More Money Podcast - What's Really Going on with Real Estate Canada - Co-Hosts of The Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast, Daniel Foch and Nick Hill

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

I rarely have guests on the show to talk about real estate, especially real estate investing, since there are so many sharks out there trying to sell some get-rich-quick scheme or there are just so many other real estate-specific podcasts already out there. But when I had the chance to meet Daniel Foch and Nick Hill at an event recently, I knew I had to have them both on the show to fill us all in on what's going on with the Canadian real estate market. Not only do they host The Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast, but they also have years of experience working in real estate in a variety of roles as well. They also have personal experience with homeownership and real estate investing too. We go through a lot in this episode, so if you're thinking "Is this a good time to buy a home or sell my property?" you're gonna want to listen to this.For full episode show notes visit jessicamoorhouse.com/426Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, loo-loo, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I am your host Jessica Morehouse. And on today's episode, we are talking real estate. And if you are a long-time listener of the show, then you know that I've only done a handful of episodes on real estate investing over the past 10 years, because honestly, there are entire podcasts dedicated to that topic, but also honestly, a lot of the pitches that I get, the guests just are not that credible and there are a lot of sharks and scammers in the real estate investing world so I'm very cautious. But not these two guys, not these new guests on my show. I'm talking about Daniel Fosh and Nick Hill,

hosts of the super popular Canadian Real Estate Investor podcast. Now, Daniel and Nick come from the world of real estate. Daniel works as the Chief Real Estate Officer at Valerie.ca, Canada's only AI-centric real estate platform. And he's also a real estate broker with over 15 years experience. And Nick Hill is an advisor at Land Bank, a commercial mortgage brokerage, and he's also a very experienced mortgage agent himself. And both of them came together in 2022 to create

what is now the number one real estate podcast in Canada, where they discuss investing in real estate, ongoing news in the Canadian real estate market, how to structure deals, and how to grow your real estate portfolio. Now it's funny, I've actually been talking to Nick apparently for years over Instagram, but we never met until recently. We were both invited to a sports game and we just talked the whole time. I hardly watched the basketball game, unfortunately, but we had so much to talk about. I'm like, we need to have,

we need to talk more on the podcast. And so we're actually doing a really fun podcast swap. So I'm going on their show, they're coming on my show and they have so, so many nuggets of wisdom when it comes to real estate, what's going on in the market, the condo market, the housing market in Canada, what are some pockets that, you know, may have some opportunities in Canada

in terms of real estate investing, what you should and shouldn't do, what are the risks, what are the benefits, and is this something that you should pursue or not? We talk about it all in this episode, so you are going to love it. So without further ado, let's get to that interview with Daniel and Nick. Welcome to the More Money Podcast, Daniel and Nick. So excited to have you on the show. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for

having us. You're so welcome. So we met recently for the first time a few weeks ago at a sports game that I did not watch at all because I love to talk more than and eat more than I probably watch sports. But we really got to chatting and so excited to have you on to talk about I think something that's on everyone's minds. And I honestly don't do a lot of episodes on real estate because there's podcasts dedicated to that topic like yours that really can go in depth about it. But I think real estate is something that people are always talking about,

people are always thinking about, especially in this, man, I don't know about you, but are you getting all these questions all the time about uncertain times? What do we do now? And I'm like, man, we've been living in uncertain times forever. So for me, I'm like, what else is new? But people are concerned about should I buy, should I not buy? What's the difference in terms of buying

my own home or buying rental property? Is it smart? Should I delay all these kinds of things? So we're going to dive into all of that. And you're going to have to answer all of my questions about that to get your opinions on what's going on in the market right now. But before we really get into it, I'd like to kind of get to know you guys. So you started your podcast in 2022. Did you always know each other? How did that kind of come to be? And I know one of you is more the mortgage side, one more the realtor side. Share a little bit about your background, how you came together to then create a very successful podcast. I'd say probably the most successful real estate podcast in Canada, I'd say. The largest.

The largest. I don't know if I would call us successful per se, but we have a lot of listeners. We actually met by a common way that people meet these days, which is Nick slid into my DMs. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Tinder and Hinge were dry, so I thought, hey, let me go try to talk to this real estate

guy. No, I'm kidding. Dan and I, we'd gone to the same school, we're both University of Guelph alumni, and we'd had some friends in common. I don't think met at school, but had enough friends in comm. We were both kind of doing a lot of real estate stuff in general from doing deals, buying properties, doing transactions, trying to put deals together, making content about it. And a couple of people were like, yeah, you guys need to meet. So yeah, I slid into his DMs. That was our little meet cute.

And from there, we pretty much, I think, met like the next day. Dan was working on a deal that was close to where my parents lived at the time. I went back and we started working on that deal together and that spiraled into, hey, let's start a random podcast. Dan had already kind of had one going on and brought me in. And yeah, and then it's really just, you know, years later, we've got a podcast, we've got events, we've got these businesses that service people across the country. So if you're thinking about sliding into someone's DMs,

do it because you don't know what's going to happen. You never know. So I mean, that's not, in my mind, I'm like, 2022, that's not too long ago. But yeah, you've expanded not just to the podcast, but events and this whole kind of network. How did that kind of naturally happen or expand? Was it just like people are asking for this and there is maybe a lack of connection or community when it comes to real estate in Canada? I mean, that's sometimes what I hear from people is like, how do I learn about this stuff? And who do I go to? And are there other people doing it? Nick and I were like from start to finish, I think we've kind of been like sort of humbled by the experience. And so we never really had

the idea that we knew what the next step was. We always just like really listened to our audience. And I think that's something that you do a lot as well as, you know, you like people just said, hey, we would be awesome if you could do a coaching program. And we're like, okay, we weren't really sold on the idea, but if you're telling us that's what we need to do, then we have at least one customer, at least one person will get value out of us taking that action. And then similarly, people are like, oh, you always talk about networking. It's like there's no good networking events.

