Scott Dillingham: 0:21

Welcome back to the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. Today I have three super awesome people that I'm excited to share with you on the show. They're on the team. They're doing mortgages, commercial mortgages specializing in Canada. Obviously branching out into the US like, like our team is as a whole. But we're gonna be here to talk to you about commercial financing and I just thought would kick off this episode. With an introduction to the team, what they're doing, what they're up to, so you can see how they can help benefit you on your investing journey. So we have Mike Peters, Jennifer Champion, and Christine Trainer. Welcome. Thank you, Scott. You're welcome. You're welcome. So I'm gonna start with you first, Mike. Sure. Do you mind sharing? A brief background of yourself and what you specialize in financing for Canadians here.

Mike Peters: 1:18

Sure. So, initially I got a master's degree in economic development from the University of Waterloo, and I worked for the Essex County Regional Economic Development Agency, assisting businesses grow and expand in the region. And that's always been sort of my passion is to help businesses grow and expand. I've started after leaving, the economic development space, I started several businesses of my own. And so I I'm all about growth through business. So the types of commercial mortgages that I tend to specialize are more business focused restaurants even cemeteries, churches gas stations. And then I do a fair number of residential income properties. More or less six plexes, not too many real large apartment buildings. And so I, I have a broad spectrum of, de development areas that, that I specialize. I have a network of residential brokers who you know, rely on me besides internally at Lend City to complete their commercial mortgage deals because commercial mortgage deals are. Very, everyone's, each one is very unique. And so each one has to have a real hands-on approach and an understanding of business. So that's what I do.

Scott Dillingham: 2:36

That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And I just wanna pull out one part of what you said, because somebody who's listening to this, they may not understand the relevance of, or the importance of what you said is that you're doing residential mortgages on the commercial side. So I just wanna highlight that because a lot of Canadian investors will come to us and say, oh, my debt ratios are too high. That's what my bank said. And yeah, I mean, that might be the truth on the residential side, but on commercial. It's kind of very much like the US financing, where it's based on the property and the property's numbers. So even if your bank or lender can't move forward on residential, there still is potential options in commercial. Right? And that's super cool.

Mike Peters: 3:18

Yes. A number of people have significant property portfolios even on the personal side because it does first and foremost rely on the property as a business. If the property is generating around 20 cents to every dollar of expenses it's gonna be favorably looked at by the lender, even from a personal perspective. But once you hit a certain number of personal then it tends to make sense to put your future purchases into a corp.

Scott Dillingham: 3:45

Absolutely no thanks. Thanks for sharing, and thanks for being here, Mike. Yeah. So next up in the roster is Jennifer Champion. So Jennifer, let's hear your story and kind of what you're focused on. I.

Jennifer Champion: 3:58

So how I got started into investing is I am was from Victoria, British Columbia, and I started investing in New Brunswick in March of 2020. So very uncertain times. I was a value add investor doing duplexes and fourplexes. Started building locally 45 minutes outside of Victoria and then started doing more commercial projects in New Brunswick. And most recently now just focused on the Alberta market. My strategy is always the path of least resistance. So going to a province that wants you as a landlord is open for business and just has so many opportunities, just makes sense and really on. The investing side. We do a lot of like six, eight, and 10 units. And then we're also helping other people take advantage of the CMHC, MI MLI select financing and get into those opportunities themselves.

Scott Dillingham: 4:55

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, no, thanks for sharing. And Jennifer, I. Christine, you're gonna hear from Christine in a second here too. But I think the cool thing with you two is your partners in this, but is not only are you financing multifamily, you know, apartment buildings, is that you're actually building and developing them. And I think that's so important because there's so many people. Like I used to work at a bank, right? So if you're an investor and you just go to one bank, there is so much risk in that. One is you don't know who you're dealing with and if they actually have expertise in the product they're offering you. And then two, it's just one individual bank, right? So. You're gonna be potentially getting not the best terms, not the best rates where with you guys, right, they're getting that expertise for sure, because you're doing it, you're practicing what you preach. But then secondly, working, you know, on, on the mortgage team with us, you are having access to multiple lenders. So instead of just the investor going direct to the lender, you're able to shop around and get them. Better pricing, better, you know, better terms. So I love that. Do you have anything else to add, Jennifer, before we switch over to Christine? I.

Jennifer Champion: 6:06

I don't think so. I think it's just, you know, it's really interesting like educating people on sort of, you know, how the MLI select program works and, you know, building to fit that model instead of, you know, trying to do it after the fact. And just really important with who you're partnering with and who you're working with in terms of like builders.

