Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Life by Design is a podcast that shares the experiences and tools to help couples align their wealth goals and reclaim their time, enabling them to experience freedom, abundance, and a life by design.
Transcript
Jessilyn & Brian (00:02)
Welcome to the Life by Design podcast. Today we're excited to have two guests join us to share their journey on real estate investing. So Sylvia and her partner Arran met 12 years ago and turned to real estate to escape the nine to five. Their investing journey experienced a strong start, a few setbacks and a pause and reset. But Sylvia and Aaron persevered and are now more focused than ever. Welcome. Welcome to our podcast. Yes, welcome.
Sylvia And Arran (00:31)
Thank you for having us on. Thank you.
Jessilyn & Brian (00:33)
Yeah, so why don't you guys start off by just expanding on your little intro that we gave you. Can you tell us a little bit more about the setbacks, about the pause and where you are now?
Sylvia And Arran (00:46)
Go ahead. We got into flips and we're sort of doing that and then we came across multifamily and knowing a few other people that do it and sort of wanting to grow. It sort of seemed like the direction we wanted to go in and we still do. We went down the rabbit hole in learning and we kind of paused everything else and that's kind of where we sort of took a pause and now we've got a bit of shiny object syndrome and now we realize we've come back to our focus and now we're moving forward again.
A lot of distractions to find your path. There's so many different paths that you can go down that seem so right for us, but then you have to really focus on the main ones. You can't just go everywhere, otherwise you're not going to get anywhere, which is kind of what happened to us.
Jessilyn & Brian (01:31)
Yeah, yeah, we've been there ourselves. It took us a lot of years to sort out our particular path. And so tell us about ⁓ the fix and flips. Is that where you started in real estate? So what did what are those first few projects go like? Can you tell us some experiences around it?
Sylvia And Arran (01:43)
Yes.
The first one actually went great. Well, we had a, we could have made a lot more money, but we got it right. We got the numbers right. We got what we wanted. And then we realized we probably should have done better. But the first one we founded pretty quickly. It all went pretty smoothly. Sort of until the very end, but it still worked out really good.
Yeah, we met our timelines, we had everything like that, basically the part is at the end there, the realtor we were using sort of came with the deal. He was the one that brought it through a wholesaler, so we had to sell it with him. He took it upon himself when it was finished to do a walkthrough, and he was going on holiday and listed it, and then went on holiday without showing us the listing for us to approve. Did he even do a walkthrough? Yeah, because he told Okay.
So when it went live I looked at it in the morning and he had put new plumbing, new electrical, new this, new that and we were like no no no we didn't like it's not that's not what I've done. So anyway it was a great deal he provided a listing price which was okay in our mind but afterwards turned out we had 23 other offers after accepting one we sold it in half a day so with him listing it the way he did
it ended up triggering some red flags at the city because they said new plumbing, new electrical, etc. And there were no permits. So the city turns up and then they want to see permits for this and permits for that. So we had to get our contractor in and do a walkthrough and say we didn't touch this, we didn't touch this. You can see it's original blah blah blah. And they wanted a few things upgraded. So it ended up costing us some money to do that. And we ended up dividing it with the realtor, the contractor, ourselves. We still made money on it.
but there was more money to be made. the realtor sort of took it upon himself to do that. So we learnt on top of that to really, really make sure that we approve the listing.
Jessilyn & Brian (03:52)
That's great. That's great you guys made money. A lot of the stories we hear, the first fix and flip, they rarely ever make money. In fact, in the whole shiny object syndrome that we were talking about, fix and flips were one of our shiny objects, we're kind of glad we didn't pick up. And I guess maybe just by luck we had enough conversations with people like yourselves who went through all the trials, went through all the tribulations, and we just went, you know what? ⁓
That's not for us. So tell us about like what kind of experience or support or training you guys had coming into your first fix and flip. Like how did you decide on fix and flip as your first real estate adventure?
Sylvia And Arran (04:36)
I've worked in construction most of my life and I had a few injuries and I was just like I can't do this forever. So I was just looking for something else. I have worked hard for other people and I don't want to do that anymore. I sort of wanted to work for us and our families and stuff like that. And I just sort of was talking to a friend and he had a co-worker that had started doing flips and at the time there was a company called Black Card which was Stefan Arnio which was based here in Winnipeg.
And he had left his job as a paramedic for the city, is a great paying job here and within a couple of years was basically self-sufficient doing this and the market was pretty hot then. So he had given me a book and I started reading it and I thought this is right up my alley. I already work in construction, I know the process, I know a lot of good trades. And then we went to a seminar that Stephen was running here and it was super interesting, seemed like a very charismatic guy.
very knowledgeable, so we signed up for coaching and that was our path that started into real estate and the plan then was fix and flip to get money to buy other bigger assets for rentals and stuff like that. And it was here in Winnipeg so he knew the market so it kind of helped a lot more as opposed to trying to get coaching from a different province and different rules so it did help out a lot.
Jessilyn & Brian (05:37)
Okay, great.
Yeah, great, yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (06:02)
that way. He has specific questions about things.
Jessilyn & Brian (06:07)
Yeah, yeah, it's great to know your and you and because you are from Winnipeg, you know your local market as well. So it ⁓ we we do similar strategies we invest in our local areas and it and it's just so much easier sometimes to just Know street by street like what what a particular property looks like and fantastic job on getting coaching first because that's not the usual story either Not what we did No, we didn't we didn't get coaching. We did not ⁓ we we've lost some money on some deals
Sylvia And Arran (06:11)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jessilyn & Brian (06:37)
Well, actually that's not true. Our worst deal, we still made 6 % ⁓ over 11 years, mind you, but we still made 6%. But we lost on the sell. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so fantastic job on getting the coaching because a lot of people go into it and they do not get the support they need and they end up losing a lot of money getting a bad taste in their mouth from real estate. Yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (06:46)
It's still moving forward. It's still moving forward. You're not going backwards.
We sort of, like, I understand the build. Like, I've worked in new construction, I've worked in renovation, and I understand that side of it. I didn't understand the buying side of it, the monetary side, finding deals, and that sort of thing. So, new part of it, but not all of it. And, sort of talking to a few people that had coaches and things like that, you know, it can help you take steps forward faster and learn those things rather than having potholes or being very put off by one or two bad deals at the start.
Jessilyn & Brian (07:34)
Yep. Yep. So after doing some fix and flips and learning all these lessons that you could take forward into future fix and flips, sounds like you decided to pause and maybe pick a different strategy. Is that correct?
Sylvia And Arran (07:50)
Yes, so what happened was we met some good friends from Black Card who have gone to Wealth Genius and they were like, ⁓ we went to a boot camp that was here in Winnipeg. And we thought, ⁓ hey, yeah, this makes so much more sense. This is exactly what we need. And we kind of jumped ship and went on to that, which was great.
Jessilyn & Brian (08:19)
Ha
Sylvia And Arran (08:20)
And Jeff and Dakota, who are also with Wealth Genius, were with Black Card at one point as well. So you can see that people are moving in that direction and it makes sense and they're doing well and everything's doing great. So I this makes sense for I feel like it's almost, unless you want to just specialize in fix and flips or single families, I feel like it's a natural progression. You've done a few, if you've had some rentals, you know, when you've got a single family and somebody moves out, you're on the hook.
Jessilyn & Brian (08:28)
Okay.
Sylvia And Arran (08:49)
there's a mortgage for that while it's empty or fixing damage and then re-renting it etc. And when you understand some of that stuff with knowledge and time and then you come across multifamily if it's your thing and having multiple doors on one property your risk is less if one unit is empty and you've got five, six, seven, ten to cover that. You don't notice it as badly as you do with a single family.
Jessilyn & Brian (09:15)
Yes, yes, that was our approach as well, but we never did fix and flips. We were always long-term hold, but we did have a lot of single ⁓ condo and single family and not all in province. So we definitely had some lessons we learned from being spread over different opportunities. And that's where we...
⁓ Quite a years ago, we actually decided to just shrink our portfolio and get rid of all the singles, all the condos, single families, and just do sweeted properties or kind of duplex concept, similar concept, right? If one moves out, well, at least the mortgage is still covered. And we love that strategy. It's still one we love today that we keep all of our properties that we have. But like you guys, we also are expanding into multifamily.
Just kind of go bigger, faster, I think is kind of our game now. Exactly, yeah. So I'm sure you guys have experienced it, but fix and flip is a job, right? You have to always be on to try and get to the next dollar. And early on in our career, when you only have one or two properties, well, you're at that risk now of having a vacancy, having a problem with the property and potentially, you know...
basically going south on your money with those properties. We're at a point now where our portfolio is large enough so that a vacancy can happen that doesn't really matter. But when you can buy a single building and have the same aspect of not really having a concern about a single vacancy in it, it makes a whole lot of difference. And both us and you guys have figured that out and we're well on the ⁓ path towards multifamily.
Exactly, yeah.
It makes such a difference to how you manage, to how you run your portfolio. Everything is a total game changer. So what got you guys past the, which is what a lot of blockers are for people getting into multifamily, the dollar amount. Because the dollar amount is quite a bit higher than, say, buying a home. What helped you guys get past that and kind of ignore a few of the zeros on the building?
Sylvia And Arran (11:33)
I think I'm already having a little bit of experience with the flips and understanding the numbers. ⁓ The numbers are bigger but the returns are bigger. ⁓ Things like that. It's just you are just literally adding a zero on the end. But you're doing a lot more due diligence, more careful due diligence and you have to make sure that your numbers are more...
are proper numbers, they're strict numbers, they're conservative numbers so that you don't get into trouble if anything does follow. You really have to be careful with that. I think for the future, the returns long term are better. I think that's what we really want is that freedom in the end of the day to get to that point where we're sort of self-supported by that income and we don't have to have regular jobs and you can show other people that you can do it. We're just regular people.
Jessilyn & Brian (12:01)
Hmm
Sylvia And Arran (12:25)
We can take those steps and get through that fear that when you first start, if we can show other people that, then they can do it too.
Jessilyn & Brian (12:32)
So the attractiveness of the larger deals, that's definitely what attracted us. And also the experience, we came from experience too, that makes the transition a fair bit easier. But if you were to redo it all again, what would be the number one experience that you would try and take on to get to multifamily faster?
Sylvia And Arran (12:51)
think starting,
would just have, if had to start again, I'd probably just sort of learning some of the stuff we did. I'd probably just go straight to trying to get a duplex or something first and then scaling up. Just trying to manage all those people without a management company would be quite difficult. Also, your network is You've never done it before. Your network is a massive thing too, like the people you meet.
Sylvia And Arran (13:20)
they'd already have more knowledge, more experience and having that access to people that potentially want to invest in deals. Your network is massively important too. But definitely coaching. And coaching, especially for something this big is a big must. It's a big feat, for sure.
Jessilyn & Brian (13:40)
Yeah, % agree with that. We went down the same path. ⁓ We were already experienced managing our own properties. We had had a portfolio for 10 years or more. And I don't think I would have ever jumped into multifamily without coaching as well. There's so many nuances to any type of real estate, like whether it's fix and flip, multifamily, or just even buying a single house, you really need to know those nuances or you could lose your shirt on the deal.
Sylvia And Arran (14:08)
Yeah, exactly.
A single family house is a bit more fluid. If you have a bigger multifamily, you really need to cross the T's and dot the I's because it's not as easy to sell or as fast to sell as a single family. So you have to really make sure everything is where you need it to be. Yeah. I mean, we had a house.
That went pretty well and we're going to use it as a rental and we didn't like the applicants. And so we thought, no, we don't want to do this to this neighborhood. We like the neighbors. And so we just turned it around and sold it and we were able to sell it. And we did a, you know, we did pretty well on it. It was pretty good. didn't even do it as a nice, as a nice arena. mean, it pretty good though. Except for the, the, the attic.
Jessilyn & Brian (14:56)
Yeah, and so you're talking about network as well. So ⁓ we actually met through I actually met friend friends or associates of yours in Toronto and I knew we met in Edmonton through the same associate so like Real estate is a is a just a tremendous networking like skill like and and just profession in general ⁓ Can you talk about like sort of the saying of your?
your network is your net worth and how that applies, how you guys see that applying to yourself.
