Daniel: Richard Payne started as the Chartered Management Accountant, because you're a number maniac. And I understand like numbers you like large numbers, you like complex files that it turns you on.
Richard: It's in my DNA. What can I say?
Daniel: Then you are a real estate investor. You have a portfolio, but mostly the reason why we're talking to you tonight is because you are also a very successful realtor, eight years now in the Halifax market.
The last time we had you on this, we were strictly talking about what do you buy in Halifax? How's the market? And of course, you shared with us, it's like multiple offers and over asking and things like that haven't changed at all. Since we talked two months ago.
Richard: It's as easy as that.
Daniel: What is particular? I'm from Ontario and I want to buy a property in Nova Scotia. How the facts let's say all the facts. What is particular, or what should I be aware of before I even call you to ask you about finding properties for me, what's special?
Richard: The special thing is you've got to understand all the different neighborhoods and areas. That's where I spend a lot of time with clients that are moving here. Tell me about what you're looking to achieve from a lifestyle and their point of view inside the move to Halifax. Because, it's pretty straightforward now with people being able to work from home, maintain jobs in Ontario, in BC and Alberta, and actually say, great, but now I'm looking to change my lifestyle.
My job comes with me. I don't have to worry about that. I just want to change my lifestyle. My questions always tell me about what you're looking to achieve. Tell me about the neighborhoods you want to be in. Tell me about what you want from the house and then give me a budget. And then from that, now we'll talk about one of the like 60 different neighborhoods inside Halifax Regional Municipality, HRM.
Daniel: How many did you say?
Richard: There's about 60 different neighborhoods? People tend to focus on Halifax and they say Halifax, the problem. Halifax is literally just the Peninsula of four different regions, north, South, west, and central. Then once you get off Peninsula, Halifax, we've got Dartmouth, Bedford, Lower Sackville, Middle Sackville, Hammonds Plains, Fall River, like it just goes on and on. But what we do is we group all those together and we call it the Regional Municipality, HRM.
Daniel: Are there any property management nuances or particularities for somebody who wants to buy income property in Nova in the HRM?
Richard: Right now, because of COVID where we've got some increased rules and regulations around owning income properties here.
The biggest one of course is that we've now been imposed rent control from, I think it was a roundabout February last year, this year earlier on. And they said we can't now increase rents by more than 2% equally. We're not allowed obviously to evict people during the moratorium because of COVID-19.
Those are two big changes that we've had to the HRM area. And the fact that 2%, it's not really going to cover a lot of your increase in costs that we're going to see. I'd love it if my fuel bill never went up by more than 2% a year, but that's impossible. Taxes. Yeah, pretty much guaranteed. They're going to go up by Northern 2%.
We're taking some extra increase. And because of that, they've said it's temporary. My concern is especially with the government, being able to introduce these things under the guise of COVID-19 and trying to be fair to tenants which I get. We all get that as investors. The question is, will they know this snuck it in?
Are they going to actually release it? When the world gets better, hopefully at the end of this year, everybody has vaccines and we get rid of a lot of the cases then are they going to relax that and bring it back. We're not introducing rent control. If you go do what you need to do that's going to be an interesting question.
Is the landlord tenant board in the HRM balanced or pro tenant or pro landlord?
Pro-tenant at the moment, pro-tenant, the process as well for, if you do have a difficult tenant, even two years ago, the process was never straightforward or easy for a landlord to actually get rid of a difficult tenant.
That absolutely is not paying rent, doing damage, causing disturbance to the rest of the tenants in the building. A whole range of different things that could make a tenant, a difficult tenant that you don't want.
Daniel: Wow, any tips and tricks for investors wanting to invest in your neighborhood or in your area?
Richard: The biggest thing I think is going back to one of the earlier panelists as well from who it was from Jonathan maybe. Where he says find those downright dirty and ugly buildings. They'll be pretty easy too. Number one, purchase. Number two, probably very easy to get rid of the tenants as well.
And then basically do a full-on renovation. Like I had interestingly enough. One of my clients is in a place called Alberta Lake in Dartmouth. That's exactly what she did. She bought it for, I think just over 300, maybe 340. I think she bought it for three units. Kept the tenants for a number of months.
And then, it wasn't even more than probably six months, got rid of the tenants. Lawfully just basically said, look, I'm doing a full-on renovation top to bottom of the building. Clearly you can't be here whilst that happens. We need you to leave. There left, she did a full-on renovation and we just sold that building for probably an all-time record high for a triplex inside Dartmouth.
She's pretty pleased with the number she got and that was for multiple offices after three days of being on the market.
Daniel: That would be a strategy for people to look for. Okay. You know where to find those properties?
Richard: Yes. Yeah, we do a lot of turning over rocks and looking for the ugly stuff underneath.
Daniel: We have already just put on the screen here, your information, it's going to show up more. When anybody listening to this, anybody watching this, if you have any questions or you're interested. Any curiosity or interest, doesn't matter to do something in the HRM.
And by the way, at one point we had seven properties in the HRM. We now have two porter’s lakes and haven't explained, but we like dealing in that area. And we certainly like dealing with Richard Payne. You contact him and he is going to help you. Richard.
Richard: Additionally, we can find the right properties depending on the situation.
Daniel: Thank you very much, Richard. Thanks for taking the time.
Richard: No problem.
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