Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Vacation Like A Pro - Stephen Petasky On What To Look For In An Airbnb Investment

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Stephen Petasky (@stephenpetasky) is the CEO and Founder of the Luxus Group. Prior to launching LUXUS, Stephen spent 10 years as the president and owner of retail grocery stores, bringing years of experience and entrepreneurship to this new industry. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about what to look for when buying a vacation home, what makes a good Airbnb and a bad one, his favorite places to vacation and much more! Find out more about Stephen Petasky and Luxus Group here: https://luxusgroup.com/ If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are gathered. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van Blen! Oh, yeah. Welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I'm CBV, Chris Van Fleet. Thank you so much for being with us, wherever you are, whatever you happen to be doing right now. And I am pumped to have Stephen Potaski with us today.

He is the guy when it comes to travel. And as the CEO and founder of the Luxus Group, he is a pro. when we're talking about Airbnbs and vacation real estate. And if you follow me on Instagram, I hope that you do. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I love travel. In fact, I don't think I don't think I've gone a week this year without being on a plane. Maybe one week, but I've been traveling a lot is the point here. Aside from all that, though, Stephen's just a great guy who has this amazing excitement for life.

Speaking of Instagram, by the way, you can find. him under his name. It's just at Stephen Pataskey. You can find me at Chris Van Vleet. And if it's your first time listening to the show, it would be amazing if you would consider subscribing or following wherever you're listening right now. Our fan

of the week is Kenny King Jr. Thank you for this review on Apple Podcasts. It says, goaded. CVV puts out some of the best interviews and content on a consistent basis. Interviews are always fresh and always fun. Well, thank you for that.

KJ, Kenny King, Jr. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. I read one on every episode. It's my small way of saying thank you for being on this journey with us. And of course, I shout you out for free. So if you have an iPhone, if you have Apple Podcasts, everyone has an Apple Podcasts.

If you have an iPhone, by the way, go in there and leave a few words and we'll shout you out here on one of the upcoming episodes. If you have Spotify, they have ratings. And at last check, we had 550. ratings, that's amazing.

So thank you. If you could go in there and consider leaving a rating there, that would be so appreciated. Okay, let's dive into this. Please welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Pataski.

Always good to be joined by a fellow Canadian. So, Stephen, thanks for jumping on with us. Yeah, my pleasure. Yeah, fellow Canadian. We're pretty opposite ends. But you know what? Once from Canada, we're like brothers. Well, that's the thing, right?

It doesn't matter that you're probably a 40-hour drive away from where I grew up. Oh, right. You know, it's Canada, right? Exactly. We're all connected. One degree of separation. That's it.

I also love that you are as active as I am. I saw that recently you did Hard 75, which I think seems like very difficult. And before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this interview, what's the toughest part about Hard 75? The toughest part was, I would say, for me, I definitely enjoy it like a cocktail once a week or the weekend. And I think it was like changing your perspective on what social time means with your wife, your friends. So like I found like the workouts were into that bad. And that said, you know, I'm from Canada. I'm from a colder part of Canada, Eminton.

And it was, we did it from January 1st, 2020 to March 15th, 2020. So 75 days, but there's two inches in caveats. Minus 40 degrees Celsius. And for all the American followers, you know how minus 40 Celsius and minus 40 Fahrenheit. That's where they cross. Yeah. So it was. very cold and that was pretty difficult for sure, but reevaluating what social time meant. You don't need to have a cocktail in your hand to have fun. But the really hard part was March 15, Day 75. My wife and I did together, we achieved it. And March 15th was the day the world fell apart with COVID. So I kind of lost some of those gays as we went to survival mode for the next six months. And for people who don't know we're talking about this is Andrew Fricela and he has the podcast

Real AF. So it's two workouts a day, one of them outdoors. Is it read 10 minutes a day? Yeah, I know 10 pages of it have a hard copy book, not an audio book. It actually got to turn the pages. Yeah. And then it's also no drinking for 75 days. Yeah, so there's five things. So you got the two workouts a day, 45 minutes each, one outside.

