Ottawa’s Rental Reality: Scams, Shortages & the Truth About Renting

Episode 2 • 16th December 2025 • Real Estate Reality • BIGSTUFF Productions Inc.

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📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 Today we have an amazing guest. Her name is Chantal Lafontaine.. She works with exp Realty in Ottawa with us. We've known each other for years. We've been working together. We've done some deals. Have we done deals? I don't even know if we've done any deals together. We've just helped each other a lot.

think, we? I don't know. Luca, have you done a deal with Chantel?

I've, yeah, we've done a

together for sure.

So everybody listening, we've done deals with Chantel. We know her, we know how she is. She's great. And today we're gonna talk about the rental market primarily. Chantel is an absolute expert in rentals, which is which is hot right now, which is always hot actually.

Let's just get right into it. We have sections, we've got a few segments we're gonna go through. And we hope that this is of value to you. And if it is, just please share, share this to someone you think also find value. In our podcast, real Estate Reality. Here we go. Rising rents, low vacancy, and the affordability gap.

Is that still a relevant sentence? I, is there still low vacancy or are there more vacancies now? What's driving this?

It depends what pocket we're talking about here. Like when it comes to rentals, whenever people ask me like, what's going on with the rental market? A lot of it parallels what's happening with buyers and sellers. It's the same thing across the board. There's some areas where there's way too much inventory, prices are going down, some spots where rentals are flying off the shelf.

So it really depends on what pocket we're talking about here. I think what's driving like the vacancies more than anything is the new construction market. How we had that massive influx of new construction in Bar Haven, Canata Orleans. So now there's way too much inventory that hit the market all at once.

So there's a ton of vacancies there, dropping prices, but then when you look at inventory in the core, there's barely anything available just because, now with everybody getting called back to work, everybody's kind driving themselves back into the core of the city. I don't know, it just depends on like where you're looking.

Yeah, and I think one of the other things that's having an impact on the. I would say higher vacancy rates is the lack of international students the curb to immigration. I think there was a lot of building and a lot of money put into, making sure that, there would be enough space.

And then they've pulled back on immigration. So think there's a lot left over, just due to reduced demand and the overall economy just heading downwards.

When the interest rates shifted and then all the builders decided instead of building properties for sale, they built all these purpose built rentals. So there's not a single condo for sale, new construction. I think there's one project realistically in all of Ottawa, but then everything else even coming up, it's all for rent.

you've got all these buildings going up and they're building like these tiny little condos. And at big budgets. So there's not a whole lot of affordability there. So that could also be what's driving like the vacancy numbers more than anything. But I mean they're finding people from some places

Yeah, I'm surprised at the amount that they're getting rented out for some of these, because some of these, like high-end rentals and the rental payments are like literally more than,

mortgage,

payments on a six, seven, $800,000 property. It's surprising. I imagine they probably have very high turnover. and people may be coming for a year if they're relocating and then they just end up buying because at 2,600 plus for a two bedroom downtown, you can do a lot with that.

A lot of it is embassies. They like those kinds of buildings. 'cause it means that the owner's not selling a unit in a year or two. So they can put their embassy workers in there for three years comfortably, no problem. So a lot of it is embassy. So there is definitely some turnover happening. People come in for a year or two contract in the city.

A lot of those very there are still international students, but they're all hovering around the Sandy Hill market

area. And so anything within that vicinity tends to get rented out super fast. When parents are looking at the cost of putting their kid in dorms for a year or an actual rental,

Yeah, it's

It's cheaper.

It's much cheaper.

you have, and you get more space and you're not right on campus. So

Yeah, exactly.

definitely makes a lot of sense.

So how do you think that interest rates and investor pullback are shaping the supply of rentals right now?

The cost of building, cost of financing has gone up significantly. So that's obviously curbed. A lot of investors, they've taken their projects to. Other provinces completely. But honestly, the biggest, I think the biggest issue, what's like why investors are not wanting to invest in Ottawa anymore.

It's mostly based on what's going on with RTA. If you have a bad tenant, it takes you eight months to a year to get them out.

Sorry, and for our listeners that

RTA is,

Residentials, tenancies Act

and, yeah. Sorry, I gotta watch the jargon a little bit. Or LTB, the Landlord Tenant Board, like if you try to get a hearing with LTB, that's what takes over eight months to a year.

And the laws are very 📍 much in favor for the tenants. So a lot of landlords are just saying, you know what? Screw it. I don't even wanna be in this space anymore. They're selling off their properties and they're putting their money into other projects as opposed to rentals. And I think that's honestly what's driving a lot of mostly like the mom and pop investors, like the smaller investors, right?

Like the big guys. The interest rates don't really affect them that much.

you, are you finding in the clients that you're dealing with? We've had some in the past that were, maybe it was they were solo or there was a couple of them, but they lost, they've lost a fortune when they bought new, a few years

And now their leverage and their house is worth, their investments worth like a hundred thousand, 150,000 less. They're not paying the mortgage. Are you finding that the clients you're working with, the landlords, they, of a similar background or are you working with any that are like groups, like corporations.

No, mostly what you, like the first thing you said, like mostly landlords that ended up purchasing at the height of the market, purchased all these new construction properties and thought when I close on them, I'm gonna sell them and make a ton of money where capital gains is not even gonna be an issue.

Then all of a sudden they go to get the keys on their properties. The market has shifted completely, and now their homes are worth like a hundred K less than what they paid for it. So then they're calling me saying I have no choice but to rent it out.

But then when we start looking at what they can rent it out for versus what the mortgage payments is, they're all being rented out at a loss.

There's this huge preconceived notion that like these landlords are these greedy, money hungry guys that are just filling their pockets. But it's the complete opposite of that, right?

And so are you finding that a lot of the landlords that you're dealing with are, they've, they have these properties now. Are you working with anyone that's just recently bought a property as an income?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a couple of them that are like new investors that have popped in

do, would they have massive down payments to be able to leverage that?

massive down payments and like massive imaginations.

Okay.

I hope I don't get too lost in the weeds with this one. So a lot of the newer investors that are coming into the game, it's because they know that you're supposed to invest in a down market. Like you're supposed to jump in when everybody's jumping out.

Although when they, the prices that the properties are being sold for, what you can rent it out at, it's really not matching up. But these guys are telling themselves, look, at the end of the day, I could either put an extra 500 bucks away in like RSPs or investment savings or whatever, or put it back into real estate.

Even if I am gonna be at a $500 a month loss and I'm gonna hold onto it for 10 years. Eventually what goes down must come up. The markets will shift, will change, tenants will change over, and then eventually they can recover it. So a lot of these guys who are investing now, they're more pocket focused with I wanna be in like Golden Triangle, Leb.

Westboro, like the hot areas. Not so much like Orleans, Canada, bar Haven, like that's still. A very struggling like investor market in a sense. So there's definitely a lot of like new investors that are coming to the table. And then there's a lot of people that are coming from Montreal, like to Ottawa, who are now saying I've killed it in the Montreal market.

I wanna make my way into the Ontario market. And so they're coming

here. There's definitely, it still is like very much a big Black Friday sale for investment properties when it comes to Ottawa. Like we see the stats and how those properties tend to sit, but some of them are turning over.

wonder if like I because I know Montreal is still a pretty hot

'Cause there's not as much inventory. I was talking to an agent out there the other day and it's interesting just thinking about that, how investors may be coming from Montreal but not coming from Toronto anymore because Toronto, they're just, they've all 📍 lost,

Yeah. I would think because I haven't really dealt with anybody I know agents working with Toronto sellers here who bought at the peak and now they're getting out because they've lost in Toronto and they're trying to get whatever they can here before they lose more.

They've just lost their shirts.

