Table of Contents
Podcast Transcription
Sandy Mackay [00:01:34] Breakthrough Real Estate Investing Podcast Episode Fifty-Nine. Now.
Rob Break [00:01:58] Hello and welcome to the Breakthrough Real Estate Investing podcast, we put this show together to inspire you and help you break through to the life that you want to live through the power of real estate investing. My name is Rob Break, and here with me is. Mr. Awesome. Sandy Mackay
Sandy Mackay [00:02:19] in the struggle for a new name, either there I
Rob Break [00:02:22] was. That’s called the, you know, suspenseful pause.
Sandy Mackay [00:02:27] Okay. Yeah, what’s up? I’m happy to be here again, as always, excited for another great show. And we got a while. You can do it into a quick intro where we got a great guest in the waiting here and excited for this one.
Rob Break [00:02:39] Yeah, me too. It’s going to be really cool. We’re talking. We’re going a little bit off topic of real estate investing like, you know, as a as a hard-core topic. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about business startup, I guess, in management. And Natasha is here with us. So thanks for being here, Natasha. We’re just going to do our little intro, but how are you today?
Natasha Cultraro [00:03:02] I’m doing very well. Thank you. I’m really excited to be here with you guys tonight.
Rob Break [00:03:06] Well, thank you. We’re excited to have you. But first, as everyone knows, everyone should jump over to our website Breakthrough Aria Podcast Dot S.A. There you can download our free gift. It’s actually a pop up now, so as soon as you go to the website, boom, it pops up and you can get our free gift the seven free TIM activators that you can trigger in your property starting right now. It is a free report that Sandy wrote, for all of you to make the best of your real estate investing endeavor, where you can spend less time managing your properties and have a little more time to do the things that you want to do, right?
Sandy Mackay [00:03:44] Yeah, basically what it’s all about, and it’s helping make the journey in real estate a little smoother and easier and more exciting. Yeah. And so I would always love to see everyone go over and grab that copy. That also gets them on our email list, too. For four events that we run and things like that, we’re both kind of have a few of those going rob an idea, investor tours everything too. So that’ll get them, get them on our list and be notified about future events and fun activities like that. So definitely you want to join that list, right?
Rob Break [00:04:13] Yeah, the investors have been a little shocking, but I am going to start them back up very soon here. And I mean, depending on when you’re listening to this, of course, you will be able to come on out to a tour and they’re always fun and we get to see some properties out in this over in the east end of Toronto, that’ll work for adding second suites, which is one of the best ways that I’ve found that we can add value and get some money back, pull it out and start, you know, increasing the size of your portfolio.
Sandy Mackay [00:04:42] Yeah. And then as always, to we want to encourage everyone to go give us a review and five-star rating over on iTunes. It is something that really helps us get the show out there. More people get it and do up there in the rankings on iTunes and just allows us to get more great guests like Natasha on the show. And we, of course, love it. If you can go do that and if you’re listening right now on iTunes, it’s a quick little click away. So go do that. Give us five stars. We really love to see that.
Rob Break [00:05:07] Yeah, I do. And I want to say thanks to everybody that has done that too. I’ve got two more reviews that have come in since last time we done the show, and they’re both five stars. So the first one is from Fernandez. Twenty-five, he says play ball and it’s five stars. He says after listening to various episodes of your podcast, I can confidently say that you guys have inspired me to pursue real estate investing, to achieve my financial goals and ultimately fund the life that I want to live. I just purchased my first duplex and your analogy of hitting a few singles or doubles instead of always seeking that homerun deal was my motivation to finally pull the trigger on my first deal. Thank you. You will be hearing more from me soon, and that’s from Nick Fernandez. And the next one is this is fantastic content, and it is by Sean from Alberta. He says, hey, guys, I am a University of Alberta student and I’ve been looking into real estate. Investing is a long-term investment strategy to help secure my financial stability. I can honestly say that until I came upon your podcast, I’d been finding tidbits of information here and there. Now I have access to high quality content on a variety of topics. Personally, I found the episode on structuring of corporations to reduce liability fascinating and applicable. Thanks for doing what you do. So again, like these are great, and I really do appreciate everybody who takes the time because I know it only takes a couple of seconds to write it, you know, to write something down like that, but honestly, to think about it and to actually, you know, take the time out of your day to say, I’m going to go over and help these guys out really does mean something to us. And we have a hundred and five ratings. 98 of them are five stars. So I mean, it’s that’s amazing. I just it blows me away every time I look at it and there’s always new ones there. And so, you know, it’s nice to come over here and see that. And again, like Sandy said, it helps out a lot, so I really appreciate it. I get those reviews sandy
Sandy Mackay [00:07:13] and pretty cool. People taking action. So what are
Rob Break [00:07:16] you been up to?
