Eastern ON

Amiel Jelinek
 
Daniel: Amiel Jelinek, you're a mortgage broker. You are super busy. I know because I'm working with you to refinance a property, and you're busy. I know you're very busy. Before I let you share whatever good advice you want to share with our audience this evening. Let me ask you one question and then I will let you go free. Tell me about the team, because I know you work with the team. We know you are constantly qualifying in the top 10% of the mortgage brokers in the company you work with across Canada, which is a pretty good, really good accomplishment. But I also know because I'm working with you, that there's all kinds of people dealing with three or four different names and stuff. You are surrounded by a team.

Amiel: I'm part of the Windrose Group mortgage alliance team. And the nice thing about being part of a team is that you can rely on each other for skills that you don't have. We certainly pass things back and forth. If some of us are better at doing this, the standard single family, some are better at private financing. I focus a lot on commercial finance. It's great to be part of the team where we can pass things back and forth. It's amazing to be part of that.

Daniel: We were talking now the way you described it in the way I asked the question, we're talking about your internal team. But also as a mortgage broker, you work with realtors, you work with lawyers, you work with accountants, you work with investors and so on. You are successful because you also know how to surround yourself with the right outside team.

Amiel: We work with them, one of the biggest things for me is appraisers. A good appraiser can make or break your deal. Working with a mortgage broker that has a good power team that works with people on a regular basis, that they know that they can get things done is super important.

Lawyers are another one that we're always working with. And a lot of times, I feel bad sometimes. Financing sometimes ends up going long, especially when we have short timeframes when we're trying to close within two weeks, a lot of that is taken out by financing. And the lawyers are not getting things until the last second. And so having a good team that works together can make that process much smoother. Being able to give information to the lawyer upfront right ahead of time. Even though everything's not done, they can get a file going and get everything ready ahead of time.

I can say, I'm also a real estate investor myself. Some of the other power team members that I have are accountants, property managers, those kinds of things, which are essential. The last thing that I want to do is manage my own property. Property managers are definitely crucial in my business.

Daniel: Yeah, but I'm surprised here because with all your knowledge and accounting and numbers and stuff. You actually use an accountant to do your taxes?

Amiel: 100%, it's been said this evening you already know what you know, and know what you don't know, and I love numbers, but you need an accountant to make sure that they know the rules, the CRA's rules. I don't know the CRA's rules. I know numbers for you. But I don't know all the rules. I don't know where to save money. How to write things off properly. Ensure that you're paying the least amount of taxes, but at the same time you're protected. I'd rather have that shield if CRA ever comes back and audits me, never been audited yet, which is great. I want to be able to have that shield and have my accountant do that part of it for me.

Daniel: Thank you. I appreciate that because there's a couple a year and a half ago, we were at an event and I was sitting at a table with somebody who had done about 25 rent to own. He is still doing all of his books and stuff because he says, what's the problem? I can use an adding machine. I didn't get into an argument with him, but I thought to myself, okay, you're saving a couple of thousand bucks or a few thousand bucks here and there on the accounting firm, but men what it's probably costing you in depreciation and expenses and that you're not using or whatever? Anyway, that was silly. Thank you very much to hear from somebody who knows numbers that it's not about. Accounting is not about numbers. You're right. It's about what you put on the form and what we'll see already. Think of it.

Amiel: That's great. And you can try and push boundaries yourself or you're bound to get yourself in trouble.

Daniel: You mentioned that you were an investor and yes, I know you. I'm reading some information about you here. You started with a single family. You've rented your own multifamily and commercial buildings. Right now in the market that we're in pretty much everywhere. What is your advice to the people who are at this event this evening for investors? What should they do? What are you doing? What should we be looking for?

Amiel: I think it's something that's been said already is definitely make sure that you're working with your power team, relying on your experts and getting yourself prepared ahead of time. Making sure that you are getting your financials checked ahead of time that you know what you're qualified for. What you can buy and what you can't buy.

To me, obviously I'm a biased mortgage broker. That's number one thing from my side is making sure that you're getting qualified right. And that, what you can afford. It's really relying on your experts, like your realtor, right? Like this market is insane. And you really need to have a realtor that knows what they're doing, because in normal circumstances you have an offer price and when it's a more balanced market there's an offer price, or there's an asking price, I should say.

Your offer price is typically going to be slightly lower than that. But this market is different. Whatever that asking price is, there is no boundary to what the actual purchase price will be. I've seen insane numbers on how high purchases have gone above asking price. You really have to rely on your realtor for that in terms of what it is going to sell for. And what's that boundary, right? Where should I be putting my mark to get an offer, but not overpaying? And then as investors, you do really have to straight stay true to your numbers.

Go in with a number ahead of time that, after speaking with your realtor and your mortgage broker, what makes sense. And you got to do your own due diligence. And make sure that number makes sense so you have that number that you won't go above and stick to it. There's no sense in buying a property if it's going to mean negative cash flow for two or three years.

Daniel: I translate that to say, buy the property with the calculator in your head, not art.

Amiel: That is exactly it.

Daniel: Because you like the kitchen and you like the neighborhood, but you're not going to live there. Why pay 60,000 more than you should? Because you like the neighborhood view, you'll live 150 miles away from there. Why would you care? As long as you can rent it and if it can catch. What do you care about the neighborhood? Or the sides of the trees in the yard. I'm pointing that out because I've heard this from a lot of people. Oh my God, that property, I lost it, but you should have seen the trees.

Amiel: Yes, I've certainly learned my own lessons along the way. I've been doing this for a while. It does not pay to get emotionally attached to let me tell you.

Daniel: The last question, before we wrap up here and that is, is it better now than for investors to look on the commercial side? Or is it the same kind of crazy market for people who want to buy, say six blocks, eight blocks or whatever? Is it the same or is it a good place to go to since single families are going insane?

Amiel: It certainly can be. I've definitely seen that there's been multiple offers on commercial buildings, but the nice thing that I've been seeing with commercial buildings is that you still have financing. Like you still have a conditional period. There's still none that I've seen so far that I've come to me and said okay, I'm buying this 10, 12 unit building and I have no conditions it's a firm offer. You still have time for due diligence, but what I've seen is that time for due diligence has decreased, due diligence on commercial properties takes significantly longer than it does on residential.

We're typically working, like I typically start with 30 business days. What I'm seeing is that it is definitely decreasing with the market that we're in, with a lot of competition in that. Again, it comes down to working with your power team being set up ahead of time and saying, okay, this one is potentially coming down the road.

What do we need to do to get our ducks in a row? Right from the beginning as it might be. Typically the way that we like to work is that we like to get an approval first, get a lender approval first, and then we work on due diligence. You always start with your free stuff and then you get into the stuff that costs money.

But when we're in tight timelines, it might mean that, before we even get that approval from the lender, we have to order our appraisal. And depending on the type of building, we might have to order an environmental assessment and we might have to do a building condition report. It's some of that, sometimes we have to get ahead of ourselves and do some of those things up front rather than waiting until we would prefer to do them. Once we have our financing.

Daniel: Advice from the wise. Thank you very much, Mr. Amiel.