The 5 Questions Podcast
Join us as we unlock real estate and business insights, one question at a time.
The 5 Questions Podcast
Building Wealth through Non-Traditional Financing with Jan Carmanico-Reeves
💡 Unlock the secrets of creative financing with Jan Carmanico-Reeves, a 40-year business and real estate expert! Learn innovative strategies like the vendor take-back mortgage and how they offer flexibility and growth for investors. Jan breaks down common misconceptions and shares powerful success stories, including a single mom who transformed her financial future using a HELOC and property management outsourcing. 🌟🏡
From a salon owner’s inspiring career pivot to real estate investing, discover the essential steps to financial freedom—even without big personal funds. Don’t miss these game-changing insights! 🎧
https://abodeinvestments.ca/
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So this increased her monthly income, took away lots of stress and got her excited about now she's looking for another investment property.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast, where we unlock real estate and business insights one question at a time. Welcome to the 5 Questions Podcast. I am your host, mario Lamar, our guest on today's show. She is a creative financing expert with over 40 years of combined business and real estate investing experience. She has a mission to make real estate investing fun, easy and profitable for not only her, but her clients as well. Welcome, jan Carmanico-Reeves. Jan, welcome to the podcast today.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Jan, the concept of the podcast is I ask you five questions about real estate or business and we get straight to the point you ready.
Speaker 1:I'm ready.
Speaker 2:So in the intro we mentioned that creative financing is your expertise. What may be strategy you believe every real estate investor should know about?
Speaker 1:Well, there's many. I've used many, but one of my favorites innovative strategy is the vendor take back mortgage. Every real estate investor should know about it. So this approach. It involves seller financing for a portion of the property's purchase price. Of the property's purchase price. For an example, recently I secured a vendor take back mortgage where the seller provided 75% VTB for the property at a 4% interest rate.
Speaker 2:That's really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the VTB was structured over five years and I also negotiated two years interest only because I knew I was going to do a major renovation in a section of it at an additional unit. So that allowed me the time and flexibility that I needed to do the renovation with, you know, a lower cash flow at that time and to be able to stabilize the property and to be able to stabilize the property.
Speaker 2:So being, like you say, creative in your way you make your offers is really important and can allow you to maybe secure more deals if you, you know, use like, for example, you said, vendor, take back, you know, and then you need to qualify less with regular banks, so that's amazing.
Speaker 1:It gives you a lot more flexibility and I was also able to use a refinance from another property as the down payment where that might not have qualified with traditional financing.
Speaker 2:Wow, real, real creative. So that's really good insights for us. That brings us to our second question what talking about, again? Creative financing. What are some common misconceptions about creative financing and how do you help your clients navigate through these misunderstandings?
Speaker 1:Okay, well, number one. I think when people hear creative financing, they think, oh, there's something illegal involved here, I'm going to jail, which which is not the case at all. These are all 100% legal strategies. It's just thinking outside the box a little bit. So a common misconception is that it's only if you can't qualify for traditional loans, but that's not the case at all. The more creative you get with the financing, the more opportunities you're making for yourself to be able to acquire more assets.
Speaker 2:Right. So then again, it brings us to our first point, where, if you want to grow as a real estate investor, you are going to have to use creative financing strategies, because if you use just only traditional banks, you're going to maybe grow, but at a much slower pace.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly, and I've used them all.
Speaker 2:Well, that brings us to our third question, which is that you have a mission. We spoke about it in the introduction. Your mission is to make real estate investing fun, easy and profitable. Can you share with us, maybe, a moment where you helped a client transform their investment experience?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I love helping people. I've done that all my life, my career. So one memorable moment was I was working with a client who was a single mother of two. I was working with a client who was a single mother of two and she had her first rental property, but she was just feeling overwhelmed financially with property management duties and all those kinds of things. So I helped her look into getting a HELOC to restructure her finances and be able to consolidate some debt. So then that made her cash flow a lot better by having one payment, and we also outsource property management for her. So this increased her monthly income, took away lots of stress and got her excited about now she's looking for another investment property.
