The Pomp Podcast - #1380 Owning Manhattan’s Nile Lundgren Is ALL-IN On Bitcoin

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Nile Lundgren is the star of the new show on Netflix called "Owning Manhattan" and is one of the top luxury real estate agents in the world. He has solid billions of dollars of real estate. In this conversation, we talk about the similarities between bitcoin & luxury real estate, scarcity, psychology, inflation, macro economy, interest rates, and filming "Owning Manhattan". ======================= CrossFi is the Apple Pay for Crypto. For the first time in history, anyone with a web 3 wallet like Metamask can spend crypto through a physical or virtual visa cards anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. Be one of the first to get your hands on a CrossFi card and a prize pool of $3 Million Dollars by joining and participating in their testnet today: ⁠https://xfi.foundation/users⁠ ======================= BetOnline.ag is a proud sponsor of the the Pomp Podcast. Use crypto to bet on sports, play poker and enjoy casino games at BetOnline. Visit ⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠ and use promo code POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline boasts no crypto transaction fees, and processing is anonymous, instantaneous and secure. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. All right, guys, bang, bang. We have a very, very special treat for you. We have a celebrity in the house today. We have Niall Lundgren. He is the star of Netflix's new show

Owning Manhattan, and he is one of the top luxury real estate agents in the entire world. He has sold billions of dollars of real estate, and he is here to explain why luxury real estate and Bitcoin are very similar assets. We talk about scarcity. We talk about the impossibility of building a decentralized computer network and building skyscrapers into the sky. We talk about the psychology of why people may buy either asset. He's a huge Bitcoiner and he just so happens to be incredibly successful at his day job as a luxury real estate agent. And so I'm really excited for you all to listen to this conversation. Trust me, get all the way to the end. There's tons of fun. There's tons of insights. And I think that you really enjoy it. Here is my conversation with

Niall Lundgren. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by CrossFi. CrossFi is the Apple pay for crypto. For the first time in history, anyone with a Web3 wallet like Metamask can spend crypto through a physical or virtual Visa card anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. No more exchanges or middlemen.

Just link your wallet, get your card, and start spending today. CrossFlight card transactions have already been successfully processed in New York, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, China, Japan, and over 20 other countries. Be one of the first to get your hands on a CrossFlight card and a prize pool of up to $3 million by joining and participating in their testnet today. You can go to xfi.foundation slash users. Again, that's xfi.foundation slash users. Go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by BetOnline. Do you like making a profit from sports betting? Well, set yourself up to take home the most profit possible using crypto to fund your sports betting, casino, and poker account at BetOnline.ag. You can avoid costly transaction fees,

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if you use promo code POMP100. Bet online. The game starts here. Betonline.ag. Go check them out today. All right, guys. Bang, bang. We're here with Niall.

Well, I thought a good place to start this conversation, which many people will not make the connection. You are one of the top luxury real estate agents in the entire country. You and I met because you messaged me and you were like, hey man, do you want to come see the penthouse at Central Park Tower? And I was like, this guy's insane. I'm not going to buy that. So I don't want to waste his time. I want to be respectful. He didn't even just come look at it. And as we were walking through there, you and I started talking and it was very obvious that there are connections between luxury real estate and Bitcoin. Absolutely.

And maybe we can kind of just unpack that for a second because I think that your portfolio, many other people's portfolio, Bitcoin and real estate benefit from a lot of the same things in terms of price appreciation or depreciation. Absolutely. And so like, how do you think about these?

Like on one hand, luxury real estate is kind of an old world asset. Bitcoin, which I know you're super into, is a new world asset. So what's up? No, first off, thank you for responding to me on Twitter and actually coming through and seeing the penthouse. That was amazing. It was getting really nice getting to know you and

Paulina. Anyone who wants to buy the penthouse at Central Park Tower, call him. Please. We're still looking here, but would really appreciate it. But Bitcoin, in my opinion, is a really great asset because there's an easy way to entry. There's a little barrier to entry. If you have $10, you could start buying it, right? And when I first started getting into investing, roughly 2016, 2017, I'm a real estate broker and I really wanted to buy real estate. How can I be an effective real estate agent if I don't own real estate? So I was really trying to figure out how I was going to, like what my path was to being able to do that. I felt that that was a very important thing as a luxury real estate broker. And then I stumbled upon this asset through a

friend of mine who was like, hey, you got to check this Bitcoin thing out. I think it was about $9,000 at the time. So I started just DCA-ing, buying $100, $200 here on a weekly basis. And I realized as we went through the first bull run, or one of the first bull runs, 2017, 2018, that it was an asset that can appreciate and the barrier to entry was very low. And I didn't really know too much about the stock market, nor did I really want to get too involved in it. I do have money manager i work with morgan stanley right now so i do have stocks but my main basket is in real estate and then bitcoin and what i felt by being a bitcoin holder and i've really never sold i haven't sold i've been dcing for almost seven or eight years now um and it's it's been a stomach

