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In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, Host Michelle Kesil interviews Ian Armour, a real estate investor specializing in multifamily properties in Nova Scotia and the US. Ian shares his journey from starting a construction company to flipping houses and eventually focusing on acquiring multifamily buildings. He discusses the importance of off-market deals, lessons learned throughout his investing career, and offers valuable advice for new investors. The conversation also touches on strategies for scaling a real estate business and building relationships with investors.
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Ian Armour (00:00)
for me, and this might be controversial as a realtor to say, but the real money to be made in my eyes is certainly in the off-market deals. for me, so like in Halifax, Nova Scotia, you’re probably your average house is maybe half a million dollars or so.And through some off-market strategies, I was able to acquire one host for about $60,000, another host for about $90,000. And those were all through a few different strategies, but all off-market.
Michelle Kesil (02:05)
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, Ian Armour, who is a real estate investor focusing on multifamily in the Nova Scotia and US area. So excited to have you here today, Ian.Ian Armour (02:26)
Yes, thank you for having me. Looking forward to it as well.Michelle Kesil (02:28)
Awesome. So first off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?Ian Armour (02:34)
Absolutely. over the years, the focus has certainly changed up a few times. It all started back sort of ununique to, I’m sure some of your listeners in reading Rich Dad Poor Dad years and years ago. I was actually in university at the time and decided that, hey, I don’t want to work for someone and I’d like to generate some cash flowing assets and an obvious path for that was gettinginto real estate. To do that, I actually first started a construction company and a focus in roofing. But with that, I was listening to bigger podcasts, bigger pockets podcasts, daily taking in some of those lessons.
putting some of the lessons that I learned from that right to work. And that’s kind of what helped me spring from my construction company into the real estate side of things. I started off mostly flipping houses. So bought a handful of properties here, like you said, in Nova Scotia up in Canada. And from there, yeah, learned quite a bit of lessons, all of which were useful.
in the acquisition of my multifamily buildings. Some of the main ones being
like buying the properties off market. ⁓ a lot of podcasts out there, a lot of resources will point you in that direction. And that’s something that, you know, once you get good at that, that’s something you can apply pretty much all over the place. And with that, it really made a big difference from, you know, just being in the game to actually being profitable in the game.
And I think there’s a massive opportunity for people that are looking to either start real estate or get their next deal is certainly under that lens of off-market deals. So it’s something I certainly want to talk to you to further more or further about. as we continue on that, we’ll dive into some of that a little bit more. So, so, yeah, I got into the flipping some houses that was going well, but really
realized, you know, back to the Rich Dad Poor Dad lessons that I wasn’t, you know, I was making good money, but I wasn’t necessarily building wealth. And that’s kind of the whole goal is to buy assets that end up paying some of your bills and if not all of them. So then went back to the drawing board and figured out, okay, how are we going to start getting into more rentals? So started to change my strengths.
strategy for for the off-market to target more of the multifamily buildings still some duplexes triplexes all that stuff, but then started getting up to you know, the eight unit buildings and four plexes and that type of stuff and You know, it took some time but eventually great gain some traction with that and then ⁓ yeah flipped gears To get into the the multifamily side of it all of which I still own
today so that’s a of a brief background on that.
Michelle Kesil (06:36)
Yeah, amazing. So, circling back to what you mentioned about acquisitions, do you want to expand on how that process has been for you?Ian Armour (06:47)
Yeah, absolutely. even now, so I’m also a licensed realtor. And so I work with a number of buyers and even in like today’s day and age where, you know, there’s the market, depending on where you’re at, some markets are doing really well, some not so much. I would say the average of most markets, your, your certainty, the wave of, ⁓ of purchases done during COVID reenter the market and people still want the price they paid forduring COVID and the values aren’t really there to support it.
for me, and this might be controversial as a realtor to say, but the real money to be made in my eyes is certainly in the off-market deals. for me, so like in Halifax, Nova Scotia, you’re probably your average house is maybe half a million dollars or so.
