How a Toronto Real Estate Investor Gives 1% of Revenue Back | Aaron Moore

Aaron Moore (00:00)

We have a team real estate fund and we have the community fund, which a lot of it goes to sellers. So the team fund that’s been used by people on our team to it was like buy their first parents, buy a rental property, buy their first flip. Some people have used it multiple times. And I know Tobias on our team, he just got 17,000 from the fund

To buy a house, buy his home. But even before that, he used it. That was the that was the second time because before that he used it a year ago to buy a rental property. So, congratulations. And a handful of people use it once already. But we are like we’re giving at least one percent, and it’s more it’s somewhere between one and two percent, but mandatory one percent, all the revenue we make, one percent goes into this fund, and half of that one percent is

our team real estate, half of the sellers.

Issa Hanna (01:20)

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today we have Aaron Moore with us to share his knowledge. Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron Moore (01:28)

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Issa Hanna (01:29)

Super excited to have you. You bring a wealth of knowledge, investing knowledge into the real estate space. And you’re gonna give us an international look, right? So we’re usually investing you are interviewing US investors. You’re a Toronto-based investor and you’ve been killing it since 2008, full time. but with that, can you give my viewers a rundown of a day-to-day in Aaron’s world?

Aaron Moore (01:50)

Currently day to day, I typically have some meetings with my team. that I’ve filled in the business to a point where I probably don’t do the maybe the different pieces that I used to do some years ago. I’m not out there going to houses, putting in offers as much. I’m not wholesaling or not managing the rentals very closely anymore. But I’m still the marketing director in our company.

wear the marketing hat, the visionary hat. So I am looking closely at our leads are marketing. I’m always talking with our sales team that’s out buying how this talk into our house sellers. we do some private lending as well. So I do get involved in our private lending side and it’s typically for the investors who are buying with us. So I we will definitely do some private lending or some maybe some

inventor sometime. So I’ll look into deals where that’s a potential from our investors. But overall it’s how can I help our team grow and improve and just do better at what we do.

Issa Hanna (02:43)

I love that. And it’s spoken like a true leader, right? A true captain of the ship. So the captain has to steer that ship. he’s the like you said, the visionary. He has a vision. He knows where his business is going. It’s up to him to put the systems and processes and people in place to execute that vision. Once you get to a certain level, especially when you have a great team like you have, you’ve got to be up there and your time has to be delegated to that vision and steering the ship.

to where it wants to go. So amazing and like I said, spoken like a true leader. I want to rewind the clock a little bit, right? We’re gonna go back a few years. We’re gonna go back to 2003, when you first dabbled. You were in the corporate world, you dabbled in real estate. I’m gonna let you take it from there. Give us that story of how you went full time into real estate.

Aaron Moore (03:27)

Thank you. Yeah. I had some maybe influence from someone else I knew who was doing some rentals and turning properties into rental properties, like adding a second suite, that sort of thing. So it was good to have a, at least one person in my life who’s an influence is doing something that’s, building wealth for themselves, kind of beyond their day job. Like they would have got a day job as well. So I had that one example.

And they I think was one example of a person, one book I got, a rich dad, poor dad real estate book from back then. And that was enough for me to probably buy a house, throw some numbers in a spreadsheet to see the expenses, the potential income. And me and my brother, we’ve each bought a house because we were guys in our 20s, we were almost living with housemates. So we bought houses where we bring brought our housemates in with us to rent from us.

I bought this two unit in the junction area of Toronto. He bought a house in Oshawa. And I’m Canadian, so I’m talking all Ontario. so that’s how we started buying these couple of houses, helping each other out to get into our first one. we each shifted some money to each other to make it happen to get the first one. And that was the start. And then after that, it was just looking at okay,

The equity’s going up, mortgages going down, the renters are paying my expenses. I like this. it took me a couple of years to have the confidence and to experience it to say, all right, let’s do more of this. Let’s learn more and do more.

Issa Hanna (04:46)

I love that. And then, O8, you just said, I know enough. I’ve got enough. I can do this full time. and like you said, build that long term wealth and equity. I always say this on the show, the nine to five job, it’s a great way to secure yourself. You’re getting paid every, week, two weeks, monthly side, whatever it is. you’ve got the insurance, you’ve got everything. But if you can leverage that into starting to build your own portfolio with real estate.

not only are you taking care of yourself in the present, but boy are you gonna thank yourself in the future if you get some mortgages. I’m sure you know, older you is thanking the twenty something year old you for buying the first house because it’s probably paid off almost by now, So it’s literally a NASA.

Aaron Moore (05:25)

They’ve done well over the years. So and those, having the job at the start helped me get some mortgages, but help having the job helps to buy the house with the bank’s money. It makes it easy. So there’s a symbiotic relationship.

Issa Hanna (05:37)

Hundred percent. I actually had the founder of the Chicago Rhea on last week and he told me five years. he said, you or I’m sorry, five houses. You get to five houses, it starts getting easier and easier and easier to scale. So man, you’re already dropping golden knowledge on the viewers today, Aaron. I’m loving it. Let’s talk about the company, ’cause you told me some

super inspiring things about the way you do business and what you’re bringing into the real estate industry. I asked you today your strength. You said it’s culture or my our culture is purpose. you have things like a giving fund in your company. I want you to explain the culture of purpose in your company.

Aaron Moore (06:52)

Yeah. I think it’s over the years, we have developed our culture, developed our purpose. And it starts with having some values. We like listen, we’ve set out our values. We started as a company. We’ve always been strongly focused on like helping these sellers, like just being good to our sellers. These are people in tough situations. It could be financial hardship, or like typically we’re buying properties that need a bunch of repairs.

So we want to solve the problems, be helpful and kind to them. that’s part of our values. But in more recent years, this all developed. Like we have our purpose statement and that developed, we’ve always been like, loving ourselves. But we you notice some disparity between how we maybe treated our team. Like it’s let’s up the level of how we treat our team.

These are the people we’re working with. And yes, we want them to help out these sellers in the big wig. So we really put a purpose in place and we put a KPI that measures our purpose. Now I love it so we call it the key purpose indicator. And I didn’t extend any of this, but we treated it for our own company, of course, made it unique to us. And for us, like our purpose is there’s really three parts. It’s enhancing, just developing our team members in.

prosperity because we’re in real estate. So we want to help build help them build wealth. And if they have that interest, we’re here to help them. It’s also just growth and leadership. We’re here to build people and grow them. And also our sellers, stick compassionately assist sellers, which this is that’s the second part of our company purpose. But also just the community so that the third part just be a positive impact in the community. Which we didn’t share with giving and that’s but what I’m what I really like is that

The team, the sellers would deal. But we did make those, like I mentioned earlier, we made those two giving funds. We have a team real estate fund and we have the community fund, which a lot of it goes to sellers. So the team fund that’s been used by people on our team to it was like buy their first parents, buy a rental property, buy their first flip. Some people have used it multiple times. And I know Tobias on our team, he just got 17,000 from the fund

To buy a house, buy his home. But even before that, he used it. That was the that was the second time because before that he used it a year ago to buy a rental property. So, congratulations. And a handful of people use it once already. But we are like we’re giving at least one percent, and it’s more it’s somewhere between one and two percent, but mandatory one percent, all the revenue we make, one percent goes into this fund, and half of that one percent is

our team real estate, half of the sellers. And on the seller side, yeah, I’ve got a lot of stories from how we’ve used that to help our sellers. And that’s I just love some of those stories. but I don’t know. I don’t want to talk anything you want me to which direction you want me to go and I could talk people here.

Issa Hanna (09:27)

What let’s give us a seller story because I wanted you to explain, your culture and the way you’ve built your company because I wanted the integrity to shine through, right? a lot of these investment companies that are picking up houses from distressed sellers, they don’t care. They don’t care. You guys actually care, you work with sellers. So let’s get a seller story. ’cause because I find that very refreshing.

Aaron Moore (10:26)

Right. I love we have these team meetings every Wednesday. We share some of these stories, share who on the team got caught being awesome, who have we helped out there in the world, how have we used the stellar giving fund? And I, it warms us all up. But the one story that always sticks in my head. I’ve never, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t part of it, but I it’s been told a couple of times to me. And it’s what like I see it in my head now. But

It was, Danny on our team. and part of the, it uses people’s initiative. he’s our outside salesperson. We call him the home buying specialist. But he’s out with a seller. and we like our team members are out, they take the leadership to identify these opportunities. they’re the ones seeing this, and they’re the ones taking the initiative to actually make this happen. So the story and this was the

I’m in Toronto. So our winters are cold. This isn’t actually during like a snowstorm time. So there’s snow is heavy on the ground. We got probably a couple feet of snow at this time of year. This is the middle of winter. And he’s at a lady’s house, senior lady. And he knows this house is cold. But then he actually at one point he touches her hand. I was thinking of there, I’m trying to remember I don’t want to make it sound weird like he touches her hand.

But she actually had a cut on her hand. That’s right. So he went this guard, he had a bandage, got her bandage, put the bandage on her hand, and that’s when he felt how cold her hand was. So I’ve got him talking.

Sometimes we get a little choked up to tell me stories. But anyway, my point is he’s he realizes she’s cold, the house is cold. And then she gets in, they just clearly explain like the heat hasn’t worked in some days. And this is like the freezing time of winter. So he takes like he just takes he knows we’ve got this giving fund. So he just automatically is using the giving fund to get, try to get a technician out there. He I know he made a couple of calls that’s

It’s not easy to get technician with a couple hours, but someone else on the admin side of the team ended up helping them out. And we got a tech there that night. And even more the story, we’ve got a tech coming at it’s something like eight or nine pm at night. And this lady, we’re trying to get making sure she’s home, but she’s there at the mall trying to stay warm. And it’s like this kind of picture there’s a senior lady. So it’s like she’s locked in the back, like how long do we get back home? Like the mall’s across the street, basically.

