What's Up with Real Estate in Toronto??

Not making decisions is costing you!

I do a lot of my best thinking when I’m either in the shower or driving. For someone with great computational brains and an awful hard drive, this means a lot of my brilliant ideas (well, at least to me) never survive the shower or the drive. Although, I did just come out of a drive where I spent some time remembering an experience where I bought skis recently. The actual buy means nothing, though there are some real lessons from the way I remember how that all went down. Spoiler alert: when...

Living with (and LOVING) Leverage

Quick: what’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “leverage”? I know most of you see DEBT (!) when you see that “L” word instantly. Somehow, someway we’ve all been told to avoid debt, to avoid leverage. We’re conditioned. We all read the same headlines.. “Canadians are over-leveraged!” “Leverage is at an all-time high!” It’s time we faced the truth, though… leverage is the key to happiness. Stick with me, I’ll explain why and share my own experience with my favour...

Investing during a pandemic, for the win!

Toronto: 2020. When Coronavirus hit, it stopped everything. Lockdowns. Slowdowns. Panic. Concern. Anxiety. All of that happened. It’s how we reacted. Frankly, it’s how we react in general. I honestly feel that, as a society with access to social media and the internet and the endless scroll, all reactions have the ability to easily transform into over-reactions with very little effort (Natalia and I wrote about just this a little while ago).  Real estate isn’t immune to those feelings. Re...

Natalia and Donny’s take on the real estate market RIGHT NOW!

Toronto is on sale in 2020

Not paying rent? You’ll end up with less. Here’s why.

Seemed like a normal time way back in March. I remember gearing up for March Break with the kids, plans in tow. In the days leading up to the final Friday before the Break, doubt started building about whether or not this “Coronavirus” thing that we keep hearing about was going to derail our plans. That last Friday, we were told school wouldn’t be returning for a few weeks - this “Coronavirus thing” was forcing us to quarantine. We cancelled whatever plans we had for the break and bolted th...

Season 2 Episode 5: Airbnb, Toronto, COVID-19. All together.

Season 2 Episode 4: How much money are banks making off of us during Covid-19?

Season 2 Episode 3: From the Attic... Coronavirus and the Toronto real estate market

Season 2 Episode 2: Mortgage deferrals and NO APRIL RENT rally

Featuring Donny Mangos, Blaine Shular and Kimberly Lam

Season 2 Episode 1: Toronto in 2030

The complicated truth about Airbnb and Toronto

**Note: I mention “Airbnb” in this article, though I generally mean any short term rental platform Something happened in my neighbourhood over the weekend. It didn’t make the news (for some reason) and it was eerily similar to what we have seen elsewhere. I woke up to early morning text and Facebook messages from a few neighbours sharing photos of yellow police tape blocking a section of street where I live with my family. In our very family-oriented and family-friendly pocket, gunshots we...

HANDS-FREE Real Estate Investing

The further I get into investing in real estate, the more I discover that most people in general avoid investing in real estate. The question I keep asking myself is: Why??!  I’m living, breathing, and walking proof that investing in real estate - even in small doses - can have a tremendous positive impact on financial freedom and independence. When I’m asked, I happily share what this focus has been able to provide for my family. Yet, I still see reluctance from many in my world when it co...

The UnRESP

We’ve looked at the results of our RESP for our kids. That’s why we came up with a much better plan - the UnRESP - and our worries about financing the university years are gone.

Team Mangos will NOT make you rich

We won’t make you rich. We won’t make you famous. What we can and will do though, is provide you with a better life through stronger personal financial control.

Completed our first collaboration with Suite Additions

The “P” Word: my love/hate relationship with it.

I’ve always hated this word, truth be told. I’ve tried to avoid using it for forever. The further I go into my business, and the more I speak with my wife at home about our life goals, it keeps popping up into the conversation, inevitably. This damn word: Plan. It comes up everywhere I turn these days. It’s even in some of favourite sayings, like “Failing to plan, is planning to fail.” Damn you. I’m literally writing this from an airplane seat, en route from Barcelona to Athens (and no, I’m...

Episode 27 - House is about a week away from completion. And pension stuff.

What I invest in (and what you should, too) - Part 2

“This article will make you hundreds of thousands of dollars, so read this.” - Signed by your Future Self. This is part 2 of my article. Click here to read part 1. INVESTING 2.0 I ended part 1 of this article by introducing what I call Investing 2.0. Basically, I am trying to create awareness towards real estate investing as the (much) smarter alternative to what we’ve been doing. Real estate makes you money in several ways. Let’s get into that next. THE 3 WAYS Let’s chat about real est...

