Bryce Kander - Real Estate Investing

Have you heard of shadow tax? It's what inflation really is — a tool the government uses to pay off its debt faster. Think about it from the government's side. The first time they borrowed a million dollars, that was real money. But inflation shrinks the value of a dollar year after year, so repaying that old debt later is easy for them — they hand back dollars that are worth less than the ones they borrowed. The debt stays the same number; the dollars get cheaper. That's the shadow tax: nobody votes on it, nobody sees a bill for it, but it quietly transfers value away from everyone holding money. Here's the part most people miss: it's exactly the same with your mortgage. At the end of your amortization, you're paying the loan off with inflated dollars — dollars worth less than the ones you borrowed at the start. As a borrower, that long tail of cheaper dollars actually works in your favour. And the lenders know all of this. That's why they front-load the in...

Here's one for tenants. If a landlord puts an Airbnb into the upstairs suite or the downstairs suite of the property you live in, the place you call home changes overnight — and that change is worth money to you, if you handle it right. Start by naming what's actually different. You used to live beside a neighbour 365 days a year. Now there are 365 different people cycling through the property over the year. That's more noise, more strangers, more wear on the shared spaces — and your landlord knows it, because the Airbnb only works if the building stays in good shape and the reviews stay five stars. So make the offer that turns their problem into your discount. Tell the landlord you're fine with the arrangement — and that you'll keep an eye on the property for them. Offer to handle the snow removal and the lawn care, the exact things that make guests happy and keep those five-star reviews coming. You're offering to be the on-the-ground help their Airbnb needs. T...

I just learned something that changes the math on tiny houses completely: you can get a 25-year mortgage on one. A full 25-year amortized mortgage — on a tiny house. That surprised me, because I assumed tiny house financing worked like RV financing. An RV is a vehicle, so you're looking at a short loan — five or seven years — with payments to match. Short amortization means big monthly payments, and big monthly payments kill cash flow before you even list the place. A tiny house isn't financed that way. Spread over 25 years, the payment drops to something a rental can actually carry. Now run that idea where it belongs: your own backyard. Put a tiny house on your property, finance it over 25 years so the monthly payment stays small, and rent it out on Airbnb. The nightly income comes in against a mortgage-sized payment instead of an RV-loan payment — and that's where the cash flow lives. It's a different way to get into short-term rentals without buying a whole second pr...

How do you know you're looking at a good flip? It looks bad. Eggshells on the floor, a place in rough shape — that's what a lucrative flip actually looks like when you walk through it. A lot of people get this backwards. They tour properties that are already nice and wonder where the flip is. There isn't one. If a house is already too nice, you can't make it any nicer — and you can't recoup the money you'd put into it, because there's no value left to add. The profit in a flip comes from the gap between what the place is now and what it could be, and a pretty house has no gap. So you need the opposite: something ugly. A place where you're stepping over the previous occupants' mess just to see it, where every other buyer walks in and walks right back out. That's exactly the point — while they're seeing a disaster, you need to be seeing what the place is going to look like when it's done. Ugly is not a warning sign in a flip. Ugly is the op...

I've paid tenants to move out more times than I can count — so let me tell tenants how to be on the receiving end of that deal. If someone buys the property you currently live in, and the place is run down, you can usually see the writing on the wall: they're going to fix it up, and you're probably going to be moving anyway. So don't just wait for it to happen. Go to the new owner and ask for cash for keys. Tell them you'd move out early — offer them a number, like $500 — and point out the advantage to them: they're going to renovate this place and make a lot of money on it, and having you out sooner gets that started sooner. Frame it as help with your moving costs, and ask if that would be advantageous to them. Then comes the most important part of the negotiation: after you've said it, don't say anything. The next person to talk loses. You've made a reasonable offer that helps both sides — an early, clean vacancy for the owner, and cash toward your...

Some of the smartest Airbnb plays I've seen don't involve buying anything. I've got friends who live on an acreage, and all summer long they Airbnb'd the trailer in their backyard. The trailer was just sitting there — so they turned it into a rental and let guests pay them for it. Other friends took it even further. They moved into their trailer, parked it at Sylvan Lake for the summer, and rented out their massive house while they were gone. Think about that trade: they spent the summer at the lake, and their big house — the expensive one — was busy earning money instead of sitting empty. It worked out to more than a free holiday. Renting out the main house paid for their mortgage for the year, and then some. One summer of guests covered twelve months of payments, while the owners lived in a trailer by the lake. That's the part of Airbnb people underestimate. It's not just about buying rental properties — it's about looking at what you already have differen...