Nick Neacsu | Angell Hasman & Associates

I am Matt Parker, your host of the house rich homeowner podcast. Managing your home finances is hard. After many years in the mortgage industry, I've decided to combine my knowledge, resources and connections and turn them over to you. Each week I'll be featuring different home finance experts or my own personal insight to help you achieve financial peace at home. Let's. Hey, Matt Parker here. Very excited to have Nick Miaksu with me today. Nick, thank you for being here.

No problem, Matt. Thank you for having me on the show.

Oh, my pleasure.

It's great.

Yeah, yeah.

It's fun on this side rather than the other side.

You know. Quick little intro with Nick. He's been in the real estate world for over nine years now. He's when he's with angle Hazman over office in west Vancouver, but he focuses van on the north shore. North Vancouver and downtown as well. And we're just really, really lucky to have him here. He's a great resource and he's a wonderful connection. So thanks, Nick. I like to start off with a fun question.

Sure.

What's one thing that not many people know about you?

Oh, hey, this is great. I like how these questions aren't preloaded. Think on the spot. One thing that people don't know. I love country music.

Okay.

I love country music.

Do you? Yeah. Who's your. Who's your. Who's your go to right now?

Luke Ryan. After I saw him live, I was hooked.

Yeah, good.

Yeah, he's a fun. He's just fun. He's a fun guy. Yeah, yeah.

No, it's funny. Like in Vancouver in the north shore and everything.

It's. You don't.

You don't hear, like. I know deep down a lot of people love country music, but you don't. You don't hear people talk about it that much.

You don't know. So there you go. Now I'm talking about it. And that's one thing people might. Might not know.

No, I do too. I mean, I didn't like it until I ended up playing hockey in smaller towns when I was younger and it was just such a part of the culture. I was like, oh, this is quite fun. I like this stuff.

Yeah.

Because you've been doing this for quite some time now. What got you into a real estate profession to begin with?

Well, good question. So actually before I was a realtor, I was a develop manager. So I was. When I was 26, I was hired on the island in Victoria to work for a company called three point properties. And I worked myself up from an assistant marketing director to project manager, which was an interesting leap because, you know, my degree is in marketing, but I've always found it fascinating looking at these project managers and they're building, they're building communities, they're doing subdivisions, they're, you know, they're creating something. And so I learned. I basically taught myself how to build a house, how to do a subdivision. So, you know, by the time I was 28, I had built three houses for the company, helped with a multifamily row home development on Dallas Road in Victoria. And then by the time I was 29, we completed a phase one and phase two of a of the land and cottage development in Port Renfrew, which is on the west coast. Check it out. It's awesome. And so I learned how to do subject fields, work with engineers and planning departments and all that. So, you know, I think what happens, what it was, I realized that real estate was my passion and I just wanted to absorb everything I could possibly do. But then I sort of hit the ceiling of my, you know, I guess my job worth. Right. So I hit an X point where this is how much I was gonna get paid for the rest of my life. Yes. And. And that frustrated me. So, you know, I had a couple friends in real estate that I, that I looked up to and they, and they suggested that, you know, why don't I give it a shot in real estate? And I always wanted to come back to Vancouver. And so I thought, you know, perhaps I should contemplate becoming a realtor. At the same time, I was looking for jobs as a development manager in Vancouver, but it was so competitive. So I thought, you know, I'm gonna get my license, I'm give it a shot and it will be easy. Which it wasn't. I was overconfident.

Yeah, you have to wear so many hats, I'd imagine.

Right?

There's just. Yeah, there's just so much. You can't even be taught until you do it.

Oh, my gosh. Like, you know, I thought I knew, I knew how to build a condo, I knew how to build a townhouse, I knew how to build this and that. I was a little bit overconfident going into it. But you know what? Sales is something different. Sales is you need all that plus it to gain trust, to gain, you know, and so forth to become a successful realtor that actually build business.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, being. Having done it for quite a few years now, what keeps you here? Why do you love what you do?

You know what I Love problem solving. I find that my business is all about problem solving. You know, not necessarily like, you know, the deals, but also, you know, find finding new businesses all. It's such a thinkers industry and a creative industry. I love working and meeting new people. You know, I'm a natural introvert. Like, I was an introvert throughout my whole, you know, life, even after like 20, you know, to my 30s. I started. I became an agent at 31. I had to teach myself to be more extroverted. So I'm sort of in the middle. But I just love the challenge. I love people, you know, I want to also make the industry better, you know, to what I think is better. And I just love real estate as a whole. So the drive comes in loving the industry and making it feel like it's not work.

Yeah, no. So cool. Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that. If you weren't doing this, if you weren't in real estate, is there anything that you see yourself you sort of gravitating towards in terms of an industry that you think that would be always thinking that'd be kind of fun to do?

