[00:00:01] Speaker A: If you're looking for the skills and tools to succeed in real estate investing, you've come to the right place. This show is about breaking through barriers, breaking through limiting beliefs, and breaking through to the life that you want to live through the power of real estate investing. You're listening to the Breakthrough Real Estate Investing Podcast. And now here are your hosts, Rob brake and Quinton D'Souza.
Good morning. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us. It's a little bit different today. It's just Quentin D'Souza and I today. Rob. Break. I, I don't often introduce myself, so I'll introduce Rob.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I've known Rob for probably over a decade and you know, we met probably because he was posting ads on some sort of post for wholesaling way back in, I don't know, long time ago.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: It was a long time ago.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: We, we connected, networked together. You know, we were in Durham together. And, you know, he's improved his life significantly by moving to Costa Rica and, you know, doing a really big move with his family. We're going to talk about that today and we're going to talk about his big project, the Manay Lodge in Costa Rica. So first of all, Rob, let's, let's do a little bit of a deep dive.
What, you know, how did you get started in real estate investing?
[00:01:38] Speaker A: It's weird being interviewed on our show.
Well, actually, so what happened was I, I had a very, I think, very normal upbringing for where I grew up. I grew up mostly in Gravenhurst, Ontario, as born in Aurelia, Ontario. And like, I had like, very standard jobs. Worked in a donut shop, I worked at a burger place, I worked at gas station, printing press, a bunch of just like regular jobs. And then I started working at a cat rental company. So I was driving all day long.
As much as, as freeing as that job was, I actually really liked that job. I was just delivering construction equipment all day, going to different job sites and, and a lot of times, you know, pulling dead machines off of lots and things like that. Right.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: I had to use, use some of your head and also some of your, some of your brawn. But at the same time, I was always looking for something else, some other way to have a little bit more freedom. I think it's always been about freedom for me. Right. Like time freedom has always been the thing that's driven everything that I've done. So at that job, I was working at least 12 hours a day usually. And then with the commute, I was usually gone 14 hours, if not more. Every day. So it's quite a long day of not seeing your family. And when my first son was born, I really started to try and kick into finding something else to do. So I was looking at, like, starting my own business and that kind of thing.
Just like lawn service, something really easy, like with the zero barrier of entry pretty much. Right. If you got a lawnmower, you can go and like, so business that way.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Like manual labor type stuff.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Yeah. But my wife was also like, well, how are you going to do this? Like, you're not going to go work 14 or be gone 14 hours a day and then go and do this.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: So anyway, I, I, I really had, you know, obviously, like everybody else who watches shows about people flipping houses, that was like, sort of where the passion started with real estate. I was like, okay, well, I want to do that too. Let's learn about it. I've got 12 hours a day in a truck. Let's learn about how to do this.
So I, I found a podcast called Flip to Freedom. Right, Right. But it's not a, about flipping houses.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: It's about flipping purchase contracts. That's, that's what the, that's what the, the show was about. And this guy named Sean Terry, he's out of Arizona.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: I remember it was step by step by step, exactly what to do to start wholesaling. So I listened to one, one show, and he would say, okay, go buy bandit signs. Go buy, you know, coroplasty signs. Right.
Sell your house for cash and your phone number on it and go put them out, you know? And so, like, it's almost like you don't even know what you're going to do next.
Go do that step and then come back and listen to the next one. It was almost like that I had a little bit more info before I started, but basically it was like, you know, do this, this, this, this, this. And actually, before I actually started. Quentin. Or maybe not, because what, what year was this?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: What, what year was this?
[00:05:07] Speaker A: I think it was 2010.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: 2010.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Okay, no, no, no. Maybe 2011 somewhere around there. Okay, 2011. But that was the start of it. And you validated it, because I remember looking for more local information.
It said, like, can you wholesale houses in Canada? And you wrote, yes, you can. And I'm like, great. Someone to validate it here. Because it was all American info that I was getting.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: You know, they tell you different ways of, of drumming up leads for that kind of stuff, too, but it's not really anything that works here that's like.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a different market, a different type of clientele, different mindset. Right.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: It was. So I worked really hard at that and I. I started getting some traction. I started actually flip contracts to people. Right. And so for, I mean, just real quickly, for those of you that don't understand that it's just getting a property under contract, getting a purchase and sale agreement on it, and then taking that purchase and sale agreement and selling it to Quinton for five or ten thousand dollars. Wholesalers have gotten really greedy lately, like.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Oh, they're making like 50,000. A hundred thousand is on some of their, Their, their contracts. I mean, I work out at a gym, and, you know, a friend of mine who is a wholesaler is in the same gym, and sometimes I hear about that and I'm just amazed at the amount of, like. I mean, they're making probably the same amount of money as the person who's actually flipping the property.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Oh, most times more and they can't. Sometimes more. And they're not. And you know what? All they've done is find someone else the opportunity to do what they want to do.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: So it's a, It's a. It's not like they're not adding value, that's for sure.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: But it goes to show you how.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Important finding the right deal is.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: To be able to work and it's not just pulling it off the MLS and being able to flip a property and make money. It doesn't often work that way, but. Sorry, we're going off track here a little bit. So you. So you've got the. So you've got the signs up. And. And then you're. You're discovering that you can actually do this in Canada.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Right. And so there's nuances of. Pardon me.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And then what do you start doing?
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it wasn't just off signs, Right. Like, I mean, I don't know. We're not trying to get into a hole. How did you. How do you do things?
[00:07:33] Speaker B: But for you, what. What was the next step? How did you move?
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Well, I think the first thing was the validation. Right. The validation that it worked. So selling that first contract was huge.
And. And because I had no money. Right. Like, you have to understand, like, literally no money. No money in the bank. You know, just week to week. Right.
And so when you realize you can do this, it unlocks, like, my mind just went crazy. So then eventually, you know, you get some credibility and then people start to appreciate what you're doing. I started being able to sell a lot more. So I did pretty well in a couple. In the two years that I did it. I only did it for two years because after that, I had. I had Michael Dominguez come to me, one of the realtors in our area, and say, you know, I'm starting a team I want you to work for with me. And so that.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. For those two years, how much do you think you made? Like, ballpark?
