First residential rental property investment, Ottawa

[Kevin McGuire]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Ottawa.

Single family townhouse

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Long term passive income generation, low risk investment

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Real estate agent

How did you finance this deal?

Conventional

Lessons learned? Challenges?

As this was my first property, I did not have a model to evaluate if this was a good investment. I now have built a spreadsheet for net income analysis and evaluate by cap rate. By doing so I've subsequently bought better.

[Kevin McGuire]

Hi @James Edgar, @Mike Zahniser, thanks! 

No actually I live in Seattle, WA but I am from Ottawa.

I just signed up here in BP and wrote that post late into the night when entering my properties and didn't quite grok it was going to create this post otherwise would've invested more in the writing.  Since Jan 2016 I've bought seven. I've listed them in my profile but, being new here, I am not yet comfortable publicly posting the financials. I am ok privately sharing with you both though.

My goal is long term passive retirement income generation without capital disillusion using risk managed assets.

I chose Ottawa to get started for a few reasons:

1) I know a real estate agent and a property manager there that I trust. 

2) It's a "steady Eddy" market, no huge ups and downs, which matches my investment goals. 

3) Good exchange rate from USD to CAD for the down payment.

4) I may someday retire there so wanted property in that market as a hedge against currency and real estate value changes.

Reasons (1) and (2) made Ottawa a good place to start. Next I may add more properties in Ottawa but am starting to consider diversifying to other CAN or US locations.