David Cinelli - Buy Smart. Build Wealth
What does it take to stand out in one of the most competitive real estate markets in the world—and actually make it fun to learn about? David Cinelli is one of Canada’s top 1% Realtors®, HGTV co-host, and a trusted advisor with nearly 20 years of experience helping clients navigate the ever-changing real estate landscape. Known for his charisma and clarity, David has a rare ability to break down complex concepts into simple, actionable strategies anyone can understand.
Whether you’re a first-time homebuyer, a seasoned investor, or a high-income professional looking to grow your wealth, this conversation is packed with insights you can immediately apply. From behind-the-scenes stories of Toronto’s luxury market to smart, data-driven investing tips, David brings both expertise and real-world perspective to the table. If you’re looking to make smarter real estate decisions—and actually enjoy the process—this episode will leave you informed, inspired, and ready to take action.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Learn how real estate can build long-term wealth through strategic investing
- Understand how to leverage equity and use tools like HELOC to grow your portfolio
- Discover why starting small is key to scaling in real estate
- Identify the mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur
- Learn practical ways to turn your home into an income-generating asset
- Understand the risks involved in real estate and how to navigate market changes
- Gain insights on building passive income without quitting your full-time job
The key moments in this episode are:
0:00 Loss That Sparked A New Path
2:02 From Immigrant Roots To Real Estate
8:27 Education Versus Entrepreneurship Mindset
16:22 First Sixplex Lessons And HELOC Leverage
24:37 Turning A Home Into A Portfolio
27:00 Pre-Construction Pitfalls And Market Reality
31:52 Hold Or Sell Plus
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Full transcript here:
David Cinelli
So I thought, I'm gonna go do my get my license, but I don't want to be a realtor. There's no way I want to be a realtor. Uh and my dad was kind of excited too, because he's like, he kind of wanted to stop being a hairdresser and focus more. And at this point, he had to build a really nice portfolio. I started to help, I was using his portfolio to to fix it and help run in and show people what they can do. Unfortunately, before my first exam, four days before my first exam, my dad uh suddenly passed away. So he didn't get an opportunity to see me uh uh become a realtor and we couldn't we didn't have a chance to work together.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom Show. We inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Real Freedom, Real Estate Leverage Freedom, where we talk about different ways you can build time and financial freedom in the real estate space. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website, freedom through realestate.com. We put all of our episodes on there, blog posts, content for you to figure out where you want your path to be inside of real estate. And as we know, it can change, it might move and adjust. And so that's why we're here to just tell great stories and share great examples with you to inspire you to take action inside of real estate. So today, super excited to share. We've got a guest north of the border. We've got David Chinelli here, brings a perfect mix of expertise, charisma, and real world insight to every conversation. One of Canada's top 1% of realtors, HGTV co-host and trusted advisor with 20 years of experience. We'll probably talk a little bit about the brokerage side, a little bit about the investment side, and love to hear your story. So, David, thank you so much for coming on the show.
David Cinelli
Well, thanks for having me, Mike. Really, really happy to be here.
Mike Swenson
Just get us started a little bit about how you got into real estate, why you got into real estate, and we'll take the story from there.
David Cinelli
Well, how much time do we have? So, yeah, it's a it's got a long story.
Mike Swenson
Gonna be part of a 10-part series.
