Upcoming summit showcases best of real estate investing

Michael Sarracini reached his ‘Lifestyle Freedom Day’ when he was 25 years old.

The CEO and co-founder of real estate investing education company Keyspire describes it as the day your passive income meets or exceeds your desired lifestyle expenses. Today, Mr. Sarracini helps others reach their ‘Lifestyle Freedom Day’ through his best-selling books, series such as HGTV’s Income Property and the Keyspire Investor Summit, one of Canada’s top real-estate investing conferences.

Mr. Sarracini broke into real estate back in 2000, buying his first property when he was 20 years old with his friend and current business partner, Scott McGillivray. Mr. Sarracini and Mr. McGillivray were working long hours at a local restaurant, scraping together money for food and rent. Living in a house with five friends, the pair were in charge of collecting everyone’s rent and depositing it into their landlord’s bank account.

One day, the bank teller accidentally gave them a copy of the deposit slip, showing that the landlord was only paying $1,200 a month in mortgage fees, despite the students paying $2,500 a month in rent.

It piqued their interests, so Mr. Sarracini and Mr. McGillivray approached a mortgage broker and combined their student loans for a down payment. Their plan worked, allowing them to become landlords who rented out properties to other students.

Eventually, their efforts led to Mr. Sarracini making more than six figures that year. “I’d never seen more than $5,000 in my life that was mine,” he says.

At the upcoming 40th Keyspire Investor Summit—happening Sept. 27 to 29 at the International Centre in Mississauga, Ont.—Mr. Sarracini and Mr. McGillivray will bring together some of the country’s top investors.

Attendees will have access to talks from 30 industry-leading speakers, including celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal. There will be content for every level of investor, covering topics like multi-family investment, vacation rentals, developing properties, legacy planning and more.

The summit is just one of Keyspire’s many educational offerings. Others include the ‘Three-Day Real Estate Investing Bootcamp’ for beginner investors, as well as the annual ‘Signature Mastermind Program’ for mid- to advanced-level investors

Since the first event in 2012, the Keyspire Investor Summit has attracted more than 10,000 attendees. “Ultimately, our mission is to put people in control of their future,” Mr. Sarracini says.

In addition to learning industry insights, the summit is a place to build community. While it can typically take up to three years to build a real-estate investment team, Mr. Sarracini says the summit is a hotspot for meeting like-minded investors, including people with exclusive access to profitable income properties.

“Your risk goes down when you have partners,” Mr. Sarracini says. “It’s better to own 10 per cent of 10 properties than 100 per cent of one property, because if something goes wrong with a property, 90 per cent of your portfolio is still intact.”

Mr. Sarracini says he acknowledges the real-estate investment space can seem overwhelming, and that’s why the summit’s 40 training sessions allow attendees to get all their information in one place from a trusted source.

“One of the biggest misconceptions in real estate is that it takes a lot of money, when in fact, this is the least money-intensive business out there,” Mr. Sarracini says.

He shares an example of a previous Keyspire summit attendee named Cam, who went on to become a summit speaker. Attending a Keyspire event in 2016, Cam learned all that he could, but he was unable to afford Keyspire’s three-day bootcamp—priced at more than $1,000. Despite this, Cam walked away able to buy his first rental property: a semi-detached home in Woodstock, Ont.

The next year, Cam had made more than enough to afford the bootcamp, and by 2019, he attended his first Keyspire summit.

“‘I can’t get a mortgage, I’m just a student, no one’s going to take me seriously,’” Mr. Sarracini recalls Cam saying. “By coming to our event, he managed to get the confidence to overcome all these fears.”

Today, Cam has his own team and has been able to help his parents retire early. “This remarkable young man overcame all the odds—all of the barriers that you get when you’re in university,” Mr. Sarracini says.

Stories like Cam’s are why Mr. Sarracini says he does what he does. “It’s very rewarding. We are producing results for people that impact their lives for generations to come.”

Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Keyspire. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.