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know. I'm gonna say, like, it wasn't enough to quit my job because I was still working. Right. So I had to do it at the same time. But let's just say.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Let's say like you had. Let's say you're like.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Like 150, probably. 150, 000 per year. No, no, 150, 000 for the years.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: For the two.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: I would say, like, again, I wanted to make it work. Right. And I. And. And like, there wasn't that many people doing it back then.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: No, you're right. Yeah.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: So all I was trying to do is validate it, make it work, and make it something that I could continue doing. So I really didn't get greedy.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: And then you. Then you met Michael, and then you started doing the realtor thing, right?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Well, I had a couple of rental properties before. Before I started with him too. Right. So, like, even when I started. Yeah. When I started wholesaling, I did have a rental property. I already had one.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: But yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: So you got into the. The Realtor space, and. And you're still a realtor today. So that. What was that, 2013?
[00:09:39] Speaker A: I think so. Yeah.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So that would be about 2013. And that's. That's probably when I quit my job. And I. I had been doing Durham REI for five years, so we probably met in 2011.
And, you know, you saw me quit my job and focus on real estate full time. Because I remember you were a wholesaler while we were talking together and working with each other. And then we. You became a Realtor after that. So as a Realtor, then how. How did you do in your first year of Realtor versus being a wholesaler?
[00:10:22] Speaker A: I at least doubled my salary in the first year.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: But it was a good time to get into it. Right. And I also had ends with people who were. Look like, who were real estate investors. Right. And I also knew what I was doing right. When I started as far as finding investment properties. So, I mean, I'm going to say, at least in my first year, I probably only sold exclusively with Investors. Right, right. Like, I'm really bad at.
I can show you where to find the value as a rental, and especially when most people were looking for something they could add a basement suite to, because I can bring them to the right properties there and that, that's, you know, value to the clients as well. But as far as where the sun sets in the backyard and, and you know, who's gonna get what room? Little Jimmy and whoever, you know, I can't do that. It's just not for me. You know, I will do it, don't get me wrong.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: But, but it's, it's not what you're really good at. Right. So then, so you've been, you're, you're doing the realtor thing with investors and you, and are you still building your real estate portfolio at the same time? What are you doing, you know, in the background while you're working with realtors?
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely, I would say. I, I, I, I got a property a year, probably a property a year.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Okay. Were you working with partners or were you. Oh, yeah, just yourself.
How did you build your portfolio?
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Well, again, like, just because I was able to sell a couple of, a couple of wholesale deals, it would be gone as soon as I got it pretty much, you know.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: You're digging yourself out of credit card debt and stuff like that.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: So that money really wasn't anything that was able to change my life at all. So I was always working with partners. Again, like, the credibility is the most important thing. That's why, that's why you got to make sure that you're, you're honest and straightforward and always do what you say you're going to do with all your partners. And that's like one of the biggest lessons that I've learned because I could find a partner right now for a project if I, you know, when I need one. Like, we're going to talk about the hotel. It wasn't hard for me to find a partner for that. Right.
And the, the build that we did here in Costa Rica and pretty much every property that I bought was all with partners.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Okay, so you were doing that the whole time you were as a realtor and as an investor. Let's say we, we get to. Before you left to Costa Rica and you, you made that change. What did your portfolio look like and what were your income sources like before you left from Costa Rica? When did you say? When was it, like 20, 21 that you left to Costa Rica? Okay, so let's say, let's take you back 2020 before, you know, all the craziness.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: You know, 2020 was when it started.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: So let's say 2019 then.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So 2019. Describe what your real estate portfolio was like back then, you know, five years ago. Like, so. And also, like, what your income sources were like, because it's very different today and, you know, I think people would be interested to hear how you were able to make that transition.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Well, I was. I. I did do very well as a realtor.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Right. Like, I find that I provided a good value to people, and I was, I had, like, every year was better than the one before as a realtor there before, and 2020 was my best year before I left.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: Okay, so 2020 was your best year.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was. That was drastically life changing because, like, I at least quadrupled. Definitely. Probably much more than that. My salary from when I was working, you know, with cat rental.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I was making really good money.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: What. What did your real estate portfolio look.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Like at the 10 properties?
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Probably about 10.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Okay, 10 properties.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: What type of properties were they?
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Most of them are duplexes, but I have a triplex and two student rentals. And the student rentals are.
They're. They're 18 doors between the two of them.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: And they're legal. 100 legal registered with the city of Peterborough. That's where both of my student rental properties are. So those are the big ones. Those are the ones that do the best.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: And. And I've sold quite a few of them since I moved here just because, like, with the, with the, you know, interest rates the way they were, a lot of them weren't making any money anymore.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Okay. We. Before we, before we. We jump to that point now. Like, in 20. In 2020, you had your best year ever. So you're doing really well from your income side. And then what drove you in 2021 to. To want to change that? Because that's huge. If you've, you know, tripled or quadrupled your income and then 2021 comes in, you say, all right, that's it. I'm, you know, I'm done. I want to, you know, what led you down to that path?
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Well, there. I mean, there's a million things. Right. I think that there was definitely. There was. I was already looking into different places, and listening to podcast has always been like, one of my favorite sources of information. But so I listen to a lot of podcasts on people that have moved to Panama and were able to, you know, transition their life without too much Disruption, I guess, as. As little as possible with a move like that.
So that was one of the places we considered originally. And then I never even went to Panama. Actually, though we ended up just coming to Costa Rica. But a lot of it was more planned to just escape. Not escape, but somewhere to go through the winter.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Six months.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: That was the plan originally.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Ah, so in 2020, you were just gonna go for six months, and so you. What did you do to kind of prepare to. To leave for six months at that time?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Well, I wasn't leaving for six months at that point in time. Like, I was still just looking for a place where we could go and do that. Right. So. So in 2020, we ended up being here for three months, though.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: So we traveled the country.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Ah, so you explored different parts of Costa Rica?
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Definitely. All right.
I haven't been, like, super far south, but I've been to Quepos, which is the furthest south that we've been, so.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: But we did a lot of exploring. And. And quite honestly, it was. That was more just, where do you want to buy a possible rental property?
[00:17:35] Speaker B: And this was with. Just with Jen or with you, Jen and the kids?
