Balancing Risk and Reward As A Private Lender For Real Estate
Wealth through real estate can be extremely rewarding, but you still need to balance these rewards with the potential risks involved.
What you need to know about navigating risks when it comes to investing in real estate.
In this episode of The Wealth Through Real Estate Podcast, hosted by El-Ray Noble, Serena Holmes provides a candid look into her investment journey, offering practical insights and real-life experiences.
She discusses the deals she invested in, which significantly expanded her investment portfolio.
From pre-construction properties to syndicated mortgages and private lending deals, whether, you’re a seasoned veteran or looking to get started in Real Estate Investing, this is a must watch.
⭐Want to book an investors consultation with El-Ray? Go to https://calendly.com/el-ray/investor_… ⭐Looking to sell your property? Go to https://calendly.com/el-ray/listing-c… #eXpRealty Find Serena Holmes https://instagram.com/serenaholmesrealtor https://instagram.com/inspiredtoinvestpodcast
Real Estate Podcast Transcript
Transcript
0:00and I think it’s different where your one toone as a joint friendship partner I think you just want to make sure that they have a proven trap record of
0:06business and I wouldn’t say take for granted like how long I can happen cuz there’s someone in my community that’s been doing this since I think 2012 and
0:14she just F bankruptcy for one of her companies and I think it stems potentially from especially new
0:19investors deciding when is it the right time for me to enter a free community versus a paid Community there’s kind of
0:25a quote that says only those who risk going too far will ever know how far to go yes there could be setb and stuff
0:30like that I would be where I am had I
0:36[Music] not joining us today is Serena Holmes
0:42Serena can you tell us a little bit about your background in real estate and how you got started in the industry yeah
0:48for sure so I uh used to run my own agency was all about Staffing and experiential marketing and I guess it
0:54was back around 2012 so we were about 8 years in and I was like should a
0:59business coach like I’m sure there’s lots that I don’t know like I’ve been winging it and my first coach was pretty
1:04expensive like she was $1,200 a month I think for two meetings a month and the two big takeaways were managing my
1:11margins uh but the other thing was really just how much money that you need to operate on so at that point in time
1:17we had you know a year and a half of operating cost in the bank and she’s like this is a waste like why would you just have this money in the bank I’m
1:23like well we have a don’t make sales for a while like I can pay for anything like and she just really encouraged me to
1:29start investing so she said you know most business owners only operate with 3 months you have like 18 months so she
1:36encouraged me to take out some money to start investing with so at that point in time I wasn’t really sure what I wanted
1:42to do and because I was self-employed I just felt like I couldn’t qualify multi family was definitely not on my radar so
1:49I ended up buying a short-term rental in Florida and it was back when the dollar was at par so when is that ever going to
1:54happen again so I was able to basically buy it for cash between the money that I had in my bus business as well as
2:00somebody on a HELOC and I kept that for four years um pretty much rented a
2:05deficit the entire time because the people that I bought it from um you know
2:10they made it seem like it would be booked all by eight or nine weeks of the year and it’s kind of the opposite like January to March no problem I could book
2:17probably four years in advance um but the whole rest of the year was vacant unless we got like a bonus renter at
2:23different times of the year so um essentially I was able to at least keep it for a period of time and then when
2:28the dollar shifted I sold it and uh went back to the drawing board so and of
2:34started educating myself more and you know diversifying ter all I was doing so what attracted you to the the short-term
2:41rental side initially versus just a standard put a tenant in there and kind of hopefully let it run itself because I
2:47know short-term rental tends to be a little bit more active um and you you obviously had your your business that
2:53you were running at the time so what what inspired that yeah I mean it wasn’t really active
2:59because where it was it was at a like a country club basically it’s golf course
3:04in Country Club so people that came usually stayed for 30 days so it wasn’t like you were turning them over weekends
3:09and stuff like that so more often than not you even get the same like snow GS that come down January to March so in
3:15that sense it wasn’t heavy turnover like I did still have to learn you know navigating having a rental in the states
3:23having like American bank accounts to pay bills and transferring money around and things like that but it really just came down to what I could afford and pay
3:29for cash just because I didn’t feel like I qualify for very much here and at that
3:34point in time I didn’t know anything about commercial real estate so looking back if I knew that like had I gone into
3:41multif family then like I think I would be maybe a little further ahead in different ways at this point in time and
3:46obviously it’s a lot easier to qualify for commercially because it’s the noi that’s basically qualifying you not
3:52necessarily your personal situation right so being a business owner like I paid for a lot of expenses through the
3:58company kept my pay relatively low which is fine from a Town’s perspective until you need to qualify for something right
