FAQ
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FAQ about Volition
The burning stuff you want to know about Volition
We are a Real Estate Investment Advisory & Realty firm. We help real estate investors invest in the ultra-competitive Toronto real estate market by being not only a service provider, but a solutions provider: we have a complete end-to-end offering to ensure that our clients are successful.
We’ve been investing since 2001. We’ve seen our fair share of ups and downs in Toronto (including market downturns/stagnation in 2008, 2017, 2020, and most recently in 2022), but mostly ups.
We currently personally own $32M+ in real estate. We have been through the trenches, we have invested in not only Toronto but Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Sudbury, and Edmonton, and that has helped us develop a unique approach to successful investing… which includes a risk mitigated investment business model adapted for the Toronto market.
We’ve been featured on:
- Real Estate Investment Network (REIN) guest speaker
- Erwin Szeto’s “Truth About Investing” podcast
- REITE Club
- Thornhill Wealth Expo
- York Region Investors Forum
- Asia Property Expo in Hong Kong
- Dave Dubeau podcast
- Austin Yeh podcast
- REIN Canada Magazine
What else:
- We run the largest and most active Real Estate Investor meetup group in Toronto with over 2400+ members
- Several investing awards from REIN
- “Michael Millnear” Real Estate Leadership nomination, REIN’s top investor award
- Certified Real Estate Investment Advisor (REIA)
- Realtor awards (Chairman’s Award 2016/2017/2018/2019/2020/2021)
Advisory
- We teach you how to invest in real estate, educate you about various investing strategies that are available in Toronto, and we build a personalized investment real estate investment plan that is uniquely tailored to your specific circumstances. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our Real Estate Investment Advisors.
Realty
- Buyers: We identify and help you acquire properties that exactly fit your criteria according to your investment strategy/plan
- Sellers: Our unique handle the entire (i.e. stressful) process of selling your investment property, which often involves dealing with tenants. We are connected to thousands of qualified investors ready to pull the trigger, so you’re not left wondering if the buyer can actually close or not.
Construction Management
- We can do what very few others in Toronto can do; get approvals and permits for a multiplex conversion for you. This is a very complicated and involved process, but for you, it’s completely hands off. Check out some of our major multiplex conversion projects here.
- That said, we also do cosmetic upgrades to enhance units for top rents. We have the ability to deliver biggest-bang-for-the-buck: renovating for investment properties is not the same as for your own home. Your goal is to maximize rents for the lowest amount of money possible. We know what that sweet spot is. Check out some of our recent cosmetic renovation projects here.
Leasing & Property Management
- We find you the best tenants and do a thorough screening of them, and in doing so, mitigate your risk substantially.
- We have strategic partnerships with the best Property Management firm in Toronto, but the reality is, we don’t have too many clients who require it. Why? Simply put; it’s because of the business model that we employ. Our investment business model caters to top tenant profiles and quality properties. And as part of our Volition Inner Circle networking group, everything you need (plumber, electrician, handyman, appliance guy, etc.) is only a quick text away.
- Home Buyer: Being Investor Realtors makes us a cut above the other 50,000 regular joe-schmoe Realtors in Toronto. We have the ability to see how your personal residence is an important aspect of building wealth, and how it can be utilized to help accelerate you towards your investment goals by paying attention to important considerations such as secondary suites, ensuring that you have the proper financing in place that you can easily draw upon, etc.
- Home Seller: You want top dollar. We can get you top dollar. We have the ability to determine whether a $20,000 kitchen upgrade will fetch you an additional $50,000 in selling price. And we can handle all the renovations for you. We can also advise on staging is suitable, and what the ROI would be on staging. Completely turnkey, fastest sale, maximum price.
- Renovations: We can help you create your custom dream home, or even just help with the kitchens and baths to breathe new life into an older home. Or we can help you design/build a laneway house as a simple mortgage helper or for somewhere for your kids to live.
$228M+. Almost a quarter of a billion dollars. And counting.
$113M+ And counting.
$10.3M+ And counting.
FAQ about Toronto
What makes Toronto worthy of your Investment Dollars?
