Investing in international real estate and collecting passports with Ladislas Maurice - Episode 527

The more diversified you are internationally and across asset classes, the more resilient you become, right? So when there's a market crash, I'm not all S&P 500. It doesn't really impact me that much. So sure, I have exposure to stocks as well. I'm not just involved, I'm not just invested in real estate. I just happen to talk more about real estate.

Welcome to Streams to Impact and be inspired to engage passionately in the work of your calling while achieving financial prosperity through multiple streams of high-yield returns on investment to bring your dream of making a meaningful impact to reality. I'm your host, Dr. Allen, and I am delighted that you are joining us today. If you haven't yet, get a complimentary copy of our exclusive guide, High Yield Investment Blueprint: Secure 18%+ Returns in 60 Days. Go to our website, highyieldblueprint.com. That is www.highyieldblueprint.com. Just provide your email address and we'll send you a copy today. Hello, enlightened investors. Welcome back to Streams to Impact. I'm your host, Dr. Allen, and thank you for being with us today. It is always a great pleasure to have you with us. And with us today is Ladislaus Maurice. He is investing in international real estate and collecting passports, and we're going to find out what that is all about today. So Ladislaus is aka the Wandering Investor who travels around the world full-time in search of unique investment residency Opportunities and citizenships. So, Lattis Loss, your journey, much like that of Equus, has been one of transcending boundaries and inspiring others through your work. So can you share with us the moment or the experience that first sparked your passion and set you on the path to creating streams of impact in your life and the lives of others?

Hey, Alan. Good to be here. I mean, this is this is quite quite the first question, to be honest with you. The moment that set me on this path. I wouldn't say there was a moment. I would say that it was more of a journey. So I was lucky enough to grow up as the as the son of expats themselves. So my parents took me around the world when I was a kid. My father was a university professor and He studied, he got his PhD, and then he took contracts teaching in different universities across the world. And then I would just follow along and go to different high schools. So when it was time for me to go to college and then choose a career, I went down the expat path and, you know, worked for Nestlé at their headquarters in Switzerland, and then they sent me to South Africa. I spent 4 years in South Africa, then I lived in Ghana. I was on the executive board of Nestlé Ghana there, in charge of the milk business for a few West African countries. And then when I left at the age of 30, I, I went on my own path and, and started investing in real estate and in equities and in private businesses all over the world. So now I've been doing this for over 8 years, just traveling full-time with my family looking at investment and immigration opportunities literally everywhere in the world.

Well, that sounds fascinating in and of itself. I guess the first barrier that would come to my mind is language barriers. You mentioned Switzerland, which, I mean, I think English is ubiquitous to most Swiss, so that's probably not an issue there. South Africa, that's certainly not an issue. But now you're living in Mexico, and I visited Mexico, and a lot of people speak English down there too, but it certainly is not the predominant language there. So what— how are you dealing with the language barriers from nation to nation?

Cool.

So look, I speak a few languages. So it's a little easier for me. This being said, I have done deals in countries where I do not speak the language. So recently I bought land in Cambodia, and, you know, obviously the villagers didn't speak any English, so I had to use people to help me translate, etc. At the end of the day, I wouldn't worry too much about going overseas and making a real estate transaction in a country where you do not speak the language. As long as you hire good attorneys. That's what it comes down to. And even if you speak the language, hire good attorneys. Because when you invest internationally, there are so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns for you. You know, you may think that things are like back home in the US or in Canada, but in reality, the real estate market is completely different. Things are very different. So you definitely need good legal support when you go into a deal. And if you have good legal support going into a deal, you shouldn't worry too much about not speaking the language. The bigger risk is rather in terms of market analysis. So that's— it's a little harder to analyze if you don't speak the language. But for that, just spend time on the ground. Increasingly, you can go online, find articles in the local language, use Google Translate, etc. So I would say that it's decreasingly a problem.

Well, yeah, some things I want to get back to on that. But before we do that, let's just get an overview here in terms of why have you made the decision to invest internationally, and particularly investing in real estate internationally? What is the basis of those decisions?

