Condo Investors: How a real estate agent scooped up three properties worth $1.4 million

Buyer: David Elliott, a 36-year-old real estate agent

The backstory

In 2005, while taking a postgrad diploma in marketing at George Brown, David, then 23, stumbled upon a great investment opportunity: a 400-square-foot pre-construction condo in Maple Leaf Square for $189,000. As a student, he couldn’t afford it on his own, so he pitched the idea to his parents, Bob and Anne. They thought it would make a good retirement investment so they bought the condo. Initially, they planned for David to rent the place to help pay off the mortgage, but he decided to move to South Korea to teach English. So, instead, Bob and Anne leased the condo to tenants before selling it in 2014 for $281,000. As a thank-you for finding the condo, David’s parents gave him $30,000 from the profits—on the condition that he invest the money in real estate.

After returning from South Korea, David used the $30,000 for a 10 per cent down payment on a 584-square-foot pre-construction condo in the Canary District. He lived with his parents until builders completed the project. In 2016, his relationship with his girlfriend Korrie got more serious, so he rented out the Canary District condo and moved into her place in Fort York. A year later, he saw an opportunity in the market and felt the itch to invest before getting priced out. So, in the fall of 2017, he sold the Canary District condo for $453,000 and used the capital to invest in a few properties.

Things moved quickly. By the end of 2017, David used approximately $130,000 from the sale of the Canary District condo, along with a small private loan, to snap up three properties across the GTA: a three-bedroom detached home in Hamilton for $461,000, a one-bedroom pre-construction condo near Kipling station for $299,900 and a one-bedroom pre-construction condo on the Danforth for $389,900.

The bottom line

David enjoyed investing so much that he became a licensed realtor in May 2018. These days, he’s leasing his Hamilton home to a family for $1,900, which nets him about $400 a month in profit. That helps David and Korrie pay the $2,850 rent on their current place, a two-bedroom condo in the Humber Bay area, where they’ve lived since July 2019. The Danforth and Kipling condos will be completed in 2020 and 2022, respectively. David plans on renting those out, too, until they can use the equity from their three properties to buy their dream house in Lawrence Park or Bloor West Village. In the long term, David and Korrie plan to keep investing in real estate and, eventually, get married. They’d also like to purchase David’s parents a condo in Florida. Today, David’s investments are worth a total of $1.4 million.