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All Forum Posts by: Jordan George

Jordan George has started 2 posts and replied 5 times.

Post: Book on Rental Properties' Return Metrics - Possible in Ontario?

Jordan GeorgePosted
  • Peterborough, Ontario
  • Posts 5
  • Votes 1

After purchasing The Book on Rental Properties a couple years back and then putting it aside and not doing anything in the rental investment space, I've now gotten to the point where I've built up some capital and I'm ready to jump in and invest. However, I'm wondering what kind of numbers are attainable in terms of ROI metrics in a market like Ontario.

As an example, The Book on Rental Properties (TBORP from here on out lol), when talking about Cash-on-Cash ROI, says that 6.7% would be considered below average and potentially not worth looking at. However, looking at some listings in my local market (Peterborough, ON), at initial glance it doesn't look like you'd get anywhere close to that - and that maybe 1-3% CoCROI would be more realistic.

I'm just interested in picking the brains of those of you with more experience to get an idea of what kind of numbers I should be aiming for when appraising deals. Thanks in advance for the feedback - it means a lot to a newbie investor like myself!

Post: Rental Property Investing - US vs Canada

Jordan GeorgePosted
  • Peterborough, Ontario
  • Posts 5
  • Votes 1

Wow - quite the conversation going on since I dropped into this thread last. Thanks everyone for your comments, it's nice seeing the different perspectives you all have.

Sounds like I've got a few options to look at, including turn-key offerings, some potentially solid cities in my province, as well as some up and coming cities in the US. Better get my nose to the grindstone, because I definitely want to get my first investment under my belt by the end of the year!

Putting aside the fact that it probably makes more sense to get my start somewhere relatively local to me, I was still wondering, for you fellow Canadians (@Marie Shaug , @Roy N.) who have some experience investing cross-border real estate, are there any resources you could point me towards that would help give me an idea of what kind of additional expenses, taxations, or other considerations I need to take into account if I end up going that route?

Post: Rental Property Investing - US vs Canada

Jordan GeorgePosted
  • Peterborough, Ontario
  • Posts 5
  • Votes 1

Hey @Sarah Larbi, thanks for the warm welcome! You raise some great points - considering I've barely just begun my investing career, I should really just focus on finding deals within my own province (if not my hometown) instead of crossing the border to find properties and deal with even more unknowns and variables. 

Thanks for the pointers on areas to look into for properties; I'll take a look at Thunder Bay and Brantford and just dig into Ontario more in general. 

Post: Rental Property Investing - US vs Canada

Jordan GeorgePosted
  • Peterborough, Ontario
  • Posts 5
  • Votes 1

Hey Dino! I've heard about "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor" - I'll have to put that on my list of what to read next. Brandon's rental property book is really good, definitely an eye-opener for me about the potential of investing in rentals. But it's definitely crazy when you compare the market costs for real estate in Canada vs a lot of regions in the States. Now I'm looking into how tough it would be for me to invest cross-border out of curiosity. It'll be interesting to see if any other, more seasoned Canadian (or American) investors weigh in here on this topic.

Post: Rental Property Investing - US vs Canada

Jordan GeorgePosted
  • Peterborough, Ontario
  • Posts 5
  • Votes 1

Hey BiggerPockets community! This is my first post on these forums after stumbling across BiggerPockets a few weeks back. Since then I've tried to devour as much content as possible and figure out which investing path makes the most sense for me. After buying and finishing The Book On Rental Property Investing, I'm definitely investing in rental properties is the path for me.

I'm still obviously at the very beginning of my investing "career," so forgive me if this is an uninformed or silly train of thought, but I'm wondering if anyone can weigh in on the differences of investing in real estate, particularly in rental units, in the US vs Canada. Specifically, the dramatic difference in purchase price and foreclosure rates in the States vs Canada.

Granted, I'm sure that with enough digging, good investment options can be found in any market, but after a very quick comparison of my local market (Peterborough, Ontario, a city of under 100k about 1.5 hours outside of Toronto) with, for example, Buffalo, the price discrepancies are MASSIVE. 

As an example, here's a property I found in a quick 5 minute search of Zillow: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/306-Landon-St-Bu...

A price of $39,900 is almost unmatchable by anything in my local market, and assuming this property could be easily rented (I'm not familiar with the market in Buffalo so obviously that could be a naive assumption), then it should seemingly be easy enough to get a strong ROI on this property. Heck, I could almost buy that house for cash at this point, which blows my mind because it's not like I'm even making crazy money at my day job.

Now compare that with this property in my city: https://www.zolo.ca/peterborough-real-estate/154-h...

Now, I ran the analysis and if I could negotiate the price down by about 15%, the numbers seem like they would work out pretty well. But still, the price difference between these two properties is clearly drastic to say the least.

All of this to basically ask: is it possible, even likely, for investors in Canada to make similar returns to investors in the US, or is the market in the US much more ripe for investing at this point? Note that I'm not asking this question looking for an excuse to give up on my dreams of real estate investing before I even start - I just want to go into things with my eyes wide open and adjust my strategies if necessary.

Thanks in advance for your input guys (and gals!), I'm looking forward to being a part of this community!