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In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Steven Loewer, a private lender and multifamily investor. They discuss Steven’s journey into real estate, the importance of community in business growth, and the advantages of multifamily investing over single-family homes. Steven shares insights on creative financing solutions, challenges in the lending industry, and valuable lessons learned throughout his career. The conversation emphasizes the significance of problem-solving and adaptability in real estate investing.
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Steven Loewer (00:00)
one of the best lessons that I’ve learned in the past 10 years in this space is don’t over ⁓ saturate yourself with one borrower ⁓ doing one type of thing. So that’s one I wish I would have known at the beginning.Michelle Kesil (01:50)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Steven Loewer, who runs a private lending company in Canada, as well as a investor focusing on multifamily. So, excited to have you here today, Steven.Steven Loewer (02:11)
Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.Michelle Kesil (02:13)
I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching private financing, creative financing, as well as your multifamily endeavors. So let’s dive in.Steven Loewer (02:25)
Awesome.Michelle Kesil (02:27)
First off, for those who are not yet familiar with you and your world, can you share what your main focus is?Steven Loewer (02:34)
Yeah, you bet. So I run a private lending company in Canada. ⁓ So we focus on residential and commercial properties, first and second mortgages. ⁓ And so that’s kind of my active income. One of the things I learned from one of my mentors recently is, well, a few years back was, you know, there’s different types of income that we get in the real estate world. Today money, tomorrow money, and forever money.And so the lending company I recognized is a lot like wholesaling. It’s kind of, you you do a deal, you get earn a fee and then you got to go and find the next deal. And so private lending’s like that. And so that’s good for today money, but for tomorrow money and forever money, it doesn’t really work. So ⁓ with that, I joined ⁓ a couple ⁓ communities in the U.S. to focus on acquiring ⁓ U.S. property for long-term rental.
And with my background in multifamily, I finally decided to like, oh, I should just focus on multifamily instead of single family homes or small, small multi. So my focus is residential commercial multifamily, 20 units to 200 is my buy box. And yeah, that’s what we’re focused on.
Michelle Kesil (03:46)
And are you focused on specific markets within Canada and the US or is it more broad?Steven Loewer (03:55)
Yeah, so there’s certain markets that we are targeting in the US for acquisitions, and right now we’re just doing acquisitions in the US. So primarily landlord-friendly states, the Midwest, the Sunbelt. We love ⁓ Atlanta. We love the Carolinas. ⁓Texas and Florida has some interesting things. Florida has some challenges with ⁓ insurance and so does Texas and ⁓ higher property taxes. But if we can make the numbers work despite all those things, then yeah, then we’re interested.
Michelle Kesil (04:31)
How did you get started in this industry?Steven Loewer (04:37)
Good question. so my, my mom was very entrepreneurial and she, started acquiring some rental properties when I was quite young. So I, I didn’t fully understand it back then, but I, remember, you know, we’re going to go paint a fence at a rental property. We’re going to go clean up after tenants. We’re going to go wash carpets. So I got to see and understand a little bit of, ⁓ you know, the, rental world.and the messes that some tenants can leave.
And I decided that, you know, that was real estate was something I was interested in. I read some books. read Rich Dad Poor Dad as most people do and decided, this, this, this real estate thing seems pretty interesting. I bought my first rental property when I was 19 and yeah, just haven’t looked back ever since. So I’d studied, I did a bachelor of commerce with a major in finance. Cause I
I was good with numbers and I liked, ⁓ like the finance world. But when I finished there, I, I wasn’t sure how to mix the two, how to, how do you, you know, I’m interested in real estate, but I’m doing finance. What’s, what is there out there that I can do? And so I got pulled into the, into the real estate finance world and the guys that I was training under actually had quite a bit of experience with private financing and private lending. And so that was super helpful to, ⁓ get some exposure to that. And then, ⁓
Yeah, then I worked for ⁓ a small private equity firm that was focused on ⁓ apartment building flipping. And so during my time there, we bought and sold over 750 multifamily units and did about 200 million in transactions. And so I really learned a ton ⁓ during my time there on how to do due diligence, how to underwrite, how to put together a proper capital stack to take down a building, ⁓ all sorts of creative financing techniques with
agreement for sales, wraps, seller finance, you name it, we did it. So that was, yeah, that’s how I got into it.
