Zorya & Patrick Belanger: Navigating the Transition to Full Time Real Estate Investors

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (00:34)
Thanks for having us. Thanks a lot for having us. Yeah, we can get talk about ourselves quite a bit. where would you like to start? Yeah, we’ll start with.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (00:40)
Tell us, we know you’re a real estate investor, so tell us what do you invest in and how do you help others when it comes to real estate?

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (00:53)
So yeah, we’ve been investing since 2013. We’ve invested in single-family homes, half-duplexes, garage suites, small multi-family, and more recently, larger multi-family that Zoria has been participating in and working on in the US. And we help others through a coaching program called Multi-Family Makeover. It’s a program where we help basically investors make the transition from essentially single-family into multi-family.

and all the steps that are necessary along the way.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (01:25)
That’s awesome. Now, we’ve known you for quite a few years now and you were both engineers, I think, when we first met you. And if I believe I’m correct, you’ve both stepped out of those careers and you’re full-time into real estate. Can you share a little bit about what that journey looked like?

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (01:40)
Yeah, absolutely. So Patrick and I met in university, like fifth day of university. And yeah, we were friends. then we did engineering together for five years. And, you know, after university, that’s when we started, we traveled together for five months around Europe and really got started in our engineering careers. And it was about three years into that that we, I guess, discovered real estate investing. I we were doing a lot of

reflection about what’s next. were just, well I had personally got my PNJ and was looking to the future now because that was always the goal but once that goal was attained we kind of thought what do we do now? Do we just work for the rest of our lives and our careers or what else could we do? And we started looking more into investments and self-development books. You know, we started reading other things other than engineering books.

And that’s when we really came across Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, specifically the Rich Retire Young book. And that’s where we really learned about the concept of investing and being an employee versus being a business owner. Because we never really taught that too much. that really was the first mindset shift that really got us down this road. And initially,

we were thinking of maybe we could be business owners. Maybe we could start an engineering consulting firm or something like that. But we pretty quickly realized we didn’t really have the experience for that yet. And so we started looking into real estate investing, which was mentioned in that book as well. And we were thinking, I remember thinking, I wonder if anyone in Edmonton invests in real estate. Because that’s how little we knew about it. I wonder if this works here.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (03:32)
Yeah.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (03:36)
And so yeah, with a bit of research, we found other people that invested in real estate, found a real estate investing network that we could join and get educated. And that’s kind of what it took to get started, once you go from there. Yeah, so I guess I was in the, like we bought our first property, not as an investment property, but we bought that in 2010 as our first condo. And we did everything wrong with that. We didn’t use a realtor.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (04:01)
Yeah.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (04:02)
We didn’t use a mortgage broker, so we spent wasted time evenings and weekends shopping for rates. We just kind of we didn’t review the condo documents really well. Like it’s like we did everything wrong, but it was, you know, a low price to entry and we were able to pay down that mortgage really quickly. And so it got to the point where we actually started wanting to invest in real estate. In the fall of 2013, we were able to like after getting educated, we realized, OK, well, let’s refinance this condo. We had a bunch of equity there and that allowed us to

use that equity and go out and buy a couple of half duplexes. so we bought, know, so in October we started looking into investing in, or like we said, okay, we’re going to invest in real estate and closed on our half duplexes by that December. And at that point it’s like, okay, well we’re out of our own capital, but let’s make some systems and see if we can do this again. And so basically built the systems necessary on what we’d already done, but then also started learning how to join venture to be able to.

continue to grow the portfolio and scale up. So bought a couple more properties with joint ventures and bought a different house. We moved out of the condo in 2015 because we wanted to have a little bit bigger place to be able to raise a family in. then at that point, price of oil went down and a lot of the real estate investors in Edmonton were pretty nervous. And so we saw our rents drop quite a bit. So we kind of just said, hey, we’ve got a number of mortgages on our name.

let’s see if we can ride this out. We didn’t know what was ahead of us, but managed to make it through there. And then we realized, hey, you know, we’re, this is all good. We managed to keep good tenants in our units and from there continue to grow in scale. continue doing more joint ventures and, and some new builds and some new properties. So, and it wasn’t until, I guess it was about 2018 that we, we were basically taking possession of, one of our new builds. was a new house with a garage suite.

And it got to the point where the financing became a pain, like, and painful for our joint venture partners. And so they just said, you know, the returns are great, but you know, we don’t want to do this again, just because it’s so invasive for them that, know, they just didn’t, you know, it was too much effort for the returns that that’s how they felt. So it’s okay. Well, how do we do this, but make it easier for an investor? And that’s when we started really looking at, you know, like commercial financing and looking at multifamily. Like we saw

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (06:27)
somebody presenting on multifamily and said, hey, we should explore this a little bit more. Because now they’re talking about a business. And that excited us. And we didn’t know at the time that we could jump into that. But after learning more about commercial financing, it suddenly made sense. And we realized that, we were at the point with, we only had seven doors at the time. So I think we initially thought, we’re not ready for multifamily yet. But after learning more about it, we’re like, yeah, this does make sense because of the net worth we’ve created from that.

in the difficulties that we’re having with our joint venture partners and we couldn’t qualify for residential financing anymore. So after just like just learning a little bit about how it works, it made it. We realized it was the right move for us to get into multifamily. And then just like when we first got started, we got educated, joined a program that, you know, got a mentor that could help us, you know, through that first purchase. And that’s when we started.

And we could also recognize opportunities too. So we actually bought like a more of an unconventional type of multifamily, whereas actually multiple residential, sweeted townhouses and not be very popular now, but not many people were doing it when we first bought our first sixplex. And so, but we were able to recognize that we could put a commercial mortgage over these multiple residential titles. And so that was our first one. There was a brand new build.

And since that was successful, we just repeated that and bought another six plaques and then another eight plaques and then another six plaques over the course of a few years. And yeah, and then after that, I guess we should go back to the point where I stopped being an engineer was basically when in 2017, when our first son was born. And so that was back when we only had like four, four properties. guess we were.

closing on number five like at exact same time I was giving birth. But yeah, we weren’t too many properties in, but I already knew that I think way before that I wasn’t going to go back to my job after having our son. And we basically decided that that was a good step in our business that I would could focus on real estate and growing our portfolio and Patrick could continue working and being our money partner, essentially.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (08:22)
Yeah.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (08:45)
You

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (08:46)
And yeah, that was so before we got into the multifamily stuff, like I had already like stepped away from my engineering job and I was just focusing on that and being a mom. And then 2020 was when we took possession of our first multifamily, also the year that we had our daughter. And yeah, and then kind of continued growing after that. Yeah, during the pandemic, there was a lot to happen that year.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (09:07)
And the pandemic, A lot of things.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (09:14)
Yeah, but now we’re, five years later from that first multifamily purchase. And now we have, yeah, our asset managing 177 doors. So a lot of that in partly in Edmonton and Patrick’s been able to focus on taking that, like overseeing that side of things. And then I’ve been focusing on the large multifamily.

project in Houston, Texas. So that was 144 doors that partners and I acquired almost two years ago now. And I’ve been the asset manager on that. And that has been a big value add project where we’ve renovated 96 of the units and did a lot of renovations on the outside as well. And now we’re getting to refinance that. But the only reason we’ve been able to do that is

Patrick stepping away from his job just over a year ago and been able to, so we could handle all of that. We basically went from like 26 to 177 in a matter of one month. Yeah, 2023 was a busy year. And it was just kind of, it was a good natural transition. Cause yeah, like if Zoria was to try and do all the asset management for Houston, as well as all the local asset management, it would just have been too much.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (10:21)
Yeah.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (10:38)
And so was kind of, was the perfect timing to be able to, you know, step away from one career and step into another. Yeah. And 2023 was also two years ago when we launched the multifamily makeover program. So it was like doing that and basically mentoring other people at the same time. So it was like, it was a lot going on and I don’t think I could have gone too much more without Patrick like stepping in and helping.

That’s very our net. And so, now at this point, it’s continuing growth, continuing to build our local portfolio and then also looking at seeing where the opportunity is going to lie. mean, obviously, there’s been a lot of shakeup in the economy, a lot of uncertainty that’s been playing out over these past six months. Just, you know, with the administration of the United States changing government or potentially changing government in Canada.

And so it’s just about, okay, let’s position ourselves to be able to take advantage of, you know, what’s the opportunities to come. So that’s where we’re at now.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (11:38)
Awesome. That’s great. I mean, obviously you had many challenges along the road. Can you tell our viewers maybe one or two of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them? If they’re looking to start this journey, obviously we don’t want them to just start by buying a hundred doors, right? That is too much and it will cause overwhelm and we shut down. And so we try to help our listeners by giving them nuggets and tidbits of just

Those first few steps, maybe they’re thinking about getting into real estate. They’re working full time. They have a family. can seem overwhelming, but I think you two addressed it very well. And we have a similar style where one of us stepped out of our career to take this on full time. The other one, let’s call us the money partner. I tell us time to transition us both, but it doesn’t have to be both of you all in at once. And as a matter of fact, that probably wouldn’t have worked so well for you guys. Can you

Talk a little bit to that.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (12:41)
Sure. thinking about some of the big challenges that kind of came along the way and there’s been a lot. But I think that one of the things that is very important is being able to take, you know, those growth actions, you know, like in curving out time to actually, you know, take the next step, whether that’s, okay, well, what do I need to do to accomplish this goal that I’m going after? And then taking meaningful action towards that every single day. So when we first got started, it’s like when we knew where we wanted to go, so it was pretty easy. And we both had, you know, careers at the time.

