Buying A $250 Million Mega-Mansion | Confronting Enes Yilmazer

but really quick before we start this episode down below in the description you can subscribe to the brand new iced coffee hour clips channels we're also going to be posting some fun behind the scenes and exclusive content down there so make sure if you haven't done it already down below in the description subscribe hi everyone welcome back to the 56th ever episode of the iced coffee hour podcast my name is nsumaza and so far channel has made sixty eight thousand seven hundred eighteen dollars and seventy four cents we did it wow jack was that the best one yet dare i say it i dare you i think that was the best introduction we've ever had on the ice coffee thank you guys so much here's your phone thank you thank you so much yeah really thank you so much for driving all the way to las vegas so we could do this today now for those that are not aware you have a youtube channel where you tour the most expensive luxury ultra high net worth houses in the planet pretty much you see the best of the best now you're touring like 100 million dollar boats you're getting to see what it's like to be ultra rich to have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and get an inside look into how these people live and how they spend their money and your youtube channel is getting very close to by the way a million subscribers so we're gonna link your channel down below in the description because i gotta say your home tour videos are absolutely incredible it's like it's watching like a cinematic movie of like this 75 million dollar house thank you thank you man we work really hard and uh yeah we're very fortunate to be able to tour these homes how did you get into this um you actually know the part of the story i know the story but they don't know the story uh i'll give a quick recap so two and a half years ago i moved to la i used to flip homes in texas prior to that i was a student at texas a m i was an athlete back then so i graduated there got into flipping kind of like investing in real estate around 2015 2016 heavily flipped about 30 40 homes back in texas and after that i was like you have money you know you always wanted to move to la why don't you just take the leap of faith and just move there and initially i wasn't sure what i wanted to do in la i was like maybe i developed properties maybe i learned the real estate market a little bit so two and a half years ago i moved to la got my real estate license and got into the business and the way i grew the business was really simple i actually took your course real estate course it's awesome and both courses by the way both real estate and youtube i mean link down below in the description actually now that i think uh just speaking out loud you had a huge influence on how i kind of built my business in general and three months in going to brokers open seeing the homes and you know me coming from a contracting background i was like why nobody's talking about these homes uh and we have mikey right around the corner i called mikey probably two to three months being into real estate agent i was like mikey i don't i'm not making any money i don't know much you know i don't know many people here but these brokers opens are amazing why don't you move to la you can sleep on my couch and on like the side we'll start shooting some videos and i watched your youtube academy i was like seems simple enough and we just started shooting homes and here we are explain that more you didn't just start shooting homes and then we're here and then you woke up one morning a million subscribers okay fair enough so how did this happen we started shooting and it sucked at the beginning i mean it was like we were getting like 100 to 200 views we were basically touring brokers open and remember wait was this with your gopro or what you were touring with the gopro i remember watching your early videos when we first you first reached out and we'll talk about that and say because that's a crazy story yeah watching this video yeah it's just a gopro just kind of walking around these like five to ten million dollar houses in beverly hills or bel air that's really no commentary you see people like getting out of your ways you're walking around the houses are packed you know why we were using gopro number one obviously it was easy to use number two we were so small nobody knew us we were kind of embarrassed almost what we were doing we were like let's just use a gopro let's just stay low-key and me and mikey were just touring these homes getting sound bites i was talking about details here and there and i think maybe i could be wrong on this we made like 12 to 15 videos and we were at like 300 subscribers like it was a grind like it wasn't moving we weren't really getting any progress and uh i remember at that time we watched your academy probably twice at that point i was like we gotta find a way to meet graham now i haven't told you this but yeah i've emailed you before moving to la i've emailed you probably two to three weeks after moving to like and uh i've never heard back which now i truly don't blame you the amount of emails and dm's we get hundreds hundreds per day it's in my impossible it's impossible to we we we will some we'll sort through all the titles but even like the time we miss emails so so much so we got to work on that now like yeah no hard feelings like i totally get it and then uh and then i saw this uh listing that hit the market and you were either a co-listing agent or you're a listing agent on it i told mikey about i was like mikey graham listed a property because at the time it was hard to find you you weren't really fully into real estate this was