I didn’t have the possibility of posting this on Friday because of business travel. Nonetheless, here’s a tardy odds and ends from the personal finance world:

• Real Estate Guy who guest-blogged on Tuesday about the pros of real estate investing has a possible opportunity for those who wish to learn more about real estate investing. I am going to cut and paste verbatim his offer. Please note I am just passing along the message and neither for or against the offer. I am not part of this potential group. As with everything in this blog, please conduct your own due diligence and decide accordingly. Thanks.

“For the benefit of many ‘newbies’ who don’t know where to start, and don’t want to be taken advantage of, Real Estate Guy is forming a mentoring group.

Real Estate Guy has actually invited one of his professional real estate investment mentors to lead a group of (newbie) real estate investors in Toronto in the near future. Together, they will put together a group of 3-5 people and lead them through the entire real estate investment process, from A-Z, and show them how it’s done.

Some of the things the group will do are: understand at a glance if a for sale listing is worth pursuing, how to calculate ROI, where to find deals, where to find buyers to flip to quickly, and also teach people how to write effective offers.

If you would like more information, please email DJMI@Rogers.com. Please note that the group is currently being formed.

This offer is for those who are serious about pursuing the benefits of investing in real-estate. Given the generosity of the offer, kindly email for further information only if you are seriously interested. Thanks.”

P.S., the first mentoring group will gather for a 3 day session in Toronto (date t.b.a.). Based on interest from bloggers, mentoring groups in other cities will be arranged!”

• As everyone knows, the Feds cut the interest rates by half a percent which is quite a large cut. Much like Investoid, I am against the rate cut for many of the same reasons cited.
• Canadian Business recently released their “Best Cities for Business” in Canada. Quebec City came in first and Victoria scored dead last. For real estate owners, the survey has two interesting stats- commercial building permit growth expressed as a % and crime rate per 100,000 people; two factors which are important variables in real estate prices as commercial growth and low crime drive up housing prices. Two things that struck me immediately about the survey- Vancouver has a higher crime rate than Toronto, Calgary and Montreal (it appears that crime against property and crime against persons have equal weighing in the survey but so much for the media fixation that Toronto is full of criminals) and, if you believe this survey, Calgary has peaked as a city to do business in- its gotten too expensive for many businesses to move to Calgary and they will find cheaper pastures to set up shop. For years, my real estate investor friends have pointed to Waterloo as the place to invest in investment properties- the Kitchener-Waterloo area came 11th in the survey. Here’s the survey.