Sandy Mackay [00:07:18] What have you been up to? There’s not a whole lot to report. I guess we are always taking action, I guess I’ll say, and we bought another property in a close in a couple of weeks. So that’ll be exciting and see a duplex in Hamilton. And as far away is another one. This is the only one who is going to buy lately because we usually try and get our get our clients in on the good deals. But one of our clients ended up deciding it wasn’t the right fit for them and didn’t go through it after the conditional period and we ended up just taking on ourselves. So it’s a good property. We think it’ll be a cool one. It’s a duplex, not a huge renovation project, not a huge one, but it’ll take some work to get up or running. And yeah, we’re excited about it and we’re just finishing up. We’re getting close to being done. We want those many of you listening to. This got to be a bunch of episodes back now, 10, 15 to go where we had bought a 24-unit property side by side. So we’re just getting close to finished renovating. Just one side of those been a long story with the city and things like that as far as getting these up and running. But they’re going to they’re going to be probably really looking back, probably our best property properties we own actually just in terms of the value we got them out and everything now that the market’s really helped us this year with the appreciation, which is always cool and a little bonus on top. So yeah, that’s about all
Rob Break [00:08:35] that was four units each side, wasn’t it?
Sandy Mackay [00:08:37] Two for each side?
Rob Break [00:08:39] Yeah, yeah, for each side. So that’s a that’s a pretty cool building.
Sandy Mackay [00:08:42] Yeah, yeah, setting. So it’ll be awesome to finished. Maybe we’ll get some photos of it and throw them around on our own personal page Facebook page somewhere. Maybe if people are friends with me or our or real estate group on Facebook, they can check those out. Probably at some point, you
Rob Break [00:08:59] know, you have a spot like that for things on the website, for their yeah, on the podcast website because we have made some changes to it like we’ve been talking about for quite some time, but we’re still far from really having the amount of content that I would like on there anyways. So we should have stuff like that. And I’ve got two rentals on the go myself right now and I’ve made a bunch of videos. A couple of them are up on YouTube. They probably come up if you search my name, but I think actually I’ve had like one view on one of them and zero views on the other kind of thing. I haven’t really. I just put them up the other day, the two of them together. I haven’t really done anything to promote them. I haven’t, you know, linked them, and put it out or anything like that, but just thought I’d mention it here. But things like that, we should eventually have up on our website, and I’d be a great place for us to showcase what we’ve been doing as well. I think Sandy, and let me tell you right now, I actually had a fight back the urge to start drinking before the show today, just because, you know, and I’m sure it’s the same thing for everyone that’s going through it all. But I mean, men, sometimes things just don’t go the way that I think they should. And that’s sort of something I wanted to point out today really quick. It’s just that I don’t think things ever go exactly the way you plan them to men. Even if your account for a little bit of a contingency with things, there’s always something that pops up that’ll sort of rattle you. And those are the kind of days where you feel like I do, especially when, like I said, we’ve got the two projects on the go. And of course, there’s things going on at both of them. They’re sort of throwing me off like, I won’t get into it, but basically, we had floor down how to rip out the entire floor of the apartment and just throw it out. So, you know, things like that happen. So but my point is that you do get through it. And when you look back on it, there are always, I guess, sort of fond memories of battles that you’ve overcome and obstacles that you’ve overcome. And these things are going to get into place pretty much any time you take on anything, whether it’s property management like Natasha is going to talk about today or real estate investing. I heard somebody that has a podcast that I used to listen to. He’s gone now. I don’t even think he does podcasts anymore, but he always said, as soon as you decide what you want to do as a real estate investor, I’d probably said this on the show before to automatically all of the obstacles are set into place. So if you decide you’re going to be a real estate investor, well, immediately all of the obstacles that come along with doing renovation projects and that kind of thing, those are instantly put into place. And to think that you can obviously learn from other people, but to think that you’re not going to be affected by some of those things is just not realistic. So you have to be resilient. You have to be able to fight through it. You have to be able to push through obstacles when they get in your way. But again, on the other side when you look back on it, it’s always worth it.
