All Forum Posts by: Elaine Lee

Hi there, I'm new to investing and currently in the process of building a team in Edmonton. Thanks to BiggerPocketer's recommendations, I have connected with some great team members already. Right now I wonder if anyone has recommendations on a good investor-focused accountant in Alberta? (I'm based in Toronto, not sure if that would make a difference in choosing the accountant)

Thanks! 

@Scott Swanson I'm from Canada and investing in Canada only.

I'm new to investing and I'm just starting to put a team together. Currently in the process of chatting with a few realtors. I have a question regarding where I should get my mortgage for this first investment/rental property from.

I currently have a primary residence and its mortgage, but I'm planning to put rental properties under a LLC (or corporations in Canada), what process/place would you recommend I get the first mortgage?

From what I researched so far, (investor-focused) mortgage broker has been recommended a lot, but seems like a mortgage broker is a great way to find loans but not so on saving money. So given I'm at the very early stage, I assume it's easy to just get a loan from a bank (given my reasonable income etc.), would it still be better to talk to a broker?

Thanks!

Hi there, just wondering if anyone has good recommendations on investor-focused realtors in Edmonton?  We tried searching on Zillow and other websites (e.g. rate-my-agent), but seems like the result is not coherent. For example, the top 5 rated realtors on one website cannot be found on the other website, which really makes me doubt the reliability. 

Or if anyone knows how I can search for the sales volume of these realtors myself? 

Thanks!

I'm new to real estate investing. When I reached out to realtors, they always ask me to check how much loan I can get, is it expected? I am a little bit concerned that if realtors know I could finance at certain number, wouldn't they be less likely to bring me the deals that is much less than that number? 

Another question is that, I contacted several realtors, and some asked me to reach out to their team members who help clients figure out loan limit. Should I go to a bank to figure out the loan limit myself or work with realtor's team members? (I have not signed any contract with these realtors yet, but it seems like working with their team members for loan limit is a prerequisite). 

@Melanie Dupuis thanks for the comment, although could you explain or share a bit more about this suggestion? 

Thank you guys so much for the replies! They are really helpful. We have made a separate entrance to the basement, with fire alarms/parking, etc in place (although first time heard about egress window), and we don't have shared space with the basement (so tenants have their own kitchens and bathrooms, except we share the laundry), so based on Roy's comment, this is still within RTA I guess, so it's more in favor to the tenants (based on Denis' and Frederick's comment).

With that being said, we are very interested to know the pro&cons between renting out a basement from our primary residence vs. just regular rental units. For regular rental units, I think many comments kindly shared above still apply, although would there be some disadvantages when it comes to primary residence (besides living with others under your own roof), e.g. higher insurance costs? or somehow negatively affect our financial statement in the eyes of the banks? We are planning to put regular rental units under corporations, would that also work with the rentals in our primary? (we are concerned if we have fewer protections when we get sued?)

Thank you guys for the suggestions! I think I could call the city and ask what kind of permit I need and have a licensed contractor to work on it. But I got another question, we have actually already started the project (dividing the living room into two bedrooms), and my dad even almost finished one of the two including plumbing/shower and drywalls (he is not licensed but he gathered a lot of skills/experiences as his hobby over the years, if that makes sense...), so at this point, I assume we should still ask the city for the unfinished second bedroom, but how about the first one? do we need to have some inspector (real estate/safety inspector? or just a licensed contractor?) to check the finished bedroom? or we can just rent it out in the future?

This is probably a silly question and I'm new to real estate in general. My question is, let's say now I have a project that I'd like to divide a large living room into two bedrooms (and might even create a separate bathroom for each) by myself, is this generally allowed? or is there anything I need to verify?

(This unit is in Ontario Canada)

If we want to rent out a basement in our primary residence in Ontario Canada, what are the process or things we need to do/check? What are the pros/cons of renting out rooms from your primary residence?