Multifamily Financing & Commercial Mortgages in Canada: Jennifer Champion & Christine Traynor

Introduction

Welcome to the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. The show is designed to help Canadians invest better in Canada and the United States. We are the North America-based mortgage financing lender and provide education to both countries.

Discover how you can become a better investor and access the financing you need. 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 our team is as a whole. 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.

The Core Idea

So we have Jennifer Champion and Christine Treanor. 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. 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's still this potential options in commercial, right?

And that's super cool. So next up in the roster is Jennifer Champion. So Jennifer, let's hear your story and kind of what you're focused on. So how I got started into investing is I 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.

Deep Dive

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, MLI Select financing and get into those opportunities themselves.

Awesome, awesome. Yeah, no, thanks for sharing. And Jennifer and Christine, you're going to 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 going to be potentially getting not the best terms, not the best rates. We're with you guys, right? They're getting that expertise for sure because you're doing it.

Practical Steps

You're practicing what you preach. But then secondly, working, you know, 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 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.

Yeah. Now, for those that are listening that don't know, could you elaborate the MLI Select program?

Key Takeaways

Yeah. 65 here, the product just works really well.

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.

That's awesome. I love it.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. And last but not least, Christine Traynor.

Resources

How are you, Christine? I'm doing great.

Thanks, Scott. How are you?

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

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.

Introduction

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 work done up front so you're good to go on your investment when the time comes.

And just love helping investors build legacy wealth and really structure their portfolios in a way that supports them to do that. That's awesome.

I love it. And one of the things that you said too that I want to call out is like you're 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 CNHC is going to offer on this property even before a client gets it under contract, right?

The Core Idea

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'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 going to 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?

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, want to 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 are 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 going to work or they don't have the capital or whatever that might look like.

Deep Dive

I love it. That's awesome.

That's awesome. So what I'm going to do for everybody who's listening to this show, I'm going to 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 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, you know, 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 going to be doing a deep dive into the commercial end and we're going to 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 going to want to hear next week's episode. Thank you so much for tuning into the show today. If you found value, please follow the show and rate it five stars. It would mean the world to me.

Practical Steps

And lastly, all the resources that we spoke about are at the bottom of the show notes. Looking forward to seeing you in the next episode.