$400K cash in USD, invest in Canada or US or both?

[Arthur Royale]

Hello all, I just joined this forum and I'm excited to be here!  A few points about myself to give you some perspective. I'm a Canadian that now lives & works in the US and am a part owner of a student rental apartment building in Canada.

I have saved up around $400K USD to be used for investment purposes and I'm debating what to do with it in the real estate world.  The options are: convert it all over to CDN to benefit from the +40% exchange rate and invest in the Canadian real estate market. Or invest in the US market given the possibly better deals here. Or a combination of the above. Or convert to CDN but wait for the CDN housing market to correct. Etc. Many options!

In terms of my goals/needs, I don't need the income from the investments since I will be in the workforce for a while. I am more of a buy & hold investor so not interested in flips. I'm not into loaning money. I'm not a handy person that wants to buy fixer uppers. I'd rather build up a portfolio of buy & hold real estate that will appreciate over time and allow me to eventually live off the proceeds. I do have access to credit in both the US and Canada.

Any thoughts on the options I mentioned?  Cheers!

[Christos Dimopoulos]

I feel better about the US Dollar long term vs the Canadain Dollar. Thus, I would feel much better about investing in the US. You wouldn't want to end up in a situation where you are wanting to sell and the Canadain Dollar isnt worth much and you lose some of your return to the exchange rate. It can be a significant hit.