All Forum Posts by: Luc Boiron

Nicholas, The RTA stands for the Residential Tenancies Act and the LTB is the Landlord Tenant Board.

@AJ Dhillon Syndication definitely exists in Ontario. I'm looking to put together a smaller deal on a multi family in Ontario, 20-40 units. I think you're better off investing part of it with an experienced syndicator, and probably owning a share of something larger, around 80-120 units. Depending on the structure (usually some form of flow through) these JV's can be pretty flexible for tax purposes, such as allowing you to use depreciation to reduce the taxable amount on it or using renovation in the first year to have a loss for tax purposes, allowing you to take a larger salary from your company then reducing it by the paper loss on the investment.

I know someone who has a really good reputation for larger multi family properties - would be happy to put you in touch.

The advantage of multi family is that you get returns that are levered by debt, but the property qualifies for the loan, not you as an individual.

Originally posted by @Thomas S.:

Canada is definatly not the U.S.

In January only .28% (1Q US 3.5%) of mortgages were in default in Canada. Foreclosures are either listed on MLS, where lenders are required by law to sell at fair market value (no deep discounts), or they are auctioned by silent bids (depends on province).

There is no forclosure feeding frenzie in Canada.

 A technicality, but banks are not required to sell foreclosures at fair market value, they can sell them for whatever they want. They are required to attempt to get fair market value for power of sale properties though. Approx 90-95% of bank sales in Ontario are Power of Sale, but there are still judicial sales and foreclosures, but they're very rare.

Process - put property under contract - assign to investor buyer - investor closes with seller through lawyer and you receive assignment fee.

Wholesaling is really easy but also really hard.

Lawyer do pull title, but usually will do it only shortly before closing. Helps a lot to work with a real estate agent, without one to pull comps and get you access to certain information it's really quite hard to value properties.

I doesn't much seem to be done here. The difficulty is getting a good list to mail. Some of the US techniques still work here in Canada. Driving for dollars works here in the same way to build your list. Go driving for dollars, build a list of 500 houses (mailing becomes a lot cheaper through Canada post once you pass 500 at a time), go to city hall and look through the tax rolls, and see where the tax bills are being sent (ie where the owner lives). It's a lot of work, but then you mail that list 8 times and buy some houses, hopefully.

I'm trying the shotgun approach - EDDM hitting whole neighbourhoods. Still testing it out, we'll see how it works out.

I love the vinyl click planks. One tip is to scratch the test piece in the store. See what colour the scratch is. I don’t go with darker vinyl for the reason that most scratches show up white. Medium tones are better. Something with a hint of grey is great because the scratches often show up grey, so they really hide scratches well. And I use the vinyl in bathrooms too- no glue issues with the click vinyl.

I wholesale in Canada. It's not easy to do. 
There are lots of people looking for properties (but adding them to your buyers list can be hard because they don't know what wholesalers are).

The hardest part is finding properties at a steep enough discount. It can be done, but it's really not easy to do.

Agreed with @Jacob Perez the areas around Hamilton can cash flow pretty well.

Duplexes tend to get you better cash flow.

$100k downpayment is enough to buy in many areas an hour + outside of Toronto. Niagara area, Brantford, London, Woodstock, Orillia, Midland, etc are all accessible to you with that downpayment.

Originally posted by @Kash Jawed:

Thanks @William Johnson and @Roy N. for the insight.

I am learning about wholesaling as well within Greater Toronto Area. Is there a certain form you use to wholesale your deal or add certain clauses/schedule to the APS (Agreement of Purchase Sale) to allow you to wholesale/sell a property that you haven't closed on?

 You should include an assignment clause in the APS in order to wholesale it. For the form to wholesale, if you are a realtor and have access to it, you can use OREA form 145 - Assignment of APS.

Thanks for the mention @Roy N.

I agree with @William Johnson. Wholesaling is definitely possible in Canada.

The main difficulty is finding a property at a good enough price that you would have buyers willing to pay more. 

The main disadvantage is wholesaling in the expensive Canadian markets is what Roy mentioned - it is difficult to find deeply discounted properties.

However, there is a big advantage. If you are able to put together a very good deal, you may be able to negotiate bigger spreads and make quite a bit from one deal.