Month: November 2024

Real Estate Sales

Unlocking China: A Marketing Masterclass

Today I implemented a custom marketing plan to directly market one of my listings to Realtors in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.

I knew that the Buyer would be a very unique one because of both the opportunity and the style of the home, so one of the suggestions I had was a direct marketing campaign to Realtors in China from three of the main cities that immigrate to Canada.

How did I do that?

To start, I did some research on what Chinese Buyers are looking for in a Country, City and Home, and how Ottawa was a great selection. Then I took my drafted marketing and framed it in a way to reflect all of those aspects a Chinese Buyer was looking for. Next, I took the reframed marketing on Canada, Ottawa and this particular home, combined it with favourable photos, and translated it carefully into both Mandarin and Cantonese. After this, I leveraged my REMAX network to identify the top producing agents and Broker Owners with highest producing brokerages, and sent them a personalized email in both English and their language of choice, with the Electronic Flyer in both languages.

Common sense, right?

Sure, it took some brainstorming, resources, careful attention and about 4 hours to put together – but this isn’t something other people can’t do.

What it comes down to is you really have to have pride in your work, and a job well done. If you’re one of the type of people that like to just get by with the bare minimum – than you may find this excessive. But, it you’re a person that values hard work focused in an effective manner, this might resonate with you.

This type of strategy is simply a Macro version of what a normal Targeted Marketing campaign looks like. Normally we identify the Buyer for a home and tailor the marketing for that one specific and ideal buyer, but in this case we simply took the same principles and applied it to a larger audience.

😉

Real Estate Investment

Buying Your First Investment Property

YES, it is true, Real Estate investing produces more millionaires than any other industry. But that doesn’t mean it’s dummy proof.

And YES, it is true, it’s hard to lose when it comes to Real Estate investing over the long term. But that doesn’t mean you CAN’T lose, or at least that some strategies are better than others.

So where do you start?

Well – here are some questions you need to consider.

How much money do you have?

How risky do you want to be?

Are you more interested in short term CASH or long term equity?

Do you want something turn key, or something that needs work?

How handy are you?

How much time do you have to put into this?

How big of a project are you comfortable taking on?

When you take the time to answer those questions you can really start to determine what works best for you.

For example. Lots of money, time and skills, willing to take on risk and looking for short term cash? Maybe we buy a house on a main street on a big lot where prices aren’t yet too crazy but rents are still high – and we build a wicked multi unit, rent it out, and flip it as a cash cow.

Little money, time and skills? Want as little risk as possible and ok with long term equity? Let’s buy a brand new apartment in the most steady location we can find and rent it out for 10 years.

Both could be your first investment – and one is SUPER ambitious and the other is pretty tame. Both are good.

Rather than list all the options, just answer all those questions and feel free to send me the answers for recommendations on investments that match your answers.

What’s the most popular 1st time investment in my experience you ask?

I’d say a purpose build duplex that could use some lipstick and that would fetch some great rents. That’s a pretty decent first step that gives you some low(ish) risk that will probably get you a little positive cash flow but will absolutely get you some nice equity over the long term.

The MOST IMPORTANT part to Real Estate Investing? START.

Honestly, that’s it. Even slightly sub par investment will pay off big time if you hold it long enough, but what’s undeniable is that when you own Real Estate you have more options. If you have a property that builds some decent equity, once that mortgage is due you can refinance it and pull out some money to invest in more Real Estate – and it snowballs from there.

If you want to have a talk about how to get in the game, send me a message and I’ll be happy to talk 🙂

Real Estate - ANALYSIS, Suburb Series

The Impact of 4 Rate Reductions on Prices

Have the prices gone up since the rates went down?

I looked at prices of the median residential home across the major suburbs in Ottawa within 10 days of the past 4 rate reductions to track, if any, the impact on prices.

Here’s what I found.

Question: Have the prices gone up since the rates went down?

Hypothesis: Yes, I bet they went up a bit.

Research:

Baseline: April 10th +10 days = Median Price of $691,000

Now let’s start lowering rates and see what happened!

June 5th impact? $695,000 ok. small but fair

July 24th? $672,000 probably just a one-off

Sept 4th? $680,000 better, but still lower than baseline

Oct 23rd? $677,000 that’s really weird, rates dropped .5%

Analysis: Well, it looks like in this particular instance, the prices have NOT gone up since the rates went down. Technically, they also went down.

Conclusion: In Ottawa’s suburbs, prices for residential properties have NOT gone up since the rates have started to come down. I believe this is really due to the financially conservative nature of the residents given the drop in values we saw after the Covid bubble. We’re not used to big swings in value like that, and I think it put us on our heels. People are still being very careful with their spending.

There you have it. I’m honestly surprised as I at least suspected a 20K rise in the average price. Nothing big, but enough to show that people are at least opening up their pocket books just a little more.

Seems that’s not the case.

If you have any questions let me know 🙂