Alisha Fuss: it's just kind of diving in and starting out and not getting overwhelmed with all the information out there. Just find your first one, run your numbers and just know that it'll work out even if it's not the best deal in the world. What you're gonna get from learning while you do the project is, is so invaluable.
Patrick Bobczynski: Like Alicia mentioned, there's so many resources to get information. You're listening to podcasts, reading books, and it's like you, you can go down so many different avenues, Airbnb, long term rental and stuff. And I think it's important at the very beginning to just pick one and just do it and just get right into it.
Laurel Simmons: Hi everyone, and welcome to another REITE Club podcast. I'm Laurel Simmons, uh, co-founder of the REITE Club, and my coho today is Francois Lanthier, who is joining me from the beautiful city of Ottawa, Ontario. Francois, we have a lovely couple today who are really know, fun and full of life. Uh, Alisha Fuss and, and Patrick Bobczynski in Calgary. Tell us a little bit about what we heard.
Francois Lanthier: Yes. So, I love their energy. And how, as a couple, it really reminds me of, uh, my wife and I, we've been together 23 years. I don't think they've been together that long, but, uh, how they're able to stay together even though it's tough living through renovations and.
Living with drywall, dust and challenges and as you mentioned Laurel, they're keeping it fun as well. It's, it feels very light. You hear about investors sometimes, and it feels heavy and there's a lot of stress. This couple, I saw something very different. They're taking it in stride and giving some great advice, things you can do yourself, like back splashes and anyway, you have to listen to the episode and I'm sure you'll, you'll.
Laurel Simmons: Yeah. So let's go to the, uh, episode and Listen in to Alisha and Patrick. Talk about how they've lived through it, Literally lived through renovations, in, in their, uh, secondary suites.
Hi, Patrick. Hi Alisha. Welcome to the REITE Club Podcast. You guys are in Calgary? And how long have you been there?
Alisha Fuss: I've been here my entire life. I lived in your, uh, in Europe for a short amount of time.
Patrick Bobczynski: I'm originally from Ontario and I've been in Calgary now for about five or six years I think it is.
Laurel Simmons: Okay, and you're buying and investing in real estate together?
Alisha Fuss: Yeah. Yes, so we've been investing for about a year and a half, and our properties are all in Calgary right now. So that's kind of the market that we know the best.
Laurel Simmons: And what I find really amazing is that you're still together.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah. It has been very challenging at times, but it's been awesome at the same time too. Like, we've definitely grown stronger together and closer together because of it all. Yeah.
Laurel Simmons: So tell us a little bit about your portfolio. What are you doing? Like, where are you investing? What are you investing in? Why all the rest of it?
Alisha Fuss: We actually just picked up a property and we got possession on Thursday. So, we have six doors right now. We've, uh, like I said, we've been investing a year and a half, so we specialize in properties with, uh, suites in the basement that we legalize and we do the renovations on our own. Up until right now, we've been doing that, so we're gonna be renovating this new one ourselves too. And, uh, and we self-manage our properties.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah, so I take on a lot of the renovation work. We will contract out the major things for electrical, plumbing, any, any sort of major thing like that. But for the most part, I am taking on all of our, all the Reno, stuff.
And yeah, so we mainly. Specialize and find an illegal suite of basements and LE and going through the process of legalizing them and updating them at the same time. And the reason we do that is because the process of legalizing an illegal suite, one that's been grandfathered in, is significantly easier than adding in a suite from scratch. It can be done, but uh, you have to meet, you know, x amount more requirements if you're adding in one from scratch that wasn't previously there.
Francois Lanthier: And can, can you tell us more maybe about what are the requirements if you're starting from scratch? I know about the furnaces, you need two furnaces, which seems insanely expensive. There are other things as well.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah. So, the big one, like you just mentioned, was the separate heating. So like you said, two furnaces. There's also, you have to have insulation and completely drywalled between the units as well. So in a lot of these cases, like if you have a basement that isn't developed or is just a regular basement, the contractor will wanna come in and they'll basically say to you, We have to gut this entire thing.
