Transformation & The Era of Scarcity

For decades, abundant land, cheap capital, and rapid development kept supply flowing across many of the world’s most desirable property markets. But that dynamic is changing. Today, a combination of rising construction costs, tighter regulations, infrastructure constraints, and surging global demand is making prime real estate increasingly scarce.

Ronan explains how this transformation is already playing out across international lifestyle markets—from coastal destinations and resort communities to emerging global hubs attracting wealth, migration, and investment.

Drawing on his global research and boots-on-the-ground experience, Ronan breaks down why scarcity is becoming one of the most important forces shaping property values—and why investors who understand this shift early may benefit most.

In this episode, Ronan discusses:

• Why global real estate markets are entering a new scarcity cycle
• The forces restricting supply in many of the world’s most desirable locations
• How infrastructure, tourism growth, and migration patterns accelerate property booms
• Why lifestyle destinations are becoming magnets for global wealth
• What this shift could mean for long-term real estate investors

For anyone interested in international property, lifestyle investing, or understanding the forces shaping the next generation of real estate markets, this episode offers a valuable look at how scarcity is transforming opportunity around the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

We're here in FOTA. I came over, I popped over to try and catch you in person before you leave the country. You're leaving Ireland.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Bags are packed, about to lock up the house for the summer, and on Saturday I'm hitting the road, heading to Amsterdam. The beginning of my circuitous route to the gathering in November.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Okay, so you're gonna put in you're gonna put in a few air miles between now and November.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I'm gonna be clocking up air miles, sea miles, train miles, um canal miles, lots of miles. So what what so Amsterdam is just a transit route? Are you yeah, Amsterdam is basically a vacation, but I'm really really curious to you know, I'm spending four days there um before heading on to Croatian Montenegro. It's primarily a vacation, but I'm also really really interested just to kind of get a handle on the real estate market here because you know this this era of scarcity that we're in for best in class real estate in desirable destinations, and you know, I want to check in to understand those really hot, really blue chip markets because you know it's an important piece in the overall puzzle that that we're putting together.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

And so after Amsterdam, where are you going? I'm flying to Split.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

I have two nights, three days in Split, and I haven't been to Split since geez, I I think probably 2004. Between 2000 and 2004, I had three visits to to Croatia, just as Croatia was was opening up. So um I'm gonna be in Split for three days, then traveling along the coast. Um, we're gonna spend about another three days along the coast between Split and Dubrovnik, some time in Dubrovnik, over to Montenegro, and then back to Dubrovnik. So um, you know, I've got to have a nice block of time, four or five days to to really try and understand the the Montenegro opportunity, which on paper, from from what I've seen and from what I've heard from our colleague Paul, sounds very much like the opportunity I found in Croatia back in 2001, 2 and 2003. Which which was what was that? Which was basically get in at the ground floor of just one of these huge transformations that we like to buy in ahead of. So, you know, you've the backstory, um, Croatia was relatively newly independent, it has an absolutely stunning Adriatic coastline, just one of the most pristine and and nicest coastlines on on earth, but it was just pulling itself back together after the various wars that ravaged the the region, and um you know it was getting ready to join the EU, it was just getting ready to join Western Europe effectively, and you know the thing about Croatia, and again this was really interesting just to see it on the ground. I recall at the time it was just an eight-hour drive from Munich. Yeah, so it was so accessible to just that huge market in Central Europe and southern Germany, and um real estate values just took off. Um you know by 2005, the opportunity had largely passed, prices had more than doubled, it happened so fast there.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Um and so you this is what you're looking for in Montenegro to see if it stacks up.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

This is what I'm looking for. I mean, I'm not looking to reinvent any wheels, I'm just looking for more of the same. And when you figure that you can buy condos in Montenegro with those absolutely stunning views, um stunning sea views and kind of idyllic towns for $150,000. You know, I mean that is just you're not going to get anything for comparable for you know a half or a third in Croatia, and it's all the same coast. And you know, Montenegro is in the process of undergoing a similar transformation, applying for EU membership, and again just becoming integrated with you know all of Western Europe.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

I mean, you know, you you do see and hear a lot of noises now with Montenegro, and there's more and more people just anecdotally going there, digital nomads people for a few months. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And all the all the kind of the influencers. So, you know, it's just interesting, those people who are always out ahead, you know. I mean, you know my thoughts on crypto. I've never never bought one, but you know, some of those crypto people are are out ahead of some of these big changes, and um you know I've seen them flooding to Montenegro, other digital nomads flooding to Montenegro, and um it just appears to be beautiful. So from Montenegro then it's Portugal, yeah? Yeah, so from Montenegro I'm going to the the Silver Coast, um straight to my home in the in the Silver Coast, and you know that's going to be a bit of a a breather in this big kind of this big 10-week scouting trip. So um, you're gonna come over and visit. I am, yeah. Come for a few days with a personal interest in exploring.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah, so I've I'm looking for a base, I'm considering a base in Portugal, and considering and I've been looking at the Algarve but you have me very intrigued about the Silver Coast, so I thought I'd come over and impose myself.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

I'm I'm absolutely tickle pink anyway with um with my purchase. So just to you know to to remind everyone, I bought a home on the silver coast, and when I say home, I'm making the very kind of clear distinction that I bought for lifestyle reasons, so this wasn't a financial investment, so you know I've I've invested for profit in in the Awgarve, but this was a place where I wanted to put myself and spend time, but it's kind of nuts, you know. Just this morning I was just looking at my bank account, and in the last four weeks I've got more than 7,000 euros straight into my bank account from renters who've been there, while I've just been here in Ireland catching up with friends and family and getting out on the golf course and that. And that covers your costs, does it? It covers well, yeah. So this is August, so obviously that's in no way a typical month. But the thing is, you know, just over the past, probably over the past kind of seven weeks, seven, eight weeks of peak summer rentals. Again, when when when I've chosen to put myself in other places, um I've generated enough rental income to cover my mortgage. So this is a beachfront condo, yeah, fabulous beachfront condo from my terrace. I see the waves crashing, I see the golf course. My mortgage is well, no, I stand corrected. I was about to say it's 607 euros, but with the recent rate hikes, I think it's gone up to about 640. Okay. Um, but the rent I've got over the over the past kind of seven or eight weeks covers my mortgage, covers my golf club dues, covers my property taxes, covers my hoa. Um, so you know it's really I as I say I'm I'm tickle pink because I bought this because I really love it there, and I spend a lot of time there, and this was a a luxury I was purchasing for my life for myself, but on a month-on-month basis, it pays for itself, and you know, one of the neighbors next door is selling up now for 95,000 euros more than more than I paid.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

