Why Brad Lamb is “All In” on Hamilton

Andrew la Fleur: Three years, over 170 episodes, 150,000 downloads, dozens of industry experts interviewed, and yet, somehow, I have never interviewed my guest today. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my interview with Brad J. Lamb.

Announcer: Welcome to the True Condos podcast with Andrew la Fleur, the place to get the truth on the Toronto condo market and condo investing in Toronto.

Andrew la Fleur: Okay, it’s my pleasure to welcome to the show, for the very first time, Brad J. Lamb. Brad is the CEO of Brad J. Lamb Realty and Lamb Development Corp. Brad, welcome to the show.

Brad Lamb: Thanks for having me.

Andrew la Fleur: It’s great to finally meet you in person. I’ve been following you, obviously, through the industry, so to speak, for years. I love to hear your opinions on things in the market, what’s happening, so it’s great to finally sit down and chat with you here today. Looking forward to this conversation. I know a lot of the listeners are, as well. So let’s jump into it.

Why don’t we start … Just tell everybody, tell me, tell everybody a little bit about your story, in terms of how did you actually get started in real estate? Because you have a bit of an interesting story there.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. First of all, everyone says this, but I was legitimately very interested in real estate from a very, very early age. When I went to university, I took mechanical engineering. I went to Queens and I lived in the ghetto. In year two, we rented a house in the ghetto. That house went up for sale in the Spring.

Andrew la Fleur: Sorry to interrupt. For those who don’t know, can you tell us what the ghetto is? My wife went to Queens, so I know what the ghetto is, but-

Brad Lamb: Oh, sorry. Okay, so-

Andrew la Fleur: What is the ghetto, the famous ghetto of Queens?

Brad Lamb: Generally, what happens is, students stay in the residence in the first year, but there isn’t enough official residence in the Queens campus to hold the whole population of students, so usually, the year two, students go off and they rent a house in the periphery around Queens, which is loosely called the ghetto, because it’s student housing and it’s not nice. It’s old, Victorian homes that have been beaten badly by students over the lats 50, 60 years.

We stayed in a large house on a park. We had eight people in that house. I lived downstairs in what would have been a library. We were paying somewhere around $900. It was about a hundred and a quarter each a month. $900 rent.

Andrew la Fleur: Hundred bucks a month.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. The house went up for sale for 50 or 55 thousand dollars about a month before our year was over. They had, as agents do, the little lean to with the flyers in it. I was on that same level. I would see the people come in and look at the house. I looked at the brochure. I looked at the numbers and I thought, “Wow. This house is a rental property.”

We only stayed in the house during the school year, but we had to pay for the whole year, so it was vacant. Anyway, it was incredibly cash flow positive. It was a 20% return on your cash right away. I thought, “Wow, that seems quite easy. You buy a house, you rent it,” so I was intrigued.

Andrew la Fleur: Was that your light bulb moment?

Brad Lamb: Yeah. That was a light bulb moment.

Andrew la Fleur: You saw the for sale sign. You looked at the price. You looked at the rent you were paying. Like a lot of people getting into real estate, investing for the first time, it’s like, when you first do that, simple, back of the napkin calculation, it’s like the light bulb goes off. It’s like, “Whoa. This makes sense.”

Brad Lamb: Yeah. I was 20 and my parents were serial movers. I never really looked at the economy of that, like why they were doing it. I knew my parents made money on the houses. It was a huge pain in the ass to move all the time, but they were climbing the ladder, just like people do today.

I never cottoned on to the idea of renting a home until I saw this. I went away thinking, “Wow. Log that for later.” Finished my education. Got out and immediately went to my father and said, “Lend me $3,000. I want to buy a rental property.”

I was an addict. In the summers, I would get the … At the time, the Real Estate News was the bomb. It was an inch thick and it had a phenomenal array of properties for sale. Not like today. There would be hundreds of semi’s and attached houses for sale in Cabbagetown or East End and West End. They were 180, 170 thousand dollars to live in a house, to buy investment property.

I knew I couldn’t afford the city. I was looking at other areas like London, Ontario and that kind of thing. I bought my first investment property in 1984, say late ’84. I graduated in the Spring of ’84. I got a job and I took my first $1,500 … My dad lent my little brother $1,500. My older brother was working at IBM and he’d put in $1,500. Our $4,500 bought a townhouse for 26 or 25 thousand dollars, in that range, in London. A four bedroom townhouse.

My little brother was going to school at Western. He was going to the medical school. I rented it to him and his buddies. We rented it for $800 a month and we paid $200 each. We bought it for the low 20’s, so the thing was crazy cash flow positive. It was insane.

You could do this all day long in London. I kept it rented for a year. They broke up. They didn’t want to live there anymore, so we sold it a year later. We sold it for close to double what we paid for it. I forget the exact numbers, but we made about 15 or 20 thousand dollars, which, I was, at the time, an engineer making $24,000. I made as much money in one year, or I made my annual salary in one year, in one transaction, by holding it for a year. And, by the way, we made a few thousand dollars off the rent, paid off some of the mortgage.

I went off and I bought four more townhouses. From there, I was absolutely a addict. I needed to own everything. I was absolutely into it. Now, what happened after that was-

Andrew la Fleur: This was in the days of double digit interest rates, as well, right? This was-

Brad Lamb: Yeah, I was paying like-

Andrew la Fleur: What was the highest interest rate you remember having for your properties?

Brad Lamb: In around the 10. 10, 11, that kind of thing.

Andrew la Fleur: Oh, okay. So you weren’t part of the days when it was 19,20%?

Brad Lamb: No. In the ’82, ’83 time, it ballooned to like 14. In the ’85, ’86, it came down again. Then it ballooned again in … Actually … Yeah, it ballooned again in the late 80’s.

I remember, in the late 80’s, early 90’s, having a Government of Manitoba bond that paid 16% interest.

Andrew la Fleur: Wow.

Brad Lamb: Interest rates really went nuts.

Andrew la Fleur: Guaranteed 16%.

Brad Lamb: For me, I was addicted. I was an engineer at the time, working. After four years of it … I never enjoyed it. I just wanted to do real estate all the time. As it turns out, I was really focused in London. I had a few condos. I had started buying condos from floor plans in Toronto and Mississauga. I had a few of those, but I had a lot of stuff in … I had millions of dollars in real estate in London at that point.

I was churning real estate because you could. I needed capital to buy more. Rent wasn’t giving me enough capital to buy more. My job, I was up to maybe $50,000 a year. I couldn’t make enough money. I lived at home and I saved everything, but I could not make enough money to meet my aspirations for growth.

My real estate agent, I asked him, “How much did you make from me last year?” He said, “I made $75,000 from you on your transactions,” and I was making 50 as an engineer. I thought, “Fuck that. I’m going to be a real estate agent. That’s it. I’ll just represent myself. I’ll get more money, and I’ll be fully immersed in it, and I’ll learn everything I can.”

That’s really when I hung up my engineering degree and decided to go full time into real estate.

Andrew la Fleur: That was a sad day for your real estate agent, who lost you as a client.

Brad Lamb: It was.

Andrew la Fleur: That was the end of his real estate business.

Brad Lamb: He really missed out, yeah.

Andrew la Fleur: So you jumped into real estate full time and you were a very successful broker for a number of years. You went on to represent and sell a lot of well known buildings in the city for developers. Then you became a developer yourself.

Can you talk about that transition? Was there a similar light bulb moment, where you said, “Okay, I’m doing well at investing in real estate. Now I’m doing well at selling real estate,” then you said, “I was to actually start building real estate myself”?

Brad Lamb: I have to say, from popping out of my mother’s vagina, I have had megalomaniacal tendencies, so I think-

Andrew la Fleur: You always want to move up the ladder and-

Brad Lamb: I think development is just one of those things-

Andrew la Fleur: A natural progression.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. Development is the top of it, really. You control everything. You have the capacity to generate large amounts of money. If you have vision, and ideals, and ideas, then you can see them happen with your touch and your ideas.

For me, I don’t think everyone would want to be a developer, because it’s a really, really, really, really difficult job. It’s massively stressful, more than anyone could possible comprehend. It’s a very, very stressful job. You need to be uniquely suited to it or it will kill you.

The public’s idea is that developers make tons of money and it’s easy, but the truth is that we sometimes make lots of money. Often we make no money. The cost of money … Developers don’t use their own money. You’re not going to build a $200 million building. You don’t have $200 million sitting in the bank, right?

Andrew la Fleur: Yep.

Brad Lamb: So you need to use a capital stack and leverage. That leverage has a cost. If you trip, it can be deadly. Really. It can be very bad for you.

The trick is to not make too many mistakes. Mistakes are going to happen. Sometimes they’re not your mistakes. Sometimes they’re a premier’s mistakes, or a mayor’s mistakes, or someone else’s mistakes, but you have to live with everyone’s mistakes and clean them up.

Anyway, for me, it wasn’t necessarily a light bulb moment. It was always going to be something I was going to do, but I had to have enough net worth, and wealth, and capital, and a business, my real estate sales business, strong enough to be able to withstand being fired, because I knew that if I was public …

I was developing quietly with partners and nobody knew I was, for years. Taking 10, 20% on deals and running the sales program.

Andrew la Fleur: As a equity partner-

Brad Lamb: Yeah.

Andrew la Fleur: In the projects that you were selling, right?

Brad Lamb: Yeah, some of them. I knew that if I became public about that or decided to take the lead role that my developer clients would fire me and they did. It was very quick. Within six months-

Andrew la Fleur: It didn’t surprise you.

Brad Lamb: No. I knew it was coming, so I needed to have enough money, but was smart enough to realize it was going to happen, so I needed independence. When I was independent, around 2005, I went public with Lamb Development Corp. Then it was full head. There was no-

Andrew la Fleur: The genie’s out of the bottle.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, I couldn’t sit back. I had to do multiple projects. I immediately jumped into six projects.

Andrew la Fleur: Wow.

Brad Lamb: They were all really successful and-

Andrew la Fleur: Now, is it true I read somewhere once that you actually, to fund your launch as a developer, I don’t know how accurate it is, you sold a large number of the condos in your portfolio, your rental condos that you owned?

Brad Lamb: Yeah.

Andrew la Fleur: You sold off a whole bunch of them and you used all those profits to actually launch your development career?

Brad Lamb: Yeah. It’s funny, because when I was selling for guys like Context, and [Lanterra 00:13:03], and [Fried 00:13:03], the developers, the owners, would always say, “Why are you buying so many condos? What do you know that we don’t?”

You guys are developing. You don’t believe in your product? I believe in your product. [crosstalk 00:13:13] I’m involved and I believe in it.

I would buy like three, four, five, six apartments in every building I did. I would take about a quarter of my commissions that I would make, plow them into buying units, rent them, keep them for five years. The property wave has been quite strong. Recently, very strong, but back then, you would see a good increase.

I had in the Toy Factory, three or four units. I had six or seven in the Radio City. I had three or four in the Candy Factory, and in Tip Top Lofts, and all these great buildings. I also bought … When I saw a project I thought was amazing, like the Merchandise building, many years ago, you know, they were selling condos for $99,000. That’s like free, even back then.

I basically sold somewhere around eight to 12 units to raise $2 million. I took that $2 million and I bought a piece of land. I bought the land for $4 million and then I brought in two partners. I took the majority interest in the project, brought in two partners.

I brought in a construction management company that would build it for me and I brought in an architect, Peter Clewes, that would design it for me. He was a friend of mine, but he’s also, I think, the best architect I’ve ever met. I knew if I had Peter working on the project, I’d get the best of him.

That was our first project as a development company. It was called Glass. It was wildly successful. I couldn’t believe how well it went. It’s not always that easy. That was a really good one.

But, yeah, that’s how it started. I sold-

Andrew la Fleur: Oxley Street, King and Spadina, and that still, today, is one of the best buildings downtown and still the values there are some of the highest anywhere downtown.

Brad Lamb: I learned a lot from that development. I learned to fight harder with the [inaudible 00:15:12] department. You can see, it’s 16 stories and everything around it’s 45. We still made a lot of money, but it should have been 30 stories, or, at that time, maybe 20.

My partners were very risk averse, had obviously more development experience. I just took the road of least resistance. I’ve learned since, that’s a bad road. We fight every time. We fight very hard now for our projects. If it’s given too easily, it means we didn’t fight hard enough.

I would never do that again, but for a first project, we got our financing fairly easily, we sold it reasonably easily, and we got our zoning and it was a relatively painless first project on my own.

