Laurel: Hello REITE club nation. It's Laurel Simmons here. Before we get started, I wanted to ask you a quick question. Have you checked out our online community? I really hope you do because our online community is a place where you can find lots of education, training, and information about real estate investing and about general business. It's a great place to network with like-minded people. We have interactive forums, all our podcast episodes and tons of videos about a wide range of topics. It's free to join. Be sure to come grow with us at thereiteclub.com. Now on with our podcast.
Sarah: REITE club nation, welcome back. It's Sarah Larbi. And today we have an amazing podcast with Karan and Kunal who came from India and started investing just recently in the last year and scaled to 10 properties without using any of their own money using other people's money while they were working full time. They are making things happen. It is a great podcast with lots of questions,
Karan and Kunal are super knowledgeable. And in the short year that they've been investing, they are giving some great insights. I hope you guys enjoy this podcast. Don't forget to check us out. We have lots of virtual events all the time, thereiteclub.com go to the events in the calendar section. And those are free.
Let's come out and enjoy the zoom webinars. Maybe one day we'll bring back the in person thing as well. I know everybody likes networking in person. As the pandemic subsides, I think it's gonna be another new opportunity to get back into in-person meetings. But until then, we've got lots of other great events virtually, coast to coast, tons of different top topics every single month. Check us out thereiteclub.com. On that note, let's bring in Karan and Kunal. Welcome to The REITE Club podcast. How are you?
Kunal: Doing well, how are you guys?
Sarah: Good. You've got an impressive story coming as immigrants from India and you've really made things happen, taken some action, which is amazing. Maybe if you don't mind sharing a little bit of your story about how you got started in real estate investing.
Karan: Sure. I'll kick it off and then I'll hand it over to Kunal to continue. I came to Canada in 2012 as a student, and then once I finished my graduation, the next step of the puzzle was to get a good paying job and kind of get settled down.
After spending a few years, my corporate career like I had that stability that kind of I was looking for. The next piece of Canadian dream as we call it is buying a house. That's when Kunal and I and my wife as well, we pulled our line of credits together and then used it as a down payment for our prime residents.
Once that happened, obviously our day to day expenses kind of rent out while you have the mortgage and you have the property tax like expenses that you wouldn't have when you were renting a property. That's when our heads are spiraling. We need to increase our different sources. We need to include other sources of revenue, like income and our day to day life to help pay for these additional costs. Then I'll let Kunal take over and continue how we got started.
Kunal: It was more like I came and I graduated University in 2017 and then, hey, what should I do? I got a full-time job. Let's buy a nice fancy car. And I got my first car here in Canada. And then as soon as we got the house, I'm like, okay, it's getting a little tight over.
And our plan was also to bring our parents over here so that they can live over here and then enjoy their life with us here in Canada. After that, what we started doing was like, I started essentially with social media. I started following people and I followed you Sarah for a very long time.
It's networking with people. And then I realized, I see people buying so many properties in the year and they're not using any of their money. And then we joined a mentorship program in Mel and Dave from North Bay and we were just able to relate with them in terms of Buying properties with OPM.
Once we educated ourselves, it was time to take action. We joined the program in February, starting like the next month we started putting offers and here we have our first property under contract, closing in two months, but we still don't have any money for down payment. And then that's when we started putting our knowledge to work and started raising money as immigrants.
We don't really know a lot of people over here. The only people we know are other students and professors. It was just telling everybody, we know our neighbors, our doctors, people, we meet at the adult park, hey, this is how we are doing. We're looking for a sum of money and we're presenting a human investment opportunity.
It's all a numbers game in the end. This is how we're gonna pay you back. That's how our investment journey started. Now we are in one year at 10 doors with like four properties and none of our money.
Sarah: Amazing. 10 doors in one year, all with OPM, Other People's Money. You've got one single family, one Plex, one fourplex, and one duplex. And doing that all in one year is awesome. I wanna talk to you guys about, just like your experience with raising money and other people's money and what that looks like. You obviously said you had other than your teachers and your school other students and whatnot.