Sylvia And Arran (15:31)
Absolutely, just even Toronto was an example as well. Just through that network we met a bunch of people that are higher level things than us, we've been given the opportunity to invest in some new builds in Edmonton, which is partially why we're there to have a look around. ⁓ Just the people we've met providing information, opportunities, people you can reach out to to ask questions if you maybe get stuck or you need to...
find some information on how to get past something, to be able to potentially contact them if they're in a city that you're not, to say, hey, I'm looking at this opportunity, you're in the area, would you be able to go and have a look at it for me? Which we actually did for someone from WealthGenius here in Winnipeg last week. So it saves them having to come here and we can go and do a walkthrough video, give them our honest opinion of the area, sort of surroundings and things like that. So your network gives you that ability to grow.
faster and access to information. Definitely meeting so many people, learning so many different things and trying new things also is great. yeah, definitely was, that gave me a big boost in Toronto when we went. And you also, because you're surrounded by people doing things and it's a great environment where you, it's almost an overload that you leave incredibly inspired and excited. Yes.
Jessilyn & Brian (16:38)
Yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (16:53)
Yes, the editing was little bit more focused, which was good that way.
Jessilyn & Brian (16:54)
Yeah, from my experience.
It does that it helps you focus immensely from my experience I love real estate investing primarily due to that because it's just such a social profession like you just need to get out there and Like interact with people and there's really no other way to do it Like how do you how do you buy even a single house without you know ten different professionals? Surrounding you and properly supporting you. It's it's pretty well impossible
Sylvia And Arran (17:24)
Right, because you need to know the lawyers. ⁓ Good realtors, ⁓ contractors, there's so many people, it's great. Financing, yeah, you are doing it on your own, definitely. Which we've done as well.
Jessilyn & Brian (17:42)
Yeah,
so in terms of ⁓ real estate and for the audience out there, what's one of the biggest misconceptions about real estate investing that you could share with everyone?
Sylvia And Arran (17:55)
A lot of people think it's a scam. ⁓ But it's not. I have some people at work that say, you better watch out. There's so much scammers out there. I had a friend that this and this. And I'm not even aware. But it's not. This is legit. It's pretty funny. Coaching, we should talk about people, they think it's super hard to get into or this and the other, but coaching can really help you through that. It's like anything.
Sylvia And Arran (18:25)
Practice it's like stretching a new muscle it's going to be hard at the start and it will get easier find someone that you can follow or they could mentor you or just you know go find someone that's high level and pay for the coaching because it's worth it you'll get a return on that yeah it's not a scam coaching is a but it's not I mean it's hard to tell them that
Jessilyn & Brian (18:41)
Yeah. Yeah, scam or you hear, you it's not the right time to invest or the world's going to implode or something bad is always going to go on in real estate. Yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (18:50)
Right. really the right time until it's the time.
You also get lot of doubters, even you'll find some people that are closest to you are the biggest doubters.
Jessilyn & Brian (19:06)
Everyone has a horror story of a tenant, right? Even if it was from 20 years ago. So yeah, we ran into that a lot and sadly, right? And it's interesting because I still get asked all the time when I'm out and about, you know, real estate. And again, they all bring up the horror stories and I just very quietly ask, was it managed correctly? And a lot of them are all like, oh, I don't know. Because generally they inherit it.
Jessilyn & Brian (19:34)
Right, I find, and then they want, I'm gonna rent it out, but they don't realize there should be contracts, there should be reviews, you should be doing checks before they come in, and then checks after, and I even had that last week, someone mentioned, was like, yeah, we changed the furnace filter every six months, 12 months max. That's our in to see how the property is. like, that's a good idea, I'm gonna start that. I'm like, great! Yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (20:02)
You also to make sure your tenants are happy. You got to be a good landlord. It works both ways.
Jessilyn & Brian (20:10)
Yeah, yeah. So many people start into real estate and they're just so happy to get their first tenant in the door that they just kind of like close their eyes and ignore all the signs. Unfortunately.
Sylvia And Arran (20:23)
And that's why that house we did as a regional, that's why we sold it. We went through tenant applications for two or three months and it was kind of a transitional area and just had really terrible tenant applications or they wouldn't want to fill out an application at all. So, you know, after two or three months, we're like, you know, what we'll sell it. And that's exactly part of the process. You know, we wanted to put the right person in the house that stood at the area that, you know, it was... Wasn't gonna give any troubles with anybody else and...
