OCREIN | Secrets of Luxury International Investing with NOVA HAUS (Martin Papp and Tyler Jordan)

Hello. Well, what we want to do is tell you about a little bit about our story. I am not here to teach because I can tell that there are people in this room that know more than I do. But what we can do is contribute about some of the stuff that we have done and the stuff and some of our experience being abroad. So we'll keep it short. I know that there's a ton of people that want to be introducing and talking and mingling. This is a networking event, so we'll do our best to keep this timely. But, and if there's any questions at the end, please ask, or just come up and talk to us, and then we can all have some drinks and get to know each other. Do you have a clicker?

I have a clicker.

Awesome. Let's click away. All right. So tonight we're going to introduce what we are as a company, a little bit on my background, a little bit on Tyler's background, and why we invest out of country. It's our go-to investment strategy at the moment. And we can talk to people that are thinking about investing abroad about where to start. What are the things you want to be aware of? How do you reduce the risk? These are the things we're going to go over today, as starting from identifying an area, a place that you want to be, all the way to doing the due diligence of building your team, working with legal, architects, property managers, Airbnb hosts, whatever it may be. And then we'll go into a little bit about what we're doing in Costa Rica for 2024.

So there's an underlying question when anyone comes and speaks, and it's, why should I listen to you? Why should I trust you? Why should I spend any of my time listening to you? So that's what we're going to do here and sort of go over how we've come to be standing up here and talking. And hopefully that'll build a little bit of trust and credibility into what we're going to speak about. So, myself and Martin, we met probably 3 and a half to 4 years ago at an event in Atlanta, Georgia, where a bunch of— basically like this. There was 65 traders, investors, entrepreneurs from all over America. We came together, we did a Spartan Race, spent 3 days together, and it was truly an incredible experience where we got to mingle with so many people. And we both came away from it and— We were hooked. We said, you know, we need to scale this out and we need to build the real estate for these events, for these retreats, and for people like you and for people like me and Martin to come together and connect. So, I'll jump back in.

Very briefly, our company is a syndication based out of Nevada. We're the operators. We bring on limited partners to do luxury villas abroad and then we put them on Airbnb, VRBO, For short-term rentals. Are we going to try to introduce you or you introduce me?

You're up first.

I'm up first.

Yeah.

All right. Well, in my early years, guys, I lived in China. So I graduated from university in St. Lawrence, St. Lawrence University in 2008. It wasn't the best time to enter the workforce. As we all know, that was not a good year to be looking for a job. And so I was just reading the book Outliers. Anybody read Outliers? Excellent book.

Thank you.

We got, we got a couple of people here. It was basically a book saying all of— well, the way I— the takeaway that I had was your success is highly dependent upon your environment. It's not as much as you think about yourself and what you know. It's about who you know. It's about when you were born. It's about where you are. So I decided that I was going to go spend time in China. I went there with the intention of learning Mandarin, and that led me to do a bunch of entertainment stuff. So I started speaking Mandarin. Any Mandarin speakers here? Basic, basic.晚上好。晚上好。我是马丁。今天我要给大家讲一个故事关于我的自己的生生命。 It is all about entertainment in China. I was the white face that was speaking Chinese on TV. I was doing all sorts of shows. And one of the really cool parts about all this is that I got to travel all around the country. I was speaking in stadiums with 30,000 to 50,000 people. And I was also on national televised events like Chunwan, which are— these are all things that if you were in China, you might know. But it led me to have a very interesting career where I was constantly dealing with Chinese businessmen and at those roundtables where you all share food together and drink the baijiu. And I decided that at some point that wasn't going to be my long-term career. I always wanted to start my own business, and so I created a company called Pabst Tea. I leveraged all of the connections I was making. the following that I had to create a tea company. This tea company was inspired by the fact that Chinese people in general love drinking tea, but they actually had very little experience. This is in 2013, 2014. They had very little experience from— of Western tea. So what is it like to have a Southern iced tea with sugar? You know, what is it like to have an Earl Grey or an English Breakfast or yerba mate from Brazil? or rooibos from South Africa. And so I started bringing in these products from out of, out of country, and we started importing and educating Chinese customers. That led us to build a brand called Pabst Tea, where we got venture capital funding in Shanghai. We opened up stores throughout the country. We ended up having a big left turn in our business once the pandemic happened. And so I was actually here with my wife Oh, we missed the picture with my, my family.

