Jason Hartman broadcasts this episode from St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. He talks about housing affordability and how refinancing has boomed. Then Jason brings on Andres Pira, CEO of Blue Horizon Developments, Managing Director of Phuket Condos & Homes and author of the book Homeless to Billionaire – Andres discusses the importance of giving before expecting and how that will help you succeed in business and life.
Investor0:00
If you don’t have any investment, real estate investments, you will not have the opportunity to learn to make mistake, learn from it. And then you will not be able to tell which one is a better investment. I think you just have to get it started somewhere and with the help of your investment counselor, and then move forward.
Announcer0:18
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:08
Welcome to Episode 1304 1304. Thank you for joining me today. I’m coming to you from St. JOHN, New Brunswick, Canada. This is where we stopped today on the mastermind cruise where we’ve got small group of our real estate investors here on the cruise. And we’ve been exploring the New England states and now Canada, and then we will be headed home after we visit Halifax, Nova Scotia Our next stop on the voyage. We are on a princess cruise ship boy princess does a great job I really got handed to him. And one of the things I just realized and we’ve been in several ports, but I did not notice this before the horn you know the big foghorn? Well, you may not know this or you may not even be familiar with the show. But there was a very famous show that I used to watch as a kid called Love Boat. And maybe many of you remember, you remember Captain stubing. And the bartender, Isaac, and Julie McCoy, the cruise director. Well, that was set on a princess cruise ship and the horn on the ship, as we were departing the port here today, and we’re just leaving the harbor. Now. The horn plays the theme from Love Boat. I mean, talk about attention to detail. I stand impressed. Hats off to Princess Cruises for that one. Really, really good. Well, hey, Today we’ve got our main segment today, where we are talking with a man who went from being homeless, to being a billionaire, a truly amazing story and a large part That was guess what Guess what? Real Estate, income property.
Announcer3:05
Imagine that.
Jason Hartman 3:05
Imagine that. So, couple more things. New Brunswick, Canada here, while St. JOHN I should say this is the home of the famous reversing falls. Now I know some of you have been here because some of you have sent me messages saying make sure to see it why saw it about I want to say was here maybe 18 years ago. It’s a really odd thing. I’m not sure it’s the only place on earth where this happens. But when the tide changes, oh, maybe you can hear that the horn is going off now playing The Love Boat theme. Amazing. Talk about advertising. When the tide changes, the water flow literally reverses direction. It’s really amazing and odd to watch that happen. I’m not sure that happens. anywhere else on planet Earth, maybe it does. I’m not sure but it happens here. I can tell you that much. Anyway, we’re on our way to Halifax, Nova Scotia tomorrow will be there in the morning as the ship docks there. And yesterday, we went to Bar Harbor, Maine. Ah, it’s just beautiful up here this time of year, the fall foliage, the fresh crisp fall air. absolutely wonderful. We had a great seafood lunch yesterday together as a group. Just a really, really nice time here on the cruise. I got to tell you though, I made into my much there. Boy, they feed you well on these cruise ships. You know what it’s just like, I think you just you just eat and then you think about well, what am I gonna eat again? It’s an awful lot of food. It really is. It really is, but good stuff. Okay. I want to share with you and we’ll probably talk about this in more depth tomorrow on tomorrow’s episode, but An amazing Wall Street Journal story, probably conceptually won’t surprise you too much. But the details will surprise you for sure. And it talks about how people making $100,000 a year still can’t afford to buy a house in many American cities. Now, I’m not talking about expensive places on the west coast in the northeast, South Florida. I’m just talking about cities across the country, where 100 grand won’t even buy you a house. And it reminds me of a story I probably shared many years ago on the show here. There was a housing tract in Irvine, a woman came in there she was a young lawyer making lots of money by any objective standard, she would be considered successful in her career. And the new home salesperson this was a development that I bought a home and I remember the new home salesperson working for California Pacific homes in Irvine, California, told me that she came in and salesperson was talking to her about the prices and what you can buy and, and she literally started to tear up saying, I can’t believe I can’t afford to buy a house. And, you know, she’s a successful attorney can’t buy a house is