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Oh, with all of us.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: All of you. Okay. All right. So you're all exploring.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: I never went on a vacation before my kids were born. Like, like on a plane.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Right, okay.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: And. And they've been on every single one that we've ever been on.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Oh, very cool.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: My kids are always with me.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Awesome.
So, so now you. You've explored for three months and travel with Jen and. And the kids. And this was during the whole vid issue. And so you were. Everybody else was locked down, and you're traveling all over the place. I'm. I'm.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: I'm thinking traveling within one country.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Within one country? No, no. But I'm just. I just. I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to get a picture for people. Right, and now you've traveled for three months. And what. What happened. What, what, what happened next?
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Well, that I was looking for places here. Right. So it did turn into that over that time, like, because, I mean, made me reconsider a lot of things. When they canceled, our. Our flight home got cancelled.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: So we ended up having to scramble and try and find something else here to stay at and figure out what to do.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: So that kind of made me, you know, start thinking a little bit more about staying here.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: And then.
And then, like, honestly finding where we live right now. Potrero is an amazing Community. It's like nothing else that I've ever seen. And that's really what prompted us to say, okay, I think that we could actually move here and live here, because the community, the education that's available for the kids in this area, there's like seven international schools right around here.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: And I never considered moving to any of the places until we came here. It's just a feeling you. You get.
So that was the real driver for the actual move to stay here.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Okay, and so you. You bought a place in Potero right away?
[00:19:38] Speaker A: We rented here for about two months, and then I started looking. Yeah.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Okay, and then you ended up buying down there after. After that? Like, what did you do when you. After you've rented for two months?
[00:19:52] Speaker A: We went back in March, and I actually, the agent that I was working with here at the time, he sent me a property while we were in Canada, and. And I knew exactly where it was, what it was. I like the price, so I bought it from Canada.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Okay, and what kind of financing did you get on it, or was it cash purchase?
[00:20:13] Speaker A: It was a cash purchase. I wanted to. Just to have the experience. We did a VTV for 50% of it.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: So we were able to do that. There's a lot of sellers here that will do or seller financing.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: And what was the VTB at the time? Do you remember?
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it was 5% for two years.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: 50% interest only.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Interest only, yeah.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Okay. And then while I'm assuming that two years passed and you own that property.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: And your two years into being in Costa Rica, what did you end up doing?
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Well, I worked for Crane, luxury real estate. So we came back in, like, June, and I started with Crane right away. So in. In August, I think.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: So that was pretty good. And. And the first year or so I had some traction.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: And.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: And a lot of.
A lot of the people that I reached through the podcast and through past clients, they were interested, and I. I did a little bit of business through existing clientele, but Crane's pretty good too, so they. They do have lead distribution.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: So some of my leads came from there too. And yeah, for the last, like, three and a half years, I've been with them and doing okay. It's definitely different because it's so secular, you know?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: It's like right now, it's like the beginning of December, and we're coming into high season, so people start. You. You start to see people around again. For the last few months, it's very rainy here, like October, very rain.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Flooding. We got some pretty bad flooding this year.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember seeing your pictures.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah, but yeah, I've seen some of the pictures that were in the chat groups and like even my friend's boat sank from the rain.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: That's something you don't hear very often.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that was the worst that I've seen.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: All right, but. So three and a half years now in Costa Rica and you know, and working for Crane. How has your. Now I know that I don't know what you want to kind of disclose, but how has your income changed from where you were to where you are now? And has it real. Has it affected your lifestyle?
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Absolutely, it's changed drastically.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Okay, so like maybe explain that to people because sometimes people I find are so caught up, especially where we are in North America, caught up with the day to day grind of trying to compete with other people. And you know, it's about like, it's hard to kind of get by even when you're making good money sometimes because of all the grocery prices and accommodation prices, you know, your cars, your, you know, all of that sort of stuff. So maybe you can describe kind of like the change in lifestyle and, and income anyways.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Well, it was a true downsize. Okay.
So I like my house was almost 3,000 square feet in Canada.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Right in around there. And, and this one, I mean, I don't even know how it's like 1200 square feet, probably this house.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: You know, it's a three bedroom house, but it's pretty small. Of course you do do a lot of your living outside.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Right?
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Right. The weather's beautiful the majority of the time, so you're not spending your time in the house. But that is one of the big things that was hard to get used to. My kids would always say, why are we like women? They're great now. I think they've really adopted and they love it here and they did right from the beginning too. But I remember my kids saying, you know, why do we have such a small house now?
You know?
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Right. Okay.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: We have our big house back. Why do we gotta. Yeah, that kind of thing.
And so like this office that I'm in right now, this was actually part of the outdoor area before I just, you could see, I just.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Closed it in. Yeah.
And so now you, you know, your kids are there, you're there. From an income perspective, what was your income like percentage wise? How has it changed from when you were maybe 20. 20 is not a great example because it was a time when you had like you said three or four times amount of income that you had in previous years. But like, how has the amount of income come down as an example, like, are you at 25 of the income that you were before?
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Well, the difference is like, so I'm paying for kids schooling now. It's not that bad.
It's. It's about a thousand dollars a month.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: Okay, Canadian.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Canadian dollars, USD.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: I've completely stopped saying anything in cad.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Okay, so. So for everybody going forward, we're just talk dollars.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: Okay, so a thousand dollars for your kids schooling.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: But. But the house is like. There's no mortgage on the house.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Okay, so no mortgage on the house.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Okay. So I mean, what about, like, property taxes and insurance and utilities?
[00:25:31] Speaker A: I would say my electricity bill is like 400amonth, so it's kind of high.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: You know, it's having the air conditioners running all the time. So you got these split unit air conditioners in all the rooms.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: So the majority of the time they're on.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: What about property taxes?
[00:25:50] Speaker A: So property tax? Quentin, you're asking me questions. Like, you're asking a guy questions who literally, like, people ask me, what's the gas price? I'm like, I don't know. What do you pay for this? I don't know. Like, I don't. I.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: All right, we gotta get this stuff. So we gotta get Jen on the call, then get her to tell us.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: But so, like, property taxes are like 700 a year.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: A year. Okay, so let me. Let me ask you like a ballpark figure then. So, like, if you were to look at property taxes, utilities, insurance, all of that sort of stuff, put it all together in a number, like, what are you looking at?
