A Look Back at 2024 and Ahead to 2025!

As 2024 comes to a close, we reflect on a year filled with challenges, roller coasters, and the strength it took to persevere. From major updates to transformative reforms, we’ve seen it all. But what does 2025 have in store? Let’s dive into what lies ahead and how having the right mindset and professional guidance can help you achieve your goals of success in real estate and beyond!
Martin Keuv, an Experienced Investor, Broker of Record at Keller Williams Legacies and Co-Founder of the Vaughan Investors Club, is joining us to share his expertise on navigating the ever-evolving Economy and Real Estate landscape and planning for a prosperous year ahead.
  

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Transcript

you have told us all the stories from 2024 saving is a losing game they're expecting to see the rate cut come down to about 2.75 that's going to likely spark the economy a lot of opportunities to be explored in 2025 I for one I'm very very excited about what's happening in 2025 welcome to the Stellar talk show it's your platform powered by experts insights hi and I'm your host Stella ra you have told us all the stories from 2024 what you have experienced the obstacles the challenges and the financial difficulties you had and you you were skeptical about 2025 but today we are joining with Martin Q who's an investor broker of record at Kell William legacies and also the co-founder at one investors Club to break it down and what to expect in 2025 welcome to the show thanks for having me sah you're most welcome so before we dive deep into today's topics Martin why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and where it all started sure um I'm going to go way back a little bit is uh I started out not even being an investor at all I followed exactly what uh the government told me I should do and and uh basically go to school get a job buy a house pay off that house and live that free and I lived in the corporate world for a good almost 20 years wow and then uh and then real estate was a light bulb that went off for me and uh it went on a kind of a three or four year period there where I just was a sponge and absorbed as much as I could which led to me eventually transitioning from the corporate world out into the real estate World nice um a very scary thing obviously when you're doing it up front but uh if you do it calculated and you have the information behind you then you're taking action with information rather than just coming out and doing something so I transitioned out into the corporate world I started uh from the corporate world into the real estate world and basically started out on my own and um like anybody else that just starts out in real estate I uh basically refinanced my home went out bought several properties and uh tested the model myself single family homes converted into duplexes and if I fast forward a few years after that eventually getting into multi family investing working with investors so starting out with individual investors then getting a pool of investors and raising funds for much much larger assets that's amazing and then that led into uh starting helping someone else start this brokerage as well and then uh I've had a number of investment clubs but the one we have right now is the bond investors club which we have here and uh it's not just real estate we focus on what other avenues do you have to build wealth cuz for us it's all about Building Wealth and living life that's a slogan of our investor club and it's essentially those two things need to be equal it can't be just about I want to make as much money as I can and on the other side you need funds to enjoy the lifestyle that you want so you want to have live life on your own terms and uh to afford that you know you need both you need to be able to build your wealth not just your short-term wealth but your long-term wealth uh and then living your life ever you want and that could be you and your family for me it happens to be my family happens to be traveling could be something different for somebody else that's that's very inspiring and that's definitely true it's always like true to say like when you earn that money you need to make your money work for you as well which is exactly what you were doing and you know taking that first step I you mentioned it was scary definitely it's a scary step to take but once you do take that and pass that stage it's a world of opportunities that you explore correct and I I uh I was afraid I I was asked to go back to the corporate world and uh I haven't looked back since I'm glad that you didn't so let's uh talk about today's topics a little bit so 2024 was a very eventful year we saw a lot of fluctuations when it comes to different topics uh let's talk about economic Trends and inflation first uh your uh insights into that sure uh I don't think it's just 2024 we've been on this roller coaster probably since we came out of the pandemic that's true and it's unprecedented right now we haven't had we've had times in history where we had pandemics but the world closures that we experienced the pent up demand that people were kind of collecting their funds and then when we came out of the pandemic or all those lockdowns spending one on a high on on a high for everybody that's a lot more disposable income and that's when you saw inflation go up and so basically inflation went up and in return what does the government do they raise rates so basically you have that monetary and fiscal policy of what the government does and they raise rates and reduce rates depending on what inflation is historically our interest rates are typically lower than what you have with um that inflation that's true interest rate should be lower that happens for us and it happens for the government and if I want to go a little bit deeper in terms of the government the government has a very very large deficit the last two years or probably yeah 2023 till now the interest rate has been higher than the inflation rate now that is okay in the short term but not sustainable for the government in the long term it's the same thing as me going out and investing or borrowing for me to invest so let's say I borrow at 5% I go invested I only make 2% that I'm losing 