wrenching process uh but i now understand the fundamentals of bitcoin the scarcity the 21 million the amount of bitcoin that are even lost forever um and then all of the individual people that hold it um and then all of the uh bitcoin that's held off the exchanges in cold storage so once you start to understand that in basic economic principles of supply and demand it's like bitcoin is the asset so for me bitcoin was my first asset that i used to build my wealth right and then from there i started to say all right what am i going to do and then when i did a couple deals an 18 million dollar deal a 30 million dollar deal then i said all right now I'm going to buy the real estate. So I had two separate assets that were both appreciating at

the same time. So what's interesting to me is they both benefit from scarcity, right? And also they both benefit from the debasement of the dollar. And the scarcity component, I mean, you're on this show, Owning Manhattan, excellent show. You are the star of the show. Ryan, I know everyone wants to talk about, but I think actually you're the star. He'll probably laugh at that. I think that, um, you guys on multiple occasions talk about, there's only one of these, right? There's only, you know, so many units left in this building, like this idea of scarcity driving people to make decisions. Uh, and you even talk at times about the disconnection between the money and the emotion. Oh yeah. And so maybe walk us through, like, why are people buying these luxury

real estate, um, you know, kind of units, the, uh, penthouse at central park tower is like $200 million penthouse. But there's been multiple transactions just here in Manhattan where people have bought, you know, 100, $150 million apartments, which seems insane in terms of dollar amounts. Is it just like, I want to brag to my friends or what are they doing? I think there's a brand new asset class that is being built up right now. Real estate is the traditional asset class. That's how America gets the, I guess it's the American dream, right? Okay, I'm going to buy this and hopefully one day I'll appreciate it and I'll go from there. But the secondary part of real estate is this new asset class of $100 million or more, right?

So the lower penthouse at Central Park Tower just traded three weeks ago for $115 million. Jeff Bezos is on a buying spree down in Miami on Indian Creek, buying up everything from $70, $80, $90 million one by one by one. So over time, if you look at those assets, A, if you're buying in prime, prime, prime location, right? You don't want to overspend for something where you're not at. But if you have a prime location, there will always be demand for that. Similar to Bitcoin.

There's always going to be demand when you have so much that you can buy. So when it gets more and more scarce, when Bezos buys more and more and more of those properties, there's less and less and less out there. So when we see the S&P 500 has nearly doubled since COVID times, what are people doing with all that money? Well, they have to put it somewhere. You can't just keep it in the bank because the government is printing money ruthlessly. and that dollars that's sitting in the bank is going down dramatically so you have two choices

you can invest in the s&p 500 which is very very difficult right now because even today we're at an all-time high right so why would you put your money there right then you say well real estate all these billionaires are buying it and they want to buy more so if you own that eventually maybe someone want to buy yours or you just hold on to it because when you're in an inflationary period like we are right now you buy real estate because the real estate inflates with the inflationary period when they're money printing similar to bitcoin where we're literally just printing money and the dollars that are sitting in a bank are not going to work so you have to buy an alternative asset so that's why i like bitcoin and real estate because bitcoin is my

short-term buy where i'm just collecting a little bit just my sets i'm just buying my sets a little bit of sets all we talk about is sets so i just pull all those sets in and then i sit there and I say, okay, where else are we going to go with this? So I own three different investment properties now. And all of them have done really well because I bought in the 2020, 2021 range. So I got rates that are less than 3%. So more than 60% of America has rates that are below 5%. So I think when you look at it that way, we're in a bit of a stalemate on the general real estate market where normal people, you know, everyday Americans are trying to buy a home. The median home price is about $400,000. That represents a 5.5% increase from the year before, which is outrageous. Americans

can't afford homes, which is a problem. And I think Bitcoin solves that. Because if you look at the price of Bitcoin comparatively to housing, housing goes down compared to, because how many, you know, the guy that bought the pizza for, you know, 10,000 Bitcoin. I mean, that guy's shooting himself right now. Same thing, right? If you bought a house a couple of years ago, it might've been a thousand Bitcoin. Now it's six, right? And what's it going to be in two years? What's it going to be after the next cycle? What's it going to be in 2020 or 2030, for example? So I think there's a lot to talk about between the two. And I think Bitcoin is one of my favorite hedges against inflation. And I also like real estate as a

hedge against inflation. The issue just for the average American right now is that the interest rates are so high. I was on Fox News last week. I was really urging Jerome Powell to cut the rates because we're in a gridlocked scenario for the housing market. New York is a little bit different of a market, I would say, because co-ops generally are 75% of the market and they dominate the sales market. You have to put down 50%, 25% in those types of assets. And when you put such money down, when the when the prices kind of go down you know normally people have to sell but in new york they're just so equity heavy that they're like i'll just wait on it and most of the people here can wait and they will wait they don't want to trade up to a seven or eight or nine percent

