Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this conversation, Anita Bongers Lewis shares her journey from being a chiropractor to becoming a successful real estate investor and broker. She discusses her initial motivations for investing in real estate, the strategies she employs for new investors, and the importance of understanding property conversions. Anita also delves into various acquisition strategies, the current market trends in the Durham region, and her future projects aimed at helping first-time homebuyers through house hacking.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Anita Bongers-Lewis (00:00)
That’s right. I was a chiropractor and an acupuncturist previously and my husband and I just felt like we worked quite hard and we weren’t going to retire when we thought we should retire and we wanted to find out where we could put our money and what we could do with our money to have a better financial future and to retire younger. So that led us to a lot of podcasts and books and meetups and that led us to investing in real estate.Dylan Silver (01:52)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Anita Bongers Lewis is an investor broker out of Canada, the Durham region. She’s won the Canadian Real Estate Investor Award for her work. And over the years, she’s helped countless investors build their personal portfolios. You can find her and her team on doorstowealth.com Anita, thanks for taking the time today.Anita Bongers-Lewis (02:15)
Thanks for having me, Dylan.Dylan Silver (02:16)
I typically like to start the show by asking folks how they got started in real estate, but you had an interesting path because you had a career as a chiropractor.Anita Bongers-Lewis (02:24)
That’s right. I was a chiropractor and an acupuncturist previously and my husband and I just felt like we worked quite hard and we weren’t going to retire when we thought we should retire and we wanted to find out where we could put our money and what we could do with our money to have a better financial future and to retire younger. So that led us to a lot of podcasts and books and meetups and that led us to investing in real estate.Dylan Silver (02:45)
I wanna ask you a little bit about being a chiropractor, because I think myself and a lot of folks don’t know what goes into being a chiropractor. How many years of schooling does it take to be a chiropractor?Anita Bongers-Lewis (02:54)
So a full undergrad degree, three or four years, and then another four-year post-grad degree doctorate.Dylan Silver (02:58)
Did you know at any point in time when you were studying that you were gonna be a real estate investor?Anita Bongers-Lewis (03:04)
No, if you had ever told me that I would have never believed you ten years ago.Dylan Silver (03:08)
So you’re going in, walk me through what it’s like in the first couple of years ⁓ practicing as a chiropractor.Anita Bongers-Lewis (03:14)
It’s wonderful. I like helping people. I like working with people. I like working with my hands. ⁓ It was wonderful, but it’s very physical. ⁓ It was great. It challenged me. like to learn a lot of things. So it was a wonderful profession. ⁓ Just we sought out something to invest in outside of the profession ⁓ as well. But I have nothing bad to say about the profession. I did do it for 10 years successfully and really enjoyed it.I will say my body physically is happy to not do it at this point, only from the physical’s perspective, from the helping people perspective. It was a wonderful job to have or career to have.
Dylan Silver (03:50)
It’s interesting, right, because you’re helping other people ⁓ recuperate and it’s wearing on you. then you think, okay, well, how do I, what’s my exit strategy here? When did real estate become something that you were looking at? Was it along the way in your chiropractic career? Was it at the end of it?Anita Bongers-Lewis (04:07)
⁓ Just over 15 years ago, we sort of stumbled into a little bit of something, a couple of pre-built condos, which worked out well that we held for about a year and got rid of my husband’s condo before we got married as well. We sort of flipped it and renovated it as well and then bought our first home. But it was really just looking for, you know, we made decent money, my husband and I, but it felt like there was never enough to get where we wanted to be or to retire. So we just really started researching.what were the best returns we could get on the money that we had so that we could move a little bit quicker. My husband’s the type of guy who has had a spreadsheet that would tell you the month and year we’d retire based on our current trajectory. So we wanted to change that. And everything pointed towards real estate as something for great long-term wealth generation. that’s when we started dabbling in that, think. So the more intentional investment, not these pre-built condos, but the intentional investment started around 2012.
when we started diving into our first properties. And that’s where we actually achieved that award. So it was for newcomer of the year for the Canadian Real Estate Wealth Magazine. We purchased five properties in our first year and converted some to two unit dwellings. We had a student rental and we had our first child. So we had a crazy first really active year in our investments.
Dylan Silver (06:10)
You know, I think a lot of people can relate to this idea of, know, if I’m not working in the business, then is this business going to be making money for me? Right. And so as a chiropractor, as a career professional, if people stop working, the money stops coming in. Right. And so real estate, of course, offers that opportunity for ⁓ being able to pull yourself out of the business, at least at some point in time. Initially, you were you were an investor. Right. And soAnita Bongers-Lewis (06:37)
Yes.Dylan Silver (06:37)
brokerage and being a realtor that I’m imagining was not the initial focus when you were getting in as an investor.Anita Bongers-Lewis (06:45)
Not even a little bit. So my husband and I did get our licenses only because we figured we could just represent ourselves as we did transactions, but had no intention to really work with anyone else. We also got it because for anyone who knows us, we’re nerds for lack of a better term. We like to learn. We like to understand how things work and how to get an edge. So we did all that with no intention to use it except for ourselves. And actually the realtor that I had used for our first five purchases.said, you know what, I want to retire. What are you doing with that license that you got now? And we saw a unique opportunity to leverage all the information, all the knowledge we had gained in our own investment. The realtor I had worked with had been working with investors for some time. It was a unique opportunity to step away from what I had been doing. So I shifted into it part-time and then eventually full-time.
Dylan Silver (07:34)
Yeah, I mean, I had an investor agent here recently on the show tell me that if you want to know, you know, who’s successful in business, it’s not just how many transactions that they’ve done, but what’s their what’s their portfolio look like? Because if you are purely a transactional realtor, I know many that have gotten burnt out on that side of it. Because again, if you take yourself out of the business, what’s the what’s the cash flow look like? And soI think it’s interesting because as a realtor myself, I went in thinking, well, every realtor must be an investor or must think about investing. of course, that’s not the case.
Anita Bongers-Lewis (08:10)
Not even close. It’s actually surprising how often we bring it up even within our brokerage. ⁓ Even especially right now, there’s a lot of opportunities in our market right now with where things have gone. And there are so many who just won’t take that jump. And there’s so many realtors who work until they’re 80 because they haven’t got that passive income coming in. ⁓ We believe in diversification. So we don’t just have our investment portfolio.Dylan Silver (08:26)
Yeah.Anita Bongers-Lewis (08:35)
Certainly we have my business, have our investment portfolio, my husband day trades as well. We do private lending and so we have multiple streams just to make sure that we’re growing but also to make sure it’s something that like you said when we step away from the business, there’s an income, there’s a cashflow coming in there still.Dylan Silver (08:51)
Do you have a personal favorite asset class, whether it’s single family, multi-family or ⁓ some other segment of real estate for newer investors when they come to you saying, how do I get started as an investor?Anita Bongers-Lewis (09:05)
So I’d say if you’re very, very new investing in our markets anyways, something like a duplex, a two unit dwelling is what we call them in our local area. It’s a good balance. If you get into multifamily, you’re dealing with multiple tenants, ⁓ likely some conflicts, managing a larger building. I think sometimes a tenant profile will shift a little bit when you go into higher level multis. So sticking in and around something that’s two units works well. You’ve gotyou know, more income than you would in the single family home. So you’ve got better cash flow. And in our markets here, you will not cash flow in with a single family home anyway. So it’s really not an option. Maybe in some of the very rural areas, but it’s pretty unlikely. But also you have a little more security if you have a vacancy for one month, you still have the other unit paying rent in that case. So you may be negative a little bit, but you’re not set at zero. And ⁓ we find that’s a pretty good asset class, but also
A lot of our investors, because I’ve done a lot of this work myself, so because we sort of practice what we preach, a lot of them will do the buy the single family home and convert it to two units. So get that forced equity in there as part of it, but also get that greater cash flow at the end of the day. So that’s really been a niche. That’s one that I’ve personally utilized a lot with a BRRRR strategy, right? The buy, renovate, refinance and repeat. ⁓
Dylan Silver (10:09)
Hmm.Anita Bongers-Lewis (10:24)
little trickier these days you have to buy smart but it’s becoming a really good strategy again because there are certainly motivated sellers within our market right now so that’s sort of my sweet spot we’re shifting that even to triplex conversions now because bylaws and local rules have changed to allow three and four units as of right now so there’s definitely some opportunities but that gets more complicated for a new investor to really understand you know ⁓ if a building can become three units what the costs look like and what that process isDylan Silver (10:50)
Yeah.Anita Bongers-Lewis (10:52)
But certainly the classic turn a bungalow into two units is not so complicated.Dylan Silver (11:31)
Now, when we talk about converting a single family into a duplex, let’s say that the single family home is rental grade. So it might not be completely modernized, but it’s certainly livable. What’s the basic things that people need to do? You know, adding a door, right? Separating, separating the units to convert a single family into a duplex.Anita Bongers-Lewis (11:47)
there.The main things are they have to realize that you have to pull full permits. They have to be prepared that they will have to get drawings done and they will have to pull permits for it, even if it is already two units, but not legally two units. You still have to pull your full permits. Then you need sound separation, fire separation. You need to have the proper ceiling height for egress. You likely have to add an egress window or make sure there is an egress window there as well. And then you’ll have to for your fire separation or part of your fire code, you’ll have to have interconnected smoke detectors, including one in the furnace system.
