Have you ever wondered if the daily grind is all there is to life? Welcome back to the “Inspired To Invest” Podcast.
On this week’s episode, prepare to be both motivated & inspired by Sibtain Panju. Along with his wife Insiyah, they traded their corporate shackles for the liberating world of real estate investing.
Buckle up as Sib showcases his multifamily property portfolio in Canada & his quest for financial independence, revealing the impact of passive income as well as some of the unexpected opportunities that emerged during the pandemic.
Launching a company called Pragma Properties, Sib talks about his & Insiyah’s meteoric rise in the industry, building an eight-figure portfolio in 3 short years. Their story is not just about acquiring properties, but about transforming lives, with a special mention of a Kingston gem bought sight unseen that turned into a gold mine.
This episode isn’t just a collection of success stories; it’s a treasure map for your own financial journey!
From the significance of solid partnerships & off-market deals to the practicalities of exit strategies, we uncover the essentials of building wealth through real estate.
Discover how Sib & Insiyah manoeuvre multifamily investments for superior cash flow & why they feel that this asset class trumps single-family homes. We also peel back the curtain on the freedoms afforded by this path, including more time for family, travel, and personal passions.
Join us as we chart out the life-altering power of real estate investing, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find the keys to unlock a future you’ve always dreamed of.
To connect with Sibtain, go to @pragmaproperty on social or online.
Thank you to Fluent Capital Lending Inc. for bringing us this month’s episodes of “Inspired To Invest”. To learn more, go to @fluentcapital on social & online.
“Inspired to Invest” is proud to support the Beyond Success Program, a not-for-profit financial literacy program for students, launched by More To Give & MAK Investments. Find out more!
Join us again on Feb. 14 to hear from an investor who will share key strategies you need to succeed when you’re investing in real estate.
Thank you for tuning in & remember, “when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit!”
To connect with our host, Serena Holmes & to buy a copy of The Accidental Entrepreneur.
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!
Real Estate Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1
00:01
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 the Inspire to Invest podcast has been brought to you by Fluent Capital. Welcome to the Inspire to Invest podcast. I have an amazing guest today named Sibtain Panju. He also goes by Sib, and him and his wife Insiyah grew their real estate portfolio to an impressive eight figures in just three years, enabling both of them to leave their full time jobs. Most of their multifamily projects have actually resulted in doubling the value while they’ve worked on them, and they really focus on bringing high quality, affordable housing to Canadians. They also have a given component to their business. On a monthly basis, they donate a percentage of their proceeds to causes such as providing education, clean water, food and shelter to deserving families and orphans in various locations across the world, and they want to support other investors to create passive income investing in real estate through their company, Pragma Properties. So welcome to day, sip. How are you?
Speaker 2
01:07
Good thanks, Serena. How are you Thanks? For having me on the podcast.
Speaker 1
01:09
Yeah, I’m so happy to be here. I think your story is so inspiring because you and Insiyah had obviously left your full time jobs and you know now you’re living a good life, I guess you can say but no complaints. First, is like what. What did life look like before real estate for both of you?
Speaker 2
01:26
Yeah, so that’s a good question. We basically followed the traditional route. We went to school, did the BCOM, I did the CPA, cfa and you know, nca was a high school teacher for a few years, just before she quit her job in 2020. You know, I came from the corporate world. I worked at Coca-Cola, I worked at Nestle and corporate finance before joining a big five bank. You know, in the bank I was there for almost 20 years or so. I worked in finance, vendor management. You know I worked on some large projects and large deals and contracts. So for over 20 years I was working the nine to five job, taking the GO train every day downtown, because back then, you know, there was no work from home strategy, right?
Speaker 1
02:09
So hustle and bustle.
Speaker 2
02:11
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1
02:14
So then, what was the catalyst to get you shifting over from the corporate world into real estate?