Sandy Mackay [00:12:05] And I think those little things that seem like tragedies at the time, though, won’t be long awaited until they’re really pretty. They’re comedies, and
Rob Break [00:12:15] it’s pretty much new really in the grand scheme of things, right? Yeah. But yeah, I just thought I’d mention that because I’ve sort of been feeling sorry for myself a little bit with what’s going on here. And I do know, like when you really put it into perspective that that these things are not big deals. But you know when you’re going through them, you can’t help but be stressed. So these are things that are just going to happen. And if you expect them, I guess you can stress a little less. OK. So anyways, we’re going to move on from that and get into our interview with Natasha here because she’s been waiting so patiently back there. And again, like I said, we’re sort of going to talk about Natasha’s business, of course, but we’re more going to focus on how she started it up and how she balances her life with her, her business that she’s running. So there is there’s a lot of different kind of businesses that people can run, or people start it that sort of coincide with real estate investing. There’s media and marketing, construction repairs, mortgage insurance, appliance sales and all that kind of stuff. And, of course, property management. So Natasha is going to talk a little bit about her business with us tonight. So after that long winded stuff there, Natasha, thanks for being with us.
Sandy Mackay [00:13:33] My pleasure. So Natasha, let’s go brief bio. And then maybe you can kind of extend it a little bit, Natasha. But that’s a contrario is a real estate investor and owner of Investors Choice Property Management. She has over 10 years of real estate investor experience and managing residential properties. The Typekit do. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your investing journey and even up to so far, for sure.
Natasha Cultraro [00:13:57] So I started investing back in 2006 with my husband, and it was kind of dry and boring, right? It wasn’t really exciting. I didn’t wasn’t really passionate about it, but we kind of stumbled into it because what happened was, he received it as barbecue, this big metal barbecue that his sister gifted to him for his birthday one year. And what happened was we lived in an apartment at the time, we rented an apartment in Scarborough, and we decided we were going to use this enormous barbecue. So we took it out to our balcony and we’re on the 11th floor and we just, you know, grabbed a couple of burgers and we started barbecuing. And if you can imagine what happened was the whole building’s fire alarms started going off and be in. The alarms were going off. There were another super tenant was on the speaker telling everybody to evacuate. So we evacuated the building and we kind of realized what happened there and we thought, OK, that wasn’t that didn’t work out very well. But what we wanted to do was we wanted to use this, this big, nice barbecue. So we looked at properties. We thought we should buy our own place so that we could use this thing. And we ended up buying a duplex in Oshawa. It wasn’t legal at the time. It was an inn last week, but we ended up legalizing it ourselves. So we lived in the upstairs and we rented out the basement, and that was our first taste of real estate investing.
Rob Break [00:15:33] Did everyone know it was you that set off the alarms?
Natasha Cultraro [00:15:36] No, we didn’t tell them. So please don’t tell them,
Rob Break [00:15:41] OK, I won’t tell them. OK, so that’s great. Thank you. So why did you decide to start this business, your property management business?