Speaker 2:See, that's the one thing, and I'm, you know, I believe in networking a lot. I'm a big networking person and, like you mentioned, when you work with people, maybe they don't know about these things. So, working with someone who's done it before, who maybe has more experience than you, for this purpose, real estate investing is crucial to your growth as well, because you taught her of some opportunities that maybe she thought she couldn't do investing no more because she was overwhelmed, but you opened the doors, opened the light of her seeing the possibilities out there. Why don't you use a property manager to offload some stress off your plate? And these are all great thoughts and insights that you bring to our listeners, and insights that you bring to our listeners. That brings us to our fourth question, and this you mentioned about our previous discussions. We had together the art of pivoting.
Speaker 1:Can you share a story of a significant pivot in your career and how it led to success? Okay, well, it was very significant COVID lockdowns. I've been a salon owner for over 35 years, so COVID lockdowns led me to need to pivot for an income, shall we say. And during that time now, just previous to COVID, about eight months before COVID, I had purchased my first rental property using a private mortgage and so I took advantage of the time in COVID lockdowns and there's a whole big, long story, but the close note version of that is I took that time to dive into learning, you know, joining investment groups, getting some coaching, tons of education in real estate investing. So that really helped me scale my portfolio during that time. And, yeah, that was a huge pivot because I only had one income stream, so I knew I needed a second income stream and, yeah, the pivot really was diving into the education, joining networking groups and yeah, a lot of people maybe underestimate the power of those groups.
Speaker 2:Some even think it's a scam. But for having done it myself, I can assure you that is crucial to your growth. That have been investing for decades will bring you much further, much faster, because you're not discovering and going through the motions of going through the mistakes that everybody makes. As you go, you use their learning and their experience and you hop over those mistakes and fast forward much faster in your investing career. So I agree with you Learning and being part of certain groups is crucial. And just to let you know, I talk to a lot of people and COVID was a big game changer in pivoting in life for a lot of people. We had no choice. We had to find an alternate solution, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Already our fifth question and final question. Financial freedom through strategic investment is a method that is central in the team of your work. What are the first steps you would advise someone looking to achieve this financial freedom?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to give you five first steps that I would recommend to everybody, and a lot of the things we've already covered, but I would say number one is education. Learn the basics of real estate. Investing, creative financing, understanding different strategies will power you to make more informed decisions. Number two financial assessment. Really conduct a thorough review of your current financial situation, including your assets, your liabilities and, most important, your available equity. A lot of people don't even realize what they already have, that they can work. Number three would be goal setting. Define clear and achievable financial goals, whether it's generating passive income or building long-term wealth. Having a really clear roadmap, I would say, is crucial. Number four is networking. Financing and in real estate investments, like their guidance, is just invaluable in your learning and, like you said, to avoid common pitfalls and mistakes, can save you a lot of money, and so any investment you make into coaching will come back tenfold, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I agree with all those points that you mentioned. They're just, you know, exact roadmap to achieve financial freedom. A lot of people don't realize how accessible it is to everybody to achieve that financial freedom. You just got to be open first of all, open your mind and put in the work and another misconception that we spoke of that people have you don't need a lot of money to start in real estate, you just need the know-how.
Speaker 1:That's right. I've done all my deals with none of my own money.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. You know, I'm really glad we brought you on the show today because that's going to open the eyes of many of our listeners on. You know, maybe I can do it myself, maybe there is a way that I can you know better my my financial situation or even achieve free financial freedom, you know.
Speaker 2:So, uh, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Uh, lots of insights it was. It's a short podcast, but we go straight to the point and we try to bring lots of values to our listeners. So, Jan, thank you again and we hope to speak to you soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it. Thanks, mario, it's been my pleasure and, yes, if anybody wants to know any more about, like I said, I'm the creative financing queen. So if anybody wants to know more about strategies I've used, please feel free to reach out.
Speaker 2:We'll put your links in the description.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, great chatting with you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jen, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Bye now.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning into the 5 Questions Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, like and hit the notification bell on our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more insights and tips to transform your real estate and business game. See you next time.