They're not gonna work with what's there because there's so much that needs to be done in the walls, electrical wise, plumbing wise, uh, furnace, HVAC wise that it, for them, it's way better to just gut the entire basement and start fresh. So like there's, there's definitely a lot more to jump through, whereas with.
When you're adding in from one that's already previously been there, you can kind of bypass a lot of the stuff. Like, for instance, your second furnace or heat source, you can bypass that insulation in between the units. You can bypass that one as well too. So it saves, it saves a lot of cost and time and allows, like for instance, like me, like I'm not a certified general contractor, but I can go in there and update an illegal one into a legal one fairly, fairly easily. Right?
Alisha Fuss: We did our last one for about $10,000, whereas the quote for a new suite is anywhere from, uh, I don't know, 70, 80,000 to well over a hundred thousand. So it's quite a financial difference. Yeah.
Laurel Simmons: So how, how do you find these places? Because, I can't imagine that someone goes, you know, posts or an ad or whatever who says, Hi, I have an illegal suite, , like a basement suite. I just somehow just don't see that. So how do you find them?
Patrick Bobczynski: Well, it's interesting. It's almost like a gray area. So you, they actually in the listing service, we are, we are both real estate agents, as well, we're licensed in Alberta. In the listing service, you can actually put illegal suite into it and you can, And then for our searches that we set up, we can have an illegal suite.
Search and matter, or sorry. Uh, realtors will post illegal suites in there. They like City of Calgary, like I said, it's a gray area. They like to say that they're on top of it, but like a lot of these illegal suites still get posted. And sometimes one way to bypass that if a realtor is feeling kind of scared and doesn't wanna.
Post that it's an illegal suite. What they'll do is they'll actually take the stove out of the suite in the basement and they'll just say there's a kitchenette in the basement. Not a whole full suite down there, because according to City of Calgary, what makes a suite, a suite in a basement is actually the stove in, in that unit.
You can have a full functioning kitchen with a fridge and a sink and everything, and it could be considered almost like a wet bar, right in a basement. As soon as you add that stove in, that's when they consider it a kitchen, and that's when you have an illegal or suite in the basement basically.
Francois Lanthier: Wow. So huge opportunity for investors to, as you mentioned, $10,000. That's like a drop in the bucket. That could just be appliances, . Totally. Exactly. That's insane. Yeah. So what, what would you say to people starting out? Cause you've been doing it a year and a half, so you remember the early days. Like what was your first project or how would you.
Alisha Fuss: There's, uh, so much to unpack there. I think like it's just kind of diving in and, and starting out and not getting overwhelmed with all the information out there. Just find your first one, run your numbers and just know that it'll work out even if it's not the best deal in the world. What you're gonna get from learning while you do the project is, is so invaluable. So, I think, yeah, just diving.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah, exactly that. And like, like Alicia mentioned, there's so many resources to get information. You're listening to podcasts, reading books, and it's like you, you can go down so many different avenues, Airbnb, long term rental and stuff. And I think it's important at the very beginning to just pick one and just do it and just get right into it.
Because you can sit there and you can over-analyze for, you know, weeks and months on end. But if you just get into one and start to do it, you start to get a feel and you start to realize where exactly you want ahead with it. Right.
Alisha Fuss: Yeah, and everyone's gonna tell you, you know, things, it's not a good time or something's not gonna work out. There's always a way, like right now people are saying, uh, interest rates are too high. Maybe it's a terrible time to buy real estate. We just bought one. Like, you can, you can still make it work. There's always a way. There are different avenues. As I said, it just comes down to your numbers.
Laurel Simmons: And it's really interesting what you say about interest rates because in the, in the real world when interest rates go up, most, well, not most, but a lot of people get scared so they don't buy. Therefore, there's more inventory which may actually bring some prices down, which is a great time for investors to buy, right?
It's looking at it the right way and going, Well, you know, I, not so bad that interest rates are going and we all know that interest rates have been ridiculously low for years now, and then coming back to more what I call normal rates.
