Hello Everyone with Hamilton Real Estate Investments!!
What great weather we are having! I’m so grateful it’s still warm and sunny out as we
 installed our Christmas lights on the house this past weekend. I’m already deathly afraid of heights so no way I’m getting on an icy, snow covered roof, I’ll gladly pay someone else to do that! 🙂
Speaking of paying people, we were quoted $300 to rent and install/remove Christmas lights by a contractor who was hired by several of my neighbours. Â $150 for labour, $150 to rent the lights. Â Instead we spent under $140 at Canadian Tire to buy 120′ of lights that come with a five year warranty so that was a win. As for the installation, I figured this project would be something fun for my daughter Robin and I since this is Christmas and Robin rarely sees me do any work on the house because I don’t :). A fun thing about Robin is she has no fear of heights, whereas I do, so I’m thinking if we don’t teach her about fear then she’ll never develop said fear? Well as soon as Robin saw me on the roof, she asked Cherry (my wife) to lift her onto the roof as well – mission accomplished! 😀
I hope you all can translate that into your real estate investing as I have numerous everyday investors with 5-10 properties. Â Anyone can do it with the right education and coaching.
Three Tips on Flipping Houses
This past Saturday, we had a special guest speaker, Ruben Furtado, who has personally bought and sold 26 properties for short-term profits (aka flips) and assisted clients in an additional 80+ transactions. Â For you Rock Star Inner Circle members, Ruben will be giving an unabridged presentation early in the new year.
Ruben’s presentation was excellent as always and we even had him back after the break for an encore for more lessons and Q&A.  It’s no surprise this was our most attended meeting this year and we managed to raise $180 for my charity, the Hamilton Basket Brigade. My favourite part of the presentation was when Ruben shared the before pictures of his lovely brick home he bought in nine year old subdivision in Oakville for $916,000 with finished basement and move in ready.  The next picture was of the house gutted to the frame including the removal of every brick, followed by images of the modern, finished product that you would see in Modern Living magazine. Ruben has already received unsolicited offers to buy for a quick profit of $200,000 but Ruben’s not interested in selling.
Anyways, here are three tips I took away from Ruben’s presentation:
- Focus on the opportunity and not the cost of the investment. In Ruben’s opinion, if your flip does not return a minimum of $150,000, then the return on investment and your time is not worth it.  A sophisticated investors requires sufficient buffer should a disaster happen.  As a worst case scenario, you walk away with $50,000 in profit.  The minimum amount of a capital to flip like Ruben is over $250,000 and the term is six months to one year.
- What is the best renovation for investment? Most would say kitchen or master bathroom however Ruben says it’s landscaping because landscaping is timeless and never goes out of style. Ruben even provided an example where he spent $100,000 on a backyard oasis and sold his property for $200,000 more than his neighbour’s who had a similar house with similar finishes on the inside.
- Novice investors waste time and money on the small details. e.g. door knobs and replacing baseboards.  This coming from a man who spent $300 per door knob in his home… but in a flip, they matter less.  Basic brushed nickel knobs will do and paint trim white BECAUSE well staged properties and home technology like big screen LED TV, smart homes controlled by iPads, open concept layouts (because you removed a wall or two) get the buyers’ attention and steer their focus away from the minute details. Don’t believe Ruben? What did the knobs and baseboards look like in the last very nice home you saw?
It takes a special investor to flip like Ruben does and if that’s you please let us know and we can make the introduction!
Thanks for reading and happy Hamilton real estate investing everyone!
Erwin |Â MrHamilton.ca