Scott Dillingham: 6:28

Yeah. Now for those that are listening that don't know, could you elaborate? DMLI select program.

Jennifer Champion: 6:35

Yeah, so you know, one of the markets that a lot of opportunity is in Edmonton because of the median rent being 1665. Here, the product just works really well, so it allows you to have up to 95% loan to cost. Up to a 50 year amortization and your debt service has to be 1.1. So when you're working with a team from the beginning, that building is essentially being built to fit the model instead of, you know, sometimes after you're trying to fit the model to the building and maybe the unit sizes don't work and the rents you're getting and everything like that. So just really important to, you know, do all of that upfront work and have your financing in place and everything so that you know exactly what you're getting into.

Scott Dillingham: 7:19

That's awesome. I love it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And last but not least, Christine Trainor. How are you, Christine?

Christine Traynor: 7:26

I'm doing great. Thanks Scott. How are you?

Scott Dillingham: 7:28

Awesome. Awesome. I would love to hear your story and anything that you have to share about the financing as well. I.

Christine Traynor: 7:36

Sure. So, quick backstory, my background before getting into mortgages and deep into the investing space was 20 years as a real estate appraiser. So, I owned and managed three real estate appraisal firms on Vancouver Island before exiting those businesses in 2024. So last year. And, yeah, it was a natural fit to move into the mortgage space. Being a real estate investor one of the things that I love to help people with is building out of town portfolios. So I live in Victoria. A large portion of my investment portfolio is in Edmonton. And I just love helping people get, I think one of the biggest things, as Jen said, is getting people into a position where they're pre-qualified. To move forward with what they're looking to do and how we can help them meet those investing goals. So, I just think it's super important to kind of get all of that worked done upfront. So you're good to go on your investment when the time comes. And I just love helping investors build like legacy wealth and really structure their portfolios in a way that supports them to do that. So.

Scott Dillingham: 8:35

That's awesome. I love it. And one of the things that you said too, that I want to call out is like you are sort of pre-qualifying that property for the investor, so I love that you mentioned that because it's true. We have the tools where we can analyze and see what CMH C's gonna offer on this property even before a client gets it under contract. Right. We can analyze if it's a good property, if it's a resale one, or obviously we'll work with the. Builder, developer, realtor, whoever if it's a new construction property. But I love that you mentioned that, you know, you've got the tools to do that, and I think that's super important because a lot of clients go to brokers or lenders blind, and they're uncertain of what they're gonna get. So that's super cool. And just for fun, like how long does it take you to analyze a property? Let's say I come to you, I've got to perform and all that. How long would it take you to analyze a property to determine the loan amount, the rough loan amount?

Christine Traynor: 9:27

Yeah, I mean, I would say our service levels are wanting to get back to clients within 24 hours of reaching out to us with those details. Obviously, you know, we're all have full schedules and a lot on the go, so we try to kind of strive to stay within that 24 hour timeframe of looking at a property so they know whether or not they can. You know, wanna move forward with putting that offer in. And yeah, just kind of two pieces to that part, Scott, like you were saying, is like, one is pre-qualifying, you know, the investor so that they're good to go and know where there may be any gaps, you know, in terms of their application whether that's like net worth or liquidity or any of those components. And then the other piece is the property and what we've started to do with some realtor partners. Is pre-qualifying their listings their new construction listings or their non-New construction listings before they're actually going to market with them so that they know when they've got clients or, you know, or sellers or selling realtors or bringing clients, they know where, whether or not that property might fit or where it does fit within the CMHC process. So they're not tying up a property for, you know, four to six weeks of due diligence, only to find out that, oh, it's not gonna work, or they don't have the capital or whatever that might look like. So,

Scott Dillingham: 10:27

I love it. That's awesome. That's awesome. So, what I'm gonna do, for everybody who's listening to this show, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes here for anybody to book a call with somebody on the team. If you want to chat about, you know, whether it's conventional, commercial, or you want to do something on, on multifamily the key to. Success that I firmly believe as a real estate investor, the number one key to success is having the proper team behind you because they will work with you to help, you know, boost your success rate as opposed to you doing this on your own or with inexperienced people. So I think that is so important and we're here, we're accessible to you to strategize and come up with some plans to. Like Christine said make some generational wealth. So, that's awesome. I really appreciate all of you guys for being on here and check in next week as well. We're gonna be doing a deep dive into the commercial end and we're gonna talk about different programs and policies and what to watch out for and trends. And so if you're looking at investing in commercial or you already are and you want to take it to the next level, you're gonna want to hear next week's episode.