Interview: The Real Estate Guild System Is Collapsing With The Rise Of AI
Sasha Poperik of Immobilium.io reveals AI’s disruption of the U.S. real estate system, citing NAR lawsuits totaling $2.2B and brokerage conflicts over MLS exclusivity, while arguing 5–6% commissions are outdated with digital tools like RON and virtual tours. His platform targets diaspora buyers—e.g., Ukrainians, Venezuelans, or Americans seeking EU residency via Greece’s property incentives—with 102 global locations, including Lagos, where distrust in local agents spurred innovation. High U.S. insurance costs (e.g., California’s 200%+ wildfire surges) and rigid tax systems contrast with Europe’s affordability, from post-COVID commercial deals to Mauritius’ growing tourism-driven market, suggesting tech will soon dominate transactions, leaving traditional agents obsolete except for ultra-niche assets like luxury casinos. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, joining us now is Sasha Poparik, and he has an international perspective on the real estate market.
You know, we have a way that we have here in America of buying and selling houses, which is different than the rest of the world.
We've only seen one way for several decades, but even that way is undergoing a lot of different changes.
We've had major lawsuits between brokerages and others fighting each other in court in terms of how listings are going to be done, how real estate is going to be done, commissions and things like that.
Two major lawsuits with the National Association of Realtors, one in 2023 that was $1.8 billion.
And then there was another one for $400 and something million dollars that happened in 2024.
Meanwhile, there are lawsuits going back and forth between big brokerage companies like RE-MAX and a service called Compass that is doing exclusive interviews, interviews, not interviews, but listings for a short period of time before they put them out for multiple listing.
And so that's created a competition between Compass and Zillow.
So Sasha has a company that is the first international real estate platform.
So I thought it'd be kind of interesting to get his perspective on how things are rapidly changing here in the United States, as well as what is customary internationally.
So joining us now is Sasha Poperik, the founder of Immobilium, I guess is the way you pronounce it.
Is that correct?
You're excellent.
And thank you, David.
Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Well, thank you for coming on.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
A lot of tech changes are really happening.
And I think even when we look at the ability of artificial intelligence to go through and sort through a large amount of data and bring that home and make some sense of it, we're not the point yet where the AI agents are really working that well.
But theoretically, you could have an AI agent that would go out and look at listings and you tell it you want to be in this general area and you give it some other parameters, maybe about schools or this or that, and have it do a sort through of all the data that's out there and present candidates to you.
What do you think is going to be happening in the real estate market?
Wow.
I mean, we had this like little chat before we started it.
And, you know, I think that the major thing that's going to happen, it's that unfortunately or fortunately, agents are going to become more and more obsolete.
And, you know, I mean, human agents, human agents, you mean real estate agents.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The physical appearance of an agent, because the work that agents provide today, it's not even as close what was happening 10, 15.
I'm not even talking about 20 years ago.
I mean, you as a seller, let's say in 2000s, early 2000s, were hired an agent who could go and break his or her's leg and show in the house and take her pictures and do all these documentations, applications, anything for you, which was rightfully something that would earn the agent 5% of the commission or 6% of commission, depends on the area.
Exactly.
Today's age, I mean, I am not sure what agents are actually doing except being like Instagram models.
I mean, it's, you know, you can say you're okay.
So people are going to look at me now because I have tons of friends who are agents and tons of friends who are brokers.
And I think they already know this whole thing.
This whole COVID period shook that three of 400,000 agents in California alone, you know, coming down to maybe like only 30% of them actually selling something.
And because every single agent prior, the COVID prior, the interest rates coming to just a few percent and was making $200,000 a year buying the brand new beamers, buying amazing purses, like if it was a female agent.
And it was like irritating the neighbor next door who was actually doing something else, being a hostess of being like, you know, receptionist.
And then she goes to neighbors like, oh my God, how do you make all this money?
It was seller's market.
Properties being sold left and right.
And then they go, look, you just go do your test three, four months, you know, whatever, you get your license and join my brokerage and I'm going to give you so many deals because the market is looking for buyers to accumulate.
And everyone was making money.
When COVID hit, after the COVID, the economy started crashing down, all these things, most of the agents fell off.
And they go back to their own roots, back to being hairstylists, back to be hostess, back to be receptionists.
There was nothing on the market, there was no sales, but not just that, there was nothing that could contribute towards helping the industry grow.
And I think that that era has pushed technology to that roof because every single agent who was sticking to this ongoing, you know what?
I'm going to stick to this thing.
They were looking for ways how to utilize on technology itself and how to monetize to make it easier for them to sell the property.
So technology became its own beast, its own entity, its own, so to say, a beam parallel towards the real estate industry.
And people start slowly adapting towards technology on enormous ways.
So technology grew up next to the whole market.
Now you're coming with concepts like Compass.
Compass and Refkin, which is an amazing, amazing brain of a human, like he saw that.
He saw that tech is future.
And so did others.
So did Zillow.
So is Google right now.
And it's becoming more and more relevant for you to use technology as a tool and making it so accessible and so easier to even the agents who are not tech savvy to actually utilize the sales.
I remember when we built our own tech in early 2020s and I was going and it was this blockchain thing and people were asking what is blockchain.
Crypto was on top.
Everyone was buying Bitcoin, everyone's buying Dogecoin, everyone was buying all these coins.
Everyone was making money.
So agents themselves who were not so tech savvy would automatically associate blockchain and all this new technology to Bitcoin.