David Cinelli
Yeah, exactly. Right, part one. Exactly. Um, well, it started off, like I guess I didn't re really recognize what was going on in our family. Our family are immigrants from uh from Italy and we lived in Toronto uh basically our whole lives. And then I didn't realize my dad, my grandfather passed away when my dad was like 16 years old. And he bought his first investment property, I guess when he was 20. And he realized like that's what he was doing is he was leveraging properties and able to use them to build wealth. At the same time, he was a he was a hairdresser, very much like the you know, the wealthy barber. If you guys heard of that, it's a very similar um situation. Uh, fast forward to myself, like for us, my dad just really wanted to go to university, both my brothers and I. Um, my oldest brother, not so much, he's a hairdresser with my dad. Uh, but my my middle brother, you know, and I like we went to school, did that. But my dad also focused on he said we were both good hockey players. I ended up getting a scholarship to the States and uh in Wisconsin. And so I went to the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. I'm a goalie, a little bit of a knucklehead, I guess. And uh, so our whole lives are basically, you know, my dad was like, Go to school, go to school. Uh, but I used to help my dad with all the rental properties when I was younger. Um, fast forward, I you know, after university, had my degree, bounced around, did my MBA because I didn't really make it through through pro hockey. So basically went back to school, got my MBA, and uh started to work as an analyst. And during that time, my brother gave me and his wife gave me a book called Rich Dad Poor Dad. Now, I'm I'm always amazed at people that I haven't read this book because I love that book. It's really straightforward. He's like, again, I have an MBA and a and uh basically a business degree, two business degrees. And I felt that this book was way more helpful than any degrees I took in university, right? It just it just broken everything down. And I realized when I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad that my dad was the poor the rich dad, right? Like he was the one that was the entrepreneur doing all this stuff, didn't have any degrees. Again, he dropped out of high school, like uh grade nine. Uh, and I remember when I got my first analyst job and I was making this money and I'd look at my paycheck, and I'm like, go to my dad, I'm like, what the hell is this? Like, and in Canada, I don't know if you guys realize how bad we get taxed in Canada. Like, it is it is a ridiculous amount of taxes. And uh, and reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, they're basically saying, you know, that's how you you know get some money back, you're able to leverage homes and it's passive income. So I went to my dad uh and he's like, Oh, so now you want to learn basically how to how we really do do this in the real world. So from that moment forward, well, I so he helped me get into my birth of uh investment property, like I said about 21, maybe 22 years ago, uh, and still keeping my analyst job. Um, but throughout the years, I had a lot, I was buying and selling properties. And um just funny because I didn't really get along with a lot of realtors, they were kind of screwing you over, they weren't really they it wasn't an industry in which you know, somebody like I would wanted to get myself into because we had a lot of bad realtors. I had only bad experiences with realtors, so I was like, as much as I loved the industry, I didn't want to associate myself with that. Uh fast forward to 2014. Um, I got finally got packaged out from my job. I was able to help my wife and other people get into um, you know, and become entrepreneurs. And my wife was, I think, at this point, it was on her first or second. I think it was like actually, I think this is like her first. So this was still her first business. And she loved being an entrepreneur. But me having the analyst job, I had all the benefits. I thought, you know, as long as they when they start to walk people out, and then one by one, I was a treasury analyst, they they walked us all out one by one, and it was perfect timing. Um, but I did again didn't want to associate myself with being a realtor. So I created a business uh that had a business plan, and it was called uh the property manager. I've been helping people identify what is an investment property, how to become an investment property. So uh between my financial planner and I, we were like, okay, so I gave him kind of my uh my business idea, and he's like, we had three different models. He had uh find it to recognize what could become a business, uh, sorry, an investment property, uh, fix it, renovate it, you know, like whether you needed to take like a like a single family dwelling, make it into multiple units, how do we identify that as well? If you don't have the trades, we would bring that in because I've been doing this at this point for you know 12 years. I had lots of connections doing that. And if you went with the first two programs, then we would run it for free for uh for six months as the property manager. That's the run it part. So it was a great plan. We had put things in motion, but the when I went to monetize it, I realized the glaring hole was the realtor. Like as the realtor was the one that had all the keys, like identifying the properties, what's been selling for, you know, the searches, all that is. And back then, you remember we