Welcome back to the show today. I'm really excited for you guys to meet Quentin D'Souza. He is a multi award winning real estate investor. He's a multiple book author, and he's the owner of a portfolio of at least 80,000,000 worth of real estate across Canada and The U S so welcome Quentin.
Quentin D'Souza:Thanks Scott. Thanks for having me.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah, no problem. I'm excited. How are things out your way?
Quentin D'Souza:Things are going great. Always working on the portfolio, expanding my network and creating some great relationships.
Scott Dillingham:Oh, that's awesome. And I see you online. I see you on other people's podcasts and it looks like this comes so naturally to you, but how did, you know, having a portfolio this size, how did it happen? Like where did you start to do?
Quentin D'Souza:I started with one property then I ended up really enjoying the process and just understanding different components of the business and scaled and grew it. I started in 2004. Really it was 2008 where I bought multiple properties. So I had three to four properties a year. I was using the strategy that was, I was buying properties that needed work.
Quentin D'Souza:I would fix them up. Then I would refinance it and then rent it out long term. So that was it's called, it was it's rebranded the BRRRR strategy, but I've been doing it well before it was rebranded.
Scott Dillingham:That's how I started to actually doing that same strategy, but you're right. It was not called BRRRR until.
Quentin D'Souza:Yeah. And it was great. It was good for building a portfolio of cash flowing assets. I would take on partners who were a part of the that process. And some of those people that I started with are still people who I partner with today.
Quentin D'Souza:And it's been great in 2013. I had enough income from my portfolio to quit my job. I was a public school teacher. I actually have a master's in education and I was going down the principal route. And at that point I had to make a decision whether I wanted to continue what I was doing or focus on real estate full time.
Quentin D'Souza:And so I left teaching in 2014 with all my qualifications and to the chagrin of my mom and focused on real estate full time. And that was back in 2014 when I did that and haven't never looked back since I was 40 at the time.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's incredible. Good for you. Do you find this? Cause this is what I find and I have a lot of investors. They have this fear of starting to invest, but I find the more properties you own, the easier it becomes.
Scott Dillingham:Do you find the same thing?
Quentin D'Souza:It was certainly the first. After the first three properties, it was more of a game than it was difficulty. But it was, it's just positioning, finding the right property, getting the funds together and being able to finance the property. Get those three F's and you can put yourself into a great position and you don't always have to bring all three in order to get a deal done. It's something that I wish I learned sooner.
Quentin D'Souza:But and then once you get started and get going, it certainly becomes easier. In fact, I find that doing the larger apartment buildings now are much easier for me to do than it is to focus on a lot of smaller properties.
Scott Dillingham:You have the economies of scale now, right? And you can have a live in superintendent depending on the size of your project. And it takes away some of the the hands on things that a normal single family home investor might have to deal with.
Quentin D'Souza:Yeah, for sure. Some of the forty and fifty unit buildings we don't necessarily have on-site supers, but what we're doing is we have a part of our property management company who's in that area and focuses on the buildings that are there. So we have a team that helps to do that management, but yes, it certainly is a lot easier and much more efficient. And also it's just easier dealing with the numbers of people that we do when it's at the scale. You can have we have we use a third party for our, to do all our finances.
Quentin D'Souza:Like we use an accounting firm who does all our financials at the end of the year. And we have a bookkeeping company that does our monthly bookkeeping. It gives us, it gives somebody else an oversight of what we're doing. But it also just makes it easier to do because of the number of units we have that scale. And it's much different than it would be if it were a larger, like REIT or something like that, where we would have there, the model is a lot different.
Quentin D'Souza:There would be a lot more fees involved in a lot lower return. It's just a different way of doing things. I work directly with people and we get things done together. So it's it's definitely a different way of doing it, but the scale makes certainly makes it a lot easier and it's a lot less confusing and you're not dealing with hundreds of dollars. You're dealing with tens of thousands of dollars, which is really just adding another zero onto whatever it is that you're dealing with.
Quentin D'Souza:But it certainly helps for on the scale side of things and having the appropriate people that can help you do what you need to get done.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's awesome. And I'm curious. I have a personal curious question for you because I see it a lot doing financing. Are you someone that prefers to get a corporation per property or do you have one that has multiple properties?