like probably a little less than two years ago and then uh yeah this is just by the way as i was phasing out yes i was focusing more time on youtube and a client called me from youtube believe it or not okay saw my youtube video and said uh i forget how she reached out i think she found one one of my other email addresses reached out to me saying that she had a five and a half million dollar home in west hollywood okay and i was scaling back but this was like right up the street from my office i spoke with jason to make it listing yeah it was a great listing um right up the street from the office 500 million dollars view of the entire city and jason said listen don't worry about it if you're not able to make a showing i'll make this showing so uh so we're able to make it work but that's that's how i got the listing is from youtube there you go that's amazing yeah um and i remember seeing the listing i was like mikey graham's listing your property and then i saw the brokers open i was like grandma's gotta be there uh mikey was like ah you know we we reached out to him he never got back i don't know maybe we shouldn't like push this anymore further i was like i don't want to hesitate this let's just go so we literally came to that open house just to see you and i remember really well because after meeting you mikey was like you came in really hot like you're like hey guys welcome to my listing i was like we're not here for your listing we just came to meet you like i almost came off too bold but uh that was the time we met you and you gave us like some really good advice i remember so well i think i was editing by the way in that open house i had my computer open because it was a slow open house yeah because what happens in los angeles is that when you list a house like that the first weekend is packed all the agents and people go and see the brand new listing after the first week it really settles down so you really have that beginning uh the momentum i think you came in like the second or third week i think possible on a sunday it was a slow sunday i was editing yeah yeah uh and then like i remember one of the first things i'm sure mikey remembers it too we were doing like vlog number eleven twelve you're like no one cares no one cares about the number he's like title these videos was like wait wait what like no one cares like what do you mean like i couldn't even comprehend what that meant at the time we were so like i guess not educated enough about youtube and platform but that's how we kind of met you for the first time yeah and you had 300 subscribers back then and from there your channel started to grow and develop and you started to get more bold with touring some of these houses when did you leave the gopro and start going with like a nicer camera i would say after meeting you kind of me and mikey sitting on this thing for a couple of months at that time i think couple things started click and i just kind of started to look at the videos as like a whole i'm like you know we're not clear what we're doing no one knows who we are so let's make it simpler let's make it about just one home right start to finish and then from there listening feedback of the viewers kind of understanding why they comment the way they comment optimizing it and i feel like four to five months later me and mikey's gears were like shifting in the right way and then from there we're like let's use a better camera let's use a better lens let's be a little bit more careful on how we walk these homes let's get a little bit better listings and one of our gopro videos it was like this 49 million home in bel air one morning i can't remember the exact number but uh me and mikey woke up we were like are you seeing what's happening we got like 10 000 views and then that video just went viral i had like i can't remember the numbers but like it was a lot of use for the time so that was the first relief of we can do this like it's possible and from there we just articulated our thoughts make better videos brought in like sony cameras brought in more help and the channel just kind of grew did you ever get any agents complaining about the that gopro footage like you touring their house without their permission like the belair house i would imagine the listing agent eventually gets wind of this hey we see this video i didn't know you were filming take the video down every single one of those songs we actually asked the agents we're like we're shooting this small gopro vlog are you okay with it because no one knows that they're like yeah sure whatever do whatever you want and we're actually really good friends now with the listing agent of that property really in fact he's also his name is marco nagar okay he's with aaron sure and aaron kerman is awesome by the way yeah he's nothing but aaron kerman is like one of the los angeles best agents yeah he's big without a doubt and uh marco is the listing agent on a 110 million dollar ranch that we shot recently so we're actually really good friends with him now that's so cool and then you reached out to me again i think when you had what was it like forty fifty thousand something four fifty thousand subscribers and we met at a like a coffee shop got avocado toast that's right and talked about strategy to grow the channel and it's incredible to see how it's grown from there and the properties that you're able to get access to right now are truly one of a kind so what's something that when people see these houses and what's it like for you by the way to walk through a house it's like 50 million dollars or 65 million of what stands out but first i want to thank our sponsor ladder recently i've been looking to buy a new home in las vegas so i