EPISODE 28:
Dubai vs Bali Property: Returns, Risks, and the truth

00:35
Hi, everyone, this is Omri from Bali Business Club. Good to see you again. We haven’t done a podcast in a while, I think a month or two. So today we are sitting with Aaron and Justin from Revest, Revest.ae. We are in Dubai right now, not in Bali. We are going to discuss about the to compare the real estate in Bali and real estate in Dubai. They are both amazing. Spoiler, amazing investments. But we are going to explain why in some cases one is better than the other one, whether it’s Bali or whether it’s Dubai.
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01:08
Don’t forget to subscribe and see you in a minute. Hi, guys. So today we have on my left Aaron, on my right Justin. Justin is from Ireland. You’re from England. England, Manchester. You guys have been in Dubai for about three, four years. Yeah, I understand. Four years. Just gone over four years. Before you were in Australia and worked in that industry for a while, yeah. So very, very briefly, a quick introduction on as an introduction. I would love you to tell me a little bit, a tiny bit about you guys and explain to me
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01:49
what Revest does. So because it’s not it’s not a normal real estate company. No, so to speak. Yeah. OK, so who wants to start? I’ll give you the. All right. Thank you. No. So I’m from Manchester, up north in the UK. And my experience is in the property side of things, working for a brokerage in Manchester City Centre for about four or five years. Then I went into the commercial side where we were kind of working on the design work of HVAC systems. And then obviously the past four years or
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02:22
so, I’ve been working with a main brokerage here and then into obviously what we’ve built out at Revest. What does it do? What’s Revest? So what Revest is, that’s the big question. Compared to your normal brokerage agent, you know. So there’s a couple of different aspects. So from a property side, we positioned Revest as a buyer’s consultancy. So what that essentially means. What is that? Exactly. Is we solely and exclusively work on the investor’s side of things. You know, the market here is a brokerage
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02:59
style. So in a lot of instances, you can work with on a buyer’s side and a seller’s side. And then the broker works in the middle to manage the whole process of the purchase or sale of the property. And usually pretends he’s on the buyer’s side, but he’s actually on the seller’s side. That’s exactly right. Your usual real estate agent. We have the same in Bali, don’t worry. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, it’s been a seller’s market for the past four or five years.
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03:26
It’s been on a great tearing run previously. So, yeah, we’ve seen this aspect where the buyer is not necessarily left out. But, you know, there’s some work there that needs to be done for their priorities at best. So we’ve kind of worked Revest to concentrate on their priorities and help them with the negotiations. And, you know, it’s a really wide market. There’s a lot of noise about it. It can be hard to cut through the noise. So that’s where we position ourselves.
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03:57
OK, we’ll get back to that after. Just quickly to, you know, for our viewers to have another view of what Revest does. You have, and this is more you, Justin. Yes, more on my side. We have a source. So you’re mainly, you’re the real estate guy. I’m the real estate guy, yeah. He’s getting pretty close on the payment side as well. I think he’s been listening to me for too much. What are you doing in that company? So Revest was actually formed about 11 months ago. Me, Aaron, or our other partner, Jack, we
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04:25
didn’t know each other back then. I was at a conference, Token 2049, which is a crypto conference. And I met Jack there. Jack is one of our other founders, and he’s actually launching another platform of his own. And we had a discussion about payments and, you know, how I could help him with his platform. And we got onto the topic of sort of what I was sort of seeing in the market, that obviously there were some challenges with the property side and payments. So I was building out some solutions
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04:54
specifically for Dubai property market. And he said, you have to meet my mate. He’s been working in the industry. He said he’s been having these problems with the payments, and he’s just left his job recently. And I met up with Aaron, and we had a few drinks, and the rest was history. Yeah, OK, OK, OK. We’ll get back to the payment thing after. So let’s split this podcast into, we’re going to talk about real estate, and we’ll have a conversation between you and me. I mean, you can jump in if you want.
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05:24
I like to know everything. I like to think I know everything. We’ll see how well you learn. Well you’ll learn. you’ll learn. If you can explain to us, what’s your process? What’s your typical buyer? Seeing that you guys are handling probably different type of buyers than your usual targeted. Yeah, you’re targeting certain countries more than like your normal real estate agency. Let’s discuss what you guys are doing and the general market, because you know the market very well, if you don’t mind.
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05:54
We essentially have built it out so that we are targeting international investors. So a typical real estate company will find the properties or developers stock. They will then advertise those stocks and then the buyers will contact them. Whereas what we’re doing through the payment side, we’re trying to work and bring in these international investors into Dubai through the payments process. So we manage that side of things for them. And then from there, we can, with their priorities at hand, we can speak to them,
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06:29
understand their requirements, what their strategies are, if it’s for end use, if they’re looking for an investment and timelines, which is really key in this market because it moves so quickly as well. And then it works on a consultancy phase. And then from there, we then go to market. So rather than trying to find the property, then the buyer, we work with the buyer to understand what they actually want and need. And then we will go to the market. You do mainly off plan or secondary? It depends on the buyer’s profile.
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07:04
Yeah, you know, again, we’re in with the developers very regularly. We have all the contacts. We have access to all the projects, as a lot of the agencies do. But yeah, it depends, you know, if you’re looking for end use, if you’re looking for a villa, townhouse or you want water from apartment, then, you know, we can go to the market and find that on the secondary market as well. OK, and from experience, like so far, you’re more off plan or more secondary? I would say we’ve probably actually been
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07:34
more the secondary market, really, because I think a lot of investors see it as an investment, but also they want to gain that instant return on investment, you know, whether they’re renting it out or whether they want a holiday home or if they simply want to move here, because, you know, everyone’s moving to Dubai at the minute. So, yeah, point made, point proven. So, yeah, I think off plan is a massive market here and you probably have to have more of a long term vision because, you know, construction periods are three to four
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08:14
years. And then, you know, that’s at the point when you can get someone into the property, renting it or living it yourself. Sure. Yeah, I mean, in Bali it’s more or less the same thing. It used to be all secondary. And then when people were starting to get good at making renders, it became all off plan. Yeah, not all, but maybe like 70 percent or something. I don’t have the actual numbers, actually. What’s the timeline in Bali for your typical… One year. For a project? Yeah. One year?
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08:44
Yeah, because here you buy units, right? Units in like skyscrapers, 50, 60 floors. 50, 60 floors, yeah. My apartment building is 40 floors and it’s like the smallest downtown. Yeah. I feel like I’m a tiny, tiny little building compared to you. I’m in front of the Burj Khalifa and address and whatnot. So you do, you know, to build those buildings take like three, four years. In villa, your typical construction time is around one to one and a half year. Yeah. Depending on the two factors that make it
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09:19
longer, it’s Ramadan. Yeah. And rainy season. Yeah. So it depends when you start. The best time to start is right after Ramadan. OK. So you can hope to finish before the next Ramadan. So it’s 11 months. So you don’t get that other time. Yeah. Otherwise, everything just stops. Yeah. You know, at Ramadan, your construction site is empty. Yeah. There’s nobody, you know. So, yeah, it’s about the time. So, yeah, now in Bali is mostly off plan. I mean, everybody is doing off plan.