Didn't know a whole lot of people, but what was the process? If you don't mind, I don't need names or anything, but what kind of relationship was the person to you that started lending you the money and walk us through what that deal breakdown looks like.
Kunal: I do want to give credit to Karan. He's very good, he has a lot of patience when he talks to people and other investors. I am a numbers guy, I'm gonna present deals when it comes to raising money. It's mainly my brother over here.
Karan: It's a two prong report. I kind of reach out to people because I have been in the country longer. And the kind of industry that I work in, I network with a lot of people. It's more like I started talking with my colleagues like, hey, this is what I'm doing. What do you guys think? What I said, what we started off with was just starting to pitch people just to get their feedback, because we just started, we wanna be like, hey, I have this presentation. I want to give it to. I don't really want you to invest with me, but just gimme feedback.
How does it sound? Does it sound pushy? Does it sound to the point? While you are doing this presentation, one of my colleagues is like, hey, I'm not ready to invest with you, but I know a guy who might be ready to invest with you.
He connected us with that person. We went out, we met them in person, showed our numbers, told them about us. He was pretty impressed. That was our first investor. Another piece of the puzzle that he helped us solve was he didn't come up with the entire down. Step back though, the way we structure our deals, essentially we go 80% to 70% low to value.
We go with a lender just because of a lower, better interest rate. And it just makes sense in terms of cash flow. What we do is the remaining 20%, 25% of down payment. That's what we raise with the private investors in a promissory note.
We had this person who we connected with, we initially went in hey, we need the entire down payment. I trust you guys. I know you guys, but this is the first time I'm investing with you. I'm not gonna give you the entire down payment, but I'm gonna still trust you.
I know what you guys are doing and I believe in you but I'm gonna give you a portion of the down payment. That helped us solve one piece of the puzzle. Now, we had, let's just say we had $60,000 in down payment money that we had to raise. We raised $30,000. Now we only had to go out and ask people for the remaining 30,000 and ask for the entire 30,000, which is bigger. That's what we did. We started breaking down the down payment amount, like instead of asking one person for everything, we went to different people and asked for a portion of the down payment or the money they were comfortable investing with.
Kunal: I think it's all a numbers game in the end, right? When you show them the numbers that, hey, I am not paying you out of my pocket. Is the cash flow paying you 8%, 10%, 12% interest rate. They understand. And a lot of people are just not aware of different strategies that are out there. Once you tell them it opens their mind, yeah, what he's saying makes sense.
I will get my money back. Once you do your first property after that, we give all the credit to social media. We started posting our journey to show how people are making money when investing with us and start telling everybody, hey, this is what we are doing. We have a deal in the pipeline.
Are you interested in investing with us? And as soon as we get a deal, we create a lenders package and we have a pool of people. We send it out to the bank. Raising unsecured money is a little challenging compared to raising secured money. It comes down to how confident you are in doing what you are doing and if you're educated and who you're backed up with and the credibility that you have built in the past.
Karan: Essentially, also it was right to the value you bring to the table, right? In one of our deals, we had someone who's also an investor, but they're more like a beginning investor. I don't like that I haven't joined a mentorship program, but I've been following you guys. I haven't seen what you guys are doing.
Instead of investing in the mentorship program, if I invest with you guys, would you guys teach me what you are going through? And every single process with what you're doing. So it became sufficient with both of us because we got that person to invest with us. And in return, we were able to just share what we know with them. That would be helpful for them when they actually start their real estate investment journey.
This person is also getting their principal, but when you were to join a training program, you're not getting the principal back. You're definitely getting a lot more value out of it, but not the principal. That was another strategy that we used in terms of getting investors to invest with us.
Sarah: You're still qualifying for 80% loan to value 75% loan to value based on your T4 jobs, your income, and then you're getting the money for the down payment. Now, are you also sourcing money for any renovations or what are you doing with these projects? The 10 doors that you bought? Were they more buy and hold or the BRRRR strategy?