can finally move out of grams i'm just so tired of graham bursting in my room and asking me to smash the like button on all of his videos every time he posts ideally i'd love an amazing view of the mountains so i can really enjoy what life has to offer and of course i would love for it to have a decent sized garage and a pool that i would actually heat gram and most importantly a nice trophy case for my biggest paper hands awards and this absolutely awesome experience of searching for my first ever home serves as a reminder of how 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um it's almost hard for me to be really really impressed because i've seen so many good homes right but we're at a price point now like every home we tour is actually somewhat different you know when you start touring homes at like 40 50 million dollars you have to make them different that's what people are looking to see you know you cannot kind of copy the formula that all the developers are copying um generally the things that i look for are just like scale proportions i'm really big in sizes of rooms like if you cannot get your proportions right i feel like houses always sits weird i always look at architectural details how an architect designed the home how it takes advantage of the v corridors how well the lot is utilized as you know a lot of the homes in la are hillside so it's always kind of amazing to see how they utilize these properties and make the best out of them and i you know we really look forward to travel outside of california and outside of the country to really see different stuff yeah what's been your favorite house like what what features to use like shocks you um we haven't released this video yet but uh a few days ago we shot this home in hollywood hills we were actually reached out by the owner because owner was a really good friend of another friend of ours was a developer and he was like you have to let these guys shoot your home and it's this beautiful modern architecture right on uh collingwood and it's a stunning property 54 million 950 000 it has these bifold shades that automatically retracts to the roof so you can put these metal shades up front it's like sits on a promotory the whole house was just sick like i i'm so impressed with that house without a doubt that's my favorite home here in l.a and uh hopefully that episode will be out in like by like mid-june what's the most unusual feature you've seen in the house like this one weird thing that we saw i was like ah that's interesting we saw this guy install a black toilet that lifts up like a lambo door and he had black uh toilet paper i was like this black toilet paper i thought it was cool i was like that's interesting wow it seems impractical it does to have black toilet paper yeah but i mean like talking about attention to detail i was like good for you like that's kind of awesome um a lot of these drop down tvs hidden features honestly that house again we haven't released that video but it has these like bifold shades like metal shapes that sits outside of the home it's like a railing that protects the home and with a click of a button it bifolds and like stacks to the roof and sits like a cantilever actually this guy was like obsessed with uh utilizing the outdoor spaces he put space heaters everywhere that comes down from cantilevers and motorizes down so it's like sits two feet above you so i thought that house probably has some of the coolest features going and seeing all these 40 50 million dollar homes is that something that you would want to achieve at some point in your life and if so which home that you've toured is the home that you would prefer to live in like your favorite home for you to to live in so i have a confession to make uh i used to be really really inspired by these homes in terms of like i would love to live in one of these and don't get me wrong they're amazing but they're so big they're so expensive and when you think about the running costs utilities and like the overall liability of owning a home like that and kind of the stress it causes on you i'm not gonna lie i'm almost a little bit turned off on having these kind of luxuries like i would almost want like a two-bedroom house in hollywood hills that's simple that gets a good view and has the open living room that'd be good enough for me it's something about these really mega mansions it's just it's kind of overwhelming it's a lot of people don't know this like it's amazing to see them it's amazing to hang out at them and all that would i want to have him as my home and spend like i don't know like a million bucks a year on property taxes it's a bit insane yeah so which home that you've toured is the home that you'd prefer to live in it would be this this again same home or for snow you know for snow that home with three different uh candles yeah without a doubt those are my two favorite homes in la one of them is viewpoint uh i think it's 28 million dollars now it's one of our popular videos has like two and a half million views i believe uh that home and the last one we toured those would be my two favorite what are the owners like of these properties can you talk about like because i feel like once because to buy a house it's just 50 million most likely they're worth anywhere between i would say 100 billion on the very low end to probably realistically about 500 million to a billion uh what are they like so it's interesting every single one of them like it's like different personalities some a lot of times we deal with developers they're kind of like it's an investment for them it's a risk um every once in a while we meet these owners with such unique backgrounds like i won't give the exact names