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A Replay Of Michele and The Fearless Millionaire
June 14, 2022 | Posted by: Michele Cummins
Warning! This is a digitally automated transcript of the show so there will be mistakes throughout - including the spelling of Michele's name!
Curtis Pope:
which means it's time for the commons Real Estate Group show with Michelle Cummings and myself Curtis Pope. And today, Michelle, I know you're extra excited, but one because you've had a lot of coffee. And too because we've got a guest.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Yes. And yes, I have had a few cups of coffee and I have one stool in front of me right now. So Delicious and high caffeine, the smoking gun, my favorite coffee of all time, so good. And they just opening up their location in downtown Chilliwack it's so cool. You've got to check it out. Actually. Today later, I'm going to pick up 20 bags of coffee beans, they have ready for me.
Curtis Pope:
It is really powerful. It is amazing coffee, I have to admit
Michele Cummins - PREC:
it's true. But talking about real estate, I am so excited because I love love, love investing, especially real estate. I have other investments. But my focus and mine is real estate obviously it would be but I just know how golden real estate is. I absolutely love it. And I was introduced to amazing investor that we have on our show today. You may have heard him giggle there in the background just now. But his name is Mason Ammeraal and he is from fearless millionaire.com That's fearless dash millionaire.com And we're talking today about short term rentals because he does lots of different investments, real estate investments, too. But we're going to just focus since we have a certain amount of time on the show on short term rentals. So Nathan Ammeraal is he's an international real estate investor with over a decade of experience in long and short term rentals SFH Land, land and lending commercial he does it all I need them launched his career from being a mortgage broker to rapidly becoming one of the nation's fearless investors within his first few years. Nathan transacted millions of dollars of real estate in the US and then took his skills to Uganda and Portugal which Nathan I think you're in Portugal calling in from there right now, aren't you?
Unknown:
I am. I'm on these little small islands off the coast of Portugal called the Azores Islands. I call them the big nine rocks. They are
Michele Cummins - PREC:
fabulous. And almost like a property. Curtis texted me the other day of buying in the islands. It must be fantastic.
Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely is. The weather is no smell absolutely decent all the time. And in the culture, it's just more of a calm culture European. So it's very nice.
Curtis Pope:
And all that incredible Spanish food and wine. I have
Unknown:
Standish. Well.
Curtis Pope:
I know. But I mean, it's gotta be close enough.
Unknown:
It is close. We do have those good spices. So it is it is
Curtis Pope:
it is very similar cuisine, is it not?
Unknown:
It is it is it's actually very, very similar. mixes. There. You definitely got those good spices for sure.
Curtis Pope:
Yeah, no, I just, I like anything. Spanish, Mexican, Portuguese. I'm just I'm there for it. It all just blends into one for me.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
You've been there a few years now too, haven't you?
Unknown:
Yeah, actually, in, you know, like you said, the majority of my real estate business was in the US. And then in 2013, I went over to Uganda, got married and started a family. And, you know, I was living there most of the time. And then what I ended up doing, you know, to reunite my family who was in Massachusetts, we just reunite back on the island because actually, We're originally from here. My parents immigrated to the United States many, many years ago. So we just said, Hey, why don't we just reconnect back on the island? And we would you know, so we started coming out here in 2013 2016 17. And 2019, of course, because of COVID. We stuck around for a little bit longer since we've been here. So that's the short summary.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
So you have passions in finances in real estate investing in raising capital, which is really neat niche and remote business building. And I know there's so much I want to talk about. Maybe we'll have to have you again back on the show. But we will really want to focus on short term rentals right now because they seem to be the all the rage and it seems to be really popular. People are really vacationing in like Airbnb. To me short term places, and I have a few myself, which I absolutely love, and I see such great results with. So I want to welcome you officially to our show. And thank you for taking the time to be here for us. Absolutely. So you are an investor. And since you decided to focus on that, I also wanted to see if you could also maybe share a little bit about any, any of those seekers out there, who are the dreamers and their dreams will come true, because they're going to focus on them, but they're in debt right now today, but they, they just need some tips on how to get out of debt in order to start real estate investing. So if you can also share some tips that way as well. That'd be fantastic.
