Client's Voice Andrew & Sandy

We were both homeowners in our 20s before we’d even met each other. Real estate in Toronto was hot in the early 2010s and our parents thought it’d be a good head start for us to own our own places. We were both very fortunate to have support from them to buy condos in the downtown core at that time. We started renting out pretty early on after becoming homeowners. I (Andrew) was moving in with Sandy, which left us with an empty condo. I was very risk averse and renting my condo and being a landlord was very uncomfortable. However, I’d purchased that condo not long before and didn’t want to sell knowing the value hadn’t gone up a lot. So, I ultimately decided to rent it out, but it never occurred to me that I was a “landlord” because I didn’t have to do anything but deposit cheques. It wasn’t until I sold that unit, and received a very large cheque – a larger one than I’d ever seen before – that there is real money to be made in real estate. That cheque propelled us forward and led us to buy our next home. Then, when Sandy sold her condo, we received an even bigger cheque which allowed us to buy our next house, this time in Leslieville. Our house in Leslieville is a duplex. It was Sandy’s idea to “house hack”. We lived in one unit and Airbnb-ed the upstairs unit. We lived in that house for free for several years, with the income from renting the upstairs unit covering our expenses. Again, I was very opposed to it at the start but Sandy saw the potential. It was weird to me to have random strangers live in half of our house, but Sandy took care of most of it and when I saw how financially beneficial it was, I quickly saw the benefit. Homeownership felt normal at that point even though most people around us rented. We’re early homeowners in our social circles, so we could see how well it was doing for our net worth compared to our peers. Real estate has given us a really big boost. It started as “hey, I need a place to live” and then “I need a bigger place to live”, the way a lot of people start out. It wasn’t till the pandemic that we started considering buying more and more properties solely for investment purposes. Our first purpose-bought investment property was purchased in Hamilton, before finding Rock Star. We’d learned about the BRRRR method and were set to find a property to try and do a “perfect BRRRR”. On our first outing, we saw some scary properties, and we looked all over the Golden Horseshoe for a couple of months. Then, we stumbled on a single-family home on the Hamilton Mountain on a fairly large lot which seemed like a perfect setup. We took the plunge and bought and renovated it into a legal duplex; 3 bedrooms up and 3 bedrooms down. It now cash flows north of $1,000/month for us. We were then able to roll the refinancing funds into the next property.

I attended a Rock Star Intro Class while we were deep into that first BRRRR property and was immediately convinced to join Rock Star. When I told Sandy that Rock Star was a network of people sharing resources, she was on board too. With our first BRRRR, Sandy had basically managed the whole thing on her own. The realtor we’d used gave minimal tips, so it was a lot of Sandy asking around and figuring things out by herself. There were a lot of nights spent trying to solve one problem or another. Yes, we’d learned things from the first BRRRR, but planning to do a second one, and the idea of having the same amount of challenges we’d have to deal with alone was quite daunting. So, we were completely on board with Rock Star, and Charles has been so helpful. We would have loved to have him for that first property, but better late than never! Early on, Sandy had the idea of Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE). At that time, we had 2 or 3 doors and set the goal to have 10 doors by the time we hit 40. We wanted to grow aggressively after seeing the financial benefits. I’m a physician but I’ve only been in practice for about 2 years now. However, our net worth has grown so quickly in those 2 years, almost entirely from real estate. I’d have to work so many years trading my time for money to grow our net worth in the same way. Why would I do that when the real estate path has been proven to be so effective for so many people? We’re already reaping the benefits from it. We’re at 8 doors, so we’re very close to our goal, and only in our mid 30s. Moving forward, we plan to continue to take things one step at a time, continuing to use the BRRRR method to grow our portfolio. Our primary goal is about FIREing, whether that means we actually retire or not. Having the financial freedom to be able to say, “I’m not worried about what happens at my job or the economy, we’ll be okay”. It’s a huge weight off our shoulders. A big challenge for both of us is that we come from very traditional backgrounds where you go to school, you get a good job, you work your job till you retire and that’s life. So, for us to get into the mindset of becoming a landlord in our 20s, doing Airbnb, and taking on a lot of debt to buy more properties was very unnatural for us. So, if there’s one thing we want to get across, it’s for people to go outside of their comfort zone. We were lucky that we stumbled upon investing in real estate and realize this pays off, but it really was pure luck.

Since joining Rock Star in the summer of 2022, we’ve purchased two more properties - one is a single family home in Brantford that we plan to convert into a duplex and the other is a duplex in Kitchener. Now we’re at 8 doors, well on our way to our target of 10 and our goal is to add 1-2 properties to our portfolio every year.

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