Watch this video!
Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Toronto is only too “expensive” to invest in if you weren’t able to get cashflow, if the underlying fundamentals weren’t strong enough, if you were speculating solely for capital appreciation, if you were buying a bungalow in Willowdale or Richmond Hill for $1.5M and renting it out for $3000. But done properly, investing in Toronto can be a reality.
Regular people view risk as the same thing as price. If the price is too high, then the risk is too high. This is an oversimplified perspective, one that is driven out of lack of investment education. The reality is much different. The reality in Ontario is that tenants are your biggest risk, due to the way that the landlord-tenant laws are written. Identifying and mitigating tenant risk is your #1 job as an investor, and that means you need the absolute best tenant profile in your properties. Some attributes of this tenant profile are: millennial, university educated, professional white collar job, works in downtown Toronto, $60-80k salary. You also want them to be transient, so that you can raise rents to rising market rents upon turnover (you do NOT want a lifer).
Done properly, investing in real estate is not as scary or “risky” as you may think. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our Real Estate Investment Advisors and they will walk you through Catastrophe Planning and “what if” scenarios.
- Preconstruction Condo
- Resale Condo
- Entry level house
- House with basement unit (existing or create)
- Legal Luxury Multiplex Conversion
- Laneway Housing
- Smaller property ($750k condo or $1M small house): $150-$250k cash and $600-1M mortgage qualification
- Solid investment property ($1.2M-1.8M triplex): $300k-$400k cash and $1.2M-$1.5M mortgage qualification
- Multiplex conversion + laneway suite ($1.4-1.8M property and $500k-1.25M renovation) : $800k-1.5M cash and $2M+ mortgage qualification upon refi
Very few people can reach into their couch cushions and find $500k to invest. That is why during our Advisory, we ask deep questions to probe and unearth relevant details in your scenario to see if there are some opportunities that have as of yet gone undiscovered. We have been able to help countless investors figure out how to buy a triplex when they initially believed that they could only buy a condo. Maybe we can help you do the same. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session here.
FAQ about Legal Multiplex Conversions
What makes this the best investment in town?
We take an older single family home and convert it into a property with multiple units. The units will be legal and registered with the city. They will be luxury units that will attract the top tenant profile and fetch top rents. Typically, this is done in conjunction with the BRRR strategy. The end result will be a refinanced property that has built lots of equity for you, you’ve managed to take out most/all of the renovation costs, and you will still cashflow with a low-headache property that has been rebuilted and filled with excellent tenants.
On the lower end, a typical property starts with an acquisition price of $1.2-1.4M. Then it would require a $500k reno to turn it into a triplex, with an ARV of $2M and $8500 in rents. After refi, it would be a $400-500k equity takeout and cashflow $1000.
On the higher end, a typical property starts with an acquisition price of $1.6-1.8M. Then it would require a $1.25M reno to turn it into a fourplex with an additional laneway suite, with an ARV of $3.5-4M and $14000-15000 in rents. After refi, it would be a $1M-1.25M equity takeout and cashflow $2000.
12-18 months.
There are many factors including exact location, size of the house, size of the lot, side setbacks, front/rear setbacks, zoning in the area, condition of the property, precedent in the area. If you are interested, Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our REIAs and we can go over some high-level discussion with you. If you are an Advisory client who has retained our services, then you can book a personalized tour of several properties currently undergoing conversions.
FAQ about Advisory
Mapping out your path to success
Advisory is all about education, strategy, and planning. It is most analogous to mentorship, coaching, consulting. During Advisory, everything is completely tailored to your needs. You can use the sessions in any way that you see fit. We often educate you about the pros/cons of various business models, we jump on calls with you and your mortgage broker or lawyer or accountant, we consult on various topics that are of interest to you like corporations or how to maximize/reposition your portfolio, and we build a plan on how real estate maps to achieving your life/financial goals. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our Real Estate Investment Advisors here.