but one of them was a film producer and he's also an investment banker the other one is like uh uh which we are gonna release a video he's a developer from russia and he used to be in a bachelor's like of russia he's really famous in actually ukraine and russia and he develops these like sick homes and hidden hills hollywood hills he's a totally different personality um like sometimes we tour these development companies listings that are like big firms like with like 50 other investment it really depends a lot of the times we either deal with the realtors or the developers because a lot of the homes we try to avoid touring homes that has personal furniture just for liability and we don't want to expose their like personal life so a lot of the homes we tour are like staged all polished up so we end up dealing with for the most part with developers have you ever filmed and like released a video and then after the fact you know either let's say like the the buyer or something wanted you to take the the video down and you had to remove it happened couple times and we tried to honor it and not from a point of view of uh like we shot it beyond that content it's more so i mean i don't want to have the feeling of like knowing that someone is living in that house and they're uncomfortable to have the video up it's just like i don't want to put that kind of karma out on our channel and just it's personally not worth it for us we just kind of like fine like that's why like we try to not showcase the home from exterior that much on the street level and i kind of keep it private because we want to keep these episodes they're super hard to make we spend so much time i mean it's mind-boggling the amount of hours we put into making one video so we try to take keep him but if we have to take him out we take him out yeah there's one video that jack and i did a while back where we traveled to go and tour this house and shortly afterwards she sold the house and wanted the video down and we know that by taking a video down it affects the algorithm and by removing even even if it doesn't get any views by removing an old video it tends to drop the entire channel and my concern was that by removing this video this could potentially cost us tens of thousands of dollars uh potentially even a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars over the course of you know who knows how long if this drops our views from removing a video so we ultimately were able to work it out where we kept the video up but that became a major concern for us moving forward with house tours is that if someone buys the house they don't want anything on there on the mls especially in that price point it becomes a tough one it is a tough one it's one of those challenges um we deal on a daily basis and i just kind of look at it as like it's another difficulty that most people would struggle to deal with and we'll figure out a way to do it what was the most expensive home you've been through 110 million dollars santa barbara 3600 acre ranch with like three mega homes plus like 10 other like uh staff homes it took us three days to shoot this property yeah we almost died trying to make this video happen like it's a 49 minute video and we're a little bit reserved and i like that about us like meaning we don't really expose what we do that much we kind of stay quiet and we just focus on our work that video almost killed us like the amount of work that we put in shooting we were shooting like 12 hours a day for three days we had a car from beverly hills come in they were so separated from each other so we all had to work remotely um it was a huge challenge and we made it happen it has like 1.1 million views i believe in like 30 days who reached out to you for that was it the owner agent or developer agent reached out to us to kind of discuss the idea and you can imagine when someone gives you 110 million dollar asset it's a big responsibility and there were so many things to talk about that house i was almost exhausted trying to remember everything about it because these owners are counting on me to make sure we highlight these features you know there's a lot of pride in uh owner you know pride and ownership goes into 110 million dollar home so that was just a lot of pressure but the agent reached out and we kind of put this plan together we're like this is how we can shoot it because it's such an overwhelming property to show in person each showing is like six hours so we were like how can we make this a video where someone can watch us for 40 minutes and really understand fundamentals about the property and if they're interested they can go see it we almost wanted to create like a virtual link for the real estate agent so even with so much plan it still ended up being like 50 minutes yeah it was insane it's funny you mentioned a six hour showing there was what was that the property i'm blanking on the name it was on the market 250 million uh like bruce mccuskey yes yeah yeah uh he was explaining because he gave a tour to all of us at the oppenheim group and explained that every showing that they do was like 15 000 just to bring in a buyer because every time you go in there are perfectly fresh flowers throughout the entire thing um so everything and they don't keep them overnight like this is just for the time the buyer walks through it's like 15 grand and the agent by the way was paying for this so and this this was a request of the owner so every showing yeah they had they had to have fresh flowers they also had to have i think the staff there to meet the prospective buyers so they could meet each other face to face uh they also had i think it was food and they also had i think of ace of