Yeah.

That's— I'm happily married, going on 10 years, 7-year-old son. We moved here to Irvine for my son to bring him, raise him here and go to school. But I was constantly running the business in China, so I was doing the double life where I was traveling one month in China, one month here, one month in China, one month here. And it was Some people might say exhausting. I thrived in it. I loved being in different cultures and that back and forth jolting me kept my mind sharp. And the pandemic stopped all that. So I was unable to travel and I had to rethink about what I was doing with my time. And so we closed down these stores and instead now we operate solely B2B. So I still now sell to restaurants, hotels throughout China, offices. So actually the Google offices in Beijing and Shanghai all supply our tea. We're the exclusive supplier of a lot of these vendors that are looking for, you know, healthy tea products for their employees or for their customers in over 400 locations now across mainland China. That's still my main income. That's what's allowed me the privilege to be getting into real estate and started investing in things. By doing a bunch of stores in China where we were doing F&B venues, we were doing cafes, retail, I started getting into the— into real estate really through commercial because I was doing— working with contractors, landlords, doing designs, leases. And then that led into us also starting to invest in residential property. So we started buying apartments in China with my wife. And doing short-term rentals, mostly in Beijing as well as Hainan. We also started doing some investing here.

We—

this is a property in West Hollywood that we did a total demo of. We kept the foundation, but we rebuilt everything. So this is also a lot of experience building up for boots on the ground, working with contractors, you know, figuring out what it's like to actually be building a property from the ground up. And so now we also do investments in the United States. We also have apartments— sorry, not apartments, a villa in Phuket that we do short-term rentals on, and also now in Costa Rica. And without further ado, I'm going to hand the mic off to Tyler.

Awesome. My story isn't as exciting as that, but Yeah, I'm Tyler. I'm from Australia. I've just recently moved here to Orange County. I moved here in December and I moved to actually Dana Point about 3 days ago with my partner Madison who just arrived. And this is a bunch of us. There's not much to me other than work, working out, and some skydiving. I do real estate. I've been in real estate since I was a teenager and I have a very privileged way to get into real estate is actually when I turned 15, I had my father— I asked him if he could buy an old property and teach me how to flip it and how to get into, you know, do the whole system of flipping real estate. I realized how privileged I was. I didn't see any financial gain from it. He did all the finances, but I was in there working nights, weekends, dealing with contractors. He was making me make those phone calls to agents. The whole deal. And we did a couple of flips and we've got long— we've flipped it, we've renovated a couple that are still being rented out long-term. I then also helped some other people as well going through it as well. That led me into a career of civil construction. So I am the guy who's very new to these button shirts and— I like it. dress pants and things like that. I'm used to calluses on my hands and mud and dirt and shit all over me. So, I'm the guy that's boots on the ground. I've done everything from single-family homes all the way up to, as you can see here, 6-story basements for high-rises. I ran a team of about 16 people, 16 employees all up and down the East Coast of Australia doing all sorts of developments for the better part of 7 years. So, that's on the professional side. And then, on the personal side, I do fully remote small multifamily over the last couple of years, basically doing duplexes, land acquisition, building it, and then renting it out, and then exiting after a couple of years. So, I kept that very brief. That was good. So a few, few little things that we're going to touch on here tonight. Me and Martin both had input on this slideshow. You will notice very quickly who did what slide. I did this one. Martin did all the rest of them. So let's discuss why me and Martin are investing outside of the country. And I want to reiterate what he said before is we're not here to teach you anything. We're just here to tell you what we have done, what we are doing, and how we're doing it. And if If that serves you in any way, fantastic. If you do it a different way or if you don't like the way that we do it, that's also fantastic. Come and teach us how you do it. But yeah, we're going to get into what we do.

I guess you should answer the question, why leave California? Why don't we just do stuff here?

For exactly this reason here. Why leave California? There's nothing wrong with investing in California, but for us, we are chasing yield and we're chasing the highest ROI that we possibly can. And we're chasing an easy path versus a hard path. And what an easy path looks like is high revenue and low build cost. Whereas here in the US, if you're building long-term rentals, it's obviously low revenue and a high build cost. Short-term rentals here, you've got high revenue, but you've also got a high build cost. Whereas overseas, doing long-term rentals, yes, it's cheap to build, but your revenue is low. But if you're doing short-term rentals in desirable locations overseas, your build cost is super low and your revenue, you're charging Southern California rates in countries where you're building for a quarter of the cost, which comes out to be a very, very lucrative setup.

Yeah, just to be clear, obviously investing out of country, there's a whole lot of different ways to do that. So the way that we've decided is the path of highest ROI. And we found that working our way into this discrepancy, this arbitrage of low-cost countries. So we're talking about, you know, those countries relying on hospitality that are looking for tourism, Westerners coming in with Western salaries, but using the labor costs of building stuff that can be $100, $200 per square foot. For a luxury ocean view property. To do that in California, you're looking at a minimum, you know, $600 per square foot to do something nice in this state. So it's that, it's that price, price gap that where huge ROI and returns can be created in overseas properties. And of course there are inherent risks with that going overseas, but that's why we do it. And we, and then today we're going to talk more about how you reduce those risks. to make it a very viable investment strategy. This is just an example of the type of returns you can get by using overseas properties. So we're talking about IRR rates of 20 to 30% plus. And that's something that having invested here locally is possible, but hard, very hard. I see a guy shaking his head here. Maybe we just say it's not possible, I don't know, but it's difficult. And so if you have the appetite for a little bit more adventure, there is really good opportunities abroad. And it starts with the approach. There are a lot of ways to go about doing it. We created a methodology that suits us. It's basically a 24-month cycle, and we'll go through those steps further in here in a second. Tonight, because we've— this could literally be like a 2-day, you know, retreat where we go and talk about these things in Costa Rica, maybe, where we could do something in-depth like this. But for just this short presentation, we're really going to focus on step 1, which is identifying and the preparation to actually acquiring a property. But we do have laid out all the way through identify to acquire to design, construction, launch, and optimization. All of this we go through a play-by-playbook, essentially, that helps you reduce the amount of risk you take when you go abroad.

Also, don't get hung up on how much details there are here. I have a big gift for you guys at the end where we're going to actually break all this down and basically give it all to you guys. Kind of just broke that as well. So we start with step number 1, which is identifying an area. Now you've got the entire globe here to choose from. Within the entire globe, you've got hundreds of thousands of submarkets. Within submarkets, you've got millions of sub-submarkets. It is almost impossible to figure out where you want to go. And that is one of the biggest things that we run into when we start talking to people. They're just like, I would love to, but where do I even begin? And if you don't know where to begin, you sort of just end up in this endless loop where you're like, oh, you've just got too many options. I think the quote is, too many options will make a tyrant of anyone. So, we use a platform called AirDNA. We've actually partnered with them and we've got the beta subscription and access to all of their enterprise data. And what that does is it allows us to see all of the data in every single market across the world to be able to hone in on the hotspots, where's up and coming, where the vacancy rates are lowest, where the growth is the highest, Where's getting the best yield, all these types of things. This is just a screenshot of Phuket. And this is the type of data that we're looking at here as we're moving into a market and looking to identify the markets. We're doing 64 properties in around 15 to 20 different countries over the next couple of years. And it's not just throwing darts at a map. There is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours going into playing with numbers. I know one guy who was here said he was good with data. I think we could use you.

