Podcast Transcription

Erwin Szeto [00:00:07] Hello, and welcome to the truth about real estate investing show. My name is Erwin Szeto, always bringing you the truth about real estate investing. I’m back from vacation. Yes, I know I was back like two weeks ago from Hong Kong and China, but this time I’m back from our cruise trip. We had booked long before our we booked our trip to Hong Kong. This time we took a Norwegian Bliss cruise out of Miami with stops in St. Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands and Tortola British Virgin Island, which was my personal favorite thanks to the lovely views of rainforest and coastlines. And it’s one of the nicest beaches ever been to. It’s called King Beach in case you’re ever in the area. Plus, the Bahamas, we did some amazing snorkeling right off the beach in Bacons Bay, St. Thomas. I was struggling with land developer. Charles was dad and he goes by far because he’s either serious. Trouper is in the sixties and he swam the entire length of the beach while we walked it. My brother and I, my brother and I are in our forties. But you know, whatever, my brother’s an advanced diver. I’m a recreational diver. We both like to dove. I’m obviously more passionate. He’s a biologist by trade, so he loves animals. Can he goes crazy excited when he sees sea life? But we were traveling with kids, so snorkeling we’ll have to do. We did it right off the beach, so it didn’t cost us anything other than other than rental of the struggles which made me think I’ll hit the next time a child without kids, I’ll bring my own snorkel to save the 20 dollars us. We saw lots of tropical fish, some even the size of my forearm. I found us a school of cuttlefish, which is super cool. And then the highlight was we saw an octopus. It was actually camouflage. My brother’s quite a very good diver again, and he spotted the octopus. It was camouflage to the coral as it was wedged between in like a small hole. I didn’t see it until it, but I pointed it there. And then we hung out with her like a friend for a bit, and we’re treated to a show as it changed colors to an almost white. I have no idea why an animal in the wild would change to color white, other than to let us know what is pissed off. So we left it alone. Circling brought back memories of my brother, and I remember growing up as kids, we restore the Bahamas when the coral was so much healthier and there is a lot more fish closer to the beach. Anyways, this whole event and trip was a great bonding experience for all of us. On this trip was my wife and kids. Tony, my brother, his wife and kid, my mom, friends of the show trials, while land developer and Andy Tran, who most of you know for his basement suite consulting business in I was called in suite designs. Oh, Suite Edition’s suite additions in suite designs is our friend Don Tarragona. They both brought their families, including the parents. So our tour group was twenty six people and it was so much fun. This wasn’t completely planned. It was just a great deal that was presented to us by Charles’s dad while it was too good to pass up. There’s a great group of people already knew were going, and so we just signed up. And then I told my brother about it and he said, Yeah, it’s a great deal, is go. It was his first cruise, so he was highly skeptical because he’s more of a he’s a foodie and he’s more or less adventurous type travelers. You know, the people who had to like, walk Paris for like ten days and stuff like that. Try lots of fancy restaurants. But he’s got young in my niece melodies only two years old. So they wanted the convenience of staying much closer to your room, which is much easier when you have a toddler in travel. Anyways, I call this having multiple flavors of cake and eating it too. To explain that Charles, maybe for my friends who are first my clients as I am a realtor, now an untapped practicing realtor, but that’s another story. Then they became close friends of mine while young, ambitious entrepreneurs. So it’s great to get together like family to enjoy a pleasure cruise. We get each other. Whereas many of the investors know, especially in more busy investors, know not many people get you. They don’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish. They don’t understand why you need more than one house. They don’t understand why you have millions and billions of dollars of debt. Good debt, mind you, but they don’t understand it anyways. These guys get it. Obviously, I love cruising so much. I already book my next cruise for early. Twenty nineteen. You see, I’m turning 40 in early 2019 and that things are going down when I turned 18 and then when again, when I turn 30, I’m sure I thought this almost every year since then. Anyways, my wife and I are attending the 10X Growth Conference by Grand Cordon in Miami, so I threw the idea one on hop on a cruise four night cruise right out of Miami in the Caribbean. Since we’re already in Miami and it’s so much cheaper to stay on a cruise ship and eat on a cruise ship versus staying in Miami, for example, our Airbnb for four nights is like twelve hundred dollars. US versus our cruise is between the two of us is under a hundred dollars us. Get for four nights and that includes meals. Of course, a couple of friends look to be coming as well. And how great is that? We are going to a motivational conference whenever I’ve heard this is one of the best three day conference, only 100 bucks us for the cheap seats for bye week with these fellow entrepreneurs to mastermind and have a good time and truly love mixing business with pleasure. Quick announcement Before we get to our guests, I’m still getting questions almost daily on a daily basis on the timing of Real Estate the future Real Estate blockchain. Blockchain in Real Estate. Am I worried about interest rates and bubbles? And we’re starting to see more talk about a coming recession and I kind of agree. The recent announcement of the GM plant closing in Oshawa, et cetera, et cetera. So come January and my monthly network meeting, we don’t have a date or venue yet, but we’ll have that soon. I will go over how I see the world, how that research drives my decisions. I’m not an economist. I did do for credits of it in university, so I did four terms of economics, but hardly makes me an expert. I don’t know how you quantify four terms in terms of credits, but whatever I do four terms of economics. I’ve coached multiple multimillionaire Real Estate investors and I spent a lot of time around other Real Estate multi-millionaires. So hopefully I’ll find something along the way. I’ll show the research anyways. You may make your own decisions. If you’re not on the invite, this go to WW W Dot Truth about Real Estate investing dossier slash meeting. Again, this WW w dot truth about Real Estate investing dossier slash meeting. Also, our January guest speakers are currently developing a small piece of land and building from scratch two houses on a lot that they already bought. With two houses on it, they bought a Dubeau lot. There’s already a house on it. All the details in January, but pretty cool. You buy one property and then they’re severing the lot to build two more properties on it. Pretty cool, huh? For a total of, I think, four properties and eight units, again, they’ll have all the details. It’s pretty cool stuff. Again, the building from scratch as they’re hiring all the contractors to and they’ve got went through the whole permit process and variances. And now they’re digging in, they’re just doing footings and concrete forms are up for their basement foundations again. Crazy, cool stuff. Not many people have. These are able to share these types of this type of information, so this is a rare opportunity to hear how small investors can do this. So how do they do it? Any trend in trials, what will be at my networking event again in January to share how they went about doing it? So same link is going to get on the invite list. Let me WW truth about real estate investing dossier slash meeting. Hope to see you there. Have you met Doug and Anna Scott? No, they are at every networking event. They even split up to divide and conquer if there are events going on at the same time. Last time I saw Doug, it was at the Ontario Landlord Watch Conference, but not enough. She was at Scott McGill Risky Spa event in Toronto, where she is one of the member coaches that can also host her own networking meeting in Cambridge, Ontario. I’ve been there, it’s before. It’s great. It’s an energetic group of action takers. My wife has spoken there once I spoke there just a few months ago. I highly recommend if you’re in the area that you check them out or enough in the area again in and are pretty much at every event. They’re at my lunch just a few weeks ago with Don Campbell. They tend pretty much every germ REI meeting in the wild thing is they live in Waterloo, but our regulars and members of the germ REI meetings take place all where would be. So anyone who’s done that drive across the four one in the evening, on a weeknight in a how nutty that is? Also on a good day. I think this 90 minutes with no traffic. Oh, about five hours and Toronto traffic. Anyways, here’s their story. Even though they started late in life, investing, just a few properties allowed Doug and Anna to retire after thirty three years of work in financial services and tech to retire five years early. And they’re going to tell us how what retirement life is like because I think that’s all what all of us want. I think all of us want a nice retirement, comfortable fun and sooner than later, the house retirement. What retirement means and being full time investors, what do they do on a daily basis, how they got started, how to become a great networker and as always, advice for the new investor. So without further ado, I give you Doug and Anna Scott, but he has been up to. How was your summer? I’ve seen you guys since. Whoa, what did they see you guys?

Anna Scott [00:09:08] It was June and July zero. I mean. That’s when you and your lovely wife presented an army to wow. It’s been a long time renewal. How’s your summer? So very good. We’ve been doing a little bit of private lending, but we also did some traveling Eau Claire in Newfoundland for a couple of weeks, and I was in Calgary late July and I was just like, We missed the stampede. That’s right, we were visiting our daughter Stampede.

