Wouldn’t you love to leave your 9-5 to pursue something you’re not only passionate about, but is also helping serve the needs of the community?
Welcome back to “Inspired To Invest”. On our latest episode, we had the pleasure to interact with Carleen Su, a true force to reckon with in the realm of real estate investing.
Tune into the episode with your preferred video or audio streaming.
Breaking free from her corporate job, Carleen built an impressive portfolio of 85 doors and is now spearheading her journey towards financial freedom through real estate, an inspiring story waiting to unfold.
Throughout the conversation, we spent our time discussing the intricacies of purpose-built rentals, barriers faced, and leveraging professional resources, all through Carleen’s unique lens.
Her experiences in building a stock townhouse portfolio and offers up valuable nuggets of wisdom for budding real estate investors. Furthermore, we delve into the importance of assembling the right team, the role of coaching and mentorship in business growth, and the opportunities available in development projects.
Our conversation with Carleen promises to offer you a riveting journey into the world of real estate investing- a must-listen for those eager to learn about the field’s dynamics.
To connect with Carleen directly, you can find her on Instagram under @investorcarleen, on facebook under @trucapitalrealestate. She is open to offering a free consultation to anyone who would like to learn more about real estate investing and how they can come on board as an equity partner in one of her projects.
To connect with our host, Serena Holmes, click here and to buy a copy of The Accidental Entrepreneur, click here.
And, for everything related to real estate and real estate investing, please make sure you’ve subscribed to @serenaholmesrealtor on YouTube & other platforms. We also have a page dedicated to this podcast on Instagram and Facebook @inspiredtoinvestpodcast where we preview guests each week, highlight their episodes, top takeaways, tips, quotes and more.
Are you a full-time real estate investor with an inspiring story to share? Apply now!
Thank you again to our sponsors Coast to Coast Homes & REAL Power Ladies for bringing us this episode.
To learn more about them, go to:
* @goodhomescanada on Instagram or Online
* @realpowerladies on Social or Online
Last but not least, Carleen also a coaching program, designed to provide customized support and guidance to investors taking on their first stacked townhouse project. This is for the real estate investors who have started their portfolio with single family houses but are looking to move into multifamily and developments but need to educate themselves further so they can move forward with confidence at each step of the process.
TOPICS COVERED
• How to Find a Deal – learn what the requirements are to build one of these projects and which lots are suitable.
• Building Your Team – find out who are the experts you need on your team to surround yourself with. • Planning and Development – learn what regulatory steps are necessary to apply for the city permits and how to get the project approved.
• Economic Analysis – find out how to run the financial analysis on these types of projects and what are all the soft and hard costs involved.
• Raising Capital – find out how much capital you need for these types of projects and learn the steps on how to find capital.
• Legal structure set up – learn about the different legal structures to set up these deals and which option is best for your situation.
• Financing – learn how to apply leverage and the best ways to finance your project from construction through to term and how to get CMHC financing.
• Project and Asset Management – learn the best practices to implement such that you manage the maintenance of the property, the tenants and investors to be successful on the long run.
To register, contact Carleen at carleen.su@trucapitalrealestate.com
Tune back in on Wed., Sept. 6 for Episode Thirteen with the owner of an insurance company here to talk about you about Infinite Banking, a concept and strategy that will completely blow your mind.
Thank you for tuning into Inspired To Invest and remember, “when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit!”
REAL ESTATE INVESTING PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 100:01
Welcome to the Inspired to Invest podcast, where we’re sharing stories from real estate investors and how investing has changed their lives. This episode of Inspire to Invest has been brought to you by Coast to Coast Homes and Real Power. Welcome to the Inspire to Invest podcast. I have a wonderful woman named Carleen Su here with me today and, to give you a little bit of background on Carleen, she is an active real estate investor and she’s been doing so full time for the past five years. She’s also a proud mom to three great children.
