Wouldn’t you like to be living the kind of life you’ve always dreamed of?
Welcome back to the “Inspired To Invest” Real Estate Podcast. Meet Gareth West, a seasoned investor and real estate developer, who’s been flipping homes for over two decades.
To watch the episode, click below and to listen, here.
From seizing opportunities in the 2008 housing crisis to navigating the world of multi-unit residential buildings, Gareth’s journey is a riveting tale of resilience, foresight, and success. He credits a part of his success to the government’s CMHC financing program, a tool that has played a pivotal role in his endeavors investing in real estate.
In this engaging conversation, Gareth shares his insights on the current residential construction market, his evolving financial freedom number, and the potential investment opportunities stemming from a generational shift in residential building ownership.
Get ready to be inspired as he shares valuable advice drawn from his vast experience investing in real estate, his thoughts on the transition from baby boomers to the younger generation, and his unique perspective on real estate investment.
This episode offers more than just a glimpse into Gareth’s journey—it provides actionable insights for anyone looking to invest in real estate. So, whether you’re a seasoned investor or a newcomer, don’t miss this fascinating chat with Gareth West on the “Inspired To Invest” podcast.
To connect with Gareth directly, go to @west_gareth on Instagram, garethwest.com or westdevelopments.ca online
Thank you to Conduit Asset Management, Five Oaks Land Development and Stone Hearth Properties for bringing us this month’s episodes of “Inspired To Invest” to help people learn about the value of investing in real estate
To learn more about them, go to conduitassetmanagement.ca online and for Five Oaks Land Development/Stone Hearth Properties, go to @stonehearthproperties on social or https://fiveoaksld.ca or https://shproperties.ca online.
To connect with our host, Serena Holmes, continue exploring this site.
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!
Tune back in on Wed., Oct. 25 for Episode Twenty for a guest who believes in building the homes of tomorrow while living the best life you can today.
Thank you for tuning into “Inspired To Invest” & remember, “when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit!”
Investing In Real Estate | Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1
00:01
Welcome to the Inspire To Invest podcast, where we’re sharing stories from real estate investors and how investing has changed their lives. This episode of “Inspired To Invest” has been brought to you by Conduit Asset Management, Five Oaks Land Development and Stone Hearth Properties.
Speaker 2
00:20
Hey everybody, welcome to the “Inspired To Invest” podcast. I have Gareth West with me today. I promise he sounds so much better than I do. We’ll read a very short bio and then we’ll just dive right in. So Gareth, starting from the ground up, has been flipping homes since 20 years ago and shortly after the 2008 housing and financial crisis, decimating real estate values in the South, he raised funds to purchase a portfolio of residential homes outside of Atlanta, which he held on to until 2014. West developments has established the following year in Montreal and Gareth has been doing really great work since. So, without further ado, welcome, Gareth. I’d love to know a little bit more about your story and where things started for you before real estate.
Speaker 3
01:05
Well, first of all, thank you so much for this invitation, and it’s always a fun experience to discuss real estate and investing in particular.
01:14
As you said, 20 years ago I began flipping homes and then that kind of snowballed into just seeing other areas of real estate into which investments could be lucrative and, as you pointed out, the OA crisis, which unfortunately decimated so many, though it did create opportunities for others. I was fortunate enough to meet the founder of realtorcom, as it were, and then gave me some advice, which was, of course, to invest in a particular market outside of Atlanta, which I did, and we did very well on the investment, not only because of the appreciation that the properties realized after having, as we said, been so heavily reduced in their value, but because it was in those years, for the first time in maybe half a century, that the Canadian dollar was at par with the US dollar. So, by buying in that year with a par dollar, it was quite easy then to, in 2014, make the decision to sell when the dollar was comparatively at about 40 points higher. But that 40 point profit margin, without even that which was achieved on the homes themselves, was substantial.
Speaker 2
02:29
I mean, that’s where my real estate investing started, not in Atlanta but in Florida. I bought it later than you, but I bought when the dollar was at par as well, so I held on to it and obviously sold it, made most of my money on the exchange four years later, so I can appreciate that.
Speaker 3
02:44
Right, and obviously more people lost than one in that crisis. Now, then, just kind of try to parlay my profits into a purchase of some residential land in the Montreal area where I had a vision for custom construction, right, and I felt as though there was a market there in that particular area, and I proceeded to build these custom homes until really last year, when I saw the rise in interest rates became preventative for that type of custom construction. Yeah, it was just that the houses were not going to sell as they had previously, and in fact, I then took the opportunity to move to Toronto, where I’m located now, and began investing in multi-unit residential buildings.
Speaker 2
03:33
So, just going back when you started flipping houses, what was the catalyst Like? What were you doing before you started flipping houses?
Speaker 3
03:41
That was at a time when the US dollar was quite strong and there was tremendous opportunity for export. In fact, I was in the car business, exporting cars briefly which allowed me to raise sufficient capital to start my first flip, and those went well.
03:57
I had a partner at the time with whom we split profit and then snowballed into the purchase of other flips, and we really stayed with the flipping for that duration until shortly before the financial crisis, and had accumulated some savings with which the purchase in Atlanta was made and there were other opportunities. I think one of the things about investing is that there are so many opportunities and it’s difficult to choose the most profitable one, one that’s profitable at all, and Lord knows. I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes, though fortunately I’ve made more good decisions than bad ones over the years.
Speaker 2
04:44
Now, how did you choose to live back around Toronto? Because obviously Toronto is not really the cheapest place to invest. So what kind of multifamily are you focusing on here?
Speaker 3
04:54
Well, that’s a good point. In fact, I should have been more specific, because I am not investing in the GTA to your point. I do feel as though it’s overvalued, perhaps, or maybe that’s the wrong term but that it won’t appreciate as quickly as other adjacent communities to the GTA, and so I’m looking. In London there’s a lot of opportunity. Waterloo, I think, is up and coming with infrastructure. I believe these are areas that will experience large appreciation over the next 10 years, and much more so, in fact, than the GTA itself.
Speaker 2
05:29
So now you talked about obviously making some good decisions, hopefully more good than bad. When you look back at your career over the last 20 years, what do you think is the most success or the most accomplishment that you have?
Speaker 3
05:43
Without a question, it was the Atlanta purchase that was a home run in many respects and for many different reasons, and these things are often based on timing and, as we see, one of the things I think is likely to happen, with the interest rates as high as they are, is that the current owners of residential buildings, some of whom may not be running their buildings as well as others, the result of which is going to be the foreclosure or that they won’t be able to continue to pay the ever rising mortgage payments that they have.
06:17
And I think that there will be deals upcoming as those, maybe the owners who have run their businesses more poorly are shifted out of the market.
Speaker 2
06:28
Yeah, and one thing I’ve heard as well is just the amount of baby boomers that own portfolios and their children don’t want to carry them forward. So just based on that, there should be a lot of inventory when it comes to the multi-family space departments that could be potentially coming up in the coming years. Now, when you look back at lessons, so what do you think is like one of the hardest lessons that you’ve faced so far?
Speaker 3
06:53
I feel as though I’m not trusting my instincts sooner. For example, I should have left Montreal a year before I did, and by staying the year longer, the projects that I had on going at the time weren’t very successful, or certainly not to the standards that I try to hold myself. And that was also true even in going to Atlanta and maybe even selling Atlanta. I should have probably sold a year early. So, not trusting my gut, I had those intuitions and then just really didn’t follow them, and although those both ended up being profitable, not to the extent that they could have been?
Speaker 2
07:36
Yeah, I understand. Is there anything that you would define as, like some of the bigger obstacles that you faced?
Speaker 3
07:44
I think that as an entrepreneur, you don’t have the luxury of the salary and you’re constantly looking for the next win, the next winning project, and that can be stressful, and particularly if in between wins there’s a loss or a fail or one that’s not as successful. So those things can mount up and make you question your choices, question your decisions, and I’m certainly glad now, given where I am, that I’ve stuck to my guns, though there were certainly moments when I doubted myself and questioned whether I made the right decision.
