All My Real Estate Profits Are Gone

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]So, recently I sold an investment property that I swore I was going to keep for the rest of my entire life. And now, the profits from that sale, they're all gone. So, I thought what I would do here today is share with you my experience of cashing out on my real estate investment and exactly what I did with the money. Because normally I make videos here on the channel about real estate education, purchases, sales, market knowledge, statistics, and even investing. But then through my experience that had me thinking, "When investing is done, why wouldn't I also share with you what I did with those profits so you can better judge if you should stay in the real estate market yourself or if you should cash out because prices just keep going down." So, in an effort to keep this channel as transparent as possible, I'm going to pull back the curtain today and tell you what I did with the cash and how almost all of it has already disappeared from my checking account.

[00:01:03]But really quick, before I get into the nitty-gritty, if you like these types of videos about honesty and transparency alongside of my regular educational videos, please go ahead and click the like button to help me get this video out to more people and also subscribe to the channel. It really helps the channel grow and it's all that I ask in return for sharing my experience. So, thank you for doing that. I also should probably add a disclaimer that first, this is in no way anything like financial advice.

[00:01:31]This is just what I did with my cash and it should not be representative of what you may do with your. So, please, if you have money to deploy, go hire a professional or do your own research on what you should be investing in personally. Unless of course you're looking for advice in the capacity of which I'm licensed as a real estate agent here in greater Vancouver. Then you can just book a call with me right down below using the first link in the description. And with that out of the way, let's talk about where all of my money has gone. Now, it's only fair to I guess share what I would consider to be the real numbers.

[00:02:10]When I walked out of the lawyer's office, I I signed all the paperwork back in 2021 when I bought this property, the down payment was $93,500 plus transfer taxes and legal fees as well.

[00:02:25]But when I sold that same property just this last year, the check I picked up from the lawyers after things like mortgage pre-down and appreciation, that number was 197,000 bucks. Meaning I basically doubled my money in about 5 years, not counting the profit of cash flow during the time of ownership because that was taxed on a yearly basis. But of course, the first thing when you have any gain like this that you have to look into, any profits that you're going to have in something like this, you're going to have capital gains. Capital gains tax is calculated as 50% of the lift of the holding that the asset gets you. That gets added to your income for that given year. But now I guess I should give you the real numbers so I can show you how I've I've roughly estimated that for next year's tax season. I purchased the property for $465,000 and I sold it for 532.

[00:03:22]Then there were some, you know, lawyer fees involved, transfer taxes, some closing costs and other capital expenditures along the way. Although I assume that I'll probably be in the range of somewhere between you know, 50, maybe 55,000 dollar range of an actual capital gain, I'm going to use $60,000 here just to be safe because I like to estimate my taxes on the high end and then be happy if I get a return at the end of the year. So again, that gain, let's call it $60,000.

[00:03:51]That means that $30,000 will be added to my income for the tax year of 2026.

[00:03:58]However, I owned that property jointly with my wife, so we will each have an extra $15,000 of tax, or I guess taxable income added on top of our income.

[00:04:09]And I guess that doesn't really sound all that bad, but that does create a problem, and that problem is taxes. So, the first thing we did with the money, and actually was the largest portion of the money that we did, was to put a bunch of those profits and smash them into $70,000 worth into an RRSP.

[00:04:27]RRSPs are a great way to help you not worry about taxes today. The account allows you to defer those taxes from today until retirement. So, as long as you have room, you can transfer your money into an RRSP account, and essentially our taxable household income this year, between my wife and I, was reduced by $70,000, which will have a knock-on effect, if all goes well, not only hopefully not owing taxes this year on the gain, but hopefully setting us up for a large refund in 2027. But truly, I won't really know until after we file our taxes next year how much we made this year and how much, you know, we've already paid in taxes, because we're both self-employed. When you're in commission sales like I am, you never know if you're going to have a good year or a bad year. Thankfully, I've had some pretty good years. Next up, we took advantage of another amazing Canadian bank account called the TFSA.