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Probably a thousand. Okay, for all the expenses? Yeah.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Okay, so about a thousand dollars for all your expenses. Telephone, all that sort of stuff.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Everything in that.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, so my Internet, I do know that my Internet is like 50amonth.
Internet too.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: All right, so if you were back in Canada and you had all of those expenses, compare that number. Like, what would that number be?
[00:26:55] Speaker A: How much would it, like, what my phone was. What my phone was like 150 or 200amonth.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: So.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: So that's your phone cost.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: I have to ask my bookkeeper. I have no idea.
So but let's say.
Let's say you had like your thousand dollars in. In Costa Rica, what would that equivalent number, ballpark be in back in Canada?
Like, would it be what I need.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: To cover my expenses? The same. The same expenses, but I got to pay Mortgage.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Okay. Without the mortgage making a real. I'm putting you on the spot. But I mean, like, I don't.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: I honestly don't know.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Would it be like three times, like. Okay, so your property tax. Yeah. Your property taxes would have been like, what, 500 per month Canadian.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Right, right. Because the property tax is like 4500 or $5000 maybe. I think actually it was like 5500 for my property tax.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: So close to 6. About close to 500. Your. Your insurance is probably about 100. Your. Your utilities are probably about 300. Your phone was about 150. Like you said, you know, you don't.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Need car insurance here. I have car insurance. You're not required to get it.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Well, you. Yeah. You don't know what the car insurance was back home. Right.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: So about 100. I think it's about a hundred.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Around 100.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Maybe 85, I think. 85, 90, something like that.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: All right, so we say another 100, and then, you know, you have, you know, gas, whatever. Like, I. I'm. I'm. It sounds like it's almost 2000amonth, not including your mortgage. Right.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: So it's. It's less here, for sure.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: So it sounds like almost half, but.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: I think that the big thing is not having the mortgage, obviously. Okay, Right, right.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you've downsized and you don't have a mortgage, but a lot of people could do that. But it sounds like even your general cost of living is about 50% of what.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: What I will say, like, I've. I've had. We've had to curb our lifestyle, too, a lot because, like, I love to go out to eat. Right. When we first got here and before, like, in Canada, we went out to eat all the time. Like, I'd say four or five times a week.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. Yeah.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: So. And that. That transitioned to here, too. So when we first got here, we were going out four or five times a week, maybe even more sometimes. And that can really make the money disappear quickly.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah. That's crazy.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Now you go out one or two times a week, you know, and that's.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: That's typically to what we do here. Like, we'll go out once or twice a week, but that. That's it. Four or five times a week is quite a bit. So that. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so it sounds like your expenses went down too, because you've cut back as well.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Definitely. I mean, I got no car payments because the cars are, you know, both bought out. Right, right.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Okay. So now. Now you're down there. You, you're earning income from your, from your real estate profession down there. You still have your rental properties up here. What, what happened over the last couple years with your rental properties up here?
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Well, they definitely started to not perform as well as they did originally. From a cash flow at the beginning. Yeah, absolutely. You know, because of interest rates, I would say in some cases they weren't even covering themselves. Right. Because of the interest rates.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Okay, so what did you do? So you have 10 properties at the beginning of.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: The funny thing was, through all of COVID I never had one tenant not pay. Not one. I, they all paid on time every month, which is not the same story as I'm hearing from a lot of people, especially with the student rentals. I had zero problem until last year. One of my tenants at the student rental property, one of them stopped paying and, and it became a real big problem and ended up, just because of that one room we weren't able to cover.
And so that went on and on and on until finally we, we ended up selling the property.
So, so that was like. So, and, and a couple, I've sold a couple others too, and it was very similar. Like they were mostly covering themselves, but there wasn't really any income from them. And it seemed like good time. Like, I made pretty good amounts of money off of the sales of these places.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: So how many did you end up selling?
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Three.
[00:31:38] Speaker B: Okay, so you still have seven properties, but you sold three of them.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: And you, you, you get a big capital influx and you have to share that with your partners because you bought them with partners. But how much do you think, if you don't mind sharing, like, how much do you think you were able to extract from, even from partnering 50% with people? Like, how much were you able to take back and, and then recapitalize into your life's or your investments?
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Well, I'll talk in CAD for this one, but I would say we, we, we probably got close to 300 from the three, just ourselves.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: And then what did you end up doing with that 300 when you, when you brought it down to cost, I'm assuming you brought it down to Costa Rica.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Not all of it.
A lot of it's still there.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: But, but what we did bring down was that what we like. So a partner and I built a container house here.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: And, and I put my capital into that as well.
It did, did pretty well on the sale of it too. So.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Okay, so you're able to use, use that capital down there to do a content you're part of your container build, right?
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: What else? So what have you been doing then down in, in Costa Rica? You're down there now, you've sold some properties, you have some capital, you. To Costa Rica and. And now you're the real estate investor of, of Potera in Costa Rica. Is that what happened? What's, what's going on?
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Well, I would say somewhat, but again, like, for me it's about life, life style, freedom. And so I could be, I think, more busy if I wanted to be. I could definitely be more busy. I'm trying to just stay at the point where I'm at. I'm pretty good. Like, I, I'm doing a, I'm doing a decent amount of sales as an agent. I'm. So again, the container I was built took a lot longer than you would think it would. Right. From, from getting the, the, from closing on the property, getting the permits, getting the place built and sold. That took two years, you know, and, and again, my wife, she likes to take things slow too, so kind of gotta take a cue from her, you know, on things as well. We ended up earlier this spring buying the hotel. So I found a fantastic deal on a, on a, was a nine room hotel.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Well, it's actually, it's actually a ten room hotel. But what we did was.
And this guy, like, he wasn't running it really like a hotel. He wasn't advertising it. He. There's no reception area or was he.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: A local or like.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: No, he's a guy from France. He owned it. He lived in one of the units and he would basically just. If someone heard of it somehow and got in touch with them, then he had just lock boxes on the doors. They could come in and just go in the room. The rooms were very plain, not really much to them. They all have kitchens though.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Which is interesting. But we ended up being able to get that for a good price. And we've turned it around. Like, I haven't put that much money into it, but we've ended up turning it around quite a bit. We took. Funny thing was, Quentin, when we, when we, when we first bought it, there's a two bedroom apartment in the middle.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Of the hotel.
