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Ep. 13: Ernesto Furtado - Building a Sustainable Global Real Estate Empire
46 Plays6 months ago
“The goal is to buy low and sell high, not buy high and pray to God it goes higher.”
Have you ever wondered how a home or community can truly live in harmony with nature, fostering sustainability while offering a fresh way of life?
Exploring the intricacies of building homes that embrace the land’s natural resources while minimizing environmental impact, we touch on groundbreaking approaches like prefabricated homes, energy-efficient designs, and how these choices lead to healthier living environments. The dream of being part of a community where your home not only shelters you but sustains you, both financially and ecologically
Ernesto Furtado is a seasoned real estate expert with over 40 years of experience, managing properties across 24 countries. He’s the CEO of Vision Real Estate Management Services and a group CEO at All Things Real Estate Global Group. Ernesto has managed to grow his network to nearly 90,000 realtors across 24 countries, and he continues to provide exclusive advisory services to real estate investors worldwide. Ernesto is now leading a groundbreaking project on the Island Sao Miguel, part of the autonomous region of Portugal—a regenerative community designed for adults seeking a more conscious, sustainable lifestyle. The development, Quinta Vida Nova, is centred around the principles of sustainability, incorporating renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, eco-friendly construction methods, and communal gardens that provide fresh produce for the residents. Ernesto's vision is to create not just homes, but a way of living that fosters community, health, and respect for the natural environment.
Websites:
https://quintavidanova.com/newhome/
All Things Real Estate Global Group: https://atregg.com/
Explore these valuable resources to further your journey in regenerative design:
Discover more about Paulownia trees and their sustainable potential at https://www.paulownia-la.com/.
Dive into the Twelve Laws of Nature and unlock the secrets of harmonizing with our planet at https://www.12lawsofnature.com/.
Fulfill your garden aspirations with expert guidance from the Garden of Your Dreams masterclass at https://www.gardenofyourdreams.com/.
Ready to take actionable steps towards your dream garden? Book a complimentary 30-minute training session with Matthieu for immediate results: https://calendly.com/garden-of-your-dreams.
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Transcript
Vision for a Sustainable Community
00:00:00
Speaker
I want a place where I can go and play in the dirt if I want to. My wife loves to garden. The owners of the community can invest. That's why even around the buildings that we're gonna create, there will be gardens. So we could pay a gardener or gardeners, because it'll be a lot of work. where We're gonna have a composting center, obviously. So we're gonna create our own soils, as you mentioned, right? And what kind of soils do we want? So it'll be constantly growing different things. i mean We planted a hundred, maybe 200 square meters of
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Regenerative Design Podcast.
Introduction of Ernesto Furtado
00:01:13
Speaker
Today we have another amazing guest. His name is Ernesto Furtado. Ernest has a very impressive ah resume of achievements that he has done over the years. He has over 40 years of experience in business and he's part of numerous organizations in the real real estate space such as EXP Realty. He's also a group CEO of and Senior Asset Manager of Altings Real Estate Global Group. And he's also the CEO and founder of Vision Real Estate Management Services, which is a and company that offers support throughout the whole real estate space. So I'm very excited to talk about Ernesto's personal story and also learn more about what he has done over the years. So Ernesto, welcome to the show.
00:02:09
Speaker
Great to be here, Matthew.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'd love to start with the question, Ernesto, when you go to a dinner party and you're with a group of people, everybody's talking, and all of a sudden the room goes silent and somebody looks at you and asks you, hey Ernesto, what is it that you do? How do you answer that question?
Ernesto's Role in Real Estate Advisory
00:02:33
Speaker
well
00:02:36
Speaker
My main question, and we we provide global advisory service for real estate investors. That's that's really you know and the elevator pitch, exclusive advisory service for real estate investors. That's that's our my primary function.
00:02:53
Speaker
We have a team, as I mentioned to you, we we function out of 24 countries. We have agents in those countries. We're almost at night reaching 90,000 realtors globally in those 24 countries.
00:03:07
Speaker
and so you know, all things real estate is a very broad spectrum, you know, from, you know, people, oh, can you help me find an apartment, right? What size apartment? Where do you want to live? And so on and so forth to, I have a million bucks, where should I invest it? Right? So, and and we only function in the real estate world. So I don't, I don't do stocks. I don't do stuff like that. You know, anything that involved in the real estate industry, we are involved, you know,
00:03:39
Speaker
We buy and sell construction companies, management companies, I mean, anything to that effect as well. But again, it's something that service the ultimate thing, which is the real estate industry. Interesting. It's probably a long answer than you want. Yeah. Well, that's a great answer. So I'd love to go really back in time. Like where did all of this start? Like you've got it so much experience over the years, but there must have been a moment back in time where everything started.
Influences from Early Life
00:04:10
Speaker
Let's go even back to your early life.
00:04:17
Speaker
So how about going back to eight years old? Nice, I like that. My dad owned the business, um he owned the bakery, and all the construction companies used to dump all their leftover wood that they used to burn for the ovens.
00:04:33
Speaker
just you know so we did that so and and we had a big piece of land behind the property where all this wood would be dumped and that's where we played with my friends and it was a bit of a not a jungle but it was a very green area you know so you can get a hide in in between different things back there. So we take that wood and create little tree houses and forts and we would play you know cowboys and Indians and war games and the typical little boy stuff that you do. And so my hands on started from even back then. you know My father used to tell me as a child,
00:05:15
Speaker
You know, they would bet on how long that would take a toy apart because I was those electric cars with the battery thing. I was more interested in the little motor inside to figure it out. I would take it apart and try to put it back together. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn't. So, you know, being hands on. and So, you know, part of all of that, so fast forward to today. I'm a master builder. I design, build, you know, I'm ah i'm i'm a wannabe architect. Really, it is what my passion and desire becomes. I'm passionate about architecture.
00:05:49
Speaker
you know So being in a construction site to me is like being in a kind of a candy store. siss I get excited. I love building things. We've built many things. And it's always a treat to drive by years later. There's something, you know, you built or you were part of the the final result, you know, because we go from An idea, like I mentioned to you, somebody comes and says, you know, I have excellent dollars I'd like to invest, or I would like to do something, and my job is to go figure out what's the highest and best return for those funds, depending on, I guess, the aptitude of the investor, you know. I call them ABCs, you know, aggressors, betweens, and conservative. You know, so different, it's not one recipe fits all.
00:06:38
Speaker
You know, different people need different things and or want different things or have different tolerance to different things, right? So obviously, the riskier the deal. ie I don't believe in gambling. I'm not a gambler. I don't go to casinos. you know So we minimize the risk tolerance as much as possible. Let's put it this way, in my 42 year career, we've never lost money because of the deal. It's always because of people, unfortunately. you know People that say they're gonna do things and and they don't do things. The deals are always, numbers are the numbers. you know and And I've learned through the years that markets go in cycles.
00:07:18
Speaker
I mean, the goal is to buy low and sell high. you know Not buy high and pray to God it goes go higher and then it then obviously get wiped out because you bought at the wrong time. Location is is the the golden rule of real estate globally. Don't buy swamplines, right? don't Don't buy somewhere where something's gonna happen to to the property. So these are all the, I don't even know what the question was again, sorry. We got Cyrail, welcome to Ernest Furtado.
00:07:47
Speaker
such No, I was going backtracking like back to your life. You're eight years old already working with your father. That's amazing. And similar to me, I was always fascinated about how things work. And that for me was the fascination about how nature works. I also, when my sisters had little toys that were mechanically working, like I remember my sister had a small washing machine. I had to take it apart always to know like, how does it work? What's the mechanical?
00:08:17
Speaker
thing behind it. I could never put it back together. That's another story. But at least I understood
Career Beginnings in Real Estate
00:08:22
Speaker
how it worked. um So it's interesting. you but get all kinds of stuff you know We had, um you know, putting 10 old bicycles and creating one bicycle that functions, you know, so taking those pieces apart and things like that. So I'll give you this back even further story. Mom and Dad are originally from here at the Azores, Portugal. um The story is, you know, I was ordered in Portugal, delivered in Brazil where I grew up until I was 10. At 10 years old, due to health reasons, Mom had to move away from Brazil.
00:08:56
Speaker
And we moved to Canada, and that's where I spent most of my life. you know And then four years ago, unfortunately, both my mom and dad passed away, so it can you know an empty nester of different things. you know My kids are big, they're grown, they're doing their own thing.
00:09:14
Speaker
And so I wanted different. I love Canada. I think it's a great country in many aspects. Other aspects, not so much anymore. So it's not it's becoming less and less business friendly. And in my journey, you know so somewhere in the middle there, went to school, had a passion for architecture.
00:09:37
Speaker
You got to understand, I got to Canada when I was 11 years old. I didn't speak three words of English. So by the time I started learning, so I was always way behind my schoolmates. So I struggled through school because I just didn't understand. you know I knew what basic math was.
00:09:57
Speaker
But, you know, when it became too written math, you know, Johnny walked five kilometers, Mary walked three kilometers, how many more kilometers, blah, blah, blah. Simple math, but I didn't know how to read and write to answer the question properly. So I struggled, you know, that's simple things.
00:10:14
Speaker
So I took on I decided you know I have to you know my dad says welcome to the school of hard knocks if you don't want to go to school and and and go through that pain you're gonna have to go through other pain and I was okay with that I was thrilled to to just roll up my sleeves and at 16 I was working full-time you know that was my career and and I always looked for understanding what my employer was doing. And then I started my own business. I had my own little business side hustle when I was 15 years old. you know I was selling soap in larger quantities. It was an Amway product. If you understand multi-level marketing, I got into that.
00:10:59
Speaker
And so understanding business and understanding the whole thing. And then, you know, fast forward a few years later of working various things and construction companies, labor, obviously, sweeping floors and carrying stuff, um decided to, I was working in a hardware store.
00:11:18
Speaker
And I used to help people to do the basic drawings for simple things. you know I want to add a garage to my house. you know you just ah Back in the days, you just needed a very simple drawing to submit to the building department. Or I want to build in a little extension, something like that. So I could do those drawings. I could do some basic stuff. But I want to improve my skills in architecture. And so I went to night school drafting. I wanted to just improve my skills in drafting.
00:11:46
Speaker
and And as I shared this story with you, and I used to walk by this tiny little real estate office. And one day, I was looking at the window. One day they said, salesman wanted. And I was like, hmm, I wonder what this is about. So I walked in. I asked a guy, you know, tell me about how do you become a real estate sales man? That's right. We're going back to 1982, 83.
00:12:11
Speaker
um And the guy, there's an older gentleman, he just told me to sit down and ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up. And at that time, I didn't know what a developer was, so I told him I want to be a builder. He said, it was great, get your real estate license. What is being in a builder has to do with getting a real estate license?
00:12:34
Speaker
So as as I told you, he was extremely, you know, to the point, he says, you know, are are you stupid? And I think I don't think so. You know, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday, because it was one of those life changing moments for me. And he says, well, you got to buy the land, you got to build the house, you got to sell the house, you make money three ways. he goes Well, I'm not that stupid. So I went out and got my real estate license. And that's how I began. And that was, you know, 1983 is when I got licensed. And by 1998, you know, basically in those four years, I became my best client.
00:13:03
Speaker
So I was buying and flipping properties and things like that. And you know there's more to that story. you know it's ah i call I've mastered OPM, right working with other people's money, and because I didn't have any money. So I had to find solutions. you know So there was a lot of people with money, but didn't know how to build and didn't know how to invest their money in real estate. And everybody kind of You know you mentioned about going to a party and the moment they know I'm in real estate, they want to know how's the market, what's happening in the market. Every market, you know after all these years, there's always opportunities. The worse the market situation, the more the opportunity. you know So it's like when there's a crisis, there's opportunity.
00:13:48
Speaker
You know, when everybody's, everything's good and everybody can do things, it becomes very competitive and the opportunities become smaller. So fast forward 42 years, and you know, whatever on 30 plus years, I got fed up of being in Canada. I got fed up a winter, you know, I i was born in a warm country. So winters is was always depressing for me by like January, or February, I wanted to just jump off a building because I'm just so short days cold. I hate being cold, right? You know, to me, hell would be a cold place, not a hot place.
00:14:23
Speaker
and love And so, Yeah, so we decided to move. This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass. Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to cultivate the garden you have always wanted? Do you have a backyard with lots of potential, but you get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time to do gardening? Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's an incredible story in the sense that you at such a young age, you came to understand from a mentor or somebody that gave you advice, OK, you want to be a builder. But if you don't if you don't have access to the complete supply chain in the real estate, you always end up with difficult wallets. Anyways, it's difficult. But now that you start started with the real estate aspect of buying and selling, you had a lot of experience in that realm. You wanted to start building but then you also became a developer so in that sense you're having the whole supply chain of starting a project from scratch
00:15:38
Speaker
to delivering it to the clients or even keeping it in your portfolio and as a rental project. So I think that's that's really interesting. So at what point in your career did you then move away from purely buying and selling to really getting into the development space?
00:15:59
Speaker
Well, you know I lived in downtown Toronto. It was already a developed city. And so the joke was there's no more land available. And I said, that's not true. There's land everywhere. There's the fact that there's a building on it. You knock it down, right? So we did land assemblies. Basically, you know, you buy the house and you buy the next-door neighbor and then you buy the next-door neighbor and you buy, you know, half the street or whatever amount. So that became through client acquisition. So that's a lot of work. It takes a lot of time because, you know, one wants one price, the next guy wants more money, yada, yada, yada. So there was those things. and
00:16:36
Speaker
And so the developer piece, i it took me, I would say, you know a good decade plus to understand that you know buying a piece of land, changing the use of that land,
00:16:50
Speaker
it was almost It was all paperwork. It was all the bureaucracy and all the nonsense that you have to go through. But it is what it is. It's part of the job. you know Digging the hole for the foundation is is part of the job. you know Putting the footing, putting the roof, and so on and so forth. So the bureaucracy of getting approvals, changing the use. And you've got to remember, there was many things there. you know At one time in Toronto, there was a gas station in almost every corner.
00:17:16
Speaker
Right? That's the way it used to be back in the day. I mean, it was ridiculous how many gas stations and then the oil companies decided, you know, they were going to not have them everywhere. And so we were buying old gas stations. So we were dealing with environmental issues, you know, digging out old tanks, they leaked.
00:17:34
Speaker
mess and so you dealt with it. yeah So instead of buying it for half a million bucks, you bought it for 50 grand and you spend $450,000 cleaning it up and there was your land value right as long as it made sense.
Challenges in Real Estate Development
00:17:46
Speaker
So understanding the deal first and doing the due diligence, you know you're an architect It's the whole thing, right? So you come up with a concept idea. You work backwards. you know What can we do here? Work it backwards. And then at the end of the day, is there any money left over? If there is, you buy it. There's not next. I have a little joke that you know investment opportunities are like onions. you know
00:18:11
Speaker
It's a beautiful fruit and then you start peeling, you realize it's an onion and the more you peel, the more you cry. So yeah that's a bit of a joke, but just to give you an analogy of what you go through. So I learned very quickly.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, and i um you know I guess going back to my eight-year-old self and and like yourself taking things apart is inquisitive. you know i always you know I was always, and I still am today, like a two-year-old kid. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why why is it like that? Why does it have to be like this? Why does it go this way? Why does the loss of this blah, blah, blah?
00:18:50
Speaker
So, you know, so inquisitive minds and that's how you get answers. Yeah. So it's pretty straightforward. You know, you look for a niche, you look for a problem and you solve it. and You know, that's usually you can make money by solving.
00:19:02
Speaker
problems. It's a good way. And and and what's needed. you know The market needs two bedroom apartments. I'm not going to build four bedroom apartments. you know I'm not going to build one bedroom apartments. In the city of Toronto right now is probably the the condo capital of the world. They've built so many properties. And because of rental housing and the lack of, they've built so many studios in one bedrooms. Well, you know where's the family going to go? So they got to move out of the air.
00:19:33
Speaker
And what are you going to do now with one bedrooms or studios? You know, break the walls in between and make it a two bedroom, right? Two kitchens and two baths, right? All that kind of stuff. So it's, yeah, you you sort of have to look at what makes sense. And as an investor, it's always, you know, and that's the asset management part. You know, my job is to understand the deal from the very beginning.