Speaker 2
08:24
Yeah, I think that’s normal and I think that when you’re an entrepreneur and investor, you can be very isolating. So sometimes it’s easy because you wallow in that right Like, who do you bounce ideas off of? And like even just flushing something out just to give yourself the confidence no, like, no, this is okay. So I think that you’re not alone in feeling that way sometimes.
Speaker 3
08:43
Absolutely and to your point. You know, having the confidence in oneself is so necessary.
Speaker 2
08:50
Yeah.
Speaker 3
08:51
And difficult sometimes to have.
Speaker 2
08:54
Yeah, no great. So we’re just going to take a really brief break for our sponsors and we’ll be right back Time and time again we see investors struggling to manage multiple projects effectively.
Speaker 4
09:03
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Speaker 1
09:44
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 5
10:19
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Speaker 2
10:55
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Inspire to Invest podcast. I have Gareth West here talking about his career. That’s spent 20 years as a real estate investor, so we talked about some of your successes, your challenges and obstacles. What do you think is the craziest thing that you’ve ever experienced as an investor?
Speaker 3
11:13
Excuse me, I think there was a couple of properties where it was made clear by the municipality that the zoning was going to align with the project that we had intended for that property upon its purchase and then, after the purchase, in fact, two separate properties just happened. They went ahead and didn’t change the zoning as they said they were going to, and there ended up being stuck with these properties. There was nothing to do. Ultimately, however, we were able to persuade the city that these were projects that were going to benefit the communities. So I mean, those are not really crazy examples, but for us at the time it was quite difficult because we invested a ton of money into these particular properties and it seems for some time that they were going to be thoroughly useless.
Speaker 2
12:08
Yeah, yeah and I think that’s something that even other people have spoken to as well is like every day, there are those challenges or setbacks, and it’s how you have to face them and overcome them as just part of the journey, and that’s where you learn and hopefully you can try to minimize those issues going forward. You mentioned that you obviously got out of Montreal. What kind of things. Like you talked about London and these different areas. Like you have projects underway right now, or are you just looking at the moment?
Speaker 3
12:34
No, in fact, I have two buildings under contract now, one of which is to sign later this month and the other to sign early next month, and these are properties that will require, or at least that I intend on, rehabilitating and really trying to increase the values of those properties, refinance and proceed to get kind of the BRM method, and so I feel as though there’s a tremendous opportunity there I also will try to take advantage of. Pardon me, the CMHC financing program offered by the government in Canada permits, rather than a 25-year amortization, on any given note, for a 40 to 50-year amortization, which I mean we can see would be beneficial. In addition, which you can get financing of up to 95% loan to value, as opposed to the traditional 75%. So the combination of those two things almost results in a free building. Once the renovations have been completed, you have that initial investment. You’re hoping for between an 18 to 24 month turnaround, after which you get your investment dollars back and go on to build your portfolio and maintaining this building for really pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 2
13:51
Yeah, and I think one thing with that is that we had someone speaking to us about that at an event I was at recently and just was trying to roll with the changes. They released this MLIS Live program and now they’re going back and they’re adjusting it right. So for some people that are applying, they have to go back and they’re dealing with different circumstances, right. So just knowing that anything is bound to change at any time, so it’s a great project, great program, but just know you still have to expect the unexpected sometimes.
Speaker 3
14:22
Absolutely.
Speaker 2
14:23
Yeah, now, when you think back, is there anything that you would define as the best advice that you’ve ever been given?
Speaker 3
14:29
Well, at the risk of repeating myself from earlier, it was meeting the founder of realtorcom and it just so happened. I mean, I’m a fitness enthusiast and I met him in the gym. He and I ended up training together and he was very, extremely humble man but came out with the reality that he had founded this incredible company and he began to exchange some information and share some of the tips that he had. And one of the things I know that I’ve done well is to take risks, to not be averse to risk, and I went pretty much all in on that advice and it really paid off.
Speaker 2
15:15
Yeah, now what was it about that particular area that he felt like was so strong? Cause, obviously, the States? In general, there was different markets, but what was it about that particular market that he thought was gonna be good?