00:34
She had the opportunity to leave her corporate job, which is an eight to five, probably going back about five years ago now, and during that time she’s built up a portfolio with 85 doors and she currently develops built for purpose rentals. So she can tell us a little bit more about the fun projects that she’s got on the go and now she’s helping others achieve financial and life freedom with opportunities to invest and coaching them through her real estate firm and invest in coaching strategies. I’m kind of blending through that, but you can tell us all about everything that you got going on and ideally, maybe you can start by sharing where you were. So you were working this corporate job, you were grinding it out, doing an eight to five. So how did real estate investing come into the picture?
Speaker 201:15
I came into the picture very early on. Actually, I always had a bit of a bug in me to always do something more than just have my nine to five job At that time. You don’t have a family and I was just. I had energy to burn. In fact, I think my nickname for my friends at the time was energy bunny. But I was always wanting to do more and doing things that made sense and I also had. I was kind of intuitively more about financial literacy. When you have the down payment, you’re like, or when you’re looking at the numbers and making sense, you’re like, why not hold a real estate asset?
Speaker 101:56
And that’s how I got started. Yeah, no, that’s amazing. I think more people need to be thinking about their financial futures and, at the end of the day, a lot of times people look at real estate investing as very risky, but I personally think one stream of income and one source of employment is as risky as it gets, I guess, in terms of investing. So obviously you felt that this was important, but would you say there’s any particular catalyst that made you think, okay, this is what I want to do now and kind of move out of the corporate world.
Speaker 202:26
The catalyst really is the family. So I knew it made sense intellectually, even when I was younger, when you’re working nine to five and I had decent flexibility there, but still it’s like you know you’re going to have to take your kids, you know, on field trips or I would want to, or wanting to spend extra time during the day, not just in the evenings, and that’s when you know real estate offered an option to do more for the family but also have the flexibility as well.
Speaker 103:00
Yeah, I think that’s the thing that you know. The money is one side of it, but the other side is also taking your time back and you know obviously there can be those compromises, especially in the beginning, that it’s taking time to build up and learn your systems and figure things out. But you know it’s the flexibility that I think you know most people are after in terms of the long game right.
Speaker 203:19
Totally right the freedom, and the freedom to do the things you like and the freedom to spend the time with the people that you want to spend time with.
Speaker 103:28
Now did you just rip the band-aid off and just say, okay, like that’s it, we’re going forward, or did you find that you were kind of straddling both sides of the fence for a while?
Speaker 203:36
Yeah, no, that’s a good question because I know people do wonder if they can just like quit and just throw themselves in there. But no, I mean, I did it in a it wasn’t like a 10-year plan but what I did was starting in 2013,. I started building other than my first initial purchase out of university. I started building my portfolio in the 2012, 2013 years, just adding one or two properties a year along with my husband, and I think that really helped to provide, you know, a base income. So you choose the right properties with cash flow that allows you to just be. It allows it to be a true option. I guess at that point, you know.
Speaker 104:20
Yeah, I think a lot of people are so scared to make that jump just because they’re worried about their quality of living going down. If they do have to salary cut or something like that. And I think that’s something consistent that I’ve heard from a lot of other investors is that you have to make sure that you’ve got some stability with your income before you obviously move over to it full time.
Speaker 204:38
Yeah, I do recommend that because you don’t want the other state. You might have freedom, but you don’t want financial stress either, and so yeah, yeah, so can you talk a little bit about your development side?
Speaker 104:49
So for anyone that doesn’t know the kind of work that you do, obviously you’ve kind of built up your portfolio but then you got into land development, kind of maybe a little long before land development has become what it is today, so maybe you can talk a bit more about that.
Speaker 205:02
Well, you know, investing for 20, 20, gosh 20 years, I’ve done a lot of different strategies. I’ve done the Renault’s, the Fix and Flips, I’ve done the buy-in holes, I also just did my recent Airbnb. But the thing is, when you do a lot of different strategies, I can test them all out, and what I’ve learned in all of these years is that there also is a really good strategy for a particular time in the market. Back in like 20, gosh, when the market was hotter around 2013, I started the buy-and-hold strategy when truly it was. You know, our market was going up and I realized then that the better strategy to actually really accelerate that growth would have been to do renovations and development.