Yeah. So Montreal, so you're finding, you're dealing with some clients from Montreal.

yeah, a lot more investors that are trying to pull their money into Ontario, 'cause they see that like these properties are sitting stagnant, they could potentially get it for a better deal. And so they're starting to notice that this is the window of opportunity to get into Ontario. 'cause if you look at Ontario versus Quebec, it's obviously very different numbers for purchasing and renting.

And so a lot of them are seeing this as their time to finally come to this market.

The psychology of renting versus buying, are you, I mean, I know I've said it so many times where, you talk to a client and you say listen, if you don't get so focused on buying the big property right away, unless that's what you're, you and your family think that you need, if you can buy something smaller, rent where you live, where you are now, buy something smaller.

Are you finding just one way of looking at it from an investment standpoint, but are you finding that there's a lot of buyers now who you're dealing with are focusing on renting and. Staying away from home ownership just because of the changes in the market.

No, I think people are staying away from home ownership because they can't afford it. Like point blank. If you were given a hundred thousand dollars a great interest rate, which there are some out there, and you were given a good budget to work with, you would buy a house. Anybody would, right? So at the end of the day when someone says that they're, oh, I'm just gonna rent.

I don't believe in home ownership. I don't believe you. When you say that, what you're saying is that you just, you can't afford it. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Like having to save up for first and last month's. Rent alone is enough, let alone a down payment, unless it's gifted to you or unfortunately you get it through some sort of inheritance or whatever.

It's really hard to get into the market anyways. So renters are renting out of necessity. They don't really have much of a choice, or they're downsizing. They did, they did the big house. They're done with the maintenance. They wanna be snowbirds, they wanna relax, they wanna retire, they wanna put their money into other investments.

And so they're pooling out now and they're deciding to go into the rental market. I, and then there is the bracket of buyers who, because of what the media says and because of what they see online, and oh, home ownership is not achievable. But then when they start looking at the numbers, 📍 realizing that, oh wait a minute, rent is meant to cover someone's mortgage and more.

So your mortgage can be less. So I do have some clients who have a substantial amount of money saved, but they're like I heard it's a bad time to buy. And then when they go look into it with a mortgage broker, they go, oh, actually,

It's have you checked checked what your capacity

yeah. Get off of Instagram or TikTok, go talk to a mortgage broker.

It's like Rob Butler, the with the, no, Ron Butler. I don't know why I'm getting that name wrong. The angry mortgage agent, he always says, he's I don't know what the fuck is going on with these TikTok, Instagram mortgage brokers. just stop listening to these guys.

Please. I've been doing this for 40 years or whatever. Anyways, he's hilarious. But it's true. It's like you just, you need to know.

That's just it. And that's where we get all our information, right? Like we. Are constantly on social media anyways, but it's just the information that's being pumped out there is not necessarily accurate, but there's no rent shaming. If people wanna rent for the rest of their lives 'cause they just find it easier, then so be it.

Then some people will take their money and put it into other kind of investments and there's nothing wrong with that either.

That's, I think there's a big shift in that happening with certain, the younger demographic

Yeah.

because there are more, there's way more places you can put your money than there used to be, and it's way more accessible,

exactly.

different types of investment.

only have a couple of options, right? If you wanna grow your wealth, looking at real estate and the stock market, and I guess now you also have crypto, but very similar to the stock market, right? But if you want an actual real asset, you're probably gonna start somewhere in home ownership.

And then maybe you can start acquiring businesses or commercial properties and stuff like that. But I think it really starts with, getting type of investment property and then working up from there. And I would argue the opposite point of, people renting all their lives I think is extremely stupid. To put it bluntly,

if you're,

don't be a hater.

you know, you're gonna be paying rent for 25 years,

you could be paying a mortgage for 25 years and then have a home that's paid off that's doubled or tripled in value and actually have that to retire on. And if you're able to acquire four or five properties. Over the course of say like a 10 year span by, refinancing, pulling equity out you're sitting, you come retirement, even if you haven't saved another single dollar and have zero pension, now you have five properties that are paid off that you can now live off of the rent or slowly start to sell them off and live off of the live off of the completely paid off appreciation that was done 📍 for by somebody else.

And I think a lot of us start off by renting. I think it's very difficult to get ahead now if you don't have a gift or some type of down payment or

Yeah that's the thing.

as a, as like a young adult or even like a 15 or 16-year-old that, started working and just started saving money and then saved money throughout university and then are able to buy something and then bypass that.

Because if you're paying $2,500 a month in rent, you got food, groceries. Insurance, transportation, everything else. You're probably eating three grand to 3,500 so then you look at most income after tax. It's almost impossible, like how long is it gonna take you to save a hundred thousand dollars if you're only able to put away

bucks that's, and that's the biggest problem right now, right? Is like, where does the down payment come from? Most people can't save it. And a lot of the families that gifted during the pandemic time, now everyone's over leveraged. The parents included. So it's where does the price, where does the balance in the income match what used to be the greatest investment?

I'm not saying it's still not a good investment. Like I believe everything that you're talking about, obviously it's just not as easy to get into it. No, and like when I had started in rentals like 11 years ago, and if I. Was representing a landlord, we would get an application, we would look at the applicant's income. We wanted the rent to be 25% of their monthly income. That was like the safe zone in saying okay, this person can afford the rent.

No problem. Now when we get files, it's between 45 to 65% income to rent ratio, and that's normal. I have some older landlords that are like shouldn't it be at like 25%? And it's, no, it's impossible. Now, like there are people that of their monthly rent six or of their monthly earnings, 65% is going to rent.

That's insane.

It's insane. But then also landlords have no choice. They've got big mortgages. It has to be covered. There's property taxes. It's market. Val. I mean it's market value also, but. At the end of the day, like most of the landlords that I'm working with, when we look at what their mortgage payments are and what the market rent is, and they'll say don't you think we can get more?

Because now I'm like, negative a hundred bucks, or like just making over a hundred dollars a month. And it's unfortunately, no, that's the market rent. And so landlords can't lower the prices any further because of where interest rates have brought their mortgage payments. So tenants are paying substantial amount for rent, but then landlords are

are still losing.

still losing.

So there's, no win. I think that if anybody wants to buy a property, they would if they could. There's definitely ways to get there, but most of those ways are make more money.

Yeah. Make more money.

Make more money, cut expenses. And I

One of the other things that I think often gets ignored is, building an in-law suite or

Those lines

I think that's gonna become a lot more popular. 📍 It has to be 'cause that's the thing. It's make more money. But with the way that Canada is working right now, there's, there is no extra money.

I think you have to get creative

like duplexes or things that can be converted into duplexes and then offsetting your mortgage at least getting started that way. Like I know some friends that got into the housing game like 10 years ago, right out of university and just basically did a rooming house.

in one room and, it's obviously not sustainable for a lot of people over a larger period of time, especially. If you get into a relationship and wanna start building a family, like you're not really gonna want strangers

your other rooms in your house where you're sharing a space with.

But if you're willing to suffer for a short period of time, there's definitely ways to get into home ownership without, having a ton of money, saved up. If you are willing to deal with some shit,

Or partner up. There's a lot of people that are partnering up, like even couples, we're gonna buy this house. One group's gonna live in it, the other ones are gonna be co-owners. A hilarious scenario, but if it works,

note, You look at how many people got together during COVID into relationships and I don't know, Greg and I have probably done probably like five to 10 deals this year through like separations and stuff. So there's a lot of

yeah. Unfortunately.

Yeah, unfortunately.

But a lot of people, it's one of the only ways for them to get into the market is to combine incomes, combine down payments, and get into something and

Yeah.

