HANGING IN?
When I showed a colleague this photo, she laughed. “Oh that’s the story of many real estate investors these days.” Hmmm, that wasn’t the purpose we had planned for the photo, but if that’s an instant reaction, then let’s chat.
So for all our highly rational, analytical readers: warning: this blog post is not that. We’re talking gratitude and emotions. Zero facts. Continue at your own intrigue, or peril =).
For some investors, the climb is tough these days, and it truly does feel like some of us are holding on by our fingernails. The background scenery is still Canada (which we unabashedly LOVE), but the slog is real.
For some investors, it’s just the next chapter.
After chatting with my colleague, I realized how “lucky” we have been.
- We were investing and renovating back in 2013 when quality labour was tough to find in Alberta. And even when we did hire people, would they show up? Or would they receive a better offer before Monday morning and just ghost us? Well, that’s happening again – at least in and around the Calgary area.
- We were investing in 2016 –oh that wasn’t pretty in Calgary. Prices were down, vacancies were waaay up, and population/GDP was dwindling. As an Albertan, we endured 6 years of recession-like economy. Some condo owners in Edmonton and Calgary have shared with us that their prices are just now returning to that 2014 price point. It sure didn’t feel “lucky” at that time. We had to give away TV’s to get tenants into our units!!
- We’ve been managing a variety of prices for materials and labour in our business for over 15 years now. Truthfully, 2023 is quite remarkable, but 2021 was nuts for lumber prices, just saying. And we survived that chaos.
My point is simply that we’ve seen some ups and downs—which makes us “lucky” in today’s economy. We understand that the real estate cycle booms, then slumps, then recovers. For more information about these three very predictable phases, see Secrets of the Canadian Real Estate Cycle: An Investor’s Guide, 2011, by Don R. Campbell, Kieran Trass, Greg Head and Christine Ruptash. This book is just as relevant today as it was over a decade ago!
For some of our colleagues, they have seen cheap financing, stable markets, rising prices and record profits for about a decade. Today’s real estate rock climbing is a shock to their system! We’re hearing a lot of emotional stories, and some of our colleagues are even exiting Canadian real estate all together. It’s as if some investors forgot that the upward ride wouldn’t last forever.
Suddenly we’re realizing that our perspective, our hardships, and our experiences have been a gift.
We’re not sitting in our La-Z-Boy simply recycling old solutions. Clearly many of them wouldn’t work in today’s market.
But we have a resilience, and a belief that we can and will solve each problem as it arises. We already know to go back to our “Why” and clarify IF this is still the path we want to take to our Financial Freedom. We have already been through phases where we evaluate each property: keep, sell, renovate, change strategy.
In the current economic and global turmoil, we find ourselves feeling incredibly grateful for all the life lessons that brought us to today. We’re not greedy, we’re not fearful, and we’re not as surprised when the latest wild card crashes the party. No need to panic in Calgary, or Alberta.
The challenge is real, but the destination is still worthy of the effort, in our humble opinion. So we’ll keep doing the work, and climbing on ….