3% every single year and that's exactly what's happening to the government right now with the inflation rate much much lower than the than the interest rate so there is going to be likely uh in 2025 if if I foreshadow likely more rate Cuts if this is in the cards and if GDP continues to be low they need to spark the economy and the hard part is the housing market has been that backbone for several years now yes it has always been they don't want to Spook uh increase that demand too much they're in this little conundrum um but interest rates have been a roller coaster inflation has been a roller coaster yeah the good thing and you know I don't have a crystal ball but uh I think we have potentially hit the bottom and we are starting to come out of that yes we haven't had a recession we have had interest rates now starting to come down the economic indicators are kind of coming into check so inflation is still is still low now it's actually a good spot where the government wants it to be yeah and uh now with interest Trad starting to drop I'm an investor at heart we're starting to see opportunity there's a lot more opportunity and that's what makes me very very bullish for 2025 in terms of what opportunities can you see not just as a as an investor but as someone purchasing your first home or someone just going out in the market for the first time that's true that's true and you know just touch on the economic growth that we are seeing right now it's a good starting point for 2025 in other words and also the inflation as you mentioned has gone down below what was it was expected to be it's 1.9 right now if I'm not wrong last time it just went up to two again oh it's did okay there you go but it's still it's it's it's where the government wants it to be essentially exactly so a lot of U as you mentioned a lot of opportunities to be explored in 2025 yeah so let's um also touch based on the population growth and the the housing demand that we saw in 2024 sure a lot of discussion around that the government as well yeah and population growth is one of the key metrics we look at and as an investor I look at longterm or shortterm so the short-term ones are things that can change on a monthly basis your interest rate your GDP your inflation all of those things can change monthin month out so I look at those in terms of the long-term trends however population growth has been with us for quite a while yes and again it's the backbone is what the government uh uses in terms of getting that economic growth because people come into the country the government can issue debt you can raise you can increase spending overall that's true um so that population growth has been with us for a while and Trump is now in power and he he mentioned something and in in reciprocal we mentioned the same thing in terms of hey we need to cut that back and it's true we probably do need to cut that back we need to cut that back because people aren't uh able to have homes you know we're focusing on rank control we probably should be focusing on Supply so that population growth has been increasing for quite a while they have been talking now about settling it back but if they settle it back the I wouldn't say the damage is already done but those indicators and what's already in place is not going to be going away for a long time so we still have a supply problem that's true the supply problem is not going away uh unfortunately and I can get my government hat on is when they focus on rent control they're focusing on unfortunately votes and immediate demand rather than how do we fix this for the long term and that's going to be Supply yes and we need to have people building more homes more homes for rent and for resale resale we've been doing quite a good job we haven't been building MH um permanent rental structures for quite a while that's true we had it last couple of years there we've built it but it's all been Condo building I'd say 20 years or so just putting it out there for resale rather than rentals and we do need rentals out there you know if we look at Toronto and where Toronto is on its growth and its life cycle it's still growing up but we're not where New York is we're not where Singapore is other world cities but we are going in that direction that direction is essentially a rent Direction where people can't can't afford homes they need to rent and that's likely going to be the future Generations is they won't be able to afford homes hence they're going to be renting that is absolutely true and when you talk about that rental you know opportunity in building rental properties that is a very good aspect to focus on as you mentioned because a lot of people during the pandemic they actually sold their homes in the GTA and they they moved out because the because of the remote work environment they had but after the pandemic was you know all came to an end the the companies that the big uh corporations they want the employees to come back to work so they had to sell their homes you know outside the GT and come back and either repurchase or rent in the GTA and in the meantime the immigration uh numbers went High it it was more than what the caran immigration was expecting much more exactly so the demand was so high like I was looking at an article by TD economics they mentioned that in from 2024 to 2026 they are expecting to have like a u demand delay or like a crisis over 300,000 homes in the GTA which is absolutely what we are seeing right now and that is likely going to grow because housing starts are not matching the amount of people coming in that's true so it's very difficult that that stat is likely going to increase and that lack of Supply that's why as an investor I look at the next 10 years out and that lack of Supply is not going anywhere at least the next decade or so we're we need to build homes and we're just not building it fast enough even if they come out and start putting a pressure on that it's not going to be enough no I understand I agree with you on that so there's a lot of things to focus on hopefully 2025 will be that year that lot of these questions are going to get answers for right um let's also talk about uh the big conversations that we had in 2024 every Gathering was not did not end without talking about