Andrew la Fleur: Right, right. Let’s jump into the market today, the real estate market, and the condo market, specifically. I’d love to get your take on the Fair Housing Plan. Let’s start with that. So, before and after-

Brad Lamb: You mean the Unfair Housing Plan?

Andrew la Fleur: Yeah, exactly. The Unfair Housing Plan. We sort of had the before and after. The market leading up to that, obviously, was a frenzy and now the market is very different since then. Everybody has their opinions on what’s going on with that. What are your thoughts on … Now that we’ve had the Fair Housing Plan in place for a few months, we’ve had some time to absorb it, what are your thoughts on it and the market as a result of it?

Brad Lamb: I think, largely, it’s puffery and smoke. Most of the points in the Fair Housing Plan are stupid, and irrelevant, and won’t do anything. But I think there’s some significant ones that are encased in that and also that are lingering outside of it.

One of the ones that is a disaster for citizens of Ontario is the extension of rent controls to properties built after 1991. The knee jerk reaction is, “My rent gets capped. It’s great,” but the scenario is, “Okay, you’re in a 500 square foot one bedroom, and you’re a single girl or a single man, and you meet someone and you want to get married, and you need a bigger place.”

Well, now you have to go to an apartment that’s vacant, a condo that’s vacant. You’re in an apartment. Maybe you rented it for 14 or 15 hundred dollars a few years ago and now the rent on that’s only been going up 2% a year and it’s quite comfortable.

Well, the jump to the two bedroom is going to shock you because the availability of product to move into is zero. When a tenant or an apartment owner in a big building, a purpose built building, has an empty apartment, they’ll charge market and market will be far higher than you can imagine.

To give them an idea, that $1,500 apartment that they have rent control on is now $2,100. They want to get a two bedroom. They’re hoping it’s 22. It’s 32. What it does is, now it’s locking people down to live a crap life in a small apartment and raise a kid in a one bedroom. It’s not possible.

What it’s done is, on the surface, if someone’s going to stay single their entire life and stay in a small apartment or stay in their apartment forever-

Andrew la Fleur: Works for them.

Brad Lamb: Works for you. But that doesn’t help people coming into the marketplace or people moving to a bigger place. What we need to have is a vibrant, strong, purpose built apartment industry where people are building apartment buildings that you can live in forever and know that you’re never going to have it sold out from under you by the owner and that you can have reasonable stability rent control, reasonable stability in rent.

Market rent generally won’t jump 20% a year. That happens once every 10 years, when there’s friction, there’s some kind of situation where prices stayed somewhere for a long time and then they blew, like we had last year for a six month period.

But generally, you’ll see rents rise 2 to 5%, but an owner needs to get that 5% when they can, to offset inflation, which is always higher than the government says, to offset interest rate fluctuations and the refinancing, and to offset taxes, which …

Governments say taxes aren’t going up. Residential taxes aren’t going up. Commercial taxes aren’t going up. This building that we’re in right now, my office building, my taxes doubled in three years.

How did they double? The building doubled in value, according to MPAC. That’s what happens with condos, too. Yeah, the mill rate stays the same, meaning the multipliers. They mayor cay say-

Andrew la Fleur: “We’re not raising taxes.”

Brad Lamb: “We’re not raising taxes this year.” That’s bullshit, because valuations are going up 40%. You’re taxes are going up 40 … Anyway. In order for people to feel safe to invest 100 or 200 million dollars to build an apartment building, they need to know they can get their money back.

In a rent controlled environment, you can’t. It’s a disaster. That’s number one. All the other stuff … Taxing investors is a terrible idea. It’s a disaster. We need investors. Investors in this city primarily buy new condominiums. That’s probably 75% or 80% of where the money goes. Those are the apartment buildings that are not getting built now.

We want investors to buy condos so they can rent them, so we can have rental stock in the city. It’s crazy. Local people won’t buy that stuff. When you go to the big launches, there are not a lot of white faces there. Let’s just say that.

There’s a lot of Southeast Asians there. These are largely foreign investors or they’re new Canadians that were foreign before. They’re going out there and they’re investing in our economy. By doing it, they’re telling their friends back home, “This was a great opportunity. You should do it, too.”

We want foreign investment in this country. It’s ridiculous to me. We allow a national Chinese company to invest in a condo project on King Street, Blue Jay Way, owned by the Chinese government. We’re okay with that, but we’re not okay with an individual Chinese guy coming here, or Southeast Asian guy, or German guy, or whatever.

We’re not okay with them coming here and buying a condo?

Andrew la Fleur: Right, and renting it out.

Brad Lamb: And renting it out. It’s insanity. That’s just bad politics. Those two things are terrible.

The last thing I’d say is, her decision to abolish the OMB is nail in the coffin for our development industry. It’s a horrendous decision. it’s going to have ramifications, if it stays in place, that are going to cause massive inflation in real estate. Developers will stop buying land.

Andrew la Fleur: Going on the rent control issue, there so much evidence and there’s so many studies, globally, that rent control doesn’t work, exactly how you described it. It actually has the opposite effect of what the government says. For people who never move, it’s great. If your goal is to make people never move, and just stay in a place forever, and never grow a family, and never evolve, and never economically advance in life, it’s great.

But for everybody else and the rest of population, it’s a terrible idea, because it artificially reduces supply, and people stop moving, and new rental rates go up much higher than they would otherwise. There’s so much evidence. So many studies around the world.

Why do you think … I’m just curious of your opinion. With all that evidence, globally, left wing, right wing, it doesn’t matter what your political views are. It’s just there’s evidence, all around the world that this happens. Why do you think the government still insists that this is a good idea and that this is good for the public?

Brad Lamb: Because I think they realize that people don’t read. You’re assuming that that information trickles down into human’s brains, but it doesn’t. People don’t read the newspaper. You think people read those reports? They don’t.

What they hear are the sound bites. What they know is, “Hey, your rent’s not going to go up.” “Oh, that seems great. My rent’s not going to go up.” They don’t think of the big picture, because government and, surprisingly enough, the media, is not properly educating them about the situation.

They go off thinking, “I love rent controls.” I send out messages all the time about this and I get people coming back, “Well, you’re a dirty, filthy developer. Of course you want rents to escalate.”

What they don’t understand is that their rents are going to escalate. That’s the problem. The issue is that if human beings would properly educate themselves on these issues, they would side with the logical, common sense solution, but they don’t. All over the world, they don’t.

This happens in New York City. It happens everywhere. Rent control is a lovely, left wing ideology that have proven to be a failure every single time, for hundreds of years, since they’ve been discussed or in place, but governments lie. They want votes.

Andrew la Fleur: Our memory is so short, too. Nobody looks back and asks the question of, “Why did we get rid of rent control in the first place?” It wasn’t that long ago. It was 20-ish years ago, 25-ish years ago. Why did we get rid of it in the first place? Because it was having the opposite effect of what they wanted.

Brad Lamb: Well, we got rid of it to generate new housing, but they kept it in for the old … The other question … I don’t understand why people don’t have this “hmm” moment is, why are all the apartment buildings 50 years old?

Andrew la Fleur: Exactly. Look around the city. Every apartment building’s built in the 60’s and 70’s. Why has there been no apartment buildings built-

Brad Lamb: Yeah, it’s very clear, but again, I don’t think people wander around … First of all, people don’t wander around with their head up anymore, they wander around looking at the phone. If they wandered around with their head up and they noticed the age of the building they’re entering is 50 or 60 years old, they’d realize there’s a problem and this premier has just made it far worse.

Andrew la Fleur: Another big change that potentially come to the market, which could have major ramifications is this off sea stress test. I don’t know if you’ve been-

Brad Lamb: It’s a disaster.

Andrew la Fleur: Tracking that or following that. Basically, everyone, including people putting 20% down, has to qualify at 2% higher, essentially. A mortgage rate 2% higher than what they’re actually going to be paying.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. Only place in the world where this is happening.

Andrew la Fleur: Yeah. From what I’m hearing, it sounds pretty likely it’s actually going to happen. What do you think of the idea and, assuming it does happen, how do you think it’s actually going to affect the markets?

Brad Lamb: There’s this logical fear of Canadians having too much debt. This all stemmed from that. The reality is … I’m lucky enough to have the Bank of Canada come to my office every two years to interview me on how I feel the economy is. They do this with 100 different leaders to get a sense of the overall … Different fields of business.

I said to them, “I don’t understand your analysis for indebtedness in Canadians. Let me just give you an example. Consumer A has a car lease, and $30,000 of education debt, and $20,000 on their credit card, so they have maybe, say, $80,000 in debt. They make $150,000 a year. They have like a 70% debt to their income. You’d say, ‘Consumer A, good on you.’

Consumer B walks to work, lives downtown, has no credit card debt, and managed to have jobs while he went through university, and has no university debt. But they bought a $600,000 condo. They make $150,000 a year. They bought a $600,000 condo and they have a $400,000 mortgage. They put 35% down, fantastic down payment. They’re 200%, a little over that, in their debt to income situation. They’re like 230%. You say that’s bad. What you’re not talking-“

Andrew la Fleur: So you say this to the Bank of Canada guys.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. I said, “Consumer A is renting. If Consumer B doesn’t pay his mortgage, what happens?” “Well, the bank will take the property. He still has $200,000 equity, but they’ll take the property.” “What happens if Consumer A doesn’t pay his rent?” “Well, the same thing. He’s thrown out.” And he has fucking zero. He’s got a car lease. He’s renting.

Andrew la Fleur: He still has his debts.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, and he’s got debt at higher interest rates. “Why do you not make it a fair comparison? You need to either eliminate housing debt from that calculation,” because housing debt is the same thing as rent, “or you need to establish a multiplier where, if it costs more to own a house than it does to lease a house, then punish them a little bit. But your numbers aren’t right. Your numbers scare people.”

I think these guys are so dumb. Honestly, I think they’re so dumb that they don’t actually see that a $400,000 mortgage with a person making $150,000, that’s all they have as debt, that’s smart, because that guy also is paying $12,000 every year on his mortgage, getting $12,000 richer. If that’s the worst case that happens, in 25 years he owns his house. The other guy’s got zip.

I think that this is coming from a poor analysis of the situation and I don’t know how to solve it except to talk about it and have people go, “Hmm. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense.” It’s a disaster. It’s a bad policy. If it happens, it’s going to shut down a lot of people from ever buying real estate.

Think of this. What do we want to do, as Canadians? We want people to build equity. We want people to have something to retire with. Regardless of whether you agree with it, most people use their house to retire. It’s a logical thing. It’s a place you put money down and at the end of the day, you’re paying off your mortgage and you have a chunk of money to retire on.

We want to tell that people not to do that so they can be that guy who’s leasing a car and renting? That’s what we want our country to do?

Andrew la Fleur: That’s a preferred stance.

Brad Lamb: That’s what you’re pushing people into. You’re pushing them into being tenants. We should be incentivizing people to buy homes, not deincentivizing them. That’s what this is doing. This is the kind of things that a government should be toppled for, democratically, but this is bad, bad business.

Andrew la Fleur: Yeah. No, absolutely. Some people out there are looking at the average price numbers that have come down, across the GTA, since the Fair Housing Plan. Some people are saying things like, “The market is down 20%.” Some people are saying the market crash is imminent, this kind of thing. Some people say the crash is already actually happening because they see these average price numbers. What are your thoughts on that? Is the market crashing?

Brad Lamb: I’ll tell you what. I still buy units in our buildings. I put a unit up for sale the other day that was 423 square feet on the second floor, facing a brick wall in Bryant Park. It sold for $412,500 in 36 hours. It sold for $980 a foot. It would not have sold for more than that in April.

I’m not seeing it. In my marketplace, one of our guys just sold a townhouse that was 1,100 square feet for 1.3 million. It’s a very stacked townhouse. He came to me and he said, “What should I price it at? My clients want to list at 1.3 million.”

I said, “You’re out of your mind, man. That’s 115. Best you’re going to get.” Put it on the market. Sold for 1.3 million.

I can tell you dozens of examples of prices being pretty well the same as they were in the Spring. I think there’s areas like … You have to take up the averages in areas like Richmond Hills and Markham, which have been hard hit by the 15% tax. These are communities that are 50% Asian, Chinese.

Asian investors buy what they know and what they’re advised on. That’s where they buy. So if they’re buying houses, they’re buying them there and they’re renting them or they might be keeping them empty. I think that market is hurting a little bit.

The Nobu development that came out a month and a half ago is sold out. 660 apartments sold for an average of $1,150 a foot. To me, I just can’t … I’ve been saying this for a long time. I can’t conceive of a real estate correction when the economy is growing by 2 plus, 3% a year.

You have the lowest unemployment we’ve had in 10 years. You have zero inflation. You still have very low interest rates. I think the interest rate rises that were recently done were stupid. I don’t see why they’re necessary. The dollar’s still relatively strong vis a vis where it has been.

I don’t see where the slack’s going to come in the economy. People say, “I’m not buying houses anymore.” [crosstalk 00:33:08]

Andrew la Fleur: It’s something you’ve said for years. Short of a recession, there’s no reason for prices to come down with any significance.

Brad Lamb: Think about it. You’re a 25 year old kid. You get your degree. You’re a lawyer. You get a job. You’re like, “After a couple years, I think I should buy a place.” You have a good job. You’re making money. Why would you not? What’s going … Just in the microcosm of Toronto? You go, “Well, Toronto. This one place only, I’m not going to buy”? You live in London. You live in Quebec. You live in Saskatoon. You’re going to buy?

I just don’t buy it. I think when times are good, people feel good. I don’t think that people know the value of housing as much as the government thinks people do. I think people know housing by what they can afford.

They look at it and they go, “I’m making $10,000 a month,” or $8,000, whatever it is, “and it’s $2,000. Yeah, I can pay that and have enough money to have a decent car and go on a vacation once a year. Yeah, let’s do it.”

I don’t see that changing until the economy changes and here’s the thing about that. We’ve had economic growth of 0 to 2% for 10 years. Normally, after a recession, economic growth spikes to 5% in the year or two after and then comes down to around 3 or 3.2.

We have so much economic growth that has not happened after that recession because, I think, it was a very bad recession. It was, worldwide, a very bad recession. I think that that growth still has to happen.

We’ve flattened the growth curve. I think it’s going to go for longer. Capacity, utilization, all of these things that … Inflation in pricing. All these things are not happening. Why are they not happening? Because growth is so slow around the world.

Now, if Europe starts seeing 3% growth, and the United States sees 4%, and China goes back to 8, South America, which is negative, the brick countries, including Brazil, if they start seeing the growth they were seeing, then yes. Then we’re going to have inflation and then we’re going to have a recession at some point.

I don’t see it. I don’t see it for a long time. I don’t see it for a long time. I could see this continuing like this, this muddling we have, for 20 years. I think that waiting, sitting here and waiting, and going, “Oh, the shoe’s going to drop. Prices are going to far,” that’s such an asinine thing to do. People have been doing that for 10 years. You know what they’ve missed?

They’ve missed an opportunity to buy. Those people that have sat and waited, that were on the fence to be able to buy, they will never buy. They are out of the market til they die.

Andrew la Fleur: And now they’ve got to deal with rent control.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, your income can’t keep pace with the growth of real estate prices, and so some of those people that thought they were being smart, in some cases, being smart asses, with their comments about a bubble bursting five or six years ago, prices have doubled.

Even if they don’t move from here, they’re out of the marketplace. That’s too bad. That’s a bad thing. I think that the government and the media have a responsibility to properly educate people about that risk. We have a duty to get people into the marketplace so that they can have something for the future.

I think it’s a shame that people who are misinformed make that decision. It’s a life decision now. They’re out.

Andrew la Fleur: Absolutely. What would you say to the people who look at the recent interest rate increases and they’re saying, “It’s not a good time to buy, because interest rates are going up”? Or they’re thinking, “The market is going to crash because interest rates are going up. The cost of money’s going up. Less people are going to buy” is the logic. What do you think about that?

Brad Lamb: I’ll give you an example. I’m just about to build a building called East 55. Long journey. Anyway. We’ve pro forma’ed 4.7% on our construction loan. That’s actually coming in at 5.2, because it was too little bumps.

You know how much it … So this is $140 million revenue building. You know how much that cost me? $180,000.

Andrew la Fleur: $180,000 on $140 million building.

Brad Lamb: It’s nothing. it’s a rounding error on the project. People need to understand that interest rates-

Andrew la Fleur: [crosstalk 00:37:18] Parking spots.

Brad Lamb: Interest rates moving up a half a percent or a percent, it’s not going to change the fundamental reasons why people are buying real estate. I’d also say this. Listen. We’ve just gone through the lowest interest rates because of this great recession. Rates will go up. They should not expect them to stay this way forever. They’ll go up and the real estate market’s going to be just fine. It will.

Andrew la Fleur: Shifting gears to talking about investing in condos and specifically speaking to the first time investor, what’s your … When people come to you and say, “Brad, I want to invest in a condo,” what is your main piece of advice that you would give somebody thinking of investing in a condo.

Or maybe another way to think of it is, if you think back to yourself, when you started out as a first time investor, was there a mistake or a lesson that you learned early on that you wish you’d had of known that you want to pass along to the first time investor today?

Brad Lamb: I’ve made some mistakes over the last 20 some years, or 30 years, I guess, that I’ve been in this business. The number one thing I’d say is, stop second guessing yourself.

I remember when I was buying that first property and I saw $800 a month rent and my costs, all in, were $300. Like, “Holy fuck. Why isn’t everybody doing this? I’m going to get my money back, my $5,000 back, in a year. Then I have a free home. Why isn’t everyone doing this?”

The reason that everyone’s not doing it is because they’re not thinking about it. It’s not in their daily routine. They go to work. They earn their paycheck. They pay their bills. They’re tired. They don’t think about it.

They don’t have the extra juice at the end of the day to go, “Hmm. How can I invest my extra money?” It’s part time job. It’s another job. “Fuck, I don’t want another job. I want to go to a movie. I want to go out for dinner with my girlfriend or go drinking or whatever.”

Andrew la Fleur: Watch Netflix.

Brad Lamb: I think the thing is just, believe the numbers. The numbers are real. Believe the track record. The track record is real. In my opinion-

Andrew la Fleur: Did people tell you you were crazy when you bought that first property?

Brad Lamb: Yeah.

Andrew la Fleur: Did some people say to you, “What are you doing, Brad?”

Brad Lamb: Everyone did. Listen, when I was buying … People still tell me I’m crazy. But when I was buying condominiums for $200 a foot, $180 a foot, people were like, “You’re out of your mind. You can’t buy condos, and rent them, and make money.” Like, “But I am. I’m buying it. It’s costing me $1,000 a month. I’m renting it for $1,300. I’m making money. What are you talking about?”

“If you could make money, everyone would do that. Why would anyone ever rent?” “I don’t know.” Why are they renting? That’s the question. I just think it’s because people aren’t curious. They don’t read. They don’t examine. They walk around their lives with their head in the fucking sand.

Take your head out of the fucking sand and look up. See the world for what it is. There’s so much opportunity. It’s easy. It’s not hard to be a real estate investor. It’s not hard to own a home. It isn’t.

“Oh, I need a down payment.” So, you know what? Stop having a cup of coffee every day at Starbucks. Stop going out for lunch every day. Spend two years and live a very tight lifestyle and you know what? You’ll save 20 or 30 thousand dollars and then put the first 10% or 5% down on a condo from floor plans.

We’ve offered investors … We offered young people, first time buyers, people work here, people I know that come to me, we’ll give them a long time to pay their deposit and they can pay it off in chunks when they can. We’ve done this for people.

The girl that worked for me, she started working for me and she said, “I want to buy a condo, but I have no money.” I said, “Okay, how are you going to make the down payment?” She goes, “Well, I’m working at night as a bar server. I’m working as an agent in the day.”

I don’t let people do that. I said, “Well, you can only do that on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. You can’t do that during the week. That’s not going to work for me.” “No, no. I do it on those nights.”

She would make about $1,500 a month extra money doing this job. She’d give it to me as a check every month. After 30 months, she saved $45,000. She bought a condo at King Charlotte. She bought it for $230,000. It got appraised for $500,000. This will make $270,000 in her first property.

Think about how to save $270,000. How many months that takes.

Andrew la Fleur: Yeah. It’s not going to happen.

Brad Lamb: How many years that takes.

Andrew la Fleur: Never going to happen.

Brad Lamb: No. It’s never going to happen. This is a women that had no money, but she took a second job and she saved $1,500 a month for 30 months.

Andrew la Fleur: She asked the question. She asked the question. She came to you and she said-

Brad Lamb: And she had someone who was willing to do it. But you know what? We’ll do that for people on … We’re not going to do it for everybody, but we’ll do that for people that come to me and say, “Listen, I want to do this and I will do it. I’m dedicated to getting in the marketplace.” Then we’ll help them.

Andrew la Fleur: There’s opportunities out there if you’re looking.

Brad Lamb: By the way, she had to also work as an agent for three years, four years, maybe five years it took to do the whole project, to get her income up, to qualify for a mortgage.

Now, you know what she’s done? She’s bought a second property.

Andrew la Fleur: Good for her.

Brad Lamb: She’s on her way to being a millionaire.

Andrew la Fleur: Yeah. Absolutely. From no money to a millionaire.

Hamilton. Hamilton is … You’ve been talking a lot about it, tweeting a lot about it. There were articles. You recently came out with “8 Reasons to Invest in Hamilton”.

So you have this new project, Television City. Tell us about Television City, but maybe start by saying, why Hamilton? Why now? It’s always been there. Why is now the time that you decide to jump full in here?

Brad Lamb: Get in your car. Drive from downtown Toronto down to Saint Catherine’s. Think she’ll notice? There’s no break. It’s one mega city. It’s not Toronto. It’s the Golden Horseshoe. It’s one city. There’s no break.

Andrew la Fleur: There’s no break in the traffic, definitely, at rush hour.

Brad Lamb: There’s no break in terms of … It’s just one huge city. In fact, if you go off the 401, the 403, you see that it continues to be one city to the west. This is a mega city we’re working with here.

To me, the next … If you look at condo prices in Oakville or Burlington, they’re $700 a foot. The absolute logical conclusion from that is, it’s going to continue. And it is. I’m not the first guy here, the canary in the coal mine. It is moving south and west.

There’s a condo market in Hamilton now and the condo market … You can buy a condo in Toronto, one of my condos here, for $1,000 a foot. You can buy it there for $580 to $600 a foot. The rent is off … The rent’s … You’re going to get $1,300 to $1,400 for a one bedroom there. That’s what you got here three years ago.

Hamilton’s three or four years in the past, if you look at it that way, behind Toronto, let’s say, in terms of rent, but what are you going to find in Toronto for $600 a foot? $600 a foot with the rents that you can get in Hamilton make you money. You can get a positive cash flow year one or year two.

In Toronto, forget about it. You need to put 50% down to get a positive cash flow in Toronto. A lot of people are buying condos for cash here in the city, today, from floor plans. At $1,000 a foot, you’re not going to get $5 or $6 a foot rent. You’re going to get $3.50 to $4, so it’s getting harder and harder, or impossible, to be a investor landlord in Toronto.

But you can do it all day long in Hamilton. This building is not like a piece of crap built by a developer that delivers garbage. This is one of our buildings. This is a beautiful building. It’s a … This building would be happy in Chelsea in New York or the Financial District in London. It’s a beautiful piece of architecture.

The apartments are amazing. The standard of quality. No one builds nine foot ceilings in Hamilton. We have nine foot ceilings. We have gas on the balconies. We have thick stone countertops in the bathroom and kitchen. European, clean cabinetry. The same floors in my office, we’re offering as standard there.

Andrew la Fleur: Beautiful. I’m standing on them right now.

Brad Lamb: Everything we’re putting into this thing is fantastic. Then the amenity package is unbelievable. The floor plans, because it’s a big piece of property, the tower is smart, meaning it’s wide, shallow units. Meaning it’s a lot of windows, not so deep. So you get the most efficient bang for your buck on square footage.

So I say, why would you invest anywhere else? We bought a boat load of real estate in Hamilton because it’s the future. Hamilton is 55 minutes away by the go train. There’s a new LRT that goes up and down King Street, which is like their … Main Street and King Street are the two main drags.

The other thing about this is that Mississauga, Burlington, Oakville, there’s no city there. Hamilton is a city. When you drive into Hamilton, it’s, “Holy shit. This is a real city. This is a big city.” It feels like a big city.

Andrew la Fleur: Why is that so important to you, because that’s something you talk about a lot is, you only want to build in, as you say, real cities. What is a real city and why do you only want to build there? Why don’t you build a Brad Lamb building in Mississauga and Oakville? Because you could have.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, but I also think it’s for safety. I wonder, why would someone live in a condo at Appleby Line and Steels? You walk out there and you got a Finn McCool’s, you got a Subway shop, and a McDonald’s. What kind of life you going to have?

You live downtown Hamilton and you walk out and there’s like Shakespeare’s, a fantastic restaurant. There’s like 50 amazing restaurants, and pubs, and bars, and so much to do in a city. I think that if you’re going to live in a high rise, in a small apartment, do you want to be able to get out and meet people, or do you-

Andrew la Fleur: Go ahead. Sure.

Brad Lamb: I’m just a big believer in [inaudible 00:48:19] as an investor, it’s safer for me to invest in an economy that’s diversified. Mississauga does have a diversified economy to come extent, but it’s not like Toronto, or Vancouver, or Montreal, and, for that matter, Hamilton.

Hamilton has a huge industrial base. It has a developing financial base. It has a developing, fantastic medical base, medical technology base, it has a huge arts base, and it’s now developing a big tech base. Then you’ve got the entertainment base, which is becoming tremendous.

As a investor, I like the safety and diversification of the economy, and as a consumer, I think, “Where would I want to live? Why would I want to live in a condo at Appleby and Steel’s, man?” You’ve got to get in your car to go anywhere.

At Television City, you jump down the elevator, get on your two feet, and you can walk to everything you need to get to. Hess Street is one block over, the party street. Locke Street, the restaurant street. King Street, Main Street, right there. James Street, a beautiful, historic street with dozens of restaurants and great stuff.

I just think your lifestyle’s better when you live in a city in a condo.

Andrew la Fleur: Does Hamilton today remind you of Toronto? You’ve been here for 30 years, working in the city. Does it remind you of Toronto at a certain period of time? Or do you see it as a completely different city, all on its own?

Brad Lamb: Well, it’s a completely different city, all on its own. It has its own feel and taste, but in some ways, there’s some similarities with what’s going to happen to Hamilton to what’s already happened in Toronto.

One of the great things about Hamilton, because Hamilton suffered for a long time with the steel industry, its contraction and its growth, and its contraction, growth, development didn’t happen to a great deal over the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, and early 2000’s in Hamilton.

There’s a lot of historic architecture. There’s a lot of great homes. Television City has a beautiful, historic, 1950’s mansion on it. This house in Toronto would be $15 million. It was thrown in.

Andrew la Fleur: You picked it up for less, I think.

Brad Lamb: We bought the whole property for well at less than that. We got an acre plus this house. The house was thrown in. In front of the house is this huge yard. We’re going to turn it into a private city park. When I say private, it’s going to be owned by the condo corp and maintained, but anybody in Hamilton can sit in the park, read a newspaper, have a coffee.

The building we’re going to convert into a five star restaurant, with patios all the way around it and a beautiful glass box solarium. Solarium doesn’t do it justice because it’s a 3,000 square foot modern addition to the building. Spectacular.

You can’t get stuff like that here. I just think Hamilton’s the next opportunity. I think Hamilton is where people should be investing their money today. Buy a house. You can buy a house in Hamilton for $260,000 that’s a million dollars here.

Andrew la Fleur: Still, eh? Wow.

Brad Lamb: Yeah. You can buy a condo from me in this project for the low 2’s. It would be $500,000 in Toronto. It’s the same condo and the rent isn’t that far off. It isn’t. I just can’t understand why more people … Well, actually, more people are doing this. Developers are now buying up … The land’s moving very quickly now and the prices of land is going up.

We couldn’t do a Television City a year from now at the prices we’re offering Television City today, because the land price is very good, because we were early to the game. I just can’t understand why you’d buy a condo at $1,100 a foot, $600,000 and rent it for $2,000. You’re going to lose money.

At that point, it’s a rich man’s game. You’re buying with huge deposits or you’re living in it. And that’s, by the way, how Toronto’s going to segue. Toronto’s going to segue like New York segued. It’s a have and have not society in Toronto.

That’s the future. It’s not my doing. It’s what has evolved. Our government’s probably been largely responsible for that. Municipal, federal, and provincial. That should have been eyes on the city to create more social housing and to offer more incentives for people to get into the marketplace, first time buyer incentives, which, to me, rather than making it harder, they should be making it easier, but that’s another story.

I just think that when you look at the options in Toronto as an investor, they’re getting tighter. A project in Yorkville, $1,500 a foot. How you making money there?

Andrew la Fleur: Does that mean … Are you … You’re speaking so highly of Hamilton. Are you saying that you’re leaving Toronto as a developer?

Brad Lamb: I’m finishing Harlow. I’m starting East 55. James, we went to the OMB, hoping we’re going to win. We’re going to start building on, if we do, shortly. We have Wellington House, Bauhaus, and Bread Company all lined up.

After that, we have a project in the East End that I’ve owned for years, and years, and years, a property that I bought seven years ago. Then we have a property in the West End I’ve owned for a very long time.

We’ve got eight or nine projects in the pipeline for Toronto. Listen, people are going to pay me $1,000 a foot for my condos here. I’m going to take it, but I’m saying that you have no options. It’s not like our pricing is more than anyone else’s. It is what’s here. Stuff out in Liberty Village is $950 a foot and you couldn’t pay me to live in Liberty Village. It’s so difficult to get around in that. The traffic’s brutal.

I know that people will buy our product here at those prices, because it’s good, but if I had an option … People say, “Well, I don’t want to own something that’s not in the city.” A lot of the investors are from the 905, Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Milton, the [inaudible 00:54:26]. You get in car …

I’ve gone from Hamilton to here at 2:00 in 40 minutes. Now, I have a Ferrari. It goes pretty fast, but you don’t have to go that fast.

Andrew la Fleur: HOV lane.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, if I have someone in the other seat. If you have an investment condo in Hamilton, you can easily manage it yourself. It’s no worse than being in Scarborough or Richmond Hill.

From the standpoint of the objection that it’s not Toronto, it doesn’t make any sense because the Golden Horseshoe is going to be one organism. It already is, but it’s going to be one organism. I don’t think there’s going to be this mental gap, what we used to have. Hamilton was this one thing and Pickering was this one thing. I just think it’s going to be one thing, one big thing.

