Scott Dillingham: 00:21

Welcome to the wisdom lifestyle money show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. Today. I have a very special guest with us today. She's one of our employees, Gillian Irving.

Scott Dillingham: 00:29

She specializes in tons of investment properties, student rentals, and she's actually got a really unique strategy that she's gonna share with us today. So I'm excited to hear about it. So welcome, Gillian.

Gillian Irving: 00:39

Thanks so much for having me, Scott. Look forward to chatting all things real estate with you.

Scott Dillingham: 00:44

Okay. So, usually, I like to start off with, hearing about some of your background. So could you let us know, Gillian, how you got started into real estate investing?

Gillian Irving: 00:53

I like to cons I think of myself as an accidental investor, actually. I really I got started just really on a whim. I'd started reading books about real estate investing. Everyone's read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but I read that book back in 2,008, just before the big crash. And honestly, it never occurred to me that you could buy a house and get your tenants to pay for it.

Gillian Irving: 01:16

That's how unsophisticated I was. And one day, I went for a run, and I ran past this really amazing house in a great neighborhood in Toronto called Leslieville. And And I came home when I told my husband. I said, guess what? We're buying a house.

Gillian Irving: 01:30

And he's like, I thought you went for a run. Anyway, we bought that house, and it was like the beginning of this really long, great love affair I've had with real estate ever since because we bought it without me knowing much. And it became clear pretty quickly that, if I really dug into real estate investing and, you know, got a coach and learned specifics, that I could take that very rudimentary knowledge and turn it into something pretty big, which is what I did. So I bought that house back in 2,000 and 8. I've refinanced it several times to buy more property.

Gillian Irving: 02:02

And with that money, I bought student rentals in Hamilton, which have ended of being, like, the mainstay of my portfolio, which is student rentals. But that was the beginning. It was just a whim one day.

Scott Dillingham: 02:14

It's incredible. And it's Yeah. So amazing how much how many investors have started because of Robert Kiyosaki and reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. That was what triggered me. I read it, same thing.

Scott Dillingham: 02:24

And I was like, man, I gotta do this. And then I joined he had a course, in Canada that he ran through a third party company. And I signed up on it and then I, yeah, I started investing.

Gillian Irving: 02:36

I think once once you understand the numbers and how it works, the fear that you might have about, like, these big investments vanish because you can see the power of appreciation mortgage pay down and and cash flow working together. And you're like, wow. I wish I knew this sooner. Anyway, we can always start when we start, but, yeah, it really has been great for for us.

Scott Dillingham: 03:02

Yeah. And to to your point there, honestly, personally, I found the very first one to be the hardest because say, you had a vacancy and it was a single family house, you have to pay that out of pocket. Right? But once once you get a couple, then they carry themselves. So even if there is a vacant don't, you don't even notice it.

Scott Dillingham: 03:19

So really, in my opinion, the first one's the hardest one.

Gillian Irving: 03:22

You know, but that's like anything, right, Scott? I'm always, when you start something new or you're learning a new skill, or you're starting up something totally different, you're always gonna have those nerves around it. And so I guess, really, it's just getting over the hump of the first one because you're right. It just gets easier after afterwards. Because then you nothing really surprises me anymore.

Gillian Irving: 03:43

That's for sure. Especially with student rentals. Like, I've seen it all, honestly.

Scott Dillingham: 03:47

Yep. No. And that that's also and I don't know if I've told you this before, but that's why I'm so excited that you're part of our mortgage team as well, because we specialize in working with investors. That's our like, this podcast is about investing in money, and this is what we like to do. And the fact that you had that background in investing, it just, I don't know, we're excited to have you.

Gillian Irving: 04:07

Well, I really do feel like as a, like, a mortgage agent investor, I get it. I really understand the challenges that investors go through when trying to get financing. I understand the invest like, the the the landlording part of it. So I I really feel like I've got a bit of experience in in all these different areas. So it does help.

