[ad_1] Money is no joke—or is it? For Brampton, Ont., native and celebrated comedian Russell Peters, money is as funny as it is serious because, well, everything is funny through his perspective (iykyk). He’s very into real estate (the stand-up comic loves collecting houses) and has recently bought two condos in Toronto as part of his ambassador partnership with The Condo Store Realty Inc. While Peters does live in Los Angeles, he stopped in Toronto to meet with Simon S. Mass, founder and CEO of the real estate investment firm in Liberty Village, where he also sat down with MoneySense. We talked about his investments, had a few laughs, discussed money lessons he’s learned, had a few more laughs, chatted about downsizing—and laughed some more. The happy accident of collecting homes Lisa Hannam: You have five or six homes. What is it about real estate that makes you keep wanting to collect? Russell Peters: Well, I have properties. But I didn’t buy them as investment or rental properties. I don’t know if it’s a mistake or not. But it might have been a couple of those good mistakes, like a Bob Ross kind of thing. Let’s just make this a beautiful mistake. I was buying properties to live in. I was just an idiot, going like “that,” buy “that.” I’ve got all these properties, but I never really considered doing investment properties. I started talking to Simon, and he made it make sense to me. LH: Tell me about your partnership and what you are working on together. RP: Oh, Simon, tell me about that. Simon S. Mass: Russell and I met about three years ago. At that time, I was doing a little wish-list item, which was to be an executive producer. So, there was a TV mini-series on TSN with Danny Green, when he was a Raptors player. And one of the episodes was a tour of Brampton, with Daniel Green and Russell Peters. I attended the shoot. We met and we got along. The next night we went to Russell’s mom’s house for dinner. We became friends first. And, you know, COVID happened. We were in touch constantly talking about everything, including real estate. I was encouraging Russell to buy some real estate in Toronto. That’s not a place he wants to live in, but [it’s where] he wants to invest. It’s great to go and buy incredible homes, but they don’t really generate long-term income. So that’s how it got started. We then started thinking, what if Russell was a client of ours? It’d be great to have Russell come on board as a brand ambassador. We’re working on two different properties together right now. RP: We’ll probably expand from there. You know, see how that goes. Even as a client, and a friend, I don’t stop being a skeptic. That’s just who I am as a person. And I think that helps me work with the brand, because it’s not like I’m the guy that’s just going to go and accept anything. I’m going to give it to you straight from the way I saw it. And so far, so good. “Comedians by nature are idiots. I know this first-hand because I’m an idiot with money. I’m getting better at it now, but I did some ridiculously idiotic things.” LH: Are you renting them? Is that the goal? SSM: So, our specialty, the space we dominate, is pre-construction. So, we are in the business of buying pre-construction condos, about half a billion dollars’ worth of pre-construction condos in Toronto annually. And those condos take, on average, five to seven years to be completed. So, anything that Russell is in right now will not be completed for another four to six years. So, there’s plenty of time for them to be completed. But frankly, we’ve been doing this for 30 years; 17 years as The Condo Store. So, we’ve got $25 billion worth of investment transactions. We’ve exited quite a lot of them. The market is improving year after year. LH: So, you have time to decide if you want to move in? RP: We have time for a lot of things in that space. I have time for a couple more marriages. Changing lives one joke at a time LH: I read that you gave a homeless man $100, and then he opened a show for you. RP: A few years ago, I was in Santa Monica. I came out of a restaurant, and this guy walks up to me, he’s clearly on drugs, clearly strung out. Filthy, homeless. And he says, “Hey, I’m down on my luck.” And I go, “I see that.” And then he says, “Wait a minute, are you Russell Peters?” And I’m like, “Wait, how do you know who I am? How do you know who anybody is?” He starts talking to me about how his mom’s Guyanese and his dad’s German or something. And he says, “I’m embarrassed. I was the little chubby kid on Mighty Ducks.” I was like, “What?” And he says, “I was in Heavyweights.” I was like, “That was you?” He was all gaunt and completely just a shell of a man. But I could see in his eyes he wasn’t gone. You could see he wanted to get out of that world, but he didn’t know how. I gave him 100 bucks that day. That’s what I had in my pocket. I said, “If I give you this, are you going to buy drugs?” And he goes, “Not with all of it.” I’m like, “Well, at least you’re honest.” That was maybe five, six years ago. I never thought about it again. Then, a few months ago, I got a message on my Instagram: “I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but I was the guy outside of the deli you gave 100 bucks [to]. And I really appreciate it. And I’ve been sober now for three years.” I looked at his [Instagram] page, and you could see he gained his weight back and
