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Real Estate Without Borders
Why Global Investment Flows Are Shifting Away from Dubai and Dubai Bonds
00:36:52
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to the Real Estate Without Borders podcast. I'm joined here, as always, by the brilliant and worldly Cameron Hutchinson. Now we're going to be talking about. Well, what are we going to be talking about today? I got a couple articles I'm going to bring to the table.
- [00:14]
B
Yeah, I think what would be interesting and, you know, see what your insights are on it. I know it's probably a little bit outside of the standard of what you'll talk about, but are different flows in the real estate investment or international real estate investment world, where money's flowing into and different sides of it, outside of what a lot of people would think or what we've spoken about over the last couple episodes of, you know, secondary homes or apartments that you can invest into to Airbnb out as well as for personal use. And start looking at other interesting trends like AI data centers, green energy facilities and stuff along those lines and why you're seeing institutional funds flow to it. That's. Hopefully that'll be of interest for the listeners. Have you done much of that?
- [00:58]
A
A little bit. We like to talk about it from a news perspective because I think that paying attention to that stuff matters. It's almost like your smart money indicator. Where are the massive funds? Where are these global institutions putting their capital on a country basis, on an asset class basis, on a currency basis? So that I think is always interesting to pay attention to. Yeah, it doesn't give any direct practical advice for people who want to buy a house in a different country, but I think it gives enough of your macro and directional support for some people's thesis of if. Well, some of the articles that I have here, one is UBS just gated a 400 million euro property fund they have in Germany for up to three years. And then the other one is that a lot of the real estate bonds in Dubai, which we've been talking about, obviously in the conflict in the Middle East, a lot of those, the real estate bonds are sort of becoming distressed. Right.
- [01:58]
B
Or there have fallen off too. Right?
- [02:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. The stock, like most stocks are trading down. So understanding like that, that's. Those are pretty easy and intimate sentiment readers on what's happening in different markets. And you know, that can kind of guide your decision making moving forward as a. As a individual direct investor. We do have a lot of people who listen to the show that are larger institutions, global funds, et cetera. So we try and pay attention to all of those.
- [02:23]
B
Yeah, and we'll touch on it a little bit at the end. We spoke about it from an international standpoint, when you're talking about if the thesis is right and you know real estate is only another house or another apartment in a sunny spot or a ski spot in those luxury zones. If you've got a belief that one of the things we'll talk about is the demand for land for data centers and then kind of the subsidiary services from there areas where you can get good cooling technology to help cool off these data centers, good power, green energy power to help with stability. And when you see spikes in the oil market and stuff along those lines and there's, there's ways to get into it as call most fractional investor these days. So we can talk a little bit about that. So it's, it's still understanding that okay, these markets are growing and the logistics are. That's logistics space that's required for these international markets are growing and how can you invest in real estate as that being the tried and true part of your thesis in there while also leveraging economic terms so trends. There we go. Yeah. And still have that core thesis to kind of go around. So you know the, the gating side of it. I mean do you want to jump into that first and then I can sure. Spin off.
- [03:39]
A
Yeah, yeah. Let me share this article real quick. And then so Basically headline says UBS Gates $400 million property fund for up to three years. Swiss bank said liquid assets in the Germany based fund were insufficient to meet the rise in redemption request. So basically they don't have enough liquid assets in the, in the fund. And this is what happens in a lot of cases with real estate because it's levered. Right. So you're, you know the, the, if your valuation comes down, which valuations around the world are coming down right now. If your valuation comes down and you are maybe 75% levered or 75% loan to value and now all of a sudden your price drops 10%, you're closer to 80 or 90% loan to value. If the debt is still there and if all of your investors or a bunch of your investors try and pull capital out, they won't have enough capital to redeem all of the equity because the equity doesn't actually exist anymore. This is, it's a cascading problem and it's not the first of its type. We saw some, we've seen, I mean in Canada we've seen debt fund gating redemptions rom spend trez capital. A couple of like big Canadian debt funds have already done this. I think Black Blackstone did one of their Funds. Yeah, one of their real estate funds. I'll find the specific one. But yeah, they've gated redemption. So basically like, and this is where I'm kind of curious to get your take because I'm, I'm like, I'm such a, I'm such a bear. Right. Like, so I, I always think about things as, and it's not even like that by my nature, like I'm not a negative person, but I think that, you know, your, you know, the best, best outcome doesn't require a plan where. So I always think about the worst. Right. It's like, you know, people with anxiety, it's, it's like what's the worst outcome that could possibly happen? And then I build a plan based on that and I still invest more than most bulls that I know. Right. That's the funny part. But I do it with the assumption that I would still be happy with this investment if the worst case scenario that I've imagined in my head that comes from a lot of this bearishness actually materialized. And so I always try and fact check, stress test my thinking with people who maybe are less accidentally or prototypically bearish, like myself. So I'm curious to get your take. Are we just sort of in a bear market where you've got AI stocks coming down, SaaS, valuations, correcting, stock market, correcting, property markets, correcting. Everything's sort of been deflationary for the last little bit, right?