spades champagne so by the time you walked up you were given like the full treatment uh and you were able to meet the staff so just imagine like uh and oh and he was even explaining by the way that they've had showings where they've been fully ready and the buyer cancels oh my god imagine that just the buyer like last minute sorry i can't make it honestly 18 grand is gone i i totally get it and it's actually the right call because anybody's spending money at that level logic is off the table it's it's fully riding on emotion like you go in there you smell the house you get the feeling you're like this is how i want to feel i want to own this place and whoever buys a 100 200 million home it's an emotional purchase i mean it's a tough one to justify just like hey i can afford it and i would like to have this house so i'm just going to have it you know so i think it's the right call and every showing is so important pretty much anybody that you get through the door at that price point they're billionaires yeah so yeah that to me was probably the craziest house i've ever seen not so much for for the the price point but just because when you hear the story behind every little bit every item every corner has a house crazy behind it uh like it was the uh the the powder room sink was worth 400 000 for just the sink in the guest bathroom because of like it came from a castle yeah um every piece of art was like hand curated they had onyx on the outside of the house that was it's like you nobody puts onyx as as an exterior wall of the house so expensive yeah everything even the the movie theater like the the equipment alone was like a million dollars just for the equipment it was it was just insane i mean i feel like that home and the home next door to that in bel air those were really experimental projects for los angeles even selling it at 88 million dollars i think broke like a new layer of like what's possible i do my only two points on those two homes are i think at that price point people look for land and they seem to lack a little bit of land i think especially bruce's home was like well executed in terms of like what kind of unique things you get in a home like that i just felt like they were not big enough in terms of properties and i don't care how cool your home is people at that price point look for land look for like they go in and they're like this is my backyard i can have thousand people here and because they don't see these homes as just homes they're like assets where you like leverage off to like get the right people through the door that kind of stuff what i've noticed though is that those buyers are sometimes the most like stringent when it comes to budgets and they'll basically just in their mind walk through the home be like okay that's a million that's a million and they'll come up with the cost of like how much it'll be to build that house yeah plus the cost of the land plus the cost of carrying cost plus the cost of the guys time they'll make an offer based on the profit they think the owner should be making i've seen that that's true so much they're like hey listen you're in this house i'm just gonna guess 60 million dollars you're in this uh okay your time is worth you know six million a year we're gonna offer this and that you know regardless of what the asking price is that's what i've seen most of the time and i don't blame them i mean every house we go back it's not that hard for me to like roughly estimate how much they put in you know even if it's a hillside where engineering and foundation and chaos can be quite variable it's not that difficult to calculate so a lot of these people at that price point they have resources where people they can literally hire two engineers and a good contractor to be like give me a rough estimate how much these people are in yeah and they can just sit down they can see the purchase price for the land the time that they hold the property i would like to think if i do a one to two day research i can probably guess the cost of a property to a 95 accuracy yeah so yeah i remember too uh jason oppenheim uh jason oppenheim had the listing i think it was 44 million dollars in hollywood yeah and the guy it's on hillside right yeah yeah and the guys spent i think it was just over a million dollars removing the few power poles in front of the view welcome to at like i think it was 100 or 150 000 each to put the power pole underground yeah in the hollywood hill so that way when you look at your view you don't see a wire going across the city that could be a 5 million dollar swing yeah on the sales price having the pull versus not pulled i can't tell you how many homes i've sold in the three to six million dollar price point where the reason they didn't buy the house was because right by the bedroom on that second floor the third floor this buzzing of this big power pole and they feel like i don't want to be next to that what if it gives off some sort of radiation what people just hate it yeah i know but it doesn't make sense you can't remove it at that price because you never get your money back but above like 30 million bucks you got it people demand a higher caliber of home without a doubt i totally agree you know these luxury homes they're they're a little overwhelming sometimes but and it's it's almost interesting to me to see that like most of them sits empty it's kind of because people that can afford these homes they're so like wealthy that they probably are running big businesses they can't even enjoy it uh we toured one home owner was like he owned the home for two years i'm this is not a joke he's like i'm never sweating in that pool me and mikey were like looking each other i was like what he's