Could you point us to some? And then we scanned the... And COVID kind of like decimated that world. So we kind of scanned the environment and said, oh, you're right. There isn't really any networking events. Like this is bad advice until, okay, let's build the infrastructure for, for people to, to do that. So now we have a 26 meetups coast to coast, one in every city, every major city, I think, except for Regina across Canada.

So yeah, I think it's just really grown, like you use the word organically based on what our audience demanded of us. And we're very fortunate in that way. We just have really strong relationships with our listeners and try and meet their needs. And when it comes to the coaching component, what were people wanting from that? And I guess you're talking specifically, people wanted to learn more about the rental property. How do I expand my portfolio of real estate as opposed to, how do I just buy a home for myself? I guess you kind of mentioned there wasn't much or there was

lots of bad advice. That's also why I'm very, I mean, we talked about this, there's a reason that there's not a lot of real estate people on my show, because there's a lot of bad characters or people that are like, oh, you were clearly a snake-hole salesman. I'm gonna, you know, protect my audience from that. So yeah, tell me a little bit about like, what were people wanting to learn from you guys? Yeah, we, you know, I think just one more piece

about the network. And I think real estate is just unlike the stuff that you talk about a lot, Jessica, all, you know, and I am probably one of the worst stock investors and bad with money outside of real estate, but real estate is so driven by that network. You need other people. So that was a super important piece for us. The coaching and consulting business that we started, again, early on we tried to avoid

that stuff like the plague because there are so many bad actors that have really done detrimental damage to real estate and real estate investing in the public eye. Dan and I have always liked to be contrarian when it comes to whatever, everyone else is going this way. Okay, we're going to try it this way. We've always led with value. It all stemmed from a podcast episode that we wrote called the 18 step process

to buying your first investment property. Uh, it was like episode a hundred and something. We're almost at episode 300. It was episode a hundred something. So it was a decent chunk into the show. And that episode kind of skyrocketed to one of the most listened to episodes very quickly, dozens and dozens of people reaching out via DMs and texts and emails just saying, hey look I listened to that episode, I need to learn more, how do you do

this, you know, where's this piece, all these knowledge gaps. So that's when we kind of begrudgingly started the consulting business and it has been, it's been awesome. Just like all the other things, the events business that Dan was mentioning and everything else. It's just really brought us together with the people. Your podcast, you know that there's hundreds, if not thousands of people, if not tens of thousands of people that will hear this episode or other episodes, you might never meet or

see any of them. And being able to have these branches of this business that we've built has allowed us to normally meet, but help service and really help change some of these people's lives that they were asking us for us and not us kind of shoving it down their throats. Well, just to get a sense of like, you know, what were some of those pillars that you were teaching people that were so popular in that episode. When you're coaching people, the other question I have is, is your advice different person to person or is it like, no, these are the steps that everyone can take to see the results

of buying property, seeing value, earning a profit or getting that rental income or what have you. One of the reasons, like you mentioned, the industry gets a bad rap and you have a lot of that snake oil is you get people who are trying to sell someone a one size fits all solution in an industry that is so qualitative, right? And it's not like a stock where you can say there's a handful of different options and they're going to give you X results or an ETF or whatever it is like a lot of those are very prescriptive. Real estate is you know there's different types of investing for example like you know an Airbnb is a lot

more management intensive than a long-term rental, a student rental you have more turnovers than you know than an older family and so the qualitative element I think really it made us arrive at the conclusion that you hear this, the old adage, you teach a person to fish rather than giving them a fish. If you give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach a person to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. And I think to me, that's the most important piece is like, we have to do a super in-depth needs analysis and this is for anybody who's just like, it doesn't really matter whether or not you get this advice from us, but you have to like really get granular on your needs.

A lot of people just jump in and they think my primary need is I need to make a lot of money very quickly and I need to get exposure to a big, like the best leverage product that I can get from the financial sector right now, which is a mortgage, right? And that's usually the wrong approach. The right approach is really thinking, what do I want to get out of this? And nine times out of 10, when people actually do that, and they run a cost benefit analysis for themselves, they actually realize, oh, wow, maybe I shouldn't be investing in real estate. Maybe I should be investing in something else. And I think a lot of the people who end up in

real estate investment haven't actually done that analysis. Probably not. Why do you think most people look to real estate before investing in other things like the stock market? Because that's actually pretty common. From my perspective, when I talk to people like that, it's largely because that's what their parents didn't have worked out for them. So that's all they know. I think that's a big one. I think everyone's lived in a house as well. So they understand the product more than like, I don't know what half of the companies that are in the ETFs that I invest in actually do, but I know what a house does. So that would probably be the other one, I think. Yeah. So it's interesting to have you ever come across people that follow you and then

do some coaching and then they're like, oh, after doing this analysis, this actually isn't probably the path I should take. One of our first students actually, I think, our course is by no means cheap. It's a higher ticket course with a couple of different tiers. They had said, I was about to buy a pre-construction condo. I would have guaranteed lost $100,000. I feel like this $5,000 investment obviously paid for itself and such that I didn't lose that money. So we've had a handful of people actually take it and just talk themselves out of investing in real estate. Wow. And then walk me through how – I'm just kind of curious with that scenario or some other similar scenarios. How is it that that person could have potentially lost money? Yeah. I mean, functionally, if you were to buy a pre-construction condo today, like what's

available for sale today, you'd be paying about $1,400 a square foot and the resale market is trading at less than $1,000 a square foot and it's trending down. So I mean, that's probably the easiest way to explain it. It's basically overpaying for a product by 40%. So that even though there is like, because yeah, that's what I've been hearing, especially in Toronto, the inventory, there's just so much of it. And that's why it's being hard to move. So why are these pre-construction condos still charging like this kind of premium?

Like, why are they charging that much? Shouldn't they be adjusting the price point to? Well, yeah, it's a great question. So no new projects have really launched since this crash happened. And so it's all just lingering product that's already in a building. And if they were to sell a new phase at a lower price than the past phase, then all of the existing people who they've sold units to would be very upset, but they'd also have problem closing on the unit because now the value of the building has actually been decreased.

And so their appraisal would come up short and they would have a hard time getting a mortgage for that property. So that's the primary reason why they're still being... So their appraisal would come up short and they would have a hard time getting a mortgage for that property. So that's the primary reason why they're still being... And also, I mean, more granularly, builders quite simply can't afford to sell units for less because construction costs, land costs, development charges, et cetera, have all increased substantially over the past five years. And so they're not incentivized to actually create a product for less than $14 a square foot.

My question is, then why would anyone buy a condo right? It doesn't sound like it could get like, and is this just a matter of just wait it out and see how things play out? Resale condos I think have come down 20%. Those are becoming compelling to a lot of people. I'm of the opinion there's probably a little bit more downside risk, but you know, certain people who are, you're seeing a lot of first-time home buyers get on, want to get onto the property ladder and they're feeling like, you know what, I don't know if I'm going to get a better deal and I don't really want to take the

risk of seeing the market jump up 10% again, like I saw happen in 2016 and 2021, right? So I think you are starting to see people jump in and jump in the resale market. In the pre-construction market, I think we only saw 315 pre-construction sales in the fourth quarter of last year. Really? Like units? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So no housing. This is the primary way that we get new housing built. So no new housing will be built, add a five-year construction period to. Like we're going to have a huge shortage in five

years, but for the next little bit, we still have all of those ones that pre-sold at high prices that are going to cause a bit of a supply flood. And this is compared to like literally like not so long ago, those, those same pre-constructions, there was people literally lining up, like fighting, like it was like, you know, Xbox is dropping a new game or Nike's dropping a new shoe and you got like sneaker heads waiting outside. Literally people were waiting

in lines in like freezing cold to go in and throw money at these overpriced condos. So like, when would you say like 2021 was like that? Yeah, 2020 and 2021. I think people were really, so there was a little bit of a weird selection bias too, where, you know, judgment judgment aside, if you bought a resale condo on the same day in 2020, it would have been a far better investment. You were getting it at 20% lower price. You got to experience the cashflow right away. What compelled people to invest in the pre-construction was one that it was speculative. They didn't have to own it today, which means that they inherently didn't really believe in it.

Because if you really wanted to own it, if you really believed in the asset class, you'd want to own it immediately, right? Yeah. That's true. The longer you own it, the longer you get to benefit. And then the other piece was that a lot of them had extended payment periods. So you could do like a 5% deposit today and then 5% in 60 and 5% in 120. And so it also sorted a little bit for people who actually maybe didn't have the 20% down

payment which I think is probably the even more concerning one. So I find that, yeah, the condo market is so fascinating. Do you think then this might not be the best time to purchase that kind of property or I guess pre-construction not, but maybe there's an opportunity with the resale condos if you are a real estate investor or I guess a first-time home buyer. There's definitely an opportunity evolving. I wouldn't say there's ever really a perfect time, but it's always a good time to do a good deal.

It's always a bad time to do a bad deal. If you spend a lot of time researching, really getting granular and outlining the perfect criteria and then searching for the right deal, like right now there's tens of thousands of condominiums available on MLS. So if you pick through them all and negotiate with multiple sellers, you're probably going to get a deal that looks really good in today's market. You could probably do that. But on average, I think that there's probably still a little bit of room left for the market

to give some better deals. Yeah, just to add to that, Jessica, because you brought up a good point, like whether you are a real estate investor or first time home buyer. Well, that goes back to how different, and do we teach the same thing, right? No, definitely not.

If you are a first time home buyer and you plan on living in Toronto for the next several years and maybe you're married or you've got a long term and you're in a long term relationship, maybe it is a great time to buy. It's always about asking certain questions. How long are you going to be there? Are you financially stable enough?

Totally different set of questions when asking an investor, especially when you're in the condo market, whether it's in Toronto or any other major city, over 50% of Toronto condo owner investors are negative cashflow in the hundreds of dollars. Not really investments after all, because I think investments, we all would all agree, make money and are just pure appreciation plays. Very distinct difference there as to who you know, who, what, when, where, why, how long. And really, Dan and I always try to reverse engineer all these questions when we're talking to people is, you know, what's the intention, right? Is the intention that this

is going to be a home for a couple of years? Are you going to be in that corner for minimum five years? Do you have someone that, you know, younger sibling or something like that that would come and rent it off you afterwards? Every situation is different and every situation deserves to be looked at and judged in its own right. So for some people now could be an amazing time to buy a condo. For other people, literally never do it. Don't do it.

Don't touch it. Yeah. And I guess we've mainly been talking about the major cities, but there, you know, obviously you have kind of a lay of the land. There's so many different pockets of Canada that probably people don't know. And there's always opportunities no matter what. And I feel like you guys are very dialed in. I have a friend who's a realtor and he knows things that I don't know about because he's

always just looking for this information. What would you say, and just like in general, that you've been kind of looking at, you're like, oh, this might be interesting, this part of Canada. You know, one of the things that we look at a lot, Jessica, and that we that we teach and that we talk about in the podcast and everything is this is this idea of long distance investing. Okay, now if we look at our counterparts in the States who are obviously 10x everything, the you know, way bigger. If you look at some of the people, some of the larger real estate investors that live in a New York or a Los Angeles or a Seattle, well, most cases they don't own their portfolios

there. You live in Seattle, you might own a portfolio in Oklahoma. You live in LA, you might own a bunch of stuff in Arizona or something like that, right? So Canadians, and this is, we've kind of come to realize this over the last several years of having hundreds, if not thousands of these conversations is, you know, a lot of the major markets here in Canada are so freaking expensive, right? Yeah.

Toronto, not just even Toronto, the entire GTA, Vancouver, not just Vancouver, the entire lower mainland, even Calgary now, right? And even Montreal being the cheaper out of the big cities, still expensive. But Canadians have this, I guess, like mental block where they're like, okay, like I've never been to Regina or Saskatoon or Winnipeg or Cape Breton or any of these smaller places. And I don't know them, so I'm not going to invest there. I'm not even going to think about it, but I know Oshawa or Pickering or Burnaby or something

like that. That's where I'm going to invest. Very quickly, they start to go and try to do a deal and they realize it doesn't pencil. In a lot of cases, deals can be forced and money can be lost, et cetera. We try to teach and tell people that Canada is a big place. There's a lot of great markets. There's a lot of great things to look for in those markets, whether it be new infrastructure, new schools, new major projects, growing population, whatever it may be. And we get people to analyze those metrics. And that's how we help people formulate an investment thesis on how to pick

the market that they're investing in. Do you feel like then it could make sense for someone to buy property on the other side of Canada and never have to, like, do you have to visit the home? Like, just as a reference point, I have a friend who is a realtor, so he does know what he's doing and has been investing properties for a long time, but he bought a property in New Brunswick. He's like, never been there, bought it, sighted one scene just based off the numbers and some photos and stuff like that. And I'm like, that is, that's crazy risky for me. I could never, but does it sometimes make sense? Cause I mean, who has the time to travel around to all these different places to view a home?

And they're like, no, this isn't good. I would just say, does it sometimes make sense? Hell yeah. Your friend sounds like he knows what he's doing. He sounds like he's, he's using the who, not how principle. It sounds like he's got a great power team out there. It sounds like he's worked his way up likely to pulling the trigger on something like that. For sure.

Yeah, he's been doing this for at least a decade. Okay, perfect. Yeah. If you are a first timer, I would highly, highly recommend not doing that. So yeah, Dan, I know you've got some stuff you want to add, go ahead. One of the biggest things with real estate is, it's very easy for it to become a lucrative job.

And so what we see a lot of investors getting stuck in when they own portfolios nearby, not to say that I have any issues with it, but like I'm guilty of this. Like I have assets far away and I have assets close by and the assets close by, I tend to manage them because when you're really in real estate, you're running a business. And so when you're running a business, you have to go do things. You have to fix stuff. You have to go collect payment, et cetera. If the assets, the further

away the asset is, the less likely you are to do that, the more likely you're going to hire someone to do that. And so it becomes more of an investment where you become more of an owner than an operator. You know, if you're thinking about that kind of like Kiyosaki cashflow quadrant, if you really want to be an owner and benefit from investment, you should be less and less involved and not because the more involved you are, the less really you're getting paid for your time and the less you're actually investing and earning passive income. So the one thing I will say that we see a lot of GTA investors end up doing is that they go and buy properties far away. They can get it at a much cheaper price. It allows them to get into the market, but they also actually enjoy a good

quality of life for a real estate investor because they're completely removed from the asset. From day one, they need to have a property manager, a handyman, a real estate professional, all of these things. They build a proper business rather than hiring themselves to be a real estate investor in their local market. Is it just because... I kind of get it. When I, a while ago, considered buying a secondary property, this is like right before COVID, then I'm like, yeah, that's not for me. And I, yeah,

in my mind, I'm like, yeah, I mean, if I bought something close by, I'd probably want to just be the landlord and do that. Because, you know, you're always thinking, well, I could save money. Because I think a lot of people are concerned of all the costs involved of owning a real estate property as an investment. If I then pay this organization to manage my property, well, maybe I can save that money if I do it myself, but I'm sure you've seen it all. Does it actually make sense to sometimes or oftentimes, even if you live close by, to hire that part, to outsource that part out. I'm of the opinion that you can easily think about this one where if the property can't

pay for a manager, then it's a job, not an investment. That's probably got to be one of the most common things that we, the early investors that are like, you know, we'll see, oh, there's no property management fee. There's no snow removal fee. There's no cutting the grass. There's no capex or opex or anything. We're like, you're missing this. Like, I'm just going to do it. I'm like, okay, well, that property, you know, whether it's 45 minutes or two hours away, you know, that's going to eat up a lot of time. And this is kind of where I, there's two parts to this. Like the first being, I do believe in some cases it is great for the newer investor to go through

the trials and the tribulations and the experience of screening tenants and dealing with that leaky faucet, which I'm literally dealing with right now at one of my properties, and just all the little nuanced things that go wrong and dealing with that to understand how much work goes into a property manager's job and how important it is because that tenant is your client and that's all about client relations. So there's a part of me that thinks, and I think I just try to say that because that's what I did for the first few years. I justify it, saying I learned the ropes before I went and got a property manager.

But again, back to Dan's point, right? Like, you know, the more involved you are, everyone wants real estate because it's passive income. For those listening, I am doing heavy, heavy air quotes right now. Okay? It is passive income. Well, it's not passive income if you don't have a property manager. It's actually even more active income, right? So the closer you can get to that cherished, you know, passive income, you're going to need to do that. You're going to need to be at the top of that org chart that you are going to design and have every single person underneath you doing what they do best, operating that who not how principle.

And that's why I love the idea of long distance investing because it almost forces you to become a business owner rather than the person that's going to fix the toilet or deal with the rent being laid or all the different things that go wrong in real estate. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious because we haven't really touched on this, but there's some real risk investing in real estate. Obviously, we don't know what the market is going to do, but also you were dealing with people. And I think that's a big fear of lots of people who are thinking of getting into real estate but aren't sure because you hear the horror stories on the news of the tenants, they trash the place or they're not paying. And sometimes you're like,

oh, that will never happen to me. And then you hear, you know, then it does. So do you want to kind of talk about some of the real risks, especially for first time property owners that you need to take into consideration because they are real, they property owners that you need to take into consideration because they are real, they could happen and you need to build that into, I guess, like your budget or to your strategy. Look, there are just as many bad landlords as there are bad tenants and it kind of turns into a kind of a negative feedback loop in some cases. Now the tenants that we hear about are the worst, right?

They're the ones that are like, I know my rights and I'm not leaving for three years and blah, blah, blah. And at the same time, there's landlords that are like, hey, this roof has been leaking for the last three years and there's mold in the house and they haven't done anything either, right? So I don't want to make it a landlord versus tenant thing because I've seen brutal stuff on both sides. I actually rent as well as own property. I rent my primary residence, so I'm kind of, I play both sides here a little bit. But yeah, I mean, totally, look, the risks are real, right? You are dealing with someone that you're getting

into a long-term relationship with, right? This is not a casual fling here. Someone's sleeping over for a couple of days. Someone is living in a property that you put your hard earned money into, and they're likely gonna be living there for bare minimum a year, and in a lot of cases you hope for it

to last several more years, because tenant turnover can be good in some ways, but it can be annoying or unfortunate in others. I'll give a couple really high piece of advice, and then I'll turn it over to Dan. My number one thing is just do your due diligence on these people. There are a lot of creative ways. It's really easy to find information on people that maybe they don't think like, hey, no

dogs in this one. And they're like, oh, I don't have dogs. And then it's like in their Facebook profile, it's like two great Danes. And it's like, this is a one-bedroom apartment upstairs. I can't have two great Danes up here kind of thing. So heaviest thing would just be due diligence on those people. And also remember that they are your client. A lot of landlords look at tenants in a, I don't want to say demeaning, but just in a

way that it's like, okay, you owe me money every month kind of thing. And it's like, yeah, well, you owe me a place to stay with like, it works. Exactly. Right. So I think, I think both sides need to remember that the more harmonious that relationship can be, the easier and better it's going to be for everybody. Like literally the less you hear from each other, the better. Yeah.

Also never rush to fill a unit. I've made that mistake before where I've had a unit sit two, three months kind of thing in a bit of a slower market, nice unit for some reason, you know, hundreds of applications, none of them really hit. And I was just like, yeah, I just filled it. I dealt with nightmares for like six, eight months, right? Cops showing up, non-immersion police getting called, other neighbors in the building getting angry.

And you know, would I have rather rather let that unit sit in another and bleed another, you know, 1500 bucks for two more months to get the right tenant. Of course we'll never make that mistake again. So due diligence and don't rush for my two main pieces of advice. The only thing I would add there is that again, it is a business. And so a lot of people, uh, they fail because because or they run into problems because they're not running a compliant business. And so, you know, make sure your paperwork's all in check.

Make sure you do everything properly, especially if you do end up going to the landlord and tenant board. Like the board is definitely slow, at least in Ontario, but for the most part, it's pretty fair. And so, but in order to arrive at those resolutions, you have to submit all your paperwork properly, have all the proper leases, etc. And so do that and remember you're running a business. It's not passive income.

Yeah. I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of it in those terms. They think, oh yeah, I'm just buying a second property and renting it out. Easy peasy. But it's a business. So, I'm curious on some of the business front. In your opinion, does it make more sense, especially if they're a first time real estate investor to just stay as a sole proprietor or I see there's a trend of a lot of people incorporating and

then all of their real estate assets are in this corporation? Does it depend on the situation? What do you see? A lot of people are tempted to incorporate. There's no true advantage from a tax perspective. A lot of people think there is, but I would call that the hold-co myth. If you have a holding company, a passive income is taxed the same for individuals and hold-cos. I think a lot of the time you would use a corporation probably for privacy or to keep

the income away from your personal income, not for tax purposes, but just for organizational purposes. That would probably be the primary thing would be, you know, you have it, it has its own account, it has its own tax filings, et cetera. So again, now it is a business. It's not a job that's, that's on your books and it starts cluttering your own, you know, your own personal taxes and yeah, personal finance. Yeah.

Yeah. The only thing I'd add is when, when we get that question from, from very early on, very early stage investors is, is, you know, what's, what's the bigger plan here? Right? Is the plan to you know, own three to five properties and that's kind of your retirement plan for a bit of cash flow and equity that you can tap into in 20 years or is the plan to bit of cash flow and equity that you can tap into in 20 years, or is the plan to leave the nine to five and start this whole organization where you've got property management, all this stuff? And I think for earlier investors, a lot of the time they don't know, right?

They really just want to get into the market. And if you're just trying to get into the market, I would say try to take the path of least resistance because it is going to be hard anyways. And sometimes throwing in the corp can add just a few layers of complexity. If it's not needed, then skip it for now. Yeah, but definitely hire an accountant. Don't try to do it all yourself.

This is one thing I see with people just starting small businesses. And I have a few videos on my YouTube channel about it and I get a lot of questions about taxes and how to set things up. I'm like, my gosh, don't try to do everything yourself. That's the one thing. Well, just like you said, if you can't afford a property manager, maybe the numbers aren't adding up that you should buy real estate and do this type of business, this type of investment.

