Live From Campus Ryan

The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

Live From Campus Ryan

Spotify Google Podcast Apple Podcast Subscribe via RSS Leave a Review

Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso Podcast, your morning shot of what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasce. On today’s show, we’re doing a live show on location. We’re coming to you from Mont-Tremblant in Quebec. We’re doing a walkthrough of a property we’re just finishing construction on. It’s located near Mont-Tremblant. This is a ski resort about an hour north of Montreal, and like many ski resorts around the country, all around North America, especially the major ones, there is an acute problem. That problem is that there’s a shortage of housing for people who work at the resort.

You can experience the same thing in Vail, in Breckenridge, in Aspen and many of the major ski resorts all over North America. And it’s no different here at Mont-Tremblant. The product that we built consists of 253 suites, specifically workforce housing for people who work at the resort. We did some test marketing just a few weeks ago by talking to staff that work at the resort and asking them a simple question: “How far did you drive today to get to work?” This isn’t a very scientific poll, but without exception, every single individual drove at least 30 minutes, with many driving 45 minutes to an hour. That’s a long way to drive to work. The property that we built is less than 10 minutes from the resort. It’s located within the city of Mont-Tremblant.

In fact, our very first residents are two students from France who are coming to work here for the next season. They don’t own a car. They’re going to be living here at the property, working at the resort. Interestingly, the city has rerouted the bus route to loop through our property, taking people directly to the base of the mountain and then back through town right in front of the grocery store where they can pick up their groceries. You can literally, in a mountain resort setting, live without needing a car – an extremely rare opportunity.

So when we designed this entire complex, consisting of 12 buildings, we designed it specifically with that end customer in mind. We are, in many cases, not leasing directly to the individuals although in some cases we are. We are also in negotiation with the major property owners, the hotel owners. We have one hotel, for example, that is going to be leasing 40 units. We have another one that is leasing 17 units, all for their staff. Because one of the big problems in resort communities is attracting talent. Not only do they need the right people, but those people won’t work for them if they can’t find a place to live.

The design of this particular complex is unique in that each bedroom has its own dedicated bathroom. An important feature. We have a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom apartments throughout the complex. So even if you are sharing a unit with friends or strangers, you want your own dedicated bathroom. That’s a game changer. The other thing is, when designing a cost-effective product, it is important to make sure that the apartments are not too large. Even the three bedroom apartment is only 911 square feet, not very large for a three-bedroom apartment. When you’re designing a slightly constrained space, you don’t want it to feel small or claustrophobic. You want to make sure that it feels like a very livable space.

The key to achieving that is to design a space that comes fully furnished for the end customer. That way they don’t have to go through the effort of visualizing how they’re going to buy furniture to fit in that space and how they’re going to orient things. That’s a fairly difficult process that, frankly, not that many people know how to do effectively. So we’re delivering a fully furnished product with built-in furniture, with built-in cabinetry, a built-in desk in every bedroom, and so on. Every single detail has been planned out almost to the millimeter.

The attention to detail is noticeable even down to the queen-sized bed in each bedroom which comes with a nighttable on each side. The positioning of the electrical outlet is exactly where it needs to be. It fits between the nighttable and the bed smoothly. Plus, the nighttable itself has an electrical charging station on the top of it with both USB and USB-C connections. All these little details have been carefully thought out so that we’re delivering a modern product for the year 2025.

The design of compact spaces continues right down to the kitchens. We have 24-inch wide refrigerators. Now, that may sound small, but when recessed a bit into the wall so they sit a little deeper, they flush with the front of the cabinets making everything fit together well. It looks well planned because guess what, it is.

We’re doing a walkthrough and a quality assurance check today because guess what, tomorrow we have a big open house where we’re gonna have a number of folks, more than a dozen from various hotel properties and restaurant owners that are looking for a place for their staff to live and want to see what the finished product is. Now, in some cases, we’ll be renting directly to the individual employees, but that block of space is reserved by their employer and the rent is guaranteed by that same employer. There’s a B to C engagement with a B to B component wherein the business is in fact putting the deal together prior to the signature of the lease.

The design of the buildings includes some of the most modern amenities. For example, the building access has a camera with facial recognition, meaning you’ll be able to simply press a button, present your face to the camera, and it will open the front door to the building. It’s fantastic that we’re able to build a product that employs some of the most modern amenities boosted by AI technology that makes so many things that would have been previously impossible extremely convenient for the end user. Yes, it requires an astounding amount of attention to detail in order to deliver a product that’s embraced by the marketplace. But we’re excited to be delivering these very first units for tomorrow’s open house and will be continuing to drive construction to completion over the next couple of months. We wanted to share this moment with you, the listener, because we’re not just running a podcast. We’re actively out there building projects all over North America and hope you are too.

As you think about that, have an awesome rest of your week, go make some great things happen. We’ll talk again tomorrow.

Stay connected and discover more about my work in real estate by visiting and following me on various platforms: