The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jason Hayes, Founder and CEO of LuxuryProperty.com

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Jason Hayes, Founder and CEO of LuxuryProperty.com Luxuryproperty.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're going to do another great podcast.

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you that you're just like, I belong to something much bigger than myself and a place that loves me and doesn't judge me. What better place could that be than the Chris Voss Show? Go to YouTube or Goodreads.com for Chris Voss. All the groups we have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all the places all those kids are at these days. Today we have the most amazing guest on the show. His name is Jason Hayes. And Jason provides a management lead on consulting, marketing, and sales,

providing comprehensive advisory services, which include strategic collaboration with developers, owners, and architects, the creation of compelling brands and marketing position, advice on creation of distinctive and unique marketing materials and intelligent, honest, and experienced brokerage. His company, LuxuryProperty.com. Welcome to the show. How are you, Jason? I'm incredibly. Thank you so much for that amazing welcome. There you go. And did I get the name of your company right, or did I just name the.com? No, no, LuxuryProperty.com. You can't miss it. The world's finest homes. There you go. And do you have any other plugs you want to do? Because I just did the plug for you on

the dot com. I quite like the way you've done that. Yeah, normally I ask people for their plugs and I'm just like, I think I just said it. You're on LinkedIn and Instagram too as well. I guess people can follow you there. You'll find us across all of the social media platforms. On LinkedIn, I'm known as the billion dollar broker because that's pretty much every day of my life, to be fair. But to be honest with you, go to luxuryproperty.com for the world's finest homes. Is that too much of a plug? There you go. No, that's fine. That's great. In fact, let's talk about it some more. So a billion dollar brokerage, a billion and or what was that you said a billion dollar billion dollar broker billion dollar broker was is that all was trillion just not below the mark

i'm not quite i don't genuinely i'm still in the billion sort of range and i find trillions just a little bit crass one shouldn't talk about money it quite so much. So I often take the view that if you can count it, you're obviously not earning enough. So yeah, a billion dollar broker will work quite nicely. There you go. There you go. As long as the check's clear, right? But you're in Dubai, so trillions probably going to be coming up on the markers. We're based in Dubai. It's the most incredible place on the planet and we don't pay tax. So I hope Mr. Biden isn't listening, but guys, come on over. I've got a couple of hands for you. There you go. There you go. Now you are also based in 25 different markets,

is my understanding? That's right. Yeah. So we market homes across 25 different markets. So from obviously the Middle East, where we're headquartered, New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami, Paris, wherever you probably would wish to live, we're marketing homes there. Yeah. So tell me about how you got started in the business. Let's talk a little about you and then we'll get to the company. How did you get started in this business? What got you in the field of luxury properties? Look, when I left university, I started my own property company and I sold that quite successfully in 2007. And I've always been incredibly engaged and motivated by the digital space.

And I look at real estate and I look at the digital space and how the two interact, quite simply. And with LuxuryProperty.com, it was very evident for me that I was looking to buy a home in the Caribbean at the time. And I was looking to buy a home in Los Angeles. And to be quite honest with you, if you're looking to buy something spectacular, something nice, there's no one digital destination to go to in order to buy that home. And that sort of sprung the idea of, hey, wouldn't it be a really good idea if you had one digital destination where if people were looking for homes of distinction, they could go to and search and click on and find spectacular homes. So through hard work and endeavor and blood, sweat, and tears, not quite so much blood, I did want to try and assemble a desk.

But I think through hard work and endeavor, we've created something that's quite unique and we're busy now trying to scale that. And the United States, of course, is on that target list for us. And property values and real estate is just hotter than heck right now. I see so many people talk about investing in it. There was a limited inventory of homes and here in America, just lumber prices are off the chart to build new homes. The new home market or the home selling market is huge. I just saw some sort of crazy, I think it was one of those San Francisco fixer uppers sold for a million dollars, which I think was a thousand dollars per square foot. And it's like a junker. It's one of those

things that you're going to plow and just rebuild. So tell us about luxuryproperty.com. What a great .com by the way, because that thing, luxuryproperty.com, boom, right there. Tell us about the website, how it interacts and how people can either buy or sell or work with you guys on their properties. Yeah, of course. Yeah. We built the website. We started with the wireframes and all of the tech, et cetera, we built. We had a team in India that were helping us do it. And then we outsourced some stuff to europe the website enables clients around the world who are looking to sell their homes it's got an e-commerce functionality so you log on luxury property.com backslash advertise you log on you upload create an account it takes about three seconds upload your photographs upload your description upload