I saw when you shared shared that and you shared some of those numbers in in our channels. I got a bit of FOMO, I have to say.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah, yeah. Well, I I feel like I'm looking a bit stupid because I said that this certainly wasn't a retail deal. So I mean the bar is high for our retrograde opportunities, but it's really interesting, Owen, because what it shows in in this era of scarcity, you know, buying best in class real estate, you know, even if you're a bit off the kind of the beaten track of the super white hot markets like the Algarve, you'll do extremely well because demand just outstrips supply. And you know, the context for this is the Silver Coast is nowhere near as developed as the the Algarve in terms of tourism, it's quiet, it's sleepier, it's gonna have fewer tourists, it's gonna have lower rental occupancy, it's gonna have all these things. But what I have is a condo where you can sit out in the morning and see the whites of the waves crashing, and that's really really unique because you know, in Portugal and right across Europe, permits to develop you know, beachfront and ocean view, beat but beachfront in particular, it's so heavily restricted. So you've got scarcity, you've got scarcity of high-quality real estate for all those folks from right across Europe who are looking for a place to live with beach and golf and all that, and then you've got the double scarcity of the beachfront, the the beachfront component and the and the sea view. So um, so I'm thinking I'm mulling another investment in the Silver Coast, and this time it would be for a big villa. I want to I've studied what um what my friend Chris White down in the Algarve has done, and I mean just this summer he's made 72,000 euros from renting his home just over those peak summer months. Took his family on a bucket list um trip right across Asia, and he does it every year now, and in those seven, well, over the summer when he was away, he pulled in 72,000 euros. So I'm gonna see if I can replicate that play on the on the Silver Coast, but I know to do that it's going to need to be a very special home because you know the the rental market just isn't as isn't as strong, it's more competitive, it's just not as robust a market as it is in the Algarve. But I have learned from this experience with my condo is that the the right properties rent extremely well.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And what what what exactly is Chris's play?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Like what did he do that? Yeah, so very interesting. He bought a he bought a wreck of a home on a big piece of land, like a I mean a plot of I think it probably is about an acre with some nice trees. It was an ugly old pink house in the the heart of the Algarve and he significantly upgraded it, added value, renovated it, and now rents it when he's not using it. So what his play is, and and he's repeating it since then, is first to buy really really well. So, what he does to buy really really well is typically it's a bank foreclosure of a wreck of a property in need of a lot of love in a central but not super prime area of the Algarf. So, to put that in context, you go to Quinta de Lago and you buy a wreck of a home, it's going to cost you four million euros, and there's lots of people chasing that type of a wreck. You go a bit off the beaten track, maybe 15 minutes inland, and no one's looking at these at these wrecks. So you can buy them, you can you can make it make a good deal on the the buying end, and then he adds value by renovating them to the the standards and services and amenities that these villa renters are going to look for. Typically, that's a you know at least four to five bedrooms and a pool, they appeal to families or kind of extended groups of people. So that's the market that you're you're you're renting to. And you know, once you can tap into that market, and you know, Chris rents for kind of minimum of a of a thousand euros a night over over the summer, and he's full, he just keeps it full that the market is that strong.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

You you mentioned a couple of times the era of scarcity, but I mean I've I was thinking about this on the way over this morning. You know, you see headlines, um, I've seen a lot of headlines in my news feed talking about uh house prices coming down, a slowdown in the market. Seems to be in contradiction to this idea that there's there's going to be a scarcity, or there we're entering this era of scarcity in terms of real estate.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

There's there's no contradiction. When I open my feed, when I open my YouTube feed, I see all these sensationalist headlines about you know price drops, about increasing inventory, about um all these metrics that imply a softening of of the market, and there's a degree of so that that is what it is. Some of them are sensationalist and some of them somewhat misrepresent the the current situations other, but you see, on the the big point here is the US in the coming decade is going to have somewhere between five and seven million too few homes. That's the macro picture. So, like you know, Boot Montana demand is softened after this like unprecedented three years of a frenzy. So what? You know, I mean that's of relevance if you're buying or selling a home in Boot Montana today, and there's this kind of impulse everywhere in the social media world that we're living in. It's almost like talking about real estate as if we can trade it like an option or a stock. That's not how real estate works. Real estate is is illiquid, there's high transactions costs, and there's all these things, it's a physical, real thing, um, with frequently complex legal processes. So when thinking about real estate, you need to take a you know a medium to to long term perspective, and you know, looking at the looking at the US market, in the medium term there's a shortage of housing, and um you know it's very important that we're aware of that, and that whole trend is is replicated right across the developed world. So we have this moment, and we have it right here in Ireland too. We have this moment where there's no inventory, literally at the point of no inventory, but prices and rents seem to be just at the cusp of affordability. You know, just down here where where I spend time, just across the fairway there, um, rents have trebled in the last four to five years, and now just this just this past week, something very interesting happened. There's no inventory available to rent, and and I'm not just talking about here, I'm talking about in Cork and in Ireland, full stop. I mean it's just astonishing. And a house over there, fabulous house, very rentable, and but it sat on the market because they just pushed the pricing too far. And I can I can see this kind of situation you know happening and evolving where you've got chronic scarcity, you've got huge demand, the market is kind of seizing up because the sellers have an expectation on pricing that the buyers just aren't in a position to meet, you know. So people are moving in. I mean, countless stories I'm hearing about people you know moving jobs and they have to move in with a family member. They, you know, it's it's a horrific situation, it's a truly a housing crisis, but it's just getting stuck because it's getting stuck at prices that are beyond that that affordability level, and um you know, I guess so. What what does what does this mean? I mean, I think for how does it relate to to our beat? Because I mean our beat is to to find these exceptional real estate opportunities to buy ahead of these big long-term trends. So, what this means is this is going to create an additional push factor. So, again, pre-COVID, Arbeat was all about the pull factors. Why a place is why Los Cabos or why Lagos is so attractive, um, why it's so attractive to people. But since COVID, we're just seeing more and more of these push factors. So people are being pushed out by higher costs, people are being pushed pushed out by antisocial behavior, just the concerns are myriad, and you know they just vary from place to place, but it's all feeding into making Lagos in Portugal or Cabo San Lucas more more desirable. So that's going to fuel demand, and it's going to in particular help fuel demand at the the long-term rental end of the market. You know, the other thing that's you know, in terms of kind of related to the world that we're in today is just the soaring costs of the soaring costs and scarcity of everything related to construction. So everything is getting more expensive, everything is getting more difficult, and it's more difficult to get the right land, it's more difficult to get permits. You know, in parts of the world, the COVID backlog in terms of permits and bureaucracy is so chronic the agencies don't even reply anymore, or they auto-reply to say we're not going to reply. Horrific situation, just seizing, just this thing, you know, physical real estate, a place for human beings to live, and it's just seizing up. So it's getting more and more difficult and expensive to create homes or condos everywhere. Again, whether that's Toulume in Mexico, whether that's on the silver coast, whether that's here in Ireland, um, whether that's in Los Cabos in Mexico, and that's contributing to scarcity and cost. So that means that future inventory is getting more and more challenging to create. You know, many developers find themselves in the spot where they say, I just can't price how much it's going to cost to build this project, so I'm just going to sit it out because um they can't lock in, they can't lock in, lock in costs. So all this is contributing to restricting supply at a moment when these push and these pull factors are sucking people in and pushing people out and just contributing to this demand. But to the point of it being counterintuitive to call scarcity at a moment like this, I'll never forget my kind of my epiphany moment in Dublin. I think it was in 2010 or 2011, a friend of mine, Chris Mayer, who for many years wrote a fabulous newsletter called Capital and Crisis. He was coming over to Ireland to meet the CEO of Kennedy Wilson. So Kennedy Wilson is this big US real estate conglomerate who was investing very heavily in Dublin and Ireland post-crisis. In the previous year, they'd put a billion euros into Ireland. And remember, this was at the height of the fear in Ireland. So this was at the height of the time when we were concerned if the ATMs would stop working, the banking system was frozen, the real estate industry was dead, and they were putting a billion dollars into Ireland. There, kind of as part of the the portfolio of distressed assets that they that they bought, and all I heard was about the red tape, about the barriers that they were facing the barriers and costs that they were facing to create new supply. And um, you know, that just the light bulb went off then, and that was a similar moment because I was looking around and I knew I knew Airbnb were setting up a new corporate HQ there, Facebook were moving into the docklands, just all this, all these US multinationals were just rolling in, creating jobs, all people who needed a place to live. But even at that moment, supply was just not possible. And just last weekend I met up a friend who's um who's a big developer here in Cork, and he said to me, I cannot sell an apartment in Cork for less than 480 euros. That's how much it costs me to get the permits, to build, to pay all the taxes I have to pay, and make a modest profit. So these are very, very interesting and challenging times.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

That that explains, I I get that, I understand that now the about inventory being scarce. But what what does it mean for for Rita? Does it mean that the the deals are gonna get scarce?

