Despite a slowing property market in some areas and further expected interest rate increases, the demand for real estate investment properties on the edges of the GTA appears to continue to be strong.
Is that still the case?
Where are the opportunities for reasonable house prices and cash-flowing rental markets?
Join us for the next stop on our virtual tour of Ontario markets with expert insights and market updates for Kitchener.
Daniel: We're going to be talking to Santos. I just love talking to Santos Garcia about the Kitchener market.
Santos: I have some slides about when we work in Kitchener. We all know what is happening in Guelph, Waterloo and Cambridge. It's really great to be here. My name is Garcia. I am a full-time real estate investor here in my team and I have done over 12 million real estate transactions. We're focusing on buying Bungalows that we convert into legal duplexes back in 2017, 2018.
When I just started, I used to go to the REITE club every month. I used to tell my wife, no matter what I needed that Wednesday off. I really appreciate all the community there and it's been great. I am from Lima, Peru. I am the founder of Heading Home. I live in Waterloo, Ontario. I've been here since 2012. I'm married, have three daughters. It's pretty busy here. I come from a very humble background.
This is where I was born, so you can see it's really humble. I moved to Argentina when I was a teenager. I was doing house hacking there. We lost the house. The bank took it. Me and my brother didn't really know what we were doing, but that was my first, learning with real estate and I called it an opportunity loss. I did it again. I was able to do house hacking and I was dealing with tenants or roommates. It was really good again, I didn't know what I was doing. I met my wife. I married and I moved to Canada where I started learning English. I became a Canadian citizen and I also started learning more about real estate.
I start investing more in education. I used to be an auto technician mechanic for over 10 years. And then I started investing in real estate. I start with my basement from wheels to housing deals. That's how we call it. These are some of the transformations. That's how we started now that the rental income from the basement is around 1900, which is a great mortgage helper. Then we were able to refi our primary residence. I opened the home real estate where I started doing rent once.
Santos: It was really challenging at the beginning. I switched to legal duplex conversions where I acquired my fears off market duplex. Then the pandemic started and everybody was freaking out because they saw an opportunity. And I started working more with joint ventures. So I was able to. Find my second deal with a joint venture partner. That would be my second legal duplex conversion back then.
And then we did incredible transformations. I started building uh, my power team. It started happening. That more people were interested in investing with us and in Kitchener the legal duplex conversion is a really good model. We buy bungalows as you can see, we convert them. We get those basements that are dark and empty, and we convert them into beautiful ones.
Legal units where families can live, we're creating more housing and we're very proud of it. Kitchener is really good with us giving us the permits. They like us as investors. And that duplex that our friends are talking about is ours. That we put it for sale. funny I saw it there, but yeah, good.
I work with many investors and many joint venture partners. We have over 24 doors now in kitchen Waterloo, we have an amazing power team. I will definitely recommend anybody to invest in Kitchener. It's a really strong market already. You hear Ryan and and za talking about how the tri cities and wealth is.
They're a really good place to invest. And I agree a hundred percent with them. We have the L R T we have. And the two universities, very close to Google, are building another 18,000 square feet building. So if Google is investing here, I'm staying here as well. With my team there are so many tech companies as well.
A lot of people come to the city, which is we have good tenants as well. The rents for an upper unit. We are as high, have 2200 and for three bedrooms and for a lower unit with two bedrooms, we're getting anywhere from 17 to 2000. So it's really good. We're also starting doing short term rentals, Airbnb.
And we're getting rent every month per unit, around three to 4,000, which is solid number. So I'm very happy to invest in this city in Kitchener. And there is my content information. If you would like to reach out, you have any questions, please go ahead. We have a full team.
This is what we love, what we love to do. And we're happy to connect with any of you. Thank you. Bring it on, bring the questions.
Daniel: My first question to you would be: Although you did not go into some of the details that the other presenters were giving, because it is Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge wealth.
I'm making the assumption here that, if you had shown us graphs, they would look very similar in terms of it. It was, it went up it still a little bit down that there's more listing. Now it's more of a seller's market. So pretty much the same thing happening in Waterloo as is or infection or as is happening in Waterloo in Cambridge, correct?
Santos: That's correct. Exactly the same. We are investors. So for us, it's a good thing because we wanna buy these bungalows and convert them into legal DUPL for our investors. So we are, we're really happy to know if you are selling however it is, we think it's a great time to buy. We have to adapt to the market and keep creating new ways to create more opportunities for our investors.
Daniel: And from my I've never done a basement conversion, although one of our sponsors is can Beck them who specializes in that, in the GTA. I understand though, from having conversation with him that this is not something that you, if you're not, if you don't know about basement conversion or duplex conversion, this is not something that you just go and do you need to work with somebody who really knows what they're doing?
He came here once and showed us. We were looking at a house and he. Can't do it. And I say what's wrong. The ceilings are high and everything's fine. They say, yeah, but says, there's no parking here. There's a curb. There is a a what do you call that? A fire hydrant. And then there's two.
The city will never give you a permit because you cannot add one more car on the street here. So I would've never thought of that. So it's, if you're gonna be doing that type of. Conversion, you need to work with somebody like you and a team who can guide you do it properly.
Correct.
Santos: Hundred percent, hundred percent. I know king and yes, that's a hundred percent correct. You need to know the light that you need in the basement, where the windows will go, the mechanical room the size of your bedrooms. You need to know the high ceiling. You need to know yourt system very well.
You need to know the parking. You need to know the five address windows. Hundreds of things that you need to know. We're happy to connect with people and guidance.
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