So, okay, well, what do we need to do today to move towards that goal? Whether it was refinancing a condo or, speaking with with mortgage brokers or speaking with with realtors or whatever it might be, just building that power team, you know, taking meaningful steps every single day to get to where you want to go. Yeah, I would say that one of our biggest challenges, we didn’t have so much, I guess, a challenge getting started. We can’t really speak to that so much. just, you know, we got we.

Luckily found a good community where we could learn from and then we knew that we had to find a power team. so because we were both working full time, I was dancing and volunteering a lot. Like we knew we didn’t have that much time to do this. like having putting that power team in place, like hiring a property manager from day one for our very first property that helped us, I guess, before we had, I guess.

before we got to having challenges with our time, we knew that we had to put those systems and people in place. And some of the challenges, I think, through our journey, though, I guess in the first few years, though, was just even though we had property management in place, we had still difficulty with kind of learning how to all the whole landlording aspect of it and still dealing with a lot of difficult tenants initially. So we had to learn.

what our criteria was for accepting tenants. So we just, and that was just by making mistakes. Even though we had a property manager, we still made the final decision in who we accepted and who we didn’t. And that was good because we did learn a lot during the years by having to make that final decision. so yeah, we’ve had difficult tenants that we brought in, for example, too low of a credit score. And now that is…

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (15:04)
something that we don’t compromise on and Yeah, making sure that we do an inspection a good inspection of the Tenant before we offer to a renewal So yeah, so that’s one of kind of some challenges, but there’s What did you talk about I think that one of the biggest things has been just like this whole transition

from both of us being in engineering careers to entrepreneurship? Yeah, actually that would be probably one of the bigger challenges. Just because it’s all internal. Not so much the external stuff. I remember external stuff like when we were in our condo and we were on the board and we were having work done on the building where it’s roofing or siding or whatever it might be or deck replacement and whatnot. And having to, as a 23 or 24 year old kid,

you know, sometimes having to have difficult conversations with contractors. But you kind of put yourself in those situations and you kind of lean into them and say, okay, I’m going to do this hard thing, but do it really well. Right. Because there’s people depending on me, whether it’s in this case, you know, the condo board and like other condo owners, but you kind of say, okay, well, I’m going to put myself in that difficult situation. I’m going to do it as best I can. And I’m going to come up with excellence. Right. Kind of that mindset. Well, well, that is kind of an external hardship. One of the

difficult internal hardships for me anyways, was stepping away from a career that I’d spent half my life, like 18 years working on, And I can remember being 10 years old wanting to be an engineer. And so that was a big shift for me was to say, okay, well, I’m gonna step away from this one thing that I’ve been gunning on for so long and step into something new, new chapter, new book.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (16:36)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (16:58)
And so that was certainly a challenge. It took years to kind of make those decisions and recognize that that’s sort what I wanted to go for, but then actually had to jump on it. And it was actually in August of 2023, a friend of mine passed away in an accident. And that was kind of the triggering moment where I realized, OK, well, if I only had a month left, what would?

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (16:58)
Yeah.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (17:27)
you what regrets would I have? And at that point, you do a lot of soul searching and you realize, okay, well, if that’s the case, okay, well, what are you going to do about it? What if this was your last month? And it just got me thinking about that quite a bit. And it just happened to be at the time when, you know, Zoria had, you know, taken out, had a lot on her plate. And it just made me do those reflections and say, okay, well, and every day driving to and from work, there was this kind of pit in my stomach where there’s this feeling where it’s like,

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (17:29)
you

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (17:56)
Like I should be working on our business. This should be the thing that I should be doing and it wasn’t until that You know that that incident or that event that you know, I really had to search within and say okay, let’s Let’s you know where companies for years have placed bets on me, know saying hey, you know this person is a you know competent individual knows what they’re doing can be put in many different situations and do well and now it’s like okay, well put that same faith in yourself and

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (17:57)
Yeah.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (18:26)
that was the decision point. gave my… was the regret? Yeah, like it would be, you know, if I didn’t do this and that was it, I would have that regret. So basically made the decision, put in my notice, gave a month to be able to transition, get my appropriate backfill. And as of October, 2023, been working besides Zoria on this journey.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (18:50)
Thank you for sharing that. You’re right. That’s, that’s deep to go soul searching, but sometimes it takes, unfortunately, an event to wake people up to realize this isn’t the life I actually wanted, even though I might’ve put in years or decades into building it. If I’m not happy at the end of the day, or if I’m not happy going to work, what can I do to change it? And then for you to take that leap, cause it’s a big leap to be into entrepreneurial ship where it’s a hundred percent on you.

