Luxury Short-Term Rentals: Expert Tips for International Property Investment with Martin Papp

What's up, you guys? Welcome back to the New and Experienced Investor Podcast, the podcast that brings real estate investors from all walks of life together. I'm one of your hosts. I'm Alex Barnett. I'm the new guy.

And I'm Joe Homs. That's my cue. I'm Joe Homs and I'm the experienced guy or the old guy, whichever you wanna say.

Do not call him old. If I catch you calling him old, it's gonna be a problem. Um, so we're super stoked today. We got Martin Papp. In studio with us. He's going to be talking about investing internationally. I know we've had a lot of people come up to us and ask us about that. That's not really, we're kind of local guys.

Yeah.

I'm like, and then I'll wholesale in Florida. That's insane.

Yes.

And then going international, that's mind-blowing, but we're going to be talking to an expert today. So I'm super excited about that. But first, let's talk about the meetup coming up on Monday.

Monday meetup at Hangar 24. Martin will be our speaker for the meetup. Sorry to say there is rain in the forecast.

Not confirmed. Well, unconfirmed rain.

Make sure you bring your umbrellas. We're trying to get a venue inside like we did last month. Uh, but that was for another reason. But anyways, uh, Monday, 6 o'clock, be there sharp with your umbrella and you'll learn more from Martin.

Looking forward to it.

All right. Yeah, this is gonna be cool. So let's go ahead and just jump right into it. This will be sort of the, uh, hors d'oeuvre, the intro, and then, you know, Martin is gonna blow your mind on Monday as well. But, uh, Martin, thank you so much for joining us today. We're, we're super excited to have you.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. This is fun.

Absolutely. Why don't you go ahead and dive on in, let everybody know your background just in real estate and in general, and how you got into investing internationally?

Sure. Yeah, it's, it's a long story. I'll try to pick out the highlights of it. So I have always kind of had an inkling to travel and, and have that international experience being in new cultures. My dad's from Italy. He's actually living in Italy now, in Tuscany. So when I was little, we were going to Europe a lot, and I had made some friends in college that were from Nepal. And so I ended up going abroad to Nepal during college to work on a nonprofit there. We built a library in a rural village in southern Nepal, right on the border with India. So I was getting kind of that that the love and the enthusiasm for like being abroad, being in new cultures, I was thriving in it. And then I graduated in college in 2008 from St. Lawrence University, right into the economic recession crisis that we had. And I had just read this book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, highly recommend it. And it was, People can get what they want out of it, but the takeaway for me was it was explaining how success is largely based on not just your personal talents, but on your environment. When you were born, where you were born, who you know, like, all have significant factors in how the rest of your life unfolds. And so they had this cohort that was born between 1900 and 1905, And a cohort that was born from 1905 to 1910. And they— I think that's right— and they had significantly different levels of success for the rest of their lives. And you're like, well, why would those 5-year— like, why would that make a difference? Like, isn't it about like your personal drive and, and your own, you know, your, your own personal skill sets? And it was— the argument was, is the reason was the Great Depression. There was one cohort that was graduating right into the Great Depression and one that had already been in the workforce. And so it's the ones that graduated into the Depression where not only did it, you know, at a time when they needed to be building skills, getting a job, they weren't. And that had long-term impacts on their expectations for the rest of their life. So even after the Great Depression's finished, like, it's kind of been baked in, like, in your When you're in your 20s, like that's when you got to be hustling. You know, that's when you have to be developing new skills and doing things. And so I'm reading this in 2008. I'm graduating. Like oh, like I need to go somewhere where there's growth, where things are where things are taking off, popping, and that's where I'm going to get the most opportunity. And and so I ended up deciding to move to China. At the time, they were I don't know what their GDP growth was exactly, but it was something like in the. Double digits, or I think it was like 10% a year. And I wanted to learn Chinese. And so I went and got a teacher's job at a university in Jiangxi Nanchang, which is a totally random, you know, town in— it's an 8 million population town. So it's a massive city, but still not something off the kind of the beaten path of what an expat would usually go to. So I was totally immersed and I ended up learning Chinese really fast that way. Ended up getting married in China, stayed there a lot longer than I thought I was going to be. And I started a company with my wife that was selling modern tea experience to Chinese customers. So I know this is a long story, but—

I love it. I'm fascinated. Keep going.

Um, there was a lot of traveling I was doing around China, and I noticed just how much people loved tea, their huge tea drinking culture. And yet it felt very kind of, uh, rigid and built, baked into, into the legacy, the ceremonial kind of history and everything, in some ways limited all the new innovation that was coming out that that I was seeing in the United States, how tea was this like cool, modern, fun thing. And they're talking about the antioxidants and green tea from Japanese tea, you know. And you've got non-caffeinated teas like rooibos from South Africa, or you can be like Messi and Suarez that are drinking yerba mate, you know. And, and so it was very international, it was very cool. You had companies like Teavana doing all this fun stuff. And in China, you weren't seeing that. In China, the tea companies were We have tea from this mountainside, and I know everything about this mountain. But they wouldn't have anything beyond that. Like that was their selection. And so I saw this niche kind of open up where why don't we provide an international tea experience for people that love tea? And what better place to do it than in a country where everybody drinks tea? So I started a tea company called Paps Tea in 2014. We opened up several retail stores. This is actually where my real estate experience starts to come in because we start designing retail spaces as well as cafes. And so I'm starting to get into design, customer experience, dealing with landlords, dealing with city permitting, getting your licenses, then working with subcontractors. And so my real estate actually started from the commercial side. And we were building and renovating spaces in Beijing and Shanghai, and that was going well. We got venture capital funding from a company in Shanghai called Bits and Bytes, and I'm one of the few Americans that I know of that built a startup in China with Chinese money. Like usually what happens is you have expats or foreigners that go and bring a business to China, or they bring a Chinese business to the U.S. Very rarely do you have an American that's like, "I'm gonna go to China." and completely start from scratch a business there and for Chinese customers. And so that was pretty unique. I got a lot of attention for that, um, and a lot of buzz that helped our business grow. And then what happened— well, well, before I, uh, go to the, the real estate, uh, domain, uh, we're currently still running that company. I run it remotely now. I have 2 offices in Beijing and Shanghai. And we sell to over 400 locations. These are not all my own stores. We actually closed our stores, and now we sell B2B mostly through restaurants and hotels, namely restaurants like Wagas or Blue Frog. These are for people that if they travel to China, you know, you can go and stay at these, eat at these places, Western cafe chains. And that's been my bread and butter, and that's what allowed me to— we made the business profitable, started really being able to pay ourselves. And with that income, uh, we started buying real estate. And, uh, we started with apartments in Beijing. Uh, this is renting out short-term. I was doing it on Airbnb. Um, interesting for some people to know that, uh, Airbnb actually left China recently.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so, you know, Amazon used to be in China. Amazon left too. So a lot of things are changing in the landscape. For China. So it's actually harder, I think, to do things now than it ever has been. But, but that's where I originally got some success. We did some multi-commercial residential spaces like lofts. We did just pure residential. And because we're on a real estate podcast, there's some interesting tidbits here about China. You don't actually own the property.

Mm-hmm.