Dylan Silver (12:18)
Okay, so that means if one goes off, the other’s going off.Anita Bongers-Lewis (12:21)
Yeah, and I always love explaining it to our clients why one goes in the furnace. And it’s because the furnace system feeds the entire house. And it isn’t fire that kills people. It’s usually the smoke that kills people. So ⁓ what happens with the, we call it an inline or in-duct smoke detector is it shuts your furnace off if the smoke detectors go off. So that if there’s a fire in one unit, the furnace isn’t pushing the smoke into the second unit.Dylan Silver (12:42)
Now in the Durham region are the good deals all off-market? there any deals that you can find on market?Anita Bongers-Lewis (12:50)
Yeah, absolutely both. I’d say if you’re doing a flip strategy, you’re probably looking more for off market deals. It is a lot harder to find them on the market. But yeah, usually we’re dealing with wholesalers for flip projects. But I’d say for those two unit conversions or especially for something that’s already two units and a tired landlord, those ones we’re finding on the market quite easily.Dylan Silver (13:10)
What’s the, I know it’s gonna be a range, but what’s the range of rents that you could get on both sides of a duplex?Anita Bongers-Lewis (13:16)
So for total your range is probably if we’re talking you’ve you’ve purchased it and you’ve renovated it and you’re setting your market rents you’re looking upwards of 4200 to 4500 for the whole whole home.Dylan Silver (13:29)
And at that point, it’s cash flowing because what’s the I’m thinking that the mortgage that you have and this isn’t going to be substantially more than a single family home.Anita Bongers-Lewis (13:37)
No, it isn’t. that’s the amazing thing. That’s what’s happened during all of this uncertainty. A lot of investors have exited the market. So traditionally, we found the two unit dwellings really retain their value, even when the rest of the market was correcting. But there’s just tired landlords who over leverage themselves, who couldn’t handle the rate changes. And there’s some of them that say, I have to get out. So we’re finding some really great opportunities out there where we can make those numbers where.Dylan Silver (14:04)
I want to pivot a bit here and ask you about acquisition strategy. There’s ⁓ so many different ways to get into real estate to get started. Of course, the way that most people know is find a realtor, make an offer to a property on market. But then also there’s countless people who are wholesaling. There’s folks who are doing acquisitions off market. And there’s now, I would say, more folks than ever who are interested in making seller finance offers. ⁓ Do you have experience in several of these realms?Anita Bongers-Lewis (14:28)
Yes.Dylan Silver (14:32)
Would you advise for or against one or the other?Anita Bongers-Lewis (14:34)
So whenever you can get seller financing, so a vendor take back, that is wonderful. And yes, we have experience with that. We’ve been able to, I think the best one I’ve negotiated is we’ve got an interest rate of 1.75, which was lovely for an 80 % loan to value. So it was a wonderful situation for my client. She could renovate it, turn it into a triplex during the period that she had the vendor financing and then refinance into a different product, which is really great. We are finding with again, motivated sellers, it’s a great opportunity. But I deal with…wholesalers and flippers all the time. So we have opportunities there as well with off-market and pocket listings quite often. So I have a relationship often with a few of the wholesalers where they’ll come to me for my opinion of value. So they decide if they want to flip it themselves. But in exchange, I get a little early access to it so that I can go and maybe see if I have anybody who may be interested in that property before it hits their big list. But I mean, there are so many opportunities. I do caution a new investor.
with ⁓ sometimes with the wholesale opportunities, it is they just need to make sure they’ve had maybe a lawyer vetted or be a little careful because with the wholesale opportunities, the wholesaler is very honest that, you know, no guarantees, no warranties kind of thing. But I don’t think all purchasers realize what they could be walking into in those situations. So, yeah.
Dylan Silver (15:48)
Yeah, there’sabsolutely.
Having come from that space, know, you know, of course, the fiduciary responsibility that people have is also it is non-existent. But then also you have the idea that, these are properties that are being handed to an investor. And if the investor is thinking like, hey, this is just going to be wrapped in a bow, that’s not necessarily the case. Many of the times it’s not, right?
you have to go in and do your own underwriting. Of course, the, I always tell this to people, say walk the property, but I know so many investors now that are doing this remotely. What’s your thought about being a remote investor and seeing the rise in people doing this across state lines and so forth?
Anita Bongers-Lewis (17:10)
I mean, I guess if it fits your risk profile, that’s all it is, right? It is sort of what risk you’re willing to take on. But I’d say right now the risk is greater than ever. are in a market where things in our market have declined about 30 % from the peaks during COVID. So some sellers, even some agents are particularly motivated and may not, like you said, no fiduciary duty, ⁓ no responsibility there that you can end up in a verytricky situation, I think you should walk a property. There are just certain things that you can’t possibly understand from a video walkthrough and things like that. So I think walking the property is good. Now, I know a lot of wholesalers, have a whole acquisitions team. So somebody’s walking in for them. It’s just not them, which makes perfect sense as well. Oftentimes for my flippers or my clients who are buying from wholesalers, nine times out of 10, if they’re buying from wholesalers, they’re flippers. ⁓
In those cases, they’ll just have me come walk the property with them as well. So I can give them an idea of what the value is later because I’ll be listing it for them later. It helps us both because I also don’t have an unrealistic expectation once they’ve done their flip of what that price is going to be. We’re all on the same page and they know what to invest in the property if it makes sense. quite often, even though I’m not involved in the purchase, I will come for the walkthrough just to give my opinion.
