New Brunswick is booming as a popular real estate investing province, especially for investors from the more 'expensive' provinces. Join full-time Real Estate Investor Francois Lanthier who shares their lessons from investing in New Brunswick, in particular, Moncton for the last 18 months.
Daniel: We're going to move on to part two of our evening, which is with Mr. Francois Lanthier, who is on fire. He recently retired from his nine to five job. He is focused on growing his real estate portfolio. He's in Ontario, he's in the US, he's in Costa Rica. Who knows where else he's going to be a few months from now. He is also a coach. He has students coast to coast. Tonight he's going to talk to us about investing in New Brunswick, more specifically Moncton. Francois, take it over.
Francois: Investing in Moncton, New Brunswick. It's funny tonight to be on the other side of the table, as a presenter but initially I was asked to talk about New Brunswick. I thought about it for a minute. I thought I'm really only in Moncton. All my properties are in Monkton. I'm going to share with you my story and how it's been and what I've done out there. Just a few of them. It's actually not all of it. Of course, me, if that's what I'd see, full-time real estate investor, podcaster, social media Fanatic, I love it. President at FL Homes Corp.
FL is not for Francois Lanthier, it's for Family Lanthier, so Lanthier Family and because my wife and kids are involved. And it's great in Florida, it looks like FL homes. A business development and sponsorship manager at The REITE Club, coach/mentor at Creative Real Estate Investing.
I thought I'd share this fun picture as some of this summer, I actually moved to New Brunswick. That's how committed I was to investing there but I'm back in Ontario, so beautiful place and they make the covered bridge potato chips. If ever you're driving down to Moncton, make sure to stop and take a selfie.
I love long distance investing. Many people enjoy traveling. I like discovering new places and new opportunities. I now own properties in three Canadian provinces, Alberta, New Brunswick and Ontario in the US and Costa Rica. I'm hoping to expand into more areas in 2022. When I enter a market, I always want to buy three properties or more.
Tonight I'm only going to show you three properties in Moncton. I have others, but those I thought were interesting as a case study and it makes it worth the investment to learn the market, the local culture and for economies of scale, as I saw some people joining from Southern Ontario. You don't get as much, this year you've been spoiled but in New Brunswick they do get quite a bit of snow.
If you're shopping for snow removal and you have three, four or five properties, it makes it much easier. You have better buying power. I now coach people from various provinces, which is interesting because of all this. I do have some insight in some provinces and how to invest at a distance. My wife puts up with all my crazy ideas, including posing for potato chips.
Why in New Brunswick? The acquisition cost. We heard Richard earlier, Nova Scotia. Yes, it's going up, but to us Ontarians I think were mostly Ontarians on the call. It is cheap. I am in Ottawa. The average house I think is getting close to 800,000 now. Even though that's like an average house, $450,500 is quite cheap. New Brunswick is even less than that. Properties are a lot more affordable. The barrier to entry is much lower. Property taxes are much higher, so that's one big thing to watch out for.
It's actually double what the owner occupied. I'll show you a bit later on what that looks like. Land transfer taxes and legal fees are quite similar to other Canadian provinces. As some provinces have no land transfer tax but New Brunswick does and utilities. If you are providing them like common areas or inclusive rentals, or if you do Airbnb and other things, it tends to be a little bit more expensive and the power is not that cheap, but it's not terrible.
Why did I choose the city of Moncton? Moncton has excellent fundamentals. It's got a very diversified economy and no employment sector represents more than 10% of the overall economy. As I mentioned earlier, Ottawa where I live is very government heavy. I saw some Ottawa people chatting there. It's if the government's not doing well or there's cutbacks, we feel it in the city. Moncton did feel it. They were quite heavy on rail. I think CN or CP, some sort of rail was there. When that closed down the economy was hurt quite badly.
Moncton reinvented itself. There's two major hospitals, one larger university and two smaller ones. There's a Christian University and another one community college, great shopping. I spent my summer there and I picked up a nice jacket and there's all kinds of great things happening there. If you go to Moncton, it's quite impressive too. There's cranes everywhere. It's like a mini Toronto and there's construction. It's just the bounds and a major labor shortage. That is one issue.
If you are investing there, it can get quite challenging to find labor and people that are available to do such things as roofing or windows, or it's a bit the case across Canada, but it's even worse in Moncton and materials that are harder to get because of the remote locations, so plan ahead as well. There's just fewer options. There's some stores we're used to, they just don't go there but for the most part it's quiet.