As long as it was working and Bitcoin was rising, so to say the crypto was rising, they were the biggest fan of the tech.
The crypto start crashing down, so much scam was happening, they were like then literally eliminating everything that they actually got associated with camps.
They didn't want to deal with this thing, that even us had to bury this whole amazing concept of transparency, security and transaction on a global level and put the agents first, the human factor first, which for us actually helped us build this franchise.
It was actually a blessing in disguise, adding human factor and adding, you know, this whole agents on top of it to make us grow.
Inspection's Role in Global Real Estate00:14:38
Now, Compass sees, hold on a second, we built something significant.
We are expanding.
We've been throughout and straightforward to this whole real estate winter and crypto winter, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Why do we have to now really deal whatever the National Association of Realtors, NAR, is dictating?
There is no point in that.
The same way people see MLS as the major platform dictating their own ways.
And COMPAS said, hey, I'm going to go and do it my own way.
And this goes well with NAR, and that's why the lawsuits are starting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is kind of interesting.
You're talking about this.
What value do they add?
And I remember when we bought a house in the early 80s and we were in Texas, we were buying a house in North Carolina.
And we had an agent who did what you were talking about.
They would physically go around to the different places and take, you know, at the time they had a, you know, the early 80s, they had like a fax machine that would give them a text description only of this property.
And so they could look at it, see how many square feet it was and bedrooms and things like that.
But they didn't have any way to actually transmit pictures.
So they would go around and take pictures of it.
They'd spend a lot of time looking at it and that type of thing, but and then narrowing it down, talking to us, narrowing it down.
And then when we came to visit, they had a list of places that we could go look at.
But since then, I've been scratching my head and saying, you know, what do I really need an agent for?
Because if we've got the capability to look at these listings online with pictures and all the rest of the stuff, I'm doing all the legwork, actually finger work, right?
Looking at all these different things with the databases there.
And what value are the agents really adding to any of that?
And I think furthermore, when we look at it, probably the time is coming where you'd be able, not too far off, somebody's going to put something in, let you do a virtual house tour that's going to be kind of three-dimensional, right?
And you won't need to physically go there.
You get a very good idea of it.
You'll still want to go probably and kick the tires.
But being able to get a sense of the space and be able to move through it and that type of thing, I think that's probably the next thing that's coming.
So the question then is what function do these agents bring to it?
And I think that's a key thing that's there.
What you have now is an institution that was set up for a different time when people didn't have that kind of information at their fingertips.
And it's become an anachronism, I think.
And so there's going to be a lot of changes.
So when you look at, as an international agency, talk to us about how it's different in other countries in terms of the house buying experience in America.
I think that as you just said, and, you know, I completely agree with you.
An agent had to come to you, fill up papers, sign here, fax, it goes, show you, drive you around.
Oh my God, my first properties in the 90s.
Actually, I got tired.
I got tired driving around with an agent who set everything up.
I could not even imagine that I had to deal with this thing, that I had to deal with sellers, with sellers agent, with escrow with title.
The security and transparency through technology did not exist.
Today, you sign everything with DocuSign.
You don't even have to go to Notary anymore.
There is RON, a remote online authorization that you and I can now really be with a third-party notary public through a video call and authorize everything.
So I don't have to leave the house.
The problem that this thing is still not there, it's the getting used to a factor.
Same way, it took you uh, a long time to switch from a cab, from a taxi, into an Uber.
The same way it took you a long time to switch from a Blackberry to an Iphone.
You cannot even imagine not having, like you know, uh like, so to say, like a keyboard to type, like what is an Iphone?
You were fighting it while technology was there and growing it more, more people getting comfortable, comfortable with dealing with their own thing.
Now you're going to say, is five to six percent commission worth it for an, for an agent to collect on a property that's been sold to an agent?
In today's, today's age, today's society?
Absolutely not, absolutely not, because most of the work it's already been prepared by a seller.
Uh, if the seller is really uh, wants to put some effort, they can deal with uh, what you may call it.
With title company, they can deal with um, with escrow, they can deal with inspection.
There is still this securing concept of of a buyer not trusting the seller.
It's not like you're buying something from your brother next door, you're buying through someone that do know.
So that's why they're using these brokerages, because brokerage is, so to say, someone who guarantees that the process, the legitimacy of the process is going to be completed right, and that's when the seller and buyers are needing a third party.
Generally speaking, if I will meet you now and we put something on a paper and it's like okay, let's just be honest with each other, let's go through inspection together, let's go through this together, we both can bypass five, six percent commission.
The only thing that's needed here is an escrow, which is something that, like until we submit all the paperwork, is the main factor of holding the this transaction and the money agents.
What i'm seeing where agents are needed.
It's like in art business.
You know, it's easy for you to sell an emerging artist painting who now, through your show, can showcase it.
Look what it has, what I have.
Go to one of these platforms and buy it and you say okay, great.
When you are coming to uh, like Picasos, when you are coming to uh Frida, Karlos or Pollux or those, those really abstract or like very expensive collectors artists, they're worth millions and millions of dollars, you need millions of dollars equivalent buyers.
Those guys they don't sit around, they don't look through zillow, they do not actually.
Just, you know, knock on doors.
They need specific group of agents who are having buyers, catalogs who are having sellers catalogs, because these people have enough money to actually not deal with agents and when a 10 million dollar property with five percent commission costs half a million dollars out of a seller's Seller's pocket,
it makes sense because the sale of a $10 million or $20 million mansion was done faster.
These individuals may always need some agents.
But if I have a $400,000 condo in, I don't know, call it like Phoenix, Arizona, you know, I don't know why I need an agent for what this agent is going to do.
The place is on a market.
It's nothing extravagant.
As long as you get yourself a loan and you can tell me that you have a proof of funds, I'm there to close the deal and to save us 20 grand.
Why not?
So those are the things that I'm seeing agents being still part of some society down the road versus like being associated with every single property on a market.
Yeah, when you're talking about the high-end properties, it reminds me when I've been to Jackson Hole, I see the real estate dealers that are there, places like Sotheby's, you know, because you think of as a fine art auction house.
And because the properties are so expensive, that's what they're doing.
And actually using the analogy that you did, that you got somebody that is going to be connected to the very wealthy people who could pay that kind of money for a home there in Jackson Hole.
So I agree with you with that.
But in terms of the bread and butter stuff that is out there, the ordinary size homes, it's a huge commission to pay when there's not a lot of services that are being provided there.
So tell us a little bit about your international real estate platform and how is that different than what we see that's out there right now?
Have we lost him?
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's try to reconnect.
I think we got cut off.
Oh, we did.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, we're back now.
I said, so tell us a little bit about your platform, Mobilium, and it's the first international real estate platform.
How does that operate that's different from what Americans are used to seeing through real estate.com and Zillow and their local agents?
Well, as an American real estate industry, you're always kind of associate what's in your backyard, what's close to you.
You know, I have friends of mine who I'm trying to sway over to buy amazing properties in like, you know, Spain, in Greece, even Africa, Dubai, you know, South America, amazing deals.
Now with Maduro Gon in Venezuela, there's so many deals over there.
And we all know that Venezuela potentially where we have our operation, it's at one point going to be probably like the most prosperous country in South America.
But like now convincing you, David, to tell you, hey, why don't you buy a $10 million hotel in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, you would tell me, Sasha, this is all great, but I do not know anything about that area.
And I tell you, dude, you're going to make three times the money what you're going to make in Los Angeles because national like increase in properties in California, it's like 10% versus, let's say, what's happening overseas.
You're going to tell me, Sasha, I like my 10% because I don't know the law, the rules and regulations or anything like that, versus something that could be overseas.
Now, this is coming from someone who is more stationary located in the areas of your own, so to say, a vicinity.
But major companies, major investors, they don't buy anything local.
It's already over-exaggerating.
They want to actually buy something that's 30 cents on a dollar.
And those are the guys that actually use us or like any other major international franchises to purchase properties in, you know, Sant Lucia or purchase properties in different other countries with security and transparency.
So what we did, we actually created technology that allows all this transaction to happen.
connecting with the banking systems, connecting, converting crypto into a fiat.
That's a major concept that some countries still do not accept crypto payments.
So we are converting them and sending fiat, which means dollars or Euros into those countries.
And of course, securities.
Here you have in America, almost by default, inspection, title, as you say, like escrow.
In other countries, you don't.
So for you to just go and buy something in other country, it's like a risk that you're taking unless you have somewhere there on the ground doing that legwork for you, doing this security for you.
And what we actually have done, we have so far 102 global locations in 60 countries.
So we syndicated boutique brokerages to be under our umbrella, to be under our franchise.
We still gave them and still, we still told them to keep their own identity.
That's another aspect of international way of thinking.
Oh, you're going to come here as a predator.
You're going to take my name away.
It's not Travis Knight.
Now it's Remax.
So we say, no, no, no.
How about you still Travis Knight?
And we just give you the roof over your head and technology to make you're more transparent to international buyers.
And then you say, okay, great.
I'm happy about that.
Like it's a sensitive concept.
But what we're doing, we are not just catering to an American buying something in Malta.
What we are doing, we are focusing on where the diaspora, the immigration is, like focusing to access those like centers where let's say there is a half a million Greeks living in Chicago.
So pretty much they're going to be 99% buyers of the Greek properties in Greek islands or something like that.
We're not going to force feed some American telling, dude, buy this thing in Athens.
We're going to go to Greek communities, we're going to go to Greek cultural centers and say, hey, we are here to help you buy something from back home because eventually you may just go back, immigrate, retire and be where you came from.
And by starting that, we open those doors, those pipelines, where now even Americans who have nothing to do with, let's say, Greece in general, as an example, are willing to purchase properties there.
And why?
Because there's many incentives buying, let's say, properties in Europe.
You can actually secure yourself EU residency, European residency, by buying a 250,000 Euros property or piece of real estate in Greece.
And it gives you something which is called a golden visa, which is equivalent to like a green card in America.
Allows you to stay in Greece.
And it's a first step for you to become potentially a passport of European Union and immigrate over there.
EU Residency Through Real Estate00:07:02
Other countries have similar concepts, similar plans like Malta, Portugal, Hungary.
And so they're actually doing exactly the same that what America is doing, you know, come here, invest money, stay here.
Now they say, hey, why don't you move to Europe?
You'll be tired of American way of life, you know, immigrate over here and you can travel to Europe.
And so those are the ways that we have set up, not just for Europe, Latin America, you know, Africa as well, and a bunch of other areas.
I see.
Yeah, that's kind of interesting.
You know, years ago, I remember John Davidson, who was with the National Taxpayers Union, one of the things he was saying was, you want to try to make sure you've got what he called residential ambiguity.