You have a gallon of water a day. You have the 10 pages of a, it has to be a, you know, professional development or personal development book. It can't be like Harry Potter. And that's hard on with Harry Potter, but just not for this. Exactly. It's a great book, but a great series. Harder than you think 10 pages a day. Legitimately to turn 10 pages over, not fall asleep and miss. Strict diet, which was probably is certainly, it's very difficult. That includes no alcohol, no cheats, no nothing.

But whatever your diet is, are you trying to lose weight, build muscle, whatever, you just have to stick to it. And then the fifth thing, which you wouldn't think is very hard, but take a progress pick 75 days in a row. I've had friends that have actually lost on. 75 hard because they forgot to take a pick one day. They go back like, oh my God, I missed day 47. And it's very much the honor system of restarted. It's the easiest thing in the world to hide. But it's really a program out of your own personal integrity and your own personal

battle to win. And that was, I was okay with that, but I had an alarm set so I didn't forget. But there were a couple times I was close to the edge on, on falling asleep reading the book in bed. And then that would have been so horrible to start over. I like that idea, though, of sending an alarm to like make sure that. that stuff gets done because I think a lot of people like go, oh, I'll do that thing tomorrow, then they forget about it or they write it down and go, I need to do this thing today.

And then they never end up doing it. When your phone is buzzing and you look at your phone 76 times a day, you know, I think it's hard to ignore that. I know. No, it's been. And the more you can get done in the morning, like it's kind of like they'll win the morning, win the day. But that is, I mean, you absolutely dialed during 75 hard in your mornings.

Like you can't mess it up because once you get behind, it's basically impossible to catch back up because you only have 24 hours to complete it. So each day, and it's a new day the following, you know, new cycle, 75 in a row. But it was an awesome experience. I think honestly, it really set me up for COVID because I turned 40, you know, two years ago, March 15th. And then that was, you know, school shut down, airline, it's all shut down. And we're in the travel business. So it was definitely a hard run. But I feel like the mental discipline that came as a result of that program it gave me and my wife both kind of the tools to navigate it over that kind of six to 12 months. where it's kind of a pretty scary time.

I'm so excited to jump into all of this with you because like you're the guy when it comes to like vacation rentals or Airbnb's. And I've kind of been like dipping my toe into this water of going like, all right, I think it's time. Like I want to get one. And then I know where the real estate market is at right now, which is like kind of like where the gas prices are at right now. Yep.

Yep. So I want to start with going, you know, asking you this question. Is now a good time to get started? A great point. And so for clarity, our business has like multiple different prongs within that vacation real estate space, whether it's we develop our own inventory. We do do some luxury Airbnbs. We have a very large co-ownership fund, which is a group of hundreds of investors that pool together their capital to buy properties, almost like a private club, but an equity base. And everyone's asked a question about that. It's like, is there still good buys out there. And the reality is, is like good as a relative term. You know, it's kind of comparative to what you can achieve from. like a cap rate perspective. So if your Airbnb is, yes, there are still deals out there, but it wasn't like, we had such a good run from 2010 to 2019 of like, especially the first five years of that cycle coming out of the Great Recession

where you pretty much could not mess up a buy, even if you tried to. Now you have to be like surgical on your discipline on the underwriting. And the problem is, is every time a good deal comes on the market, people are getting multiple bits. So it is a hard time to buy. Not impossible. The good thing is as the, um, capital, you know, the price to acquire unit has accelerated, so as the rental rates. And obviously,

there's the demand for renting home, safe havens, you know, outside of hotels or cruise ships or whatever, has really accelerated during COVID. And that's driven up those rates in parallel to the capital rates. So I think you can still get very good rates. Just the capital appreciation side is going to be tougher to get versus maybe what, if you look in hindsight, the last two years has been a pretty good run. Yeah, I feel like people before COVID were like making a bunch of money on this. I feel like people now that might be buying something now might just be trying to cover their mortgage. It almost is. There's definitely, we've been looking at some deals lately on behalf of clients just helping out. And it's like certain markets are fairly insulated,

I believe, to what, you know, there'll be some form of reset. And I don't, the difference with it now in 2008 was there was so much supply being poured in the market in 2008. Like it was inevitable some form of crash. No one thought obviously to the extent that the crash happened. But Everyone thinks will it be the same thing? Yeah. There's no crystal ball. Personally, I don't believe there will be because I look at the supply as being different than it was then.

