Laurel Simmons: Hey, REITE Club Nation. It's Laurel Simmons here, and I'm with my co-host Sarah Larbi. There's lots going on and our guest today actually, he's not letting anything slow him down, he's really busy.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. Mark Baltazar, you guys may have heard him on a prior podcast. If you haven't, feel free to go back and listen to his story cause we actually got right into the weeds in the last year and a half.
He quit his job. He's built a portfolio, I think it was 7.6 million since the last year and a half. So since you guys last spoke to him, he has been on fire acquiring some mid-size. 12 to 20 units buildings, and has done tremendous. And it is just really exciting because, covid, it's unfortunate in the pandemic, it's unfortunate, but you can see that there's people that are making things happen regardless of the cars that are dealt.
He left his full-time job a week prior to the whole shutdown. And Made it happen and became really successful focusing on the real estate business. So it is awesome. It's so inspiring and I hope you guys enjoy this podcast. But before we go onto the podcast, I will say, if you haven't yet, check out thereiteclub.com. Check out our Facebook group register. There it is completely free. Laurel, shall we bring on Mark?
Laurel Simmons: Let's do it.
Sarah Larbi: All right, Mark, welcome back to the show. It's your second time. I'm excited to have you come back and you did wonderful and you shared so much insight and great tips last time. We're excited to have you back. So welcome.
Mark Baltazar: Appreciate you having me back and it was, I know it was fun last time. You can probably, the stories can go on for a long time yeah, appreciate the conversation and I must have said something insightful for you to have me back again. So thank you.
Sarah Larbi: Awesome. So for those of you that don't know Mark's background, feel free to scroll down and watch and re-listen to the podcast. But I wanna talk about everything that you've been doing since the last year and a half, because there's lots of exciting things that have happened for you. Number one, you've actually left your full-time employment and you've became aka retired, but a full-time real estate investor may just walk us through your last year and a half and what you've been up to since then.
Mark Baltazar: My strategy is, house flipping and apartment building, so really ramped up the apartment building side of the business over the last a year and a half I'd say. So I think the last time we spoke I don't even know, I can't remember if we even had the peak multi-family brand. So we created a new brand that was so my background was brand strategy and marketing. So the creation of brands is what I've lived for a long time, for 15 plus years.
My partner and I created a brand that was dedicated to apartment buildings. So peak multi-family investments and essentially, that brand is really designed and caters to the acquisition and management of apartment buildings for people, for our partners essentially. Really our proposition is, education in the sense that we're helping people. Get into their first building. So through education, some coaching and some courses we just hosted our first course in September, which Went better than we thought from a registration standpoint.
That was great. And we're not really in kind of the transactional side of apartment buildings, but we do connect people that are looking for buildings and we connect them with people in our network. So the proposition is really just building wealth through apartment buildings.
At the beginning of March or so, we didn't know where the market was going, but it's proven to be a very Competitive market and in a market that continues to grow without much fluctuation, which is good.
Sarah Larbi: Awesome. And you left your full-time job and you started a podcast too.
Mark Baltazar: That's right. We started a podcast. We started, that hasn't been a year yet. It's probably nine months in. I think we're like 24 episodes out now. So I think the 24th or 23rd. Went out today. I love it. You guys have been doing it longer than I have. It's been really cool.
It's dedicated to apartment building investors or people kinda getting into it. So it's what I found is I went to the US about a year and a half ago to a multi-family conference with capital razors and syndicators. And one of the things that they were doing to brand themselves and get attention were podcasts.
What I have found here is a lot of great, real estate podcasts such as yours and your Sarahs as well. But I found that there was nothing specific to apartment buildings. So I was like, okay, wow, this kind of, this is the opening in the niche essentially. And so we launched it. I forget less than a year ago.
It's been great. It's been great, and I've been getting great feedback. Stuff like, oh, it's helped me get into my first building, it's helped me understand that type of market. So yeah, it's been good for us and it's connected us with people across the country, which has been really cool. So it's an effort as you guys know. There's work that goes behind it, planning and such to do it properly, but it's definitely paying off for us at least.
Laurel Simmons: You said you've left your j o b and you're now doing this full-time and so how has your day changed since you left the job? Or has it?
