All Forum Posts by: Duncan Lai

@Curt Davis Thanks for your tips. In terms of turnkey companies I am still very new to this. I definitely will consider them as I am brand new to this. Can you elaborate a bit more on what is considered a "good" one and a "bad" one? I know there will be very different factors but in general what should I be looking for and avoid? Also, those states mentioned are not really the ones that I have selected, but just the names that have popped up when I was doing my initial research. By no means I am targeting those states specifically at this point. I do appreciate that pointers on them you provided though.

@Joel Owens I am nowhere near close to the 500k figure that you have mentioned and I don't think I will be started commercial anytime soon. I would like to stick to the simple residential real estate for now.

@Ndy Onyido Let's connect since we are both starting out! I will send you a PM.

@Joe Villeneuve I might be missing something here and not understand the rules in the US. But doesn't the bank will always require you to have some equity? Can you please illustrate with a simple example with some numbers?

@Paul Timmins I see, so essentially your buddy got the passive income stream from helping the owner place students.

Why are these cities the "hotspots"? Is it due to taxes? What are your thoughts on the other cities such as Indianapolis and Memphis as I have seen many CDN investors talk about?

@Joe Villeneuve gotcha. I guess this strategy is for applying to homes where you rehab it or bought at a discount. When you refinance, I guess you also need to leave some equity in it, or not? Does this mean you won't be able to take 100% of all your money out?

What about in a buy and hold situation where the property value is already in line with the market value, is it more preferable to keep the cash or throw it back into the mortgage to reduce interest expense, build up equity quicker and do a refinance?

@Joe Villeneuve I have seen this advice a few times and just want to clarify (as I have the same question as @Keith Bloemendaal as well. By #1 Pay cash, do you mean using our own cash? and then by #2, when is the appropriate time to do this?

@Mike D'Arrigo Thank you for the quick comments on the three states that I mentioned. You are correct that I am looking for cash flows. My primary goal is to set up long term investments that I can sleep at night and make a reasonable steady return over time. So any sort of "betting on the future" is probably not for me (at least for now). I will look into the cities that you mentioned and try to learn more about them myselfs.

@Chad U. Thanks for the offer, please check your PM :)

@Paul Timmins Thank you for the step by step specific tips. I already got J Scott's books on my reading list as I have already heard about it multiple times on BP's podcast. I specifically really like your tip on calling different property managers to learn about neighborhoods. I think that is a really good because pretty much they will let me know which one they prefer and which one they do not want to deal with. Can you also please elaborate a bit more about how "you don't have to own it to control it" in the context of your post? I have heard that phrase and concept before but don't fully understand it in here.

Hello everyone, I am a newbie RE investor from Vancouver, Canada and am researching on investing in the US market. I am still starting out so I have a lot of (dumb) questions that I would like to consult the experts here. My goal is to accomplish buy and hold (and not flipping/wholesaling), at least for now.

Macro Research: I am taking a top down approach in identifying what neigborhood to do further work on by first looking at state level, then city level and then finally neighborhood level. The things I will be looking for are mainly job growth, population growth, average rent, average home prices and crime rate. I have started by looking at the US Bureau of Labour statistics and found some info there so far. Questions:

At the macro stage, are there any other factors that I should take into consideration?

What are some websites and sources that would be useful for finding these type of data? Preference would be government source data as they are unbiased but any other sources are welcome too.

In researching neigborhoods, before I even fly down to check them out, what are some good ways to get a sense of what areas within a city are the higher quality neigborhoods and which ones to avoid?

So far I have identified Cali, Texas and Florida to be the ones with the most job growth over the past year but will need to continue to gather more data. I saw a post about a lot of Canadians buying in Memphis and Indianapolis. Is there any specific reason to this?

Financing: I have read somewhere that if I borrow through a Canadian bank that has a US operation then I can use my Canadian credit history and get up to 50% LTV loan. Is this the maximum of what I can expect I can get? Are there any other financing methods that I should look into?

Tax/Legal: I know there are already a few threads out in the forum about Canadians investing in US and I have read through them. From what I have read so far, a lot of the advice is to sit down with lawyers and accountants with cross-border real estate expertise to discuss the appropriate legal and tax structure to fit my needs. This will definitely be something on my to-do list.  If there are any good contacts that any of you have work with before and recommend, it would be great if you can send it over to me too!

Besides these aspects above, what other factors am I missing out that I should be researching into at this stage? Currently I have just started the macro research stage and plan to work done the list above.

Looking forward to connect with the experts here! Thank you!

Hello everyone! Been listening to the podcasts and now finally got to register and start my first post at BP!

A quick intro of myself: I am in my 20s and currently with my girlfriend, we are looking to build a future where we can secure enough passive income so that we do not have to go to work everyday just for that darn pay cheque. We are both accounting and finance professionals that make decent income but in terms of living in Vancouver, it is almost just enough to get by!

We have done some learning in the past few months through reading books, blogs and podcasts and determined that it is time for us to reach out and meet more people! We know we know so little so hopefully we can learn as much as we can here.

Again, glad to be here and hope I will have a good time with you guys!