Category Archives for "Real Estate Investment Coaching"

“How important is trust in life?” asks Stefan Aarnio of Bruce M Firestone on his show, Respect the Grind. Bruce M Firestone is best known as an entrepreneur and founder of NHL hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, their home arena, Canadian Tire Centre, and the Ottawa Senators Foundation, a children’s charity, as well as a […]

“How important is your education in terms of your success?” asks Stefan Aarnio on his show, Respect the Grind. [Here’s a rough transcript of the entire show] Stefan Aarnio: Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the show, Respect the Grind with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who have achieved mastery and […]

Yesterday, I was visiting a client of mine in Gatineau and she told me about this tiny neighborhood café called Edgar. I am guessing that the place is no bigger than 16 feet of frontage and maybe 40 feet deep so only about 640 sf. The food is amazing, coffee great, and it’s a BIG […]

[A version of this article first appeared in Ottawa Business Journal, https://www.obj.ca/bruce-firestone] When most people think about business models and modeling, they think it only applies to tech startups but turns out, they’re just as important in any industry including real estate. If I ask someone about real estate models, she or he will probably […]

(This article first appeared in OBJ,  https://obj.ca/article/opinion-coach-houses-open-door-better-urban-planning-ottawa.) As OBJ readers may already know, the city of Ottawa recently changed its bylaws to permit construction of coach houses on many existing residential lots. This is part of a worldwide effort to densify and intensify existing urban areas to make them more interesting, more diverse, and more […]

[This article originally appeared on Spirepoint.ca] The number of mega wealthy people on this planet (a class that includes billionaires and millionaires, the latter, however, must have a net worth greater than $30 million USD to be included) is a tiny percentage of overall population—just 0.004% of adults qualify according to Wealth-X. This group controls […]

The Cap Rate Most real estate professionals do not use IRR, internal rate of return, calculations—they use cap (capitalization) rates to compare one project with another. The cap rate is an approximate assessment of ROI, return on investment, as all financial measures are anyway. But they are more approximate than the IRR is, in my […]

The Telfer School of Management’s professor Barbara Orser assisted by Luc Lalande has asked me to give one last lecture in 2016. I tried to make it both fun and informative. You can watch the video of the lecture below. It is also available on YouTube, https://youtu.be/GqqdLeT25us Here is the slidedeck I used, https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvo3187hnzr3397/firestone-legacy-lecture.pptx?dl=0 Here’s […]

There are many ways to value your real property— by completing a CMA, comparative market analysis, yourself or asking a realtor to do one for you, using the DFCA (direct comparison approach)—comparing what other similar properties have recently sold for in the same general area within the recent past (aka using “comps”) 2.       by using a cost approach—that is, determining the […]

old subdivision design v new conservation subdivision design When conservation subdivision design principles were first introduced, developers thought their properties would be devalued and sales would take longer. It turned out, however, buyers would pay more to live in a village that made preservation of natural areas a feature even if it meant smaller lots […]