mortgage at the current time so it's a bit it's a bit fixed uh in in new york now bitcoin you can put theoretically unlimited amount of money to work right if you have enough time and you start to acquire these assets you could go put a billion dollars you could go put whatever um if you said to me uh is there a billion dollar real estate in america um i think that trump would argue mar-a-lago is worth a billion right judge that's worth 18 truth is probably somewhere in between right exactly um there are a couple of homes in palm beach uh one in particular that i'm aware of where the family that owns it probably thinks it's worth a billion. And maybe there's two or three other homes, you know, kind of around the world that people would

say, hey, it's worth a lot of money and it's increasing because of the debasement of the dollar and all this stuff. But it'd be really hard to go put a billion dollars into luxury real estate. Maybe Ken Griffin is trying. I was about to say, Ken's the guy who's doing it. He's trying. He's really doing it. If I remember correctly, he bought here in New York City, a $250 million. $238 million. He bought three floors at 220 Central Park South. So when somebody does that, how much of the luxury real estate purchase is for resilience

and like the storage of wealth? Meaning they're not so worried about, is this going to appreciate as much as I don't want to lose the economic value I'm putting into this property. Right. And there's a parallel in Bitcoin where some people are buying it because like number goes up and I want more fiat dollars in the future. And others are saying, I don't care if this goes up or not. I just don't want to lose economic purchasing power to inflation. And so I'm looking more for like a store of value.

What is the luxury real estate market? Are they looking for appreciation or are they looking more for protection from all this inflation? I think it's a mix of both. I think when you have a lot of money, you want to have downside protection. And then all the smart money that I've been seeing, and especially with some of the guys that I work with, they're buying real estate and they've been buying real estate. I have one client who put $100 million into real estate. I sold him a $34 million property down in Miami. And this is a very unique strategy. He bought it. And what he did was he got a loan. So he bought it in cash, took a loan out at like 3% because he recognized that we're going to be moving into an inflationary period with higher

interest rates. And now he has an assignable mortgage at a 3% rate. So that's the key, the assignable mortgage. So now what he's able to do is command a much higher premium if he wants to sell because he could just give that person a 3% loan. So it's very interesting how it's being played out, but there is a huge appetite concerning how much money has been made post-COVID for real estate. And I think that Bitcoin as well is something that I'm hearing more and more and more in the conversations, not just separately, but also, can I buy this piece of real estate with Bitcoin? Interesting. I'm seeing yesterday it happened. And that's because somebody has a lot of Bitcoin and they just want to go and buy the real estate. Is that because there's some

other reason driving that? Why do they want to spend Bitcoin to do that? That's a good question. So the gentleman I was with yesterday, he proposed just handing a USB drive. So I think there's some tax implications to something like that um i think that overall if you've made a lot of money you know this gentleman has been been buying heavily and he's a multi-millionaire already probably a cent a millionaire and he showed me his portfolio yesterday and it was alarming and his average cost basis was 15 000 so he's like i'm sitting on so much cash if i'm gonna take it off the exchanges and go through the whole situation of you know going through the irs and doing that that's one that's one thing you could definitely do that or you could just say can we strike a deal and

just kind of give you a ledger um so i i think it's very interesting and there's some clearing houses there's some title companies that are now allowing for the exchange of crypto for example there's a project that we're working on i'm selling down in miami which is the mercedes-benz places they will accept cryptocurrency what they do is they you would wire the crypto or send it however you send it and um to a title company and then the title company then exchanges it immediately to usd at usd and usually that's about a five to seven percent fee to do that and people who don't want to spend the taxes you know maybe that's that's something that they want to do and so new york and miami both seem to be red hot over the last two or three years on luxury

real estate, which is interesting because interest rates have gone up a lot. And so why is it that luxury real estate still seems to be pretty strong, even though maybe kind of your average single family home across America, there is that gridlock, there is much less interest here. Is it just most of these buyers are kind of cash buyers? Yeah. I would say, for example, I have a number of different properties in my portfolio. One of them is a brand new condominium called the Huxley. that's 71 condos that i represent we've sold 95 of them we have like four or five left that is a 1.5 million dollar price point and below so when we saw the increase in the interest rates total nightmare total disaster at the property because they're really pension pinching every

penny to get into that studio or one bedroom apartment now conversely i just made a deal on a nine million dollar apartment on fifth avenue on the upper east side that wasn't all cash and literally. So there's two worlds where it's like people are really struggling to get the rates and to pinch the pennies and save every dollar that they can so that they can have the ability to go through the bank process and get the loan, right? That's also a problem, going through the whole bank process to get the loan. Bitcoin, you just buy it, right? So they have to go through that whole process to get the loan. And then you have these other side, which is the luxury market. And the luxury market is dominated with cash buyers. I haven't done a deal above $4 million

