The accidental millionaire
Getting rich through real estate wasn’t exactly part of the plan for Calum Ross, a 42-year- old wealth planner, who bought his first place as a cheaper way to live in a pricey Toronto rental market. That decision sent him off on a string of house buying over the years. “I was definitely an accidental real estate investor. I bought my first place in June 1998. At the time I had just committed to ( studying for) an MBA in Toronto. And my parents were like, ‘ You should own a place and not rent.’ I couldn’t afford to do the MBA full-time. I was scrambling. I paid $150,000 for a duplex and I used all my money in my RRSP to just get to 10 per cent down. The interest rate was 6.88 per cent. I was thinking to myself, ‘How am I ever going to pay down this $140,000 mortgage?’ But three and a half years later, I walked away with more than $50,000 in tax-free capital gains.
“I just started buying property after that. I’ve bought 20 since that first purchase and it’s turned out to be a very profitable thing for me.
“The funny thing is, just to be 100 per cent clear, I never had any intention of making money in real estate. I was just on such a strict, strict budget. The only reason I bought that first property was because the monthly mortgage payments, with the maintenance fees and the taxes, was going to be $300 less than it would cost to rent.
“So, many people see me and think that I’m a successful real estate investor. And it was just way good luck and not really good judgment. Even my second place, I bought because I could live below my means.
“Friends were looking at me, below the age of 30, and I had all these home-runs in real estate. There was no method to the madness. The first property I bought because it was close to the subway, the second one because it was renovated. And my third property? I went to a builder’s office and fell for the marketing.
“I’ve come to terms with this. In life you get good-luck bounces and bad-luck bounces. Real estate was a good one.”
VERY PROFITABLE
Calum Ross