Mark Baltazar: It has a little bit. So my previous work was in the marketing and researching kind of brand strategy consulting space. I had a lot of flexibility there and was working with some pretty cool clients and very project based work.
I think how it's changed, the work that I'm doing now is still, I think intellectually stimulating. It's dealing with really smart people. So that's great. Dealing with investors I think the amount of time that I'm spending in business hasn't really changed.
Pretty dedicated to growing what we have going on. I think what it's done it's just a little more flexibility, I think. So that's the nice thing. I have a growing family of three boys. And so that was actually the main reason why I made the shift, or at least started down that path in the first place, was to give me some, a little more kind of family time and flexibility that way.
This business has allowed me to do that. To get out wherever I need to get out, hockey and such and whatever my kids are up to and give us, give that flexibility. But from a business building standpoint it's very similar in that we're growing a brand or kind of, attracting customers or clients.
We hired a marketing manager to help us with that. And we have our, so we're running it like a business, right? So I, so that's a lot of similarities that way. The nature of work is obviously different because it's investing, but the people that I'm dealing with, super smart and still intellectually stimulating which is what I liked about my previous place as well.
Laurel Simmons: You're talking about you made the transition, but let's what was the trigger? Because we know a lot of people who still have jobs. And do their real estate investing on the side. Lots of people do it. And that's a great way to go. But obviously something there was a trigger point in which you said, okay, I'm doing it. So can you share with us what that was?
Mark Baltazar: Sure. So the decision was made well before it actually happened. So it was probably a four or five year journey. It was about five years ago or so, four and a half or so, where I decided, you know what? I think over the next few years, I'll start to trend myself. I own part of the company, so I was a partner in that company. So it was something that had to be planned and discussed with the partners. And so the trigger was really time. It was a consulting business, so I was traveling a lot. Especially when my kids were young.
I missed the birth of my second child. Because I was on the road. So that was like, whoa. That was, so experiences like that. And also, when I'd be asked, dad, you're gonna be home for dinner. And a lot of times, I wasn't able to. And that decision was made pro five years ago that, okay, I gotta switch this, I gotta change.
I always thought real estate investing was always something that I wanted to, and we had just started doing some stuff on the side, and then I saw that it could be built into a real business. And I found myself being pulled in two different directions, the marketing business and then the real estate business.
Then I just wanted to go all in on one thing again, as I did, early on in the marketing business. And so it was a combination of I just needed more time for the family, but also just I didn't want to, I didn't want to have my feet in two different buckets. I wanted to really go deep into one thing and that was, real estate investing.
That was the factors and the influences at that time that kind of really, and I'm glad, now looking at, it's wow. The stuff that I think we're able to do, and I can see this the speed at which the business is growing now and the traction that we're getting. It's because myself and my partner are really dedicated to growing this business. And it's what we're doing day in, day out. So I think, so it can be done, people that obviously have jobs can grow real estate investing business. We're doing that for ourselves, building our own portfolio, helping people build their own portfolios, and also building a brand around it too.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. I think that where you invest your time is what is essentially gonna grow. Yeah. And can you share, where you were maybe in terms of portfolio size before you left and then what it looks like today?
Mark Baltazar: I think, okay, so when I left I had two buildings, two multi-family buildings and a number of flips on the go. And then I had 1, 2, duplexes, a fourplex and all. We probably had about three to five flips on the go at once. Throughout the last four few years, I've recently, I can't remember what we talked about in my last podcast, but, Over the last year and a bit now down to one duplex. And so this year alone we're on track to acquire 7.6 million in apartment buildings.
That was the goal. The goal was 7.5, so we've hit 7.6 this year. And that's, I think that's just because of one, partnering with the right people, but also just being super focused and really focusing on the apartment building side. We get calls, emails all the time. Hey, I heard you guys are into an apartment building. The branding's starting to work when people start calling you for that reason. So yeah, so the apartment building portfolio has expanded to hit our goals actually. And we thought at the beginning it was a stretch goal and it was a bit.
COVID we thought was gonna slow things down and It didn't really. And so I think it's just really because we're able to dedicate all of our attention to the business that's allowed us to grow. And so we're probably on track to continue at least that pace over the next couple years. That's what we want to do anyway.