I mean, just to put this in perspective, this was not available, you know, 10, 15 years ago. So the game is— the landscape has changed incredibly, the amount of resources and tools you have to educate yourself about different places around the world. And so what I'm finding, and without belittling ourselves, it's not as difficult as you think. There is so much data out there. If you find the right resources, like an AirDNA, you can go in and get super specific about markets. You can see exactly what the properties are, what kind of income they're generating. You can see the rates that they're generating. You can see where the, the booked listings, if the rental demand is going up over the last 5 years. You can look at property appreciation data. I mean, it's out there, guys. It just— you just need to take a little bit of a— you need to have a goal in mind of really like, what, what do I want to achieve? So maybe it starts with a cool social media video that you saw of a property in Colombia or Bali. Um, maybe it starts with a friend telling you about how great this apartment complex was or this opportunity in Mexico. It's like, so you, you use your, you know, your environment, the people you know, testimonials, the news But then go use data to back up some of these assumptions or what people— these suggestions that people are telling you. Go find the data. It's there.

It's there.

Trust me. You might have to pay for it, but it's worth it. So like, for example, again, I might be talking to people that already know all this stuff, but it applies for abroad as well, is that there are listings where you can go in And see the metrics. You can see everything that these properties are doing. And so you as an Airbnb host, which is what we do, we know which properties are going to do well. We know if we build this type of property in this type of market, it's going to have this, probably this type of occupancy. It's probably going to have these type of average daily rates. It's all there for you.

So over the years, me and Martin have identified there are Realistically, 2 ways to do overseas investing. The first one is the way that most people do it and the second one is the way that we have found that works best for us. So, how do most people do it? They do it in 5 steps and these steps are choose a country, they then find a property, they then go and get an agent, buy the property, they then start working their way up the list of contractors and they realize they're pushing a boulder up a hill and they hate the experience. Someone who's invested overseas, how spot on was that?

We didn't actually invest.

Oh, okay. That tends to be the common thread here. People start, it's sexy, it's exciting, they start doing it the same way as they do it here in the US and it's just within a couple of months you're pushing a boulder up a hill and you think this is the worst thing in the world. So, we flipped that on its head and found a way that is— I wouldn't say easy, but it's much easier and safer and makes life easy for us. So, we start by choosing the country and you'll notice first thing is buying property is one of the last things on our list. So, we flipped this on its head and we find the top legal firm in the country. We find the legal firm that's working with the highest net worth investors. The people that are plugged into all the politicians, the governments, the foreign investments, the people who are essentially— the legal firm that's essentially got their plug with the people that are running the country essentially. From there, we then have them suggest and refer us to the top architecture firm in the country which we then go to and say, we're working with so-and-so. And that architecture firm is like, oh my God, yeah, that's great. Let's work together. And the reason we do that is because then you're leveraging credibility of the top legal team and the top architecture firm. From there, we start working our way down the list of contractors. So we're going to general contractors, we're going to landscapers, we're going to cleaners, we're going to anyone and everyone and saying, we're working with this legal firm and this architect and this is what we're building. And we have everyone and their mother and their dog throwing themselves at us saying, we will do anything to have our name attached to that job. We'll make this easy for you. We'll do whatever it takes. of who we're working with and the way that this is being done. Then we select a property, and then we push the boulder down the hill, and we realize this is a phenomenal experience and everyone's, you know, doing their bit. So that's the way that we flip it on its head.