your unique content. Does it have a hot tub or a barbecue? If it doesn't have a hot tub and a barbecue, why doesn't it? Does it have a, does it have a, does it have spectacular sort of views, et cetera, et cetera. And then you run your credit card. And for a very reasonable sum, might I say, we go live with your, with your listing. We reach millions of users every single month from the four corners of the globe and the leads go directly to the advertiser so really simple model sometimes the best ideas are the most are the most simple ones and the leads go directly to to that client so it could be the person putting the property up could be a realtor

in the united states or indeed it could indeed it could be a homeowner as well. We've got a brokerage business in Dubai. So in Dubai, we market, we're known as Dubai's luxury brokerage and property prices over here are going crazy. Across all 25 markets, with the exception of Russia, but we won't mention that. Across all 25 markets, it's going nuts at the moment. Double digit growth across all markets year to date. And a lot of that's come from the pandemic. A lot of that has come from people living in their homes and then all of a sudden having a little bit of a sort of cognizant approach to what it's actually like to live in a property.

For many of us, we get up, we grab a shower, we have breakfast, we dash out the door, we're at work all day, we're having supper, going to the gym, doing whatever. We come home and we go to sleep. We don't actually spend that much time in the property. And of course, what we found has happened is people have been spending more and more time in their homes. And now're realizing hey you know what i need extra space i need a home office i need a gym or whatever it might be that they want in their home and that's what's fueling the the growth and everyone's worried i think deep down we're all worried that we're going to get hit with this pandemic again and we're going to be stuck with our wives or we're going to be stuck

with our children and we want more space so that we can get through it better the second time around. And I'm really hoping my wife is not going to watch this podcast. Otherwise, I'm in a whole heap of trouble. This sounds like a you problem on that one. But no, honestly, people have been losing their minds. They're stuck in the homes and they're dealing with everything. Like we mentioned pre-show, I got a lot of friends that their wives are going, we're going to get divorced. I've done that divide by two and it's very expensive.

So that's never going to happen. That's never going to happen. But I think as well, I think a lot of people are like, I think as well, they've had a read. They've looked deep at themselves and they've gone, you know what? We're not going to travel. We're not going to go to Cabo or to Whistler or wherever it might be. And they're putting that money that they were spending on consumables back into their homes and upgrading homes accordingly. And we're also seeing a lot of people coming out of condos because of that multi-living aspect and taking standard homes.

So yeah, really interesting time. It's a great time to be a real estate broker, I can assure you. It's really interesting because it's very different than what happened after the 2008 crisis. I remember we get these bags of, what do we call it, jingle mail. People are just mailing in their keys to their home. And what was weird about that was they were keeping their credit cards in their expensive cars. And in the mortgage business, we'd never seen that where people had flipped the model. And you always need a place to sleep at night. So normally people wouldn't give up their homes. But there was a lot of non-occupied homes.

So they were sending those keys in as well. But yeah, this is a total flip model. And I think it's going to take a while for inventory to catch up to housing. It's going to probably take two or three years. Some places like Las Vegas, one of the things that created the boom in Las Vegas real estate-wise was construction people took their plans and their stuff they were going to build off the market for two or three years after 9-11. Because they were like, wait, I think we're in a recession. Maybe we shouldn't build. Who knows what's going to happen? And that created that housing glut. And now we're doing the same thing where it's probably going to take two or three years for that to catch up if it ever does.

Well, that supply-demand matrix is always so sensitive. And it's always, you know, the analysis that goes into that is very deep. What's happened with this pandemic is it's thrown all of that analysis out of the window and people's behaviours have changed. And I think I think that's going to it's going to take some time for certainly going to take some time for inventory to come back. And in the meantime, the cost of money is affordable. Mortgage rates are low and they're not at the lowest they've ever been, but they are hugely attractive. And of course, governments around the world have floated the economies. The British have got, they've ordered more trees in order to print more money at the moment. I think we've done the same here in America. So, basically, the government is floating the economy and the furlough schemes and things that have happened across Europe and, again, in North America as well, basically means that people were able to keep up their mortgage payments and keep things going. It's really fascinating times. It's rather interesting.

Yeah, yeah. that's really interesting about your site is I see here that it has, I don't know if this is current, but it's 6 million impressions that it takes and provides to people across the globe there. That was probably this afternoon's figures. I would imagine it's probably up at 18 million by now. We're hugely busy. When the data sometimes comes through, I'm often challenging my digital director and asking him to double check. We had, I think it was the month before last, we hit 222 countries. Now, my geography isn't that good, but I think that's more than there are countries in the world. And apparently Google have territories that sort of add up. So our reach is very broad. And probably because we're, you know, our brokerage being headquartered here in Dubai, we've got so many international people moving to Dubai.

You know, Dubai did a marvelous job of managing the pandemic and it's a truly wonderful place to live. And I think that's part of the reason that we get so much international traffic, people looking at gorgeous homes over here on the beach. There you go. And you also have mobile apps that can access your website as well. Yeah, yeah. So we're on the Google Play and the iStore with our apps. And they're hugely popular. We are a prop tech business that does real estate.

That's the way we like to think of ourselves. And it's really interesting, the fundamentals behind looking for real estate haven't really changed digitally that much since my first website in 1995. You are first and foremost looking for something in a specific area, a specific type of property, and then you're led by how good the photography is or how good the videography is or indeed the 360 walkthroughs and that sort of thing. So we just make sure that we create technical applications that are light and intuitive and with good UX so that people can very quickly come through, click, book viewings, that sort of thing. So it's all done in-house as well. And it's quite good fun

when we're in the middle of changing it and updating it and that sort of thing. There you go. So you can find properties to buy, rent, short-term, off-plan. You can find different agents to work with, international stuff, no matter where it is. What is off-plan stuff? What is that? So basically, that's new development projects. So over here, we've got probably 150 projects across the city. So they could be towers or they could be villa communities or whatever it might be.

And it's hugely popular. So you're buying it. So you're probably buying at about 30 or 40% under value. So by the time the project gets delivered, there's some significant uplift in capital values at the time of completion so a lot of people invest in off-plan projects we're actually doing an event tomorrow evening on a on an off-plan project so a really good way to to make money the the payment plans for the apartments and things are very attractive and the yields are great so like you can genuinely make about 8% or 9% yield in Dubai, where the rest of the world is probably running at about 3% or 4%.

Wow. Sounds like Dubai has always been a crazy sort of setup, with the building and everything going on there. So I guess Dubai is really hot. It's really awesome there. It is the most incredible place on the planet. I'm very lucky to have traveled all over the world with my job and my company. Very lucky to have lived in some amazing places as well, your country being one.

And I loved it. Albeit they didn't get my sense of humor. That's probably, but Dubai is amazing. It truly is quite amazing. Everything, world-class healthcare, education for for the children even the speeding tickets arrive on your cell phone so you're driving down the road and then click and then next it comes on your cell phone you press click and then pay and it's done rather it's quite it truly is quite fascinating and i think the everything that we would do in the states or at home in the united

kingdom we can do over here scuba dive in the morning they literally go do in the States or at home in the United Kingdom, we can do over here. Scuba dive in the morning, literally go skiing in the afternoon. We've got our indoor slopes and things. Holy crap. Oh, the indoor slopes. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And it truly is.

It's quite an incredible city with zero crime. That's the bit that people don't sometimes understand. Zero, zero, zero crime. If I go to my Range Rover now, I bet I haven't locked it because I've never locked it. I don't even if i go to my ranger over now i bet i haven't locked it because i've never locked it i don't even know how to lock it are you serious i promise you there's no crime in dubai zero so we've got this sort of incredibly tolerant society where there's mutual respect you're not you know strict rules of course you're not allowed to swear you're not allowed to spit you're not allowed... If somebody cuts you up on the freeway,

you can't gesticulate to them. Oh, really? You'll get into trouble for that. Yeah, yeah, it's a great place. It's an incredible city and there's always so much going on as well. There's always so much, so much going on. Yeah, I love it.

Absolutely love it. And of course, we've got Expo happening here in October of this year. So again again the entire world will be here chris you can come and do your podcast here we'll host you i should i should it sounds like i need the only part is the swearing i'll probably end up in jail the way i swear put some sort when i walk around a public house yeah but that's interesting i've always always been intrigued by Dubai and stuff. You see how far it's gone, like the old pictures when it was just sand and then how it just...