There's just not that much supply in the market. And the people aren't using or people are using their homes more as second vacation homes and using versus back then investor buyers were buying on subprime and it was just driving prices up artificially. So I see there's more of a soft landing. I do see certain markets more insulated to kind of a reset, things like Hawaii, places where it's safe. Of course, the war in Ukraine is a horrible, horrible thing. But from any time there's uncertainty in the world, people flock to certainties. So I feel like that just drives, you know,

greater value for these kind of like key markets. And then there's a few up and coming markets to keep eye on. I think they could have good long term, long term gains. Let's take it back here, Stephen, because you've been doing this since 2007, which I think most people didn't even realize this was a possibility in 2007. The idea of Airbnb being something, I think, just is like a fairly recent term for people. So what got you interested in this? Thanks for asking. Yeah, for us, I mean, Airbnb interesting was founded in 2008 and really didn't get its kind of wings until 2010, 11, 12 was when it started to get going. So we were 07. We weren't in the rental space. That particular first mall came actually out of just very simple. And my wife and I

had our child, their first son, his name's Cash, and we loved to travel. We committed to ourselves that when we started out children, we were not going to stop traveling. We loved it. And so we thought, okay, what are our options? Well, hotels, okay, they were great, but, you know, hotels are not as romantic when you have a baby sleeping in the room beside you were sharing the bed. So it kind of takes the fun away from when it comes out to a hotel. So we kind of scrap that renting homes, but it had that inconsistency. We didn't want to show up and have the pool not look right, you know, I don't know. You just don't know with rental homes, especially back then.

It's certainly a lot better now. And then the third thing was buying a second home, which first off, we couldn't afford at the time. And then second, we didn't want to be restricted to a singular destination. So we thought, wouldn't it be nice? This is kind of where a fantasy line came into play. It's like, wouldn't be nice if we had like 20 second homes and we could travel to any of them any given time. And obviously, we need $20 million. So we are 19,9,950,000 short from that, from that.

achieving that goal. And so we thought, well, what if we brought on a whole bunch of friends with us and let's share it together. And that's not a new concept. People buy second homes together all the time. But we're one of the few in the world have done it on the scale where we raised our first three and a half million dollars. We bought three homes, a place in Palm Springs, or pardon me, Scottsdale, place in Maui and a place in Interior, British Columbia. Palm Springs is number four. And we shared these homes with 18 friends and family. And that became effectively this co-ownership vehicle. And then, And it did it kind of snowball. Those friends told their friends, and that was kind of the start of this Luxis group journey. And we raised about $100 million in 10 years and bought 50 properties. And that became our personal collection of vacation homes, along with a few hundred of our closest friends and family. And that was the kickoff to Luxus. Wow. So what do you look for when you're looking for a vacation home?

For us, and just mentioned, say, people ask how we got the name Luxus. They think it was a spinoff of Lexus, but Lexus is Latin for luxury. So just a little side note there, if you're curious, that makes way more sense. Yeah, yeah. So that's where I came from. Not the car company, but something different. For us, when we're shopping, it's a couple of things.