00:19:58
Speaker
you know, buying the bushland to the very end. You know, I'm the first one in and the last one out, right? If we stay out. And a lot of times we stay in, is that's where the management company comes in because sometimes, you know, the idea is to buy and hold and cashflow, not buy because, you know, tax purposes. You know, as I mentioned to you when we were here, it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep, right? They make a lot of money, but if you pay taxes and you have all these expenses, oh, I made a million bucks.
00:20:27
Speaker
Okay, how much did you keep? Oh, 50 grand. such So, you know, you could have got a drop somewhere and they double that or something. But anyways, so that's, again, I've done the bunny trail. What's the question? No, I just, we're free flowing here. I really love the fact that you have like that inner child, that childlike imagination of like, OK, why is it not working? Why is it working? Like, I remember as a child as well, I was always asking questions. And I think if you the moment you stop doing that, you lose interest. That's how so many people end up in boring nine to five jobs that are all just living for the weekend. Now, you kept your fascination for your job ah throughout your career. And that is part of your success, in my opinion.
00:21:19
Speaker
So it's it's really cool to to understand that and learn from that.
Return to the Azores
00:21:24
Speaker
Now, I'd love to go to like ah the the more current trajectory of your life today. I think there has been a pivotal moment from going back to your roots, back to the Azores, back to the the island, Sao Miguel, which I was blessed to visit and we spent some time together, which was amazing.
00:21:48
Speaker
And I got to experience this island to work on a project. And I have to say it's it's a well-kept secret still today, but I think it's going to change very, very soon, or it's already changing. And it's just the whole landscape for me as a landscape architect and a nature enthusiast, it is breathtaking. like The size of the island is like it's not too big and it's not too small. And you have a variety of mountain ranges. You have lakes that look like Switzerland. You have pasture land that looks like Ireland. You have ocean views that look like you're in in Africa, let's say. it's It's such a beautiful, diverse environment. so
00:22:30
Speaker
My question is, was that part of the trigger that for you to move back or what were the exact reasons to to come back to San Miguel?
00:22:42
Speaker
Well, we're in August, so two years ago we came for a three-week visit to see an uncle. I have one relative, I have a few relatives here, but primarily a close relative, which is my mother's younger brother, still alive.
00:22:59
Speaker
And he's only a couple of years older than me. So so he was, ah anyways, we came to visit him and started looking around at opportunities. But, you know, go back to to tell you a little bit about more about the story. So when the exp announced in 2019, they were going to go international.
00:23:18
Speaker
you know, we open Australia and the UK first, you know, obviously it made sense, English speaking over North American speaking. So we had US, s Canada, and now these two countries, but they wanted to go further afield, right? So we're looking at different things. Being Brazilian, I looked at the Brazilian real estate market.
00:23:35
Speaker
And you know it's not only the real estate. You've got to look at the whole thing. What's the government like? What's the currency? What's the unemployment rate? Is there jobs? you know Who's going there? Is it safe? What's the medical system? You've got to look as an investor. You've got to do all this massive due diligence. And that's the primary.
00:23:55
Speaker
So it made sense that you know you started looking. I said, OK, I had a business partner we used to talk about. you know It's better to be a big fish in a little pond than being a little fish in a big pond. So you you know you eat or you'd be eaten. And Portugal made a lot more sense for many reasons. Portugal, if you do the studies, forget my background and my roots. it just It was a blessing because I could speak the language.
00:24:25
Speaker
Um, so that, that made life easier. Right. We went to Greece and we started doing some work there and the language was so difficult. And so that alone is a, is a, a hindrance to the fact, but there was other things, but anyways, coming back here. So I brought exp to Portugal.
00:24:42
Speaker
You know, i we do did the due diligence. I convinced my partners in the US and leadership group there that Portugal would be a good choice, you know, for the last, I would say,
00:24:58
Speaker
probably the last decade, but for sure the last half a dozen years, you know, what they call Portugal's in fashion. It became fashion, you know, with the golden visa programs, with the tax incentives, with non-habitual tax incentives they had. Many things, many things, the safety, the quality, the affordability, it's an affordable place to live for most people, right? It's becoming much more expensive in the big cities.
00:25:26
Speaker
You know, but that's any city, any city in any country in the world. You go to the big city, it costs, you know, New York City costs, Manhattan's one price, you cross the river to Jersey, it's another price, right? And same thing. So even in Portugal, you go to Amada, which is across the river from Lisbon, it's already one third the price less. You go 45 minutes away, it's half the price. I mean, if you want to live in the big city, you've got to pay the price.
00:25:54
Speaker
And anyway, so going forward, so we brought exp to Portugal. And in my travels, I spent 18 months traveling up and down and sideways. You know, it's it's not a joke. And I'll tell you the reason we live in 256 places in 18 months. And we know that for a fact, because, you know, my I became a citizen through my parents were Portuguese, so I was entitled to to have my citizenship. And then I applied for my wife to become landed.
00:26:21
Speaker
and the immigration officer wanted to know where we live or our home address. So we don't have one. So how can you be here all these months and not have a home address? And so she wanted proof. So we have to print every receipt of every hotel, every Airbnb we rented, you know, to instructed them and we had a stack like, I don't know.
00:26:41
Speaker
couple of interesting, but, you know, a book. And we handed it to her and she freaked out like, what is this? You ask for the last eight months, there it is. right And we counted it. It was funny. But my point is we traveled up and down and sideways ah throughout Portugal looking at opportunities. And there was a lot of opportunities. But again, you know,
00:27:03
Speaker
I was testing the waters. you know It's not just the opportunity. Yes, I see opportunity, but how do you get in? How do you get out? How do you create an exit strategy? A, B, C. I always try to – it's not just one way to get out. There are multiple ways to get out. you know That's, again, the investor mind.
00:27:21
Speaker
So we looked at our different opportunities. And then we opened Brazil. So I wanted to go down there and and really see because it made it easier. Once we had everything already translated into Portuguese, opened Brazil is much easier. Because Brazil is 26 states. It's like 26 countries. you know I have a joke that I call you know the the the divided states of America. They're not united. It's 50 states. It's 50 different laws.
00:27:46
Speaker
You know, you can have a gun here, but you can't have a gun there over here. You can shoot somebody here. You can't shoot somebody. crazy You can buy marijuana in this state. Next day you go to jail for life. rabbi So it's the divided states of America and Brazil is the same. We have 26 states. um And it's like opening a country every time you open a state. You have a different broker. You have different rules, different licenses and everything else.
00:28:11
Speaker
So it became Portugal, one law, one rule across the nation, including the autonomous regions, which is the nine islands of the Azores and the few islands in Madeira, which is off the coast of Africa. It's all part of, still Portugal, but these have independent governments and they still speak the language. They're still part of Portugal, but not.
00:28:31
Speaker
And anyways, so fast forward 18 months later, we go to Brazil, came back, we went, like I said, I went to Greece, we went to different countries, we went over to Spain, and then I come decided to visit uncle.
Choosing Portugal for Investment
00:28:42
Speaker
And then when I got here, I discovered the tax advantages. So, you know, corporate tax was less, you know, and I could function out of here and it still operated all of Portugal. So, you know, instead of paying 28%, I was paying 21%, and we paid 21%.
00:29:01
Speaker
The value added tax is 23% in mainland, 16% here. And I was like, okay, let's start. So it's like I mentioned to you earlier, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. And then all kinds of incentives. I can fly to mainland for 130 bucks. If I paid more, I get a refund because I'm a residence. I can fly to the other islands for 50 euros back and forth, return, it's cheap.
00:29:27
Speaker
this you know And it also allows me to go to North America for four and a half, five hours, where from mainland it takes seven, eight hours. you know It's different. So it's two and a half hours to mainland Portugal. It's five hours to to Toronto from here. And the flights are daily. you know I could fly out of here to Toronto or somewhere in the East Coast of the United States or or Canada.
00:29:52
Speaker
twice a day on the worst case. Now it's like three, four flights a day. The location is incredible. I call it the world between worlds because it's like pretty much in the middle. It's really cool, you know, but it's island living. So you still have to figure out, you know, if you don't know what that means, it's an experience. Building is the next thing then. How do you get everything on the island? How do you get the right people? How do you do all of that extra challenges?