So everything is a long-term lease. And they're, they're 70-year leases. And, uh, as a foreigner, you can only buy one in the entire country. So that's where it helps to have a Chinese wife. It helps to have a Chinese family that kind of helps you do a lot of the business there. And, uh, yeah, that was a really good start for us. And then we ended up buying a property in Phuket in Thailand, and we were Renting that out through a property management company. We still are. That was also a great experience. Similar similar issues with owning land as a foreigner in Thailand. You only can do long-term leases unless it's a condo, and but that doesn't stop people. There's still a ton of development and business going on in Thailand, and you can still build houses, sell them, but you're just selling the the structure on top of the land, and you're selling the lease as well. And then you have the pandemic happened in 2020. That kind of changed the whole path of my life. I had, I have a 7-year-old son who we decided to have him go to school here in the United States. I love China. I love the fast-paced, but for a child's education, I actually think US is still a great place. You know, we've, And especially Orange County. I mean, we've got— I'm in Irvine, got parks, every parks and pools, like, you know, left and right. And, and that's just very different than if you grew up in an inner city in Beijing, where it's like, you're afraid to take your kid outside because there's just cars and bikes and smoke and smog. And so we decided to raise him in the US. And where am I going with this? Okay, so so the pandemic happened, and my son was going to school here. We bought property here in Irvine. We also did a couple builds in in the U.S. too. Did a nice luxury property in West Hollywood that we flipped, so we can get into that. But that's not the broad stuff. But the the pandemic changed everything for me because I could no longer travel back and forth. I couldn't I couldn't run my business in China and then also see my family here. and see my son. And I kind of had to make a choice. And so I decided just to plant my roots in the United States.

Mm-hmm.

I had to learn to run the Chinese tea business all remotely, and it allowed me to focus on other things. Uh, so the silver lining of the pandemic for me is I got to spend a lot more time with my son, relocated here. Um, I could not have guessed, but, but interestingly, I think I left China at the perfect time. It's it's gotten much more hostile to to be a foreigner building business there, at least for now. So I started getting into more stuff in real estate, and so one of the things that we've recently done now is also started buying property in Costa Rica. And love Costa Rica. Could talk about that all day. And unlike what you see in a lot of Asian countries, is in Costa Rica you can have freehold rights. As a foreigner, you can have the exact same rights that a local Costa Rican would have, and that's very comforting. And so when you're investing abroad, that's something I'm always thinking about is is like how does this what are the property laws? What are the regulations? And I'm now building that business. We're bringing on investors. We have a syndication based here in the United States, but then we use that. Those funds to develop, uh, short-term rentals in, in, in Costa Rica at the moment. But we plan on doing, uh, more in Latin America in general. Uh, so I saw you were going to talk about Mexico at some point. We could— that'll be an interesting, interesting to bring up. But I think that brings us to present day.

Wow.

And then been hanging out with Joe, you know. Yeah, kicking it in Irvine.

Let me, let me ask you something. Um, I, I travel I travel a lot and I travel to, you know, foreign places. But my number one golden rule has always been, I do not travel anywhere that if I get in trouble, they're not going to be able to send the Marines after me.

Yeah.

China.

Yeah.

Russia. I've been there twice, but that was on an excursion with the cruise line. Very closely supervised. Not that I'm going to get in trouble, but didn't you have a concern when you went there in 2008? Like, you know, what happened if you did something wrong? And like, you know, we'd be talking to you, you know, from a jail cell or something. Yeah. What went through your mind? Did any of that go through your mind?

It does. It's It's part of personality. I think it comes down to what kind of person you are. And I just love the adventure of it. Like, for me, everything I do is also baked into quality of life. And quality of life for me can be measured in many ways. And one of them for me is always thinking about, you only have X amount of years on this planet and—

Oh, now they tell me.

Yeah.

Yeah, sorry, man.

And to that point, how do you rate how great of a life you lived? And I think that for me, it's about how much experience can you accumulate that Earth has to give you. So the more things you can go do and try— And the more places you can totally experience, I will feel that I have lived as full of a life as possible. And not knocking anybody that lives and grows up in the same town or whatever for their whole life, but for me, that's not who I could be. I would feel like I'm missing out on way too much.

Yeah.

So I have the appetite to go to those places. I love it. It's what keeps my mind sharp. I feel like a lot of people, as you age, you have a problem of the hardening of the arteries. of where things kind of become rigid. You start to have kind of tunnel vision, the way you think, the way you do things, because everybody's— you get used to a certain way of life. And, um, by having to adapt to different cultures, having to jump from China to the US to Thailand to Costa Rica, I mean, they're jumps.

Mm-hmm.

And you have to have your mind flexible enough to be able to withstand all that without letting it stress you out. And so if you're going to go, that's, I'd say that's a really big takeaway actually for investing out of country is that you need to be adaptable. And if you're not that type of person, then stay local. But if you feel and think you have the skillset to adapt and to get along with people from other cultures and travel, it can help you It can keep your mind malleable and continuing to create new neural networks and new ways of thinking. And I love that. It's what makes me feel young. It's what makes me feel like I'm maximizing my life here. So my choice to do investment abroad isn't just about the numbers. It's about the lifestyle. So I'm heavily invested in both those things, making money and fulfilling as much experience as I can pack into this short life that we have.

But you still have a safety concern up there, don't you?

Yeah. And that's— and I—

You're not, you're not gonna like walk into North Korea for no reason just because.

Correct. Correct. Yeah, I, I've thought about like, would life be okay if I went to prison just to experience it for like a year or something?

Locked Up Abroad. I've seen that show.

Yeah. And I've decided no, I don't want to do that.

No, no, no.

That's past the limit. But, but good. But to your point, there are places I wouldn't go. There are countries that I would not invest in. And and I did just mention that I do think, for example, I left China at a good time because I don't want to be there at the moment. China in the two thousand, like after the Olympics in two thousand eight till about two thousand twenty, there was like this like kind of golden period there where everything was really nice, very. Foreign-friendly. Um, and then China is incredibly safe. Like, if you want to talk about crime, I mean, you can walk anywhere in China and not feel, um, your safety is a concern. So the, the Big Brother fear is, is valid.

Yeah.

But that's more of like if you're involved in politics or you're like, if you're doing something stupid like talking negatively about the government. But like, in terms of walking around and meeting people, like You don't have anything to be worried about. And there's— I applaud China actually in that regard. It's, uh, in most of Southeast Asia in general, quite safe. Yeah, I would say—

I think it's the culture.

Yeah, I would say Latin America is far more dangerous.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, if you do want to go to jail, I highly recommend Alcatraz. Have you ever been to Alcatraz?

No.

Oh, you should go. They, they have tours there. They will lock you up in a cell. There are cells that they call the hold. Basically, they lock you in and then they close the door and it's pitch black in there. And you can go there and they can lock you up. So if you want that experience, the immersive experience of being in jail, you know, without the fear that they're going to keep you there, Alcatraz is my suggestion.

I If I have the time, that could be fun.

You can get a bread bowl afterwards too.

Yes.

Right there.

That's always a plus.

Yeah.

Clam chowder.

