BY DAVID HOWELL, EDMONTON JOURNAL JANUARY 22, 2015 Billions of dollars in active and pending construction projects in the Industrial Heartland region will help offset the downturn in other parts of Alberta’s energy sector, a business audience heard Thursday. “With shovels in the ground or shovels we expect to be in the ground this year, […]
Author Archive | Thomas Beyer
Mintzing Words with the OSC
The Ontario Security Commission (OSC) is a powerful agency in Canada. Since we as a real estate firm issue securities for our syndicated residential properties we have to follow security laws, specifically NI 45-106 and NI 31-103 . We do not yet follow OSC’s or the proposed national security regulator’s overreaching rules, as we are […]
Ich bin ein Berliner: The Berlin Wall – 25 Years later
Today is a special memorial day for me: The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago, Nov. 9 1989. Ich bin ein Berliner. I was born in Berlin, not even two years before the Berlin wall went up in August 1961. Both my parents are from East-Germany and foresaw the lack of opportunity in that […]
Achtung: Inexpensive energy is critical for economic growth !
Humans require energy. Humans in an industrialized and growing / affluent society require more energy than tribal groups with low living standards. Developing nations, be they in S-America, Asia or Africa require far more energy than before. One of my interests always has been energy, the price of energy, renewable energy, nuclear energy, energy conservation […]
Nine Steps To Invest Successfully in Real Estate Syndicates, LPs or private REITs
There are two ways to invest your money in real estate: you do it yourself, or you do it with others. Besides public market REITs with their often volatile ups and downs like any stock, private syndications in the so-called “exempt market” are becoming quite popular. Syndicating a large piece of real estate i.e. pooling […]
Five Year Bond Yields Up Sharply – Rental Housing more attractive
As you can see from this chart, 5 year mortgage bond yields are up sharply since spring. This has created upwards pressure on five year mortgage rates, thus making buying houses or condos more expensive. As shown here for the last few weeks, due to CMHC capping its insurance to lenders, and rising Government of […]
The new VW 1 and the growth of Urban Real Estate
As cities get denser and denser, people movement in and around cities is becoming increasingly difficult. Three solutions exist: mass public transit, car sharing and smaller, individual vehicles. If one looks at Canada’s major urban areas, you may have noticed that more and more condo towers spring up, and the urban real estate that sells […]
Real Estate Investing, Credit Cards & Car Loans
I received my credit card statement today. Here is what it said, in fine print: If you make only the Minimum Payment each month, we estimate it will take 81 year(s) and 5 month(s) to fully repay the outstanding balance. Our estimate is based on the New Balance shown on this statement and your current […]
Apartment Buildings vs. Land
As you know we have been investing in cash-flowing rental properties for 15+ years, first single unit condos and since 2000 we have transacted over $166,000,000 in apartment buildings, and still own a fair bit. This is a good investing strategy and has served us and our co-investors/limited partners very well over the years. But […]
Creating Value in Apartment Buildings.
Recently I was asked how we create value in apartment buildings, for us and our co-investors/limited partners who co-own these assets. The short answer is: by higher rents, usually due to improvements to the asset, but on occasion with little or any investments. So if the rent goes up by 3% the asset value goes […]