All Forum Posts by: Allen Seto

Hey @Mark LeCounte...stay patient and keep learning.  Start defining goals and what type of investing you really want to get into.  

I am probably in my 4th month and I know the feeling.  You get really jacked up to start and want things to start happening over night.  Things will start to come together as you keep chipping away...

@Christopher Tully welcome to BP! Tons of great info here...keep educating yourself and get out and talk to people. REI groups and networking with like minded people is a really motivating and powerful.

As an investor you know what number makes sense to you.  If the seller is  stuck on a higher number the answer is simple:  Walk away.

This just happened to me....I walked way from a deal.  Seller came back a week later and wanted to take my final offer.  Not saying this will happen in your case but NO deal is better than a BAD deal.

Hi @Edgar Soriano,

I am in Ottawa and have considered the areas outside the city such as Hawkesbury and Cornwall.  I am looking to purchase my first investment property.  The numbers on the properties out there look good but my main concern is demographics and the quality of tenants you would attract.  What are your thoughts on the areas?  We should chat...

@Yousef Reda

Where abouts in Ontario is the property?  I am in Ottawa.

Hi @Hatice Martin, what areas are you looking in?  

The Rental Property calculator is a great place to start evaluating potential deals.  It really does a good job accounting for all your potential costs (including vacancy, maintenance and capex).  It will then tell you if the property cashflows!  And cashflow is king!

Lots of great info here on BiggerPockets.  I will try to summarize.  Know your market.  Know what kind of tenants you want to attract.  Know your rents.  Know what you like and don't like about owning/managing a rental property.

Keep learning...good luck! 

Just finished this book cover to cover this morning on a 4 hour flight.  It was the fastest 4 hour flight I have ever been on.  Awesome, awesome book!  Clever, funny, and educational all wrapped up in a great little package.

Thanks @Brandon Turner for putting so much great info and stories in one book.  I feel it opened my eyes and my mind a ton!  But those are all just words unless I put it into practice, and I intend on doing just that!  I have the tools.  I have the toolbox.

Hey @Matt Geerts, for the last 4 weeks or so, I have gone to the courthouse and asked to see the newest probate court files.  There is usually about 12-20 cases filed every week and they are available to the public.  There is a fee of $10 to see each record, but I tell them it is for a "research project" I am working on and I just need to pull some information quickly, and they have let me have the files for 30 mins or so at no cost.  I then flip through them, and snap pics with my phone so I have all the info to enter into a spreadsheet when I get home.

This is tedious...and so far I am only working on probates.  I hope to expand into divorce and possibly debt defaults to see if a similar strategy will work to at least get the leads.

So what do I do with these probate leads one I get them?  I do a mail merge and send out some direct mail yellow letters to the names of the successors I pulled off the files.  My success has been limited (non-existent) so far, I have had one very angry call (haha - I guess that is part of the deal), and a couple of other exploratory calls from others.  Nothing concrete yet.  But as others have said on this forum...it is a numbers game and its about following up.  So I will keep plugging away.  I am working and seeing what happens but also have some other ways to get leads at the same time.

I would love to get feedback and opinions on my strategy....

@Matt Geerts I have also been on the lookout for lists like these.  No luck on my end with actual lists.  I am just starting out, but my best luck of finding leads has been more old school.  Making a trip to the local courthouse and physically pulling records.  I would love to automate this process so am curious to see if anyone has discovered some of these mailing lists in Ontario.

Here are 3 real estate related books that I just recently read that are specific to Canada (for all the BP'ers north of the border).  Really good insights in them all...

Real Estate Investing in Canada by Don Campbell

RRSP Secret by Greg Habstritt

Investing in Rent-To-Own Property by Mark Loeffler