I don't know. That's a good question. I consider. I consider myself unemployable on a staff. Yeah. Right. So I would never want to work with anybody and I don't think. Or for anybody and never want any. I don't think anybody would ever want to hire me. So. Employee. But good question. I mean, I was, you know, it depends. Like, I was a. I played college collegiate soccer in the US ncaa. So, you know, soccer. Professional soccer player, perhaps. But, you know, when I found my lane, there was nothing but that. So nothing distracted me. Yeah, I'd be doing. I'd be doing something, some kind of entrepreneurship. For sure, though. For sure. Yeah.

No, that's wonderful. Yeah, I know we're in a, you know, we're in a unique time right now as we, as we talk. We're coming into mid April and sort of in the early sort of transition into this COVID 19 situation. Now, I don't know if you want to speak on that directly because I do think that, you know, eventually that should pass and we'll see what happens. But do you have any advice for anyone looking to purchase a property, anyone looking to sell their property, whether it be now or in the coming year, on the steps to take or just any sort of advice on the market in general or your philosophy on real estate?

Well, this is a whole new set of circumstances for everybody. So we're all in the same Boat, right. People talk about the 2001.com not crash 9112008 recession. But this is different. This is a whole different set of circumstances that we haven't seen in 100 years. So we don't know what's going to go on. What I see though is that real estate has a pause button on it right now. You know, there is that there is a market further out. Fraser Valley for sure is less affected by, you know, this whole epidemic. But you know, the very first case in Canada was in North Vancouver, five minutes away from where I live. So you can understand that on the North Shore people are extra cautious, right? And so health and safety is number one. So if you, instead of fighting it or saying poor me and you're accepting that health and safety is number one for everybody else, acknowledge it with your clients, acknowledge it with the general public. Adjust your business towards those values and people will, you will gain trust, maintain your clients as well. I mean be creative. I know my business partner, DJ Danner is going on a tour this week. His clients are at home and he's going virtual tour. So he's at the homes recording with the phone and they're real buyers at the 5 million. So we're taking creative steps and there's no right or wrong answer yet because no one's found the magic formula. We have been given direction from our council, our heirs and admissions as well and our real estate board that if we are involved in, if we are showing a property and somebody does get sick with COVID or anything else, we are personally liable. So we don't have insurance over that. So covering that liability. So we would be personally liable for that person getting ill. So we need to now have waivers to release a liability. We're going to use the best practices as possible according to the CDC and just do and be good stewards or be good community members and thinking about safety first if we're there, that's step one. Step two is now to find the opportunities. So if you're working with a buyer, call the agents and ask about, you know, you can't divulge motivation but just try to get information out of the agents without by asking indirect questions. See if it's, see if these properties would be a fit. First make sure your clients are pre approved. Don't go beyond, don't be doing the introductory tours. This is not the time for introductory tours. There's no open houses, so don't waste your time. Just make sure that you're working with qualified buyers that are ready to act in the next three months. Right. And if you're a listing agent, those are the same questions I ask. I ask the questions. I have a list of questions that are still new to my vocabulary. One will be, you know, has your client traveled in the last 30 days outside the country? Has your, has your client, you know, been around Anybody who's been COVID 19 positive? Has your client experienced any flu like symptoms? Very common things. Has your client been pre approved? You know, in some cases, can you provide me with some documentation to show me that they've been pre approved? I'm not going to bring anybody into a property if it's not worth, I mean it's not, it's never worth the risk. As you could say for real estate. Our life is number one. But you know, with, you know, I'm not going to risk anybody's situation unless they are. It's, you know, at least worth taking, you know, some risk, you know, for a qualified buyer that meets all those criteria.

I think the good news, the good news is as you, as you mentioned is luckily we have technology and we have ways to be able to navigate this a little bit better. Like if this was even, even 10 years ago, would have been, you know, completely different than today, which is the technology we have. So that, that's, that's a, that's, that can, that can definitely help in what you're speaking on.

Yeah. So I would say that, you know, as a listing agent, you know, any listings that we take on now forward or you know, four weeks ago forward, we'll have the virtual tour, the matterport, so you can do the walk through the VR walkthrough. It's a really neat technology. We've used it in the last three or four years. It's an expensive technology. So sometimes we use it, sometimes we don't. But in this case, this is where the value is. So you gotta adapt your business. I mean, this isn't changing in a month. This is a six month process, minimum. And even if the virus does dissipate, our culture won't. Mm, right. Our culture will. Our business, the way that we do business is gonna change for some time. So let's adapt.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's get ahead. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, exactly. The new normal. Yeah, I appreciate that very much. Now with the, you know, having been involved in a lot of transactions, purchase and sale, is there one, is there a property or just a situation that stands out as the most memorable to you?

Oh my God. Okay.

Quite a few.