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09:49
But so payments, I mean, exactly like I want you to explain to everyone how the payments scheme works, like the installments and whatnot. But like in Bali, you have a structured payment, a little bit in the beginning, down payment in the beginning, and then it’s spread across the construction time. And there’s like a 5-7%… Does it change per developer in Bali? So does the payment scheme… Yeah, yeah, everyone does… Yeah, everybody’s allowed to do their own. It’s not like a one size fits all.
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10:15
I developed a few projects that I sold, like villas. And every client was different. I didn’t have like a structured… So you can tailor it a little bit to the actual investment. Yeah, which is great. I mean, there’s no law, you know, with that, which is good and bad, because there’s no escrow, unlike here. I mean, there used to be none, and now there is. So it’s safer for the investor. But there’s no law that says, OK, 30% now, and then 20, 20, so on and so forth. It’s quite adaptable in that position.
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10:54
Well, it’s great because you have an investor that can say, look, you know, it’s complicated for me in June. Can we do July? I say, yeah, sure, no problem. If you were the developer then, sorry, just to butt in. So the escrow side of that, do Bali make you hold all the funds to pay out at different points of the development? So can you use all the funds, say, people have bought into the project, can you use that as capital? There’s no such thing as escrow for an off-plan So there’s no escrow for an off-plan.
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11:25
The only escrow you have, so in Bali, a purchase of an off-plan or secondary market is done through a notary, right? So the only escrow time is during the diligence. So you shake hands with the owner or the developer or whoever, then you leave a down payment at the notary in the escrow account of the notary for two weeks. And this is the time that they need to do the due diligence. And all see if the zoning is correct, and then the money is released to the developer or the buyer, to the seller,
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12:02
sorry. It’s a risky business. Yeah, I was going to say, because obviously there’s a lot more regulation in Dubai around that. Now there is, but there wasn’t before. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how many stories I heard of developers going belly-up and people are like, what? Where’s my money? You have half a building here. So how is it? Can you explain to me, I know, to our viewers, what is the payment structure, your typical payment structure for the purchase of one unit off-plan, some Emaar or Meraas
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12:35
or DAMAC building or whatever? Yeah, so again, you know, it does vary developer to developer, depending on situations, you know, during Ramadan, they do actually change and put some offers in place, you know, a longer period or more towards the handover date. But the typical process is you will, on some developments, on big launches for, say, Emaar, Meraas, Nakheel, you’ll have to put an expression of interest down, which is a nominal amount. And then you almost kind of go into a lottery to kind of get allocation for a
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13:12
specific property. Yeah. So that is a refundable amount. So, for instance, how much is that? Again, that varies on the property. But, you know, typically it’ll be anywhere from, say, 30k dirhams to 50k dirhams, obviously increasing if it’s the ticket of the property. For your normal one, two, three bedroom apartment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you’d be looking anywhere from, say, 30 to 50. OK, so 30k dirhams, so we’re talking like $8 ,000. Yeah. So it’s a small… Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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13:42
So once you get up into the villas, then they’re considerably higher. Yeah, you can be looking at 100, 150 and upwards. Let’s talk USD here, yeah? Yeah, yeah. For the purpose of everyone understanding what we’re talking about. Yeah, old habits. 30 USD. So, yeah, and then once you get your allocation for units, say you wanted a waterfront two bed, you have that. The process then is you’ll pay the booking fee and then you’ll sign the SPA, which is a sales purchase agreement. Yeah.
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14:13
And then from then you’ll make the first payment within a month. The booking fee is the same thing as the expression of interest? So that’s separate. So the expression of interest will form part of the booking fee. And the initial payment. So typically within the first month of buying an off plan, you have to be ready to pay around 30% of the actual property price because you’ll have the booking fee, you’ll then have to pay the first installment and then obviously the payment plan then starts
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14:43
off. So we always recommend, you know, obviously having the money available at any point is great, but 30% within the first couple of months is ideal. Then once that’s processed, you know, you’ll have an Oqood, which is essentially similar to a title deed, which is a title of ownership, but an Oqood is for A what sorry? An Oqood. So essentially it’s a document titling ownership of an off plan property. Is that an English word? I don’t think so. It’s maybe their Manchester accent.
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15:16
The accent might be killing that Arabic word a little bit. Let me check my dictionary. Yeah, Oqood. How do you spell “Oqood”? Yeah. So that essentially states that Omri, you own this property, it’s off plan, it’s being constructed. And then from then, the payment plan will begin. And then over the next three to four years, you’ll pay anywhere from some developers offer, you know, 1% installment, some five. Per month. Yeah. Or at different stages. Some of it is based on construction.
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15:48
Some of it will be based monthly. Some of it will be based quarterly, depending on the developer. Well, we see mostly everywhere is 1% to 2% monthly, yeah? I would say the big developers, it will typically be around 5% during construction on that side of things. Obviously, you can forward pay as well if needed. But, you know, again, for cash flow, it’s not necessary. 5% is more like quarterly, right? Yeah, yeah. So it will be spread out a little bit, but yeah. What I was told is, what I understand is
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16:24
that you have a minimum of 24% up front, which is comprised of the booking fee, personal interest, the first installment, and DLD payment. Yeah. DLD being? DLD is the 4% government tax when buying a property. So that’s across every property, whether you’re buying off plan, secondary, that 4%. That’s in Dubai only, because in Abu Dhabi, for example, it’s only 2% to 3%. So every emirate has different rules. Yeah, yeah. And again, in terms of the brokerage as well, you know, actually opening a brokerage
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16:57
requires different licenses in these emirates as well. So, you know, off plan, you can still sell through a brokerage as well. But yeah, the regulations are slightly different. So just to give a quick overview, 24% to kickstart the project. Yeah. Okay. And then over the course of the next three years, more or less, 1% to 2% a month. Yeah, roughly. Yeah, roughly. Again, it does vary between, you know, some developers will offer 1% and, you know, for cash flow, that will help. Others more. Some are quarterly, and then it’s like 5%,
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17:36
7%. Yeah. And you have a big, or some, there’s a system like 65, 35 or… Yeah. So it’s split over. So can you explain that? Yeah. So essentially, it’ll be split over. So the way it’s advertised. Yeah. No, because for people that don’t understand, they see those numbers. I mean, I remember when I came here the first time, I’m like, what is this 64? 64, yeah. So let’s make everyone understand on the advertisement of the property, you have two numbers, one number slash another number.
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18:12
It’s basically what you pay before the handover and what you pay at handover. And so the before handover, so let’s say 60, 40. Yeah. Then 60% is paid before handover. Yeah, exactly. So 24% to start with, and then 1% every year, whatever. Payment plan for the rest of the year. And then 40% at the handover, so you need to have that big amount of cash ready. And what people do or used to do is they count on the fact that they are going to flip the property right before the handover. So they don’t have to cash out those 40%.
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18:48
And with the money they make from flipping it, they can finance the 40%. And put us more, which is their profit. Exactly. And it helps, obviously, with their cash flow in terms of only having to put down, say, 60% across the three-year period. So again, the payment plan can be very key in a lot of investors and what developments they go for, because larger developers might say 80% during construction, but the investor knows it’s a reputable company. They’re going to go through. Essentially, they back up what they say
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19:28
they’re going to do. So other investors might want something that’s spread out more so, like a 50-50 payment plan or something like that, because the cash flow helps them if they have other investments, either in Dubai or elsewhere. There’s all kinds of payment plans. Yeah, they do change developer on developer. A lot of bigger developers, it’s pretty consistent in what they offer, whereas some of the smaller boutique guys who are coming into the market, they do tend to have to offer… A little bit more… Less flexible.
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20:05
Yeah, shiny payment plans to kind of catch eyes. Oh, yeah, OK. And some of these guys are actually tried and tested in, say, Europe or the US, but because they’re new to Dubai, you know, they’re not the big names like Emaar, Meraas, Nakheel. So they need to kind of build that awareness and kind of have a selling point as well. At the end of the day, it’s probably similar in every country, except there’s some technicalities with the tax thing and the booking fee. And we don’t have a lot of this in Bali.
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20:39
I mean, the expression of interest is basically a down payment, 10%. And then there’s no booking fee or whatever, you know. Then you pay the rest. And from the first payment, the agent gets his 5%. So agency fees are 5% and paid by the seller. So as soon as the seller starts getting money, the money is retained from that first payment. Yeah, so in Dubai, again, it varies. You know, different developers will offer different commissions. You know, it can range from… And this is paid by the developer as well.
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21:19
So as an investor, if you’re buying off -plan, you don’t pay brokerage charges. So the overall fees to buy off-plan is cheaper. So that can range from 4%. Some developers will pay up to 7%, depending on different projects as well. So you guys being on the buyer side, how do you structure your commissions? So, well, obviously, if we’re selling off -plan, the developer pays that directly to the brokerage who’s managing the sale. Secondary is a little bit different. So in the current market, the buyer always
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21:57
will pay 2%. That is a flat fee that they will always pay. So as a buyer’s agency, that’s kind of where we come in on that side. You know, I always kind of say, you know, as a buyer, if you’re paying that 2%, you want someone to work for that 2%. You know, you don’t… Not just because you have it on Beyoard or Property Finder, you’re getting that 2%, you know, because you’re typically on this seller’s side. Yeah, because I think a lot of people come into the market, they’ll be speaking to
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22:27
five, six different brokers on different properties and what have you. And, you know, they’re having to do a lot of the learning themselves because that agent is concentrating on that specific property. Whereas, you know, having a buyer’s agent manage your process, you know, they’re fully understanding your strategy, what you want, you know, understanding where the funds are coming from and then going out to the market. And, you know, it saves a lot of headache for them because they’re not having to
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22:57
manage six, seven different relationships within a market. You know, it’s hard to get to know these people on a personal level, never mind a professional period, whereas at least as a buyer’s consultancy, we can sit down with you, fully understand your reasoning and position on where and how you want to buy. So that kind of saves the investors a lot of time and effort as well. There’s so many options here as well. You know, when you go into the payment side of things, obviously in the brokerages,
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23:27
there’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Being able to, you know, we’ve obviously tried and tested all the solutions that we have as well. So knowing that you can come to one place and know that somebody’s going to have all that stuff already sorted out for you is obviously a benefit for them guys too. I mean, and especially as an international investor, you know, entering a market that you don’t have exposure in, it’s quite daunting. And you, you know, you do hear a lot of
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23:52
things about the market here. And, you know, there’s over 40… You usually hear the bad stuff before the good stuff. We didn’t want to say it. Yeah, look, I think every market has… I mean, that’s always, you know, come out. To be honest, Dubai has came up with that quick. They’re trying to keep regulation and stuff like that. To be honest, it’s credited by the regulation here is phenomenal now in payments, in real estate. But like the boom was that quick that, you know, trying to build the infrastructure for
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24:21
regulation, the same pace at everything else was coming up. It’s like, obviously there was going to be cracks in the system. But yeah, you know, for the regulation side of things, obviously having that had some cracks in the system. But now, obviously, Dubai has come up with RERA, DLD. No, it’s a well-oiled machine. Okay. So let’s move on to returns. Let’s talk about the money. How much do I make? I have a million bucks here. I want to invest in Dubai. What’s, how much am I going to make?
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24:59
I mean, let’s face it. Everybody is, they love hearing us talking about regulation. What they really want to know is like, where’s the cash? Like how much they’re going to make? How much you can hope to make? So before we go there, we are recording this podcast on, I think, day 33 of the war. So we are not, and guys, we had a chat before. We are not doing a podcast that’s talking about the situation now. We’re doing a podcast that’s talking about the situation in general.
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25:33
And no one, absolutely no one has any visibility as to how the situation will evolve. Because we don’t know. I’m not a seer. I don’t have a crystal ball. So we’re talking about the situation in general. I trust Dubai will recover. I think there’s no doubt about that. That’s my opinion. But when? I don’t know. Maybe two months, maybe six months. Or maybe, we don’t know that. Let’s talk about how much money in a normal market, not this exceptional parenthesis. Like, you have a million bucks.
