Ramping up our REI business

[Shawn Quigg]

Hey BP!

My business partner and I are excited to share we've taken solid action in the past few months to get our business off the ground. We already own a high performing student rental in Windsor, ON which is cash-flowing $1,300/month pre-capex/vacancy reserves. We sold a primary residence (no capital gains tax in Canada in primary residences), which was purchased for $11k down and house hacked for four years, and pocketed $140k which we used to purchase a pre-build condo in Toronto, ON which is still not even finished being dug. When it's ready, we're expecting an assignment fee of $100k+ and will consider closing then refinancing at its new value. We're in the process of 80% LTV refinancing the student property to pull $100k out which will finance another student rental we have under contract in LaSalle, ON, a 7-min walk to a college of over 12,000 students situated in an affluent neighbourhood with no student housing. This place is a 2+1, 1-bath that will turn into a 3+3, 2-bath and is only 20 years old.

Our next steps include creating systems for running our business smoothly (considering Buildium and a rent paying feature like RentTrack which reports to credit bureaus; we also need checklists for getting our units ready), building our brand which focuses on high quality student rentals which are net-zero or zero-emission homes, and getting more properties under contract.

Does anyone have any insight to offer on:

-powering homes with solar, electric furnaces (we know they’re expensive though I can’t get anyone to actually give me a price), solar water heaters, and other measures to cut house emissions

-pre-/post-buy checklists

-systems for running rental businesses

Finally, shout out to @scottinnocente for being a knowledgeable and educated investor-real estate agent and the Green Mortgage Team for moving our financing along.