in the last two years that wasn't all cash or non-contingent, all cash, and then they buy it and then they can get their own loan afterwards. But it's all cash north of $4 million, that's what I've seen. And who are these people normally? Like when people think of the Bitcoin buyer,

they're thinking of a young person, usually digitally native, maybe a former gold bug who's opened their eyes, right? But there's an arch type, which isn't actually representative of the full Bitcoin market. But I think people kind of have this general view of, they skew in a certain direction. You know, we look at content analytics and like 90 plus

percent of every one of our platforms is male. And we've been like, should we try to do different things? But like, maybe that's just the market. Right. What is it in luxury real estate? Is there kind of an archetype, like somebody who has $9 million to make it all cash purchase, probably has done something right in their life. Right. Or won the ovarian lottery. one of the two but um how do you think about like are they real or are they not can they actually you know buy this thing or are they something we want to deal with right no i mean that's that's a really good question i think money talks so yeah i mean i don't know sometimes i deal with people that i don't like to deal with but if they have the funds then i will take them seriously whether

they pull the trigger or not that's that's going to be on them but i'll take them very seriously in that in that situation the people that i would say who are buying are either very successful for example uh folks i i met a gentleman the other day he he had like something in health care technology during covid and the guy made 100 million dollars right so that's that's like literally just got lucky he's like i got lucky it happened now i'm looking for luxury real estate that's one type and then the other type i would say is well there's maybe three types if you consider the bitcoin aspect of it but generational money generation you have to think about it the baby boomers are passing down so much wealth right now that i don't i think people are overlooking that

and i think that's going to have a big impact on the bitcoin marketplace because when that when those baby boomers those those folks end up passing they're going to leave tons of money to this next generation and those people have been watching this podcast and they understand that the dollars in the bank aren't going anywhere and i think the new generation is really going to usher it in, helped with the fact that Larry Fink and all the other people down on Wall Street really enjoy Bitcoin at this time. I mean, we're going to have an ETH ETF coming up very soon. And the Bitcoin ETF has been amazing for Bitcoin. The inflows are wild. And I never really even expected that. I've just been a Bitcoin maximalist my whole, you know, since 2017, my whole career.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, holy shit, if Larry Fink thinks this and they're putting, it doesn't matter what happens. He just keeps buying. So, I mean, for me, that has got to be one of the biggest uh green flags that i can ever say about any asset now the person who made 100 million dollars for through the health care thing um how much did they spend on the luxury real estate if you make 100 million i'm sure you got to pay some taxes and stuff sure but are you looking for a five million dollar apartment or like a good question yeah i got you know 50 million in the bank like let's just blow it all yeah you know what's the best thing i can get for 50 million some people are like that don't get me wrong this guy in particular his budget was relatively

reasonable considering, but it was about an $18 million budget. And he's just one of those guys that had made the money and he wants to get in something that's very unique. So that goes to another point, just about talking about scarcity. What he was looking at was like a one-of-one property with the view of Central Park and nobody can really emulate that. The zoning restrictions don't allow for anything to be built in that area. So what he likes is the scarcity of that. this is the only condo on fifth avenue in this area that has these views so he also understands the scarcity asset now i didn't talk to him per se about bitcoin but that plays right along the same thesis of hey this is a scarce asset so when you have a scarce asset and you have the funds

to buy it if you wait especially in an inflationary period where they're printing fiat you're going to win long term and i think that's what they're trying to do is diversify and i think stock market's the first place that people go but then we're at these all-time highs so it's like if you want to right now and i just spoke to my financial advisor before i walked in just just to hear what he had to say he's like yeah we might want to start trimming right now because it's getting very high and trim out of some of the heavy-weighted you know stocks in the s&p 500 and then dca into for example you know ibit or bitwise um and that's very interesting because morgan stanley for example they're not supposed to be soliciting it but i've been telling

my my manager hey this is what i want i want to be invested in these etfs because i believe in this asset and i've actually educated my financial advisor on that which is like he and i've been talking about for two years and now he's like wait i actually believe in what you're saying and let's do it together so he's waiting and we buy it's funny it's like i can't believe i'm like really how am i telling you this yeah but ahead of the curve you know i think that's really important And as somebody enters the Bitcoin market, they can go on an exchange and they press the buy button, done. Super easy.