didn't have uh all these great search engines like we had now. Like you guys have Zolo, we have House Sigma, we have all these ones that are great now. We didn't have that back then. There was, and a lot of the information wasn't accessible to uh the the public, right? Where now it is. Um, so I thought I'm gonna go do my get my license, but I don't want to be a realtor. There's no way I want to be a realtor. Uh and my dad was kind of excited too, because he's like, he kind of wanted to stop being a hairdresser and focus more. And at this point, I had to build a really nice portfolio. I started to help, I was using his portfolio to to fix it and help run in and show people what they can do. Unfortunately, before my first exam, four days before my first exam, my dad uh suddenly passed away. So he didn't get an opportunity to see me uh uh become a realtor and we couldn't we didn't have a chance to work together. Um but long story short, uh I passed my first exam with 100% without studying. I knew like I didn't want to be a realtor. Second course, I helped teach the course, even though this realtor's been in the industry for 20 years. Again, and emphasize for me that maybe I don't want to be in this industry. Like, how can you be in this industry for 20 years? And somebody like myself, who kind of does it part-time, let's call it, and I'm teaching you, I'm teaching you. Like, she would come to me and ask her, like, Am I am I doing the math problems correct? Uh, and then she would talk about renovations. I throw up my hand and say, That's actually not correct. I'd have to keep correcting her. Um, finally, by the third time, the the third exam rolled around watched when you gave you a license. I came home to my wife and I was like, Yeah, I think I'm supposed to be a realtor. She started laughing and she's like, Well, it took you long enough. Um, so I decided to embrace being a realtor. And but the whole key was I only want to be a realtor if I can make sure that people don't go through the same heartaches that I went through. I want to make sure I want to elevate your real estate experience. When you work with me, I give you lots of information. I help like you don't, I don't pressure people to work with me, and I never pressure people to purchase stuff. We present the facts and the figures and I help guide you, but I will never force you to do anything. And like I said, so technically I'm in the top one and a half percent nationally. I always call like there was because there's a little bit between. And I've been that for the last seven, eight years, I believe. It's been the top two, it's not seven, top two to one and a half percent uh last seven, eight years. So yeah, that's kind of where we are right now.
Mike Swenson
It's funny because I talk with my kids about going to school, get a good education, all that kind of stuff. And then I we always talk about, you know, mom mom's a mom's a therapist, so she's got two master's degrees, and then I've got a bachelor's degree, but I said, you know, the reality is I didn't need any degree to do what I'm doing in life, you know. And the funny thing was is I was considering, so I was entrepreneurship and uh was gonna add real estate as a major in college, and then decided not to because I figured I could go back and do that later and just get my license. And then I worked out of real estate for 10 years. So had I just done that, I'd have a 10-year head start on where I'm at today. So hindsight is 2020.
David Cinelli
We didn't have that when I was so like our real estate college is like its own little college. Now it's part of our curriculum. Now they've added a few years, which is at Humber College here in Toronto, and it's now it's it's it's one of the colleges. Like, and on the States, it's like you know, it's it's different. You guys have college university, depending on the size. We have different, like our trade school is like known as our colleges, right? So they've they've added up like a whole new uh program, which is great. And it's it's you can get your license as early as like seen the fastest, probably eight months to and to like and usually takes up to two years, but but yeah, like I wish I would have known that too. But again, I had to go through the struggles of going through what I went through to realize I probably could be good at this, but yeah, I had no clue beforehand, right? I just I didn't want to be a I didn't want to be a salesy person, right? I never identify myself as sales, but um, I guess I've been pretty good. So I guess it's as long as you don't see it as sales. I that's why I always I think the problem with salespeople is like they're always looking, you know, to pad their pocket. And like we'll we look at it as like we're here to help. And if we get paid along the way, that's how that's how we we like that we identify us as having success. It's how many people have you helped, not how much money you make.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, and that's how I look at it too. I I you know pride myself on not trying to sell anything to anybody. It's you know, here's a problem, here's a solution. If I can help you with that solution, great. If not, no worries, you can find somebody else or maybe find a different solution, you know. And so I guess that's how I look at it as well. It's funny how that works. And and to your point, too, rich dad, poor dad. I remember it was my uh optometrist in college that told me to read that book. And so that was the the life-changing book for me, too.
