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Show Summary
In this conversation, Owen Reimer discusses his journey in multifamily development, sharing insights on the construction process, challenges faced in financing and land acquisition, and the importance of building strong relationships in the industry. He emphasizes the need for integrity and action in business, while also touching on personal life and work-life balance.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Owen Reimer (00:00)
A lot of people sit in the sidelines and they just don’t take action or whatever. They go, they know all the right answers. They can tell you everything, how to do something. They tell you how you do it all wrong, whatever the case may be. It doesn’t really matter, but the key item is, you know, action.just move a little bit forward every day. It doesn’t have to be big action, just take some action. So that’s kind of our thing is every day we just kind of move the ball forward, right? Little bit, little bit, and all of a there’s a building done.
Quentin Edmonds (01:57)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. Super excited to be here today. Excited because I have another fantastic guest who I get to peek through their lens and learn more about what they do. And I’m so happy that they’re here to tell us what they do, you know, to add value to the show. And so this gentleman is coming, you know, knows about the development space. Yeah, definitely does multifamily, but you know, the land, I think that’s something that excites him. That’s something.that he has found success in. And it gives him a chance to kind of control the narrative, right? Not having to hire other people to try to, know, maybe gouge him for the land when it comes to prices. So he’s in a very, very great advantage, the great, great, great position when it comes to that. And so I want him to tell us all about it. And I want to introduce you guys to Mr. Reimer. Mr. Owen, how did I do? Did I do good? Awesome, Awesome, man.
Owen Reimer (02:47)
Yup, you got it. That’s the right pronunciation. Yup, very good.Quentin Edmonds (02:53)
This is Sir, thank you for being here today. How you feeling man?Owen Reimer (02:56)
Doing great, yeah. It’s a warm day here. We’re only at minus nine Celsius, whatever that is in Fahrenheit, I’m not quite sure.Quentin Edmonds (02:57)
Good, good, good.Oh, that’s it.
I don’t even know, man. But it just sounds like that’s cool. That’s cool. Yeah, I’m complaining about my 19 degrees, man. man, wow. Again, you’re already changing my perspective. So I appreciate you. So listen, man, want you to take us into your world. I want you to tell us what your main focus is these days.
Owen Reimer (03:07)
We’ve got snow, we’ve lots of snow.Sounds bad.
Quentin Edmonds (03:26)
If you want to give us a little origin story of how you got into, know, what you’re doing, how you got into the real estate game, we love origin stories. And then please, if you don’t mind, tell us what part of the world you’re in, what markets you’re operating in. And so Mr. sir, you got the floor.Owen Reimer (03:41)
Sounds great. Yeah, we’re located in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada, which is right smack dab in the middle of Canada, close to the US border. ⁓prior to getting into development of multifamily, I had a track record in financial services and a bunch of those years we did some private equity and I got exposed to kind of, know, how do these groups build all these different buildings, these big apartments? Often they’re bringing in outside investors and things like that. And once I sold my business and trying to figure out what the next step was in life here, we…
We had a few opportunities to do some commercial buildings. did great on those. We just saw that there was a lot of risk though, if you’re trying to be small in that space with single tenant commercial retail.
So, you know, we started to dive into doing some multifamily development. There are some really unique, I guess, lending structures available in Canada that allowed us to kind of scale up quickly. I had the background in raising capital already, so I had a lot of context in deal structure and the legal side of things, what it should look like. And it brought in some great, great team members to help us on the construction side. And so from what we do now is, yeah, we do ground up multifamily
building, start from nothing, piece of land, we know put everything in there, all the parking lots and and we go from ground up.
We would stay in smaller buildings. We’re not doing a lot of high rise stuff. Right now, three storey is kind of our max height, just in how we structure everything. It keeps it simple, keeps it quick, and also allows us to really know what our costs are. And, you know, at the back end, when you’re looking at everything, if you can build for less than what it appraises out at, that’s how you create some value and also make sure you have some good cash flow to distribute back to investors.
when everybody’s leased up. So that’s kind of what we do. Lots of fun doing it. We lots of you know future
Projects in the mill and that’s some days people say well, I’m in the process of building Let’s say a building is you know walls are going up and it was no you’re so involved Are you really involved in the construction? I said actually like I go on site and take pictures and high-five everybody and bring coffee and I focus on what’s next, you know, so I’m focusing on what’s the next building? Where is it? How to make sure we get all the land? ⁓
taken care of, what the plan, what can we put on that land, that kind of thing. So I focus a lot on what’s coming, not what is currently.
Quentin Edmonds (06:56)
Beautiful, beautiful. I appreciate that. When you mentioned no real high rises, it made me think I had someone on from Australia. And he was telling me, you know, came from Australia, came to the United States. And he’s like, this multifamily thing is new for him because like in Australia, there is really no multifamily. So I heard you say the high rises. I was thinking, you know, how does the landscape look different than it would in the US when it comes to multifamily?or is the structure kind of like the same? Unfortunately, I’ve never been to Canada, so I’m asking this question because I don’t know.
