A small group of landlords who own hundreds of rental properties across the province have run out of money, owe over $144 million in unpaid loans and face dozens of lawsuits from creditors, according to documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Dylan Suitor, Ryan Molony and Aruba Butt are behind 11 now-insolvent corporations that face a “liquidity crisis” with only $100,000 in the bank, the documents say.
The landlords and their corporations are based in the Hamilton area, but specialize in buying, renovating and in some cases relisting “distressed residential real estate in undervalued markets,” said a court factum.
Those markets are in Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury, as well as smaller communities, including Kirkland Lake, Temiskaming Shores and Val Caron.
Suitor is also a Realtor with over 200,000 followers on Instagram, where he shares business advice as a “self made” entrepreneur and real estate investor.
Last August, Suitor hosted a “Business Results Training Seminar” in Burlington, Ont., promising attendees would learn to grow their business up to 150 per cent over 12 months, according to his social media posts.
A small group of landlords who own hundreds of rental properties across the province have run out of money, owe over $144 million in unpaid loans and face dozens of lawsuits from creditors, according to documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
The three received court-ordered protection, under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), from over 300 lenders until the end of March 2024, wrote Justice Jessica Kimmel in her decision this week.
The landlords and their corporations are based in the Hamilton area, but specialize in buying, renovating and in some cases relisting “distressed residential real estate in undervalued markets,” said a court factum.
The landlords currently own 406 properties where 1,000 tenants live, making them “one of the largest holders of residential real estate in Ontario,” Kimmel wrote.
“To reduce the [landlords’] significant interest expense and improve their free cash flow, the company began exploring refinancing and sale opportunities in 2022,” Clark said.
Filing for creditor protection is often used as “a very last resort” for companies on the brink of bankruptcy, said lawyer Karen Fellowes, based in Calgary and Vancouver, who specializes in restructuring and insolvency and is not involved in this case.
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That’s quite literally what bankruptcy proceedings are for.
The point is the value of their assets (i.e. the properties and associated cashflows) exceeds their liabilities (i.e. the loans) and so bankruptcy proceedings are required to figure out how to disburse the value of those assets to the debt holders.
Yeah like the term ‘undervalued markets’ makes me shudder, you mean where people are living and have been for years - just aren’t paying enough to in your eyes?
OK, where’s the cash flow of these +400 properties?
Can they turn it into payments?
Sounds a lot like a liquidation sale arranged by court can fix this.
Yep, it’s the playbook private equity uses too. Buy a healthy profitable company and then leverage it to the tits to pay themselves back. The company is saddled with debt and an obligation to service that debt and creates a situation where the only way the company can survive is if they grow rapidly. Sometimes it works out and private equity hits big, other times it doesn’t and the company goes under. But who cares, fuck those workers and their livelihoods right?
Create a company, making sure that personal assets are insulated from corporate liabilities.
As a corporation, raise funding through equity and debt to support investing in offices, staff, etc, as needed to operate a new venture. Lenders assess the business to determine if it’s a good credit risk, making money if the business succeeds and taking a potential loss if it doesn’t.
Company goes bankrupt.
Company assets are liquidated and disbursed to debt holders (who knew the risks going in) to minimize their losses while owners and employees are insulated from personal liability.
Why? To encourage entrepreneurship: who would want to start a restaurant or coffee shop if they knew they would be personally liable if the business failed?
Is it possible to misuse limited liability corporations for nefarious purposes? Of course. But it’s absurd to imply they don’t serve an important social purpose.
I guess I did heavily imply that the concept of limited liability companies is evil by design. That’s on me. My intention was to call out the egregious misuse of them.
I’m not even so much concerned that the system is possible to abuse as that it not seen as abuse by too many.
Why not ban corporate ownership of any residential real estate that is in legally-habitable condition?
Because that’s becoming a massive problem when corps come in and buy up entire neighbourhood, only to jack up rents to the maximum the market will bear.
Better yet, make any personal ownership of homes beyond a certain amount - say, 5 rental units, not just homes - be classified as “landlording as a business”, and therefore ineligible for residential home ownership of anything other than their primary residence.
People who upgraded from a home and held on to it, or are renting out a “mortgage helper” suite in their basement aren’t the problem here… tens of thousands of these people competing against each other is what will make a marketplace competitive.
The problem occurs when someone with deep pockets runs out and buys 5, 50 or even 500 “investment rentals” and then parasitizes off the backs of working-class Canadians. These capture the market, limit/reduce competition by dramatically reducing players, and hold it ransom to the highest bidder, severely hurting working-class people.
I would be in favour of limiting how many properties/parcels one corp can own (as long as there’s a limit to how many corps one person can own). But outright bans would probably be detrimental.
Lots of areas need to be bought up by corps in order to densify areas, like buying up 10 detached houses in a downtown area in order to merge it and build a large apartment building which can house 200 instead of 20.
It becomes a problem when one person owns ten corps each of which have a house each to rent out, or when one corp owns 300 properties.
Thank you for the deeper explanation. I’ve seen a lot of “landlords are all evil” being dropped around on various platforms, I think here you capture the difference pretty well (oligopolistic tendencies, limited liabilities, maximizing profit, major companies with leverage vs micro-landlords with 1-2 rented apartments).