I will say that this is actually step 2, step 3 is interchangeable. So if you're looking to develop a property, another great way before you get the legal team is you can also go out and find amazing properties where you're like, wow, I love that property. That's an amazing property. I've seen it. You find out who the architect is, you contact them, and then you ask them as well, what are the top legal teams that you work with, with your owners, with your investors? And so, these can go back and forth. But those 2 pillars are quite important. Now, if you're not developing property, just looking to purchase, then just start with the legal. And I reiterate this because what happens is a lot of times you visiting, traveling, you see a property or you have agents that you stop at and look at the windows and see the houses that are available and you're like, wow, it's beautiful. And you get people coming at you, property agents, realtors. And by the way, real estate agents here, love you guys. But when you go to places in emerging markets, developing countries, the real estate Agents can be a bit more aggressive. And they have one thing in mind, and that is to make a deal before you go back to your country. So you have a lot of things working against you, which is why it's about finding these guys first, not working with a cool agent. I think we move on.

We'll get to that.

So how do we do that? We basically implement a concept that we have coined The law of 3. And that means that everything has to be done multiple times and that this process of having to do multiple times will teach you and educate you on who are the right people to work with and things you need to know. So that starts with talking to at least 3 law firms. And it might sound like, oh, that seems like a lot of extra work. It's not because you're educating yourself along the way. The first lawyer you speak with, you might not know anything, but you come back, you leave there with them telling you, oh, as a foreigner, you're like, if we're in Thailand, for example, you're not going to be able to own the property outright. There's no freehold rights for foreigners. Okay, well, that's important. You didn't know that. The leases maybe are only 30 years or 20 years. So you leave that conversation, you have your next appointment with the lawyer. You go in there a little bit more educated. Now you can start asking more refined questions. You can start asking, okay, well, if we did a lease, you know, would I be able to renew it? What would I be able to build? Like, and so slowly by forcing yourself to go through multiple vendors or multiple meetings, you yourself will become more versed and have a better experience also selecting which lawyer fits you best.

One?

Yeah, sure. So, um, this is me in Koh Samui. I'm looking to build property there. I went there for the summer, uh, and it was a, it was a great experience of spending one month, uh, enjoying myself but also creating the entire package team there to build property. So you meet— I would suggest always meeting with a local law firm that is going to be native, and then also try meeting with an expat law firm and play off them, figure out which one fits you best. You might find the pros and cons to either of those situations. Quattro Legal, that's our Costa Rica attorney, but I can't stress enough that this— by going this route first is going to— you're going to avoid so many problems. Because they're going to tell you all of the bad experiences they have because they're the ones that are doing 100 real estate deals a year with different foreign investors. So they're going to tell you the things that you need to be careful about, the difference between buying zoning of agricultural land versus commercial land or residential land. These are things that you will very likely be confused if you just rush into a property realtor right up front because they won't always be honest with you. Find attorneys.

Next step is the architects. This is a bunch of architects that we're working with. The guy in the middle here, Andres, he is our Costa Rican architect. The 2 guys at the bottom are guys that we're working with in Bali. There's people from Thailand, there's people from all over. Architects are, funnily enough, the biggest use case that they come in for you is connectors. They're the people that are working with everybody. So once you start working with your architects, they're going to connect you with different real estate agents. They're going to know about all of the zoning and the permitting, and they're going to sort of be your connector of your go-to person. That has definitely been the case for us. More than anything, they're our first point of call for everywhere that we go. One of the things that we do as well, and it's got up there, my favorite question to ask is, if you were me, where would you buy? And these guys are doing all of this, especially as I said before, you want to work with the top architecture firms. They're doing the biggest deals, they're working with the highest net worth investors, and they're also getting the broader scope of the country or the market that you're in. So, they're going to be able to point you and refine you to an area of where they think from their knowledge of living and working and breathing in that area for so long where would be best.