I just thought I'd share with you the fancy duplex that got us started. As you can see, this is really not fancy. This is before some other work and I was just going to say hi to tenants and we're going to be ripping some concrete and things. Anyway, they were happy though that I don't have the end result there, the picture, but add this. I'm going to share the numbers with you. I purchased this duplex for $158,000. Again, the cost of acquisition is way lower. I spent $50,000 on it.
A new roof, one of the units needed a new bathroom, some flooring paint and a variety of things. Now the new evaluation and when I think I should update that, but it's at least $275,000, if not $300,000 and the annual rent roll here is $59,400, growth. Before expenses, $21,000 and then my math here doesn't work but anyway, the cash flow at the very end I'm done with I'm left with $8,000 a year, plus the mortgage paid down and the appreciation of $117,000. This place I acquired in July of 2020. It's been getting close to two year and a half, that's one example.
That's one that got me started in Moncton and then a little bit about landlord and tenant law. There's some activity that's been happening. New Brunswick was quite relaxed, but with the massive changes and the pandemic, they're getting a little bit tougher with landlord and tenant laws.
New owners must wait one year to increase rent. If you're acquiring a property, now you have to wait a full year to increase rent to existing tenants when the way to circumvent that is to evict people, ask for vacant possession, which is very possible in New Brunswick. A six months notice is required to increase rent.
If you've owned the property for more than a year, now you just give six months notice and you can increase rent and there are no rent controls. There's no 2%, 10%, whatever. It's whatever you want but if the property has several units, you must increase rent by the same percentage for all tenants. The landlord must increase the rent for each unit in the same building, by the same percentage, or increase their rent in relation to what is charged for comparable units in the same geographic area.
This is to prevent abuse. You've got quite a bit of Liberty to increase rent and make your property cashflow. Another nice feature is the damage deposit. For those in Ontario and a few other provinces like Quebec, usually it's first and last month's rent. It's a damage deposit just like in Alberta. I say to some other provinces it's held in escrow. In Alberta, I think they'll pretty much get the landlord to keep it out there.
If the tribunals or the rentals man, as the locals and the tenant gets a certificate that it's held there in escrow. What's nice about this is the deposit can be claimed if the tenant damages the unit that's obvious, but also if they leave it dirty. I've had some tenants move. They left furniture all over the place and garbage, and I claimed their damage deposits and that can be equal to one month's rent.
Not too bad, depending on the situation. Even if they don't pay or give proper notice, that's also grounds for collecting the damage deposit. In some instances, I actually made more money collecting damage deposits versus the actual rent and then I was able to rerun at a higher price. And so there's advantages and it's important to maintain a good relationship with your tenants.
It's good to have these measures in place as well to protect your investment. This one I want to share, I just love this so nice people are friendly in New Brunswick. It's much more pleasant to do business there. People take you like family and friends, which is really nice. However, with all that things move much slower, and there are a lot more relaxed about a lot of things, even legal documents.
Sometimes it's oh, it's a day late, no worries. You have to get used to that and even the garbage bins are encouraging. You can see my wife, Jennifer and I there, we were just out for a walk and we do business with Pharaoh for garbage removal and there you go. They have all these nice encouraging words, like never give up on garbage bins.
It's just fun anyway. And then top tips. My top tips for investing in New Brunswick, Moncton's most specifically is banking. Don't neglect local credit unions, they're awesome at checking out advanced savings. If you're in Moncton, they're really good at lending on difficult properties. Properties that maybe are distressed or hard to finance, like some fiveplex.
It's a little bit weird. I'll show you one a bit later on. A lot of banks go up to four and then six is commercial, but five is like a weird warp zone. Not every lender will blend on a fiveplex RBC but they are a bit tougher to qualify. I found a way. If you go with a local, advanced savings, it's awesome. Property taxes watch out. They're extremely high. Make sure to plan plenty of room in your cash flow calculation for that, because remember you're acquiring the property. I showed you for example, at 158, the evaluation was maybe one 10 for taxes, but now it's worth almost 300,000.
Property taxes will rise quite a bit as well. The last one is parking and pets. Pretty much everyone has a car in New Brunswick and tons of pets. If you have couples, they'll have two cars each, be prepared, look for properties with lots of parking properties, with little parking. I find. Are difficult to rent. Yeah, tenants need parking and you need space for all that snow as well and pets as well.