They did it for convenience and safety and now they had to get outta

While even for renting, it's very hard to be a single person in this city, province, country, like just to be a single person attempting to live on your own, to pay all your bills, whether you're a buyer or a renter, it's very difficult. Unless you're making a loan $150,000, you don't really have a whole lot of options.

Most landlords are gonna favor couples knowing that there's two streams of income over anything, right?

Of course.

I think it's just a sign of the times, honestly.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see where this goes. What are you seeing day to day in your, in the trenches?

I see lots guys,

Yeah.

you have to be more specific.

I, yeah. Just a basic of what you're seeing in your business right now, like any trends.

Oh my gosh. Trends. It's honestly hard to gauge. 'cause when it, especially when it comes to rentals, it's such a mixed bag out there, right? You have town homes, detach suburbs, downtown condo where, so sometimes when you're selling and buying real estate, you tend to focus on one niche. Whether you're like a country agent, a suburb agent, downtown agent.

But when you're working rentals, you're all over the place. Not so much in the country. But in terms of trends, just again, the suburbs are oversaturated with town homes. There's a ton of inventory there, and they're starting to slowly drop the prices. So if you're more budget conscious and trying to find something at a cheaper rate, town homes are definitely the place to go.

The sweet spot. There's still quite a bit of demand, though. Some of our town homes are getting like 40 plus showings, but they're being very selective because there is a ton of inventory out there. And then when it comes to downtown, you're, staying on the market maybe a week or two if that, especially if you're under 2,500 bucks, that tends to fly off the shelf.

under 2,500 for a two bedroom is pretty sweet right now.

Yeah. That's like the good spot to be. I have a lot of investors who will come to me and say, oh, I'm thinking of buying a luxury property. And the luxury market out here struggles immensely. Anything, and that's considered anything above $3,000 a month would be considered luxury

For a condo.

for a condo, for a house, for anything.

Honestly, the $3,000 month bracket. Struggles because everybody's trying to stay under that. So if you try to have anything rented out above that, it's gonna sit on the market 60 plus days until you find somebody relocation big budgets.

I for Ottawa, right? 'cause we don't get sure you get some international visitors and stuff like

Yeah.

Most of the people are going to Toronto and Montreal for a lot of the bigger company headquarters. And you are in Ottawa, all the tech stuff is out in Canada,

There's a couple of pockets out there that usually do pretty well because of tech. But yeah, I agree. I think anything over three grand in the downtown core takes a while to move.

If you have a budget of: 3000

you're probably buying something. And then in terms of trends, again, there's just a ton of purpose built apartment style buildings going up in the city. So for, I think a trend that they're trying to push is more densification inside the city and having more people go to condo living.

Although Ottawa is not really a condo type of city, we're not really an apartment city. If you look at most of our apartments, they're built very much for the young, single professional,

for the families at all whatsoever, but they're trying to get more families to live in that style of property.

Yeah,

what they're trying to do, but it's just you can start off there Yeah, exactly. Like you said as a single person. But like how many condo buildings have three bedrooms?

Like, almost

that's, and that's the thing. It's like they need to start doing that again. I think they voted in that would be a priority at some point with some of the new builds, like at least trying to put in

Yeah.

floors of three bedrooms.

people also don't wanna

that's the thing in, our city, a lot of people don't

there's no condos that are, like, if you look at Toronto, Toronto has some condos where in the courtyard there's play structures, there's toy room areas, there's stuff that's built for families in mine. Whenever I have clients coming in internationally that are from countries that are used to living in those kinds of condos and apartments, and then we walk through a building, it almost feels inappropriate to have kids with you.

Like you're walking through these beautiful condo buildings that like have a bar in the like entrance and then a yoga studio, and then a spin classroom, like nothing geared towards kid. Or like a super trendy rooftop pool that like if a kid cannon balls in there, people are gonna lose their mind

It's like professionals only

Exactly. So I think the city is trying to trend in the direction of like encouraging families to live in the city, but the builders are not following that trend at all whatsoever. So they're just staying in the suburbs. Although most families would like to stay in the city if they could.

Affordability is more apartment, which it's just not, we haven't caught up yet with that.

,: 2600

Across Canada too.

not really having much of a choice, right?

Like you're just, you need the space, so you're going into the suburbs the space and for the price, right? And there's nothing downtown you have soccer fields, you don't have a lot of large parks downtown. So like it's one thing to be living in a condo and you have access to a lot of green space downtown, but they're just. a lot of spar like sports stuff

facilities, right? 'cause there just isn't the space for it downtown.

Okay.

Chantel, what do you think makes a great landlord in today's market?

A great landlord would have a clean property,

Hey, that's yes. Great answer.

a great landlord from my experience of working with tons and tons of landlords, the ones that really do have pride of ownership in their properties, take really good care of them. And then whenever they're turning over to new tenant, like professional cleaning paint touchups, making sure that the property is delivered in a really nice presentable way to their new tenants, starts the relationship off on a really good note.

And then when that tenant goes to leave, they do everything in their power to make sure that property is returned back into the state that it was given to them. But then I have some landlords who like refuse to do cleaning. They don't wanna do repairs. Yeah. And then at the end of a tenancy, when a tenant leaves a bag of garbage behind her, they're like, oh my God.

What's going on here? And it's yeah, that's what you know. That was the tone you set. Yeah. So honestly, what makes a good landlord is just giving people a clean, safe property to live in and keeping your tenants happy. That would prob, other than dropping the prices significantly so people can save money.

No, but that's,

couple clients that are like

they're like charging significantly below market

just to keep the, yeah. To help

cause they know that the tenant is quality

that's,

and they'll maintain the property properly.

the other component of it is the tax burden, right? So if you're earning too much money on your rental, it's,

Yeah, fair enough.

a negative impact on your taxes.

Yeah, exactly. If you're a landlord that has that luxury, let's say if you purchased a town home like 12 years ago. And your payments are lower. Yeah. A thousand bucks a month and you can afford to discount it in a sense. Yeah. Some people will. But yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Just like clean, safe, good standing, and then hands off.

Like I have a lot of landlords who are like, oh, I'd like to go do an inspection of the property every two months. And it's man, just let people live. Like you don't have to be in there if you don't trust them. Don't be a landlord at all. You have to understand that you're giving a property to someone to be their home.

But then also tenants have to understand it's not your property either, there Ha. It's like a two-way street here. But just letting people live and helping them whenever they need it. If there's repairs needed or whatever. I feel like it's obvious, but not to a lot of people.

That's what would make a good,

perspective, obviously, but that's where it's

at. And what are some common mistakes? How to avoid tenant nightmares?

Oh gosh. Screening, the screening process. The amount of landlords that come to me who didn't use me to help them find a tenant, but come to me after with like their 📍 horror stories of past tenants, it'll always be I really wanted to give that person a chance. And it's the bank doesn't care about giving you a chance on your mortgage, so you can't give people a chance.

And so I get a lot of people who say that letter looked so real, the employment letter. And they explain their credit and Yeah, even though they're convicted felons they seem like they're like on the right direction of, and so people have a big heart, but unfortunately it's a business too.

Like you can have a heart and help people out, but they also have to help you out. And, so the tenant screening process, I think is the number one problem where a lot of landlords miss out. And there's so many tools out there now, right? There's open room that you can check the LY files to see if anybody's had any judgments on them through the RTA or LTB.