00:30:20
Speaker
The only thing they have here is milk and cheese and cows and, you know, and potatoes and wood. They have lots of wood and they don't use it for construction. They use a very little wood. Most of the wood is shipped out. And in Canada, all we use is wood for construction with veneer and things like that. But anyways, fast forward. doing So we came here, looked at all the opportunities.
00:30:40
Speaker
and um looked at some things, looked at the tax advantages, looked at those location advantages, and you know, you you sort of did the math and you're thinking, okay, check, check, check, check, check. ah Yes, it's harder to get things over here, but you know, so you schedule for it, right? whos So where Mainland, I could go down the street, pick it up. Here, it's two, three, four, five, six weeks. Everything here, is we have a joke, you know. You can get anything you need, but it's four to six weeks.
00:31:12
Speaker
So Portugal doesn't have an Amazon, everything has to come either through Amazon Spain or Amazon Germany, but it gets here, right? Sometimes like the next day, sometimes the next week, but it gets here. You know, when you're doing large scale construction, obviously it's it's a ship, you know, it's like your container has to go through whatever.
00:31:30
Speaker
So it's ah four to six weeks. you know That's safe. Can you get it in two? Yes. If you get it in two, you celebrate. if you get But realistically, it's four to six weeks. So you schedule for that. You prepare for it. You prepare it for many things, you know for things for delays and things like that. you know you know Europe, like South America, you know people work to live.
00:31:57
Speaker
North America and some other parts of Germany, it was the same thing. A little bit, not as much as North America for sure. We live to work. People are just always busy, rushing, rushing, work, home, work, home, doing things. So it's a different lifestyle. I literally went into shock for the first six months I was living in Europe because I was so used to such a fast pace, like all of a sudden I'm slamming on the brakes and everything's working. I work at a super fast pace there.
00:32:26
Speaker
more than the average person. So when I got here, I was in shock. You know, everyone was like mañana, you know. I expect to go to the bank, open a bank account. I mean, in 45 minutes an hour, I'm already freaking out. Here, it's a whole day sometimes. Sometimes you got to come back the next day to finish opening a blessed bank account. Not all the banks are like that, but that's just a simple example of, you know, it's different.
00:32:51
Speaker
So like everything else, you just go with the culture. Okay. So how do you fit in? You know, I can't change the culture, you know, I'm i'm not going to change it. So, you know, cultures change. It takes generations, right? So we work with what you know, with what you get. That's their country, not mine. Well, it's kind of my country now, but it is what it is. So you fit in. How do you fit in? How do you function? How do you work? And, you know, we used to turn houses around.
00:33:20
Speaker
six weeks, eight weeks, like three months would be a joke, right? Like, what are you doing? You're sleeping on the job. ah so You know, here, if you turn the house around in six months to think you can walk on water, right? It's not unheard of. You know, one year is already super fast on average is about, I would say 18 months, you know, to turn the house around. I will go bankrupt in Canada. It took me 18 months to build the house.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting that the whole cultural aspect is such a big part of it. And again, I think it's an additional obstacle, which also means the competition becomes less, right? Like going the extra mile of going through all the hurdles puts you in a position that when you get to the point, you can actually start building and finishing. When it's done, you will have an exceptional position in the market, especially with the project you're currently working on.
00:34:17
Speaker
that I think is an amazing project with with a great vision. So let's talk about
Historic Manor Acquisition
00:34:23
Speaker
that. So the project is called Kinta Vida Nova that you're currently working on. and I got to see the land. Could you tell a bit more about your vision, the i idea, the initial um the initial the way that you acquired the land? I'd love to hear hear more about that.
00:34:46
Speaker
So about 18 months ago, probably a little bit more than 18 months now, you know, like I said, we came here for three weeks and then we stayed longer and we extended it for another three weeks. So for about first three months, again, we started looking around and doing different things.
00:35:02
Speaker
We had brought EXP already functioning here in the island. We had a couple of agents, well, one agent in particular, Zhuang, who's showed me a bunch of properties. We started looking at different properties just because I want to be known, right? Everywhere I go, I'm always looking at properties. I'm always on work quiche, not vacation. I'm always on work mode. and But that's because I love it, right? See, you were mentioning about a job and work.
00:35:32
Speaker
It doesn't feel like that to me, right? I love what I do. I get excited. So what I do is a job sounds like a burden. It's, you know, my career is, I'm passionate about what I do. Is it hard sometimes? Extremely hard. You know, but so is a sport. So is hiking. So is whatever you do. It's hard parts to it. But as long as you love doing it, you're, you know,
00:35:55
Speaker
our Our mentor, you know know, well, Raymond would say, you know, figure out what you love to do and do that and make, you know, figure out how to make money doing that. And you never work a day in your life. Right. So you're always doing what you love. And if you can make money doing what you love, it becomes easier. Anyways, going back to you, we looked around looking at opportunities and we came to look at a piece of land, just, you know, a couple of blocks from here.
00:36:20
Speaker
And then Jerome says, oh, by the way, there's this manor over there. And I said, not interested. Not doing any renovations, like because it's hard to find labor here. And so rebuilding, you know renovations are a lot more work. i love It's a lot much easier like for me. it's like I like to start from scratch. It's much simpler, right? I don't want to get into demolition. I don't want to start discovering that I have issues. You know, it just twice. Renovations is can be a lot more work.
00:36:54
Speaker
But he showed it to me, and I looked at it, and I was like, okay, well, yeah, this is probably a designated historical building, not touching it with a 10-foot pole, right? and he And he said, well, according to the owner, it's not designated. I was like, how is that possible, you know? Because the thing is, over two it's 221 years old now.
00:37:13
Speaker
And so there's a history to it. Thomas Hinkling built a house. He built some really, I don't know, did did you ever get in to see the Terrenosta Park? did you Did you make it there? i wasn't sure I didn't ask you. Yes, I made a stopover there. yeah He was the guy who built the park as well.
00:37:32
Speaker
Correct. So that was his summer home. What the manner we we're talking about was his family or home. And just to give you a sense, he had 14 children, right? So the the the thing at the time, if you look at all our components, we're we're just shy at 1200 square meter for this house. It's a big house. yeah um And so it's a three story building at that time was unheard of.
00:37:55
Speaker
So he had to bring workers from North America to bring to build the house here at the time because he was ah you know he was an Englishman who lived in the U.S. and and i mean to give you a ah sense of time.
00:38:08
Speaker
He was commissioned by George Washington, the first president of the United States, to be the ambassador or vice council to the Azores for the United States, the new United States. Back then it was like, I don't know, six states or eight, I don't know the history of how many states, but it was in 50 states. It was just the beginning.
00:38:27
Speaker
you know, so that's who he was. And the major industry here in the island was citrus, you know, oranges, lemons, limes, and so on, tangerines, especially. um And that's how the mind the guy became very rich. So he could afford this manor. He could afford the pteranoster, which is unbelievable, beautiful, with the thermal pools, you know, natural thermal pools that he built his house up there. And that was his vacation home.
00:38:57
Speaker
you know So the Nordest, which is the eastern part of the island, they used to call that the 10th island, even though it's the same island, but it was so difficult to get to with the winding roads and the up and downs back in the day. you know it It was like a one or two day journey to get to what now takes 45 minutes with a new highway. right before the highway it would take you four or five hours. you know the I don't know if you took some of the back roads, it's it's pretty. If you love to drive you know and you're excited about all the corners and things like that, you know you can do some neat driving still. But thats again, going off subject. So we looked at the property and then discovered it was 32,000 square meters. So 3.2 hectares.
00:39:47
Speaker
It was way bigger than I thought. I was like, holy moly. And so there's a whole other thing around it. So there's it's a rezoning. It used to be like a terror in Auster Park. It must have been unbelievably beautiful at one point. But it's been abandoned for almost over a century. yeah So it became overgrown. You can imagine. The house now has only the walls left. There's anything wood. The roof is gone.