The same thing, you've got to get an account. You don't want to screw that up. That should have been my answer when you even asked us the questions. Ignore everything we're about to say and ask your account. Oh my gosh. Please don't try to do it yourself because that is where people are like, I owe taxes on this money. Yeah. Now we haven't really, we talked about condos, but I know the housing market, houses or, you know, I guess maybe townhouses may be in there, different kind of situation, different market

right now. What are your kind of thoughts going on with houses, especially when it comes to buying that secondary property or that property you want to rent out? Does it make any sense with how crazy expensive houses are across the country, no matter if it's a big city or small city? Some of these small cities, I'm like, how much is that house? To me, it's all relative to rent, right? The easiest way to look at that is using a calculation like the cap rate. So you would basically take the net operating income of a property and divide it by the purchase

price of the property and that'll give you a rate like typically five, six percent. That allows you to compare properties side by side very easily and then you can sort them based on how they perform relative to their income. So yeah, house prices might be very expensive in certain cities, but if the rent that that house produces is also high and it's in comparably high relative to the price, then it could still be a really good investment. Similarly, you might be tempted to go buy a house in a city where the entry point is

really low, but then the rents are very low as well. Maybe you could see a house in Toronto that's trading at a 4% cap rate for a million dollars or a house in New Brunswick that's trading at a 4% cap rate for $200,000. And so the big thing is getting clear on what metrics you're using to compare these properties side by side and create an apples to apples comparison. Because it can be really hard to do that when you're looking in different cities and different types of products. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The only thing I'd add to that is again, I think going back to what is the intention with that house, right? Are we buying a secondary property, just a duplex because I've got, you know, 500 grand from inheritance and I want to put this into a savings vehicle because I don't trust myself with the meme coins right now or whatever it is. Or is this like, you know, am I an ad value investor where I'm gonna go buy a property and yeah, it's a four cap in New Brunswick, but hey, it's zoned for this and I can add another unit here and I can actually improve the quality of life for the people that are maybe either living there or going to live there and I can maybe bring that up to a

six cap. I'm gonna just throw in from, from a real estate legend here. This guy's called, it's like an anonymous guy on Twitter called strip mall guy. It was like one of my favorite real estate quotes. So I don't buy real estate because the value goes up. I buy real estate because I can make the value go up. And that to me has always been like the trigger there, right? Like I can't go and put a basement apartment in Apple stock. I can't paint my put a basement apartment in Apple stock. I can't

paint my Nvidia stock a nice color. So it does better when people are looking at it. And I think going back to one of the original questions, Jessica, like why do people, why are people so attracted to real estate? Well, I think that's one of the main reasons because there is that element of control, right? It's that familiarity. Hey, yes, we've all either, at the very least we've all seen homes, maybe we've lived in condos or town homes our whole life, but we've all seen pieces of property, they're everywhere, right?

And we've seen renovations, we know people that have done well with them. So I think that's one of the main things that attracts people to real estate is knowing that you can make the value of that asset go up. That is exciting. I mean, that's the one thing that I'm really proud of. My only kind of real estate deal besides buying this house was my first property townhouse. I mean, my husband lived for five years. And again, a lot of it was luck how, you know, that the

price went up because we sold at the peak. But also we did add a lot of value because I saw this property and it was not super, like it was a rental at that time. And you can tell they didn't really upgrade certain things. I'm like, oh, I've watched enough HGTV. We could add some paint on here and make it a lot nicer. I can do this. And we spent the next couple of years making it so much nicer.

So then when it was time, we're like, we got to go, we got to sell and move. It was already done and ready to go, which is really exciting. So I know, I know part of that had to do that. And that was a lot of fun to be creative and have that vision where it's, you can't really do that when you're just buying boring, like index funds or something. I mentioned, I remember when we first met, we were chatting, you're talking about, you know, sometimes you can take a look at just what's going on in the world or the economy and see certain opportunities. Like I think you mentioned, hey, there's some town and they're bringing in this new industry. And that might be an opportunity because you know, if they're bringing in this new industry or this new business, you know, is opening up and that's going to bring a lot of new people,

they're going to need places to live. Is that something that you're always monitoring? What are these pockets that might be an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, get those properties, and then see the value go up? I think that's an especially important consideration right now with all of the changing factors around demographics, immigration, et cetera. There are markets that are insolent, even if you think about tariffs, right? The thing is the real estate asset can be exposed to a lot of these different factors.

And so you can almost buy directional trends. If you're bullish on commodities, as an example, you could buy outside of some of these new mines that are going in in Saskatchewan. Or if you're bearish on aluminum, as an example, as a result of the tariff announcements that we're seeing this week, you might want to stay away from the area in Quebec. There's one city that's built around the aluminum industry or steel, like Hamilton, as an example. So now more than ever, I would say those different little geographic anomalies and all of the macro factors and how they play into different geographies does create, it's almost like I would call it like a stock picker's market, but for real estate where directionally you

could really pick a thesis and be very right and get outsized returns and beat the market. You could also be very wrong and have bad returns and lose against the market and potentially lose money. So I think it's a very important time to be doing proper research. Interesting. And are you seeing anything yourself, just like you don't have to say where or what

if you're keeping it close to the vest, but are you seeing like, oh yeah, there's some things happening. There's always something happening. You just have to look for it. Yeah, there's a couple of areas that I'm really interested in. I think Atlantic Canada probably is the most mispriced area in the country right now and Quebec as well. I just think that those markets seem to be performing very well relative to the rent that they're

able to produce. Population growth probably, like the Halifax of the world probably will be impacted a lot by the slowing population growth but that could present a buying opportunity in the short term and I do believe in them. And yeah, I mean Nick and I are typically very open to the point where you know, we create competition for ourselves about the market so we don't ever keep anything too tight to the chest. We kind of just like- We maybe should have been like years ago. Yeah, for sure. We've definitely priced ourselves out of certain markets that we already- You're like, oh, we were going to buy, then everyone bought because we told them we had to buy.