So you can check if a tenant's, ever been brought to tribunal. And then there's single key where you can pull up a report on a tenant and essentially scrapes the internet of all of their footprint. So you can see if they've been listed anywhere.

does work, I'm glad you brought that up again. That, and that, that's for, that's a product that either the landlord can pay for the tenant, or you can request that the tenant pay for it for the landlord. For

Yeah, you can do that, but honestly, I find, if I'm requesting it on my end, I think it's about 40 bucks. But I pay for like a bulk

Okay,

pay, okay,

I pay for it. I always found it was cheap when a landlord pays or asks a tenant to pay for like their own screening or whatever. It's if you.

and that's the thing. If they don't have everything and you want something like that, it's, do it. If you're, if you feel like you're ready to invest. In this tenant

property, it's worth the $40 or whatever

do the research,

And we use it as like the final line of defense. So whenever we request documents and we do the verification process, we do it all like organically, our own way, like calling employers, calling landlords references. And then right as we're like, at the point of signing, it's okay, now we can pull this report just to make absolute sure that there's nothing hidden out there.

Whatever. So I don't know exactly how the backend of that system works. I think it's like an AI driven thing where basically like you plug in all of the tenants information and it just scrapes the internet of all of their info, like social media accounts which I don't think we're technically allowed to do, but it does that.

So then if you're trying to do

be a kind of a notice when you start the process

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you would. It notifies the tenant that you're about to like, yeah, pull up the report or whatever, and then it searches their Equifax, TransUnion, and then now open room also has an option for international applicants. So if somebody's coming with no footprint here in Canada yet, it can, in certain countries only can pull up their footprint in other countries also.

But it's the last line of defense, like you still need to make the calls, do the verification process yourself. Basically. You have to assume that everybody's guilty until proven innocent. When you get an application, you have to assume it's fake. You have to assume that it's not authentic, and your job is to make sure that it is.

Yeah.

And that's terrible, but that's how it

unfortunately, right?

and when you get somebody into that contract, into that lease, like they're there, they're in your house,

the end

And they're not coming out.

they're not coming out.

if they don't want to.

Exactly. It's like I said, LTB is very much in favor for the landlords. And and transparency from the beginning just helps make the relationship nice and smooth from the start,

yeah, no I agree with that 100%. What do you this is a good question here because you've just went through this, so I think maybe we could talk about this again. Why rental scams are increasing and how to spot red flags.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

I guess two part this, answer that question in the best way and then run through your story.

'cause I think it was pretty,

Yeah.

it's a I think people want to hear it.

Rental scams, man. Oh my gosh, I don't even know where to begin with this one. 'cause there's so many of them out there.

It is a hot topic here. Here's the thing, right to us, because we're in the market every day. We're working here, we live here. To us, the rental process just makes sense, right?

But when you're coming from another country, even another province, you don't necessarily know what the process is like. Imagine going to rent an apartment in China, would you understand how it works? No.

I wouldn't

we're in the business, so

ex. Exactly. But if you don't know. So a lot of people who are, and we're the nation's capital people are coming from all over the world.

And so oftentimes they're coming from countries that don't have an MLS system. And so they're starting their search on classified sites. 'cause that's where properties are just listed always to Gigi marketplace. So what happens is that scammers, what they'll do is they'll take our photos, our information, they'll post fake ads.

d it was posted somewhere for: 1200

I'm in California and I didn't have time to leave keys with a broker or a, an agent. But you can go look through the window and if you like the place, send me deposit of first and last month's rent, and then I'll FedEx you keys.

Crazy that

I 📍 used to have people like tenants call me and be like, some guy's looking through my window right now.

I also saw your ad posted for: 1200

But then what's happened recently? So last week I got a phone call, some guy named Ray. Calls me and he's hey, I gave you first and last month's rent last week, and I haven't gotten any keys yet. What's going on? And I was like I have no idea what property you're talking about. And he names the address of the property, which is one of my listings.

And I'm like, I'm sorry, man. I have no idea what you're talking about. It must have been a scam, thinking that it was one of those online scams. And then this ray guy says I was actually inside the house. I saw the property, so I start freaking out. 'cause the thing is that as realtors, you only get access to lock boxes if you're also a licensed realtor.

So there's no way that any other person from the streets could get our lockbox codes at all whatsoever. So I was racking my brain with like, how did this person even get into the property with the scammer? And then after a morning of investigating, talking to my partner, turns out, so a scammer, we'll call him Dennis, ended up putting up an ad, a fake ad for the property.

This Ray guy reached out to Dennis, and Dennis tried to get money off of him, but then Ray was said, I'm not paying you a cent until I see the property. So then Dennis being the clever scammer he is, ended up reaching out to me on one of my actual ads and saying, I'm interested in your property. Great. And then I send him a list of pre-qualifying questions.

He answers them all passes with flying colors. I say, when are you available for a showing? I book a showing with Dennis Good to go. Two minutes before the actual showing itself. This Dennis Guy texts my partner who's doing the showing and says, Hey, I'm running super late right now, so I'm gonna send my friend to go see the property while his friend turns out to be little, old Ray, totally unsuspecting, has no idea what he's walking into.

And then we're thinking, oh, okay, so it's just a friend coming to see the property and it happens so fast that we can't react to it.

This does happen too. Like I've had, like a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner,

even like a business colleague, go and see a rental for that person or even,

yeah,

It's not uncommon.

So just for the listeners out there, it's very common that, you're not necessarily showing the property to the person that you had originally spoken with about seeing it.

no, and especially with relocations, sometimes a friend is my brother who's already in Ottawa, or my cousin is gonna come see the house. And it's so normal to be like, hi brother or friend, come on in, take a video, walk through, let me know if you have any questions. And then once this Ray guy saw the house with my partner, he didn't necessarily have our contact info to reach out to us 'cause he thought Dennis was the one in charge of this property.

So then he reaches out to Dennis and says, yeah, Dennis, I'm super interested in renting the house and then sends him money. So now looking back on the whole thing, we have to do a PSA to people out there that even if you are in the property. And you get to see the place that you're viewing, you have to question where the money is going.

And when you're listing a property with a realtor, first and last month's, rent ends up going right into a trust account, and it's being held in trust at a listing office. It doesn't go into the owner's pockets right away. So people need to start questioning like, where's their money going? And also the person that you're actually doing the tour with that has access to the house and has the keys, talk to them directly and make sure that you're, you've been in communication with each other, right?

There was obviously some red flags, but again, like to a person who just doesn't understand our market or doesn't know how it works, that could have been a very normal situation. It'd be like, oh, it's okay. I'm gonna go with his showing partner or whatever.

But in all honesty like a relatively easy mistake to make, right?

speaking to somebody. A lot of people, a lot of agents have teams and stuff, right? So

You're dealing with multiple different people on one transaction from, for example, the same office. And I can see how this guy got you guys mixed up if he'd never spoken to you on the phone, it was just one email exchange, right? He goes in views, the property, likes the property. Now he's physically been inside. It

Showed by, one of our partners

then just ends up sending the money to the wrong person. So it's obviously a very in depth scam that, obviously a couple of, security things, can be added in to avoid it.

But overall pretty. Pretty well thought out.

Oh Yeah.

Very clever.

another level above to get, actually get you in the home

make you believe that they are the landlord and that they have access to this

Do we know what happened to Ray?

Oh, poor Ray man. So the thing too with Ray is that, and this is part of, so I've always told. 📍 Consumers that there's a couple of signs to look out for, right? When it comes to scams, number one, if the property is marketed well below market rent, it's a scam. If they're not gonna show it to you and they ask you for money, it's a scam.

But now I'm having to add to that, that if a landlord's willing to give you a chance on a tricky file, it's likely a scam. 'cause what happened was that this guy had passed issues with tribunal from unpaid rent. His credit was severely bruised. He was just not an ideal candidate for the rental market.

So he's likely been rejected hundreds of places. And this one person was like, yeah, no problem man. I can help you out. The landlord's willing to give you a chance. And he's thinking, yes, I'm getting into a place. So if a landlord's willing to give you a chance or says a line of yeah, I would just really want a good person to take care of the house.

Chances are it's a scam. Nobody wants to give you a chance out there, which really sucks. And I like, I'm sure that could start like a whole debate in itself about giving people chances, which is not, I think, what we want to get into, but if somebody's willing to give you a chance, it's a scam, unfortunately.

That's a great lesson out there. Just make sure, I think number one, to

The money's going. If you're working with a realtor, that money

Going to the realtor or to the landlord directly. It will be going to a brokerage trust account. So I. Once you receive the deposit details, there should be a couple of different options on how that can be paid. And it should not be cash. And it'll be held into a brokerage trust account. So make sure that trust account lines up with whatever brokerage the agent that you are working with or speaking with,

Yeah.

works at Chantelle with regards to the market and, how it can be competitive, what can a renter do to stand out in terms of their application in a competitive market?

What are some the, that guy, the

Of knew what to answer to pass, the first initial

colors and

Yeah

what are some things that, people can do to stand out when they're applying in, maybe for some of the more competitive rentals.

unfortunately, like there's not, it's not like the buying process where we can say, write a letter to the sellers and plead your case. And

yeah. That hardly even works

That hardly even works

anymore, right? Unfortunately, there's really nothing you can do to stand out. But what I will say is I know what landlords are looking for, which is strong income with like stable jobs.

So if you're coming with you work for those ride share companies and things like that, like there's. That's tricky to get your foot in the door. So good stable jobs credit reports with, and nobody needs a perfect credit report. They don't exist. Yeah. People are just looking for transparency.

So even if your credit report is lower, like we all know being self-employed, right? Your credit scores are automatically, at a lower. Yeah, exactly right. So yeah. Strong employment, good credit reports. Number of occupants is a big one.

That's a big one.

It's a big one. And I don't wanna say things that will infringe on like human rights.

It's like that roommate situations are really hard to pass, unless it's like a downtown two bedroom condo makes total sense. But when you've got four dudes that wanna rent a town home together,

Yeah. We

that. It was a bit of a challenge with the landlord. Initially, but we 📍 them in the right way because it was, what, there was three guys, two were brothers, and they all, they were all earning like 70,000 to 110

Yeah.

So they were all they had their references, they had their act together and, and they were clear.

They're like, one of them was going to be moving out within 12 to 24 months with his girlfriend who was also there at the final showing. We all met and everything but it's true. Like our client was like, it was his first time renting a house, out in Ottawa. It was a new build. And he was he's what do you think about this?

These guys altogether, they're just like, they're roommates and everything. I'm like, yeah, but their job they make more than some couples combined. That would be, I want a family. And we're like you could get a family, but then you're also gonna have,

Yeah. Potentially

a mom, dad, two kids running around.

Like young professionals who they're clearly.

have no kids.

I have no kids, like the place is probably gonna be spotless when they're gone.

It's the risk with everything, obviously. Yeah.

but it's

Like it wasn't like three people moving, three guys moving in together,

that

work at the

down the At the restaurant or something like

Yeah. And unfortunately, again, that's a sign of the times. People wanna like buddy up and like lower living expenses and not have to live in a shoebox.

But because landlords, the profit margins are so low, the wear and tear budgets are not there anymore. They can't afford to have groups of people in there. And when you have a group of people versus a family, I understand like children can wear and tear a lot more.

I think we're talking, when we're talking group, we're talking like four plus adults.

Yeah. Like four plus adults, that's usually a tricky one in terms of an application. And then if a property is vacant. Trying to take possession of that as soon as possible, usually makes your application stand out above everybody else's. But then again, we understand that people need to give first and last or 60 days notice before moving out of their current places.

And so that's not always possible for people, but trying to, that's honestly the best thing that somebody can do is to say, I know it's vacant, so we'll take it as quick as possible. That's the best way to jazz or beef up your application. But realistically, there's just not much that people can do. It really does depend also on the temperament of the landlord.

And I guess that covers the, one of the other questions here. What documents and habits show a tenant is serious. It's just having your act together,

preferably, and even better with a realtor.

Yes. Yeah. The thing too is when, because our properties are listed on MLS and we have, so it invites other realtors to bring their tenants forward. Those realtors who are working with tenants will have likely pre-qualified them already. So whenever another realtor comes forward with an application on our properties right away, there's already a,

there's a level of trust

Yeah.

and you know that, you know they're working with somebody. They've vetted them because they don't want to be like, none of us wanna be wasting our time at the end of the day, right? So

you're

Like we all do this, we, we pre-qualify all of our tenants because we wanna make sure the income and the credit and, their employment is there for what they're looking at.

If they're making $2,000 a month and they're looking into $3,000, rental doesn't make any sense, right? They physically can't afford it. But if you have a client that's making six grand a month and you're looking at $2,500 apartments, already checks in the income box, the landlord's going to accept that.

So you're going into it with a lot more confidence. And we can also explain to our clients, like what the requirements are gonna be here and, making a phone call to the other agent and get some additional information going into it. And having representation for rentals just like it is for the buying process, doesn't cost the tenant anything, right?

You're just getting of a professional. to be able to protect you and also protect you from 📍 a bad landlord, i've had some clients that have applied to a place and we had some issues with negotiation even though they're having trouble finding a place, I'm like, eh, like I don't know about this landlord.

If they're being this difficult, through their

the

Oh, a hundred percent.

I'm like, is this somebody that you and your family wanna be dealing with for years to come?

They ended up taking a risk and then

and it all fell apart.

He just had issues like basically within, from like the moment of moving

Contract started on a specific date and amendment was done to move up. My client moving into the property, but we never changed the day that the rent was to be paid

and it was like a two day difference and we paid more than first and last month's rent. then the landlord spamming my client with messages being like, you need to pay, like I have a mortgage to pay, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, looked at the

just to verify. And I'm like, yeah, like we might have moved in two days earlier, but the date for rent payments is still the middle of the month. Sucks to be the landlord, but I'm also just man, like you should have some type of windfall, if there's a delay or anything like that.

Plus you got an extra additional two months

Not deposit, but basically rent that was paid ahead

I'm like,

so what is, so what are you doing?

you plenty left over to be able to make that payment.

Oh yeah, absolutely. There's definitely like a,

as well, I find.

oh gosh, yeah. Trust your gut. But yeah, to your point, there's definitely a lot of landlords that'll try to be a little sly out there. If we're submitting an application, they're like, okay yeah, these guys look pretty young I'd like to get like an extra month of deposit rent or whatever, because who knows how stable their relationship is.

It's okay, first of all, that's none of our business. And then second of all, it's illegal to ask for more deposits. You can't ask for damage deposits, you can't ask for security deposits. And then I'll come back to my clients and say, Hey, you know what? Let's just move on. 'cause this guy's just gonna give you guys a headache and he's, you're gonna live under a microscope.

It's gonna be a nightmare. So it's just not worth it. It protects everybody all around if they're working with a realtor with a professional. And if, again, trust your gut. And if you're not even sure about the realtor themselves, like people can actually search us on the Ottawa real Estate database and see if we're licensed realtors, right?

So there's definitely that le level of protection as well. But yeah, it's a tricky tricky market

got one question that we didn't have on our list that just popped into my head. I'm not sure why you didn't have it here previously, but for the, under this segment dealing with pets.

dealing with PET

So before

oes wrong, that the tenant is: 1000

about

at least.

maybe more,

Oh, 75% we'll say No way. Even though legally they're not supposed to. But that goes back to what we were just talking about of if they're not gonna allow your Pap pet, why do you want to push that with

them? You know what

the, oh my God know. This'll give you some juicy rage bait content talking about pets.

Oh, like first of all,

us know how you really feel. With Chantel.

it's I can tell you what I see, not what I feel. Ev it is. One of the questions we ask whenever we're pre-qualifying tenant is, do you have pets? And people will answer if they have a pet. And as we onboard landlords, we always ask them, how do you feel about pets? And a lot of them right off the hop, no, they don't want pets.

And whenever I ask if a tenant has a pet, they'll always say, yes. I have one well-trained dog. He's the best trained dog in the world. He's hypoallergenic. He has no claws, he does not drool, and he doesn't go to the bathroom ever. Like it's the best dog. It's made of gold, and same thing with the cat.

The cat is so old and doesn't move, and it's basically a pillow. So everybody's pet is the best pet on the face of the planet. Or it's an emotional support pet,

which. I don't even wanna get into that one either. I'm trying to stay as diplomatic as possible without getting this whole episode canceled.

But the thing with pets is that, and then of course if I say, oh, I'm, unfortunately this property is not pet friendly, people will fire back with, that's illegal. And it's actually, it's not. So any landlord is allowed to refuse an application based on a pet, unless that pet is a service dog with papers provided by WSIB, like an actual recognized entity for service animals, not emotional support.

It's two different things.

they, can

So that whole thing, when people mention that it's not

No, they no. It's not even a gray area. They can legally refuse. They cannot evict you for getting a pet.

After

Ah,

in, so after you move in, if you do decide that you need to get an emotional support, Cobra or whatever. Then the landlord finds out about it. You can't evict a tenant based on having a pet.

Okay? So 📍 what'll end up happening is some tenants will not say they have any pets on the application. They move in and all of a sudden my client calls me like, there's a great Dane in this one bedroom condo. What the f? Nothing you can do about it. So what we do is we just put it in all the contracts.

Even if the landlord has said they don't want pets, and the tenant has said, no, it's okay. I don't have any pets. We'll put it in the contract that if pets are found on the property, tenant is financially responsible for it.

And a lot of landlords have said what if that encourages them to get a pet?

I guarantee you that clause will not encourage anyone to do anything that they don't already want to do.

Yeah,

If they had plans to get a cat, a dog, a hamster, whatever, they were gonna do it anyways. So let's just put that clause in there to protect you. Now, being able to go after people for money, rarely does it ever work out.

'cause once a tenant leaves, they're gone. Unless you take 'em to small claims court for substantial damage. But if somebody had a pet destroy a house, chances are they don't have money to even fight you in court and to reimburse you anyways. So a lot of people just end up dropping it and being out thousands of dollars in damages and pets is definitely such a gray area.

'cause everybody is, everybody has a fur baby. Everybody has something that they want to take with them to a property. But unfortunately, a lot of people out there have ruined it and landlords just don't even want to go near it. But yeah, I always get that. I get one star reviews with this girl didn't said that, the property's not pet friendly and that's illegal.

And I'm like, all right, whatever. This is what it is. You can't please everyone.

people are just uneducated, right? And it's a, obviously as we've seen here, like it's a very popular misconception. You can discriminate against pets

and you can, not go with a tenant if they have a pet. However, if they move into the property and then decide to get a pet. You're basically out of luck. So it's

have a clause in there stating that the tenant is responsible for any damage

That pet may cause. But obviously there's a large difference between, a 10 pound dog and, like a hundred pound Great Dane, right? So

when it comes Your walls and everything else.

And obviously

the floors?

the, type of owner, right? But up if you have laminate in your rental property, great tip,

Laminate and luxury vinyl

scratch proof. Great for rental properties. Hardwood not

No. And everybody always says too you know what? I would be open to someone having a cat 'cause they're not as bad. But cats are though. It's not even about that. It's the fact that first of all, their bathroom is inside the house. And cats don't have the best aim and make the hugest messes when it comes to that.

No matter how well-trained fluffy is, you know 📍 they're gonna make a mess. And the smell of cat, especially if it's a male cat, the only way to get it out is essentially the same process as cigarette smells. You gotta rip out carpets, you gotta repaint, you gotta fumigate. It's impossible. 'cause a lot of the cleaning products actually ends up feeding the crystals and the ammonia and their urine and making it a thousand times worse.

I know, right? Oh gosh. Yeah. At the end of the day, but again don't come at me for pet talk. It just, it is what it is. And people who have pets just have to understand the market that they're entering themselves into when they come with a pet and they can find places that want pets.

They can. There's a lot.

It's just, a bit more challenging. But I've always found a place

with a

Just be transparent from the beginning, like especially those purpose-built rental buildings. Those landlords are like, yeah, pets, whatever. They get it, they understand. But if you keep your pet off the application and move in with a pet, guess what? Whenever you have repairs to do in your house, do you think your landlord's gonna be so willing to jump up and get you the best trades person possible to fix that problem for you right away?

They're gonna make your life absolutely miserable. So you decide to leave with your Great Dane that just showed up after moving,

if you're ever late on rent, prepared to be harassed

fees and everything

there's gonna be no grace period at all whatsoever.

It's a, a general tip for everybody listening is treat other people how you want to be treated, right?

You're good to your landlord, they'll be good to you and vice

Absolutely correct.

onto the next segment, turning renters into homeowners.

Yeah, that's my favorite one. That's pretty much what's built the bulk of my business, right? At the end of the day, you can never convince somebody to buy real estate. I think it comes down to what we talked about right at the beginning here, how people just don't know they can achieve it,

So if we're talking from a business standpoint here, like realtor to realtor now, whenever we work with tenants, get them into properties, we'll usually start to follow up three or four months before their lease comes to an end, just to passively show up and say Hey, have you thought about home ownership?

Or are you planning on renewing your lease? Do you need to find a new place to live? Or, would you like to talk a little bit more about how you can get into the buying market? And then a lot of people will say, oh, I'd love to buy a house one day, but that's just not achievable for me. And then I'll ask them to start the conversation with have you actually chatted with a mortgage broker?

And if they say, no, I haven't really gotten there yet. Okay we'll link them up with some good mortgage brokers to just have a conversation and see if it works. And then if there are some clients that say I don't even have a down payment. I don't even know where to begin. Okay, 📍 it's actually free for you to chat with a financial advisor.

Here are some great financial advisors. Just have a conversation and see if there's things that you can do to get you on that path eventually. So it comes down to not pushing people, but to educating them and just putting out a feeler and seeing if it is something that can be achieved for them.

'cause again, some people just don't know that they can do it, but then if they also wanna find somewhere else to rent, then you have a longstanding client. Right, right.

what should renters do six to 12 months before buying? Like in preparation? Like how would you

Well,

yeah, definitely chatting with a mortgage broker or a financial advisor and a realtor, you have to talk to your team right when it comes to buying a house, and a lot of renters will think I'm only going to do that when I have the down payment. When I have a certain salary level or when I've reached a certain capacity of whatever that benchmark might look like, people think that's when they should do it.

But in reality, you should be prepping all of this stuff years in advance, right? I even have it honestly, because we're already in this industry and yeah, my kids are six years old, but it's already in my mind that when my kid has her first job right away, I'm linking her up with a financial advisor.

I don't care if it's a job at McDonald's making minimum wage. What do you do with your money to put you in a,

grow your wealth,

grow your wealth, right? Right away? Like you don't have to be a millionaire to grow your wealth. How do you think you get there by growing your wealth? And it's the same thing with home ownership, right?

It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen with cutting Starbucks out of your life. Have you ever seen the cost? You can actually save by not gonna Starbucks. It's nowhere near a down payment. Like it's not that simple, right? There's things that you have to invest in and that you have to do and it doesn't start.

At the end of your lease, it starts the day that you get keys and move into your new place. So realistically, what people should be doing to get themselves into home ownership is educating themselves not on social media with actual professionals. 'cause I get a lot of clients who will send me a TikTok of some guy who acquired property and did like the bur method.

