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.
Scott Dillingham:But we're gonna be here to talk to you about commercial financing, and I just thought we'd 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 Jennifer Champion and Christine Trainor. Welcome. 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.
Scott Dillingham:And yeah, I mean, that might be the truth on the residential side, but on commercial, it's kinda 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. So next up in the roster is Jennifer Champion.
Scott Dillingham:So, Jennifer, let's hear your story and kinda what you're focused on.
Jennifer Champion:So how I got started into investing is I'm was from Victoria, British Columbia, and I started investing in New Brunswick in March 2020. So very uncertain times. I was a value add investor doing duplexes and fourplexes, started building locally forty five 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.
Jennifer Champion:So going to a province that wants you as a landlord and 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 MOI Select financing and get into those opportunities themselves.
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. No. Thanks for sharing.
Scott Dillingham:And, Jennifer and 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 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 in a bank, 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. So you're gonna be potentially getting not the best terms, not the best rates, where with you guys, but they're getting that expertise for sure because you're doing it, you're practicing what you preach. But then secondly, working on the mortgage team with us, you are having access to multiple lenders.
Scott Dillingham: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?
Jennifer Champion: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:Yep. Now for those that are listening that don't know, could you elaborate the MLI Select program?
Jennifer Champion:Yeah. So, you know, one of the markets that a lot of opportunity is in Edmonton because of the medium rent being $16.65 here. The product just works really well. So it allows you to have up to 95% loan to cost, up to a fifty 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.
Jennifer Champion: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:That's awesome. I love it. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And last but not least, Christine Trainer.
Scott Dillingham:How are you, Christine?
Christine Traynor:I'm doing great. Thanks, Scott. How are you?
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. Awesome. I'd love to hear your story and anything that you have to share about the financing as well.
Christine Traynor:Sure. So quick backstory. My background before getting into mortgages and deep into the investing space was twenty 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.
Christine Traynor: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 prequalified to move forward with what they're looking to do and how we can help them meet those investing goals.
Christine Traynor:So I just think it's super important to kinda get all of that worked in upfront so you're good to go on your investment when the time comes. And just love helping investors build, like, legacy wealth and really structuring their portfolios in a way that supports them to do that.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. I love it. And one of the things that you said too that I wanna call out is like your sort of pre qualifying that property for the investors. So I love that you mentioned that because it's true, we have the tools where we can analyze and see what CMHC is gonna offer on this property, even before a client gets it under contract, 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, if it's a new construction property. But I love that you mentioned that, you know, you've got the tools to do that.
Scott Dillingham: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 the Performant, all that. How long would it take you to analyze a property to determine the loan amount, the rough loan amount?
Christine Traynor:Yeah. I mean, I would say our service levels are wanting to get back to clients within twenty four 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 twenty four hour time frame of looking at a property so they know whether or not they can, you know, want to move forward with putting that offer in. And, yeah, just kind of two pieces to that part, Scott, like you're saying is like one is prequalifying, 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.
Christine Traynor:And what we've started to do with some realtor partners is prequalifying 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 selling realtors or bringing clients, they know whether or not that property might fit or where it does fit within the CMHC process. So they're not tying up the 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.
Scott Dillingham:So 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 wanna chat about, you know, whether it's conventional, commercial, or you wanna 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.
Scott Dillingham: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 wanna take it to the next level, you're gonna wanna hear next week's episode.