Am I really, I have a footprint in several different countries, and he looked at it as a way of kind of keeping your foot in the door for freedom.
You know, if it gets really bad in one area, you can get out.
Of course, we've had a lot of people who have emigrated out of the United States because of things that they see happening here.
Speaking of international situations, just as kind of an aside, I know this wasn't what you came on to talk about, but let's talk a little bit about Venezuela.
Can you kind of give us a temperature reading as to what's going on there?
How are people reacting to the situation that's happened after Maduro has been taken out?
I'm a dreamer.
I'm a visionary.
I'm delusional.
That's why I actually build my businesses.
Like I just go and say, you know, whatever the hell kind of stays around.
I have a good friend of mine.
His name is, you know, he's one of the lawyers.
I'm not going to mention it, but top lawyer in LA.
And I was visiting him once and he has like in downtown like probably like the whole building of lawyers, like 60, 70 lawyers.
And they take like every case that comes towards them.
And I go to him, Mark.
Okay, well, the cat is out of bags.
Mark, why all that?
He goes, Asha, I throw everything against the wall, whatever it sticks.
And, you know, that's actually kind of worth building all my businesses all my life.
But to jump to Venezuela, we went there when no one else did because I realized there is no competition.
We went into Africa where everyone else is going out.
And now I think we are the biggest African network.
We're in 16 countries.
So are we already positioned in Greenland?
So we are already in Ukraine.
When the war started, we went in Ukraine, we opened four locations.
We know that that war is going to stop one day and we're going to have a position.
Venezuela was always controversial for us.
And as, you know, hopeful I was, I knew that I have to be pragmatic.
I have to be realistic.
What's the downsize and what's the downfall of if things don't work out?
And I saw that like we didn't do anything illegal.
We're just a real estate company, you know, being positioned there.
But we knew that the population of Venezuela, that the whole that area there, they needed an open door.
They need to open these gates, need that.
And I think that Maduro in general was more a symbol than anything else.
I don't think that he was flexing muscles or something like that.
And the moment, you know, even prior Maduros, we had deals that we were offering to people, they were scared.
No one like that was one of my partners who's actually not even a U.S. citizen.
And he's like, dude, you have to go there and like do some deals.
No, no, I'm scared.
I'm going to get arrested.
He's like, nobody's going to arrest you, man.
Nobody cares.
Trust me.
But people were scared and they didn't want to even look at Venezuela as a vision and not even buy something.
Now things have changed.
So we have requests for land purchases.
People are asking us where exactly the oil raffinaries are.
When it comes to Venezuela, this area is going, this is it.
That's it.
It's stabilizing.
It's going to become probably the most prosperous market in South America.
it's going to dominate.
You know, some people say, you know, I missed my chance with El Salvador and I want to miss with Venezuela because I say prior to that, everyone was scared of those areas.
So they say it's El Salvador, Panama.
That's those are the kind of like, you know, tunnels they're building when it comes to wealth, when it comes to money making.
And of course, it needs real estate.
So most of people are not approaching us, even still, they're like very candidly looking and cautiously looking at this area.
But the smart investors are asking us about land purchases, commercial real estate purchases, hotels, anything that has a potential of accommodating the new way of, so to say, migration.
And who are the first in that line are exactly the industries that are going to participate the most.
That's the oil industries.
So that's been required, it's close to the oil ruffinaries, oil, like drillings, drilling positions, then the lands that are available to purchasing, you know, to build hotels, to build like pretty much like, you know, housings for the first tier of immigrants who are going to be the workers for all these big oil companies.
The next to it are now more and more interest, not as Caracas itself.
I don't think that that area has any appealing concept unless you are bringing some business headquarters.
But from a residential point of view, people are feeling more and more now confident looking into islands there, Venezuela, like Isla Margarita.
It's between Curaçao and Ice, and I think Aruba or these areas.
And because those are deals there that could be now turned into Airbnbs, everything that Venezuela was missing for all these years, it's shifting down there from a business perspective.
Yeah, that was the amazing thing about Venezuela by talking about the tremendous natural resources that they had and why this should be one of the wealthiest countries on earth.
And yet, because of politics and other things like that, it really kept that from happening.
So what you're doing is you're helping people to identify, I guess we could say, fixer-upper economies that are there.
Not just a particular house in a particular neighborhood, but seeing where there's a region that is poised to really grow, I guess.
How would you advise people in terms of investing in real estate, especially internationally?
Questions From Bever Hills00:04:26
Well, I mean, not that I'm trying to put myself first in this game, absolutely not.
I see that we are in the beginning stage of what we are going to be, especially with technology that you mentioned.
And you mentioned how AI now kind of can give you the whole scenario.
And I was associating with this company that actually are Canadians and they moved to Dominican Republic and they built this software even four years ago that AI was just starting.
And they were literally, the reason they did that because Dominican Republic has the biggest influx of Canadian immigrants.
They live in Canada moving to Dominican Republic because it's one of the biggest economies in this whole Caribbean belt.
And so they didn't know where to move.
So they created the software in-house, those couple, couple of, couple of programmers, and they said, hey, I want to move to Dominican Republic.
But, you know, I have a father who is 80 years old and he cannot walk far enough.
And I want to make sure there is a bench, you know, in front of the house.
And I want to make sure that there is no school close to it because schools are loud.
So they built this software.
What it does, it's actually searches seven billion points of like photos through Google Map and analyzes every single area where any house is for sale.
