How to Keep Real Estate Investing Simple and Profitable | Michael Currie

Michael Currie (00:00)
Once you get up over seven or eight units, it’s a different game because then you’re buying a business that’s standing on its own, it’s different lending rules, it’s completely different. But if you just wanna retire a millionaire and I don’t know, then just buy a duplex and pay it off.

once on it and then it’s just gonna pay for your life. you could literally with real estate I find people are just going in they just want so much and it’s like you know what you can really keep it simple.

Michelle Kesil (02:03)
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, Michael Currie, who is a real estate investor as well as consultant, property manager. And he has created the Landlord by Design blog. So excited to have you here today, Michael.

Michael Currie (02:28)
Thank you, I’m excited to be here.

Michelle Kesil (02:30)
Awesome, so yeah, let’s dive in. First off, for those who are not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Michael Currie (02:40)
say so my main focus is I started blogging back in 2015 and that led to a couple books I wrote my first book was based in the property management space because I found a lot of times

When I started investing in real estate, everyone’s talking about the hype. Like there’s always someone that wants to sell you a building or a course or that type of thing. So I felt that the thing that really smacked me in the face when I started real estate investing was the challenges faced in the property management area, the customer relations and just some of the issues that come up pretty regularly as the portfolio started to build. And so I ended up starting blogging.

is almost like, it all started out as almost like a sort of therapy, ⁓ just sort of writing about the really, what it’s really like to be a landlord and what those experiences are like and then.

And then over the time, just went with that. And then from that, of course, led to a lot of people saying, how do you invest in real estate? And that’s my second book, Landlord by Design 2. It’s just basically a rundown on 20 ways you can participate in the real estate space. And some of them cost $0 and some of them cost millions.

Michelle Kesil (04:05)
Awesome, and which markets do you operate in?

Michael Currie (04:09)
I’m in Canada, so I’m in the east coast of Canada, in Nova Scotia.

Michelle Kesil (04:18)
Great. And so when you started investing, how did like that journey progress? What do you feel have been some of like the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow successfully?

Michael Currie (04:35)
I think when I started, so what happened was in the early 2000s we did some flips like from I’d say like 2001 to 2009 and then I started to get into buy and hold real estate in around 2009 and at first what I would recommend or recommend to people is really set out an objective and I think for me at the time it was more about doors, I wanted more doors then.

⁓ quantity over quality and that’s what got me into a you know if I could go back in time I probably would have slowed down slowed down the pace but then and went for more quality over over quantity and and so as I’ve simplified over time and you know now that I’m starting to cash out on some of the investments because it does take time it does seem like you can make it a really simple

operation if you want to be super simple and you can make good money or you can it can be whatever you want it to be.

Michelle Kesil (06:32)
Yeah, absolutely. And what type of real estate investments did you focus on?

Michael Currie (06:39)
multifamily is kind of my, area. So kind of, ⁓ I’d say like small, small multifamily, like, ⁓ more looking for like what I call, ⁓ be great buildings, like just regular good quality tenants, you know, relatively easy to, manage properties, that type of thing.

Michelle Kesil (07:02)
Awesome. And you have a background in property management as well. Can you share how that experience went for you? Any challenges that you overcame during that portion of your business?

Michael Currie (07:17)
I think for me, I really felt like it’s a real customer service business. I think what I find…

For me anyway as I find like I always try to negotiate or to deal with the with the tenants and always focus on the end goal Like try not to be too emotional and I found sometimes you might get emotional because someone’s not paying well The objective is to get them to pay so just focus on that objective And if you can get some money out of them or it works out or or if you have you know I’ve turned over cash for keys, you know, but you know, you sometimes you have to swap

your pride and look at the end goal of what the big picture is of getting a bad tenant out for example ⁓ or on the flip side of that or what’s what is it to keep a good tenant you know like sometimes you know for us where we’re trying to burn a little bit of money ⁓ as far as increased expenses where we have revenue coming in that we don’t we aren’t using is we’ll go and upgrade tenants properties like you know everyone

got heat pumps, everyone’s got, sometimes they’re like yeah we’re putting new windows into your property. that type of thing. And just really, really focus on the human side of property management.

Michelle Kesil (08:48)
Yeah, absolutely. And is that something that you’re still doing?

Michael Currie (08:53)
I manage a couple of, my wife and I manage a couple of properties ourselves just because you know I always feel like I write in the space so I always like keep my toe in the water so we do we add well we manage three properties so right now.

I think you’re frozen right there, sorry.

Michelle Kesil (09:28)
Awesome. What have

been some of the biggest challenges that you’ve had to overcome in your investing career?

Michael Currie (09:41)
Sorry, you’re just cutting on me there. Sorry about that. Shall we?

Michelle Kesil (09:48)
Yeah, I asked what have been some of the biggest challenges that you’ve overcome in your real estate career.

Michael Currie (09:58)
on the, ⁓ property management side, I mean, or on which, which area.

Michelle Kesil (10:03)
Whichever, just yeah, in general.

Michael Currie (10:41)
On property management, did get into, I bought a what I would call a C building and I did have some kids in the neighborhood, well there was a police involved and they were trying to hit me with a baseball bat and I got into a pretty big altercation that I had to diffuse and then work out a deal with them and it all worked out in the end.

wrote about it but I’ve been into some pretty pretty sketchy situations like that. I think one of the challenges that I faced early on when we started buying properties was we had incorporated so we had a company and I gone to the bank that I’ve been dealing with for years and years on flips like no problem like buy a house you know fix it up so that sort of thing and then I asked him I said well

I talked to the bank and it was like a major, you know, regular bank and I said to them, said, well, what if we want to start buying some multifamily? And they said, well, in a company name and they’re like, well, you’re not going to be able to do that. Like there’s going to be all those restrictions. And they went on and I was like, oh, well, that’s kind of disappointing. So then I had contacted to ask around some other friends, some other real estate investors like, now you got to go to a, to a

mortgage broker, right? Like you gotta find the right source. And at the time I was like, so I went to a mortgage broker and I said, ⁓ who turned out to be the guy that set up money for us for years and years now. And I asked him, said, so what do we need to buy a property? was, we were only looking to buy, it was like a duplex, a side by side. I said, but we want to buy in a company name. And he’s like, well, you’re gonna guarantee it. At the time I was like, you guarantee it? I said, yeah.

That’s not a problem. We’ll guarantee it. But you know, it’s going to be in the in the corporation. And he’s like, do you have down payment? I was like, yeah, it’s like not a problem. And I was like, well, what if we want to buy another one? It’s like you get down payment for that. I said, yes, I do. I got two line two deals lined up. He’s like, no, no problem. Like easy, you know, so I think it’s just finding like don’t accept the first no and and look for experts. Like there’s people out there.

Lenders don’t get paid unless they lend money and You just got to you know if you can present the right case for them to that it makes sense for them to lend the money they they will so just don’t ⁓ don’t give up on and You know and don’t rely on just conventional conventional banks. There’s lots of options

Michelle Kesil (13:33)
Yeah, absolutely. And so what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next in your business?

Michael Currie (13:42)
For me, where I’m a little older, I’m 53, so I’m kind of on the downhill.

Just kind of say what I’m doing is actually kind of neatening up the portfolio. So we’ve we’ve paid off some some properties and ⁓ and so we’re setting it up as more of an income solution I guess be the best best way to describe it. So we’re ⁓ we’ve just kept we just kept we’ve scaled the portfolio down to keep it super simple. I’m a big believer in in neutralizing your your

⁓ expenses and everything in your life. So one thing for us, like we have a couple of ⁓ suites in a part of our house that we rent out that cover all our living expenses, all that sort of thing, just right off the bat. that’s sort of, so our focus is more my wife and I just kind of kind of winding it down.

Michelle Kesil (14:49)
Yeah, amazing. And so what does the consulting practice of your business look like?

Michael Currie (15:36)
For me, it’s like, I think, well, because I blog and ⁓ folks reach out pretty, well, it’s pretty regularly. So usually what happens is, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess for me, is that someone will get into the weeds, like they’ll have some sort of property management. It’s all in the property management space. And they’ll reach out and they’ll be like, okay, what can I do to solve this problem? And a lot of times they are.

in the ⁓

They may not have the knowledge. Like I find that professional tenants or sometimes ⁓ the riskier tenants tend to pick on smaller independent landlords because they might not know. And the other side of that is when people, I’m working with lot of people and looking at the type of properties they want to buy and what their expectation is, just setting the expectations of what they can expect as far as return on investment.