Owen Reimer (07:25)
Yeah,building wise very similar. Our landscape would be very Midwest style. We’re pretty spread out. We have lots of land available. It’s just making sure we get the services to it.
Quentin Edmonds (07:32)
Okay.Owen Reimer (07:39)
We don’t really run into roadblocks with geographic constraints. It’s kind of like you can spread quite easily. As soon as you go higher with buildings, that’s more lot of times more like we’re in a smaller markets. We’ll call it secondary tertiary type markets.⁓ So you don’t want to build like 150 unit, eight story building. It just doesn’t make sense. ⁓ So you stay to like three story buildings, you know, maybe 20 to 40 doors per building, somewhere in that range. If we go to, you know, around 30 doors and up, we can do an elevator, which is really tenants really like the elevator, especially if they live on the third floor. So we look at, you know, not just ease of construction, we also look at the backend.
Quentin Edmonds (08:03)
Got you.Okay.
Okay.
Owen Reimer (08:24)
do tenants want to live in this place? Like if I was a renter, would I want to live here? You know, and I once was a renter and as soon as you’re above the second floor, you’re like, stairs get old.Quentin Edmonds (08:30)
Yeah.Yeah,
Absolutely. Especially after long days work, Absolutely. So Mr. Owen, I kind of want to pick your brain when it comes to your strategies. Now, I’m going to ask this question, and I would love if you could answer it two ways. What are some business strategies, core business strategies that you live by, but also what’s some personal strategies, core personal strategies that you live by? When I say personal strategies, I know some people
Owen Reimer (08:41)
Yeah.Quentin Edmonds (09:02)
go to the gym every morning. Some people may do a cold plunge, go for hikes. So have you identified any personal strategies that you know that help you and what are your core business strategies that you feel like help you as well?Owen Reimer (09:49)
I guess on the business side, a lot of it is surrounding ourselves with quality people, whether that be some of my partners. I’m not good at everything, right? So I make sure I have good partners that can kind of fill the gaps. So making sure you’re surrounding yourself with, with, you know, other eight players and what they’re good at. So they can fill the gaps, create some systems. And when you create the systems and strategies, when you’re smaller, before you go big, it’s easier.Quentin Edmonds (09:59)
Hmm.Owen Reimer (10:15)
You know, making sure you cross your I’s and dot your T’s, that kind of thing. You know, especially when it comes to partnerships, all your legal stuff. Like if you go too far ahead of yourself, you could run into trouble. You know, if something starts to go wrong with even within your, with your group, if you don’t have all your documentation right and properly structured and systems, it can really unravel what could be an awesome business, right?On the personal side, mean right now I work out of my home office. We’ve been doing that for a few years. We’re in the process of building an office and shop space for our companies. Just, you know, it’s a long time coming. We’ve been looking at a couple ideas there just to separate work from home. I think that’s what we need to do on the personal side of things. We also…
really enjoy traveling. We make it a focus to to kind of plan that stuff and have stuff to look forward to that, you know, work isn’t everything. I enjoy my work. I could do it on vacation. I like what I do. I don’t have a problem. don’t people say, oh, you’re retired already. I’m like, yeah, sure. If this is retirement, sign me up. I like it. But yeah, I’m not I don’t really have any like real good disciplined workout strategies. Probably I should get into that.
Quentin Edmonds (11:09)
Yeah.Owen Reimer (11:29)
But yeah, definitely planning like, you know, going hunting or vacations, things like that. We do that a lot.I think I might be freezing up here a little bit. Up in Canada we got garbage internet I guess.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello? Hello? Yes.
Yeah, I’m here.
I can’t hear you. Can you hear me?
Quentin Edmonds (11:44)
Hear me, Mr. Owen?I can’t hear you. What is going Can you hear me?
Owen Reimer (11:48)
yeah, I can hear you now. Yeah, loud and clear. This is the editing part. You know, it’s funny. I’ve only had these issues whenever I’ve recorded podcasts through Riverside.Quentin Edmonds (11:50)
Okay, my apologies. But this, there you go.Thank you. Let me be quiet because Riverside is listening, but I’m glad you said that. I’m I’m glad you said that.
Owen Reimer (12:07)
So…Yeah, yeah. mean, I made sure I told my son, I’m like, get off your phone, get off your thing. Like I shouldn’t, I don’t think it’s me, but we’re supposed to have a really high speed, but you never know, right? So it’s goes.