Natasha Cultraro [00:15:50] So once we bought that first place, the next one kind of came quickly and then we bought a couple more. Over the last 11 years, we’ve done rent to own, have converted houses into duplexes, and we have a couple of single-family homes as well. And all the while, my husband Paul, he’s really been focused on the investing side and I’ve been doing a lot of the management on my side now over the years are friends really started to see what we were doing and they were noticing our success and they were like, well, hey, if Natasha can do it, I can do it. So first it was my mom know she ended up buying a few properties in Peterborough and then my best friend, she started off as well. Paul’s mom ended up buying a four plex, so everybody started this whole thing. We kind of set off a trend in our little circle and we kind of we’re in the middle of that circle as the experts for our friends and our family. So we kind of led them in the right direction. We coach them a little bit. We advise them what they should be looking for and help them with their first investments. And then when the problems started coming with the tenant and with the legal matters regarding property management, they came running back to me and they said, I don’t know how to do this. Can you just do this for me? So that kind of really that kind of really was the beginning. And the birth of my business, because as I was doing my own investor, as I was managing my own investment properties, I was really gaining the knowledge and the experience that I was able to use to help my friends and family as well. So a little bit at a time they started to ask me to take over there the management of their properties. And that’s basically how investors choice was born.
Rob Break [00:17:37] Yeah. So it’s like, so you’re probably like, hey, if people are going to be getting me to do this anyways, I may as well be getting paid for it.
Natasha Cultraro [00:17:45] Exactly, exactly. And there’s value there. Then you might as well be able to, I’d rather, you know, open it up to more people instead of just doing it for my friends.
Rob Break [00:17:55] It’s pretty hard to ask family to pay for it, though, isn’t it?
Natasha Cultraro [00:17:58] It is, but my mom usually pays me, so I’m really so. I’m really thankful I try not to take her money. But she insists, and I usually just, you know, do stuff around the house with it and, you know, invite her over for dinner or something. So.
Rob Break [00:18:12] Oh, nice. That’s good. So let’s start talking more deeply about the business itself. So I mean, I guess I understand the reason why you started it, but how did you come up with the vision for the business? So in other words, you’re like, oh, I’m going to do property management, but then you have to take it on a bigger scale and say, how like, what are the steps, I guess, right?
Natasha Cultraro [00:18:37] Hmm. Well, what I did was I kind of looked at what I had and what I could work with. So I’m an investor, too. And so I thought that I would target investors as my as my audience and really gear my products and my services towards investors. Now when I say investors, so you’re so you might think like, well, who else invest in real estate, right? But a lot of people who have rental properties consider themselves landlords and not investors. Maybe they have just one or two properties and they kind of want to stop there. But what I’m focused on is the investors because the investors are more educated, and they have this higher expectation of what a property manager should do and what they want out of a property manager. You know, the work that I do on the service that I do is up to par with real estate investors. And I go above and beyond, and I’ll talk about a little bit about my services later. But I have got premium services that will manage properties the way that I manage my own.
Rob Break [00:19:42] So that was more the first thing you decided, OK, I’m going to offer more of a premium service and give everyone everything that I could possibly want out of it. So that was sort of the business vision.
Natasha Cultraro [00:19:55] That’s one of my products. But as an investor, I also understand the importance of cashflow. So the I do have a basic service that is more popular and it’s basically just everything that covers the owners legally. And that’s and that’s really what most people go for. Now that premium service is there as well. And what I do when the premium service that I don’t do in the basic service is I analyze the property very deeply and I look for ways to maximize cash flow and limit liability and plan long term maintenance. So those are that’s the real value added in the premium package that the basic service doesn’t include.
Rob Break [00:20:37] Do you want to give us a little bit of insight into how you might do those things, like what sort of things you look at?
Natasha Cultraro [00:20:44] Absolutely. So for the cash flow, I firstly look to see if the property is being used for its highest good and the most the best use of that property. I’ll take a look to see if there’s. First of all, if rents are at the right level, if they should be. And with the premium service, I automatically do rent increases every year. I will take a look at expenses, and I will manage those as well, so I will do an in-depth analysis of where the money is going and where, what the expenses are and whether they’re actually necessary or not. And I also look at the lease very closely and exactly understand what it is that that lease has included in the rent, as opposed to just little things that the tenant might ask for that might not actually be required, such as, you know, can we upgrade to these doorknobs, so the doorknobs are perfectly fine, they’re functional and they’re safe and they’re clean. And because and there’s nothing else that we need to do with them. So no, we’re not going to switch out those doorknobs or really in the end, the owner can decide whether they want to move ahead or not. But I will inform them at that time that that’s what their options are.
Rob Break [00:22:05] All right, thanks for answering that question, I guess, since you got the next one.
Sandy Mackay [00:22:09] I was going to some of the challenges, obviously, this is of some challenges. What were some of the main ones that you’ve encountered and how did you kind of?
Natasha Cultraro [00:22:17] cope with them? Well, it was. It was interesting listening to Rob speak earlier about his renovations because he was just, he was explaining he was just talking about my life. So it can be very chaotic sometimes. But some of the some of the biggest challenges obviously are getting my name out there, like doing the proper marketing, making sure that my audience knows who I am, where I am, how they can get a hold of me. You know what I offer building that client base. But the biggest thing really is the family sacrifices for me. So my husband and I, we have a daughter who’s eight and a half years old, and I’m trying really hard to maintain my, my work and life balance, but it doesn’t always work out that way. And there is a lot of emotions that come up with that as well. There is guilt, you know, there’s a lot of fear because I’m afraid, you know what, if this doesn’t work or what if I’m wasting my time? What if I’m wasting my efforts and money? I think, well, my will, my clients like me, will these people want my want, my business, that sort of thing. But then there’s also there’s also the euphoria that comes the excitement when I get a new client and the joy that comes with, you know, seeing something that I’ve worked so hard to put together actually manifest and come a lot.
Rob Break [00:23:39] So you just mentioned like that that one of the biggest challenges that you overcame was, I guess, the fear of Are you wasting your time? Are you wasting your money? Is this going to be worth it? So now if we want to like, break that rate down when it comes to stuff like that, how do you like what are the things that you do to actually overcome that fear? Because I know that that is a common thing for a lot of people when they’re even if even if they’re not talking about a business startup buying a property is a big thing, like a big deal. So most of the time what holds people back is fear. So how did you overcome it in the case of starting up this business?
Natasha Cultraro [00:24:21] Well, I feel it all the time and I feel that a little bit of it every day and I’m and there’s always that fear because there’s but the fear, I try to use it in a positive way, because when I have that, those big emotions within me, I use that fear to fuel my work. And I use that energy to focus even more, because that is that is exactly what I need to do to get the results that I’m looking for now. I’m really lucky because I have such a supportive family. I have a great circle of friends that are that are very supportive of me. So I appreciate that. But it’s difficult because I also have to take care of myself so that I don’t burn out. And I’ve actually started this exercise program and week 10 right now, so I’m feeling great. And the thing is that if when I exercise and when I take care of myself, when I eat, right, when I, when I take time to rest, when I need to, then I have more energy and I have more focus that helps me, that helps me with my business, which is what my business needs. There have been some days when I’ve really wanted to skip my workout, or there have been days that I have actually gorged on junk food, and I feel horrible, and I don’t have that energy. I don’t have that focus or that drive. So I find that really taking care of myself is a big part of making this business happen, which is ironic because it comes back to that work-life balance again.
Sandy Mackay [00:25:58] And yeah, and I guess maybe you already mentioned that, but how do you balance everything? How do you have that life balance when starting a business?