And through some off-market strategies, I was able to acquire one host for about $60,000, another host for about $90,000. And those were all through a few different strategies, but all off-market.
just a quick rundown on some of my favorite off-market strategies and what’s worked for me would be the driving for dollars. So that’s just going out, picking out a handful of the ugliest hoses on the nicest blocks, getting their information. In Canada, it’s a lot more guarded, but I know in
the state’s information is quite a bit more accessible for you guys. So instead of just perusing what’s for sale on whatever site you guys use, you want to basically spend that time.
go around and find these houses that need some work clearly from the outside and typically those are going to be your more motivated sellers. So driving for dollars, huge. I would spend quite a bit of energy on that. Then a little bit of an easier one and one that again, I’ve got clients, I’m coaching them on how to do this stuff all the time, but is perusing for rent ads.
finding going on whether Facebook marketplace or whatever You know yard sale a type store you guys have in whatever area and and just go through and ⁓ and basically if it’s if it’s a quote-unquote
poorly listed unit. So, you know, it’s clearly the landlord taking the photos. It’s clearly maybe there’s only two or three photos on there. Basically, it’s not like a commercial outfit that’s trying to rent these, but it’s just more of your mom and pop shop trying to rent these is basically just going through all the for rents and see if they have any interest in selling. know, again, clients that I’m working with now, we’ve probably viewed
15, 20 houses that way. basically none of them have fit the criteria that we’re looking for yet. But the offers that we are throwing out there are significantly below what you would see on like a MLS type system. So even if you’re not trying to, if you’re just trying to get like, you know, maybe a few rental properties, I think that’s a great strategy even between those two to ⁓ get you in and like, you know, we’re saving all the
realtor fees plus if it is someone that has a little bit of urgency you know it’s an easy target because they’re clearly losing money from their property because it’s not rented currently so they’re gonna have a little bit of motivation to sell and especially if it’s been listed for a few months or few weeks or whatever it might be you know you’re hitting them when they are a little bit vulnerable
from a cash flow perspective because they’re losing money on it. you know, even if you just want to get a solid property and you don’t want to pay any below market rate, that’s a quick, easy way to do that.
Michelle Kesil (11:16)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that strategy. Sounds like it’s going to be supportive for so many people. And what are some lessons or obstacles that you have experienced as your journey as an investor has gone on? And now looking back in hindsight, you can see the lesson.Ian Armour (11:37)
Yeah, I would say a big one.And for me, like coming from more of a construction background, ⁓ you know, running and operating my business. But still something that I had always struggled with was getting renovation budgets proper. They’re, you know, and it’s tough, especially when you’re buying something that needs a considerable amount of work put into it. But yeah, definitely trying to get the renovation budgets nice and tight. I know for me,
like once I get it I’ll have you know a budget set out but once I actually get into it and I see that we could upgrade this a little bit more we can make this a little bit nicer but it’s something that can certainly hurt the deal so when calculating or underwriting any of your your your potential properties try and avoid that spreadsheet magic put a nice healthy contingency fee in that like if it’s
heavy renovation and you’re you know basically gutting a house like do your best to to get your budget right and accurate and then add 20 % to that to just make sure that you know it’s penciling it out and you know on that same vein it’s you know make sure that you’re you’re not just doing the like I said the spreadsheet magic to make a deal work you really want to make sure that based on conservative numbers that that deal is going to actually
pencil out when you’re done.
Michelle Kesil (13:04)
Yeah, absolutely. I think those numbers and those chances of error are likely. Yeah, it’s important that people have that in their mind.What are you most focusing on solving or scaling to next for your business?
Ian Armour (13:20)
Yeah, so right now, so I actually had my first child about a year and a half ago. And for the last year and a half, really haven’t been pushing the envelope very hard on the real estate side of things. It’s been more so of my current buildings, just getting them even more stabilized, doing some refinances, that type of stuff. But yeah, now just based on the climate out there where again,we’re about five years out from COVID when we had a big giant real estate surge. Now we’re getting back to things sort of really leveling out and actually quite a bit of a decline from there. So now I think it’s gonna be over the next two years, we’re gonna be back into a really good buying window for whether it’s a single family home or whether it’s a
60 unit building, think, just based on all the economic factors out there. We’re going to be really in a nice prime buying window. So that’s something that I’m really starting to do now is get back to ⁓ analyzing more deals and submitting more offers and really just getting in a position to ⁓ grow the portfolio.
Michelle Kesil (15:20)
Yeah, absolutely. And being in this position and wanting to grow, like what sort of action steps do you feel that you’re going to need to take in order to get to that next level?Ian Armour (15:35)
Yeah, absolutely. it would be coming from the action side of things. So, you know, it’s not about the planning. It’s stuff I’ve done. It just got to continue to do it. It’s certainly the action side of things. So it’s going to be making more offers. It’s going to be analyzing more deals. It’s going to be, yeah, basically, like I said, talking to the for rent ads out there. It’s going to be sending letters to thecrappy looking properties. It’s going to be just taking action on these types of things. And like I’ve learned from doing it in the past, it’s the action is what gets the results.
Michelle Kesil (16:11)
Definitely. What advice would you give to someone that’s just starting out on their investing journey that you wish you had?Ian Armour (16:19)
well, I’m pretty happy with how I did things. ⁓ I guess,Yeah, think maybe a lesson differently would be, yeah, definitely raise raising capital side of things. So I’ve worked with a couple million in private investor funds for four deals. That’s it takes a while to get there. So it’s something that I would certainly suggest starting early. So as much as you’re looking for for a property, you should also be looking for investors.
like a lot of people are saying, know, like, or I’m sure there’s some people listening that, you know, they don’t have a ton of capital to put towards, you know, buying a really, you know, run down property and making it really nice. You know, these are, you know, 100,000, $200,000 type deals of capital that you’re going to need. And what I’ve always found is, yeah, digging your well before you’re thirsty from an investor standpoint is definitely
something that can make a huge deal and what else to give you the confidence to continue to look for these types of deals. So I’d say as much effort as you’re putting into finding deals, you want to put into finding investors.
Michelle Kesil (17:34)
Absolutely. So are you saying that you and you are suggesting to like partner with investors on these projects for capital raising? Is that what I understood correctly?Ian Armour (17:45)
Yeah, I think, like I know for me, like, to just do everything with my own money, it would, get to where I am now, it would take, you know, many, many more years.So if the goal is to scale up a portfolio, I would definitely suggest working with investors. And, you know, I did my first few deals with a lot of my own capital. you know, once I got into the larger multifamily deal that, you know, some deals needed, you know, a million dollar plus to do, it’s like to do all that. You know, it can be done, but it’s certainly a lot. You could scale a lot easier.
a lot quicker if you bring on some investors.
Michelle Kesil (18:28)
Definitely. So do you have any strategies that you use for finding the right investors to scale with?Ian Armour (18:37)
Yeah,absolutely. it’s a
You know, a lot of this is it’s a numbers game. And so what I suggest is reaching out to the your your circle of influence first. You could write whether it’s on, you know, a text or Facebook message or whatever it might be, just something along the lines of, hey, I’m looking to get into some real real estate investing by a small value add property. I’m wondering if if I did if
good opportunity were to come up, would this be something that you would be interested in investing in? And just leave it light, leave it open, just have it, you know, you’re not trying to force anyone to do anything, but just to see, you know, if there is any interest out there. And if they say, yeah, I’d absolutely be interested, then you say, well, let’s jump on a call. And then on that call, just say, you know, this is my plan. This is, you know, my elevator pitch of what I want to do. Obviously, I don’t want to go in
into crazy detail until I actually have a deal where I can tell you, you know, this is what we’re going to be doing. But you want to give them a general plan of, you know, buy a property for approximately X amount of dollars. We want to put anywhere from 50 to $100,000 into it. And then we want to refinance it and get out, you know, majority of our capital. Would this be interesting to you? And if they say yes, then you try and figure
well if this did come up how much money you know would you have available for something like this and you know and to have like you five five or ten of those people that said yeah I’d be interested if a good deal does come across your your your table then then you can you can move forward with it certainly with a lot more confidence I would not rely on maybe one or two people because
Everyone’s excited and interested in real estate, but when push comes to shove, maybe they have to wait on a refinance. Maybe they have to wait on their Christmas bonus. Maybe they have to do so whatever it is. So you want people that that are keen and you want a handful of them because you know the timing might just not be right on the first one. But ⁓ you know this is kind of a lifetime game. If there’s something you want to do for the next foreseeable future, you know build these good relationships.
and have a good, a number of them lined up.
Michelle Kesil (21:02)
Yeah, definitely. I think that’s very valuable to build the relationships in a simple way.So before we wrap up here, if somebody wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?
Ian Armour (21:15)
Yeah, so best way would be to reach out on Instagram is probably my most used handle and it’s most used account. It’s just Ian underscore armour. I’ve got my professional one as well, which is Ian armour realty. Yeah, reach out. Happy to chat. I know, you know, when I was earlier in my, my, my journey listening to tons and tons of podcasts,I was always amazed ⁓ by the ability to just reach out to these people and how much they would actually answer and give you the time of day, whether it’s just a quick Zoom call or whatever it might be. And I know that’s certainly something that I’d be interested in doing as well. So Instagram’s definitely the best way. And ⁓ yeah, would love to answer any questions anyone has.
Michelle Kesil (22:07)
Awesome Ian, thank you for your time and your story. Appreciate you being here.Ian Armour (22:13)
Awesome, thank you so much.Michelle Kesil (22:16)
And for the listeners tuning in, you got value, make sure that you have subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Ian who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.