Speaker 3
15:28
There were three markets he suggested to me. There was the College Park area outside of Atlanta, there was an area just outside of Dallas, texas, and Las Vegas, nevada, and so, just for myself, geographically it made sense to keep myself on these coasts I was living in Montreal all the time and specifically to that area. These were brand new houses that had lost 50% of their value on account of never having been occupied. So they were foreclosed on and taken over by the bank, and the bank just had to recover their investment, and they were able to do so at pennies on the dollar or 50 cents on the dollar, and so that I think he obviously knew that. I certainly didn’t at the time, but when I went to investigate he was absolutely right and the thing came off exactly as he said it would yeah.
Speaker 2
16:23
Yeah, I think that’s amazing and I think obviously it’s good to have that intel and then do your own due diligence to back it up. So for anyone that’s watching, that’s a brand new investor. They’re not really sure, like, how to get started. Is there anything that you would say to them to kind of help them or build their path?
Speaker 3
16:39
Yeah, I think that it depends on what dollar amount that the investor has, and I think that there are good things that can be done. Given those amounts. I think flips are starting to resume profitability. Of course, I’m here in the multi-unit residential space. I have confidence in that market as well. The one thing I would maybe stay away from is new construction. It’s very difficult to get construction financing right now A tremendous amount of time and I just feel as though there are better places to put one’s money.
Speaker 2
17:15
Yeah, I think that’s part of it. I think there is a lot of opportunity as a developer, but maybe in terms of, like, being a consumer or something like that, then pre-construction can be challenging because it’s totally out of your control, right.
Speaker 3
17:28
Absolutely.
Speaker 2
17:29
Yeah, now is there anything in terms of quotes, any particular quotes that you find really inspire you or motivate you?
Speaker 3
17:37
There is, landlords become wealthier in their sleep, and that just occurs to me and one of the reasons, in fact, that I left the residential construction and particularly the custom homes. The frustration to me was constantly liquidating my assets, and during COVID I sold two homes relatively close to each other and both of the individuals to whom I sold them turned around within six months and nearly doubled their money, and I realized that would have been my profit and the concept of constantly selling my assets was not one that I was any longer comfortable with, and it’s for that reason, really, that I came to Toronto and am heavily committed now to the multi-unit residential and with the goal of establishing a portfolio of residential doors that will accumulate wealth over time.
Speaker 2
18:31
Yeah, Now, with that said, do you have a particular financial freedom number, like whether it’s number of doors, cash flow like? What does that look like for you?
Speaker 3
18:42
What I noticed about this is, over the years I’ve had, this number has changed, and so I think it would be disingenuous to my previous self to suggest I mean the new number that I have at any point in my life as I’ve approached that number, and from 10,000 to 100,000, to on and on, as I approach that number, it’s no longer the number and it changes. So you know, at the moment the idea of a thousand doors is nice. I think that’s a relatively short term goal. A longer term goal is 10,000 doors, and though I just suspect that history will repeat itself and as I approach that thousand, door mark.
19:22
I’ll no longer be satisfied with that amount.
Speaker 2
19:25
Yeah, but I think that’s important. Like it gives you that renewed sense of purpose or a new goal, like it doesn’t mean it doesn’t change, but just once you reach the pinnacle it’s kind of like OK, well, what next? That’s not unusual, ok. So I guess, in terms of anyone that wants to get in touch with you, how can people find you?
Speaker 3
19:42
Yeah, well, the website is Westdevelopmentsca and, of course, instagram, it being as strong as it is as a marketing tool, mine is West underscore, gareth.
Speaker 2
19:53
OK, so we’ll include that obviously below and thank you for your time. For anyone that’s watched this and you’d like to see future episodes, please make sure you subscribe and that you’re following along and inspire to invest podcast on social and remember when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit. Thanks again for tuning in.
Speaker 1
20:11
Thanks to our sponsors, Conduit Asset Management, Five Oaks Land Development and Stone Hearth Properties for bringing you this episode of the “Inspired To Invest” podcast.
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 hosting guests featured on Inspired 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.