David Cinelli
It's so funny how that that one book, which is not a hard read, it just changes so many lives. And so the other day, uh for my MBA, they asked us to come in and like do some, you know, talking for the graduating class. And there's a guy who's an entrepreneur. By the way, I would always recommend taking entrepreneurship class. I took one during my MBA and it was fantastic. It's probably my favorite course I've ever taken. And then I also got the juices flowing. And he asked me, he's like, Oh, anything kind of recommendations? I said, Well, if you and I told him, like, well, you know, I read Rich Dad Port, thinking that all these younger generations probably have already heard of it. And he's like, Look at me, he goes, What book is that? I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait a second. You're right. Like, you take an entrepreneurship class, yeah. And they they never mentioned that book. They're like, no, that book is like, how old is it? Probably not 30 years and old, something like that. It's like, it's like, you know, uh, that whole thing was that the mouse stole my cheese kind of situation where they hand it up like to HR people. It's it's gotta be, I think it needs to be in curriculum for all business schools. I just and it's because again, like in the problem with I would always say this, I say this to my kids, the problem with university is it's great, it helps you think, but it helps you think like an employee. Whereas that is the entrepreneurship class, the only one helps you think like a boss or like a like a like the head person, somebody's training somebody to do like and Rich put it the same way. He goes, Why build up the corporate ladder when you can own the ladder? Right. So I was like, hmm, that's a great way of looking at it. And again, when I looked at what uh what my dad had accomplished without any even grade nine education and seeing how he was able to do that, and let's be honest, he was very smart in his own right, but just because he didn't have a degree doesn't mean he wasn't smart. I'm not saying that. I don't like how people associate, like you know, with degrees with people that are smart because how many people you know have degrees that aren't very smart, like there's a lot of them, right? So um, anyway, my point was like, I think it's like like literally should be teaching this to everybody. It's like, you know, they should it's it should be part of the curriculum.
Mike Swenson
So I majored in entrepreneurship because the the school that I was going to had a had a great program for it, but I still had to make peace with taking the risks, right? Like I was in my head, I was like, I need to learn how to think like an entrepreneur, but I'm not ready to do that yet. And a lot of my classmates, it was taking over the family business, or they knew what they wanted to do. And I was like, I gotta go find a job because I know I'm not gonna be an entrepreneurship or be an entrepreneur yet. And uh it it took 20 years, 15 years after or 15 years after I graduated to finally go off on my own. But those lessons and principles were very helpful. But but yeah, in hindsight, like that's you know what I what I should have been doing.
David Cinelli
So well, my dad don't remember that my dad gave me shit one day. I was like, you know, I was an analyst, I was making, you know, we're talking you know, early 2000s, like 2008, 2009, maybe I was making a hundred and something thousand dollars a year. And my dad pulls me aside, he's like, What are you doing? What do you mean? What are they doing? He goes, I didn't send you to school to be an employee. Like, what are you doing? You just gotta build a business. And I was looking at him like, no, no, I'm like, that's not why you go to school, dad. You go to school because you teach other people, you can show other people that you know how to learn and you can follow the rules. And he just never got that concept. And it was like, so it's funny because again, it was very risky to move like some people think the risk is you know paying for university. That is like if you get nowadays, like college is very expensive, very expensive. I get it. Um, we were fortunate not to have like with this, my scholarship to the states uh for hockey. I didn't, you know, really pay for the for my education there. And then when I would did my MBA, they actually back in our day, and this this is probably how old I am, uh I graduated my MBA in 2004. Our program, which was a one-year core, like 12 months straight, it was only$25,000, right? And because I had such good, believe it or not, I was a student athlete, like I had really good grades, I was on the dean's list all the year, they knocked off five grand off it. So it only cost me$20,000. And my dad, because he didn't pay for my undergrad, where he paid for my brother's undergrad, said, I will cover the cost if you go back to school. So I was one of those rare individuals that got out of university with very minimal debt, right? Like my dad didn't help me like when I was in university, like he didn't give us money. So, you know, get a line of credit and I had worked and passed, so I had some savings, but I was um but nothing crazy. I think my my my line of credit was like$10,000 or$15,000. It wasn't in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, and again, I understand, I recognize that in today's market, I think they're with everybody being able to do things online and the ease of entering into the market and not having to have a brick and mortar business, there's lots of opportunity out there for for more people. And if you want to get education, great. It's like I think it can help. Um, but I would always keep an open mind too. If you're if some people always say if you just want to have an education to if you love like accounting, if you love uh well, if you want to work the corporate ladder, if you want it's I think it's great. But I also think I also caution people that are getting a degree just to get a degree. And I'm like, you don't want to be in a hundred or sometimes more thousands of dollars of debt. And if you're if you're the the job you're going for is only gonna pay you like$35,000 a year, you're gonna be in debt for a long time. Like you might want to think about that, right? Like, and and we're having a shortage here of trades. Our tradespeople are making way more money than anybody who has an MBA right now. Like it's because they're there's not a lot of them, right? And they're always in demand. So I would I know I would caution people saying, like, it's it's changed where you know, where you just get a degree just to get a degree to get your foot into any business. Uh now it's like I think I'm like talking to my my friend who's a CFO here at one of the large companies, and he's like, basically, there if you don't have an MBA, we're not even looking to you for entry position. I'm like, an MBA. When I got my MBA, I was very I was one of the few people that had that, and I was overqualified for all these jobs, and I never really had a big boy job. And it was like, because I had the MBA. Now it's like that's your entry point. So it's it's changed a lot in the last 20 years. So yeah, that's even that's why I think entrepreneurship is is great. And also, I love entrepreneurship because it makes you think, right? It makes you think outside the box. Uh, you're solving people's problems. If you can help solve people's problems, not only you can you make money, that's clear, that's the end of the day, but you're actually helping people, and that's that's very important. I think that is great for society. If you're actually helping people, again, you will be rewarded.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, absolutely. So, talk a little bit about investment property, your journey there, how that was grown, and and kind of how you help other people now think through buying property or things like that through the eyes of an investor, future investor.
David Cinelli
Yeah, great question, like great question. So, as I mentioned, I bought my first property with my dad gave me the money, and he basically baptism by fire. He's like, it was an older, like over a hundred-year-old home, sixplex. They had a shitty job inside. Like the plumbing was an issue, the everything. You we had asbestos in the house, we had a boiler that wasn't working, leaks left and right. But you know, it was one of those things, it was like it was it was great because I got to figure out who was in my network for plumbing and fixing. So they're on the process. I I was frustrated for you know a couple of years. We bought, I think 2005 or 2006. By 2008, I wanted to sell this thing, it just had problems and problems and problems. Um, but then one of my one of our contractors are talking about us, and he's like, even though my dad had done this for a long time, I remember he kind of stepped away, let me do my own thing, right? He didn't tell me how, uh and this is where I the journey started. Um, I thought investment properties I'm going to my dad. I'm like, I'm doing all this work for this house. I'm spending this money. I'm like, at the end of the year, I'm only making$10,000. He looked at me and goes, that's$10,000 more than you had beforehand. And plus, you're able to write off a lot of your expenses, right? And that's the huge part when it comes to tax time, right? Again, you're you're making over$100,000, you're in a higher tax bracket. You're over here, you're getting, you know, we're getting we're in the 54%. Like that's how much it takes over half of our money in taxes. So, in order to mitigate that, you know, like you have rental properties, you're able to use a lot of accounting, like, you know, you're using to um uh you're able to use uh deterioration, amorization, you're you're able to write off a lot of the interest. And at tax time, I was getting refunds. And I'm like, hmm, this is interesting. But I didn't know how to absolutely didn't know how to utilize equity in the property yet until I talked with one of my contractors because some of the departments were kind of like shitty, right? They were falling apart. And I was six bucks. So he's basically said he goes, You know when you can pull equity. I'm like, what is equity? Again, like we again, I'm like, I'm not to say that like our it just real estate wasn't an option for us when we talked about equity. When we were talking about how things, how to earn money. University is great, but no one ever taught us how to make money. I was a math major at one point. I could tell you anything, I I could tell you slopes of lines, I can tell you any kind of derivatives, you know, like those, but I couldn't, I didn't know simple things like equity. And he's like, Dave, it's simple. He goes, We look at the value of your property and you the bank will loan you 80% of that at this point. So if your property at this point is worth 600 and sorry, it's worth like say eight hundred thousand dollars, eighty percent of that they'll loan you up to six hundred and forty. How much money do you have left on the on your mortgage? Because so you subtract that. I was like, and I think well, there's only like four hundred thousand dollars on that. So he goes, the bank will give you access on a HELOC home equity line of credit for that extra$240,000, and you can use that to build up the properties and pay them and to renovate the properties, and all the interest you only pay for the money you use, and the interest you can write it off towards your income. And I was like, really? I didn't know about that. So that's what we did. We started doing that, and then uh a couple months later the uh we had an electrical fire in the property. So what happened was we wanted, I think one of the tenants was fooling around with the electrical panel, we had to kick everybody out. At that point, I was able to revamp the whole house, so all the issues we had, we had plumbing issues, like no water pressure, so brand new whole systems, and we were able to fix all the properties. And um, it took a little while. But my wife and I at that point were we got married in 2008. At this point, we were broke, like we started renovating another property, we were living paycheck to paycheck. Um and but because of that, we were able to once the property got up and running, the equity started to build. And the property was building so much, even before that, we were able to pull equity from this property. We bought our matrimonial home. So when people saw that they come into work, I'm like, How do you you're 26 years old or 27 years old? Like, how are you able to afford two homes on your salary? I'm like, and it's again, it wasn't the salary, it was the equity of the homes. We pulled the equity, we were able to buy another property and able to buy another property, and that's kind of what we did. And then this we did this before the fire, right? But then obviously the fire came. So when people saw that and we were able to satisfy them, we were in we were able to buy purchase properties, and then we bought another, we lived in the other one home, had the sixplex, and then everything was up because we renovated both of them, and then so the equity built because now the value went up, and then after 2008, the both value went up. 2011 we bought a third property, which we moved in to turn our matrimonial home into a rental property. So I was showing people how to do this. Like, listen, you don't my dad always said, and I unless you need to sell a property, don't sell it. You could turn it into you can turn it into an investment property. So nowadays, what I try to get people to do is like I use that as an example. And from this now, at this point, we own our matrimonial home. So we're a bigger home now. Uh, we sold that one little bungalow roll matrimonio, but we have the sixplex and we have four condos. And with my mom's portfolio, we are gonna eventually take over three of our commercial properties by not using our own money. It's called OPM, right? Other people's money. So, because if you borrow the money, you're in the debt, the debt you're able to write off of your income, it's never your own cash. You can, it's all about cash flow. So I use our cost, our tail is not a cost of your tail. It's like, this is what you can do. So when I talk to young couples and I say, you know, they're always looking, the problem they're finding now is that in this type of the, I guess, new environment, people are looking online, they're seeing these beautiful, you know, beautiful homes. They're like, oh, when I buy a home, they have all these dreams, they want to get into their dream home. I'm like, you're 27, 40, 35 years old. You've never bought a house before. And like the bank's not going to give you the money, like, unless you're some anomaly anomaly, you're not going to be able to purchase this gorgeous property. You need to start like we did. Like, you build your properties, you start low, and you buy, get into a condo that you can afford and let it build on it, like, or like a townhouse or something affordable. If you're able to get into a bungalow and rent out the basement while you live upstairs, that helps pay for your mortgage. And then when the equity, the value of the property goes out, you can pull that and that'll turn into an investment property and then move into another home to upgrade. And if you can do that a few times, then that's how you can build your home without like really risk. There is obviously risk, but it's less risky with real estate. But you don't have to quit your corporate job, you don't have to quit your your day-to-day. You can do this as passive income on the side. And that's how I started explaining people to do that. It's like it does take time, it's not going to be overnight, and then you have to have the patience for it and make right decisions. Obviously, getting good tenants, and there's ways we help them get tenants as well. Like there's new um there's new checking the systems that we checked to help verify anybody's coming in because we were getting burned here in Toronto big time for like all these tenants. And our rules here in Ontario really favor the tenants, not the landlords. So somebody could squat for like years and not pay anything, and the landlord is forced to pay that. So there's other new tools we've come up, we've found that which really helped you know to decipher that the person is exactly who they say they are, if they are a good tenant. Anyway, long story short, that's how we start the process, right? We set them down on them. And some people say, I don't want to be a landlord. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. But if you want to be able to build equity, your home will earn more equity than you can ever do by working. It just that's how fast our market's been growing. Our market's been growing in the last 30 years, 6.3 to 6.8% per annum compounded. So, like you, and that's again, it sounds small because oh, I make an investment property, and if I buy stocks, I can get 10 to 15%. But when you're purchasing a property, you're only putting in some cases here under 1.5%, you're only putting 10% down. So you might buy a property for 1.5%, but you're getting 6.8% on 1.5, not the 10% you put down, which is say$150,000. So once people get that in the mentality, you're like, yeah, so it's like it's passively increasing, increasing. You got to change your mentality of what an asset is in liability. Currently, when you're living in your home, it is a liability, not an asset, until you turn it into a way to make money. And if you have the mentality like that, like this is a stepping stone, we need to treat it like an investment. Right now, it's a liability. We're gonna be putting money into to eventually to gain on it. That's how you could start to win. It's been these kind of game.
