The next REIN ACRES weekend is in Toronto on April 17th, 18th and 19th. The weekend usually costs $787, but if you click here you can get it for $200 off, or $587.

I wish I could go because I’ve met a lot of amazing people on myREINspace who I’d love to get a chance to meet in person. It’s also a great weekend of real estate investing education, and I’m curious to hear a little more detail on the Ontario market.

Why do I bother to keep going to these things when I can?

$2,692,700,000

That’s $2.7 billion and it’s the value of the real estate purchased by REIN members. The purchase cost. As REIN’s nearly 20 years old, there’s a lot of old real estate in that bucket, and the current-value is significantly more. The people I meet at REIN meetings are amazing, and it gave me the confidence I needed to go out and buy my first property in Edmonton.

Anyways, what happens during an ACRES weekend?

There’s the Friday REIN meeting. I tried to liveblog a REIN meeting once, and it was just way too much info. That’s great if you’re going to the meeting, but sad for my computer. There were four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

Saturday is all about the macro. Where to buy, evaluating towns, areas, and general factors. There’s a lot about getting financing (getting the banks to say yes) and they briefly touch on JVs.

Sunday is the day you’ll want to have a pen and a calculator. It’s detailed property analysis, and learning how to tell which properties are right. Finding motivated vendors and creative financing strategies. Financing when you’re self-employed. Action strategies.

Here’s how the topics break down (in their words):

Saturday

Is Your Market Ready To Crash?

The “2009″ REIN™ Property Goldmine Scorecard… An Answer to the Question – Has The Canadian Market Peaked or Is There More Profit Available?

The R.E.F. System for Choosing the Best Properties – The 5 Quick and Easy Keys to Immediately Identifying How Much Money a Property Will Put into Your Bank Account.

Where and What To Buy – We’ll tell you specifically, right here in Canada, which cities and towns are the best to invest in today for lowest risk and highest returns.

Eliminate The Credit Crisis Issues! Honest Financing Secrets

How To Get The Bank To Say YES in 2009 & Beyond – Due to the credit crisis, the rules have changed again.

How To Save Thousands of Dollars On Your Mortgages – These secrets alone will be worth 20 times your small tuition for this event. (This strategy has helped me a bunch…to the tune of $2,400 a year!)

Self Employed Bank Financing

How To Ensure You’re Buying A Great Investment Property –  11 fundamental secrets veteran real estate investors use to maximize their results when buying investment property.

3 Creative Ways To Buy Real Estate from today until 2013:

• The Joint Venture Secrets
• Turning One Property Into 3 Properties Legally
• The Hassle Free Tenant Strategy

The Fear Remover Strategy – Fear is good, it keeps you aware; however, it can be debilitating and can hold you back from creating real results.

Sunday

The Positive Cash Flow Property Ladder – My favorite part! This is deciding property-by-property if it’s a good buy or not. This is how can make money in a recession, and make sure your money is working for you. I wrote a blog post building on this strategy.

Advanced Due Diligence -  There are 11 Due Diligence Questions that you MUST ask before buying any property – if you’re not asking them you are increasing your risk and decreasing your returns.

How To Find Only Motivated Vendors — In 2009, with all of the extra properties for sale, it’s critical to spend your time only with motivated vendors… finding them is key. Discover if foreclosures and tax sales are the answers to finding great deals… or just a big scam in Canada.

The 9 Questions You MUST Ask Before Buying Any Property -You will have in your hands the critical questions that will lead you to finding out the truth on any property.

Spring 2010 Update to Top BC Investment Towns Research – Be prepared for some surprises – no hype, just facts.

How To Be Known as A Sophisticated Investor – AKA your Financing Binder. This one seriously blows people away…I went in to my bank to change my mortgage payments and after reaching into my binder to find an answer to their question, they offered me another loan at a better rate. This one works.

And that’s it. It’s a huge amount of information in one weekend, and I’ve been to them a couple times now. (They’re free if you’re a REIN member.) Like I said before, the weekend usually costs $787, but if you click here you can get it for $200 off, or $587. If you can’t make it out to Toronto, the next one will probably be in Calgary in the spring. You can bookmark this link where they’ll post the next one after Toronto’s done. You can also buy the home study materials, which I have a copy of, and are a great resource.

No related posts.