Quentin Edmonds (12:12)
you ⁓Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. So from your ears to whomever, I mean, from your mouth to whomever ears. But, no, I thank you. I thank you for asking that question. I was tracking very well. I know you said, you know, you have the vacations, you plan, you know, you like to go get away to bring up, break out the monotony. I know you did say, you know, not really like strict kind of workout routine and stuff like that. So I want to let you know that I did hear your answer. I thank you for your answer. ⁓ I love to get different people’s perspective on the strategies that they use.
Owen Reimer (12:48)
Okay.Quentin Edmonds (12:54)
And so I appreciate you saying that for sure. So let me ask you this. I know, you you’ve been building, it seemed like, you know, you’re successful. Have you had to face any adversities as you was building and getting to success? Because, you know, sometimes deals go sideways, you know, sometimes we run into roadblocks. Have you had to face any adversity as you was building your business?Owen Reimer (13:15)
We haven’t had too much issue on the actual construction side. Wea good project manager. It helps a lot of that kind of stuff. ⁓ But yeah, there’s always adversity where you build and then you hope to have another deal coming and then that one gets delayed. And now you’re like, what do we do now? So, you know, trying to fill the gaps. We had one time where we bought some land, you we’ve got hard money on it ourselves.
and then interest rates started going up and we had some other things kind of change in the background and we had to pull the plug on it and the seller was like, no, I’m not releasing the deposit. Even though he sold it like three months later. So, you know, we lost our own money on that. Wasn’t like the big picture. I don’t think it was a real ton of money, but you know, every little bit that you get cut hurts. But the good news is like it wasn’t.
investor money. It was just our own internal money. ⁓
trying to get variances done on things you can save some money on, parking spaces or things like that. mean, we, you you sometimes just get a hard no. So you just pivot and you move on. I think for the most part, yeah, we know there’s always challenges. Like it’s never, like every day there’s a new challenge. And so if you are gonna get frustrated over little challenges over and over, ⁓
It’s not going to be a fun day, but you just see that as that’s your job, right?
And we call it, we do what’s called hurry up and wait a lot of the time. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait for financing. We typically use a company called ⁓ Processing Canada using CMHC, which is kind of like a Fannie Mae Freddie Mac type scenario. And just to get a call that a certificate of insurance so we can get lending.
Quentin Edmonds (15:26)
mmm, mmm, mmm.Gotcha.
Owen Reimer (15:46)
takes often right now up to four months, just waiting to see if they pick up your file. So the delays are incredible.Quentin Edmonds (15:54)
So yeah, so when you do freeze on my end too, so I come to a leg and I can see me like going like, you know, going that slow leg. yes. So it’s frozen on my end and on your end. And now it’s asking me to refresh it again.Owen Reimer (16:06)
Okay. I always look, I alwayslook good at my end. never lags here.
Quentin Edmonds (16:11)
Okay, it looks good. Yeah, it’s definitely on my end and I got I got I got the ethernet connected like I’m going straight into the router I don’t know but I it’s telling me to refreshOwen Reimer (16:21)
Sure, sounds good.Quentin Edmonds (16:22)
Again, I apologize about the start and stop. Definitely heard your last answer. You talked about the different deals and I appreciate that. Just a little adversity that you hit. What’s the next real goal for you? What are you looking to solve or scale next? What’s the next target for you?Owen Reimer (16:37)
Our next thing is besides keeping building buildings, that’s part of it, but really it’s more on structure in terms of like right now we have it, each building is its own limited partnership, its own little kind of entity. And the idea is to create a fund on top of that. so each building, each limited partnership can kind of be underneath that. it creates a bunch of different things that are great for.Quentin Edmonds (16:52)
Mm-hmm.Owen Reimer (17:04)
not only our business, but also for investors. creates liquidity. It helps us get better access to capital. ⁓ It creates kind of a bit more of like a better in terms of distributions, more, more consistent, you know, cashflow returns more solid that type returns. It also allows us to, you know, access capital that’s kind of trapped inside of our buildings and, you know, add to the portfolio. Maybe we partner with other developers in other areas, whether it be.in other areas in Canada or other areas into the US, either or we can look at doing those kinds of options. So that’s what we’re working on behind the scenes. Same thing that’s going to take months to get done. You know, we’re working with tax lawyers, accountants, just so it’s done right. So then when we launch it, I would say that’s probably another thing to say, like when a lot of people, they rush things.
you know, take your time setting the groundwork up, right? Just like a foundation on a building. You do gotta do that right so that, you know, the end product looks really good. And we’ve, yeah, we’ve had spots where we’ve kind of rushed things here and there and you, you often, you pay a bit of a price at some point for doing that. So that’s kind of what we see as a kind of the big, the next, the next step.