truly amazing what has happened in our culture. And, you know, a large part of this, of course, is the price of packaged commodities, the regulation that makes construction so expensive, the regulation that makes it hard to build anything on any piece of land, the environmental regulations, and then of course, low interest rates, pushing up prices, basically, the very definition of inflation, right, a large supply of currency of dollars chasing a limited supply of goods and services, and the those goods are the properties, the homes, and then you add all of that, to when a country doesn’t really have much of any border control. Now all the tech companies would say the opposite because, well, they’re just greedy, right? All of the CEOs of Google and Facebook and all the tech companies, you know, they just think well let everybody in because we want to get as much cheap labor as possible. But, you know, that drives up the cost of housing. I mean, look at what has happened on the west coast of North America, not just the United States, but Canada. Right. I mean, Vancouver prices have just been dramatically increasing Seattle. You know, all along the Oregon coast care, the California coast, certainly the expensive Northeastern markets, where you’ve got money from China, Russia, India, the Middle East, I mean, everywhere on the planet, coming in just driving the cost of housing up Because, again, limited supply of stock of inventory of widgets, those houses are the widgets widgets are just a name for an economic unit. And those prices are just pushed up. I mean, this has been going on for decades. It’s nothing new folks. You know the story, but it is truly shocking what happened. So we’ll share a little bit more about this story, some details on it, probably on tomorrow’s episode, as I will be talking to you from Halifax, Nova Scotia, another beautiful area of the world. really, truly amazing what has happened. So for all of you listening, right, great news for you. Absolutely great news for you. Because of course, you own these inexpensive properties that just can’t be rebuilt new, because you purchase them at or below the cost of construction or even if you paid a little bit above the cost of construction. That costs just keeps rising inflation, inflation, inflation and your loans keep getting paid down, your mortgages keep getting paid down through inflation induced death destruction. So lots of great stuff happening for you there. And by the way refinance applications have gone through the roof. I just saw an article today that literally refinancing activity has tripled, tripled, three times up 300%, approximately, because of the low interest rates. So if you started following my work 15 years ago, 10 years ago, seven years ago, and you had heard me back in 2004 2005 2007 2009 2012, whenever you started following my work on the podcast at our live conferences, whenever right, and you heard me talking about refi till you die, well, depending on how long You’ve been following my work, you may have already gone through a couple of refi till you die cycles, maybe it’s time to consider another one. And if not, just go back and negotiate with your lender for lower rates. Now, you’re not going to get cash out. But people are doing as I talked about, they are doing workouts. Amazingly, you don’t even have to show a hardship. I mean, very few people have hardships nowadays, right? The economy has been booming. Things are really looking great. There are certainly some clouds on the horizon, as we all see as an economic boom, can’t keep going forever. And this one won’t, the recession will inevitably come. But these lenders, especially if those are portfolio loans, meaning the lender has not sold the loan off to another entity. And by the way, just so you know, a distinction on that. If you have a mortgage and you received a notice saying, Hey, don’t pay ABC lender. Pay XYZ lender now because The servicing for your loan has changed for your mortgage that servicing has changed. That doesn’t mean that they sold the loan, it might mean that it might not. So the same lender may still own that loan. And if they do, they don’t want you as a customer to leave and refinance and go somewhere else. So they might just lower your interest rate as an accommodation. This is happening, people it is happening now. Can you guarantee it’ll happen? Absolutely not. But it never hurts to ask, as the scripture says, to he that knocketh the door shall be opened, right? So ask ask ask doesn’t hurt to ask to see if you can get a reduction in your interest rate. If you can’t, maybe a refinance is what makes sense. Okay, so we’ve had just a few people lately, still getting tickets for our upcoming profits in paradise event. Which is just nine days away, and a property tour included with that as well. So go to Jason Hartman live com if you’d like to grab a last minute ticket for that, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in Orlando for the property tour end or the profits in paradise event. Okay, let’s go to our guests.