Before the Complimentary Advisory Session, you will fill out an Advisory Intake Form, which will give us a basic snapshot of your current financial situation and your intentions, which we will dive into further during the Advisory session. During the session, we will ask deep questions about 1) where you are now & 2) where you want to go, and then 3) we will help outline a high-level plan on how to get there. The purpose of this Complimentary Advisory Session is to determine whether Volition is able to help you in your real estate journey, whether we feel that we are a good fit for each other, and ultimately to determine whether you’d like to move forward with Advisory Services.
This high-level plan is typically refined in future Advisory sessions, once we have a more comprehensive understanding of your circumstances and your goals, at which time we will create your customized Real Estate Action Plan using various analytics and tools such as the proprietary Volition “Multiplier Effect” analyzer, and via discussions about the most suitable investment options for you. This Real Estate Action Plan will model out for you which properties you need to invest in, itemize the actions you need to take at which points in time, and show you how your real estate investments will map to your financial goals, in support of your life goals. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our Real Estate Investment Advisors here.
There are several different Advisory packages available.
Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with us to discuss which option make sense for you.
Realty is about finding the right property. While working with our Investor Realtors, you can ask questions about any one specific property, rents, cashflow, tenant profile, etc. But for in-depth discussions about various business models, what is right for you in your particular situation, how to employ certain investment strategies, tactics about how to get the highest possible appraisal value, what should you do to maximize your mortgage qualification, etc., you would need to retain our Advisory services. Book a Complimentary Advisory Session with one of our Real Estate Investment Advisors here.
FAQ about Mastermind Meetup
4300+ members and counting…
Click here for a list of all of our previous Meetups. Previous topics have included: Where to invest in Toronto, the best types of properties, real estate trends, mortgage financing, accounting, lawyers, creative dealmaking, property insurance, life insurance as an alternate form of financing, tenant profiles, how to boost cashflow, interest rates, how to grow your portfolio, why Toronto vs. small town investing, laneway housing, impact of Covid, Joint Ventures, and more. Every topic under the sun that is relevant to your success as a real estate investor. We primarily focus on Toronto (obviously), but the information is applicable to real estate investing anywhere. If you have a suggestion for a topic, please send us a message through our Contact Form below.
Expert guest speakers are often brought in who are the leading experts in their field. This means that you will listen to the best real estate investment accountant, the best real estate investment insurance broker, the best real estate investment mortgage broker, etc. We also often feature other investors who share their journey and expertise, as well as their tales from the trenches. If you have a suggestion for a guest speaker, please send us a message through our Contact Form below.
Quite simply, we offer the best real estate investment education in Toronto. We have a heavy focus on the fundamentals and on understanding the mechanisms through which you build wealth in real estate. Whereas most other “gurus” will be showing you snazzy deals and property analyzers and pretty pictures and how many $100s of thousands of dollars they made on their last flip, we go deeper than that. We recognize that it’s not quite as “HGTV sexy” to be talking about economic fundamentals and GDP growth and job growth and population growth, but this is where the true understanding is built. In fact, if you have been to our meetup and sat through our presentations, you will often see that we don’t talk about any particular property until the very end… AFTER you have fully understood the fundamental concept being taught… and only then do we show the actual property and how the fundamental concept is applied to this particular property. It’s not always sexy, it’s often a bit boring, but investing in real estate is SUPPOSED to be boring, actually.
They used to be in-person in the Annex in Downtown Toronto. Since Covid, we have transitioned online to Zoom. Once it is safe to do so, we will be returning back to our in-person meetups, since nothing really replaces the ability to network in person!
Investing is a lonely journey. When we first started investing, there was no one like Volition helping us out. There was no meetup like our **TORONTO REAL ESTATE INVESTORS MASTERMIND** to learn more about investing. It was just “throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks”. It was just “buy this condo/house and pray that it all works out”. As a result, we made mistakes. A lot of them, in fact. And we don’t want you to make those same mistakes. You have the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants.
These Meetups are about education. They are about building community. They are about learning from each other and sharing best practices. They are about providing the support that investors need to stick it out for the long haul. These Meetups aren’t about us, these Meetups are about you. So if you want to see something specific at a future Meetup, please send us a message through our Contact Form below.