05:55
Yeah, and again, now we’re kind of in a different, almost the same market cycle, but the market, you know, factors are a little bit different and we’re actually really I’m predicting we’re going to see quite a bit of growth over the next few years. And so I’ve taken the best of the strategies and kind of combined it together, because what I do with purpose-built rentals is you get the fourth appreciation of a development, yet also the longer term gain of the buy and hold, where you get mortgage pay down and a benefit from the market appreciation. So I’m kind of combining that and packaging that for investors that don’t necessarily know how to do one or the other, or both.
Speaker 106:38
Can you elaborate on what the term purpose built rental?
Speaker 206:41
is, or anyone that may not know, yes, so you know, sometimes you know houses, they become an accidental rental, right Like you think. The owners can’t sell it and it becomes a rental to make things work. Now, these are purpose built rentals, in that I’m not developing them for resale for another buyer or for other owners. I’m building them for investors to come in on them and then they are meant to be held as a rental property.
07:14
The particular assets that I do, which are these eight unit stacked townhouses- are perfect for that because they really answer the need for that missing middle housing that you know a lot of the government is seeing as the solution to address all of the, I guess, the housing shortage. Yet it’s also perfect for, you know, the financing options out there. So for all of those reasons, I do do that’s what I do.
Speaker 107:45
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I mean obviously kind of found what works for you and I’m sure your systems are great to back that up. Now I’m sure it’s not all just sunshine and roses. So can you talk a little bit about some of the biggest lessons and maybe what you learned, or maybe what you could have even done differently if you could go back and change what you’ve done at that time?
Speaker 208:06
Honestly, I don’t know that I would do anything differently. I think, looking back, you know there were definitely times of, you know, at the beginning, a lot of uncertainty, like, yes, I knew that I should be listening to my gut and knowing that it’s an opportunity to follow my passion, but it’s not a sure thing, you know. There were definitely days when it’s like, am I doing the right thing, you know, am I choosing our path? Cause I did like I did want to do coaching from the start as well, but I instead chosen to do that at a later point. But you know all of those. And so I think, looking back, I guess I would say, you know, I probably had to go through that, but I would maybe just tell myself that, hey, like, just stick with it and you’ll make it through, because I guess that’s that really is what happened. And if you take you, put one foot in front of the other and just take the next step, you end up really achieving quite a bit like you know.
Speaker 109:04
Yeah well, they say like a lot of your success just comes from the habits and your daily routines, right? So I guess, then, alluding to success out of everything, now that you’ve done, what would you say you’re most proud of and what’s like one of your biggest accomplishments?
Speaker 209:21
I’m most proud of just stepping into doing what I need to do. So sometimes, maybe a lack of confidence or just fear of being judged is what stops a lot of people and I had all of that as well but at the end of the day, you still got to get these things done. If I put myself out there and I offer an investment, then I’m going to follow through on that, keep my word, put myself out there, create the relationships that I need to. So I think I would say that is the one biggest thing that I am proud of is that I always have always stepped up where I needed to. Yeah, no, I’m not necessarily one where I need to plan 10 years ahead. Never been like that.
Speaker 110:06
I don’t have this grandiose plan of who I need to be or where I need to be, but it’s always been what’s the next step forward and going from there, and I think that’s huge, because in this industry, your reputation is paramount and if you’ve got happy investors, then they’re going to refer other investors to your projects and stuff like that as well, right? So yeah, now that we’re just going to take a really brief break for our sponsors We’ll be back in just a moment.
Speaker 410:32
I’m Diana Boyden, She-eo of Real Power, where female investors and entrepreneurs come together to enjoy real content, real connections and real collaborations. Our events and programs are designed to give women the type of community, the type of support, the type of learning that they need to flourish in this business. We have a 12 month mastermind program, starting a fall cohort in October. Also, we have our upcoming Canmore event, october 20 to 22nd in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, featuring a full slate of powerful female speakers, great interactive sessions and, of course, our beloved sequence social. And if you or someone you know are just looking to get started in real estate investing, be sure to check out the Girlfriend’s Guide to Real Estate Investing kicking off in September of 2023. You can find this and more at real-powerca. We hope to see you soon.