Speaker 2
02:18
Yeah. So I’ve always wanted to have passive income because I knew long term. I wanted passive income because we were trading time for money and paying a lot of taxes, like huge amounts of taxes. There’s actually a date in June where you’re working for the government, like from January till June paying taxes. So I was always looking for passive income opportunities. We did some real estate flips, single family, we did some stock option trading, we did some stocks and bonds, things like that for passive income.
02:49
But then I came to a point in my life when I realized that, you know, this can’t go on for another 20, 30 years, right? Yeah. So but what happened was after we had kids, life got busy with the, you know the nine to five job leave the house seven o’clock, come back at 6 pm, take the kids for hockey. Our kids were into hockey, taekwondo, soccer, tennis, skiing, snowboarding, right. So the life was just busy. And then the social life.
03:13
On top of that, the main catalyst for us was COVID. So when COVID happened, everything stopped All of a sudden. We were working nine to five, working from home, and then we had the evenings and weekends free. So we started, you know, meeting a lot of people, like over the phone and things like that. We started traveling to cities to see properties. We spent a weekend in Windsor, we spent a weekend in Kingston, for example, we attended seminars, we started networking and so, in 2020, we bought our first two multifamily properties, and then that’s when I see a quitter job, and then the rest of this street, right. So COVID was a great catalyst for us to move this forward.
Speaker 1
03:56
Yeah, now I know you didn’t leave your job at the same time. You just left not too long ago. I think it was maybe four or five months ago, if I’m remembering. So why did that feel like the right time? Like, and see, obviously left sooner, but why did you feel like you were ready, I guess?
Speaker 2
04:11
Yeah, I think I think it came came a point where I couldn’t do both. You know, I was taking up my weekends and the whole point of doing this was to have a work-life balance and a work lifestyle, and so we quickly realized that, like working weekends Is not what we wanted. So so quitting the job was was gave me a work-life balance. It also gave me time to explore new opportunities. Yeah, and in said quarter job shoes, full-time on on the multi-family game since 2020 yeah, which helped us build the portfolio to a point, but but really helped that I had extra time as well.
Speaker 1
04:45
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense now when you look back at everything you’ve done, like it’s obviously been a lot in just a very short Period of time. So is there anything in particular that you think you’re most proud of or you look at is your biggest success so far?
Speaker 2
04:59
I think our biggest accomplishment is building our power team. You know we’ve built our team over the years, from realtors to contractors, to our mentors. We have great lawyers, mortgage brokers, bankers, account so like they’re all part of our team. The real estate is a team sport, yeah, but it takes time to get the right contacts. You know, the last few deals We’ve done have been off market deals. We also recently partnered up with a company that does midterm rentals for traveling nurses, yeah, which is going to double our, our income in those units where the traveling nurses their furnished rentals, which takes a little bit of a capital investment. And just from the standpoint of projects, there’s been a couple of projects, you know. One one was in Kingston, one was in St John where we more than doubled the property value through renovations within sweet laundry and with, you know, putting in mini splits and the full renovation new roof, new windows, buildings needed, everything.
Speaker 1
05:52
So no, is there any particular market that you’ve found, that you’ve worked in so far that you have been happiest with?
Speaker 2
06:01
You know what the each market has its own sort of pros and cons to it. The Ontario market has has more laws you have to deal with for landlord tenant laws. The New Brunswick market and the the Alberta market where we have properties, the laws are a lot better, yeah, but sometimes, like like in the Alberta market, the lift in the property value Is not as much upfront Because the rents are a little bit lower. Right now they’re a little bit depressed. They’ve been climbing up over the past year. But the Moncton market, st John, frederickton markets have all been very good in terms of the rental increases. You know they’re very fast growing provinces with very low vacancy.
Speaker 1
06:41
Yeah, yeah, I know that’s awesome. Can you speak a little bit more to how those landlord tenant laws are different? So obviously I think everybody knows that in Ontario they’re very tenant friendly, but when you’re looking at something in Alberta or New Brunswick as a property owner or landlord, how is that different in terms of dealing with a tenant related issue?