Seriously, no, I'm not even kidding. Really? There was a property in a town, Cornwall, I'll name it. And here's a great example. So one of the things with Cornwall, Ontario, is they were getting a Great Wolf Lodge. So immediately, okay, well, there's thousands of people employed for a couple of years as we're building this. Anyways, all that aside, just another little random, totally random thing to look for, right? Like how could something like the Great Wolf Lodge affect a town of 50,000?

But anyways, Dan and I have been buying there for years and we kept on going up against competitors and bids and we'd find out that they're like, no, we're podcast listeners. We're only buying here because you guys told us to and we're like, oh my God. Played ourselves for sure on that one. Maybe just like keep something to yourself. I don't know. I don't know. We're too giving, right? We just want to help people.

There's one other thing I wanted to touch on because this is a trend that I see with a lot of especially young real estate investors is renting the dwelling they're living in and then buying properties that they're renting out. Whereas I feel like before it was, oh no, if you're a real estate investor, you own your home. That was just like, I never met someone who rented. Why do you find that is more commonplace now? Is it because, well, maybe it just makes

more financial sense to rent in a big city and then buy real estate outside of the city? I think it's purely a capital allocation discussion. You go to Wall Street, all of the investment bankers rent their apartments on Wall Street. If you can go and achieve a greater return, then you would be able to through home ownership, then you ought to do that. And I think a lot of people have done that math and choose to rent. I think also, there's a degree of freedom to renting that you don't have when you own your home, right?

Where owning your home is a bit of a maintenance item that exists in your life, right? You have to make sure certain things are working. And if you rent a property, you don't, you just have to text your landlord and ask them to fix said problem. And so a lot of people opt for that lifestyle benefit as well. Yeah. I mean, I'm literally that guy. Like that is what I do. And, you know, I think for a lot of people, it's a way better idea. Jessica, I was telling you, I live downtown Toronto. Rent's expensive. To own that property would be way more expensive.

And I would have spent all the capital that I saved up to buy cash flowing rental properties that have huge potential in the next five, 10 years on a condo. I would have set myself back likely a few years with that down payment for the condo. I also don't know if that's where I'm going to be living for the next five years, right? I'm in my mid-30s, my life is changing rapidly. Maybe I'll live somewhere else, maybe with a significant

other, whatever. So there's a lot of, as Dan said, I think it just provides that element of a bit more freedom. But really for me, it's the, it's the capital, right? Like I need to be downtown for, for meetings to, to, as you so eloquently put to go to sports games that I don't watch, uh, cause I'm too busy talking. Um, and they lost apparently. And they, they got, they got blown out. Apparently there was like a 40 point difference by the end. So it was a Raptors game for everybody.

It was a basketball game for everybody. It's wondering what the hell we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, I think for me it just really, and not just for me, but we've done deep dives into research for this kind of stuff and Dan can drop some home ownership stats on you that are fascinating. But if you look at, let's just say countries

that most people would think are successful overall, okay? Let's take like a Switzerland for instance. Well, most young people in Switzerland don't own their homes. They rent because why would they go and spend, you know, whatever Swiss francs that are down payment costs when they're more focused on starting businesses and doing things that they can actually get an ROI on versus just, Hey, like I'm going to post up in this house for, you know, however long being, especially being young and not knowing what,

you know, there's been a lot of people recently that have come to me that bought a home or bought a condo a couple of years ago, haven't even been in it for five years and are already moving on. And in some cases there, it's kind of a break even thing. So it's like, why, you know, what was the point of even doing that? You basically just rented from the bank anyways. Yeah. I mean, I've always like the one piece of real estate advice that I got, I don't know, maybe it was from a book or something. I don't know. But it was, if you're going to buy, you need to stay there minimum five years to break even basically, because we don't know what's going to happen with it. And that's kind of the same thing with just like investing in the stock market. It's very difficult to make money quickly by buying something short-term,

selling it quickly. If you really want to build your wealth, it's about buying it and holding it for a very long time. And so for home ownership, that's where my mind is. That's why I bought this house is we're going to be here for at like told my husband, like we're staying here for 10 years and then we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. But yeah, but for the first, I don't know, five years of living here, I think I got that math right. We rented and I'm so glad we did because I wasn't sure if we were going to stay in Toronto.

I really like I was homesick for like good two years moving here from Vancouver. And so like, I don't want to set roots. What if we're about to go back? So it gives you a lot of options and flexibility, especially as a young person too. Like we lived in parts of Toronto that we couldn't actually afford to buy, but we could afford to rent. And that also gives you, you know, some flexibility, right? Like I can afford to buy something like in downtown. Well, maybe I maybe a condo, but you get different things. So that's what it is. Yeah. I think it's interesting what you mentioned about just the holding period for real estate. To buy and sell real estate,

just purely switching costs are like 5%, right? Commission to a realtor, land transfer tax, lawyer, moving, et etc. And so your return on that needs to be a minimum of five percent in order to make it worth, you know, just to break even. So you need to be getting, you know, to be able to beat stocks or something like that, you need to be getting 10, 15, 20 percent to really even make it worthwhile. Because a lot of people, they don't deduct the cost out. They just see the house price, what they bought and what they paid. And it's like, well, when you bought it, you paid X amount, maybe you had CMHC premiums, et cetera. Then on the sale, you have all the same things.

Yeah. Do the math. Yeah, do the math. You should see the spreadsheet that I had set up when we were selling our townhouse and looking for a house. It's like the numbers have to work and just, oh yeah, the realtor fees and the land transfer tax and all these things that you're like, oh, right. I forgot. That's a lot of money. You don't want to be doing that too often.