Mike Swenson
Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, doing due diligence, and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to handpick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off-market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio, or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedom throughrealestate.com and click on invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. That's freedomthrurealestate.com and click on invest. Yeah, that's a great, I mean, great process and something that, you know, yeah, we we bought right uh as the market was crashing here in uh 2006-2007. And I was like, shoot, we're gonna be underwater on this townhouse for the next 10 years, or we can turn it into a rental property. We bought a short sale, fixed up that short sale, and then took the proceeds from that and bought another property and just started to build. And yeah, you're right, it takes time. And then we used a home equity line of credit to launch a business that we ran on the side that ended up not working out. However, it showed how the asset of your home and that equity that's gained can really give you some more, I guess, ammunition to take some risks in life. And uh and now I do it full time, so so I can take more risks now. But but yeah, it does show that you know, those few steps early on. People ask me, you know, advice for getting started in real estate. And I tell people like, if you're interested in buying a home, renting it out, right? Like if you're right out of college or young, whatever that might be, or buy a multi-family that you can live in one unit, like those are the easy ways. Now it does not a fit for everybody, and it's not gonna work for everybody's style or their life and what they're doing, but those are some of those easy things that can really give you a head start later on down.
David Cinelli
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it's and the funny thing is, like you said, it's like it's it's not a level of like we've seen people with no education system, like it's it's simple. Like, but I always say, like, if you're gonna be it's simple math, you gotta be able to run some simple numbers. What I don't like was what happened here is uh we had uh pre-construction. You guys have pre-construction, I'm assuming, as well, right? Buying the properties off of plans, and the market was going so hot for so long that people were paying ridiculous prices, like$1,700,$1,800 a square foot for properties downtown core, like there were studio apartments, it was ridiculous. Um, because the properties kept going up in value, right? You're buying these things, you know, four to six years, seven years out. And if the the value continues to increase, you're okay, or lease the money to go to close on the property. The value is, if not on par or above of what you purchased. And that was the idea. Um, but we had a market crash, which kind of currently having like a market, like a condo market. I would say not a crash, but it's it's pretty like it's pretty hard to sell condos right now. There's a lot of inventory. So when though now we're noticing those people that paid that$1,700 square foot, when they're going to close on the bank's looking at it or they're giving a market valuation, like, I know you paid X amount of dollars, like$900,000 for this property, but our valuation is only at$650,000. So either you come up with a difference of the$250,000, or you're gonna lose the property and you're gonna get sued. And that's happening a lot, right? That's how people are there's people in our market right now that are that were on the news. This one guy took out a$300,000 mortgage, like a basic line of credit, so that he didn't get sued. He so he sold the property for$300,000 less than he had paid, just so he didn't go into bankruptcy. So he's literally got a$300,000 mortgage, he's paying interest on it and has nothing to show for it. He's he's bought nothing with it. And that's a cautionary tale, right? That can happen, right? And it's so there's that's what I'm saying, it's not a sense of not having risk. But if you know anything here in Toronto market, it's like as long as you hold on to a property for like a long period of time, extended period of time, we're talking 10 years, 15 years, it will grow. So even some right now, we're having our market is like last year, we had the slowest market we've had ever, pretty much per capita, like the slowest market on number with intrinsic number for like 25 years. But if you look at per capita, it's the slowest market since the inception of the MLS system here, which basically means it's the last 30, 40 years the slowest market we've had. But there aren't people still selling their property for say like a million, million and a half dollars that paid$70,000 for this property, right? So they're still like saying, I don't care, like sure, we're down a little bit, but I'm still making bank on it. There are those still people, those like well, the boomers, the baby boomers, or they're they're seeing that, right? Uh it's it's the