This is a huge question. Is this pet friendly? You can restrict pets in New Brunswick. You can say no to pets, no to kids even if you are nice about it and you restrict it to maybe two pets, not five or seven, like I've been asked for. Then you can do some really good things and make sure if there is a yard or something that is a big renting feature.
Location, yes that applies to Moncton as well. This is one of my favorite properties in the Jones lake area fourplex. The porch swings. I don't know if you can see fairly well. Anyway, we were redoing the front of the place, but a nice fourplex and Jones lake is great.
It's a hip area, but little cafes and breweries and nice things. It's got a nice vibe and it rents better because of that. You attract the higher tenant grade, I guess you could say, and I can show you a bit about the numbers because it's a trendy area, you're getting some hipsters, but red jackets and digital nomads. Lots of people from Ontario actually ran to my properties and young professionals.
This one I bought for $320,000. Annual rent roll growth is $47,000. I'm left with $14,000 per year for this fourplex and there's still room to increase rent and efficiency. But this one, I only had four parking spaces, which does restrict some of their rent. Something to consider when looking at properties.
Moncton hot spots. I wanted to share with you. If you are considering Moncton, there's some neighborhoods that are better than others. There's the North end, over there it's mostly duplexes and they're newer, like late 1990s, early 2000 and up. You do get lower cash flow, higher rent roll expenses because of the acquisition costs, but you also get better tenants.
They have backyards for their pets, lots of parking because there are side-by-side duplexes for the most part and less turnover at ZF, which is not Monkton, but it's right beside it. It's the more Francophone city of the two as it is similar to the north end, mostly duplexes, some multiplexes and it's actually easier to finance. Some of the lenders RBC for example, told me that for some reasons is that easier to to finance? I have some mortgage experts in the room. Maybe you can shed some light on that, but the financing part is quite appealing for ZF.
River view, across the bridge from Moncton, very similar prices, but a great mix of properties. Maltese, duplexes, it's a nice area for young families, and there tends to be a little bit more space there as well. It's a little bit more land. Those pets and cars think about your tenants.
University hospitals. I own the place there. I sold it this far. It's a bit of a rough neighborhood. It's close to the hospital, close to the University of Moncton. It could eventually gentrify. There's lots of opportunities there but be careful the tenant profile you're getting there is not as nice. I find some people are actually scared to rent there in the Jones Lake area. It's older, has lots of character properties, but lots of charm attracts a younger tenant base hipsters, et cetera.
Downtown, I'll show you a property afterwards, downtown. It's a bit of a mixed bag. Stay away from homeless shelters. There's quite a few of the churches as well, have a soup kitchen so not the best areas, adders that tend to be a bit more crime there but there are great opportunities for BRRRRs, fix and flips. If you pick the right streets you could be doing quite well and there's an old map of Moncton. I thought that was cool. That's evolved a lot, really.
I went to Moncton in 2010 and in 2020 when I acquired these properties and it's not the same city it's really changed. There's one of my downtown properties. As I mentioned, it's a bit of a rougher neighborhood. This one has four, two bedroom units, one bedroom in the upper floor and this used to be an old medical clinic. It's cool inside.
There's some nice features. And firstly, I don't have pictures cause it's always full, which is nice. There's an onsite laundromat parking in the back and then four, five units and up, you must pay for garbage service. If you're for one to four units, the city picks up the garbage afterwards. You need those beautiful bins. It's not that bad though. Around maybe 200 bucks a month for garbage removal.
I find downtown has a higher turnover and of course not enough parking, which makes it tough. I have five units and three parking spaces. I would not recommend it. There you go. If not, you have to find students or I'm a bit of a different tenant base and here are some of the numbers. I bought this place for $250,000. I spent $50,000 in repairs on different things, annual rent roll gross is $58,000 in annual cash flow, $20,000 and appreciation. This one, as well as acquired in the summer of 2020, it's gone up at least $150,000, which is quite good in my opinion.
A lot of people ask me, how do you identify a market, or how do you buy places? Identify the market, like I said, in the beginning, look for good fundamentals areas that work then find a property type that works. This is important as well. How do you see yourself managing this place remotely? If that's what you're doing, if you're from the GTA or somewhere, is this a property that you would enjoy and then find a JV partner?