No paperwork, no negotiating, no dealing with the other side's emotion. It's an order book. If there's liquidity, you're getting your Bitcoin or whatever you want to buy. Luxury real estate is very different. And one of the things that when I watched Owning Manhattan that I took away was you all as the luxury real estate agent serve not only as a pseudo accountant in terms of like, hey, here's what we think this is worth, what your budget is, what are some of the numbers and math behind it, but also a little bit like a psychologist. Because, you know, buyers are like,

I don't know. And there's a couple of times in the show where people show up and they have like a $5 million budget. And next thing you know, they're buying a $20 million unit. And so talk little bit about maybe like the the you know kind of more uh uh qualitative stuff right like how do you handle when a buyer is getting cold feet or is pressing ahead you're like actually i don't think that there's anything on the market right now that you want and if you buy this you may have kind of buyer's remorse or you know how do you just deal with some of those intricacies so that's that's it's case by case every single person who you deal with is going to be different So one of the things that I pride myself on is really listening. If I'm showing somebody

properties, I've seen a thousand properties. I've been doing this for 16 years. I'm not too interested in what the place looks like when I walk in. I'm interested in what your face looks like. Are you excited about it? And then I can play off of that. I think emotions are one of the biggest things that are played into real estate. I mean, people have egos. Everybody thinks that their property is 100% the best. But there's one thing that I learned being a real estate agent early on was that buyers are liars. So just because you have a $5 million budget, that doesn't mean that's actually the case. So Manhattan specifically is a very different market than I would say the rest of the world. If someone tells you they have a $5 million budget,

I might show you $5 million, $5 million, but I want to show you $6.5 million just so you're educated, another $8 million just so you're educated, a $4 million, and then maybe a $12 million. and you'd be surprised. I've done deals like that on the 12 and you saw Jessica Taylor do that in the show where she had a buyer who had a budget eight to 10 million and then she ended up doing a $20 million deal with them. That happens all the time, all the time in New York.

It's a very wild- And they just fall in love with the uniqueness or the asset itself? Absolutely, absolutely. Whenever you walk into a property with somebody and it speaks to them, you could tell, right? And when you see and you're showing somebody exactly what they want within their budget

and it never works, you have to think on your feet a little bit. And that's what a luxury real estate agent does is I've seen all the product. I know all the inventory. I know all the new developments. I also know all of the shadow inventory in the new developments. That means not just the stuff that's on the market, but also the inventory that they haven't put on the market yet. So having somebody filter through that and digest that and then help walk you through your own discovery process, I would say is one of the most important things that real estate agents can do. I don't really pitch buyer's remorse. I don't really pitch, oh, you're going to regret it later. It's going to be their decision. My job is to simply put all the options out in front of them,

weigh pros and then cons, and then they're going to make their decision. And if it doesn't go out the right way, well, they learn that lesson. And when we hit the next one, they know exactly what to do. When somebody buys Bitcoin, it's their Bitcoin, right? Well, on the exchanges. Well, meaning at least they have a legal claim to it. If they leave it on exchange, But it's theirs and they may be buying it for different reasons, but it's theirs. When people buy luxury real estate, sometimes they're buying it because it's their primary home. Sometimes they're buying it because it may be their vacation home.

How does the kind of process or the decision-making change, whether it's somebody's primary home versus, oh, this is the fifth home that I'm buying that's $50 million. Do they want to see it more, less? Do they care as much? You know, I'm fascinated by when Bezos buys the fifth house. Right. How much different is that process than when he bought the house he lived in for, you know, 20 years?

Right. Well, I think what Jeff is doing down in South Florida is he's compiling an assemblage. And assemblages in real estate are how you make properties more valuable. So, he's buying one lot next to the next lot next to the next lot with the hope of eventually he's going to knock it all down and build a mega compound, which if you ask me, that will be worth north of a billion dollars on Indian Creek when he's completed. When he's doing that, and let's say that you're three houses down from the first one he buys, and he buys the one two houses down, and he buys the one next door. Do you just call your

accountant and lawyer, and you're like, put a zero on the end because he needs this? Exactly. And it's literally, there's only one buyer for this, and he's going to pay whatever I tell him to? Right, right. That's exactly it. Absolutely. So what is the most expensive one he's bought so far in that? Do we know? It's about 100 million. He's built like three or four of them though. 70 and 94, a 104, 78. So he's had a number of marquee purchases. But you know, I have very close contacts to some other developers who did the same thing down on the Sunset Islands. And I mean, the value that you can unlock is tremendous. And by putting them together.

And also there's a very important factor to it. It has to be one of the prime marquee views. So looking over Biscayne Bay where you get the sunsets, that's very important. So it's like, talk about scarcity. It's like, yeah, you could be on one of the islands, but if you're facing east into a canal, into another property, there's not much of a view. But if you have the water in front of you, that commands an almost double premium. Mm-hmm. And for those that don't know, Indian Creek is so exclusive that I think almost every

house on the property or on the island is owned by a billionaire. And they have their own police force. Which when I first heard that, I said, that's cute. They have some security that probably drives around in a little car. They have uniforms. No, they have like boats and planes. And it's pretty legit security that they're putting up there. That's what you need. If you're going to buy an asset like that, you can't just pick it up a random island. You have to have people literally monitoring the waters that you're in because they can just pull up and just get off the boat and roll up on your property. So to have that, I think that's really important. One of the other things that I'm fascinated by is Bitcoin was something that was previously

thought impossible. Build a decentralized computer that was the strongest computer in the world, create this digital decentralized currency. There was 40 years of R&D, people tried to do this and they all failed and eventually we get Bitcoin. um when you and i went to central park tower uh other than polina being excited to see the highest residents in the world and take pictures for instagram um one of the things that struck me was maybe even 50 years ago this would have been previously thought impossible oh yeah you know if i remember correctly that specific unit is 1400 feet in the air yep um when you were in the unit, you pointed out, not to scare me, but it did, that you're actually higher than the helicopters

fly in New York City. And so how high can these buildings go? Will they be able to build one to 2,000 feet? Is it just going to continue to be bigger, higher, more luxurious? Is that just the trend here for the next couple of decades? That's a great question. I think that's always the mission in real estate is to build higher and bigger. In New York, you're limited by a lot of constraints. I've had some of the top luxury agents from Dubai come and look at the penthouse at Central Park Tower. They get goosebumps. They're like, yeah, we've been in the Burj Khalifa. We could build 10 Burj Khalifas in the desert. How the hell do you figure this out with all these buildings in Manhattan? And as I was talking to you about Bezos picking up the

assemblage, you know, Gary Barnett, who's the developer, he's the assemblage king. What he does is he buys one asset next to the next asset and then buys all these assets and then works out a deal with this guy through a third party who doesn't know it's him, right? So he's very good at it. And then what he does is he knocks everything down and then he builds up. So where we stand right now, there's 157, which is a building that he built directly at the base of Central Park. Then there's Central Park Tower. Right in front of that is 220 and then 111 West 57th Street. But beyond that, from those buildings, all of the air rights in that area have been bought. Yeah, there might be some supertalls that go in downtown, but to have something on Central

Park, I don't think that's ever going to be replicated. They had to buy all the other air rights and there will literally be nothing else around. So it's a scarcity play. And Gary Barnett, I think with his assemblage moves, he started buying at 2000 for that property. So, you know, This is a 20-year play, $3 billion. And you remember, when you buy those, you have to carry the costs of those. You have to rent them out. You have to keep them going so that you're not paying for them. And Gary was able to do that.

And that's a very impressive thing. And based on what I see, there's really not going to be anything, especially at that height. There could be other super, super tall, 50, 60, 70 floors. That's going to be the standard here in New York. But over 100, that's going to be a very rare error, if you want to say. Oh, that's a good pun. 129 is the floor 129 130 and 131 so um maybe the craziest part about it was not that it's 129 100 you know 30 131 uh stories up there's an outdoor area wild how crazy is that so that's 131st floor

there's this outdoor area which is the highest outdoor area in all of north america probably The highest residential terrace in the world. In the world. Okay. So we went there. I don't really like looking down 1400 feet. Right. Because you're kind of like, that's like really far.

Right. But just the engineering feat to build something like that, you know, again, to build Bitcoin nearly impossible, to build this seems impossible. Right. And I also think that there's this element of, you get to meet a lot of really interesting people. you know you message me i go and i say we become friends and yeah i'm like man that was like a unique experience yeah um who's like the craziest person you can talk about that you've met doesn't

have to be for that specific unit could be any of them okay like what why is it so memorable or a crazy experience uh that is a really really good one so we we deal with um a lot of celebrities We deal with a lot of business executives. I like the business executives because they're very direct and they know what they want. They're like, I want this. And I'm like, I can't, based on what you're telling me, we can't pull it off. Like I'll tell them straight up, but like, yeah, I'll educate you on it. I like dealing with those guys because for the most part, they're super tough, but they're

direct. And if you could nail it, they'll buy it like that. you know the guy that i was talking about yesterday he wasn't even going to tell his wife that he was going to buy i showed him a 50 million dollar apartment and he's like i don't know i have so much crypto if this guy will accept crypto like i might not even tell my wife like i'll just buy it this place is sick i was like wait what so you know but he's a business executive he knows what he wants he he sees it it fit his aesthetic and he's like i want it and i like that i like the people that are very certain about what they want because that makes it a little

bit easier for me it's challenging at the beginning because you have to really get your bearings understand what they want where they want it how they want it but if you could put all that together and then couch them and then maybe show them show them something that's double their budget they're probably gonna buy is that the strategy yeah all right uh you guys have this netflix show yeah uh it's been filming for what two years now yeah uh to do it um one of my takeaways from the show is not only the real estate is obviously amazing and uh cool to watch uh you guys are good at like actors although it's not really acting like it's entertaining right it's uh it's engaging um there's many real estate shows on netflix and uh you know frankly um my