First off, you know, we look at, you know, there's a weight. And it's this constant balance between like a financial aspect. How are we going to do in this financially? Whether it's, you know, for capital appreciation purposes within our own fund, or if it's for an Airbnb purpose, like for short-term rentals. So that's kind of like one half of the weight and the other half of the weight. his lifestyle. How much are we going to enjoy it? So because all of the products we bought, we intended to enjoy it. We never were in the space to buy in like quarter million dollar

properties. And there's nothing wrong with that. But at the time, we were like, what's the type of vacation we would want to spend time in and our friends? So we pursued that equal weight to say, okay, let's look for something that has good upside appreciation. If we ever were to sell it, could it be rentable in the open market to generate like a nice return? Because that's obviously a good approach. If you talk about selling as per sector, if you have two types of buyers, an investor buyer and an end user buyer, you now have two people bidding against each other for your property. So that's all that aspect. And then just what felt good? You know, what are places we like to be, you know, on the beach, on the lake, on the golf course, in the middle of a city,

Times Square, Tuscany. And so we just actually, we're kind of driven by our own personal travel ambitions and that of our partners. And that helped us kind of that weight scale said, okay, we like this destination, this community, this property, pull the trigger. So you're basically saying like it's okay to spend a little bit more if it's ticking all these boxes with location and like a place that you'd actually want to go vacation in. Personally, if it's your first time, like you're kind of wanted, like you said, dip the toe into the Airbnb space. You're in your first couple assets.

I 100% believe, and I'm pretty convicted in this, pick something that you would want to stay in. Because who knows, maybe one day there'll be like a global pandemic and we're all going to have to leave our cities and go. And no one ever thought that would be the case. But our partners and those that had these Airbnbs that short-term rentals were effectively shut down for extended periods of time, our clients and those got a chance to move into these homes temporarily part-time to enjoy because they actually own them. If it was an industrial building in northern Canada, I can't go live in that.

But if it was a condo of Maui, well, I could go there if I can't be in the city. So personally, I think in your first couple, you pick something you really love because It's worst-case scenario. If it doesn't perform financially the way you dreamed, you can enjoy it personally. As soon as you get scale, you have to get a little more sophisticated in the underwriting to ensure they're kind of producing the returns you're targeting. But the first couple definitely, you know, speak from the heart as much as the wallet when you're buying. Yeah, so this is where my toe dipping has begun.

I live not far from Big Bear. It's like a two-hour drive. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And is Big Bear, does it make sense? Because I feel like the market there is like doubled over the last two years. It is. It's funny. we just had a client.

Are you San Diego? Are you Orange County? I'm in L.A. You're in L.A. Yeah. So we have a client from San Diego looking at Big Bear. So we just did some research on us. I can actually get you some intel.

But I actually think it's purely because it's proximity. So this is a good example on like bucket number one is demand. Big Bear will always be in demand because it has 10 million people within a two hour drive. So I like it from that perspective that I don't see it as a market that has a risk of a big decline, even though obviously it's increased in price. And it's a four season place. You have winter activities. You got spring, fall and summer.

So personally, I think Big Bear is good. Picking the right asset's always tricky. I mean, you have to find something you love. But if you're going to use it and you can drive two hours away, even if you don't rent it out all the time, which I think you'll have no problem doing, it's a great place to go use and vacation as a family. Yeah, but I look at it and I'm like, oh, this place is listed for, I don't know, $6.50. And then that person bought it a year ago for $400.

And it just breaks my hour to see that. It's very, very frustrating. And we all have like the gift of hindsight right now. Like I should have bought that. I should have bought that. But don't know back when it's $9.50 in a year and be like, I could have bought it at $6.50. And not to say don't be part of the buying frenzy because I think you can still buy intelligently, even in a seller's market.

You just have to really do your, you know, do your work, do your diligence and then be ready with your cash on the sidelines when the right deal comes up. So do you now have the ability to pretty much work from wherever you want? I mean, you've got these great homes all over the world. You could work from anywhere, really. You know what? We're super blessed. Like I really, really blessed because our homes are obviously, they're co-owned by a number of other partners. For us, when we do these different destinations, they're generally not in those places. We vacation there because we're a co-owner with like shoulder to shoulder with our investors. But because we have a development angle, a development side rather to our business, which is around developing projects in this lifestyle space, we are blessed to be able to go to these areas like Las Vegas or. Hawaii or Tuscany where we have projects that are active and spend time there because we have to be there anyway. So rather than dad just going for a business trip to Italy for five days,

the family will come for a week or two. And we can actually give the kids some education on the road and the remote learning has been really quite good since COVID hit, which is maybe one of the few wins of COVID over the last couple of years is kind of how the education system's gone online. So we've had the privilege of doing that a few times. And we're just very grateful and hopefully you can just keep it going. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens, which is a super important part of my morning routine. With one scoop of athletic greens,