Mm-hmm. When I was in Nepal, we slept in these like dirt, you know, we slept on these, in these dirt huts and we ate on the floor with our hands and everything. And we, not that that's related to prison, but we had to eat The same food every single day, like the food did not change. It was like rice, lentils, and some kind of vegetable they might swap out. And every once in a while, if you wanted to, you could meet up with the guys and we'd go find a rooster and pluck it and kill it, pluck it, and eat chicken. And that was like a celebratory event that you would have chicken with your food. And so even those kind of experiences will make you when you come back to the U.S. and you're like. Just eating whatever you want anytime, anywhere. You're like, wow, like our standard of living is so high and we do not appreciate it enough.

You just don't go to McDonald's and grab chicken there. Is that how it's made?

No, it's pressed into a little thing. How shredded were you in Nepal though?

Oh, I lost a lot of weight. Yeah, yeah, shredded is the wrong word. It was a little more malnourished. You know, you get some parasites in you, you know, like cleans you out. Oh, it definitely cleaned me out.

Yeah.

I was taking showers and drinking water from the well. We have a pump and yeah, I definitely got sick from that. So I do recommend to, depending on your age, like if you're young in your 20s and you go do this stuff, like, you know, knock yourself out. If you're a bit older, like might wanna take some more precautions, talk to a doctor, Before you go, maybe there might be some kind of meds that you want to take or have some antibiotics on hand or something if you're drinking from the well water and things.

Yeah, absolutely. Take us through, so when you pick a spot you're going to invest in, take us through that process of scoping it out, meeting the team. I'm sure you got to have people involved there from the land. What does that look like?

Yeah, well, let's— okay, so let's back up. One, I'm not the type of person that's going and buying dirt in a small village in Nepal. Like, that's not a smart investment opportunity from my standpoint. So what I am looking for is I'm looking for data that's going to— and in today's world, you can find that data easier than ever. Not saying it's easy everywhere, but it's easier than it's been to first select from a macro perspective, like, where's money flowing? What areas of the world are developing, and you continue to shrink that down to a market when you then have a market that you're interested in. So for me, you know, Costa Rica was was obviously a prime candidate for me. I also spent Thailand a lot of time in Thailand looking at there as well. So identify a couple spots, you know, blend it in with maybe some of your intuition, things you like to do, places you love to be. So you like doing research on it. But then from there, in terms of actionable steps to actually make progress on this, I would start with— well, what I do is I started in 2 places. One is I start with legal counsel. So before I do anything, I want to know that I have somebody to fall on for for any legal questions about regulation, zoning. Like, I don't want to— because if you call an agent, they'll sell you anything. So, so I think you start off with like— I'll, I'll do Thailand. So it's a great example. So this summer I went there for a month and I was like, I'd love to look— I want to check out property here. I was on the island of Koh Samui. So I've identified a space. I use AirDNA to look at market data. Excellent resource. I would highly recommend if you're into like rentals and you want to see like data, you can see how how different parts of the submarkets are doing. And I say, okay, this looks like a great place. And from there, I then go on. I know this sounds simple, but I literally go on Google and I ask for the top real estate attorneys in the country and or in in Koh Samui or or in the country depending on where you are. And, uh, look at Google reviews, look at, uh, any type of testimonials that you can find, um, and look for good websites. I know that sounds silly, but like, uh, good websites, internationally speaking, imply a level of sophistication that you want. Um, you know, a lot of people ask me sometimes like, well, well, what if you don't speak the language? Don't speak the language, speak English. Because again, that's a natural default way to make sure you're working with the right people. People that are bilingual, people that have dealt with international real estate investors. Like, that's what you want to go to. You do not want to get into the real estate game in a foreign country via a friend whose aunt has the uncle who's an agent there and they can hook you up with the right people. Like, you will get lost so fast. And so I think it's always about mitigating risk. So how do we reduce risk? We reduce risk by making sure we work with experienced people that are at the top of their game. And so that comes first and foremost. So I'm not going to do anything based off of a personal relationship I have. And I usually say that I get people that are like, oh, like my wife's from Bogotá and great, great guy. But he's like, and his aunt is into real estate there. And I'm like, love to talk to her. But full disclaimer, like, that doesn't mean I'm working, working with them. I'm going to be doing my method of I'm going online, I'm looking who has the most professional website, who has the most experience showing. And those are the people I contact. I get on a phone call, set an appointment. You can start, I think you start with 2 in 2 places, depending if you just want to buy versus also build. If you want to build, spend time looking at properties that you love. And you're and find out who built them. So go on Airbnb, ask questions like to the hosts. You know, like who built this property? I'd love to to know who did it. You start getting names. If you want to know what the expenses are to do an Airbnb property, you want to understand the costs. Ask people again. Airbnb. Start inquiring with Airbnb hosts. Say hey. I'm I'm interested in in actually also buying an Airbnb property. I wouldn't say right next to them because nobody would like that. But you know, like you know in Thailand or something. Like I'd love to know your experience of being an Airbnb host. Like what are the costs involved? Like is there anything that I should be aware of? And do that to twenty people, and you might get half that don't respond. You might get a few that are like kind of like you know a few like. You know, your competition. But then you'll also get a few people that are totally cool about it, and they're like, you know, they want to tell you their story. They want to tell you what the costs are. And so I even have, for Costa Rica, for example, I got a made friends with one of the Airbnb hosts there. We started kicking it off just in chat, and I went down to Costa Rica, stayed at his place. We had dinner together, and and the next thing you know, he's become a great resource down there. He he loomed.

Nice.

Uh, his entire Excel, like accounting software of all their expenses month to month. And he went through it for me, 10 minutes long.

Great guy. Great guy.

Yeah.

That's a good kid right there.

And they're there if you ask for it and if you look for it. And so immediately that starts to give you confidence and you say, okay, okay, I get it. I get how, how this could be profitable and how this would work. And I see this guy doing it. And, um, and then you also start finding architects of pla— of, of builds that you like if you wanna build. If not, Start talking to the attorneys, get on a call, say, hey, this is what I want to do. I want to do a short-term rental. And I would do with at least 3 interviews. So no, never, never just go with the first one, even if you like them, like set up at least 3 calls with different attorneys. And I do usually a mix of where I try to find like some big corporate ones where it's like they got multiple offices. And I also try to do some That are, that are like, um, what do you call them, like sole proprietary, like attorneys working out of their own office. And, uh, yeah, you can, if you're there in the country, great, go actually have sit-down appointments with them. Um, if not, Zoom calls can accomplish this, a lot of the same stuff. Ask them all the questions, have a list prepared of all the things you might be worried about, and then ask them, let them have time to speak to tell you all the things that you need to know about. And they know. These are the people that are doing hundreds of deals of real estate transactions with foreigners. They'll— you'll educate yourself just from those 3 meetings more, and you'll be the expert. Like, you'll know what you need to— what you need to look out for. So I mean, I— we could talk for a long time about all these— all these steps, but like, there's— it's pretty common sense. You just need to make a plan and, and, and kind of execute to, to find ways to mitigate risk And to meet the people that are going to— that know their shit. Sorry, Ken.

All good.