Unknown:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, to go back into the short term rentals, you know, a lot of people think like, oh, I need a lot of money to get into real estate. And there's many ways to skin this fish we call real estate, so many ways to do real estate investing. But the reality is, is that you can actually get into short term rentals without owning the property. And I've done, I've done both ways, so you can own the property and then rent it out. Or you can do a joint venture partnership. So basically, what that is, is you can ask an owner of a property who may not be utilizing it just property just sitting there fully furnished. And they want to property, basically, let's say property management, they want to, you know, have someone earning money for them. So there's those types of people. There's other people who are doing long term rentals right now. And they are in a really hot market, where they can actually go from if they just converted their long term rents to, you know, option that they have right now to a short term rental position, they could probably be earning more money. So if someone wanted to break in and start a real estate investing or property management business, they could do Airbnb, like let's call it arbitrage or you know, just creativeness and go into a joint venture position, if they don't have all the capital to purchase their own property. And they could do a joint venture partnership with someone else, and manage the properties for them on their behalf. I hope that I made that simple. But that's basically what someone could do. And I've done both I've we manage rentals that are not ours. We've done joint venture partnerships with people in the US and Portugal and Uganda. And also we own a bunch of short term rentals as well. So yeah, there's two roads for them. So
Michele Cummins - PREC:
what type of real estate investments? Specifically, do you own? You own mostly short term rentals? Or what's your mixed bag?
Unknown:
Well, that's a great question. So over the years, I've done a whole bunch of different transactions. So I own and I own mostly I got land deals, I own a bunch of houses, single family houses that I've done owner financing with. So a few years ago, back in, I think, 2020 10, I got really into affordable housing. And I was really trying to give back to the United States and my country and really help veterans out who I knew were struggling with getting affordable housing, active, active military and veterans. So what I ended up doing was I ended up purchasing a bunch of properties, single family properties, and I am doing owner financing for them, which is carrying the mortgage. So I've done a bunch of those. And I've also done a bunch of commercial properties. I recently just bought a senior care facility. So I'm helping out seniors because, you know, we talked about short term rentals. It's a booming market, you know, the word Airbnb is like tissues like Kleenex tissues, right? So when people think short term rentals, they're thinking Airbnb. So that market is extremely growing. And I think it's going to grow even more because of COVID. And you know, more and more people are going to be working remotely and exploring the world more. There's a whole other side of that market. I call it the opposite of the millennials is the senior care market. You know, there's many, many people, the baby boomers are now getting into up in age and they're, you know, they're there. They're going to need a place to stay, and they're getting the accommodations, and they're going to need some senior care. So I think that's another booming market. So I stepped into that market, that industry as well. And then yeah, again, short term rentals, long term rentals, land. Yeah, I got a good portfolio. And I also do funding transactions, they also fund transactions for real estate investors, sometimes the clients that that I work with, that come in want to learn how to do real estate outside, help them fund their deals to get into their first real estate deal as well.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
You also do ROI, then rent to own.
Unknown:
I don't do rent to own I did a few of those in the beginning, but I ended up changing the format of the transaction. So I ended up doing the either lease option, which is okay, that is kind of a form of a rent to own. Yeah, I do apologize. Sorry. I mean, we just don't call it rent to own in that state particularly. So yeah, so we do lease option with an option to purchase if they wanted to. And or we mostly do owner financing, though. That's pretty much what we've done. In regards to it's something similar to rent to own
Michele Cummins - PREC:
It's interesting depending on the location that you're wanting to invest in, we really determine what type of investment you should purchase. So, like Vancouver, furnished long term rentals do absolutely fantastic. Well, so does normal rental long term rentals is an unfurnished. But there is a real big market for furnished long term rentals in the Vancouver area, not so much in our Fraser Valley area here in the valley outside of the Greater Vancouver. So I find that interesting as well.
Unknown:
Yeah, there's a great website, I'm not sure if it actually works up in Canada, but it's called Air, air dna.co.co. And basically, you can type in an address and see how well the short term rentals are doing in that area. I actually don't know if it works Canada, I apologize. But if any of your listeners are thinking about investing in the US, or doing short term rentals in the US, the website air dna.co is a great place to get data before you even make a purchase or you know, do a joint venture agreement for short term rentals that was
Michele Cummins - PREC:
air a IR and DNA like your DNA and your
Unknown:
DNA, like your DNA yeah.co.co.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Thank you for that. So I have a few short term rentals As mentioned previously, and they're doing really, really good. But how do you get into that market? Do you have advice on that?