4:04so then they’re like this is all you make and it’s like well not really but like that’s how they look at it right so
4:10it was just at that point in time the easiest step into the market based on the fact I had no background and no
4:15education why the states I mean I know I get I get the appeal to it and there’s a lot of people that that want to invest
4:21in the us but as your first property like I mean at this point you were living in Canada right yeah um so in
4:27particular we have family that have been in the St States for okay since 94 or something like that and I had an aunt
4:34and uncle in that area so they were only 20 minutes away so I could lean on them if we needed help there was family
4:40friends of theirs that had a unit in the building right beside ours so they were kind of showing us around at all the different places and that really the
4:46Bing was just buying things at par right like we knew that yes this is like this unique window in time
4:52where dollar for dollar were equal and I knew that I was banking on that more so than the market shifting like in the
4:58span of those years it went for me AR like $137 to one so that was really
5:04where I made the majority of the profit when we did eventually sell okay no that that makes sense so so you decided okay
5:11well maybe this isn’t the strategy for me so what happened after you sold what
5:16did you do then yeah I mean again it was operating at a loss and it just felt like it was this tiny little like 1100
5:22squ foot condo everything broke everything like I think the air conditioner broke three times uh you
5:28know Springs in the windows when the Furnitures fall apart like it was beautiful but it was just like that time
5:34span when everything kind of starts to go within it and it just felt like an obligation like it felt like we still
5:40had to go down there at least a couple times a year and check up on it and stuff like that and you know it was nice to be able to spend that time with
5:47family and it turned out like neighbors of ours the cottage IAT 10 minutes away so it was nice to have those things but
5:52it just felt like it was becoming more of a drain and when we were at the point where we wanted to start a family like
5:58do we just only want to keep going back there we get your time that we have so I ended up selling it I didn’t know what
6:04to do but I ended up um Staffing events for a really well-known real estate education company here and it put me on
6:10their radar so I went to their well tour sat through the one hour and of course furiously wrote a notebook I’m like oh
6:16my gosh there’s all these things I don’t know so I signed up for their two-day event and then it led into their
6:22membership and um I was on the fence because it was very costly at Point time I $35,000 to join and I met someone that
6:30was a mother-in-law one of my staff that gave me the encouragement the question that I needed she’s like it won’t be a waste if you’re ready to take action and
6:37at this point in time I did have money that I intended to invest with so I went to their investor Summit and I bought
6:43two brief instruction properties I invested in three syndicated mortgages a land F in the deal and then I was
6:49introduced to private lending so everything just really snowballed at that point time wow okay yeah so yeah
6:55quite the snowball um so like what the the pre-construction property what was some key lessons that you
7:01learned from that experience yeah I wouldn’t have probably I wouldn’t do it again just because I
7:09had the money available and it was kind of the easy thing to do at that point in time but first of all you have to wait for the property to be done so you can’t
7:16you’re not making money on your money right away you’re waiting um and again multia was just not then what it is now
7:23where I think looking back I I wish I would have found some to partner with to
7:29you know Jo Venture on a multif family property where we can improve it and he repurposing that initial Capital but at
7:35the time it was the opportunities that were at hand so at least I was doing something but I bought a preconstruction
7:41condo inally that I intended to sell an assignment and it took about a year longer than intended which isn’t too bad
7:46considering like in Toronto could be like five years longer um but it only made probably about half of what I
7:53expected it to make and what was projected and then I kept um a long-term tenant in Edmonton was basically sueded
8:01um property where I was renting the main floor and the lower levels so I kept that for four years and it did you know
8:07appreciate and value and then I decided that I would sell that and I would ideally move into multif family and um
8:14it was right around the same time interest rates were changing and stuff like that so um I kind of shifted
8:19everything at that point in time okay and so you moved into multif family and I take youy no I wanted to move into
8:25multi that was a plan I sold it with the intention so I put an offer on a
8:30property in Kate brenon and it was a package of property so it was about I think it was like 30 units across six
8:37properties it’s kind of an interesting thing and my plan was that I would buy it side on scene but I would go there
8:42for due diligence and everything else and I guess the seller was uncomfortable with the fact that I hadn’t seen it yet
8:47so they actually chose the offer that was a lower amount just because that buyer had physically seen it so at that
8:53point time I thought well you know maybe this happened for a reason like maybe there’s just stuff that I don’t know so
8:59maybe I need to educate myself more I learn a little bit more about what I want to do so I ended up jumping all
