Eagle Quest Properties

GOOD NEWS to our real estate investing friends and associates:  8-10% Cap rate buildings are now coming into the marketplace (Ontario, Canada).  Besides lining up the fundamentals, try to find motivated sellers!  We came across an owner who had overpaid for his apartment building by $300K two years ago and is now bleeding $150/unit negative cash flow owing to mismanagement.  Another owner wants to sell a Mixed Use building with 75% seller financing.  Needless to say, there’s more and more power of sales on residential houses you can pick up for a bargain.  If you are real estate savvy, you might want to start analyzing some deals and get ready to buy.

Qualifying a good neighborhood is far more important than the numbers.  We have viewed a condo for sale at $68,000, but the neighborhood is mostly infested with drug dealers, ladies of the night and druggies.  Talk to the cops on the street, they might tell you the whole story behind the scene if you ask nicely (although, officially they’re not allowed to say negative things about their beat).  Talk to the tenants of the building you want to buy.  Talk to the residents on the streets.  Talk to the cab drivers by giving them a tip.  Drive around different neighborhoods at different times, you would be amazed to see one block can be completely different from the next block.  One property owner spent over $500K to retrofit, renovate, convert from office use to residential units with high quality material, yet he can’t convert his tenant profile and the quality of the neighborhood!

The Lynes’ Inner Circle

We would like to say thank you to all who inquired about our real estate opportunities.  The more deals we analyze, the more time we spend with appointments, and power team members, the less time we can attend to individual inquiries.  It has been suggested we form an inner circle to serve our real estate community.  Initially, we want to set up an exclusive mailing list for readers to be notified about all the potential deals: Commercial and Residential.  We believe residential properties with opportunity for some minor upgrades for a quick flip can produce quick chunks of cash in good pockets of neighborhoods.  Our criteria: any one within our database who are interested in real estate investing in our residential and/or commercial projects.  Any questions or concerns, please drop us a line.

If you have decided to join us, we welcome you to send us a e-mail with subject line: “The Lynes’ Inner Circle”.

Is It A Setback?

Life is not getting easy for most of us in today’s turbulent economy.  We see friends being let go from their long term jobs.  We have financial constraints from overspending on real estate courses, unexpected vacancy on a property, Daniel’s unstable contracting work and the list goes on.  Part of us (the impatient side) want to quit, but Scott Scheel’s story inspires us to move on.  Scott incurred a $400,000 debt from failing in a business venture.  He couldn’t even feed his dog and he had to move back to his mom’s tiny basement suite.  (Be grateful to supportive parents when they are).  With his creative strategies, Scott bought his first 24 unit apartment building with 80% VTB, which cash flows $2,500/month.  He now owns and manages hundreds of millions of commercial properties.  Should we believe a set back is a set up for a come back?  If denial is not a choice, we can only work harder to get through our challenges and learn from our mistakes.  Going through a setback requires mental strength and taking actions, yet, you will see you will become a much stronger person at the end.  Cheers!

Free Seminar:  Risks in Real Estate, Kitchener, ON

For those of you in Ontario, the Gowlings law firm will be hosting a free seminar at the Holiday Inn, 30 Fairway Rd S, Kitchener, ON.  Free breakfast is served during registration at 7:30am.  Seminar starts at 8am and lasts until 9:30am.  The title is ‘Risks in Real Estate‘.  It will touch on the topics of Aboriginal Issues (the duty to consult and what it means to you), Official Plan Policy Changes (impact on development), and Paying the Rent (landlord and tenant points of view).  If you are going to attend, please register at Gowlings’ website.  For more information about the event, please contact Chantal Chaves by phone at 519-569-4558, or by email.

4 Full Days of Complete Immersion!

Here we are in the Rock & Roll City, Cleveland, OH attending the Commercial Property Academy as alumni.  Scott Scheel never ceases to amaze us by his genius creativity in adaptive reuse, financing in volatile market, advanced market analysis, reading trends, repair & rehabbing, condo conversions, mini-storage and much more!  Aside from the seminar world, Scott took us to the real world.  He took us on a bus tour to show us some of his properties, how he analyzes the upsides in real numbers, structures the deal, acquires the property, organizes phases, budgets, adaptive reuse strategies and how he makes the profit at the end of his project.  What an eye-opening experience!  If you are going to learn, learn from the best!