Right? You can show up and get a paycheck at work. If you’re having a bad day or you’re not feeling great, you can muscle through it and still get paid. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you have to show up, especially for your investors, right? Cause that’s how you get paid. So it’s a definite, mind shift. And sometimes I find it’s really hard for people to do that jump. There’s a big fear, right? What if I don’t do this? What if I don’t do that? And you know, lot of things can be dependent on it, but to take that leap of faith is,

Man, once you get there and you’ve done it, it’s an incredible space to be in.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (19:54)
Yeah, for sure. And so for some people, if they can just do it on the side, like and just do a slow transition, that is probably the safest. But at a certain point, you have to kind of go all in. And then we kind of did that by, you me leaving my career first and then and then Patrick. But it’s not like it was a surprise. Like we knew this was direction we were going, but it was just like actually just making that decision and doing it. It took that that event. Yeah. And like it because that wasn’t the original plan.

The plan was to continue working. The plan was to keep going that way. It was just that, yeah, again, that that circumstance, that event that made me have that realization. So that was the kind of the tipping point or the pivot point. And I think a lot of. The thing that also helped is just being clear on our values and our needs as well, and just through this whole journey, it’s been a kind of a journey of discovery, like who we are and what’s important to us as well. And I think.

Being dialed in on that had also helped in the decisions that we’ve made along the way. So making value-based decisions has helped a lot of the way, because Patrick did go from a transition from one job to another, and then again into entrepreneurship. So just leaning in on that and really knowing what our values are, and also our human needs. I’m not sure if.

It’s a little bit less talked about, the human needs as we see them are a growth, significance, contribution, loving connection, uncertainty and certainty. So there’s six different ones and everybody needs all of them, but knowing like which are your top three, that’s really helped us as well. And so it’s helped us understand why, you know, certain

Activities that we do are fulfilling versus other things and so it’s because they’re fulfilling because they meet those needs So in my case, it’s growth Contribution and love in the connection where his Patrick is a little bit different where he his significance is a little bit more important to him and so we When we’re like looking to what we need to do next and what will be a good fit We like we’ve learned to kind of tie it into that

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (21:53)
Thanks

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (22:19)
I think that’s it for that.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (22:19)
That’s great that you can have your values to fall back on. And I agree with that. It’s, it’s values. I, I’m always supportive of having a vision. Like you have the big picture of where you want to go with your family, but, then when times get a little rough or tougher in a space, you don’t want to be, you pull it up, right. And you review, okay, what is our values and what was our vision? Like I know one we’ve shared for years was time freedom. We’ve always, no matter what we chose to do, did it give us.

More time freedom. Cause that was our, our wealth goal. Right. And if it didn’t, we had to be like, okay, let’s not take this on. It doesn’t contribute to where we want to go. And it’s not always easy when you’re in a situation, someone asks you you want to do something and we want to be like, yes, of course. But it’s like, no, hold on. I need to evaluate how this fits into the bigger picture and whether it works for me and my family and being okay to say no, if it doesn’t. Did you have more to add?

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (23:14)
Yeah, and it’s so much easier if you kind of almost have that as a reason. it’s, yeah. One of the big catalysts for change was going back to values-based decisions was my realization that my, or the companies that I was working for, the direction that they were going no longer aligned with my values, which was.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (23:18)
Yes.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (23:39)
a little bit odd and that wasn’t the case for the first five years of my career. First five years of my career it was like man this is my dream job and everything about this is like fully aligned but when you start if for example a company isn’t you know doing things that are aligned with your values all of a sudden you get frustrated and it wasn’t until you know I listened to a podcast that time and you know that was pointed out that you get frustrated when you know your values are not aligned with say company values or

