:07] Well, yeah. I mean, I mean, I’m not going to you’re going

Erwin Szeto [00:42:11] to say net worth.

John Roumanis [00:42:11] So yeah, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I mean, real estate is real estate is what’s driving the growth. Keep in mind Erwin, though, that the vast majority of what I have in stock is in recipes and this is legacy investments that I have through different companies, right? So where I work now, I have a company RRSP, they match 100 percent. If I put a dollar figure, a dollar. Yeah. You know, you can’t beat 100, you know, 100 percent guaranteed return is you’d be a fool not to take advantage of that, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:42:42] Only stupid people.

John Roumanis [00:42:43] So but the thing is, it wasn’t an RSP. So, you know, I’ve been working for 17 years or 18 years now, full time and across various companies in every company now in the corporate sense will give you an RSP and some match to some degree. So I’ve been covertly capitalizing on that and there’s been growth there. So. And when I leave a company, I basically pull the money out of their program and I just go into a self-directed account. So the vast majority of my stock portfolio is an RSP that I’ve just had as legacy and it’s growing right now. Some of that I’ve actually invested in bitcoin. No, no, no, no. To each their own again. I mean, there’s people who bought bitcoin when it wasn’t worth very little. There’s people who do the same thing with legal marijuana stocks or with Amazon. And I mean, for every Amazon out there, there’s a hundred other companies that that went nowhere for any

Erwin Szeto [00:43:35] time that don’t remember the doggone dark underworld

John Roumanis [00:43:37] REIN. So for every canopy, there is probably, you know, 10 or 15 different companies, weed companies that go nowhere. So I mean, again, the new sensationalizes these one or two successes or whatever it is, and

Erwin Szeto [00:43:50] they’re still the bitcoin. People like these potheads being multi-millionaires with bitcoin, and they sensationalize them. It’s the one where the guy lost his hard drive in a dump, and the worth was like 20 million in the heart of his little read in a dump. But he has venture capital of money to go and get it. My just you just can’t get the region’s permission to go into the dumping and get it. So just what it was

John Roumanis [00:44:21] random world where we were so disconnected. The idea of currency from these sort of value

Erwin Szeto [00:44:30] like, I mean, that’s like the opposite of Real Estate. I mean, you want the 80 Real Estate. There you go.

John Roumanis [00:44:38] When we talk about this whole idea of tangible or intangible, right? I mean, you know, I would say on one extremely of Real Estate and Real Estate is a bit of an extreme right. I mean, you it’s a house. I mean, it’s you bring the brick and mortar, brick and mortar, you have a roof, you have a human, you know, people living in your house. You have, you know, bills that are associated with that. That’s what it was tangible as against in the middle. Somewhere you have stocks, right? Stock is a, you know, at some point was a piece of paper. Now it’s an it’s a couple of pixels on a screen and see that you own a piece of a company, but somewhere out there, right? There’s a there’s a there’s buildings, there’s a production, there’s people like, there’s something tangible about it. And then on the other end, you’ve got bitcoin, and I’m just I just I don’t get it now. I’m not seeing that people haven’t made a ton of money on good for them. But again, go back in the early in the correlation. If you can make money on something that to me is the only measure of financial success is whether you need money or I don’t care to do that treating. I don’t care if you do it, the Real Estate. I don’t care if you do it through your own business, you know, or if you’re a corporate guy and you make a ton of money, whatever, if that money is money, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:45:43] My thing is, though, is that anyone who argues believes it’s actually a currency because it’s not a currency, but you know what I mean? What is this?

John Roumanis [00:45:51] So what is it? What does it look back by?

Erwin Szeto [00:45:55] Nothing, right? Nobody. My simpler use of currency is use it for an exchange of goods without having to exchange it for actual dollars. Use whatever crypto it is. Yeah. For an exchange of goods or pay your taxes or buy a liter of milk. Whatever it is, make a transaction with it. But you talked to anyone I’ve spoken to who’s using it is more for speculation. Yeah. You know, entirely speculation, right?

John Roumanis [00:46:26] Yeah, I mean, I read a little bit about it. There was a there’s a book that I bought a while back and try to understand bitcoin and blockchain, and it’s just not for me. Again, tweets are all men. I mean, you know, you may have your name make money. I’m happy for you to. Yeah, that’s me too. Same thing.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:42] But you do it legally. Not hurt anyone.

John Roumanis [00:46:44] Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, my assets, my accent missing is, you know, sorry, 65 35.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:50] And then how about what is the mix between the two in terms of increase in net worth?

John Roumanis [00:47:00] Well, definitely weren’t

Erwin Szeto [00:47:01] prepared for this. So I know.

John Roumanis [00:47:02] Yeah. And on a road, I mean, I would say definitely real estate. I mean, the real estate market has been ridiculous over the last couple of years, right? And I mean, as much as people are seeing that prices are struggling or prices, I’m still seeing good like, I mean, I follow the, you know, I go to REI HB dossier like the Real Estate board of Hamilton Burlington every month to look at the housing price increases by neighborhood, which I’ve been tracking for years based on where my properties are. I’ve been looking at the Niagara Realtors Niagara and generally the prices have been still steadily rising. Like, I’m not complaining, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:47:43] Do the market are so short to sorry? These market are still very low? Yeah, I think they’re under 30, which is similar to Toronto.

John Roumanis [00:47:50] What I’m struggling to understand is what has really changed over the last year. So last year, at this time, or maybe even last year, maybe like back in April of last year, in May of last year, you had that super mega peak, right? Everybody was trying to buy their house before the new regulations went in. So you have this unnatural spike that we’re now trying to compare against. That’s like saying

Erwin Szeto [00:48:14] that this is the norm.

John Roumanis [00:48:16] Yeah. So it retails when I used to work in retail. You know, when you would look at, for example, Easter was a moving target every year. If Easter last year was March 31st and this year it’s April 20th. And I look at my sales April, you know, March 30th or March 31st this year versus March 31st last year. My sales are going to look way lower because I didn’t have the Easter rush. So, you know, you’re not really comparing apples to apples, you’re comparing apples to oranges. I think 2017, the spring of 2017 is a crazy anomaly. You saw these crazy prices go up, and now we’re sort of kind of heading back to the mean, if you will, of whatever the, you know, you know, mid-single digit price increases. So I think you’ll see 2019 versus 2018 might still be pretty good.

Erwin Szeto [00:49:04] So we live in Burlington just to just to give some stats behind this kind of Erwin to move to Burlington. And don’t forget to tell you who told you to move down to move. So 2017, I like medium prices versus average. So the median home in Burlington was 740. Yeah, and this year we’re down 50 grand at six. Eighty nine. Yeah. Diesel market in 2017 were 12 days, which is absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, and it’s doubled. So right now it’s twenty four.

John Roumanis [00:49:34] You’re looking at freehold only or you’re looking at condos that’s combined. Yeah, you can’t look at that REIN because the with that, I mean, the condo makes it really. Burlington is bursting with condos now, right? So the average price is going to come down.

Erwin Szeto [00:49:51] Yes, that’s huge. We’re going to have more condos. Never.

John Roumanis [00:49:54] Yeah, this is the feature, though. This is, you know, that’s a that’s a good thing that, oh my god, I’d like to talk about you.

Erwin Szeto [00:50:00] That’s a good thing. Yeah, because most of them want to go downtown. Burlington will get into this, which is specific.

John Roumanis [00:50:06] No, no. But I mean, this whole the whole idea of the it’s forget about the condo conversation about Burlington. We’re talking with the kind of conversation holistically, right? Yeah, I mean, you here’s let’s go. Let me go back to the facts. OK, let’s go back to the facts. OK? Are interest rates still historically low?

Erwin Szeto [00:50:26] It’s basically free, right?

John Roumanis [00:50:28] Interest rates are still historically low.

Erwin Szeto [00:50:29] Discounts on 3.5 loans.