I do a lot of joint ventures and I kind of pair properties with people and we get the deal done. This one I love to share. I always keep track of various leads. I get phone calls, messages, and emails from people here. I want to do a part, a JV with you, or I have a deal. I have some money to land. Keep track of all of that. I wasn't sales and I still am. This is the sales funnel here.
Look for potential JV partners. Usually there's a big pool of people interested in working with you and it's important to interview them and then start to think, what do they want? What do they need? Money is number two and could be number one. I've always looked for private lenders to connect with great people. Like we have The Windrose Group here on the call. Make sure to know what your numbers are. How much are you pre-approved for? Are you able to get private money if needed and then deals? Of course, that's the name of the game and then put it all together and then you have a deal.
This chart means nothing here, but when analyzing deals, remember that motivations can vary. As you'll see, in my next example, it's not always about cash flow, appreciation, or even forced appreciation. I'll share with you why that is and that's a New Brunswick example. This one is actually expensive New Brunswick property. It's actually a house where I moved in the summer and we did some work on it.
I spent about $50,000, a new roof, a new color and a few different things. The reason behind it was for the house. It actually ended up being one of our better rental properties, not for cash flow, but the appreciation is quite high. We purchased it for $350,000. It's now valued at over $500,000, actually 4,400 square feet.
You can't tell from here, but it's very deep. It's three rooms deep and there's two units, upper floor three plus one bedroom, two bathrooms, a garage standard room and tons of storage and a huge lot. It's like a pie shape. There's six parking spaces. There you go, lots of space for your cars, your pets, and downstairs.
There's a nice three bedroom unit with one bathroom. My tenant downstairs is actually an Elvis impersonator so he's awesome. The upper upstairs tenants, I had moved there. I decided to come back to Ontario but the upper unit is actually renting for $2,600 a month, which is on the higher end from Moncton.
I heard Halifax is $3,200. We're not there in Moncton, maybe a newer property but $2,600 is possible. There is space for some higher end rentals, but as you can see with my numbers here, that cash flow is not that high because property taxes are almost $10,000 a year on this property. That eats up a lot of the cashflow, but I'm still happy.
There's a line of credit on this property, which I'm using. It's still an amazing deal in my opinion and that's it for me. Thank you very much. I'd love to hear from you and make sure to follow me about wine and real estate on Instagram or my podcast. You can send me an email. If you have questions or Facebook. I host some different groups on different topics, investing in Audi's and different areas as well. Thanks to everyone.
Daniel: Thank you Francois. Don't go away because even though I know we are a few minutes behind here on the schedule, nobody's going away. I can tell, I can see that I have a question for you. How has the market, like we heard Richard about the 10 days of inventory prices with buying a house with multiple offers, clean offers, et cetera. How's the market from your point of view, as an investor in Moncton right now?
Francois: I see Danny knows my tenant is done. Yes, that's him, the famous Elvis. The market is red hot in Moncton. It's total insanity. I mentioned earlier a six Plex in the hospital university, hospital area. I had over 25 offers. It sold well over asking that was in late November, which is not usually a great time to sell it. It had a leaky roof and all kinds of issues.
I still sold way over asking it's bidding wars. Get ready if you're interested in Moncton. Look for off-market deals, maybe stale listings or something, a bit different. Like the house I showed you, the red one on Darla courts. That was my house. That one sat on the market for three months. The reason is inside. Everything was covered in ceramic. I don't know, like $40,000 in ceramic and no one wanted that because it's not normal in Moncton. It's cold. We just covered it with some nice vinyl plank all the way through 4,400 square feet.
That's a lot of flooring, but because of that we were able to get a crazy deal. That's gone up in value almost 200,000 with flooring and your roof and that's it. I have great tenants. Look for that but it's a tough market now. Moncton, you have to go on the outskirts personally, because I'm far. I'm not willing to go to villages and smaller towns. I prefer the bigger cities you can fly in, fly out. It just makes it more convenient for distance investing.
Daniel: There's still business. I'm using the word easier. It's a relative term, but it's still easier to find houses that have cash flow in Moncton than it is, for example, in Ottawa or the GTA.
Francois: Absolutely, you could have a single family house and it could have cash flow depending on how much you pay for it and property taxes, that's going to be the determining factor, is those property taxes.
Daniel: As I saw in your last property there. You're only making $3,600 of cash flow, but really if the property appreciates a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Francois: That's it, that's why I'm like, I am going to be laughing about selling it, but no, I'm going to keep it. It's paying me to own it. I'll keep it. I don't mind that.
Daniel: Folks, if you want to know more about investing in Moncton, if you want to know more about investing in the US Costa Rica or many of these, the places where Francois is doing business, where to find him. He's got plenty of profiles on our website. Contact Francois, and he's gonna help you out. I guess our technical person, who's going to switch everybody over to the networking event and that means that everybody can read their hand and ask the question, but we also are going to go to the chat.
Richard: I'll answer the questions first and then we'll move people over often.
Francois: If I can, I'll answer the questions. I see Sheila, she mentioned we've been looking at Moncton, but I have a hard time finding decent, affordable property managers. That is one big issue. I did share earlier tonight in the chat.
If you look up there's unique property management. They're doing a good job personally. I don't use them. I self-manage, but I know other investors use their services and they've had great reviews. Otherwise be very careful. There is one company. I'm not sure if I didn't mention it, but I would stay away and they actually have multiple lawsuits against them.
It's like a special kit. If you know what that means, you'll know what it means. Unfortunately, self-managing is a great way to do it. If you are able to shell out to go to Moncton, when things are reopened, what I did is I did some networking. There's some great local groups and I found some people there.
I have a handyman and there's a lady who does some housekeeping in the hallways and things, and we pay them by commission or hourly. It saves me a ton of money. Jennifer Russels seems to have a similar question. Do you use a property manager and what percentage? No, but typically in Moncton, it's 7% to 10% property managers.
You will find some cheaper ones, but then they nickel and dime you on everything. Watch out for added fees and stolen damaged deposits and other things. Diana, I love it. Elvis, yes, I should have him on, I'm coaching him to become an investor. I love teaching my tenants to become investors and leave my apartments, which is not a good idea, but I like helping people. Elvis is done so, look him up. He's awesome. He does look like Elvis and I had Elvis living in my basement. That was, roger, I think from Ottawa as well, how she peds shit at being new to real estate investing?
Who can I connect to find off market deals across New Brunswick? There's Martin and Lynn in. I'm not sure if they're in our Facebook group, but our wholesalers out there and there's a Moncton house buyer. His name is Sean Gunter, a great wholesaler. Look him up Rob, right? Sorry, Richard. I'm monopolizing the speech, but Rob is asking what is the average rent in Moncton?
Three beds, two beds, one bed, two bedrooms. I have lots of them. I'd see, as the sweet spot, that's the best thing to rent out. I'd say you can rent for around $1,300 a month, maybe $1,400, depending on the condition and that's exclusive of a rent. Three beds will be more in side-by-side duplexes and now you can look at $1,500, $1,600 a month, which is quite good. One bed between $700 to $1,100.
I have some in John's Lake for $1,100 and they're one bedroom units. Allie, do you still think the market will stay the same in New Brunswick? New Brunswick is a weaker economy. I do apologize if there's anybody tuning in, but New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and all of the Maritimes, the economy is not as strong. Yes, it's getting better, but it's not GTA. It's not Ottawa.
That's why I say to be careful, stay closer to the bigger centers. That's my personal opinion but stay like in Halifax or Moncton or St. John. If you go to smaller towns like Northern New Brunswick, that is weaker. There's fewer employers. It's not as diversified. I think if there is a correction, those smaller places will be affected before the bigger centers. Were there any other details about PEI? I'm not sure. Was that Richard, did you mention something about prince Edward island? Nope. Tonight we're focusing on New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It was already answered.
Anything in Alberta, that's going to be another night. That's a new project of mine. My new acquisition closes tomorrow morning. There you go and I'm just trying to see if there's any other questions, property manager yet. Another question, so you need property management I've heard is good and do you do short-term mental in the Maritimes? I don't. There is a market it's quite popular.
There's a great company. It's Sarah Short, who does short-term rentals, she'll come and dress up your place and tell you how much you could rent it for. I do find the rents are lower. You're looking at about a hundred dollars a night with. Once you pay all utilities, internet and things. I haven't found that great, in my opinion. It depends on the acquisition costs, but there are no rules. It's not like Toronto.
Daniel: You're talking about Moncton now?
Moncton, is there anything in Halifax, Richard?
Richard: It's been a really popular rebound because a lot of people, especially when they're coming here, often have to go with the closing date that the seller wants to have. Often they come here and they're here early. I was in the short term rental market and the vacancies are pretty low now. It was pretty bad, like a year and a half ago, but now everybody is basically getting into short-term Airbnbs because you can make a lot more rent short-term Airbnb plus.