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26:11
What can you expect? Again, this is probably what a lot of people push in terms of the Dubai market. You know, you see these crazy returns and what have you. And I think… So what are those? Well, I think one of the main things… Yeah, I think one of the main things to get across is, you know, it’s a wide market. Not every investment is as lucrative as another investment. Of course. So, you know, it’s cutting through all that to find the real gems that are there. And, you know, in comparison to other
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26:44
markets, there’s plenty for… That’s why investors need you guys like you. Yeah, exactly. And I think, look, in terms of returns on investments, you know, as rental properties, you’re looking anywhere from 5.5% to 7% in some instances. Short term, obviously, there’s a massive tourism base here, and short terms typically will make anywhere upwards of 20% on top of a normal long term rental period. But yeah, I think, you know, villas, townhouses, buying off plan, you can considerably look at around 20% uplift
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27:26
around that, you know, as long as it’s the right unit in the right… 20% more than… More than the actual initial cost of the property. So… Sorry, sorry, I lost you here. Come again with the… So you’re saying first, between 5.5% and 7% for rental, like long term rental. Yeah, exactly. If you’re going short term, so you’re taking 20% above that. Yeah. So from 7% goes to like 8.4%. You’re probably looking closer to like 10%, around 9% or 10%. With the actual property value and
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28:02
appreciation, you know, there’s a huge lack of supply in larger layouts, especially three bedrooms, townhouses, villas. So that’s where a lot of the smart money is moving, because, you know, you pick the right layout, the right development, right launch. You know, you can be pushing those 20% plus returns when it is ready and comes to market to go back to your point on why people, you know, buy off plan and then sell before the handover. You know, once it’s actually built, that’s
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28:42
where that appreciation comes in as well. There’s two different strategies. So, just to sum up, because there were a lot of percentages thrown out on the table here, so if you’re taking your million dollars, or your hundred thousand dollars, or whatever money you’re putting in, and you buy a property, so a secondary market, because that’s what’s making the money right away, you buy a property today, you can expect to make between 5.5 and 7% ROI on a long-term rental basis. Then if you’re going to short-term rental, so
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29:19
Airbnb and things like that, so you are somewhere around like 8 to 10% ROI. And even more in certain cases, depending on the property, but again, you don’t want to be throwing out the 20%. And then there’s the property appreciation. So what are we looking at, like your typical appreciation percentage here? It varies on the property. For instance, there’s a high volume of studios, one beds, two beds, in the market. A lot of developers factor those layouts into their developments more so than the largest
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30:00
still at this point, even though there is a lack of supply. Not to put too many figures on it, because it does vary, but you’re probably looking around 10 to 15% for good reputable developers on handover. A year? Yeah. Forget about construction. I mean, once I’ve bought secondary… Ah, okay. Yeah. I mean, it’s probably tracking around 6% to 7% at the minute. So 6% a year more or less. Okay. So that’s one strategy. So you buy secondary, you put it out on the market, short-term rental or long-term rental.
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30:40
Short-term rental is obviously high ROI than long-term rental, like in Bali, like anywhere in the world. Actually in Bali, it’s not entirely true. I made a podcast on that. If you want to look in the podcast list, there’s a podcast on that. Now let’s talk about the off plan. So I have a million bucks. I want to invest it. Okay. So there are capital calls and I don’t need to spend a million bucks right away maybe. So it doesn’t matter. Regardless, I’m spending a million bucks over
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31:09
the course of like three years. And then I have the last capital call, which is like the 60, 40, 70, 30 we talked about before. So what can I expect? How much more? What’s the, give me, I need percentages. Yeah. Without the noise around. Yeah. Just go to the point. How much can I make? So typically you, again, on the properties… So that’s flipping, not renting, flipping. Yeah. Yeah. This is flipping. So apartments, smaller, more numbered layouts in a building, you probably look around 10 to
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31:47
15%. Larger layouts, the larger layouts tend to be more unique. So they do at times warrant the higher appreciation. So you can push that upwards to maybe closer to the 20% mark. And then likewise with villas and townhouses. So depending on the time that you get into these developments, because a lot of large projects will have a phased entry. So if you get in at phase one, the pricing will be more favorable. Phase two will be slightly higher, phase three, and so on and so forth. Like any business in the world.
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32:27
Exactly. You’re an OG, you make more money. End of the story. It’s supply and demand as well. Like as Aaron alluded to, that a lot of these projects do have a lot of studios, a lot of one beds and stuff, which obviously dilutes that now. So the supply and demand for the bigger three and four beds, the villas, townhouses and stuff. And I think obviously as the demographic of people moving to Dubai sort of changes, a lot of South African people and people that are used to not living in apartments, especially
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32:58
me, this is the first ever apartment I’ve lived in in my whole life. And if there was more options for townhouses and stuff, or smaller villas, we would probably look into moving into something like that as well. Yeah. I mean, it’s contingent on the market at the time. Yeah. So like today, townhouses and larger apartments are more favorable. Everybody’s gonna build some. And in 3, 4 years there’s another supplies and back to the one bedroom unit. It’s an ecosystem. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
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33:32
Okay. Yeah. It’s interesting. So just because this podcast is about comparing Bali and… Yeah. So on the, I think on the ROI level, Bali is So on the, I think on the ROI level, Bali is ROI higher. For your typical villa or apartment unit in an apartment building, you’re looking at a minimum like seven, eight percent, like that’s really low. And you can go up to 15, 20. That’s for a short term rental. Okay. Okay. Long term. So I was saying it might be different for Bali now because right now in Bali, there’s an
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34:11
oversupply. There’s a massive oversupply, which means we are more into the six, seven, eight percent, 10% for some, depends on the location, whatever of your villa, which is very, very low for Bali. Yeah. The trend will reverse. My estimate is in a couple of years. Yeah. It’s when it starts to reverse. Yeah. And again, if you want to see this podcast that we did maybe like a year, six months ago, something like that. Very interesting. You can look in the list. But yeah, it’s going to, it’s going to take a
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34:48
while. Now regarding flipping. So my advice, and I’ve been doing business in Bali, in real estate for 15 years, is to either you build a villa and you sell it and you make a profit, but you won’t make much of a profit by buying secondary or even off plan and selling it. You will make a little bit, but that’s not where the money is. Yeah. Is that due to construction costs in Bali? How do they factor? When you are, the market is not veered towards that. The market is veered towards two things.
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35:33
Either people buying and selling land, so bare land, which is my specialty, or people investing in a villa and getting, having an investment generates yields on a monthly, quarterly basis. But the market is not veered towards a buy a villa and sell it in one year. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, they can make a profit. Sure they will. Yeah. But it’s not, this is not where the market is. Yeah. What would you say the risk comparison is between what you know in the Dubai market compared to the Bali market when you’re
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36:10
comparing them numbers? Very good point. So we’re going to talk about risks. Bali is for sure more exotic than Dubai, which is probably why the, you know, always a risk ratio factor. Yeah. So depending on the risk appetite. Yeah. So Bali is probably a less safe market than Dubai because regulations, even though, I mean, there’s a bunch of laws and they’re fine. Yeah. But the enforcement of those laws or, I mean, there are more laws here. The regulatory framework is more advanced here
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than it is in Dubai. Yeah. And never changing. Yeah. Sorry? And never changing. Yeah. Changes a lot too, to the market times. Yeah. You know, there’s updates probably every three months. You allow them to get a DLD. Yeah, exactly. But it’s all moving in the right direction. It is. Yeah. In Bali, a lot of laws are not enforced. Yeah. So people take the piss. They take advantage of it. For a technical term. Yeah. It’s outrageous. Yeah. So they just build anything anywhere, which is built on green zone, on agricultural zone.
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37:23
They don’t care. And then if you have, so say you buy this beautiful plot of land with this amazing green zone in front of you, and you build your villa and you have this beautiful view, and then some dude come and build some horrendous thing on your view. Yeah. You know, when he’s not allowed to. Yeah. And I mean, there is a regulatory framework, but it’s not well enforced. Yeah. So that being said, recently they have been enforcing more and more. But it’s going in the right direction.