John Roumanis [00:50:31] Four percent. And I mean, if you if you can’t absorb a half a percent interest, you’re in trouble. Like you should never have gone into real estate in the first place, either owning your own home or buying rental properties. OK, so rates are still historically low. Is the economy doing well?

Erwin Szeto [00:50:47] Yes, OK. Because you think about inflation, they’re worried about inflation, but they’re going to raise rates in July.

John Roumanis [00:50:54] Yeah. So they hinted about that, which is why the dollar was up like a penny today, right? So the economy is still doing well. It’s not, you know, overheating, but the economy is doing well. Employment is good. Unemployment’s low. The U.S. is doing well. The U.S. is our biggest trading partner. They’re still performing well, right? You know, Trump, love them, hate them, doesn’t really matter. The fact is that the U.S. economy is doing well. So we have to positive. So far, we have low rates relative to history, I mean, talk to my parents who whose first house was 18 percent interest. We have good job prospects. Last I checked, immigration is still running about 250 300000 people a year right across Canada.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:35] So you missed Saturday’s meeting? Yeah. So if you actually look at 2017, those numbers, the net number for Ontario is almost 190000 in 2017. OK. The increase says bursts into immigration,

John Roumanis [00:51:49] OK, and lets you know half of them end up in the GTA at least a.m. Every booking

Erwin Szeto [00:51:54] is play with me, like 85 percent at least.

John Roumanis [00:51:56] OK, so let’s call it a hundred thousand or so people enter moving into the GTA Turkey. So you still have immigration. Those people need to live somewhere, OK? And then you have the green belt green that’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So you have these four factors, none of which is ebbing. We have again, low rates, historically solid economy, including in the United States. And you have you have immigration continuing to be strong and predominantly, you know, you know, moving people, moving Ontario. And then you have the green belt around the GTA, which is going nowhere. So if you have

Erwin Szeto [00:52:34] one more to add to that, there’s going to start really came about two weeks ago and mentioned there’s about one million, one million millennials still living at home with their parents, and about 700000 of them want to leave home in the next decade. Yeah. So roughly a straight average 70000 on top of your 100000 immigrants

John Roumanis [00:52:56] aren’t going to be looking for somewhere to live. So here’s the thing. Right now, all those things combined, you you’re what you’re going to see. If you can see fewer houses being built, I mean, it’s inevitable. It’s like, no, there’s no houses. It’s almost no, it’s going mostly condominiums. So I’m a fan of condominiums because at the end of the day, people have to live somewhere and I have no problem with densification. I think density is good,

Erwin Szeto [00:53:17] right for someone else.

John Roumanis [00:53:18] Not as much at the end of the day. I live in downtown Burlington and condos are moving into the area. But with condominiums, you have to remember, like with condominiums come young, people with young people come restaurants and restaurants, comes commercial tax. Right? You know, as well as I do that when residents are the ones who are paying the taxes because there’s no businesses, the tax rates are higher. So there’s an affordability component of businesses. So I’ll tell you just, you know, letting

Erwin Szeto [00:53:49] in higher property tax per square footage REIN in a condo and lower and

John Roumanis [00:53:55] lower means. Think about it. You have a condominium. You have, let’s say, you know, five or 600 people living in a condominium.

Erwin Szeto [00:54:01] OK, pay lots of property

John Roumanis [00:54:04] that parking lots of property tax. And there’s a strip of road in front of there in front of that condo, which maybe two or three house lots of white, right? Think about the maintenance fee for that road relative to the people who are living next to it versus what it is in, you know, one of our small neighborhoods where we live in our houses, right?

Erwin Szeto [00:54:23] So, you know, successful retail will be on that same street. Exactly right. You want to figure how to combat Amazon.

John Roumanis [00:54:31] There it is. So it’s interesting because in Burlington, especially downtown, and then it will get off a Burlington in a second. There’s a huge resistance to condominiums. Every right. Right? And it’s funny. Three NIMBYism like, there’s a lot of nimbyism like, I get it when I used to live in Homa Bay around Homa Bay in Toronto know when I moved into the area, there were maybe, you know, 10 or 15 condos in the area. By the time I left, there’s probably double. The condominiums also have to be thoughtful like we’ve recently built some condos here in Burlington by the Go station and the Burlington Gorge station. Profits isn’t perfect. Young people who want to live by the Gold Station get on the train within an hour of their downtown for work. It makes perfect sense on air car when you start throwing condos on waterfront and taking enjoyment away from Spencer Smith Park or from the small business in that area. You just have to be thoughtful and I think I think we’ve kind of lost our way a little bit in that regard. And you know, Burlington is not downtown Toronto. You can be a little more thoughtful about where you can put those condominiums and do they have to be in the downtown core? That’s a different discussion. So but I would offer densification Erwin. The reality is there’s no space. And where are you going to put these, you know, 100 plus thousand immigrants every year? OK, right? They’ve got to they’ve got to live somewhere.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:45] So and we need them. Yeah, because oil is evil. Oh boy. And as I was commenting about this on Saturday, because just think of all the awful things we’re willing to do, our government is going to do to us and we’re willing to vote for it, willing to accept all the awful things we’re willing to do to generate revenues. Gambling casinos are all government cigarets. We cigarets even alcohol man on tourism. Be the largest drug dealer in the world. LCBO Become. We’re here, we are where you are. We’re just going to have a bottle. So this is responsible drinking as John directs me to pour him more. But think of the drink, how many people abuse alcohol and we’re willing to sell our soul. We’re willing to generate tax income this way. Yeah, but you think of how hard, how much sin our money and our tax dollar, Jennifer, how much Sinner comes with our tax dollars? Absolutely. And we say no to oil, but it’s

John Roumanis [00:56:48] it’s just hypocritical. Yeah, I mean, again, exactly you.

Erwin Szeto [00:56:53] There’s no perfect way for us to generate tax income.

John Roumanis [00:56:56] There is no perfect way, right? Everybody’s against something. So I find it funny that, you know, you look at the know this concept of environmental environmentalism, which again, I mean, at the end of the day, I am I happy that we’re not breathing in LED gasoline like we did in the 60s and 70s. Of course, you are happy that you wake up in the morning and see blue skies instead of gray. Of course you like cleaning up the world is paramount. It is important. But at the same time, though, we did not get to where we are today as a society without some abuse of the environment. And I don’t mean that in a positive way, like the farming, OK, when you raise REI said he not REI. See, when you raise a piece of land to make space for a farm, you removed a number of trees, which means you’re now reducing the planet’s ability to digest carbon dioxide by whatever an acre. But you’ve also created food to feed hungry people. Right? Like when you trade off, when you put on a pair of leather shoes, there’s a cow that died for that or we put it or whatever, or when you

Erwin Szeto [00:58:02] farming allowed them to

John Roumanis [00:58:04] grow. What I’m seeing is like, Look, there, there’s got to be a balance between environmentalism and human prosperity. Right? And they don’t it’s not necessarily a zero-sum game. It’s not saying that if I increase human prosperity by two widgets, the environment’s going to suffer by two widgets. The idea is to try to get there in as least a damaging way as possible. If there’s demand for oil, the reality is that the world is still running on oil as much as we want to think that these green technologies and solar and lithium ion and these are still decades away from any sort of material

Erwin Szeto [00:58:42] in the forward defensively. People are still consuming gas.

John Roumanis [00:58:45] Right, exactly. And you know, the countries in the world where they have the highest penetration for electric cars, for example, is not like Norway, I think is the highest penetration. I think there’s actually over 20 percent of vehicles sold in Norway or vehicles on the road are actually electric. But for

Erwin Szeto [00:59:02] the export of oil, how do you

John Roumanis [00:59:06] give it to me? It’s also Norway produces oil, uses the tax dollars it generated to subsidize those electric cars. So using oil money to put towards the reduction in price of those vehicles. So it’s a little bit hypocritical. REIN It’s like Japan. Japan is a heavily forested country. Why? Because they’ve exported their deforestation rather than using their own trees for the wood that they need. They buy the trees elsewhere so they can protect their own country. You are still deforest ing the planet. Money you’ve done is you’ve just exported that deforestation. So Norway is exporting their environmental footprint by selling oil to other countries and subsidizing artificially their electric cars in the absence of subsidies for electric cars. Nobody’s going to buy them.