9:05that money into private lending what was supposed to be a year so that I could take that time and I explored a lot of
9:10different things like short-term rentals in you know various places like tum Costa Rica kirasa I looked midterm
9:17rentals in kind of the Midwest I was exploring like join frch on a multif family in the east coast and my plan is
9:24that all that money was supposed to come back last summer and then um I was notified of little before saying oh
9:30everybody has to extend by 6 months so that was supposed to come back uh January and then um the mortgage broker
9:36I was working with kind of imploded so now everything is wrapped up in a whole
9:43situation at the moment so I’m cautiously optimistic it will eventually get resolved but it’s tied up in you
9:51know so proceedings and insolvency protection at the moment some of it is outside of that direct borrowers so
9:57we’ve been left to try to connect to those borrowers to find Solutions so I really thought I was really widely Diversified with nine or
10:0410 different borrowers and then all this happened like just in the last couple of months so you know me and 500 other
10:11investors are all grappling with that at the moment um but I think the Silver
10:16Lining like I’m young enough to recover like there are a lot of investors that
10:21are in their seniors or breing Keck Ming and stuff like that and they’re really
10:27struggling right now so um yeah so lots of lessons kind of going through that full process that was really unexpected
10:34but like I said I pasly optimistic that it’s going to get res is just going to take some time yes that is I think
10:41that’s that’s a big a big worry right now um in general yeah would you mind
10:48touching on some key lessons that you’ve taken away from there had you had you had the opportunity to start over and
10:55and and do this from scratch what what would you look out for this time and what due diligence can can others look
11:00into to to sort of Follow that path yeah so um when I had started kind of going
11:05more into this path I was introduced to the concept of private lending and I think I was really blessed in a way that
11:11you know I did 60 deals in five years all unsecured except for one and everything was fine like everything came
11:17back on time or early there was never any delays and then as of last summer
11:22everything kind of started to shift and looking back I think I just got a little bit too comfortable because everything
11:29had gone so well for so long like i’ even been living off of it for a few years really and it was really stable um
11:36I think with the money that I had put in like I regret not putting it into secured first position but again I
11:43just yeah I wasn’t really that worried about it because I was so well Diversified and no one could have
11:48expected this so that’s one thing not to say that it wouldn’t change what happened like the people that are in the
11:53secured mortgages are basically in the same thing like in the sense that everything is paused while all these
11:59borrowers are in CCA protection um so they’re all on pause they know they’re going to be taken care of like as assets
12:06start to refinance and sell like they’ll obviously be paid out first um so there’s been some lessons there but
12:11specifically with this mortgage broker I think you know again I thought I was very Diversified I think now I would
12:16probably never trust any Mor Hood broker with any like just with everything like
12:22you know I always believed in diversifying but I never would have thought I would have to diversify even to that extent and there were some
12:29things that that mortgage Rover were doing like they had offered one option for people that if you want didn’t want
12:35to assume the risk with the bore that they would assume the risk and I didn’t go down that path but that should have
12:41almost been like a warning sign because like how would they possibly be guaranteeing this and taking the risk
12:46when there’s no assets to back it so there’s probably about 400 plus investors with 80 million invested that
12:53are in this fund so they’re actually now an arms length away from the borrowers so just that whole situ with those
12:59investors is um a bit of a mess um there’s more due diligence I think I
13:05would have done with the properties like again with promissary notes because they’re not registered you don’t see
13:10everything so what we’re seeing now that the investors are all together is like yes they had mortgages on the properties
13:15but they were using promisory note money for the down payment and closing costs then they were doing more promisory
13:21notes for renovation so in some instances there’s you know three or four promisory notes on a property and the
13:26debt on the property actually exceeds the value of the property yeah so now that we’re literally seeing it like we
13:32have a Google sheet where everything is shared together so everybody’s just like oh my gosh like when you see the scope of that there’s no way that you could
13:38have necessarily known that so I think we’re learning a lot through that and then the other thing is that the mortgage broker offered three options
13:44for first position that you could off have a 100% loed value and get a certain rate I think it was like 133% 9010 and
13:51it was 12% or you do 80 20 to sale 10 or 11% of private mortgages and thinking
13:57back now I’m like why would any Roper be offering 100% loan of value because
14:03obviously when the market shifts and the property could be worth worth less than the mortgage right so there’s a number
14:08of things that just looking back I think um you know they had a great reputation in in around for 10 years they had 305
14:14FAL reviews um but now looking at it there’s no way we could have realized
