On this episode of The Your Life! Your Terms! Show we bring in our lawyer Chris Argiopoulos to chat about everything from his espresso drinking and intermittent fasting to liability insurance claims, the Canadian legal system, real estate strategies, joint venture agreements and more! We used to be scared of the legal system but once you understand it you realize that it can work quite well. Understanding the legal system and finding developing relationships with good lawyers is definitely a “must do” for all investors. You can find Chris at: www.capclaw.ca .
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Transcript
00:00 Hey, it’s Tom Karadza and on this episode of The Your Life! Your Terms! Show, we have our lawyer, Chris Argiropoulos coming on to give us a legal update and we cover a lot of ground. Chris has the perfect demeanour in my eyes to be a great lawyer. Nothing seems to phase this guy. Even during the podcast you’ll hear I try to make a little joke or a little jab at lawyers he’s having none of it. Doesn’t phase him at all and just kinda keeps going. So he’s just a really good guy. We have known him now for years. He’s worked a lot with different real estate investors over the years. He’s helped us out on different things over the years and it’s really important in our eyes to understand the legal process. In Ontario when we were younger, we didn’t have a good handle on how the legal process worked.
00:43 Our only exposure to it was when our father’s construction company would sometimes either get served with some kind of legal paperwork as bad as that sounds, or if he was in the middle of serving someone else and going through some process and the construction industry between general contractors and subcontractors always seems to be some battles going back and forth. So we had some exposure to it so we weren’t kind of scared of the legal process and Ontario, but we didn’t have a good understanding of it and I think that’s what Chris has helped us to do over the years. And on this call, or sorry, on this podcast, we talk about different insurance liability amounts that perhaps we should all think about and consider. We talk about different legal, a quote unquote games or can you kind of gain the legal system at all in Ontario and get his thoughts on that.
01:31 We also talk about investing strategies and joint ventures and rent owns and some of the things to be aware of in those particular investing strategies. So we cover a lot of different ground. He’s just a good guy. Uh, we have a good chat. You will, uh, I think you’ll take something away from at minimum, you’re going to get one little piece of information. I feel that it’s going to be important or valuable to you in some way. So enjoy the call. Joe. I keep saying call, why am I saying call? So it’s clearly a podcast, so enjoy the podcast, this episode of the, your life, your term show and if you are listening to this and you are thinking about perhaps going into business yourself and you have some entrepreneurial itch that you’re looking to scratch or you started a business and you want to grow it.
02:13 We have something coming up in June that we are starting to get a lot of questions about and I think you should know about it. We, we basically have taken 10 years more. I guess it’s about 12 years of our own experience after quitting our jobs and we are distilling it down into a two-day event where we share facebook marketing strategies and Google ad word strategies and what we do with Youtube and podcasts and business operations and marketing campaigns. And the math of business and creating your own, what we call rockstar entrepreneurial blueprint. So you have a blueprint to grow a business or your business further from where it’s at today. We do this over a two day period. We get a lot of great feedback. We have done this two other times before we’re doing this just because of the demand from the last time that we did this.
03:00 We had just about 50 percent of the room last time instantly sign up for this year’s version of the Rockstar entrepreneur summit without knowing the dates or the content or anything. So that was really a great testament to what they felt or what we felt they felt the quality of that event was. So we’re doing it again June 13th and 14th. Two thousand and 19. If you think you want to come to something like that, you can check out all the details rockstarinnercircle.com/summit. So that’s rockstarinnercircle.com/summit. So you can check out all the details there. I think that’s it for now. With that, let’s get on with the show.
03:41 Are you ready to live life on your terms? Is it time to take charge business, building the economy, health and nutrition and more. It’s like The Your Life! Your Terms! Show with Tom and Nick Karadza. Are you ready? Let’s go.
04:06 Chris. Thank you. Thank you for being here. The reason I was smiling just as we’re beginning this is I just think it’s always good to have lawyers as friends. I don’t know. I don’t know why I think that, but uh, I think I do know why, and I’ve probably shared this before, but it was an old Italian guy once told me, he said, Hey Tom, I probably shouldn’t be sharing this either. I did. He told me, you. Yeah. You know what? I’m going to not share that. We’re just going to leave that one day. I’ll share with this all the time. I’m going to pull up rein myself in here a little bit, but listen, there’s something that comes up with lawyers all the time in your business. In real estate. We always have our challenges. I find in your legal profession, one of the challenges that you have is that people shop lawyers, especially real estate lawyers are closing deals.
04:48 Shop you guys around for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So pull, pull the mic. Super, super close. I want everyone to be able to hear you. Okay. Um, so, uh, they shop you guys around and I’ll have people come up to me and say, well Tom, you know, I know you guys know Chris and he’s a good guy and stuff, but I found somebody who’s like $49 cheaper and I, I don’t mean to laugh like it’s a, like saving money is obviously important, but the wisher. But the way I live my life is that I want to build loyalty with certain professionals in my life. So I’m not trying to actually pay people around me whether it’s contractors. I know I’m going to take heat for this, but contractors, lawyers, accountants, home inspectors. I’m not trying to like get the best deal from them. I’m actually trying to get them to be making money from me with the hope that if I pay them what they’re worth, they’ll recognize and it’s a bit of a gamble on my part. They’ll recognize that I’m a good client to them and then when I need a favour, maybe I’m like the godfather then when I need a favourite, but I feel like I’m contributing to their profession and their livelihood so that when we all have those accounting emergencies or legal per emergencies or you need a home inspector on short notice,
05:58 I can make a call and I have built in loyalty with them because over the years I’ve been a good client. Whereas most people I find with almost everyone they deal with are looking to win the deal. Like they have to get the lawyer to be reduced their fees by a certain amount so that they won. Or the home inspector or the contractor contractors are tough there. You’re spending a lot of money but, but um, you know, everyone’s always trying to win. Whereas I’m trying to sometimes leave a little bit of meat on the bone for the other person so that they feel like we have a good relationship. I don’t know why we’re starting with this particular point, Chris, but it just came to mind. I’m trying to build loyalty points with people and in your profession, you guys fight that all the time. I know you do.
06:40 Yeah. So it goes, it cuts both ways. You know, some lawyers have like huge, huge fees. Um. Okay. That’s fair. I know if you’re doing a big thing. Yeah. I guess I was focusing in on the real estate side but go ahead. Yeah. Like it cuts both ways. I mean, you know, sometimes people look at lawyers fees and go, wow, some lawyers are, are crazy in charge, huge fees. Some guys do like total bargain basement stuff and do volume, you know, only because you asked. I really do feel like I’m sort of moderately priced middle of the road in terms of my fees. Yeah. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, don’t. No, but, but, but yeah, that does happen. I mean, I, I had a guy today, you know, that I mean first deal, like sometimes after guys done three or four or five deals and you know, it says like, you know, we’ve got an ongoing relationship and the relationship isn’t just, you know, we’ve done four or five deals.