Speaker 2
06:59
Yeah, so. So in in Ontario, you know if a tenant stops paying you rent. We had one tenant that stopped paying us rent, you know, and he and he wouldn’t even pay the previous landlord so he hadn’t been paying rent for a long time. It took us about 14 months to get that tenant out In New Brunswick, for example. You can, you know if a tenant stops paying rent. It’s between 30 and 60 days that it’s very easy to to get that tenant out if they’re not paying rent. And then the landlord tenant board process in Ontario just a waiting game. We have some friends in the business as well and they’ve been waiting six months, eight months, yeah, just to deal with the landlord tenant board.
07:36
Yeah, I’m glad for Biddy. Make a mistake and then you have to go start all over again. Yeah, that’s, that’s happened to some friends of ours.
Speaker 1
07:43
Yeah, yeah, now, I guess in terms of obstacles, what would you say is the biggest obstacle that you face while you’re building this portfolio? You?
Speaker 2
07:52
You know, the biggest obstacle, and still is the biggest obstacle, is time. Right, real estate is a time consuming business. We look at 100 deals, we run numbers on maybe 30 deals, we offer on 10 and we get one property. And then, once you get the property, then you start the process, the financing, the renovation, the tenant management, property management, and then there’s the operational side of it, the accounting, the taxes. So the biggest obstacle is time right now, and it always has been time. You know we are building out our team and you know our goal is to work on the business, not in the business. And we also love, you know, sports, traveling, meeting people, so just juggling, all that is an obstacle.
Speaker 1
08:35
Yeah, no, I can understand. I appreciate that. I guess, in terms of some of the learnings that you’ve had, what would you say are a couple of the biggest lessons that you’ve come across so far?
Speaker 2
08:44
A couple of lessons are. You know, we continue to learn. One of the lessons that we should have probably brought more property 20 years ago than stocks, yeah, but you know, when the mortgage rates were low a few years ago, a couple of years ago, we should have locked in for longer terms. I think that was a simple lesson that we should have learned. You know, our brokers and our bankers were always saying, well, you can get more flexibility with a shorter term, but the reality is you can always get a second mortgage if you want to refinance a property after a few years, right.
09:21
And then a lesson that I learned over the years in the past is don’t speculate Like we don’t buy a pre-construction condo, things like that, because you don’t know what the market’s going to do, because supply and demand things can change. We’ve been through some weird cycles over the past few years with COVID, with the interest rates changing. So hope for the best but prepare for the worst. So we invest based on solid numbers and cash flow that we can hold the properties on a long-term basis if we need to.
Speaker 1
09:49
Yeah, yeah, I know that makes perfect sense. So with those pearls of wisdom, we’re just going to take a really brief break. Try our work from our sponsors and we’ll be right back. Inspired to invest is proud to support the Beyond Success program. In today’s complex world, it’s absolutely crucial for our youth to learn how to take charge of their financial future. We believe that every young person deserves access to accurate, practical financial information. Designed to bridge the gap, the Beyond Success program leverages a comprehensive educational bootcamp to equip young minds with essential financial literacy skills. At Beyond Success, it’s not just about teaching financial literacy. It’s also about fostering a foundation for a prosperous and empowered future. Join us. Together, we can build a brighter financial future for the next generations. We are so excited to announce the launch of Fluent Capital, a competitive investment and lending solution to all of our clients.
Speaker 3
10:44
We’re providing competitive investment rates as well as alternative lending options for first and second mortgages. Our mission is preservation of capital through rigorous underwriting processes to ensure we preserve your investment. So what makes Fluent different from other investment firms? We have a low-fee structure with full transparency, and we have a low-fee structure with a high-fee structure. We have a low-fee structure with full transparency, and our investors receive the interest income as well as all the other fees that we charge to our borrowers. That includes administration fees, renewal fees, discharge fees and origination fees. At Fluent Capital, we’re all about risk management and preservation of your capital. Fluent Capital, we speak your language.
Speaker 1
11:30
I value transparency, integrity and trust. If you choose to work with me, you can be assured that business will be conducted honestly and openly. Time is up the essence in this industry, so you can expect nothing short of quick, clear communication from me. I’ll keep you informed every step of the way so you feel comfortable throughout this entire process. Our homes are where we eat, sleep, relax and play. My client’s best interests are at the heart of everything I do and, with this said, my service to you doesn’t end when the transaction does. As your realtor, I’ll not only help you buy and sell your property. I’ll also educate and support you along the way. I want to help you fulfill your goal of home ownership and become your trusted real estate resource for life. I can’t wait to share my passion for real estate with you. More importantly, to find you the perfect house to turn into your home.
12:25
Looking to buy, sell or invest in Durham Region or Toronto? Let’s chat. Welcome back to the Inspire to Invest podcast. I have Subtained Panju here from Pragma Properties, and him and his wife and I have built up a very impressive portfolio worth more than eight figures in just three years. So he’s talking to us about some of the challenges that he’s experienced, obstacles, successes, and I guess one thing that I really want to know is what’s the craziest thing that you would say has happened to you so far as a real estate investor.
Speaker 2
12:53
Yeah, I think the craziest thing first to think back is how we bought the Kingston property. You know, we were new to the multi-family game. We had one Sixplex at that point we had walked through many buildings, we had run many numbers on many buildings. But we noticed the property online and we called the realtor and learned that the offers are due in two hours and there’s 10 offers on the property already. We ran the numbers and decided that this property can support 30% over the asking price, like $400,000 over the asking price. We went in and we placed the offer Within two hours. We had not seen the property, but we had seen enough properties and ran enough numbers to know that this could easily support, you know, the 30% over asking. So we got the property. This property needed everything from roof to windows, full suite renovations. The properties now doubled in value. The rents were $800, and now they’re about $1,800.
Speaker 1
13:56
Wow, yeah, that’s significant and I’d say that’s pretty brave going in. I guess you obviously had pretty significant conditions if you’re going in buying site unseen.
Speaker 2
14:06
No, so we had limited conditions on that property because there were 10 bids on the property, right. So we had to ask a lot of good questions, we had to get some video footage quickly from the realtor, yeah, and we had to go in with limited conditions on that property. So it was a really crazy story on that one.
Speaker 1
14:24
Yeah, I’d say so, but a good way to thank Nimble and beyond your feet, so that’s awesome. Now, I guess, in terms of mentorship and education, you obviously talked about, you know, networking and joining different organizations and stuff like that. What would you say is some of the best advice that you’ve been given over the last few years?
Speaker 2
14:41
Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of advice from a lot of great people over the years, which has helped us get to where we are. But, you know, some of the best advice we’ve had is between where you are and where you want to be. There are people. Right, you have to connect with a lot of people. You have to leverage people, leverage their knowledge, leverage training. We’re part of a lot of networks and masterminds that help us grow every day. You know, partner with people who are already doing what you would like to do, right, but you have to take action. Like you have to partner with somebody, you have to take action. You have to take the training. You have to pound the pavement sometimes to go see properties, right, yeah, and then the last thing I guess is invest in multifamily versus single family. The cash flow is better, expenses are lower and you can force the appreciation on these properties and the risk profile is overall lower as well, because you have you know, if one tenant doesn’t pay rent, it’s a small percentage of your overall income, right?
Speaker 1
15:36
Yeah, now would you say that there’s a sweet spot with your properties. Like are you looking at the smaller multis? Are you working towards larger acquisitions? Like, what would you say is really your focus?