- [06:23]
B
Yeah. Or would it be that it got a little bit too heavy? Do you know what I mean? Like everything got a little bit too overvalued and it's less of a devaluation and a correction back to kind of things where fundamentals start making some form of sense again. That's more of an equity investment standpoint and standard on it. But I'll tell you, if you're looking at companies with the probability, their P E multiples and that you were seeing out there before, and you probably know better on purchasing prices on multiplexes and stuff like that. What is it cap rates that you were seeing on those before? We're just out of line with what traditional theory really would make sense. And people started thinking it as a new normal across multiple different sides within the economy. And then as you start to see some turmoil from a global economy, whether it be the effect that AI could have and you've seen massive shifts within that, I think software has almost come back a fair amount after push up a couple weeks ago. And then people recalibrate what's going on and then they, the smarter minds will go together and go, okay, here are the fundamentals. What's a strong business? What's a strong real estate market? What's a strong investment play? Ultimately, from a real estate standpoint, probably one of the reasons why you're so attracted to it. One of the things that makes most listeners are as well as there is just a finite amount of it, so it should in theory hold value within the right markets over a huge duration of time. I get to be another caveat. Yeah. And that probably gives you a little bit more confidence on it.
- [07:56]
A
Yeah. I think the other piece with real estate is that it's basically like when you build a house, like when you, you know, when you've improved a site so there's a finite amount of land, but once you've built something on that land, you basically have built a time machine. You baked a cake out of all of the ingredients that are required to make a house and you've paid today's price for them. And then in 20 or 30 or 40, 50 years, most cases, if a home's well built, you don't have to replace most of those goods. And so you get a hedge against inflation in that regard. That's why real estate is often considered an inflation hedge, because the site improvement, yeah, they depreciate and you have to put maintenance and opex dollars into most of those things that exist within the house. But they do that less than how much inflation would cost you to fully replace them in present day. If the house is 50 or my house is 200 years old, if I were to get brickwork done, it's triple brick sandstone pulled from the credit river by hand. If I were to get that done today, it would be millions of dollars of just brickwork probably. And I paid less than a million bucks for the house. So there you go.
- [09:11]
B
Good investment. A little bit more, kind of some other areas that people are touching base on even in the real estate world or starting to focus private institutional capital, I guess would be the easiest way of putting it. You know, one of the themes that more and more people, it's all over the news is this new requirement to be able to service the drive and compute power that's going to be required to be able to leverage it. And so you're seeing more and more organizations, companies, and even just markets as a whole of starting to find the real estate plays that could be associated with that.
- [09:46]
A
For sure.
- [09:48]
B
Ultimately you need great access to huge amounts of energy. So if you're looking at kind of a subsection investment. There is green energy within the right regions to host these data centers because it's consistent. The prices don't change as much from that type of investment as you're seeing within the oil market right now from the cost forecast. You're also seeing the need for land next to great sources of good water for cooling. And there's people putting out crazy theories on where they're going to build their next cooling and data centers. Whether it be, I think some people are starting to push them on the bottom of the ocean. You can see, I think Musk came out and said the next great data center should be in space.
- [10:30]
A
Cool. Yeah, cool. And then all the solar they want to build solar. Yeah. I mean it's going to become a really interesting dynamic. And China is developing so much power generation capacity right now by comparison. Like you know the US is an exceptional example and Europe as well. I mean Germany now has completely erased their nuclear capacity. So you know they're like Europe is in trouble on this regard. China is forging ahead. The US I think is trying to be a leader but there's so much bureaucracy and all these things to get new power generation. You know, talking nuclear, solar, whatever it is. China is developing more solar than anybody else in the world by a long shot. I think like the next three combined.
- [11:17]
B
It's. It gives you geopolitical safety as well. Right. For sure these things are going to need to be developed one way or another or they're planning to. Are they going to over develop, under develop. What's their lifespan on it? You'd have to talk to. Well you were at the Nvidia but they probably the right people there. But these lands will have to be found sourced and you're already seeing them get picked up. So you're starting to see a flow of funds globally into either directly into land and real estate to be able to service it from a commercial standpoint or alternatively into kind of the supporting industries. And that's happening everywhere. One it's top of mind I think over the news over the last couple years in Canada. But logistical logistics ports along those lines are seeing a huge increase in capital flows and the ability to be able to transport any finished good or Canadian perspective oil and gas effectively. So you're seeing ports requirements go up and that's also the long term effect of U.S. tariffs. Maybe that'll shift around to more nationalized economies a little bit. Nationalized probably seems to go a little bit of a dark word bring in house economies. So you don't have to have as much trade, but trade functions for everything. So you're seeing a fair amount of institutional money drop into logistics. London, seeing a huge portion of it. It's really, it's scattered amongst. You talked about Dubai or we will talk about Dubai again. But it's funny when you're doing research into past trends. So where you've seen past capital go, obviously there was a huge portion of it getting dropped into that market for the luxury real estate, office space, real estate development stuff along those lines. But you had fired me over a couple articles about what this, the repercussions for their market has come out to from the real estate side. So that one probably going to shift a fair amount if you're forward looking. But this is more of a back 10.
- [13:14]
A
Yeah, I think the other piece is just like what other components of this supply chain end up breaking as a result of this. I mean in Canada like the Ontario and federal government just removed sales tax on new homes. So you know, and they did it just for a one year period. So they're obviously pretty, they're really trying to stimulate the, the housing economy there I think, you know, so that construction to me is a big one, you know. And if I think about the people who I would want unemployed, if I'm a policymaker, I would be much more comfortable with my white collar workforce being unemployed than my, my blue collar workforce being unemployed. You know, I mean there's tough guys like those are the, those are the dudes who scare me. You know, they got, and they got the guns and the tools and the snowmobiles and whatever like that, that, you know, so those are. And I think that you feel it a lot more if they're unemployed. So you're seeing that happening. The debt side is another interesting piece of the puzzle, right? Like banks, lenders, you know, in the US you see this a lot. You have, your banks basically have gone from lending a ton of debt and doing record mortgages during the pandemic period, you know, on your MBS where basically they develop a mortgage and sell it to Fannie or Freddie or whatever, those are gone. Like nobody's buying houses in the US like the number of, the spread between the number of buyers and sellers in the US right now is the deepest that it's ever been. So you've literally got the deepest buyer's market in U.S. history. So you've got that and then the debt side and then you get into equities, right? You get into REITs and things that we've been Talking about in a market like Dubai where you've got six Dubai real estate bonds. Let me just see here. Put it up on the screen here. 6 Dubai Real Estate bonds fall into distress as the war rolls on. They represent about 15% of US dollar real estate bonds in the Middle East. And it's funny because when this happened in China with Evergrande and you used the word nationalized, but this is where you start to see policymakers really playing a massive role with this stuff. Germany actually nationalized all their rental housing already. They did a referendum to vote if the consumers wanted to take them away from these mega funds and roll it into the national government. But in China, you had like. And I thought this was going to be the Lehman moment for like this. I mean, it seems like we've had so many Lehman moments in, in, you know, Canadian.
- [15:37]
B
What was the fund over there?
- [15:39]
A
Evergrande. Yeah, Evergrande. There was a bigger one too. Evergrande was China's second largest property developer and they were ordered to liquidate in 2024 following a massive debt crisis exceeding 300 billion USD. So a third of a trillion dollars.