Jessilyn & Brian (20:31)
Allow them.
Sylvia And Arran (20:52)
I also wanted to sell it before the market went down. Because sometimes when it comes into summer, everybody's gone and nobody's looking for houses, so you have to get it in there just before it slows down again.
Jessilyn & Brian (20:56)
Yeah, So ⁓ as a couple in real estate investing, like how do you guys manage decisions and agreements and what direction you're going when it comes to investing?
Sylvia And Arran (21:20)
Go ahead. We have a lot of conversations about it. I'll remember that. We sort of discuss a lot of things. We don't have our own strengths. We don't be in goalers and what's the path to get there? Is it this one or this one? We talk about each thing a lot.
Jessilyn & Brian (21:22)
Let him take the trap first.
Sylvia And Arran (21:43)
We keep our heads on things, Sometimes it comes down to practicality versus aesthetics. we do stuff, Sylvia on a couple of houses had great ideas, but they were very, they were sort of more to the personalized for herself side and had to come back and say, this house is not our house, this house is not for us. ⁓
Jessilyn & Brian (22:04)
Yeah.
Sylvia And Arran (22:05)
Even though it's great idea, it doesn't fit in this house. I mean, it's hard because you want it to look great and you want it as your baby. You want to make it, you know, but you have to scale it back. I understand. I got it. People listening that have never done it, you can't have any emotional attachment to the house. It's not yours. You're just passing it through. You're just making it good for someone else. Yeah.
Jessilyn & Brian (22:17)
Yeah
Yeah.
Oh, I hear you on that. I have conversations with my cleaners all the time. It's like, it does not have to be clean to my standards. It has to be clean to my tenants standards, right? They're different levels of standards. And it's same thing with like, you your renovations and other things. We know investors that will replace the flooring literally every time the tenant moves out because there's, you know, scratches or like things going on in the suite that they just don't like.
It doesn't make any sense to me because you can get many many more years out of it and most tenants will just not notice at all like they They kind of come in and they just look at you know, the generalness of the property and if it looks clean and it looks, know bright That's that's pretty well what they're looking at. Yeah, but you don't have to go to be
Sylvia And Arran (23:04)
No. As long as everything works and...
So yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't replace the floor every time. My goodness, that's a lot of money.
Jessilyn & Brian (23:21)
All right.
You you gotta run it like a business, right? Not everyone runs real estate like a business, All right, so wrapping up here, did you wanna ask anyone a last question before we close here? Yeah, so what's the best advice that you could give to our listeners that we might not have caught through this conversation?
Sylvia And Arran (23:51)
A lot of people get stuck in just reading or not taking action. They'll just go down the rabbit hole and not actually taking the action. You have to take action. You have to start. Even if you're not the best at it, when you make mistakes, you have to start and you'll learn from those mistakes. Yeah, that's true. Take action. Don't wait till tomorrow. Just do it. Just kind of put that fear aside a little bit. It's always good to have a little bit, but just...
Jessilyn & Brian (24:08)
Yeah, 100 % agree on that.
Sylvia And Arran (24:20)
You just go, just go. Find someone, a mentor that is where you want to be. lot of people say this, know, find a mentor that is you want to be and learn from them.
Jessilyn & Brian (24:29)
Yep. Agreed. Fantastic. So if our listeners want to connect with you, can you share how they do that?
Sylvia And Arran (24:36)
They can get a hold of us at silverfern.rei at gmail.com or I guess they can call us if they want or also I have it's silverfern.rei ⁓ on Instagram.
Jessilyn & Brian (24:49)
You get to have social media handle as well.
Okay, fantastic. right.
Sylvia And Arran (24:59)
I don't have Facebook, not yet, sorry. I'm having so many people think that right now. yeah, it's on Instagram as well.
Jessilyn & Brian (25:04)
That's okay.
Great, thank you. And of course, we'll include all that in the show notes. But thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your journey and your wisdom for our listeners. And for those who are looking to get started in real estate, remember, just take the first step. .