Category Archives for "Investing"

Ah, actually no. Let me explain. Wealth Factory says, “There is more to wealth than just money. Real prosperity involves your health, your spirituality, your relationships and your overall emotional/mental wellbeing. People don’t live compartmentalized lives.” But I think the way to achieve “harmony” is through one of two methods: You make so much money […]

[This is an excerpt from an upcoming book I am working on called, Business Model Illustrations, Real Estate Investment and Personal Business for Life Mini Case Studies] David Leigh (not his real name) is a rich dentist, age 44 when he first comes to Firestone for coaching. He is a lean, polite married person with […]

[Note: this is an excerpt from Entrepreneurs Handbook II, https://brucemfirestone.com/product/entrepreneurs-handbook-ii/] Here are Firestone’s Three Laws of Power Selling. First, I’ll iterate them and, second, I’ll give some examples that will seek to illustrate how the Three Laws of Power Selling actually work. Most people read these types of things and they nod wisely but really […]

A friend’s 500 sq ft (approximate), 3-room apartment in a Hong Kong tower in a  desirable neighborhood is worth $4 million CAD, but rents for “just” $4,000 a month.  Cap rate?  About .8% pa. Conclusion? Real estate investing in HK brings poor cash returns, which means CDN real estate looks mighty tempting with cap rates […]

I’m halfway through Bill Browder’s excellent 2015 book, Red Notice, talking about his experiences as an investment banker and asset manager in Russia in the days and years after the fall of the iron curtain (circa the 1990s). If you are like me and wonder why so many of the financial industry’s products are self-serving […]

What is QSV, quick sale value. There is no generally accepted definition, but here is my attempt at defining it based on experience: QSV, quick sale value, is the price a property put on the market will trade at less seller administrative, legal and accounting charges, realtor fees and closing costs in a liquidation process […]

The Pit If you want your building interiors to be highly animated and increase collisionable hours, you could do (a lot) worse than copy the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism’s “pit” on the main floor of their building on Carleton University’s campus… What’s it used for? -speeches -parties -presentations -charettes -teaching -gatherings -random meetings/collisions -concerts […]

A cap rate or capitalization rate is found by dividing NOI, net operating income, by the cost of a property or its fair market value. Obviously, we can reverse the process–find property values if we know both NOI and the applicable market-dictated cap rate for that type of property. Let’s try this with some Bloomberg […]

You know what I’ve found? Getting clarity in your life matters (a lot). Here’s how I help people do that (feel free to pass this on): [I highlighted the big depression-fighters in my experience in bold]

Here’s an email I sent to a client of mine about the role of amortization in developing and financing a real estate portfolio “effortlessly” in a rinse and repeat/perpetual motion machine kind of way. See below. Chris, you are 100% right. No, actually, 1,000% right 😊 Here’s a case I looked at for clients of […]

Where buildings in North America meet grade, we tend to throw away its value. How’s that? Every time you open a building at grade to the outside, every time, you add both functionality and value. It’s easier to access apartments, condos, retirement residence suites/rooms, stores, offices co-working spaces, makerspaces, you name it and it makes […]

“You can’t drink all day, unless you start in the morning,” one middle-aged female fan of the Buffalo Bills told me at their home-opener on Sunday September 16th, 2018. It was 0930 at the time, proving her point. That the Bills are important to Buffalo seems self-evident to me. But after tailgating with over 100,000 […]