Erwin Szeto [00:09:37] So funny. Like everyone, I went to Calgary the first time and I didn’t research anything, just arrived with a friend’s wedding, just arrived like, Oh, I see, I see, like one person wearing cowboy boots and a hat come stampede week. You stand out if you don’t wear these things

Anna Scott [00:09:54] between the white had a particular activity and a customer there. Cool.

Doug Scott [00:10:02] Yeah. So we are just. We feel like we’ve been busy enough, even though we’re retired from our day jobs seems to be a lot, lot to fill, fill our days anyway. Hmm.

Erwin Szeto [00:10:14] Awesome. OK. So can I ask you about private lending? Because none of that many people do it. So a lot of people don’t even understand what that is. What is it you’re looking for when you’re in your private lending?

Anna Scott [00:10:23] Well, the we actually just started that in the last six months. A friend of mine had come forward. She’s doing some flips and wanted to know if I was interested in helping her out for this month period. She bought the property, needed some additional funding to help do the renovation. Then had refinanced. Oh, actually, no. She put that she and she sold. All of you sold it and the closes happening this week, in fact. So just lent her a certain amount of money for a 14 percent annualized equivalent. And yeah, I get that all back next week.

Doug Scott [00:10:59] So, yeah, so far, the lending has been to people. Though we’ve known for a while, we haven’t endeavored to far too far into the outside world, I guess.

Erwin Szeto [00:11:13] Right. So, you know, and you know, the community where the property is and all that, that’s right.

Anna Scott [00:11:18] That’s right. There was a couple of short term lending because of the day that they closed the exchange or extended or the seller wouldn’t extend. So a couple of friends to come forward ask, Could you build for one of us for 11 days? And one was for six weeks. They already had the financing in place. They just needed something to bridge them for a short period of time. Got it.

Erwin Szeto [00:11:39] So the 14 percent interest is annualized over a six week period. That’s correct. I got it. Got it. Got it. No lender fee or anything like that. Any additional charges you had on that.

Anna Scott [00:11:49] There was a nominal lender fee, but that was paid for by the borrower only $500

Doug Scott [00:11:55] or that was the brokerage available

Anna Scott [00:11:58] for broker’s fee. So it’s been mostly to help a few friends out, and we’ve most recently become aware of another opportunity where the individual is looking to invest in container or shipping containers that person. So, yeah, so we thought, OK, we’ll look into that. I little Warren 15 percent one year, so we thought, OK, that’s really interesting. Let’s see what we could do with that one.

Erwin Szeto [00:12:26] Interesting. But what’s the plan like? What what’s the plan with the with the shipping container houses? Are they like this is rural? Is this urban?

Anna Scott [00:12:33] Like, No, it’s in Alberta and it’s near Edmonton, and there’s quite a bit of popularity with smaller houses. So they’re converting compressed and combining them into livable spaces. And their business model is buying a piece of land that can be seven. So two buildings on the property.

Erwin Szeto [00:12:55] Fascinating. Are you able to share who this is or is? This is still confidential stuff?

Anna Scott [00:13:01] Well, I haven’t actually spoken with that person, so I think we should probably get their permission, but. Cool. So I can’t really say one or the other, but oh, it’s they’re starting up. It’s I’m sure longer term she wouldn’t mind me revealing her name. Yeah, at this point, I’m not sure if I can.

Erwin Szeto [00:13:17] All right. No, because just the social aspect of containers gives people. And for the business benefit, I’m sure you guys understand, you know, everything we buy, a lot of it comes in our shipping containers. But the nature of the business is we don’t have much to export back to them. Yeah, that’s great. So this can be in this cheaper for containers just to stay here than to usually use them as cheaper for them just to build more of them and continue to ship them here. And then we just accumulate these and it’s essentially garbage. But these things are very expensive in their fullest deal. And yeah, that’s really interesting. Oh, good luck to you guys, and good luck to you, to your friends business. Like it’s again, like there’s the environmental impact of these, of these shipping containers. It needs to be a good use for them because I’ve only seen like videos on Facebook and stuff, people building like, like kind of like essentially cottages, like plopping them on lakefront property.

Doug Scott [00:14:12] And these are all things look like modern building in the city.

Anna Scott [00:14:19] Fascinating. The way she described it is just still kind of in its infancy, but they essentially there’s you really can’t. Even their scene was almost the same will be covered in such a way that you really can’t tell that they’re two shipping containers built together. So we’re just in the beginning, we’ve seen a couple of videos where they’re cutting out what could be windows or, you know, you’re sliding doors will be going into. It would be great to see the finished product. So they’ve been actively watching what they’ve been doing with that or visiting with her.

Erwin Szeto [00:14:50] Very cool. Well, the one caveat is there’s a built in Hamilton that’s exactly about shipping containers, and it’s well known that it’s going to costs more to use from their situation for the shipping containers versus just a build from traditional build. And we actually looked into buying it in a shipping container pools and a few of those. Did you ever see that?

Anna Scott [00:15:09] Yes, I have seen them. Yes. And they threw glass on two sides and you actually see two people swimming for them. And that’s super.

Erwin Szeto [00:15:17] And they would they were craning over your head. That’s how they get them in.

Anna Scott [00:15:20] Right, right? Yes, you and I must have seen the same video

Erwin Szeto [00:15:26] Are you on Facebook? That’s where I saw it. I don’t know where you were.

Anna Scott [00:15:28] Yeah, that’s where I saw it as well.

Erwin Szeto [00:15:29] I mean, Facebook friends with the fix that afterwards. So you actually made some good points like everything you did in the other private lending makes a lot of sense. And I’ll share why I say it, because for example, I have a friend of mine who lent private money to. I don’t know what the term was, what the exit plan was, but she lend it to a lady of property near and near Fairview Mall in Toronto. It’s a good area. And the lady defaulted. But again, like what you did right was there was an intent. There was a defined exit for the property in your money. In this case, I don’t know what it was because I think the intention was that she would continue to live there and keep paying interest payments, right? And then what went wrong was for people who don’t pay enough attention was the first mortgage fell out of order and then they are then the process started for the first mortgage to take that, take the house back and then the fees are just ridiculous. I’m actually surprised they’d be in Canada, where everything is very protective of the consumer. How crazy the fees were. And then my friend actually ended up having to purchase the house and pay for all these fees, even though everything was being made right. The lesson here is for anyone who doesn’t know private lending. The lesson here is like you to keep an eye on the first mortgage, and it’s pretty simple. I mean, keep an eye on someone else’s first mortgage. If your interest payments are bouncing, they’re probably not making payments to the first week. Right? So if your interest payments are bouncing that red flags Spidey senses should be going off, find out. And then worst case, start making payments to the first directly. So that’s just a lesson for the listeners who want to do. Private lender is that the whole disaster is losing money now, and she’s and she owns a house for a lady that can’t afford it. And so it’s a bad, bad situation.

Doug Scott [00:17:13] Hopefully, it’ll turn out well in the long run. Friends of ours went through a similar situation, managed to take over the property, and now they say it’s one of their best assets for investing, but it’s taken a number of years for that to happen.

Erwin Szeto [00:17:30] So that’s tough. You know, like just buying it and immediately being a good investment property.

Anna Scott [00:17:37] You know, we’ve done a little bit. We have a few rental properties and we also have done some land development deals and it’s really just more of a diversified portfolio. We made heard about private lending and some of the benefits of that rates of return that some folks were getting. So we thought, you know what? Invest a little bit in that as well and spread it around a little bit more diversity and.

Doug Scott [00:18:01] So what we’re doing from my side, having that actual immediate income in the short term was a bit of a benefit long term buy and holds, you know, early days or early years of having a property, even though it shows us cash flying and probably leaving the money in the bank account, building the capital reserve and with the properties that we have within the corporation, that was we haven’t actually taken any money out from that corporation yet. There’s been those three of three and a half years now, I guess, but we haven’t needed to.

Erwin Szeto [00:18:42] What year did you guys get started investing in real estate?

Anna Scott [00:18:46] We just we just started in April of 2015 and we had no where we owned our house. We had our cottage pretty much paid off. We were renting out our cottage occasionally to family and friends. We really didn’t go whole hog. We didn’t. You’re being bitter about. But then we had tend to be Real Estate education weekend that kind of lit the fire underneath us and said, You know what, we think to this point, we really knew we wanted to do it, but we didn’t know how. And it wasn’t until we had gotten a little bit more information that some of the people began networking, heard what they were doing that and got ourselves educated, but that we had the courage and the confidence to start acquiring properties, renting out our cottage a little more frequently think that it was basically a little world that we were exposed to with respect to real estate investing. So in the time that prior to 2015, we just had the house and the cottage. And since then we’ve acquired seven more. We’re looking at seven more mix of multi-use between duplexes or Plex’s triplex with an eight unit as well. And we’re now looking to go to commercial financing and get an eight 20 unit going next.

Erwin Szeto [00:19:57] Very cool. Very cool. What cities are you in cities or your investment properties in

Anna Scott [00:20:03] there in London, Ontario? Midland, Ontario Well, yeah, and we have one in Lucknow, which is a small rural community just north of Godrich, right near the cottage, actually. So but it’s one of our best income producing properties. Oh, how come? It was.

Doug Scott [00:20:27] Yeah. So the eight unit property, you only got it. Rents were fairly, fairly low and we’ve been able to boost those rents, of course, being in rural Ontario. The pricing was nowhere, nowhere compared to, say, kW or Hamilton, more or less. So we’re able to get a relatively low cash flow as well. But realistically, probably not a lot of appreciation going, Oh no.

Erwin Szeto [00:20:54] Even though it’s commercial, like commercial thrived on the values based on their operating income.

Doug Scott [00:21:00] It’s so small. Eight hundred people town sort of thing. Yeah, no. Sorry, how many voted on how many people that still need a place to live?

Anna Scott [00:21:11] You know it does really well for cash flow. From a cap rate perspective, I think we started off with

Doug Scott [00:21:16] both and the appraisals comp. about seven

Anna Scott [00:21:20] seven percent cap. So it’s otherwise doable for us.

Erwin Szeto [00:21:25] Condo building, eight hundred people.

Anna Scott [00:21:28] That’s true. Yeah, that’s really well for us.

Erwin Szeto [00:21:31] Fantastic. Fantastic. What can investments did you do before 2015?

Doug Scott [00:21:36] There’s the usual mutual fund and bonds RSP type two. So you

Anna Scott [00:21:43] say

Erwin Szeto [00:21:44] you’re rich, right?

Doug Scott [00:21:47] Well, certainly we were always the type pay off that mortgage, so we were doing all the everything we could to pay it down. And that certainly allowed us to have access to decent capital base for getting him to Real Estate.

Anna Scott [00:22:06] We were the Canadians who, you know, we were conditioned by the banks and other financial institutions that that is, pay down debt, save to, well, save yourself the wealth. And in the three little over three years that we’ve been investing in Real Estate, we have almost as much equity in those properties than what we’ve been able to save through just savings and in our it’s our employment in the last 30 plus years, it’s been phenomenal. I mean, we’ve done well with our investments and we were conditioned to just save yourself the wealth. But until we started doing real estate, it made a huge difference. You know, we actually just retired in REIN and by investing in real estate, it enabled us to accelerate exponentially our ability to contract that timeline of when we would otherwise have been able to retire. Does that equity appreciation and the other related Real Estate investments wouldn’t doing? It’s just taking a moment.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:10] And then just take a moment to think about that. Doubled what you accumulated in 30 plus years. So which you had already done 30 plus years, you replicated that for years.

Anna Scott [00:23:22] We’re pretty close. Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:24] And maybe four years

Doug Scott [00:23:26] or so that’s on paper, right? We haven’t sold anything.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:29] Yeah, I know people say like, Oh, of course, every conversation with a financial person, like someone who works for a financial industry and it’s like, Oh, your house isn’t liquid, it really you me 30 days, I’ll turn it into cash.

Anna Scott [00:23:42] That’s true.

Erwin Szeto [00:23:43] This is not in this market right now, says, well, that’s not every market like Wolf. The market continued to get much better

Anna Scott [00:23:53] when we started in Real Estate, we set a goal first of a plan, we said, You know what? We took a look at what our expenses were, what it costs to leave the lights on. If you know, basic expenses and bills, what kind of. And we looked at the income we were making and we said, what is the minimum income that we would require to be able to have financial freedom? And I frequently quote to her vicar, who said, So freedom comes with where you are. Your income exceeds your expenses and passive income exceeds your expenses. So what that number ends up being for you is still subjective. But so that we have that philosophy, is that okay? Where is that magic sweet spot with her number in terms of when we would be otherwise be able to retire? And so it was through all these other investments, Real Estate related, that enabled us to say, OK, this is the point at which we will be comfortable and we can retire wholeheartedly. And that was able to cheat on three and a half years.

Erwin Szeto [00:24:54] So without the Real Estate, where would you be without the additional Real Estate still working?

Anna Scott [00:24:58] Absolutely.

Doug Scott [00:24:59] Silly working would still be working for another three or four years. Five years, maybe. Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:25:06] So and you’d enjoy that, right?

Doug Scott [00:25:08] Because there were times that it was fun and exciting, but it has been doing my job for over 30 years’ time for a change

Anna Scott [00:25:22] and Real Estate. Was it afforded just a little bit more? We wanted something to be able to retire to as opposed to retire from Real Estate was exciting. We learned so much. We’re meeting some of the interesting people are, you know, expansive knowledge in relationships and networking has grown significantly. So it really made that leap to retirement that much easier as well because quite frankly, the day job was getting in the way of the Real Estate that we were going to networking events, going to various meetup groups, you know, having dinners and doing all sorts of other activities that you still have to get to work the next morning. And it was it people starting to book meetings and appointments during the day, and then it just became too invasive. I guess you could say that the Real Estate was more interesting, more exciting than the day job, which is really becoming inconvenient for them. And then we just had an hour to make this work. So we’re sort of thinking about that, as well as when finances are non-existent, assets are Real Estate assets at that time. Can we make this happen? And sure enough, we made it happen to me.

Erwin Szeto [00:26:28] So what I want to get across listeners is I want to try to help motivate people, which is kind of funny because we shouldn’t really be trying to motivate people, but it will. I’ll make the point is, what you’ve gone through as real estate investors is worth five years off your retirement age.

Anna Scott [00:26:44] Oh my gosh, I can’t say enough about that. Absolutely. We were very strategic in our planning and how we wanted to do it because we said we wanted. We wanted to acquire property first because they were greater rates of return. Of the seven properties we have, we’ve done six joint ventures as many partners. So the six properties are really very passive for us. We’ve just put down payments down. We have very little contact and talk to our partners quite regularly, frequently. But the true involvement on our side isn’t as extensive as perhaps it otherwise be. If we were property matching it, that we property manager, eight unit and even then it’s not excessive in terms of time. Spending on what’s happening is maybe attrition, turnover, tenants leaving and we might have to do some work. Most recently, we just started windows, but we’re getting, you know, painting done. We’re getting some, you know, carpet cleaning, and it’s so easy just to pick up the phone and make those arrangements. Have those people come in and do all sorts of really when we don’t have turnover, we only have three turnover in the three, three to eight years. It’s maybe four or five hours a month is the total time commitment for managing a unit at this point when we do have turnover. I mean, we do track our own personal time and whether we have to hire other people to do things. And increasingly, we’re starting to have. We thought initially we found we had one unit that we had to work. The flooring took the baseboard heaters we replaced with new heaters. The building we acquired was built in 84. But it’s, you know, slowly this things that need to be replaced with put a new fund within six months. We bought it. So we’re improving the units. But, you know, putting all sorts of great new stuff in and then increasing the rents after the previous tenant as we left, so dug in, ripped up the floors with new baseboard heating and we arranged for new fixtures. Lighting over the city put all that in and then one point I just looked at me and hire somebody to do it in this country. But we wanted to do it just to get a sense of what, how much work, how much effort is a. And then to know then when we’re ready to subcontract that out or hire someone that we have a sense of, you know, an invoice comes, makes it looks reasonable. And if it’s a tourist, which they charge the 300 bucks, well, we know that’s an outrageous price REIN worth. They say we have to replace the baseboard heaters and they charge a hundred bucks a pop. Well, we know that’s a Real Estate. So we wanted to get a sense of what is the after, what is the labor required? What is the true cost of the replacements? No. Then once we starts the contracting and getting others to come in and to do that, it’s what’s fair. What’s reasonable? Looking to acquire more property as well?