interest rates right it was we saw it Go a high and we saw the last five times it came down the consecutively and now it's at 3.25 so what are your input in the in the trend that you saw 20 in 2024 and what are we expected to see in 2025 sure sure so we've we've been on a roller coaster for sure the last time we faced that was 2017 and 2017 we had the onaro fair housing plan we had the stress tests come in and we had interest rates go up I think it went up several times and then came and then they came down afterwards um I'm a long-term investor so if I look at average home prices I look at what's been happening for the last several decades and 2017 did not do a blip stress test is still in there um on tarir housing plan is still in there um interest rates went up interest rates came down the trend continued EX exactly where it is today so I look at long term and I go we've been on this roller coaster for the last several years I expect it likely to revert back to what that longterm is and that's essentially just following the same Trend if I look at the last two years specifically in terms of interest rates going up and down the the economy and the people are they don't know what to expect it's been unprecedented for them so when it went up obviously people start clamping down we see home prices drop now it's starting to open up the first four rate cuts that we had didn't really do too much to average home prices you know the market we didn't feel it we didn't feel that spark Demand yet yes but now we've had two aggressive rate Cuts uh over the last two periods that September and December we expect that to likely spark the economy we have seen that in the last two months um so I do expect uh 2025 to start strong whether it remains we'll see still that pent up demand uh it is there but how much is it going to be there mhm uh in the long term I'm not sure yeah but uh I I still do expect that these last rate cuts and further expected rate Cuts in 2025 are going to start fing that market you're going to start to see the home prices go up and probably go on that same Trend and then if I start to put in the Govern the government money supply and all of that um it still makes me very short-term cautious long-term optimistic on real estate and I've always had that view and uh I think this could be the start of the next year to two years of being very good opportunities for investors or someone just starting out in the market that's absolutely right I completely agree with you on that and just to say like you know every it's like a scale in other words that that we say every time the interest rate drops the housing prices they rise typically yeah and then the interest rates go up the housing prices drop so right now we are in a good pocket in other words like we don't see the rise as much as you know it should be so if anybody's on the ede like you know thinking about maybe step taking that first step uh this will be an ideal time to have those conversations that's a good very good point and in terms I'm not a time I don't time the market saying in real estate you don't want to time the market it's you want to have your time in the market however right now we've had these interest rates go up and down so with the interest rates come down that drastic the home prices have a delayed effect they don't happen at exactly the same time yes so basically interest trades drop and you may have several months of delay MH before home prices actually start to shoot up yeah that's the opportunity right now that we're seeing and it is probably a very small window because the DraStic drop that we've had we had if we do see that pent up demand start to come out over the next several months it may be a little bit sharper in terms of the home prices going up so that window right now is looking really really good really really good we say in our investor Club it's like these these upcoming months not that a year from now is not going to be a good time to buy it just may be more advantageous time to buy right now because you haven't experienced that growth because of the infl the interestes coming down yet that's true and also I I know I noticed the Bank of Canada was saying like according to the private SE sector Economist they expecting to see the rate cut come down to like about 2.75 by mid next year so that's a good number to be at so if you're trending towards that and if they are in that declining climate of interest rates it's a good time to explore opportunities and options agreed and you know we had our exra up to 5% Bank of Canada overnight rate now at 2.75 that's almost half yeah in the span of a of a year and a half that's true and that's that's going to likely spark the the economy um well but jury still out on that we'll have to see we have to wait and see most definitely so a lot of interesting things happened in 2024 and a lot to look forward for 2025 I want to touch base on one some of the key changes that happened in the industry from the beginning um we saw like earlier this year I believe in March or April um the 10day cooling off period which was uh initially introduced to the uh condo Market uh for new preconstruction was extended to Freehold just you know giving that extra strength uh for anybody who's you know getting into the pre-construction freeold stage and then we saw uh on December 15th we saw the the the boulders mortgage reforms coming into effect making it much accessible and E at reach for any generation uh when it comes to buying a home we also saw the stress test was taken off uh which was a great thing when you're actually rate shopping going around looking at your mortgage options because we have a lot of mortgage renewals coming up as well in the upcoming months and with that I want to also touch on the uh the opportunities that was introduced when you thinking of building that second unit uh if you're a homeowner do you want to touch base on that for a bit sure lots in there by the way um so if you're looking specifically I won't go into all the mortgage changes that happened however in nutshell it's making it easier for people to do things you know if the 10day cooling off period comes in you're not under stress you're under stress you have the ability to get out so you may make that