07:31 We’ve done four or five deals. You’re happy with me and I’m happy with you. I e you don’t make me nuts, you know, um, but you know, at that point, you know, can you work with me, can we do something? Sure. That’s always a discussion. But when someone out of the gate, you know, hasn’t met you before, doesn’t know you at all and says, yeah, can you discount it by, you know, x number of dollars or hundreds of dollars here or there. It does, it does leave a bad taste in my mouth. Uh, and then so then I become a professional, right? And I started thinking, okay, well I started sort of sizing you up in assessing you. Are you really good for four or five deals down the road or are you going to do get a discount now? And then I’ll never send it already sets up this like on a confrontational relationship.
08:11 Right. So then we’re sort of, you know, right off the bat and then it’s a business relationship, you know? Um, I don’t know, I think it’s very much in the person, like I think that some people are more inclined to shop the best, best deal they can and other people are maybe a little bit more liberal minded about it, you know, I’m, I’m willing to take the risk with both most things. So I’ll say, okay, that’s your fee, I’m going to pay it and let’s just see how this experience is. And if, if this is winning on both sides, like you’re awesome and this has been a good experience. Damn, I’m just going to keep coming back and let’s build a relationship here. But I’m like, you, I’m totally like that, you know? And if I find that it’s not working out, then I say, okay, my bad. Maybe I paid that guy a little bit too much, but I won’t go back to them. Totally. That’s a different story. I own it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, but, and I feel like every
08:55 business owner, every professional, this is what you have, especially if someone’s coming to you as a referral, they don’t know how to compare you often other than just on your price. And I look at that as a, actually I’m a little bit of an issue on my part, like if people come in real estate and they look at us and just solely judge us on like a commission or something, I’m like damn, we have really got to change our processes so they’re not just looking at us and able to compare us on cost of what our services are. We have to build the bigger picture and that’s just a marketing or business lesson. But anyway, we’re off track, off topic to begin with. I want it for you, you, you’ve lost some weight. So what are known as I know? No, I did not know that this was going to be a sub. Oh, I didn’t know. Yeah. So I’m just curious, why have you lost some weight and the strategy. We talked briefly about eating window or strategy or so. So here was my life up until about a year ago,
09:54 um, wake up in the morning, don’t eat anything, grab a sandwich at some point during the day, wolf it down as I’m sort of going between meetings, a meeting clients here late at night sometimes, you know, eight, eight, 39, leaving here, getting back to the office, dropping the files, setting them up for the next day, getting home around 10 and then having an absolute feedbag at 10:00 at night. Right. Um, and that’s sort of how I lived my life. Um, and I don’t really recall how I got away from that, but I just sort of woke up one morning and said, why am I eating that late? It’s ridiculous. It wasn’t sleeping well. So all I’ve done, Tom, is, I’ve just stopped eating late at night, so I generally won’t eat past 6:37 tops a and try not to eat a lot at night, you know? Um, and that is basically meant 20 pounds over the course of a year. So it’s not like, you know, I lost four pounds a week or three pounds a week. It was sort of, you know, a pound and a half, two pounds tops a month and you haven’t maybe seen me or sort of kind of looked at me, assessed me, sized me up, you know, and that’s maybe why I seem to you that I’ve lost this weight, but it’s been very gradual, you know, just by not eating late at night
11:03 is that, was that an easy enough change because then you’re not eating. So then when are you eating in the morning? I guess time. Do you start eating again? So that’s the other part. I’ve never really been a morning eater ever so often. When you wake up, that coffee. Espresso, Espresso. So no sugar in the espresso or. No, always. Always just straight approved the espresso drink. That’s right. One hundred percent. Nice. Okay. So probably four or five Espressos by noon for sure. That’s fine. I’m all for this process. Maybe trick your cortisol levels at some point, but we got to check you out. Make sure your kids are caught with four or five. Good. Yeah. Um, yeah, so just a black coffee espresso until noon. You’re going from. Are you really then going from like six or seven until noon the next day? What I learned,
11:43 and not doing this intentionally, but what I learned just from then I sort of saw it. I was seeing the results very gradually, but I was seeing the results and I was feeling a lot by the way, like
11:54 feeling great. What I learned was that, um, um, without even thinking about it, I was doing the intermittent fasting. Right? Uh, and so that turned into sort of, yeah, I was doing 16 hours, 16, eight, you know, sort of the 16 off and you know, eight on and then then when I was seeing some results and some days I do like 18 hours, you know, like 18 on or off in six off or six on whatever it is. But then really like I haven’t been following it religiously. Like I don’t go, okay, now you know, now’s my time that I can eat or now’s the time that I can eat. There’s been plenty of times when you know, you’re not, you’re not ocd about it. I wouldn’t be OCD, but that’s great. I know like if we’re out tonight having a couple beers, I’m not going to like, lose my mind about it, like I’m not going to be beating myself up the next day about it, you know, I and I and the coffee I’ve recently learned the coffee.
12:41 It has basically no black coffee has basically no calories. So you’re really going through a large right, a intermittent fasting window there where you’re not eating food that’s good for the detox mechanisms that are good for the body in that. Good for you. And I think it’s, it’s good to be losing that much weight a month if you drop pounds quickly. It’s not really a long term adjustment either. So yeah, I have no idea whether it’s healthy or not healthy. Like I’m not a doctor, but I can tell you that I’ve been feeling. Let’s just play doctor and say it’s healthy. I’m with the lawyer here. I can say no, I’m cool now. Um, but uh, yeah, no, that’s cool. That’s really good. And the espresso, I just want to tell you, I’m, I’ve mentioned this on this podcast a few times now, but I’m pretty convinced entire maybe in the southern Ontario era, I’m making one of the best, if not the best espressos.
13:30 Um, I really got the water dial. Then I have the bins down, then I got the machine grind dialled in and out like a boat two months ago. I had my whole family over cousins and everybody, um, nieces and nephews and uh, I had multiple being set up multiple water types, different grinds. We went through a lot of Qa, doesn’t know mickey mouse operation or in our new office, which will be moving into late summer of this year. Right. Um, we’re going to get a big proper espresso machine that grinds the beans and stuff because I have that home obviously. But here we’re an espresso. Here you have the Nespresso when you’re quite proud of the Nespresso here though. I think you liked the Nespresso. I hardly drink it. I’ve had maybe one. Um, I don’t really. I’m not. I feel so very suspicious over the Nespresso. I don’t understand how that could.
14:14 It’s in a pod. It’s plastic. You’re wondering? Yeah, how and it comes up with a nice come on top, which I feel like should be impossible coming from a, like a little pod thing. So I feel it’s a, I’m very suspicious over the Nespresso, but I have friends that are like all in on it and some older school, uh, friends that are a big espresso guys that are like all into Nespresso now. And I’m like, ah, I’m very, very nervous. George Clooney didn’t turn your mind. And the commercials are awesome. I love the commercials. I’m a fan of the commercials, but commercials are nuts. So listen, what I wanted to really talk to you about was an insurance claim stuff sometimes when we’re dealing with investors on properties, rental properties, I guess 1 million liability insurance used to be pretty normal. And then now what do you suggest? What’s the, what, what do you suggest people get? Well, I think the level now is $2,000,000. Um, and I think that that’s a bare minimum now. I wouldn’t go with anything less than 2 million a year. Some people are getting more than two, some, some are getting more depending on their specific situation. If it’s more of like a high-risk rental, for example, with students or something. And I shouldn’t say high risk like, you know, it’s going to blow up tomorrow. But coming from a legal perspective, I can like a, you know, a student rental mcmaster with like, you know, 10 guys in the, in a home, is more, more risk than, you know, like an RTO with like an older family let’s say, you know, so, um, I think 2 million is the, is the basic level now and maybe you go higher if, if the circumstances warrant.
15:48 And the reason really for that Tom, is that over the course of some time now, sort of evolutionary damages awards in civil lawsuits have been going up, uh, for very long time. We were sort of download, like way lower than in the US and we’re still way lower than the US. But damages awards are going up. Uh, and what you really have to worry about is, um, you know, someone really injuring themselves like on a slip and fall, like on an icy sidewalk or something, uh, you know, and sort of being, having, I think they call them life altering injuries now, you know, sort of having like a quadriplegic or that type of scenario. You have like a young guy for example that might be 25 years old that isn’t, you know, that it’s sort of more of a handy type guy. He sort of, more of a worker type guy, maybe he’s working in a factory earning 50,000 or 60,000 a year or something like that. So he’s young, he’s making a pretty decent income level and then he slips and falls and has like a sort of life altering, you know.
16:49 So it’s not really, we’re talking about it before this. It’s not just, it’s not really about him dying because Ashley, ironically that dying is a much smaller damage award. It’s the craziest, sounds crazy, but it makes sense for replacing income. It’s true. So he lives, you know, he lives, he’s 25 years old, he’s making 50,000 a year and now he can’t make $50 a year for the next 40 years of his working life. You do the math very quickly. ADDS up. That’s in a perfect world and let’s just say there’s no contributory negligence would say a judge finds in his favour and you know, all this, you know, sort of everything goes the way that it should for him, not for you, but you know, policy limits have to be up to sort of cover for that, you know, and I guess in those kinds of environments you want to have the right policy because you want to do the right thing and make sure it’s all covered and stuff such as in your best interest.
17:36 I mean, I mean to cover yourself primarily, but also, you know, depending on how you feel about social conscience, about, you know, even covering the guy that hurts himself outside. Right? So it depends on how you look at it. But I, you know, I, I have no idea what, what the increase in premiums is, but it’s, I know it’s more, but I think that that’s the bare minimum. Now, every time we’ve looked at the increase from one mil, well anyway, from 1 million to 2 million sounds like 2 million now the minimum it’s, it’s almost negligible in the grand scheme of things, I would say it’s negligible. It’s true. But um, okay, so maybe even more. And that’s something you could talk to your lawyer about and decide what’s right on the property type and your broker, you know, like your agents, they’ll talk to you about all that sort of stick.
18:13 Got It. I know for a while some insurance, some people were doing like umbrella policies where they were getting. And I know I’m in just talking to some of our insurance brokers and stuff. They’re advising most people now and again talk to your own insurance broker if you’re listening to this, but they’re advising most people to get, every property has its own policy, don’t get the umbrellas because they feel it just, it’s much easier on the policy. I forget the exact example, it was just better. I think it was if one of your property have an umbrella, but maybe you have a joint venture over here somewhere, it just keeps it nice and clean and especially like, you know, the clientele coming out of, out of this brokerage, but a lot of brokerages now that are investment minded brokerages, people are always hustling and moving and trying to find new ways to make money, right?
19:00 Joint ventures and Rtos and stuff like that. And if all of that isn’t totally inappropriately disclosed to your agent, your broker and then to the insurance company, then that gives them a reason to not to not pay out on the, on the, on the claim, you know, uh, and I’m carrying right now, you know, maybe a half dozen litigation claims that are insurance companies not paying out a. So they do find ways to not pay out some times you’re trying to bleed you out. So, so I’m, you know, I’m. Umbrellas worked fine, I think. But, you know, um, there can be sort of gray areas that maybe aren’t being caught and an umbrella policy. If you’re doing, for example, a joint venture or, you know, an RTO or something like that. Right. Okay. And then why do you think damages are going up? Like why are we becoming more like the US and not from the major things but it sounding, listening to you that just damages, in general, are getting awarded at a higher amount?
19:52 So yeah, I, I think, I think part of it is we just, we’re following the U S and we do that I think in a lot of aspects of our lives, so we’re just slower to get where they are. We were more traditional and conservative in that, uh, the plaintiff’s Bar, we had a joke last time I bought the word bar, but sort of plaintiff’s lawyers, personal injury guys that are, you know, you can call them ambulance chasers or whatever, but they’re chasing these things are becoming more and more sophisticated. They’re modelling their submissions and their arguments and uh, you know, sort of, for lack of a better word, theatrical on some of the US is getting better or just, you know, better or different or whatever they are. But uh, you know, and I think in some ways it actually makes some sense. I mean if you have a guy that’s rendered quadriplegic and he can’t work for the next 40 years and he was earning a nature, it makes some sense that the guy was going to, should be paid for that, you know, assuming that there’s fault and assuming that, you know, there’s a policy, there are forums, so okay.
20:49 So it’s kind of morbid, but it’s important and I think it’s important to know I even hate bringing up the talk but I think it’s important to know it’s important discussion that I think every investor should have with their lawyer and their insurance brokers and the whole bit. So just talking about that as, as we just sat down. I was, I was just asking you if there’s any new things or any games being played in the legal profession that we should know about. Just almost humorous stuff or anything. Just of interest. Is there anything going on that you can share about where I was coming from was like, are there games people should know about, like about lawsuits and serving papers and stuff like that, but I think you were bringing up an example of something different so you just take this wherever you want to go.
21:26 Well, um, people always want a sort of a throw off the person that they’re suing. So, you know, every Christmas, like around Christmas time, I’ll get the, you know, make sure you serve them like right around Christmas time, you know, like that kind of way. Oh yeah. I’m so naive and innocent when it comes to the. Oh yeah, I’ve got. Oh yeah, like make sure that you get um, like on Christmas Day or you know, whatever. Right. So there’s always that stuff. Got It. Okay. Um, and that, I mean, I guess that has some shock value, but at the end of the day you’re issuing a claim, paying the money with the court and that has to be served and then there’s going to be a defense. So all of that at the end of the day doesn’t really get you anything. So even if I serve a guy at Christmas, I really, what do I get other than some sort of shock value, I guess that’s the way I look at it.