people that were maybe the highest of the market, which is 2021, and the height of our market was February 2022, where our average sale price in Toronto was 1.33 million dollars. Well, fast forward to last month, the average price dropped to a million and nine. So that's you know,$320,$24,000 less on average, it's a big job, right? It's a big job. So we're we're seeing people like that that are having those problems. So our advice always to them is like two things, twofold. It's like one, if you don't have to sell, if you this is your only problem, you don't have to sell, don't hold on to it. You know, like if the bank is not foreclosing on you, if you're not worried about mortgage claims, you don't have to sell, and you can hold on to it or you weather the storm, the market will rebound. We just don't know when. So it's when. So it's hold on to the assets so you don't get paid from. The second thing that I always say to people is like, well, now's a great opportunity to upsize, right? So that property you would have paid, for example, for$1.3 million two years, and now it's down to one million. Well, sure, you might be losing on the sale of your home, like losing on the sale because you might like, but you're gaining much more because now you're upsizing at a much lower price, and it'll be much faster to pay off that one million dollar mortgage as it would be a$1.3 million mortgage. And the interest rates right now have dropped to the lowest they've been since the pandemic. So there's a lot of upsides if you're looking to upsize. So unless you need to sell, don't sell. You know, that's that's our advice. You know, we're we're here to help people and to guide people. Now, unfortunately, there are I have a number of clients that they're you know, family members that are parents have passed away, and they said, you know, we need to sell. We're we don't want to carry this property, we don't want to rent it out. Okay, that's also a situation like you can sell it, and you know, you have it is what it is, and that's happening a lot too. Like, so I have like three or four of those sales right now.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I think it takes time to gain wealth in real estate, and you can buy real estate and wait. And you know, same for us, you know, when we bought when the market tanked, uh, yeah, we ended up holding that property for 15 years, but we sold it, we made money on it, and had a good story to tell at the end of the day when it could have been, you know, foreclosure or something like that. It's why we need great agents that that uh can help people and walk through those steps. Well, David, thank you so much. I know there's so much more we we can cover for people that want to reach out to you, learn more about you, get help from you. How can they do so?
David Cinelli
Well, the probably easiest way is go through my Instagram. Uh because even on my Instagram, I have a I have a what's called a link tree to which link links me to all my YouTube and everything else. So my Instagram is my name, it's David V Chinelli, C-I-N-E-L-L-I underscore realtor. And you should be able, that's my handle. So David V as in Victor. Oh, my middle name is Vincent, but I'll say I was saying Victor. I don't know why. Uh and then Chinelli underscore realtor. And then yeah, it's that'll leave you there. And you can take a look at my Instagram. It's and yeah, there's a lot of educational advice I do there too. Uh, I also like to showcase obviously my family and things we're doing. Like, we want to just show some of the things we do, but right now it's busy time, so unfortunately there is a lot of houses we're posting, but I do like to like to spice up and add some of like my activities in there as well. So you could learn learn a little bit more about me, not just I always tell people when they're doing Instagram and we're doing some sort of social media. You don't want to just put house up there. People get bored of that, they want to know who you are and your personality. Uh, right now our Blue Jays are doing very well, so we're excited about the Jays this year. And my wife and I went to the opening game, and we're gonna be watching it for fine in Milwaukee in a couple weeks from my birthday and gonna watch the Jays there. We got some more games lined up. Or don't we don't talk about the Leafs and I don't talk too much about my Green Bay Packers right now either. So but yeah, like follow me there and DM. I actually do it's it's either me or my assistant. My assistant doesn't answer my DMs, I answer my DMs, and I do answer everybody. So it's it might take me some most of the time I answer fairly quickly. But if you don't see me answer right away, that's probably because uh I haven't been on or I'll put my phone's off. So but yeah, I'd love to hear from you.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. If you're listening, certainly check out his uh his Instagram. And uh, David, thank you so much for the time and the investment and uh all the wisdom that you've given us.
David Cinelli
Appreciate that. Thank you so much.