So now when you have like when you go to a listing and you see, you know, all these filters, you see like, um, oh, I want a three-bedroom house with like two bathrooms and accepts dogs and it's close to here and close to there.
And you can look it on a map, but you don't know if there is like traffic light close to it or if it has a, you know, which schools.
So pretty much you're going there and you're seeing one segment, but not three days later, it may bother you that there is kids there coming out of school every single day and you just purchase three million dollar house.
So this software, even back then, can pretty much give you the whole scenario.
You give the whole scenario where you should move, but then it eliminates all the other listings in that area that would actually be problematic for your way of life.
Wow, imagine how far this thing is going to go, you know, coming down the road.
And it's just going to help people move abroad.
Moving abroad was a taboo, was something scaring, was something like, I don't know if I make mistakes.
I'm going to get scammed, absolutely scammed.
That was the whole major aspect why we built that.
And I remember sitting at our early stages in 2020s in Golden and one of the offices in Bever Hills.
We didn't even have an office.
It was COVID bankers' office in Bever Hills.
And one of our friends was the GM there.
And he brought us there.
And we had like this thing called AMA, like ask me anything, where people log in from around the world and ask us about our platform and about our concept.
And we tried to impress who is who from the industry.
There was like leaders from like Fidelity, leaders from like Soteb, leaders from everyone watching us.
And more and more people were joining with questions.
They were from Africa, from Nigeria, or something like that.
I want to be a bigot and not to take their questions.
So I took, you know, one, two, three questions.
And at one point, I was like, okay, this is not looking good for me because I was hoping someone from London is going to join in and ask me how to buy a property in Bever Hills or Tokyo, how to buy property in, let's say, like, I don't know, like Dubai.
So I said, you know, let me double down on that.
So I opened up a conversation with that individual.
And the gentleman asked me, like, when are you guys going to open your location in Lagos, Nigeria?
And I'm like, okay, I don't even know where that is.
You know, so I'm googling while I'm talking.
I was like, okay, I see it.
And I asked him, I'm not sure, sir, we're going to look for it.
We're just opening now those big metropolitan areas, Barcelona, this and that.
And I asked him, but I don't understand how we would make money.
Structured Secure Residency Options00:07:27
And then he goes, we do not trust our own family sending money to put as a down payment.
Imagine sending money to an agent who is somewhere there with the idea that it's going to be safe because they don't have escrows on there.
They don't have things like we have in America, which is the beauty of money security.
And that was this aha moment when I asked him, but who is actually buying most of these places?
He goes, our immigrants, our diaspora, who are all over the world.
And that was this like, you know, rum opening a door for us, how to position ourselves and how to actually assist the buyers.
And from that end, everything went on the other direction, which means then we start allocating where an American who would love to retire can move without any hesitation or any kind of worries.
that his or her money is going to be stolen, the transaction is going to be done, that, you know, that the property is going to be as they said, especially for a reason of no escrow, especially a reason that there is properties they are not in register like here.
As much as we complain about NAR, NAR or Compass doing one thing or Zillow or whatever, are the most secure real estate market in the world because real estate in America, it's commodity.
In a world, it's something that people go there, they buy and they sell.
People here know they're going to stick here for next 20, 30 years.
They have a value.
The prices are going to go.
Even if inflation is going to eat some of this appreciation, so to say, it's still going to be valuable 20 years later that your kids can inherit it versus in a world when you have to have tons of components that are going to help you out.
So we position those components, we position those tools, and we are pretty much the most transparent platform and concept around that for any kind of purchases, doesn't matter if it's residential, commercial, hotels, casinos, islands, name it, we are there to assist and help.
Well, I imagine most Americans, you know, most of us are not in the market for a casino.
That's a Trump family, I guess, but most of us are not in the market for that.
But there might still be reasons for us to do investment abroad.
What kind of advice would you offer for people who are kind of middle class in America?
There is a lot of incentives.
Everyone loves Americans as much as there could be rhetoric about that.
Everyone loves American money.
So there is areas that you have to feel comfortable.
There's people that, you know, we sell properties in Mauritius, you know, that actually it's growing exponentially.
It used to be just an island where the main source of GDP was agriculture.
But now they changed to the industry and they're making it now more to change it to like tourism, changing towards like, you know, opening doors to more migrants coming there, retiring over there.
It's much more affordable lifestyle.
So people ask, okay, what are pros and cons to go there?
And once there is a wave of developments, there is many deals.
So the point is, what are you buying this thing for?
Are you buying this property so you can rent it out and have yourself some kind of like passive income?
Or are you buying this thing to move there and live there?
And that all depends on particular buyer.
If people want to retire and they want to have like more affordable way of life, because if they have any 401k, it doesn't matter.
Let's call it a 401k.
It's $500,000.
That $500,000 in America, it's not going to last much longer.
If you bring it to different areas, now what they had was something close to them.
They were moved to Mexico.
They maybe moved to Caribbean islands somewhere they were associating.
They never thought about moving to South America, moving to, you know, Indian Ocean area like Mauritius, Seychelles, all these areas, or Europe.
So we, um, the deals there are significant.
And I think that especially with options for you as an individual residential buyer, which is not the case in America, to purchase a condo, a house, and secure yourself a residency, which can open the door for the rest of the European countries, for example.
It's an appealing incentive and it's something that drives people to invest more, more and more.
Yeah.
And of course, I hear more and more from people who have lived abroad.
They just can't believe how expensive everything is here in America.