And not only just that, but like if you're going to be talking math, you know, I'd encourage everyone listening to that owns to go look at your amortization schedule, right? And understand the difference between where that money that you're paying to the bank every month or biweekly or whatever it is, where that's actually going because for the first five years, it's going to the interest. It's going to interest. It's barely going to that principal. And most Canadians take that five-year, whether the standards of the five-year fixed, okay, well, you barely own any more of that house after that five years.

Yeah. So that's something, again, I think people kind of breeze over. And as a mortgagation, that's something that I really drill into people being like you, how long are you going to be here for? Because that is a huge question. Absolutely. Now, somehow we've already recorded for like 48 minutes. This was the easiest episode to record ever because I have so many questions and you have some really great answers. So thank you so much. Before I let you guys go, one thing from my listeners, and I told you the demographics

are pretty much 80% women between 25 and 65. I'd say it's a big range, but there's everyone in between and I don't, you know, I hear you when I see you. What would you want them to know, especially if they're not super familiar with this, this really kind of sometimes intimidating world of real estate investing? What is like one or two things that you would want to leave them with? Yeah. My first, I'll go first here, Dana, and then jump in. My first thing is always, if you are, whether it's whether you're a woman or

man or anything, my number one thing, if you are trying to get involved in something, whether it's writing a book like you just did, Jessica, or whether it's investing in real estate, whether it's trying to put a stock portfolio together, seek out other people that are doing it. Go and find a mentor, find someone that is doing what you are, want to be doing or has done what you want to do and make yourself in any way possible value to that person. That is the only reason I'm here with you guys today is because I found my way. I found a way to, to find really great people in my life, add value to them and, and, and partner with them. Mentorship is like the absolute key

for anyone trying to kind of get out of their comfort zone, start a business, take a risk, go find someone that they can do that. And not even just maybe one mentor, but that's why we started the groups, is go and find a group of people that are doing it. So that is what I would recommend to all of your amazing listeners.

And I would just add to that, like you mentioned, to find someone who's done it and also just to kind of from a confidence building exercise, like if you're worried about it, understand that statistically, single women actually own far more real estate than single men. Really? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, that's good to know. I didn't know that.

Yeah, I think they're the largest individual group of first time home buyers. That's cool. Yeah. So know that data is behind you. I'm a big data guy. Yeah. Data is behind you. You can do this.

And I would argue that are statistically doing a better job at it. So that's cool. I mean, the data also shows that women are really good at stock market investing too. So what more for it? So yeah, there you go. Even though I feel like historically investing, whether it's been in real estate or stock market has been pretty male dominated, we're seeing a shift and that's really exciting. And so this world is open to you and there's so many great resources that you can learn

more and connect with people, including all the great things that you're doing. Tell us a little bit more where people can find your podcast, your coaching, your course, all that good stuff. Yeah. So the podcast is available on all podcast platforms. It's called the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast. Very easy to find. Very easy to remember. Yeah, for sure. I'm surprised no one took that name already. So were we.

Right? So were we. Yeah. But people, I mean, it's like for us, our original podcast had like a very clever name. And I think everyone in the real estate space, like everybody wants clever names, whereas we opted for the SEO. Yeah, exactly. Just make it obvious.

That's what I think. Yeah. Yeah. So I think podcasts are really evolving into a search platform in that regard. So everything else you can find through the podcast, but if you search Nick and I on any social media platforms as well, we're pretty easy to find. And just send us a DM. We're very easy to reach. We're both very responsive. So send me a DM on whatever platform that you're looking for. And we have a YouTube

channel as well. So we do about 10 minutes of each episode on video. Yeah. Amazing. Nick, anything to add? Anything you'd like to mention? No, I just encourage if you are possibly thinking of, you know, taking a risk, getting involved in any capacity, we have tried to make it as easy and as welcoming in whatever meeting you feel comfortable, whether it's listening, watching in person, reading, we put out a ton of content. So if this was the, you know, if this is your wakeup call that if you are looking at or real estate curious, we have built out a world that is very accepting for everybody, whether you are literally like, I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just showing up to this event, or you own like, you know, a $10 million, $100 million portfolio,

we have everyone in between. So I would encourage you to come out and take that risk. And Canadian specific, which is so important because man, there's a lot of real estate stuff, not for Canadians. And that's again, a good portion of my audience is Canadian looking for Canadian specific information. So that's so awesome that you've got all these amazing resources. Thank you so much, Daniel and Nick, for coming on the More Money Podcast. It was a pleasure having you. Yeah, absolute pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Thanks. And that was my interview with Daniel Fosch and Nick Hill. Make sure to check out their amazing real estate podcast called the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast. Really easy to find with those keywords there. I will link to it in the description for this episode, so I'll make it really easy for you and in the show notes. So make sure to give them a follow if you want to do a deep dive and also take a look at some of their

other offerings. They mentioned that they have coaching, they've got a course. So if this is an avenue you want to explore more, this is one way to do it and And also love that it's Canadian specific because if you've ever followed someone from the US, very different markets here in Canada compared to lots of the markets in the US. So that is one thing you can do after this episode. And also just a reminder, my book,

Everything But Money is on stands now. It is a bestseller. So I guess that means that people like it. Maybe it's a pretty good book. I don't know. I'm biased. But if you want to check it out for yourself, get it from your local library, buy it from your local independent bookstore or whatever bookstore you like. I don't care.

I don't judge. Whatever you want. And let me know what you think. Give me a review, and if you submit it to me at jessicamorehouse.com slash book, you will get access, free access to a bunch of exclusive videos, audio, and worksheets that are companion to the book that I made, specifically for people who pre-ordered my book, but now I'm giving it to you

if you again just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash book, instructions are there. Well, thanks again for listening and watching and I will see you soon in my next episode. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar, and podcast producer, Matt Rideout, who you can find at mravcanada.com