Is the developer reliable? Are they experienced?

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1 UNIVERSITY SUITES F.A.Q. Is the location any good? by Andrew la Fleur truecondos.com The building is in what I call the Sweet Spot. Right at the intersection of Princess and University. 5 minute walk to campus, and 5 minute walk to the downtown shopping area. Princess Street is the main shopping street in downtown Kingston. It s sort of like the Queen Street West of Kingston where you will find stores like The Gap, Lululemon, Trailhead, Starbucks, and some very nice restaurants. You are also only about a 15 minute walk to the water if you head south through the campus OR if you go east through the downtown. The address is 495 Princess Street and the most telling stat about this spot is that it has a WalkScore of 93. This is like living on Yonge street in downtown Toronto. You don t need a car for anything here. Is the developer reliable? Are they experienced? The developer is PRK developments and this is their first condo building, yes it s true. But that being said, the partners bring a wealth of experience in real estate. There are 3 partners in PRK. 2 of them are Queen s University grads and former Olympic athletes with student rental properties all across Ontario.

2 The 3rd partner is a member of the Reichmann family who are possibly Canada s most famous real estate family, having built most of the Bay Street office towers and Canary Wharf in London. They also own around 70% of the retirement homes in Canada. A cash flow business for which University Suites is modeled after. What s the deposit structure? $3000 with the offer balance to 5% in 30 days 5% in 120 days 5% in June % on occupancy When will the building be built? Occupancy is estimated at May 2017 How does the building compare to other condos in Kingston? A huge reason for the appeal of this building and why demand is so strong is that there is nothing like it that currently exists in Kingston. In Toronto we take condo living for granted and have beautifully designed buildings with state of the art amenities and modern finishes everywhere we turn. In Kingston there is no amenitized building like this. No building with 9 ceilings. No building with finishes like this (stainless steel appliances, stone countertops, tile backsplashes, laminate hardwood flooring throughout, designed by TEEPLE architects). In Kingston the condo market consists of a few old buildings (10 20 years old) on the waterfront with prices in the $500 $800k range and sizes in the 1200 sq ft and larger sort of range. These buildings were built a long time ago and have no relevance to a student rental condo. There are a couple smaller buildings in the historic area of kingston, just east of the campus, but these again are very old buildings (10 20 years old), and no amenities, inefficient designs, high maintenance fees etc.

3 What s the market like for student rentals? The Kingston/Queen s housing market is dominated by rooming houses where you have anywhere from 4 10 students living in a house together. Students pay around $ /month for a room in a house. 4 or more students to share a bathroom is pretty standard living in Kingston. Kingston being one of the oldest cities in Canada has some of the oldest housing stock in Canada. Most houses are 100+ years old. That means knob and tube wiring, terrible insulation (Kingston gets VERY cold in the winter), poor windows, uneven floors, leaky basements, small kitchens, few bathrooms etc. The housing market is very tight in kingston and the hottest properties are those within a 5 minute walk or less to campus (University Suites is a 5 minute walk). Students are under constant pressure of figuring out where they will live next year. As soon as they arrive on campus in September, they start looking. If you don t have a lease signed by the end of January for the next year you are likely going to have to commute in from the secondary areas of town. 12 month leases are normal. Many landlords get the benefit of having their properties sit empty for 4 months a year in the summer while still collecting rent cheques every month from their tenants who have moved back to Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal for the summer. The best way to sum up the housing market in Kingston and how many buyers are looking at University Suites I will quote a parent of a Queen s University Student who I talked to on the phone this week. He said, I want to give these slumlords a run for their money In other words, it is a slumlords market and it s about time that students with the means have a choice of a high quality housing solution in Kingston. University Suites is that option. Do I have to go to Kingston?

4 Kingston is a beautiful small city with a lot of great history and sights to see. The Queen s campus is rich with tradition and really is The Ivy League of Canadian Universities. I encourage you to go visit Kingston if you have never been. But that said, you don t ever have to go. Sales are being run out of Toronto. With the 3 year rental guarantee and 3 years of free property management, you likely will not have to ever set foot in Kingston if you don t want to. That s the beauty of condo investing and especially with the free property management it s a very low maintenance investment but will provide high returns. Why would I invest in a condo in Kingston? Part of the beauty of condo investing is that they are low maintenance properties. You can own several condos at a time in different cities with little to no effort each month. Unlike owning a house, there is usually nothing fix or repair, and they are much more secure than a house. I own a condo in Florida that I bought sight unseen and has been rented out for the last 2 years. The only thing I have had to do during these 2 years is replace the dishwasher. And my property manager took care of it for me. All I had to do was send an . And this condo is more than 10 years old! A brand new condo like University Suites will come with a full warranty under Tarion. Buy a condo here and you don t have to think about it for 6 years! It will take 3 years to get built, then you have 3 years of cashing rental cheques without doing any work. But the real reason you want to buy a condo in Kingston is the pent up demand for this type of product. I believe the resale ability and rentability will be very strong in the future should you choose to sell or keep renting it out beyond the 3 years. Rental Guarantees - How does it work? You buy the unit from the developer and the developer agrees to lease the unit back from you for 36 months at a set rate. The rental rate depends on each unit. Ranges from around $1275 $2400+ depending on the unit. It goes up with the price obviously. Rental starts the moment you get your keys for the unit on occupancy.

5 The developer then reserves the right to go out and sublet the unit, which they will, and at whatever rate they want to. However, keep in mind that you still get paid every month no matter if your unit is sitting empty or not. What happens after the 3 years? After the 3 years you have some options: 1) you can sell you unit 2) you can move into it yourself 3) you can continue to use the property management company (Varsity Properties) but you will have to start paying for their services 4) you can take over the management of the unit yourself at no charge 5) you can hire a different property management company of your choosing If I decide NOT to sell, but keep renting it, what rent will I get? While it s impossible to predict the future, especially since it is 6 years away, I believe that you will have no problem getting around $1000/bedroom in the building considering students today are paying $ /bedroom to live in dumps. In 6 years time those same students will likely be paying $800+ per room so $1000 for a significant upgrade in living standards seems very attainable. So $1000/room for shared units (2 and 3 bedroom units), would mean that studios would fetch a premium over that and 1 bedrooms an even larger premium over a studio. Can I opt-out of the rental guarantee? Yes, you can opt out before the occupancy date if you want to. It s not mandatory, you have to give notice 90 days prior to occupancy if you are going to do that though. You can also opt out of it mid way through the 3 year period, once it has begun if you want. Is the rental guarantee assignable? Yes. This is great. So you can flip your unit to another investor in a couple years and they will still get the benefit of the rental guarantee.

6 Assignment is free, you just have to pay the developer s legal fees. Who picks the tenants? The property management company. They have 2500 student beds under management now. They know what they are doing! Will all the tenants be students? Not necessarily. That s another benefit of the building and the location. The building will have a great appeal to grad students (Law school AND medical school at Queen s), as well as the staff and faculty of the University as well as there are 2 major hospitals within a short walk and you have the entire downtown Kingston area which employs a lot of people too. Will there be high demand for resale for this condo in the future? The best way to think about your exit strategy is this: It's the year You have been renting out your unit for 3 years and getting amazing cash flow every month. Now imagine a wealthy family from forest hill or rosedale sending their kid to Queen's. They go through the first year residence thing, then they need a place to live for 2nd year. They start shopping around for a place to rent. They can either a) rent a room in a dumpy old slumlord house for $800/month with shared bathroom, or they can buy your condo off of you and their kid will live in it for 3 years, they will get a roommate who will pay them $1000/month and pay for more than half the carrying costs to own the property.

7 You have to ask yourself a) How likely is the above scenario to happen? and b) How much do you think that guy would pay for your condo in 2020 when the alternative is to put their kid in a dump for $800/month and have zero to show for it 3 years later when the kid graduates. My answers would be a) Extremely likely. buying pre construction today puts you in a position to sell to a highly motivated and wealthy audience at precisely the right time in the future (when it's august and a student needs a place to live, parents will buy a place on the spot without thinking about it). b) In the worst case scenario, he would gladly pay you what you paid for the condo because after he rents out a room to his kids' friend at $1000/month, the condo is costing him less every month than what he was going to pay in rent for his daughter to live in a dump. 3 years of renting at $800/month = $28,800 in rent with nothing to show for it. or 3 years of building equity in the condo with another kid paying you $36,000 in rent When you break down these numbers you realize that these units will go up dramatically in value because the alternative just doesn t make financial sense. Those families with the means (and there are a lot of them at Queen s) will buy a condo rather than throw money away on rent for 3 years.