It's just crazy, some of the stuff that it does. So it's just amazing. The infrastructure projects they do are incredible, truly incredible. About four years ago, these plans arrived on my desk and they were going to put a canal around the heart of the city. And I remember looking at it and thinking, this is something that Victorians would have done. And it would have taken them 100 years to do it.

It was truly quite amazing. And then five years later, we're having lunch overlooking the canal. And the canal wraps around the city. And it's just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And I think what they what their accent are doing is their master plan developments their this is what we're going to do and then they deliver it they deliver it in a timely fashion and they deliver it to to the best of to the best of standards and and i think that's probably what sets the city apart and i suppose if

we look at you know if we look at a europe by example or or indeed north america and we get we get so in in london by example heathrow airport had been asking for a runway a fifth runway whatever it is and they're going through consultation after consultation after consultation a decade later we still don't have the runway meanwhile over here in dubai we've built 10 airports holy crap that's the sort of difference you know to to the way that the guys do things here it's very much a a can-do attitude so for entrepreneurs like myself it's uh it's matter from heaven you know it's a sort of hotbed of of entrepreneurial spirit that is amazing man i need to look at more maybe i'll just move there it sounds like i always like

vegas because vegas is always a lot of fun and there's it's always a new town the way it rebuilds itself but yeah it's wow yeah it's a little that makes dubai makes it sound like just uh i don't know a boring old place thank you i love vegas it's the most uh I think it's Cascata Golf Club is one of my favourite any country in the world, with the exception maybe of New Zealand and Australia, who've done a rather good job as well. And I think we've got more people vaccinated per capita than anybody else in the world. And our mortality rate is one of the lowest in the world.

For the last six months, maybe even longer, we've been running and operating the office. We know people have been having lunch. People have been doing things. We're still wearing masks. We're still social distancing. But we haven't been on lockdown. I think our lockdown period was about four weeks,

if I remember correctly, or maybe six weeks max. Wow. Yeah, so the guys have done a great thing. And then, of course, coming back to the tech side of things, if you were coming out of lockdown, you just went onto the app and you got the permit to go and do whatever you need to do etc so the guys have been really super clever about protecting the nation and protecting the residents that are here with the covid pandemic and that's what's in many respects what's attracted

everybody to the emirate and that's what's attracted everybody to dubai in terms of buying real estate that and the fact that we don't pay any tax which is just a minor one a little thing that's definitely a major thing that's one of the things i always loved about vegas is they don't have any state tax there so there's yeah we don't have any tax it's a three-letter word it's bad tax we don't have income tax capital gains tax tax, inheritance tax. Nope, nope, nope. Nothing at all? Wow. There's VAT. So there is VAT at 5%, which is like a value added tax, but no personal income tax or personal tax at all. So if you make a dollar, you- That is rather pleasant, isn't it? Yeah. That's crazy, man. I need to move.

Jason, it's been wonderful covering this with you. Anything more we need to know about you and the business and luxuryproperties.com? Hey, look, luxuryproperty.com, if you're a realtor in the United States and you want to reach the world's audience for your high value home, you need to log on to luxuryproperty.com, click on advertise and watch the video and it'll show you everything that you need to do. We are going places. I think we're a startup. We're a small little company and we've gone from zero to $10 billion worth of listings in the short space of time. And we are definitely heading in the right direction. So one day you will be finding your home on luxuryproperty.com. I'm definitely sure of that. There you go. There you go. Jason, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks for spending some time with us today

and giving us a lowdown on what you're doing. And everyone should go download your apps and go to your website and check it all out. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to seeing you guys here in Dubai for Expo 2021. I'll definitely check it out. Do you have the.com on the Expo 2021? I don't have the.com on that, unfortunately. We can Google it. Expo.com, I'm sure you'll find it. Yeah, I've got a book coming out later this year,

so hopefully I'll be doing some speaking in Dubai and we'll get a chance to hang out. I'm looking forward to that, my friend. Really looking forward to it thank you so much thank you very much jason thanks for tuning in go to youtube.com fortress chris voss hit the bell notification button go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss our groups on facebook linkedin and all those different places thanks to everyone for being here and we'll see you guys next time