Alisha Fuss: Yeah cause on the flip side of that too, it kind of stimulates the rental market as we all know. The rental market is really high right now. People are kind of priced out of the market, so they need somewhere to live. And we've definitely seen.
Laurel Simmons: What would you say is the, what's the biggest renovation you had to do in a, in one of your, uh, units that you bought?
Patrick Bobczynski: Well, the one we're doing right now, The training one right now. Yes. So as Alisha mentioned, we just, we just took possession last week, and I just finished gutting a lot of the, not gutting, but like, taking out a lot of the basement and it's gonna be fairly extensive. So like we're redoing the kitchen, redoing the bathroom, redoing all the floor. We're not really redoing the layout, we're just updating them, but it requires taking a lot out and a lot of work.
The one we're currently doing is definitely the most extensive. Other than that, it would be our first one, which we got a year and a half ago where it was, it was kind of a similar situation. We didn't, we didn't update the layout because on that note, when you start to update the layout of an existing suite, the city of Calgary might come in and.
You've changed too much now. Now we're not gonna consider this an existing suite. Now we're gonna consider this a new suite, and now we're gonna make you meet all the criteria of the new suite. So I think that's important to point out is that in these suites, we're not updating the layout overly. It's more of an update of the finishings, the new counters, new back splash, you know, new bathtub, surround in the bathtub maybe right?
So our one right now, to go back to your question, definitely our most extensive. Other than that, our first.
Francois Lanthier: That's great though. So you started with a hard one then. You had kind of, I know some background information. So your second one was an easier one, let's just say like a more cosmetic kind of, uh, lipstick flip.
Yes, which is great. You got a bit of a rest and now you're back at it. Are you, I'll be a bit indiscreet. Are you moving into that one? Are you staying where you're living right now? Cause that's another, uh, special part, Laurel you didn't know about. But, uh, Patrick and Alicia live in their flips or their properties, sometimes during the renovations.
Alisha Fuss: Yeah. So, luckily we're not gonna be moving into this one. We can't live through another one. No. If we had to, we would, but it definitely was pretty chaotic and, uh, we're kind of going back and forth, but unfortunately, it's completely across the city, so it is quite a trek to get over there. But yeah, we're definitely gutting the entire thing.
Like we don't have a working kitchen in there right now and out of the two kitchens, and it's just definitely not livable at the moment. So it's nice being able to stay where we're at and not have to deal with any dirt, dirt and dust and whatever else.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah, I, and like Francois had mentioned, like the first one we lived in and yes, it was very stressful at times. Living outta boxes and, uh, moving the stove in and out of the living room every once in a while to moving it back into the kitchen to plug it in and cook a meal. Like it was very stressful, but, uh, it was worth it though in the end and like, I don't think we regret.
We regret that at all. Like it was, it was a big learning experience and it, it challenged us not only like on like professionally, but also like our, our relationship as well too, right? so yeah, so, fortunately, this one, we're, we're gonna stay where we're at right now and just work on that one and slowly pick away at it.
Alisha Fuss: Here we're on a bit of more of a time crunch though, because we feel the pressure of the caring costs now. We definitely wanna, you know, get it done as fast as possible.
Laurel Simmons: So, a thought just crossed my mind here, and when you were talking about, like doing the actual work yourself, what would you say to someone though, who, who doesn't have any, any of the wherewithal, any of those skills to actually, you know, do it or, or the time, I mean, that's not fair.
Maybe you have the skills but you don't have the time. Cause a lot of people are really, really busy and they'd like to do something like this, but hey, it's, it's. It takes hours and hours of your own time to do this work, right? Mm-hmm. , what would you say to someone is, is it still worthwhile doing it? because you're gonna have to get people in to do it for you. Your costs are gonna go up. You know, what advice would you give to someone?
Patrick Bobczynski: So I, I think in that scenario, and this was, this was exactly why we moved into the first one, was because we, we didn't know how long it was gonna take. I had ambitious goals, but it, it, and I have a, a history and a past of like doing a lot of labor and construction and stuff, right? But, This was all a new beast. And, and we have the same worries at first too. Like, are we gonna have enough time? Am I gonna be able to do it all? And I think in that scenario, like if you really wanna do the work yourself and save yourself the money that you almost have to move into the property and you have to sacrifice living in the construction zone because you're not worried about carrying costs, you're not worried necessarily about how long it's gonna take.