Quentin Edmonds (18:17)
I want to talk and pick your brain about relationships. I want to know is relationship building important to you? If it is, how has it impacted you and your business and your growth?Owen Reimer (18:26)
it’s, it’s everything right. Relationships, whether it’s relationships with people that are investing in our, deals. ⁓ you know, just being right open and transparent and, ⁓ having coffees or, or video calls, whatever, whatever they were looking for it to do. ⁓ also just with our contractors as well. ⁓you know, having good relations, they become trusted people, right? And they look out for you then. Often we’ll have our own, our contractors say, Hey, can I invest in your deals? And they’re seeing, they’re buying in not just as somebody building for us, but they’re also buying in as an investor themselves. So the, the, the buying level is really high. And that’s just because of your relationship. Just we keep, I would say, you know, one of my partners,
at our level is I would say his, if the baseline is 100, his integrity level is 150. And that just elevates, we all wanna be at that same level. And integrity for us is like, that’s something that’s ours, right? It’s not like money, you can take money away, life goes on, right? But integrity is crucial to us from here going forward, kind of.
do what you’re gonna say what you’re gonna do and do what you’re gonna say that kind of mantra. And you know it’s every day you gotta do that. You gotta sit down and this is, you know, we gotta follow through in what we said we were gonna do. And we try to, you know, we hold others to that type of accountability as well.
⁓ You have some uncomfortable conversations at times with people, ⁓ but that’s life. And, you know, we just kind of maneuver through it and you ⁓ build stronger relationships and trust as you grow in that regard. Not just like with everybody, right? With your bankers, with your accountants, with your lawyers, with your investors, with your trades people that you work with on a regular basis. You become…
you know, they’ll look out for you when they, you know, something they see, Hey Owen, you need to stop. There’s something you need to look at here. That’s, that pays itself back in spades, right? Taking that time to build those strong relationships.
Quentin Edmonds (20:27)
Yeah, yeah. My wife has a saying that she told me that she got from, he was a fitness coach, but she gave me a saying that really challenges my integrity. She says, if you lie to yourself, you truly have nobody else left to trust. So you lie to yourself, you truly have nobody else left to trust. And so, you know, how you do, they say how you do anything is how you do everything, right? Like,Owen Reimer (20:45)
Yeah.Quentin Edmonds (20:52)
If I can keep my word to myself and not lie to myself more than likely, I’m going keep my word in every situation that I’m in. You know, when I know who I am, I know what to do. So when I have integrity for myself, I have integrity for everybody else around me. And so unfortunately, integrity is a practice. Had it is a practice characteristic. Like you have to constantly have it in every endeavor of your life. And so I love how you talk about integrity, talk about trust.I think it’s a big thing just in life, you know, just dealing with people. think, you know, the more integrity you have, the more sustainable the things that around you is going to be in all aspects of your life. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Listen, Ms. Owen, sir, I thank you for your patience with me today. Before we get out of here, is there any last words you wanted to say, any final nuggets you feel like you wanted to give? Is there anything that you wanted to say that you hadn’t said yet?
Owen Reimer (21:32)
Yep, 100%.I don’t know, a lot of people say like West quantity the biggest things in doing what we do, whether it’s building or real estate or whatever. think the biggest thing is this action.
A lot of people sit in the sidelines and they just don’t take action or whatever. They go, they know all the right answers. They can tell you everything, how to do something. They tell you how you do it all wrong, whatever the case may be. It doesn’t really matter, but the key item is, you know, action.
just move a little bit forward every day. It doesn’t have to be big action, just take some action. So that’s kind of our thing is every day we just kind of move the ball forward, right? Little bit, little bit, and all of a there’s a building done.
So yeah, that’s kind of my last words.
Quentin Edmonds (22:24)
I definitely appreciate that. think that’s a great last word. I people all the time, of my favorite books is Atomic Habits, and it says be 1 % better every single day. Just 1%. So 1 % better every single day. And so I love it. How you talking about taking action? For sure. Listen, I thank you, man. If someone wanted to reach out to you, Mr. Owen, collaborate with you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you,Owen Reimer (22:47)
Yeah, probably the best way to reach out to me is either through LinkedIn. I’m on there under Owen Reimer. I’m pretty easy to find there. ⁓ I run most of my own LinkedIn myself. And then also on our website is www.stoneshorecapital.com/ You can check us out there, see what we’re up to, try to keep it up to date as much as possible. That’s where you can find us.Quentin Edmonds (23:09)
Beautiful. I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Owen, for your patience, first of all, for your time, because that’s connected to your patience. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. And thank you for your perspective. This has been a great episode, and I really appreciate you,Owen Reimer (23:23)
Thank you.Quentin Edmonds (23:24)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all got the value from Mr. Owen. You can’t tell me you didn’t. Please make sure you are subscribed. You do not want to miss out on these amazing conversations from amazing people just like Mr. Owen. So thank you again, sir. To everyone else, we’ll see you on the next time.
