Synopsis
Giovanni is a real estate investor in the Bay Area who started his real estate investing career in Las Vegas. We’ll talk about potential investment opportunities in Vietnam, as well as the pros and cons of investing overseas.
Key points
- Passion follows you
- In this episode, Giovanni shares how he spent 25 years of his career in a printing business, all the while thinking about jumping into real estate. Although his desire to do so was great, he was afraid of shifting to something completely different after spending a significant time in his business. He eventually made the jump recently and is now crushing it.
- A good property
- For Giovanni, a good property is something that you can do a lot of things to such as renting it out, living in out, living in it and renting out a part of it, AirBnB, etc.
- Investing overseas
- Investing overseas is a lucrative strategy. Giovanni tells how people are making millions of dollars investing in countries like Vietnam and Thailand, countries where he himself invested in. The economy in SE Asia is continually growing and real estate is part of it. One can buy a piece of land in these countries for a small amount, and sell them to companies who build factories in those places to gain a significant profit.
- Investing overseas is not “business-as-usual”
- In Giovanni’s own words, “Investing overseas is not business-as-usual”. The way real estate investing works overseas is not the same as in the United States. There’s a lot of grey area, especially with the processes and legalities. If you’re not careful, you can lose a lot of money. A way to make things run smoothly is by bribing the right people which is very unfortunate.
There’s a lot of gray areas on how to operate there. So nothing is ever set for sure in those countries unless you have the connection.
Giovanni
- Protect yourself when investing in other countries
- You can make big money investing overseas, but it comes with risks. The government can take away your property anytime. You need to protect yourself by securing the right paperwork and knowing the right people.
- Starting out as an investor overseas
- You need to identify if you want to do some real estate development work or invest solely in land. If you are not able to spend time in the country you’re investing in, development work would be a challenge since it requires time to supervise the project. Supervision and trusting other people completely would be an issue. You need local boots on the ground to help you with the basic legwork and scouting potentially good investments.
- The future of real estate investing in Asian cities
- Giovanni sees that a time is coming when people living in the condensed cities will move out to nearby areas, making investing in those areas as early as now very profitable.
- Giovanni’s advice
- If he would start all over again, Giovanni said that he would start in real estate investing as early as possible. He is encouraging everyone to do so. For those who are like him who stayed on the sidelines for so many years, it’s not too late to start something and surely you will succeed if you put your mind into it. The key is to hustle. Investing in real estate overseas has risks, but the returns are high.
References
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