Like you can pick a way, way at. Slow over time if you need to, if that's all, if that's all your, you know, your time allows you to do, and you're not worried again about the, the closing costs. I think so. I think moving into it can be very powerful, in terms of somebody who's new and wanting to try it out.
Alisha Fuss: And I think, I think YouTube, in terms of resources for learning, YouTube is really great. Like, if it was just me doing this property, I'd have no idea what I was doing. But I think even if you, Save money by doing little bits and pieces yourself and then contact out the rest. I think finding good contractors is the most important thing.
Like we know that we're not gonna keep doing properties on our own. We know that if we wanna scale up, it's not gonna be a renovation here. One there, like we know that we're gonna build the team. So I think starting out by finding that team is gonna be the most valuable way to go about it.
Francois Lanthier: Yeah. And what were you, would you say are your biggest cost savings? So, yeah, moving in, but Alicia, you mentioned something interesting there, like little things like changing light fixtures or what, what do you see people doing? Like, I, I know what my wife can do. She can replace toilets and stuff and tubs, and I'm like, I, I don't know what to do with this . Okay, so I can do the light fixtures and the plugs and all that, but
Alisha Fuss: That's worth something too. For sure. Yeah. I think maybe even, backsplash, I don't know, countertop flooring, something like that.
Patrick Bobczynski: Sorry. Are you saying like what we can do that would save a lot of money?
Francois Lanthier: Little like little task that some people might think it's complicated, but maybe it's actually not that bad. Like a toilet. I'm kind of exaggerating. I've replaced toilet. It's not that hard with the wax seal and everything, so maybe there's little things people don't think about. You can do yourself to save like maybe the demolition and then you have a contractor do the finishing work.
Patrick Bobczynski: The demolition definitely you can do that. I will say though, with that, like, cuz as I'm, as we were tearing stuff out, for instance yesterday, I'm thinking about what needs to be done to bring it back together and I'm only tearing to a certain part, right? Sometimes, like if you're just demoing, not really knowing how it's going back together.
You might take out too much or you might, um, you might like handcuff yourself later on in the project, right? One thing I, I think that's super easy to do. Painting, painting always makes a huge difference. That's, you know, super easy to pick that up, pick up a paintbrush and go at it and learn, right? Another thing that's slightly more complicated, but actually not too bad is flooring.
Flooring these days with your laminates and your click-together grooving is actually fairly simple to put together and install. I would say it's a beginner to intermediate level, but uh, that's something where you could definitely save on labor costs of a, you know, a company coming in and doing that and doing it yourself.
Laurel Simmons: It sounds to me like if you're just getting started in this and you're not quite sure, even you wanna do some of your own demolition, um, it might be smart to get someone in, like who's either done it before or a contractor just to give you a sort of an overview and say, you know, it's great to pull that, you know, that paneling down. But do be careful. Don't, don't, don't knock out the, uh, supporting beam or something like that, whatever it is.
Alisha Fuss: Right. Yeah, no, that's, that's great advice.
Patrick Bobczynski: And on that same note, like, I had mentioned that I did a lot of construction in the past and, uh, it, it was actually on part of my family, on the other side of my family, but, they own like a construction business.
And I have a cousin that's my same age who's been in that business his entire life. And I was on the phone with him constantly on our first project, asking questions along the way. What should I do here? Sending pictures, like, should I do this? And I think that's very important. What you just said is like having somebody that you can lean on and ask those tough questions because there's gonna be a lot of them.
And especially your first time doing it, like you're gonna come to. Situations where you don't exactly know where to do or what's the best thing to do here. Right? And having those conversations and making those decisions on your own is, is can be very, very scary and especially in the beginning. So having somebody to at least reach out to and talk to and FaceTime may be to be there right with you?
