Interesting video that was spreading around here as expensive real estate has been a hot topic here lately as people struggle to find affordable homes and finding ways to pay off a mortgage. So who are the ones buying up these properties? One example was a realtor here named Thomas Park who also has a business called “REITIUM” where it’s advertised as “A real estate investment platform that has simplified the process of buying real estate for as little as $100.”
Apparently he created a video talking about how he bought a property and did short term rentals through AirBnB which was very profitable to the point where he pretty much paid for the mortgage, property tax and strata fees. Then according to him the strata was potentially going to implement rules to restrict AirBnB rentals. Because of that, he decided to tell people that doing so would drop the value of their property and he also got the voting proxy from a lot of owners where ultimately he was able to vote down that idea.
While there is nothing illegal about what he did from what I gather, people are questioning his integrity as they feel there is a conflict of interest where the decision may not actually be I the best interest of the owners versus him maintaining the profitability of his AirBnB income. I am just surprised he actually created a video about it where I suppose maybe he thought it would be a good way to sell his company.
But with housing affordability being a topic nowadays it’s not surprising that the reactions were negative to the point where the video has been taken down it seems.