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Joe Sammut, Mortgage Agent at Mortgage Architects talks about the importance of maintaining a good credit score. How important is the credit report? What are some of the things you could be doing in your 20’s to make sure you have a good credit rating? Why is it important to make the minimum payments, if you cannot afford to pay the full amount on your credit card? What is a credit score out of? Why is it important to pay of your credit card balance sooner than waiting for the statement? Transcript Davelle: Here we go. Hi, Joe. Thanks for joining the show today. Joe Sammut is a … Is it mortgage broker or agent? I always forget. Joe Sammut: I am a mortgage agent with Mortgage Architects. Davelle: Okay. Joe Sammut is a mortgage agent with Mortgage Architects. He is going to be joining us today to talk about the stimulating topic of credit reports. Thanks, Joe, for joining us. Joe Sammut: You’re very welcome. Thank you. Thanks [inaudible 00:00:24]. Davelle: One of the reasons I decided to talk about credit reports is a couple of weeks ago we were doing one of our first time buyer seminars and it was just a topic that just came up. I’m noticing it’s a topic that comes up continually with people who are looking to make a big purchase, like buying a house or a condo, because they don’t understand the importance of having a good credit report, what goes into it, and how they go and make sure that they have a good credit report. Joe, do you want to tell us a little bit more about how important the credit reports really are? Joe Sammut: Certainly. What I will tell you, or what I would like to start with, is credit is unfortunately not one of the things that any of us have ever been taught in school. Even our school curriculums today are not at all discussing credit perhaps the way they should. Perhaps educating young people, most importantly young people, on how maintaining a good credit score and a good Beacon score is going to help them throughout their adult years simply because without a good credit score it’s going to be virtually impossible to get financing going forward if they’re not conscious of exactly what their credit looks like. What we find is that unfortunately by the time we get to … By the time an individual gets to us when they’re in their late 20s, early 30s, a lot of the damage has been done already and then we need to spend a number of years with that client or with that prospect to help them repair their credit and give them some guidance as to what perhaps they should’ve done when they were in their late teens, early 20s. Credit is something that carries through life with you. It’s your signature. It is your credit worthiness. It’s your ability to obtain credit. It’s what lenders look at to decide whether or not they’re going to give you that car loan, that student loan, your first mortgage. Again, credit is a very, very important part of peoples’ lives. Unfortunately, as I said, it’s not taught young enough on how to maintain good credit and how much in fact credit costs you if you don’t maintain it properly. Davelle: Sure. If you’re in your 20s what are some of the things that you could be doing to make sure that you have a good credit rating? Joe Sammut: One of the things that I encourage young people to do is to, first of all, get a credit card of any sort. A $500 Visa, a $500 MasterCard. Get something in their name that they then can utilize on a monthly basis and pay it off the minute they use it. Now, by doing this you’re definitely not going to be the bank’s best friend because they’re not making any interest off of you because you spend the money on their credit. You’re then in turn paying it back so that way you have a zero balance, so therefore they can’t accrue any interest to your bill. As I said, you’re not the most popular of individuals amongst the banks because they’re not making money off of you, but it doesn’t matter. They will make money off you in the future and they realize that that’s helping you to maintain or to establish some good credit. Get a small credit card, utilize it, use it, buy something, pay it off, use it again, pay it off. Pay it off as soon as you spend it. Don’t necessarily wait until you get the bill at the end of the month to then pay the bill. You’re best off to pay the bill or pay it online the day after you spend the money, so then that way you’re much more conscious of not spending the money unless you had it available to you to pay the bill off. Davelle: Got it. What about what’s some advice that someone in their 30s should know about their credit? Joe Sammut: Same type of thing, but one of the biggest misconceptions is if I have a small balance on my credit card and I don’t make the payment this month that’s okay. I’ll just make double payments next month. Doesn’t work that way. If you cannot afford to pay the credit card off in its entirety at least try to make the minimum payment at all times on time or before the due date always. Simply because if you don’t your credit bureau gets flagged with a delinquency on that credit card or on that loan or what have you. That is what impacts your Beacon score most negatively, if you have delinquent payments. Davelle: Got it. Joe Sammut: At all times try to make at least the minimum payment until such time that you can afford to make more
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Senior VP Market Research & Analytics at Fortress Real Developments which helps to finance various condo developers. Is there too much supply of condos in the market? Is there an impending crash coming? What are the trends in the sizes of condos? Will families be expanding into condo? What’s happening with foreign investors? Transcript Davelle M.: On today’s episode, we have Ben Myers, Senior Vice President of Market Research Analytics at Fortress Real Developments. Welcome, Ben. Ben Myers: Thanks for having me. Davelle M.: Awesome. Thanks. So tell us a little bit more. What do you do at Fortress and how does it relate to real estate? Ben Myers: Sure. Fortress Real Developments is a real estate development company. We partner with other builder developers on most of our development projects, a lot of them. Our major responsibility is sourcing equity, sourcing debt financing and helping development along on the financial side as well as to the construction side of things. So what I do is, I underwrite or do the due diligence on the deals that are presented to us, either from a [inaudible 00:01:22] developer or a broker. I look at them from a revenue perspective, so I look at what the unit can sell for. Is it the right market that we want to be in? Is it the right neighborhood? Is it the right built form? Is it the right product type? Is it the right unit size? Is it the right mix of units? The right amenities, the right features and finishes and that’s kinda where my level of expertise comes in. And then on top of that I kinda produce reports for our stakeholders, either general public, folks that raise capital on our behalf, or our development partners on macro level trends that are happening at a national level and that are happening at a municipal level and are happening on a neighborhood level. So that’s kinda my main focus at Fortress. Davelle M.: Perfect. That’s great. That’s very broad. One of the things that you touched on in terms of: you’re looking, you’re researching trends. So in terms of trends and sizes of condos, what are your thoughts about people saying that people are going to be starting to raise their families in condos? Do you see that as a valid trend in your business? What are you seeing? Ben Myers: Yeah, I know, it’s interesting. I did a survey of realtors recently and for my next market manuscript with Fort, which is kind of a robust report that I put out to the market on trends. So when I went and asked realtors what they thought, it was interesting that a lot of them thought that yes, for the next five to 10 years that’s gonna be a big trend and even a few of them indicate that they’ve already sold a number of condominiums to families. I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen and I think it’s gonna be obviously a slow process but it’s a necessity to live in the Greater Toronto Area for us to expand vertically. There is, obviously there is a really tight supply in the Greater Toronto Area, especially in the core where essentially built out of any what we call green-filled lands and in the city of Toronto, Mississauga, Scarborough, North York. There’s very little land available for low-rise housing unless you’re demolishing a strip mall or something that’s already existing. There’s very little land to just do massive single-family detached communities. You know, if people want that they’re being forced to drive farther out or pay very, very high fees. So if people want to stay in the city, they’re looking at alternatives to spend more time with their family and spend less time in their car. So they’re looking at buying condominiums to kind of service their needs. So it’ll be interesting to see how that trend starts to evolve. Davelle M.: Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. And what would you say about the condo supply in Toronto right now? Do you think it’s adequate? Do you think it’s inadequate? There’s always lots of talk about: oh, we’re facing a condo bubble, they’re building too many units. What do you say to people like that, Ben? Ben Myers: Yeah, I know, it’s interesting. For the longest time we were delivering in and around 10 to 15 thousand new condominiums a year in Toronto and that had served the market fairly well. We had a major sales boom in 2011, which resulted in: somewhere in the neighborhood of about 25,000 new condominium sales. So you give those projects a year in pre-construction and then two to three years under construction. We saw a major increase in the second half of 2014 into 2015, just a lot of projects coming to completion. So I think for a 12 month stretch there I think we had about 26, 27 thousand completions bordering on 30,000 completions in like a 26, 28 month period. So just a lot of supply came from online and an amazing thing that happened is, they all got sucked up and everyone expected there to be at least some flatness in the market but if anything it started to pick up. So, very interesting. It totally wasn’t expected with that major level of increased supply that we would continue to see prices gain, and not only gain, but gain more than they had in the past. I think people want to be in Toronto and I think young people aspire to come to the big city from London, to Guelph, to Kitchener, to Brantford, to Windsor. You know, obviously a lot of people are gonna stay in Kingston, or in Ottawa, or somewhere further west, but I think a lot of people desire to come to Toronto and if we can keep producing high volumes of condominiums and keep the prices relatively in check, where a lot of people 300,000 seems
Matthew Slutsky co-founder of real estate new site & resource BuzzBuzzHome shares with us their 2017 plans to allow buyers to purchase pre-construction condos online with their credit cards. BuzzBuzzHome covers real estate and developments across many cities including Toronto, New York, Miami. Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and more. Transcript Davelle: On today’s episode we have Matthew Slutsky, co-founder and president of BuzzBuzzHome Corp. Welcome to the show Matthew, can you tell our listeners a little bit about BuzzBuzzHome? Matthew Slutsky: Yeah, for sure, thanks for having me on the show. BuzzBuzzHome is North America’s largest on-line listing of all new residential developments. Basically, we’re like MLS but only for new construction so new condos, new town homes, new sub-divisions and essentially that’s what we do where BuzzBuzzHome is a listing of everything new in the marketplace. Davelle: Cool, but you obviously have a cool news aspect of it as well too because that’s certainly that’s one of the reasons why I go to your site quite regularly is to read the interesting articles you’ve got about real estate. Matthew Slutsky: Yep, so we’ve got a great new site it’s at news.buzzbuzzhome.com, we have a team of about