One intriguing scenario:  A gung ho young man, Ted bought a property in 2006 for $2,000,000 at a 7% Cap rate with 10% ($200,000) down and 10% ($200,000) seller financed note for 3 years at 5% interest with no payments.  He took out a bank loan of $1,600,000 with interest rate of 4.5% for 25 years with a 3 year term and monthly payment of $8,856 ($106,272 in annual debt service).  He has a DCR (debt coverage ratio) of 1.27 with his NOI (net operating income) of $135,000.  Over the next 3 years, Ted successfully raises his NOI to $155,000, so that he can refinance the property.   He hopes that the refinance will allow him to pay off the seller’s $200,000 note and pay off his acquisitions loan of $1,600,000.  Sadly, when Ted sits down with the loan officer to discuss his new loan in 2009, he is shocked to realize the interest rate has climbed to 8%.  He can only support a loan payment of $10,700/month or $128,400/year based on $155,000 NOI.  Thus, his property can only support a loan of $1,279,230.  After paying on his loan for 3 years his balance is still $1,488,092 and the balance with interest on his balloon to seller is $231,525.  This leaves him $440,387 short of being able to pay off his notes and keep the property.  Ted has already invested $200,000 up front and he has no where to go to raise the $440,387, to avoid foreclosure by the bank and pay off the seller.

Don’t be caught in the bubble!  Knowing when to get in and when to get out is critically important.  NEVER EVER OVERLEVERAGE on your properties!

The New Top 10 Towns

Don Campbell, president of the Real Estate Investment Network (REIN), has released the list of Alberta, BC and Ontario’s top investment towns for 2009 – 2014.  The list for Ontario is as follows:

1. Technology Triangle: Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge
2. Hamilton
3. Simcoe Shores:Barrie- Orillia
4. Brampton
5. Durham Region – Whitby, Pickering, and Ajax
6. Ottawa
7. Brantford
8. Toronto
9. Vaughan
10. Whitchurch-Stouffville

For further information about REIN Canada (named North America’s best REIA by Robert Allen), or to purchase the reports, please contact REIN at 1-888-824-7346, or by email.

A Powerful Use of Google Maps

Do you know that you can now view Google Maps at the street level while sitting in the comfort of your own home?  This is new to Canada and Europe.  The US has had this feature for a couple of years now, but due to privacy issues in Canada and Europe it took a while before everyone was happy with it.  It is called Google Street View and It is a great little tool.  Type in an address and drag the little man to your designated spot to view.  You can check for blighted lots, trashy streets, schools, shops, and anchors from your own desk.  You can view a rental building you want to rent from.  Try it, it is great!

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty”

- Winston Churchill

Daniel Lynes and Julia Lee

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Volume #2 Issue #4

2009

The Deal That Wasn’t To Be
We have been looking at a property in earnest in Hamilton lately.  However, after spending some time analyzing it, running the numbers, and weighing all the possible options we have decided not to go ahead with it.  Everything looked great on paper, but we felt that there was just too much potential for the numbers to become very skewed, because of the age of the building, and the lack of existing services.  On another note, we are constantly pursuing other properties that fit our profile.  If anyone is open to joint venture possibilities, please feel free to email our Acquisitions Department.

Tweeting on Twitter
If you haven’t heard about Twitter yet, perhaps you should.  It’s a great tool for both propelling your online presence to the next level, and to hobknob with some of the best minds in your areas of interest.  Since joining Twitter, we’ve found a wealth of information on real estate and search engine optimization (SEO) that we wouldn’t otherwise have known about.  Before you jump onto Twitter, you might want to learn one simple rule of etiquette.  If you like something someone said, and you want other people to know about it, you should ‘retweet’ it.  In layman’s parlance, that means give credit to the original author.  You do this by preceding the quote with ‘RT @twittername’, where ‘twittername’ is the twitter username of the person you’re quoting.  ‘RT’ means ‘retweet’.  If you wish to reply to someone, merely type in ‘@twittername Whatever your response is’.  If you wish to send them a private message (a direct message in twitterspeak), type in ‘D @twittername Whatever your direct message is’.  If you would like to join Daniel on Twitter, you can follow him at @dlynes.  Happy tweeting!

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

Daniel Lynes and Julia Lee Lynes

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Volume #1 Issue #2

2008

Happy New Year!  It’s time to celebrate our successes, great and small.  Let’s cherish some family time and flashback something we can learn from 2008.  We end this year with a grateful heart.   Our parents are healthy.  We got married.  We bought our 1st investment property, a duplex in Indianapolis.  We completed several real estate investment boot camps with Robert Allen & EWI; Dave Lindahl’s Chunker & Foreclosure Boot Camp, Than Merrill’s Marketing & Wholesaling Boot Camp as well as the Commercial Property Academy Boot Camp with Scott Scheel.   We are grateful for the more than 400 of you that are staying connected with us through our newsletter.

Our Move to Southern Ontario

After some diligent research and analysis on the real estate markets in Canada, we found that southern Ontario fits our criteria.  Our criteria is to find commercial properties with a 10% or higher cap rate with positive cash flow.  Being exuberant and confident about commercial real estate, we made a quick decision to say goodbye to rainy Vancouver, BC and move to snowy Brantford, ON.  With our daily necessities packed and loaded into our car, we started our cross-country odyssey.

We took the I-5 south to the I-90, and then took I-35 north to Canada, taking the 17, 69 and then the 400 series of highways the rest of the way to Brantford.  That was a safe route to take if you have to take a drive to Toronto from Vancouver in the winter time.

