Hello Hamilton Real Estate Investors,
Today’s post is inspired by my clients Diane (REIN member) and Tania who recently purchased a Mr Hamilton’s Best Buy, signed a tenant, collected first & last month’s rent one week before closing at rent of 9% (annual, plus utilities) of purchase price and the tenants moved in 11 days after closing. Um, yes please may I have another?
What a job well done! Want to know what they did so well to make them Rock Star Investors? They acted as sophisticated investors. Here are some highlights:
- Great Marketing – the subject line on the online classified ads were attention grabbing: “FREE Cup of Tim’s Coffee Every Day for a Month!!” as the property was located across the street from a Tim Horton’s. Do you think the phone rang? You read the results, think that was worth a $50 gift certificate?
- Jamming as many tenant leads into the property at once – not only is this a great time saver but it creates competition as there are many tenants to one quality property. Diane and Tania only showed the property only three times in two weeks.
- “Home Staging” – well not quite… the renter showings occurred before closing so the vendor’s furniture was all there so tenants could easily visualize where their furniture would go. Make sure to use the right clause in your offers!
- Creative financing – Diane and Tania knew going in the property would require some renovations (knob & tube, galvanized steel plumbing) but they wanted to preserve as much capital as possible. So they arranged for private financing to purchase the property, pay for the renovations and now they will pursue a traditional mortgage where they will be able to extract some equity. Plus they got the seller to pay for the closing costs :O
- Building a team of professionals – Diane and Tania have aligned themselves with excellent professionals. From Diane: “I must admit, we are feeling more and more like Rock Stars and it really helps when you have a good team! We
have a great Realtor and we are working on the rest of our team!!!
Thanks Erwin and I will keep in touch regarding our next property purchase!!”
Well done ladies!!
So when you see Diane and Tania at a future REIN meeting or Hamilton investor meeting, please do congratulate them both for taking action and taking steps towards living their lives on their terms.
Till next time – Your Life, Your Terms
Erwin Szeto
MrHamilton.ca
Real Estate Investment Adviser
e: erwin@mrhamilton.ca
p: 416-848-6293 x 211
f: 905.481.2341
PS: To keep up to date with my blog, enter your e-mail address on the RIGHT hand side of the blog. And please “LIKE†my facebook page and feel free to share my website with your investor friends 
PPS: check out my FREE STUFF
Excellent post Erwin and congrats to the ladies….this is purely positive momentum and the signs of professional real estate investors taking action! They did everything right with their foot on the pedal – many fall off after purchasing not realizing their journey has just begun.
I encourage everyone to take a look at ‘staging’ as well – along with proper advertising this enhancement to make your property stand out will increase the chances of great tenants signed on faster. Affordable solutions are here: http://suitedesign.ca
Erwin is a huge fan of SuiteDesign!!
Thanks Joey!
Investors, if you want to minimize vacancy and maximize rents you need to speak to Donna at Suitedesign.ca about her home staging solutions for rentals. I haven’t seen anything like it!!
Well done Erwin!
I enjoyed reading about the headline that the ladies used in relation to the Tim Horton’s. Catchy headlines is the most important aspect about marketing. If your headline is not catchy or thought provoking, no one will read it.
The point of the headline is to get the reader to first read the headline, and then to get them to read the next sentence. Each subsequent sentence should be designed to further the readers interest, and get them to read the next sentence, and then the next, and so on…
(Copy writing 101.)
I have used some funny headlines in the past when advertising vacancies for my rentals. A recent on that I used that got a lot of views was…
“Do your Laundry Naked”. I borrowed this headline from a suggestion in the myreinspace.com forums. This ‘catchy’ headline was relevant to the unit I had for rent as the unit had laundry facilities. Many of the people inquiring on the ad, were currently in living arrangements in which they had shared laundry facilities.
The people that ended up renting the unit responded to this particular headline (I had several other headlines out at the same time).
They also commented that they thought the headline was funny.
If I did not have a catchy headline, I would not have found these tenants.
Best Regards,
Neil.
LOL – That was you?! You don’t know how many of my clients mentioned your ad to me! Well done Neil! And your headline cost you nothing – LOL