00:40:12
Speaker
you know i have like a bunch of the interior walls because they're they're they're some of the walls are almost a meter thick, right? from Excuse me. get but Water here. It's really incredible the history of the places. I got to see it with my own eyes and and the guy who came on that island became super rich with the oranges knowing that back in the now oranges is like a most normal thing. Back in the days it was a real
00:40:43
Speaker
a rarity to be shipped around the world. So it was extremely expensive. So he made a good amount of money with that. And the only people who made an orange was rich people and you got an orange for Christmas. You know, if you got an orange for Christmas, it was a treat. You know, it was not something readily available. You go to the corner store and buy a dozen oranges, you know, at any time of the year, anywhere.
00:41:05
Speaker
So that was unheard of, you know, it's like we we went to in Brazil, we were there, we went to the museum, the story of cacao with chocolate and how that all started. And again, cacao was drank and only by royalty.
00:41:20
Speaker
So the pure cacao, which was bitter and disgusting, but again, when you drink coffee, imagine you never drink coffee. Explain to people what coffee is. You know take these beans, you make charcoal, you run hot water through it and you drink the charcoal water. That's what coffee is.
00:41:37
Speaker
yeah So I imagine what that would have been, you know, trying to sell that to the queen or king or whoever it is that you, when you brought this back, how this is delighted, which is the thing, right? And, and how was the same thing?
00:41:53
Speaker
You know, this bitter thing, it was used by the natives, you know, Indians throughout the world. And as a medicine, as a treat, it's not sweet. Sweet came later, you know, from sugar, you know, milk chocolate came from you guys out your way, you know, and Swiss chocolate and all of that fun stuff. So milk chocolate became much later. Anyways, the whole history in there, money.
00:42:17
Speaker
So Hinkley builds this house, creates an amazing garden. You saw the lookouts. The lookouts were built. it's this massive They have rocks everywhere. where where you know This is a volcanic island. So to farm, yes, you cleared away the bush, but you're mostly clear. And the soil here is is is almost like gold, only certain parts, but mostly rock. And maybe 200 years ago, even more so, you know the vegetation you get in the northern part where you get a lot of forest.
00:42:48
Speaker
So there's some soil, but anyways, they cleared all the rock. And they have this, oh, it's gotta be 15, 20 meters high. I haven't measured the height, to be honest with you. i I'll just should do that. This big, think of a man-made mountain. So it looks like a round pyramid. You go around and around and around until you get to the very top. It looks like a birthday cake we've started.
00:43:15
Speaker
And from that was the lookout, you know, so for many reasons, I mean, you know, Portugal was one of the major whaling because you still do, you know, one of the major things to do here is go to look at the whales and dolphins. You know, there's a whole reason why they still migrate and hang out around the Azores because of the currents.
00:43:37
Speaker
Well, either that and also brings the plankton from the current. So they just sit here and and and just open their mouth and get set in the feed. They eat a lot of plankton every day. So anyway, so the waters are infested with that, which then the whales came. But whale hunting, whale oil was a big business. So a lot of the ah fishing, small fishing villages wear whalers, you know, and you catch a whale.
00:44:01
Speaker
So you had to spot them and somebody had to be awakened all the time, looking all the time for these whales. But anyways, nonetheless, it was for the ships also when the ships were very far away. You got to think, you know, it's not like today you have a motor and, you know, when you see a ship an hour later, it's here. But, you know, a sail didn't take that, you know, depending on the wind. If it was really windy, it still moved, but you could see it far away. And you would want to keep those oranges on the tree as long as possible. You know, the moment you pick it, it starts to rot.
00:44:31
Speaker
So you pick it, get it over to the boat. There was no marinas back in those days. That means, you know, you you fill in your little boats and you row out there and put it in the big ship back and forth a hundred times or until you fill up the the boat with all the oranges and then that boat takes off. Right. So you have to see the boat coming, you know, it could be, you know, hours and hours before. So.
00:44:54
Speaker
the bell would go off or rocket or cannon. I don't know what they would announce that it meant everybody dropped what you're doing. It's harvest time and you harvest day and night until you you did what you did and fill up the boats and then off they go. And anyways, that's how they did it, right? So, you know, the the payday was maybe once or twice a year, right? And it wasn't, it's not like oranges grow 24 seven.
00:45:21
Speaker
365. So that's how he started. But anyways, that's deviating from the fact that he created this Ternoster Park. So in those ships, they would because they travel all over the world bringing oranges and bringing the citrus to different parts, they would have saw bringing back things, trees and bushes and other fruit trees and you know so the pineapples and and which is a big thing here. you know Zora and pineapple is very famous. you know And we have other fruits and vegetables. and Exotic trees, which you you know if you got into Veracor Park, it's unbelievable the variation. And they have the little tags. you know This one is from the Philippines. This one's from China. This one's from Australia. This one's from you know whatever, Greenland. All over the world, you know Central America, South America. you know And they had the variation, and they still have it there.
00:46:14
Speaker
because we're a subtropical weather here, even though when you look at the, you know, we're at the same almost parallel to many countries where they get snow and ice. We don't get no snow and ice. Pico Island, which is the tallest point in all of Portugal, is an island that literally at the top So when you're flying on the airplane, you can see the tip of it above the clouds. That's a lot of people don't even know, you know, most people don't even know where the heck the Azores is. When I mentioned to people, where are you now? And they say, well, we're in the Azores, or where the heck is the Azores? They don't even know where that is, you know. So we call it the Hawaii of the Atlantic, or the Hawaii of Europe, as opposed to the Hawaii of the Americas.
00:47:00
Speaker
But anyway, so that's kind of what we are and back to the land come down. But unfortunately, it got overgrown. and the the estate who went from this person who bought it off of them because what ended the industry, we don't have no longer. So in the so this started in the late 1700s. By the mid 1800s, there was an infestation of some sort of a bug that came probably from one of those trees from some exotic place and infested the whole island and killed all the oranges. They became they became diseased and basically wiped out the citrus industry.
00:47:38
Speaker
And so a lot of rich people became very poor, very fast, you know, I mean, because it took a lot of money and, you know, you needed the income. It was very good income. But, you know, when you have staff and people to grow and take care of the land. So a lot of the orchards got abandoned, they died, diseased, and now now what? know So they started to do other industry. like Today, the big market here is is corn for feed.
00:48:06
Speaker
and mostly not corn for anything else. I mean, there's some sweet corn, but it's not much, but it's corn and grass to feed the cows. So we have cows all over the place so because cheese and milk and milk products, which is mostly the cheese that gets exported, Azorian cheese is a little famous as well. And then the beef, obviously for consumption. for Yeah, they have 265 days of grass-fed milk and meat, which is quite exceptional.
00:48:35
Speaker
so Correct. The climate is incredible. As you said, there's such a variety, like pretty much you can grow everything and there's so many microclimates on the island as well. Like every corner of the island has a different humidity, exposure. So it's very, very diverse. Yeah. So there's nine islands and all of them have a color and some you go as the green island. And when you get here, you understand why it's called the green island. Yeah. Somebody even told me that there is a different shade of green that was like was invented or they didn't found it yet. And it comes from that island because the green of the grass is so like nearly yellow green that the color didn't even exist. So yeah, it's it's obviously you have a lot of humidity, a lot of rainfall. So everything grows like crazy when the soil is in a good condition.
00:49:29
Speaker
So, but now bringing it back to to your, to the land you're working on, could you tell more about the idea, what you want to do there? What what is it about? So we have to do it in phases because, you know, the the zoning maps are still very antiquated. And according to the zoning map, there's still a forest here, which been has been deforested for probably a decade, you know, way before I came.
00:49:59
Speaker
You know, all, all I inherited when we bought the place was, you know, stumps, you know, and dug out stumps because they were trying to turn this into a a vineyard. And, you know, and so Pico Island is famous for its wine, but the vineyards grow amongst the rocks because again, the the temperature, right? So the sun hits the rock, the rock absorbs all the heat and then radiates into the whole thing.
00:50:24
Speaker
Soil, like I told you, is is is gold around here, so there's not a lot of soil. So the the vineyards grow along the rocks. As you mentioned, a lot of rocks. There's a lot of minerals and so on and so forth. It's a different grape. I kind of don't like it. I find it very acidic.
00:50:40
Speaker
But I'm not a wine connoisseur, so forget what I think about wine, because to me, you know, I told you a $2 bottle of wine or a $200 bottle of wine is wine, you know, forgive me, but that's, I'm i'm not a wine connoisseur. And so there's different things. um But it's it's different. and and And it's expensive because it's rare, you know, so the pico wines and some of the Azorean wines could be expensive because there's not a lot of it, you know, there's a demand for people that like that kind of stuff. um Anyway, so the the trees are gone. Most of the trees are gone.