Flipping a house and then I'm looking at the content and I'm like, man, that's in Utah. That's not even Canada. That doesn't make any sense. The prices don't line up and that process doesn't work here. And they're like, I can do this too. No. So you need content in your market and to talk to professionals in the market itself.

A couple of basic tips too, right? Is, if you're planning on buying a house in the next year, cut down your expenses,

Do not purchase a vehicle,

number one. So anything that's gonna take away from your buying power is going to affect how much you can afford in terms of your monthly mortgage payment. if there's any outstanding debt that you have, getting that paid down and out of the way. If you have your stuff invested in a 10% fund and you have a credit card with $20,000 on it with a 30% or 25% interest rate, take the money out of your investment, pay down your card, get rid of that, and then start saving money again. first time home buyer account,

Is a really great tool that you can start putting money into. If you have a bunch of money into your RSP talk to your accountant as well. You can use RSP money for down payment without, significant tax implications. so there are resources out there that you can use six to 12 months leading up to your home purchase. And some of them well before that, in order to put yourself in a better position, in order to be able to achieve home ownership.

And like to anybody like listening to. This stuff who might not even be in the industry, but even somebody who's in the industry myself, when you start talking about home buyers, tax incentives and this and that, even to me it's so confusing and I don't understand any of it. And when I go to my mortgage broker, my financial advisors, I'll literally tell them, I know I'm almost 12 years in real estate, but talk to me like I'm six.

thing is that this is not our expertise or our wheelhouse. And so you shouldn't think that. You need to basically white knuckle it by yourself and do it yourself. Contact professionals and literally have them hold your hand and walk you through it. Yeah. So that you're doing it right.

Because, and my financial advisor had said no matter how much money you save for a down payment, if you have a leaking ship, you can't go buy a house anyways

you're saying. If you have high debt or whatever. Like I had one client who is trying to pay down his mortgage faster by doing like triple monthly payments on it.

And then went to go wanted to sell, buy a new property, but then the financial advisor's yeah, but buddy, you have $150,000 line of credit that has to be paid off. Why have you been paying so much into a mortgage and not your line of credit to get rid of that debt? Like you're still debt to service ratio just doesn't make any sense.

So talking to professionals is definitely key. And even if you think you're a professional, you're not the professional, go talk to one.

point I agree that it's mo One of the most important thing is when you do speak with a professional you give them all of your information, they will tell you, in order to get this, you need to take care of

And that's what they can plan.

Your to-do list. to-do list.

before get to the actual application.

years to tackle,

the sooner you start and create a plan, I always go back to this. It was from like Grant Cardone or something like that from, or I dunno, maybe some other motivational guy. But,

Basically.

Like you need to have a goal of where you want to go because if you're on a ship or you're on an airplane and you take off and you have nowhere to go, you're just gonna be going in circles forever, basically, until you run out of fuel and you've wasted a lot of time, right?

So having a goal and then working backwards from that gonna go a long way and it's gonna bring you a lot of clarity, right? You're not just gonna have anxiety of oh, I can never afford a home. Sit down, see how much money you're making, see how much money's going out, see how much you can save, and then have 📍 a clear target of what you wanna buy and when,

Obviously there's gonna be some fluctuation in price and interest rates and things of that nature. generally speaking, if you create like a five year plan for buying a property, and you get pretty stringent with saving and cutting down in expenses it's very achievable. At least getting into a starter town home or one of the stock towns, you can get into for four or $500,000.

If you saved out save a hundred KI mean it's a, you can get into your first home with a 20% down payment and then work your way up from there and start building equity.

Five years from now, you will be happy that you started it now.

right. Like it's, and it's like with everything out there, you don't wake up one morning having everything that you wanted to achieve, right? Whether it's like better health, more financial wealth or anything like that, it has to start somewhere and it has to start small And again, like yes we do see a lot of people getting pre-approved with like gifted payments and down payments and things like that.

But there are people out there that were able to save up their own money, but it's because they started it years ago and very small steps. We always assume I need to have 10 extra thousand dollars to put away in the bank. Even if it's just a hundred bucks, that can grow into something. But it has to start somewhere.

So that's usually whenever I have that conversation with tenants with, they're like, I'm never gonna achieve it. It's yeah, with that attitude, fine. And rent, who cares? That's okay too, but.

Yeah, it depends on what you want.

saving 500 bucks a month is six grand a year. So adds up. And like maybe the first year you can only do 500 bucks, but then, you're improving your education, you're cutting down expenses. Maybe the next year now you're able to do a thousand bucks a month.

So now you're at 18 grand. And that's assuming you started at zero, within five years you can get up to basically a hundred thousand dollars down payment.

And that kind of leads into the next question, Chantelle, what's the best story of a renter that made the jump to home ownership for you?

The best story oh, actually one of my favorites. So when I started understanding that there was a process to helping people get into the market, I remember one of my first leads that I had worked to turn over from a renter to a buyer. So I had helped him rent. A detached home in Canada at 2,500 bucks a month.

That was the whole detached house, years and years ago. And I continuously followed up with him and then he gets into a position where it's a separation now and he wants to downsize. But then explaining to him that if you downsize into a town, homes, town, homes are now $2,700 a month. So at $2,500 a month, you're living in a castle compared to what everybody else is paying.

And then he started the question of does it looks like rents just don't make sense anymore? Like maybe I should just buy a house. And it was like are you in that position to be able to be able to do and he's a business owner. He owns his own business and he said he had a lot of debt and just wasn't sure what to do.

And I did the song and dance. I linked him up with a mortgage broker. Mortgage broker, met with him and goes, Hey, actually this guy has a substantial amount of money sitting in an account. We're able to do some stuff, work off some debts or whatever. It's gonna take about six months to maybe a year to get there, but he can get there.

And so this guy ended up following this mortgage broker's advice to a t like every, everything that he had to do, six months goes by, most of his debt is all cleared off and he can start the pre-approval process and we start shopping. And I was able to find him a house on the water. It was like a small little starter home, but it was exactly what he wanted.

And he ended up paying less for a house on water than he was renting the $2,500 a month Canata house. And it took a while to get there, but, and at the end of it, when he ended up like getting possession and moving in and I checked in with him to see how things were doing and he said when he got the keys and walked into his place, he just could not believe in his mind that being self-employed.

Somebody who thought he had a ton of debt, didn't know what to do, was like standing in his own house. So I think that was probably one of my favorite stories. And because he is a business owner, he's also able to expense some of that mortgage, which made way more sense than rent. So yeah, it was a long process, but he did the process and got there

Most importantly, he had a plan

a plan.

He had a plan.

Plans are good.

Yeah.

Worst rental advice you've ever heard.

Worst rental advice is to lie and say you don't have pets.

That's a good

Honestly, I see that in forums all the time where tenants are complaining like, oh, I can't find a place. I have a dog. And people are like, just don't tell the landlord that you have a pet. It's illegal. That's the worst advice. The worst advice possible

That's lie on your application.

don't lie. We don't want you. And top three tips, Chantel, your top three tips for navigating Ottawa's rental market right now.

Be patient. Don't give your notice to vacate until you've locked something down. We get a lot of people that do that. They give their 60 days notice and then they wanna go find something else and they cannot get into anything else. And then they're renting garbage because their back was up against a wall.

Go find something first. Lock it into contract, then give your notice to vacate. That's tip number one. And be patient. Wait for the right place to come along. Tip number two, trust your 📍 instincts. If it's a, if you, if it feels like it's a scam, it's probably a scam. So do your homework. Do your due diligence, contact a realtor, have them help you through the process.

Don't trust whatever you see online. Third tip. Yeah, I guess it comes down to the bad advice. Be super transparent, be completely honest in your application, don't lie. And you'll be able to get your foot through the door lot faster.