eight reporters on it and their goal is to report not just on new construction but on real estate, on tech, what’s going on in the real estate world, and really to be a kind of a [all out 00:01:34] leader and a news provider of real estate and what’s happening, it’s a great resource, people love it. Davelle: Cool and I mean one of the things I’ve noticed is you guys have certainly been expanding into a number of different cities. Which cities are you in now? Matthew Slutsky: So, we started out in downtown Toronto, and my background’s land development and we kind of got our toes wet in downtown Toronto, that was about six years ago, we expanded across Ontario, we started getting calls from builders in Vancouver saying that what we’re doing is really lacking in the Vancouver marketplace so we opened up an office there and sort of take over the Vancouver market. Then we started filling in between Ontario and Vancouver and started going all the way down to both oceans and about three years ago we started expanding into the US, so we opened up an office in New York and we now are across all of Canada, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, Florida, Texas, I think we’re in about 10 major US regions. Davelle: Geez, that’s amazing, it sounds like you’re about to take over the world, what’s next? Matthew Slutsky: That’s our plan, world domination is our plan, you know the reality is that new construction has been kind of a forgotten aspect on-line worldwide. There are a few players in … Some in Russia, some in Australia but generally speaking that there really is no great … India actually has some really good ones as well, but there is no dominant global player listing all new residential construction. Typically on the real estate side companies that try and enter the market go after where the commission is, so they go after the resale side first and from resale they might start looking into rental but very rarely do they actually enter on the new construction side. So it’s a niche that we found and have started to grow and ultimately we would like to be across the world, right now we’re pushing through the United States and we’re starting to launch a bunch of really cool new projects as well. Davelle: Awesome, that sounds great. Now how did you get the idea to start BuzzBuzzHome? Matthew Slutsky: I was in land development, my background is real estate and development, I did my undergraduate in urban studies at UofT, I did masters of science in University of Edinburgh both with a land development twist to them so obviously I wanted to be a builder. I worked for a company called Atria and worked my way up there then moved over to Diamante and worked my way up to VP of development at Diamante which is a luxury condo builder in the city and I just noticed this huge gap. I noticed, you know, we were spending a fortune on print ads, signage, A-frames, yet we had a pretty awful website and the more I looked around most builders had an awful website yet I was starting to see the market change in that purchasers were starting their search on-line. Not only were they starting their search on-line but they really felt entitled to information and at the time most builders were reluctant to release any information. The kind of typical sales strategy was give them as little information as possible and try and lure them into the sales center. Once they’re in the sales center, still don’t give them any information and listen to what their needs are and have the sales agent show them kind of one or two best plans that fit their needs. We were starting to see that the purchasers weren’t interested in that, they wanted to go on-line and they wanted to get all the information possible on-line. So, I left Diamante and started what’s become BuzzBuzzHome, I started with my partner Cliff Peskin, he was running a company called Nutrition in Motion, which he ended up selling to a US company. He had a great kind of … Built a great technical background or he led the team that built a great technical background in that company, so we partnered up and launched what’s become BuzzBuzzHome. Davelle: Cool, that sounds awesome. Where will you take your brand next, what’s next for BuzzBuzzHome? Matthew Slutsky: So we’re working on … We’ve got quite a few projects on the go right now, our most interesting is what we call BuyNow and essentially BuzzBuzzHome currently in it’s current state is a discovery site
It’s a rarely available super pet-friendly large (over 600 sq ft) one bedroom condo with a locker & parking. The open-concept kitchen with a breakfast bar is great for entertaining and the balcony is the perfect location for your morning coffee and reading the paper (if you still do that) and it’s listed for $438,000. To see MORE pictures and get ALL of the details about this condo visit www.601-55delisle.com Looking for a place to call home. Looking to put down roots or downsize in the area this could be your new home. And with ST CLAIR SUBWAY STATION, STARBUCKS, SHOPPERS, LONGO’S & LCBO a stones throw away, what more could you need? Well maybe, you could use easy access to the BELTLINE TRAIL & MOORE PARK RAVINE to get your nature fix in which is only a block away.
This 2 bedroom bungalow with a basement apartment and front pad parking & sits on a generous 25 X 100 ft lot. The large kitchen is great for family cooking, dining and watching over the little ones as they play in the living room. It also has 1 parking spot, right out front. The basement already has a separate entrance, bathroom and partial kitchen which could help you generate additional income. Move into this detached home or build your dream home on his generous 25 X 100 ft lot. With this location close to Taylor Creek, Danforth, Woodbine & Main Go Station, what more could you ask for? Walkscore 85* Transit Score 86* To see MORE pictures and get ALL of the details about this house visit www.18crewe.com
Carolyn Ireland has been a reporter with the Globe and Mail for 20 years. She writes the Next Move column in the Globe and Mail’s real estate section and covers market movements and trends in the marketplace.