Along the way, we discovered many new places, including Coeur D’Alene, ID, Bozeman, MT, Black Hills, SD, Mount Rushmore, Mall of America, the world famous Hoito Restaurant, and Wawa, ON.

So far, we love the snow and the bright sunny days here and we have a found a good Pentecostal church.  Brantford is a small peaceful town with 90,000 people and it’s a 20 minutes drive to Hamilton and 1 hour drive to Toronto.  It’s an ideal location for us to find commercial property because it’s close to the 403 highway, and it’s in the middle of Southern Ontario, so we end up being 1/2 way to wherever we need to go.  So good!

As we see it, Southern Ontario has a major population base, excellent highway and rail infrastructure, as well as a multitude of national companies’ head offices.

Free Money Grants for Real Estate

We are learning how to get free money grants for our real estate business.  Yes, that is right.  Chris Johnson is brilliant at discovering how to get free money grants and loans for real estate, education, and business.  For instance, the federal government offers financial assistance to landlords of affordable rental housing to pay for mandatory repairs to self-contained units occupied by tenants with incomes below the CNIT (Core Need Income Threshold).  In the Toronto area, the maximum assistance per unit is $18,000.  For a comprehensive, step by step guide, please visit Chris Johnson’s web site.  Chris has both American and Canadian versions of his program.

Planning Ahead

Tomorrow is the most important day in our life.  It comes into us at midnight very clean.  It’s like a perfect blank page when it arrives and puts itself in our hands for us to write down our goals and action plans.  People don’t plan to fail, but they fail to plan.  Daniel and I will take a couple of days just to write down our goals and action plans.  If you find it hard to begin the process, try using the valuable acronym from my monthly mentor, Raymond Aaron.  He teaches his students to use the six MAINLY pathways of life to achieve a full and rich life.  For more details, you can read his new book Double Your Income Doing What You Love.

We would also like to extend our thanks for Daniel’s father for allowing us to stay in his house while we look for our own place.  Please stay tuned as we strive to find our golden goose property.

"You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our blessings to you for a happy, healthy, successful 2009!

Daniel Lynes and Julia Lee Lynes

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Volume #1 Issue #1

2008

Hello, welcome to the Lynes Roar. We are pleased to extend our sincere appreciation of your desire to stay connected with us. This is our first newsletter and we are extremely grateful to July Ono to mentor us on our first newsletter. The purpose of our monthly newsletter is to share our experiences with you and allow us to keep connected with you on a monthly basis.

We were happily married on August 8th, 2008 and we trust that you like the picture.

Julia Lynes

She came to Canada from Guangzhou, China 20 years ago, without knowing a word of English. She loves Canada. Her biggest challenge was finishing secondary school with her limited knowledge of English, and achieving honor roll standing. Her dream was to complete a business degree in university. Due to financial hardship in her family and having to work multiple jobs to help pay the bills, she regrets not being able to go to university. She completed her CIP and worked in several commercial insurance companies in the underwriting department for 10 years. She started to think about creating a stream of passive income after her disability from an eye surgery and a few herniated discs on her neck. She is so excited to have discovered real estate investing. For that, she has to thank Selena Cheung, who first introduced her the power of real estate: a high leverage investment with small, calculated risks.

Daniel Lynes

He has been developing computer software as a hobby since 1980. He has been developing computer software, professionally since 1994. He has also been doing Linux and Windows system administration since 1997. He hitchhiked from Thunder Bay, ON to Vancouver, BC in 1994. After 3 days of driving, he arrived in the

most beautiful place in the world. The next day he called up his mother and told her he was never going back to Ontario!

Our Trip to Las Vegas

It was such a treat that we had the opportunity to learn about Commercial Real Estate investing from Scott Scheel in Vegas for 4 intense days. The four primary property types: office, retail, apartment and industrial/warehouse. Each type has its own criteria and considerations. i.e. A retail property is leased based on square footage and typically has a operating expense ratio of 15-35% (of GOI) as most of the expenses can be passed down to the tenants. An apartment is leased by the unit and it is not uncommon to have an expense ratio of 40-60%. The former typically has a lease term of 3 years or more, which can be quite attractive for the bank to finance. The latter typically has up to 1 year lease term and it is generally more management intensive.

Having a low interest rate and a soft market, this is the best time to buy commercial properties in the last decade. Scott Scheel is a commercial real estate Einstein. He started investing with a 24 unit apartment, no credit and $400,000 in debt. He achieved financial freedom in less than 2 years. We learned a lot from him and we are grateful to have him and his team to coach us on our investments.

Tip of the Month

If you find yourself needing to use MS Office documents, but you can’t justify the cost, take a look at a free alternative that’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux: OpenOffice.org. For simple tasks, it’s usually easier to use. Unless you’re an international economist, you’ll probably find it just as capable as MS Office.

Until next month, we wish you an abundant and prosperous month! God bless!

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