Jason Hartman 12:25
It’s my pleasure to welcome Andrew spirit to the show. He is CEO of blue horizon developments and managing director of poo cat condos and homes. He’s the author of a new book entitled homeless to billionaire 18 wealth attraction principles for creating unlimited opportunity. Andrus, welcome. How are you?
Andres Pira 12:44
I’m very good. Thank you for having me here today.
Jason Hartman 12:46
Well, it’s a pleasure to have you. Are you coming to us from Phuket now?
Andres Pira 12:50
I just came from Dubai yesterday. I’ve been there receiving a couple of awards. Men before that we came from Thailand but we’ve been traveling around a lot. The last The last
Jason Hartman 13:00
three months. Fantastic. Tell us how you got your start. I mean, as the title would suggest, really, that’s an amazing story. You were homeless, and now you’re a billionaire.
Andres Pira 13:10
Yeah, it’s an autobiography of my trial and error and successes over the last 16 years in Asia and Thailand.
Jason Hartman 13:16
Fantastic. So give us kind of the genesis of your career. I know you were in the brokerage business, and then you get some investing in properties. And then development is basically the progression right?
Andres Pira 13:29
Absolutely. I mean, I started in real estate, I would my first job that I ever landed in in Thailand and I got employed as a marketing executive for a real estate agency and that was more or less giving a brochure or solder office and trying to get people inside the door and working myself up. I wanted to become a sales agent. I got the chance one day to show a client around and he actually bought them the first presentation so I got promoted to sales agent and I did very well the first year and they are working Me as the best sales agent for the year, which led me to become a sales manager for that organization and then Sales Director for the company. And after that, I wanted to do something alone. And I started my first real estate agency. And that led to acquiring a lot of investors and buyers who were happy with my advice and, and giving them great returns from their properties. And with that, I gained a lot of trust with them. So they asked me if I were interested, they will be interested to started developing different projects. And of course I was so I became a real estate developer after that.
Jason Hartman 14:32
Okay, so so give us some ideas to like, what you’re and what geography where was that located? When you did all that?
Andres Pira 14:39
Everything that distorted in Thailand in pocket pocket Island is Thailand’s richest province, and it’s in south of Thailand. So that’s where I’m based with and that’s what I do most of my resorts and hotels and commercial buildings.
Jason Hartman 14:52
Okay, great. And what timeframe are you talking about, just so we have kind of some context around it.
Andres Pira 14:57
Well, my first job was 16 years. years ago in real estate, and I would say it took me four years from that. So that would be 12 years ago that I started my first real estate agency and I was buying and flipping the unit. And I started my first developments 10 years ago.
Jason Hartman 15:15
Wow, that is an incredible story that congratulations. That’s phenomenal. So what would you say are some of your your secrets to success, if you will?
Andres Pira 15:24
Well, in real estate is patience, persistence, perseverance, and never giving up and always study your competitors very, very closely because they’re always doing something great and take a little bit of that and do it better. So it’s a lot of competitive market. So you need to be able to really intensively research all all the competitors you have around and buy in the right moment and sell at the right moment assets. So it’s a balance with all these things.
Jason Hartman 15:51
When you say in real estate, just want you to kind of define that for us. Do you mean brokerage Do you mean investing the mean development or
Andres Pira 16:00
all of them? Well, there is different parts of it, I guess many of the properties that I buy I do it to let them out to lease them others I buy empty land plus to do developments on and they involve my architects and engineers to do great projects to sell unit by unit or a whole project itself. And sometimes we have commercial buildings that I buy or renovate or restore is many different aspects in in real estate that we can go into the we’re currently doing.
Jason Hartman 16:28
Yeah, so in your book, you highlight several important principles, you know, lead a laser focused life, take risks, responsibility and action, the care to pick a couple of your favorites and go over them with us.