Gillian Irving: 04:28

Oh,

Scott Dillingham: 04:29

it does for sure. Because again, like, I know that's what our clients are looking for. They want that expertise. They don't wanna just go to somebody who just approves that individual transaction, and then they don't set you up for the future. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 04:41

I know that's kinda how we look at things and running through even some of your most recent applications. Right? The clients are looking to refinance to purchase and we're, you know, we're planning it all out for them. So, it's super cool that, you have that experience. So I'd like to talk about student property investing.

Scott Dillingham: 04:58

So I know a lot of people would buy student rentals pre COVID and everything was fine and dandy. There was plenty of lenders to do it. How are you finding that space now?

Gillian Irving: 05:09

So during COVID, students push back on their landlords a lot and we're hoping for refunds and rebates and all sorts of stuff. So each landlord handled that differently, but, there are a lot of landlords who'd never had any sort of hiccups in this space before, and I think they got spooked by the market. And many of them sold their rental prop their student rental properties in the pandemic. So what we've seen now as a result of that is there is such a demand for student housing. I have never seen anything like it, like in the how many years I've been investing in that market a long time now, and it's usually just pretty standard.

Gillian Irving: 05:49

And I've never seen demand like this. I would say rents have gone up by probably 40% compared to last year. There's just nowhere for them to live. So all of a sudden, this is, like, such a hot, strategy, I would say, and it was always cash flow positive anyway. It was one of the strategies that were easier to cash flow.

Gillian Irving: 06:07

Now it's even better than ever. So it's great. It's a great strategy to consider if you're trying to buy, like, a single family type home in Ontario but can't figure out how to get the numbers to work. If you're near university or college, I encourage you to encourage everyone who's listening to consider the student rental strategy. It's actually pretty easy, and it's not as complicated as you'd think.

Gillian Irving: 06:28

And it's been really great in terms of cash flow.

Scott Dillingham: 06:32

No. One of the negatives that I've heard, and hopefully you've got the answer for this. I'm sure you do because you have the experience in it, but is a lot of people are scared of the student investing because they don't want the tenant or students to have all these parties and damage the properties and stuff. What are some tips or tactics that you have to sort of minimize that?

Gillian Irving: 06:50

Yeah. I think everyone saw that movie Animal House, right? I think that's the meme that sticks in everyone's mind. They're like, they just imagine these insane parties in, like, the living room couch ending up on the front lawn or in the pool or something like that. And the truth of the matter is, Scott, that, you know, now with, you've got your parents are cosigning these leases.

Gillian Irving: 07:11

And so, you're really not at risk for any big damage because you've got cosigners who are gonna, 1, pay for damage if there is any. I've just never had a party. Like, I've never had damage that at all on any of my properties. I vet my students pretty well. They know the house rules.

Gillian Irving: 07:29

But the truth is the only really the only downside to student rentals is that there's a little bit more just general wear and tear because there's more bodies in your house. But I've not had any issues with damage that we haven't been able to, like, really easily recapture either by the students themselves or by a quick phone call to couldn't behave knowing that their parents are on on the hook as guarantors.

Scott Dillingham: 07:55

So that that's smart. So then there you go. So that would be the tip. So have the parents on as guarantors for all the student leases.

Gillian Irving: 08:01

Absolutely. And so that's it's the safety mechanism in terms of getting paid rent. You think about it. You have the student who's agreeing to pay rent, then you have your parents as the guarantor also agreeing to pay rent. And that's like a mechanism that doesn't exist in any other rental strategy where you have 2 people on the hook.

Gillian Irving: 08:22

And students also, like, when they get to university, they've been working hard to get there. No one is gonna put their living on in jeopardy when they get to university. They've worked really hard to get there, so they're not gonna let their they're not gonna risk getting evicted from their home, for heaven's sake. So it really is a completely different like, just such a complete different population with just very minimal risks in terms of rental payment and damage and all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah.