[00:05:23]Again, you will need to have contribution room for yourself, so you you're going to have to figure out how to calculate that, but we had it in our case. So, we each put $20,000 for a total of another $40,000 into those investing accounts for the future. And the best part about the TFSA, even though it is after-tax dollars, so we don't get the deferral, anything we make in there by the way of dividends or future growth, it's all tax-free. So, that money will grow because again, it's not a deferral, but it will be tax-free in retirement when we need it. Now, it's a good time to let you know that both our RRSPs and our TFSA are not just sitting there in a high-interest savings account. That's something that kind of gets lost. A lot of people think if I've got a tax-free savings account that it just sits in savings, same with a registered retirement plan. These funds are actually sitting in different trading accounts. So, we can buy into the markets, the stock market mostly, and grow at the same rate, hopefully, as the economy, or at least, I hope so. With that cash that I do invest, I do a few things. First off, I dollar cost average into the market. So, let's say I have, you know, 10 months left after the capital came in for the rest of the year. And in this case, in my personal TFSA, we'll just use that this time, I put in 20,000 bucks. So, that means every single month I have $2,000 of capital to deploy. This helps me avoid the risk of buying into the market at any one peak time as stocks are at record highs. It might make sense to deploy all the money at once, but really, I'm pretty risk averse. So, my portfolio is uh about the same, uh I would say in my RRSPs, but it's very close to the same in my TFSAs as well. So, that brings me to the point of what is it that I'm actually buying when I put this money into those accounts?

[00:07:20]And the answer is ETFs or exchange-traded funds. These are broad-based funds that are indexed to the market. So, they carry a lot less risk rather than buying individual stocks. Generally, I also really like to diversify these into a few funds. Um but again, not financial advice, do what's right for you. I'll let you know that I really like putting in a certain amount each month into a few things.

[00:07:51]First, I love my Canadian bank stocks, or I guess just a Canadian dividend fund. It's an ETF that I take about 20% of my overall and invest in each month.

[00:08:04]Another 20% just goes straight into an S&P 500 fund that is the top 500 companies across the states. And another into a total equity market fund, meaning I'm basically investing in the entire market at the same time. Then I have 10% allocations into the NASDAQ 100, a Canadian consumer index, and a Canadian industrial fund. Then I have smaller allocations into a couple of individual stocks that I really like, a Bitcoin ETF because why not, and recently I've even started allocating a certain amount to buying gold. Next, just because I like to lump sum, I lump summed another $10,000 into my principal residence on the fixed portion of the mortgage because paying non-deductible debt is always a good idea. I possibly could have done more, but I was comfortable to get my mortgage down to a certain number with that $10,000. And recently we added a fourth bedroom to our house that I think will increase its resale value. Uh, we updated all of the carpets, put in some fresh countertops in the laundry where we put in a new washer and dryer, painted the entire house from top to bottom on the inside, which was all, by the way, financed on my Manulife One line of credit to the tune of almost 40,000 bucks.

[00:09:31]So, we paid that off as well. Now, if you're following, this leaves us with around $37,000 left over.

[00:09:39]A large portion of which, unfortunately, is going to be put towards a new roof on my house and gutters, because hey, my house is 25 years old now, and it's just time. Now, at this point, you're probably thinking, "Wow, this guy kind of sucks. So, all he did is reinvest his windfall into more investments and then did maintenance on his house." Well, before you judge me too harshly, I am down for a little bit of fun. Uh we have uh planned a substantial family trip.

[00:10:09]So, we will be enjoying a little bit of that money anyway, and I am considering, let me know if you think I should do this, getting my '72 Olds Cutlass back on the road, something I haven't done in the last 12 years since, you know, I'm a I'm a dad now and I have a family and a business, and you know, investing comes first. But, now that I'm 3 years into jiu-jitsu in my 40s for some crazy reason, maybe it's time to kick that full-blown midlife crisis into top gear and relive my 20s by getting my old lowrider back on the road. Who knows? But, whatever happens, the money, or I guess the profit, it may not be gone, but it has been deployed to work for me more in the future and also, at the same time, upgrade the standard of living, and it might even force me to have a little bit of fun. Now, if you made it this far into the video, I'm going to ask you for a favor for me sharing my story today. Please let me know down below in the comments what you think of how I invested my profits from my real estate sale.

[00:11:20]Should I have kept the place?

[00:11:23]Did I invest well? What else might I have done with the cash? Whatever it is, please let me know down below in the comments, and I'm going to do my best to respond to all of them. And if you missed the video completely about why I sold my investment property in the first place, you can go ahead and check it out by clicking right here.