So that's one of the key things that's driving people even for retirement, you know, that they still have their social security or whatever, but they can actually live off of it if they go to another country.
I guess you see that a lot.
No, no, correct.
But you know what it is?
Unless you dare, you know, most of the people, let's take, let's generalize the American society.
And 99% of the people who ever left this country, there's people who never did, whoever left this country, most of them, they went on a vacation trip, two, three weeks.
Very structured.
Very structured.
Everything's a guided tour.
Yeah.
That's right.
So maybe they went first time.
They say, you know what?
Let me test Greece one more time.
Let me test Spain.
After three, four times, you said, you know what?
It's actually really beautiful here.
So how can I live here?
However, they never end up staying there longer than a couple of months and kind of acclimatizing themselves to the society.
And me being European, I'm actually coming from Switzerland.
I understand how easy to come to America and adjust to the American way of life.
It's not a tourism.
You have to stay here.
You have to deal with problems, deal with issues, deal with like, you know, fixing yourself, like, you know, work permits.
Like it was a concept 30 years ago that I have to endure and go that.
I didn't just come here as a tourist.
So the show is on another foot for an American to say, okay, I'm not going to go there as a tourist anymore.
I want to go there and stay.
So how can I do that?
You know, how much money do I need?
What are my options?
And in comparing to America, in order for you to live here, you have to be an extraordinary person to get like 01 visa or to bring a business, to invest into a business to get like this EB5 or E2 visa or, you know, get married, a green card or stuff like that.
Insurance Prices Won't Flip00:09:57
There is situations that are on the table, but they are much more complex.
Europe offers incentives that you can buy a condo and secure yourself a residency.
Now that investment is yours.
You're not going to lose it.
Here in America, if you spend, let's say, $200,000 on a business that's going to secure you a residency for a couple of years, if your business goes down, you lost money.
You know, you lost $100,000 and you're going with nothing.
In Europe, you can actually buy a property, get a residency, and let you explore if that country is really for you, if Europe is really for you.
Worst case scenario, you're going to say, you know what?
I'll be here two, three years.
I'm going to go back to America.
I still have my European residency.
And guess what?
I have a property over there that I may rent even if I'm not there, or I can sell it and get my money back.
Those are crucial differences between moving from America to Europe, hypothetically, and vice versa.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.
So this year, what do you see happening in real estate this year?
Kind of the economy has been, there's a lot of clouds hanging over the economy.
People are concerned about what's going to happen with the AI bubble and if that thing is going to bust.
What do you see happening with real estate then?
Real estate, it's finally coming to its census.
So all these people are realizing, especially the sellers.
On one end, those prices of like, you know, millions of dollars, my property is jumping left and right.
I'm going to stick with it.
I'm not going to sell it.
It's not going to work.
You know, you have to come down with your prices.
The reason is that the interest rates, even though as much as they fall down, they're here to stay.
This now, six, six and a half, that's it.
That's the bottom.
Six percent.
It's the new 3%.
You know, it's never going to go down.
I hope it's never because then we are in crisis.
Each time an interest rate is going to like literally under the anything that government can borrow, you know, it means like they need to reset the market.
That's why they offer those interest rates in 2020s to keep the, you know, this whole country alive.
And purchased a property at 3% in 2020 at a half of the price value right now, should be crazy to sell it.
Why would you?
Because even if you cash out certain, you know, gains, what are you going to do with that money?
You're going to go back on the market and buy something with more like, you know, APR and with a higher price.
You're not going to it.
You're going to stick to what you have.
That's why there is more properties on a market for sale than a buyer's, but these properties, they were pass the 3 or 4% interest rates.
Anyone who's selling a property now, sold it, you know, it's either refinancing from a 10% to 6% or is getting rid of it because it was just a vision for that individual to flip it at one point of time.
Since there is a bias market and buyers dictating the tempo, you know, the property's prices are going to go down for sure, 20 to 30% from whatever it is right now.
And thus, buyers on the other end are going to understand that 6%, that's it.
I can never go cheaper than that.
I have to figure out how to purchase this.
The biggest problems they are coming along are not even the prices of the properties or interest rates.
It's insurance.
The insurance prices went.
Yeah, especially like in California, for example.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Anything you touch, it doesn't matter if you want to insure your own puppy.
You know, it's like over 200%.
I'm not even talking about house because the major insurance companies, especially with Pacific Palisades fires and all these things that happened, you know, last year, they literally exodused California.
It's becoming a danger zone.
It's becoming something that they definitely going to go in bankrupt.
So whoever stayed raised the premiums through the roof.
And if you do not pay attention that even on a national, you know, nationwide, you know, base, you may end up paying like double interest rates.
Because if your house is now, you know, paying almost half of your mortgage on insurance, you're going to think twice if you're going to buy this house.
Yeah.
How does that compare internationally?
I mean, if you go to some of these countries, not even in a developing area, but even in Europe, what is the insurance situation like there?
Insurance itself, as I said, America, who the hell knows what's going to happen.
And I'm sorry to use this word H-E-L-L, but I think that once this whole economy kind of settled down, everything else is going to settle down and people are taking too much advantages.
It's just one of those do never let the good crisis go to waste situation that the big corporations and big companies are.
I mean, there is no reason for you to pay $1,000 a month on your car, you know, insurance.
There's for that, you know, but they don't give you an option.
So at one point, this all has to legalize, has to come to certain terms that otherwise it won't be sustainable.
