Brent Roberts: A Success Story

By Melanie Reuter & Anna Black

At REIN, we hear many different motivations for investing from our Members. Sometimes it’s financial, sometimes it’s a family tradition, and sometimes it’s to retire early.

For seasoned investor and Realtor Brent Roberts, it was to fulfill the words of his father, “Tell me when you have made enough money for me to retire”.

Thirty-seven years of experience, over a thousand doors purchased, his own brokerage, and hundreds of doors later, Brent has made quite the name for himself. Not only is he one of North America’s leading real estate agents, he’s been around since the beginning and was a founding Member of REIN (or as the 500 Club as it was known way back when). He’s also a seasoned investor driven to constantly go bigger, create more, and to always help others. It hasn’t always been smooth sailing though. His real estate investing journey has had its fair share of up and downs, and his motivation for investing has changed along the way as well.

Starting Young

When Brent was only 18 and living in Winnipeg and working in the circulation department at the now defunct Winnipeg Tribune, he bought his first home for $33,000 with $3,000 down.  Even at the beginning he knew he had to make sacrifices, “I had to give up eating out drinking and paying for a cab home all the time…well most of the time.”

Shortly after this purchase, his girlfriend (who stuck around in spite of the frequency of dinner and drink dates) had a father in real estate who suggested Brent buy an investment property to secure his future. He was very coachable and did as he was told. He made an $118,000 offer on a fourplex in town, which was immediately accepted. Immediately after he thought he paid too much: “That still happens to me today.  I always advise my clients not to accept the first offer because the buyers will think they over-offered, like I do when it happens to me – even after 37 years in the business.” 

With $16,000 down, and $5000 in a GIC to prove to the bank that he was creditworthy at such a young age, he secured himself an investment with an assumed mortgage for 19 years. He lost his job right after this purchase when the newspaper went under.  He didn’t fret because the property carried itself. Six years later he sold it.  He’s knows he made a profit but cannot remember this many years later exactly how much.

Growing His Portfolio

In 1979, Brent relocated to Toronto to work at the Globe & Mail. He had seen the power of tenants paying down the mortgage and purchased his second investment property – a $40,000 condo that paid for itself in short order (something that all of Brent’s investments have done to date). Shortly afterwards, he was promoted to a managerial role at the paper’s office in Calgary. His pattern seemed to be buy a property and then leave the province.  His relocation occurred at a time when the whole city of Calgary was essentially for rent because of extremely high interest rates that kept many people out of the market. You could buy one side of a duplex for only $10,000.

1984 saw Brent move yet again, this time to BC, buying a family home that he could barely afford. In 1985, he added eight additional doors to his portfolio (that he also couldn’t afford!). He laughs at his lack of being a geographic expert, well sort of, in a $4.8 million in lost equity kind of way.  He chose to purchase homes in Delta and Surrey for $99,000 each because the same properties in Kitsilano were $110,000.  And although he is very happy that his Delta and Surrey homes appraise at over $600,000 each, the Kits properties are worth well over $1.2 million each. Not only that, he didn’t realize that Kits was home to beaches and girls, but at the time upwardly mobile people just didn’t live in the city. The suburbs were where it was at.

In 1989 Brent wanted to increase his knowledge of the industry and became a Realtor®, learning about real estate law and transactions.  

Lost opportunities are regretful but are not in the same class as losing cold hard capital. In 1993, Brent was a partner in a 256 unit building in Phoenix. After investing $1 million of his and his dad’s money, which was supposed to be a straightforward renovation and refinance project (with plans to expand to over 1000 units), Brent found out one of his partners had been embezzling funds along with the selling agent and he was now in Chapter 11.  Brent threw another $200,000 in to try to save his initial investment but in the end lost everything. He was understandably resentful; he was now married and raising his four young children. He was forced to sell some of his doors to recoup his losses. He could have gone bankrupt but didn’t, instead choosing to keep working hard.

When asked what he learned from the experience he said, “Well, this is the first time I had ever had a partner.  I learned to vet any and all people with whom I am doing a deal.  Partners don’t do what you expect, they do what you inspect.”

Brent says he learned eventually to become “the little shot that kept on shooting.  I found that I needed to keep going,  and a great way to get yourself motivated and ready to move on is to get back to your roots, back to REIN, back to the reasons why you began investing. Don’t quit when things get tough. Look for support from REIN, from your family, from your friends, and from other like-minded investors who have had similar struggles.  Don’t disappear at your time of struggle, instead come out and share your story.”

Lessons Learned by Brent Roberts

• It’s important to share your failure with others. Don’t just share your successes.

• It’s better to fail early on in the game because if you don’t learn how to handle adversity you will be in big trouble. Experiencing failure early teaches you how to move on quickly because the longer you hold onto something, the worse it gets. If you allow your failure to distract you, you will miss out on great opportunities, waste time, and more importantly, not move forward. There’s a time for mourning and a time to move on. Brent says he wasted a decade and many potential opportunities by complaining about his loss when instead he should have just moved on.

• You don’t get motivated and then do something.  You do something and THAT action gets you motivated.

• Never lose a deal over $1000 because it will, without fail, come back to haunt you. Nobody ever remembers what they bought or sold a house for… they remember how much they haggled for it.

• Don’t wait until you find out everything about an investment before you lock it down. Put in the offer and do your diligence then.  Too many great properties are lost over early analysis paralysis.

• Every time you say yes to an opportunity you open a door and when you say no, you close it.

Present Day Brent

Today, Brent is in a wealth creation stage of his life. He owns his own brokerage – Royal Lepage Brent Roberts Realty and manages a team of five. He’s successfully secured the financial future of each of his four grown children with what he calls a “university house” that would fund their educations through cashflow and equity.  The four houses now have various amounts of equity totaling $1.5 – 2 million and he believes it is fair that the kids each have an equal share in it. The house are in his name but owned by the trust.  

He loves that his kids, now aged between 15 and 22, are interested in the business. They had always been “dragged” along to properties as young kids, but have now progressed to helping with renovations and flips. Today, they see the power of real estate as the Roberts Trust recently decided to loan out $50,000 of their equity for a second mortgage at over 12% interest. “My son is very motivated by his returns on that venture versus the $0.45 he sees in his bank account each month.”

He now owns hundreds of doors throughout Metro Vancouver, Alberta, and Phoenix, AZ.

Brent continues to help countless clients to buy, sell, and achieve their financial dreams through real estate. He has always enjoyed helping people to buy their first home and their first investment property and this passion remains today. It’s one of the most exciting parts of his job. He also enjoys helping his clients find those great deals (even when he wishes he could have the deal himself!). “I won’t compete with my clients, so lately my own investing has become a bit stagnant.”

His experience in investing has helped him make great connections. His challenges have allowed him to help clients who have found themselves in precarious investing situations find creative solutions to their problems.  

He’s walked a hard road but has weathered the ups and downs and come out with a positive attitude, big portfolio and a legacy his children are continuing. As Brent says “And their well-being and their legacy is the most important thing to me.”

Melanie Reuter is the Director of Research with REIN and a Real Estate Investor owning both single and multi-family units. She has a Master of Arts Degree from California State University, San Bernardino and a BA from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC.

Anna Black first joined the REIN team in January 2015 as Research & Editorial Assistant. She has a BA in English with a Minor in Publishing from Simon Fraser University. Prior to joining REIN, Anna worked in the non-profit, recruitment advertising, and lead generation industries in an account service and marketing capacity. 

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