or a partner’s values or whatever it might be and you can have frustration there. And that was kind of a big learning for me is just like, no, if, you know, if this, you know, I can’t be happy or, you know, moving forward in the same direction as this because it’s not aligned with my values. And, you know, that can really be, you know, I guess a guiding factor in saying, hey, is this, you know, where you want to be for the next 30 years or is a different path starting to shape up for you? Right. So.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (24:39)
Absolutely. Yeah. I experienced that for sure. Uh, my, company I was with, uh, years ago, definitely no longer aligned with my values. And I had, I had to leave it that, that same gut feeling that you got when you were driving into work was, was what I got just a little bit shorter, shorter of a drive, think, cause you’re, you’re the, you’re, uh, you had a heck of a drive if I remember where you worked, but yeah, I totally get that. Like, uh, values based and that gut feeling.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (25:02)
down 45 minutes.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (25:06)
Eventually it gets to you and eventually you gotta take action on it.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (25:11)
And it’s probably not until after you’ve taken action that you realize that, that’s not there anymore. And it’s like, hang on. If I’ve learned something about myself and, and now if you’re kind of like now in, I guess, in alignment with those values, you know, things are, you know, kind of where they need to be. So.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (25:30)
Absolutely, so we’re gonna start wrapping this up here. Is there one piece of advice you’d like to share with our audience that maybe didn’t quite come out yet today?

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (25:44)
Yes. Sure. I’ll say that growth comes from operating outside your comfort zone, right? Like from working hard, but then not just not shying away from being outside your comfort zone, comfort zone, but leaning into it and, you know, executing with excellence. Right. So like those, I go back to like when I was a young, you know, young man and having to act as quality assurance for work on the condo board.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (26:02)
Mm-hmm.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (26:14)
Those are difficult conversations, but you recognize that, again, that’s where growth happens, is you know what the right thing is, and doing the right thing, and kind of leaning into some of those hard conversations or those tough times, or those tough activities. Those are the types of activities that allow you to grow, and not shying away from them, but stepping into them. Yeah, and another big example is me stepping into the asset management role for this.

property in Houston and that’s this project has been like 10 times 10 X of what we’ve done before. And yeah, it took just, guess, trust in myself that I could figure it out. And also, like Patrick said, just leaning into it and putting in the work and just facing those challenges because that’s where that growth comes from. It’s it’s not operating in your comfort zone. And so I had to also take that leap and going into a bigger project. And because it was, yeah.

so much bigger like the everything about it with you know from how it’s in a different country so you know taxes, insurance, leasing, everything is different and then the complexity that comes from having multiple entities and having multiple partners and doing it from from operating from a different country as well so yeah I think as advice to

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (27:39)
People getting started whether you know again, you don’t want to jump into something big like that But you always want to take I guess the next do the next scary thing That and I’ve you know experienced that in my public speaking journey as well. It’s like that’s that’s how you continue to scale and It’s just stepping out taking that next scary Action that you know you need to do, but you feel maybe not quite ready for it, but you’ll never be ready You just gotta go go for it

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (28:09)
and trust yourself that you are going to figure it out and also not just do it on your own either. Like what’s helped us in our success is finding the education, whether it’s through mentors or through courses or books, and also surrounding ourselves with other people. So not just mentors, but other people that are in the industry that…

you know you can ask for help when you need it. So that’s what is a lot of comfort to me also going into these bigger projects is I knew people in the industry that I could ask. And so if I didn’t know, I knew at least who to go to and ask. And so it comes back to our, one of our recommended books all the time is Who Not How, which is all about finding the right people rather than.

trying to learn how to do everything.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (29:04)
Thank you, yes, that’s absolutely great advice and we’re huge advocates for finding mentors and putting yourself in room with like-minded people. So if our audience wants to get a hold of you, can you share their best way to do that?

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (29:17)
Yeah, I think the best few different ways. you can follow us on Instagram at Zoria Belanger. We also have our website as BREI.ca and that’s probably the best place where you can just find everything about us, our program, how to contact us.

Yeah, I think that was the best way to go. Of course, we’re also on LinkedIn.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (29:42)
Make sure to put those links in there.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (29:45)
Yeah, so people can reach out to us also on LinkedIn from a professional stance. That’s also a very easy way to get a hold of people. You know, with a direct message, know, Patrick Belanger on LinkedIn or Zoria Belanger on LinkedIn is another way to get a hold of us.

Jessilyn & Brian Persson (29:59)
Thank you, yes, we’ll include the links in this episode when we do air it. We wanna thank you again for taking the time to share your story and your journey with us. We really appreciate having other power couples on here talking the real estate journey like we do. And I just wanna thank our listeners for listening in to the podcast which we release every two weeks at Life by Design. You can find it on all streaming platforms. Until next time, have a good one, thank you.

Zorya & Patrick Belanger (30:26)
Bye guys.