Erwin Szeto [00:29:25] So that’s good advice for anyone who wants to become a new investor. And also, I’d also say, if you don’t want to do these things, don’t let that stop you from being an investor.

Anna Scott [00:29:34] No, that’s true. A long time ago, somebody said, you can hire up to $10 an hour job. Your job is to focus on the hundred or thousand jobs. You know, you need to find that the properties get creative financing in place. You do what you need to do to build your portfolio. And it’s the more glorious task that you really should be contacting others to do the REIN. So we wanted to give that sense of because that was our hour when we had our before we had our first property, that was pretty handy. We, you know, any type of upkeep or maintenance in our homes. And I’m a painter, landscaper, things like that. We thought if we’re going to go into Real Estate, we’ve got a certain degree skills that would make it easier for us to manage that. But at the end of the day and to your listeners, if you, you know, a great project manager, if you really coordinated, if you’re disciplined, you don’t necessarily have to have those skills just to be really good with calling the right service provider or having your power team around you to be doing that for you. Mm-Hmm.

Doug Scott [00:30:33] And certainly, as we get into larger buildings, we won’t be doing those tasks ourselves. Many will be managing the property managers.

Erwin Szeto [00:30:44] Do you know what city are going to look for your next building?

Anna Scott [00:30:47] Well, we’ve been looking in London, St. Thomas Stratford area and

Erwin Szeto [00:30:52] Stratford of Justin Bieber Fever Suite. Yeah, just make it all like fan posters and stuff

Anna Scott [00:31:01] there and beaver Caribbean beaver. Yeah, that’s right. There’s we get cash flow, and it’s certainly even looking around southwestern Ontario for the most part, perhaps as far west as Chatham. But there’s just some of the cash flow around that area.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:19] OK. And you know, Michelle, never mind. Yeah.

Anna Scott [00:31:22] Well, they’re an

Erwin Szeto [00:31:23] excellent yeah, she’s got a lot of property and the brand new windows.

Anna Scott [00:31:29] Yes, that’s right.

Doug Scott [00:31:31] Dinner with them last night.

Anna Scott [00:31:32] Actually kidding? Yeah. We met up with the girl tastic.

Erwin Szeto [00:31:37] I just saw her. Maybe in days today I saw her. Last week you mentioned you went to a Real Estate education weekend who organized it.

Anna Scott [00:31:45] It was coming. Ovaries keeper, OK. So we had to come to Waterloo. I think actually about a week before, it was really interesting and I almost thought it was fortuitous. We were avid watchers of is showing property at the time, and I remember we were thinking about his time. If he was to retire, what would he do or what would keep him busy? I think the thing we were talking about, you know, proving properties, doing some real estate investing. And honestly, within a week on the radio announcement came up about the coming down here said, Well, why don’t we go see him? We want the show like the show, and it was at that to our presentation that we found out about the education seven hour week in three days where you can go and learn a little bit more about Real Estate. So it was at that that we learned what this is, what we want to do. This is what we want to learn and get more information about,

Doug Scott [00:32:41] jump in and get educated and go from there.

Anna Scott [00:32:43] Yeah, that was kind of the driver.

Erwin Szeto [00:32:46] Did you pursue key further? Did you join that? Yeah.

Doug Scott [00:32:50] Yes, we joined the. So we’ve been members for three and a half years now.

Erwin Szeto [00:32:55] Are you still members?

Doug Scott [00:32:56] Got it. Yeah, yeah. So that’s one of the things about networking is finally finding the network of likeminded people. And you know, the sky’s the limit when you get involved with people that are investing in real estate and thinking like you and lots of opportunities through that.

Anna Scott [00:33:17] What we’ve also discovered other Real Estate meetup events as well. So we attend regularly and one that’s in Burlington. We’re going to the derma REI in index area. Wow.

Erwin Szeto [00:33:32] There’s I think that’s far less further for you. Yeah.

Anna Scott [00:33:36] Yeah, we just actually up between members. And there’s now a new one that’s established in London. Arie called on RIA. Oh, yeah, I heard they’ve been attending that one as well. So wherever we get an opportunity to just meet. Other individuals hear their story. What are they investing in? What are some of the challenges they’re experiencing? So the barriers, though, how they overcome that? It’s been wonderful to learn from others and learn from others mistakes. So I encourage listeners to start thinking about getting into the investing, go to look online, look for me to go to bbc.com or look for other groups associations that are attracting Real Estate investors that are at different levels, levels and stages in their Real Estate careers or their journeys. Some folks are, they’re just starting out may not even have purpoaea. Others have hundred plus doors. Multimillion dollar portfolio. You know it’s great to meet up, meet with them, talk with them and say, Why do you invest? Where you invest? What got you involved? What works really well for you? So that is something that I really encourage people to do. If you’re thinking about getting into real estate investing before you dig Dove, reinvest money, spend the money to talk to those people, see if that’s what you really want to do.

Erwin Szeto [00:34:49] I think more people will want to do this to investing when they talk to the people and they realize anyone can do it.

Anna Scott [00:34:55] So Sandy the motivation, inclination, the network, like when we first started in India, we were just more that we wanted to educate and learn and kind of as much as we could about estate investing. We were reading books and taking online courses and things like that, and we have learned more from the other investors or they are the application of what we read. So when you hear about something, you know, you read rich dad, poor dad, Richard Rob Break Sandy books, you hear about it or read about it, but it’s up to you actually talked to an investor who’s done it then and applied that knowledge that Will Smith, Smith it all together. And you then realize, Wow, it really is true. You can do this.

Erwin Szeto [00:35:42] Yeah, it’s very different time to the people to realize that. Look, when the book was published, when it was written and applied, and also where it happens, because I believe Robert wrote that book during a recession, so he didn’t have the competition that we’re used to today. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Same thing with even Arnold Schwarzenegger stories about Real Estate. It’s very different now. It’s much harder to track down owners of buildings and they’re not and always said, if you feel like, OK, if you owned this building, would you want to sell it?

Anna Scott [00:36:17] Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:36:18] Where are you going to tell the owner to put his money?

Anna Scott [00:36:21] Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [00:36:26] And then you’re paid and then you’re paying massive interest rates, interest payments. A friend of mine was making $7000 interest payments a month on a variety pack, so it can get like that rate. If you want the deal, it’s necessary to get a do.

Anna Scott [00:36:39] Mm hmm. So hopefully that was very short. Oh, it’s

Erwin Szeto [00:36:45] something you do when you have deep pockets.

Anna Scott [00:36:47] And the loan was pretty extensive too,

Erwin Szeto [00:36:50] because that’s actually the reality of for anyone who wants to deal with like big deals like that’s actually a very common reality is you do very, very large Finnerty backs, for example, if you buy a farm, right? Because no, but lenders are going to give it give you that money, especially if you’re valuing it based on a development cost value. Right? No, it’s great to find you that money. I don’t even know if they’d been to that or 14 percent. They probably want a lot more than that, which is why I have a fee for companies like Fortress Rate, and that’s why they were charging lots and lots. It’s true. So what would you tell the 20 year old U.S because you guys are not 28? Yeah.

Anna Scott [00:37:28] Now it’s been a little while since we were 20. Actually interesting enough, we were recently at that medium similar rate. Somebody said, Well, what if I only had so many thousands of dollars investigating 10 grand or something like that? And the one thing that I think a young person should think about is investing in educating yourself. Those then that you really think can take the courses, go to the programs, go to the media, meet with other individuals, get memberships with local Real Estate investment groups. Because the attendees at those events have a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of information, and in our experience, many of them are so willing to share. It’s really an amazing community in the different locations across the country where you just fill a Real Estate district and talk to another Real Estate investor for hours on end. And if she progresses as well, there’s always something in common, something you could talk about. I mean, with the Lakers, so Leslie, we were there easily, like for hours because the place where Glass was in the restaurant and we still couldn’t talk. I’m sure another couple hours. And so it’s very common.

Doug Scott [00:38:37] Certainly the, you know, the education and taking action and seeing that there’s more out there than just the know the nine to five job. As a result of going to school and saving your money for retirement, there’s a whole other world out there, right?

Anna Scott [00:38:59] The other thing I would suggest to is again, immersing yourself with other estate investors is taking a small step, maybe also. So think about if you watch the have a way of finding these great cash flow properties, be knocking on doors or talking to the owners, you’re able to finesse a deal that is so good that anyone else is not able to come up with an offer that’s that has similar characteristics or whatever, and then turn around, get out of contact with the sign of someone else. You can make good money on that, too. In an interview, you can make them a little bit more to help yourself buy your own property as a great way to turn your five or 10 into 300 percent more, which would be the time.

Erwin Szeto [00:39:47] In a perfect world, you can bring that to a joint venture partner. Like, I’ll do all the work. I’ve got the deal. I’ll do all the work right? Just sit there and collect cash payments.

Anna Scott [00:39:55] Get a job working for a property management company. See firsthand what it’s like to work with tenants and successful proposition organization or the other is if you have some skills, not that your license from a contractor or electrician or anything like that. But if you can change a light bulb or change an electrical outlet assignment, have some talent, then it would be great to go to a joint venture money partner as a working partner to sign the property, get on a contract, attract attracting money partner and then properly manage it. And you have vested interests with vested interest and either take a percentage of the make have a property manager fee or 80 percent of the cash flow and then share the equity after so many years. That’s a great way to get started as well for free, of course, or rent own. OK, so jump in. There’s a lot, so

Erwin Szeto [00:40:50] every strategy works

Anna Scott [00:40:53] but can’t really be good at one. Develop an expertize specialize in something that if you are looking to attract too many partners, I know as we’ve done six when we were vetting, if you will, our first partners, we were asking about what do you bring to the table? Why would I go into business with you for the next five to 10 years? What skills do you bring? But also just, you know, what kinds of properties are you? Are you able to take advantage of bringing to us that we would like to be able to work with you? But rent to own was another thing that not necessarily that you yourself as an investor would be the occupant, the tenant buyer, but that you could coordinate the deal and find attentive buyer matched them up with the furniture. So you get a percentage of the payment per month that you basically quarterback the deal to the thing, right? So you get the investor who buys the property gets on title and then three years later, so you work with the tenant buyer to source their credit, get them to a point where they can eventually. That’s why the property room within two, three or five year timeframe. There are lots of different options. Get really good at if you’re wanting to do joint ventures, find a community, know the community inside and don’t know what the market’s going to be doing now in the future. Forecasting trends get really good at knowing that community like the back your hand. One of our joint venture partners, when we first started going up to the Community Issues framework case, there’s a hospital here and they’re looking to expand this in the next two to three years. She was a member of the local Rob municipal government, but she had an in with several of the councilors city councilors. She was involved up local politics and economics, knew what was going on in the community, how much it was going to be growing in the next three or five years and why it would be a great place, a great city to invest in REIN USHL.

Erwin Szeto [00:42:47] All those things are pretty, in my opinion there. Like, for example, I know when a new Costco’s going in, we know where new jobs go, train stations are going in. Jacob Sandy said, I’m not sure if you know GE, but he said this is basically an open book test on making money. Like all these, like all these courses that you mentioned, they’re available to anyone you have. You may have to pay for some of them. They’re worth it. But yeah, it’s available to anyone to go make this money. Oh, and he said it in the context of when I was telling him about the growth, the growth of Ontario, right? All these stats are available publicly, right? The housing starts are available publicly. It’s just who’s going to actually. Take advantage of it.

Anna Scott [00:43:27] Well, it’s not just you can take it is find out information knowing how to apply that knowledge. What does this mean? So if I go to staff can afford it, how do I interpret that if I go to MLS? What is the walk or mean or what are the other categories of descriptions? Why is it relevant or useful? Population outlook Why if the population’s going down, is that maybe a second reason why I shouldn’t be looking at or not being it 30 years from now because the population will be dramatically decreasing? Something like that? You know, just knowing how to apply that knowledge in making your decision or whether it’s short term increase

Erwin Szeto [00:44:03] in money policy, those sorts of things, no inflation and members of his party. And even though we call real estate investing, it’s really business. Yeah, it’s not business. You know, buy low, sell high. You want to own something in low supply and with high demand. This is all just business. But yes, more specifically is real estate investing. So how did you get started her start up your own group? So actually, no, I want to go back to that. You guys mentioned like all these people want to help. There are some places that people want to help, but they just want to really help themselves. That’s not one of your that’s not your meeting, though. I think it all started the kW REI A B C REI this REIN.

Anna Scott [00:44:41] So the orchestra went to the Cambridge Real Estate Investors Group is a monthly media group that we started but two years ago, in the two years in November. Prior to that, there was a small group of local real estate investors that there was seven or eight couples that we would get together and frequently go to restaurants. And it was just the chance to do a forum to talk, ask questions of one another. What are you doing? Were a lot of us were very new to real estate investing at the time. And so a lot of us did have a lot of experience, so it was more of a sounding board and run ideas with one another. Then we realized that there were so many more individuals with whom we could equally get that information and who were also interested more broadly. So we started this group. We meet monthly at the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Center in Cambridge, and I reached for one and we four right there. I bring in guest speakers in the industry, professionals, local individuals and speakers to speak to the group. Share an item of educational interest I’ve had from mortgage brokers up there. And you look the way Jerry Accounting can speak, some of the members in our group who’ve done well. I’ve got a couple of folks who like to invest in the US. They’ve taken presentations. We’re going to have accounting again in January, really focusing on social media and marketing this fall. So we have a couple of speakers.

Erwin Szeto [00:46:14] So your own marketing, all your presenters on the subject,

Anna Scott [00:46:16] OK, talking about, you know, website development, branding, marketing yourself as getting your business established to your point, coming in and talk to the group as well. So it’s really all about education, first and foremost and then an opportunity for networking. So we do networking about an hour ahead of time. Then the keynote speaker speaks, There’s a break and then we have a secondary speaker and then we like to do a little bit of the attendees can come to the front of the room, talk about what they’re doing, the deal they can. They got a property for sale. They can describe and promote it to the group. Really a great opportunity for individuals attending to share what they’re doing in a very informal and provide refreshments and cookies and things like that just to get a sense of what they’re doing. So some of the other attendees have come, they drop off pushers. So it’s not self-promoting, but it’s just here’s a chance to know what these people are doing and establish relationships and perhaps business relationships outside of that meeting afterwards. We have approximately between 45 and 50 attendees, but our numbers are growing entertainment meeting. We had 52 individuals and

Erwin Szeto [00:47:28] you captured the new digit, the cap, that one

Anna Scott [00:47:31] we sold over. But we yeah, we were at capacity, so we had to bring in extra chairs. But it was, of course, the ideal venue given the number of people who were coming. So we have made arrangements going forward will be able to be a bit more fluid and expand quite easily. So we are hoping to get to at least a hundred regular attendees by December, and we’ve got a great season planned with all sorts. I had done a survey back in June after the meeting of the attendees to say, Well, if you like the June meeting and you scored very well, by the way, so a lot of people enjoy hearing your presentations. There was A.. But I wanted to get a sense of Are we on the right track? Are we bringing in the right speakers? Is this what people want to see in here because

Doug Scott [00:48:17] I want to bring value to the

Anna Scott [00:48:19] group? Exactly. And there is a small fee, and it’s to pay for the costs of the meeting room. There is nothing. Profits type of organization, but these results of the survey suggested the attendees really wanted to hear the successes of the other attendees. And so the focus I’m going to be spending some time is also doing more networking tech opportunities for people. So it’s kind of like speed dating one of the flats I had where you have multiple tables. There’s someone at each table who’s going to speak about the success or what they’re doing, and the attendees can sit for 15 20 minutes at a time, rotate, go to different tables and hear and see what the other individuals are doing. So that’s going to be at its December meeting coming up. But it really just after you’ve done it for the networking events, you’ve got to the people they love talking with one another. And when the organizer says it’s time to start the meeting, people reluctantly go back to their. It’s almost like, OK, that’s a five minute warning. No, we need to start meeting right now and get back to it. The prime reason why we’re here. And then when you have another break, it’s like herding cats to get everybody back to just starting up again. But so we’re really trying to provide more opportunities for people to network. It’s know one another and see what everybody’s doing. So they’d like to hear another day, another light investor’s life

Erwin Szeto [00:49:43] organizer problems and almost wonder if ActionScript the break into the end earlier.

Anna Scott [00:49:49] Well, I’ve thought about that as well, too, because some of the conversations in myself included, you get caught. I mean, I used to watch the clock and make sure we regroup, regroup and get back on time and start again. But it’s very difficult. Sometimes you’re right in the middle of a really juicy conversation or your exchange and really good information, and you have to stop and regroup. Meeting back and of course, I’m

Erwin Szeto [00:50:11] sure the next meeting I may try that meeting to skip the break goes right through breaking this end early and then focus my first focus I stay late with as you wish they will.

Anna Scott [00:50:20] Yeah, well, and sometimes to your gauging the timing, right? So we start at 6:30, meeting proper starts at 7:30 and we try to get out of there by 9:45.

Erwin Szeto [00:50:31] Yeah. What does the restaurant take you?

Anna Scott [00:50:33] Well, the latest we’ve gone the meeting topic, but it was great was great interaction. A lot of great questions. Actually, there was a segment on credit scores and end like around 10, 20 or something like that, but you’ve got people yawning and they’re paying attention. But at the same time, it’s not perhaps the regular daytime hours, 50 hours, because we’re usually the last Wednesday of the month. And in fact, we’ve got a meeting coming up tomorrow, the 26th in September. Now, having said that, I didn’t book the last Wednesday of October is Thanksgiving as early as Halloween? I have it the previous Wednesday on the 24th. So we are not on

Doug Scott [00:51:13] holiday and still take the kids trick or treating.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:16] It wasn’t the June meeting close to something.

Anna Scott [00:51:19] We had to do that on a Monday. That’s right, because there’s some other case closed

Doug Scott [00:51:24] in Canada Day,

Anna Scott [00:51:25] as well as close to Canada, the

Erwin Szeto [00:51:27] organizer problems. See all your listeners if you want to organize a meeting, but I’m looking for something you know from our spray to avoid. So I want to bookselling in March, the last two weekends there. No one’s going to show

Anna Scott [00:51:41] you definitely January and June. It’s the last Wednesday of every month. We’ve got that that firmed up.

Erwin Szeto [00:51:49] Got it. So actually, you guys are you guys are meeting organizers. I want to ask you what makes a good networker, for example, not anyone’s going to be able to get making Michelle for dinner, right? Thank you. I’m sure you’ve seen bad networking practices, and I’m sure you’ve seen lots of good ones. What are some bad and what are some good?

Doug Scott [00:52:09] Yeah, certainly. If you’re going there with the sole purpose of finding somebody to do something for you. And that’s the only reason you’re networking. I would say that would be on the bad side for us networking, getting to know people, seeing if there’s things that you can do to help. And, you know, maybe longer term, like Zig Ziglar, certainly to help enough people to be successful and that helps

Anna Scott [00:52:42] you comes full circle. One of the things that I’ve observed with networking when we coordinate these events, but we also attend these events. Don’t be a wallflower. I’ve seen so many situations where individuals come into the room with the western partner. They go, grab onto your coffee and then they go, sit against the wall or sit back in their chair. They don’t talk to anyone else. What we like to do is we divide and conquer will go to an event and we will not even sit at the same table or chairs will split up. And we exchange business cards and we’ll say, Well, how many people did you talk to at the end of the night, where or at the break? We’ll say we chatted with this really interesting person. I think you should talk to them too. Or he’ll say the same thing of me. I met this really. Great person over here has great interest. Ask people questions, people want to talk among themselves. I really, in my experience, are really great. Networking does not do the talking; they do the asking and they pull that information from the individuals are speaking with. And because, as I said, everyone likes to talk with themselves. There’s something you have in common with them and people, especially business Real Estate. Investors love to talk of Real Estate. So you’re here at this event was brings you here. Where are you from? Do you invest in what type of real estate investing do you do? And they’ll actually get a permission for something, then find common ground buying something that you both have a common interest in, and the rest of the conversation will sell very quickly, very naturally. In my experience, it’s the initiator of the questions and try not to talk with yourself about the other topics themselves. That’s one of the biggest observations that I found. The thing with that working is there should be some degree of reciprocity you’re exchanging. You’re giving information. If you ask somebody a long time ago and learn this acronym, come forward. So when you’re going to talk to someone? Keep these four initials in mind. F. talked to someone about family. Break the ice. Oh, their occupation hours, their recreation. What do they do in these dreams? What are their dreams? What are their aspirations, long term goals? Those are the kinds of questions you can really learn a lot about individual and then they can be a little bit more and they’re going to remember you because you ask those more poignant questions in. Their love, the term goals and objectives.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:04] Things get much more interesting when you get talking about dreams.

Anna Scott [00:55:06] Yeah, yeah. So I always try to think of for everyone, let’s talk with the family. Well, not another obvious for the sake of those efforts. And the other thing too is when you get to somebody text and you talk about their dreams and what are some challenges or the barriers. And if there’s something that you’ve been able to overcome, you’ve had a similar situation. Not that you’re giving unsolicited advice, but you’re saying you relate it. I have experience that equally, you know, and this is what I did to overcome that. And then they might start as opposed to, you know, what you should do. That’s the worst thing you can say is offer your listed advice. And that was something I learned from this guy

Doug Scott [00:55:49] can solve everybody’s problem.

Anna Scott [00:55:51] Listen and share your own experiences. And often the individual will ask you more questions.

Erwin Szeto [00:55:58] I mean, take the wrong road and just say, Oh, don’t talk to that person. I know he knows the answer to someone else’s problem, right? So that’s cool, Ford. What I often do for networking is I’ll say, what’s keeping you busy these days so they can choose basically from the f0r is all likely by buy. Like we answer that. And then you have the working for the dream. Yeah.

Anna Scott [00:56:19] Some people are very private and you may not get past the R, but or it might not be. Oh, they’re very limiting, but they say what? They’re trying to ask questions and be, you know, none of your business. And that’s why you respect that and you don’t pursue people

Erwin Szeto [00:56:34] aren’t used to talking about it, you know, used to drinking beer. Watching the hockey game is not tough. This very you with that moron did. Or I bet I could have saved that sucker.

Anna Scott [00:56:44] Right? When I do talk to relatively new Real Estate investors, I like to ask them, Where do you see yourself in five years? What are the major milestones you want accomplish between now five years? What is the five year? Have you thought about a five year plan? And then that’s when you find out about whether some people are doing goal setting or not. And then again, not that that’s a bad thing, but certainly time is of the essence with Real Estate. There’s that old adage you don’t wait to buy Real Estate, you buy Real Estate and wait. And because for years, we are one property is going to be coming up for mortgage renewal, but we’ve done a couple of refinancing deals in the meantime. Six months to do a flip or, you know, it goes and comes really fast, the time really does move quite quickly when you’re busy and you go on stuff on the go. So important to establish goals and objectives even headed by announcement like that at a time. So if you want to, we said we wanted 10 properties in five years. OK, here’s the mean one that means two properties a year. We better get on it and start your goal. Here’s how to make it happen.

Erwin Szeto [00:57:52] Got it! So do you want to show what your dreams are?

Anna Scott [00:57:55] What are dreams? Well, we’ve got three more properties to go. We’re three years and seven properties in. We still there’s a certain income level that we wanted to be able to have. We want to be able to have 10K per month under 20k per year from passive cash flow. And we were at that time thinking if we could do that. Three years ago, that would help expedite it, condense or contract our Real Estate or rather our retirement timeline. And, you know, we didn’t have to wait that long.

Doug Scott [00:58:29] You’re not quite there. But certainly one of the dreams was of being able to retire early and we’ve done that tick

Anna Scott [00:58:37] box set that up. You think, too, is our kids. Our son is twenty six. Is getting married next week actually installations?

Erwin Szeto [00:58:47] Oh, thank you, baby

Anna Scott [00:58:48] and daughter’s twenty three and we would like as part of the corporation. They’re shareholders of a corporation as well. Hopefully, five, maybe 10 years down the road, they may consider formally joining our organization or more full time basis than they are right now. The biggest reason was to be able to help them afford a property. That’s kind of our dream as well. So when and if we’re able to help them acquire a nice property through what we’ve been able we’d like to teach them as opposed to it, they’re going to give them a hand up to help hand out, and we wouldn’t buy the property for them. We would get an instruction to give them guidance, teach them how to properly invest in real estate. You hopefully share the bug, get them excited about the prospect of Real Estate. That’s the dream of mine is to get them more involved. And we constantly say we wish we knew now or back then. We know now and we started years ago. You know, who knows where we’d be right now? And so we’re very envious of where we’re in our fifties. Very envious of people that are 30 other late 20s, two three five Profits already under their belts. It’s like, Wow, you’re going places.

Erwin Szeto [01:00:03] REIN, a friend of mine who lives in a student rental near U of T Mississauga so he doesn’t have her bills covered by the students, right? Especially now, especially for today’s graduates, how much they graduate, how much debt they graduate with what kind of mortgage payments are looking at? What do your kids want to live? Do you know?

Anna Scott [01:00:25] Well, our son was in Toronto and his fiancee in Toronto and our daughter, Elizabeth.

Erwin Szeto [01:00:30] Did they make a lot of money? It’s going to cost like $2 to get a house, you know, Banff, which

Anna Scott [01:00:36] is the average home prices and Benford down one point three or something like that, OK?

Erwin Szeto [01:00:40] So that was worse because I saw Jasper. Prices were crazy. Yeah, yeah. It was beautiful.

Anna Scott [01:00:48] 1.2 one three five four six family homes but the turn of phrase is interesting enough are going down a little bit a million. Still, I’m not affordable for first time homebuyers, for the most part, but they we did see some Maltese.

Erwin Szeto [01:01:04] OK.

Anna Scott [01:01:06] Well, what if you lived in one of the units and started learning the ropes property management by actually being occupants of the units? They’re not quite there, you know, but it was a solid drive like a building can be converted to direct next year. There’s only like eight hundred grand in it was in the beaches.

Erwin Szeto [01:01:23] Leslie Sandy Wennerstrom backyard. Actually, if there’s interest, have your kids listen to a stream on the podcast. Two weeks ago she did. She did exactly that with her own bare hands, and she reverted to a house. We’re talking like high 300s, her first property when she’s around twenty four. And then, yeah, she turned into a triplex duplex herself the first one, and she’s been turning other ones into triplexes with a lot of sweat equity. And she’s a girl.

Anna Scott [01:01:51] So yeah, now that’s it’s doable. It’s just again, the inclination, the vision, the desire to make it happen. It’s not for everyone. Yeah, when you’re working full time, you know, we’re going to make the time. Yeah, it’s not enough to make it happen.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:10] You want, you want, you want to afford the mortgage. Yeah. So maybe you’re in the triplex, maybe two Airbnb rooms, right?

Anna Scott [01:02:18] Or even that that’s right.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:20] Then there’s no renovation requires more management and more you have to see your people. But the nice thing is, landlord as an initial tenancy act does not apply. Yes, that’s right. So I’d be very nice. That’s actually a big story right now.

Anna Scott [01:02:34] The muse was there with the Airbnb in the city of Toronto was introduced.

Erwin Szeto [01:02:39] They shelved it because it couldn’t figure it out. But if she lived there, it’s different as well. Right. I believe I think most municipalities rules are usually around stuff you don’t live in. Oh, okay, because you’re there to monitor them as you’re living there, you’re probably going to screen better and deal with problems faster. You’re probably not going to have noise issues, party issues, parking issues, right?

Anna Scott [01:03:01] Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [01:03:02] Yeah, yeah, no. I tell that to people. Too many people think I’m nuts. Like, That’s OK. You continue to live in your five hundred square foot box versus living in a house. Totally cool. It’s like to each their own. What are you willing to do make it happen?

Anna Scott [01:03:16] And the other thing I. I’m really surprised that is until we started, there’s so few places where you can learn about real estate investing. And until you become more involved than you see, all of a sudden, it’s like a parallel universe opened up to you that there’s these other sources in books. And so in school, you don’t tend to learn about the. I did learn Ryerson has a program right now called Stick Management, which is about property management for the most part, but it does talk about the local economy, businesses and other matters. But that’s really the only public institution that I’ve seen or rather educational institution that offers any kind of information and knowledge on Real Estate. And even, you know, brokerage firms or financial advisers, they really are very limited in their knowledge of the state in diversifying the portfolio. Well, they’re not interested. They’re not interested in looking

Erwin Szeto [01:04:11] even offer private equity.

Anna Scott [01:04:13] You know, it’s not profitable for them, right?

Erwin Szeto [01:04:16] Right. They’re not led us today to allow us to like, I don’t believe you can buy any street of your bank financial advisor, right? I’m sure there’s ways around it, but not directly. I mean,

Anna Scott [01:04:28] so where would you put on that kind of stock?

Erwin Szeto [01:04:31] Well, that’s the thing is with from moneymaking, I don’t think university is necessarily the place to go anymore. Right. For people who want a purely a pure or pure is right, but they’re down a path of entrepreneurship. I don’t know if universities necessarily the right place is even like a friend of mine spent like a hundred grand on his executive MBA. And my true, you’re already spending the time. I imagine the people, you get access to that kind of money in writing to, to learn from and take courses and be coached by, you know, acquaintance, for example, like Quentin D’Souza, the term REI. I don’t know. I think he’s in the five figures, too to hire him as your coach, but I might be better than a university.

Anna Scott [01:05:21] That’s true. That’s true. Even if you completely

Erwin Szeto [01:05:24] agree if he’ll take you on, if you’re completely grateful that you’re 19 years old, like take me on. Clinton will be

Anna Scott [01:05:31] well, and he’s very he will make you work and hold you accountable. You meet regularly with him. You can do not assignments, but there’s expectations or things he would want you to accomplish between meetings. So, so you work for

Erwin Szeto [01:05:47] if you’re raising a real estate investor, though, it’s not a bad path. And that’s completely outside of the education system, right?

Anna Scott [01:05:54] Right.

Erwin Szeto [01:05:54] And a bad idea.

Anna Scott [01:05:56] And the one thing, too, that if there’s an investors listening that are similar to us that we were late, we had a bit of equity in a home to start off with. We were very strategic. We knew we had only so much available capital between line of credit and other assets to be able to acquire real estate. But we wanted to be sure we maximize the people’s potential. We only have this amount. What’s the biggest rate of return for return that we could get on this investment? Mm. So it’s something that. You know, I don’t regret and we were very fortunate that some of that we’ve been able to refinance and buy other properties with the equity appreciation in of property and really have no more money in them anymore because we’ve been able to pull it all out to acquire other assets as well. So it’s this great compounding effect and honor is good with that, but there’s no exit strategy. So because we’re later, we know that maybe 60, 55, 60, 65 is where we’re going to regroup and stop and think, OK, well, are we going to acquire anymore? Are we going to start divesting of our portfolio or selling some things off? Depending on this, as friends of ours had said, Well, what are you going to stop or when is enough? When is it enough? Either properties or money? And then I set came up the conversation at a girls weekend this weekend. So like, when do you want to stop? And I said, Well, you know what? When the stops being full stops being interesting, we stop meeting new people, interesting people, who I don’t think will ever happen. But it’s almost like a bug that we have, that we want to make clear the next property and what we do to make that happen. Or how can we help others help them achieve their goals, their objectives? What can we do? Can we share education? Can we offer short term funding? What can we do to make other people equally successful? And that’s something that is thought out for quite a while.

Erwin Szeto [01:07:59] Were you to this entrepreneurial in your previous work lives?

Doug Scott [01:08:04] None, no, not really saying that there’s a standard job or, you know, went to went to school, university, got a job in it, right out of there or stuck with it until retirement. You didn’t really do too much else.

Erwin Szeto [01:08:24] Not only just late investing, but late entrepreneurship.