Here’s a selection of the news I’ve collected in the last little while. It either gets tagged in my RSS reader or in my Delicious bookmarks.

Bank of Canada drops prime another 50 basis points

BofC did what we expected and cut prime by half a percent. It was nice to see the banks follow suit very quickly afterwards. Things are just about as cheap as they get. I’ll call the bank to see about dropping the payments on my mortgages, but I’m not going to push much beyond this. I’m also starting to watch the bond rate, as that’s what will drive fixed mortgage rates. Really, I’m a big fan of the five-by-five rule. Five year fixed below five percent, and you’ll be just fine. That said, the rates have been so low for variable mortgages lately you’d have done awesome with a variable. It’s just starting to be time to think about locking in. CMT does point out that they’ve left the door open for another cut, so we’ll wait and see before making the call to lock in.

Brits Migrate to Canada

Danielle Millar pointed out an article about the large numbers of British folks migrating to Canada. I work with one of them, and he’s got three friends on the way. Even with a global recession, we still need skilled workers.

“Canada welcomed 8,128 British immigrants last year, up 25 per cent over the previous year and making Britain the sixth-biggest source of immigrants to Canada.” Read More

Springtime? Calgary’s Showing Strength

Radley and Jared both posted good articles about the inventory levels in Cow-Town, and the impact that’s having on the market. I think it’s the premature strength Don talked about in January. (It’s the little peak in the middle of the W) It’s still good to see some reality going on though.

There’s REIN This Weekend!

The tag line is:

Where Will BC Real Estate
BOOM And Where Will It CRASH?!?

I can’t be there, but if you’re willing to make the trip to Vancouver (Coquitlam actually), the ACRES weekend (formerly Quickstart) is a good time. I’ve been to several, and I learn something new every time. It’s the best real estate investment education on the planet.

No related posts.

Today’s ACRE Seminar (aka Quickstart) was great. One thing I wanted to put up at the top is My Personal Belize.

If anyone reads this and is there tomorrow come by and say Hi.

Cheers,

Chris

No related posts.

Well, I stumbled upon this tune while browsing YouTube. It’s one of those older tunes that is still floating around my iPod somewhere. Good. It’s Closing Time by Semisonic.

I’m on my way to Edmonton, flying there Friday afternoon and catching the 7am flight back on Monday morning. You’ll catch me at the REIN meeting Friday night where I’ll be attempting to liveblog the meeting. I’ll be at the Quickstart with my younger brother most of the weekend. Please come by and say hi if you get the chance!

Rock out!

No related posts.

The meetings of the Real Estate Investment Network are Members-Only. The only exception to that rule is people who register early for the Quickstart weekend. Actually, the only other exception will be on this site, when I will be liveblogging the REIN meeting in Edmonton this Friday, November 7th. (If I can get WiFi in the building I’ll be on Twitter taking questions too.

What is liveblogging? It’s where I give you a blow-by-blow account of what happens an a meeting. No, I’m not writing a complete transcript of the meeting, and I’m not giving out details you can’t find through other channels (including myREINspace). What you will get is an idea of how the meeting flows, who talks about what, for how long, and why REIN members are some of the best educated and most successful real estate investors in the world. Already on the agenda are presentations from Don R. Campbell, Russell Westcott, Peter Kinch, Barry McGuire and Gerry Gabinet from the Economic Development team of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland.

Liveblogging is a skill I’ve learned by working for an internet marketing firm. I’ve done some of it before as a guest blogger on Jody Nimetz’s SEO-Space. Two great examples of what liveblogging can look like come from Google’s Matt Cutts, one at Google Press Day 2006 and one for the release of Google’s browser Chrome. (As a side note I was sitting beside Matt at a conference in San Jose when I caught this video of Matt talking about Spam) The two posts are two very different styles, and if you prefer one over the other please leave a comment and I’ll do my best.

Set your watches. The show starts at 6:30 pm (MST) this Friday. I’ll be posting during the meeting if I can, otherwise it’ll be as soon as I’ve got internet again.

No related posts.

I’m going to be there. You’d better be there. It’s the Real Estate Investment Network’s Quickstart Live in Edmonton, November 8th and 9th, 2008.

What this is, in essence, is an expanded and updated version of Real Estate Investing in Canada. Take that book, add in all the tools you need to actually get out buying real estate and put it all on steroids. I went to my first Quickstart in February 2008. I wrote such popular posts as My Belize is in Italy, Credit Where Credit is Due and It Is Your Destiny where I decided to focus this site almost entirely on my real estate investment activities.

What you won’t find at Quickstart is the organizers selling things beyond encouraging membership in REIN (a year of which costs less that most other weekend seminars). Pretty much every other real estate course on the planet is trying to sell more books, courses or actual real estate. I know Don and Russell, and they don’t make any money from their books; the royalties go to Habitat for Humanity. They also both own a large amount of property. I know; I’ve been inside of some of it and they’re sure as hell not going to sell it to you. They don’t need REIN to make a buck. They do this as a labour of love, and the do a damn good job of it.

What do you learn at a REIN Quickstart?

Here it is, straight from the binder and double-checked against the website.

• New REIN™ Property Scorecard. Know if you’re in the right property, neighborhood, city and country.
• The Real Estate Money Funnel. The secret to understanding cash flow.
• Where and What to Buy. Talking about risks and rewards, specific to property types.
• How To Get The Bank To Say YES. This was just about the most useful part of the weekend for me and brilliant for understanding how banks work. It made my first mortgage approval a slam dunk, and my latest approval possible in the worst of the credit crisis.
• Self Employed Bank Financing
• How To Ensure You’re Buying A Great Investment Property (the Goldmine Score Card)
• 3 Creative Ways To Buy Real Estate, JV Secrets and Tenant Strategies
• Motivated Vendors
• The 9 Questions You MUST ask Before Buying Any Property
• How To Be Known as A Sophisticated Investor
• Brand New Property Analyzer Form
• Cash Flow Zone (the 10% Rule)
• The Top 10 Towns Reports
• Pro-Active Ownership and Creative Landlording
• Your Action Plan

What the heck does ‘taking action’ mean?

For me, I took several steps that are important in retrospect.

February: Went to Quickstart in Vancouver. Started getting my magic binder together.

March: Joined REIN, started working on my first deal.

Late March: Wrote my First Offer! (Hinted at it here)

May: Quickstart in Calgary (for free this time!)

June: Mom and Dad enjoyed the fruits of their labours and went to England and France for several weeks.

August: Wrote an offer, had it accepted, started financing. Pushed the closing to Sept 31.

Total time from Quickstart Live to receiving my the first rent from my tenants: 8 Months. And I felt that I took it slowly. I’ve met several REIN members who have done 3 properties in their first 6 months.

Cost

Quickstart Live officially costs you $787, but if you use this link you’ll get $200 off (and they’ll bake me a cake). You also get to come to the monthly REIN meeting on the Friday night which is always a good time.

Questions about Quickstart or about REIN?

Drop me an email (chris at chrisdavies.ca), a comment or give me a call.

No related posts.

I’m just finishing getting my place cleaned up, sending some emails and getting packed to hit the road for Calgary tomorrow. I’m headed to the REIN meeting on Friday and then staying for Quickstart Live the rest of the weekend. I’m also staying at my Gran’s place, and it’s always nice to see her.

I’ll have a camera and my Flip with me, so there’ll be several pictures and some videos posted over the next week or two. I may be blogging somewhat sporadically during Quickstart, and I’ll do what I can to upload some pictures to Flickr and post them here as we go. You can also catch me on twitter if you really want to be a stalker.

There may even be a couple of surprise guests on the video front…..

 Anyways, if any of you are in Cow-Town on the weekend be sure to come over and say hi!

Enjoy your weekend!

(That’s me on the left!)

No related posts.

Happy Friday!

First, I’ve confirmed my registration at Real Estate Investment Network’s Quickstart Live! in Calgary, June 7th and 8th. I’ll be posting from Calgary, and taking some video (assuming my new camera arrives in time). If you see me around there, stop by and say hi. 

I’ve been up to my butt in work lately, and closing on a deal. My Mom’s been calling me from France and seeing how much fun they’ve had there is a good motivator for getting my own real estate investing going. I also discovered that a guy I met at cadet camp when I was 13 and played a couple tours with in 1998 and 1999 is a REIN member, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up in Calgary.

 The song of the week is Brick by Ben Folds. I’m sorry for the fairly random images. Ben Folds is a great artist, and this is a great song. Enjoy!

 PS. I can get special Quickstart rates for the first two people to contact me. Email chris at chrisdavies.ca.

No related posts.