Andres Pira 16:40
Absolutely. And I was a lead the laser focus life, it’s, you can use it in all walks of life for whatever company or whatever you want to achieve or desire or be or do or have. And what I noticed is most people never really achieve anything because they’re not really specific on what they want to achieve or what I want to do or what they want to see in life. So little Focus life is means to be very specific on where you’re going and what makes you happy and what the things that you want to acquire or what kind of success you want or achievement, and how that’s going to look like in where am I in five years? Where am I in 10 years? What kind of experience I want to have. So for me, it’s an icy that will many successful people will have very specific goals and targets to reach. And that’s one of the first fundamental keys to moving forward with in life.
Jason Hartman 17:24
Okay, so focus. I mean, everybody listening would agree that that’s important. Not everybody does it, of course, but very important to understand that, pick a couple of others. I mean, you’ve got quite a few things here. What do you have 18 of them, right?
Andres Pira 17:40
Yeah, the same principle. Some are easier to adapt and sometimes take longer time. And it’s same principles that I’ve been learning to trial and error for the last 16 years. Some of them are taken from great role models, leaders, and success, successful people as on them and I learned by myself leading all my organizations that And the employees I have So, and also taking risks. I mean, every great success or milestone or achievement is when you take risk in life, we have to do that. But we have to take them in a calculated way and also put everything in line, what’s the worst thing that can happen? What’s the best thing that can happen? And if the worst thing happens, can I handle it? And how do I bounce back from it? And, and also, make sure that you have to take big risks in life that that’s how it is, but calculated what what what can happen if it doesn’t go your way. And I mean, the greatest successes we have with projects is we have we have taken risks that we have built, and they turned out to be great. So
Jason Hartman 18:36
yeah, no, no question. You know, what I find particularly interesting is this idea of that you talked about in principle number five, the celebration creates an addiction to progress. Tell us about that.
Andres Pira 18:50
Well, I would say, our team and our departments every time we have a great every time we have a success or a milestone or a record that we have broken and We celebrate extensively and sometimes, I mean I’ve taken my departments and companies to we just came came back from Kilimanjaro. With summit that mountain in Tanzania, we’ve been in a Japan doing skiing together. We’ve been in Indonesia, Camden, active volcano. This is the kind of torjussen goals are put on my team since day one. When we reach this thing, let’s celebrate together let’s do something together. Let’s be different from other companies, but also that goes in hand with your competitors. And I also tell the employees and people around you that when our competitor reach something great and they have done something successful, we should be happy about it instead of complaining because most companies they get jealous a hatred envy and that just going to affect yourself. It’s a be happy for other people success is celebrated extensively with the people around you, because the more you celebrate it, because more than addiction and the more you want to experience it, right.
Jason Hartman 19:52
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I was kind of when I asked you that question. I was kind of relating to the idea of, yeah, I mean, there’s sort of two major philosophies in life, you know, save all your money, go out and learn as much as you can and save as much as you can. Right? But then there’s the other philosophy of work hard, play hard, if you will, right? earn some money, but, you know, spend it because tomorrow’s not guaranteed, right? You might as well live it up. And I think the optimum answer is a balance. To some extent. Do you think it’s important for people to sort of reward themselves for their progress along the way? I mean, or is it good to be just really frugal? Well,
Andres Pira 20:31
honestly, I really believe that you should reward yourself as much as possible every time because you’re the product of success. So and you need to be recognized when you do something great. It’s you need to tell yourself that you done something great and you achieved this milestone or or you have broken this record and you see yourself moving forward. You see yourself developing yourself and when you reward yourself you feel great about it. And some people that they do it opposite, they reward themselves but they instantly feel better. about it because they think that they have done don’t have the right to do it, or they should do it for a later stage. But that just creates the stress in that in that individual. So I guess it’s very important especially to reward yourself and others. I mean, you’re the most important person in your life. So of course, you should reward yourself and pat yourself on the shoulder when you do something great. And that makes you feel good.