14:20like how few borrowers they worked with and how many lenders there really were
14:26and how much lending was facilitated like one of the borrowers has I think I think they owe 4 to5 million and they
14:32only have a couple of assets so like they don’t even have the assets to support it right so the plan that they
14:37presented to us as lenders is that it would take like a flip a bun for two years just to pck off our principles and
14:42it’s like or they could go Bop so it’s like those are our options right so I
14:47think we’re trying to be very patient and understand like the best way to work
14:53with these borrowers that we had no relationship with till a month ago or two months ago so there’s been a lot of
14:58uh lessons and learnings and stuff like that but I think I just regret um not sticking to my guns in terms of I kind
15:05of like a minimum I normally do with like one person and just diversify as much as possible and there were
15:11instances where I bent on that a little bit and now I’m kind of left in this
15:16situation I’m trying to navigate now for the listeners out there who are like what does Serena mean by diversify would
15:23you mind diving into that a little more yeah so with the private learning I’ve done like technically I have 19
15:29currently out and 13 have been paused so with this mortgage broker I think I had
15:3511 two did pay out and I have nine I have another three with another um big
15:41company that was really really well recognized and respected in this community I’m part of and they have had
15:47kind of The Perfect Storm of things so again normally I would do one so say you do like one p not at 50,000 I did three
15:55so and looking back I’m like I should have already done the one and my husband also had some funds place and I regret
16:00that we work with the same investor right if you just want to work with as many people as possible like do the
16:06minimums like if you have 200,000 like do eight or do 10 like split it up as
16:11much much as possible and with people and companies that have absolutely no connection to each other just so that if
16:17one of them runs into a problem you know you’ve got 10 others that you can fall back on right so I think when I talk to
16:24people sometimes they’re like well I have 400,000 I was saying to doing two and I’m like no don’t do two you do 10
16:30like you know but I didn’t even follow my own advice because I got a little comfortable with the reputation some
16:35people had and the work that they were doing and and now they’re in these situations where they’re overleveraged
16:41and they’re having challenges and you know we’re trying to to work with it I’m just hopeful that even if it takes time
16:47I’d rather them take the time to work through it than just go in file bankruptcy or something like that right
16:54yeah yeah exactly okay so you mentioned um the invest and I I I get that is uh
17:01if you’ve worked with one before like it just seems it seems like a no-brainer you know um we’ve done this before why not
17:08do it again so I get the fact of splitting that up diversifying across the board were you diversifying in terms
17:14of location as well yeah yeah yeah there’s definitely like a big breath of location like literally across the
17:20country um I wouldn’t say really necessarily did too much into the states like there are opportunities there as
17:26well um but in this instance it was Canadian based so definitely in terms of asset class in terms of location and
17:33what they’re doing okay so diversify in terms of the investor asset class location and your takeaway would be if
17:39you had to do this again diversify in terms of the mortgage broker as well yeah right yeah absolutely yeah yeah you
17:46kind of thought well they’re diversifi for you right with all these different borrowers but now understanding the
17:51scope of everything with those borrowers like I yeah I wish I had looked into
17:56them in a little bit more detail to know like I would never have known all of this stuff then right but I think I
18:02definitely could know a little bit more just even understand the connection between them right like when the CCA stuff happened I had no idea there was
18:09any connection between these companies and there’s nine of them or 10 of them that kind of entered in together that
18:15everybody’s life are they subsidiaries of a h c like how are they even connected and and all of that right so I
18:22think everyone’s just confused about how all of that even happened and would you ever do a promisory note again
18:28I think some people have asked me that I think that I’m not going to say I absolutely wouldn’t um I think I would
18:36really want to know the person in great detail but I have learned a lot from it like with this mortgage brokerage they
18:42had it indicated where it kind of felt like there’s a posy security like in the event of a default you could put a lean
18:47on the property so everybody felt like that was almost this measure of security and as we’re learning that doesn’t
18:53necessarily provide you with that security the only way to get almost to State your claim is by literally filing
19:00statement of claim that’s the only way to register your interest and then you go down that process of getting a judgment and stuff like that or settling
19:07in a report um but you’re technically that doesn’t hold a lot of weight necessarily so I think the way
19:13that that was worded was really misleading to people um the other thing I’ve learned is that you can’t file a
19:20ppsa so with a personal property Securities Act without a general Securities agreement so if you do go
19:26into a provisory note you want to have the GSA accompany with that so that if there are any issues you can register a ppsa because