We're finding people are looking at the cottage ones on the lake and going. I now own a cottage on the lake for myself. I'll reserve six weeks a year for me and then you can rent it out pretty much a year round. You're talking at least $150 a night for short Airbnbs, especially if they're a cottage.
Francois: The ocean depending on location, the price is going to be very different, but I know in New Brunswick there's like the Kokang area, there's some very cheap cottages. Nova Scotia has gone up quite a bit though for those properties.
Richard: A lot of people are first with the ocean, apart from the view, because I don't care. What month of the year in Asia not swimming in the ocean, off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Francois: There you go. Nice swims in the lakes around here. The lakes are quite warm. I did some, how do you call it? Anyway, I did some surfing. The inflatable paddle board was on this river and it was quite warm and nice then it's where the salt water meets the fresh water, which was really cool. There's more questions in the chat, Krista, how often can you do inspections?
In New Brunswick, as often as you want, as long as you give 24 hour notice. I have my people inspect once a month, just check on fire alarms, fire extinguishers, make sure exits are accessible. Especially during the mentor's look at roof roofing. Richard, how is it in Nova Scotia? Are there restrictions on inspections?
Richard: Nope, same as New Brunswick. You just have to give at least 24 hours notice and then most people are set in the upstate and every two months, like almost, we'll give you two months notice and we're doing the next one on the same day, next month, two months, same thing,
Francois: That's a great practice to always have that for your insurance for everybody's sake.
Richard: Here's a little trick. Try not to make it the same time because they'll tidy up and they'll make it look amazing and then the second year, it's not looking so great. We tend to say, oh, sorry, we need to bring it forward a week.
Francois: That is smart. I see a question from Katherine. What about property managers in Nova Scotia? You answered it in the chat, Richard.
Richard: I've got one that looks after my stuff and she's very under the radar. Unless, you know what, I can't give a name out cause she tells me there's one of those things that you have to ask me for her details and then I email, introduce you and then she's oh, Richard I'll take care of you. I think Daniel might already know her. I think I've already given Daniel his name. There's another buddy as well called Jillian property management. She's pretty good as well.
Francois: Excellent. The next question is from Cindy for Richard, do you have any tips for finding off market deals in HRM?
Richard: Look for properties that don't look great. Look for properties that have got two or more power meters on the side of the house, that'll tell you it's a duplex or more. Basically, it just comes down to knocking on doors, or if it's a duplex, you need to find a way because we've got a system called property online, which is the land registry for all of Nova Scotia.
You can go to the land registry office, play a fight fee for a certain amount of hours in the day and then you can do as many searches on who owns properties as you, you just need to go in there with the dresses. Once you've done a little bit of digging and found some addresses, then you can actually go and find who's the owner.
Funnily enough, if the mailing address for the owner doesn't match the property address. Guess what it is. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out. That's a rental property and then you've actually got the owner's address. We, as realtors, I'm not allowed to do any of that. That's called solicitation and we get slapped on the wrist, pretty hard for that, but nothing stops private individuals from going down that path and finding out ways to find off market deals, especially when you get to three units and above there's a lot more off market than on market.
Francois: It's so true. Maltese, it's more off-market, it's really who you know, and who knows you. Question from Katherine, what about gardens suites, additional dwelling units in Nova Scotia? You mentioned it earlier. Richard, a lot of people are adding basement suites in New Brunswick. I'm not seeing that. It's not a lot of places already in Sweden, like the house I showed but we're not seeing too many bungalow conversions from what I've seen. Richard, do you have anything to add on that way?
Richard: No, it's become popular and the change, the restrictions around putting like what they call the backyard suites in place. Everybody was like, this is going to be great and I know zero people that have actually done it. I think the conversion for a split entry or a bungalow with a basement into a duplex makes a lot more sense than actually doing a brand new structure in the laneway houses, the backyard suites. It makes more sense to find a duplex that you are a single family. You could turn into a duplex.
Francois: Exactly, and you have to look at comparables. What does the market show? Like you said, nobody does it. We had another REITE Club event, Daniel, I don't know if you remember. I think you were talking about Edmonton or Calgary. They have garage suites. You have a garage, separate garage, but an apartment above, some people have done but very few and most tenants are not really interested in that. It's not like in their culture. You have to look at that. That's very important.
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