All Forum Posts by: Luc Boiron

Most of the time, tenants won't move back in to a rental after it's renovated, because it's too much hassle to move everything to a new apartment, and then back again.

Also, s.53 (2) of the RTA requires that a tenant give you notice in writing that they wish to have the right of first refusal to re-occupy the unit after renovations. I would bet many would not give you notice in writing before moving out, but have never tried this.

This only makes sense. The wealthy (or at least the financially educated) can expect to earn much higher returns than mortgage rates. If they have any otehr debt, it will be higher than a mortgage, because mortgages are secured to real property. If you can get 10% return investing, and borrow at 2.35% on a 5 year term, why wouldn't you?

I agree with Greg. The SD is needed the most when a person is moving out, so you won't really know if you need it until the end.

You can offer to give them something if you want to incentivize them, but the SD should be there at the end if the tenant decides they want to move out with 10 days notice and not pay the rent for the next month, or if there is any damage. Don't reduce it.

And I don't think you should care if your tenants compare notes.

The rooming house setup is a lot of work, but can be worth it.

I have done it, and the numbers are usually a lot better than renting separately, it's just a lot more work in my experience. You need to consider who you are renting to. Also, I don't know your market, but $500 for a room would usually be in a pretty nicely renovated house. I'm not sure of the condition of the duplex and the level of finish, but take that into account.

@Roy N. Has very good advice for this kind of setup, including having a "Den mother" who lives there and takes care of the property.

I find, depending on the price I ask for rooms, that I can have much less than 1 or 2 rooms empty on average. Part of that is continually working on getting the rooms renting, being available for showings often etc. However, this number should also account for bad debt, as the tenants who rent rooms are the most likely to live month to month and should they lose their job or spend too much on a new phone, they won't be able to pay rent.

As for your numbers, electric looks a little low. 8 people in a house are likely to use more electric than that. I don't know electricity rates in your area, but I think for 8 adults with their own electronics plugged in, $200 would be more realistic.

Sounds like a good deal though!

What are the condo fees? Sounds like a great deal!

@Jordan Valeriote

Welcome to BP! There's a ton to learn here, so dig in to the forums and blogs when you have some time.

@Samuel Sedore is not too far from you and I believe he has a regular meetup, you should check it out.

Good luck getting started, RE is like a drug!

@Andy Robison Great transformation!

The fireplace room looks so much better. The painted wood paneling looks great, and I like the white mantle to tone down the dark fireplace.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the exterior colour. That yellow isn't that nice to me, and it had pretty good curb appeal before. I like the carriage style garage doors though.

Congrats on stepping back up to the plate after the first flip throwing you so many curve balls!

Do you mind sharing your numbers? 

@Faisal Farnas

I honestly don't think you'll get that far with this with the seller. Once you have closed, it is not easy to get anything back or have them pay for anything. The laws are different here, I know that if a seller fraudulently misrepresents something, you can go after them, but poorly fixing something might be harder to argue.

If you were the seller, would you have spent $1275 to fix the roof, or would you have done the minimum for it to stop leaking?

As for the insurance, don't bother. Your insurance premiums will likely go up at renewal since you have made a claim. And you have a $1,000 deductible, so you'll barely get anything.

This is the reason I usually ask for a seller credit to fix things, rather than the seller fixing it themselves. I'd rather get half of the repair cost in a seller credit and pay the difference myself, but know that it will be fixed right.

Since you asked what I would do: If I felt like it, I could send a letter to the seller asking for them to pay half the cost to fix it, hoping that they do. They likely won't. I would just expect to fix it myself, and going forward, make sure that I either get a seller credit instead, or have the roof more properly inspected after repair and specify it in the contract (or specify that repair should be by a professional with warranty provided).

I'm not in BC, but I don't think this will do much. Many people think that there is a problem with too many foreign buyers, but much of the time they aren't actually foreign.

People anecdotally look at a neighbourhood and see that there are many people of Chinese descent there. They think this means that are foreign buyers. Likely though, the majority of these buyers are permanent residents or Canadian citizens, so this won't affect them.

We're a very multicultural country, and some people seem to forget that many of these Asian buyers are simply new Canadians, not foreigners. This is likely the government trying to appear as if they are doing something, without actually changing anything.