Jason Hartman 21:20
What is a vibrational giving
Andres Pira 21:22
vibrational giving you something and it all started in Thailand because if I take you back many years back and in Thailand, they have another believe it’s, for instance, when we have our birthdays in our modern our western world, we expect to receive gifts for everyone when we have a birthday, right? And in Thailand is different. It’s opposite when you have your birthdays, then you should give gifts to others, especially to other people that are that are less privileged than you and I just love this idea. And I noticed that every time I started to practice it, things around me started to go better. I start my company starting to increase I get any unexpected incomes. These phone calls emerged from class that I forgot about the one or to buy something more and invest more so, vibrational giving is to give out whatever you want to give first and if you give success or happiness or money to other people and you feel good about it, then that will be returned tenfold to you every single time because it’s an energy it’s an emotional we give out to the universe as I call it and that the universe will see it and give you more of that. I’ve been trying to disprove this mirror year after year but I’m always getting the same results. So I’m gone from wishing to hoping to just knowing that the work so it’s very important to give whatever you want first in life so not practice that every single day.
Jason Hartman 22:37
Okay, good. Well, you know, what else do you want people to know maybe something I haven’t asked you.
Andres Pira 22:42
I do a lot of different things. I wrote the book now and I’m a real estate investor, real estate developer. I have others several businesses I have I held centers and gyms and, and coffee shops and restaurants around so it’s a lot of different things. And I’m doing this to help others to actually propel in their business and making them more successful. So that’s the whole idea behind the book. So people are free to ask me anything within that. And hopefully I can help.
Jason Hartman 23:07
Uh huh. Talk to us a little bit about the more maybe technical side of real estate investing, if you will, you know, some of the reasons you were attracted to it, some of the you know, tricks of the trade or the things that make it so great. I mean, I love income property. I think it’s the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. And it’s accessible to so many people at different levels, you know, you can be very wealthy and do it or you can just have a very modest means, you know, buy one house and rent it out and then you know, get another A few years later, that’s what I saw my mother doing growing up and it ended up very well for her and it’s been very good to me too.
Andres Pira 23:46
What thoughts do you have on that? Real Estate this as a Bruce aspect, but I believe that with real estate in general that it’s I mean, passive incomes, multiple streams of income and and buying at the right moment from the right people and be able to integrate great deals, that’s something that I’m very passionate about. And I love looking for next deal or next opportunity or next project or next unit to flip or buy or renovate. So there’s many different aspects to it as well. And what I noticed, especially in Asia, now, it’s booming with the Russians and the Chinese market, because divided what we’re doing now for the moment is we’re only selling investment properties and more than almost 90% of everything that we’re building. People are not buying it to live or to have holidays in because we guarantee certain returns every year. And we have great management companies and big hotel groups that are managing our property. So we can offer this high return from 7% up to 10% return per year for our clients. And that’s a guarantee. So I mean, people are buying properties from us online at the moment because of payment options and also the returns that we offer. So it might be a bit different from America market. But I can just tell you about how how is working in Asia and Thailand at the moment.
Jason Hartman 24:58
Were you from Thailand, originally? Were you from?
Andres Pira 25:01
No I’m not. I’m half Colombian and hot Swedish, but I lived. I was born in South America, Colombia. When I left when I was three years old. My parents took me there. And I was raised in Sweden until I was 20 years old. And then I’m moved to Thailand. And now I’ve been living in Thailand for 16 years.
Jason Hartman 25:20
Now, did you move to Thailand? Because you just liked it there, or did you see that as a particularly good real estate opportunity?
Andres Pira 25:27
When I moved to town, I didn’t know what I was going to do or what job I’m going to have. And I came to Thailand with hundred dollars in my pocket, to be honest, very young at that age, but I was always studying like Sweden, in general is a cold country and the weather is bad. It’s dark, and it’s snowing, and it’s cold. So I wanted to live in a tropical paradise. So it was more of a coincidence that I ended up in Thailand since I asked the travel agent, where can I get with this money and there was I had $2,000 to my name, and she recommended me to fly to Thailand because they look good on their own in the catalog with white sand. beaches and little oceans and palm trees. I ended up there mortal McQueen’s it is from the south to be honest. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 26:07
came there as a beach bum and ended up as a big real estate mogul. So that’s fantastic. Great. That’s great.
