ADDY, RENOVICTIONS FOR EVERYONE

Vancouver based startup Addy is a crowdfunded real estate investment platform with the tagline "Real Estate for Everyone", they claim to be making real estate investment accessible to everyone starting at $1. The founders are two guys from Vancouver, Michael and Stephen, who seem to think they have it all figured out. But behind their jazzy #passiveincome marketing strategy lies a darker truth.

The addy investment strategy is very simple, buy cheap properties they can flip with cheap renovations and sell for profit. Except the properties they buy are rent controlled and they use intimidating tactics to evict the tenants for renovations. Their legal representative tells us this is not "the renovictions we keep hearing about in the news" when it is the literal definition of renovictions.

In March 2021, nine rent-controlled buildings on Wingreen Court near Don Mills and Lawrence were listed on Addy. Buildings #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #8, #9, #10, and #11 were purchased from Greenrock in a crowdfunded effort, together with 1,321 investors on addy, with a few million dollars in private loans and equity from the founders, they created the Wingreen Court Limited Partnership

The tenants who live in these buildings are entirely low-income, retirees, pensioners, 99 families combined who have lived here for decades, some since the 1970s and due to the rent controlled buildings they are paying a lot less than market rent. None of them can afford to move, much less pay market rent at comparable apartments.

Wingreen Court LP has already started the process of issuing renoviction notices to the tenants offering them mediocre amounts of money as bribes to voluntarily end their tenancies. They've been sending threatening letters to tenants who don't understand legal terminology or English very well. The property management company has stopped responding to maintenance requests.

They're evicting vulnerable people so that they can slap some paint on the walls, and glue vinyl flooring on the vacant apartments as "renovations" and re-list the units at much higher rents. They're using a crowdfunded real estate investment strategy to evict seniors and single moms from their homes who can't afford to rent anywhere else in Toronto.