All Forum Posts by: Marie Tai

I'm glad to hear you found a new accountant.  Good luck with your investments!

Oooh, good suggestions, Alan Rohrer!

Hello, 

I signed up with Landlord BC and use their RentCheck services.  I think it's only 10 or 20 bucks and it spits out the credit score immediately.  I loved it.  Other than that, I call up their previous landlord, some personal references, work reference.   I also meet them personally at the open house and ask them more questions in person.  It's much easier to get honest answers that way because you can see how comfortable they feel in answering questions like, "Do you smoke/drink/do drugs/have pets?" or "How has your experience been with your previous landlord?".  You also get an idea of their cleanliness level based on what they appreciate about they unit when you are showing it (ex. do they notice how clean your unit is or the extra TLC you put into painting something perfectly/etc).  I find that if they notice and appreciate things like that then they are also more likely to appreciate that in their own home later on when they are renting.

I like rent payments via e-transfer.  They can send it to me even if they are on vacation somewhere else in the world and the money can be deposited instantly.

There are tons of great articles on Bigger Pockets and on the internet on how to screen tenants and be a great landlord.  I would really recommend looking those up.

Good luck with your landlording business!  

Take care, 

Marie

Hello Melanie, 

I am an investor in the Tri-cities area and I can tell you that your 100K down on something under 450K is totally doable in Port Coquitlam.  I currently have two condos there in the downtown PoCo area that rent for $1450 and $1550 per month.  Both are around 600 sqft, 1 bed, 1 bath.  Rents in downtown PoCo are high and property taxes are manageable.  The tenants I currently have are 100% trouble free for over a year now.  I literally do nothing and just collect rent via e-transfer.  However, I did invest in making the condos really beautiful and trouble free when I first bought them, and I invested a lot of time into learning how to be a great landlord and how to choose amazing tenants.

I think that you are in an excellent position to buy a small condo like that in the downtown PoCo area.  With 100K down, you should be able to cashflow if you choose your property carefully.  At any rate, PoCo is appreciating in value thanks to the skytrain line that connects to Coquitlam, the development of the Freemont area, and the big recreation center developing there now.  For instance, I bought my first condo there in 2016 for 260K and now it is worth about 420K.

If you are looking for a good realtor in the tricities, I can recommend Krista Lapp with Royal LePage.  

I would recommend to always choose a realtor that is an expert in the area that you are looking.  That might mean switching realtors if you switch the area that you are looking in.  You want a local expert that knows the good neighborhoods vs the bad and knows what is going on currently and in the near future.

I can't comment on the other areas that you have brought up or the ones that the other posters have suggested since I am unfamiliar with them, but I figured I would chime in on what I do know.  Investing that money in a place that lets it grow well is another good idea that Luc brought up.  I would also agree with that option.  Vancity has 2.45% on a 15 month term deposit available right now.  If you don't need that 100K for 15 months and don't feel comfortable investing it into real estate, then that's a decent interest rate.  If you might need the money anytime, then 1.1% with Tangerine sounds great.  I should look into that one myself! (Thanks, Luc!)

A presale would be a good idea too (although it's a safer bet if you have a back up plan to rent it out instead of just selling it for a profit).  Make sure to pick one in an area that is rapidly developing and thus has a lot of potential.  Just watch where all the big developers gather in hoards and you should be in good shape since they put a lot of money into researching an area plus they change the area a lot themselves.  If you see developers abandoning projects in an area though, then you should run too.  

Good luck!

Marie

Hi Buu, 

I recently was looking for a new accountant too.  I googled all the top rated accountants near me and called them to ask questions to see if they would be the right accountant for me.  I looked at whether they were easy to talk with, how open they were to questions (some of them are very secretive which might be good for protecting privacy, but it gives me nothing to work with in terms of deciding if they are the right accountant for my needs), how experienced they were with real estate investments, cost, etc.  In the end, I found my accountant through a referral from a realtor.  She was oddly way cheaper than all the other accountants, but she seemed to know a lot about rental investments so she was a winner for me.  We met her in person and everything was very straightforward so I let her do my taxes for last year and I was happy with the results.

Maybe ask around to see if your realtor or another real estate investor you know has an accountant that they recommend.  It's worth exploring those first since you know that they already work with real estate investors and you have a referral that makes you more trustworthy to the accountant.  

This is the list of questions I had for choosing an accountant:

Questions for accountant

●What are your credentials?

●What services do you offer?

●What areas of tax and accounting do you specialize in?

●What is your background and do you personally own real estate?

●How would I be able to communicate with you?

●Can I get questions answered by email?

●Given my circumstances, what business structure(s) do you recommend? Why?

●Can you register the business structures for us?

●How can you help in the various phases of real estate investing (acquisition through sale)?

●Do you specialize in tax strategy? Specifically geared towards real estate?

●How aggressive will you be in helping us keep as much money as possible?

●What tax strategies/issues should I be aware of upfront?

●How often would you suggest we meet to review our progress/plan?

●Do you do tax preparation?