Kunal: Sure. . After we got our first house, we are currently in Milton, Ontario and how prior house prices are. We couldn't qualify for more. All the other data shows that there are small residential loans, essentially buying it under corporations so that they're not looking at our ratios anymore, but we still have to personally guarantee the amount. And they also do rent. If they can go and collect the rent.
Karan: If you default on the mortgage payment, then they have that agreement with us. Like the bank gets to first collect the rental income in case we default. They obviously look at the rental because these are rental properties, so they are looking at the income and expenses near the BC. Cap rate and everything before they approve the mortgage for us.
Kunal: The remission is always our line of credits, just so that we have a buffer. It's not gonna be a perfect bear all the time. There is gonna be some money in the deal, but we always pay our investors back. We are okay to take a 10,000 to $20,000 loss just because we're gonna recover that in one year, two year timeframe from our cash flow that we're generating for our properties. All of them are up north in Sudbury. Prices are still reasonable, the property still has cash flow out there. That's why we're okay to leave some money in the deal.
Sarah: You bought all of these, I guess in the last 12 months, is that right?
Karan: Yes since February 21,2021
Sarah: And onwards. There's a lot of people that will say, hey Sarah, where are the deals? How do I find the deals yet? You guys were brand new, and found four deals. Like what, how did you find these? Were they on the market? Were they off market? Where they threw, refer like word of mouth wholesalers, give us some insights.
Kunal: All of them, all our properties so far work on the MLS and it is just knowing your market. If a property comes on the market at 9:00 AM in the morning, we analyze it in the next half an hour or latest by the evening, our offer is already out the same day. We don't want to wait. If there is an offer presentation, we're not gonna wait for an offer presentation.
I'm gonna give you a bully offer based on the numbers. If you wanna accept it. If not, I am not competing with you because. I know what kind of strategy I'm using, and I don't wanna get into a bidding war when I'm doing a bird project. So it's just knowing your market, mainly analyzing as many properties as you can on a daily basis. Like properties are at five cap.
If a property comes at seven cap, if it's a good neighborhood and there's no cap over there, put an offer right away. And also having, because the properties are in Sudbury. We cannot go and look at all the properties before putting them on.
Karan: Just a disclaimer of that yes, we are able to, because we run all these limits, we know what properties are, good properties. We know what properties are, bad property. And the reason we are, and obviously the kind properties we put offers to, they're not the best looking property for the neighbor. Like they're probably run down. Drew is leaking. Tenants are very bad. They're holders, there's garbage outside. There's obviously a reason that we are able to like, yes, we are doing our due diligence.
We are doing our negotiations, but obviously the one of the biggest reasons we are able to do the negotiations is because of the condition of the property. We save for investors. We don't want the best property on the block. We were the most rundown property on the block, so we can make it a good property and get them to refinance and get them, get the money out.
Sarah: You gotta add value. That's how money is made. It's not just through buying something. Again, there's other different types of investors, but the ones that are wanting to scale and newer or still in the growth phase of their journey, it is important to add value to properties rather than just buying something to just sink in your money and do that. CES in Ontario, has pretty strict rules when it comes to the landlord tenant stuff. You're getting these properties with tenants in there?
Kunal: Yes.
Sarah: What process have you had to use in order to BRRRRr the properties so that you can do the right renovations and reset.
Kunal: There's a trick that we use and then we haven't told anyone.
Sarah: Oh, good. So you get a trick here on the podcast, the first ever let's hear.
Kunal: If we get the opportunity to do the walkthrough during the inspection, after we have received the accepted offer, we go and we have a conversation with every tenant in there. If it's a 20 unit building, we'll have conversation and try to have conversation with the maximum of them. And it's Karan strict. So why don't you?