Now, when it comes to real estate itself, as I said, it's a tree that has too many rotten apples, too many rules and regulations.
Technology is going full speed.
I remember even back in the days I mentioned earlier a part of the interview, like something like RON, remote online authorization was taboo in most of the states because not a republic, it's an industry on its own.
Yeah, so they're like little guilds that they've got, like a union or a guild or something, and they protect their little territory there, right?
Make it illegal.
So that's why they were making tons of money.
And let's say, and I'm not going to give you the wrong data, but let's say two years ago, out of 50 states, 31 had remote online authorization options because of the COVID shifted this whole technology to be acceptable.
Let's say states didn't, and that's California.
So anywhere else, we could have finished the deal that I'm in California and you're in New York and I can buy your property like literally with a camera, like, oh, this is it.
And in California, no, you're present of a Not Republic, which means you have to fly from New York to do that.
So technology, I think, is taking charge.
And once certain rules and regulations come into a place, and especially with crypto situation, I think it's going to be parabolic because all that part of this blockchain, all the part has been built that's not, it's not, it's not legit, it's just not acceptable to the society, to the to the regulatory systems.
Once it's set in stone, it's going to be an open market for tech to be a dominant part.
And then brokerages and agents are going to come there as a tool.
So it's going to flip the switch.
Here, tech is a tool.
A few years from now, agents and humans are going to be the tool towards technology.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
We were talking about insurance.
And of course, that comes into the bigger issue of affordability.
And, you know, we have very expensive prices here in America.
Our insurance is very high.
How does that compare to like Europe and some developing markets in terms of insurance?
I think that the insurance in general, and I'm seeing some other countries, you know, it's jumped everywhere because we're talking about economies were tanking, you know, the whole interest rates were jumping.
So everything kind of went with it.
But here in America, it's more about shares for the shareholder and price per share earnings.
And the more they generate, the more the money the stock market is going to make.
It's close to the level in Europe.
Why?
Because America has its own one-system rules.
Where in Europe, even though you're part of the European Union, every single country has their own rules and regulations.
So the insurance there in Switzerland and the rates are not the same that are in Germany or like, let's say, France or Portugal.
They are based on the local economies.
Here in America, even though we have states and they are kind of independent, but at the end of the day, certain rates, they're federalized and they're pushing it across the board.
In Europe, it's like they have to adjust to each other.
Why saying that?
Like, because if one country that's part of European Union cannot keep up with the other country because it's less prosperous, so they are helping the less prosperous country not to pull the whole European Union down.
And that's why the control, it's more towards regional aspect versus global European or international aspects.
That's interesting.
Let's talk a little bit about what you do with your company.
And of course, I'll just spell this out for people.
Complicated European Property Syndication00:10:19
The name is I-M-M-O-B-I-L-I-U-M, Immobilium, okay?
And people.com.
And people can find out.
What kind of a service do you provide to them in terms of taking all your expertise and experience in these different markets together?
What is it that they find from your corporation?
Sure.
First of all, it's spelled immobilium.io.
I as an I1O because it's a tech company.
Oh, okay.io, not dot com.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, we, from a tech perspective, we secure fastest way of purchasing property where you literally, if everything is intact, you can buy it like as if you were on Amazon buying shoes.
So on both ends, like with one click purchase, that's our model.
Like, you know, if you, if we have something now in Spain, let's say in Biza, there is a property there.
So what we do, we already pre-vet this property, we do inspections, we collect documentations like from a seller.
It's already done.
It's like a product.
We're putting it on a platform.
So there is no reason for you now to fly to Spain to check this property.
There is no reason for you to deal with six weeks escrow, due diligence, research.
We did all that prior putting it on a property.
So the buyer comes and see, oh, this is ready to go.
We are not wasting time.
So let me conclude this transaction.
And so that's one aspect, you know, assuring that that product as in real estate, as a product, it's ready to go because that's the only one asset in the world that actually it's not, there is no option to buy it as you're buying, you know, shoes.
Right, right.
It's encumbered with a lot of technicalities.
Yeah.
Why?
And the reason is why?
Because the real estate, it's part of the local economy.
It's almost a commodity.
It's you're paying taxes.
You know, the government owns the land.
Like there's so much there that you cannot just buy real estate.
Oh, you have to do background check.
We're doing AML, anti-money laundering, KYC, knowing your customers.
So even our buyers have to be known so we can make it much, much easier for the seller to accept that transactional purchase.
And so we open these doors that people go all around, they come to us.
Okay, let us close this transaction through you guys because you have, so to say, troops on the ground in Spain helping us out that we do not have to fly to Spain to actually check the property.
Someone over there is going to do all this thing for us, all the diligence, all that's necessity of this transaction.
And I'm still here in California.
Now, we went so far that like, you don't even have to ever fly to Spain to buy these properties if you want.
We can do all the documentations online for you.
But if you will, that's the icing on a cake.
You go there to pick up your keys.
So you don't have to fly going back and forth and waste time.
Not just that.
Whenever you go to Europe, whenever you go to any other countries, most of the time you go on vacation.
You're not going to go and spend two, three weeks looking for properties.
You go there to relax.
And when you go back, you never went to any country as a tourist and say, oh my God.
How many days we have?
Four.
Let's just go buy something.
These things don't happen.
You go back and you say, I loved Spain.
I want to go back there.
I want to still live.
What's the next step?
And then the steps is like, well, let me call some local agency in Spain.
