Tom and Nick Karadzas Rock Star Inner Circle

Canadian Savers Are Officially Losers. Seriously…

Photo: Nesster

Forgive us this week ... a tiny little rant follows ... we can't help it ... we're monetary policy geeks at heart ... There used to be a day, not long ago, when it was smart to pay off your debts and save money. Those days are gone. Debt is still bad, and "bad debt" for silly purchases, is still really silly. But because of the way the money system works these days; good, smart debt has never looked more interesting. And saving money in the traditional ways has never looked worse. This isn't how things are supposed to be, by the way. Saving money and building up a capital base for yourself or for your bu...

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Low Canadian Interest Rates – FOREVER?

OK, forever is a long time. But stick with us here... Right now you can get a five year mortgage at BMO for 2.99%. Our parents, back in the early 1980's, had a mortgage rate of 16.5% if memory serves. 16.5%!! I mean ... how long can this go on for? Back in 2010 we had several people tell us rates were going to shoot back up "anytime now". In the spring of 2011 a prominent mortgage broker told us Canadians would be in for a shock when rates spike up in the Fall. And now, here we are. With Prime -0.4 and 5-year rates at 2.99%-3.29%? Here's a historical chart of interest rates going back to January 1951 from CMHC:

We're currently sitting ...

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The Story of The $5,000 Cassette Tapes

Photo: ericjason732003

I get laughed at all the time for this, but it's the truth, so I'll share it here with you as well. I haven't listened to the radio in my car since at least 1998. Approximately 13 years of no radio. I can't stand it. All the commercials, the fairly meaningless news updates and talk radio, just drives me mad. I believe that listening to the radio pulls me into some sort of depression. I'm not sure why, it must be my personality. Or I just have some sort of mental problems :-) One time I paid $5,000 for a set of real estate tapes. Yes, you read that right... tapes. And, back in 1998 my car didn't have a tape player - only a CD player. So I strolled into Zellers and found...

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Constant & Shameless Promotion by YOU!

In the last two weeks we've sat down with several people we know to give them some guidance on starting their own business. And it's become obvious that us Canadians, as a group, are a little more conservative than we should be. Let us explain... When I first got into Sales it always seemed that the sales guys and gals who talked about themselves, often generated the most sales and almost always got promoted the fastest. I used to think they were brash, rude and lacking taste. Then I learned that those guys were often making 100K a year more than the sales guys that were more timid. When I first started investigating different businesses, I was mystified by the ones that started their marketing to me with a headline along thing lines of this ... "We Will Reveal the Hidden Secr...

Broken Water Heater + Crazy Repair Guy = Chaos

The problem with real estate is that you have to deal with a fair amount of short term pain to get the long term gain. You literally have to be ready for ANYTHING. Doesn't matter if you own one rental condo, a dozen single family homes or twenty apartment buildings. You always need to expect the unexpected to survive in this business. We never forget these wise words, "You don't make money in real estate by timing the market. You make money in real estate by time in the market." Here's the thing... If you want to secure your own financial future, in today's world, you BETTER be taking an active role in planning for it. We care a lot about the people with work with. We do our very best to guide them very carefully to make wise real estate investment choices. The type of choi...

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Jedi Mind Tricks to Maximize Your Real Estate Investing

(This article was featured in one of our Rock Star Reports and a portion is being shared here...) “We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming with this breaking news…” This week we’re were to begin tackling the most common objections when placing offers on properties. And it occurred to us that jumping in and just tackling the objections doesn’t give you the “foundational knowledge” or “thinking” behind what we’re doing. The saying goes that without a good foundation a house isn’t going to last very long. And neither will your negotiation skills. So…With that in mind, this week, we wanted to share with you something we wrote up a while back for one of our newsletters. It’s the “Science behind Persuasion”. This article gives you a “behind the scenes” lo...

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