Laurel Simmons: Okay, so let's get to the real, Come on. I, I really want the dirt here. You're, you know, you're a couple, you're working together and you, you mentioned you brought it up, so I'm not, I'm not anything outta school here. Uh, but it can be really, really stressful. And I know with Franco and Jennifer, his wife, it's stressful, right?
And, my husband and I like working together as a, as a couple, is it, it brings a whole bunch of. Oh, little mind feels that you're maybe not aware of as before yo go into it. So what is your, what would be your advice on working together with your life partner?
Alisha Fuss: I think for us, we're very fortunate that we're both on the same page in terms of both getting into it at the same time. I know that doesn't happen for everybody. Sometimes you have to kind of convince the other partner. So both of us really are interested in it and we both wanna make it work. So having both of us devoted to it really helps. I think communication, knowing each other on a personal level. If you don't, before this, you're going to, after renovations and that sort of thing,
So, but knowing each other's strengths and weaknesses, what are, what are we each good at and how can we help that along? He's really good at, at managing projects, uh, figuring out what we need to do, planning things out and I'm good. You know, the social media side of it, networking, all of that. So we support each other, but we let each other do what we're good at.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yep. Alicia mentioned it. Communication has been the biggest thing, like at the end, at the end of the day, especially right now, like we're in the thick of one right now. At the end of the day when we lay down in bed, we'll talk some a lot about the day. You know, Okay, this is what happened today.
This is what I'm thinking about this. How do you feel about that? And we try to get each others. A really good feel, I guess, for each other and like, are we happy with how things are going? Can we be switching? Can we be doing things differently? Are we happy to rip out all of that flooring and put brand-new flooring in? Is that gonna make no budget cost? Go way up. So communication has been huge, huge.
Alisha Fuss: And I think we have an extra layer of difficulty because he works away, you know, three weeks out of a month. And I work a, a nine to five job, so most of our res are done either one week of the month or in the evening. So it's definitely difficult and, and I think we have to make a big effort to kind of spend some time outside of the renovations, just enjoying each other's company and doing something to get our minds off of it, because that's gonna keep us sane in the end. Mm-hmm.
Laurel Simmons: I would imagine too, if you're, especially if you're living in it, you gotta get away and just take a break and, and just become a couple again and just, you know, there is life outside of real estate.
I know people who are listening to this are saying, Oh no there's not. Well, yes there is. The reason we're into is to do the things we wanna do with our lives. Right. It's not all about the real estate. Yeah. Anyway, let's go to our right. Lightning round. These are questions that are designed to shock and, and, no, I'm kidding. They're not gonna shock. They're easy, easy questions. . Sounds good. And it, it is pretty, pretty straightforward. Just, just tell us what comes to mind.
Laurel Simmons: I'm going to ask what's the, what's the best advice you've ever received from someone, whether it's a mentor or an inve, another investor, or at a networking event?
Alisha Fuss: I would say not getting distracted by too many different strategies. Just focusing on one and getting really good at it and then mine.
Patrick Bobczynski: I'm gonna go with something a little different here. And it was a piece, it was almost a quote I had heard a couple years ago and it was, Luck is what happens when opportunity meets hard work.
And I Itruly believe that, and I think that, you know, a lot of people will say, Well, you've got your third property. A you're, you're lucky. But it's like, we've worked very hard and the opportunity has come and we've been prepared for it. That's a good.
Francois Lanthier: Yeah, I love it. You've positioned yourself to be ready for that luck, let's just say in brackets. So I love it. Great advice. Uh, so question number two, what is your favorite resource for real estate investing? It could be anything. A book training, a personal event. I heard YouTube earlier. Maybe you have some other ideas.
Alisha Fuss: I would say Instagram has been huge. We got an Instagram account even before we started investing and just networking, the resources, the tips, projects, everything that people share on there is amazing for real estate investing.
Patrick Bobczynski: I'm gonna date myself a little bit here and say Facebook because the groups and the networks that you can form with other investors on Facebook. Very, very powerful. Not only that, the marketplace we just purchased used appliances in very good condition off of marketplace. It's Facebook, honestly, and I know it gets a lot of hate, like everyone wants to say they're not on Facebook, but like it is a very powerful tool. Still very powerful.
