All Forum Posts by: Ash Nahle

 This has to be about the worst advice I have ever seen! Investing purely for appreciation is surely a way to get your rear handed to you. Every Market in history generally returns to its long-term mean. Chart out prices over the last 40 years in Toronto and you will see that it is far above that long-term trend. And Note what happened in 1990

@Joseph Costanza @Nick Vazquez I'm a Toronto based investor and run a real estate investment firm. Yes, you can generate cash flow in the city, but it's not going to be like in the outskirts of the GTA. If you've read any of my posts before, I think cash flow is highly overrated. Not that cash flow isn't important, but rarely is there a full discussion on what cash flow means. It's a function of risk - the higher the cash on cash return, the higher the risk of the investment as a general rule.

The biggest returns in real estate for me have been through capital appreciation and where cash flow was enough to allow me to hold the property without issues. My highest cash flowing properties (I held 7 student rental properties in Waterloo at one point), had lower capital appreciation and therefore lower overall return compared to my Toronto properties. Time (mortgage paydown) and appreciation is really how big money is made. This means location (buying where jobs are, areas of gentrification, increased population)  is paramount when buying a property in my eyes. A couple of hundred dollar more or less per month, won't change my life, but a couple extra $100k's in appreciation makes a big difference.

This isn't to discount what others are saying about investing the outskirts of the GTA. I know many of them personally, and they to are successful at what they're doing. We've all become experts in our own areas of investing. 

At the end of the day, investing is an individual journey and anyone who tells you they've got the best investment for you, is wrong - you've got to figure that out for yourself.