Sarah Larbi: That's awesome. And so you're mentioning your partner and having the right people on your team, that helps as well to scale and do it successfully. So you have a business partner and. What part of the business, how do you guys split your tasks?
What do you know he does, what do you do? How do you guys have that partnership in place right now?
Mark Baltazar: For sure. My, again, my background in marketing and sales and such. So I deal with it. I know we intersect a little bit, but there are some pretty clear lines, I think just because of our backgrounds and just what we enjoy doing. I deal with, so we raise capital for our projects, at least most of them. So I deal with passive investors. The recruiting of passive investors as well as the brand building and marketing kind of components of peak multi-family webinars, educational content and such.
Then my partner will deal with a lot of the acquisition side of things, so deal flow. So we think of the business in three kinds of buckets. There's deal flow, there's capital. So sales and marketing and then asset management or operations. So my partner Mike, he deals with the deal flow.
That's what he's been really good at. He's also developed some really good relationships that can keep the deals flowing into us. So I deal primarily with capital raising. We, asset management, have property management companies on some buildings.
We do it on our own. And looking to potentially bring someone in house at this point, given the portfolio size, I think it, they can support that now. And so asset management we share essentially that responsibility.
Laurel Simmons: I have a question about the type of apartment buildings that you get involved with. Do you have a favorite? Is it like a, I don't know, a 10 plex versus a, I don't know, hundred unit building? Or a, is there something you really like to play with and have in your portfolio or recommend to people?
Mark Baltazar: For us right now, we're on the smaller side of things, so probably the 12 to 20 is where we're playing right now.
The favorite for us is, so we just acquired one, or the closing is coming up in a month, but we've done our due diligence and we've gone firm. This is a 20 or close to a 20, an 18 unit and it has vacancies going in and there's opportunity to add three new units. That's an ideal case for us because the whole strategy for us is the value add strategy. It's like a BRRRR, a bigger BRRRR where the property has to lend itself to additional value opportunity. And so if we're acquiring with vacancies, we don't have to wait for turnovers.
If we're acquiring a building that has the physical structure that allows the addition of new units, then you know, the name of the game really is increased net operating income. So that gives us. The opportunity to increase net operating income fairly quickly, in the length of the project. So I would say anything that comes with vacancies and unit addition opportunities, those are, those are the diamonds in the rough, I guess you could say.
Sarah Larbi: Essentially you're gonna wanna pull your money that you're putting in out of the deal, and you're gonna be able to do that with what you said, right? Increasing the NOI or the net operating income. So how do you get, so two questions. How do you find these deals or how does your partner find them or they on market, off market and how, and then how are you getting them financed? Being that, you're looking for the vacancies and the vacant ones.
Mark Baltazar: Sure. So we get this question a lot in terms of on market, off market. So I think in the apartment building space, and I can only speak to apartment building space and nothing else in no other commercial but apartment building space the majority tend to be, so there's quote unquote off market.
It's so it really means it's not on the MLS, but it's still getting broken. Typically getting brokered by agents that specialize in multifamily. And so they're basically exclusive listings. And those listings don't go out to everybody. They go out to, select, a group of people.
Sometimes it's a large database of people and sometimes it's only four or five people. And the reason for that is because the sellers as well as the bro because the closings and the due diligence period are much longer than single family. The seller or the selling agent, they don't want to have the deal locked up for such a long period of time, and then only to find out towards the end that someone's not gonna close.
They're pretty selective in terms of who they send it to. So we're fortunate enough to be sent those types of deals. I think one, because we've been able to close on deals before, so we have a track record that, within that, unit size, we'll be able to close.
Source of Deals is a combination of brokers that are specializing in the space. We have a deal now that we've gone direct to the seller, which we're able to do. Those are great as well. We have purchased on MLF before too. We look everywhere. At the moment, we're getting a lot of deals sent to us from agents that are listing things exclusively.
I think we've benefited from a couple things. One, just the ability to close on some deals in the recent past as well as just the branding, the podcast, the Facebook group that we host. Has helped give us the credibility that, hey, we're serious in space. We're not fire kickers. We are, if we say we want a building, then we are gonna close on it. If we're fortunate enough to get an accepted offer.