Just to add to that, I know that people meet architects locally and they sometimes want to do buildings for you abroad. And I would highly discourage that unless you're already a sophisticated, experienced investor abroad. The architects here won't know the building codes down in the local country. They won't know the materials to use. They won't know what's going to be most cost-effective. They won't know what's capable. The general contractors, you know, have different skill levels. And so don't be taking— Yeah. In my opinion, don't be taking an LA architect to go build your property in Mexico. Go find quality talent in Mexico. Spend the extra time to make sure it's local. That's not because of my altruistic heart of wanting to support the local culture, which I do, but it's really also the smartest thing. You don't want to be bringing outside expertise that doesn't have the inside expertise. And this is the exact same thing for contractors. When you are there in these, in these countries, I highly recommend spending the extra effort it takes to go meet with contractors. This is probably the most difficult meetings to set up because contractors are busy. They also will be like, well, where's your, you know, your property? Let me see the designs. Like, oh, I don't have it yet. I'm just, I'm just thinking about doing something down here. And so there's extra layers of barrier to get meetings with them. But I think they pay off because they're also going to be verifying things of concern like, yeah, it's great to buy property here, but guess what? This hill has no water and you're not going to get a water letter of availability. Good luck getting that. Oh, well, now I know this whole mountainside is off limits, or I know the challenges that are going to take— that it's going to take to build something here. So again, I know that we might be going highly in-depth to people that want to build abroad, but even if you're buying property, if you're doing value adds, if you're looking to fix things up, definitely speak with contractors. If you have the time and the ability to set up those meetings, you're always going to learn something valuable. And those, those, those are the people that you're going to be spending months with if you end up going and doing something. So those are the ones you want to develop relationships with, not the property agents. So really think about who are my long-term partners here and invest the time to make those partnerships. Which leads us to the realtors. And realtors can be excellent resources of information. They can become good friends as well. But especially in developing countries, There usually is not an MLS system. So the realtors that you know, that approach you, they don't know what properties are available at the other realtor office. And so that lack of communication, the lack of that multiple listing system, really means you have to, you have to be ready and willing to work with multiple agents, even though nobody will want you to do that. Naturally, I understand the reason behind that. But in these type of markets, you want to be protecting yourself, and you don't want to be missing out because you're being tunnel visioned into a certain set of properties by one agent. So I really strongly suggest being courteous, being polite, being transparent, letting people know that I'm working with other agents. But that's important because you will, I think, have— you will suffer by not being— having access to all the properties available.

I just want to quickly point out as well, I know we've got a lot of realtors here. One thing that we found out very quickly is the way that agents work in the US and Australia compared to countries like Costa Rica and Bali and Thailand is very different. So although we might be hurting your feelings here, I promise you it is run completely different and it is very normal in these countries, whereas if you did that here, you would be shunned immediately.

Yes, thank you, Tyler. Mark, real quick, before I start bunking up with somebody, what is that?

Sorry?

It says agents before bunking up with one. Before bunking up with one? That's Tyler's Aussie terminology over here about not getting in bed with one. Yeah, yes, I know it's a very progressive society we've got in the comments here. This is also true, by the way. Let's see that slide. This is also true for lending as well. So there is financing available in some places. So highly recommend, and this is again where the legal teams come into very important play, is they'll tell you which banks to approach. They'll tell you the regulations on getting financing, how realistic is that. It is definitely more difficult. And in some ways, it makes it easy though too, because if financing is off the table, then— You know everything's all cash. You know everything's full equity. So be it. But there are situations where you can get lending financing as well. Places like Costa Rica do offer it. But if, for example, you go to Thailand, definitely not. So it really depends on on country to country. What'd you say? Okay. Almost done.

So this is the part that we all get into international real estate for is to. Business trips, to do business trips if you will. And business trips, although they're hard to actually justify to your family and friends and investors if you have them, they're actually critical and you need to do them. You need to experience the culture, you need to meet the locals, you need to meet tourists that are staying there, you need to get all that insight. I need to call it here soon. But we've got a rule of 3 again, 3 restaurants, at least 3 pedicures, 3 sites.