purchase and over like 10 days realize it is a good purchase or hey I'm not ready yet yes um other the other things that came in specifically around a secondary Suite or having access to to to debt and access to to funds and access to Capital is one of the big things as an investor or or a first-time home buyer it's basically how people make decisions is what's that debt like for me on a month-to-month basis so making it easier for you to get debt for example that threshold from $1 million to $1.5 million makes it easy for you to to borrow on higher on higher priced assets where in the past it wasn't and it's making a lot easier for us to build secondary Suites when I first started out getting a secondary Suite on a property was pulling teeth it was very very difficult you know we had that in place from a provincial standpoint municipalities still weren't around yes and it came around to basically I want people to be happy and healthy and I want to get my votes in municipality um rather than what's the long-term need there and now you've seen over the last decade or so from one home one Suite to two suits two suets to three Suites and now in many municipalities uh you can put up to four sues on there yeah and that's basically not by the fact that the municipalities want to do it they have no choice they need to do it and that comes back to population growth and it comes back to increase in demand and we don't have enough Supply so they're trying to get how many what levers do I have to increase Supply you know one of those is let's put more sweets on there they're making it a lot easier for people to purchase and put secondary Suites on there and also have borrow against that put those in so to build those secondary Suites as well as get mortgages on the entire unit so you have two units rather than one so there quite quite a lot in terms of that spark they want to put and uh if that Sparks the market great and they want to do that however what I was saying before is they don't want to spark it too quickly as well so they're in that conundrum so they they want to spark it and it has been the the the backbone but too quick is not is not good as well because what happens when we start to increase homes and uh and the government starts to spend money inflation starts to come back and that's the problem and you get back on this fiscal and monetary policy of government's raising rates and lowering rates and raising rates and lowering rates reaction yeah it to be a good balance heal balance you want the balance you want basically I'm I come from the corporate world and I'd rather have two years of grow 2% growth every single year for the next 20 years rather than 5% one year and 2% one year it's number one it's stressful number two it's not predictable so I'm I'm an investor I want something that's both projectable and predictable and I can basically make those decisions because I have not a certainty of what's going to happen but a high probability of what's going to happen M and when you have markets over the last four years that are kind of doing this very difficult to predict that is true absolutely right um I just want to break it down to like anybody who's listening to this what is a secondary unit is so basically if you're a homeowner and if you have that extra space maybe like a basement or like you have like a big backyard you want to build an separate unit which has a kitchen a bathroom and um sleeping space like a bedroom with with a separate entrance that's pretty much the secondary unit is which can definitely improve your income potential as well in today's real estate market because there's a high demand for rentals in the GTA um not only in GTA but anywhere across the country but specifically GTA has a a bigger population growth um so um some of the um um opportunities that was introduced to that is um they're doubling the loan amount so it was previously 40,000 now they're doubling it to 880,000 which is coming into play I Believe in early 2025 and also um they are giving you the opportunity to borrow from your Equity up to 90% um and then having a lower interest rate to pay back and also having that cap for those um units of up to $2 million but you know more than me you will know more about if do you want to touch base on those sure sure yeah um they're good good initiatives but as an investor they're still likely not enough to push forward forward yeah $8 $80,000 and these are um construction loans it's basically for you to build that secondary Suite to put a Coach House in the backyard for example is not $80,000 it's upwards of $300,000 to put a secondary Suite in your in your basement could be10 could be 150 it could be 50 depending on what depending on the size yeah so going back to what secondary Suites were is they started out as granny suits or inlaw Suites and people were basically utilizing these as potentially secondary income sources M mhm the hard part for that is you can get more income but now you're touching on the equity part of it and you can borrow upwards of $2 million so if you're doing that you have the ability now to borrow much much more and as as an investor going back to that it's all about redeploying your capital and having access to that Capital so if you can go back and get a secondary Suite in there you're doing two things one is you're increasing your income so basically your funding of your debt every single month makes it easier you have your own mortgage to pay if you're living upstairs someone else is paying part of that mortgage overall it's great for you on the reciprocal end you've pushed the value of your home up so when you push the value of your home up you can go straight back to the bank and borrow against that you increase your ability to get Capital that's true and the bank is looking at that and if they look at the the the basement unit and the upstairs unit typically a bank looks at your personal income on how much they're going to give you as well as the home and they praise the home out when that income is coming from a secondary source now they're starting to view that they never viewed that so they didn't view the secondary Suite or the third Suite as income and they relied on the person's personal inome income coming in and typically you