All good. That know their stuff. And you start to build out this team around you, and you realize all of a sudden that there's so many people there to help you. The attorney wants to work with you, right? The contractors want to work with you. The attorney wants to work with you. Airbnb hosts, they can be your property managers. So there's so much available knowledge if you approach it, send out the, whether you believe in, you know, the law of attraction or whatever, like you have to signal like the information you want and people will give it to you. And then I think the part about just being smart about it is knowing whose information to listen to.

That's great. Yeah. And I don't think it's much different than if you're gonna go invest outta state, you know, except maybe in this scenario you're riding a moped from here to there and you're in flip-flops. Um, but other than that, it's pretty much the same thing. You're, you know, you're reaching out to the professionals. And yeah, these foreign countries have professionals too. They do. It's not just all partying.

And, and, and in some ways it's almost— I find it sometimes easier than in the US.

Sure.

Because not only by speaking— like, obviously if you have command of the local language, great. All the power to you. But by kind of eliminating the possibility of, of, of not working with local speakers and actually working with local speakers that also speak English, you, you immediately narrow down the field. So the, the decision-making becomes almost a bit easier because I'm not dealing here like when in the US, like there's so many people you can work with, right? And it's such a competitive industry. Um, everybody's doing, you know, something in real estate. And, uh, when when you go to some of these other countries, like, it, it actually not as— it's, it's, uh, it's not as difficult because the, the, the process to the type of person that you need, there might only be a few. And then it makes it really easy, like, oh well, that's the guy I should work with. He's the one who does all the deals in Koh Samui with big foreign investors, great reviews. Like, it's an easy decision. Um, and then, and then it becomes easier in terms of of zoning and development, in my opinion, than the United States. I find it extremely difficult here to understand all the zoning from one county to the next or one city to the next. Like, it's like there's no way you can wrap your head around all of it. In a lot of these other countries, um, especially when it comes to like short-term rental regulation, um, places like Costa Rica, for example, um, their entire, um, GDP, like a significant portion is based on hospitality. Like they want foreign direct investment. They want you to go there and build amazing properties and put them on the short-term rental market. It's not like here where you don't know next year, you know, things could change. You know, I feel like in some ways the red tape is far greater here than it is in those other countries. And so I think in some ways it's easier. And I think that surprises a lot of people when I say that, but it's been my experience so far. It's almost, you know, you go in there, you work with the right people, and things get done, maybe not quicker, but definitely a little less bureaucratic. And as long as you're being adaptable and realizing that, you know, you don't know everything and maybe some things get delayed, that's normal. But I think compared to the US, like I was looking at recently doing something in Nashville, And I was looking at the zoning documents I got, and and I just blew my mind how detailed they get.

Yeah.

And if you're trying to do anything a little bit unique or different, it's like oh like I don't even know what this would be classified as. My country club? Am I am I a multi you know use you know property? And and all of a sudden you're looking at more fees and more costs to get attorneys to talk to the city. And a lot of that can be bypassed in some of these more emerging markets where it's just Frankly, less regulation.

Yeah.

Question. I met with an investor from India a few years back, and he was building, you know, he was a builder there. So he was building a lot of single-family homes and stuff like that. And then he gets to the, you know, to the question here. He goes, how do I pay How do I pay the contractors and the inspectors that come around? And I go, I'm not sure what you're asking. And he says, well, over there, we like give them $20,000. They come over and they sign off all our permits. And I go, do not do that here. How is that process?

That's part of the adaptability I was talking about.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, and I'm— but I'm serious. Like, in some ways, if you come in there and you have the right funds, if you've budgeted properly, um, some things that you— obstacles that you may encounter can be easily solved by just making sure that you talk to the right person and you, and you compensate them appropriately. And if you do things wrong, sometimes it's a question you should ask. Be like, I don't know why this didn't work. Um, well, maybe it's because you tried to go talk to the city municipality yourself. First mistake. Like, make sure you have the attorney go do it.

Right.

Make sure you have the architect that has a relationship building here go do it. So learning how to be a little hands-off and don't go in there like a stereotypical kind of like German mindset where it's like everything's gotta be like this, you know? Like, let them do it the way they do it. If you have to pay a gringo price here and there to like, you know, get things done, like, that's your power. And so, yeah, sometimes that stuff will happen, but I embrace it.

Do you have any Tony Soprano issues? You know, hire basically somebody that's gonna sit around or they're collecting, you know, something, insurance or whatever. Do you see any of that? I mean, maybe not upfront, but—

I have not encountered anything like that. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And again, I think it depends on where you go. But generally speaking, if you're staying in markets that are relatively developed— when I say relatively developed, I mean like, I wouldn't go to places like that don't have any foreign investment and it's like Nicaragua and you don't like— you're the only one, like you don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah, go to places that are already being developed. You're seeing a ton of luxury properties being built and you're like, holy crap, this place blowing up. And that's where you get the micro industries, you know, there that you have the attorneys, you have the contractors, they work with foreigners. So you're going into places that are somewhat established, um, is I think again a, a risk mitigation practice, uh, and that's where you would avoid, I think, the Tony Soprano story. It's like I try not to get into anything where like I'm the first. Like I never want to be the first.

Yeah.

Ever. Even same with attorneys, contractors, builders. I don't care like how cool it is, like If nobody else has done something similar, like, I don't want to do it.

Have you ever had a situation and whatever, wherever you're at or whatever, like, you know, you kind of, you think like, oh shit, I shouldn't have done that. Like, yeah, like, I'm sorry, I talked to Tony Soprano in person. And yeah. Have you ever had like a scary feeling, you know, like, Yeah, all the time. Because that's the juicy stuff we want to hear.

Yeah, that's part of the, right, you know, right? Live your life as if you're gonna write a book about it afterwards, right? Like, um, embrace, embrace those moments without, without getting in trouble. Um, geez, let's see what I can say that doesn't like diminish my, my credibility with you guys. Uh, like, like, because I've definitely made mistakes.

No, and if anything, it's going to increase your credibility because you're going to tell us, you know, Okay, it's life.

I'll give you an example, um, without a lot of details, but a lot of these countries, um, there's prostitution. And so if you're mixing business with prostitution, uh, that could be gray areas that you might want to avoid. But it happens. Like, you're going to be in Thailand, like, you're going to be in, in your, like, in Costa Rica, in your Jaco or something. Like, it's just everywhere, and people are going to want you to be a part of it. And And that's where you might start, or or drugs, for example. Like if you get anywhere near those kind of circles, you're you're creating risk, and that might not be directly related to the property at the moment. But you know what happens when you start to make the wrong friends who start to know that you have a bunch of money and you have this property? Like you know be aware of these things. So be on good behavior. If you're going to go. Party like Wolf of Wall Street, go do it somewhere that's not near your house. Go do it in a country that you're ideally not owning property in because you don't want that stuff to come and bite you in the ass afterwards. So that's one thing where I've had some experience where I'm like, ooh, probably shouldn't have done that. Probably didn't need to let that person know who I am or what I'm doing. And then maybe the only other Um, in, in terms of risk avoidance, things I've made mistakes with, um, the only other time that I felt like kind of the Tony Soprano story you're talking about is once I was in India, uh, driving around tea farms in, uh, in Darjeeling. This was for my tea biz, had nothing to do with real estate, but I was in a Jeep and we stopped, crossed paths with another Jeep, and like they were They were talking, and I'm visiting the tea farm here, looking at the tea leaves, and they're like, "All right, let's go. Let's go eat lunch." You know, and and and the people in the car, we all turn around, pull a U-turn, and I'm like, "Oh, this isn't part of the plan. Like, aren't we supposed to be doing our own thing?" And he's like, "Like he these guys want us to go. We better go." So okay. Later on after the lunch, everything was fine. Everybody was super nice. But afterwards, he was like, "Yeah, that guy's like at least killed at least like thirty-two people." Wow. Yeah, they're like, "You don't want to mess with those guys." Wow. And uh. And, and so there was a bit of lawlessness up in, in Northeast India, um, some skirmishes of factions. And so don't invest there, okay? You buy tea from there, fine, but that's part of the risk mitigation. Like, again, go to places that are safe, that have, have examples of being— of, of case studies where you can be like, yes, that they did that well, I'd love to do something like that. Um, so don't go That's a— and if you were going to bring up Mexico, like, that's why I'm not in Mexico. Like, there's a lot of situations where you have examples of foreigners not only being not in high crime areas, but actual properties being confiscated. Like gangs coming into properties and basically kicking you out and the authorities won't do anything.