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Well, it so it this is very interesting. So our whole so integral to what we do, okay, is that we combine our group buying power and we bring that to the table so I can negotiate for best in class inventory to get these big discounts and because we pool our group buying power. So there's a couple of there's a number of things at play. When the market gets really, really hot, you know, as it started to get, you know, kind of tail end of last year, that's a moment where our group buying power can have less value. Because if everything is selling, you know, like that at these crazy high retail prices, then what we bring to the table is is less. So there's an element that a super hot market doesn't really play into our favor, and that's the way the way things were going towards the tail end of last year. Now, very fortunately for us, you know, I'm always working two or three years ahead in terms of our deal. So our pricing was locked in, our inventory was locked in, and over the past kind of year, 18 months, we've been doing our various due diligences, so we were still good, we still had great inventory at kind of ground floor pre-COVID pricing. But the future was starting to look to look challenging because the market was was just so strong. Now, the fears that I'm hearing out of the you know, the fears about the the global economy, you know, everyone is nervous about them, and the developers we work with are the really smart ones. These are the ones who've come through crisis after crisis after crisis, and these guys know what can happen in or what happens in a crisis, which is sales can just stop like that overnight. So now this global uncertainty plays right into my hands because we have the solution for that, which is just these fast sales. So we're back at a at a point where the value we bring to the table is much, much greater because of the uncertain environment we're we're looking at. You know, this uncertainty is very very much a kind of a short-term thing because the trends we buy into are these big multi-decade trends. So we buy ahead of these big transformations, we're buying Miami of the 1980s. So over those decades, you're gonna get these ebbs and flows, you're gonna get crisis, you're gonna get a pandemic, you're going to get you're gonna get a financial crisis, and we want to be buying and in places and you know accepting that that's the way it is, because we're buying into these big multi-decade trends, and the only thing we need to be absolutely sure about is that we don't overpay. So take Cabo as an example. In Cabo, we're buying into this big multi-decade trend, but you know, towards the tail end of last year, early part of this year, you know, I was seeing retail pricing on some projects, and I'm thinking, hmm, the multi-decade trend I'm buying into, I could see there being a dip, and I could see there being another seven years before pricing catches up to that. So we cannot, so even in places like Cabo or Lagos, we cannot buy um frothy prices frothy moment. Now, what we do in Rita is to basically make sure that that we don't buy in that that moment or that inventory in that moment. So we're buying these big long-term trends, and we just need to make sure that we're always at that kind of ground floor level pricing, and you know, this this flux and this uncertainty in the world, you know, it's it's helping us on the developer negotiation level. We we've got much more power to bring to the table. The constraints on supply are hurting us because a lot of new projects are just much more difficult to get off the ground, and there's those barriers to supply issues. But um, all told, it's a great moment for us because that inventory that we can still get our hands on is just a supremely scarce inventory, like those condos Donna Anna in Lagos, where Rita members are going to be closing in the in the coming weeks. I mean, that's on literally the best piece of developable land remaining in Lagos. You know, this is just cannot be be repeated because it's this flat plot of land perched above town, overlooking the the Atlantic, and the only reason it would it stayed there undeveloped was because there was the ISO or just a horrific half-biv building that was stuck there for 28 years. But once that's gone, it's it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

It sounds then that for any Rita member who got in on a Rita deal, they're they're they're in a very strong position.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Absolutely, because this is our Rita pricing, you know, was true on all all our launches, was true ground floor early in pre-COVID pricing. Since then, everything has has got more expensive. So members who've got in have got the benefits of you know, the multiple benefits that I predicted and we anticipated, which was uplift from buying below market, from the paths of progress, you know, from from all these things we spoke about before COVID.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Roland, in April 2020, when the pandemic was becoming a thing and becoming the thing that it was going to become, you you were calling it the great accelerator of these trends that you follow at real estate trend alert. So here we are two and a bit years later. Um and how have you found it to play out? What are those trends and how are they how are they playing out now?

