Why We Sold our Dream Home to Rent!

My husband, John Paul, and I love taking on renovation projects. There is something so satisfying about seeing a home transform and watching your vision come to life!

It all started with our first home in Oakville about 12 years ago. We started small with flooring, countertops, a backsplash and eventually the basement. Standard updates to put our personal touch on the home.

We then moved on to our next home in Burlington. John Paul likes to remind me of my initial thought on the home. “I think we really only need to change the backsplash”. He should have known me better as it turned into a complete main floor gut prior to moving in and over the years a complete basement renovation and outdoor landscaping. Oops!

Through these 2 projects we learned that we really loved renovations and that we were pretty good at them too! Having gone to school for Design at Ryerson I have always had a passion for interior design and love creating beautiful spaces. I can walk into the ugliest space and just see the potential waiting to happen.

When we sold this Burlington home, it was the highest selling home in the neighbourhood (although it was not the biggest) and almost 3 years later still sits in the top end of sales for the area! On all of our personal sales we have managed to set precedents for the area which I mainly credit the overall design, finishes and ultimately being able to bring something a bit more unique to market.

Our next home, and most recent renovation was SO UGLY! It had pine floors, pine walls, terra cotta tiles, pink carpet, gold fixtures (and not the trendy gold that is in these days). You name it, everything in the house had not been updated in the last 30+ years.

This was the biggest project we have taken on to date. We took the main floor and bedroom level down to the studs as well as full landscaping of the backyard which included a saltwater pool, hardscape, retaining wall and natural playground.

This renovation took 6 months. My parents were kind enough to take us all in (2 adults, 2 little kids and 2 dogs) for a bit longer than expected, which always seems to be the way when it comes to renovations.

When the project was finally complete we were really proud. It was a lot of work to get to the completed stage and it was gorgeous. In my mind we had achieved a certain level of success with this property and I was so happy to call it home!

And then…

One day in October of 2018, John Paul came home and said “I think we should sell our house.” Although we never planned on this home being our forever home, we had only been living there for 1.5 years and had not discussed the desire to move anytime soon. But this was the beginning of a big change for our family!

After much discussion (and some tears) we came to two conclusions:

We lived in a very beautiful home that we loved.
Our home, although beautiful, was holding us back from being as aggressive as we would like in our real estate investing.

We had to decide what was more important, coming home to a pretty house every day or building a portfolio we were proud to pass onto our kids one day.

This home came with a pretty decent size mortgage which is not favourable with the banks when you are trying to acquire more properties. Although we also had a good amount of equity in the property refinancing to access those funds would only grow the amount of our mortgage.

The decision was a big one, and a bit scary but we knew we wanted more for our girls’ future.

We always tend to choose discomfort, hard work, uncertain situations that push our boundaries vs being content. So we knew we were doing the right thing.

“Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that is the one that is going to help you grow.”

So with that in mind we started putting the plan into motion. We put our house up for sale and started looking for a rental property to live in. With our personal home mortgage off of us and the proceeds from the sale in our account, it put us in a much better position to move forward with our plan.

Although when this is all said and done we are definitely going to be holding more mortgages than what our personal home mortgage was worth, but as we all know these multiple properties will have a larger growth over the years than our one personal home ever would have.

In February of 2019 we sold our home for just over 1.8M….I cried as I normally end up doing but knew deep down we were making the right decision. New adventures await! We then moved into our rental in the Bronte Harbour area (which we absolutely love) and started to formulate our game plan going forward.

It was a good problem to have, but we had never been in the situation before where we had such a large amount of funds available for investing. It made the first purchase a bit harder as we wanted it to be thought out well in terms of being able to maximize what we were going to purchase. I didn't want to make this huge move and then just buy the first rental I walked through.

We have chosen to go after a few different types of investments and see where they take us over the next few years.

Here is what we have going on at a glance.

Pre Construction condo in Niagara falls that was purchased in 2017. We took occupancy a at the end of 2019 and it has currently been rented for $1900 a month on a short term basis for now. Since the building is still under construction I know I can achieve higher rent once all of the amenities are complete and the construction is over, so I did not want to commit to a one year lease. My preferred plan with this property is to turn it into either a fully furnished executive rental or an Airbnb. It’s located on Thundering Waters Golf Course and is a 4 minute drive the Fallsview Casino so its a fantastic location!

4000sq ft commercial office unit purchased for my husbands business. The build out is currently underway and we have sold his current office in Oakville. This unit should be ready to occupy in the coming months, fingers crossed!

Duplex property in Hamilton which is rented for $2195 on the main floor and $1395 in the basement (including utilities). I can’t believe the basement is renting for the same amount I rented my first detached rental for in 2009!

Pre Construction 1 bdrm + den condo in Oakville (Distrikt) scheduled for occupancy in 2022

Pre Construction 2bdrm condo in Toronto (The Well) scheduled for occupancy in 2022

2 Pre Construction condos in the Television City project in Hamilton that we purchased a few years ago which has been really delayed and is scheduled for occupancy in 2025

St. Catharines 3bdrm townhouse which closed this January and is rented for $2100/month. We purchased this one with a Joint Venture partner and hope to do more of these this year!

We just submitted a worksheet on a pre construction 3bdrm townhouse in Etobicoke near Sherway Gardens and hope this goes through!

The interesting thing about this list is that if you asked me 5 years ago if I would invest in condos I would have said no. But as housing prices get higher and higher it is forcing people to live in smaller spaces. In addition to the strong population growth the GTA has had to date in addition to the forecast of 3.2M people in the next 10 years!! One big draw to pre construction is that your initial investment can substantially grow by the time you take possession.

With this in mind we may sell a few of these condos after taking possession to free up some cash and hold on to just a few. The nice thing is that we have a few years to see where the market is going to take us from here.

Our plan for this year is to purchase at least 2 more investment properties on our own and at least 2 more with joint venture partners. (anyone else looking for a JV partner out there??)

Long term we will personally get back into owning our own property but we are ok to keep renting for the next few years.

My ultimate goal would be to buy a lot and build our next home…but that is still under discussion at home. LOL (more my dream than my husbands) Renovations/builds are not for the faint of heart so we will see how much stress we are looking to take on and what else we have on the go in the next few years.

So to say the least we have had quite the year and we are so glad we took this chance!

If you take anything away from our story I hope you will remember these 3 things: