The Truth About Financial Independence for Canadians

On with the show! This week we have the lovely Victoria Cluney who has a different journey than most… well at least she is the first career Canadian Armed Forces personnel to be a guest of this show.  Victoria shares her journey of how she stumbled into being a landlord by renting out her home when she was transferred by work to different bases, which made great money but it wasn’t until she devel...

On to this week’s show! Our guest is basically a Canadian as he grew up in Minnesota near the border. Ryan grew up further north that the vast majority of Ontarians so he knows snow, hockey, black flies and cold winters. Then he smartened up and moved to Florida and participated in some roller coaster markets including the financial crisis and housing market crash of 2007-2009.  Ryan will share hi...

Investing for positive cash flow, areas of job growth and warm weather, regaining control of the retirement investment plan and legacy portfolio; all this and more on today’s episode of the Truth About Real Estate Investing Show for Canadians. I’m your host Erwin Szeto, landlord since 2005, Realtor and Coach to investors since 2010, 4X Realtor of the year, $400,000,000+ in client transactions, and...

Hello and welcome to the Truth About Real Estate Investing for Canadians, my name is Erwin Szeto, residential real estate investor since 2005, and in my experience, the investment that has gotten my over 350 clients ahead in life is direct ownership of real estate as they own the property, manage it themselves or hire a property manager, and grow their portfolios by borrowing cheap mortgage money....

On to this week’s guest Francois Lanthier has already exited his long-term rentals in Ontario a while ago and now lives in Costa Rica with his wife and teenage kids. Francois has investments in New Brunswick, Alberta, Michigan, Florida, Dominican Republic, Dubai, with plans to find more investments in Eastern Europe and Panama. It’s like he trying to buy up all the spaces on a Monopoly board! On t...

We have Calvert Home Mortgage Investment Corporation in the house! OR Calvert for short. The specialise in short-term financing for flippers, BRRRR investors, even pre-construction investors who need short term financing to close a property so they may immediately sell said property. As a real estate geek, I enjoy learning about what’s going on the in market, where investors are putting their mone...

On to this week’s show! We have the lovely Lena Guirguis on the show! Her Asset Management company NV Property Management since 2005 manages 168 units including 32 of her own. Her portfolio is incredibly diversified from owning a commercial flex space in Richmond, residential properties around the GTA and apartment buildings in Cleveland, Ohio. Lena is the founder of Stilettos and Hammers, a netwo...

On to this week’s show we have my old friends Mai Nguyen and Jonathan Lim who’s travel agency business was hit hard by Covid but thanks to their experience as early adopter AirBnb hosts were able to successfully pivot into short term rentals, specifically AirBnb and now own a couple and manage a total of 30 Airbnb properties. From Muskoka Cottages two hours north of Toronto, to downtown condominiu...

Our guest today is Andrew Kim, with ten years of real estate experience starting in the GTA, before building a portfolio of 20, fully managed properties in the state of New York, Florida, Atlanta and Dallas.  He’s a serial tech entrepreneur who’s worked in Silicon Valley startups and is now combining his passion for real estate investing with his technology.  Andrew’s company combines the expertis...

We have a long-time friend of the show Kayla Andrade , President of Ontario Landlords Watch, a grass roots, not for profit organisation, there’s almost 10,000 Facebook group members. Kayla has been advocating for landlords ever since her local city passed a by-law that if a tenant doesn’t pay their water bill, said debt gets applied to the landlord’s property tax.  Got to love how landlords are ex...

If you need help improving your record, myself and my lovely friend, today’s guest Elizabeth Kelly loves to help too.  It’s why we get along so well. Hopefully Elizabeth Kelly does not need an introduction.  She tells it like it is. Elizabeth was a paid, professional educator for Rich Dad Canada since 2012 and taught a couple thousand investors, including many of today’s influencers, coaches, full...

In this episode, I am breaking down the newest updates from the Bank of Canada on what's happening with interest rates. There’s talk of a possible recession and the economy slowing down, and we're here to get to the bottom of it all.   Using fresh info from Stats Canada and the Bank of Canada, I look at how the continuous increase in interest rates is affecting not just the big picture, but our da...

