Most agents send you a listing. We send you the rent roll, the tax bill, the zoning, the fire separation question and the number the building actually produces after debt. If the file does not work, we say so before you write the offer, not after.
Residential income · Multi-residential and MLI Select · Commercial and mixed use · Rural, farm and land · Ottawa and Eastern Ontario since 2013
The work is different at every stage. So is the advice. Tell us which of these sounds like you and the first call goes straight to what actually matters.
Usually a duplex you occupy, a single family with a legal secondary unit, or a condo bought for the tenant rather than the finishes. The two things that decide it are whether the unit is legal and whether the rent survives a rate renewal.
The wall most investors hit is not deal supply. It is lender appetite once the fourth and fifth mortgage lands on the same personal covenant. Structure starts to matter more than the next purchase.
At five units the file stops being residential. Value comes off net operating income, the lender underwrites the building rather than you, and CMHC's MLI Select program can move leverage and amortization further than any conventional structure.
Permitted use, severance history and environmental designation decide these files long before price does. This is the part of the market where the wrong assumption is expensive and quiet.
Four screening tools, free, no email required. They are the same models we run on a live file. Every one of them is an estimate for discussion, and every one of them will tell you when a deal does not work.
Score a building on affordability, energy and accessibility, find the tier, then size the loan by both loan to value and the coverage the income supports. The smaller number is your real ceiling.
Open the calculator Any rentalNet operating income, cap rate, cash on cash, debt coverage, break-even occupancy and a five year view of equity and cumulative cash flow.
Open the calculator Two propertiesThe same assumptions applied to both properties, line by line, with the stronger figure marked. Print it and bring it to the offer conversation.
Open the calculator OttawaOntario land transfer tax, the first time buyer rebate, the non-resident tax, default insurance and the eight percent Ontario sales tax on that premium that catches people at the lawyer's office.
Open the calculatorA pretty building with a clean rent roll can still be the wrong purchase. This is the list we work through on every income file, and the reason our clients occasionally walk away from a deal they were emotionally committed to.
National advice gets Ottawa wrong in predictable ways. These are the local facts that change a deal.
These are the checklists and templates we use internally. We will send any of them over, and we will walk through the one that applies to your file.
On a property you will not occupy, yes. Default insurance is not available on a pure rental purchase, so twenty percent is the floor. If you occupy one unit of a duplex the answer changes completely, and that single distinction is the cheapest leverage available to a first time investor in this city.
Sometimes. Below five units it is not available at all. Between five and about twelve units the professional costs of energy modelling, accessibility certification and the application itself have to be weighed against the premium discount and the extra amortization. We run that comparison before anyone spends money on consultants.
That is a question for your accountant and your lawyer, and the right answer depends on your income, your other holdings and your exit plan. What we can tell you is how each structure changes the lending conversation, because that part is our end of the table.
Regularly, in English, French and Arabic. Non-resident purchasers should know that Ontario's twenty five percent speculation tax applies across the whole province and that several exemptions exist. Get that advice before you write, not after.
Yes. It happens on roughly one file in four, and it is the reason those clients come back.
Send the listing, the rent roll or just the address. We will come back with what it produces, what it needs and whether it is worth your condition period.
Charles Khouri, Sales Representative · The Khouri Group · Royal LePage Team Realty
613 864 3327 · charleskhouri@royallepage.ca · 1723 Carling Avenue, Suite 1, Ottawa