Michelle Kesil (07:23)
Awesome. And what do you feel are some of the main keys that have made the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and run successfully?Steven Loewer (07:35)
Hmm. I think probably the biggest, like rocket fuel that I’ve poured on the business in the last couple of years would just be the, the community. So I joined a sub two community with pace Morby and, the, the amount of information that the help, the network, the, ⁓ the support, that I’ve been able to receive through that has been super, super helpful. ⁓ also just seeing other leaders in the community like pace and the other leaders.on how they operate, how they grow, how they ⁓ deal with challenges. ⁓ That’s been all super, super helpful.
Michelle Kesil (08:14)
Absolutely. So when you’re focusing on investments, why specifically is multifamily the arena that you’re diving into?Steven Loewer (08:25)
Yeah, good question. What I found is that a lot of people jump into single family because they know single family, right? Most of us have our own home or we’ve, we’ve purchased some sort of property in the past and single family is a great avenue for a lot of different reasons. one, it doesn’t generally produce a lot of cashflow. Most people are lucky if they, you know, generate one to $300 in cashflow on a ⁓ simple single family property. And after you’ve gone out andbought five, 10 single family homes, I saw everybody going, okay, now that I’ve got five or 10 homes, now I’m going to pivot into multifamily because I can scale faster. can scale bigger. Um, the operations are a little simpler. If you’re managing, you know, 10 or 20 units at one location versus 10 single family homes scattered throughout your entire city. Uh, obviously, uh, things are a little bit easier to manage. um, that’s one of the main reasons. Um, also
the, the, the financing that you are able to get with multifamily is very different from single family, especially in Canada. It’s very difficult to scale if you’re buying, you know, single family homes. and similar for me, when I’m going to buy in the U S I’m not a U S citizen. And so getting financing for single family homes is more challenging. So the thing that I like about commercial multifamily is, ⁓ once you’re five units and up, they don’t really look at you personally.
for your debt service, they look to you to confirm, you have some down payment? Do you have some net worth? Do you have some contingency money? But otherwise, we’re gonna qualify the deal based on the income off the property, not based off of you. And so that’s one of the biggest reasons and benefits of going multifamily.
Michelle Kesil (10:47)
Yeah, absolutely, that makes sense. Can you expand on some of the creative financing solutions that you work with or that you find are supportive for multifamily?Steven Loewer (10:59)
Yeah, you bet. So one thing that we, come across quite regularly is we’ve got a mom and pop who have owned a 30 unit building for 20 years, call it. And, you know, they paid, let’s say $50,000 a unit back in the day and they’ve been managing it mostly self management and it’s been providing good income for them. And now they’re ready to retire. They’re, they’re tired. They want to go spend time with grandkids. Um, and, um, and so they,will sometimes try to package it up and, and, try to sell it with a realtor. And oftentimes, ⁓ their, their books aren’t in great condition. The units are in great condition. Often the rents are below market because they haven’t bothered to raise those. Cause for them, the numbers make sense based off what they, what they paid. And by now they’re oftentimes really close to, if not totally paid off their underlying debt. And so one of the solutions that we bring to them is to say, Hey, instead of
you you just selling this property, let’s, let’s call it $2 million. instead of you just selling this property for $2 million and, and having a huge tax consequence and paying capital gains on this, why don’t we structure something where we can continue, ⁓ giving you payments each month and you can continue to use that as your income going forward into retirement. And now you don’t have to manage the property. You don’t have to deal with any of the stress, the headache of the tenants. you basically, we, we upgrade them from being a landlord to being the bank.
And so that’s one of our favorite solutions for, is seller financing. And so we help in a number of ways. One, over time, they’re gonna earn more ⁓ in principle and interest for the sale price than they would just on a flat sale. Also, they’re gonna be able to ⁓ spread out their capital gains ⁓ exposure over time as they complete the seller financing. And… ⁓
And oftentimes, you know, they they’re very emotionally attached to the building. So we want to build a relationship with them and let them know that, we’re going to take good care of your tenants. We’re going to take good care of your property. And so they oftentimes are more concerned about that rather than just some big equity firm coming in and raising rents, kicking everybody out and things like that.