There you go. All right, another really great tool that I don't think people use enough is Airbnb's platform itself. It's the perfect way to learn more about properties in the area. I mentioned how AirDNA tells you all the revenue stats, all the occupancy stats, and then you make— any of the mathematical brains back there are saying, well, what are the costs? It's all relative to how— what the expenses are. Well, guess what? Ask people for them. You can find those numbers. So here's an example on Airbnb of me asking property owners, Airbnb hosts. These are people that are doing the things that we want to do, and I'm asking them, what is it like to be an Airbnb host? What does it cost? Like, what— I love Nicanoya Peninsula. I would love to build a property there, but I don't know what it entails. Do you mind sharing with me your expenses? and letting me know what it would take to also do something like this. And you find some people— you do that with 20 properties, you know, you find properties that you like that you want to emulate, and you'll get some responses like this where you're like, unfortunately, I can't disclose any of the villa's financial data, especially not on this forum. And fair enough, okay. But don't let that deter you because there are people that are also very friendly and very willing to share their experience And their story. So these are examples of where people literally line item it out, telling you, here's my expenses for this villa. You can see how many bedrooms it is. You can see the square footage. You know, you know what, what that would cost now to do something similar. And even better, you might find people, and this is really where I think the real gem of this all, all is, is that you already can find Airbnb hosts by the ratings, on the platform of who's doing a great job, who's getting great reviews. And then you can go to the host page and you can see, oh, these guys are already managing 5, 6 properties in the area. Well, now you just found your Airbnb host manager. You get people like this that say, hey, tell me more about your project. I love what you're doing. This is exactly what we can do for you. We have around 40, 50%, you know, what's the word, cost expenses to revenue. And this guy in particular is now going to be our property manager in Santa Teresa. So there's so much opportunity there if you know where to look for the right information, develop the right relationships, and you know that you're now working in good hands. It's not me that's going to be running that Airbnb. I don't know what it's like to run an Airbnb. In Nicoya Peninsula. This guy does, and now we're partnering together. So my first thing would be to say is that if you want to go do investing abroad, I suggest you go there in person. It's not something I would do fully remote, but there are some people here that do that and have done it successfully. And that's where Tyler says, hold my beer.

So we don't take this approach anymore, although we do take an approach that is similar. But over the last 4 to 5 years, I've been doing builds back in Australia fully remote. This is the latest one that just got finished in February of 2023 and actually just hit the market yesterday to sell. How many have you done? No, this will be— this is my I think I've done 4 now total. I've helped my parents do them. I've done 2 of them. We've also done a couple back in my hometown as well. But I've never seen this place ever in my life. I've never been there. I've never been within an hour of it. I will never see it yet. In a couple of weeks, there'll probably be a couple hundred thousand in my bank account and—

Profit. Profit.

Never been there. So this is all built from the ground up and it is possible to do. It is basically using the principles that we've basically outlined here tonight and it is finding the right team, working from the legal team and working your way down the list rather than trying to work your way up the list, making sure your team is— your foundation is solid at the top and working your way down and things get done for you. Like me, without— I'm halfway across the world. I'm getting emails at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. For instance, at top right there, that's one of my weekly rent checks, almost $1,100 for the week. That probably comes in at 3 o'clock in the morning from Australia. And then also access to our insider investor list so that you're getting the actual updates that our investors are getting so that you can keep track of what we're doing. If you're doing builds yourself, you can compare what we're doing to what you're doing and give us a call and be like, you guys suck. Look at this. Great. Or, we could learn from you, or you could learn from us, whatever it might be. Maybe we can work together. We are going to give you all of this, which is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes and value for absolutely free. We just want to build trust and we want to see you guys win. The more you win, the more likely you are to want to partner with us and win together. All that you need to do is, at any point, Tonight when you're mingling, if you want to come up and scan this QR code, just fill in a couple of details. It's your name, your email, your phone number, and then keep an eye on your inbox to fill up with all of that value. I will disclaimer, it is not finished yet, so give me a few days to finish it all. I have been working on it, and that will hit your inbox soon. But That is, uh, that is it. I'll leave this screen up for anyone that wants all of that, but I appreciate you guys coming out tonight. I hope you got something from it, and talk soon.