Quentin D'Souza:The way that I structure a deal and it depends on the size of the property, but I will have one corporation per property. It's much easier on the financing side when it comes to keeping your books clean, because it's really the one property that holds the one asset. And that's what I found works for me. But then the owners of that asset would usually be separate corporations and they own shares in the company that owns the building. So it's just a little bit more sophisticated.
Quentin D'Souza:It's great for transparency. But from a tax you have to talk of course, to your own accountant, but from a tax situation, it's really just passing through one corporation onto the others. So there there's not much tax benefit from it, but it's definitely something that's easier from a financing and organizational perspective.
Scott Dillingham:Absolutely. And bringing in partners. There's a partner wants to leave and you're gonna bring in a different partner. It's so much cleaner when you isolate them. So that is actually what I do suggest investors do when they have a large portfolio.
Scott Dillingham:Think it makes perfect sense. Great. I was just curious how you structured that. No, that's awesome. Doing all these properties, have you ever had any sort of issue properties?
Scott Dillingham:And if you did, how did you get past those issues?
Quentin D'Souza:Yeah. There's issues every day that comes up with properties. There's always issues, but the key is to create processes and systems to be able to handle all of those issues. We had a roofly last night and we had a property. Our property management was able to get on-site at two in the morning in order to help address the situation.
Quentin D'Souza:And then today they are working with contractors in order to get the work done. So having all the processes and systems in place is something that we do that we offer. And having dealt with a lot of situations I've written two books on property management and filling vacancies and I'm a very systems oriented person. So putting those systems in place and making them available, standard operating procedures just makes it run more like a business than anything else.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah, no, I agree. I love it. I believe in every business, whether it's real estate or not, you always have to have a strong foundation and good systems. And it really creates a much more successful enterprise. So I love that.
Scott Dillingham:Quentin, I'm really excited to hear about some of your larger projects that you've done. Most investors out there, they start off small and they gradually get bigger, but not many people have a portfolio your size. So I'd love to hear about some of your larger properties and how you maybe acquired them and what you did to maybe improve them and increase the rents and value of the the projects and that type of thing.
Quentin D'Souza:Yeah. A lot of the projects that I found are based on relationships. Yet to buy an apartment building off the MLS. And we're, I think we're at about 17 buildings now. It's just not something that I do.
Quentin D'Souza:It's based on the relationships that I have. And those projects, we bought a building, a 23 unit building in Coburg back in December. And that, that one has done extremely well. We were buying it for a cap rate that is much more compressed now than it was before that value of that property has gone up about 25% since we've actually purchased it. And then your relationship is what proceeds you in this business.
Quentin D'Souza:And I have a very good relationship and being able to find properties and opportunities is what I do. I have a good ear to the ground. I'm really focused on the 401 Corridor. So I'm looking at properties from Toronto out to Ottawa along that 401 Corridor is where I have done really well. The biggest purchase I've done is a two zero two unit, seven apartment building purchase.
Quentin D'Souza:And that again is just based on relationships. Being able to put a deal like that together and getting it closed. It was a lot of work, but it was really a mindset shift for me. I w I really wish I did it sooner than I had actually done. I probably could have done that same deal three years ago, but it was, I wasn't associated with the right people.
Quentin D'Souza:I I think my mindset was stuck in a specific place. And I started to talk to other people who were much further along, had a larger portfolio, did things a little bit different. And it helped me to shift my mindset enough to be able to attack that deal and then get it done. And I have a, another apartment building under contract now. It's a 92 unit building.
Quentin D'Souza:Great cap rate, great area. It's going to work out very well. But again, it's just getting out there and doing it. It's a $15,000,000 acquisition. So it's not something that's, that's a small, but it all depends on your perspective.
Quentin D'Souza:Right? Funny enough. I asked my son, my, I have a 17 year old and a 13 year old. I, if I asked my 13 year old, what's a lot of money. He'll say $50 And if I say, ask my 17 year old, what's a lot of money.
Quentin D'Souza:He'll probably say $500 So it's all your mindset. And oftentimes with when you're working on opportunities, it's simply adding a zero to whatever you're working on can shift your mindset. And then the next time you do it, it becomes easier. Pushing yourself to do a little bit more or adding a zero can make a huge difference in what you can achieve. Not only deal, but in your life, Right.