Unknown:
Yeah, well, I would say first, you know, if someone's especially if they're doing it remotely or internationally, I would say first pick a market that you love, or maybe a play like you wouldn't mind visiting there, you wouldn't mind traveling there. So you can probably stay in your own rental while you're there. That's like an added benefit. But I would also say if you travel to a place or you revisit a location for vacationing, or traveling holidays, stuff like that, you go to that location, very often, maybe once a year, twice a year, I would definitely encourage someone to pick up a rental there, you can always just either get a property management company in there, or you could just manage it yourself. And there's a lot of tools out there software tools that you could use and manage these properties completely on your own. You know, keep most of the percentage share, if you don't mind a little bit of communication, maybe someone in your family can manage the the deal for you. But today, you know, I think I think a lot of people who are doing short term rentals, they like that. They don't they like a host free check. And they like to check in on their own. They like to just get to the lockbox get their tea and check right and they don't want to be shown around. At least that's my been my experience. So that's that's typically how we run all our short term rentals we have, most of the time, we just have a lockbox and they you know, the client will get right to the property we you know, we guide them right to the property to our, our, you know, our messages or our templates, and they check right in on their own.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
That is so true. And when we come back from the break, I'm going to mention how much I've made growth in just two years owning the beach house that I own and where I bought it price wise to what its value is that now so people can understand. What a real life example.
Curtis Pope:
All right, Michelle, so we'll take a quick break gave me my cue there. So if people want more information about what you do as a realtor, where can they go?
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Michelle cummings.ca
Curtis Pope:
We're back with more right after this.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
She
Curtis Pope:
ever over to become cons Real Estate Group show the course Michelle Cummings and myself Curtis Pope. And of course we have our special guest, Nathan from the Azores Islands, which is off the coast of Portugal, which is just amazing that we have an international guest on the show.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Our first one. Yeah.
Unknown:
So great to be here with you guys. This is such a fun show.
Curtis Pope:
Well, we try to have some fun.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
If you can't have fun, it's been it's just ain't worth doing. Right.
Curtis Pope:
Exactly. Sometimes we'll go on here and talk for 10 minutes and we won't even talk about real estate and then we realized oh yeah, this is a real estate show.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Yes. Give the listeners what they want real estate. So Nathan, we're talking short term rentals. And I just wanted to mention in in when we were chatting before we started the show about how you know you meet with your family in a place for so long, like whether it's a lake house or in my case, it was on the Oregon coast for over 10 years and I'm like I should just buy something here and rent it out. short term rental through a company and takes care of it, and we get to enjoy it. And it's an investment. And the I'm so happy that I made that decision with that property and the other ones I bought, and I've never regretted buying a property never. And mine, just as an example, of course, everywhere has gone up in price in just this last year. But just so listeners can understand, with this property, only two years of renting it out. And the first year you start a short term rental, it's not as profitable as it is in the second and third year, because once people get to know your place, they love it, and they come back and they tell their friends and family and you're establishing it. So the first year is good, but it it only gets better from there. And I saw this at my beach house. And so for two years, I've been renting it out, and it's made over 211,000 Gross. And I bought it for 550,000. And today's video value of it is very close to 1.2 million pretty much 1.2 Because the improvements that I've done with it as well. So that's a real life example of one short term rental, I have the Kassa Property Management taking care of it, I chose an international property management company for that one, because they have such, you know, exposure, and they do so much advertising and they show results. So anyways, I had to negotiate what I would say get a percentage wise because they can take a big chunk, so you have to be careful and just watch your your fingers and watch your numbers. But it's been fantastic to be able to enjoy what I already enjoy my family enjoys a couple of times a year, to a few times a year to be able to always have it and have it paid for itself and and be able to improve itself and be able to pay. Like it's just, it just grows your your real estate portfolio so much faster, too. So what I always ask my clients when they're, you know, wanting to invest, because I might say one of them is unlocking your real estate potential. So I don't like just to help you get into your primary residence, I want to help you expand on that, and really get the gold out of real estate and profit from it because everyone can and it's actually quite easy to do. It just takes the steps, you just have to be kind of bold, and take those first step. And I asked what are your hobbies? Like if, like you said, What do you enjoy? Do you love skiing? Do you love hiking and mountain biking? Do you love the lake and just relaxing on the water or ocean fishing really depends on what you love doing. And then maybe focus on the best area that you normally visit and then look into the real estate comps and like that website that you shared, and look into the Airbnb sites and the VRBO sites and they cap the size and all those sites to see what other types of rentals and what they're doing and, and go from there. But anyways, I want to hear and we all want to hear from you, not me, we always hear from me. So please expand and share your knowledge with us.