Karan: I actually got this strict from Sean REA. I was just listening to one of his podcasts and like he was starting to speak to someone and how to figure out everybody. Do a form offer on a property or not. Like I just followed his advice and what we essentially do is when we are doing the home inspection, I am walking with the home inspector, in every single unit that we have access to. And then while I'm doing that, and the home inspector is doing its inspection, I'm actually speaking to the tenant.
And when I'm speaking to the tenants, I'm asked, like, how long have they been here? What did you think of the property? Essentially I'm trying to gauge their, how long are they gonna stay in the project during this conversation? That is the intention that I'm trying to get to.
And sometimes the tenants are like, oh, you know what? I'm okay. Like I'm thinking of moving or, like this XYZ thinks leaks in this property or this needs to be repaired. You're able to get a lot of insights while having this conversation to make a decision, whether you want to phone on an offer on this property, or if the tenant says hey, I've been here for 30 years and I'm not moving.
It's gonna be a difficult catch for key conversation, but when the tenant, oh, I've been here for two years and I'm thinking about moving. I like my daughter or sister living in the nearby area and thinking of leaving them. Okay, this can be a very good potential task for keys conversation. That's what we do in terms of while we are walking through the property before we form up the offer.
Kunal: If there're students, we don't even bother to go and offer them cash or keys they're gonna in a semester to, as long as they're leaving 12 if we have a promissory know for 12 months, as long as they're leaving at the nine month or 10 month mark, we are okay with that.
We do cash for keys with tenants who are like, who have been there for a while. If a tenant tells us that, hey, I'm just here for my daughter's education and her semester's over, or she's gonna get a job in Burry and okay let her live. And then, we will not bother her too much.
If she doesn't leave by that time, that's when we're gonna approach her and have a different conversation, but it's mainly gauging the interest before even we firm up the deal and that, hey, is this property gonna be a potential BRRRR? If you have to return the money in the one year time period to our investors.
Karan: In addition to that, while we are doing this inspection, we're also identifying good tenants versus bad tenants. So tenants, we would potentially be okay with keeping for them to naturally turnover and tenants. We wanna go with the LTB route because some of them could be hoarding and we've had two tenants that we used LTB to be victims.
This is also a gazing processing, like one thing, which I would highly recommend everyone does. If it's possible to go visit the property while the home inspection is happening, because this will give you a lot more information about the property that just maybe just reading the home inspection report might not give you that information.
Sarah: Are you getting these under contract with a condition of walkthrough or something along those lines so that you can, once you've talked to the tenants, decide if it's for you or not?
Kunal: Yes. A hundred percent.
Karan: And all our properties have a good conditional pay. I get these two weeks of condition period
Sarah: And the sellers in this market have accepted, it 's interesting.
Kunal: It's getting more and more challenging for sure. So what we'll do is remove the financing condition, but they'll still have the home inspection condition.
Karan: It's like home inspection is key. You need to know what you're buying into because there could be structural issues. There could be issues that users don't know about. So you have a big portfolio of properties that are sustaining you and you're okay with just taking a loss or so if something unpredicted comes into play we would definitely want to have an inspection condition in there.
It also allows us as we are, because we are buying multifamilies and a fire retrofit or can cost you a lot down the line. If there are any open permits. Once I'm doing a walkthrough of the property, if anything catches my eye, that's not up to code. We view all the, in our checklist, we have call the fire department of the city and ensure there are no open work permits because, we don't want it to come invited, you know what, at a later date, and then we're stuck with thousand dollars in bills just to make it up to code.
We don't keep a fire retrofit condition in our offers, but if something catches our eye, definitely like.
Kunal: It's about the due diligence space so we do our diligence to make sure that things are up to try to keep the minimum condition, but still do everything.
Sarah: What about management? Are you living in Sudbury, are you close to Sudbury or are you managing remotely?
Karan: We have a property manager in Sudbury. So she takes care of the rents and tenant issues and any maintenance issues. We just have this like a regular monthly call, just to see if some just to get an update on the tenants. And if obviously, if there's something that is urgent, that requires our attention. She's pretty prompt enough to just send us an email and hey, can I go ahead and do perform this maintenance request. It's been pretty straightforward and pretty seamless.