Natasha Cultraro [00:26:07] Well, it’s kind of tricky, because at first, I thought I could schedule everything in a tent. I put in my I make sure I exercise every day. You know, I make sure that I have time to cook healthy meals. I meditate every single morning and take time to rest, take time to be with my family, take time to do my continuous learning, my reading, my podcasts, my YouTube channels. But I can’t connect to that schedule every single day because in the during the stay up process, my schedules are so chaotic and that kind of really goes out the window. But I know that there’s this promise of success that keeps me going even through the chaos. So I have a schedule. I try to stick to it because I know if I stick to it, I’ll have the energy that I need and the focus that I need. But I can’t always stick to it. And it’s kind of like a limbo where I’m not really. I don’t really have one foot on one where I’ve got one foot on one side and one foot on the other and just kind of trying to balance in between. It’s really, it’s really interesting.
Rob Break [00:27:15] I like here’s one thing that I’ve noticed is that I can sit, and I can work nonstop. The work doesn’t ever end, you know. So if you don’t take the time to balance out the rest of it and purposely sit down and actually decide, like you’re saying, to schedule in rest the schedule and family, time to schedule in time to exercise, all of those things have like for me, I’ve got to schedule them in or else they don’t happen because, you know, no matter, no matter how much work, I think I get done. There’s always more. And I’m always falling behind as far as I’m concerned. So I’m sure it’s the same thing for you, but it’s so important to actually get your head right or else there’s been times where when you do burnout and you’re trying to get something done that should take you five minutes, you end up staring at a computer screen for 20 minutes and then you and then you sort of shake yourself back to reality and go, what was I doing again? And so the importance of what you just talked about, I find that it’s very prudent, I guess, in this situation. And then let’s talk about mindset a little bit. So., I think mindset is a big part of it, too. So how does that translate into your business?
Natasha Cultraro [00:28:35] Mindset is really important to any big project or any little project or anything that we do in life. I mean, I don’t need you to quote this, but I know everybody, everybody knows this quote. And it’s whether you think you can or you think you can’t. You’re right. It’s really about staying positive and committed. And again, I’m going to I’m going to reference what you said earlier in the podcast, Rob, about when you decide you want to be a real estate investor. That’s when all of the challenges come up. And that’s because you’ve committed to it. You’ve committed and you’re committed, and you’ve really committed. Then there’s no turning back. So I do a lot of things that really help me keep that positive mindset because it’s very easy to slip and give up and get down on yourself. But it’s so and because of that big commitment, I have to I just have to charge through it, and I just have to get it done right. My circle and I, we are we are aware of the law of attraction and some other manifestation techniques. So our daily meditation is good for clearing my head. And you know, the mindfulness is good for keeping me sharp and focused, and it’s just so critical for my life, let alone my business. So it’s a huge part of that. I also have a whiteboard where I have all of my goals written up, and to be honest, my whiteboard is in my home office. So I also have my goals written on a piece of paper that I teach in my bathroom mirror because every morning, as I’m brushing my teeth, I’m looking at that and I’m reminding myself and draining in my subconscious the goals that I’d like to accomplish and just putting that energy out there. I do lots of other things. I do visualization. So just like even, it’s kind of like pretending or you just imagining. But apparently, it’s supposed to have these really great magical powers where we’re at home, where it really manifests, they’re the things that you’re thinking about. And lastly, I would talk about affirmations because affirmations are really something basically like a sentence that say, I am going to grow this business to, you know, x amount of dollars by this date. And you just repeat that to yourself, you know, every day. And it’s just it’s kind of convincing yourself subconsciously so that physically and mentally, you are able to believe you can do it and actually are actually do it.
Rob Break [00:31:22] Yeah, I agree. I mean, if you say those things to yourself, it’s not like they just magically appear. But those are the things that get into your head where you want to be. And once you know where you want to be, you will start. You even subconsciously start taking those actions that are going to get you to that place. And I mean, I hope nobody takes us through our way because I don’t mean it in in a sort of tongue in cheek way. But I think my wife has that ability to sort of manifest things because I find that sort of whatever she sort of comes out to me and says, you know what? I think that we should do this, or I really want this. And it’s not always like physical thing. It’s sometimes it’s a vacation or a change in the lot in life. And it seems that she’s when you when you set your mind to something as strongly as she does, I believe that she’s able to bring that stuff around pretty easily. And so I’ve noticed that, and I tried to take a cue from her. It’s all about setting your mind on something and really just following it through until it becomes reality. So thank you for all of those tips here. Now I want to ask you, I guess we also need inspiration for like carrying on and doing all this stuff as well. So what are the things that inspire you in your life and where do you get motivation to continue doing this business?