The barriers that we’ve created, about different municipalities in cities, are going to evaporate because of price. I know. I can tell you. I see the numbers, what’s coming here in the city. One of my condos in five or six years will cost you $1,500 a square foot to buy. If you want to buy in Harlow in six years, if I launched that in six years, it would be $1,500.

By the way, the amount of product is going to shrink dramatically, because the city of Toronto is stopping development on a dime. That’s another conversation, but they are absolutely doing everything they can, everything they can, to prevent residential development from happening in the city.

Andrew la Fleur: It’s become harder and harder lens … Sites are becoming harder and harder to acquire. Approval’s harder and harder to get. OMB is gone now.

Brad Lamb: Even if you acquire them, they won’t let you build on them. They’re locking them down with Heritage Control bylaws so you can’t do anything with it. It’s brick. You can’t touch it. They’re creating new rules-

Andrew la Fleur: Make sure there’s no historic drains in the basement.

Brad Lamb: Well, there’s huge problems-

Andrew la Fleur: The same large market thing.

Brad Lamb: Huge problems now with water control and sewer control, but there’s also new policies in effect to lock down the downtown core to create a larger financial district, so you can’t do residential in a larger part of the city. They’re locking it down so you can’t do any residential. That’s creeping into the King Spadina neighborhood, east and west.

They’re doing everything they can to stop residential construction. You might say, “Why?” It doesn’t matter why. They’re doing it, and that means there will be less, and that means prices go higher.

I look at Hamilton and I say … We’re going to continue working in other cities. There’s opportunities everywhere. But I look at Hamilton and I think, “It’s $600 or $580 a foot. It’s a joke. It’s so cheap.”

Andrew la Fleur: It makes sense. You see a good future in the city. The opportunity’s there, basically.

Brad Lamb: Yeah, there’s nothing but good things happening for Hamilton [crosstalk 00:57:09].

Andrew la Fleur: How committed are you to Hamilton? You have more than just this one site, I believe. Are you actively looking to do more and more?

Brad Lamb: We have a billion dollars of development there.

Andrew la Fleur: Wow.

Brad Lamb: This first project’s in the $350 range. We are working on two enormous developments outside of that, that we may or may not do. For me, being a developer, it’s all about money. I have some money, but I don’t have an unlimited … I don’t have a million dollar money tree that I can just pull million dollar checks off.

We have to, like any company, manager our money. In the development business, too, it’s so risky that if you have problems, you need money to solve those problems. We always have to have money around.

I would like to buy everything I like, but I can’t. For now, we’ve bought what we’ve bought, but we are looking at other opportunities in Hamilton, for sure.

Andrew la Fleur: To the skeptical person, like you said, the person who says, “I only invest in Toronto,” or “I only invest in GTA,” what would be your main message to them as you want them to think about Hamilton?

Brad Lamb: I started selling real estate in this King Spadina area and new buildings … I got the first new project in the city at 20 Niagara, which is Bathurst and Wellington. You have Wellington, then south is Niagara, and then you have Bathurst. Just inset a bit, there’s this white building with 24 units on a park.

I sold that building. For context. It was our first project. There was a sausage factory in the basement of the sales office. It was across the street from the site. My office was above that. Stunk like sausage.

I remember being … This was on the second floor. I remember being there [inaudible 00:58:59]. I look out the window and a car would pull up. They’d see the sign on the site and they’d see where the sales office was. I’d be looking. [inaudible 00:59:10] see their heads going like, “No,” then they’d drive away.

I’d run out of the sales office. “No, no, no, no, come!” They’d be gone.

Andrew la Fleur: Just let me talk to you.

Brad Lamb: For the skeptic, I sold those units. They were 1,100 square feet. I sold them for $160,000. Those apartments are selling for $1.1 million. The building was completed in 1998. If you bought a unit back then for $160 and you put 10% down, $16,000, your $16,000 is now $1.1 million.

What’s the return on your invested capital? It’s insanity.

Andrew la Fleur: It’s pretty good.

Brad Lamb: By the way, it’s tax free. It’s tax free. It’s all yours.

Andrew la Fleur: Assuming you live there, yeah.

Brad Lamb: Everyone looks at Toronto, “Oh, yeah, Toronto’s amazing. I want to live in King Spadina.” I was here in King Spadina where nobody wanted to live here. Cities change. Hamilton is in the middle of the same change that Toronto saw 20 years ago.

You can miss the boat. You can buy a condo for $160,000 or you can miss the boat and wait til it’s $1.1 million. That’s your choice. If you want to be an idiot, wait the time and pay $1.1 … I’m fine with that, either way.

We always find people that have vision to buy our buildings and our projects, so they’ll all sell. You either could get in line and buy or you can be one of the idiots that misses this great opportunity.

I think everyone has an innate desire to have money and be rich. This is one of the easy ways to do it. Go to Television City, buy a condo. You’re going to make money.

Andrew la Fleur: All right. Excellent. Brad, it’s been great having you on the show. Appreciate your time and your insights here. It’s been fantastic. If people want to learn more about you or Television City, where would you direct them? What’s the best place to do that?

Brad Lamb: Television City is televisioncity.ca. I think I’m right about that.

Andrew la Fleur: We’ll verify the official-

Brad Lamb: Or you could go to the website-

Andrew la Fleur: Website and we’ll put it in the show notes for this episode, for sure.

Brad Lamb: Or you could go to lambdevcorp.com and our projects are there. You can email me at brad@torontocondos.com or there’s another email address I have, but I can’t remember it. That’s the best one and I’ll respond to anything you ask.

For Television City, it’s hard to miss it. You could also just google “Television City Hamilton” and there’s a website there with all the floor plans and images. The thing to do is to register, because there’s 600 units there, 619 units. I think we’re going to sell out the first tower day one.

Andrew la Fleur: Wow.

Brad Lamb: You want to get in, and call, and book an appointment if you want to get an opportunity to buy in this building at these prices, because I’ll tell you, phase two won’t be at these prices.

Andrew la Fleur: Okay, good to know.

Brad Lamb: The other thing, too, is it’s going to take us five years to finish phase one. What’s going to happen in five years? Rents are going to be higher, prices will be higher regardless or whether you’re getting a good deal here. The opportunity’s there for anyone that has the desire to take it.

Andrew la Fleur: Excellent. Great. Thanks, Brad. Hopefully we’ll have you on the show again soon.

Brad Lamb: Okay. You’re welcome.

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