There's one thing I wanna say about that. It's interesting when you're dealing with a tenant sometimes when they're giving you information if you're speaking with them, if it's on paper, it's a little bit different. But if you're speaking with them. The minute that it goes from, okay, this is good. And then there's like this weird hesitation you

I've caught a few people where I'm just like, like, listen, if some, if there's something wrong, I'm like, just tell me. I go, I can't help you unless you tell me everything.

I go, I feel like there's something else that you're not giving me. And then they'll say yeah, this. I'm like, okay, great. I go, that's not a big deal.

We can work with that. I go, that's what you need to know. yeah. Transparency.

Yeah. And that's for tenants, right? But if you're a landlord, it's. I think the number one tip would be to make sure that your verification process is like on point and don't trust everything that you get.

Yeah. I had one actually, and he my landlord client caught it he was cool about it. I was like, holy shit. I'm like, I didn't even notice that at all. was, I had two tenants that were, their names were almost the same. And then the ID that came in for the, their father, who wasn't even on the lease, but the name was, it was like, there was one letter that was different. I looked at it and then, I just, I briefly saw it and then I saw the names. Then I did all the verification. Like I called all the places. Like I wasn't, I looked at the id, I'm like, okay, this is the guy. And then, and the agent on the other end was cool, but then he's Hey man, he goes, ID that we have is not matching the name of the guy on the on the application.

So it was a mistake. He, He had sent me that id, um, I guess he'd use the father if he needed a cosign, but he never mentioned it. But he sent me the ID. Anyways, it all worked out. It wasn't a thing. It was just like a administrative mistake I guess.

Yeah,

but

I mean there's definitely human error, but then there's also especially Ottawa listeners, Ottawa landlords, if ever you get a proof of employment letter from Transport Canada, you have to be super suspicious. So years ago. Somebody took a letter of employment from Transport Canada, a government letter and put it in a system for editing and sell and sold the letter to whatever tenants that were, trying to get into the rental market with no proof of employment.

And I ended up getting one, I remember I had heard about it and then lo and behold, a couple weeks goes by and I get an applicant that reaches out on one of our listings and he says, I work for Transport Canada. And I thought, can I get your letter of employment please? And so I get the letter of employment and to the point where I call the manager, even when I search like the GOC 4 1 1, find the manager for that Department of Transport Canada.

The same one on the letter. I call the guy, I'm like, hi, my name is Chantal Lafonte. And I got a unit listed friend. He is I'm just gonna stop you right there, letter's fake. And I was like, oh, is it? He goes, I guarantee you. He goes, I get 10 calls of these a day right now that they're all fake, so lo and bolt.

And then I ended up messaging the guy back and being like, nice to try pal. But

what was this response outta curiosity.

me.

just basically moving on to the next person,

📍 who else

That's

No, he like, and I think that they thought that we wouldn't do that extra step of calling.

I'm sure there's some agents that don't, Yeah. I've had, I've submitted applications on stuff where I know the landlord on the other end or whatever, like they didn't really verify much, but again, it's because it's coming from realtor to realtor, so they know that it's already verified.

But yeah, I've had so many landlords who, oh, sorry, Luca. And then they ended up like calling me later being like, yeah, I just gave this guy a chance and we didn't really look too much into it. Like the letter looked real, turns out, guy didn't have a job or whatever. 'cause you can buy anything online now.

A letter of employment even. I've had some credit reports come in. Where it turns out to be like just an editable PDF, and they've sent me that format by accident and me realizing that, oh, they've purchased like a, an Etsy file or whatever. So you can check the properties of a document and like you can see that if you check the properties, it'll say where it's downloaded from.

And any Equifax report is downloaded from a very specific hardware of sorts. It'll like signature block it.

tools recognize

will, eh, that's

If you upload it into Chad GPT, it'll say I can't read out the file for you, but I can tell you if the file has been altered in any way. And it'll say, oh, it looks like it was downloaded from this server.

Which is typically where Equifax documents come from. Like obviously I'm no tech expert here. Like I can't explain it properly, but you can check to see if a document's been altered in any way. 'cause look at ai, look at the content that's being put out in social media.

of it's oh my God, it's like raining dogs, like somewhere, like it looks so real, so of course people can fake documents.

So we just need to be one step ahead of it as much as possible.

Most important part of that is, and difficult to verify the credit report,

Calling the employer a very important step that often gets overlooked, right? So call the references that the applicant

And, make sure you call their current and past employer, verify they actually work there for the timeframe that they said they've worked there and, just

Yeah.

are actually employed at where they say they're employed, right?

Yeah. I mean it's nice when you get the letters of employment with the signature and the name, and then you call and speak with that person directly,

but it goes to a central kind of line

to that person. You're Like okay, this is obviously

📍 Do your own backend like work to find their employer? Like usually when we get. A letter of employment, I'll go search the manager on LinkedIn and then I'll add the person to LinkedIn and I'll send them a message saying I'm about to call you. And oftentimes they don't really see that message fast enough.

But however,

I've found somebody on LinkedIn and then let's, I had a client who had given me a letter of employment, but then the phone number at the bottom was written with Pen.

And so I ended up calling the letter and talk and this guy just picks up the phone like, hello? And I was like, hi, is this td?

like, hang on a second. It's: 11:00

No. So I ended up googling the branch calling the actual central line and no, she hasn't worked here for months, so even if they give you a letter, go through some backend channels to see if you can find a phone number or an email address or whatever that's posted somewhere online.

And again, if you're a government employee applying for something, you can search them on GOC 4 1 1. The actual like government website has a directory to, to show if people are still actively employed. You can't find it for military and RCMP obviously, but anybody who works for the government is listed on there.

So if they're not listed on there, then they're just not employed there. So again, it's everybody's guilty until proven innocent, do your own backend work.

Tips. Those are the tips, the hot tips from ch the pro Tips. biggest myths about renting in Ottawa.

Oh my gosh. Biggest myths. I think the biggest myth is about the landlords that are stuffing their pockets with thousands of dollars off your rent.

, and we can only rent it for: 3000

So I think that's one of the biggest myths

Yeah. if they tried to sell, they probably would've lost close to 200,000 on

more Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like at a wild loss. That's probably one of the biggest myths is yeah, that everybody's, biggest myth.

and even like investors who will contact me and getting all excited about wanting to invest in real estate and think that they're gonna buy a property and quit their job tomorrow, like that's not how it works.

investing is a long-term game, right?

It's,

and then you transition into

buying, more units and more properties over time, right? And then, as you start to pay off more of the property and the rates come down and you have more equity, you can then leverage

That's why it's best to start small,

It's, yeah,

home. Easy to

It's, not your it's not gonna be your job replacement, it's gonna just compliment your life right now. I think that's probably like the myth on both sides of tenants and landlords is what's actually going on out there.

Okay. Final words, Chantal for us? For the listeners,

So listeners just don't come at me about the pet stuff. Okay. No, no rage baiting and no, rage posting, don't go after my reviews and say that, I hate dogs, or something like that. That's not what I'm trying to get at there. It's about my observations. And I guess the biggest like disclaimer is that I'm not.

Like a paralegal or an expert on the Residential Tendencies Act. 📍 I'm an expert on the rental marketing and vetting process, so if you have nobody with like legal questions come my way with it. Make sure to talk to Paralegal.

Guess that would be my biggest takeaway now,

or your lawyer. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. thanks For coming on the show, Chantal Real Estate Reality.

Thanks for having me guys.

you're very welcome. we'll add your information to the notes and uh,

Yeah, and if you're looking for rental guidance or thinking about transitioning to home ownership, reach out to CH LaFontaine or our team and we'll help you build the plan. you next week.

chow.

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