Sarah Larbi: Okay. And then the second part of that was the financing piece. Is that private money? Is that v t Vtb? Is that bank money? Cmhc, how do you get the financing?
Mark Baltazar: It all depends on the deal. So this year we've done a combination of a lot of things. So we've done CMHC financing, we've done private. So it all depends on the deal. So the big thing where we spend, I'd say most of our time, and I think where a lot of the strategic thinking comes to light and this is why I say it's, it's intellectually challenging.
Cause we're building economic models for each building. And a deal is, at least, my belief it's made or broken due to financing. In one we just closed in, in July, that was, the income was high enough that we were, we felt that it made sense to CMHC right off the back. We finance a CMHC, which, the benefits to that is the amortization for that one was 40 years. So extends the amortization for 40 years. Reducing the annual and monthly financing payment and the rate was really low. I think it was 2%. So I think we're really good for that building.
Laurel Simmons: That's quite free money, right? Like really?
Mark Baltazar: It's free money. It's pretty much free. Yeah, it's free money. It's, we actually were, this might sound a little weird, we were disappointed at two, to be honest. Cause we thought it was gonna come in at 1.9 or so.
Sarah Larbi: Is that just for Writing rights, being like, I got something under two or is that, or is that something in your numbers that you really wanted at 1.9?
Mark Baltazar: We underwrote the deal at three. So we typically, no, if it's gonna be we're underwriting at three, so it's a bonus regardless. But so does my partner Mike, he has a building in his own portfolio. He just refinanced at 1.85 a month before with CMHC. So we thought, okay, you know what?
Similarly, we should probably get under two. So it was because he had gotten under two recently, so we thought we were gonna get it. Okay. Still good. So, CMHC on that one where when we acquire buildings that have very low income, it doesn't really make sense to go CMHC off the bat because there's an opportunity within the first, 12 to, 24 months.
To increase it enough that we can then refinance at that time. So with those buildings, we would close. So I've closed with a b lender before. Now we're using a private lender that's helping us. One, they're the first lender, but they're also financing some of the renovation costs as well.
That helps from a capital raising standpoint. The downside to that is that you have fairly large mortgages at a higher rate, right? So the rate that we're getting is anywhere from six to 8%.
Laurel Simmons: Do you have properties or when you're looking at the apartment buildings, are you assessing them based on the I don't wanna say the status, but the, like the general repair or disrepair or the maintenance required or the rentals required. Do you look at that a lot or do you care? We all care, but how much does that matter? Factor into your decision to make an offer for that building.
Mark Baltazar: I'd say the primary criteria is the delta or the difference between what the rents are today and what they should be for that market. And so we're looking at, A good kind of quote unquote deal for us would be a building that has rents that are probably anywhere from 40% to 60% below what it should be.
That happens for a bunch of reasons. Tired landlords, they don't keep up with their rental increases or, they're, upon turnover it's easier to kind, it's quicker to get someone that's gonna pay, less than weigh it out, right?
The primary criteria for us is the rents are much lower than what we think it should be in that market. And typically, I'd say in all cases, at least in our portfolio, it's due to yeah, I wouldn't say poor management, but just under management or not proper management. And then those buildings all require renovations, right?
In order to get the max level of rents, they do require unit upgrades. And just to standardize the process, the unit upgrades that we're doing are pretty standard across the buildings. They're anywhere from $32,000 to $40,000 per unit, and it's the same, it's basically identical renovations.
Sarah Larbi: I have a question for you, and you don't have to answer it if you're not comfortable. So just let us know. We can edit this out, but I guess if you guys are hearing the answer then Mark was comfortable. So you're taking these under rented units.
How much are you doing in terms of issuing notices for renovations versus cash for keys, or just waiting for tenants to turn over? Is that something that you can share? You take a building, okay, that's great. All the rents are 600, they should be 1200. You know what is your game plan? Because we are in an area where it's hard for somebody to freely leave.
Mark Baltazar: Okay so there's three parts, I think turnover is really important. Turnover is super critical because when you underwrite part of, your ROI or the amount that you're planning on getting on is all based on turnover.