never swimming in the pool yeah that reminds me of someone actually yeah i relate to the guy yeah yeah so that's not a smaller scale yep geez yeah we've i i am always surprised at the level of um just the wealth that's out there that yeah these these houses just about empty they don't care uh there's there's another property that we had a listing of this is many years ago in beverly hills i think that the property was anywhere from like 50 it was over 15 million and uh the owner bought it intended to move in and just decided he wanted something else instead that was it nothing wrong with the house just bought the house you know what we actually saw something a little bit nicer bought the other house instead now think the market went up so we ended up selling it for a profit so he bought this house made money on it but to buy a house like like that expensive and be oh this other house i'm gonna buy that instead just doesn't care we toured another house and then like owners pro i mean they were technically living in it they're like yeah their kid is going to uh ucla so they bought this house it's like a 20 million dollar belair yes what you know so that's the world we live in yeah there was uh somebody i met at uh at a car meet who was i think he was a little bit younger than me but his family bought it must have been a 20 to a 40 million dollar house in bel air right by ucla because he was going to ucla and that was it that was the only and and their their uh logic behind it was well we'll be able to sell it for more money because it's a it's like a prime property i actually i don't know if i could say i think i should be able to say it was one of like the walt disney estates there's some sort of disney estate that was there that they that they purchased in holby hills but it has underground tunnels by the way that's crazy they connect to like an adjacent property it was wild we recently toured the godfather estate the oh yeah beverly hills yeah 90 million dollars that was a pretty crazy one uh like they had a nightclub where they took hugh hefner's old nightclubs like furnishings and all that so they replicated the club after it was closed and brought all the furnishings to this home so they have a nightclub that looks like exact i think it was called touch uh it was hugh hefner's uh beverly hills nightclub so that was really interesting wow what do you think of the one um it's really big now let's explain this this is the most expensive property in is it in the world it's the world no it's not in the world i've i've seen the the antelia listen but that's like a commercial apartment building it's a dumpling house it's a it's an apartment building that you're buying a skyscraper it's a home that's a skyscraper it's a skyscraper what do you think do you think it's a home is that a house you know the one time yeah i know i know i mean unfortunately i would say it's technically a home i mean he's crazy enough to build it the way he did yeah i i get it i feel like that's cheating that's like you know i'm buying like a big walmart oh once you're building a house so big wouldn't it make sense we were touring this uh penthouse in new york and during the uh when we were shooting it listing agents were showing it to someone else someone's representative they're like yeah they're interested in buying the top two floors in the bottom two floors and doing like a five-story penthouse each one of these penthouses were like 50 million bucks like are they just casually talking about dumping 200 million dollars just so they can have like top five floors people do that stuff so i'm actually not that surprised about that home i mean people are crazy okay so we'll call it a home yeah fine fine he looks so happy of course he looks happy but okay so we'll call it it's it's the second one of the most what are your thoughts on that um i mean i think without a doubt the land that it sits on has got to be one of the best pieces of property in the you know in los angeles if not in the country describe what makes it well it's this really high promontory but you know a lot of times promontories are nice but if they're set back and they're low a lot of people look into it so i don't like that it sits high enough and kind of pulled back in bel air that is somewhat private considering the elevation so i like that about it number two um it's just like he owns the whole hilltop it's not just like he owns the edge of it right like you just go to the elevation it's that property and that's it uh in terms of architecture i mean it's mclean it's a good home mclean is an amazing architect you know he does so many projects in la where i would compliment on is i mean it's so big you know i'm really trying to understand who would be the end user and why it would make sense for them to have that much square footage uh i'll be lying if i say i'm educated enough to understand and comprehend that um we actually been in that property about two two and a half months ago me and mikey went there to check it out uh we went uh we met one of the project managers and to our site at the time they were about 90 percent done uh it wasn't fully finished already i mean it's a good home it's it's a different take it's kind of like that bruce mccoskey home like it's a bold approach and he sold it you know granted he started with 250 million it ended up selling for 88. what would happen with this i don't know you know you saw the niles video he has some bold perspective on that house maybe they would do something like that i don't know it's it's a it's a tough one for me to make a comment yeah so they're asking 500 million for the record wait i thought it was 250. now they're like i didn't they go down to