had a ceiling and that ceiling was much lower so all we're doing right now is making that ceiling higher higher so we make the ceiling higher it means more people can come in that's amazing that's that's a good uh breakthrough hopefully that will um cool down the uh demand that we have hopefully but you know these are baby steps that we are taking lot to be done but it's it's great steps that we um seeing the government is establishing there um so with saying that when it comes to rentals and you know having these secondary units um there are a couple of things that comes to mind first like there are a lot of uh opportunity out there for rentals but those need to be legalized like when it comes to basement suits we see that in you know many places in the GTA you do have the basement Suite which was initially made as a part of your own dwelling but now you want to rent it out but you need to get a permit or you you need to legalize it so do you want to touch a little bit on that aspect like you know how does that work and what to look for sure uh 90% of secondary units are still not legal you know it hasn't been legal people are just basically trying to put them in there and there's a couple of things on that in terms of negative negative is a safety concern for one is it not following building code electrical code all everything that you need to have to have a safe unit in there but number two it impacts your ability to further invest and the bank is not going to loan to you they're not going to see that income that you're getting on the secondary Suite they're going to rely on your personal income that we just talked about uh so they're not going to loan to you as much as they would before mhm so you're trying to basically I wouldn't say cut a corner but you essentially are trying to cut a corner on one but that cutting that corner is impacting you and impacting you in a negative way you want that permit you want that piece of paper that says it's secondary sweep and now let's look at the positives the positive the reciprocal what I just talked about having more access to Capital you have someone that's going to verify and look at that income that's coming in not relying on my own income coming in and then what happens when I sell that property if I have a legal secondary Suite the value of that property is pushed up it's legal someone else can physically touch it you know I can't come in there as a as an agent and say this is a legal secondary unit cuz it's built to code you need a piece of paper that says that so it needs to be that's the only way you can verify that is what is that Municipal municipality documentation that says there's a legal secondary Suite in here the issue I come with new investors is everyone wants to cut a corner everyone wants to save costs I was that guy when I first started out how low can I spend to get something done and in the long term I found and we call this you know spending dimes to save nickels type thing and it's basically down the road it does hurt you it hurts you down the road in in terms of If You Don't Legalize a secondary Suite you don't have access to what I just talked about before but you're also losing money in the because it cost you if you let's say you have a secondary Suite that is a blank canvas you already have to build it in terms of having it to a safe unit so let's just assume you're going to build a to code already even though you're not going to go through the through the government permit process going through that permit process the additional cost is not that expensive maybe 5 to 7K that's true and if you look at 5 to 7K and what it does to your property value correct and I mirror that to what it does my property value as well as the access to capit and the access to things that I have it's a very small number to pay whether I'm a residential homeowner or I'm an investor so for everybody to go in there and and and say I just want to cut that cost you may be hurting yourself in the long run in terms of opportunities that you have that's true so like what I would suggest to anybody that who's considering um using that extra space in their house as a secondary unit maybe maybe the basement or building a secondary unit talk to the professionals get the best advice you know take the you know um what the permits and you know get it legalized because you know in the long run as you mentioned you're trying to like you know nitpick and save a little bit money right now but it's in the long run when you're looking at the whole property value of it as you mentioned it's a big number that you're going to miss out if you don't do the small things now agreed I I wish I did that when I was younger it's what the term is called house hacking so if you're just starting out I'd always say to every any new investor just starting out is one try to purchase a home yes but number two is how can you maintain that home so there's two very two uh lenses you got to look at one is do I have enough down payment can I purchase this home uh that could be some love money it could be some you know parents helping you out however the case may be try to get your hands on a down payment that you can purchase the home the second piece comes down to how can I finance that home and get access to Capital if you have a secondary Suite in there it makes it a lot easier for you to not just access the capital But ultimately anybody makes a home purchase especially when they're first starting out m it's not the price of the home it's not they have the down payment it comes down to how much can they spend on a monthly basis to service that mortgage typically that's how people are making that that decision so if that decision could be made easier because I know I have a very predictable source of Revenue coming in from the basement uh then it means now I have access to Capital and I can service that debt on a monthly basis much easier than I could without that sector weet so my personal outof pocket expenses are much much lower because I have someone else really helping me out and I can go much much further and in the process I'm building equity in the long term so it's really a a positive thing for someone to do m i remember I had to I had to convince my wife on this is when we first