And the owner wasn't living in there, he was renting it. He was renting it for 500 bucks a month.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Right. Okay.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: So what we've done is we've turned that into a reception area and there's a restaurant, the restaurant actually we're renting out and it just opened two days Ago.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Right. And what are you renting the restaurant for?
[00:35:36] Speaker A: How much?
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: 450.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Okay, so that's a plus.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Plus 2% of their, their sales.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Ah, okay. Is the 2% lucrative or not really? Well, you don't know yet. I guess.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: I don't know. I, I, and all I did was just based it off of the fact that, you know, I've heard maybe 3% is kind of like the going rate.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: So you gave them a deal so that you could get them going?
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: I want, I want whoever's in there to be successful too. And the rent's a little bit lower as well, right? I think a little bit. Yeah.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: But once they're established, then you could always increase it a little bit and change the, how long is your contract for with the commercial tenant?
[00:36:21] Speaker A: It's just like a year or so. We don't even have anything on paper yet.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Well, this must be a Costa Rica thing because I would never do that. Yeah, yeah, you should always have something on paper. But okay, so 450amonth plus.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: Listen, I, I, I've adapted to the way things are here. Like, my law there says that he's doing it, but you know, it gets here when it gets here.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Yikes. Yeah, I remember I tried to send you a book and never got there like no Costa Rica.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Okay. Just on a side note, when, when there's, when there's issues, they can take a very, very long time to get them resolved here. Like, and, and one of the things that we see, I would say the most often of the issues when people are purchasing something is property lines not being in the right spot. Right. You from old surveys overlapping with new surveys, and the lines aren't correct. Right. So there's a discrepancy. And getting that fixed, sometimes it's easy, you know, So I tell people, like, let's not shy away from it. It happens all the time. And sometimes it's fixed easily and sometimes it's not. So I've got a particular client that's been waiting for over a year for property line issues to be resolved.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Yikes.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: And some of them, and some of them are like a month.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Okay. All right.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: So because I like, asked me what the difference is between them and I don't know.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: So I'm on Yana. Right.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Tomorrow, or is that, no, it's two weeks story.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Oh, two weeks.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Don't worry, it'll be ready in two weeks. And then two months later, it's still two weeks. And then, you know.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, it's Typical South American type of Central American, whatever.
[00:38:09] Speaker A: You have to have grit to just understand that the culture is not the same and the way that things are done is not the same. Right. And you just have to accept that.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Okay, so you've, you've changed your mindset in order to be able to be there and adapt to the culture. Because you're coming from a different culture and you're adapting to the culture that's there. Now you have this Manta Ray Lodge, this nine bed property. You've converted two bedrooms into a restaurant and a reception area.
And what did you do with the other nine units?
[00:38:49] Speaker A: So our caretakers in one of them. So one of the rooms actually didn't have a bathroom attached to it. You had to come outside of the room and go downstairs and use the bathroom.
[00:38:58] Speaker B: So that's your caretaker one now?
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so he took that one. Luckily enough, he's fine with it.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: And then the other eight.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: And the other eight are, are just rental. Yeah, they're rental rooms. So we've got six rooms that have two queen beds and two rooms that have one king bed.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: Okay, so these are for singles then. Right, and then so how have you been.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: The rooms with two queen beds are family rooms.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Oh, two queen, two queens and two kings.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Six rooms that each have two queen beds and then two rooms have just one king bed.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Okay, so two signals or couples maybe.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Okay, so how. So I know you've had lots of experience now with this hotel. How has it been going since you purchased it? What challenges have you had and how have you overcome those challenges?
[00:39:55] Speaker A: So first challenges first.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: First off, how did you. You bought it by a vtb. What were some of the terms?
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Look, the guy wanted $48,000, so we gave him $48,000. He held the rest.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: How much is the rest?
[00:40:13] Speaker A: We gave him 48. 500,000.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: 500,000 for the purchase price. Okay. And you gave him 48 because that's what he wanted and he carried back the rest.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: What, what did you carry it back at? The4.452.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Or what we agreed on is two payments of 24,000 a year and half of that goes towards pay down.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Ah, okay, interesting.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: So.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: And so and so. And we can hold that for five years.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Five years. So in five years you pay down about 125K.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And then now here's another thing. So his lawyer, he wrote the contract. Wrong. He wrote that all of our payments were going towards pay down. Oh, that's, that's how they wrote it up now. See what. We also have a purchase and sale agreement, which says it differently. But the way that his lawyer wrote it up was that all the money goes towards pay down.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Right. Okay, but you've already agreed. I'm not going to. We won't go down the path of what you decide. Maybe that's.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: What do you mean? I'm not. I would. I could never, never do that. I could never even consider doing that. But especially when, I mean, look, we've got a. We've got a something that we agreed on. Purchase and sale agreement is there and.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Right. You're interested. Interest.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: I just think it's funny that it was written that way.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: And.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: But your interest cost is very low on this property. It's like when you. When you look at it, 24,000 a year. So if you have $452,000 to. To start. Right. And 12,000. You know, you're talking about an interest payment. Interest cost of about 2.6%.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Yeah. That's pretty good.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: Pretty good.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: I think it's good.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: Are you kidding me? That's. That's amazing.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: You know, Quinton, like, the. The. There's always the possibility that it's not going to, like, make enough money to cover those payments. So it's pretty stressful, too, you know?
[00:42:17] Speaker B: Okay, so talk about it. What. What makes it stressful for you as a. The active partner in this deal?
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Well, of course, you always want to do good for your partners.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: That's the biggest. The number one thing. And then, of course, the second one is not being able to cover those payments. So if you can't cover the payments.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: So what's been happening then? So have you been renting the rooms yet?
[00:42:40] Speaker A: We haven't come to a payment.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: Okay, but that means that you have to make. Make income.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: We set the first one way out. The first one was like a year.
The first payment wasn't doing for another for a year.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: Okay, so the first payment is due, like, in spring 2025.
In June. 2025.
[00:43:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: 2025. Okay. So you have basically first year. Free. Free. Your first year. There's no payments. Yeah, that's. That's again, I can see why you can say it's a unicorn. Okay, so how. What have you done up to this point? Because you've done all the renovations, I'm assuming you're reinvesting all the capital back into the. So the units. What have you done to the units?
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Okay, so first of all, what happened was when we were in our due diligence, Period for the hotel. We found out we, we had a budget. We have a very small budget to work with. We decided on 50,000 for renovations. Okay. So I thought that we could get a lot done with that. I was happy with that amount. I'm pretty good at making a dollar stretch. Right. But when we were in the due diligence process, it turns out that this, the hotel was built without any permits whatsoever.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: So the solution for that is you just pay them and they give you your permits.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: So that cost 16 grand.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: So right there, that came out of our renovation budget.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: So you didn't go back to the seller to do that. You had to come up with the funds.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, I wouldn't. There's no way that would have went through with him.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Okay. So you got that done now. And now you're, you, you're legal.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: So we have the old permits from the hotel, but we've been in process to get new operation permits for ours since we took over in March. And so I'm still waiting on those. We got, we got permits to run the restaurant. It took six months, but we got those. We still don't have operations permits, so they're in process. So I have, I have.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: They're in process, but doesn't mean that you can't rent them out, right?
[00:44:55] Speaker A: I am renting it out.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Technically you can't, but this is Costa Rica. Right. So.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Well, the thing is, like, we've got our insurance for the hotel, right. We've got. And, and, and it's in process. So how do you run a business when, like I said, we've been waiting on, on certain things for over a year.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So you just.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: I, I tried to do like, when we were, when we were doing the container house, I had a big lot, so I was trying to segregate it and sell them separately. Over a year later, the segregation still wasn't done, so I just sold it all together.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: You know, it's just like you, you, you got to adapt. You have to learn how to, you know, overcome the issues and not get stuck you. And again, like in Ontario, I would start work on basement apartments with, with, with permits and process too.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it becomes a bit of a challenge, right?
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: When. With all the government bureaucracy. But it sounds like that bureaucracy these even longer.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: I don't know if it's that. I, I honestly, I can't say what it is. But you don't have access to these, the municipalities.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: Right. You're not, you're not paying off the right people. In other words.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Trust me, I've asked, I've asked if I can just pay to get stuff done and apparently I don't know the right people or. Yeah, or I'm not doing it the right way, but it doesn't work.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Okay, well, so over the last six months, let's say it took you a couple months to renovate and get things. How long did it take you to do the renovation?
[00:46:25] Speaker A: Actually, it was a couple months. We didn't do a whole lot like everything got paint, we freshened up. A lot of the electrical needed to be worked on, the lighting needed to be fixed. The just like a lot of cosmetic things needed to be upgraded as well. Like we had to buy, you know, all new linens and for all the rooms and you know, all that stuff.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Okay, so what are you renting those units out for now? So you have the queen rooms?
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I just kept them the same 75 bucks a night for two adults. If they want to keep another adult in the, in the queen room, then we're doing. What was it? I think 15, $15.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: Okay, and what about the King Room?
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Same thing, 75, but it's a two person limit.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: And then how have you been? I. I guess you've had some issues. At the beginning, I remember you telling me some stories about the. You had hired somebody to, to run the hotel.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: We, we did, we hired a manager. So somebody that I was acquaintances with.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: So I thought it was a great idea. Someone who has acquaintances with came up to me and said, hey, you know, I know, you know me from this place, but now I'm doing remote managing for people, you know, that, that may not like, know the ins and outs of the permitting and, and all that kind of stuff and hiring employees. And I thought, this is great. I'm gonna hire this guy and he's going to help us through it all. And it was a fraction of the price of hiring someone full time to do that job. Right. Because he was only, he was like, he said, I'll go there twice a week, I'll take care of things in the background. I'll make sure you get like all the rented, you know, all of the, the employees have to be in the insurance, you know, ccss.
And so I was like, perfect, since I don't know how to do any of this, will hire you on. Well, what ended up happening anyway is. And we caught on pretty quickly, we have our caretaker there. But what would happen is people would come to spend like to, to take the rooms and he would just assume that they've already paid. You know, it's not him, not his job to ask people. Yeah. If they paid. So anyway, the manager would call up and tell them, hey, I've got some people coming. We wouldn't tell me, you know, and they would just end up transferring the money to him.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Oh, so he was keeping everything.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And he started the booking.com and, and Expedia accounts in his name.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Oh, right. He was getting everything into his bank account.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Right, right. And, and again, like, it wasn't a huge amount of traction. Like, as far as I can tell, there was maybe a dozen times that happened without me knowing that there was people there. But still, obviously, you can't have someone like that working for you. So as soon as we figured it out, we, we, we cut that off. I eventually got him to give me the logins for the booking, but this was, like, right before, kind of while figuring all this out. And there was a bunch of stuff in there, but I had to just cancel it all because I, I had to make sure that he didn't have access to it. So unfortunately, we lost some bookings that were already in there. These are things, like, I didn't ask him to do that. You know, he just took it upon himself to do those things.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: Okay, so, I mean, you mean setting up booking.com and.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: Okay, so now you got rid of him. You're.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: So I did it all myself. So now you now your website. Okay, myself, I, I, I, I put all the reason. Something called Hotel Runner, and it links to Airbnb and it links to booking, so that made everything pretty easy. But I'm running it myself now.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: And what's the urlcr.com Monterey Lodge cr. Okay, good. And what have you learned now with, you know, renting it out? Like, are you, like, what's your.
I guess you're. Now you're going to get into busy season.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: So what are you doing to kind of promote it? What's your. The amount of people that are renting?
[00:50:50] Speaker A: We are fully booked over Christmas and New Year's.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: So I think it is, like, as of the 25th, over Christmas and New Year's, we're fully booked.
And then there's, like. And there's a bunch of, you know, reservations in and around there and before and after it and whatnot, but those are the only times that we're fully booked, you know, like, I mean, Quentin, you're just honestly, like, learning lessons every day. Yeah, right. It's like, so the washing machine Broke. So I gotta get, like, yesterday. So I've got to get another one out there, like, right away, or else we're gonna run out of sheets. You know, just all this kind of stuff.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: Okay, so you're booked over. Over Christmas and New Year's, and then, like, how are you. I. Each winter morning.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:37] Speaker B: How are you promoting it first? What are you doing to promote it?
[00:51:40] Speaker A: I've just got Facebook ads. I actually just put the Facebook ads out yesterday.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: Okay, what sites are. Is it on booking.com?
[00:51:48] Speaker A: The ads are on. Are just on Facebook. Like, I put out ads yesterday.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Paid ads?
[00:51:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Okay. And then what about, like, what sites are you putting the Manta Ray Lodge on? Like, to. To be able to get people to book it.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: It's on Airbnb, so I just went three individual rooms on Airbnb.
So I've got two ads for the queen rooms, for family rooms, and one for the king room. But if someone books the king room and then. And someone else wants a king room, we can still do that. It's just easier to manage three pages instead of.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: So you've been able to. To. To do that. Do you connect, like, Airbnb with a system so that it manages booking and Airbnb? What's the system called?
[00:52:40] Speaker A: It's called Hotel Runner.
[00:52:42] Speaker B: That's Hotel Runner. Okay.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: And that makes sure that you're not double booking or anything like that?
[00:52:47] Speaker A: Exactly, yeah.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Okay. And does it tell you what your, like, vacancy rate is? Like. Like, yeah. Per month?
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's got a. It's got a really good calendar system on there. Shows everything.
[00:53:01] Speaker B: Okay. And I guess you really haven't had. You just really started renting out the whole thing. So you don't have an average.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: Really. It's only been, like, a month, you know, a month of being open.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: All right, so how much. How much do you think you're making in your first month? What do you think you made, like, bulk?
[00:53:20] Speaker A: I don't know. 5,000, maybe.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: 5,000. Okay. Okay, so 5,000. And then what are your expenses? How much do you think your expenses bulk are?
[00:53:31] Speaker A: See, if you gave me time to see Quentin. See, I thought we were interviewing a guest today, and when we get on here. No, I'm just gonna ask you about this. I don't know, man. If you. If you had to let me prepare, I could have had it ready.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Sorry, we don't do that.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Well, we've got two electrical bills, and one of them is usually around 200. The other one's usually around 300. So the electricity is probably a five. I'd say 600, probably for electricity for the month. Water is around 50.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: Okay, and then what about, like, your employee or the person that's staying there?
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Do you pay the employees? We've got a cleaner, so. So the caretaker and his wife, they live there and they look after everything, so he does all the maintenance in the pool.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: And how much do you think you pay them?
[00:54:21] Speaker A: Oh, I pay them 150. I pay him 150 a week. But he lives there too. So you've got the accommodations.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Right. So you. You're so. And does that include the cleaner as well, or.
[00:54:32] Speaker A: No, no, no. She gets 100 a week.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: So that's about a thousand then. Okay, so about thousand and then plus whatever advertising and other costs do you. That you have?
[00:54:46] Speaker A: Yeah, the advertiser, like four bucks a day.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: And then cleaning, like, I guess, cleaning products and all of that stuff. Like, how much do you think?
[00:54:54] Speaker A: 100 at least.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: All right, It. It seems like your expenses probably run about 2,000, 2,500amonth, something like that. Yeah, but that's based on the first month. But if you. If you have. If you're doing 75 a night and you have the same for all eight rooms, it's possible that you could rent out. You know, if you rented out all eight rooms per night, that's about $600 per night. If you were fully booked for a whole 30 days, that could get you about $18,000. Right. So the possibility is that you can get. If you were to fully book, particularly in high season, your goal is to try to book it out fully for the. The high season. What one's high season, it kind of.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: Starts right about now. I've seen it's a little bit slower right now. I would say after Christmas, January, February.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: March to March, the end of March.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: Okay, so you get.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: April's still kind of high season, but I'd say it, like, tapers out over April. Right.
[00:56:05] Speaker B: So you're trying to get it fully booked out in these three or four months because then that's where you probably make most of your money.
[00:56:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So the idea is to appeal to local families. Like, we really want it to be a family hotel. So if we can appeal to local families. And what I mean by that is. Is. Is people live in the city, in San Jose to come on the weekends and stuff like that. That's what we're really trying to do.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Okay, but 75. Is that 75 US a night? That would still be for two people.
Oh, no, for two people, it would be like 90. That's still pretty cheap.
[00:56:40] Speaker A: Isn't that 75 for two people?
[00:56:42] Speaker B: So, okay, 75 for two people and it's an extra 15 for a third.
[00:56:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: So 75 for two people, is that like, well priced for the area?
[00:56:54] Speaker A: It's less than everybody else.
[00:56:56] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: And if I would say we're only like five to ten dollars under some of the other ones around.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: And I wanted to make sure we were too, trying to. Some exposure.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: What about, like, if you're trying to get Canadians coming down and they wanted to come down for a week, they could book it for a week, of course.
Okay. No problem. All right.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Somebody staying there for three weeks right now.
[00:57:27] Speaker B: Oh, okay, great. So there's lots of that. That too. So you're, you're really appealing to local families, but you don't mind if you had people who are listening to the podcast want to come down, visit Ross down there more than welcome, and maybe Rob will actually meet you in person and shake your hand. We'll see if we can. We can. If, especially if you heard it on the podcast, make sure to let him know when you're down there so you can. He can come in and say hello. All right.
[00:57:57] Speaker A: Bring back Quentin's $5 for every.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: Well, you know what? I'm, I. It's very interesting to hear, like, the potential really is 18,000amonth. And if, even if you could get like 80% of that for those, you know, four months, that. That's really where you're going to make your money. This is probably where it counts the most now.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: I think we should be able to do that. Yeah, it's, it's shaping up nicely for the end of December and beginning of January and even through mid January. Right now, I would say we're. We're pretty solidly booked up until the. Maybe January 21st.
[00:58:36] Speaker B: Right? Okay.
[00:58:37] Speaker A: Yeah, right now.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:39] Speaker A: And I, and I think it'll keep coming in.
[00:58:42] Speaker B: So really, you need to, like, are you also talking to people who are kind of, you know, in that Airbnb space who kind of, you know, maximize their, like the, the value of the property? Like, I remember we talked to Ashley and Spencer before and Drew Knox.