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nutritional insurance. Athletic Greens. You put this quote out on Instagram that I absolutely love. Share it to us travel more. Your money will return. Your time won't. I honestly, for my whole life, I've loved travel. It's something super, super powerful. I've, because we've had hundreds of clients, all high net worth families, all totally financially independent to do whatever they want. I've seen so many wait until it's too late and not necessarily that someone passes away, God forbid, but their health deteriorates or they can't swing a tennis racket or golf or ski. And they have a lot of money. So we, I've dedicated like, you know, most of my

adult life to encouraging people to travel more. I've never said someone, I heard someone say, I was a, I I shouldn't have traveled that much. Like, has anyone ever said that? I should have gone to Hawaii so often. It was so bad for my mental health. Like, no one says that. You always say I should have traveled more. So I'm part of my like mission is helping people travel more.

And we do that actually through our company. But it's a sometimes some people are really like in a specific path on working in a career and they wait a little late. And there's never too late to start. Just get moving. Just get out there and get doing things. Can anybody work with you or is this like a word of mouth thing? From an investor perspective?

Yeah. You know what? It used to be more open, but it was very geographically restricted within Canada is based on because we are security. So if you're issuing a security with certain specific laws in Canada that kind of covered it. From a so co-watership perspective, it is a bit restricted and we don't have any open funds right now. But from a perspective of some of the different things we have on the go, we are starting to spread the word more. So we have an education platform for YouTube now. we actually open up an advisory side to the company,

which is trying to take our education out on a greater scale to help people out. But generally, it has been a little bit more tighter net word of mouth, but we are trying to open it up to impact more lives for sure. So you mentioned your YouTube channel. Let's plug that right now. Where can people find that? Where can they subscribe? And what would they find on there?

Yeah, thanks so much. So we were chatting earlier, but I am the worst social media guy. I know you probably pulled that quote from probably three years ago about my last post. It was like 15 post. posts ago. So exactly. So that's about about three years or so. I haven't been going to social media. It's kind of on me and I haven't done a good job on spreading the word, I guess. So too much encouragement through my mentors, my peer groups and now on social media, Instagram, I'm starting to reactivate. It will be slow on inside. I don't put a ton out there. YouTube those where we're

spending our time. And the YouTube channel is focused on actually 20 minutes snippets, basically helping people, you know, learn from what's in our, our company and our employees we have and then things we've learned over the years and providing people free content on buying homes, selling homes, renting homes, managing homes, developing homes, and everything in between. So it's, if you are in the space for a vacation home, whether you're just starting the process, you have six of them already, you want to be an Airbnb pro, we're just dumping free content out there. So that's like, for me, it would mean a lot of any of your listeners, appreciate it, subscribe. If you don't like the content, just unsubscribe later. But hopefully you find some

some good tibits in there that can help you along the way. Well, you just gained a new subscriber from me. Appreciate it. I'm at seven. So I got my, you are at, you are at 184, the Luxist group on YouTube. Okay, there you go. It's been a good day. Thanks, buddy. I'm free I'll take everyone I can get. What would you say is the biggest mistake that people make when they're getting their first vacation home? Biggest mistake almost universally is buying based on emotion, like not having that proper diligence. And again, a vacation home should be an emotional buy because as I mentioned before, it is connected to the heart as much it is the wallet. But I think that the issue is people can't spend enough time to properly do the diligence

on a specific market or community, especially in a seller's market. You go down there, real estate agents can be hard. You've got to put an offer in today. You're going to lose the home. And so you feel this emotional, like this overwhelming emotional thing. And you write a multi-seventh figure check or six figure check and you have the buyer's remorse a few days later. I've fortunately don't have that because I do even if I miss a number of deals to get the right one, we'd always balance that scale. And so part of actually the YouTube channel is we have an advisory side of the company as well helping people understand what it is to balance that. What does it mean for us? So we check all the boxes in the financial side, the diligence side and then the lifestyle side.

