All Forum Posts by: Dave Fairb

I found it. It's the book on managing rental properties. 

I'll take a look at Landlording on AutoPilot thx 

I have a big house that I'm thinking to rent out for December 1st. I live in the house at the moment and thinking to move to Mexico for a year. 

The house is in pretty good condition, though it's built 1950's, it's had lots of updates. 

It has 3 floors. 

Top 2 floors are one unit. That unit has 6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms.  

Basement is a separate legal unit and has 3 bedrooms. 

Gas and electric are not on separate meters for the 2 units. 

Area is a good up and coming area. Professional people would live here. 

I'm just wondering who would be looking for a 6 bedroom unit?  What I want to avoid is something that happens here in expensive Vancouver BC, and that it where one person rents it and then gets their hommies in all renting a room each. 

There's some insulation between the upper floors and basement, but it can noisy if there's a ton of foot traffic upstairs. 

I guess the basement people would have to be aware of that before they decide to rent. 

Anyone any thoughts on this? 

Bit of a long shot here. But I bought a book about being a successful landlord off a link on this site. It was a while ago now and I can't find the download. 

Is anyone familiar with the book?  I think it was called being a successful landlord, something like that. 

Trying to figure out if it's worth it to Airbnb my basement suite. I'm in Vancouver BC, the house prices here have gone up a lot, and there's always room for prices to go up more. 

I've been digging around and it looks a bit like this;   

Scenario 1. Say my bnb takes up 40% of my house. I do the bnb business for say 5 years. In that time, say things go nuts again here and I'm ready to sell. My house has appreciated 500 thousand in those 5 years I did Abnb (not out of the question in Vancouver)   Then 40% of that 500k = 200k is the capital gain. Capital gain is taxed at a 50% ration in Canada, so 100k is then added to my taxes for that year. Taxed at 30% = 30k in taxes. 

Scenario 2. I rent out my basement suite to a tenant, landlord tenant act of BC applies. I pay taxes on the rents, less my expenses. Sell in 5 years and no capital gains tax as far as I can tell from my research to far. 

Scenario 3. My uncle lives down there and we have an agreement. No tax or capital gains. 

I'm thinking that Airbnb would have to earn me quite a lot more than just renting to a family, otherwise from a $ point of view, why pay capital gains. And a lot more than scenario 3.

Anyone got any thoughts on this one? 

My father died recently and it got me thinking to sell my house.

I'd net around 750k and enjoy more of the things I'd envisioned doing when I bought this house 13 years ago. I'm 58 now and in OK health, so I could do the things that involve being mobile and some energy. 

So I've been rocking around the 'sell -v- wait for price increase -v- unknown amount of time alive  etc...    and I find it no easy thing to come up with a decision. 

But one thing I have noticed is that sometimes, people just seem to hang on far too long. Many people think they will live lives of good health and into their late 80's and beyond. All the while not really doing anything to proactively stay fit and healthy. 

And so many stories of people retiring only to pass away shortly after. 

At the moment I have 2 friends thinking over the same predicament. 

One is 72, He's got enough equity in houses to live until he's about 300. Has a lot of stress off tenants, has things he wants to do. Has a medical condition related to stress that he says is due to tenant aggravation. He says he's going to make changes in a couple of years and then enjoy life? His brother just passed away mid 60's and had planned to retire in a couple of years. 

Another friend has a job that will give him a good pension. But he hates the job, could sell his house now and net enough to retire, move to a smaller town. But he's hanging on for the pension. He's already lived 6 years longer than his father did, and his wife's had cancer twice. 

It's a tricky one. 

I've owned my house for 13 years. Have 2 lines of credit for 180k total and have around 20k still available (used 160k) . Have mtg for 620k. 

House would sell for 1.45 to 1.6 depending.  So around 670K + in equity. Maybe as much as 750k

I live in the house. I rent out the basement and 3 students upstairs. The rents I collect pay the bills + mtg. And I live here at no cost to myself and have about $400 left over, and also about 1200 a month is paid off the principal of mtg. I also have a secure garage that I run my handyman business out of.

I got my house before the banks crashed in 2007/8 and at that time as a self employed, I could state my own income, without verification! (in Canada) 

There's no way I would qualify today, and as I live off the rents and some self employed income quite easily, my net income is very low. 

I believe my house will go up in value still. I'm in Vancouver BC, I'm on an arterial route near a skytrain station. Anyone who knows Vancouver BC market will likely agree on that. 

But it's frustrating to have all the equity and not be able to have some.  Yet if I sold it and made say 700k, I'd have to find a spot to live, and a 1 bedroom condo on the cheapside of town is about 500k, with no garden, no workshop etc... a serious downsize. On plus side I'd be free to do things without having to take care of tenants etc.. But it might actually be boring without all that? Hard to say. 

If I never sell it, then what exactly was the point in buying it and all the hard work of the last 13 years?

All my efforts of the previous 17 years (time that I've been in real estate) are tied up in the equity of this house.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Hi Joe, yes that's pretty much what it came down to. Also on my block, we are all immigrants bar one person. Only me and one other have English as a first language. That seemed to play a part in things too. 

Ah well,I guess you can't win them all. 

I got my neighbours together for a land assembly 3 years ago.

We had a solid written offer from a local developer for 2.25 million + we could live in our houses rent free until they were demolished, likely 2 to 3 years. 

13 houses on my block, majority of them assessed at around 1.2 to 1.3 million. 

I held the meeting in my house with the realtor present. 

Only 4 of my neighbours made any sense. The rest of my neighbours ranged from not getting it to just ridiculous.

One neighbour wanted 3 million and said her kids like to swim at the community centre nearby, so she didn't want to move. Her house is an older bungalow and for 2.25 million she could have bought a new house around the corner and had at least 250k in the bank. Or bought a similar older bungalow a block away and had around 800k + in the bank. 

Another neighbour said his house was already worth 3 million, and even when showed great comparables he still claimed it was worth 3 million. 

My other neighbour who's getting older and lays tiles for a living, on his knees all day long. He could hardly be bothered to talk about it. 

My other neighbour said " don't be so anxious, we are on an arterial route, developers will be knocking on our doors begging us to sell" 

How wrong he was, as it's now 3 years later and the bottom has fallen out of the land assembly market. The developer walked, and we would not get that offer again or anything close to it, in fact we wouldn't even get a developer interested in a land assembly period. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it was unbelievable how they kind of ummed and aahhd at a million dollars! And these are people like me who work as janitors and carpenters and out in the rain earning a living...... a million ***** dollars! 

In the meeting I held, the realtor got all angry and started to walk out mid meeting when he heard the ridiculousness of their objections. He said he'd never seen such push back from a group of people being offered such a profitable deal. 

My oil tank was under the concrete slab in my garage. I dug up the concrete, cut it up with a sawzol and took it to the recycling depot. 

It hadn't leak and was in good condition. It cost me about 100 bucks.