met we met and we had a condo we had someone living here here here and here and when you get your own home a lot of the the mentality is well this is my home I don't want anyone living in my own home and that's why we have building code in place is that secondary unit is the same thing as someone being in a condo they're completely separate and they're making that in terms of parking in terms of erress in terms of your laundry capabilities your entry all that is completely separate so even though it's your dwelling utilize your dwelling or your largest asset for a way for for you to help yourself but sometimes I even wouldn't call it a sacrifice you know I did it with my matrimonial home when we got married we didn't we did it with our second home and we haven't been doing it now but um not because we don't need to but because that gave us the ability to go up quicker that's true that's the reason why we did it wasn't really a a sacrifice on us no yeah it's a smart move in another way because you actually was focusing on the bigger picture than the small Comforts that you were craving for right so that's a very smart move that you made um so you know based on the topics that we talked about today I think 2025 is going to be a big year with lot of exciting things to look for um the most important thing is you know whatever the opportunity that anybody is exploring get the experts advice talk to the professionals uh you know look look for that the legal advice it can be or to get that experienc Realtor by your side to support you through the process or if you're thinking about General investing not only real estate you know have that investment advisor by your site to show you the clear path on you know hey what will be a best option for your money to grow and the timelines and where to invest and you know what not to look for right uh so definitely do your research you know explore your opportunities I know lot of families that I speak to um even after we've seen this declining rate environment they're still on the fence they like still I I don't know what to expect I know like you know my mortgage is coming to Renewal I'm always doing a fixed rate now like you know everybody is advising me I should go for a variable I want to it's nice the number is nice but I'm scared what will happen next time what if it goes up again so these are the uncertainities that you know a lot of people that who are thinking so but I think just have a like a open mind like explore your options talk to your experts and you know understand what opportunities are ahead of you and you know if you if it's at reach go ahead and grasp it you know because you know these Pockets don't happen all the time because we we went through a couple of you know hard ear and we are now coming to an end of that era hopefully as you mentioned in the beginning so um in my opinion I think there's a lot to look forward for 2025 uh what do you say uh I agree with everything that you're saying there and it's you touched on it something that I talk about quite a bit and it's disting ising between risk and fear and risk it comes down to a number I can calculate I can mitigate risk I can work with risk fear is something predetermined in my head that I have something that will make me take action or refuse to take action because of something that is not real and or may be real or may not be real but you need to validate the fact if it's real or not so it comes down to what you were saying of I need certainty I need 100% certainty that my interest are going to stay down or if I go in a variable rate I want to know that it's either going to stay where it is or it's going to get better it's not going to go up you're not going to have 100% certainty in anything that you do yeah however I'm an investor how can I tilt the odds in my favor that's all you're trying to do you want to tilt the odds in your favor and have a higher probability of things happening your way because this is systematic you want to basically do this in a year and year out basis so if I'm looking at what happened in the last 3 years it's been unprecedented can I predict the future very hard to do if you just look at the last few years is however as we said a lot of ecomic indicators are lagging when things certain things happen interest rates just went down dramatically right now we're probably going to expect some sort of price action to go can you capitalize on that you know Donald Trump just came into Power what happened in the stock market that's those kind of things are even though they're not 100% certain to happen they were predictable before they happened yeah so put the odds in your favor in terms of variable rate mhm um it goes back to uh I'm touching on the mortgage broker here but goes back to what you're saying about having a realtor having a mortgage broker having an investing investing professional by your side things have are different now than they were 20 years ago they weren't talking about secondary skits back then yes they weren't talking about a landscape that may have a different lens you need to look at um one one thing we say in our uh within our investment Club is no matter who you have working with you make sure they're qualified to work with you if it's a mortgage broker your friend Jim from high school may be the right guy for you but does he know about secondary sweets does he know about the access to Capital that you're going to have with getting something that may be two units versus three or four units it's going to be a whole different process once you get past four units yes can be easier for you to actually get Capital so all those things you need to have the right person in place rather than a realter is not just a realtor and I always use the analogy of you know if I'm getting a divorce I'm going to use a family lawyer I'm not going to use uh a corporate lawyer you want someone that's specialized terms of what they're working on so same thing goes for accounting you want someone that knows how to do accounting for Real Estate Investors you know I want to depreciate my asset for example a lot of people they don't do that all it is is a timing thing and deferring tax so you want to have those right people beside you in order to make those decisions and