19:33without the GSA you can’t do that so that’s just one added U measure of
19:38security that you can register against a company so I do have one company that offered that but then this brokerage
19:44didn’t happen and I didn’t know really the true value of it at that point in time so um you know just learning the
19:50laws around it and you know what could happen in an instance that you run into issues right like what’s your reforce
19:56and how how do you recover thatly yeah yeah so so how much do you currently have tied up that that that you waited
20:03on that’s a lot that’s a lot yeah significant so yeah I mean there’s
20:10there’s a lot of people with ready there’s one guy that from what I’ve heard I think he has like seven million
20:15in unsecured that he’s waiting on because he has his own business so he does have some secured and he like so I
20:20don’t have anywhere close to that but it’s not an insignificant amount of money right so it’s money that um you
20:26know I obviously don’t want to lose but I’m hoping I recover at least most of it it’s just going to it’s going to take a
20:31while and what’s the game plan from your on all for you yeah so obviously I have my real estate license um my business uh
20:38couldn’t really operate during the pandemic so since I had been investing in real estate already I thought well
20:43I’ll a real estate license and I think what I didn’t realize at the time is how
20:49different it would necessarily be in respect to uh the client relationships like I have been opened this for 18
20:55years but the reality is that we were a B2B so we worked with the corporate cents Rogers Airport package and what I
21:03wasn’t really expecting was um you know the range of emotion that you can deal
21:09with when you’re dealing with residential uh clients so it’s just a very different dynamic in terms of
21:16working with them and just the expectation and you know sometimes the level of professionalism can vary
21:22significantly so um you know I think my priority and my preference is still on the real estate invested side like
21:29there’s a way I can try to find work with clients more on that capacity I think that would in general be happier
21:35but ideally when these funds are recovered uh my plan is to ideally joint venture on a multi family property and
21:43find something probably in the east coast that we can improve and um just keep repurposing that capital from year
21:49to year okay I yeah I get that and tell me are you are you on the residential side for for your license or are you on
21:55the commercial as well it currently residential okay and on the multif family side are
22:01you looking to go the value ad route or sort of what the new craze is at least I
22:06can speak for Edmonton here is uh the the new build route the info route you know where people are taking a big lot
22:13and they uh they building eight units on there six units on me what’s what’s the game plan for you yeah I mean I have
22:19relationships through my Mastermind with both so I narrowed down in the last year
22:24um what concepts I liked and I think again going back to Diversified I’ve been work with a couple of them I know
22:30someone that builds um eight Plex purpose built rentals in Edmonton and calary so I got a connection for that
22:37and again it’s the numb is really attractive just in terms of how they break that down and it can there’s a lot
22:42less red tape in Alberta so things can move along fairly quickly in terms of Building compared to other places and
22:48then on the flip side I thought connections with people that um acquire properties in New Brunswick specifically
22:54l m um and again ideally you can move fairly quickly through that and it’s
22:59very landlord friendly there um and you can get the refi done within a year and and again keep on reprocessing things so
23:05I think that was the goal just because I don’t feel like I’m necessarily in a position where I would be the active
23:11investor taking on a project like that but if I could learn from someone that’s been there that has the systems like at least to start that would be my
23:18preference and then if I kind to learn along the way then maybe it’s something I would take on later on okay so the game plan for you is to get out of the
23:25private lending get more into the joint venture side the money partner and then potentially down the road transition
23:31into being a little bit more of the active partner I think I would always do both yeah I think i’ always do both like
23:37my thought was that because have access to money with my keog like I think there’s still a value to the private
23:42lending and having the passive income and the cash flow and then with the cash and whatever I make from my active
23:49earnings as a realtor then ideally I would just put that directly into more like long-term equity and Acquisitions
23:56okay okay yeah well that makes sense so going forward looking to evaluate potential joint venture Partners yeah on
24:03the multif family side of things what are what are some key things to look out for for people out there as well who are
24:09potentially in a similar situation and they’re also looking to partner up what are some key things that you’ll be looking for in in a partner so that you
24:16could sort of uh mitigate going down this path again yeah in a different strategy of course yeah yeah I mean I
24:22think it’s different where your one to one as a joint friendship partner right so you’re going to obviously have your
24:27partnership agreement in place there’s going to be I think uh precautions kind of set up so that it’s not like they can
24:33drain the money from the account like you know you are pretty secured in that respect but I think you just want to make sure that they have a proven track