Oh yeah.

And so I think that's going on in Chicago or LA, isn't it?

Yeah, really? Exactly.

I think so.

So yeah. So, you know, you want to do— you don't want to go into anything blindly. Like, think about these things. And, and, uh, yeah, that's why I, I chose Costa Rica as my place to go at the moment, uh, because they have strong, uh, property right regulation, uh, one of the safest countries in Central America. Um, and, and, and so Latin America in general, I think, is a huge opportunity. I'm 100% behind, uh, the concept of nearshoring. which is basically taking things that were offshore, like all the manufacturing in China, and they're trying to bring that to places like Mexico. They're trying to bring that places that are allies with the United States. And so I think you're going to see everything from Mexico down to, like, you know, Colombia. I think there's going to be huge development over there in the next 10 to 20 years.

Nice.

And so I'm very bullish on Latin American investment in general. So knowing that, Then go find the pockets that you know your money's gonna be safe.

In Costa Rica, is the best move like a yoga retreat or a surf hostel?

Oh yeah, those would be great.

Good.

Yeah.

I've seen, I think I've known a few people that like went down there and started a standup paddle retreat thing and I'm like, what?

Yeah, another place I'm looking at too for something like that would be El Salvador. Recently that country's cleaned up its act. Like they have a, I can't remember the president's name. Oh, that's right. Yeah, he kind of came in and took charge. Basically, anybody that had tattoos are now incarcerated.

Yep.

And it's made the country incredibly safe all of a sudden.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of opportunity there. That's that's going to be for the more adventurous investor.

Mm hmm.

But but if if you were somebody that's like thinking about investing for the first time, I would definitely say something like Costa Rica would be like your baby steps. You know, Costa Rica. Maybe potentially Belize, something like this. And then if you're a little bit more adventurous, I would say Colombia is a really good option. You know, they have huge opportunity for growth, and they have relatively good safety in terms of property regulation. The only thing you need to be careful about is robbery, crime, that kind of stuff. So you need to know where to go, where to be. You know, don't just be aimlessly walking down the streets. Sure. Having said that, Latin America is not the only place. If you are thinking about places in Southeast Asia, again, extremely safe, way safer than Central America. So if you have the appetite to go to Bali or something like that, like great properties there.

Yeah.

And you can have great rentals, ton of tourism.

That's what she— I've seen some that are like, they make them so nice, like luxury. Yeah, like pool inside the thing.

And, and they— and those pro— those properties, um, you make such good ROI because the cost to build there, um, you're looking at something like $100 per square foot.

I mean, wow.

And, and then you charge, you know, if, if you get like a good place with ocean views or something, uh, you charge Westerners Western prices they're used to. I mean, maybe not completely, You know, Western prices, but the the ROI make the yield is just so much better than anything you're going to get here. So easily, I'd have to ask my friend about Bali because he was the one who's focused on property there earlier this year. But when I was doing all my research for the Koh Samui property and on the island of Koh Phangan, easily 25% ROI per year yield.

Hmm.

Interesting. Yeah.

So you the only thing you have to be aware of there, in some ways makes it easier, is that you're not going to get any financing.

Right.

So it's all cash deals. But it kind of simplifies things too then.

Okay. What's wrong with that?

You're but but reminder that because of Thailand, you cannot own the property outright.

Right.

So what you're doing is you're going to get like a thirty-year lease, and then you're going to get a In the contract, you'll have the right to renew it another 30 years. And within that time, you can get a— the structure you build on it can be in your name. You can own that outright. You can do whatever you want with it. You can then sell it if you want. But you sell it with the lease attached. The other option is, and this is a little bit more gray area, but still, like, I wouldn't do this if I was You know, using investors' capital where you where you have a lot you know of responsibility. But if it's just you personally, another thing that you can do is create a company and you can get Thai shareholders. And when and and you can own property if you have a joint venture where 51% of the ownership is Thai. And that's become a business in itself because now what happens is there are some Thai people that are like, "I'll." I'll put my name down on that and you pay me, uh, and I'm basically become a nominee shareholder. So like, I'm just a shareholder in, in, in, uh, in— what's the word— like on paper, right? But they don't participate in the ownership. And you would set up, um, things in the contract of the operating agreement, um, of ways to protect you to make sure that they could never take it from you. Uh, for example, they would— they write a share transfer certificate that's blank. So at any point, any time, you could— and they give that to you— at any point in time, you could transfer their shares to somebody else. So they've already signed it.

Yeah.

And usually what you would do is you'd— you could hold that onto yourself, or you'd have the attorneys hold on to it for you. So you do— you set up these kind of things to basically protect yourself. Um, I will say that is circumventing the legal system, and so the government does not like that, which is why I would say Um, a little bit more risk involved because if there was ever a situation where the government's like, that's not cool, like that's not how this was intended to be, right? They could, they could confiscate your property. So if you want to be totally safe, the lease, the 30-year leases, longstanding history, totally fine. And, and you have to remember how long is 30 years, especially if it's an investment property that you're renting out.

That's a while. Yeah.

I'll be—

too long for me.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, if I went and bought, I went and bought a property today, like I could hold on to it till I was 67.

Yeah.

And then I could renew it another 30 years.

Like, yeah.

So I think there's sometimes people like, oh, you can't own the property. Like, well, I mean, do the math. Like, yeah, you'll be good.

You'll be good.

Sell it.

You're gonna bring it back here. Yeah. If you get caught though, here's what they don't tell you. It's a full-on Jean-Claude Van Damme octagon fight, Muay Thai style. Is that true?

I have no idea what you just said.

Yeah, Thai people are quite, quite pleasant actually.

No, I know, I know.

So I'm just kidding. I found them, I found it incredibly nice.

But they do like kickboxing there. I mean, we've done Muay Thai, so it's like, I know they like a lot of camps over there.

So Philippines also really cool. Yeah, I love the Philippines. And the Philippines is almost easier in some ways because the English is, is better, right? Uh, So I think if you're interested in property and you don't have the appetite for any type of crime, like you don't want to be in Colombia, okay, fair enough. Philippines, Bali, Thailand, great places. If you actually want freehold rights, Malaysia, Singapore, you can have foreign freehold rights. But, you know, whatever, whatever floats your boat, like there's tons of ways to do it.