Quentin D'Souza:It doesn't not necessarily real estate could be finances. It could be health goals, whatever that is. You just have to step up to them.
Scott Dillingham:No. And I agree. And I love that you mentioned mindset because I think that's something that's so incredibly important just in life in general, not even investing, but if you have the wrong mindset about something, it will usually not work out. But if you approach something positively and you don't let fear overcome you, then I believe you can accomplish anything you want in life. So I love that that you've said that.
Scott Dillingham:As far as you buy a building, let's say it's underperforming. What do you do to increase the performance of the property and the value of the property to get it where you want it?
Quentin D'Souza:There are a lot of different things that we do to a building. We have very strict landlord tenant board rules and regulations in Ontario. It makes it very hard for existing properties to actually make sense to purchase. One of the challenges in Ontario, of the things that we work on is reducing expenses. If we have lighting, we'll switch it out to led lighting.
Quentin D'Souza:We'll try to reduce water consumption by looking at water saving measures that will work on different efficiencies within a building. If there's any HVAC systems, we'll work on that. So to reduce the expense side is that helps with increasing the NOI. We'll also, as we turn over units, we'll renovate them and bring them up to the market rent. We will offer money to tenants to leave depending on the situation and where we're at in order to ensure that we can add value to the building.
Quentin D'Souza:It's unfortunate kind of the situation we're in Ontario, it actually limits the supply more than anything else. And unfortunately not many people understand how that works, but when you're not making an asset valuable, it makes it harder to create new assets. The other thing is that we're actually buying buildings that are well below construction costs. The way that it works, especially with the municipalities and development and the amount of funds that it actually is required to build a multi unit building. You're probably closer to $300 a square foot on average when you include everything, land costs, all of that.
Quentin D'Souza:Whereas when you're buying an existing asset, we work hard to buy well below construction costs in any given area. And that gives us an advantage. However, different than you might think on the on buying a property and bringing up the value. Also getting good debt on it is really important. Particularly if you can get CMHC financing on the debt, or you can get some sort of flexible financing, some bridge financing that allows you to make the changes and improvements that you need to make on the property in order to increase the net operating income and therefore the value of the building.
Quentin D'Souza:So all of those things together help to reposition an asset. There's a number of other things that we do, but that those are some high level pieces that can really help people understand what we do. You got to remember they want to make sure to play within the rules and do things correctly. And so that's what we focus on doing. And we've been able to do it well since 2008, and I continue plan to continue to do it for the twenty years as well.
Quentin D'Souza:It's just keeping that reputation on, but taking the time to reposition that asset in a way that makes the most sense.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No, it's I love it. That's so awesome. And it's true. I remember on my first commercial purchase, I it was an owner occupied commercial building and I rented out part of it.
Scott Dillingham:And then I used part for my office. And just by renting out part of it, it brought up my value, a $110,000. So that's one thing I love with commercial is that you can really control your property's value. Like what you said, lowering your costs and increasing your income. It's absolutely incredible.
Scott Dillingham:But I don't think a lot of people realize that like you've got that control where on residential, it doesn't really so much residential is more of you complete some renovations and that, that brings up the value. So there's a big difference there, but no, so that's incredible. So Quentin, I knew you from you running your own events. You're on multiple people's podcasts. Well, the investing circle is small, like it's large, but it's small overall compared to the overall population.
Scott Dillingham:So I've crossed paths with you multiple ways, but how does somebody who wants to know more or what do they do to contact you or what resources do you offer for investing?
Quentin D'Souza:If you want to hear more about what I'm doing, you can get on my podcast, which is getrealwealthy.com. I've got a number of books available on Amazon. You can look up my name, Quentin D'Souza on Amazon. You can check that out. You can check out educationrei.com or you can look me up on social media.
Quentin D'Souza:I'm on Instagram or Twitter at humanrei. Any one of those ways are a great way of getting ahold of me and yeah, I'm happy to connect with people on social media and see if we can carry out a conversation.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's awesome. I really appreciate your time today, Quentin. I love your insights and the the conversation we had today. I look to meeting up with you next time.
Quentin D'Souza:Awesome. Thanks so much, Scott.
Scott Dillingham:No problem. Take care.