While I was growing up, my parents would bring me to the houses they were working on and put me to work. In that time I learned many tools to enable me to do my own renovations on future properties. My dad has been an agent for years in Hamilton, Ontario, where I grew up. He and my mom have been doing things in real estate well before they were popular on HGTV.
Being a hockey player my entire life has led me through an amazing journey. I graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a Kinesiology degree. While I love training and working with athletes, I found myself gravitating to real estate more and more each hockey season. As I became more successful in hockey, I was able to start fulfilling my real estate goals by purchasing properties and getting into the market.
As a professional hockey player for 15 years, I was fortunate enough to live in many areas of the world. This included stops in California, Las Vegas, Croatia, Austria and Hungary. Many of the lessons learned through my hockey journey have transferred over to real estate. These include work ethic, discipline, camaraderie, professionalism and attention to detail. I took pride in these as a player and bring the same commitment to real estate.
Back in 2014, I purchased my first condo, which started my personal real estate journey. Since then, I've gone through the various processes of buying and selling. Everything from being a first time home buyer, buying a power of sale, pre-sale, assignment with a vacant unit and also with a tenanted lease program. I've also purchased in a partnership agreement on more than one occasion.
On the owner/seller side, I've renovated and flipped a couple of those along the way, sold in crazy markets and in more relaxed markets. I still own some of them, have hired companies to do renovations, been through a kitec removal process and even a pre-sale HST process.
As an investor, I've been a landlord for years. I've rented units full time, short term on airbnb, hired a short-term rental company, rented condos while away and lived in/renovated them while in my off-seasons. I've rented condos both furnished and unfurnished, long-term, short-term and everything in between.
Real estate is my passion. I love it and have been through a various amount of scenarios. I believe my experience and network will better help my buyers and sellers achieve whatever real estate goals they may have.
Michael Ouzas