Erwin Szeto [00:59:54] So we’re basically doing the same thing in Canada, especially in the East Coast, by importing oil from like Saudi Arabia and all those places instead of harvesting your own country.

John Roumanis [01:00:04] We’re exporting, we’re exporting our pollution and electricity. And again, we’re buying from countries that have questionable human rights, questionable horby.

Erwin Szeto [01:00:18] It just gives off rooftops.

John Roumanis [01:00:21] The questionable human rights records REIN.

Erwin Szeto [01:00:23] So there’s still strong women. If they’re like the footage in time, our husbands, for those

John Roumanis [01:00:28] trying to get to Erwin is that we have a lot of people who are more concerned about the environment than they are about the well-being of other human beings. Right? When you buy oil from an oppressive regime, you are effectively supporting a regime that and again, I’m going to name country tyranny means. But you know, that doesn’t have a great human rights record. It’s like, who cares, right? We’re people. But, but we’re not cutting down trees in Canada, right? I’d rather that people buy oil from Canada that’s produced in a legal, ethical, humane manner. Right. And you can argue with the tar sands and all that. And I get in the oil sands and all that, and I and I get that they have their own challenges. But the reality is that the economy still has to go. You know, the food still needs to be grown cars. You’ll need to drive people who need to go to work, and there is no alternative to oil that is available today right now in an economical and scalable manner. And when it is to be green. Hey, listen, I’m all for it. It’s just not there right now.

Erwin Szeto [01:01:35] Does not. We’ve really gotten off the Real Estate topic.

John Roumanis [01:01:38] Oh, is that going to be a problem for our listeners? All right. So let’s get back to Real Estate

Erwin Szeto [01:01:43] split drink less when we talk hosts on the show.

John Roumanis [01:01:48] Weren’t you telling me that my podcast the last time we talked, did we did we get off topic? Possibly, possibly. All right, let’s go back to the sea. What’s the next question about Real Estate?

Erwin Szeto [01:01:59] It’s not like I haven’t even prepared for this. All right. So remember the title of our last podcast? Yeah, something about

John Roumanis [01:02:06] 600000 in six years.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:08] How long has it been now when it started seven years ago? Sandy MacKay over seven years old? Do you have an update on your Real Estate network?

John Roumanis [01:02:14] 800000.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:16] I just checked in today. So you’ve got 200000 in a year. Yeah. So that might be the title for that podcast. How I mean $200000 in one year.

John Roumanis [01:02:24] I think it’s I was looking at that to them. Like, How did that? Now, mind you,

Erwin Szeto [01:02:30] yeah, we do regression.

John Roumanis [01:02:31] The only the only caveat is as well as, you know, as well as I do, that the prices kind of ebb and flow during the year, like prices in winter will be a little bit lower. Prices in summer will be or spring summer will be a little bit higher, right, because of the demand and given time of year.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:45] But these are everything’s been up since December. Everything’s been up.

John Roumanis [01:02:48] Yeah, yeah. I’m not complaining, buddy. I’m not complaining. Hamilton.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:52] I mean, specifically, it’s been really good.

John Roumanis [01:02:54] It’s been really good.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:55] Like, actually, let me let me clarify as well. Like TREB, so Trevor’s massive farm Real Estate more covers from like Burlington to like Pickering. Right? If you buy an average condo, even at the peak, you’re still making money. Of course, a lot of these prices, yeah. And every category housing is taking upwards as well. Looks like everything’s bounced off the bottom of nothing else. Changes in Hamilton is roughly around an average of about four grand a month, a little over four grand a month since about December.

John Roumanis [01:03:28] So, um, the other thing I wanted to mention about Real Estate is that it’s I’m glad that we’re having this conversation. I’m enjoying this a lot. The Toronto. Let me let me give you a little over this uncle who lives in Montreal. And he told me that in the 60s, when he used to come and visit our family in Toronto, he hated the dreaded Toronto. Was his boring and very sort of, you know, mundane 1960s. Yeah. These controlled the good electron was a boring, boring.

Erwin Szeto [01:04:01] There was not the entire bathroom.

John Roumanis [01:04:03] We would leave for whatever reasons. It was not a particularly well-liked city. Then things changed in the 70s and 80s, as Tron Australia’s all the files on the big banks and major companies started to leave Montreal to move to Toronto and in Toronto became a lot more interesting and much richer REIN and with immigration and money. Toronto became the hub of Canada, right? Yeah. You know, like it or not, I mean, you may have listeners across the country or swearing me right now, but Toronto is the cultural and population hub of Canada. I mean, there’s no denying it, right? It’s like the New York of Canada,

Erwin Szeto [01:04:37] like Vancouver better.

John Roumanis [01:04:38] But yeah, listen, I know I’ll take Halifax any day. Profits Gorgeous. All right. But if you’re talking about where the money is, where the culture is coming from, where the celebrities are visiting the sports teams, Toronto’s that place right? And the other thing I want to mention is a decent cachet to Toronto, right? There is a brand in Toronto. It is. It’s no longer Toronto. The good trial is a world class city. We have a world class basketball team, baseball team hockey team. We have our homegrown celebrities drink right?

Erwin Szeto [01:05:12] And it’s our dining seems actually very popular as well. What’s very popular. I just had cousins been visiting from Oakland, California, and they were very impressed by our dining, dining and bars.

John Roumanis [01:05:23] But our food scene in Toronto is unbelievable, right? Again, that’s a bit of a hidden gem. People don’t know that until they come here, but Toronto is a world class city like we’re attracting immigrants with money. We’re attracting businesses. We’re attracting university thanks to Trump. Google wants to build a city in a future in downtown Toronto, raising Trump. Well, so the point I’m trying to make is on top of all the other factors of low rates and great jobs and all that. It’s like we’re now a major world city right where we may not be in New York or Paris or London yet, but we’re definitely call it a B-plus in the world, in the world, Szeto cities. So with that comes a certain cachet and with a certain cachet comes money comes. You know, you, you me. May 20 years ago, I’ve been competing against other Torontonians. Today you’re competing against wealthy Chinese. The Middle Easterners or Americans,

Erwin Szeto [01:06:20] right,

John Roumanis [01:06:20] well, the Europeans, right. So it’s now a world class city with world class competition show that takes things to the next level. So if we think it’s bad here, I mean your family’s from Hong Kong, right? It’s ridiculous.

Erwin Szeto [01:06:33] Well, this is not least affordable city in the world.

John Roumanis [01:06:35] What’s what would it cost to buy the house that you live in today? What would it cost? Thumb sucking it to buy it. You know, I guess, you know, Hong Kong today.

Erwin Szeto [01:06:44] My house in Hong Kong.

John Roumanis [01:06:46] This house that you’re in right now?

Erwin Szeto [01:06:48] I understand. Yes. Six million.

John Roumanis [01:06:51] Six million. And what do you think it’s worth in Burlington?

Erwin Szeto [01:06:55] Just over a million. Right.