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37:58
I trust Indonesia will go, I mean, is headed towards a more regulated market. Yeah. But it’s still, in my opinion, it’s a riskier investment than Dubai. However, money is better. Yeah. Slightly better. Yeah. And there are ways to counter that risk. So for example, we have a fund. Yeah. Yeah. And so obviously investing in our fund is much less risky than buying your own villa on your land, because the risk is, if there’s a problem, it’s spread across multiple assets and multiple asset classes.
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Yeah. So for sure, like if we have one prime on one land, the loss is absorbed by all the rest of the assets. So that’s a way to mitigate that risk as best you can. But that’s a very, very specific thing that we have. But generally speaking, I don’t think there’s another fund in Bali. Your typical investor in Bali will buy a villa or unit in an apartment building. And when I see those investors, because I meet a lot of them. Yeah. And I ask them, OK, so show me the due diligence
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that you did. They write it down on a napkin. Sometimes worse. Sometimes they go like, what? What does that mean? Yeah. No, I say the developer told me it was all good. The renders look great. You know, it’s like, come on, you have to do your own due diligence, you know. Whatever the developer is going to tell you can potentially be BS. You know, it can be total BS or a little bit BS. But there’s some degree of BS in there. Because what their purpose is to sell you something. Yeah. And again, same with Dubai, you know.
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Some of the real estate agents here. Yeah. You know, it’s at times because, you know, if you’re international and you see the renders of a development or what have you, you know, it looks perfect. But what the renders aren’t showing you is there’s a big plot next to that’s going to have two, three towers. Yeah. And that’s where having someone who’s on the ground and experience in the market to tell you that your lovely birch view isn’t going to become a lovely living room.
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40:26
Yeah, exactly. Bedroom view. Exactly. And, you know, it does catch people out. Yeah, absolutely. Same thing in Bali. And with how quickly they build it, it moves very quickly. So the skyline does change daily. It’s exactly the same thing in Bali. Everybody wants a view like the example of the view I said earlier. Yeah. No view stays a view. That’s a rule number one. Unless you go like in the mountains somewhere where no one wants to go. Even at that, they’ll still find a way. But yeah, it’s so in Bali you have a law where
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you cannot build above four floors. Okay. That’s 15 meters. Yeah. But four floors is enough to annoy you a lot. Yeah. If everything else is four floors, then yeah. And these guys, because there’s no regulation on that. I mean, you have your villa here, you know, with your view like this. And then someone will build a hotel with a 15 meter wall. They don’t care. Nobody cares. Yeah. You know? Yeah. They think you should have made the due dilligence before. before. Yeah. You know? Or they think if you wanted the view, you
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41:32
should have bought the view. Yeah. Which is something I do sometimes. Like I do, it’s called view lease. Yeah. So you basically pay the owner of that rice field to make his rice field for 30 years. Yeah. Whatever. So the smaller amount of money is notarized. And he doesn’t have a choice but to make rice. Yeah. You know? And is that enforced or someday could he come back to you and just be like, oh, this guy gave me a bigger… If it’s notarized, it’s completely legit. Yeah. Just jumping on the topic as well, obviously
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42:07
the differences between Dubai and Bali and what services you can get with property as well. Obviously, you know, you send the numbers a little bit higher in Bali as well. But, you know, obviously with the framework here, you can get obviously your golden visas for investment in the property and obviously your visas, work visas as well. If you want to just tell us a little bit about the framework that Bali has for… So let’s talk about Dubai and Bali. So let’s start with Dubai. So Dubai, when you invest in a certain amount
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of money, which is… So there’s two or three now. So you have a typical two year investor visa, which is 750,000 dirhams. So that’s a USD… USD divided by 3.3. Yes. Yeah. Around that. And then the golden visa is a two year, sorry, 10 year golden visa, which gives you residency for yourself and you can sponsor family members as well. And that’s obviously two million dollars, two million dirhams. I’ve got dollars on the mind. Two million dirhams. And so that’s 600,000. Yeah. Okay.
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43:15
So basically when you make an investment, you just to sum up, I have to sum up with this guy. I’m not the numbers guy. So when you make an investment here, you can expect to get a two year residency visa. So you invest a visa. That’s for $200,000 invested. The property value is not $200,000. You must have paid $200,000. So when you buy an off plan, if you buy an apartment off plan, an apartment is worth $200,000 until you’ve made the last check. No, so that has changed fairly recently as
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well. Okay. So it used to be that it had to be paid up to a certain value. Now it’s as long as that property is purchased. So for instance, on the golden visa, the 10 year visa, as long as the property is valued at two million dirhams, you can apply for your golden visa. Okay. So that’s new. It wasn’t like this before. Yeah. So again, this shows the UAE’s guidance changing to bring in more investment and make it more accessible to different people. Millionaire friendly. So $200,000 will get you a two year residency.
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44:31
Renewable, yeah. $600,000 will give you the golden visa, which is like the… Which is the main building, yeah. 10 years. And that gives you 10 years and a $600,000, yeah? Exactly. Okay. I understand. Yeah. And that goes with real estate, but it goes also with private equity. Yeah. So there are other avenues to get a golden visa as well. Key workers, doctors, that sort of thing can also access into that. If you would actually invest in Dubai to a certain level as well through a corporation or business, then you can access that as well.
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45:04
So again, they’re putting in the framework in to entice this different talent, these different investors and what have you. And yeah, essentially make it more accessible to more people. Yeah. Sure. They’ve just brought out the retirement visa as well. So there’s a five year retirement visa, which is the sort of one in between the other two. So it’s half the price of a golden visa and it’s five years as well. Oh, I didn’t know that one. But you have to be over a certain age as well.
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45:35
Oh, 55? 55, yeah. So you can’t be reached early. I’m retired. I can’t retire just yet. So guys, back to work. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Bali is a bit different. Actually, it’s not true. There is a golden visa in Bali, but it’s very new. It’s extremely new. I’m talking like a few months. And it’s still Bali style. I mean, I’m exaggerating. It’s actually working, but very, very few people are doing it. So I’m not going to go into specifics here because the thing in Bali is a little bit of
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46:13
the same. Laws change every month. But in Bali, it’s a huge yo-yo. We own a corporate agent in my group. So we do these kind of things. It’s crazy. So, okay. Now, just for our viewers to understand, because there may be a misconception between residency, like actual residency or right to live somewhere and actual tax residency. Yeah. So, guys, your tax residency is not based on you having a golden visa or not. No. It’s based on where your point of your, what’s it called? Point of interest?