- [15:58]
B
There's a crazy thing though, because as you're talking about it, and if you're thinking about different areas, there's still in every kind of Western society, there's still a huge lack of housing for what will be required. From a statistics standpoint, it's like looking forward, the States is still expected to have anywhere from 4 to 7 million deficit. The UK 1.5 million dollar 1.5 million housing deficit. Australia's got the same thing in where you're not seeing the deficits or increase or a lack of development. This is why institutional money is flowing to it. You're also seeing huge industrial vacancies and are extremely low. So you're having a huge gap of what's available there too. So it's a funny thing because as we're talking about it and bringing up all these points of there's issues within the housing market, there's still a supply and demand supply issue. If you're going to run basic economics on the whole thing, a supply issue in the long run should eventually lead to increased pricing, just lack of supply, more demand by nature. Right?
- [17:07]
A
Yeah. I guess that really hinges on like the status quo of global human migration staying, which, you know, it's been under pressure in a lot of places like Europe, there's been a lot of pushback for mass immigration. Canada, there's been a lot of pushback. The U.S. i mean, their whole Election basically was on that and there's been a lot of things happening as a result of it. Will, will western countries continue to grow from a population basis?
- [17:39]
B
Canada declined. Right. For the first time, is that right?
- [17:42]
A
Canada's population is declining for the first time ever in history. Yeah. So you look at that like the feeder countries. So you're India, China, a lot of these like high growth countries that typically had been feeding. They also are past the replacement rate now. So they're actually declining. Sorry. The populations will be declining. So they're more. Because they're, they're aging. Right. So you know, in China, India is a little bit further ahead. But like their demographic dividend of more young people paying into the country than old people taking from it is gone or it's eroding.
- [18:19]
B
The population now is starting to shift over.
- [18:21]
A
Yeah.
- [18:22]
B
So ages ago.
- [18:24]
A
Yeah. Well you never thought, you never thought like China or India would ever have this replacement rate or whatever experience negative demography. But now we're seeing it in real time. China's population will fall by 30% in our lifetimes. And so the question becomes the only places in the world that still have a positive replacement rate are the Middle east and Africa, are they going to grow substantially enough? Africa is really on deck. It's supposed to grow by billions of people over the coming decades. But are those people going to replace the migration from India, Central America, China or much of Asia that was going into the western world? I don't know. But this is the key question that that whole thesis hinges on. If we're thinking there is a scarcity of housing in the western world, what's
- [19:25]
B
great that you brought up the aging population because one of the thesises in the future looking forecast, you've been hearing about it for a fair amount of time though of places that's showing good returns and good inflows of funds into it is actually call it hospitality or healthcare. And from strong investment correlations in the gap, talking from an institutional side or a REIT side or whatnot, you're seeing a huge amount of demand for old age homes. I'm sure there's a better term for long term care facilities. There we go. That's a better term for it from a political standpoint. And that's only going to keep growing as you're seeing this wave of the last generation kind of get older. I'll tell you. Family members and friends and family members, friends, family members having to start to look at assisted living. There's room for improvement in the pricing of these things. Is astronomical. Like it completely takes out most people. So there's a huge market there and you're starting to see more and more people start to push into it. You know, from a stat standpoint, if you're looking at 2025, there was a 25% increase from the statistics that I was looking at and of investment globally into those types of markets. So up to about $55 billion at year. Even that seems low to me from a statistics standpoint. But interestingly enough, when you're breaking it down from different flows of funds of capital, the largest number is logistics in industrial space. And I think we're lazy and we all use Amazon and Walmart and shipping and all that stuff now as well. So that space is going up like Matt. But the biggest increase year over year was data centers, 55% increase. And I think it's just starting. There's all.