24:40record of business and I wouldn’t say take for granted like how long it can happen because there’s someone in my
24:46community that’s been doing this since I think 2012 and she just follow bankruptcy for one of her companies and
24:52I think it stems potentially from a bad partnership she had with that particular company but at the end of the day
24:59there’s $14 million worth of private money and only two millions of assets to back it up so I wouldn’t say that the
25:06time someone has been doing this is necessarily the only way to prove their value because anything can happen at any
25:13point in time right but I think you still want to see their track record understand the full scope of everything
25:19that they’ve done understand other Partnerships and businesses that they had because it can
25:24eventually you know I don’t say blow back on you but if anything ever happens then you have to understand everyone
25:31that they’re in about so to speak so you want to understand the full scope of their business and um any Partnerships
25:36that they have yeah no that makes sense on the flip side of things what advice
25:41would you have for someone who’s looking to get started in real estate but maybe they um they don’t have the same
25:47situation where you’ve had like an excess of capital that you decided to put into real estate they have minimal
25:52Capital but they know real estate is a great strategy for investing they trying to get in that way maybe build up the
25:59experience and then attract joint venture Partners such as yourself what advice do you have for them yeah I think
26:05um you know sometimes people that are at the GTA can be really intimidated because it’s expensive here right so
26:11you’re not going to necessarily see cash flowing opportunities I’m not going to say that there’s absolutely nothing but
26:17the reality is that it’s expensive here uh so if you don’t have a lot of money you can always start somewhere else
26:23right so I think in the Midwest for example you could pick out properties that you could turn into a midterm
26:29and you can up $100,000 US so even with the conversion that’s being $40,000 get 20 or $30,000 down instead
26:36of like $300,000 down and at least it’s a way to get your foot in and yes there might be a little bit of added
26:42complexity of the fact that it is in the states or maybe you’re going to a rural Market or something like that you want
26:48to make sure you do your due diligence in respect to the demographics and the community is it a growing Community or
26:53is it are they losing people um but there are so many options and opportunities in the states where I know
26:59people that have done very very well with like short-term rentals in various places or the midterm rentals and it’s
27:06just a lower barrier to get started just because their their housing market is
27:11not the way that it is here speaking of that though how do you stay informed about market trends and opportunities
27:17and what resources or advice do you have for people out there looking to do that yeah I mean I think that um obviously
27:23the media is very focused on real estate these days um but because I do license I
27:29get a daily email from Korea basically with all top headlines of the day so I’m always kind of checking those out I’m
27:35also part of an agent accelerated program with sucasa uh that my brokerage acquired so I get all of their up todate
27:43things da hadle at 9:30 so that’s just mainstream news and then I’m also part
27:48of two real estate investing communities so one of them has about 3,400 people on a Facebook group so there’s always kind
27:55of chatter in there and then I’m also part of a mastermind with about 60 other investors so we’re on a chat and Discord
28:02so again people are always sharing resources and and things like that and then we get together once a week for
28:07different calls so we have an expert speaker once a month we have a round table where we show resources uh we’ve
28:13got one topic which is like best in request so you can share a win or you can share a request that you might have
28:19if you need support with something or um a referral or an introduction or anything like that love that and I think
28:24a big takeaway that people can can get from that is just purely putting yourself in in places where where these
28:32discussions happen like in the firing line of getting all this information right in as many places as possible
28:38really yeah I I I love that um that aside though are there any any specific
28:44tools or resources that you’d recommend for for new investors and you know people who don’t have access to the
28:50realtor tools that we have now and are the specific ones that stand out most for you yeah I mean from a real estate
28:56investing standpoint um obvious L I have access to some of those tools so when I was doing due diligence for private
29:02lending even having access to geo geo Warehouse was a big resource because I could look up who’s on title and that’s
29:09actually something that came up with the Lend I did last year when I looked it up the person that wanted to borrow actually wasn’t Untitled as parents were
29:15and I was like well this doesn’t hold any weight if you default so we have to add the parents to the agreement if you
29:21want to guarantee it right so having access to those things so if you don’t um you know if there is a real estate
29:27agent that you know you can at least explore some of those things otherwise a lot of um Service Canada you can run
29:33reports and you just check the property history and how much it’s been refinanced and stuff like that but I think it really comes down to just
29:39having um the appro people in your order so having like access to a real estate lawyer and I count in a realtor just