Speaker 111:27
Upcoming events for real power include the Real Power Mastermind Fall Cohort, the Girlfriend’s Guide to Real Estate Investing, Real Weekend Fall Retreat and Canmore and the Real Power Weekend in Palm Springs. To get in touch with Real Power, contact Diana Boyden, the CEO of Real Power, Ladies at diana at realpowerca. For more, go to real-powerca online. Thanks again for following along with this episode of Inspired to Invest. In addition to real estate investing and running my own brand experience agency for 18 years, I also published a book called the Accidental Entrepreneur in October of 2021. This is my story and it chronicles how I turned tragedy into triumph to embrace my destiny in entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in picking up a copy, you can find the link at serenahomesrealtorcom and you can also find my link tree with all of the retailers in the details below. Thanks again for your support.
Speaker 312:28
Welcome to Coast to Coast Homes Canada. We are Colin and Nicole, the passionate founders. We started this journey because we know that real estate investing may not be easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Our education and our relationships have formed the bedrock of our success. We invest time, energy and care in both. Our portfolio has grown from basement suites and duplexes to apartment buildings and land development, and we’re just getting started. Reach out to us to set up a time to chat. You never know where one call will lead you.
Speaker 113:01
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Inspired to Invest podcast. I have Carleen Sue here and she’s talking about her experience developing purpose-built rentals, and primarily those are eight unit stock townhouses that are specifically built for investors to buy and hold and provide a solution to really what we’re experiencing right now, which is a housing supply shortage and a crisis, as some people would say. We talked a little bit about lessons and successes. Now, when you think about obstacles, what would you say is the biggest obstacle that you think that you’ve faced so far?
Speaker 213:38
The biggest obstacles is always just kind of continuous problem solving. Really, I don’t know that there’s one biggest one. At the beginning it might be the lack of and it changes throughout. So at the beginning it might be a lack of knowledge and there’s always like more to learn. But I was always good about being resourceful and reaching out to different networks, and sometimes it’s following even somebody on social media that you actually really believe in. But I wouldn’t recommend doing that with a whole bunch of people like really focus on one or two key mentors that way, but also reaching out and I’ve paid consultancy fees. I don’t necessarily think the only thing you need to do is just befriend people and then learn information from them. There also are professional resources out there and I definitely like to pay them for their time and information, and so that’s how I. At the beginning it’s the knowledge obstacle, but then along the way it’s been scaling as well right and building the systems and bringing on the team members necessary.
Speaker 114:52
Yeah, I think a lot of investors have talked about that the who, not how, and just figuring how to surround yourself with the right team and being, you know, to having the confidence to really trust somebody to do some of the work that you would otherwise do yourself. Right, I know when I was running my business that was one of my challenges. That 10 years in I was still doing a bit of everything and it was the barrier to our growth. So as soon as I started taking coaching and mentorship and I was able to delegate different things, that’s when we really started to see an increase in a lift in our sales and for our team and things like that. So I think that’s common. You know everyone kind of goes through those, those challenges. But obviously if you can find a coach or a mentor or, as you said, a consultant, hopefully you can get where you want to go that much faster and maybe even avoid some of the mistakes that other people can make along the way.
Speaker 215:36
Yeah, totally yeah. And you made a good point too, because I think you really like the coaching and mentoring is helpful in that it kind of changes your mindset. If you have a small business mindset, well then you’re only going to allow certain things to happen. But if you were like, hold on, I want to run this so that it can even truly run itself, I mean that’s a totally different, a different game.
Speaker 115:57
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I guess now, when you think about being surrounded by all these different people, and whether it is coaches or consultants, what would you say? Some of the best advice that you’ve given or you’ve been given to To date?
Speaker 216:12
I earlier on, very early on. You know I was taught, you know by Patrick Fancy at Rain that you know to run your real estate as a business and you know we talk about real estate being a really good alternative or a side business for somebody even with a nine to five job to have. But to actually start it with running it as a business in mind really allows you to really, like I said, do things more professionally, hire the right people, because at the end of the day you may end up not growing from one at all, or you may have 10 and you’re running around and really not that happy because now you’re the property handyman and you’re the property and that’s not the ultimate goal either.