- [21:22]
A
I agree, like there's so many people who are bearish on AI, but like I actually like work for an AI company and we create automations and agents for real estate professionals. And like, I don't think people realize that like, yeah, it's probably overhyped from like, is it going to be like, you know, rocket scientists, like AGI, all this stuff? Probably not, but it doesn't need to be. Like most of the work that is done by humans right now in the world is. It's like people pushing paper and clicking a button over and over again and sending a text message and sending an email and reading a contract and repeatedly doing these really simple BS workflows that is easily replaceable by AI. But it requires a lot of compute, right, because you have to do it every day. I think that that is the direction that a lot of this will start heading. Now that AI has hands. Like you've seen Claude basically take a lot of the principles of openclaw and make it possible for you to remote operate your computer text into your computer and tell it to do stuff. And your computer is just sitting at your desk doing stuff for you. You basically have a virtual assistant experience now through an AI that can operate your computer. I don't know, like the. I can't see compute shrinking anytime soon.
- [22:45]
B
I've started to implement it and I work, I'd say I'm probably a little bit old school and stuff like that. And you know exactly for the tasks that you're talking about. I now have it running a script, pull up news articles and how it can correlate into affecting certain businesses. For the other aspect of what I do on a day to day side, which is helping businesses manage their foreign exchange. And so instead of me spending an hour and a half in the morning kind of getting up to speed of what's happened in the market and then coming up with my own idea of where it's going to go and how it could affect businesses that we work with or that we're looking to work with, this thing now helps me digest it. I still do my own because I still believe that there's value in at least exercising my mind a little bit more. But it's taking away a fair amount of work. And me as somebody that's probably a little bit late in the sales side of things about implementing it, starting to use it as well. Then you look at parents starting to use it the same way when they started using social media a little bit later. And you're right, if everybody's starting to adopt it and the compute power is so much heavier, you're going to consistently need data centers that we're not saying something for the first time here by any means. But no, it does allow for is. Okay, where are people building these things and what are interesting ways to invest into from a real estate?
- [24:09]
A
Right, yeah, 100.
- [24:11]
B
You're seeing that shift over to Singapore. There's a huge amount of people effectively pushing into there to help with those things. Logistics in Japan and the UK to help facilitate, you know, the trade of the fuel needed for all of these new energy resources. So you know, where you're seeing it all move around into is. Is really quite interesting. You know, one of ones that also apparently is seeing great returns as well as investment into is student housing globally.
- [24:37]
A
Right, yeah, that was an interesting. I feel like that's an interesting trade from my perspective because like I feel like when we talk about AI, like higher education is not something I'm super bullish on, you know.
- [24:48]
B
No, I mean whatever. It was 15, you know, when we were going through school it was, you go and you get a business degree or something that's interested in that sets you up. And then I've got cousins that are 12, 15 years younger than me and they were. You do computer science. And I don't know what the new one is because now computer science is becoming, unless it's language models and that next level of coding which is more building out AI, the actual. Just building code to whatever run a video game or something along those lines so that that skill set's drying up the environment because AI's taking it over. So I'm curious to see There will always be something that people can use to go to school for and get.
- [25:32]
A
Yeah, it's true.
- [25:33]
B
Come up with new thesises, but on how to kind of continue and expand what we're using or what we're doing. But I wonder where it's going. And ultimately, I mean, institutions have decided that there's still going to be people going to school and they're still going to need a place to house and, and live in and that they're going to get good returns from it. So they're seeing something obviously there that, that makes sense to push pension funds into and stuff along those lines.
- [25:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. What about from like a, like a national perspective? Because like, I know we talked a little bit about like migration, housing shortage, et cetera, but you look at a place like Japan where there's like a million empty houses, Italy, where there's hundreds of thousands of empty houses that you can buy houses, you can get houses for free in Japan and Italy. Right. Like, do some of these places end up going that way, you know? Or like when what ends up becoming our high growth markets? Like I talked to Chip Wilson, the guy, the billionaire founder of Lululemon, about this on the Canadian real estate investor podcast, and he was saying geographically, he thinks that everything will move towards the equator where you can harvest cheap solar and have robots working in these overheated factories, and then people will actually live in more comfortable climates further away. I thought that was pretty interesting. Anyway, yeah, I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on global geography as a result of some of these changing
- [26:45]
B
demands, all of those free houses, and correct me if I'm wrong, in these places where towns are empty, those are rural communities. Right. And so this has been going on for a long time, but you're seeing an urbanization of almost everywhere. And the second an economy becomes more and more mature is the more the job is centered into needing you to be in a city. You can flip that on its head and say that AI would make it so you don't actually need to be in a city. And as you kind of alluded to, it's going to be the people that can actually build stuff and work with their hands that will be more important people. And why pay a premium if you can do your job anywhere? You saw that thesis probably get a little bit stamped out after Covid when people were out pushing out of cities to get more land and more space and whatever, trees, instead of just staring at brick and mortar the whole time and then starting to come back into the city for not only jobs but also for lifestyle. I'm a city guy by heart though, so I think I like a city. I don't like to get to a car like everywhere.