Yeah, good question. So look, I would say peace of mind. The more diversified you are internationally and across asset classes, the more resilient you become, right? So when there's a market crash, I'm not all S&P 500, it doesn't really impact me that much. So sure, I have exposure to stocks as well. I'm not just involved— I'm not just invested in real estate. I just happen to talk more about real estate. Because that's more my expertise. But the point is diversification brings you peace of mind. It comes with more complexity to manage for sure than having, you know, just being in an ETF for sure, or just having real estate all in your town. So there's more complexity, but there's no single thing that is— there's no single hit that is fatal to your portfolio. And we live in a world with such volatility— political, economic, social— that having all your eggs in one basket is increasingly dangerous, you know, and unreasonable, even if you believe that where you are invested is super safe, because things just change. If we are going to continue on the same pace of change that we've been on since, you know, 2020, um, you know, what's happened in the past 5 years, and let's extrapolate the same amount of change for the next 5 years, it gets a little worrying. So I sleep well at night knowing that I'm very diversified. Now the downside to this is not only the the increased complexity, but also the fact that there's always something blowing up in my portfolio, right? Because I'm diversified, I'm, I'm exposed to many different markets. There's always something that's going wrong in my portfolio, but there's always something that's going well or very well in my portfolio that helps me balance things out. So overall, if you have the mindset where you're fine with individual volatility, individual events happening in your portfolio impacting a small part of your portfolio for overall stability, then this is an approach that I find that for me personally is the best approach. Now, you know, other people, it's definitely not right for them, but for me personally, it's the approach that I've chosen, and it gives you a lot of fringe benefits as well. So for example, in a lot of countries, if you invest in real estate, you can also get a residency permit out of it, in some cases even a citizenship. So when you look at the situation in some countries where people don't necessarily agree with the politics— I mean, just looking at back in the U.S., right, um, when Biden was in power, I had a lot of Republican clients. They wanted to get their money out of the U.S. They wanted to leave the U.S. for a few years. So just by buying real estate, for example, in Montenegro, a place where Republicans like to go, you can get a residency permit. So you buy real estate in a beautiful part on the Mediterranean coast. It's pretty affordable. And just by owning any piece of real estate, really, even if you buy, you know, a one-bedroom apartment for $100,000, That gets you and your spouse and your underage children residency, and you can just live there. Now that, you know, the tables have turned, now we're seeing more liberal clients, and they're like, we want to get out of here. And, you know, a lot of them like going to Portugal or just Panama, or just having a plan B in Panama. And all you need to do is just buy real estate for $200,000 in Panama. Or even just make a term deposit of $200,000 in Panama, and that gets you residency with an easy path to permanent residency. So literally, if you're sitting in the US right now and you're sitting on cash, you just need to shift $200,000 of that cash to a Panamanian bank account, lock it up for 2 to 3 years, you'll still get your 4.5%, and then you get residency with a path to permanent residency without having to spend much time on the ground at all. Just 3 trips and that's it to Panama. So things like this are just a complete no-brainer for people that want to hedge against that volatility or hedge against politics that they don't agree with. So in some other countries, they even give you citizenship for buying real estate, like an actual passport. So the fringe benefits are quite interesting.

Yeah, it sounds fascinating. It sounds like a good plan to alleviate a lot of worry and concern about any particular nation's markets and where those are going. You know, everybody looks to the United States as as the stable place to invest. I myself have been having a lot of uneasy feelings about that over the last several years here, but have not branched out into international markets yet. But certainly that is definitely on my list for all of the unsettling reasons that you're that you're talking about diversification and the fact that, I mean, you just cannot predict what the world is going to do even tomorrow, much less several years down the road. So you had mentioned you purchasing an apartment in Montenegro. You purchased land in Cambodia for your own personal self. Is there a preferred asset class or does it It varies from country to country and determining what the real estate rules and regulations are by country.

Yeah, good question. Look, the way I look at things is in my mind, I just have a map of the world at all times. And then sometimes you come across macro opportunities that are interesting. You can see some developments in a country from a macro point of view that seem interesting. And then what I do is I'll just fly there, stay there for a few weeks or even a few months, and, you know, speak to local experts, meet lawyers, meet agents, meet expats, meet local business people, just do a lot of reading, just, just meet a lot of people. Because often emerging markets are data poor, so you have to get a feel for them. And then I ask myself, how do I play this story? Sometimes it's real estate, sometimes it's stocks, sometimes it's bonds, sometimes it's not even clear how to play it. So for example, in— I remember going to Uzbekistan in 2019 or 2018. The country was just opening up after essentially decades of communism. There's a new president that took over and he rolled out the red carpet to foreign investors. So Uzbekistan, close to Afghanistan there in Central Asia. And my plan initially was to go buy an apartment there in the city center. And then when I got there, you know, the ownership structures for real estate as a foreigner were a little iffy, doable, but there was ambiguity. And then I saw that there was a local stock market, obviously very illiquid, but I started to dig into it. And then I came across companies that had no debt on their balance sheets that were growing 20%, 30% a year. And spitting out dividend yields of you know 15%. So that was just a lot easier. So you know I went to Uzbekistan wanting to buy real estate, and then I left with a brokerage account rather. So you know and recently during COVID times I went to Serbia. There's a lot going for Serbia. They were playing a game between East and West with a lot of Chinese money coming in, a lot of Western money, a lot of Arab money coming in. And I wanted to play the story, but the stock market was just fiscally not interesting. And real estate was already very expensive. It just didn't quite make sense. So I just didn't know how to play Serbia. It turns out real estate went even higher. It was high and went even higher. So I missed out on that. But it just didn't seem like a reasonable place. I didn't quite know how To play Serbia. So it really depends on, on the country, and then just looking at how do I play it. It's not— not the rest— the world is not like the US where there are 10,000 ways of playing any given story. In these other markets, they're, they're a lot less financialized in many ways, and they're, they're harder to invest in and to, to play.

You had mentioned you have this world map in your mind's eye continuously. That, I mean, that's a big map. There's a lot going on in the world. And of course, if you're a U.S. citizen, live in the United States, you're going to get a lot of U.S.-centric information. How do you branch out to get this broad-based information if English is the only language you speak?

I speak 5 languages. So I read, yeah, sure, media in other languages as well. I speak German, French, Russian, and some Spanish. The— look, in English there are a lot of resources because every government likes to have propaganda in English as well. So I read very different sources of information. So, you know, I'll read The Economist on a weekly basis from, you know, front to back. It takes quite a while, but it's worth it. It's interesting. You know, I'll read Russian news. I'll read Iranian news. I'll read Qatari news. I'll read Turkish news. I'll read, you know, news in Latin America as I travel around. I just open myself. I'll read deep conspiracy stuff. Not necessarily because I believe in them, but because it forces you to deny them or to try to look at what's potentially wrong with them. Sometimes nothing's wrong with them, and actually that's actually a good idea, and then you're ahead of the curve. So you really need to read a bit of everything, and then gradually you can try to form an opinion, your own opinion. Knowing that you've been influenced by a lot of biases. But just having only a single source of information, just reading only American media, or just thinking that you have a good understanding because you watch both CNN and Fox News, sorry, that's not how it works. The world is a lot bigger than that.

Mm-hmm. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I have a pretty broad-ranging news chain of information, but it still has a US-centric bent to it. So you're looking at economic trends in terms of your global map there. Do you ever consider the geopolitical aspects of that in your, uh, in your investigations?

