Sarah Larbi – Build a Network of Successful Role Models to Avoid this Real Estate Investing Mistake

Sarah Larbi specializes in helping take the mystery out of homeownership for Canadians who thought real estate investing was out of reach. She has earned their trust and respect by having the drive and focus to embark, build and grow a seven-figure, 10 property investment portfolio by her early 30’s. Sarah’s goal is to inspire and train other fellow Canadian’s to realize their property-owning dreams by sharing her 7-step investing process through her online training programs. Her results-oriented approach has been featured in The Toronto Star, 1010 News Talk Radio, and Canadian Real Estate Wealth Magazine as well as numerous online media. She is an invited speaker at the Canadian Real Estate Wealth Investor Forum and is often a guest on numerous North American finance-focused podcasts. Sarah is the co-host of two podcasts related to the Canadian real estate market.   “In this real estate game, it is about time in the market, not timing the market. So just do your research, jump in and keep learning along the way.” Sarah Larbi   Worst investment ever Desire to be wealthy Sarah had a great desire to be wealthy and she wanted to find out how she could retire at 40 while still enjoying financial freedom. So she did some research and real estate investing kept coming back over and over and over. While she came across other ways of creating wealth, she was drawn to real estate. She managed to convince her boyfriend to join her and buy real estate property. She took a second job and cashed in some of her vacation money to be able to have enough downpayment to buy the cheapest house that they could afford. Mistake no.1: Renting to family At the time Sarah and her boyfriend were looking to buy their first rental property her sister needed a place to live closer to her daughter's school. So they decided to look for property in that area with plans to rent out the house to her sister. They didn’t do any kind of research they simply asked the sister what kind of house she wanted and could afford. That’s the only information they worked with to buy their first rental property. They didn’t research the location or make any price and property comparisons. Mistake no.2: Not using a local realtor Sarah used the realtor that was originally helping them in a town about an hour away to find their rental property. They kept going back and forth because the realtor didn't know the market and neither did they. Mistake no.3: Borrowing from the bank instead of a mortgage broker Once they got a property they went to their bank for financing. The bank wanted 35% downpayment forcing her to look for a mortgage broker but at this point, she’d wasted a lot of time trying to negotiate with the bank. Making the math work Luckily, Sarah happened to listen to several real estate investing podcasts and she learned that she needed to figure out how to at least break even or make some cash flow from her real estate property. She worked out that she needed to collect $800 in rent per month to break even. What she didn’t...