John Roumanis [01:06:56] So you would be a six times premium to live in Hong Kong, Brazil. What you’re paying today? Now what happens when that guy in Hong Kong? So that $6 million house and he comes to Canada to move

Erwin Szeto [01:07:08] you by six to this

John Roumanis [01:07:10] point? You are now you’re competing against a guy who has $6 million in cash and whatever he wants, he can buy the one house. You can buy a business and a rental property and have cash to boot. Right? But never tire, right? But that’s just that’s just Hong Kong. You have New Yorkers, you have Parisians, you have Londoners. You have, you know, people from all over these major cities in the world. So we wanted to be a major city. We are a major world class cultural hub. Well, you’re going to get the negative aspects of that as well. Expensive housing, expensive housing, right? Rapidly competition REIN. So I mean, we’re seeing it now in enought. So now Torontonians are starting to migrate out of the city. They went to Mississauga and they went to Oakville. They went to Burlington. Now they’re coming to Hamilton. I’m not sure. Have you read what percentage of houses in Hamilton? I thought I read a stat on this recently. Percentages of houses sold in Hamilton are being bought by people who are basically from out of Hamilton.

Erwin Szeto [01:08:12] Anecdotally, for if you pull parking managers, yeah, we know somewhere roughly around half of rental applications are from

John Roumanis [01:08:20] Toronto, right? I was reading it’s 40 percent of people are buying who are buying and Hamilton are from outside of Hamilton.

Erwin Szeto [01:08:27] There was the headline I think it was in January about non Hamilton agents. So typically travel agents. Yeah, because usually if you’re a travel agent, you don’t belong to the Hamilton Halton Hamilton Burlington board. Yeah. And I think it was like 40 or 50 percent.

John Roumanis [01:08:45] Yeah. So I

Erwin Szeto [01:08:47] mean, the Toronto agents were bringing their foreign clients to volume. Here we’re

John Roumanis [01:08:50] being, you know, Torontonians are being displaced by wealthy immigrants and then Torontonians

Erwin Szeto [01:08:58] are going to afford our

John Roumanis [01:08:59] tourist displeasing Hamiltonians. So it’s no different, right? So Hamiltonians are now struggling to buy a Hamilton. And what are they doing? The munising to Catharines

Erwin Szeto [01:09:09] is basically Katharine’s

John Roumanis [01:09:10] people strike and they’re displacing those people and then those people go elsewhere. Right? So you can either gripe about it or you can say, Well, where’s the opportunity? And I’ll tell you what, Erwin one of my biggest laments if you want to see regret. But if I could have done it a little bit different, I would have bought in St. Catharines a little while ago. Because logically, if people can’t afford Hamilton, you were geographically, where are you going to go next? You’re going to keep going around. The Golden Horseshoe is in Katharine’s was there now. Apparently one neighbor falls, is on fire like it’s you know, and who would have wanted to buy a place in the Niagara Peninsula 15 years ago? REIN. It’s economically depressed. Manufacturing’s gone. The GM plant is closed, the Caterpillar plant is closed and there’s a resurgence in the Niagara Peninsula. It’s on fire. There’s going to be how far does it go? The Gaudron is going to be going to Grimsby soon. I think REIN soon see Catherine and then see capital falls. Now what I want and what I want to do is talk to that guy or gal who lives in St. Catharines and is commuting to Toronto. I want to talk to that person who I don’t know how the heck anybody is sitting on a train for that long.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:16] But he is more likely to commute to late Hamilton his accounts for work in the city and seek out this person. He’s probably no further than Mississauga. I’m talking to averages, but

John Roumanis [01:10:25] I know people who commuted to work from St. Catharines to downtown and listen. I mean, from Burlington to downtown Toronto,

Erwin Szeto [01:10:33] we all the is of Japanese her with all,

John Roumanis [01:10:36] the first with the Go Express. It’s 45 minutes from Burlington to downtown Toronto.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:41] Yeah. Perfect situation.

John Roumanis [01:10:44] And I’ll tell you, nine out of 10 time. It’s perfect for you to go and Metrolink, you go to give them credit. They’re pretty darn good, right? But you add now James Street North Sorry, Aldershot, James Street, North Grimsby. You’re probably talking to another 15 minutes just on those three stations alone. So now you’re looking at an hour, five an hour or 10. You had seen Catherine. You probably take another 25 30 minutes. You’re now looking at an hour and a half commute each way. But that said, I know people at work who do that daily in their car. Daily in their cars, they’ll don’t travel from, you know, somewhere north of Woodbridge or Mabel, down to Mississauga, and that is a brutal drive, my friend. And yeah, I know people who do that commute. So, yeah, so Real Estate my own Real Estate. It’s been an interesting few months. I’m doing my first duplex.

Erwin Szeto [01:11:38] We do quite anything since we last spoke.

John Roumanis [01:11:41] Oh no, actually, we have no idea what I’ve been doing with my portfolio. Erwin is so I mean, I was on a bit of a binge where I bought a bunch of properties over a number of years

Erwin Szeto [01:11:52] when a year. Well, I

John Roumanis [01:11:54] mean, we didn’t listen. I mean, I know, I know. I mean, I’ve read your body of senior podcast and all those people who bought four or five in a year. And I get that that’s tweaked the room, right? But relative to the average Canadian, I would say, is a pretty, pretty good piece.

Erwin Szeto [01:12:06] Dude, you’re like, what, Tom? Probably four percent in Canada. But yeah, sorry. Yeah.

John Roumanis [01:12:12] So but I mean, there’s people who do more than me and I. I respect that. I think that’s wonderful. But my thing now is I’m looking at my properties and saying, OK, I’ve got these properties I know that I have under. I know that I’m making less rent and it should be right. And I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a property that I bought. I rented it out five years, six years ago, Erwin, perhaps to the same people who still live there. Imagine how phenomenally under market I am on that property. And guess what? There’s not much you can do. Tenants are paying every single month on time. I’ve had no food, no questions. They ask for help. Is that right? This is worse problems to have. But I am, you know, under market, I’m so identified. You know, this one property I have up on the Hamilton Mountain that was a student rental there. Just, I don’t know, student rentals. I mean, I used to be hot and heavy on them. I’ve tweaked the roll. I’m mixed on them now at best.

Erwin Szeto [01:13:09] They need more active management.

John Roumanis [01:13:10] Yeah, it is a lot of work, a lot of damage, a lot of headaches. I don’t think there’s a single month where the rent comes in on the first from every student. There’s always something happening, you know, then you’ve got to deal with all the nuances of teenage hormones. You know, people coming into the house who aren’t supposed to be there parties. It’s all. It’s not my thing, right? So we know this house on in the mountain Greeley Road, right? You know you were I own you, your rental up there as well. And the value the house has gone up, probably even without a single repairs. How you got about, you know, 90 to 100 thousand since I bought it in the middle of 2016, right? Two years, two years. Not completely great increase. But the police is a complete disaster inside just disaster. So we decided we were going to duplex this instead of keeping it as a student rental. The good news is that when you do a student rental, what you end up doing is you put a bunch of names on a lease, one single lease, which again, you can you can have sure you’ve talked about why you need to do that. And when people start leaving the lease you, the lease is now terminated. So we actually were fortunate enough to be able to start doing the renovation on me first, which would have been the renewal of your school year. And it’s been an interesting ride. It’s been an interesting ride. The duplexing, I think if we have a few minutes, I’ll talk a little bit about that. So typically how I think you would do a refinance is you would talk to the bank and you would say, here’s my plans. Here’s the drawing. Here’s the invoice from the contractor. The quote Here’s a plan for you. The bank will look at that and say, OK, looks good. Let’s refinance your property. And it’s what it’s worth today. So let’s say it went from out from 300000 to 400000, so we’ll give you 80 percent loan to value at 400000 minus your outstanding rent. You would you say your outstanding mortgage? You would use that money to then pay for the renovation. They would then re assess it, post renovation and then refinance it again. That’s how I was told that things would work came Third World Pretty World, so

Erwin Szeto [01:15:27] it never proved. I have been

John Roumanis [01:15:29] working on the refinancing for two months now, and I still do not have the money, which means that I have been financing the renovation out of my own pocket via a home equity line of credit.

Erwin Szeto [01:15:41] But then you have to think I have it.