uh I I can't stress it enough you you you have to have Realtors big one every realtor I'm a realtor for example and there's a within the industry a lot of Realtors come out there and say I can buy sell and invest but are they putting someone in the right investment vehicle by just saying they can invest they can purchase that transaction but if you're transaction focused realtor you're not putting that person in the right investment because there's a lot to look at financials access to secondary Suites how much their income is going to come in what what does that Roi look like you as if you want to be an investment realtor you need to know that rather than just kind of come out and say hey I can help you buy an investment property MH and if if you rely on them and you just they just want you to purchase that transaction no problem that's fine because they're they're they know exactly what they're doing a lot of new investors for example very difficult to do on that and they put that trust in that realtor so Realtors out there I basically want to tell you is if you go out there and you want to work with investors make sure you understand the numbers yourself and you can do the numbers for them because if they're buying their first investment property nine times out of 10 they do the numbers themselves so that's gives you the opportunity to be much much more valuable to them rather than just getting a transaction Focus because what happens when someone buys an investment property they're likely if everything works out correctly a residential purchaser is probably going to buy an in a new home every 5 to 10 years an investor if something happens that is fantastic for them in the first two years they'd like want to repeat that process exactly and that's what that's what happened to me all the uh professional investors that I know you see that you want to redeploy that Capal you want to redeploy and you want to continue that down the road and that's basically this The Snowball Effect iess yeah no that's that's great advice that you're sharing there um while you're saying that um a story came to my mind uh this is an experience I had with one of my uh prospects uh in the recent past um so this was a first time home buyer he was on the age he was Pro I've been talking to him a few months and he always wanted to buy he had the money he was able like he he has a pre-approval um he had the money he had the down pay when he had the closing cost everything but he was getting the advice from someone who bought the house 40 years ago which is his granddad M lot of things has changed in that 40 years um so when when we said get your advice from professionals get it get it from professionals I know that your granddad did bought a house 40 years ago which is a great you know investment for him lot of cash flow right now for him if he's you know end ended up selling it or anything like that but lot of things in the opportunity unities in the market and you know the trends has changed so speak to someone who's up to date uh with the mortgage industry in what's out there in the investment aspect of things if you're interested in getting your step into investing into real estate or any other avenues as well so always talk to that expert you know I know you know it's a great source your family and your circle but the experts will be able to give you a clear path and a goal setting as to how you can achieve your goals in the near future you touched on that perfectly and it's basically what's happened 20 years ago even longer than 20 years ago is vastly different today however the mentality hasn't changed you know if you if I look back to a common saying today and many people still use it a penny saved is a penny earned yeah saving is a losing game right now if you and unfortunately I listen to and I you know I have three kids and I want to make sure that they're off to a good start and a lot of kids still they come out and they start investing or purchasing with their parents mentality which was the previous generation a penny saved Penny earned is great fantastic and put the money to the mattress to save it mhm look at our environment right now look at interest rates look at inflation a penny saved you're losing money every year is true so it's very difficult for you to have that same mentality and get ahead later on so you hit it on the head you need that right professional in front of you and they're going to help you navigate this Market rather than having a mentality of the tools that I had in a previous generation that is true that is true that is very interesting to see that um that mindset you know but you know having the right mindset having the right focus and having the experts with you in your team working for you that's exactly what you need to achieve your goals and be successful in what you do so 2025 it seems like has a lot in store for us if there's one thing uh Martin that you would like to share uh with the viewers today um to keep top of mind when you are navigating this uh you know this Market with these changes coming into effect what is that one thing or like a best advice that you would like to share with them um good question so and it's going to be different depending on who you are so if I'm an investor for example um I'm going to look at it from a different lens than if I'm buying my first home but um if I'm going to basically come down to one answer for everybody it's no your goal and if my goal is home ownership right now and my goal is a home that I want forever I'm going to have a different lens if I'm an investor yes so I'm know your goal and match what's available in the market to your goal rather than trying to fit to what someone else is doing and I've seen too many people say oh this person's successful here I'm going to go and do that there yes and it's that shiny object syndrome and it's basically you want to know exactly what you got to look for for yourself and I always say within our investment Club is I love real estate investment because it's not something that I need to change to fit in I can have a vehicle within there to suit my goals I can tailor real estate to fit my own personal goals and that's why for me I love as an investor I just bought a new home for my family a couple