Hello from the True North!

[Gabriel Ho]

Greetings Bigger Pockets!

My name is Gabriel Ho and I am an upcoming young real estate investor in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. I'm here to learn as much as I can about real estate investing. I listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast daily (as of this post, I'm on podcast #48) and I'm addicted!

Here's a summary of my journey so far. My real estate journey started when I graduated from university (with no student loan debt, thanks grandfather!) and started a full time job as a defensive driving instructor in Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 2013. Over the next two years of steady income and paying rent, my father saw I was financially responsible with my money and hinted about helping me buy my first house. I didn't take him seriously until he booked an overseas airplane tickets to attend my sister's university convocation ceremony in Guelph. Before he arrived, he told me to get a real estate agent so we could do house viewings together during his time in Guelph. Now I knew he was serious.

In Podcast 45, I could relate to Tom Sylvester talking about using his unfair advantage to jump start in the real estate game. For Tom, his construction savvy father was his unfair advantage. For me, my rich dad was my unfair advantage. Upon finding the right property that fit all my criteria in July 2016, my father gave me over $200,000 Canadian dollars for +50% downpayment with no strings attached! My father didn't want to be on title or have any affiliation with the property. Talk about an unfair advantage! From 2016 to the present, I did some renovations and rent a portion of my house to get rental income to pay for 90% of my housing expenses (mortgage, property tax, property insurance, utilities, internet, maintenance, etc). I was house hacking before I knew it existed and it was awesome!

Back in mid 2018, I stumbled upon Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and the FIRE movement and that blew my mind. I didn't have any quality financial education when I was growing up so Rich Dad Poor Dad really opened my eyes as to how I could achieve my dreams of financial freedom. In my quest to achieve FIRE, I went to a Chamber of Commerce networking meeting and met a financial advisor named Jamie. During our first meeting, Jamie suggested I check out a website and podcast called Bigger Pockets. Though it was American-based, many of the business and real estate concepts taught can apply to me in Canada. As further motivation, Jamie told me she already had 4 rental properties using the BRRRR strategy and one of her properties gave her a net profit of $900 in one month. That really motivated and inspired me.

My next big life goal is to retire early with financial freedom in 10 years. To do so, my next plan is two fold: one, I want to change careers for higher income (to qualify for bigger loans) and something related to real estate so I can work to learn; and two, I want to buy another single family residence or duplex or triplex to increase my cashflow using the BRRRR strategy for buy-and-hold. Currently, I'm spending every day reading books (I have a long reading list), watching videos (Youtube addict), listening to podcasts and attending financial/real estate local networking events to build my financial education. I'm so excited to learn and grow!

Thank you for reading my introduction. I hope to see you on Bigger Pockets in the future.

Regards,

Gabriel Ho