And it really helps people make a better decision versus just going on vacation with your family to say, lay Tahoe, and you're on the boat and you're driving it. It's so happy. And there's a for sale sign on the dock. And you drive up to the dock and you shake hands with the owner. You make a deal. And it happens so frequently. And unfortunately, more times than not, it's probably a mistake or there might have been a better option for you.

So not necessarily always a mistake. Just there's probably something better if you put the time and invest in it to it. When it comes to this being an accident, asset. Like how much truth is there to the old adage of like it's not about timing the market. It's about time in the market. I think it's, you know, we're in this for the long game, obviously 15 years. So we're in our, you know, and we were buying the real estate long before that. My parents and kind of their family, but got really active for 15 years, I feel like real estate has to be a long game. There are a lot of people in right now playing the short game for sure.

They'll be thinned out when there is a plateau or a soft landing or some form of reset at some point. But if you're in it for the long term, it's real estate. So I feel like there's not really necessarily a bad time or good time. You can only look at that through hindsight, not through the crystal ball. And so when it comes to investing time in the market, the more you know about a specific destination, the more likelihood you're going to be in it for the long game. So it's kind of the idea is that the more you understand about it, the more when you make that big financial decision, you're going to be less likely that's a mistake,

that you're going on to exit within a couple of years, which could be on a downturn resulting in a long game. loss. So I like the time in the market approach to ensure you make the best decision for you for the long time. With everything you've done with your company and with your business, what would you say is the best advice that you've received along the way? Best advice, I would say, gosh, probably so many good. I've been so fortunate to have so many wonderful mentors and partners to get lots of wisdom over the years. I'd probably say that being up for the long game or anything, probably just as a segue off of that, is that especially in a relationship, estate, it's hard to do things fast and transactionally. So every decision you make,

makers of the lens, probably more of a business decision than just real estate, but is looking for the long thing to play. What's the mean to your relationship with your clients, to your vendors, to your family? And I think all those things, anytime I say, geez, I can make a quick buck or I can do a quick exit or this and that. I'm like, is it right for the long game? Because I'm a young man, I have young family. I have a lot of runway ahead. You just never want to ever burn a bridge by doing something that kind of emotionally attached to something for a quick win. If you really think about the 20 year play and getting that 20 year room, then everything just focus on like you'll get there. You'll get there. Just don't sacrifice a fraction of integrity,

a fraction of ethics, a fraction of anything unless it's ever, always focus again on what's best for you, your clients in the long run. You mentioned your family and I'm just so curious, How do you balance when you have such a successful company? How do you balance the personal and the professional life? Success is relative to, as you know. Some days I don't feel very successful. And some days you feel like you're on the top of the world. But it's kind of that, bad ebb and flow where you're on the ups and downs.

Probably the best part with family for me is maybe in the times you don't feel successful and you're getting a punch on the throat or gut punched by whatever. The market, a situation, a bad decision that didn't turn out as well. didn't turn out very well. So all these things help. I think from a family perspective, always keeping them close in the loop. Like I think that there's no,

particularly as an entrepreneur and you know, there's no such thing as like perfect balance. It's almost, and my wife uses this quote, so I'll tag it for her, but it's like a harmony in the imbalance. And my kids are long for the ride. They understand that sometimes dad is really tired of the work,

but then because of that, it creates time for us to be await for longer periods of time as a family. And my kids really understand it because they've been brought up and then entrepreneurial lifestyle. So they're okay when they have to do their homework themselves or they have to be because they understand that that creates resources or time to be

in like Cortaline or somewhere else in the summer or the winter where maybe because we've tried to create this life. So it's definitely imperfect. Like there's certainly no ideal way to do it aside. I think kids are so smart. They're so great. Keep them in the loop with what's going on in your world. And they'll understand when you're vulnerable and you're struggling.