John Roumanis [01:15:42] So I would say to anybody who is going to go down the route of doing any sort of major renovation, you know, a six figure renovation. Please do not count on the bank unless you are going to do this before you break ground. Given that we have students who are leaving as of April 30th, we said to the contractor, come in me first and just get going. And it’s been pretty good so far from the contractors perspective. You know, they do the demolition. But what ended up happening is after the demolition was done, they discovered that we had black mold and. We didn’t have we didn’t have any waterproofing or mold remediation worked into the cost. Now what I would tell people and you know, if you’re going to take anything away from this podcast is interior waterproofing is like, really? Huh?

Erwin Szeto [01:16:34] What was that? You should be quite pricey.

John Roumanis [01:16:36] It’s pricey. But it’s heaven on Earth like the idea of having you know. So, so, so. They broke the walls down and they found black mold everywhere. So the first thing my contractor did was, of course, gas the place, remediate the mold, get rid of it until the mold. Get rid of it. Fine. But if you have mold to me, that says you have a water problem, if you have a water problem that’s never going to go away unless you waterproof the house and the idea of interior waterproofing. I love it. I love it. That’s something that not only is it going to protect your house for, I mean, crazy for the rest of your life, probably. But it’s going to add value to the house when you sell your house and you told them you’ve got interior waterproofing with weaver tile and a sump pump. There’s value in that. That is something that a buyer is going to say, You know what? That’s a great investment. You’re protecting the house. I know I’m not going to have to worry about mold in foundation problems down the road. And I learned about this the hard way in my own home at in Burlington, where we did interior waterproofing after a particularly rainy weekend in 2017 started to bring water up through the floor. It was unbelievable in the basement anyway, so we did this waterproofing interior. Waterproofing has been great. And now we’re at framing. So I’m excited and hopeful. Like we’re about one month into the into the duplex ification, if you will. And we’ve got frames. We’ve got waterproofing. Next is electrical and each vac. I’m hopeful that things are going to go smoothly and this will get done relatively quickly. But I don’t know. I mean, it’s my first time going through this and rather than and I will admit, I didn’t plan this out super well again because it was a student rental and we wanted to, you know, as soon as soon as we wanted to get in there and just get going, I didn’t and think things out too much. I just kind of dove in and said, I’m going to deal with things as they kind of come up. So it’s been an it’s been it’s been a good experience so far. But like I would say to any, you know, the big lessons here that I’ve learned is No one, get ready because you’re going to find things. We open up your walls that you may not have been expecting. So for example, mold, which then ends up causing you to do interior waterproofing. And number two.

Erwin Szeto [01:18:47] And then as you found when you did, yeah.

John Roumanis [01:18:49] Oh God. And for that, for the for the money that was spent, it was a best investment ever. Like, I’m telling you, my basement and home after we spent the money on doing interior waterproofing, it’s a completely different atmosphere in the basement than it was, you know, two years ago when it always smelled musty. There’s not a smell, not an atom of must in that place any longer. I love it. The other thing I would say is if you’re going to do the refinancing expected to take at least two months. Like, I don’t know, Erwin. I mean, what are you? What are you hearing out there in terms of refinancing these days?

Erwin Szeto [01:19:23] Yeah, my REIN prices have been slow as well because there’s no deadline. For example, when you buy a house, you have five days for conditions and you have a closing date. You know, you have hard deadlines to meet the bankers, hard guys meet. There’s a refi. There’s no deadline. No. So you fall on the different pile versus the pile that has deadlines that have to be addressed immediately.

John Roumanis [01:19:46] Yeah, it’s crazy.

Erwin Szeto [01:19:48] I mean, that’s the reality. And I think that’s a good that’s like acceptable. But that is reality.

John Roumanis [01:19:55] It’s been. So I mean, it’s if there’s one thing that’s keeping me up at night, it’s that right? I mean, you’re losing money on the lack of rent you are now waiting to find out. Hey, listen, I mean, refinancing, it’s taking two months, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get 80 percent loan to value. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get the amortization period that you want. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get the rate that you want. There’s so many variables that are up in the air, and even if you get the refinancing done, is it going to be an 80 percent loan to value? You know, I was told that I’d be lucky to get 80 percent loan to value, but I wasn’t told that in the beginning when I when I started the process, right?

Erwin Szeto [01:20:36] So you see why I buy a new construction condo?

John Roumanis [01:20:40] Yeah, yeah. But I mean, at the end of the day, you know, I believe in the long term and investing in making this a duplex is going to be great, like the economics behind it in terms of the kinds of tenants you’re going to get right. Having two units instead of six students, they’re paying their own utilities. So hey, you want to run the washing machine to wash one pair of underwear? Go nuts. It’s your money. Not mine, right? You want to run the lights all day long. Go nuts. It’s your money. So I’m all for it, so I’m excited to see where this is going to go. So hopefully the next time we talk, I’m going to have a bit of a. A story that I’ll tell you about how that ultimately ended up.

Erwin Szeto [01:21:20] It’s a challenge just too close to wrapping up our third baseman. Legal basis, we believe it’s challenging.

John Roumanis [01:21:27] Yeah, it is definitely challenging. But I mean, again, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing that’s worth nothing that’s worth doing in life is ever going to come super easy now. REIN, I certainly would do it. I mean, I have a one year old son. He’s going to be one in June. It wasn’t easy. That was, I mean, I got to tell you, the first three months of his life were, Oh my god. Hey, people tell you that, oh, your life’s going to change the analogy that the analogy that I give now to explain. People say, Oh, you’re going to change. And then the first thing I was thinking is, Yeah, yeah, whatever, bro, I’m going to now for my baby sleeps. No problem. Everything’s going great. Here’s how I would explain having a child is something. So when you’re a single guy or single woman, you’re living life in the fast lane. You’re driving down the KUOW in the age of Elaine at 2:00 in the morning when there’s no traffic, you do know 130 140 easy. Life is good. You know you have a kid, and it’s not this gradual, slow down. It is like literally driving into a brick wall and you go from 140 kilometers an hour to zero. You’re absolutely stopped. Not just that your car’s wrecked. You’re never going to own that Corvette again. You stumble out of the car. What happened to your head is spinning. Your legs are wobbly, but you managed to start walking one kilometer from kilometers, five kilometers an hour, and eventually a few months later, you’re going at 50 60 80. But I’ll tell you what, you’re never going to be at 140 kilometers an hour again. Now, with the increased responsibility, the gear kids saved your day care. All this other stuff that you may get

Erwin Szeto [01:23:11] the grease on all weekend. What is it? Just take off to Greece, Italy, Greece

John Roumanis [01:23:15] on a weekend. My God, I can’t even take off to my friends on the weekend, but I’ll tell you what I mean. Erwin, you’re a parent. I’ll tell you I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love being a dad.

Erwin Szeto [01:23:28] And that’s what that’s what single people don’t get. Like they like. It’s cool. Everybody treats their own. Some people will say they never want to have kids. But yeah, I would gladly trade every wonderful experience I’ve had up to this point for my kids.

John Roumanis [01:23:44] Let me ask you this question. Being a landlord is a lot like being a parent, right? You know, it’s kind of irrational. Well, I mean, it’s an it’s a decision that you make knowing that it’s going to introduce tremendous, potentially tremendous complexity time REIN money right into your life. Right, right. Yet you do it because you have a long term vision of what your life would be with that extra complexity versus without. Right? I mean, I attribute Real Estate to a tremendous growth in my net worth. I attribute my, you know, the challenges of having a child to the to the sheer volumes of happiness that it also drives REIN. So I mean, you know, I would say to you and to the to the listeners that having a child is not for everyone to see without having Real Estate or having tenants is not for everyone.