- [27:48]
A
It doesn't even really matter whether or not you are because like I think humans, human beings have, have proven with, with their capital, like people vote with their dollars and their feet. Right. Human beings are urbanizing. So whether, like I like rural life but you like city life. But it doesn't matter what, what I think because the market is ultimately what determines the outcome. And the market has said people are urbanizing. Right. You go to the US and like, you know, you've gone from like 50% of the population to like 60, 70% of the population lives in urban areas. Africa is supposed to like entirely urbanize over the next coming decades. Right. 70, I think 50% of people globally and 70% of people in the western world live in urban areas. So we know a good point there
- [28:34]
B
about where the money's going. And one of the things that's like a watch and avoid from an investment standpoint point, if you're thinking about commercial real estate and this is across all markets. So this isn't. Yeah, this is a local or international investment standpoint, secondary offices. So those offices that are in the suburbs of a city, those things are, are having a really tough time and you're seeing credit crunch on those ones. And funnily enough, what's doing quite well. And I'm downtown in Toronto right now, my office. But the class A office buildings are the vacancies. Basically nothing because everybody's picking up the nice office space. But they're keeping people at these secondary offices and they're kind of getting rid of them because they go, okay, you know, let's say you're a back office person. Do we really need you in the office? Let's save on those, on that cost. We'll take a portion of it and we'll get ourselves kind of that Mark B office in the city. And so you're still seeing even from a capital standpoint, from an office standpoint, people pushing into the city rather than supporting the Markham office Towers.
- [29:37]
A
Yeah.
- [29:38]
B
And you're seeing that from lending harder to get lending on those ones. There's people running into insolvency issues as well as from just vacancy.
- [29:46]
A
I think another interesting thing, like now that people have done work from home is return to office. Like commuting in a car is, is like people are not going to tolerate that.
- [29:57]
B
I refuse.
- [29:57]
A
And so I think yeah, so I think like this is bullish for like transit centric development especially as well. Because even for me, like now that I've worked from home and said, okay, like if you're gonna make me go office and you're going to ask me to burn like three hours sitting in a car where I can't do anything, like that's my time that I'm losing. Right. I don't get paid to be there for that. Like I'm making the same salary working from home. And so I think people's tolerance around that is going to change and people are going to try and get that time back by commuting on transit at least, or living in more urban areas. And that, that part is the piece that really fascinates me, to be honest with you.
- [30:31]
B
And that comes into logistics, what we're talking about before, right. You're seeing more and more money pump into this stuff. I'll always equate to Toronto. I know there's listeners kind of throughout North America and throughout the world, but we are massively ramping up spending here. It's causing issues because while you build a subway system or a new tram system, it stops everything else. But they're trying to make it so logistics is easier to get in and out of the city so you don't have to do and sit in a car. And there's got, I mean I'm a big user and I think good tram systems, train systems are great. My father lives outside of the city and I'll take a train there before I drive because I find it more enjoyable. But if work's still here, people want to live out of it. No one wants to commute. If you have good infrastructure, the commuters who drive, who still will drive, will have an easier time, but you'll also be able to push people in and out of the city easier. So you're seeing that kind of everywhere. I mean, we're talking in Canada building high speed trains now to Toronto to Montreal though, and kind of building up the logistics of the flow of people.
- [31:36]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I count on. They've been talking about the same thing from San Francisco to LA and California for decades. I don't know if you get the problem with democracy honestly at face value is that it runs in four year election cycles. So you get this political business cycle where you have policymakers that like to promise stuff to try and win an election, but then the delivery timeline on it isn't achievable within their election period.
- [32:03]
B
So the budgets are never right. But that's a whole other.