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46:54
No, life. Interest life. I don’t know the name. There’s a term. So your center of interest. Ah, yeah. Or where your, it’s not a POI, it’s a COI. Or where your center of interest is. So if you have a golden visa, but you spend 300 days per year in the UK or France, believe me, the tax office will ask for money over there. Yeah. You need to spend more time abroad, first of all. Yeah. And not have, if you have, if your wife and kids are in France, you’re still going to be taxed in France, regardless of how many days
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47:29
you spend abroad. Because the tax office will assume that if you, will presume that if you, if you have your center of interest in France, you should be taxed as a French citizen, even if you don’t live there most of the year. Yeah. So getting a golden visa doesn’t mean you’re not paying tax abroad. That’s very, very important. And the same thing. And that’s a lot of questions we get as well, you know, is knowing where you’re actually from and the double tax regulations between
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47:59
the UAE and the country that you live in. Maybe if you don’t even live there, you live here, you could potentially still have to pay tax for a property that you’ve bought here as well. So going outside, but obviously what we talk about from the buyer’s consultancy side, this is something that we like to, you know, definitely hone down on and let our investors know exactly what they’re going into before they make the purchase as well. But also one key thing on the golden visa is there isn’t actually a minimum stay
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48:26
requirement for the UAE. So obviously you can travel around on that. You don’t have to be here for a certain amount of days, whereas, you know, as a… As a visa, you have to be every six months. Yeah, yeah. Obviously, depending on where you are staying, but specifically to keep that 10 year golden visa, you don’t have a minimum requirement. Whereas, you know, for a typical two, a lot of the contracts to work here, the visas you get are two years and you need to be within the country for 180 days at any given point
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48:56
consecutively. So obviously that investment bridging that two million dirham threshold gives you that global mobility. You know, there’s a lot of investors, a lot of business owners who travel a lot for work and it gives them that mobility across different jurisdictions. So Bali investing doesn’t give you anything. Okay. Unless you ask for it. If you ask for it, you can get an investor visa. Yeah. Okay. It’s called a KITAS, investor KITAS, and gives you the right to stay one or two years,
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49:30
depends. Yeah. But it’s linked to the company that you’re building. Yeah. You’re incorporating. So you open a company and that investor KITAS, investor visa is linked to that company. So you’re an investor of that company, a company investing in Indonesia, so to speak. Yeah. And that’s very straightforward. Yeah. You can just renew it, you know, as long as you have the company and it’s, you’re not, you know, doing any mischief and paying your tax and, you know, you just renew it over and
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50:00
over. I was on investor visa for years, you know. Yeah. So anyway. Okay. Quickly, I want you to tell us in your opinion, and we’ll close with this, we’ll finish with this on the real estate side and we can talk to this gentleman who’s been bored for like an hour. So in your opinion, what is today the best strategy to invest in Dubai? And then I will compare with Badia. Yeah. So. Give my two cents on that. I think the best strategy is the market has, for the past few years, been, there’s been a
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50:43
lot of talk about flipping properties and what have you. And I think at the moment now, it’s seeing where the demand is and where the lack of supply. Yeah. Kind of mirrors that. And also looking at these areas that are under such development, like a lot of these villa communities that, you know, might not necessarily be front row to the beach and the sea, but they are typically further out. Yeah. But the infrastructure that they’re building in there. So I think that’s always the best strategy is
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like we were talking about the due diligence, is actually understand what’s coming to around these areas. You know, there’s a lot of, with Dubai’s D33 and 2040 plans, there’s a lot of infrastructure coming into the outer areas away from your main Palm Jumeirahs, downtowns, these sorts of places which are very established. They’re already mature. Exactly. So looking into these communities where they’re built by a reputable developer, you know, there’s something unique about the
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51:46
property, whether it’s a townhouse, villa, certain layout. Again, payment plans that also factors into it, you know, how much liquidity do you need across the actual construction phase? And yeah, I think there’s obviously it does change depending on what the appetite of the investor is. But I think looking at it longer term over that period, which, you know, in a lot of Western countries, you know, you buy a house, people tend to keep it for their whole lives, whereas here, it’s a lot more liquid.
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52:22
Whereas, you know, having more of a long term mindset that in general will bring the best returns. Okay. So more long term than flipping quickly. Yeah. Like before, yeah. Because before the market was all about flipping. Exactly. Up until very recently. Exactly. Let’s talk about an “oversupply” in Dubai. What do you think of that? Certain areas. I think in terms of certain developments, you know, there’s places like JVC for one instance is a massive community, which is typically majority of it is high rise apartments.
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And majority of those are studios, one beds, two beds. So across the whole market for the past from 2023 to 2025, each year, apartments have made up over 80% of the stock and sales transactions in the market. And then that additional, I think last year, it was 87%. So that’s then cutting down villas and apartments between 13%. So you know, if you’re looking at around, you know, say seven and 6% or what have you for either one, it’s showing a real lack of demand. So in terms of apartments, I think in certain
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areas, there is going to be a huge increase in stock come to the market over the next couple of years when these handovers reach. So you know, 2026, 27, 28, which is where there’s a huge volumes of stock. And again, going back to strategy, you know, having something that is scarce within that market. And as Dubai becomes more of a long term plan for people and families, you know, there’s, there’s people who came here as young professionals, now they’re settling down, they’ve, you know, married, having kids, that
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sort of thing, they want these larger properties, and of course, what have you. So yeah, I think, I think definitely in the next coming years, the villa and townhouse communities is going to be massive. And that’s kind of where investors or end users will see the greatest appreciation on the property. Give us three names of areas you think it’s worth investing in. Testing me now. Question. Yeah, so like, okay, it’s your million dollar. Yeah. Where do you put it? My million dollars. Just like quickly.
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54:47
Don’t think too much. Dubai Design District. So D3 is a new master community. A lot, lot, lot of infrastructure coming there. Yeah. Dubai Creek, as well. You know, they’ve got the world’s largest mall getting built, they have the Creek Tower coming and there’s a huge amount coming. You know, Emaar has spent billions to kind of just buy the before even putting a, you know, spade in the sand. And then I like, I like Dubai South and Dubai Hills as well. You know, Dubai South is close towards where
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the new airport is going to be. Yeah. And so the location, obviously, the airport’s moving from kind of Deira, the Dubai side, which is near downtown and it’s moving towards the south of the city, hence Dubai South. And then Dubai Hills, because it’s very, very central. You know, it’s a great golf course. I wanted to put one in there as well. All right. And just quickly, because UAE is not just Dubai. Yeah. Without going too much too deep on those. What do you think of Abu Dhabi?
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Yeah. Abu Dhabi I really like. OK, that’s it. Thank you. Yeah. Would you put a million dollar there? Yeah. OK. And what do you think of Ras el Khaïmah? Because Ras el Khaïmah, there’s a casino being used there. So massive developments. Everybody’s talking about it. Who was talking about it? Would you put money there? Personally, I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t? No. Sir? No. There’s a lot of people don’t know, but I’ll not give too much away, but there’s a big project getting built on Kite Beach.