Yes, yes, yes. I'M top of mind because they're all memorable. I can recite each one of my transactions I've done in my career. Because they're all memorable. I would say, why not the last? So I sold a house in North Vancouver and, you know, for $4 million, a new house. Okay. But. So the offer had come in. It had all these conditions on there during the subject removal period. The neighborhood come over into our property in the middle of the night, cut down all the hedges. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Mike, so, you know, we're not trying to hide it. I was very upfront with the buyer's agent. This is what happened. We're going to replace him. So let's do the addendum. It was like $10,000 worth of plants. We're going to do addendum. We're going to replace those hedges. Don't worry about it. We replace them and you cut them down again. No.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. So now we have a security issue. We have a crazy neighbor, a worried buyer, and saying we may not want to go through with this transaction because of the crazy neighbor. So now this is where it got really crazy. So we planted them again. I went there at 11 o' clock at night, and I stayed until 4 o' clock in the morning watching those freaking hedges from the house. And I parked my car in the driveway to let them know that I was there. And then, and then, and then I. The next day I went and bought a bunch of those, those nest cameras.

Okay.

All over the property. I knocked on his door and I told him what I did because he wouldn't admit it. He wouldn't admit to doing it. But I saw him on the camera, but he had a hoodie on. So on the original security system for the house. So I told him what happened. I had cameras set up everywhere. And we have a guard. I'm the guard. So we managed to navigate through that weekend and with full disclosure to the buyer. So they knew exactly what was going on. This isn't trying to say everything's okay. And they felt comfortable with that effort. They. They eventually did remove the subjects. So. And this is a big deal for my client too, because my client was just, you know, you know, as a developer, you have expensive money. You're born money at 11% for, for, for example. Right. It's not always like that. But you can. Your private lending, construction loan portion, that could be 11%. Right?

You can, it can get very expensive. So every day counts.

Yes, that was a.

That was interesting.

And that was Only this, that was in 2019 and in December. So you know, that was nine years in my business. So this note, it's, you know, you do if you. There's always a solution and sometimes it can be a little bit drastic, but there's always a solution and you have.

To be creative and think outside, outside the box on those. That's amazing.

You mean the amount of time and there's so much at stake for everybody. Not just money but, you know, but livelihoods, my clients livelihoods on the table, potential. You don't know. And if this house hadn't sold then now what? Now that's another four months of interest. Gosh, like, I mean, don't even want to think about it. Yeah.

Well, congratulations. That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. Just to wrap us up here, I like to talk to clients about house rich instead of house poor because I think a lot of people think of our markets in the Vancouver and the North Shore as, as clients have big mortgages and maybe not as much left over for investment, that kind of thing. And I just, I like to talk to clients about readvanceability and really creating an investable asset from property, whether to purchase more real estate or purchase other things and really live a very cash flow positive life and pay what they want to pay, not what they can pay. When I say house rich to you, what do you think of what do you envision?

Well, house rich to me. So house rich to me would be ideally having multiple properties at cash flow. Maybe. Great, right? I mean it depends on the market you're in. But like say for instance in the North Shore, you're probably not going to buy a property cash flow out of the gate, but you are going to build equity based on your rental income. You'll have to feed the property a little bit, might be a few hundred bucks a month, but on a long term play, I mean you can't go wrong. It's a fixed asset, it's not liquid, but you have it. It's not like stock, you own it, it's there ups and downs, it's predictable in terms of what it'll cost per month. Relatively predictable. I always look at your personal residence. This is maybe may or may not agree with me as a liability because you need a place to live and it costs you money to be there. So by definition it's a liability. So. But if you're able to leverage your home to create, to bring out cash and invest in something else, you know, imagine putting down 50 grand on a, on a down payment on a $400,000 condo and then in and it goes up by 25 grand in a year or two years. That's a 50% cash on cash return. That's how you look at real estate, in my opinion. You look at your cash on cash return. Don't look at it as your gross return because you might get a one cap or you might even get a negative cap. But if you look at your cash on cash return over a period of time, you can't beat it.

No, yeah, great point. Very good point. And leveraging it out to create investment opportunities can be very beneficial if it's the right circumstances. Yeah.

You have to have knowledge too. You have to buy the right property. So you know, you should never write on your first property. You should know what you're looking for and when you find it. Don't get emotionally attached. If the numbers work, they work. If they don't, go to the next one. That's how you invest in real estate.

Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you, Nick. Where, where is a good place for anyone looking to buy, looking to sell, to find you and to reach out to you?

Yeah, absolutely. So many, many ways. I'd say you can, you can call me direct or text me anytime. 604-561-5363 More than happy to take a call or return a text and set up a more formal meeting online. Now my website nickniaksu.com I also suggest visiting my team website. We have a great team. Nyaksudenner.com youm can find me on Instagram@nickneaxu.com I reply to all my DMs as best I can. Get quite a few but I eventually get back. Yeah, but end of the day like just call me, text me, I'm available. That's what I do. That's my living.

Wonderful. Thank you Nick. I'm grateful to have you here. I appreciate all your advice and insight and I wish you the best. Stay safe and we'll be be in touch.

Absolutely. Perfect.

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