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah. So I mean, I guess, you know, I feel like as an investor, I learned so much from that kind of from the great recession and the great financial crisis of 2007 and 2009. And you know what that taught me is when you have one of these massive crises, just everything gets thrown up in the air. Everything gets thrown up in the air about where people live, how they live, their ties to a community, um, their values, be very, very dramatic. And I knew that what this was going to do, it was going to cause everyone to question everything about where they put themselves, where they put their money, how they organize their lives. Now, Owen, I had no idea that this acceleration would come to pass so quickly. Again, you know, I was getting in behind what I felt was going to be an acceleration over the medium term of what we follow. I had no idea that within months of us having that emergency get together in our group that people would be told, you can work from home, here's the technology to support it, you know, we don't care where you work from. All these things were just so so fast and revolutionary to how everyone was living. And then on the kind of the pull factors, they could go to Tulum. These kids could leave Austin and they could go to Tulum. And now for $2,000 a month, they could leave their three or four thousand dollar rental in Austin, and they could go and be on the beach in Tulum and eat $1 tacos, dine out like a king for $5, live an absolute dream. So this just triggered this flood of people, this flood of long-term renters, folks that would have never considered putting themselves in somewhere like Tulum or Cabo before that. And you know, soon after I saw the dynamic happening in Cabo. And in Cabo, it tended to be a bit older, young families, people were Canadians were coming because their businesses were shut down, tech workers were coming because they could work from home, there was space, there was natural beauty, you had the kind of freedom to largely do what you want while still feeling safe, because it was just you know, it was just um just a no-brainer trade. Like, why would you stay stuck in San Francisco paying thousands of dollars in rent, not able to leave your house, or just dealing with, you know, whether it's antisocial behavior, whether it's restrictions, whether it's taxes or whether it's traffic, when just the appeal of doing things a different way just became so much more pronounced, and the restrictions, the ties keeping people where they were were just dramatically loosened, and that genie has has left the bottle now.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

And I've I've you've mentioned before, um, I mean, just you mentioned San Francisco there. Um, somebody paying three, four, or five thousand dollars a month in rent in San Francisco, for them paying a couple of thousand dollars a month in Toulum or Cabo is is a bargain, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Yeah, absolute bargain. And then the big thing, the big kind of change I saw pan out real time, and I saw a ringside seat from my home in my base where I spend time in in Kopala and Cabo, was that people were now making the direct comparison between what they paid in in rent back home and what they can get in other destinations. So before that, you had a market that say was was sensitive to price, and maybe they were moving internationally because they wanted to live on $1,400 a month or $2,000 a month. Now all of a sudden, you have families moving who have a monthly budget of $15,000 or $20,000 a month to cover their rent and their living expenses, and um they're not making the move to save money. Of course, they want they want value, you know, everyone wants value, but you know, this is a new experience, it's a new adventure for them. They're not sacrificing anything on the the income side of the equation, you know, they're still working for Salesforce, or they're still working for Apple, they're still making that big Silicon Valley Valley money, but now they're allocating their budget to to a to a different uh to a different place, and it's a fundamental. I just saw it, you know, I saw it, things just clicked, and all of a sudden in Kopala, where I live, you know, people be walking around and asking, you know, how much is a condo in this building, and maybe the price is 600 grand, and people would start saying, Oh, that's a really great deal, because they're just making that comparison. They're not comparing Cabo with Mexico, of course. 600 grand is a lot of money for an apartment in in Mexico, but for Cabo San Lucas, for a satellite market of California, for a place where you can move so seamlessly back and forth, it seems like a pretty good deal for for these people. So we want to buy the the type of inventory that those folks want to live in, and we want to buy ahead of the the big transformations.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Yeah, and I mean you mentioned Cabo and you've mentioned the Riviera Maya. I know we were in the Casa del Sal together, I think that was February, um and that's another one of these internationalized places that you you focus on. And that's playing out there as well, the same trend, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Absolutely. So, and I mean, very, very interestingly, you know, just last week um I got a text from you know my contact in in the Costa del Sol, Jeffrey, and you know, those uh you know, a year, 18 months ago, Rita members were able to buy condos there from under 200,000 euros. You know, some of them have you know risen by as much as 150,000 euros already because of the the buying moment and long-term rents there are are spiking too. And you know, the Costa del Zal is is like it it's almost like it's the original internationalized place. Um so it's a bit like so I guess it was came to be in the 50s and the in and the 60s, and it just started attracting people, initially vacationers from from northern Europe, and then as time grew, it just became a place that attracted folks from all across the world. So you go to the Costa del Saal today, you go to Porto Banus, you'd see very, very few Europeans. It'll be all mostly Middle Eastern people escaping the heat. Imagine that Costa del Saul for us is super hot, but if you're a Saudi prince, you know that's where you go in August to escape the heat. But my point is it's one of these places where it attracts Saudi royalty, it attracts car dealership owner royalty from England, it attracts you know golfing enthusiasts, it it's just one of these places that attracts all these different people and markets, and um it just becomes a machine, it just becomes a juggernaut, and um then you have whole industries kind of grow up because when a place attracts you know mobile people, mobile international business people, you know, they they bring stuff with them. They start to create kind of little businesses there, which become so it just creates this this whole ecosystem. And that's the same sort of thing that we've seen in Playa del Carmen again since the last crisis. So the the 2007-9 crisis hit Italy really, really bad, and the the government was really really cash-strapped, so um they went after the tax evaders, and um so a lot of the a lot of the business people that maybe were unsure about um about their dealings with the tax man in Italy, they just left and they came to ply a double.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

