As interest rates dropped for homes in 2020, a large up rise in demand increased for housing and inventory could not keep up. As typical demand vs supply states, high demand and low supply means higher prices. Fast forward 2 years, and even the smaller homes are wildly unaffordable to the average income Canadian (without having already bought your first home and refinancing to pour into another property - aka BRRRR method).

But real estate has more opportunities for passive income other than just rental properties. The commercial space has not seen the same price surge as demand is not as hot. Codie Sanchez (a hustler on Instagram that shares a lot of values I appreciate and someone I admire in many ways), often advocates for the best way to wealth as acquiring small boring businesses (e.g. car washes, laundromats, etc.).

Almost 2 weeks ago, I was looking into best ways to find discounted housing properties. A suggestion by a Canadian house flipper is to go privately and leverage your network to reduce competition and avoid buying an oversold property. Some of the private suggestion routes were to look on local listing pages (off the MLS) such as Kijiji and Facebook marketplace.

I headed over to these sites to look for potential housing to buy for myself in the area. I didn't find anything that would be in a range of a mortgage I could qualify for, but I did see a Laundromat for sale in my area. Fast forward a week later and after doing some research into purchasing and running laundromats, I decided to purchase Codie Sanchez's course on the topic. I spent the past week binging the content during my evening hours.

Binging the content left it more vague in my head, so I will spend a couple days re-iterating the material and taking some notes along the way. But one thing that is potentially exciting at the moment is that as long as you get into a good profitable deal, setup your systems with hiring employees as outlined in the course, the profit margin can be upwards of $1k per month or much more. The course outlined a lot of similarities of getting into housing rental properties. Difference being, rental properties you are lucky to be making even $500 monthly profit on a single deal.

Could this be the start of a Laundromat series for me? Who knows. But I am always open to pivot. As many entrepreneurs love to preach, keep the end goal the same, but pivot on your means to get there to what can work better. Real estate might be a bit too hot for me to get into without a higher income/further savings, but commercial real estate and small businesses could be feasible. End goal is still to use real estate to make passive income. Pivoting to laundromats MIGHT accomplish that better for me.

This could become an abandoned project if I assess that the numbers don't align. But I'd rather spend the unpaid hours learning and researching a potential deal than to either a) not bother at all and skip the offer, or b) jump in without doing my due diligence and getting burned. Stay tuned!