29:46trying to understand um some different things but yeah I think being part of the communities is probably one of the
29:51biggest things that I would suggest and what’s your take on especially new investors deciding when is it the right
29:58time for me to enter a free community versus a paid Community um and that
30:03could be in the form of coaching or even just like a mastermind of sorts though I know personally from me I see and I was and I was actually just before before
30:10this I was I was speaking to someone that’s in one of those one of the same groups that you’re in and uh the value I see is being around those individuals
30:17and building those relationships on you know these higher net worth individuals what’s your take on that and where do
30:24people decide to pay versus the free the free route yeah I think when I joined
30:29there wasn’t I don’t think there were really as many free resources or anything back then you know it got me
30:35started when I would say about the community I initially joined is that there wasn’t a lot of structure so it came with you know tickets to an
30:41investor Summit and coaching sessions but there was really no structure with the learning and there is a new group
30:46that came out that I wish had been around back then because it’s very specific to a stream that you would
30:51follow like milti family uh Land Development us or wholesaling and then
30:58there’s modules where you literally educate yourself and then you have an accountability coach every two weeks so it’s very very structured in terms of
31:05what you want to learn and how you’re going to gain information and stuff like that so I think you just need to
31:10understand what you want to focus on but if you don’t have any money starting out I think there are so many groups on
31:16Facebook I think just find other people that you can learn from and ask questions of and stuff like that it’s just a matter putting yourself out there
31:22and getting to know people like when I join my Mastermind for example like when we had our go Rec call I made notes on
31:29all the different people and who I wanted to get to know better and like if they were focusing on strategies that
31:35were interesting to me and then I just set up calls all them you know and then just actively and consciously try to
31:42make it effort to get to know them so I think that people are generally um you know they’re kind and they’re generous
31:48and they’re open to sharing and stuff like that but it takes you just putting yourself out there to ask yeah no
31:54absolutely I I couldn’t agree more now we’ve highlighted a lot of risk and a lot of I mean you know based on on
32:00what’s currently going on right now I like to balance balance this out with the good and the bad yeah what would you
32:06say is the most rewarding part of being a real estate investor for you yeah I
32:11mean for me um when I started to go into it a little bit more was really because I was at a point where I was looking to
32:18start my family and I just didn’t want to take more money out of my company than I had to because I knew I was going
32:23to be taking a step back and I just wanted to leave the routine earnings in so why investing in like the syndicated
32:29mortgages and the private lending and stuff like that I was able to cut my pay in half and then Co started three months
32:35after my daughter was born so I literally stopped taking money over the tne for a couple of years and I was able
32:40to literally live off of private lending like since then like you know at one point in time i’ would say like very
32:46very comfortably and even now like yes I have some things that have been paused but what I still do have coming in is at
32:52least covering my base expenses and stuff like that but I try to be very smart like with with the amount of money
32:58I had coming in it was more than I needed so I was always just like paying down kind of what I used on my helck and
33:04stuff like that um I think that for me having a young family like had Co
33:10happened and I wasn’t doing this it would have been a very stressful time to have an infant because it’s not like I’m going to go get a job she’s three months
33:17old right so it gave me that time with her that I never would have necessarily
33:23had if I hadn’t really been doing this um so I am still grateful for that I like it’s been far more positive than
33:29negative um and again we’re learning from Ali’s lessons and I’m still you know cautiously optimistic and stuff
33:36like that but at the same time it gave me way more time than I think I ever would have had if I hadn’t been
33:42investing we begin with speaking of time I know for a lot of investors their journey and how they view things is
33:49getting active maybe it’s starting out on wholesale you know flips moving into actually acquiring properties building
33:55up the the the equity and the net worth that way and then for a lot of them the end goal is private lending yeah because
34:02that’s seen as the least active of them all you have experience with this how active would you would you say you fallowing the private lend inside I mean
34:09it wasn’t really that active it’s definitely just like checking your deposits as they come in until all
34:15happened you know like when um all this stuff happened with the insolvency and the CCA stuff initially we’re all
34:22invited to the same lawyer and then the secure didn’t want to share the same lawyer so then when we we met our new
34:28lawyer someone reached out and said um chil and basically I ended up teaming up
34:33with her to on board all of these people into a community where we’re you know I think we got 12 sub Chats on WhatsApp