22:10 I think another lawyer might say something different, but um, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty airtight system so that you can’t really play games in terms of how you’re issuing claims and even service of claims, you know, they have to do an affidavit of service and what’s an affidavit of service affidavit of. Yeah. So if I issue a clean out of the corridor, people sometimes say file a claim and then have to serve that claim on you, you know, so for you to be aware of that claim. Right. And in Missouri, they get that guy who was the server. Sorry, the process server. Yeah. Yeah. And I love that role. Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good read. I grew up with dealing with those guys because we were in the construction, in the construction business. There’s always. Lawsuits will be going on between the general and there’s just these process servers are walking around.
22:56 So I just became accustomed to like stuff arriving at our house and like it’s your father, you know, and they would give the name and I’m like, oh, I didn’t know what’s going on here. So there’s these rules, right? And then so I have to personally serve you with that claim so that you personally become aware that there’s this claim being made against you and you have x number of days to respond, et Cetera, et cetera. So where am I going with that? It’s a pretty airtight system. So sometimes there are discrepancies about whether the person was served or not served, but ultimately a judge rules on it and kind of hardest, you know, kind of hard to play the game. But I just got to show you one thing. I know it’s an airtight system, but our office in Burlington, we were an executive suites, uh, for years, which was, it was like a sandwich shop basically. But it was also an executive suite rental place that we rented out a majority of the offices there in the board room and training room and the whole bit. And uh, nick and I had a process server looking for us because it was a tenant long story tenant, got a new girlfriend, didn’t like the house, came up with some reason to come after us and I think if you’re in real estate long enough, these things just happened to you. Um, and we’re pretty used to it. But the front desk of our executive suites was literally the sandwich shop and uh, so the lady who makes the sandwiches came in one day and said there’s someone here kind of. And I guess she had kind of caught on that. It was something weird and I think Nick and I kind of caught onto what was happening where like tell them we’re not here. So they went away and then I guess the hunt, the game began. You know what this was, we were in communication with you. Yeah, we knew what was happening.
24:25 Yeah. So nick and I were like, how long can we let go void this? Yeah. And I think we managed to go a whole week where they couldn’t track us down because we weren’t always in the office. And finally, I think they got my cell phone number. Somehow there’s room for that. That’s not the airtight part. You could have went longer accommodate that. I felt very and I were like kind of high fiving like Oh. And I, I didn’t end up meeting the guy at the office and in the end, um, I met him at a car pool place off the qew. I don’t know why I picked there. I’m like, I will meet you at the Carpool. And I pulled in and the person’s in the parking lot and they’re kind of looking at me and then I parked and they said my name and I guess I kind of nodded and that wasn’t enough and I took the papers and I’m like, well, wait a second.
25:05 I didn’t actually say I’m Tom [inaudible]. And they said, well, you acknowledged with your head movement that you were. And that’s enough. That’s all I need. And I didn’t know if that was a better. That’s also, I might, I might’ve gone honestly the best process server I ever knew, I won’t mention her name. Um, but, but she was an attractive young lady and she was great for men in terms. God, man, I could see how that would be a benefit. So she just, she’d basically camp out in her car like drinking coffee, like for days on end almost. Right. And then when the guy came out of his house or whenever she saw him, she’d walk up and she called, you know, you know, is this a useful? And so, and the guy would be like, well, yes I am. And you know, he’d be served.
25:43 Right? But the airtight system is not so much in that there’s always these games you can play. It’s basically if a claim has been filed or issued, you know, and it’s, it’s been served then, then you’re in the system. So it doesn’t matter whether you were served at Christmas or not or whatever. But when giving an example of how airtight it is, or pretty close to airtight, I won’t mention names, but there’s a case that recently came out in Hamilton just a few months ago where a lawyer in Hamilton a, filed a fake divorce papers or try to fail a file fake divorce papers so that he could marry as clerk one of, is one of the ladies in his office. Um, and it was in the family court. Um, they were fake because he didn’t want his wife to him. He didn’t want, he, he didn’t want his wife to know. Right. So he filed these fake divorce papers so he couldn’t work. Right. And so he did not give up half his assets or whatever, who knows what and I don’t know, and I shouldn’t say he because I don’t know if it was him but so at emanating from his office, it was him or the clerk herself or who knows who it was. It’s in the papers. So I’m not saying anything that’s not in the papers. Um, you know, uh, this, this fake application for divorce got filed with a fake court file number. And one of the registrars at the Family Court just looking at it could tell that something wasn’t quite right, you know, the court phone number was wrong and anyway, they got to the bottom of it and turned out it was a total subterfuge. She wasn’t divorced from this, from his wife. Uh, and the application was fake so that he could marry the clerk. Right. So it’s, there’s no funny business there. There really is no funny business there. Right. It’s the evading service part. It’s kind of a risk to file fake not work paperwork. They’re not like some kind of federal, provincial. I get provincial of fan and now he’s in.
27:27 Yeah. I won’t say more than that, but I mean the crazy. I mean I know what would possess you to do that other than. Well, who knows. Also, Chris, your vocabulary is so much larger than mine. You used the word sub subterfuge. Subterfuge. Yeah. The future. That means you’re bypassing getting. Yeah. Or, or you know, as, as we use this, we say in Hamilton a gaf. Gaf. Yeah. Like I’m learning things like crazy to try to figure out how to use that in a sentence, subterfuge do it today. So, uh, okay, so that, that stuff happens. But otherwise the court system’s pretty lock tight and it’s pretty low. I think that should give everyone not, um, I don’t think you should be scared of the court system in Ontario. I think it actually helps us that we have an airtight system because if something bad happens, you know, the process, you know, that you can get to the person you’re trying to get to.
28:18 And then it’s going through the courts. And anytime I’ve been through the courts, the judges seem pretty fair, like procedures are there now ultimately if you have an adjudication like, you know, whether it’s a trial or a motion or an application or whatever in front of a judge, then your, you know, your, your life or not your life, but your case is totally in his or her hands. So you may not get a decision that you want. Right? So I’m not saying that, you know, there are cases where everyone who’s when winds and that’s not, can you always appeal in Ontario or. No, almost always. There are some cases where there’s no right of appeal, but very rare in most cases there is a right of appeal and then there’s sort of, you have to have the grounds for appeal and there are certain things that can be appealed on.
28:59 You just can’t always appeal because he didn’t like the decision. The decision making process has to be incorrect in some way. Um, so it’s not perfect in the sense that, you know, judges will always find in your favor but, but, but the procedure, the way that it’s all set out, Thomas pretty good going on hundreds of years of sort of, you know, British common law and legislation and stuff. It’s pretty sad you’ve been in the business a long time now, but when you first, because you go into some lawyers, I didn’t understand that some lawyers do not go to court or they don’t. They don’t really like going to court. Used to go to court. Yeah. Did you crap your pants like did you just like the first time you went in for, I dunno, some sizable case where your first one because you have this. Yeah, I guess I can tell by your reaction you have this weird ability to seem like it doesn’t bother you. I’ve never been nervous about court. I, I think it’s in the person nervous about. It’s not, it’s not that I’m better or worse. I’m just, this system doesn’t beat you down and you can’t afford to let yourself get nervous because honestly they were doing psychology. One hundred one. I had a real tough father. You know, I had a tough dad. Um, so obviously Greek guy, he’s gone now, but I mean it was tough, right? And so, but he was also pragmatic and I think I’m pretty pragmatic and I always said to myself what? Like what? Seriously, like what can a judge do to you? And it sounds terrible now judge my people listening. But you know, like what can a judge do to you other than maybe yell at you a little bit or I almost had a judge throw a pen at me once, but you know, like, like so they’ll chastise you or sort of give you the glare, but like, you know, it’s not like he’s going to come down from the bench and beat you over the head with a bat.
30:32 So perspective from your fathers and, and, and here’s the other thing. I’ve always thought this, and this has always helped me, like judges wake up and put on their pants one leg at a time just like you and I do, right? They get up in the morning, they use the washroom and they drink a coffee. They put their pants on like you and I do like they’re not, they’re not, you know, super human beings. So like there’s no reason why you should be afraid to be in front of one. That’s how I’ve always felt about it. I’ve never been somebody who hasn’t. I think if someone, people who are self employed or if you’re in real estate, I find that you’re going to be in the court system at some point. It’s just the nature of the world. I find if you’re in the corporate world, if anything happens in the corporate world, they have the legal department that kind of handles it.
31:15 So you don’t really. You hear about updates. That’s what happened anywhere. When I was in the software days, I, if anything went to court, I kind of got the updates about it and stuff, but we were kind of removed from it on the sales department. So it would be scary for me if I had to go to court for the first time. Like I think one of the first times I had to go with was when I was a student customs officer and uh, somebody I had sent in for drugs and they found drugs and I had to go with my little notebook that you write the date on and cancel out any blank areas in your notebook. And I had to go there and they’d actually call me. I just waited and they settled. Um, but uh, I remember being like, holy smokes, like, this is freaking crazy.
31:51 So, uh, but, but just to your point about your father a, that’s a really good point because we had a very, a father who was a very demanding. He me, he said he made us work construction and I guess that’s true. Construction paid us, but she can’t believe he made your. Yeah, I know. I know. At 13 years old he dropped me off at my first construction site, told me to pick up all the drywall, gave me a wheel barrow and a broom and left me good for you all summer. I just eat lunches at the dump box by myself because all of the older men were all just talking about politics and stuff. I didn’t know what was going on all summer. I made a crap load of money. Um, and uh, yeah, that was just normal for me, but it just left me on this job site all by myself every day.
32:31 Literally five minutes of instruction and I went to find the foreman and he just kinda looked at me and uh, off I went to go do that stuff, but he had the strongest two fingers that I’ve ever known anyone to have because if I ever did anything incorrect in his view right here at the side of your head, I know you can’t see this if you’re listening to the side of your head pointing at your template, kind of like A. Yeah, yeah. Maybe even a little above and a little back from your tumbling. It’s a weird spot. Like we just come at us with these two fingers and I swear they were made like lead pipes and he would just bolt us in the side of the head with those two fingers and he would jolt you like you would literally just. I’m not saying my Dad, I love my dad, but I’m not saying he may or may not have done that a different world now that used to be like that all the time.
33:14 I’m joking. It’s true though to hear you’re saying, you know, but he blasted us like that. And uh, I was just coming from the dentist, we’re just joking. I was having this conversation with the, with the lady at the dentist there that how like that’s not done anymore. Like people don’t, you don’t spank your kids, you don’t hit your kids. And I’m like, wow, the world’s changed a lot because it wasn’t that long ago. We’re a whole generation of us. We’re just getting the beat downs. Or has your house, your father trained you to be a lawyer? Is the bottom line? Well yeah. I don’t know if he trained me to be a lawyer, but I, you know, I don’t even know if it was my dad. Maybe I’m sort of doing too much self-analysis, but for whatever reason, I’ve never been nervous about being going to court and sort of.
33:49 I attribute that somehow to maybe the way I was raised it as, you know, where I’m going tomorrow morning, I’ll be in Brampton court tomorrow morning. I have zero anxiety about it, you know, I’ll probably be like sort of napping on liquid, on winning in the gallery. Right. So you’re dealing with clients who were all like freaking out or nervous. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The next thing I wanted to talk to you about was, um, something about option agreements on a rent to own strategy. I think you have some good advice that if a tenant is, for those of you listening, you don’t know how rent to own is structure. I mean it can be structured in a million different ways, but the way it’s commonly structured would be a standard lease agreement. And then a second agreement, which is an option agreement that is often worded if it’s done in our opinion, well that it expires on a certain day, but your saying that if they’re in breach of the lease because the option agreement will have wording saying that if the, if the tenant doesn’t maintain the lease in good order, basically not making payments that uh, the option agreement will be null and void or if they do not pay on a or sorry if they do not buy the house by a certain date.
34:50 Yes. The option and exercise our option exercised the option by certain dates. Null and void. You’re saying it’s in your best interest to actually go beyond that and do what? Notify? Well, I just think you have to be, you know, dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s as much as you can because going to what we were saying a few minutes ago, like, you know, it’s not a perfect system in the sense that the judge may not see it your way. You know, sometimes you might have all the legalities behind, you know, tenant is defaulted in some way. They have an exercise their option to quickly enough or whatever. But let’s just say the optics of the situation are such that the judge is a bit sympathetic, you know. Got It. You got a mom with two kids in the house and the two little kids and you want that. You want them out of the house, you know, or whatever it is. It could be so many different ways that a judge might a little bit more sense.
35:38 Okay. I got, you know, they’re human beings too, right? Um, so, so sometimes you know, a judge might look to the optics of the situation and see if they can find a way to maybe make it work and some of them are more conservative, some are more liberal. Like again, it’s just like you and I, we have different conceits. Right? But I guess what I’m saying is make sure that you dot all your i’s, cross all your t’s if your tenants and default and make sure that you notify them. If there’s something in the agreement that says you have to notify them and tell them that they’re in default or that you will not allow them to exercise their option or that you will not be selling the home. You just got to make sure that you’re doing all the things that you should be doing pursuant to the agreement so that if it’s ever in front of a judge and clear, it’s clear and so you make that judge and make it really hard for that judge. Then to find in the other person’s favourite. Right? Because sometimes if you give them just a little bit of a door opening, it might not go the way that you want, you know, depending on the optics or whatever the case might be. So.
36:36 And it’s funny you say that about the optics. That’s a really important point because I think naturally human nature would be to side with senate. Like I could see myself doing that. Um, and it’s interesting that you say that because in the last year people will always ask us, hey, what’s like, you know, what on rent to owns, which we hardly do any of any more just because investors don’t want to buy them because they think property prices are going up forever, right around there. A few years ago, I’m not going to do a rent to own because I don’t want to sell those properties is going to go up to infinity.
37:05 And just to, just to enter to interrupt you, there are a lot of people in the past couple of years I’ve been coming to me and saying I’ve got this rent to own and is there some way they can
37:13 get out of it? Because I don’t want to sell it for that. I could put it on the market and get way more. This is my point about the sympathy. I find that, um, when people ask us about the bio rates of rent to owns, I’m like, it’s not really dependent on the tenant. It’s actually depending on the psychology of the real estate market at the time, if the real estate market is getting negative headlines, the buyout rates go down because people are like real estate is crap. But like two years ago when real estate was like going up at 15 percent, not then all of a sudden the people who in a rent to own on attendance, it magically we’re coming up with ability to buy properties at a much higher rate. Like, like, like almost 100 percent because they were like, forget it, this, the bio is like 450.
37:54 The property’s worth 530. I’m buying this thing. And, and investors were selling. They were honoring the agreement because it was all laid out and they were selling the property. And it was a very good return to the investor, which we have to sometimes remind people, but they were kind of bitter a little bit, some not all, uh, saying, you know, kind of left a lot of money on the table there. Yeah. It was totally interesting to me because some people would be like, you know what dude, I made this agreement and I could, I could make more, but I made the agreement I’m going to live by it. And so it’s close the deal. Right. And then some other people like go. Yeah. Yeah. And so a judge would not see the sympathetic side of that situation on deals were attendance, buying other property and getting like sometimes a hundred grand in equity the day they buy the property. And there’s all these legal principles like this acquiescence and you know, and so for and waiver like this, I won’t get into lake all the particulars of it, but basically if they, if they’re offsite in some way and you don’t do anything about it in terms of telling them their off side, but then you keep collecting the money for example. Right. Um, you know, the judge might say, well okay they were offside but then you kept collecting the money afterwards, you know, or they might have been off by a couple of days in terms of exercising the option, you know, by the letter of the law, the people say the letter of the law by the contract, they’re clearly off, but you know, again, using them, you have to very extreme example.
39:18 If you’ve got a, you know, a single mom with two kids, two little kids in the home, you know, you’ve got some bad optics. Sure. Right. And then you and then you know, she’s trying to like, she’s, you know, scraping together her money to be able to buy and she’s got the money and you know, you basically you look like a jerk, right? So you have to sort of cover your bases if you’re listening. I find in general, if you are a good person as the landlord or investor and act with good intentions, that does come across in front of a judge so that even if you’re losing on some of the optics, as long as you are not coming across as someone who is really trying to take advantage of someone, I find that anyone listening to this thing about getting in real estate, you can kind of rest easy.
39:56 Like people, the judge, I think they can tell when someone’s trying to take advantage also for sure, you know, you at least hope that they can and in many cases they can. Sometimes they don’t act like they can see the difference sometimes. You know, they’re also desensitized to don’t forget. Right? So some of these judges that are doing the civil cases are also doing criminal cases. Not always, but there are some judges who do both. Um, and you know, they’re seeing some pretty nasty stuff on the criminal side, right? They’re seeing some really nasty stuff. Um, so sometimes I have clients that are like, this is an outrage. This is outrageous. You have to tell the judge, you know, this is completely outrageous. Whatever word rages, right? Well Mike, the judge in that criminal case yesterday saw outrage today. You’re just a contract case, right?
40:40 So you have to sort of play all of that into a port, all the important information. Okay. And then, um, something else I wanted to get your opinion on is in joint ventures because a lot of real estate investors will end up in joint ventures at some point. Typically either with friends, family, neighbors, even we’ve seen the biggest concern I’ll always have on a joint venture when someone’s doing it with someone they don’t really know that well or they think they know, but they don’t really know is that if, if you and I buy a property together and we’re joint venture 50 slash 50, we’re splitting the equity gain, we’re splitting the, you know, a possible appreciation. We’re splitting cashflow. But the roof caves in clearly needs a $5,000 immediate repair because the roof has caved in. But your, your like, Tom, you know what?
41:26 I think we can just carpet. And I’m like, no, what are you talking about? Like it’s the roof we need to get in there and spend the money right now. But now if we’re in a 50 slash 50 relationship, how, what’s the best way and maybe using you and I together isn’t a good example or two people. What is the best way to structure that joint venture agreement so that like somebody has deciding control on when monies to be spent or do you need to do that just or sorry, you don’t need to do that. You can just take action and recoup that money on a 50 slash 50 share. 50 slash 50 is our hard. Um, uh, you know, it’s just like a marriage, right? Like you both have to agree and if you both don’t agree that there’s no agreement, so 50 slash 50 is, are hard that way.
42:05 I’m almost always, we have a provision in the contract that says, you know, you split it 50 slash 50 in terms of what the cost is. And if I can’t come up with the money, for example, but you can then you put in the money in an I owe you the money and then you can put in the contract that one percent, two percent, three percent, four percent or whatever presented is right. And in effect it’s alone. So that doesn’t really address the question that you’re asking though, which is how do we agree that we had there? I have to fix the roof or not a and it’s hard on a 50 slash 50 when there’s more than two people. Then you can have sort of that deciding vote because we made that, I forget what it’s called, but your little management committee, you’re voting unity and agreement.
42:45 It’s there. I forget the name of it. Yeah, it’s different names for different, different agreements. But. But that’s exactly it. There’s just a committee that basically makes the decision or sometimes there’s a property manager as well, but not necessarily that person making the decision. So if there’s more than two, then it’s easy. If there’s only two and you can agree, usually the default position isn’t. The agreement is void that the whole, the agreement is void and someone has to buy someone out because now you have a total disagreement on what you should be doing. Right. Um, I haven’t seen that come up. I haven’t seen that. It’s always been on the back of my mind. It’s a little kind of. I guess because Nick and I always come from the point like if the left, there’s a leak in the foundation or if there’s something furnace, like we don’t have time to be like arguing on whether we need to be putting in a new furnace or not putting in a new furnace today.