Absolutely, absolutely. Um, so for example, a lot of my clients have gone through the Turkish citizenship by investment program for this very reason. Um, so if— and that's a really interesting program. All you need to do is invest $400,000 in any Turkish real estate. So anywhere in the market in Turkey. So it's not specific real estate that the government is trying to push that's overpriced. It's on the open market. And Turkey is a country of 80 million people. Istanbul has 15 million people. It's one of the biggest cities in the world, one of the centers of trade, largest— one of the largest airports in the world as well. So Istanbul is really an important place, especially in the emerging world, at the crossroads of Africa, Middle East, Asia, Europe. Coming from North America, it feels a bit distant, but it really is one of the centers of the world. So just by buying real estate there for $400,000, and it's not too expensive, you can get real decent real estate there for less than $200 per square foot, you'll get net rental yields of about—

10%.

5%, you know, so which is not bad for such a large city. And then you need to just hold that real estate for 3 years or 5 years if you want to pay local capital gains. But within a year of buying it, they will give you citizenship. So an actual passport. So just buy $400,000 of Turkish real estate, you, your spouse, and all your underage children. You'll just need to do to make one trip to Turkey, to Istanbul, for 10 days. It's not a punishment. Going to Istanbul for 10 days is not a punishment. It's— there's just so much to do, so many museums, everything. Just gorgeous place, amazing food. And then you will be a citizen of Turkey. You will have a Turkish passport that you can travel with, that you can open bank accounts with, and that you can then pass on to your next generations. So when you have more children, As long as you go register the child at the Turkish embassy or consulate or back in Turkey, the child will be Turkish. When your own children will have their children, so your grandchildren, even if only one of the parents is Turkish and even if the child is born outside of Turkey, the kid, the newborn child will be Turkish as long as he or she is registered properly. So just by shifting, again, it's like Panama, just by shifting $400,000 Into a hard asset in Turkey for three years, then you can sell, take the money out. You have now given Turkish citizenship to all of your descendants if they just follow the right process. I mean, that's that's a generational move. So so and then what Turkey gives you as a passport is it it's. It's not neutral in the sense that you know Turkey is quite aggressive and has always been aggressive from a foreign policy historically, but it's between East and West. It's sure it's part of NATO, but it's not really completely politically aligned with NATO. It's in talks to become parts of BRICS, etc. So it's really in between. So for example, people that had invested in Russian stocks. And then when the war broke out, all their Russian stocks got frozen. I know of people who then acquired Turkish citizenship and then managed to unfreeze their Russian stocks because Turkey is not on the Russian list of unfriendly nations.

Right.

So, the same thing when you go— when you travel around Africa, increasingly Westerners are despised because of colonial history, And because also, you know, Russian and Chinese propaganda is always, you know, pushing the Western colonial history narrative. But when you travel around on a Turkish passport, there's none of that history there. So actually, if you travel in, you know, Ivory Coast and Senegal and a lot of these countries with a Turkish passport, even looking white, you will be treated better than if you were traveling on a French passport.

Well, I mean, speaking of Turkey and looking at the geopolitical aspects of that, it certainly is in many respects the center of the world, like you say. But it's Erdoğan, is he the president? Am I getting the name right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So he is considered one of the most unpredictable, most erratic leaders in the world today. And he's made a lot of enemies. And his aggression in Syria and his seeming ideas to redevelop the Ottoman Empire, it leads to a lot of, from my perspective, quite disconcerting, as well as the fact I have a real close friend who is a professor, who was a professor at one time at the them at one of the universities in Istanbul. And he just speaks a lot about the extreme corruption within the Turkish governance system. So taking all of those things into consideration, you still consider Turkey to be a place to be for investment and for citizenship?

I mean, you're sitting in the US right now, right?

Yeah.

Everything you're accusing Turkey of doing, the US is doing. You attacked Syria many, many times over a decade. If you're going to talk about massacres, you're supporting what's happening in Gaza. And, you know, talk in terms of talking about being erratic, I mean, look at your own presidency right now. So, you know, I guess 2 erratic passports, I guess, kind of cancel each other. 2 negatives turn into a positive.

Well, yeah, look, at the end of the day, no place is perfect, right?

Um, yes, it's, it's just about diversifying and not being all in one jurisdiction. That's the main message, right? I'm not here to bash the US, or, you know, you're also not here to bash Turkey, whatever. It's just each country comes with its own characteristics, both positives, negatives. What may be positive for a person might be a negative for another, etc. But the point is being diversified and having options.