Unknown:
So you said so many great points there about how you kept revisiting like because of family. That's what I ended up doing. Also, many years ago, we were reconnecting here on the island. And it was like, Well, why don't we just buy a place for keep, you know, paying the hotels, all this money. So we did that very similar thing. And that just kept growing and growing. Because you know, the market, we saw a lot of people traveling here from Europe, and the US and Canada traveling in and we just said, you know, let's just let's just keep growing this. And yeah, in the beginning, though, Michelle, we did also have a property management company. But we just decided, like, we ended up growing the arm of our short term rental business. So we said, You know what, in order for us to scale this even more to increase our bottom line, we're going to have to self manage. So that's what we did, we ended up self managing, we brought in a few systems and you know, I brought my wife in into the business. So she, you know, handles a lot of bookkeeping side of things. And we just brought it into, we're able to recapture about 2020 to 25%. of games basically of revenue, we were able to capture that back into our bottom line. So but that may not be for everybody in the beginning, you may need a property management company, you know, to to manage in the beginning. So that's fine, too. We We've also had that experience as well. So I would encourage any of your listeners to to great way to get started, you know investing internationally or remotely, especially if you're meeting up in different places for sure. Oh,
Michele Cummins - PREC:
yes. And there's such some gray areas. It's really around the world right now. So there's some areas I have my eye on when the restrictions are lifted a bit more, it'll be a little bit easier for people to enjoy their out of country investments and short term rentals. But yeah,
Unknown:
one of the areas to ask that one. I'm sorry, I know You know, you were gonna say one of the areas that I've been looking into is the, you know, there's some, there's some great websites out there based, you know, for Europe and the US, just tourists to look for tourism, you know, the highest populated areas for tourism. So one of the one that's really caught my eye has been Italy. Now, again, these are post pre COVID numbers, over 60 million people a year have traveled to Italy. And for multiple reasons, not just for religious purposes, but also for holidays. And Alexa, that's a lot of people in one area at one particular time and other places Israel, most people would think like, Well, why would I invest in Israel, while there's a lot of tourists, there's three different religions that, you know, visit Israel on a on a very annual basis. So that's another interesting area to to consider. So all these, I would just always look at, you know, the tourism market, you know, and get get your stats on the tourists before you even you know, you know, drop down and drop a down payment or, you know, buy a property.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Yeah, very good point. And then looking into, of course, at the different countries and the different locations with, you know, are Is there a foreign buyers tax, when you purchase all the taxes, the expenses, the cost of purchasing, and then there's the cost of selling down the road. So you always have to have your end game and a plan of action? And what does that look like? So when you go to sell it, I mean, of course, laws change, but what are the current laws? And what does it look like it will be if you do want to, if it's a 10 year investment, or if it's a lifetime investment different, but if you plan on selling it later down the road, what types of taxes and things are, are owed then to and it helps you with the figures and the numbers and where to focus. If you're purchasing internationally. I was going to go to Italy, this lat actually this month, the month of September, I plan on going to Italy with a friend and just biking, biking around and just enjoying it. And I have been thinking about investing in Italy. That is one spot I've been thinking in Israel, I went there when I was 17. I would love to go back. I've always wanted to go back and really good points about looking at the tourism and in an even broader spectrum than just little local areas.
Unknown:
Yeah, I mean, most people feel comfortable about you know, investing in their backyard or you know, just starting locally, but that's fine. But you may be you know, your audience or whoever is listening right now maybe thinking like, well, there's nothing going on in my little backyard. You know, it's not a tourist area. So you might want to just reconsider short term rentals, then and you might have to, you know, like if you're in the middle of Kansas, okay, so I always I always bring up Kansas. But if you're in the middle of a farm, and you got nothing going on, you definitely don't want to start their mental down the road, you have to look for populated areas where people would come in, whether it's business trips, or sporting events, or whatever it may be, but you want consistent. You want consistent tourism. So you want that consistency of flow of people, whether it's whether it's in the north in North America, whether it's in South South America, wherever it may be.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
And we are so blessed here in the Fraser Valley in Greater Vancouver area we are, it's like live in your backyard. We are all about beauty and tourism and fun activities and sports and concerts. We have it all here. So this is a hug for the perfect place to have short term rentals. This is it. Our area is just so fantastic. And one of the things about Oregon Coast too interesting enough is the cast has said that it's their number one hottest location, best location for the best rental. There's more rentals there. You'd be surprised at how many short term properties there are. And it's their most active location. They said as a as a huge short term property management company. So Curtis,
Curtis Pope:
Yes, Michel.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
He sent me his resume sent me an island to purchase as maybe an investment. Yeah, there's
Curtis Pope:
that island is white, white stone Island isn't it's, it's just outside of seashells. And it's got a beautiful home on it. And I guess it's a total of six acres, and it could be yours for a cool four and a half million dollars.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Hey, Nathan, would you like to joint venture with Chris and myself?