There's. There's a Cameron. You know, those were all people who were focused on the Airbnb type of space.
One of the things I remember they, they did is they would have either themes to the rooms or they had like a, like a mural or something like that where People could do some instas behind. Do you have anything like that?
[00:59:30] Speaker A: No, not right now. I mean, I had some bigger plans. Again, I had to dial back because of different circumstances, different things. Like, we were planning on opening the restaurant ourselves. Well, we kind of toyed with the idea, but it's quite expensive, obviously, as you might guess, to open a hotel, a restaurant, so we decided to just rent the space. It's more. More my alley anyways. Like, I. I don't really have any business running a restaurant.
I don't think my heart would be in it, so it's not really fair to everybody to take that on.
I think that's the next step.
[01:00:09] Speaker B: Gotcha. Okay. All right. And it's too bad because, like, if you had like an insta right beside the restaurant, it would provide some people to probably go to the restaurant who were, you know, I don't know, can you see it from the road or. No.
[01:00:24] Speaker A: What?
[01:00:25] Speaker B: The restaurant.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: Was there like a wall or something that you. That would have insta potential right beside the rest?
[01:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's not.
[01:00:36] Speaker B: And maybe they would want to have that if you. Yeah, if you could put it as a, you know, as an advertising kind of thing for them. Right. They could advertise them, like, and they might know a local artist that could help to. To do that. Right. Not, you know, that. That may be something that kind of appeals to maybe some locals as well as, you know, people who are coming down. I think that, like, the. The hotel itself looks quite beautiful with a pool and everything. But anyway, so I. I think that, you know, just from what we've learned from those.
[01:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, those podcasters.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And like, from the past, like, that seems to be. And then the themed rooms. But I. I mean, that's something for the future. But you could always try one room to see how the theme rooms worked and, you know, maybe see if that actually gets you a higher rental rate than the other unthemed rooms. Right. And then that way you might have, like. Like this one theme room, and maybe that theme room is $90 a night, whereas all the other ones are 75. But if you find that the 90 a night sells out faster than all the other ones, then all of a sudden you're like, well, maybe I should do a different theme in different rooms. Right. And see how that runs out. Right.
[01:02:02] Speaker A: My goal right now is just to make that payment, that first payment. But, yeah, absolutely. Like, there's all. There's all kinds of, like, we've got ideas. We've definitely got ideas, like what do there. Well, I want to put. I want to put in a slide at the pool because again, we're trying to appeal to families. So I really wanted. And I got a quote on one of the. The, you know, it's like, it looks like natural rock with the slide that comes down.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: Cool.
[01:02:26] Speaker A: So, you know, that's something that we've wanted to do. But again, I've got a. Like, we gotta set things in priority sequence.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: So first, first year, get it rented out in high season, get some money coming in and then reinvest.
[01:02:41] Speaker A: And it is for sale too, by the way. Anyone listening? We've got it up for sale.
[01:02:45] Speaker B: So there's. There. Could they take over? Is the financing assumable?
[01:02:50] Speaker A: We'd have to find out.
I'm sure it'd be a conversation. He would be. He would have.
[01:02:57] Speaker B: Right? Okay, that's interesting. So there's. There's some other things that could happen here and there's some ways to do some upside for some innovative real estate investors who is list listening to the podcast. We've already talked a little some ideas here.
But, you know, it was great chatting with you, Rob, about this. And you know, this has been.
[01:03:22] Speaker A: Thanks for having me on, Quentin.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, no problem. I'm always happy. And you know what? For some reason I have this little bobblehead Rob, and he said, does he.
[01:03:30] Speaker A: Like give you ideas or like, what does he do? Does he serve a purpose?
[01:03:34] Speaker B: He shakes his head a lot. He's trying to. I'm actually.
[01:03:37] Speaker A: Yes man.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: Well, no, the nodding. I'm learning the nodding from him because I'm actually heading to India. India for three weeks and at the end of January just to do a little exploring and meet up with some relatives that I've never met in my life. I've never actually been to India, so it's a big kind of experience for me. And, you know, the head nodding is something that I don't know how to do yet. Because no, no, no, I don't have it right. Because it means yes. It means no. It means watch out. It means there's a whole bunch to learn about the head nodding in India. So if anybody has some tips, reach out to us on the podcast and perhaps you can help us out. But I really wanted to thank you, Rob, for kind of sharing.
[01:04:23] Speaker A: You mean going exposed?
[01:04:25] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And sharing that with us. Because I think, you know, I think people just don't know what you're doing and how you kind of got to where you are. And it's so great, like, you know, you have a beautiful wife, beautiful kids, and, you know, they're all down there with you. And you've made this huge change and, you know, it's really amazing to see what you've done with, with, with it. And I think people have got a little bit of a sense of, you know, the challenges that you've gone through and the changes that you've made in your life.
[01:04:56] Speaker A: We didn't really get to a lot of the challenges because there's a lot like people. I think I brought this up before, but I remember someone that I know on Facebook saying, you know, I lived in Costa Rica for four months a little while back and now I'm going back. I'm like, you didn't live here, man. You didn't buy a house, you didn't buy a car, you didn't put your kids in school, you didn't have to try and find where to buy anything. Really, like, it's not the same, but there's a lot of things to overcome, a lot of obstacles.
[01:05:25] Speaker B: That's going to be another podcast. Then we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to connect it and we'll connect that up with Rob and, and we'll do another podcast. So.
[01:05:35] Speaker A: Oh, it's been fun.
[01:05:36] Speaker B: Thanks, Rob, for sharing and we'll. Oh, and if you want to get a hold of me, you can visit. If you want to do a 15 minute call, I. You can talk about real
[email protected] we have great real estate events every month. You can check out Durham rei, ca. And how do they get a hold of you? Rob?
[01:06:01] Speaker A: That. That's the website for the hotel and you can reach me at robisterbreakthrough. Ca. We can talk about anything. Ask me questions about anything you think I might know about and that would be great.
[01:06:14] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for this, Rob.
[01:06:16] Speaker A: Thank you. Bye.
[01:06:17] Speaker B: Okay, bye.