Laurel Simmons: Question number three. Why are you doing this? What's your why?
Alisha Fuss: I think it's, it's pretty similar to what a lot of people would say, which is the financial freedom, and it's not necessarily for the reason of not having to work. We both enjoy working. We're both very hard workers. It's more so being able to work from a beach or choose when you work or choose what you work on.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yes, definitely the financial freedom, like what it is for, for most investors, like we just, we don't wanna work. We're, we don't wanna work for anybody else. We're realizing that, and we both wanna be our own bosses and determine, like, determine our work schedule and how hard we are working and knowing that it's going towards us.
Francois Lanthier: That sounds amazing. Can't wait to see you guys in Costa Rica and March. Maybe . We'll see. We'll need that by then. The beach lifestyle. Yeah. So, question number four, what do you typically do on a Sunday morning?
Alisha Fuss: So if we don't have any renovations going on, it's gonna be a little different right now, but usually we'll go to the gym, we'll have some breakfast, and, and the gym is really important to both of us. It helps us, de-stress and it's we're both very passionate about fitness, so it's definitely a good way to start the day.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah, the gym on a Sunday morning is an awesome way to start the, today, maybe a little bit of a sleep in, which for us has been about 7:30 AM lately but then the. Wow.
Laurel Simmons: That's, you know, great. I mean, yeah, of course, exercise, just even getting out for a walk around, going around the block. If, if you've got a problem or you're just feeling like the, the, the ceiling's caving in on you, just get out, change, Just change your, your environment and it makes a huge, huge difference to your, to your mental health and solution should come up with So.
Good for you guys. That's great. Alrighty. How can people reach,
Alisha Fuss: So we're most active on our Instagram, which is Heels and Hammer underscore. And then we're both on Facebook, like he said, Uh, or LinkedIn. Alicia Fus and Patrick Bobinski.
Laurel Simmons: Any, any last words for our REITE club listeners?
Alisha Fuss: I think, uh, surround yourself with people who are doing what you wanna be doing and, and just change the people you're around so that you can start changing your life.
Patrick Bobczynski: Yeah, exactly that. It's the people around you will influence you the most. And I, you know, we hear that so often in a lot of the books we read, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, you know, all those types of books. And, it's true though. It's very true. When you're around that type of people and you're absorbing that type of information every single day, that's what, what you will know to become normal.
Laurel Simmons: All right. Super. Thank you both so very much for joining us. This was really fun. It sounds like you're having fun. Yes. I know. It's hard work, but hey, just because something's hard, work's fun.
Patrick Bobczynski: We're having fun. We're having fun.
Laurel Simmons: That's really, really important. And the results are, are showing up, and that's what we, that's why we do this. So thank you very much and we'll see you next time. Thank you so
Alisha Fuss: much for having us.
Patrick Bobczynski: Thank you very much.
Francois Lanthier: So, Laurel, what's your key takeaway from this interview?
Laurel Simmons: My key takeaway is if you love it, do it. It's really like they're having so much fun and keep it. Keep it fun. The minute it becomes a horrendous amount of work and you're just so stressed, it's the time to get out cuz it's not worth it. There's so many other things in life that you can, you can do. Right? And real estate is one way that we create wealth. There are other ways. And if you don't enjoy, if you hate it, if it's a struggle, don't.
Francois Lanthier: I love it. Great advice as always, and to our listeners, make sure to give us a rating review for this podcast and share it with someone who will help. Maybe there are couples, you know, they're struggling, they're having stressful times.
And Patrick and Alicia I thought were really inspirational and kept it light and fun, and that's what it should be. I mean, life is an adventure and so is real estate. So make sure to stay tuned for our next podcast, and we have one every week. So Laurel, what do we say?
Laurel Simmons: Well, we say customize your life and that's what we're doing through real estate. And don't forget to go to the REITE club.com, sign up, and there are all kinds of great content there for you. So until next time, have a great.
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