00:51:19
Speaker
As you saw, this there's five cork trees. At the mainland Portugal, there's you know cork trees are like sacred. you know If you cut down a cork tree, like they'll shoot you. They'll go to jail, literally, because Portugal produces 70% of the world's cork. And cork byproduct is not just a cork for your bottle of wine, but it's cork for soundproofing, it's cork purses, it's cork shoes, it's cork flooring, flooring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, so when you think again, all the places in the world that use cork, 70% come from this blessed little country, right? And in the island, as far as I know, we only, we have the only five cork trees.
00:52:04
Speaker
right So there you go, and they're surviving. They're monumental. They're really beautiful. Even though they're struggling a bit. They're very beautiful. And the other one is a 250-year-old dragon tree. right It's a very unique-looking tree, which is you saw is in iss in rough shape. I'm not sure if it got hit by lightning or something happened to it, but it cracked in half because it's so big and old.
00:52:26
Speaker
um And so the surviving half is struggling. Again, before we got here, you know like I said, we've only been on the property about 18 months. And so the zoning, if you take away the areas out of the 32,000 square meters, we can now build on 9,000 square meters. So at the very bottom, the very top, and a little bit on the side. So we we the property surrounds three streets. It's in the middle of a whole massive block.
00:52:54
Speaker
but we have three areas that we can build on. So that'll be phase one. And then we'll work with with the with the city. where We are working with the city about rezoning you know the the balance of the place. So we will keep at least one hectare, about 10,000 square meters. This is where you came in you know between the two pyramids. we have We have a second pyramid, which is really cool. It looks more like a Mayan pyramid. This one is a rectangle. And it's like, again, a cake. And it goes up. It's not as tall as the the circular one.
00:53:27
Speaker
But it's there. And we're talking these are massive structures, right? yeah These are not like a baby structures. And so we'll restore that. So in between the two, we want to make a sustainable garden. As I mentioned to you, Matthew, this is where we start connecting. you know I just don't want a garden where it costs me money. you know i' Like I said, I'm an investor. So if I'm going to buy a tree, it's got to give me a return on my investment. Not just the beauty, which I love.
00:53:57
Speaker
but also you know the fruit. What can we eat from it? What can we do with it? you know we're We're planting at the moment probably close to 100 avocado trees. So we anticipate about 9,000 to 10,000 square meters of construction. ah So you know we're looking at 50 to maybe 80 families living.
00:54:21
Speaker
right? Can they eat all that avocado? Probably not, but then we can do avocado oil. We can do different things with avocado and so on and so forth. That's just one example, you know, the pineapples, you know, whatever, juice and this and that. You know, we've been growing try to grow different things we're we're testing things out you know cabbages and and beets and blah blah blah you know sweet corn is amazing you know with different things and then all kinds of fruits almost you get almost so we're papaya trees mango trees and things like that and and we'll see you know they all grow here but you know our land is on a very slope as you know right we're we're we're both you know, from one end to the other. So we have a very, as you mentioned, microclimate. So at the on the south end, the property, which is like a five minute walk to the beach, one of the nicest beaches on the island. So we're the sandy beach, ah black sand beach, because we're a volcanic island. We don't have the beautiful golden beaches. We have black sand. It's, you know,
00:55:29
Speaker
which is worse than the tan sand because it gets hotter. The black absorb so you can burn your feet really bad if you're not careful. But anyways, we're we're a five-minute walk. We're like not even a minute drive to the beach from the property so you have that advantage. um The manor is at the very south end and then it goes up almost I haven't done the math yet, but I believe it's 180 to 200 meter difference in height. And it's half a kilometer long. So it's a very long narrow strip. And so which is great because it slopes south. So it allows us to have terraces. So the house here, the next house still will have an ocean view, the next house will have an ocean view, and the next house will have
00:56:17
Speaker
And so that's a lot of land, a lot of space to do so many things.
Vision for Quinta Vida Nova
00:56:21
Speaker
So I can put little bushes and I can put little flowers, which then cost a lot of money to the whole thing. So Quinta Vida Nova means new life and state. So it's a new life for me. It's a new life for the land. It's a new life for the manner. It's a new life for the community. It's a new life for somebody who's coming here, wants to live here. And we we want it to be a rejuvenation condominium.
00:56:47
Speaker
Right. So it's like you're going to eat healthier here because we were going to have this massive community garden. So you're going to have organic vegetables and fruits that we will consume first and foremost for the for the people that are going to live here.
00:57:02
Speaker
And then if there's anything left over, we talked about possibly doing a funky restaurant where we can go from, you know, garden to table and invite that, you know, and see what that possibly could look like. But that's not my shtick that it would be in partnership possibly with somebody else. Somebody's crazy enough to take that on.
00:57:21
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass. Are you struggling with finding the right tools and tricks for your garden? Are you lacking the confidence to cultivate the garden you have always wanted? Do you have a backyard with lots of potential but you get overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge and time to do gardening? Then the Garden of Your Dreams Masterclass is for you. Now when it comes down to the the redevelopment of the whole space. Obviously, you want to maximize the amount of buildings to put in. That's also related to the zoning, potential rezoning. Do you think that the people that will want to live on on the land will also be interested in looking for experiences that are also related to green nature, community gardens,
00:58:17
Speaker
Like, do you see it as something instrumental for the development of your project? Totally, totally. I mean, new we we we we say, you know, why why did you buy this property? And I said, it's for me, for my own selfish reasons. You know, I want a place where I can go and play in the dirt if I want to. You know, my wife loves to garden.
00:58:38
Speaker
You know, so the owners of the community can invest. That's why even around the buildings that we're going to create, there will be gardens. So we could pay a gardener or gardeners, because it would be a lot of work. Yeah, so we're going to have a composting center, obviously, because you're going to have tons of vegetation. So we're going to create our own soils, as you mentioned, right? And what kind of soils do we want? So it'll be a constantly growing different things.
00:59:07
Speaker
we and down in the south we planted um I don't know I I maybe a hundred maybe 200 square meters of strawberries and we ate strawberries from February to June last year right pretty cool right and we have way too much straw we couldn't eat them fast enough uh at least for the you know the small group of people that were eating from it and we did like you know, Manuel, to I allowed him to like, just he's the one who planted he looks after it on his own time. So he sells it to the community baskets and baskets, you know, of strawberries, which justifies then buying the plants and you know, his time a little bit of his time, which he does on the side. And he does that with sweet corn, he does that with potatoes, he does that with sweet potatoes. I mean, we're still eating sweet potatoes from two years ago.
01:00:03
Speaker
understand your truck levels You know, what am I going to do? I can't, we're not big potato eaters, but sweet potatoes, we like a lot more than just regular potatoes. And they'll buy, you know, they'll buy a sack of, cost about 50 euros. And they'll plant regular potatoes and they'll get like 50 bags of potatoes from those, from that bank, right? It's a lot of stuff.
01:00:29
Speaker
um Yeah, so that's the intention. that That's the intention. um If they want. And then we talk about also sustainable. You know, so solar is okay. it's It's definitely a way to go But this is an island, you know and it tracks a lot of clouds So we don't have it's not like the southern part of Portugal. We're having 300 days of sunlight We have a lot less we have maybe 200 days of sunlight here So we have cloudy and we have rain season. So January February rains a lot, you know, I would say it rains like
01:01:04
Speaker
every other day or at least once a day for a few hours. you know The clouds come by, it pours it on us. We have a lot of rain January or February. So solar is not the most efficient, but maybe we have four seasons in a day on the island.
01:01:21
Speaker
Well, that's what they say here. But I've lived through winter. I would say three seasons. Not the winter, because you come from Canada. I don't know what winter is. And the greasier they're dying. And I'm like, this is springtime. And then the fall. So anyway, so we do have that for sure. But seasonal. But good thing, we're an island.
01:01:48
Speaker
and I can tell you we have like 330 days of wind, you know, maybe 350 days of wind. is I think, I don't know, there's a handful, maybe two handfuls of days where you have no breeze. So small, you know, turbines makes a lot of sense and you can do very unique difference, not those big stupid helicopter looking things, you know, which is they have some on the island in the north. And I get it. But that's not what we want. So we want to create so between solar, between capturing rainwater, which will do will create ponds and retention tanks for gray water for the toilets and for gardening. So we'll have plenty of water. So we're not sucking off the system. So there's certain costs. So the cost savings of not having to buy electricity
01:02:42
Speaker
Providing so all the common areas will be free electricity Right and a lot of the things so and it's pretty big So you think of all the roads and parking? We want to have common areas, you know, we're still debating on the design, you know We're looking at 200 film families, right? That's gonna be living on the land No, no, I would say I
01:03:10
Speaker
I don't know yet. So we're working on that. But for sure, you know, around 50 to 70 phrase one and maybe another 50 to 70. See, one of the things you said that we're trying to maximize, sometimes more is not better. Like we don't want to compromise, you know, I don't want to put a house in every square inch and and make it into this, you know, I want space, you know, I want quality, not quantity.
01:03:33
Speaker
You're not only on the housing, but also the people. you know so So we need to find 50 like-minded families who are going to enjoy not just you know this lifestyle. And so you have to make a unique indifference to attract the the right buyer to come here. um Can anybody buy in?
01:03:53
Speaker
i don't think would we at this moment will create any restrictions. when When we started this thing, again, i said you know it's a selfish need, I wanted to make it an adult lifestyle community.
01:04:04
Speaker
You know, as much as I love kids and I love my grandkids and stuff like that. No kiss, you know, just this is for 55 plus, you know, so if know a senior living adult lifestyle community. And and that's pretty much what this is going to be geared for. You know, people that who't want, you know, this is our the second home, the new life. Right. And especially with expats coming. Right. So people are coming here by the boatloads. You know, we have like playing loads of people.
01:04:31
Speaker
Like, you know, I've been watching in the mornings because a lot of the the nights are international flights come in early morning and there's like four or five planes coming in, you know, visitors, you know, we had, I think statistically, I'm not sure, I think ah all of Portugal is 14 million, but the Azores is getting, you know, in the millions of people in the first six months of the year. 140,000 people living here. right You have a million visitors.
01:05:00
Speaker
you know And then we have the marina in the fall and in early spring. um So the boats come from from the Caribbean at the end of the season. And so springtime, they're all stopping here. So they do the transatlantic and they stop here. And sometimes we have three, four. I've seen it as as many as, on average, about two to three boats We're talking cruise ships a day, on average one or two. um And the same thing happens again later in the fall. When they they go to the Mediterranean, they do they're doing all the summer stuff here in the Mediterranean. And then when that ends, they'll do the transatlantic again back to for the winter in in the Caribbean. So you have this massive shipping back and forth. They all stop here. you know Not all of them, but I would think a lot of them.
01:05:52
Speaker
So, and you think of each, some of those cruise ships are three to 5,000 people. Imagine, you know, downtown Pont de Valle, you were there, you know, all of a sudden you have 15,000 or 10,000 people crawling around the town. That's a 10% increase in population with one boat. Yeah, yeah, you know, just exactly, you know, a couple of boats and stuff like that, you know, and then the And it creates a huge business, right? so We have all the bus tours and this tour, the that tour. There's a lot of stuff to do here. <unk> i You want to get out and do stuff, you know? We have hundreds of trails. If you're a hiker, it's incredible. Yeah, now bringing it back to the land, what's something that stood out for me is that you want to make it unique and different. And I think that is something very important because looking at the island from what I have seen, and it's my own humble opinion,
01:06:46
Speaker
It has so many beautiful natural resources. You can do so many amazing activities. But then when it comes down to the housing, also the hotels, and again, I'm not general, like it's, I want to generalize not saying that all is like this, but there is not so much offering when it comes down to quality living. Like even the hotels, some of the hotels that I've seen, they are modern, they're new, but it's like a business hotel. So coming to the island, you don't want to be staying in a business hotel. You can do that on the mainland or in other cities.
01:07:20
Speaker
But if you're coming to that beautiful island, you want to have that experience of being in nature, right? And same with the the housing, the buildings. Most are have small windows. um Obviously, it's also affordable building. But anyways, I think there's some big opportunity to do something unique and different in in that sense. Is that what you're looking at? Is that what you're triggering with this project?
01:07:48
Speaker
Well, you know, again, using we we're in the real estate industry, even from the part of the brokerage, the sales part of sales and marketing of real estate. And and that business in Europe, especially in Portugal or in Portugal, not especially because most of the countries throughout Europe and Central America and Asia is very. So let me just give you an example. Canada the and US have an um an MLS system.
01:08:17
Speaker
in our real estate brokerage business is second to none. Even though it's not perfect, but compared to the rest of the world on a scale of 1 to 10,
01:08:27
Speaker
you know we're an eight, nine, and the rest of the world is like a three, four. Just to give you an idea how antiquated and backwards it is. you know we we We have rules and regulations. you know Here in Portugal, you don't need a real estate license. Anybody can be a realtor. It's a disaster. so When you're trusting somebody who doesn't, their they make They make the milk cows in the morning or whatever it is that they do. They serve coffee or they work somewhere else. And in the evenings, they try to be realtors and there's no education. There's no training. There are some, you know, but it's limited. There's no realtors association. You know, there's a brokerage association, but again, the regulations minor. So anyways, that's very antiquated. The construction industry is just as bad or worse.
01:09:21
Speaker
Right? and And so very little skilled labor. very mason dependent, you know, I mean, imagine they they create these walls, they put up these brick walls, and then they go back and smash holes on on the brick to embed the pipes and then plaster it back up, and and then they plaster the thing with cement, you know, and half of it goes on the wall, half of it goes on the ground, they throw it, like it's a lot of waste, there's a lot of stuff, and it rains here a lot, so that's when a lot of the delays, you know, you can't pour concrete on it,
01:09:57
Speaker
pouring rain. and So for months you you can. You pour the concrete and the rain comes and it's insane. And cement is a porous, you know, product, you know, so it absorbs all the water. So a lot of the houses here are humidity issues and, in and you know, so being subtropical, humidity here levels is normally 75-80% on a good day.
01:10:24
Speaker
Like the last couple of weeks, like today, I don't know, the humidity is going to be here. I can give you a quick look, but I mean, it'll be in the eighties, you know, 80% humidity. It's insane. I can't see it here. Yeah. It's like 25 degrees Celsius, but it feels like 40.
01:10:43
Speaker
Yeah. Humidity is going to be, well, it's 25. It's going to feel like 32 and the humidity, it's it's a dry day to today. 72 because it hasn't rained in two weeks, but that's low humidity compared, right? So, so 25 feels like 32 with humidity of 72, like you breathe and you're dying, right? So it's pretty, pretty nuts. Sorry. I was checking the weather.
01:11:14
Speaker
So you have all of that. And my point is, all those concrete base, insulation is almost unheard of. There's a little bit of insulation in the new homes. They're starting to come with new products now with this you know plasticized or you know synthetic paints, which now waterproofs the things. But you got you know fungal stuff, and the humidity comes from the ground up. They don't use it. Anyways, so again,
01:11:41
Speaker
you know, central ventilation systems is unheard of, you know, it just, you know, they have a space back on the wall that throws off heat and throws out condition, that's fine. But you know, if it's cold outside, it's hot inside, it creates humidity, vice versa. You throw on the air conditioning, it's hot outside, it's warm inside, you have humidity, you know, and your walls are You know, our house here in the winter, because we live in in an old house, or you know where we live, we live over the garage at the moment because the main house is being renovated. um You know, we with throw on the wood stove, get a nice, toasty warm, but it's cool and and damp outside and the walls start sweating.
01:12:22
Speaker
And there's mold everywhere. So mold is a major issue and in Central South America and for sure here in Portugal as well. And people live in mold, and mold is not healthy. So I um i like to say to myself, you know i'm I'm a human mold detector. I can walk in at this mold, I'm sneezing, my eyes start watering, I'm in trouble. So I'm extremely aware, I'm always fighting molds.
01:12:48
Speaker
And bleach is not a fun thing to be smelling either.
01:12:55
Speaker
So it's, so new product, how do we build faster, better, more affordable? So it's unique and different, right? And as we mentioned, so we're looking at prefabs, we're looking at insulated homes, insulated sit panels, we talked about insulated concrete forms, which is very common in Portugal, it's in the mainland, it's just starting here in the Azores and non-existent. You know, Madeira Island, we're doing a few homes with that.
01:13:24
Speaker
There's one here with a very inexpensive ICF product. Light steel frame is becoming in, so steel and whatever. so But steel and humidity don't drive together.
01:13:40
Speaker
And so you've got to really make sure that you protect it. And then using the traditional insulation that they use here, which is this wool insulation with humidity, again, doesn't make any sense. It'll be so fluffy, but the moment the humidity gets there, it's toast. So you're going to have mold inside your walls. Yay. So you definitely want to be unique and different when it comes down to the way you're building, right? So that quality standard will be exceptional from what I hear of. Is there other aspects that will differentiate your product project with what's already on the market or even what's already out on the on the mainland? Well, the the construction company or the development company here is called Smart Developments. So we want what we call smart homes.
01:14:31
Speaker
you know So this is the future. you know I want to be able to turn on my alarm, which I can do now from my phone anywhere in the world, turn on my lights, open the door to whoever I want, see who's ringing my doorbell. Doesn't matter if I'm here or if I'm in California or or in Hawaii or the other side of the world. I can see that. you know Turn on the heat. Turn on the air conditioning. So turn it off. See what the temperature and the humidity is. So you know even though the house is sitting empty, but the humidity hit levels so high or whatever it is, I can can monitor all that. LED lighting, which is a huge thing. We talked about gray water, right? So taking a lot of the water from the rainwater and something like that and reserve it and, you know, use it to flush the toilets. Why am I using fresh, clean water to flush toilets? You know, we can use gray water. It's clean. It's still good water, but I'm recycling rainwater as opposed to stuff like that. So we're looking at minimizing the costs, you know, because it's not only, you know, the
01:15:31
Speaker
Is a house an investment? Is it an asset or a liability? Depends. It's not putting money in your pocket, it's a liability. Even if it's your principal reason. Oh, but I got to live somewhere. I got it. But that means you're constantly paying.
01:15:45
Speaker
You're paying for electricity, you're paying for the taxes, you're paying for repairs, you're paying for maintenance. So really it's a liability. It's like a car. it's just It's a tool we use. um you know So you know in our household, you know we we rent where we live and we rent out what we own. right So that means we get to move around, we move around a lot, we travel a lot. And so I'm not worried about you know If I want to live a six months here or a year later, I'm not worried about my stuff in the house. you know I'll rent it out. I don't care. I'm not attached to my... If we have anything that we're very attached to, we'll lock we'll lock it up in a locker room, a piece of art or a piece of something that otherwise is just stuff. So as I shared with you, again, it's not for everybody. This is our lifestyle. This is what we choose to do. But the bottom line is keeping the cost down.
01:16:36
Speaker
right So, you know with like cost of electricity is very expensive, you know especially in Europe, more expensive than North America in many ways. ah The island and now is trying to do its best to become self-sufficient. I mean, we're a volcanic island, so they have one geothermal plant. They're opening up a second one, but they're still using diesel. And thank God they're not using coal here.
01:16:56
Speaker
right It could have been a coal fired generating stations.
European Solar Panel Incentives
01:17:01
Speaker
So my understanding when the the new geothermal comes in online, 80% will be free fuel from the earth. So there's a ah possibility. you know The wind energy and solar panels. And so the European government now is basically paying 96% of your solar panels.
01:17:22
Speaker
You pay 4%. So you spend 10,000 euros and you pay 400 bucks and the government will take care of the rest. you know If you qualify and your roof qualifies and the exposure qualifies, so on and so forth, it's literally free solar. You get to use your consumption, whatever's left over, it goes into the grid.
01:17:40
Speaker
and So there's all of these incentives. You know, many countries are now doing that. They're
Geothermal Resources in Northern Portugal
01:17:45
Speaker
becoming, you know, self-sufficient, self-sustained for heating and stuff like that, right? So jager you can have hot water, but you know, there's parts of Northern Portugal, um they have so much um because they they have also the the hot springs, they run hot water for the whole city. The whole city has free hot water.
01:18:08
Speaker
Well, because it's circulation you know and it runs the electricity. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. So they have to rip up a lot of the pipes and this they have to create still have to insulate the pipes and so on and so forth. Anyways, many of the businesses downtown, they have free hot water. And so if you have free hot water, you can run it through a radiator system. So you have free heating.
01:18:28
Speaker
right So there's all of these
Financial Benefits of Sustainability
01:18:30
Speaker
advantages that you could do. um Pretty cool, right? yeahre I think it's it's a very unique location, a very unique project that you're working on. And what for me really stood out is the fact that you're saying, OK, we want to do everything that's about sustainability, ecology, all of that. But it has to all make sense financially. like And that that's something that I want to share with the audience here. It's like, this is the whole point, why you want to become regenerative, why you want to be sustainable,
01:18:58
Speaker
is like end of the day, it brings you more money, you're less dependent on external inputs, it generates your income. And that that's, I think with this project that you're working on, it's a unique place to showcase that how real estate can become not so much a liability, but really an investment. And I also
Environmental Sustainability and Business Success
01:19:21
Speaker
am a strong believer that, and this is why this podcast is perfect, that you can do something that is great for our environment,
01:19:27
Speaker
for our planet, for the people that live in it. And we can do great in business. In fact, this is what creates the sustainability and the longevity of a project. Otherwise, if costs go skyrocket over time or you're dependent on on the government on or on on other incentives, then the project can go to bust very quickly. So I really
Affordable Sustainable Technology
01:19:51
Speaker
ah appreciate all of your knowledge and input on on that.
01:19:56
Speaker
so I want to start wrapping up. just what Just one thing, yeah. So just quickly is that we've hit a tipping point. If we were having this conversation 20 years ago, it would have been possible. We were talking hundreds of of euros per kilowatt hour. Now it's pennies per kilowatt hour. You understand? And so there's technology today that would have been impossible only a few years ago. So when you can have sustainable Right? And and we're we're an island, so it's impossible to have sustainable because I have to ship everything here, right? So I can't, you know, I have to offset as much as possible, you know, but I'm i'm going to put this thing on a ship that runs on diesel and stinks up the planet. But there's no, I have no choice, right? You know, I can build the houses here out of wood, but I still need nails for the whole thing. You still need stuff, right? You still need cement doesn't grow. You know, we don't have cement here. We don't have steel here.
01:20:49
Speaker
It's an island. So you're sustainable as much as possible. ah
Benefits of Sustainable Homes
01:20:56
Speaker
And so, sorry, my computer is still going to do stuff here. um So we'll get to that. so But now we we it's getting cheaper. So the question now, can I build this quality at the same cost as traditional. Yes, we're there. That's why we're here, right? So I can build all of the stuff I told you almost maybe 10, 15% more. But look, they take 18 months to build a house. I can do it in six or less.
01:21:29
Speaker
So at the end of the day, if you take the labor cost and you take the little bit the more that's going to cost me, it'll work out. So it's almost at the end of the day, we're even almost personally, even again, if we're 10% more, but 10% more for the comfort, for the quality, for the health, like some of these houses, you know, and it'll be a little bit more, but the quality of the air inside will be superior than outside. we We call it, you know, surgical room air quality. Imagine that.
01:21:58
Speaker
where you come into your house and you have a healthy environment where you're breathing clean, you know, through HEPA filters, like your air is purified inside where you have healthy air. You'll get sick when you go outside. Now, you know, you don't have to go outside for fresh air. You come
Closing and Future Updates
01:22:15
Speaker
into your house for fresh air.
01:22:17
Speaker
And it is not so much on an island because we you know we we don't have a lot of pollution here, thank God. But think of that in some cities, it's pretty bad. know Where I was born in Sao Paulo, you can cut the smog with a knife. It's disgusting. Yeah. Well, wrap it up. Ernesto, I really appreciate your time. I think we could keep talking for hours and hours, and that's what we've actually done ah over the last couple of days when I was on the island.
01:22:44
Speaker
so I think there will be a a moment in the future that we will do this again so we can get an update on the project and see how everything evolves there. So again, thank you and have a lovely day.