Mansions in Vancouver, B.C. are renting out rooms for $825 in order to avoid vacancy tax penalties. We discuss this and more…
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article78905377.html
Show Transcription:
00:04 Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of rentprep for landlords. This is episode number 256. I’m your host, Eric Worral, and in this episode we’re going to be talking about a couple recent news stories. The most interesting, at least in my opinion, is that college kids are living like kings in Vancouver’s empty mansions. Ya Vancouver, Canada. Uh, this is a really interesting story out of Bloomberg. Uh, we also have, uh, some, uh, quick content. We’re going to cover on the Sacramento landlord that’s offering free rent to promising companies and possibly somebody who’s getting their due. They’re getting a little Karma sent back to them and they owe their landlord a lot of money and we’re going to get into that as well. Uh, but we’re going to get into all that right after this.
00:49 1,2,3,4 ya ya ya…. Welcome to the RentPrep for landlords podcast. And now your host, Steven White and Eric Worral.
00:54 First off, I want to say thank you. I know a lot of you that listen to the podcast are also subscribers of our newsletter. And this actually today as we’re recording this, I’m recording this in April 23rd on a Tuesday. Our newsletter went out a few hours ago and we brought up a story of Kevin Valencia. Officer Kevin Valencia who we talked about on the podcast last week and he was injured in responding to a hostage situation at an apartment complex. And the more I read about that article cause I read up on it further after the podcast last week, the more um, upsetting and sad the story was. Uh, so pretty cool thing. Uh, Steve and Morin and the rent prep team here, uh, agreed to, uh, do a $500 donation towards his go fund me page, which you can find on the notes from last week’s episode. If you go to our website and look up episode number 255, you can also go to gofundme.com and look up Kevin Valencia, a wounded hero but anyone who donates to that cause to that go fund me page, if you put a two x next to your name, it will signify to us that you guys heard about this message from prep. And we’re willing to match any donations up to $2,000 as well. So trying to get the community kind of involved in this between the Facebook group, the podcast, our newsletter, and it’s just been really awesome to see, uh, just in the last couple hours, uh, I’m seeing donations coming in from $20 to 25 50 ,100, 500, 1000. It’s incredible to see. Um, thank you guys so much. If you’re somebody who had donated to this cause, if you’re still looking to donate you can go to go to go fund me.com and search for Kevin Valencia wounded hero or you can go to the rent prep podcast, episode 255, and also include it in the show notes today for this episode. Go and check that out. It’s a, uh, it’s somebody who’s family could really use that support. So can’t stress that enough if you guys are moved by that. Um, and understand that this guy was putting himself and, uh, in the line of duty and his family’s lives are severely impacted because of that. And it’s because of a tenant that probably shouldn’t have been in that rental property to begin with. So, but, uh, that’s not what today’s episode is about. But I just wanted to make mention to that and say thank you and also say thank you. If you’re thinking about doing it, do it. It’s a good cause. So, uh, we’ve got a couple of quick articles I want to cover here.
03:21 First one comes from a sacbee.com So the Sacramento Bee, uh, it comes from Bob Shallit and the title. This one says Sacramento landlord offers free rent to promising companies . So it says what is likely a regional first, one of the area’s largest property owners is offering free rent to promising small businesses as a way to stimulate local job growth. Ethan Conrad, whose company owns more than 5 million square feet of Sacramento-area office, retail and industrial space, is awarding the rent credits to three companies that will be selected in a “first annual” competition his firm is holding over the next five months. he said that they really want to support Sacramento business growth. So they’re holding this a competition and they said it’s not really gauged towards like startups, but more so towards businesses with a successful track record revenues of over a hundred thousand annual growth rates of at least 20%.
04:15 So I thought this is pretty cool story coming out of Sacramento. Landlords doing this, you know, he’s got probably some vacant rental properties, uh, commercial rental properties I should say. And uh, he’s put them to good use. So I thought that was a pretty cool story. I know it’s a pretty easy to focus on a bad landlord stories. There’s a lot of them out there. Those are the ones that get a lot of press right? But there’s a lot of cool stuff going on out there. So props to Mr. Ethan Conrad for putting that together. Um, the name of the program, let me find it here. Uh, you said you can find, you can apply through the company’s website. ethanconradprop.com, deadline is by the Aug. 31 . So if you’re thinking about moving a business around and you want to apply for that, uh, and you’re cool with living in Sacramento, go and check that out. So yeah, props to Ethanconrad@prop.com
05:03 And this next story I kind of debated on whether or not I wanted to include this, but they did kind of come up when I was searching landlord news. Um, this one is about R. Kelly. I know that’s name right there that comes with a lot of baggage. Uh, but it said that, uh, right now that he is down to about $635 no $625 to his name. And one of the reasons for that is that he was sued by his landlord of his Chicago studio. So it said that he hadn’t paid $200,000 in back rent and the landlord won the case and $173,000 was seized from some of Kelly’s various accounts. Subpoenas were also issued to Sony, Kelly’s former record label, as well as the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers to help obtain the rest of the money.
05:51 So I don’t know, I feel like that’s just some some Karma coming back to bite Ya. And, uh, again, I chalk this one up to a landlord doing a good deed for humanity. So we’re two for two on that one. I just thought it was kinda interesting. Uh, another thing I did not know is that his full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly. I wonder if guests Sylvester , um, it’s, uh, interesting middle name. So there you probably learned something new today, right there.
06:20 But let’s move on from at scumbag and we will go into the Bloomberg article, which I really wanted to talk about, which is the focus of today’s podcast. Uh, the title of this article is that College Kids Are Living Like Kings in Vancouver’s Empty Mansions. And then it says that globe trotting landlords can avoid vacancy taxes by renting as the latest twist for a housing market down 8.5% from its peak.
06:45 So this article comes from Natalie Wong and Natalie Obiko Pearson. It was published on April 16th to Bloomberg and the image that they show of this, and when I say imagine these are mansions like it is gorgeous. It looks like something out of like Alice in wonderland or something in the article and we’ll link to that. Of course. You got to look at the, uh, the, the front doors and the windows. I’m assuming this is probably up on a hill. How many windows are facing the, uh, the person taking the picture. But these are the front doors are just like, ah, I’ll dare say majestic. But getting into the article, it said that Isaiah Boodhoo, 22, thought it was a “complete hoax” when he saw a rental listing on Facebook for a bedroom in a Vancouver mansion for only C$1,100 if you do math its $825 in US dollars. He said It turned out the glass chandeliers, luxurious blue drapes, steam room and billiards table were for real. The nine-bedroom home, dubbed “The Castle” by the 14 students who share the property, is apparently owned by an Afghani pop artist, according to Boodhoo. Honestly I would stay here for as long as I could. He said, sitting on a white couch while sipping from a slurpee cup. I love that line right there, you know, while sipping from a slurpee cup there, you know, they added the author, added that to be like, no, this kid is like a college kid with no money. He’s drinking the seven 11 slurpee. But he said that a law or 1000 bucks for all of this, uh, this is a really interesting story. It says that this is kind of common in Vancouver right now because the city started to put a tax on empty homes. And with the Vancouver’s housing market, it said that there’s all of these luxury, uh, homes that are vacant. So they’re just starting to run them off to students who are really cheap because they would make more money renting it out on the chief and they would having it vacant and getting hit these taxes. So it said that the, the housing market is a far cry from where it was a few years ago. Uh, it said that price is more than doubled in the decade through 2016 outpacing gains in New York and London. But government policies to tame the market from new taxes district, your mortgage regulations have fueled plunge in sales . So that’s kind of interesting, right? Cause we, I know we talked about that sometimes where some markets are doing rent from patrol or through, you’re thinking about doing stuff with uh, uh, mortgage regulations. And you can see how this is a case in Vancouver, um, Canada that I know I keep correcting myself kind of pause and I’m like, it’s British Columbia, right?