And we had our very tough times over the last 10 years that we, I couldn't have got it through without my kids and my wife. And so they have to be in the loop, not just kind of like a secondary citizen to the conversation. They should be involved. That's a great quote from your wife, by the way. I'm going to borrow that and take it with me. Yeah, harmony. There's no perfect balance.

Harmony and the imbalance. That's what you have to find. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I'll pass on you past that. You mentioned it and you get 25 cents every time you say it in your show. Well, I better not say that often. We need it.

You can use the 25 cents. I saw some stat recently that I think was like 70, percent of homes so far this year have been, have gone for over asking price. So if you're someone who's going to buy either their first home or their first vacation home now, that's something that could be really scary to see. It is. It's interesting for us because we've never been from a buying perspective and multiple bid offers for maybe a handful of times over 15 years. So the fact that almost every deal that we're advising on or doing ourselves is that's what you're looking at, you have to be good at it. I say you may, the buyer good at it, but really your broker has to be good at it.

So I'm a huge advocate of finding an outstanding broker agent to represent you. That's actually something we do. So shameless plug, but part of our connection, the advisory side is arming you with tools and resources when you enter the market to buy something. You're feeling confident and not so not scared or frightened because I always said, I'll never get into a bidding more. Well, now I'll never buy a property again if I had not prepared to bid against someone else. How do I make my bid more successful versus just overpaying?

pain. A great agent will have the right data, the right relationships, the right segways, the right conduits in to helping you get the best deal and help educate you to take the fear out of the buy because that's probably the biggest thing people are afraid of is overpaying. Yes, you are paying more than less price, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're overpaying on the property. Two separate things. People, some people deliberately underpriced their properties by a fraction to ensure they get multiple bids to try to create that money more. Your agent, if they're proficient in doing this will help you navigate that, take the fear and uncertainty out of it and help you become successful on those endeavors. And it definitely makes a big difference

for me. There's going to be somebody listening to this who hasn't really traveled anywhere. So from someone like you who has been all around the world, give us three destinations that that person needs to go to this year. This year, this year. Okay, well, I would say, I mean, Hawaii is always pretty much can't go wrong. I was there last month. Love Hawaii. We can't go wrong. I'm a big fan. I'm really a big fan. Kauai in the Big Island, no disrespect to Maui, they're wonderful places in Lanai. But a Kauai and Big Island,

I have a personal desire to be more often. They're wonderful places. And I also think, too, there's slightly better buying opportunities there as a reserve alt. So there's kind of a tandem approach to that. That's number one. I think any lake country right now, it already kind of caught its boom in a lot of spots

due to the pandemic as people exited the cities. And so Northern Idaho, Montana, some of the desert lakes, some of the Texas lakes. I think any type of place where people can be close to water, but within kind of the safe haven of the borders of United States, because, again, we learned through the pandemic, the world isn't as mobile as it once was. So maybe the Caribbean or Latin America or Mediterranean,

what's going on Europe, where you can be on the water, there's greater uncertainty. I'm not saying opposed to doing it because I think it's so very safe. but anything within the continental U.S. and Canada that's on lakefront, I think, is going to have a great run the next 10 years because when there's a lake, it'll only ever be one lake. There's only one shoreline, just like a beach. And then I probably say, I'd probably say Vegas. You know, Vegas has had a good run, but the city is really coming into its own as a real city, not just Las Vegas nightlife. And I've been, we're doing a

project there, but as a result, I've been like really following the market. And there's some amazing communities for living and residing and raising a family and of course the golf and the climate all make it great so i think that Vegas has still a pretty good trajectory overall so i know those are more kind of like west coast focused uh sides because i'm on the west side as well so i've been more um knowledge in that area but those three markets i'd probably have a close look at the next year or two the idea now that Vegas has a hockey team and a football team and possibly maybe if things don't work out, maybe a baseball team soon? I think that that shows that it's like definitely stepping up and being like considered

as a much larger city. I agree. And we have a good sense of the products coming in the market there. There's more diversity, diversity products that we're doing a, it's still in the titlement phase, been in a Henderson, Nevada, a Twin Tower development that's going to be like luxury condos, which has not been a thing in Vegas off strip because it's always been on strip. And as a valley approach, there hasn't been many high rises or very few because the Vista the preservation laws.

