Montreal, Canada; Multifamily Investing?

[Sam Jahsin]

Hi everyone,

This is my first time investing in real estate. I am pretty young and I have a day job but recently I have been given an opportunity to have enough capital to purchase a multifamily home in Montreal. I have been listening to the podcasts on youtube as much as possible, especially the ones involving Ben. I have often heard of this 1% or 2% rule but I don't think it exists up here in Canada.

Through the Bank of Dad I can get a loan of up to 500k for 2% interest rate but when looking through MLS the prices for anything decent are at least 150k to 300k more expensive. Also according to my research the absolute best rents I would probably get are $800.00 to $1,500.00 per unit. Which seems low considering I would be lodging in one of the 2 or 3 units myself and use the cashflow to pay for any the mortgage, taxes and any other expenses.

In the podcasts it is mentioned several times to purchase something for 500k and renovate it to bring it to 650k but I have no background in construction nor any time to learn my way through it with my day job so... I don't think I have any such option.

Though thankfully nothing having been signed yet I can use some advice or maybe some feedback on what I am doing here.

Cheers!

[Kristina Schmitt]

Have you looked outside the city at all? If you can't afford something in town, there may be something more in your price range outside the city a bit.

I know you're nervous about construction, but have you just looked for an ugly house? Maybe something where you don't need to do major renovations, but where some paint and flooring upgrades / updates will do some good. There's the book on estimating rehab costs that Brandon wrote too that could come in handy for you when going through the numbers. No matter what, make sure the numbers work!