43:33 Yeah, that’s been my concern a little bit and we’ve always done it because we have done joint ventures where nick and I are 50 percent one site together. So I guess 25, 25 mic and I, you could look at it, but we’re 50 and another person’s 50. Yeah. We’ve never been faced with that situation and we would always just step in and do the right thing. But it’s always been in the back of my mind. Like let’s say that person doesn’t agree. They’re going to do. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Okay. So another case for the lawyer to come in and guide you through the situation. Make some money off your right. Yeah. Okay. No, no. I get it out. Okay. So I’m not that. That’s a bad thing. It’s how the world works. Um, title insurance. Why do we have, I don’t even know if you know the answers to this, but like, well thanks for asking me without knowing, without giving you a heads up, but I just want to explain something when. Yeah, when I was in, when nick and I were buying our place in Croatia over there, they went through. They literally went through, I guess I don’t know if the deeds is the right word, but they went through like this historical chain of ownership. Yes. And No.
44:32 I remember it just fascinating to me because they literally had these records they would go through and then, you know, whoever’s the current owner could be proved through a chain in here. Okay. Yeah. But we are all buying title insurance when we close on properties so that if that is messed up and something goes wrong with that, that we have this insurance that will step in and correct it. So. Okay. So here’s the answer. Luckily I know the answer to this one. Okay, good. I didn’t mean to throw you. I should have prepped you Chris.
45:05 Um, okay. So, so it used to be, here’s a sort of a generalized answer, but here you go. So it used to be that deals would close in the registry office in the city where the property was located. Okay. So for example, if, you know, if you are closing on a St Catherine’s property, the registry office in Saint Catherine’s is 59 church street. That’s where the courthouse is. That’s where the registry offices, Hamilton, it’s 1:19 king, you know. So there’s all these different Aros registry offices around and it used to be that the deal would close there. So, um, I articled right around the time that there was a change being made. So I learned the old way. So I spent months at 1:19 King Street in Hamilton learning the old aro way. The lawyer would go there, the two lawyers would meet on the day of closing or their conveyancers are their staff, but basically the two offices with no way they would actually meet there and meet their.
46:03 Yeah, I mean their representatives are very, very good. Sometimes it was the actual media that’d be at the SRO, you know. And so, you know, the one layer would show up with money in effect, the bank drafts, the other lawyer would show up with keys, you know, and then there’d be this sort of physical transaction at the Aro uh, and then you would take all of your paperwork to the registrar who was behind a big desk and she would say she, it’s sexist, but it was mostly women and some mentor. Uh, and she would review it and make sure that everything looked right and then she would register your deed and she would register your mortgage and you know, that was the deal. That’s how the deal got done at the registry office. And um, so, so in the weeks leading up to that, the lawyers would be doing their searches, so I remember going to 1:19 king or 59 church in St Catherine’s or wherever it was and pulling all the information, pulling the deeds, et cetera.
46:56 And I will be doing a physical hands on search there. You know, I’d be looking at the title register map surveys, reference plans. You’d be like checking all these things. Right. So, uh, back in those days, I say it like it was forever ago, but it was 20 years ago, you know, in 1998 when I articled. So, you know, that’s not that long ago, 20 years, right? Yeah. So, um, you know, if, if I was looking at a survey for example, that didn’t look quite right, you know, I couldn’t tell you buying a 100 feet frontage or 105 feet frontage, you know, some of these surveys like old and burnt up or 100 years old or whatever the case was, you know, and I just couldn’t really give you a lawyers opinion about what it was that you were buying or if I was looking at the transactions that you say historical, right?
47:42 It used to be like in a big huge book written down in pen so and so bought from so and so who bought from so and so and I couldn’t quite tell and maybe there was a gap in the chain of title and you know, what? Someone come back and say from 50 years ago they never released the interest. Now they still own the property, all this nonsense. In any event, I would physically check all that stuff and if I couldn’t give you an opinion, I’d say maybe you should get a new survey or maybe you should get title insurance and title insurance will cover you against, you know, if you’re buying a 100 feet or 110 feet, is your neighbor going to say he owns 10 feet of your lot line so, and then you would say yes or no, or maybe so, but it was optional on you to get the title insurance or not that, that would protect you in that circumstance.
48:26 Right? Well everything has gone now. Electronic. So every property that’s a land titles property, usually all the city properties of the old farm registry properties are different. But if it’s in a city, it’s land titles, Lt, um, and it’s, it’s got now an electronic catalog number with service Ontario and that’s called a pin number, like a vin number on a car. And so now I’m closing your deal from my office in front of my computer. I pop in your pin number in service Ontario, spits out this document that says to me basically clear or not clear if there’s a lien, I can see that, but I’m not doing a physical search anymore. I’m not going to the Aro anymore. I’m just doing this sort of transaction from my office and on the day of closing the other lawyers sitting at his desk or her desk in front of her computer doing the same thing.
49:18 So when that happened, lenders all started saying title insurance is now mandatory, right? It’s no longer optional on you. It’s now mandatory. You must get it. We are your partners in this transaction. We own the home together with you until the episode. You’re getting title insurance as a prerequisite to getting them or who made the data that the provincial government lender started doing. Lender started doing this now because they’re loaning on this stuff and yeah, you’re right. Because they have an ownership interest in the property. Right? So now it’s mandatory. You cannot get a mortgage, some privates you can, but any sort of lender’s mortgage you can get a mortgage without title insurance is totally mandatory. Now it’s a bit of a gap to use my word from before in the sense that most cases you don’t need it, you know, like most of these properties now have circulated since 2000 and they’ve been on the pin system. So if there was anything that was going to come out, it would have shaked out by now. There’s no way to subterfuge this sub diffusion, those subterfuge? No. Chris Stumble. I stuttered through the word of God. So that’s what title insurance says. It’s this, it’s this protection to protect you
50:28 and most importantly the lender against any frauds on title, any mistakes, on title anything with you know, a lot more problems, etc. Okay. SO then I guess when we go to like 20 years from today when we’re all using this blockchain technology that will electronically be the ledger representing this stuff, you might not need title insurance anymore because it’ll be like a distributed ledger. Well, who knowS? Yeah, I mean it meant that it may more may morph. Yeah, like it may morph into something else because the number of tItle insurance claims that I have are, are, you know, are minute compared to the number of deals that I do. Yeah, some of them could be a huge claims, but, and, and a big claim would be somebody arguing lot size or just straight up ownership. Yeah, ownership would be one. I mean I don’t even really, they’re arguing straight up ownership of who owned that hardly happens, you know, because again, it’s circulated so much.
51:20 But for example, someone may not have properly come off title 50 years ago that wasn’t then captured in the um, when you all went to electronic and somehow someone found it and then southern I am still and the guy shows up. He’s like, will I still own some piece with this property? Like it’s all, you know, it’s all for show, but anyway, I mean it’s technically a claim. right. Got it. so yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So we need to do this uh, often because we need the legal updates from either. Well, there’s one other thing, I, I, I find this stuff really interesting, especially when you’re into real estate as an investor. Like these are the little details that we all kind of need to know about when someone is looking to get a lawyer who is going to represent them in court on some action, you know, I’m not talking about a real estate transaction.
