Episode Title

42 - Sylvia and Arran - Shiny Objects, Setbacks & Strategies

Summary

In this episode of the Life by Design podcast, hosts Jessilyn and Brian welcome Sylvia and Arran, who share their journey in real estate investing. They discuss their initial experiences with fix and flips, the challenges they faced, and their transition to multifamily investments. The conversation highlights the importance of networking, coaching, and taking action in the real estate field. Sylvia and Arran emphasize the need for a strong support system and the value of learning from mistakes as they navigate their investment journey.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Real Estate Journeys

01:44 The Fix and Flip Experience

06:02 Transitioning to Multifamily Investments

11:04 Overcoming Financial Barriers in Multifamily

17:24 The Importance of Networking

23:26 Advice for Aspiring Investors

Contact Jessilyn and Brian Persson | Weekend Wealth Investments:

• Website: weekendwealth.ca
• Instagram: weekend.wealth
• Facebook: Weekend Wealth Investments
• Linkedin: Weekend Wealth Investments

Contact Sylvia and Arran | Silver Fern Investments:

Instagram: @silverfern_rei

Email: [email protected]

Transcript

Jessilyn & Brian (00:02)

Welcome to the Life by Design podcast. Today we're excited to have two guests join us to share their journey on real estate investing. So Sylvia and her partner Arran met 12 years ago and turned to real estate to escape the nine to five. Their investing journey experienced a strong start, a few setbacks and a pause and reset. But Sylvia and Aaron persevered and are now more focused than ever. Welcome. Welcome to our podcast. Yes, welcome.

Sylvia And Arran (00:31)

Thank you for having us on. Thank you.

Jessilyn & Brian (00:33)

Yeah, so why don't you guys start off by just expanding on your little intro that we gave you. Can you tell us a little bit more about the setbacks, about the pause and where you are now?

Sylvia And Arran (00:46)

Go ahead. We got into flips and we're sort of doing that and then we came across multifamily and knowing a few other people that do it and sort of wanting to grow. It sort of seemed like the direction we wanted to go in and we still do. We went down the rabbit hole in learning and we kind of paused everything else and that's kind of where we sort of took a pause and now we've got a bit of shiny object syndrome and now we realize we've come back to our focus and now we're moving forward again.

A lot of distractions to find your path. There's so many different paths that you can go down that seem so right for us, but then you have to really focus on the main ones. You can't just go everywhere, otherwise you're not going to get anywhere, which is kind of what happened to us.

Jessilyn & Brian (01:31)

Yeah, yeah, we've been there ourselves. It took us a lot of years to sort out our particular path. And so tell us about ⁓ the fix and flips. Is that where you started in real estate? So what did what are those first few projects go like? Can you tell us some experiences around it?

Sylvia And Arran (01:43)

Yes.

The first one actually went great. Well, we had a, we could have made a lot more money, but we got it right. We got the numbers right. We got what we wanted. And then we realized we probably should have done better. But the first one we founded pretty quickly. It all went pretty smoothly. Sort of until the very end, but it still worked out really good.

Yeah, we met our timelines, we had everything like that, basically the part is at the end there, the realtor we were using sort of came with the deal. He was the one that brought it through a wholesaler, so we had to sell it with him. He took it upon himself when it was finished to do a walkthrough, and he was going on holiday and listed it, and then went on holiday without showing us the listing for us to approve. Did he even do a walkthrough? Yeah, because he told Okay.

So when it went live I looked at it in the morning and he had put new plumbing, new electrical, new this, new that and we were like no no no we didn't like it's not that's not what I've done. So anyway it was a great deal he provided a listing price which was okay in our mind but afterwards turned out we had 23 other offers after accepting one we sold it in half a day so with him listing it the way he did

it ended up triggering some red flags at the city because they said new plumbing, new electrical, etc. And there were no permits. So the city turns up and then they want to see permits for this and permits for that. So we had to get our contractor in and do a walkthrough and say we didn't touch this, we didn't touch this. You can see it's original blah blah blah. And they wanted a few things upgraded. So it ended up costing us some money to do that. And we ended up dividing it with the realtor, the contractor, ourselves. We still made money on it.

but there was more money to be made. the realtor sort of took it upon himself to do that. So we learnt on top of that to really, really make sure that we approve the listing.

Jessilyn & Brian (03:52)

That's great. That's great you guys made money. A lot of the stories we hear, the first fix and flip, they rarely ever make money. In fact, in the whole shiny object syndrome that we were talking about, fix and flips were one of our shiny objects, we're kind of glad we didn't pick up. And I guess maybe just by luck we had enough conversations with people like yourselves who went through all the trials, went through all the tribulations, and we just went, you know what? ⁓

That's not for us. So tell us about like what kind of experience or support or training you guys had coming into your first fix and flip. Like how did you decide on fix and flip as your first real estate adventure?

Sylvia And Arran (04:36)

I've worked in construction most of my life and I had a few injuries and I was just like I can't do this forever. So I was just looking for something else. I have worked hard for other people and I don't want to do that anymore. I sort of wanted to work for us and our families and stuff like that. And I just sort of was talking to a friend and he had a co-worker that had started doing flips and at the time there was a company called Black Card which was Stefan Arnio which was based here in Winnipeg.

And he had left his job as a paramedic for the city, is a great paying job here and within a couple of years was basically self-sufficient doing this and the market was pretty hot then. So he had given me a book and I started reading it and I thought this is right up my alley. I already work in construction, I know the process, I know a lot of good trades. And then we went to a seminar that Stephen was running here and it was super ...