●What software do you use (and expect me to use) to do our accounting?

●Can you help me find other team members (attorney, insurance agents, real estate agents, etc)?

●What is your schedule of fees?

●Do you have references?

●How much capacity do you have for additional work at this time?

●Would anyone else in your office be handling my books? If so, what is THEIR level of expertise in real estate accounting?

●What kinds of ongoing things will you need from me in order to do your job? What will I be expected to do?

●What do your services cost (based on the specific duties I need you to perform for me)? Do you charge hourly, monthly, annually?

●Are there any particular ways you can help me save money on taxes?

●Will I have to sign a contract/agreement if we decide to do business together? If so, can I review it beforehand?

I quite like Intuit Mint.  I love being able to look at where all my finances are at a glance.  It also makes it easier to pay bills since I can glance at Mint to see what all my bill totals are and then use my bank to pay them all at once instead of logging in to each bank account to read the latest total.  It's also nice to see where my debt levels are at so that I'm more motivated to pay them down quickly  :D

 Hi Nancy, 

I could try and prove that their pet is not a therapy animal, but it just isn't worth my time or energy since I'll only end up with a disgruntled tenant that dislikes me.  In the end, I just choose the least complicated, super-easy-to-get-along-with tenant that plans to stay for a long time and has excellent references and credit.  It might mean slightly less money, but I self-manage so I want the least headachey tenant possible  :)

Welcome to Bigger Pockets, Logan!  I hope you will like it here.  

I know the feeling about talking too much to my friends and co-workers about real estate investing.  Lately, it's been about money and financial independence because I'm listening to the Bigger Pockets money podcast.  I think I will have no friends soon.  The way their eyes glaze over and the silence I get in response to my enthusiastic chatter... sigh.  But I am sooo excited about this stuff!  :D

I haven't had much luck with finding good tenants with pets.

For some reason, I have only had applicants that call their pets "therapy animals" and they always argue that these animals are not pets so they refuse to pay the pet deposit or the pet rent because they argue that it doesn't apply to them.  

I started investing as a newbie in condos and I really like it.  Here are some reasons why:

1.) low cost - I can't afford a house, but I can afford a small 1 bed, 1 bath condo in a downtown neighborhood in a good city where rent is high.  This allowed me to get into the market right away instead of waiting a long time to save up enough down payment for a house.  It is also cheaper to renovate a small condo than a whole house.

2.) easy to maintain - the strata takes care of the snow shovelling, hallways, entry, gardening, cleaning, etc on the the outside of my unit.  I just have to make the inside of my condo clean, nice, and in good working condition.  This means that I can get the condo into a rentable condition quickly and self-manage it instead of using a property management company.  This gives me experience in managing a property, but with less to worry about, and I can save money on PM fees.

3.) neighborhood watch - the strata is always watching what is going on in the building so I will find out quickly if my tenant is up to no good.  I like these extra eyeballs on my property because they help protect my investment.  

4.) easy to rent out - if you choose a condo in a good neighborhood close to useful amenities/shopping/schools, etc then it is a convenient location that appeals to a lot of people.  The more convenient the location and the nicer you make the interior of the unit, the easier it will be to rent out.  Also, you can charge more rent.  Lots of people enjoy condo living due to the convenience of managing a smaller living space, but being situated in a downtown core.

5.) the strata rules can help you - if you don't want smokers, pet owners, short term rentals, hoarders, etc in your rental unit then it might be nice to have these rules in the strata bylaws so that you can refer the tenants to them or blame the reason why on the strata.  Usually these rules are put in place for a reason so you can benefit from the wisdom of perhaps issues they faced as a result of pets, smokers, drugs, hoarders, etc.

6.) good return on investment - in my market at least, the condo market is appreciating quickly so my condos are growing in value very quickly.  They are also easy to sell for when I want to unload my properties later.  For instance, two years ago I bought my first condo with 60K down.  One year later, it went up in value so I refinanced.  The bank loaned me 60K to buy a second property.  Now both of them have gone up again so I can potentially pull money out again and buy a third property.  I would not have been able to do this with a house because houses in my market are in the millions.  Meanwhile, the rent goes up yearly so I can cashflow better each passing year.

Since I am not handy with fixing things, I really enjoy the ease of owing a condo where the strata just fixes things for me.  I just calculate the cost of strata fees into my numbers when purchasing a property so that I know that the rent will easily cover strata fees and occasional raises in strata fees.  I also read the strata documents carefully to look for any big costs (special assessement fees) coming up or issues with the strata management.  Eventually, I would like to own houses, but I kind of dread the day I will need to worry about things like gardening, snow shovelling, fixing the roof, etc.  I think some down sides to condo investing is that the strata can vote to restrict rentals (at which point you could always just sell and buy another property or buy a new condo where you are the original owner since original owners can rent forever) and you need to know the strata bylaws for each condo unit, which can get tedious or hard to keep track of.  Other than that, I think condo investing was probably the best choice for me considering the limited funds and experience I started with.

Good luck!