You could really overestimate that if I've seen people under eight buildings at a hundred percent. Turnovers that's hard to get right. It's possible, but really hard to get. So we look at first there's natural turnover. We do, we incentivize the seller to, expedite perhaps some turnover before we even take possession.
We've offered, some basically offered the seller kind of almost cash for keys, but they, obviously they would execute that. We've given the seller's incentive to provide us with, the more vacant units provide us the more financial gains that they're gonna get on the closing.
We rely obviously on natural turnover or once we start renovations, things get messy, things get dusty, things get noisy that typically, and, induces a little bit of turnover and then cash for keys. Yeah. We definitely offer that to those that are willing and because the market that we're in the lifts are so strong and provides so much value that the cash for key strategy, sometimes worthwhile.
Sometimes, we have tenants that are probably not gonna move ever. No matter what we offer them, because, they're, it's just, that's they're, they've come accustomed to their home, right? And they don't really care what we do.
Sarah Larbi: Can you base it on a percentage then, right when you're looking at a property and you're analyzing the property, and what was that percentage?
Mark Baltazar: Okay, so we'll do so conservatively we'll do 75% turn for the whole project, which is like a five to seven year project. If we get more great, that's a bonus. And then we'll do, like 25% year, one 50% kind of year two cumulatively and then 75% year three, four. Is what we are I guess the, I would, was the standard for us at least. But then it depends also on the building itself.
We'll take a look at how like when the leases started, so are they short-term tenants? Have they been there? Did they just move in recently or they have been there for a long time? And that will then, we'll use that as well to gauge Okay. How quickly can we turn? Obviously we'll talk to the seller as well to get a sense of, hey, if you got an inkling that people are moving or not, etc.
This 18 unit that we're buying right now, the seller's been really communicative to us and we know who might be next. We're also getting it with three vacancies right off the bat. And there's a few others that kind of already have signaled that they might. So that's how we start off. They have 75% kind of max and then, depending on what happens when we get it, but we typically don't underwrite 100% turnovers across the, for the whole project.
Laurel Simmons: With those numbers then, so you're talking about, so your turnover is not just right away. You plan it out and you work your numbers so that over the next, so one year, the two year, the three or four year plan, and by the time you get to five, you pretty much know how the numbers are gonna fall out.
It'll vary in course from Sure, yeah. A hundred percent. But over time it's probably pretty standard turnover. And that's so you have that. Sort of comfort level and knowing what's going on. Can I ask you, where do you find, are you going into smaller towns and mid-size cities? Like where are you going for these buildings?
Mark Baltazar: Our portfolio right now is Hamilton and Berry.
Laurel Simmons: Okay.
Sarah Larbi: Like fairly large cities, a hundred thousand people plus give or take.
Mark Baltazar: Population growth also looking in St. Catherine's I may have some pro, I have property in St. Catherine's as well duplex. So I like that market as well. Yeah, larger city demand, rental demand is really high. Has a good kind of economic, fundamentals, investments from the province or municipalities. There's kind of growth happening. So that's, so we've actually had a building under contract in a smaller town, which we were gonna potentially buy.
Because the cash flow was higher, it was higher. And we typically don't buy for cash flows in general. We buy for longer term appreciation. But this one was interesting. We ended up not actually having the contract, we ended up not moving forward with it because another building popped up in Hamilton that was just better suited for our strategy and equity growth. Not opposed to looking at other towns. We are looking at them, but our comfort zone right now is Hamilton and Berry.
Sarah Larbi: Okay, so I don't wanna assume this, but I'll ask you a question, but at what point do you do the refi then? Is it when you reach that goal and you've got the majority of the tenants turnover? Or are you doing a refi in between that too?
Mark Baltazar: It depends on the building. Whenever the income increase is enough that the refinance will pay off the private first and any construction, debt or secondary financing. And ideally have enough to potentially repay some of our capital partners at a certain proportion, maybe 20% to 30% or so.
Sarah Larbi: We'll wait. For it to be significant enough to do all those things. And again, so that could happen, one building that will happen in year three. And our most recent acquisition should happen in year two because we're starting off with so many vacancies, so it allows us to speed up the process.