On to this week’s show!  As always, I look to bring you a variety of guests to share their unique experiences and journeys. Today we have old friend Greg Habstritt back on the show to share what he’s up after dominating the influencer scene, owning a $100 million dollar real estate portfolio, going through dark times both economically and personally.  He invests in Calgary Alberta afterall. To his...

If you follow the real estate news in Canada as much as I do on paid and free sources as much as I do then you will have already heard of my guest this week in Ron Butler who started in the Mortgage Brokering business just after the housing crash happened in the late 1980s and his business Butler Mortgage is one of the largest Mortgage Brokerages in Canada. Ron is known as the Angry Mortgage guy....

On to this week’s show! The Ottawa Senators recently dominated the hockey headlines as it’s been reported they sold for around $1 billion dollars US.  While Bruce M Firestone is no longer the owner, I’m sure he’s proud that what he started has ballooned to a massive success.  Imagine if the Sens had kept future hall of famer, defenceman, Zdeno Chara then the Sens like every NHL team would have a S...

On to this week’s show where we discuss deflation and how to be on the winning side of AI. Our guest Nicholas Ning likes solving complex problems making them easy to understand and creating value.  Over the last 10 years, he’s worked for Fortune 500 companies on multi-billion dollar projects around the world in strategy, finance, design, and marketing. He’s also been hired by real estate companies...

We have my friend Darvin Zurfluh who has a huge private equity brokerage called Pinnacle Wealth Brokers.  If you’ve been around the investor community, you’ve likely seen them around at events but today we have the founder of the company joining us from Calgary, Alberta. If you’re not familiar with private equities, well you need to be as good as private equities is part of the reason you’ll hear...

On to this week’s show! Tim JP Collins is an old friend of ten years or so, one of our most successful clients and has achieved the cash flow goal almost every new investor has when we first meet with them. $100,000 or more passive cash flow per year so they can vacation more, not worry about money, retire their spouse, etc… Tim is back on the show to update us on his journey from high paid, high...

On to this week’s show! Today we have a full time real estate investor who’s really really smart. I’ve known Christian for a couple years but only in this interview do I get a better understanding of how he transitioned out of an executive position in the tech industry into a full time investor. What’s especially interesting is how Christian originally capitalised his investing and how he found a...

On this week’s show we have a very real conversation with full-time, professional investor Austin Yeh who does it all: wholesales, flips, BRRR’s, negotiates his own cash for keys, podcaster, meetup host and it’s not all pretty. Austin shares how he’s had to rebalance his portfolio, wholesaling market slow down, which are short-term problems as he’s successfully transitioned out of his corporate jo...

This week we have our friends from Calvert Home Mortgage Investment Corporation back to give an update on the private lending/mortgage market including lessons from the downturn: e.g. what did in default real estate investors do wrong have in common so you the listener, my clients and I may avoid the same mistakes. Please keep in mind, real estate investing can easily be done wrong and less right....

On to this week’s show! We have Hart Togman, owner, founder of Rent Panda who’s been helping our clients locate tenants for my clients’ investment properties. How good is Rent Panda? Hart tells me they’ve had one non-payment of rent issue among 900 to 1,000 successful leases.  That’s pretty darn amazing so if you want to know how to be a successful landlord with paying tenants you will want to lis...

Ming is a Toronto Real Estate Expert and head of Volition Properties’ Investment Realty Services having helped clients accumulate $200,000,000 worth of income properties in the City of Toronto from condos to mid size apartment buildings, specialising in small multifamily in top neighborhoods. Ming is here today after Olivia Chow won the Mayoral race of Toronto and vows to build a more affordable c...

Nick Karadza is a real estate investor who discovered the power of leveraging real estate through "boot camps." Starting at 21, he bought, renovated, and flipped properties for profit but realised it wasn't generating the desired cash flow to replace his job income and it was a lot of work.  Nick shifted to rental properties, achieving monthly cash flow and recouping his investment. Nick founded R...

Kellan James was recommended for this podcast by my wife’s team at Real Estate Tax Tips.  You see, Accountants know who are actually successful at making money hence Kellen is our guest today. Kellan has successfully transitioned out of his corporate job. His timing for explosive growth was well timed, his deals were profitable and well executed including his more recent deleveraging stage of cons...