Kunal: Our contractors are in the property because we are rotating tens one month after another, he has had a job with us for the past year with no downtime. If he sees something out of the ordinary, you're like, hey, this 10 is keeping the garbage outside or your snow plow didn't do their work. We can reach out to the property management and then she can handle it. And we drive to bury. We haven't seen our vault.
We went there on the 2nd of March, but we went there after six months. We were now there for the entire winter, just because we have a team over there who provides us regular feedback.
Karan: We usually try to drive it at least once or twice a month. That way we have, we are seeing what the properties are, how properties are doing, but in winter then we have security cameras as well on the properties. We get an idea of what's happening. If something the major has gone wrong. I can't sleep at night. I'm like, hey what's happening?
Sarah: What about challenges and mistakes? Obviously, you've been in the market only for one year, but you probably have a little bit of experience with some of the challenges along the way or mistakes that you made, that you can tell somebody that's, hasn't been, in real estate yet or just thinking about getting some of your insight.
Karan: We recently had an ice DAMing in one of our, like a triplex. It was the first time we were talking to insurance companies and building restoration people. One thing that I'd like we'll recommend is never cheap out under our insurance. It's 20, 20, 10, $20 more for a better quote, get it, if the property's not cash flowing $20 or cannot sustain $20 or charge, you're not buying the right property anywhere. And you just learn as you go.
We saw water leaking and then hey, what should we do? We are calling an insurance Company. They're not getting back to us on time and what should we do? Someone recommended we call the building restoration people, and it's gonna cost a lot of money, but hey, it's better to prevent it or stop the water going in other units, then waiting for it to grab insurance, to call you back.
That was the mistake that we made. We waited like a couple of hours before we called anyone. I want the insurance to pay for it and we don't wanna make any mistakes. It's the first rodeo with the insurance company. Always have a building restoration person in your speed dial. Then upfront with your insurance companies, give them the information. Only the information that they ask for.
Don't overload them with information. Don't hide something from them, but don't give them every single information , because the thing is, if they don't need to know, they don't need to know a scenario. And with this, obviously it was our first time with insurance.
We just didn't know what the next steps would be. What could we anticipate, what questions would be asked for things that we would need to have in place. Obviously since we were waiting because we wanted to call the restoration company, we just didn't know who they were gonna bill, like whether they were gonna bill the insurance or whether they were gonna bill us.
We just wanted to wait for the insurance to get back. While we were waiting, the water started leaking to the basement unit and then the basement unit 10 kind of started having these issues. Luckily, the insurance was able to get back to us within six to eight hours, and we were able to send it to the building restoration company.
We avoided something bad happening to the basement in it. We were able to maintain the situation. That was probably one of the biggest, like recent challenges that we faced. And one of the biggest mistakes that we made was getting the whole contractor when we first started the renovations, because you know how they say, don't get the first and the cheapest contractor.
It was again a learning curve for us. And because the contractor, yes, he put it as the lesson amount, but the period he took to finish the unit was way longer than what we thought. Yes, he didn't charge money up front, but it cost us a lot of money.
Kunal: And holding costs as much and holding costs, going back to the insurance, just to tell anybody who's interested in the process. You call the insurance, you send the building restoration company, they'll prevent it from damaging your property further. They'll do any removals and then they'll send an estimate to your insurance company. Once an estimate goes to your insurance company, they're gonna come back to you. Hey, this is the estimate that this person has provided.
Do you have any other estimates that you want to take? If you have a contractor working for you, get an and you trust him, get an estimate from them. And if it's cheaper and if he's an alleged contractor, they're more likely to go with you. And this was all new to us. We were like, hey, what's gonna happen. Like tomorrow. We were learning as we were going through the process .