Speaker 2
15:46
Yeah, we look for anything between. You know, over the past year anything between like 12 units has sort of done the lower side To one that we looked at which was about 110 units. So it’s a pretty wide range. We find that once you get over the 50 unit mark the competition gets tougher, the income kind of the cap rates get a little bit lower. So you know, the sweet spot might be between 12 and, let’s say, 50. But at the same time you know we are looking at the larger stuff as well.
Speaker 1
16:18
Okay, so now can you talk a little bit about for anyone that’s listening that you know they’d like to do something like this. Can you talk about how you’re doing this? Because I’m sure that you guys just didn’t set aside a portion of your personal savings to go out and buy all these apartment buildings. So can you talk a little bit more about your process and your partnerships and things like that?
Speaker 2
16:36
Yeah, sure, so we. Essentially what we do is we started buying properties with our own money first, but then eventually you need capital to buy these large properties, right? So we partner with people like usually it’s people that know us from somewhere, like either through networks or through friends and family, and essentially we partner with them. They bring in the capital for the down payment and then we share and everything else, including the proceeds of the property, and when the property value doubles, we refinance the property. So it’s the BRR strategy to buy, renovate, rent, refinance and then repeat.
17:12
Yeah, right, so essentially you can refinance the property, get the capital out for the capital partner, and then what happens is they can reinvest that capital or they can invest in something else, but they still maintain their equity share in the property, yeah, which helps them grow their portfolio long term. Right. And property, the multifamily properties we’ve been looking at they double between seven and 10 years on average. Yeah, right, so if you have a $10 million portfolio in 10 years, if it’s $20 million in another 10 years it could be $40 million, right?
Speaker 1
17:44
Yeah, no, that’s significant. Now, when you are partnering with someone, how do you feel the conversations regarding, like, exit strategies? So, obviously, life happens. Someone may go into partnership with you and know they think that they’re going to want to be this partner for 10 years or something. But have you had any experiences where someone’s like we’ll ask to exit earlier. Like, how would you approach that if that happened?
Speaker 2
18:07
Yeah, so, like most of our partners right now are on a buy and hold strategy, like similar to us, but we do allow our partners to exit. You know, we say the minimum whole period should be three years, but then after that point, if they want to exit, we will buy them out. If we can’t or don’t want to buy them out for whatever reason, then we will put the property on the market Like within six months, no questions asked.
Speaker 1
18:34
Okay, yeah, I was just curious to see how that is. I was speaking to someone earlier this week and they said they bought up all these properties, but then the problem was life changes. So they were just in a situation where they had to solve and the intention was to be more of a buy and hold. So I was just curious to see how you approached that. Now, in terms of the projects you have going on right now, can you talk a little bit about what’s next for you guys?
Speaker 2
18:58
Yeah, so we’re still looking at multifamily opportunities across Canada right now. You know we’re slandallizing a lot of deals. We have a couple under contract right now. Both are in Ontario, both are multifamily value-added strategies. On both properties we manage to negotiate vendor take-back mortgages and both properties are close to schools and hospitals, which tends to drive up revenue over the long term. One of the properties is $2.5 million range, the other one is $9 million range and to top it all I’ll top it off the properties both come with large pieces of land which are already zoned for higher density. So on a long-term basis you can actually develop.
19:38
Yeah, yeah, there’s an option for big lift there. We’re also looking in the States, but the opportunities that we’re seeing there are not necessarily better than what we’re seeing here. So we are looking at both sides of the border.
Speaker 1
19:51
Okay, so now for anyone that’s new to real estate and they may not understand the term vendor take-back, can you talk about what that is and how you approach that situation with people that owned those buildings?
Speaker 2
20:02
Sure. So in terms of vendor take-back mortgage, essentially, instead of the bank providing you the mortgage, the seller like one of the properties. That’s $2.5 million. The seller is providing about $1.6 million of the mortgage. So we bring in a down payment and the seller basically becomes the bank for us and we pay them interest only and that particular mortgage is at 4.75%, which is better than the bank rates right now and there’s no bank fees and things like that. So it’s a much better deal. And so we have a four-year deal on that mortgage where the seller just provides the mortgage and takes the interest and from a seller’s perspective it’s better because they actually save on capital gains tax. That can spread it out over the years.