years ago I have a different lens on my hat for each one of those so coming down to one thing you know I can go as an investor I can say that one thing as an investor right now uh it comes down to cash flow that's your biggest security that you have your biggest security is cash flow I can service this thing every single month so I know every single month I have a business that I don't have to go into my own pocket for MH now there's a caveat on to that if someone has a very good job and they have short-term cash flow goes back to uh the probability aspect the Market is Shifting the market is turning interest RS are coming down so if I'm buying something that's slightly negative cash flow or cash flow neutral there's a high probability that's going to be cash flow positive in just a several months from now yes so I may want to do that for the short term so it comes down to shortterm and long-term and having a bigger picture on there but ultimately it comes down to from a sustainable point of view cash flow and most real estate investor professional Real Estate Investors want the cash flow like me having a baby I want that baby to sustain itself so I don't have to start working on it as well MH um yeah so I say that's the biggest thing for an investor and if I'm if I'm a residential home buyer talk to your agent know exactly your agent is there to help you they're there to advise you so um don't make decisions based on on a realtor's opinion but their opinion is not whether it's going to happen or not happen it's what's behind that the economics and all of that so make conscious decisions that are going to help you in terms of what you're looking for so if it's a if I'm a residential home fire then I'm going to be looking at number one emotion comes into play it's my family it's the roof over my heads for my kids how much can I afford there's very different lens than cash flow over here yes so it's a it's a different lens but if I put it into one nutshell it's know your goal and then suit what's out there to match what you're looking for rather than trying to chase chase chase something else and I spent far too many years chasing yeah no I hear you but no it's it's very good advice that you're sharing Martin so we we at the end of the year today in 2024 uh we learned our lessons we we jumped through our obstacles here we are right now right so right now we are actually stronger than before because now we have more Avenues to establish our wealth and look forward for better opportunities in 2024 I think 2024 is going to be a great year right and you know a lot of things to explore discuss conversations to have you know finding that right uh Partners to partner with um in different goals in your life no matter it can be investment or even going on a vacation you know like not everything comes into place so I have big hopes uh for 2025 and uh in what are your main goals for 2025 I'm excited about 2025 I think it's one of those ones where as an investor we've been crippled for the last 2 or three years because it's been hard to find cash flowing properties yes and having a negative cash flow it's hard to attract Capital to come in there so for me personally we have the invest club that we're ramping up and changing a few things in terms of what what we're doing now we have three arms to our investment club with the Von investor club which is all about training and education yeah we have Vic realy which is basically as you talked about before have the right people behind you if you're buying that first investment property or if you have a number of investment properties and you're going into multif family for example have the right people behind you in terms of being able to do the due diligence being able to make the right decisions based on what asset that you have we have Vic realy and then we have Vic capital which is we're starting to ramp up again to purchase we're going to start purchase multif family buildings even into individual homes with individual investors as well those are called JB Partnerships yeah if anybody wants to get into the market I'm excited because I know that that opportunity is out there now and people over the last two or three years are very tight with their funds now they're actually going hey is there an opportunity for me to actually use those funds that is again predictable and projectable can I predict it can I project it am I very conscious that this is going to be something that's going to happen or is there a less than 50% chance of going to happen I look at things that are going to happen with an 80% probability or higher that's the decision I want to make yes and that's why right now with the cash flow with they are in terms of me being able to sustain an asset I can make those decisions much much easier than I could in the last 3 years so I for one I'm very very excited about what's happening in 2025 the the differences we're doing within our business and the opportunity it's going to give to everybody else amazing say oh yeah I know that's very true so as you know we talked 2024 was a year that we learned a lot of things so a lot of things you know experience a lot of things but 2025 is going to be the year that we are going to change everything and you know set our goals clearly and Achieve them successfully so if you have further questions uh that you would like to touch based on what your experience have been in 2024 and you know if you're looking for that expert to partner with you to know give you the best advice let us know we're going to leave our link below and we will be happy to have those conversations with you and you know have a successful year together in the 2025 with you all thank you Martin for joining us today and in sharing your valuable insights with us and we look forward to a prosperous 2025 thank you together pleasure being on the podcast and speaking with you yeah thank you Martin thank you for spending your time with us on the Stellar talk show we hope you found value in today's episode and gained insights to help elevate your lifestyle if you enjoyed the discussion please like subscribe and share it with anyone who could benefit it means the world to us until our next episode stay inspired and I'll see you soon on our next Stellar talk show