Erwin Szeto [01:24:45] But anyone can do

John Roumanis [01:24:46] it, but anyone could do it if they really wanted to REIN. And yeah, I mean, it’s

Erwin Szeto [01:24:54] a which is harder, which has been harder having a child, right? Okay, so hang on his back to that. So John saying it’s harder to have a child versus how many properties do

John Roumanis [01:25:07] a five rentals plus your own home? Yes. Or six,

Erwin Szeto [01:25:11] which has been not easy, either. You buy an old house. Yeah, it’s like a brand new house.

John Roumanis [01:25:16] So I mean, you know, we had I sold you.

Erwin Szeto [01:25:19] Sorry?

John Roumanis [01:25:20] No. I mean, listen, Erwin. At the end of the day, my, my wife and I and my wife, Frieda, who is an absolutely wonderful, very detail oriented and conscientious person and a lawyer and a lawyer. You know, when we bought an older house and or a neighborhood, and that’s fine, right? I would tell you that we spent tens of thousands of dollars on renovations, new appliances, repairs and maintenance. But it’s worth it. I think, you know, we seen since I moved in, I’ve had to redo our basement waterproofing, new carpet, new walls. We had a windstorm a few a few weeks back. If you remember, we had 110 km an hour for our wind. I went from having a fence on my east west side of my east side on my property, the west side of my property, in the south side of my property, to having a fence on the south side of my property from one day to the. I had to end up shelling out $7000 plus on new fences. Right. So but to me, you know, it’s. We bought the house knowing that there was a lot of lack of care by the previous owners, but we got a good price in a good neighborhood. And I’ll tell you that the work that we’ve done, the landscaping, the renovating of the house, the new fences, the new furnace, the new washer dryer, dishwasher stool fridge, everything that we’ve done is only driving the value of the house in an already very popular, very high in demand neighborhood. So again, it’s taking that longer term vision and saying, I’ll spend this much money to buy a new fence. I’ll spend this much money on landscaping. I spend this much money on a renovation on that new appliance because if you know down the road you want to go to a bigger house or, you know, something different. We’re going to have no problem selling this one.

Erwin Szeto [01:27:13] Very good. What is Real Estate mean to you? Because I want to because too many people think about, Oh, it’s their cash flow. It’s a real estate investment property, like, what does it mean to you? And I’ll give you an example. So we’re talking about here what we’re talking about, but I have talked in my mind, so I don’t think I’ve shared with you. We refinanced one property and we use those proceeds to pay down my own personal home in that have no mortgage payments. Oh, that’s awesome. And then this house does have no oh, Harry. Oh yeah. Or can mean more than half a sick. It’s awesome. I love what cash flow? Yeah. I’m saving quite a bit of money. Yeah, no. I mean, that’s a non-taxed that’s not taxed at all.

John Roumanis [01:28:01] You know, the what’s it called the there’s a name for that Smith. The Smith maneuver. I thought it was Smith. I’m like, Am I remembering the last name incorrectly? But yeah, this maneuver

Erwin Szeto [01:28:10] is going to be incredibly accurate. There’s differences of different Canadian case specific to Smith and rumors to me, American. There is a Canadian case that that’s the exact same thing. Yeah, yeah. But what is what is Real Estate mean to you in terms of like what is it gone you like? And I’ll give you another example. Like my team, we’re planning to go do this the entire edge walk in June, right? But one of my team members is still have a full time job and he can come right. But the rest of us, you know, I can afford a day off here and there because I make money when I sleep. Right? What is the real statement? You were your husband. You, you yourself are up plans to buy anything for yourself. You mean a limit of bull or money? Yeah, you don’t want him here.

John Roumanis [01:29:04] Here’s what I would say. First of all, I mean, I’ve been blessed and we see blessed. I mean, I work my butt off. But I mean, I’ve been blessed with having a good career. REIN.

Erwin Szeto [01:29:15] The eight hundred grand didn’t come that hurt I

John Roumanis [01:29:18] for I make a good salary and I’m able to take care of my expenses and, you know, my living like a king. Absolutely not. That’s also not my nature, right? I’m by nature. You know, I like to have nice clothing, but I will wear that nice clothing until it’s no longer nice and replace it and then buy more nice clothing. REIN I I’ve owned, you know, I’m 42. I bought my first car when I was 22. I’ve owned three cars in 20 years, right? I’ll drive by something nice, but I will drive that car until it’s it needs to be replaced. Not because I want to replace it, because I want something fun and new, right? So I’m not a I’m not a big, disposable cash spending kind of guy. So for me, Real Estate may not necessarily have the same art, and investments may not necessarily have the same sort of utility that it has to other people like you refinance something in there. And I mean, you not necessarily Erwin Szeto, but one person may refinance something and say, I’m going to reward myself and use some of this money to buy myself whatever a new Corvette. Or I may buy myself a vacation, a $10000 safari or $20000 safari, whatever it is, right? I will tell you, I have more of the Warren Buffett mind frame that says, as long as I have air in my lungs and a brain that works, I always just want to have more. I just want to have more. I just I want to look at my balance sheet at January one every year and see that. I mean, I I’m worth more than it was a year ago, and it’s not because I want to have more money to spend. To me, it’s fun. I enjoy. I enjoy this the first. Warren Buffett, he had when he had

Erwin Szeto [01:31:21] half a billion recovery world,

John Roumanis [01:31:23] $20 million and said, I have $20 million, I never have to work another day in my life. Why does he still do it right? You know, he could have stopped at half a billion. He constructed a billion you. When you get to a certain point Erwin, it becomes about the personality that you have, right? And my personality is that I enjoy the accumulation of wealth. Now I’m going to give you a funny example. Do you ever watch Breaking Bad?

Erwin Szeto [01:31:52] Well, you know, when Warren Buffett’s worth

John Roumanis [01:31:53] $9 billion

Erwin Szeto [01:31:56] spent a lot of money in a crash in eighty one point seven eighty one point seven? OK.

John Roumanis [01:31:59] But I mean, is he still up there, right? I mean, Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world. He’s at one hundred and twenty billion or

Erwin Szeto [01:32:04] something, I don’t know. Thirty three. Yeah.

John Roumanis [01:32:06] Based on who you know, I mean, Amazon is so I mean. I mean, Amazon is going to go up and down, right? But we Amazon’s been on a tear. It’s like $600 a share. When I was looking at that, there is when I looked at it a year ago, is it a thousand dollars? Talk about a missed opportunity. But you even watch Breaking Bad?

Erwin Szeto [01:32:22] Yeah. Oh gosh. I think

John Roumanis [01:32:24] so. Do you remember at the end of it, when you know, he’s basically, you know, everything’s done and he’s a he’s lost. And when he says to Skyler at the very end, I remember there’s a scene where the sitting in the kitchen and he says, Do you know why I did this? And she was, Don’t you dare tell me you did it with your family and all this other crap? He goes, No, I did it because I liked it. It made me feel good. And I mean, that’s such an evil spin on it. But I really just enjoy the accumulation of wealth, right? I don’t need the new car every three years. I don’t need to drive a nice car. Yeah, I drive a nice car, but I’ll tell. It’s got a hundred thousand kilometers on it. It’s a 2013, but it runs beautifully. I take care of it. I change the oil, I clean it, I wash it. It’s beautiful and I love it. So I don’t know. It’s not a super materialistic guy, right? What? You know, what are what are other people seeing that Real Estate means to them? It can be the first one or the first and only person who says that they enjoy the accumulation of wealth.

Erwin Szeto [01:33:33] I think maybe at Inverness, enough people, a lot of people like to spend a lot more than you do, I think because the fun in that. Hmm. Find my hot tub was nice.

John Roumanis [01:33:47] You put your hot tub is a onetime spend that that will create experiences with friends and family. Right? I couldn’t think of other like; I’m not denying myself vacations. I was going on vacations before I had Real Estate on one vacations, whatever like. I mean, my salary can pay for that. My salary can pay for whatever car I have. I have a car allowance through work, right? Like for me, it’s the enjoyment of building something that was not there in the first place. Right? I love that. It’s like we did when Bill Gates got Microsoft to a certain size. He could have cashed out and just said, Hey, I’m rich. There’s personalities who just want the money so that they can go and have fun, and there’s personalities who like to build, create and watch things grow.

Erwin Szeto [01:34:35] Yeah, that’s me, right? I love that. Yeah, I think this is partly me as well. When you talk about Gates and then he started the Gates Foundation. Yeah, which is like the largest is the biggest giver charity in the world.

John Roumanis [01:34:49] Basically, Cuban was in malaria. I think that they’re that that they’re going after. I think that’s what Bill and Melinda Gates are focused on is the elimination of malaria from the world.

Erwin Szeto [01:35:00] I can google it.

John Roumanis [01:35:01] But if you ask him, it’s like you with ask him game right before you got to a certain point, and now you’re starting to look at other charitable endeavors. Right? And Warren Buffett is not leaving that money to his kids. He’s not going to leave his, you know, $80 billion to his kids. That’s going all to charity. Right? And I don’t know what I’ll do, what I’m 80, 90, 100 or whatever it is, however long I live. But the reality is, is that, you know, I’m just I just I just want to build something Erwin that was just not there before. Right? And that’s what I’m doing.

Erwin Szeto [01:35:36] So, geez, Gates has given away $18 billion. Why not? Since 2010’s 2000.

John Roumanis [01:35:47] What else is he going to do with that money? How much money do you need to live like? I wouldn’t say that if you were debt free, you had no mortgage, no car payments and you had a million dollars in the stock market is going to. And you know, you can you can reasonably, reasonably without much effort, get a five percent dividend. OK. The combination of Enbridge tell us a few other great couple of banks. You get a five percent dividend every single day. $50000 in Canada. Without a job, you can earn up to 55. I think $55000 of dividends without getting taxed. So you could make that $50000 tax free, which is probably an $80000 pretax income without any debt. You could live damn well on $50000 a year if you have no car makers or no mortgage. Not doing is just paying down, you know, paying your bills. You can do a couple of nice vacations, you go in restaurants,

Erwin Szeto [01:36:46] you know, the pay rent, and that’s

John Roumanis [01:36:49] fine, just like you do in a paid off house, et cetera, et cetera. OK? You know, a pretty good life. Yeah. Yet there’s many people who aim to go higher than that. Many people like you to work in my workplace. There’s people who are in their 50s and 60s who could you know, who are, you know, vice president and chief level chief level positions that probably could have retired years ago. But they like to work. So for me, my personality, I like to work and I like to build. So Real Estate for me has hasn’t really feel fulfilled that intrinsic need to create something and to have something that wasn’t there before. I truly enjoy it. Do I need the hassle of, you know, not getting my rent paid on the month in the first of every month? Or, you know, doing a duplex that hasn’t yet been refinanced and having to pay for it out of my own pocket? Or do I need, you know, doing the hassle of, you know, 100 km hour winds and fixing to roofs in the same month? And, you know, a month or two after I replaced a $3000 furnace? I mean, no, I guess I guess I don’t quote unquote need it, but I got to tell you, it makes me feel damn good. I enjoy it and not enjoy it in a way that it gives me a rush because that’s dangerous. When you get a rush, that’s gambling. I just it just feels some sort of intrinsic need inside me that that I have. Yeah, that’s it, bro.

Erwin Szeto [01:38:19] That’s funny. So let me share with you. I was listening to a trainer in my gym doing an interview. She’s almost Olympic class. Yeah, she’s Olympic alternate. So if anyone on Team Kennedy gets her, she’s going to the Olympics. She’s that good. Yeah. She also does to make her money in the side. She trains people a personal training for Olympic lifting. So she’s phenomenal. Ridiculous. She’s one hundred and five pounds if she can put like 220 pounds over her head.

John Roumanis [01:38:54] Yeah, military pressure. What are you talking about?

Erwin Szeto [01:38:58] Clean, clean. New Jersey. New Jersey.

John Roumanis [01:38:59] Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing.

Erwin Szeto [01:39:02] Yeah, she won Pan Am gold pretty recently. Yeah, a year again, almost all of the class athletes, as she said, something that just blew my mind. She said she or she spends more time coaching people on motivation. Yeah, that she does on technique, right?

John Roumanis [01:39:21] Yeah, that makes sense to me

Erwin Szeto [01:39:22] in that crazy not to do anything to motivate you.

John Roumanis [01:39:26] No, not motivation comes.

Erwin Szeto [01:39:29] But like almost all of her over discussions around business are Real Estate has been technique. If we put in those terms, yeah, I haven’t done it. I’m pretty sure we haven’t had any discussions with you about trying to get you motivated.

John Roumanis [01:39:43] No, I mean, and if you’re different, if you think about the very first, do you remember that you remember, you remember when we first met first, the first we went out in one day and looked at six or seven properties and I decided to pull the trigger that day. On the first property, we saw 28 venue lean. I bought it for the 233 900

Erwin Szeto [01:40:04] that was playing, by the way. That’s right, that was planned.

John Roumanis [01:40:07] Oh, you planned to show me that first property?

Erwin Szeto [01:40:09] It was planned that you would buy VIDEO.

John Roumanis [01:40:12] Oh, you planned that

Erwin Szeto [01:40:14] after seeing it? It was kind of planned. Yeah.

John Roumanis [01:40:16] Well, I mean, I had told you I wanted a turkey easy property and you found it for me. Right?

Erwin Szeto [01:40:21] So it fit your plan. Yeah, it’s my plan. Oh, right. Sure.

John Roumanis [01:40:25] 233 900. I think because the beauty of venue is that it’s on a street with eight other identical townhouses. So when one of those sell, it gives you a very clear idea of what my property’s worth. I think we had one on that street to sell for four, sixty or something. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a crazy amount of money. But how much work did you put in to 33 900? I put 50 grand down whatever was 50 something, and I’ve made $230000 in seven years. That is absolutely nuts and that’s just that’s just increase. Forget about mortgage payments, right? Like there’s like

Erwin Szeto [01:41:09] 400 and 60 percent.

John Roumanis [01:41:11] Yeah, some so stupid amount of money. Eight years, seven years, seven and change. Kimberly meaning landlord Since I was in my mid-thirties, I owned the first house I bought quick man.

Erwin Szeto [01:41:24] That’s almost 70 percent a year. Return just on your appreciation. Yeah. And your cash flow? Yeah.

John Roumanis [01:41:30] Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, they had, I think God, that property actually cash flows. Yeah, it’s been. It’s been great. Yeah, that one’s a good one. Well, this this year, I had to buy to buy

Erwin Szeto [01:41:37] a new firm buying lipsticks. So we are anyway.

John Roumanis [01:41:42] And then I, I think we’re good. I have to go back. It’s had a bad time, and we’ve been talking for Erwin,

Erwin Szeto [01:41:53] she let me checkup two hours working. It’s 10, 10. Yeah. Oh geez. Rob Break the system that we’ve been talking over an hour and a half.

John Roumanis [01:42:02] Do you think anybody’s going to make it this far?

Erwin Szeto [01:42:04] I have no idea. If you do comment on iTunes and let me know you made this for you.

John Roumanis [01:42:12] So it was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me again.

Erwin Szeto [01:42:17] And any final thoughts, final thoughts? Yeah, I mean, final thoughts.

