Meet Kyle Dovigi

Before real estate, I had one of the stranger jobs in the country. I was the Draws Manager for Lotto 6/49 and Lotto Max — the person responsible for making sure Canada's national lottery draws ran correctly, every week, without exception.

It's a job that sounds glamorous and mostly isn't. It's process, verification, and a level of scrutiny most people never encounter at work. Millions of dollars moved on the outcome, so nothing was left to chance except the one thing that was supposed to be (the ball draw!).

Nobody buys a ticket believing the odds. They buy it believing in the exception.

I watched that every week for years. And somewhere in there I started noticing that the same instinct shows up in housing — just inverted. In the lottery, people wildly overestimate their chances. In real estate, they wildly overestimate the risk of doing anything at all.

34%

of Canadians’ hope to fund their retirement by winning the lottery, despite the odds.

— BMO Financial Group’s RRSP 2014 study