Most of these agents don't maybe even speak English.
And you just, this whole dream of moving abroad collapses for you.
It's becoming too complicated.
But with us, we do all due diligence prior.
We are assisting and helping you as the buyer have the smoothest possible concept available.
That's very interesting.
There's one other thing, too, in terms of affordability.
You know, one of the trends that we see happening here in the United States is there's a lot of states and a lot of talk by politicians about eliminating property taxes.
And what is the property tax situation that you typically see, let's say, in the EU?
Are they pretty high, I would imagine?
Each country has their own rules and regulations.
Each country has their own taxes.
Each country has their own availability or allowance who can purchase properties.
So there is no general rule.
And to be honest with you, with that said, even the way and timelines, how long can it take for you to actually purchase property are not set in stone.
The taxes in, let's say, in Switzerland are much more different than the taxes in Germany.
The regulations are different.
Like, let's say, if you want to buy properties in Switzerland, even though Switzerland is not part of the European Union, but let's just say has the same structure, you cannot be just an individual.
They don't want to deflate the market.
They don't want to work with flipping properties like you're doing in America.
You buy one day, you sell it tomorrow.
They are overprotective towards their own society.
And speaking, let's say of Israel, let's say it's becoming so difficult, like, okay, regardless of the current situation, but even prior that, in order for you to purchase something in Israel, and I may be wrong exactly the concept, I don't know everything on the top of my head.
You have to send money to three different parties.
You have to send, you know, partial purchase goes to a seller.
Partial purchase goes to someone who is something like escrow.
It's between a not a republic and a lawyer.
And a partial purchase goes to the government.
And then you ask yourself, why the government?
Because the government has to collect taxes, but they don't have a fixed tax system.
So they're going to keep that money until they figure out how much the seller actually owes them money.
So situations like this just push the buyer away because it's becoming too complicated.
The good thing is that many of these countries, I said, offer incentives to these taxes.
And it's helpful because it makes you think twice where you should spend your money or your retirement money on before you say, hey, it's about time for me to stop with work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that is something that is becoming increasingly common, I think, for Americans to start looking abroad in terms of how they can afford to live after they retire.
But as you point out, it's a very complicated system.
And that really is interesting that you've stepped into that as an information resource and kind of a Sherpa, I guess, if somebody's going to take a long journey.
That's a very important service.
Yeah.
If I may just cut you off.
We mentioned casinos.
We mentioned shopping centers.
We mentioned stuff like that.
And it's out there that it's 20 cents, 30 cents on a dollar.
They need buyers.
And now talking about something like that, it's not limited to just a group of people.
There could be a syndication of us buying something in Europe that can actually be our investment, not just our place to go and leave or to potentially putting on Airbnb.
But you sit here, you're limited what you have in front of you.
You limit what you have in your vicinity.
You may eventually change the state, you know, because you still want to go and check it out back and forth.
But buying a casino in Cyprus, like, you know, which is part between Greece and Turkey, and it's an amazing deal.
Even if you want it, it was like, you know, damn, how are you going to do that?
You know, they have deals, especially after Corona when, you know, they destroy the whole market.
There were abandoned hotels, abandoned shopping centers that they would love to sell to someone, but the capital is limited in Europe.
So this is where we're opening a door, even for commercial real estate.
Hey, what do you need?
You know, we buy foreclosures, abandoned projects.
This is where this major key is that like residential buyers, an average Joe can potentially buy because it's cheaper.
I hate this word cheaper, more affordable in Europe.
In Europe, you can buy, I mean, I'm not even kidding.
In Europe, you can buy a hotel in Athens, Greece, for $4 million that already is working well and generating you return on investment.
Stuff like that, it's so appealing.
I mean, what's $4 million for people to take a loan, a couple of friends and buy a hotel?
I mean, it's everyone's dream and then even move there or just rent it out.
But you just, how am I going to do that?
That's the biggest concept.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
It really has been fascinating to kind of get a picture of that.
And again, the company is I-M-M-O-B-I-L-I-U-M, Mobilium.
And IO.io.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
Sasha Paparik, thank you so much for joining us and giving us a view of what's happening in the rest of the world as we look at real estate and economies that are happening there.
Thank you so much.
It was nice being invited.
I love your studio environment.
It looks amazing.
I'm a big fan of listening to you.
And you're much more pleasant, so to say, almost like in virtual person than like just listening.
Well, thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Technology Has Outgrown Us00:01:58
Have a good day.
Thank you.
Well, certainly technology is changing everything.
It's changing it at a very quick pace.
And I want to get his perspective as somebody who knows the American market, but also knows other markets and has that perspective.
We're going to see these institutions that have been around for a very long time.
They've outgrown, well, not outgrown, but the technology has outgrown the way that we actually buy and sell houses.
So we're going to see a lot of change in that.
But the bottom line is Klash Schwab has got it right.
You will own nothing as long as you've got property taxes.
That's one thing that we need to work on here in America to make sure that we actually can own property or they will take it from us with that.
So I hope you found that interesting.
Thank you for joining us.
Have a good weekend.
The Common Man.
They created common core to dumb down our children.
They created common past to track and control us.
Their commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing.
And the communist future.
They see the common man as simple, unsophisticated, ordinary.
But each of us has worth and dignity created in the image of God.
That is what we have in common.
That is what they want to take away.
Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation.
They desire to know everything about us while they hide everything from us.
It's time to turn that around and expose what they want to hide.
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