John Roumanis [01:42:21] Like if we were to talk about if you were to go back to what we were discussing today. So here’s what I would say. Number one, focus on fundamentals, right? The world has never in the history of the planet been better than it is today. There’s more people who are being fed less poverty, less disease, less unhappiness, less esteem Rihanna than there’s ever been in the world. Don’t focus on the news. Focus on fundamentals. Immigration continues to grow. Rates are historically low. The green belt isn’t going anywhere and densification is a reality. So that that property that you own, that single family house that you own as a rental or that townhouse or whatever is going to be in high demand. Maybe not this second, but it will be at some point, right? You know, so, so don’t focus on the news, focus on fundamentals, you know? Number two, again, you know, kind of what we’re talking about a little bit earlier were some are social media, right? Don’t spend time and don’t spend too much time on social media. It’s a waste of time. You’re going to spend any time focusing on the internet. Read something of value. I’m a huge fan of the economist. I’m a huge fan of the investment reporter. Like, I’m, you know, I don’t have a lot of time to read, but when I do, I read books and I read magazines that that are that aren’t, you know, junk, if you will, right? The other thing I would say is if you’re going to be in real estate, you have to take the long term view, right? If you’re going to buy a property and you’re not looking to hold it for at least five to 10 years, what are you doing? Great, right? Why are you in this

Erwin Szeto [01:44:01] every thousand dollars increasing network? Did you flip any of those properties?

John Roumanis [01:44:04] I have never sold a single property.

Erwin Szeto [01:44:07] You hold every single one, so I’ve

John Roumanis [01:44:09] held the first property about was 28 when you lean Hamilton, Ontario. I bought that with you seven and changed years ago. Still have it for 499 St.. Treasurer of the West still have it. Five 99 First Avenue still have it. 70 you know 90 Myrtle Avenue legal triplex. I bought for two hundred and ninety six thousand houses on that street are selling for 600 plus if just still have it through by myself. But that was awesome. Thank you for not buying that price. It has been a gem. But the point is like, you know, people don’t get this what to leave office saying? If you if you if you want to learn about wealth, well takes time to accumulate. It’s the analogy that I’ll give you if you’re standing on a mountain, a throw rock off that mountain, that rock is little, but it’s going to hit other rocks on the way down. And those rocks are going to hit other rocks on the way down. And by the time that rock those rocks hit the bottom, you’ve now got a landslide or an avalanche. Well, for works the exact same way, except going up when you invest that first $5000 or five percent return is worth a thousand fifty bucks. Three thousand five hundred bucks after three thousand fifty bucks after the first year after the second years’ worth whatever a thousand sixty after the next year. It’s worth, you know, like can, my math is not great, it’s worth a thousand one hundred and whatever. But the point is that you know, you’ve got this compound return if you look at Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, who’s worth 80 billion today in his 80s, was not a billionaire until his 50s. Think about that because the man lived from age baby until his 50s and he wasn’t a billionaire from his 50s to his 80s. He went from $8 billion to 80 billion. Right. Your money is going to come down the road. You got to set yourself up and just hang in there and let compound interest do its magic.

Erwin Szeto [01:46:20] Patience.

John Roumanis [01:46:22] That’s what gives you the win.

Erwin Szeto [01:46:25] Warren Buffett said something interesting is that is one of his investor meetings. If you don’t have time to put to understand the stock market or understand investing stock investing. Put your money in the S&P 500 and go back to work and then get to know you had to go. How do you get motivated? Because that seems to be the missing part. Because technique strategy is stuff we can give people all day. Yeah, I cannot motivate people.

John Roumanis [01:46:58] I mean, I don’t know, Erwin am I genetically naturally a motivated person? Is it something that comes intrinsically in me? Is it something that you know, I think that there’s two factors and then really, I have to probably take off after this. But there’s two factors to talk about is motivation. And then there’s frustration, right? Let me talk about motivation. To me, motivation means that you have to find an extrinsic force to drive you. So, for example, I’m lazy sitting on the couch and my wife comes downstairs and says, Screams, that means is moving on. To me, that’s external motivation. And for the record, my wife doesn’t do that because we have a landscaper. One of the benefits, I guess, of being a real owner, REIN. But you know, in the hypothetical world, my wife comes downstairs, screams memorial lawn. That’s an external force that’s motivating me out of fear and or desire to not have conflict to go and get a task done right. So frustration is the lack is, I think, the differential between an expected state of being and your current state of being right, the difference between the two is a sense of frustration. I think a lot more of my life has been driven in the past by frustration than by motivation. Seeing lemon, you know, I want to be an ex. I am at point five X; how do I close the gap? And that to me, like Real Estate, helped close a lot of that frustrated gap, right? So I think that if you are, if you need external motivation, that’s a lot harder than it is to find that internal frustration and leverage that and say, You know what? I’m not happy with where I am or I want more because I think I’m better than where I’m better than this. That needs to come intrinsically. If you have to go to, you know, see, Tony Robbins and the guy is a great guy, or if you do see whoever or whoever it is, if you need an external source, that will feel good for the moment. But by the time you get home and talk to your wife or your husband, you don’t deal with your kids, go back to work. That’s going to that’s going to dissipate very quickly. The question is, are we all frustrated? Of course we are. We all have our moments of frustration. That is what you should be channeling to drive you rather than looking necessarily for external motivation. Channel that frustration. Find the partners who can help you channel that into something productive and produce, right? I was frustrated. I wanted to be a landowner. I wanted to be a house owner. I wanted to be a real estate owner. I was frustrated. I went to REIN. I met you Erwin. You motivated me to go to Hamilton. You took me out, you showed me the houses and you helped me close that gap. That is the magic. The magic is frustration, not motivation. I think the thing on that for a second, right? How many people have changed their lives because their lives are perfect? Where are they right now? How many people said, You know what? This is exactly what I want. I’m going to take to the next level four versus, you know what? I hate this. This is not what I want, right? There’s something that’s missing, right? And I don’t like it.

Erwin Szeto [01:50:34] It’s close that gap that that my client is easier. Way easier.

John Roumanis [01:50:38] The frustrated

Erwin Szeto [01:50:39] client? Yeah, that’s where you’re trying to work with versus the client who’s not motivated. Happy having the beer watching hockey in Canada. And that’s that makes them happy.

John Roumanis [01:50:51] The question, though, is

Erwin Szeto [01:50:53] didn’t work in like, you know, and having to work until infinity in order to pay their bills.

John Roumanis [01:51:01] And I mean, I guess there’s a reason why there’s some people who do this are some people who don’t.

Erwin Szeto [01:51:04] Yeah, cool, bro. There you go. Thanks for this, John. Oh, it’s my pleasure.

John Roumanis [01:51:10] I’m curious to see if anyone is going to make it to the end is a long podcast. I thought by now, we’d be sitting in a hot tub

Erwin Szeto [01:51:18] is going, Oh,

John Roumanis [01:51:20] no, no, I don’t. I do. But I do have. I’m pretty sure I have a pretty busy day tomorrow.

Erwin Szeto [01:51:25] I’m going to be an LTV tomorrow in the morning. Oh God,

John Roumanis [01:51:30] that will be a that’s a source of frustration

Erwin Szeto [01:51:32] is her situation. But I’m super excited with what I can do with the property. Exactly. I’ve been on this story. All right. Thanks again, John. Yeah, we’ll talk again.

Erwin Szeto [01:51:52] Are you going to go to the Greater Toronto Hamilton area? Are you interested in earning extra income in your sleep without getting calls from tenants or unplugging toilets? And please join us live and in person at the Halton Real Estate Investors Group meetings at the prestigious Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario. Our meetings are catered to postseason and novice investors to share and educate the fundamentals and truths about real estate investing, so you too can earn seven figure net worth. Like our guests and clients on this show, how great would it be to be financially free to take more time off a family, retire earlier and more comfortably, or even support your favorite charity? If that’s of interest to you, then get yourself on the invite list at W WW Halton REI dossier slash sign up. The host of the meeting is yours truly Erwin Szeto, a four time winner of the real estate agent of the Year to investors for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Results are not guaranteed, but our investor clients with us since 2012 are earning over 400 percent returns on cash flowing properties, so contracts sold as soon as you can due to Ontario Fire Code regulations. We can only have so many attendees and we have waitlisted in the past, so do not wait to register at www.youtube.com Halton REI dossier slash signup and I hope to see you there soon.

Erwin Szeto [01:53:14] You.

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