09:14 Vancouver, BC, Canada. I never know how to say that because like I wouldn’t say I’m from Buffalo, New York, USA. I might say I’m from Buffalo, USA. I said, what’s Buffalo, New York so I guess it’s Vancouver, British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Maybe we’ve got a listener out there who cannot shoot me an email and tell me I’m an idiot. But, uh, any who we’re going to continue with the article. I, it’s saying that the prices are down 8.5% from their peak just in last June, according to the real estate board of Greater Vancouver. So these lucky renters are getting these absolute mansions for super cheap. It says that you right now you have houses that are worth about 4 million Canadian and renting for 4,500 Canadian. Uh, it’s pretty crazy right there. Again, another image that is just gorgeous. It’s like this insane skylight and call it a skylight is complete exaggeration. It is like this room that has floor to ceiling probably 25 feet, 30 feet, just glass windows everywhere. And at the top is a dome that you think would be maybe museum with this gorgeous chandelier. And these all, my gosh, it’s amazing. And it said that, uh, purchase tenants are getting bold, said Kevin Wang, who runs a sales and rental of real estate team with his twin brother Jerry. They’ve received calls from people offering to help with gardening or maintenance in exchange for free rent and a luxury home. Oh my God, it’s amazing. I love it. Why not? Right. You can’t even fault the runner because I know half of the people listening to this, if low balled the hell out of somebody on a, a offer on a property right there asking for a hundred year life, well we’ll see if it’ll take 30. So you can’t blame the, a runner that wants to live in a luxury mansion for doing some gardening.
10:56 Something tells me that, that the person who made that offer, they probably aren’t going to go and like give $1,000 worth of gardening effort. You know, maybe, maybe I’m wrong, maybe they’re, you know, some Guru Gardner, but I’m going to guess that they’re probably going to pull a few weeds and then talk about this story the rest of their lives. That time they lived in that mansion for pulling a few weeds. So going a little bit further in the article, uh, it’s just kind of talking about the fact that, um, early last year that this home that they’re referencing the article would, it sold for about 8.5 million holes in the wall and hall and that today, the 28 year old realtor isn’t sure she’ll get a credible offer for the 8,343 square foot mansion. Now that’s interesting. Why is it square feet? If this is a Canadian, everything’s like Ben in Canadian money. I would’ve thought maybe it would been like square meters. I’m not even sure how Canada does that, to be honest. I’m pretty uneducated when it comes to that. My Eye, it says that these days a pool, wine cellar and home theater on a prime lot aren’t enough to clinch a deal. Even in West Vancouver, we’re opulent homes carved out a steep slopes overlooked the ocean. Uh, I really like that sentence there. So, uh, it says that the house, there’s another house here listed at 10.9 million, but after receiving mostly low ball offers, yeah, that’s you guys, right? I clustered. It’s tax assessed value of 6.2 million Canadian. She’s playing in the drop in the price.
12:22 This article is worth checking out just for the pictures. It is incredible. Check that out. Again, you can find all of these articles in the show notes for episode 256. You go to rent-prep. Click on resources. You’ll find podcasts underneath that a menu and you can find all of our podcasts including last weeks. I’ll, uh, I’ll try to include a link to in this week’s episode to that go fund me page. Even if you’re listening to this, you know, three, four or five months from now. Uh, I’m sure that go find me page will still be up. It’s been around for about 10 months and again, that officer’s been in a hospital for the last 10 months. So again, take the time. If you’re thinking about doing it, do it, make a donation. Uh, I’m sure his family will appreciate it. His young children will appreciate that support Uh, I don’t know if he’s going to be dealing with a traumatic brain injury for years to come or what the outcomes will be a, but that’s a pretty scary situation to be in, so I can help a wounded police officer who was responding to a call that involved violent tenant and do a little bit of good in the world, uh, share the love with his family. So thank you guys for listening again and get all the resources on the APP on the website at rent-prep yeah. Until next week guys, take care and have a great rest of your week.