Only thing on top of this would be how REIT is a way to make rentals more like an investment even though there’s not a central investor but managed centrally like a business.
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😂
Actual footage from the seminar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zx4ZeGjP3s
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=3Zx4ZeGjP3s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Seems legit.
Sounds like Trumps grift
Oh no. How terrible. 🙄
Anyway, how’s everyone doing today?
I read some good news recently. On an unrelated note I’m feeling slightly more positive about owning a home one day.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A small group of landlords who own hundreds of rental properties across the province have run out of money, owe over $144 million in unpaid loans and face dozens of lawsuits from creditors, according to documents filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
The three received court-ordered protection, under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), from over 300 lenders until the end of March 2024, wrote Justice Jessica Kimmel in her decision this week.
The landlords and their corporations are based in the Hamilton area, but specialize in buying, renovating and in some cases relisting “distressed residential real estate in undervalued markets,” said a court factum.
The landlords currently own 406 properties where 1,000 tenants live, making them “one of the largest holders of residential real estate in Ontario,” Kimmel wrote.
“To reduce the [landlords’] significant interest expense and improve their free cash flow, the company began exploring refinancing and sale opportunities in 2022,” Clark said.
Filing for creditor protection is often used as “a very last resort” for companies on the brink of bankruptcy, said lawyer Karen Fellowes, based in Calgary and Vancouver, who specializes in restructuring and insolvency and is not involved in this case.
The original article contains 806 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Maybe they should sell some of their real estate to pay their debts
That’s quite literally what bankruptcy proceedings are for.
The point is the value of their assets (i.e. the properties and associated cashflows) exceeds their liabilities (i.e. the loans) and so bankruptcy proceedings are required to figure out how to disburse the value of those assets to the debt holders.
gasp
…
Offered without comment.
A. Butt
2 things keep landlords from being an infinite money glitch: morality and stupidity. Somehow I doubt these folks are afflicted by the first one.
Time to sell the properties and get a real job, damned leaches.
Yeah like the term ‘undervalued markets’ makes me shudder, you mean where people are living and have been for years - just aren’t paying enough to in your eyes?
Landlords are the realest leaches
OK, where’s the cash flow of these +400 properties?
Can they turn it into payments? Sounds a lot like a liquidation sale arranged by court can fix this.
Is this not by design?
I’ve yet to hear of a corporate bankruptcy that left the owners and officers and board members on the bread lines.
Yep, it’s the playbook private equity uses too. Buy a healthy profitable company and then leverage it to the tits to pay themselves back. The company is saddled with debt and an obligation to service that debt and creates a situation where the only way the company can survive is if they grow rapidly. Sometimes it works out and private equity hits big, other times it doesn’t and the company goes under. But who cares, fuck those workers and their livelihoods right?
Agreed. Capitalism working as intended
It’s all in the framing:
Why? To encourage entrepreneurship: who would want to start a restaurant or coffee shop if they knew they would be personally liable if the business failed?
Is it possible to misuse limited liability corporations for nefarious purposes? Of course. But it’s absurd to imply they don’t serve an important social purpose.
I guess I did heavily imply that the concept of limited liability companies is evil by design. That’s on me. My intention was to call out the egregious misuse of them.
I’m not even so much concerned that the system is possible to abuse as that it not seen as abuse by too many.
Can we limit how many corporations one person can have?
ONE per industry please. Don’t let people set up a nameless corp for each house to protect themselves from shitty business practices.
Why not ban corporate ownership of any residential real estate that is in legally-habitable condition?
Because that’s becoming a massive problem when corps come in and buy up entire neighbourhood, only to jack up rents to the maximum the market will bear.
Better yet, make any personal ownership of homes beyond a certain amount - say, 5 rental units, not just homes - be classified as “landlording as a business”, and therefore ineligible for residential home ownership of anything other than their primary residence.
People who upgraded from a home and held on to it, or are renting out a “mortgage helper” suite in their basement aren’t the problem here… tens of thousands of these people competing against each other is what will make a marketplace competitive.
The problem occurs when someone with deep pockets runs out and buys 5, 50 or even 500 “investment rentals” and then parasitizes off the backs of working-class Canadians. These capture the market, limit/reduce competition by dramatically reducing players, and hold it ransom to the highest bidder, severely hurting working-class people.
I would be in favour of limiting how many properties/parcels one corp can own (as long as there’s a limit to how many corps one person can own). But outright bans would probably be detrimental.
Lots of areas need to be bought up by corps in order to densify areas, like buying up 10 detached houses in a downtown area in order to merge it and build a large apartment building which can house 200 instead of 20.
It becomes a problem when one person owns ten corps each of which have a house each to rent out, or when one corp owns 300 properties.
Thank you for the deeper explanation. I’ve seen a lot of “landlords are all evil” being dropped around on various platforms, I think here you capture the difference pretty well (oligopolistic tendencies, limited liabilities, maximizing profit, major companies with leverage vs micro-landlords with 1-2 rented apartments).
Only thing on top of this would be how REIT is a way to make rentals more like an investment even though there’s not a central investor but managed centrally like a business.