Michelle Kesil (13:16)
Yeah, definitely that makes a lot of sense. What are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?Steven Loewer (13:29)
Hmm. The, the biggest challenge that we’re having right now is, um, so in, in multifamily, it’s a numbers game. So when we’re reviewing properties, we might get in, you know, 20 new properties to review in a week. And so we have to quickly filter through, you know, which ones fit our buy box, which ones, um, the numbers clearly just don’t make any sense and, and which ones are of interest. so.That’s probably been one of our biggest challenges is keeping up on that deal flow because we know that if we review Call it a hundred deals. There’s probably gonna be two or three of those in there That’s that fit our buy box where the numbers start to make sense where we can put together an LOI and say That’s probably the biggest challenge is keeping up with those numbers and and building out the systems to filter through the deals
Michelle Kesil (14:21)
Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned that you’re serving primarily Canada, but are you looking to expand in the US? And what does that vision look like for you?Steven Loewer (14:33)
Yeah, thanks. yeah, my, private lending has always been just Western Canada based. and as I’ve been exposed to more of the U S market, I’ve, see opportunities for us to, to expand there. And so we’re just now kind of toying with the idea of like, if we were to bring, ⁓ lions den is, is the name of the company lions den capital. If we were to bring lions den down to the U S which markets would we want to start in? ⁓ what types of loans would we want to focus on?and what could we bring to the market that’s where there’s a need. And so we’re still in the exploratory phase of that.
But I’ve had a few good conversations with people that are doing something similar. And so we’ve got a few ideas of what that could look like. so that’ll be a fun exercise over the next few months going into 2026 of exploring that a little bit more and determining if that’s a direction we want to go.
Michelle Kesil (16:07)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s an exciting opportunity.Steven Loewer (16:13)
Yeah, the US is huge. There’s more people in California than all of Canada. ⁓Michelle Kesil (16:14)
Yeah, it is.Yeah,
I mean I’m from California so just even exploring that state is its own country.
Steven Loewer (16:26)
Yeah,exactly. You got it.
Michelle Kesil (16:28)
Yeah, so every business owner has those moments where things get more real. Maybe you have a deal that doesn’t go as planned or you need to make some fast pivots. Would you mind sharing a moment like that that you’ve experienced and how you overcame it?Steven Loewer (16:46)
Yeah, sure. I’ll give you one. I’ll give you a lending example. That’s probably the most, the best example I can give. So when we underwrite a deal and we determine if we’re going to lend on a deal, we always look at the worst case scenario. And so we basically say, look, if we’re going to lend $300,000 on this house and the house today is appraising at $500,000, we have a pretty good cushion ofof equity above us. So we’re at about 66 % loan to value. And so we would say, you know, based on that, we’re, good to move forward. And so we look at the worst case. So if the borrower was abducted by aliens, the next day after the after funding, they’re not there to pay the utilities, pay the property taxes, pay the insurance, pay the interest. What’s what would be our, our exit or what would be our, our ability to recoup our capital?
And so we walked through that exercise on each deal that we do and determine, worst case, we would end up having to foreclose, go through judicial listing, and the property would likely get liquidated and we’d get paid out. And so when that happens, ⁓ sometimes the market shifts. So where that property was once worth 500,000, now it might be worth something closer to 400,000. And so now after accrued interest fees, property taxes that are unpaid, et cetera, et cetera,
that gap suddenly starts to shrink. And so one of the deals we’re working with right now is actually a condominium where the condo fees ⁓ keep getting raised and they’re quite expensive for a small two bedroom condo unit. And so the properties on the market currently, it’s not seeing a lot of traction, even though it’s priced significantly below everything else that’s actually sold in the building. ⁓ No buyers are interested just because the condo fees are so high.
So that’s one of the challenges that we’re working on right now is how do we deal with this property that we don’t want, right? We’re just trying to liquidate and get our capital out. And two, ⁓ that the buyers clearly don’t like or want because of the high condo fees. In Canada, we call them condo fees. You call them HOA fees or strata fees. So that’s one of the challenges that we’re facing today. And I think there’s a number of… ⁓
of our competitors and other lenders that are also facing the same concerns as the market ebbs and flows and comes up and comes down. There’s always adjustments and you just have to be able to pivot.