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I think the quicker people find out what that project is, they will not invest in Ras el Khaïmah. But regardless of the project. Yeah. Regardless of that. Well, there’s one reason why people’s putting their money into Ras el Khaïmah at the moment. And it’s the development that’s been made, the casino. Yeah. So I think there is something like that to pop up in Dubai. Would it pull people’s attention away from there? I probably think so. Yeah. There’s always good investments in certain
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areas and, you know, people will still make money there. However, in my opinion, people will go and want to stay in that casino. You know, there’s going to be over a thousand rooms and what have you. And obviously, there’s a lot of hotels and what have what have you in that vicinity of Al Marjan Island. And look, a lot of investors will make a lot of money there. But personally, I wouldn’t. Now, sir. Let’s get into it. We have very little time. We’ve got a couple of minutes.
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57:41
What is your role in all this? What do you do? What is my role? I’ll not say it, but this was my idea. But let’s just for our viewers, because most of our viewers are used to the way Bali function. Yeah. And here is a little bit different. And in terms of payment. And I learned a lot of things. I mean, we had a meeting just about that. Yeah. I couldn’t understand, couldn’t grasp. What is this payment? Yeah, exactly. So just a quick sum up. So for people to understand beforehand, before
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you get into it. Yeah. We, in Bali, the way it’s structured, your expression of interest is called a DP, down payment, and you give it to the notary, usually 10% of the total sale price, and then the 90% remaining are paid directly to the property owner. Those 10% are in escrow until the due diligence is finished, then released to the owner. So it’s basically to the owner most of the time. Most of the clients I’ve been dealing with come from Western countries that have payment systems that are pretty evolved, and there’s
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59:05
no issue so much to make cross-border transfers. However, you guys have a different experience with different clients. So obviously, just as you pointed out there, there is still the reason to use banks. Obviously through a lot of the payment processes that we use, we still use intermediary banks, but there is obviously some flaws with banks as well. When you’re using large amounts of institutional money, some of these developments that we’re working with are 20, 30 million. When you’re going to move that much money
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59:40
through the bank, it doesn’t flow that easy. And it’s in their interest to obviously keep it in their safeguard for overnight, so they get the interest on it. So if you’re moving money from Latin America or America to here, you’re probably going to have around three or four intermediary banks, and each bank is going to want to try and hold that as long as possible to be able to collect the overnight interest on it. I mean, when you move USD, wherever you move USD to and from, it’s going to New York.
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01:00:07
Exactly. And it’s stuck there and you have zero visibility on how long it’s going to take. And unfortunately, the higher that amount is, the longer it gets stuck somewhere. So obviously for the Dubai market, you have investors all over the world looking to invest their money in here. And the typical brokerage model for real estate is to have a FX company. You’ll have usually an exclusive FX company. So they’ll have one payments partner that they’ll use for basically all their payments
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01:00:39
that are outside banking rails. Because obviously, real estate brokers aren’t allowed to receive funds themselves unless they have the correct license for it. And this all comes around regulation as well. You shouldn’t be collecting funds yourself if you don’t have the right license for it. So straight to the developer is one option, obviously on the payment plans. And then the manager’s check is obviously the other one. So what’s a manager’s check? A manager’s check is essentially a check on
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01:01:10
the behalf of the bank to let whoever they’re paying know that the funds are actually in the bank. So that amount goes into escrow. Whatever the check has been read out for, the amount actually goes into the escrow. So they can’t just pull it out of their bank. It can’t bounce, essentially. You can’t write a personal check. I could give you one for $1,000 at the moment. And you don’t know whether that $1,000 is in my bank or not. You’re not going to let me have the property.
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01:01:35
So a bank manager’s check is obviously the amount that they have took out of your bank account and held and froze in the account. And you want to talk about the process of what happens at DLD with the bank manager’s checks? Yeah, so if you’re buying a secondary property, you’ll put down an initial deposit as collateral against the property for… To be leased. Yeah, very similar. But that can be a normal personal check. So it doesn’t have to be a manager’s check. What then happens is during the process and
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01:02:07
once the unified contracts have all gone through and the conveyancing, which is the sales process, typically managed by a conveyancing agent, you come to a day of transfer, which is a day at a trustee office where both parties from the buyer’s side, seller’s side, and then the brokers involved come to the property and do the final title deed ownership change. And it’s on this day that the buyer will come with their manager’s checks and essentially named out to the seller or receiving party.
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01:02:40
And then they will then have that money obviously allocated and already held by the banks officially so that it protects them on when they’re signing over the property to the new buyer that the funds are there and they can then deposit them into their own bank. So there’s essentially only two ways you can issue manager’s check. One is through the bank and two, they all come from the bank essentially. But if you have the right license, escrow companies can issue manager’s check as well,
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01:03:10
which gives me a little bit more lenience to be able to work with other financial institutions to produce these manager’s checks. So obviously, we’ll get into the crypto side of things as well. So there’s a few different verticals that you can obviously pay for property in Dubai. And one of our verticals is cryptocurrency. So given the ability for clients to be able to liquidate their crypto holdings, convert it into… So this is the process, it goes from crypto. You can’t do crypto straight to manager’s
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01:03:40
check or property or anything. So there’s obviously a layer of FX conversions that has to happen to be able to get it into… So crypto, FX, FX manager’s check, manager’s check, property developer. Okay. But just to understand, we’re not talking here about UK or France or whatever. No, no. We’re talking about countries that are a bit funky. I wouldn’t say funky. Obviously, there is regions. That’s not going to end any trouble. So I thought it was the correct way of saying
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01:04:11
it, but I’m not really… I would like to say underbanked. Underbanked. Underbanked. So corporations are countries where it’s typically hard for them to get the exact payment reels like SEPA, SWIFT, that sort of stuff to be able to make one transaction, as I said, there’s so many intermediaries involved in this that for them to work that out themselves, even Canada, to get money from here from Canada, typically they don’t have SWIFT system within their banking. If we’re getting funds here, the Canadian
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01:04:47
banks have to use an FX company to send money out. Okay. So there’s lots of these cases around the world in different regions that this happens. Obviously, there’s countries with currency restrictions and stuff like that that we don’t tend to… Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And look, it’s, you know, it’s around their regulation. What we can do as Dubai is stick to our regulation. You know, if a client’s holding crypto or something in another country, we still have to do the due diligence and stuff to see how they
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01:05:19
acquire the crypto, where the crypto came from and stuff. So people often think that this process of crypto to property or just crypto in general is unregulated. Whereas to open an account with us is actually more highly regulated than even getting a bank account. So what countries do you deal with on a regular basis? On a regular basis, to be honest, we actually done stats on it the other day. And I think my clients, obviously, Latin America, Dutch, there’s quite a lot of Dutch crypto guys, Spain, Germany.