wife and i like to watch them because we just like to look at the real estate it's kind of cool you know see around the world absolutely whatever uh but i think we actually enjoyed the like human aspect of this right um what was the filming process like or or you know what was that whole experience of just like we're gonna film this and i hope it goes you know on netflix right and so i just saw it like everyone else did when it was released globally so i i was watching it with like sweaty palms because i filmed so many scenes you don't know what's gonna actually happen um you know i'll just bring it back to when it first started you know we interviewed with everybody with peacock hulu netflix we did the whole casting for that then we had to go through a whole year of

just doing the pilots and then once we were approved and netflix really picked it up then we started getting filmed uh for real for real now they use some stuff from the pilots in the show but one of the things that ryan sirhan does that i thought was super important was we're not i'm not an actor right i'm a real estate guy yeah can i act a little bit i guess but it's an improv situation this is all improv so what ryan did is with the whole cast before we actually started shooting we went to improv classes where we would go and we'd spend one two three hours as a group and we would really get vulnerable we would be crying we would be jumping up and down we would be screaming at each other but it's all to say like if you do this then i can do this no one's

shutting the door it's not uh no it's yes and and how do you do that so by by by utilizing that time in the improv it made it so much easier when we were actually in the moment because it's not interesting if i'm like hey nice suit you're like oh thanks right you know there's got to be some pizzazz to it like oh nice suit and you're like oh great suit you have an american flag pin so do one i'm like no way how did you get that pin and then there's like a conversation that's a little bit deeper and not every i would say not every show has that i don't think they're really going into like the deeper levels and i think ryan was really smart in having the whole cast do an improv uh class before and multiple classes leading up to it so that we were prepared

and engaged to actually make best use of everyone's time including the producers the audio people the camera guys were holding the camera like i try and go in there one take get it out and if you know i act a little crazy whatever that's that's part of it because i want to make a show right but i'm not trying to be bland and i think the cast did a really good job at that and i think that's why it reads really well on netflix right now i thought it was excellent thank you very impressed um what's the things you've learned from ryan oh man well i you know working closely with ryan has probably changed my career i was a very very solid agent i was all about cold calling i was all about direct outreach and hunting people down

but ryan takes everything to into the next level he's like you have to be following up with people until you die or they die and you know normally i would get into it nine ten times i'm like all right? Maybe not. But what Ryan has taught me is if you just keep following up with you, with whoever it might be, that's where the real gold is going to be because people are in different times schedules. You might be in Italy. I might be here. So you're not responding right now, but just the friendly ping, Hey, just checking in. And by doing that consistently, I started doing that really hard in January because filming stopped. And then I was like, all right, I got to start picking up business here. Right? So I just started really hammering everybody that

I've been in touch with. And you'd be surprised if you keep doing it, eventually, you know, pressure bust pipes and it works. So I'd say like from Ryan, that was the most important. And I did it before, but really like all the way to one of you die. And that's how you really get in there. Where this goes from here, obviously having a Netflix show, super helpful, you know, for a business where we've known, et cetera. Would you rather have the buyer or the seller that you're representing. Like, it's very interesting to me, like having the seller,

like being the seller's agent feels like people got to come to you. Yeah. But you got to do a lot of, you know, marketing and kind of get people out there. Buyer, you got somebody, you're on the hunt, but they don't necessarily have to buy. Right.

And so which do you prefer? I prefer signing an exclusive agreement, listing it and selling it. I think that's the most important thing that you could do as a real estate agent because you're controlling the product and the inventory. If you control inventory, you control the market. but if you look at the buyer not saying i don't like buyers um and i love going out and doing the

hunt thing because i'm very good at it i've been doing it for a very long time um and it's it served me very well but i if you're gonna you know if i'm gonna have to go one or the other i would definitely say it is um uh what was i saying one or the other oh yeah it was a seller so if i had to go one or the other it was definitely the seller all right um when you watch the show Is there anything where you were like, oh, come on, they should have cut that out or you were like embarrassed by or just like you couldn't believe they put it in?

You know, to be honest with you, I've come to terms with it, right? And I was on another reality TV show before. It was called Camp Getaway. It was on Bravo. I was a camp counselor, by the way, partying with adult campers, which was totally hilarious.

If you look it up, I have hair. It's a whole thing. But I remember trying so hard to be perfect on that show. and the first scene of me is me picking my wedgie. And I was just like, oh my God, I was so dialed in for like six months and I made sure that I didn't do anything wrong and they just picked that moment.