Natasha Cultraro [00:32:57] Well, about almost 10 years ago now, I got this audio book from Tony Robbins, and it was called the giant Western or something like that. And that really, really moved me. So I’ve listened to that audio book a few times over the years, and I had the pleasure of seeing Tony Robbins two years ago when he came to Toronto, and there was this one thing that he said that really resonated with me. Well, there were a lot of things. But when it comes to business and when it comes to starting up and succeeding, he had a recipe. He had a science for success and that recipe was get obsessed. Take massive action. And lastly, what he called grace or luck. So with the combination of these three things, she guarantees success because she said, this is a science. It’s not an art. So the first part getting obsessed. That’s just your crazy focus. It’s just your, you know when you’re when you’re talking your brain, you’re breathing. You’re dreaming, you’re you know, you’re living, you’re thinking, your business. It’s just all over you and in you and around you because there’s nothing else. That’s the obsession. Mm-Hmm. And next is the take massive action. So what can you do? Do everything you can do and then do more just to try and get your business up. You’ve got to do the right things. You’ve got to inform yourself and you’ve got to execute it effectively. And that’s another key part of that. Taking the massive action is the effective execution. And lastly, the grace or the luck. And I kind of think that the mindset piece has a lot to do with that. So I’ll just leave that there because I talked about that for quite a bit. Kind of a little passion of mine.
Rob Break [00:34:59] I love it. And you know, somebody else said, if I if I can try to remember how to get this thing right, it was basically luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. So I think that that last part is sort of off all of that combined. And that’s really cool. Yeah. Where else do you get some motivation from?
Natasha Cultraro [00:35:21] I’ve been friends with my friend Karen. She’s actually my BFFs. And we’ve been friends since the second grade. Now, Karen is really inspiring for me because she was laid off from her job and she managed to buy a Baskin-Robbins franchise. And I don’t know how she did it, but she works for a she worked like 18-hour days for a year and a half, and we never saw her. And what she was doing was she was obsessed. She was taking that massive action and she had that luck or that grace and she made it fly. And that was so impressive to me and so inspiring. I it was a real reality check, too, because I saw all the hours and all the effort and all of the energy that went in that like we didn’t get to see her at all for about a year and a half because she was at that store, you know, 14 hours a day. But she is really my hero and she’s my inspiration and she’s also investing in real estate. And now that she has this freedom, this is the freedom that that that she gets from, from having her own business. So she has the freedom to spend her time with her family and friends. She can prioritize what it is she wants to do, and she has passive income coming in. She’s got a manager watching the store and of course, her real estate investments are cash flowing positively so. So she’s having a great time.
Rob Break [00:36:54] Yeah, she’s having a great time now.
Sandy Mackay [00:36:57] Now we’re seeing a lot of it’s part of the process is always a good time challenging. I think a lot of that is part of the fun, right? Totally. Yeah. So can you tell us in touch, tell us a bit about your company and I, you know what you’ve built here through all this.
Natasha Cultraro [00:37:15] I’ve built a company called Investors Choice Property Management, and I serve residential properties in Durham Region and Peterborough. I have a lot of experience, like I said in Durham Region and Peterborough, because that’s where my investments are. I’ve got my local teams that I trust, so my contractors, my professionals, that sort of thing, and I now offer two packages. One is called the basic package and the other is the premium. So the basic package covers everything that’s legally required to keep your tenant or how to keep your investment property legal. So that includes the fire alarm checks. You know, I sell the I fill the vacancies with tenants, I handle the evictions with a paralegal, I do inspections, I do drive by exterior inspections, and I do everything that that is legally required to keep your property safe and functional and tenanted so that that basic service, including the including filling the vacancies, is a flat rate of eight percent of monthly rent every month. Now my premium package is all everything in the basic package, but above and beyond. So what I do is I do additional interior inspections, and this is really to help me rate my report when it comes to long term maintenance planning. So when we have a long-term maintenance plan, it is less surprising to the owner when something goes wrong and there’s a big fix that needs to happen or a medium fix or a small fix. This is something that the investor knows in advance, and it’s helpful to plan that those expenses ahead of time. Now this is the plan where I do the cash flow analysis. This is the plan where I’m really working to maximize the cash flow of the property, and I’m trying to minimize the liability of the property.
