Condo Investors: How a retail director turned a $75,000 wedding gift into a $1.4-million portfolio
Her first investment was a $289,000 pre-construction condo in CityPlace
The buyer
Sandy Silva, a 39-year-old sales director at Tulip Retail, a software platform for retail companies, with her seven-year-old son, Xavier.
The backstory
In 1999, Sandy started dating her soon-to-be husband, Ryan, in Waterloo. She studied economics at Wilfrid Laurier University while he took political science at the University of Waterloo. In 2002, they got engaged, and Sandy’s father gave them an early wedding gift of $75,000. Sandy and Ryan used that money for a down payment on a $289,000 pre-construction two-bedroom condo in CityPlace. In 2005, they got married and moved into the unit.
Within a few years, they were thinking about having children, and being near family became a priority. At the time, they both worked in Toronto: she was a buyer for Sporting Life and he was a supervisor at an automotive manufacturing company. They used their combined savings, along with equity from refinancing their condo, to buy a $470,000 detached house in Brampton, where Sandy’s parents lived. Meanwhile, to make some extra cash, they rented out their CityPlace condo for $2,150 a month.
The value of their properties increased enough, after four years, that they decided to leverage their equity to scoop up more real estate. They knew, from having lived in the Waterloo Region during their college years, that demand exceeded supply in the area. Ryan also had family in Waterloo, which meant someone could take care of their investment properties. So they bought two detached houses in Waterloo for a combined $462,000 and rented them to university students for a total of $4,675 a month. The rental income was enough to pay their mortgage and turn a profit. In 2013, Xavier was born.
Three years later, Sandy and Ryan separated. Ryan sold the two Waterloo homes for a total of $540,000 and split the $78,000 profit with Sandy. He also kept the place in Brampton. Sandy held on to the CityPlace condo and took $250,000 in equity from the Brampton property, which she used to invest in Rent Frock Repeat, a designer dress rental company.
The bottom line
Sandy recently joined Tulip Retail as a sales director. She lives part time at her CityPlace condo, which is now worth $850,000, otherwise she stays at her parents’ place in Brampton with Xavier. And Sandy’s not done investing. She recently bought a one-bedroom condo in Vaughan—which she plans to use as a rental property—for $525,000. Her portfolio is now worth $1.375 million. Before the end of 2020, Sandy would like to buy a place in Brampton.