A big influx of people.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

And of course a lot of people, a lot of Italian entrepreneurs who had absolutely no tax issues left as well. So I mean I'm not but it's just as soon as you start poking at people who have, you know, people with creativity, with energy, with vibrancy and skills, as soon as you start poking them, rock the boat, they'll find somewhere else to go, you know, whether that's a tax change, a bureaucracy change, you know, all these things, you know, the the people an economy wants the most are the most difficult to hang on to because those are the people with the most options.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Yeah, they'll look around, yeah. And so we were talking about your travel, and after you're you're going to be on the silver coast for a while and then take some stock and then you're off again.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

Then I have uh um I have uh a trip that was put off since before COVID, which is a fabulous trip to play the old course in St. Andrews and Carnoostie, and um with a group of friends we're gonna play some of the the open courses around Carnoustie and St. Andrews. So that's gonna be a brief hop. You know, that's another one of the really cool things about being in Europe near a big internationalized airport. You know, my friends can come in from Dublin, they'll fly into Edinburgh, I'll fly in from Lisbon. The flights are basically for free. I don't know how much my flights are costing, but I'm sure it's under under 100 euro. And um, you know, we can all get flights that that that work because it's going to be a pretty pretty short trip, but anyway, that's gonna be a cool trip. And then from Edinburgh, I'm going back to I'm going down to the Algarve, and I'm going to be spending time in the Algarve. Very cool. I'm staying in the Edega building where a bunch of Rita members have have bought. And um unfortunately I couldn't get um Porta de Moss is the the place where I really like to stay because as you know I I like to be out of the hustle in Boston. I like I like isolation.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Near the beach with Uber Eats.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Near the beach, Uber Eats space, um, but no room at the inn. Yeah. Unbelievable. You know, every time I go to Lagos, you know, I I send someone a text and say, you know, place A, B, or C in Porto de Mass, and there's always availability. This time, and it's the week of October the 13th to the 20th, there's just no availability, which, you know, when Lagosh first came on on our beat, it was a seasonal market. It was a market that was very heavily tied to school holidays.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