52:04 Is there something that you can give them as a heads up to say, hey, here’s some of the questions you should probably ask the person who. The reason I asked you this is because it took nick and I many years to understand that we’re different lawyers. This sound, it might sound really naive to you, but we believed that when you went to a lawyer you were going to a lawyer and we didn’t understand that. Just like in real estate, there are different lawyers, like some will just, um, I don’t mean say just, but they will, their profession will be closing real estate deals. They’re very good at closing real estate deals, but they don’t really go to court on civil litigation of any sort or anything like that. Um, and when they do, if they had to represent your interest because they don’t go there often, they might not be doing it the best way and they don’t have to experience.
52:44 How can you like, you know, if you, if you did get served with some documents, what would be some questions you could ask your lawyer just to make sure you’re in good hands. yeah. Well, you know, I mean asking the questions and getting the answers. So I really help you because, you know, we all have the ability to bullshit right? Until you, that we especially lawyers, we know how to do it. Lawyer, don’t you find lawyers really are. Yeah, I was trying to make a joke. You’re not reacting to that at all. you’re just like, it’s not funny todd. Never say that about lawyers. You almost have to go out and ask other people or get other opinions. The word on the street, you know, there, there are lawyers that are certified specialists and civil certified
53:26 by the law society and frankly between me and your garbage. Um, um, there are some that are not certified in there. They’re dynamite lawyers. You know, I think I’ve always, always said this, I think a good litigation lawyer is mostly based on personality and I’m not talking about a winning personality, like, you know, I’m, I’m talking about just having the ability to um, I’m going to go in there and I’m going to argue, I’m happy to argue I’m not afraid of the judge yelling at me and I’m going to do, I’m going to take shit. I’m not gonna take shit. You know, like I’ve said this so many times, we all have like a basic modicum of intelligence. Like we’re all relatively bright, but I don’t know where I stand in the pantheon of brightness and intelligence. I mean, you might have double my IQ.
54:08 It’s possible just to use Monica. It’s, it’s you’re way beyond. No, but it’s possible. Right? But think about it like what are we actually arguing about? Like if you and I were lawyers arguing in court and we were doing the theory of relativity or quantum physics, then I might get my ass kicked because I don’t really know anything about that. But it’s basic stuff like when we’re arguing law, which is really arguing things that are basic premises basic, you know, you know, uh, issues of right and wrong. We can all do that. We all have the level of intelligence to do that. It’s, are you going to be anxious about it? Are you going to be able to make your argument in front of a judge or you’re going to have like a puking session in the morning before you go into court like some people do, you know?
54:52 So I think that clients should ask around, you know, and just ask people maybe that have been in it, meet the lawyer, see what the bearing is, see what the personality is. Some lawyers are hard up for work, so they want your retainer, they want your file, so they’ll tell you they can do it because they need to eat tomorrow. Uh, other lawyers are just sort of based on their ego. They want to be able to do it because it gives them some sort of inner self-satisfaction. Right? So it’s a, it’s a really hard question to answer. I think you just have to kind of do your due diligence and ask around and, and, and then after all of that has been said, you still might not win your case because the judge might not see it your way. So it’s not, it’s not an easy answer, you know, it’s not, it’s well at least just bringing it up and if you’re listening to this just know that not all lawyers are made equal for different things.
55:41 Exactly. Exactly. That, that really did it as maybe as I mentioned that naive as that sounds. We did not get that. We didn’t understand that. We just thought a lawyer is a lawyer and if we have a good guy lawyer, then he’s done it all, but it’s really not the case all the time. It’s, it’s, you know, like. So we’ve all gone to school and we’ve all got our law degrees and we’ve practiced x number of years, but that’s really the common denominator from there. Some are better than others and I’m not saying that I’m better than others, I’m just saying we have different aspects of real estate, like in the real estate profession. we had to get our real estate licenses to open a brokerage and work with investors the way we do, but the real estate license, we all get as the same that everyone gets, but it doesn’t mean that we
56:24 have as much experience as somebody in, you know, Alberta’s a mountainside, country land or whatever. Right. And uh, you know, that was really a bad enough, but like we have experienced here and we do this here and you could have very similar real estate kind of designations, but the experience you have and what you bring to the table, completely different. I think so it makes sense in every profession. I just don’t know, maybe we were just super young when we first realized that, um, but it felt like a big thing for us. Yeah. Cool. I think a great update, Chris. Thank you. I know you’re a busy guy. I mean we’re dragging you all the way down the highway here and traffic to do this, so really, really appreciate this. How do people reach you if they want to reach out to you? What’s the best way?
57:04 So, I’m a telephone nine. Oh, five, three, eight, eight, zero, one, three, zero is my office, my cell nine. Oh, five, five, two, zero. One zero. Wait for one and a website capclaw.ca. Yeah, so c a p c law, Chris Argiropoulos, professional corporation, law. capclaw.ca. Yeah, and the email is chrIs@capclaw.ca. We will link to you. We will have in the show notes for this. We will link to that and you can always get to those at arockstarinnercircle.com/podcast. All the episodes are listed there and on this episode, this chat with Chris, we’ll put the link to his website there, so if you’re listening to this while you’re driving or whatever, you can go to that URL later and track down. Chris, thanks again, man. Really, really or something.
57:53 Thank you. Thank you, everyone. It’s tom crowds against. Hopefully, you enjoyed that. Chris, as I hope you can tell, he’s a great guy, great lawyer. He’s turned into a good friend of ours over the years. You can get his URL or his website at the show notes for this particular podcast episode and you can always get those at rockstar inner circle, forward slash podcast, so rockstarinnercircle/podcast. All the different episodes of this podcast will be there. You can click on his episode and in the notes or the details of this episode, we’ll have a link to his website, so if you heard him mention it but couldn’t remember it or you’re driving whatever. You can get to it and just. I’ll repeat it one more time. It’s www.capclaw.ca, but you can’t get to it at rockstarinnercircle.com/podcast if that’s easier to remember to get to his site there.
58:40 Everyone. Thank you for the feedback that we were sharing. We recently had The Your Life. Your Terms. Event, where we had a whole bunch of people, come out and we shared the morning together, different real estate investing strategies and economic update and a local real estate market update amongst other things and a whole bunch of people came up and thanked us and give us feedback for doing this podcast. That really means a lot to us. So thank you for that type of feedback. It really helps drive us to put out more of these episodes and try to find good guests that are interesting to all of us. So thank you for all the feedback and if you are listening to this and you feel like we’ve earned it, if we could ask that you give us a rating or review on iTunes, greatly appreciate it. So if you feel like we’ve earned it, um, if you could do that for us, that is really like the fuel that drives this podcast for us for some reason. I don’t know why exactly that’s the case, but it is. So if you feel like we deserve that, um, that would be great. And we would be very grateful and thankful for that. That’s it for now. Until next time, your life, your terms.