Rob Break [00:39:25] OK? And an eight percent flat rate, and that includes filling vacancies.
Natasha Cultraro [00:39:30] That’s correct. The basic plan includes filling vacancies. It’s an eight percent flat rate, the premium plan is a 10 percent flat rate, and if you’re just looking for filling a vacancy, it’s 75 percent of the rent. So. So I do offer that as well because I’ve had a lot of requests for that.
Rob Break [00:39:50] Yeah, that’s one of the biggest challenges that people come across. So actually filling that, especially when they’re out of town, right out of town, investors need somebody who’s in town that can show the place. Yeah. OK, well, now you’ve told us what you offer. So how can people get in touch with you if they would like to maybe talk to you a little bit more about it?
Natasha Cultraro [00:40:11] You can send me an email at info at I.S. PM Pro’s dot com. I’ve got a website and you can visit that at 8pm fros dot com so that I see PM P R O Ask.com, or you can call me directly. My number is four one six eight seven seven eight zero four five.
Rob Break [00:40:35] Oh, awesome, OK. And again, like always, you don’t have to scramble to write that stuff down. Don’t worry, you can just go to the to the info for that episode. For this episode, episode fifty-nine and you’ll find all of the links and stuff there for Natasha service. And you know, I want to thank you again, because really there is there is a lot of mental stuff that people just maybe a lot of people don’t take into consideration. And I think that this has helped I be a good guide to what sort of things to expect and how to overcome them. And you know, even these things, like Tony Robbins program, I think it’s called Awaken the giant within
Sandy Mackay [00:41:17] this
Natasha Cultraro [00:41:19] part of me. Yeah, that’s what it was.
Sandy Mackay [00:41:20] This the giant with an
Rob Break [00:41:22] OK, well, it’s one of those things. One of the three things that we said here tonight, that’s what it is. But anyway, the giant within is part of the title, and that’s one of the one of those things. You know, these little suggestions of places to go and get more information really like that is chock full of guidance for people that are, you know, dealing with the fear of either buying properties or starting a business or whatever it may be. So I want to thank you again for helping us out with all of this stuff.
Natasha Cultraro [00:41:53] My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Rob Break [00:41:56] And Sandi, if somebody wants to reach out to you, how can they get in touch with you?
Sandy Mackay [00:42:01] Best way to reach me is to email us at info at Mackay Realty Network. Com Or simply give us a call. Nano five three to eight two eight three three three is our office number and just ask for Sandi.
Rob Break [00:42:12] OK, so if anyone wants to reach me, of course they can reach me at our email for the for the podcast. It is info at Breakthrough Aria podcast Dot S.A. If they want to talk to me a little bit more about what we’re doing out in this end of Toronto or GTA. And you can just give me a call directly on my cell two eight nine nine two seven zero four six four And I mean, I’ve got a bunch of calls lately of people maybe not even necessarily looking to invest out here, but just people that are actually calling me and saying, hey, you know, I listen to the show and and really like it. So I’m loving those calls to again, you know, thanks everybody. And thanks, Sandy. Thanks, Natasha. Thanks to all the listeners and everyone. This wrote reviews, and I guess that’s another one in the book. Say Sandy.
Sandy Mackay [00:42:57] Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a good one day. Santosh is awesome, and I guess that’s a wrap.
Rob Break [00:43:03] Yeah, that’s a wrap. That’s our new one. All right, guys, have a good night. Now. Now.