So when this show came out- You know the cameraman's like, got him. Yep, exactly. So when this show came out, I was like, I gotta have peace with that because I know that's what's gonna happen. I would say, you know, losing a pitch on TV certainly doesn't feel good,

but I give Chloe a lot of hats off for her work on the pitch. I also used the pitch as a bit of a platform to tell the world about me, which I think was a little aggressive. I think I said I was a cutthroat killer. I don't know where that came from, but I probably should have toned back just a little bit.

So that was a moment where I would say I felt a little embarrassed in my hands. If you're asking my girl, she was holding my hand the whole time and she's like, your hands were really sweaty during that one. For those that don't know, So in the show, Ryan Sorhant has a listing.

He brings you and another agent in. And you guys basically have like a pitch off, right? To the developer. He ends up choosing the other agent. And I love the part you said, yeah, I thought about it for like an hour. And then I just went back to work. Exactly. Like a great kind of resilient mindset to just move on.

That's 100% my mindset with everything. It's like, you're going to suffer a lot of losses, especially working in a commission-based industry. You're going to suffer losses living in New York City. that's the whole game is how many times can you get back up so it was pretty devastating for an hour and i let myself have it i called a couple people on my team who knew about the pitch i said this is what just happened everyone's like no way really and i said i'm just going to give myself another 25 minutes and then we're going to move on and we're going to sell more real estate so

that's how i approach business and that's how i approach life i'm not going to win everyone and i'm okay with that and i just put my best foot forward for those that are looking at luxury real estate. What are the things maybe that you notice or you suggest to buyers that they should be paying attention to that they may not otherwise look at? I would say light and air, especially if you're looking about it in New York City. Where does the sun rise? Where does the sun set? That can command a premium. Is there a building across the street that's going to be built? Is there a vacant lot across the street? Because in New York, it's not always guaranteed that the view that you have is going to be there forever so we investigate across the street what this project is is this

building rent stabilized if it is unlikely that they're going to kick all the rent stabilized people out so they could knock the building down and build up all right that makes me feel better so i'm always looking for light in air because i've so i've sold properties when i was younger and not really aware and then there's a building up in front of it and then they call me like yeah there's construction here and if i was if i had known you know 10 years ago when i when i was doing it but now i really spend the time to do that because you don't want to spend 10 million dollars plus on an asset and then have the view or have you being disturbed by you know the construction you don't want to do that so light and air light and air huge ones especially and

that's just not new york also when it comes to like for example south florida you know having the west facing view from the sunset islands or from indian creek where you're looking over Biscayne Bay at Miami, that is very, very coveted. You're looking east, it's the water. So you get the sunrise and then there's nothing really left for the rest of the day. So really looking at where the sun is, it helps in understanding what level of a trophy asset it is. Because you can get something that's double than what something else is on that same island, just based on the exposures. Now, I said you're one of the top luxury real estate agents in the world. You said you want to be the seller's agent.

Yes. There's a lot of people who are, when interest rates come down, they're like, you know what? I'm going to try to sell my house. What is one or two things that they can do in their home to increase the odds that they're able to sell it?

Is there staging? Is there a nice candle that always works? That's like your lucky candle. What do you do to increase the odds? That's a really good question. So I do have a cologne. It's Le Labo. It's another 13.

and it's my scent but I spray it on the door so when you walk in you just get a nice little you're like oh this this is really nice you get a nice fragrance so that's number one and then number two it's definitely gonna be staging most people think that their house is great and I'm sure it is but declutter number one you have to get everything out of there and neutralize the home all these pictures of you and your family and this it's all great but we have somebody walking into your space to purchase it they need to envision themselves there So you declutter you get all that information or that all those pictures and everything out and then you want to find

For example, like this room. It's all white, right? If I'm gonna come in and stages I'll put a wallpaper there like a red and yellow or something that really pops so that when you have like your first lead photo There's like an interesting texture or color to get people to then say. Oh, wow, that's really interesting if everything is white bland they're not really going to interest to be interested in it so i stage it to have one photo or two photos that are like really going to pop out and that really creates the demand i love that um where can we send people to find you on the internet if yeah they're like to sell luxury real estate you know there's a lot of people probably multi-billionaires on here that

are watching that have tons of real estate they want to sell absolutely and then also you know obviously my audience is incredibly intelligent and wealthy and uh good looking and they smell good and everything else uh so they probably want to buy absolutely send them to find you absolutely no thank you so much uh so i'm at niall lundgren on all channels whether it's x instagram tick tock you name it at niall lundgren niall lundgren.com is my website and my team's website is lundgren team.com so you can find me in all those places you have a podcast i do have a podcast where's that it's called the broker that never sleeps it's on spotify spotify youtube i've been posting directly to x as well um and youtube's you know obviously a very big one because i'm doing video

like you're doing here yeah the well i just did it because you know your face has got to be on here um thank you so much for coming to do this i appreciate it uh people really enjoy it we'll do it again in the future yeah thank you anthony appreciate it