All Forum Posts by: Yuan He

Hey Ryan, I feel you, the market is white hot and people are out there offering insane prices to buy.

Disclaimer: I haven't closed on any of the private deals yet, but did get some contacts of owners. Just to throw my two cents out here. I basically tried two ways:

1. I went on facebook market and kijiji looking for those rental ad that are listed by actual people not affiliated programs. Then start the conversation about acquisition there.

2. You already mentioned, door knocking is frowned upon, but no one says anything about driving around and talking to tenants in a distance. I did this, approached some tenants asking their landlords' contact, stating that it is purely for business inquiries not personal harassment. Got some luck there.

Once you close on your first and start finding applicants for your unit, you can then further expand that by calling their references who usually are also owners. 

Best luck !

@Jasmine May Hey there, I am in Halifax and things are hot here. But have you considered investing in surrounding areas like windsor, truro, kentville ? I recently just bought a duplex in Kentville and so far it cashflows 1000+ a month. And a lot of properties there perfectly meets 1% mark. Of course, if you are also thinking about buying with potential to appreciate, then Halifax is surely a great market for that.

Hey Ryan,

I think I was at very similar position last year. I just moved to Halifax last July and had some savings. With getting some help from @Trevor Gaal, I bought my first property as a house hack, spending some money settling down like buying a car and some furnitures. With the rest money left, I just closed on my second property with a partner. So in my opinion, you have tons of options regarding how you can use the rest of capital. I would recommend you find a partner and pool your money together to buy a larger building, but you could also just buy some very nice cashflowing rentals in some areas like Windsor which is very near HRM. Moreover, with 50k as down payment, you probably can get a property in some areas that do not even need reno. Of course, I'm assuming your primary goal is cashflow, not huge potential for appreciation. My second property is in the valley, not HRM, which means it's a bit distant and I should not expect rapid appreciation, but it's not that far and it yields handsome COC return.

Happy to chat more about it.

Yuan He

 Hey James,

Yes, I did end up buying a duplex last year and found tenant for my other unit. I guess it worked out for me at least.

In terms of buying, currently, the market is still somehow very hot I would say. We are chasing a 20-plex deal currently and no surprise the seller told us that they've already got multiple offers. Even earlier for some multiplexes we thought are absolutely overpriced are bought with a lower cap rate than we thought. This might change after 3-6 months, but as of now, it's not cooling off. Of course, I wasn't watching for the market of smaller sized properties like sfh, duplexes etc. I would expect the same for those. I'd be very interested to know what is @Trevor Gaal 's thought on this.

As for the renting market, interestingly, I just heard from my broker that for higher end rentals, they start to see longer and longer vacancy. That is, they post it on the market and much less people are inquiring about it. Those are mostly sfh rentals. Not sure that represent the general trend but that's what I've been told.

Hope these information helps and eventually see you in Halifax !

Yuan He

Hi Evan,

Welcome back ! I moved to Halifax NS last year and decided to start my RE investing here as well. There are couple of meetups that I constantly attend and have been learning a lot from them. Glad to connect and know like-minded investor like yourself.

Yuan He

Thanks @Jeremy Arsenault ! Yes, for now, I use Naborly and also manually send out application for them to fill. I have chosen who I believe is the most suitable tenant. Do you also ask for their bank statement ?

 Thanks Kris for the clarification ! What screening services you use ? I am looking at singlekey right now.

Thanks Roy for these great advices and clarifications. Yeah I'll definitely borrow your ideas for doing screening using some of the screening services out there. One last question, do you actually give applicant an application form to fill out or you will just straight out collect those information directly through emails or other ways of communication ?

Yeah, we are not allowed to ask for application fee here. The screening cost has to be an out of pocket expense for the landlord.

I see, so to sum up your strategy:

In the application process, 

you tell applicants that SIN is optional but suggested to provide.

If they provide it, everyone's happy and you do your check based on that,

If they choose not to disclose it, you do your check by other information they provided.

And then if they passed the check, you approve their application, both party want to sign the lease, you then REQUIRE that they provide SIN to you. 

Are these generally your steps ? Just in theory because I'm sure it happens rarely, but what if they are not willing to provide you the SIN at the last step, and already you approved the application. Can you then just deny signing lease based on that ? Because I assume the law still says they are not obliged to give you the SIN. Or do you clarify that SIN is required condition for signing lease ? 

Thanks for sharing !