Good job, guys. Is there any questions, or should we hand it to John? Yeah, go ahead. If you have any insights between Bali, Phuket, and Costa Rica, which one you think has the highest margins? Can you repeat the question? Yeah, I'll repeat it for you. So the question is, could you provide any insight into Bali, Thailand— Bali, Phuket, you said— and Costa Rica? And how do you see the 3 markets? Which one has the highest margins? It depends on what kind of development you want to do, obviously. So this is not black and white. Costa Rica has the safest options because you're getting freehold rights, and that's— you can have the same exact rights to the property as a local Costa Rican. But it's also more expensive. It's more developed, more Americans, more expats are heading down there, so the cost per build has been accelerating fast. So we're building in Costa Rica around $200 per square foot. For nice properties, like that's nice. But so it's still a fraction of what it is here. Whereas in Thailand or Bali, you're building more around $100 per square foot. So you're going to get better margins in Southeast Asia, but you're also not going to be able to own the property outright. So you're going to be doing long-term leases where it's going to be depending on the country. So like in Thailand, it's going to be 30 years, Bali 25 years. Indonesia, 25 years. Philippines, 50 years. So that could be also a good option for you. And then you can have renewal clauses to renew those leases. Now, I've spoken with some lawyers that do remind you that those then aren't necessarily enforceable. So my recommendation would be whatever project you're going to do down there, keep in mind that this has a 25-year lifespan or 30-year lifespan. If you can renew it beyond that, great. But guess what? Like for me, I'm fine with that because in 30 years I'm going to be like 67. So like that's plenty of time for me to make all my money back from rental revenue. I don't mind. And you can still sell those properties, but you're selling them with the lease. So there is a market for buying and selling properties with leases attached to it. It's quite normal in those markets. Also, one thing to be aware of is when you build, you can own the structure in your name. So the property on top of the land can be yours outright. So if— I mean, kind of a freak situation where maybe you're having some problems with the landowner and they try to take your property, you still have legal rights to the structure on top of it. So they can't— you're kind of— they're handcuffed. So it's a pretty safe situation. You just need to make sure that your investment timeline fits into that model. There are— not to get into the weeds of it, but there are other ways where you can actually buy the property outright and have freehold rights, but it's only through JVs with local partners. So for example, in Thailand or Bali, if 51% of the company is owned by a local national, then you can own the property and do whatever you want with it.

So yeah.

Good presentation. And just a quick question about where the major capital coming from. Are they mostly imported or they are local? What's the best in this type of deal? Where's the capital coming from? Yeah, the capital. Major majority of the capital. I mean, I see a ton of expats building property in these countries. It's mostly coming from foreign, foreign places. Costa Rica, for example, we were in this luxury kind of like compound with security and you walk in and there's these multimillion-dollar homes. And I'm asking, you know, like, how much of this is, you know, from rich Costa Ricans? She's like, oh, like, like none. 95%, this is all foreign money. So it's mostly coming from foreign direct investment. Now, there's a, there's a positive side to this. If we're not going to get into the political or the emotional or moral, like, let's just strictly from an execution standpoint, a lot of these countries are much easier to work in than in the United States. Like there's just less regulation and they want you to have— they want foreign direct investment. These countries, their whole GDP is built on hospitality. Like they want money to go in there and build these properties and you hire, you know, local, local constructors and architects and everything to do this. So there's a lot of incentives for them to, to make it easy for you. I find it much easier to build in In Thailand and in Costa Rica than in the United States, frankly, which is, I mean, not surprising, but maybe a lot of people haven't thought of it that way always. Awesome. Thank you guys very much. So let's mingle. Joe, you want to take it from here?