Unknown:
I actually have I don't know anything about this property. But it sounds interesting. I do have a friend though that him and his dad they buy. I don't even know if it's the luxury property on this on this on this island. But what they do is they do fractional ownership. So what they do is they purchase a luxury property, and they tie it up into an entity and then they sell shares of that entity. And then whoever owns the share, can they you know, they have a calendar and they take the dates and when the when one of the owners is not using it, they rent it out. It was a very unique concept. I'm like I never thought of doing that. But actually,
Michele Cummins - PREC:
there are so many ways to be creative in real estate So many and we have some of those inheriting Hot Springs, here is a real tourism location on a beautiful lake. And we also have it in Whistler, which is a world renowned ski resort. And it's another location. So that's, that's a fantastic way of doing it too. And, and therefore you, you can create a limited like a numbered company and you own shares, there's different ways you can actually do it. And I always say talk to your accountant, and your financial planners are the best way for you to do it. With your you no wealth portfolio. But yeah, that's a fantastic option, we may have to just look at that island. Oh, we should actually mention maybe a couple of other great investments. Actually, if you don't mind. I wanted to mention that before I go to a new listing, I mean, coming soon listing, I just want to thank you, Nathan, and give you one last opportunity. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with us and our listeners?
Unknown:
Oh, thanks. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me. I love your show, the energy is just exactly I feel at home. So thanks so much for having me. And for your listeners, you know, anyone who's whether, first of all, if you're thinking about buying a property, they obviously should work with you. And then also when it comes to investments, you know, they're on the fence thinking about, you know, getting started, you know, over the years, I've worked with people who are, you know, just trying to get started in their first investment, they can check out my website, but if anybody who's interested in just, you know, trying to take that first step they're thinking is now the good time. Should I wait? My answer to that is don't wait, get started now, before it's too late.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
There's words of advice. Absolutely. What's your website?
Unknown:
Anyone can Google either my name or just the words fearless millionaire that someone can also go to fearless dash millionaire.com. And that's a website that people who are looking to get started investing in real estate, whether it's locally or remotely, they can go there and contact us and get some free tips and resources there as well.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
And you have social media. Are you mostly on Facebook or Instagram or led to?
Unknown:
I do actually YouTube? Yeah, YouTube is kind of like my hub recently. So someone can go there and just simply Google fearless millionaire. And we give out tips that help people gain clarity, build confidence and gain cash flow. I mean, I know there's a lot of hurdles. And you know, investing in real estate can sometimes create this mental fog like, where do I get started first. And that's the whole premise of the brand is to help clear the fog to help people build confidence they can do it and actually get into property where they can cash flow and make some money.
Michele Cummins - PREC:
Thank you so much. That's fantastic. And I'm looking forward to continuing watching your videos on there. Have a fantastic rest of your day or evening or I don't know what time it is there. But
Curtis Pope:
it's different than it was here. That's for sure.
Unknown:
So true. Yeah, it's 9pm. But thank you both so much for having me here. It's been great. Thank you, Nathan.
Curtis Pope:
Let's look and see what we have in the way of open houses a new listings this week. Well, there's an open house at 1479 Highlands Boulevard in Harrison mills. It's at Mount Woodside stunning rancher with daylight walkout basement and amazing view of the river and mountains 3300 square foot five bedroom and three bathrooms. And that's going on today from two to 4pm. As for new listings, we have 35067 sward road and mission $750,000 This one just went live a couple days ago super cute three bedroom rancher in shelter COVID had sick Lake. You're just on the other side of the street from the lake on a good sized lot. We also have 24 349 Walnut Avenue and Harrison hotsprings it's $935,000 This is a 16 131 square foot two bedroom rancher with a loft and Harrison hotsprings great views of Mount GM and only five minute walk to the lake. And then there's 2008 295 Nixon Road in Chilliwack $1,445,000 This beauty is on a corner lot in the Camden at the falls right near the amazing falls golf course. It's 3245 square feet four bedroom home that was built in 2020 and it's a top notch. Everything. Everything's perfect, it's immaculate. If you'd like to see more about these homes. You can find all the details of Michelle cummins.ca And join us again next week when we will talk real estate in order to unlock your real estate potential on the show real estate is maximized. Thanks for listening
If you missed last week's episode where we go over some stats for the month of May, please go take a listen! It's well worth it.