No Sweat Real Estate Investing Copyright © 2018 Celebrity Expert Author All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited. ISBN-13: ISBN-10: Published by: Celebrity Expert Author http://celebrityexpertauthor.com Canadian Address: 501- 1155 The High Street, Coquitlam, BC, Canada V3B.7W4 Phone: (604) 941-3041 Fax: (604) 944-7993 US Address: 1300 Boblett Street Unit A-218 Blaine, WA 98230 Phone: (866) 492-6623 Fax: (250) 493-6603 Dedication This book is dedicated to our parents, Bob and Lorraine Phillipo, Cathy and Cliff Collard, and to our son Aaron. Foreward How Real Estate Investing Has Changed Our Lives Thank you for picking up this copy of No Sweat Real Estate Investing. We hope that through reading this book you will gain a better understanding of how to create profitable investments in real estate to further your financial goals. Our personal journey with real estate investing began when Leslie was just a child. Growing up, her father, Bob Phillipo, was a contractor. He would buy properties, spend two or three years renovating them, and sell them for a profit. Leslie learned from an early age that real estate was the best way to not only pay off your own mortgage but also a great way to build profit. In retrospect, it is surprising that we did not invest in real estate from the get-go. We both instead bought into Registered Retirement Savings Plans. This is where our frustration with mutual funds began. When Leslie first started contributing to her RRSP, she didn‘t have money for a house. She worked in social services, which in Ontario does not pay well. So, she instead started with a small contribution to an RRSP through her pension at work. Jamie had a friend at an insurance agency that pushed him to get an RRSP as well. Once we started living together in 2010, we were both getting our RRSP S statements every 3 months. Every time we received the statements we would look through them and feel defeated. It got to the point where we had both individually paid into those accounts for 15 years and had nothing to show for it. Often times we were opening statements containing negative numbers. We even tried bumping Jamie‘s RRSP contributions higher to jumpstart our retirement savings, but that didn‘t help either. Jamie had been living in a rundown bachelor pad when we met, and once Leslie moved in we decided to fix it up. We turned the bachelor house into a family home. Leslie‘s mom and dad both helped with the whole process. We did extensive renovations and we built on a shop on the property where Jamie started to do his mechanics on the side at home. We decided to sell the property once we realized that the house wasn‘t zoned properly to run Jamie‘s mechanics shop. Around 3 months after Jamie started the business, the county came knocking and said that we couldn‘t have the business in a residentially zoned area. We lived in that house while it was completely renovated for about a year before we sold it in 2014. We made about $80,000 profit from that house. Jamie had bought the property for $184,000 in 2007 and we sold it for $385,000 in 2014 (we put about $100,000 into the renovations). Selling that house was when the light bulb went off for us. We really started thinking into the future about retirement. Leslie had always wanted to own real estate, and now after making such a large profit on our first house, we realized it was possible. We started searching for our next house. We printed off a county zoning map because we didn‘t want our son Aaron to have to change schools. There were only 4 properties in the whole county that had a house and zoning for a commercial shop, and 2 were current operating shops. The house we ended up finding wasn‘t for sale. We knew a friend who knew the owner and asked if he wanted to sell. He was 73 and lived there his whole life. He wanted to interview us before he sold it to us and thankfully decided to sell it to us. We first took the plunge into acquiring an income property after we decided to sell our first house and acquired our second house. This second house required a lot of renovation work as well. We had to take the house down to the studs. We actually hooked half of the house up to our truck and drove away with it before putting on a big addition. We had a realtor come in when it was still in pretty rough shape and give us an estimate on it. We had already forced equity on it by at least 100 thousand in a matter of 2 years. That‘s when Jamie got more on board with the whole idea of using real estate as our main mode of investing for retirement. We were watching a lot of income property shows at the time and thinking ―we could do this.‖ We were motivated to buy our first revenue property after we did our first Keyspire training. We had noticed events on Facebook popping up for wealth tours. We found one in the building where Leslie worked and, after some consideration, decided to become members and send our future in a different direction. Within only a few months, we put in an offer on a house in Windsor. The offer was accepted but the inspection was not good. So we looked for another one to put in an offer for. Leslie found the house we actually ended up buying. We fixed that one up, refinanced it, and took out all of our initial investment money. We found our next revenue property, a duplex. We messaged our realtor while they were signing papers to list the property and we said we wanted to be the first people in to see it. The next night we gave them an offer and they accepted within an hour. We ended up acquiring that property for just three thousand dollars out of pocket, because the refinance from the first property covered the rest. We have attained so many personal benefits from taking this journey. We feel a lot more stable and secure about our future. We feel confident for the first time in our ability to retire. We are financially much closer to retirement than we ever could have been relying purely on RRSPs. Real estate investment has also become a family business for us. Aaron, our 12 year old son, helps with the renovations and has taken an interest in investing in mortgages. It makes us feel more confident in his future too. He asks a lot of questions and is so interested in the money we can make from rental properties. Our main goal at this point is to retire early and retire comfortably. In the future, we dream of being ‗snowbirds‘ and spending the winters where it is hot all year long. We want to live where there is a warm ocean that we can put our feet in. We have finally been able to put a 10-15 year plan in place to make this happen. In order to do this, we are growing our real estate portfolio significantly, and this means that we are working with investor partners. Investor partners are people who would like to enjoy all of the benefits and profits of revenue properties, but not have to deal with the hassles of tenants and toilets. We do all the work, our investor partners put up the money, and together we share in the profits generated. It‘s all about creating win-win deals that everyone benefits from. Thanks again for picking up this book. We hope you will find it informative, helpful, and motivating to kickstart your future of real estate investing! When you are ready to talk, please reach out. We‘d love to show you exactly what it is we do, and how we can work together to get you an above average return on your money – backed by a solid asset… revenue property! Jamie and Leslie Collard 10 Table of Contents Foreward: . 4 Introduction . 12 Chapter 1: Why Real Estate? Top 10 Reasons . 18 Chapter 2: The Multiple Profit Centers of Real Estate . 33 Chapter 3: The Different Styles of Real Estate Investing . 48 Chapter 4: The Art of the Deal . 65 Chapter 5: Building Your Winning Team. 77 Chapter 6: The Risks of Real Estate Investing . 87 Chapter 7: Real Estate Investing FAQs . 111 Conclusion: . 108 Afterword: . 111 Jim, a Real Estate Entrepreneur, meets Bill, a potential Money-Partner. 12 Introduction “Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.” —Andrew Carnegie (the world’s first billionaire) elcome to No-Sweat Real Estate Invest- ing. The title of this short book makes a rather large claim. It says that you can enjoy high returns with low risk and zero hassles. The subtitle is ―How to enjoy the profits from owning revenue property without the headache of dealing with tenants and toilets.‖ These are very bold statements, and it is the author‘s intention to give you an overview of how 13 No Sweat Real Estate Investing the business of real estate works, as well as how other people just like you are achieving amazing financial rewards thanks to invest- ing in revenue properties. Chances are you either know someone who has made a lot of money from a real estate deal or you have seen television shows where the host makes big profits ‗flipping‘ a property.