I think most of the time when people are scared of a country, it's usually like the headlines. You know, it's like just like anywhere. Um, because I've played— I went and toured in Colombia. When I was gonna do that, everyone's like, I'm never gonna see you again. All right, that's just the last time. And then when we went there, it was, it was amazing. Yeah, it's so cool. Everyone was super nice, put us up in a nice hotel.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, it was great.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at where the big money is, like, they're not afraid going into Colombia. Like, they're building tons of new resorts and it's all, it's all foreign capital. Like, I can't remember that off top of my head, but like Four Seasons, all these places, like, they're building massive stuff down there. Yeah, they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't feel, feel comfortable. Yeah. Um, so I totally agree with you. You get down there, as long as you're not being an idiot, like, it's— you, you'll have a great time. Yeah, absolutely.

There's parts of Long Beach that are probably scarier than that. 100%.

100%.

I've been there.

Do I have any questions?

We've got one question from Victor Gomez. He asks, what kind of attorney writes up a lease to buy out of the country?

You would want a local attorney. So you're going to want to go to the place that you're interested in buying and hire a local attorney. So you wouldn't have a US attorney do it for you.

Oh, they're going to stonewall them.

So for example, if you want to buy something in Costa Rica, I would go to San Jose, the capital. I'd go to the the city where you're going to have the most resources and the most international kind of business, and I'd and I'd do a search of of international real estate attorneys. And I wouldn't use the word attorney. Nobody's attorney is a U.S. word. I'd say lawyer. So like legal legal services, legal counsel for real estate investment. And you should get, you know, just start doing some due diligence, make a few phone calls. The one I work with that I like a lot is Quatro Legal. Quatro Legal. But that that's just for Costa Rica. So any country whether you want to go to, I would it would start with finding a local attorney. Don't use a U.S. attorney. They won't be able to do any of that. Did that answer the question?

Yeah, that's great. Um, what's like the minimum amount? Because you're doing a lot of like ground-up builds. Um, are people going in there and buying something that's already a structure and then like revamping it? Do you see that a lot, or is the move ground up, make it super nice?

I think it is for an ROI standpoint. Like, that's where you really make a killing is doing it yourself. A lot of the nice villas that get built that are Airbnb'd out in places like Mexico or Costa Rica or whatever, they're expensive relative to what you could do. So if you if you have the appetite to to to to take the extra time to build something, I think that's financially speaking you'll come out better. But sure, you can go out and buy properties and and directly turn them. into, you could do a little renovation, fine. It's no different than the US. I mean, it's the same thing. Like, it's easier, yeah, I guess, to just buy things. I just find that a little bit more, less interesting.

Oh, why? I'm just thinking from like a timeline standpoint. Like, what's your timeline, I guess, for like—

About 2 years.

Okay.

Yeah, 2 years from identifying a property, acquiring the land, Working with you know four months to get the designs, construction, and then just about a year. Permitting something you want to be aware of, but that's again where the attorneys come in. Like they're the ones who create those timelines for you. Don't have to do that yourself. They'll tell you.

Right.

And yeah, so the the the Phuket the Phuket property that I bought was a straight. Buy it and build that.

Okay.

Um, so I mean, I have done that, um, and it's fine. It's easy. Um, still made good money on it. We bought it for $500,000. Um, and you— we can rent that in high season, you know, for a few hundred bucks a night. So, wow, paid for itself. There's a lot of opportunity, guys. You just gotta—

I'm in.

I'm—

take me with you, please, Martin. I'm trying to like— let's do this.

Well, if we're gonna do a plug I've built a company for that. So, okay, anybody that wants to participate, yeah, they can. Uh, we're building stuff. I'm gonna try to, uh, if the funding all comes in, I'm looking to do 12 this year. I've got, uh, the second, uh, one, one in Manuel Antonio that's being built now. I got another one, uh, in Santa Teresa that I, that I'm just buying in, in the, in the process of escrow. So, you know, 6 more to go in Costa Rica, then 3 in Colombia, uh, and then potentially 1 in Belize or Panama. I haven't decided yet.

Do any come with surfboards?

We could do—

yeah, we could arrange that. Like, that's so small on the list of things to do.

Yeah, but, but, but basically the— our, our strategy is to build amazing luxury villas because that's where the highest margins are. Um, so I try not to make it a commodity. I'm not trying to compete with mid-market Airbnbs. But to be fair, there's a lot of ways to do this. That could be one of them. So don't get me wrong. What I'm doing is I'm trying to go higher end to get that, that, that extra margin so we can make 15-25% yields just without, without leverage. And then, and then with the sale of the property, since you bought it from the ground up, like I mean, the return there is brilliant. Like, so I'm expecting to, in year 7, to have a full exit of over 250% return.

I like the sound of that.

Average annualized return of around 30 to 38%.

And try doing that in the stock market, bro.

Yeah, well, I tried. It's hard.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's hard.

It's not as fun either.

It's hard in the US too. I think I think, you know, Joe has— you guys have strategies that are really good and you can make some good money. Um, um, but for me, I found my skill set is the adaptability, is, is the experiences abroad, and I'm good at it.

Yeah.

And, uh, and, and so that's where I've decided to put my, my capital, is, is doing it that way. And there's a ton of ways to do it, but, uh, I want to illuminate that for people that want to have that, maybe that international portfolio. Like, come to me, like, we can, uh, we can work on stuff. And if not, uh, I'm happy to just talk and you can go do your own projects. I'm always— I'm, I'm open here to talk about whatever.

Nice. I'm into it.

Joe, do you want, uh, you want to do the video?

Oh yeah. And I was like, should we go in on a property and Belief.

Um, not a 30-year lease.

Come on, man.

All right, I'd be 99 or so.

Yeah, you're gonna live to be like 150. Yeah, by default at this point.

Uh, no, that's for the young. For the young.

All right, Martin, I will do it. Perfect. Yeah, we're gonna pull up some clips. Um, you're the expert, you're in the hot seat, so take a look at these and then give us your commentary afterwards.

All right, I have not seen these.

It could be anything. It could be shocking. Just a fair warning.

Just a warning, a couple of them are just like jokey ones.

So yeah, that's fine. I think a good laugh around like jokey ones.

Yeah, 3,000 square feet, and obviously, you know, it needs everything. Ah, great, I knew you could do it. So, um, remember, you just take care of me on this one job because I didn't buy the house perfectly right on this one, and I promise you I have tons of work for you. Remember, I also have 700 Instagram followers and a ton of people. Just make sure that when everyone's calling for the business from me that you still make time for me, okay? So, uh, we're patching the roof of the leaky sunroof from 1972. We're skim coating the popcorn ceiling instead of changing it with 3 inches of plaster. We're leaving the blue pastel bathroom, sanding the cat pee stained floors best possible. Possible, right? Nobody cares about that brown stain. But we are installing that brand new wine cooler in the kitchen that you wanted. Original quote doing it the right way was $225,080.72. However, with the new revised version, we're at $39,041.12. Can't do it for any cheaper, huh? What are you looking to sell this house for anyway? Oh, just $1.2 million. House is 3,000 Yeah.