It typically happens in a year, two to three marks on one building. We're actually planning on doing it twice. Because there's so much equity and there's so much room to go. So we might actually refi twice before locking in a long term kind of CMHC type of financing.
Laurel Simmons: Do you have a plan for disposing of the buildings? Because, buildings do come to a sort of a natural life end and depending on how old the building when you buy it could be 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, 50 years. I don't know. There's so many buildings, right? And they're all built in many different years. How do you deal with that? Do you actually plan to exit, like just to sell the building at some point?
Mark Baltazar: I think it depends on the building. We have a newer one in Berry, which we plant just to hold indefinitely, just because it is good. I'm only 22 years old, and my economic life is pretty strong. Great market. So the plant is to exit in a year five, seven, one property's kind of essentially eight year eight. But so we keep. We have multiple exit strategies. We, so the default is to sell just so that we can extract all that equity, right?
Cause at some you're always having equity in there, even if you're at a refinance. But we'll reassess and maybe we'll hold, like we're refinancing one right now in December, and that one was potentially to sell at some point. But we may actually keep it because it's in, it still has a lot of room to grow.
It's in a great kind of part of town. It's developing. So our default is to sell, that's at least how we build our proformas and our economic models. But there's an openness to keep it if it makes sense. And also it depends on which partners we have in those projects. Some capital partners don't wanna sell and some capital partners. Just extract all their equity.
Sarah Larbi: That's so insightful. I think apartment building and I think Mark's gonna have some great answers and some great insights. We can keep asking you tons of questions, but just for time purposes, the next part of the podcast is a lightning round. So we're gonna ask you a series of four questions. You can give us the first answer that comes to mind. Are you ready?
Mark Baltazar: Okay. Yes.
Sarah Larbi: All right. Number one, mark. What is the best advice that you have ever received from another investor or at a networking event?
Mark Baltazar: Okay, so this one, so this actually set me on my journey five years, six, I guess it was six years ago actually, when I had this discussion. And then heavily made my decision which was and this came from Patrick Francie, the CEO of Rain, who had some one-on-one time, early on in, in my kind of investing career.
He said, build your life. So build your life first or figure out what you wanna do with your life, then build your business around your life. So that kind of, just that talk and that quote, that idea really set forth what happened after over the last king of five years.
I think anybody looking to get into real estate or anything, any business, doesn't even matter what it's. It's and it's easier said than done, of course. As you as you both know, and what lifestyle do you wanna lead right? Then build your career or business around that.
I think as a society, we do it the other way around, right? So, we're taught to let's get into the career, let's make some money, and then decide what to do with it afterwards. Looking at it now, it's wow, that totally didn't make sense. So it's so that I like that idea and I share that idea with as many people as I can.
Laurel Simmons: Awesome. Question two, what's your favorite resource for real estate investing? And that can be anything. A book training person, an event.
Mark Baltazar: Favorite resource. I love what, so plug for you guys. I love what you guys put out. You guys were really consistently putting out some great stuff. So I think that's a feat in itself. So congratulations on, that's why I listened to what you guys put out and your webinars and such. I, so I've been tapping into over the last kinda year and a half or so like Canadian part apartment building news. And CBRE puts out a really good quarterly report on commercial real estate in Canada.
They break it down by province, by asset class and such. So that kind of it's a macro picture, but they also get into economics. So it gives me a good, just macro level view of what's going on in the industry. So I like, I always like those types of reports, even in my marketing, when I was in the marketing space, I always liked those macro level industry reports. So that's a good one, I think for people too, even, and even if you're not in commercial, it's just good to know what's going on in the space overall.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. Great. Question number three. What are the attributes in your opinion that have made you most successful?
Mark Baltazar: I think there's, as you both know, there's a lot of I don't know how to phrase it. Maybe challenges or roadblocks or hurdles and, I think as entrepreneurs, I'm gonna face that and, not everyone's an entrepreneur for a reason, right? Cause there's a lot of stuff you gotta go through. So I think perseverance and just the drive to just break through different challenges has, I think probably been the key to that.
Also just the support that I have to do that. So my wife has supported me through the early entrepreneurial years of the marketing business and now the entrepreneur no, it's like restarting again. The early stages of real estate again. So that's super, critical and having support where, wherever that's coming from. And then just the perseverance kind of drive, drive through things.
Laurel Simmons: Those who keep going. That's kinda, they make it the story of the tortoise and the hair. And the last question then, mark, is what do you typically do on a Sunday morning?
Mark Baltazar: Sunday morning? So all three of my boys are in rep hockey. So our weekends are hockey somewhere. Some one of them has hockey at some point. So that for sure. And then we're just hanging out like in the summer times. We're either camping, do you we're outdoors people, so we're doing stuff like that, biking, hiking or hockey in the winter.
We don't, we're not at home too often. But it's all family time, right? So one thing that's actually nice about this bus business is that I have my Sundays, I've claimed my Sundays back, or at least weekends for the most part which I wasn't able to do so much in the previous business. So it's definitely possible to reclaim some family time.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. Time is one of those things you can't replace. When it's gone it itself.
Mark Baltazar: For sure.
Laurel Simmons: Mark, where can the REITE Club Nation reach out if they wanted to connect with you or know more about you?
Mark Baltazar: They can reach out to me at mark@peakmultifamily.ca or even just our website, peak multifamily.ca. So lots of stuff on there can connect us, connect to us there. And lots of tons of resources on apartment buildings in Canada.
Sarah Larbi: Awesome. And we always ask these last final questions. Do you have any final words of advice for the REITE Club nation?
Mark Baltazar: I think so I think people, it seems like there's. Maybe more people are more interested in getting into apartment buildings and I think it's a level up for people that have been in single family for a long time. I think everyone that's in it has started somewhere. No one, everyone, no one kind of, was born, most people weren't born with lots of buildings.
In their portfolio. It is harder at least it seems at first, but absolutely anyone can do anything. That's really the premise of our podcast is anyone can do it. As long as you educate yourself and surround yourself with the right people. Doesn't matter what kind of financial situation you're in, you can absolutely do it.
It's gonna seem a little bit harder at first, but a hundred percent anyone can break through. That's really been the premise of a lot of the work that we've been doing is that anyone can get into apartment buildings, whether you're owning it yourself or partner with other people. But it's definitely a surmountable challenge.
Laurel Simmons: You've got the will to do it, and you have the drive and you just keep on going and, hey it's gonna happen. And just learn, mentor, get a mentor or something. And you can do just about anything you want. And you're right, it doesn't just have to be real estate. That applies.
Mark Baltazar: That's right.
Sarah Larbi: Mark, thank you so much for being on the show, and that's a pleasure having you back and I'm sure we'll have you back again.
Mark Baltazar: Yeah. Thanks guys. Thanks. Always a pleasure.
Sarah Larbi: All right. And we are back. Laurel, what do you think of the podcast?
Laurel Simmons: Like again, you're right. Mark is so inspiring and he quit his job and he set a goal and he exceeded it already. It's not even the end of the year. And it's just proof again that when you focus on something and you're passionate about it and you sound, you surround, yourself with the right people and you can do just about anything you want. As he said, as we talked about in the podcast, not just about real estate. That applies to anything. He happens to be focusing on apartment buildings, but, and it's working for him.
Sarah Larbi: Absolutely. So hopefully you guys enjoyed the podcast. I know I did. We'll have to have Mark come back at some point in the future. He's got tons of great wealth and information and knowledge to share. And I think his method is genius. He's looking for opportunities. He's looking for opportunities where there's vacancies to start with, to be able to get some of that lift. Because essentially you don't want your money to be stuck in these deals.
Especially these large deals, if your plan is to grow and what is, the best strategy is to do a BRRRR on malts or to do something where your money comes back out and you can reuse it and you can pay it off. So he's got a great thing going and I hope you guys enjoy the podcast today. Laurel, any final last words?
Laurel Simmons: The only thing I'd have to add is that, if you have a chance to read our podcast, we'd love it, cause that just helps us be visible to other people who could learn something and maybe enjoy what we all have to say and share. And aside from that, Sarah, what do we say to everyone?
Sarah Larbi: REITE Club Nation, come grow with us. Until next week, see you later.
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