Andres Pira 26:13
So yeah,
Jason Hartman 26:14
good stuff. So anything back on that technical side of real estate, like the way you structure a deal the way just to anything else you want to share with our listeners about that the economics of a deal, or you know, how you find deals and source things or whatever. And there’s so many aspects to it. Obviously,
Andres Pira 26:31
when you’re working with buyers and sellers and I heard the story a lot that you just have to focus on winning the deal. But I noticed that in my perspective is not like that. If you’re buying from someone or you have a client that you want to make money for it. It’s a win win every time and that’s how you create a word of mouth advertising for yourself and you get recommendations from other developers, sellers and client and he’s to always be be straight with your word and always follow up on on things that you promised to do. And also make sure that if you have clients that you work For, make sure that they make great returns, and they invest in the right things because that that creates just a pipeline of more buyers. So that’s what we’ve been doing over the years. And it’s very important to deliver that because it’s you can lose your reputation in one day, but it’s we’re still working on it after 16 years. So it’s important with that thing, and how to structure a deal. I mean, it all depends on the opportunity you have. So while we notice what a great money is to lease the units out, and also to flip and renovate units, and I think it’s the same kind of concept here in America, so
Jason Hartman 27:32
yeah, definitely. It’s been great talking with you. Is there just anything else you want to share with with the listeners before you wrap it up? And then of course, give us our website or something?
Andres Pira 27:43
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I go, we go much more in detail on our website and also in my book that I’ve been written for over the last 12 months, and it’s and respira.com amdr ESP ira.com and they can download the short version of the principles and or a free chapter of the book and if you like it, please go ahead on Amazon and purchase the actual copy and it will be sent to you and it goes out and all the bookstores in America, I talk a lot about real estate and investments and cash flows and also how to keep a positive mindset. So hopefully that can help other people to succeed.
Jason Hartman 28:18
You know, now that you mentioned positive mindset, I’ve got one more question for you, we didn’t touch on and that is the power of visualization. Just wanted to ask you to speak to that for a moment. Because I think it is a very powerful thing,
Andres Pira 28:32
any success any any awards, any right direction, of success, whatever is all starts in the mind and we always have to visualize the outcomes of what we want to be do or have visualizations of taking me to the person I am today. Look at an Olympic gold medalist he can see the whole race and he said before he does it he can see himself winning, he can see his so having that gold medal. It’s the same with any any thing in life or any success. We need to picture it very Clear and take time for ourself and spend time for us to see it in our mind visualize it and be clear, this is the outcome, this is what I’m going after. Because our mind is a very, very powerful too. And whatever happens in the mind, you can then after hold it in your reality, or your outside world, as people call it. Yeah, very good. Any particular tools you use to visualize? Do you watch some videos? Do you just do it in your mind? Do you? You know, meditate? Do you use a vision board? I mean, you’ve heard of all these techniques, maybe you use some just thought I’d asked for some more detail on it. Funny, you mentioned it, and I use all of them. And I mean, I have a goal list that I look at all the time that are right every year. And before I visualize I do meditation and visualizations, in my gardens in my home and but before I do that, I check my goal list and see what items or what things do I want to visualize today. And that’s how I use my goal list which I’ve written down and then I go out in my wallet and I call my mind and visualize the things that I want to achieve, be do or have and then I go Welcome, take action and then start to find people that has two things or a certain thing that I need to read or some information that’s out there. So, action is very important in any achievement, then you can just sit and visualize things in a on a location and expect it to come to you action after that is very crucial to any manifestation.
Jason Hartman 30:18
Very good. Well, good stuff. And Russ, thank you for joining us, and congratulations on your success. Thank you for sharing.
Andres Pira 30:24
Yeah, no, thank you so much, Jason. And it was great having you and thank you for having me as well and have a great, great day.
Jason Hartman 30:33
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