Because in the last few years what’s happened ⁓ in a lot of places throughout Canada and the US anyway is that people have bought properties renovated the Sonata like just renovated like granite countertops and they say and they have this expectation of these high rents you know for these little flats and what’s happened is is that people are building like buildings that there’s so many apartment units coming online it’s actually putting downward pressure on

on the rents in the marketplace. So you’ll have someone that say, I bought this property, I put all this money into it. Now I’m cash flowing negative 500 a month. So what I try to do is catch people before that and say, this has to be expectations. If you’re a real estate strategy is to negative cash flow, which I don’t wouldn’t recommend. But if that’s what the strategies, but know the strategy. Sometimes it is if somebody has a bunch of cash.

that they want to get rid of or whatever. There’s all kinds of reasons, but just knowing what their objectives are. And I think if I had a better, clearer path on that kind of mentorship side, I probably would have made some smarter decisions, you know, live and learn.

Michelle Kesil (17:58)
Yeah, amazing. And so what advice would you give to someone that’s early on in their investing journey or looking to start?

Michael Currie (18:06)
I think it’s really to understand the…

objective of what they want out of it. Like I find a lot of people want to make it really over complicated, but realistically it’s like even with with my you can have a house and you can rent out a room and a house and maybe that covers your car payment and that’s what that’s what you want out of real estate right. It’s pretty simple way to participate in real estate and do something good for yourself or maybe you want to put a backyard suite in or a basement apartment or you know so

I would say for younger people like buy a set of flats or a triplex that’s going to cover either all of or most of the mortgage and give you something that you can expense things you know you can expense the interest you can expense a lot of stuff against that property so definitely get into that and it also introduces you to property management which is going to be your biggest challenge

And it’s not about just hiring property managers, because I’ve had some bad property managers along the way. Sometimes you got to manage the property manager, right? So it’s not as simple as just turning it over. So I would recommend if it’s, if the especially if you’re going to stay a little smaller, it’s like.

to just keep it simple at first until you really have a good grounding on what you wanna do with it. And then, cause if you’re gonna scale into bigger buildings,

once you get up over seven or eight units, it’s a different game because then you’re buying a business that’s standing on its own, it’s different lending rules, it’s completely different. But if you just wanna retire a millionaire and I don’t know, then just buy a duplex and pay it off.

once on it and then it’s just gonna pay for your life. you could literally with real estate I find people are just going in they just want so much and it’s like you know what you can really keep it simple.

Maybe by a couple of duplexes, like you can become pretty financially self-sufficient really, really easily with real estate without too much, really too much effort. And I think that people are really over-complicated. They get into complicated financial scenarios and, you know, and they get into complex problems, too many units without, without really a basis. And then they’re calls for maintenance and repair stuff all the time.

or bad tense or whatever the case may be, right? So keep it simple.

Michelle Kesil (20:45)
Yeah, I think that’s a great strategy. So if someone wants to keep it simple, what would you suggest the actions that they take would be?

Michael Currie (20:56)
And then, you know, for me, if I go back in time, which I would be to just get a hold of a property, get control of a property that you can either rent rooms in or rent space in probably as young as possible and that and the rest will take care of itself. So if it’s just buying a house that you’re just going to rent out three or four rooms in it. And then and that’s about like be picky. That’s what we’ll introduce you to be in fussy and

and it’ll teach you a lot about people and human interactions and property management and running ⁓ a business because each property is its own little small business. Sometimes people don’t realize that. And then if things go wrong, like with interpersonal problems like with maybe with a tenant or whatever or contractors wherever you fall, it’s all a learning experience.

like you know there’s no real bad experience or good experiences it’s they’re all just experiences and just it’s how you react is what makes the difference so you know where I find a lot of people I find in the real estate groups and you know it’s a little bit petty when it comes to stuff and it’s like no don’t be petty you like look at the big picture

Michelle Kesil (22:22)
Yeah, amazing. Thank you for sharing all of that. That is helpful. So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

Michael Currie (22:33)
I’m on LandlordByDesign.com. It’s probably my best source. All my contact information is there. Like I said, you can Google me if you Google Michael Currie.

Michelle Kesil (22:44)
Okay, perfect. Well, appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

And for the listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Michael who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.