Sarah: Great insight. Thank you so much for sharing and tons, you've learned a ton and you've done a ton in a matter of 12 months, which is amazing. So congratulations. Next part of the podcast is the lightning round.
I'm gonna ask you four total questions and you're gonna gimme the first answer that comes to mind in less than 10 seconds each. Are you ready?
Kunal: Yeah.
Sarah: All right. Question number one. What is the best advice that you have ever received from another investor or at a networking Yvette?
Kunal: Just go and be a network of people. Talk to them about what you are doing and ask them what they're doing, because obviously you learned, add every single place.
Sarah: Awesome Kunal?
Karan: When you're proposing something, tell them that you are. Giving them a proposal and not asking for money. I am proposing an investment opportunity. I'm not begging, you are asking you for money when you're Essent. .
Sarah: Great advice. Both of you, number two, what is your favorite resource for real estate investing and learning about real estate?
Karan: I would like to podcast that they are my virtual since we drive four hours back and forth to Sudbury like it's eight hours of drive, that's eight podcasts in a day. Like podcasts and obviously joining a lot of phase investing Facebook groups. You might not know what other people, the issues that other people are going through. And just by reading through it, by understanding what they have gone through, you might be able to somehow relate to what you are doing. And you avoid that mistake where, apply that learning on your journey. .
Kunal: Same thing. YouTube videos, social media. That has just changed our lives. Everybody on social media motivates each other so much. Do not be demotivated. If someone else is doing better than you just take it as an inspiration.
Sarah: Awesome. Thank you for sharing the resources. Number three, what is the attribute in your opinion that has made you most successful?
Karan: I will be going out and networking with people. I was a very shy person and I did not like asking for money. Just having that change in mindset, that I am confident in my own skin and skin. And as nal said, We are not asking for money, we're presenting an opportunity. And as long as the numbers and the opportunity speaks for itself, you don't really have to feel bad because it's not like you're taking the money, stealing their money and running, hey, it is an agreement. It is a partnership. It is an arrangement. So just kinda, having that mindset of being confident, talking to people and asking them for money.
Kunal: I'm sure what I'm gonna say currently, I agree with it too. It's educating ourselves ,if we were to have educated ourselves in February to how to buy investment properties, how to analyze them.
Sarah: All right. Very cool. Last question. What do you typically do on an average Sunday morning?
Karan: Watching YouTube videos of real estate investing. I know it sounds cliche, but that is exactly what we do. That's how we start our morning with coffee and then just doing some basic household chores, running numbers on new properties and just spending time with family.
Kunal: Our life revolves around it just because we live in the same house. We talked to ducks, I'm on the upper floor. Hey, I probably came on MRIs. Did you analyze it? Wait, I'll run the numbers. I'm like, okay, I'll call the realtor at the same time. And it's, our life is around that. Even our wives are like, hey, when we're doing dishes, what happened at brew street? What happened at Douglas street? Is she paying rent? And it's just the same thing every time.
Karan: It is good because we are both very passionate about it. We are very much involved in it and we know what this has done for us in terms of our growth, our learning, the kind of people we have become. After our real estate investing journey started it was way different than the kind of people we were before we started.
Kunal: You're looking at a person who worked at Tim Warren drove Uber. Same with Karan. He worked at a subway as a manager, so we have actually grown as people.
Sarah: Amazing. I love that. Now, where can The REITE Club nation reach out and find out more?
Karan: For me, I'm bored on Facebook. I'm on Facebook as Karan Malhotra and I'm on Instagram as well. And my handle is invest with Karan
Kunal: Same I'm on Facebook as Kunal Malhotra and on Instagram Kunal Malhotra
Sarah: Amazing guys. Thank you so much for being on our podcast for sharing your insights, your tips, and challenges experienced along the way. It's been a pleasure having you both. Thank you so much.
Karan: Thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure.
Sarah: REITE Club nation. That was awesome. I hope you enjoy today's podcast. Don't forget to leave a rating and review. Customize your life until next time. See you soon.
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