- [32:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, that's just Western democracy. I mean, I don't know, it's got to be like, you know, you can't imagine that people are that stupid of capital allocators. Right? Like there's got like, let's just give them some credit and say they're stealing money. Like, you know, like they've got to be. Something has to be happening here. I don't know.
- [32:25]
B
That's more comforting than just being so inept.
- [32:29]
A
I think that that's why people want to imagine that there's some conspiracy that governments are stealing money because it's like they can't possibly be this stupid that they overpaid for something by 4x and the timeline was off by 10x. Right. Like the Eglinton Crosstown or something. But maybe they are.
- [32:47]
B
I think just as I'm cognizant of the time here, one of the things that I thought would be important to touch on, we've jumped around from a couple different ideas here is that international real estate investment. You're talking about the commercial side of it and how do you get into it? Because these projects aren't like buying a thousand dollar apartment with a return on investment plus your own personal value use. You know, if you're thinking about it's a new port or whatever, a new logistics center or getting some form of investment into a new AI development or trying to take advantage of those types of things, how can you do it? And this isn't going to be rocket scientists and rocket science. And I'm not going to throw out names of REITs that think could go, well, that's not an advisor, nor do I research that stuff nearly enough. But there are interesting ways that you can get into it. I'm not sure. I know you spoke with a guy who's basically doing one of them, but there's crowdfunding and he was doing that, I think over in Poland.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah, yeah. Most of like Eastern Europe.
- [33:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, you can look at those. The easiest way is to look into REITs and find a thesis within a REIT that you like and then you can do as much as you would want. And from an investment standpoint, 50 bucks to 50,000 to 5 million and then you can go into syndications and you can find buying groups and you can look at also if you want to take another step back, which, you know, debt's got its own thing, but you can look at investing into companies that service or produce debt to be able to purchase these types of ones. So there, yeah, you can have thesis on commercial real estate investments, ones that focus internationally that are trying to take advantage of the potential growth that could come about or potential needs that could come about from these trends that you're seeing around the world without having to go out and buy a farm next to a river that has a solar power plant to hope. Right, right, right. So I think it still correlates to kind of the overall goal of, of this podcast of how can you find different areas internationally to invest and how can you make it available or what's available for the average person. And probably a tough thing to start to talk about investment into REITs and stuff when the opening one are a couple that have currently gated their for sure their pull out capabilities on it. But you know, there's risks associated with any type of investment and there's ways to get into it in multiple different ways.
- [35:10]
A
Well, it's such an, it's, it's such a more like simple way for people to dip their toes into a certain market too. Like I would totally agree with you. Like if you're, if you're like direct investing in another country and sort of the whole podcast is about, and it needs a whole podcast. Right like that. You know, it's not an easy thing to do. But if you're just, if you're sort of like, you know, curious about a market and want to, want to learn more, I think REITs is a really easy way. And honestly with the way valuations are right now and how volatile currencies, rents. Most of the variables in indirect investing are the chances of you being able to beat a yield from a lot of REITs is actually pretty low. So in today's dollars, if you're buying an asset today, in two years, will that be different? Probably, yeah. But in the meantime, shouldn't your capital be doing something for you? Pretty easy way for you to get familiar with local markets is just buy into these large institutional vehicles. 100%. Completely agree with you on that.
- [36:04]
B
Yeah. I don't know.
- [36:06]
A
Everything can leave it there. I know you're firefighting some deals, so I'll let you, I'll let you, I'll let you get to get back to that. I mean, I guess you're doing a lot of that right now with everything happening in the.
- [36:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. You know, the currency market's always fluctuating around and there's always issues with everything and people trying to do stuff globally and trying to win deals, trying to help people manage their currency exchange risk. And you're absolutely right. I can should jump because I'm sure I've got a couple calls and should look at my phone. That's set to do not disturb. Right?
- [36:35]
A
There you go.
- [36:36]
B
Appreciate it. It's been a fun one.
- [36:37]
A
Yeah, 100% man. Okay, well, for those of you listening, thanks a lot for giving us your time. And if you can really appreciate if you leave the show a five star review, maybe share this with a friend or a coworker or your mom or anyone like that and we'll see you again as soon as we can.
- [36:51]
B
Bye.