So that's the first thing.

A little unrealistic expectations.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, what's it like working with contractors abroad? I mean, it's gotta be the same headaches as here.

I don't think it's that different.

It's the same guy.

I don't think it's that different.

He just speaks a different language.

Yeah. I'd say it's the same. You know, contractors obviously come in many forms. So it's really just about finding somebody that, you know, is going to do a good job. And the only thing I'd say about that is, is making sure you work with somebody that has a track record of properties similar to what you want to build. So don't go, you know, build a property with materials that have never been used before, that are coming, you know, from some part of the country that's using some kind of wood that this guy's never worked with, you know. Um, so I, for me, it seems pretty simple, but like Show me what you've done, and if it's anything similar to what I want to do, then great. Which goes back to the question of just find people on Airbnb that properties that you already love, and just ask who did it, and then go do something that got your own taste, your own flair. But like you know that they're going to do it; they're going to do a good job in terms of negotiating like on how costs and things like I think that's a little bit stickier. Um, there's probably no really right answer for that, but that's— I think that happens in the US too, right? Um, as Joe Homs said in his— one of his, uh, great investment advice videos is expect that there will be additional costs, unforeseen costs. Absolutely. Everything's always going to be more expensive than you think. Everything's always going to take longer than you think. Um, just bake it in. Bake it into the plans.

Absolutely. What about the promising them like other jobs? That is like the biggest trope of an investor to a contractor is like, dude, I got stuff lined up for you if you just help me out on this one.

Well, if you're being honest about it, why not?

Oh, I never thought of it that way.

I mean, if you're full of crap, I wouldn't say that. That's not ethical. But like, I mean, that's kind of what I'm doing to a degree in Costa Rica is I'm trying to leverage the fact that I want to do multiple properties. So I'm trying to develop relationships with contractors and architects and legal and like let them know like this is a long-term thing with lots of opportunity. Yeah. So if you, if you are going with that intention, use it.

Yeah.

You know, use whatever leverage you can.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. I would— one thing I would say is there are lots of ways to do it, but I would not try to nickel and dime a property abroad. I really wouldn't. I would, I would just— if you don't have the money to do it, don't do it. Just wait, wait until you have the money. Um, because I think you're gonna give yourselves a lot of headaches if you start like not having enough budget to complete things.

Mm-hmm.

Um, you're gonna get so much, so much better performance from all your vendors when you pay them what they wanna be paid.

Right.

Like hands down, they'll treat you better. The moment you start haggling on price, going below an amount that's Unreasonable, you know, like they they might do it, but they'll do it with animosity. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like they won't be happy about it, and that's what you definitely don't want that. You want you want people that are super thrilled to be working with you. And and here's the and here's the good thing is that being the gringo, being the foreigner that's coming in and paying the gringo prices, you you it might still feel cheap to us, but to them, like you're you're one of the best paying customers. Yeah, so you're gonna get that extra treatment. Um, don't become, you know, the, the local Tico that like wants to haggle them down to the Tico prices. Like, then, then, then you— then they're just going to treat you like anybody else, anybody else that does business with them that they're not fully, fully invested in.

Absolutely.

So I, I'm always a— I'm always a fan of just save more, make the budget bigger, make all those— make, make up those expenses by generating more revenue, you know?

Yeah.

Make a better product so you can, so you can afford to have a more expensive build.

Amen.

Yeah. And again, maybe not, not everybody does that, but that's what I do.

Love it.

That's how you're able to repeat yourself and go into different markets. Speaking of different markets, we've got right here the world's top 3 places to invest in real estate today. True or false? We have Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

What are the other ones?

It's a false.

On each one.

Yes, true or false? He says no.

You said earlier Mexico was not a great.

What they're not showing is the cartel right here.

Here.

I think I think it. I think there would be if you were going to invest in Mexico. There's there would be better places with more opportunity. I would say Playa del Carmen. Is probably overdeveloped at this point.

Okay, good answer. Next, that's correct. Next, we've got Lagos, Portugal.

Don't know anything about Lagos.

That's where everyone's retiring, apparently.

So Portugal is nice for from a property ownership perspective. They have pretty friendly policies for Westerners, you know, foreigners to to own property. So a lot of people like Portugal for that. Don't know enough about Lagos personally. Okay. Um, so I'd have to pass on that.

It's dead to us. Next one. Oh, oh, I know who this was written by.

Los Cabos.

Somebody in Mexico. Los Cabos, Mexico. Same answer?

Yeah, same answer.

Overdeveloped.

I feel like there'd be better spots. Yeah.

Okay. In Mexico or just in the world?

In Mexico, way overdeveloped. Oh yeah.

All right.

Yeah, way overdeveloped.

All right.

You want to find places where you can still get pristine, like, ocean views in areas that are still up and coming. And there's data to support this. Like, as I said, use AirDNA, like, use these services. You can see the trends and you can see where occupancies have gone down. You can see where listings have skyrocketed and rental demand has not.

Okay.

And so what I usually look for in the metric is I look for booked listings. I want to see at least 5-year growth. So I'll like look at from 2019, 2018 up all the way to 2023. And I want to see rental demand increasing with it. Obviously, there'll be a little dip probably from the pandemic, but booked listings is huge for me because you can show, oh, look at how much the market's grown. But I don't think that tells you as clear a picture as how many more booked listings are there.

Right.

So I'm not just asking how many more properties on Airbnb. I'm not just asking, you know, what the, what the revenue is or, or the occupancy, I think, is also kind of not that important because the occupancy is an average of a lot of crappy properties and good properties. And you're finding that middle. What you want to do is you want to find properties that have really high occupancy rates and see what they're doing. You know, so look at comps that you have 80, 90% occupancy and emulate that and see, okay, what is it about this property that's doing so well? And don't get distracted by kind of the average numbers. So rental demand I think is important. I'd look for revenue growth as well. And again, not the amount of revenue, that's totally irrelevant. What's relevant is the percent change from 5 years ago till now.

Right.

Right.

So you want to— you're just looking for growth. Growth means that there's space for you, right? Um, and, and if you can find places where the growth is really high and it's still relatively undeveloped, like, go for it. Um, I think Los Cabos Um, you know, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Vallarta, all these kind of places that we all know about. Like, it's too late. Um, not to say you couldn't do it, but, but why give you— make it more difficult?

Go to—

go find places that— I, I hesitate to offer anything in Mexico, but like, I'll give an example. In Bali, for example, Bali's pretty developed at this point. I would still say there's plenty of opportunity there, but if you want something that's like Guaranteed property appreciation, like hands down, no problem. Look at Lombok, the island right next door. Oh yeah, they just built an airport there as well. Like give it 5, 10 years. Like it's, it's without trying to sound like I know everything, like that's one of those like really obvious ones where it's like, yeah, take, take the effort to, to do something that's a little bit less developed. Knowing that as Bali expands, it's going to naturally go into the neighboring islands. Like, those are great investments.

Mm-hmm.

And it's cheap.

Mark that down.

So like, for any investors listening, like, you can go and buy wonderful stuff with $100K.

Like, done, done.