Speaker 1
20:49
Yeah, no, awesome, I just wanted to make sure that we shed some light on that Now, in terms of financial freedom number, obviously you guys have retired from your full-time jobs. Obviously you’re still working as investors. But what does financial freedom mean to you, whether that’s a portfolio, cash flow, number of doors, return on time?
Speaker 2
21:07
Yeah, it’s not really a number of doors, because number of doors the price can vary on the doors. So we focus more on the portfolio value and we don’t have an exact number. But we don’t want to have necessarily billions and billions of dollars of real estate and just work the rest of our lives like crazy.
Speaker 1
21:22
Yeah.
Speaker 2
21:23
What we’d like to do is build it to like nine figures and then sort of decide what to do from that point. Awesome.
Speaker 1
21:30
Now how would you say real estate investing has changed your life.
Speaker 2
21:36
Yeah, it’s been great. I mean we’ve been traveling a lot more than we have in the past. We’ve done about four or five trips. This year we went on a cruise for like three weeks. We just picked up and left. You can still work from wherever you are. We’re seeing friends more often now. Previously it was like you meet your friends on Friday and Saturday because you have to wake up early the following day and get to work. So now you can have like work-life integration where you might be working on Saturday morning when you have some time and things are quiet and you want some headspace, but at the same time you can be out on Tuesday night and Thursday night. Typically we’re out two or three nights a week now and there’s a lot more flexibility. And the kids even. We see the kids a lot more. We’re playing sports with the kids a lot more. I’ve picked up tennis over the past two or two as well.
Speaker 1
22:29
Yeah, no, I think that’s important just to shed light on what that looks like, because, at the end of the day I think we talked about offline that real estate investing is not just so much that someone’s so passionate about apartments or being a landlord and things that go along. It’s really just how it can really transform your life and having access to things that you wouldn’t necessarily have if you were working for someone else. Now, in terms of inspiration and motivation, is there any particular quote that you like to live by or really inspires you?
Speaker 2
22:59
I’m a quote guy so I have a lot of quotes, so I’ll try and pick a couple that I like. One that stuck with me over the years, since I was almost like a kid, is work hard, play hard and pray hard. So it’s not just about working hard, but make sure you also play hard, and when you do work hard you actually enjoy the play time more. And the second quote is be the change you wish to see in the world, which is Mathma Gandhi. You can’t control everything, but you do have control over what you do, and so be a good person and help those around you.
Speaker 1
23:32
Yeah, now that makes perfect sense. Now, for anyone that has been watching that wants to get in touch with you, what’s the easiest way for them to connect?
Speaker 2
23:39
Yeah, I think a couple of easy ways are our website, which is pragmapropertiescom, and then our Instagram is at pragmaproperty.
Speaker 1
23:48
Perfect, and we’ll include that in the show notes below, of course. Now, is there anything else that you wanted to leave with our audience before we sign up?
Speaker 2
23:56
You know what? Take action and get out there, because if you don’t take action, your return on investment is going to be zero, right? So take action and get out there.
Speaker 1
24:05
Yeah, take messy action. It doesn’t have to be perfect in the beginning Imperfect action on the point, or partner with someone like you guys that know what they’re doing.
24:10
That’s right, awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here. Of course, for anyone that’s tuning in, if you like what you’ve seen or heard, please make sure that you like, comment and subscribe, and if you’re tuning in with your audio streaming, please leave a review. You can follow along with us as well at Inspired To Invest podcast on Instagram. We share lots of content before and after episodes are airing, and remember, when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit. Thanks again.
Speaker 2
24:37
Thanks, Serena, awesome.
Speaker 1
24:39 So I’m just going to end this. Thanks again to Fluent Capital for bringing you this episode of Inspire 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 professional