Dylan Silver (18:26)
What’s the, and again, there’s gonna be a range here, but what’s the range for what investors are looking for from an acquisitions price for a single family flip in the Durham region?Anita Bongers-Lewis (18:37)
goodness, in the Durham region, we’d want it to be under $600,000 would be what we’d be looking for and even lower than that if we can get it. But I’d say the cusp is in and around there. If we can get it five or even just under five, that’s even better. For us right now, ⁓ if you’re doing a flip, it’s better if it’s an entry level home, so something where it’s more of a first time home buyer, that kind of thing. I always explain to people that we sort of have, we have like our luxury market, then we have that sort ofleveling up home and then we have those first time or entry level markets. ⁓ When prices shift, especially when prices go up, it puts more people in that lower level of entry, right? So that’s where you’re always going to have the highest demand is in that entry level product. You’ll have more people there. So for flippers sticking to that product, unless you’re highly experienced and you can do it with luxury. Absolutely. You can do it with luxury, but I’d say ⁓ you’re more stable in a changing market if you’re working with entry level products. So I’d say
area of Durham as well Durham’s a very large region- it’s certainly under six hundred under five hundred even better.
Dylan Silver (19:40)
There’s an interesting, you know, it’s an interesting contrast to where I’m licensed at. Because in Texas, when I’m thinking of flips, I know I’ve assigned some contracts prior to being a realtor for acquisitions price of, you know, $60,000. And that person flipped it for 200 or below that even. And so when I’m hearing, you know, 600, I’m thinking, wow, so what’s the exit on some of those homes?Anita Bongers-Lewis (20:03)
I mean, it’s just a simple flip, right? So it’s going to be a renovation depending on who my flipper is. It sometimes is just cosmetic flip. Sometimes it’s a whole tail close on it, change two things and throw it right on the market really quickly if you can get the numbers right, if they can negotiate it pretty aggressively. And that’s sort of the situation right now in our market. Affordability is a huge issue for anyone purchasing. ⁓ I deal not just with investors. I deal with a lot of residential as well.Dylan Silver (20:09)
Mm-hmm.Anita Bongers-Lewis (20:29)
We’re 50 % investor, 50 % residential, which for me is the best business model because it keeps my business resilient when investors are quiet. We find the residential is busy and vice versa. But yeah, I would say if you can get something that is really fully done right now, that’s what’s going to get you the best result. People can’t afford to pay their down payment with the prices we’re at, as well as put in a new furnace or put on a new roof or redo a kitchen. So if you can make it fairly turnkey,with major systems. Relatively updated, that’s kind what we’re looking for for the best result at the end of the day.
Dylan Silver (21:03)
What’s the turnkey homes going for on market in Durham?Anita Bongers-Lewis (21:07)
Again, huge range depending on what we’re looking at. So certainly we’re starting at 700 for a similar one that I was talking about. That’s more a seven to 800,000 ideally. ⁓ But again, that’s a real classic bungalow, nothing too fancy, but there can be a lot of variability there.Dylan Silver (21:19)
future problem. Yeah.We are coming up on time here, Anita. Any new projects that you or your team are working on, or how can ⁓ folks reach out to you guys? How can folks reach out to your team?
Anita Bongers-Lewis (21:33)
Yeah, they can always find us at doorstowealth.com or email me [email protected] is the best way to reach out. What we’re really been working on lately is we’ve helped so many investors, which has been very rewarding and has been a great business model for me because investors are repeat clients. So you invest in your leads because they come back over and over again. ⁓ But our business has shifted into two different areas. One, we’re working more with builders doing infill development and apartment buildings.⁓ So there’s opportunities there to partner with some of our apartment builders. But also we’ve started to shift on, we’ve changed the lives of so many investors, which has been wonderful. It’s changed my life too. But we want to start looking at the people who can’t really afford to get into the market. So we’re really pivoting to look into house hacking, getting people into property by having an income suite or an income generating portion of the property to get these first time owners in to get.
parents to get their kids into a home if their kids can’t get into a home, things like that. So we’re really pivoting to try to give back and get more people into the market before it becomes unaffordable again and work on this house hacking strategy quite aggressively.
Dylan Silver (22:39)
Anita, thank you for coming on the show today. Thanks for taking the time.Anita Bongers-Lewis (22:42)
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me, Dylan.