And yet, here we are, scarcity at the end of October, which is way pushing towards the edge of shoulder season to late season. So the the great thing is I'm getting to stay in in Adega, and um, you know, it will be seeing Lagosh from a from a new perspective. So, you know, of course, I'm working on new opportunities there. You know, as I've been mentioning, this kind of scarcity issue is particularly biting in in Lagos. So let's see, you know, I'm gonna be looking at a few potential opportunities, so let's see how how they shape up.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Adega is one of those uh you you organized for me to meet the developer there maybe five years ago. That's another one where I I feel I missed out there. The price list there at the time, I remember me sitting in the room 235,000 euro. And I I I don't know, maybe 400,000 now or more.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yeah, yeah, I mean oh like I mean listen, this is what I've said to you every time. You know, just don't focus on don't focus on the loss, don't let that kind of make you panic into paying too much, but really kind. Of drill on why that happened. Why why did prices go from there there to there? And it's for all these reasons that we're talking about shortage of hotel rooms, demand, path the progress of you know development moving west along along the Algarve, Portugal's incentives to attract people to move there. Like astonishingly, I heard anecdotally that 2,000, just in one kind of mass movement, 2,000 Swedes moved to Lagos during COVID. Okay? So they get sunshine, they get cost of living for a fraction of what they have back home, plus, imagine trading 50% taxes for 10% taxes. That's what they can do. Swedish people can just move to Portugal and instead of paying 50% tax on their retirement income, they pay 10% tax. So, you know, these are the push and pull factors again, like the the depressing Swedish winter during COVID versus being in sunshine with a lower cost of living and with close on double the euros in your pocket. Um so this happened because we got in at the kind of early to mid stages of this big transition. And you know, as I've said to each and every one of our Rita members and each and every one of our team, every time we get together, if you're willing, if you're willing to look beyond your borders, if you're willing to look beyond what might be immediately familiar to you, there's always that big transformation happening somewhere. So I mean our job is just to find you the next lagosh.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

And um and so where are you going after the Algarve in search of the next lagosh?

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Well, after after after the Algarve, I'll head back to the the Silver Coast, you know, get some time there back home and back at base, and um and then from there it's to the the Riviera Maya first week in first week in November. So I'm flying from Portugal to to Cancun, which is great to have a have a direct flight, you know, in terms of how I organise my time and my year now. I don't like to go back and forth transatlantic. I like to kind of do these loops and limit the connections as much as possible. So in all the travel we've spoken about to date, you know, I've had no connections. Everything is is a point-to-point flight. Um because that's that's really important for just for just the the experience of travel and the productivity while I'm moving that long hauls and long hauls back and forth can mean lost time and lost energy on jet lag. But that you know, with the gathering, that's you know, I can't wait to to meet all our Rita fellow members after three years shockingly, and it's just you know, um we've all grown up so much, you know, Rita has grown up so much since then, you know. We just saw that the the scarcity of of seats at the gathering, yeah. It's unfortunate. Disappeared fast. It disappeared fast, and it's unfortunate that some members were were disappointed. But I just wasn't willing to to kind of dilute the club feel of the gathering. So, as you know, we're we're working on other in-person event formats that will kind of round out the gathering and will complement the gathering. So everyone who's a Rita member is going to get the chance to to attend in-person events, but the the the gathering is very close to my heart and and all of our hearts, and it's very important that we keep that intimate vibe and that it's more like a hangout than a than a typical conference.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

So it's not really a conference at all, it's like a meetup of and you get to rub shoulders with the likes of you and and your various insiders. I think Chris, you mentioned in the Algarve, he's gonna be there, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, you know, my contacts from all over the world will be will be flying in. You know, I've got to keep the format very kind of informal, lots of panel discussions. You know, it's going to be tailored to active Rita members who've been paying attention to our beat and and our ideas. So we'll be doing very little of kind of bringing up to speed because I really want to use that time to focus on the moment that we have today, to focus on in this public forum, picking the brains of the smartest minds I know in real estate on what's going on in the world and what this means for us. So, this is going to be as much about me learning and me sharing and me exchanging with like-minded investors as it's going to be me presenting, because you know, I can't wait for some of these panel discussions. I'm really, really interested to hear the different views and the different experiences and different observations from from right across the world. But um to that time in to that time in the Riviera Maya, man, do we have like exciting things happening? You know, we've just had this run of amazing deals in the Riviera Maya, you know, Corusol. You know, I hope so many Rita members who are who are visiting are gonna have time to to to come and check that out. You know, that's just been an incredible opportunity for us. Um Samsara and Tulum. Um, you know, it's just been an incredible run of deals that we've had on the Riviera Maya, and um, and there's more more in the pipeline.