17:02
So, I think right at the very beginning that was, that was a really good advice in terms of, you know, growing my business yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense as well.
Speaker 117:11
Like you know, it’s even something I’m trying to wrap my heads around as I’m learning and growing is just, you know, setting up the right structure in the beginning, because you know, sometimes people have certain things in their personal name, or should they have, in the corporation, and you know, sometimes people have one corporate property and you know there’s a lot of things that have legal implications, tax implications, things that can affect your legacy and how things get passed down to your family, you know, and if they can afford to maybe take over your portfolio, depending on, again, how it’s structured right.
17:38
So I think getting that right professional advice from the get goes, so that you don’t have to go back and try to fix things from you know the standpoint of structure and legal and all of that stuff is super important. Yeah, now I guess, what kind of things are you working on right now? I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are like, oh, like, what kind of opportunities does she have? Maybe we can talk about you know how that works when you do bring on investors and what that looks like with your projects.
Speaker 218:05
Yeah, I mean I’ve got a handful of development projects in Edmonton and Calgary. Basically, like I said, these are the stacked town homes that are like built for purpose rentals. So why I do that is then investors come in on these projects and we own it together. Then you know they come in at the construction cost. So you know it’s almost like a pre construction price. So it’s not like you’re like we would have to find anything that’s already retail. So we already get that uplift that gets shared with the investors.
18:42
And then I manage it and run it as a rental as well. So it’s hands off for the investors. They get the benefit of being in a development which are generally provide higher returns. Yeah, because the parts, you know the sum of its parts is always more than the individual parts, and so then, but then holding it longer without the hassle of of, you know, managing the tenants or the property management etc. Of and the maintenance of the building. So that’s what I do, and then they get consistent returns at the end, where we actually exit from the property will likely do a sale or perhaps even a refinance, but you get double digit returns. Yet it’s in a really safe asset, in an asset. That’s also, you know, that has high demand, and so really right now, I’m just super excited about this. There’s a lot of people you know taking on the strategy as well, because it just offers so many benefits.
Speaker 119:43
Yeah, no, that’s amazing. I’m sure that there’s a lot of people like I don’t want to be a landlord, you know I don’t do any maintenance.
19:48
So it’s nice to hear that there’s other opportunities for people to consider, and it’s also something unique in the sense that you’re not buying, you know, just a multifamily property or or bring something like. You’re taking it literally all the way through from construction to to buying and holding and managing it and just offering that kind of a unique opportunity and solution maybe for investors that want to get involved but they just they don’t have the knowhow or they don’t have the time and and they can obviously reap the rewards by by working with you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So now, obviously, you’ve had quite an interesting journey with your career, so what would you say? Is your freedom number? Like, at what point do you think you’d look at it? Like, okay, I’ve made it, whether that’s numbers, cashflow per month, like a certain value to your portfolio?
Speaker 220:33
Gosh, you know that is such an interesting question and you know I would have to say and you know that I don’t necessarily have one and it does keep changing Like I mean, you know, when I’ve done those goal exercises, you know I’m like, oh, okay, I should pick one, but truly, for me it is more about the lifestyle, yeah. So right now I am very driven and very incented to just build this and really impact people and to know that, hey, I’ve changed the directory, the trajectory of their lives. If I ever find the balance off where, hey, it’s now taking up too much time for my family, I’m going to readjust. However, I love what I do and I really see myself continuing to do projects to like a ripe old age. Yeah, I just wanted to be 100% by choice. Yeah, right now I am still growing, I’m still helping my clients go. So I would definitely say I’m not there yet, but yeah, it’s in the horizon and maybe I should pick a number.
Speaker 121:36
Yeah, yeah, I find it really interesting. Obviously, those goals change because sometimes once you get there, it’s kind of like, okay, well, what’s next? Right? I think that’s what gives people that renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment. And it could even be how many people you’ve impacted to say, you know, I’ve been able to help 100 people, 1000 people, like some people say they want to educate a million people, like they’ve got these very lofty goals.
21:55
So it’s not necessarily always a self serving goal in the sense of money or something like that. I mean, for me, when I ran my business, I remember I was at like a mentorship event and I was so excited to be like I’m actually taking a month’s holidays this year. So it was, it was the most holidays I’d ever taken in 10 years, because it was, you know, week one year, nothing the following year, and you know, I felt chained to the business for the first 10 years. So when I hit that point where I could actually take a bit of a step back, I remember being, you know, to me that was this big achievement, to be like I’m actually taking a month’s holidays this year. So it obviously is different for some people and for me it was kind of like how well the business was doing like for how much holidays I could take was a reflection of how well the business was doing, because I could actually take that step back.
Speaker 222:39
Yes, yes, exactly. So there are so many different markers and I think you know you need to kind of figure out which one is the one that means more to you. And it could and it changes. That’s what I’m saying is like yes, you know, bob, it’s because you had achieved success, that’s why the number wasn’t even there that much, but with your commitment, and so, therefore, allowing yourself time off was more of the reward.
Speaker 123:02
right, yeah, no, absolutely. Now, I guess obviously the name of the podcast is Inspire to Invest, so there are any particular quotes that inspire you or motivate you that you’d like to share with?
Speaker 223:13
anyone One of my favorites, I guess and it’s a Chinese proverb, but it is, I think I have it on my Instagram as well it’s be not afraid of going slowly, but instead of standing still.
23:31
And I really like that because I really think that sometimes there are people out there that just perhaps they are ambitious, but because they’re so ambitious, their lofty goals are often the reasons that they’re stopped by them, Because they think if they can’t get from here to there in X time or that, it may not even be worth the effort. But especially true in real estate, but really in anything I really believe in just have to move, you just have to take action. That’s always my biggest message to people, too, when I coach, because it’s never a lack of knowledge, because knowledge is everywhere these days. Right, that are fingertips. You can even get AI to teach you something after you ask the question. But it’s not that, it’s how do you hack your brain to find out? How am I going to take to do what it takes to get there? And really it really is every little small step.
Speaker 124:37
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it’s just breaking it down into those achievable steps, and I think there’s a quote I heard recently that talks about how people often underestimate what they can achieve during a certain period of time. Then they overestimate what they can do in a short period of time so. I think making those little steps each day or taking that little bits of action. Obviously it adds up in the long run.
Speaker 225:02
Yeah, I think people would be really surprised. And if you trust yourself, that’s another thing I really would encourage people to do is, sometimes it is that lack of confidence, but just trust in yourself, trust in your capabilities. Find other areas that you’ve really been successful in and that you’ve been able to achieve what you wanted, and apply that to to yourself telling yourself, hey, like I’m able to do that, I can do this too.
Speaker 125:31
Yeah, and then you’ll work hard for 10 years and you’ll suddenly look like an overnight success. Yeah, right, yeah, exactly yeah. Now, in terms of where people can find you, whether it’s for opportunities or just to kind of follow along on your journey what’s the best place that they can access you?
Speaker 225:48
I guess my website is probably the best. It’s true Capital Real Estate. There’s no E in the true, so truecapitalrealestatecom and I am on Instagram as well Investor Carleen, and on Facebook as well.
Speaker 126:02
And we’ll include that, of course, for everyone that’s following along below. But thank you so much for being here today and for anyone that’s following along. If you’ve liked what you’ve seen and you wanna see future episodes, please make sure that you’ve subscribed and you’re following along to Inspire to Invest podcast on social. Thanks again.
Speaker 226:19
Thank you, Serena, it was so fun.
Speaker 126:22
Thanks again to Coast to Coast Homes and Real Power for bringing you this episode of Inspired to Invest. The views represented on this podcast are for general information only and does not constitute investment or other professional advice or an offering of securities. The host and guest featured on Inspire to Invest make no representations as to the performance of any particular investment. Should you decide to make an investment, you are responsible for conducting your own review and analysis. It is recommended that you obtain independent legal, accounting and tax advice from licensed professionals. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, you, you, you, you. You. Thanks again to coast to coast homes and real power for bringing you this episode of inspired to invest.