Gillian Irving: 08:50

Guarantorist for sure as a trick.

Scott Dillingham: 08:54

I love that. I can see that totally working in any market in Canada, really.

Gillian Irving: 08:58

So it's

Scott Dillingham: 08:58

really cool.

Gillian Irving: 08:59

Yeah. That's great.

Scott Dillingham: 09:01

So cool. So let's talk about financing. Now I know, personally, I know it's tougher, but Yeah. Can we dive into some of the option, you know, since COVID? Because pre COVID, it was pretty easy.

Scott Dillingham: 09:12

Yeah. What's available to an investor now that's looking to finance this?

Gillian Irving: 09:16

To finance student rentals? Look. It depends if you're buying or re refinancing is tricky. Right? There's only a few lenders that will let you refinance.

Gillian Irving: 09:27

There are definitely ones out there. If you're buying a property, it's easier to buy a property that's not already a student rental, that you can modify, than it is to buy an existing student rental, I would say. Yep. And, yeah, I would say refinancing is trickier is trickier to do for sure.

Scott Dillingham: 09:49

Yep. Another strategy that I see some people buying or doing, sorry, is the parents will buy the house with the child. And even though it is going to be a student rental because the child is living there, I've seen lenders totally okay with it, like major banks. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 10:07

Because it's owner

Gillian Irving: 10:09

And I think it's such a great investment for parents too to do that for their to do that for their kids. Right?

Scott Dillingham: 10:16

Yeah.

Gillian Irving: 10:16

Just to just for that child, 1, to have the experience of being, like, the land landlord, being responsible for helping with collecting a little bit of the rent. Yeah. It's an excellent exercise. And you're right. That owner occupied angle is definitely something that can can help a file for sure.

Scott Dillingham: 10:34

For sure. And the other thing I wanna clarify too is the lenders, they didn't just tighten up student rentals. They got rid of all of their auxiliary rental, not rent rental programs, but just any auxiliary programs and they stuck to their core. And that's what they started during COVID because they were scared that there was gonna be a huge, like, follow in the economy and the market and everyone was gonna lose their jobs or whatever, and it didn't turn out as bad as they thought. But now I'm starting to see the lenders start to slowly add back in these special programs that were that they took away pre COVID.

Gillian Irving: 11:09

Yep.

Scott Dillingham: 11:09

So I'm excited for that because that that could mean really good news for, student rental financing because then if you can get more of the major players to come back in, then, obviously, it's smaller down payments, better rates, all that good stuff. So I think,

Gillian Irving: 11:23

Here's something.

Scott Dillingham: 11:24

I think there's an exciting outlook in the near future

Gillian Irving: 11:27

Yep. Which is cool.

Scott Dillingham: 11:29

So cool. Now I'm really curious because you told me that you have a special investing strategy that you're looking into. You didn't give me much details, so this is I don't know what I'm in for here, but Right. What is it?

Gillian Irving: 11:43

Still early days, but together with, some other investors, I'm exploring this 4 season cottage rental business. So it's buying a property that has 4 seasons' worth of activity. So not just a lakefront cottage that you could rent in the summertime, but something that also has a robust winter economy, so like downhill skiing or snowmobiling, you know, ice fishing, something like that, so that you can really, in your mind, imagine a complete 4 season reasons to go there for every month of the year. So we're gonna do that and and enhance that with extra advertising and, like, a just a whole new sort of Facebook strategy as well too to channel our potential tenants or our cottage. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Gillian Irving: 12:36

Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 12:37

I love it. And the fact that you said 4 season 2, that's so much easier. There's so many more lenders that'll do 4 season cottages

Gillian Irving: 12:44

Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 12:44

Than if it was a 3 season.

Gillian Irving: 12:46

Yeah. And and some people have come up to me and they've said, well, why on earth would, you know, you and these partners wanna buy an expensive cottage now? What about the recession? And I agree. Everyone's feeling nervous about what's coming down the pipe.