Michelle Kesil (19:18)
Yeah, absolutely. It’s the nature of being in this industry.Steven Loewer (19:22)
You got it.Michelle Kesil (19:26)
So as an investor, what are maybe some lessons that you know now that you wish you knew when you had started?Steven Loewer (19:36)
Yeah, probably one of the biggest ones would be not being overly exposed to one borrower. And so when we’re lending out, we oftentimes will lend out smaller loans to a bunch of different people. We don’t generally lend out one huge loan to one person. And so…But if, ⁓ if you get a very busy, ⁓ fix and flipper who, you know, bought this house is in the process of fixing it up. Now he’s got another deal. So he’s buying another house and you’re financing him and then just, you know, this house is now finished. It’s on the market. Hasn’t sold yet. So then we’d do a third house. And so you start down that road and before you know it, you might have three, four or five houses that this one flipper is doing. And so we, got caught there where we got, where our borrower just got over leveraged, over extended. And, we got.
caught holding the bag. So that was probably
one of the best lessons that I’ve learned in the past 10 years in this space is don’t over ⁓ saturate yourself with one borrower ⁓ doing one type of thing. So that’s one I wish I would have known at the beginning.
Michelle Kesil (20:44)
Yeah, definitely that’s important. Awesome. So I know that as a lender you have a lot of different modalities to get people their funding. Is there anything that kind of stands out to you as something that maybe your clients aren’t aware of that you end up supporting them with?Steven Loewer (21:11)
Yeah, good question. when a borrower comes to us, they often come to us with some sort of need, like, I need this, or I have this problem. And what I found is that when you’re in the problem, it’s hard to see.You know, the big picture, right? You can’t see the forest or the trees. So, ⁓ oftentimes a borrower will come to us and say, I’ve got this really challenging problem. I don’t know how to solve it. And so we’ll ask a few key questions of, know, what’s the situation, what’s the property look like, what’s, what’s happening, what type of assets do you have access to that we could use as security for a loan? And very quickly we can find a solution for them that they just like, I, didn’t, I didn’t even think about that. I didn’t even think that was possible. And so that is what I would say is, is probably the biggest.
aha moment for most of our borrowers is despite you being in a problem and you probably have your blinders on because you’re so focused on the problem, whereas we’re a solutions based lender. So we look at it and say, okay, now how do we solve this? And it might be, you know, two or three steps away from the actual problem. And so that’s what I love about the businesses is every day is a new day. We’re always finding different solutions to different problems. ⁓ And oftentimes it’s like,
You know, we need this. What can we do to get there either quicker, more cheaply, or is there a different way that we can structure it? So we don’t have to get that amount of money today. Can we stage it? Right? Can we get $50,000 today and $50,000 a month from now? And if so, what does that look like? So those are, those are probably some of the, the, the key things that’s, that’s what I would say to most borrowers is even if you don’t know or understand. ⁓
your solution, bring us the problem and we’ll take a look at it and we’ll try to craft a solution together.
Michelle Kesil (22:59)
Yeah, definitely, that’s important. Thank you for sharing. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and reach you?Steven Loewer (23:11)
Yeah, great. Appreciate that. So best place is probably on Instagram. So it’s just at Steven Loewer. And what I’d love to do is add some value to your, to your, ⁓ your listenersI’ll send you our, our private lending starter kit.
And so what that’ll do is teach you kind of all the basics of what is it like to become a lender? What type of returns can you expect? How do we mitigate risks? And then, yeah, it’s a super helpful kit to get people educated, both on the lending side and also on the borrower side. Because when you go to borrow, you also want to know how to structure a deal to make it make sense for your lender. So ⁓ that’s key. So yeah, reach out to me on Instagram, send me the word pro and I’ll get that kit to you.
Michelle Kesil (23:50)
Thank you for offering that for the community and yeah, thank you for being here.Steven Loewer (23:53)
Awesome, thanks so much, appreciate it.Michelle Kesil (23:55)
And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Steven who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on the next episode.