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01:06:00
So that’s for crypto. Yeah, for non-crypto. Non-crypto? Non-crypto. We obviously deal with a lot of UK, Australia. The payments solutions don’t specifically tackle one region or the investors don’t come from one region. It’s actually Bali. I actually onboarded a guy from Bali last week. Give it back. So even outside the Dubai real estate, what we do is we actually focus on global capital movement. So it’s not just people moving capital into Dubai, it’s people moving capital out of
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01:06:40
Dubai. For this instance, the guy actually resides here in Dubai, but has invested in Bali and doesn’t have any local banking reels in Bali. So he wants to be able to convert his dirhams or USD into BAT to pay, obviously, the developer over there. BAT is Thailand. It’s Bali BAT? No, no, it’s Bali Rupiah. There you go. I don’t do that much. So yeah, it’s working out the same way what Aaron says about the property. You come to me with the problem and I find the solution to be able to do that.
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01:07:18
You have this solution because you have a large network of partners around the world. Exactly. Banking partners. And that’s where we’re sort of going with it at the start. So the typical brokerage model is to have one payments partner. And that’s usually because they’ve made an exclusive contract that if you’re going to use us, this is the way it works. Whereas we’ve been able to set up from the start because we’ve got the payment solutions and say, OK, well, we can use our whole
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01:07:43
network of… I probably have around 20 partners within the network that I use for the payment side. So instead of being restricted to one or two licenses for the payments, I’ve got a network that covers global coverage, whether that be obviously crypto, FX, banking as a service, which is where we set named IBANs up for the client and multi-currency. So there’s many ways to sort of tackle… How do you keep it compliant and safe for the investors? I think a lot of investors are very trusty,
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01:08:20
trusting the normal bank to bank. Yeah. Because the system is a little bit piggybacking on this. Yeah, yeah, for sure. How do you… So most of the investors that we sort of deal with tend to know a little bit about regulation and compliance. Because they’re used to it. And if they don’t, they’re not the guys that I tend to work with. So typically, they actually ask me first, you know, can I have a copy of your licensing or, you know, who is it you’re working with or blah, blah, blah.
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01:08:51
But once they get into the onboarding process, then they typically find out that, like, flip, this is quite high level due diligence that they do, you know. We’re always asking for source of funds, proof of wealth. There’s screening done on all the capital as well. So it actually is more or less higher level than most of the banks would do on each transaction. And every transaction, you have to show exactly, you know, where your funds were made and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends which country.
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01:09:20
Like in Indonesia, the KYC done by the bank for incoming money. Yeah. Is not, is none. There’s none. They don’t. Their policy is that as long as the bank abroad has KYC, has sent the money. So they mean, they think that they say it’s done the job. And that could be any bank. It’s done. Bring the money in, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, it’s in their best interest to have the money come into the bank. You know, that’s their way of thinking of it. I mean, do you think from a business aspect
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01:09:54
for yourself, having access to a wider range of international global payments would help the market in Bali itself? Or is there any friction in that side of things? I mean, I’ve been through frictions with clients, you know, but mostly it’s because their money was tied in some other investments. Yeah. Complicated to get out. There’s always the friction with the IDR. So in Indonesia, you cannot advertise or sell anything in any other currency than IDR for the Indonesian rupiah. So you never know how much you’re actually
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01:10:32
sending. Yeah. It’s always like a guessing game, yeah. They don’t show you the spread or anything. It’s sort of like… Because there’s no way to know. Because unless you convert… Smart. Yeah. Unless you convert your IDR in your originated bank, which is going to give you like a horrible rate because no one is holding IDR. So you always send like a USD or Euros or whatever to the bank in Indonesia, and then they convert it in IDR. So by the time it’s done, the effect is different.
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01:11:05
Yeah. So you don’t know, you know. And so we spend our time getting money back, like, you know, $200 worth of IDR from a landowner. And everybody plays the game. Yeah. Or sometimes it’s missing a couple of hundred dollars. Yeah. You know, we have to pay. And usually I had no one helping. You know, when this is my friend, I pay, and then they never give me the money back. You know, it’s always like a couple of hundred dollars, more or less, yeah. But yeah, I mean, it all has to do with the
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01:11:37
country that’s holding the funds. Yeah. In my experience, the real estate business that I’ve been doing, I’ve never had so much problems. But it’s perhaps because I address a clientele that’s mainly from Europe and Australia and America and Singapore. So those routes, like Bali and those countries I was going to say, the relationships between those countries are very straightforward, well -established. But I’m sure there’s a market for it. For sure, yeah. Guaranteed, yeah.
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01:12:12
Bali is one of the biggest crypto hubs. Yeah, it is, yeah. So crypto is another subject. I’m talking here like a crypto for sure. Yeah. Like I don’t have a solution for crypto. Yeah. Because you cannot pay in crypto in Indonesia. Yeah. Yeah. So as of today, I don’t have a solution. Yeah. We find solutions. Yeah. You know, weird, complicated, creative. Creative banking. What if you send there, and maybe send there, and then send back here. OK, so. It’s just a learning curve for the market.
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01:12:51
People think that it’s this weird and crazy, wonderful place, the crypto. But we literally use it as a currency. My daily job is just to use crypto as a currency. You know, I’m moving from A to B. It’s very simple, you know. It’s no different than doing a bank transfer. As a tool as well, you know. It’s only stable coins we use. We don’t tend to do anything with the trading side of stuff. It’s literally leveraging it because you’re able to make money so much quicker and so much
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01:13:18
cheaper from A to B, and then use the banking rails whenever it’s landed in the end. All right. So thank you for that. No problem. Just quickly sum up the real estate conversation. Yeah. So as I said in the beginning, there’s not a better market. Bali is no better than Dubai. Dubai is not better than Bali. There are some pros and cons in both markets. So Dubai is tending to be a little bit safer than Bali in terms of compliance and safety, general safety. However, Bali, I mean, that is counterbalanced
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01:13:57
by the fact that you make a little extra money in Bali. I think there are as much as you can have some crazy investment here and double your money in a couple of years. We have the same in Bali. My rule of thumb in my investments is to double every three years. But I have a very, very specific way of investing. I invest through my fund or Flipland, and we are very, very good at that. So guys, if you’re interested to know more, how we do it, contact us or DM me or whatever. But yeah, I think we’ve covered a lot of
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01:14:37
things. We could talk for hours and hours and hours. Just getting warmed up. But we have the podcast manager here coming through the door. So we have to exit the podcast at some point. Stay here, stay here. Thank you very much for being here today. It was great to have you guys. Very interesting. I can’t wait to have more conversation with you privately about how the business works and the way you’re doing your business. So revest.ae This is the place to go. And you can contact this guy, Justin or Aaron.
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01:15:15
They can tell you everything you need to know about payments or where to invest, best way to invest today in Dubai, strategically and so on and so forth. Thank you. Appreciate it. Don’t forget to subscribe. If you need anything, contact us. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you.