Anna Scott [01:08:27] Yeah. We had that that latent flame, I guess, and just kind of kicked up what was when we retired. But I had in previous roles in the financial services industry and life insurance companies and business analysts that process design consultant. I was a director. I was the manager. I was leading people working on multiple projects that were doing proper compliance. So I did have a diverse, diverse background in a variety of different roles in the corporate environment. I guess you could say learning a lot of skills which have been transferable to or Real Estate, for sure. I remember. So we were still working full time and going to work and acquiring the first property. Everybody that we had a third or fourth that I was sharing that with the government at work. They were saying, Wow, how are you able to do all that and still work full time? They said, Well, they’ve actually been relatively easy to do, I think because of the all the project management experience that we both had. We just kind of grew able to chunk it out, knew what had to be done now versus just two weeks from now versus six months from now. And we never really saw it as an unattainable task. It was you plan it right with the right people, you can make it happen. So. We were kind of advantageous in that way to. It just seemed like a natural progression into Real Estate that we would have if you just thought about it, planet in manageable chunks, it it’s doable.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:01] Realizable employers are very lucky to have you for so.

Anna Scott [01:10:05] They were very lucky.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:08] And that’s something that came in Rob Break year. Serkis book was that you’re like, if you’re talented, it’s your employer that’s capitalizing on that, right? Or you make a wage?

Anna Scott [01:10:18] Yes, that’s exactly right.

Doug Scott [01:10:20] You know, before getting involved in real estate, I’d never heard of Robert Kiyosaki or General or Darren Hardy. Tony Rob is none of that. So I’ve been reading as much of that genre as I can sense, since discovering it has been a great educational and personal development experience

Erwin Szeto [01:10:50] for the people who aren’t retired. What’s on the other side? What’s retirement like?

Anna Scott [01:10:55] Well, it’s I wanted to be.

Erwin Szeto [01:10:58] Let me just preface that with my last guest, Barbie Bent, and she bought her first property at 18 years old. So that’s like, Oh, so she’s basically retired forever, but since really 21, she’s never really had to work for money. So she does jujitsu to three Typekit. She does martial arts training two three times a day. So you guys are doing. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh no, she’s a world champion.

Anna Scott [01:11:21] Oh, wow. We just came from back from ninety nine, and I think the big was two big things just going to say really quickly. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is not knowing what day of the week. It is really interesting. I don’t think that was possible. People say that it’s in the corporate world. You’re very governed by meetings. Yes, and dates and whatnot. And the other is we can do whatever we want. Now we’re not restricted to limited to evenings and weekends. And that was the thing of been a little bit of a culture shock change for us because we basically planned a calendar around it. If we went to the cottage, there were some things we had to do. We would then have to leave on Saturday afternoon to be packed for Sunday night. I would do laundry on Sunday nights, get ready for work. And what did I have to do during the week at work? And if it was any other extracurricular events, you know, concerts, anything that that was always in place? Well, now we’re going to events during the day, going to two matinees

Doug Scott [01:12:23] where it will travel. It will believe it. Waterloo and time to get to Ajax for malaria across the top of Toronto.

Anna Scott [01:12:32] Or we leave here until thirty one o’clock in the afternoon. There have a nice, leisurely dinner when I see me meeting in my book a hotel stay overnight and time is a lot more fluid and less structured so we can do. And we are actually it really is true. Tired people are often busier than before they were retired, and I can’t even imagine because we’re tired nurses now, but we’re able to do a lot more of what we want to do as opposed to fit it in the time window. Our box allowable. So we were trying to do it then, but it was very limiting and compressed.

Erwin Szeto [01:13:10] That’s amazing.

Anna Scott [01:13:11] That’s the biggest. And the other side, it’s

Erwin Szeto [01:13:13] not that it’s not a traditional definition of retirement at all. We’re busier.

Anna Scott [01:13:21] Yes, we’ve done features. We’re actually looking to do another trip for the end of the year. And then we’ve got an invitation to go to Taiwan, which we’re contemplating when a friend of our lives there. He was home in Toronto visiting with his mom. This summer, we got to see him just impromptu visit. He come, here we go. Yeah, it’s Tuesday with the friends and we had a really great conversation. This is just going to come out the connected timeline and it will help your plane stop in Tokyo or Singapore. Hong Kong, come visit me. So we’re looking at the possibility of a really nice vacation. Let’s do it.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:00] Are you doing it? Japan is something to be seen. People think Canadians are polite. The Japanese take it to a whole different another level.

Anna Scott [01:14:10] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we’re looking forward to it. And right now, the wedding is kind of all consuming. After the wedding, you’re going to start planning a travel trip ideas.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:21] It’s your son, though, isn’t it? The parents of the bride, the pay for everything.

Doug Scott [01:14:25] So I tried that.

Anna Scott [01:14:29] It’s going to be a blast is a lot of fun. I’ve got to thirty seven guests. They’re going to really join.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:34] Excellent. OK. Where can people find out about K2? B.C. REI

Anna Scott [01:14:39] Erwin? Send an email to our corporate email address, which is Lot L.A. You see U.S. PGA at Bell Dot Net. It’s so close to being up, it’s not quite ready, but then it a lot of build on that and we’ll get you on our distribution list.

Erwin Szeto [01:14:56] Excellent. And folks all have the links and they all have this in the short run. And then anything you want to leave the listeners with. Final thing you want to say,

Anna Scott [01:15:07] regardless of the various stages you may be at in terms of Real Estate, one of the things I did when leaving people is why Real Estate? Why now? Because it offers that degree of diversification. But it’s really until you get into it and you can diversified and meet all sorts of wonderful people. It really is affords. You grew up in a much shorter time frame if you’re not content or not comfortable with the tenants. There are ways around it. If there’s so many options when it comes to real estate, investing it until you exploit most people in the thick of Real Estate say they could maybe do flips and or building secondary suites and renovating the basement, adding a Chanukah property suite down below. There’s so much more that you can do depending on what your interests are, and maybe explore those options. Make a time. Take the time to educate yourself. Find out more of what it’s all about and discover an area specialization that you are really interested in and become the guru to build the wall in that in that category or geography

Erwin Szeto [01:16:13] geography up in the Halton. Or was it

Anna Scott [01:16:17] like

Doug Scott [01:16:19] that, though almost all of Paul Henderson and those hockey sticks, there

Anna Scott [01:16:27] is some great little community. It’s a place where a lot of the local farmers go to retire as well. So we have some retirees in our unit and they units and they’re the best tenants ever. So they lived in the property. They don’t want to look after maintenance, they just want to pay one bill per month and looks after everything. They’re on time, not behind. Great. Yeah.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:50] Well, we pay for the rising hydro prices.

Anna Scott [01:16:52] Yeah, yeah. No, I think they pay for all their hydro. Oh, that is better. Yeah, yeah.

Erwin Szeto [01:16:59] So all right, it’s great again. I just want to say thank you guys, so thank you for coming on and sharing.

Anna Scott [01:17:05] Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We.

Erwin Szeto [01:17:14] Are you looking to the Greater Toronto Hamilton area? Are you interested in becoming a real estate investor, earning extra income in your sleep without getting calls from tenants or unplugging toilets? Then 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 both seasoned and novice investors to share and educate the fundamentals and truth about real estate investing so you two can earn seven figure net worth like our clients and guests of the show, how great it would be to be financially free to take more time off their family, retire earlier and more comfortably, or to support your favorite charity. If this is of interest to you, then get on the invite list at WW W Dot Truth about real estate investing slash meeting. The host of the meeting is yours truly Erwin Szeto? That’s me, a four time winner of the real estate agent of the Year to investors for the years 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Results are not guaranteed by our investor clients who’ve been with us since 2012, earning over 400 percent returns on cash flowing investment property. So come check us out soon, as you can do to enter your fire code regulations. We can only have so many attendees and we have been waitlisted in the past, so it’s register at WW W Dot Truth about real estate investing dossier meeting. Thank you for listening in if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe button. Hour after using or we can email you episodes of the podcast right to your inbox as soon as they become available each week, simply go to our website. WW W Dot Truth about Real Estate Investing Dossier Again, this WW w dot truth about real estate investing, dossier engineer name and email on the right. If you really know the episode, please leave me a five star review and comment on iTunes. I read every comment and am grateful for every five star review. Thank you again for listening. Now go forth. Be awesome. Take action. Never give up because I believe in you so much time. This is Erwin Szeto bringing you the truth about real estate investing.

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