34:40and we have all these Google Sheets and there’s you know questions that really leading with lawyers and borrowers and stuff like that and literally for about
34:47a month to six weeks it was the busiest I’ve been in five years like there was some days I’d be on the phone from like
34:539:00 in the morning till 10: at night it’s like the exact opposite of passive but because I kind of put my hand out
34:59with someone else to try to help bring everybody together you know there was so many investors that wanted to reach out
35:05and talk and I think they’re just all very stressed they don’t really have anyone else that they can talk to that
35:11understands like especially if you know they’re the one person in a family do something like this they can’t really they’re just going to be like well why
35:17would you have done this like you know but at least we’re all this kind of together right so it’s kind of created this support network but it was uh very
35:24overwhelming for like the first four to six weeks while we’re just trying to understand like what is even happening
35:30you know just make sense of it like he’d wake up in the morning and it would there would be like 400 messages and so
35:36many emails and even now like I’m still getting people that were on boarding and it’s about three months in um even today
35:42I got three more emails like there’s just more and more people coming out so it’s impacted like tons and tons and tons of
35:48people so at a perfect R yeah you just see those deposits coming in very little time like 10 minutes a month but um you
35:56know obviously when things have gone down this past yeah not common um but it
36:03kind of became something entirely different and I guess aside from that it’s just the initial upfront due
36:10diligence that’s done and then that’s about it yeah work the due diligence like you know ideally engaging a lawyer
36:16to look things over and there might be extra things that they look into that you wouldn’t have access to so even though there is an upir cost to that I
36:23think it definitely saves you more in a long run and something that I regret not spending more time on because I trusted
36:29the fact that Mor Rober had they’re at internal and inhouse legal and you know just again trusted them as a
36:34professional that should be helping to protect you and heting your best interests um at heart but uh yeah like I
36:41said lots of lessons so lots of lessons well look I know we need to wrap this up but I don’t to wrap it up without just
36:48doing one of my favorite segments of the show and it’s called Time Capsule so let’s imagine that you’ve stumbled across a time machine that allows you to
36:55travel back and forth in time now yeah of course you can’t change anything but you can give your younger and older self
37:01advice yeah I think just not to rush anything uh like I said when I join a uh
37:07one education company and I went to the invester summit I did the preconstruction stuff it was the opportunity at hand it looking back that
37:14probably wasn’t the best step and maybe that was rushing it just being like okay well this is this all makes sense but
37:21looking back will would have made a lot more SS and I could have you know repurposed that money over over over
37:27again and I think just taking the time to do your leg work explore options you know uh really just not rushing into
37:34anything I think is really really big and again just living by your boundaries like I think for me I had this idea of
37:41how I wanted to be Diversified and you know I got a little bit comfortable and compromised on that and you know now I’m
37:47dealing with these situations but I think you have to set those very clear rules and boundaries for yourself and
37:52and just set up ways to protect yourself and mitigate risk I love that you know oftentimes it’s the advice that a is
37:59like on the complete opposite end is like hey I wish I we should have taken action sooner and of course there’s that
38:04happy balance between the two so for certain types of people this best advice is more applicable right is be a little
38:11bit more cautious and and don’t just jump into things then for other people that don’t really take action you know
38:16it’s the other way around but I like that perspective on it though now if we have to head to your 80th birthday what
38:23advice do you imagine your future self would offer you at your current age oh good question yeah I mean there’s kind
38:29of a quote that says only those who risk going too far will ever know how far to go so I think even though yes there
38:36could be some setbacks and stuff like that I would be where I am had I not taken some of those risks so I think you
38:41still have to you know do what’s going to be right for you and take action just um try to educate yourself along the way
38:46I love that oh I love that okay so what I will do is I’ll be sure to leave all
38:52your contact info in the description below so people listening out there if they want to if if they’re like hey I
38:58love this episode I want to learn more about Serena I just want to follow along all your info will be in the description
39:03below so they can just click through and follow along but Serena this has been an amazing conversation I’ve had fun thank
39:10you so much for coming on and sharing good thanks for having me thank you for tuning in to the wealth through real
39:17estate show if you found our deep time into successfully scaling your portfolio helpful you won’t want to miss our
39:23interview with Steve we explore Steve’s Journey from loving flips to Land Development to Treasure Trove for anyone
39:30looking to scale up the real estate game efficiently this is your host AR Noble signing off
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