The Truth About Financial Independence for Canadians

Hello Investors!!! What a great weekend of weather!!! The weather man has been way off, it’s been way hotter than forecast these last few days and of course we spent Saturday morning indoors at our Halton Real Estate Investors group meeting talking about ecommerce businesses with Greg Kowalcyk and Brian Zammit.  It was great to see so many investors taking interest in becoming more entrepreneurial...

Hello investor! I hope you all had as great a weekend as I did!!! My Friday and Saturday were spent with my wife Cherry and friend James Maggs at the Archangel Summit: a business and self development conference and it was excellent!! I’m fired up to do more, be more, help more!!  I will summarize my notes and present them to you all at a later time. Happy birthday to my mom, the lovely woman who g...

First Day of School Today I’m a bag of mixed emotions. My daughter is off to her first day of school, as in no more daycare (saving $500/month in daycare fees is a big win! Like gaining cash flowing property!! HAHA) , she’s going to a real school, junior kindergarten to be specific. I was choked up watching her get on the school bus for the 2.1 km commute. Cherry, my wife told me I’m silly and I a...

Life is too short to not have more fun, more often. I was thinking this after a night out on Friday with a bunch of buddies who all happen to be real estate investors, to celebrate a friend’s birthday doing axe throwing, indulging in an adult beverage or ten, gambling, clubbing, and more gambling. Then on the following Tuesday, I was reminded how short life is as I was driving home from my colonos...

The bearish Ryan Carr is back on the show to share about his latest investment, a 250 square foot house.  That’s right, 250 sq feet. That may just be smaller than many of your master bedrooms in your homes. Sadly that is the reality of today’s housing market. On a recent vacancy of mine that we just filled last night to four lovely young adults, vacancy is too low and rents are unaffordable to man...

Oh the lengths we will go for our kids….   On Sunday, my wife Cherry planned a half day event for us to ride Thomas the Train.  No idea what I’m talking about? That’s ok. He’s a crazy popular cartoon character who is a train and for $25, you can ride in the train that he pulls.   The price is fine, it’s the distance, 122 kilometres from home in Uxbridge, ON that was my biggest problem but fine, we...

Happy August Everyone and happy birthday to my Wonder Woman who has her own business, does Crossfit 3x/week, mom to our beautiful kids, runs our household and the most difficult part, taking care of me. Happy 6th birthday!! No really, the kids buy it she's six years old…   To celebrate Cherry’s bday like anyone when they turn 18 is to go to Niagara Falls this past Friday.  To start, joined by fell...

Summer is in full swing now that we’ve had our July Halton REI meeting and taking the month of August off but don’t worry, there will be a tour mid August for investment opportunities in St. Catharines.   This past Saturday, our Street Smart Tour brought us to a city truly open for business in Brantford, Ontario with my team, the Team Titans and our friend Paisley Mackenzie, former Economic Develo...

The young and brilliant Ryan Carr is back to share his current project where he is turning his poorly performing property into a winner but adding an 850 square foot coach house in the backyard of an existing property and rent for 1,500-1,600/month plus utilities.   If you haven’t heard Ryan’s previous interview, go back to the episode titled ‘How a Mechanic Invested in 20 Properties in Two Years’...

Susan is a veteran investor who started in 2006, the perfect time right before the Financial/credit crisis of 07/08.  She’s done flips, legal basement suites, 30-40 rent to owns, student rentals and currently holds over 30 properties.   We talk about raising capital and credit from investment partners for joint venturing, her forecast and equity splits for investment partners, her strategy for the...

What can I say about Jay, he had it all, successful investments, business, a growing family till tragedy struck and took the mother of his three young children.  Thanks to his real estate, his portfolio was able to support Jay and his kids while on leave for three years to mourn and care for the kids.   We go deep into what happened, how it affected the kids, how Jay got through it now four years...

Can You Get Rich Working for a Start Up? With Tony La   This week’s guest is Tony La, Chief Technical Officer of start up Honk Mobile. Haven’t heard of them? That’s ok because you will.  They take mobile payment for parking and they just signed Pearson International Airport in Toronto.  With Honk Mobile you can pay or parking and re feed the meter all from your phone so you don’t need to have chan...

This was me (Erwin Szeto) being interviewed as the guest on the Your Life - Your Terms Podcast by Tom and Nick Karadza.  Credit to them for the recording, title and show description:   On this episode, Erwin Szeto shares his real estate journey and how he ultimately walked away from his corporate job to work with real estate and investors on a full-time basis. Over the past eight years, together w...

How to Claim Thousands of Dollars of in Home Energy Rebates with Nick Crosby   “I wish I knew you before I did my renovations” is what ever tells Nick “the Rebate Guy” Crosby upon meeting him.   It is exactly what I said because for years, I have not been able to locate a home energy auditor since many of the last set of rebate programs went away and the majority where only for your principle resi...

John Roumanis is back again and upon his insistence we opened a 2009 Italian bottle of Chianti (I can’t help but think of Hannibal Lector’s line how he ate liver and kidney beans with a nice Chianti…) and chatted about real estate, mindset for success, challenges and successes, stock investing and so much more.  I know it’s a long episode and but do listen to the end to hear what motivates John. I...

My friend and Marketing guy John Cerpnjak just entered the housing market, a new construction apartment condo on the west side of downtown Toronto.   John is a hard working millennial who works from home for the most part helping small businesses with their online, direct Marketing.  Much of the work is contract based and from home, a trend that is becoming more and more popular, and no different...

Starting an Amazon Business   Does is seem like Amazon is everywhere? They sure seem to be creating jobs in the thousands each time they are in the news: 3,000 jobs in Vancouver and more recently announced another 1,000 in Ottawa.   I’m fasting on Amazon along with breakfast too but I can’t help but buy lots of books on my kindle as I love reading it to fall asleep each night in the dark.  But our...

Mortgage Market Update With Dave Butler   This week’s guest is none other than Dave Butler of Butler Mortgage, one of the top producing mortgage brokers in the country and my personal Mortgage professional.  Dave is going to update us on the latest in the lending markets in terms of government restrictions on lending, where interest rates are going, choosing between fixed or variable interest, the...

Investing in Rural Real Estate Outside Winnipeg, MB with Candice Bakx-Friesen   I was talking to my friend Stephen Jones at the May REIN meeting about the affordability crisis in the Golden Horseshoe’s real estate market.  Stephen lives in the East, I in the West but the challenges are no different, where will the next generation live?   Stephen theorized if our kids did not have investor parents,...

Why would anyone want to build a $1 Million RSP? With Kathleen Van Den Berg   It all started with an article I sent CFP, MBA Kathleen Van Den Berg, an article titled  How to build a million dollar RRSP — it isn't as hard to get there as you think  and she corrected me in stating "think they are asking the wrong question.   Why would anyone want to build a $1M RSP?” To which I responded, I don’t kn...

If you’ve heard our previous interview, you know listening to Oliver Manalese will expand your mind and today’s interview is no different. He was co-owner of Rent Busters, a leading Rent To Own company and he gave it all up to pursue more fulfilling work as a personal performance coach.  We talk about business, investing, how he was a catalyst for a mutual friend (a successful real estate investor...

Former CMHC Underwriter for apartment buildings Pierre-Paul Turgeon is a veteran apartment building investor and the country’s best teacher in multifamily investing is back on the show.  Not only is he a leading expert on investing, he is a philanthropist who offered vacant units in his buildings rent free to victims of the Fort McMurray Fires plus food and clothing.  He is exactly the type of gue...

My friend Mike Iuliano is many things, a backyard gardener, a foodie expert of restaurants in the Niagara Region, same with apartment buildings in the Niagara Region.   Mike lead a coalition of Niagara landlords to fight the city of St. Catharines in Ontario Superior Court and won thus allowing all us student rental investors to operate our safe, clean rental properties for young adults.  Mike’s a...

Rob Break is the newest member of the Rock Star family as a real estate agent and coach, and we are happy to have him!! Rob has invested in countless investment properties and guided investor clients through the same in the Durham region.   As Rob is the host of possibly the top real estate podcast in Canada, we are in for a treat as he shares tips on podcasting, favourites guests, tips on investi...

Tony is many things, a father, husband, real estate investor, real estate agent, and not just any real estate agent but rather the preferred agent for Ottawa by both Keyspire and the Real Estate Investment Network   He has also literally been homeless and lived on the streets of Ottawa when he was a teenager but turned it around including a long stint working for the Government of Canada with grea...