You find— for $150K, you could be buying villas that are already completed.

Oh, always wanted to own a villa here in Bali. Yeah, so that's good.

I'm buying property in Costa Rica right now that's going ocean views, like stunning properties, and they're around anywhere between $10 to $20 per square foot, the land, which is—

that's insane.

Yeah, and, and that's considered expensive in Costa Rica. Like, Costa Rica is like expensive already, but it's like relative to what? Like, yeah, compared to here?

Like, yeah, compared to Landers, California. You ever been there?

Landers?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's outside of Joshua Tree.

Yeah, what's that going for?

It's probably more than that.

Yeah, I don't know.

There's no ocean view, I'll tell you. Yeah, it's just dirt as far as you can see. Ah, okay.

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, if you're, if you're slight— slightly, uh, slightly detailed topic here. We don't have to go over in detail, but one thing I was thinking that is worth mentioning is that when you go to these foreign countries and you look at how cheap the property is, you need to not let that deceive you where you're just chasing the cheap price. Because I could go to places like Mexico and Costa Rica and find even cheaper places with great views. You'll see like mountaintops of like pristine ocean, and it's like 5 acres, and maybe it's like $50,000.

Mm-hmm.

I'm just— I'm, you know, just saying that. Um, and you're like, oh my God, like, definitely would buy something there, build a house on top. The problem with these kind of properties, and they're all over the place, is that you're not going to have utilities, you're not going to have road access. You're not going to have water, electricity, nothing. And you're going to spend $1 million just to build an access road. And it's going to be delayed and it's going to take forever. So again, this is things that the lawyers should tell you about. These are the questions you should ask. Like when I go out and buy property or develop property, like tell me what I need to know. And that's one of the first things that I think you should be aware of is do not get seduced by Great panoramic views, right? Because they're everywhere. Take the moment to find one that's next to a public road, that's got electricity, that's going to have a bit access to water. It's going to have all the the the even if it's agricultural zoning, that's okay. But it needs to have the the due diligence in place, and that will be more expensive. That's okay. That will be more expensive. Like, because of those things, it's worth it, 100%.

Oh yeah, because in the long run, like you said, you're gonna be stuck in the mountains, like, using an outhouse after you build like a $500,000 resort. I've seen some of those on— I don't know what it was, like Land Finder or something, where it's like Costa Rican resort, it's up in the mountains, like a chocolate— they make chocolate or something up there. I'm like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. But it seems like it's out in the middle of nowhere. It's just like all jungle and no roads. Yeah, like, what are these people— it's basically Joshua Tree.

Yeah, yeah, public, public roads are— is, is a thing. You want to always ask where's the nearest public road. Yeah, you want to find properties that are along that have access way out there. Yeah, and I think that's true of just about every country that I've, that I've looked at property in. It's kind of Um, you know, same, same in Thailand. You want, you want access to road. If you don't have that, like, what are you buying? Like, yeah, you're buying a big project.

Yeah, yeah. Because like, especially the foreigners, they want to be able to get off the airplane, go right there.

Mm-hmm.

It's pretty sweet. We got anything else?

Got one more like funny renovation short Nice.

Nobody's gonna know.

Nobody's gonna know. They're gonna know.

How would they know? How would they know? How would they know?

I can't. I just— I can't.

Oh my God. I don't even get it.

It's supposed to be like stainless steel.

It's really, it's really silly.

Because they have the—

what? Yeah, you see this sometimes where they got the stainless steel, uh, the mismatched appliances. Yeah, the white and then the white thing.

Yeah, it's, it's— sorry.

Sorry.

It's fine. It's hard to find good, like, short real estate content. Everything. Like, I wanted to figure out—

Have you ever been to Martin's channel?

Well—

No, I'm just kidding. I wouldn't like pull up your own thing.

Don't have anything to show for that.

But I tried to find this guy Brad's World. He does flips in Italy and he will flip these, you know, um, like Renaissance buildings and villas and, uh, estates. And it's really interesting, but all his videos are like 50 minutes long, and I can't just show you that.

It's pretty amazing, actually.

Yeah, that's a channel for everyone, Brad's World. It's—

yeah, and then he turns them into like Airbnbs, but they're all like from like the 1800s.

It's amazing.

It's pretty cool.

I think I've seen some shorts on it. Um, yeah, there's— I would love to do something in Italy, but it would definitely need to be a renovation, not a— you can't build there, like, good luck. Um, Yeah, there's so, there's so many places to go, guys, and so many places to, to, to blend travel and, and experience and real estate all together. Like, I just, I love it. It's what I want to do for the next 20, 30 years, easy.

Amazing. Well, I hope you're ready to be bombarded by questions on Monday because, uh, yeah, I know a lot of people are probably going to be hitting you up.

Yeah, let's talk about K-1s and K-2s. Foreign depreciation.

Okay, there we go. All the good stuff.

Yeah, no, actually is what I'm not looking forward to. No, no, no, no.

I was gonna say, uh, falling asleep.

Yeah.

Just listening to that part.

Yeah.

Do you guys don't wanna talk about cost segregation?

Come on.

Yeah, let's do it. That gets some people excited for sure. Well, uh, thank you so much, man. This was really, you know, eye-opening for me, Joe.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So, um, it was, it was a pleasure and like you've already lived like 10 lives in such a short amount of time it seems like.

So, yeah.

It's very inspiring, and thank you. I'm sure everybody enjoyed it. So appreciate you coming on today.

Yeah, no, I appreciate you guys having me.

Thank you, and we'll see you on Monday. How can people get a hold of you before then?

Ideally, look me up on LinkedIn. Okay, Martin Pap. This face. Yeah, I don't know if on audio I don't know how to describe it, but yeah, you'll know. White Caucasian in a foreign land. Yeah, you'll know when you see Martin Pap. Martin Pap on LinkedIn. Okay. Probably the best place.

Okay, perfect. You guys reach out to Martin if you have any questions about just investing or investing internationally, and he will get you hooked up. And then, you know, the syndication's already open, so people can already—

Yeah, I should plug the company name too. The Nova House. So it's houses in the German house, H-A-U-S. Okay. So T-H-E-N-E-W-H-A-U-S.com. TheNovaHouse.com.

Perfect. All right, and we'll, uh, we'll link that in all the show notes and everything as well. So jump in there.

And, uh, did I say N-E-W? Totally butchered that. I'm sorry.

The N-O-V-A.

Yeah, N-O-V-A, right? H-A-U-S.com. Yeah, sorry to interrupt you.

No, no, that's all good.

I knew something was wrong when I was saying that. Oh yeah, yeah, that was—

yeah, I think you saw that is what happened.

Yeah.

Oh man, that was funny, guys. So, uh, we'll be back here next week and come out to the meetup on Monday. Martin's gonna be covering a lot more, uh, things about, um, investing internationally in depth, and you can ask him questions face to face.

So bring your umbrella.

Bring an umbrella. You're probably not gonna need it, but, uh, bring your umbrella. Just bring it.

We're gonna be inside. It'll be fine.

Yeah, we're gonna be inside. But, um, uh, yeah, we're, we're looking forward to it and it's always a blast. So thank you guys for joining us today and we'll see you next week.

See you next week.

Thank you, guys.

Bye.