But it’s gonna take her 25 minutes to get home on her, block her or something like this. she’s old and slow. and so it just it’s like one thing after another. It’s like the text there in five minutes. How do we get you? So our team gets her like some sort of Uber or Lyft and gets her back faster. And she’s only like she’s like minutes away from her house. Like it’s not far from like I could walk her in probably five minutes, but it would take it takes her like over 20 minutes. So we get her back and the

Solution, the end of the story, we got to fix that night. Keep the background. and this is like we never bought the house. It wasn’t a deal for us. our team is kind of empowered just to do these things and make it happen. And yes, also doing this helps us land some deals, buy some houses, get some customers, get better reviews. Yes, it helps all that. But they’re also just empowered to do it.

Help people out and that’s great. That’s the end of the story. that’s the part of the game.

Issa Hanna (13:17)

it’s so inspiring, right? I have rentals in Cleveland, Ohio. It gets pretty cold, it gets pretty cold up there, man. And I can only imagine, a senior just kind of freezing, the heat’s not working, and a lot of landlords would wait till the next day because, at night you’ve got to pay double. It’s emergency hours. So the fact that you guys went to the type of lengths

to do this and remedy the situation and you didn’t even buy the house. truly amazing. Like I said, the one thing I wanted to shine through on this episode was the integrity that you guys bring into the real estate game because it’s very refreshing. You don’t see it very much and stories just like that, you can really see that you care about this. and then I want to touch on one more point you said. It does bring you other deals. when you come in with the purest intentions

you want to make money in the real estate game, but you don’t want to eat people up, right? you bring in a heart, you bring in some integrity to the game. People can see that, right? And they rather do business with you. So I’m gonna relate a little bit. As a former buyer’s agent, over 250 first-time home buyers in my career. I never advertised one time. Everything was, I know a guy, he’ll take care of you, because I truly did.

want to take care of them. It wasn’t just about the check. It wasn’t just about the money. and it’s very rewarding. And I can tell that you feel the same way. your career is so rewarding when you bring that type of integrity into it. Let’s pivot to how you’ve been able to basically corner the Toronto market in buying these houses. You guys advertise very heavy. can you tell us about some approaches you’re using in your marketing?

Aaron Moore (14:49)

Definitely we’re once again, we’re Canadian. So things are a little different. in the US, they’re more data heavy than we are. They can buy a lot of data, be foreclosure, people head into disclosure, all that sort of thing, lose behind on their mortgages. We don’t have a lot of access to data here. So it think of us more like maybe traditional marketing, like we’re we are doing a lot of internet. So our Google ads,

We’re big on SEO trying to come up in the search engines. Of course, the AI searches these days, Facebook ads, YouTube ads. just, we’re growing. So we’re just starting TV next week. Our first TV commercials are hitting the airwaves next week. So you’ve got us at a time when we’re starting a new channel. But and yes, we do still mail. I know mail is super popular in the US when it’s targeted. targeting these people specifically promptly.

us not quite targeted but we still we do cheap cheap volume mail to neighborhoods say an older neighborhood has with more likely new fixer upper houses maybe people who’ve owned a long time will we’ll blanket mail these neighbors goes not targeted but it still works i wish i could target better but i do what i can do it’s what i have

those are the main methods.

Issa Hanna (15:54)

I love that. And as some, I’m a licensed agent in Austin and I just mailed out 250 postcards, the old school way, to a neighborhood that’s a little bit older that would respond better to that. So it’s definitely a still a good marketing tool. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with marketing, right? You just got to bring old school approaches with new systems, and you can still get those results. So amazing. And now I’m gonna give you your chance to market.

yourself just a little bit. I’m gonna give you the floor. If people wanted to get a hold of you, they wanted to get involved with you guys, how could they reach you?

Aaron Moore (16:26)

Well, I guess on the seller side, we have GTAHouseBuyers.ca, people looking to sell. But also if people are looking to join our company, people are looking for work, you can probably just type in Google something like GTA House Buyers Careers, you’ll find our careers page. on the investor side, if people are actually looking to buy discounted properties in Ontario and Canada, we have deals throughout the whole province, definitely around Toronto, but much, much beyond.

that’s house GTAHouseBuyers.ca. So depending on what you’re looking for, yeah, I’d love to be in touch with our team because I if you contact our website through our websites, you’ll be talking with the team and we can connect.

Issa Hanna (17:04)

Guys, make sure you contact GTA. If you’re a Toronto-based investor, if the Toronto market interests you, make sure to reach out to Aaron and GTA. this guy brings an amount an enormous amount of integrity into the game and can really, really help you. so make sure to hit Aaron up. If you enjoyed my conversation with Aaron and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that could bring us different knowledge on every aspect.

of the real estate industry. Until next time, the Real Estate Pros are out.