You can't block people's views. So we're learning now. There's that type of product coming on the market. The strip is a little more sophisticated with some residential stuff. And there's just amazing gated communities that just keep popping up that are phenomenal. And people are living there now. They're not just like vacationing. It's a big difference when you have a city that where everyone vacations and no one lives.

People live there. They're raising their families. That's why I think it's a pretty special place to look at. Yeah, I'm there every two weeks. Our podcast studio is inside the Wynn Hotel. So next time you're there, let me know. I'm in. I'm in. I would love to. That'd be amazing. It's a beautiful spot. And because I've been there so often, I'm like, man, Vegas was always like the bachelor party, birthday party spot. Now Vegas is like, it's just a great destination. Outstanding. Yeah. And MBA eventually, like they just keep, they just keep working at. Like, the city just keeps coming up with new awesome amenities. And that's just going to foster a, you know, stronger community.

I have learned so much from this. Thank you for all the nuggets of knowledge during this. We have pleasure. Absolutely. out more. Other than your YouTube channel, where can we find out more about you and what you do? So, I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. You can go to our website probably is the best way, luxusgroup.com and learn a bit more about kind of what some of our projects are and things we have on the go. And, you know, that's kind of where we are now. Hopefully we'll start to, maybe we'll get on TikTok and some of these other platforms, but I, we'll just start with the

basics. I'll just, you know, crawl first. I end every conversation with the same question because I love gratitude. I up every day. I say out loud three things I'm grateful for. I do it before I go to bed too. I appreciate that. So Stephen, for you, what are three things in your life that you're grateful for? Well, well, I will definitely say the people around me. I'll take my family in a separate bucket, but my team that's in the other side of this wall, my investors, especially the ones have been through the tough times with me, not just the ones have seen the good times. We've had some tough projects and tough goes like anyone else. And standing by me and our vision and our

journey has just been like really profound impact on my life. So I'll say my people, um, our health, you know, my family's health is great. I think, you know, health is your wealth. And we, we work very hard on it as a family, 75 hard. And, and, and our kids are fit and active and understanding of nutrition. And so that's really cool. So I'm really grateful for that. And then just my family. I mean, they are, uh, my wife, Carrie, son, cash, daughter, Allegra. My folks, they've all been just amazing. I just, and that's what it's all about. That's like the top of the, top of the pyramid for us. I love it. Thank you for all of this. Now I need to decide. So it was Big Bear in one,

you know, one category here and Joshua Tree and the others. So Joshua Tree is pretty interesting. It's a, we could have a sidebar chat on that. I can give you some feedback. But I think Joshua Tree is an interesting one. I held by a whole Coachella Valley area. I was going to continue to accelerate inside. So I think that's a good choice too. Well, there we go. Stephen. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me. There you have it, my friend. The zest for life that Stephen has is Contagious. I love it. Big thank you to him for joining us on this one. Big thank you, of course, to you. Because without you, this audio adventure does not happen at all. So I appreciate you being with us. Snap a screenshot. Let us know that you're on this journey with us and share this episode with someone who you know will get a ton of value out of it. And tag us on social media. Stephen is at Stephen Battasky. I'm at Chris Van Vleet. And how about we leave you with a quote that has to do with travel? I love this one from St. Augustine. The world is a book.

And those who do not travel read only one page. Be great, be grateful, and we will see you on the next one for some more insight. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do. With rapid fire takes. So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about.

You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning. only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it, but get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast. What should be? Follow and listen on your favorite platform.

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