All Forum Posts by: Roy N.

Steve Might

Awwh Come-on Steve, they're stately old buildings ;-)

I've hauled just shy of 3-tonne of lath-n-plaster to the landfill this week ... but energy efficiency will be increased by 50% when I've finished.

Michael G.

If you are uneasy with giving up 50% of the equity in the project, would it be possible to simply have the new party as a private lender ... is s/he able/willing to be the mortgagee? This way you could pay them a reasonable return (6-10%) and not give-up any ownership.

Bill,

The 19.6% credit in the French lease-back is a refund of the VAT to a foreign investor. Similarly, if you were to purchase property in Canada, in certain scenarios you {as a foreigner} would be entitled to a refund of our VAT.

Jon:

Check the codes and city ordinances in your area and have a chat with your insurance company.

Around here, undertaking a renovation would require you to remove the knob-n-tube in the parts of the property being renovated.

My insurance company, on the other hand, would require it to be removed regardless. We bought a building with remnants of knob-n-tube wiring in the attic - none of it was live - and the insurance company would only give us a 6-mth temporary coverage {at a premium} until it was removed.

Given you do not yet own the building, I would use this in my negotiations. Either have the vendor update the wiring prior to close or get a few quotes yourself and factor the cost into your offer.

Either way, I would recommend removing it.

Sharon Hiebing:

The 50% rule is a good first screen regardless of the size of the property ... if the operating costs are north of 50% of the revenue, you won't have much room for anything other than conventional financing ... and even then, you may not have sufficient buffer for unexpected.

I do tweak this somewhat for larger properties ... i.e. I would expect a 20 or 50 unit building to have operating costs even lower than 50% (i.e. 30 - 40%) of the scheduled rent.

I typically use an 8.33% vacancy allowance (less for larger buildings) and add allowance for maintenance/CAPX (8-10%) and PM (7-10%) to the operating costs provided {my experience has been that Vendors rarely included these allowances in their listings}.

If the 50% rule passes with the above allowances taken into consideration, I'll give the property a proper analysis.

I'll side with Mehran Kamari, I too am not seasoned enough to contribute ... If I were, I'd pitch-in side-bars on "investing in Canadian Real Estate" as things are, understandably, a little different up here.

Bill Gulley, on the other hand, is well seasoned - and has tonnes of practical knowledge to boot.

Joshua Dorkin

You can always use OpenOffice.org's Calc spreadsheet. It reads & writes M$ Excel files, has less clutter, runs on a variety of platforms (windows, Mac, Linux, etc), and is free.

Ryan,

You could carry-back the mortgage on a multi just as you could on a single. If both were still being used as rental properties, being the mortgagee on the multi would be a little lower risk as the probability of the property suffering a complete vacancy - and loss of revenue - is lower.

With the SFH, you have the option of selling to an owner occupier, in which case the mortgage is as safe as their employment and money management abilities. You could also entertain a rent-to-own (lease option) arrangement in this scenario.

George P.
I would be more prone to loose sleep with 7-8 SFHs if one or more unit was open as there would be no income stream supporting those properties.

Glen Sonnenberg:

Our utility netmeters as a credit against future use. The do not limit the size of the array you connect, but they do "reset" your account to zero on an annual basis ... so, if you have a surplus on the anniversary date, there is no carry-forward into the next year ... hell, they don't even send a thank-you card ;-)

As a consequence of the utilities approach to consumer generated energy, solar and wind have not really gained traction here.

There was a local developer here a couple of years ago who build a community of townhouses. There were eight row houses along one side of the development, where each had their own PV array. The builder wanted to share the power across the entire development before sending any back onto the grid, but the utility fought it and the end result was each townhouse had to netmeter its own electricity generation/consumption to the grid independently.

Here in eastern Canada the rethink on urban planning and a move towards higher density and more walkable/livable cities has been slow coming, but is finally arriving.

The post-War subdivision sprawl grew-up, matured and demanded the services and amenities of the cities they surround {sewer & water, transportation, etc} while staying beyond the tax reach of those same cities. As a consequence, cities are running larger deficits and going bankrupt and the citizens in those Cities are paying higher taxes in support of amenities shared with the subdivisions (schools, arenas, etc).

The initial attempt to address this imbalance of tax-base to services was an accelerating trend towards amalgamation of bedroom communities that we have seen over the past 20-years. While this has increased the city tax-base it has also increased the service costs and cities cannot afford their geographical footprint. The new version of the local municipal plan being developed here has the city wanting to retrench and establish a greenbelt around itself and concentrating on promoting higher density in-fill within.

I agree with Jon Holdman, there should be personal choice. If you want the 4000 sq ft house on 1 acre, go the perimeter subdivisions and purchase it, but do not expect the same level of infrastructure services as the fellow with the stacked row-house downtown ... unless you are willing to pay the same tax rate per square foot.

There is room for both types of development, we may just have to adjust our expectations of being able to live in the 'burbs but enjoy the city life.