Yeah.

Because at the end of the day, none of these governments care about their own people. I think, you know, that's been quite clear. They only care about themselves. They care about power. Um, but at least when you are not the subject of only one government, You always have a way out.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, yes, all of those things that I was saying about Turkey are certainly true about the US. That's one reason I'm like, we need to be investing elsewhere because of all that unpredictability and erratic behavior and because of all of our involvements in wars and massacres and genocides and leadership that That turns their eye to all of those things. It's quite disgusting. So, so coming back to you said you need to, to be sure that you get a good attorney. That's a difficult thing to do, even in the United States, when I'm a citizen here and I speak the language and, and finding a good attorney is Is challenging enough here. How do you find good attorneys in nations that you have no birthrights and no citizenship and you don't speak the language?

Good question. So a lot of word of mouth because I'm spending time on the ground. And then 2, when you're really not too sure, there's a whole list of attorneys in different countries that I've used on my website, The Wandering Investor, so that can be a useful resource. But also, as an American, typically the US Embassy website has a list of law firms in the capital city on each of their websites, and that's usually a pretty good resource. So typically they'll be more expensive, but, you know, they, they know that this recommendation on the US website is worth gold. So when you're an American, you contact them and you say, hey, I found you on the US Embassy website. They don't want drama. So generally, even though they'll be a bit more expensive, they'll just make sure that you get good service.

And then our final question is—

And then I'll stop right there. If the US Embassy doesn't have that, because it doesn't always for every country, just look at the Swiss Embassy, the Canadian Embassy, the French Embassy. They typically have recommendations. And generally, you're pretty— you won't have crooks there. Let's put it this way. You won't have crooks there on these lists.

Yeah, well, that's, that's good to know. That's, that's really a valuable, valuable piece of information. I've got one more question, but before we go to that, please tell us how we can find out more information. And you, you have a— what is it, a free book? Free— I forget what. Uh, free book, 12 Mistakes to Avoid When Investing in International Real Estate. Uh, how do we get that book? How do we get in contact with you?

Sure, so thewanderinginvestor.com, and then you can get that free ebook, 12 Mistakes to Avoid When Making International Real Estate. A lot of these mistakes I made myself, so it came at a huge cost. And, uh, there's a, there's a free newsletter as well that you can subscribe to, Notes from the Road. So you can be kept posted as I travel around the world looking at investment and immigration opportunities. I have a YouTube channel as well. I'm on X, I'm on Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, the whole deal.

So the— so my last question is, I mean, it's nice to be able to get citizenship and passports and investments to diversify across the world. Do you have a home base and how often are you at your home base?

Yeah, I have a home base. I have a few home bases. I do have a few home bases. I mean, I'm not here to talk about my own tax situation, but yeah, I do have a few home bases in Latin America and in, in the Balkans as well.

Yeah. Well, it has been wonderful having you today and wonderful information. And enlightened investors, I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have, and that you've gleaned a lot of information from this. And if you have, please take a moment to like, share, and subscribe. And please leave us a rating and a review on your favorite app. And until next time, live abundantly in all areas of your life, and we'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you for tuning in to Streams to Impact, brought to you by Steed Talker Capital, a company empowering passionate professionals like you to develop multiple streams of passive income built on solid passive real estate investments. As a significant part of our endeavors to make a cosmic and meaningful impact for this world, Steed Talker Capital contributes significant portions of our profits to activities and organizations committed to better understanding the equine. These endeavors attempt to enhance the treatment of horses worldwide. Steed Talker Capital, working for a world where all creatures great and small flourish abundantly. If you are ready to learn how our passive investors have earned an average 33% annual return on their investments, schedule your complimentary Passive Income to Prideful Impact consultation. Obviously, we cannot continue indefinitely to offer these valuable consultations for free, So grab your passive income to prideful impact consultation while you still can. Go to steedtalker.com/passive.