What I invest in (and what you should, too)

“This article will make you hundreds of thousands of dollars, so read this.” - Signed by your Future Self. First off - let’s just eliminate that this is a bias-piece. It’s not. I will most certainly speak about how real estate investing is marvellous and how much it’s done for me, personally. Though, just because I am also a real estate broker, it doesn’t change my opinion (or the fact) that wealth building through real estate simply rocks. I am so enamoured and obsessed with real estate in...

Episode 26 - Market value vs Appraised value vs Assessed value??! What the heck does it even mean?

Episode 25 - Hello 2019!!! The reno that won't go away. And resolutions.

I've had a pretty dizzying start to 2019. Have you? What do you have on tap for the year? I'm going to help make that come true. Listen in!

Episode 24 - Just when you thought you couldn't get any busier..

Episode 23 - The DEBATE: New condo vs triplex??

Donny and Ken are huge investment property advocates. It's done SO well for them both personally and with clients. And they do it differently. One's into new construction condos, the other favours multi-unit residential properties. Are you an investor yet?

Episode 22 - Introducing the UnRESP (because the RESP sucks)

Episode 21 - A Goose and A Guy walk into a podcast

Episode 20 - What's moving like? An 8-year-old's perspective

Episode 19 - Part 2 with the wife. Climbing the property ladder. And bringing her along with me

Episode 18 - Donny's wife joins the conversation ;)

Episode 17 - Mid life crisis? Renovations? Starbucks??

Episdoe 16 - June 2018 stats. Some positive news!!

Episode 15 - Our take on a short trip to Halifax and Moncton

Episode 14 - May 2018 stats and how much does it cost to go from a semi to a detached??

Episode 13 - Why is that house across the street sooooo much cheaper??

Episode 12 - April stats. Why these are the last of the skewed stats..

Episode 11 - THE SKY IS FALLING!!! March stats

Episode 10 - How to win a bidding war

Episode 9 - List price vs sale price?? Why are list prices soooo low?

Episode 8 - Challenged to do it all. How did we do??

Episode 7 - Permits? Cash jobs? Say what?!

Episode 6 - Toronto's rent is skyrocketing. Why?!

Episode 5 - January stats with Natalia

Episode 4 - My name is Donny. And I am obsessed.

Episode 3 - Fixed vs Variable, Open vs Closed mortgage stuff

Episode 2 - Some game-changing tech updates?

Episode 1 - What happened in 2017, where are we in 2018?

TriplexTwo - Post 10 - Nearly halfway done, video update

We haven't been hiccup free, of course. 100 year old homes that have been abused are bound to have some issues. Our main ones have to do with water - and ways it's trying to make its way into the house.   As a homeowner - this is your number one focus. Water management. Pipes burst, foundations get weak, furnishings get destroyed -- all of that. From water finding its way into the house. So, roofs and water management outside the house -- all matters.  Anyhow, this isn't a post about wate...

TriplexTwo - Post 9 - Roofing and Kitchens

Got the call the other day from Rob at Prolific Work (he’s managing this whole project for us). Few things we had to address. We knew that there were some roofing issues. There was water literally pouring into the house at the back, all because of a failing roof. We called in one of the bigger roofing shops to come in and assess. They said we needed a few new roofs for the home. Grand total of $12,000. We needed another quote to make sure this was reasonable. Our next recommended roofer came...

TriplexTwo - Post 8 - More Gas

Back on the whole gas meter stuff (yes, I know it's not very exciting, but not it's not all fun!) -- I'm kind of getting the run around from the Giant Gas Co on this whole thing. Just means I need to call them again, and probably again. We have 3 gas meters in the house. When we bought the house, I loved it. We were one step closer to having 3 entirely separately contained (and metered) apartments. Most of the stuff I see isn't like that. I'm fine to have 1 meter for the house, it just is ea...

TriplexTwo - Post 7 - Was there a fire?

We've really been motoring through the renovation these days. There are pretty much 3 people there each day working hard towards demolition and space planning. Back when we bought the house, we noticed a pretty gaping hole in the ceiling of the ground floor bathroom - by the kitchen. It certainly looked like a plumbing issue was being looked at and that's why the ceiling was taken down. That may or may not have been true. Though that hole gives us a glimpse into what's between the ceiling o...

TriplexTwo - Post 6 - Enbridge and Windows

We inherited the house with an old furnace and an even older water tank. Not sure if you know much about furnaces and water tanks, but they're pretty mandatory (and not inexpensive) if you're a homeowner. We knew we would be buying a new furnace - part of us erasing all of the sinfulness of the house. It was gross. The water tank was also old, and small for this size of house. So we knew we would get rid of that. First step: call Enbridge. Goal: get them to come and get their stuff back!! I...