Gillian Irving: 12:59

But, personally, I think that, there's gonna be less travel abroad for a while. People are gonna tighten up their belts a little bit, and the cottages that we're looking at are big enough to host 2 families. So it actually would be a really smart way to market to families who wanna join forces with another family and make it a, like, really affordable, Ontario bound vacation. These big queries about, are you scared about the recession? I'm actually not.

Gillian Irving: 13:27

I'm trying to tailor this new strategy with that actually in mind so that it can survive reset so it's recession proof, I'm hoping. I'm thinking.

Scott Dillingham: 13:37

It's it's smart. Right? So say you have a family and you could go to Disneyland. Right? What is that gonna cost you?

Scott Dillingham: 13:44

K. It's probably costing you a lot. We're in a recession. Let's go somewhere else where we can have fun with the family, and they're gonna look at stuff like that. I I I would, right, if I was in that scenario.

Scott Dillingham: 13:53

Yeah. And money's tight, but you wanna go somewhere and do something. Mhmm. I think it's I think it's great. I love it.

Scott Dillingham: 13:59

That's so smart.

Gillian Irving: 14:00

So stay local, and you can partner up with another family as well and save some money save some money that way. So despite the fact that the weekly rents will be expensive, it's shared. Right? So great for us, as investors and and then great for families too to find value in in in their vacations.

Scott Dillingham: 14:18

Yep. Now I know, couple of my clients, they'll buy in Northern Ontario near the US border, like closer to Quebec. I don't know if that's where you're looking, but they actually market to Americans, and come over here because the dollar is so much greater. So it's actually a little cheap vacation for them.

Gillian Irving: 14:35

Yeah. This is it. So good.

Scott Dillingham: 14:37

Yours are near the border, but

Gillian Irving: 14:39

No. They're a little bit further. They're further, they're further north, but still I still think that our advertising campaign, which we haven't really completely refined yet, but I I think we'll definitely be targeting Americans with their super strong dollar.

Scott Dillingham: 14:53

Yeah. Exactly. Why not? No. That's super cool.

Scott Dillingham: 14:56

So I I love now just about the mortgage part. Right? Because you're you're on the team here. What are some things that you've seen or you have done for investors to help them to scale and grow? Because I think that's super important in this time age.

Scott Dillingham: 15:13

Like, most of my clients that come into me say, oh, we're stuck. How do we get unstuck? So we're actually making a course about that to show them. But what do you find what are some cool things that you've seen or have done, to help an investor really scale?

Gillian Irving: 15:27

That's the joy of being at Lendly, right, is that the team there and especially under your guidance, Scott, is that you're so experienced in helping look like not this purchase, but how does this purchase impact the next purchase impact the next purchase? It's like being able to zoom out a little bit and try to examine not just where they are, but where they're trying to go, and to set up the foundation of buyer of of lenders so that they can scale with that in mind. So there's different lenders who will allow you, obviously, to get more rental properties than others. And so we try to just stack it so that you've got the lenders that allow you the biggest breadth of ownership at the best rates. And you start there, and then you add on top, add on top.

Gillian Irving: 16:20

And then, you know, when people get stuck and hit the wall, we have our commercial team. So I think most investors have no clue that commercial lending is even available to them as residential investors. And so I love it when I can take someone who feels like they've hit a financing wall and have been told they've hit a financing wall at other brokerages, and then finding out from us that we have this whole team in place that can help them continue indefinitely. Really, it can go on forever, rinse and repeat commercially. So, you know, it's really just about pulling back the curtain and showing them options that might not ever have been presented to them before.

Gillian Irving: 17:02

That feels really great.

Scott Dillingham: 17:04

It's super cool. And the other thing too, that people don't realize as a buyer, you would never know this, Being in the mortgage broker space, we know this, but you like, as a mortgage agent or mortgage broker, you have to do so much volume with a specific lender to gain access to them. So if you don't do the volume with them, then you don't have access to them. So you your kinda lenders form around the type of clients that you have. And because we work with investors, our our main clients, we have those lenders.

Scott Dillingham: 17:37

And I know we had it was actually your file and we were reviewing it. And the initial thought was b lender because of the debt ratios. I'm not gonna say the client or the lender's name, but I'm like, look. Let's run their rental worksheet, and let's see if we can make this work.

Gillian Irving: 17:53

Yep.

Scott Dillingham: 17:53

And we made the numbers work on the a side. So this client, had they been to somewhere else, they would've went with the b line. Right? Did lender fees? Yep.

Scott Dillingham: 18:03

Yep. And then we ran the numbers and it's all good. So the guy's working on the down payment and stuff. But super cool. Like, just the different options.

Scott Dillingham: 18:11

Like, we save this guy lots of money just by coming up with that option. It's really, really neat to to see that. So no. That's cool. Now as far as you, do you mind letting people know, like, your location and that type of thing?

Scott Dillingham: 18:25

So if they are looking for investment property mortgages or to meet up and chat with fellow investors, Where can I

Gillian Irving: 18:31

So I'm I'm the satellite office for Lend City Lend City's Windsor? I'm Lend City Toronto. I'm I'm the the the loan agent here in Toronto. Obviously, we're super well connected anyway through Zoom and through, like, all the team outreach stuff. But really, I'm here in Toronto, so I'm available to meet investors here.

Gillian Irving: 18:52

Or I go to Hamilton a lot for my own properties, Peterborough for my property. I'm really available anywhere around here.

Scott Dillingham: 19:01

Nice. That's awesome. And so somebody into this, they love your story, they wanna work with you and get their mortgage with you. How would they contact you?

Gillian Irving: 19:09

They can reach me through Lend City. So it's gillian@lendcity. Ca, or they can just, they can phone me anytime too. Should I give my phone number? I can give my phone number too.

Gillian Irving: 19:19

647-404-7271. I'm always available to chat all things real estate investing, all things mortgages. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 19:30

Would you just I'm just throwing this out there. I don't know the answer, but would you, be open to, like, joint venture partnerships? If people came along and they had money and stuff and they wanted your expertise, would you look at that type of

Gillian Irving: 19:40

thing? I do that anyway. I'm pretty selective who I want to work with. I, my sort of model for joint venture partnering is to to establish really deep relationships. So I'd rather work with a smaller group of investors and go deep rather than many and go wide.

Gillian Irving: 20:00

But I'm always open to talking to people who wanna see if it's a good fit because, yeah, I'm looking all the time.

Scott Dillingham: 20:07

Yeah. You never know. That's awesome. Cool. Cool.

Scott Dillingham: 20:09

I just wanted to ask because you never know it. I know people all over Canada listen to this. So it's Yeah. It's pretty cool.

Gillian Irving: 20:15

Yeah. Always looking to the always looking for the right partner. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 20:19

Yep. Perfect. I'm so glad we've gotta wrap up for now, but I'm so glad you could join us today, Gillian.

Gillian Irving: 20:25

Thanks so much,

Scott Dillingham: 20:26

Scott. Great to see you face to face too because you know, running the Toronto satellite office, we don't see you meet each other that much. So

Gillian Irving: 20:34

Yeah. Yeah. It's good

Scott Dillingham: 20:35

to see you. But, awesome. So yep. So we'll put your, email and the phone number in the description below. So if anybody wants to reach out to Gillian, you're looking for some, investment mortgage advice or maybe partnerships, that type of thing, Gillian will be, your go to.

Scott Dillingham: 20:53

And, thanks for coming, Gillian.

Gillian Irving: 20:55

Thanks, Scott. Appreciate

Scott Dillingham: 20:57

it. No problem.