like 380 maybe maybe 380. so they started like 500 million dollars 250 was the other house that we were talking about the bruce mikowski house with the 400 000 it's on billy road it's 400 500 million for this house it started 500 million yeah lowered now uh they're having a memorial day sale just we know what we should do a memorial day sale on the on the youtube creator academy 200 off and the mentorship group okay okay perfect you know what okay how about this well well jack and i will come up with a discount on the mentorship group and the youtube creator academy the youtube creator academy 200 off i'll testify for that it works but okay so anyway so it's reduced to 380 and what do you what do you think it's gonna sell for i mean you've seen probably more 50 plus million dollar houses than almost anybody i would know that's such a tough question to answer i would say maybe somewhere around 1500 to 1800 a square foot that would bring it to 160 to like 210 to 20-ish maybe and that's just a basic uh appraisal of new construction pricing right the only issue is this house has 110 000 square feet of interior square footage so that's a lot but it's one of a kind no one will ever be able to recreate it i mean there's like a whole story on like how he pulled the permit on that property where it was almost like overlooked by accident so like he got approved by this mega home that no one can ever build like you can never recreate a home that size and um yeah it's it's going to be interesting to see what's going to happen little yes side tangent for that when i first started selling real estate this is beverly hills 2008 they had just passed what's called a mansionization ordinance just passed it and before this you were you were you were given these like five to six thousand square foot lots where you were able to build a 4 500 square foot house insane yeah so basically imagine the entire lot is a huge mansion with a backyard like the size of like a little strip yeah little strip as a backyard they beverly hills did not like that all of these hats were huge huge developers were maxing it out so they passed a mansionization ordinance that says now you could only build it was like sixty percent it was like sixty percent plus fifteen hundred square feet it was or something like that forty percent plus fifteen hundred square feet of whatever the lot size is and that was the selling point was that this is pre-manchinization you're getting a bigger house you can't build this anymore yeah and so far uh they've only gotten more strict they're scaling back on what you could build less square footage so yeah so that's a good point there that you can't build that anymore and i don't know what kind of commercial applications uh they could have but i can't imagine anything up there like a residential area well i can't see maybe an embassy for uae i don't know i'm just like thinking you know just wild thoughts yeah what would like who would have to be the buyer of a home like that i mean what would the net worth of that person have to be my gut will tell me without a doubt it's going to be a foreigner and it's going to be maybe someone from middle east someone from asia because it's an easy asset to park a lot of money on so like you can literally put 200 million dollars in ground in another country where they would have to go through different jurisdictions to be able to touch that asset a lot of these people like to spread out their wealth so they could literally be like we can just dump 200 million there it sits it's a new year they wouldn't even live there i doubt it they don't have the staff this would be there like they would go in for three days and they wouldn't be not there for like another six months kind of yeah i've seen so yeah i've seen so many houses like that uh especially from especially from asia they want to bring money to the united states and park it anywhere they can and in 2009 2009 and 10 they were buying up the majority of beverly hills every single property that would come on the market that that uh either either myself or someone in my team would list would get an offer automatically just sight unseen it was a low offer so imagine if we list a place for five they'll say we'll pay 3.8 right now cash sign on c no contingencies sign the deal it's done we'll wire the money the next day they just didn't care but they lowball everything most of the time they didn't get taken seriously but they're doing this enough so that it's a numbers game like they they make 20 offers they'll get one um and there's a listing oh geez we had a listing on uh don uh i think with don hill drive beverly hills and i think the listing at the time was like 10 million bucks they offered like six five or something like that and uh i couldn't believe it i was like just start on scene but yeah but oh and then what's even crazier is that they would have these home tours they would all go together as a group of investors like 15 to 20 and rent a like a bus and then go from property to property to property property lining up like 30 to 40 homes over a weekend and they would all be sitting there writing offers on on houses they'd all as a crazy group as an investment to let the house sit yep and they would pretty much write an offer on everything just at a price for them where there's enough upside but i guaran whatever they bought uh back then has probably doubled their trip they probably made money on it oh yeah probably double or tripled and if someone decides to buy this like the one they lose all privacy right because like there's no way that you can go undiscovered if you're buying a property yes you can so it's buying a property i think it's you you buy it within like uh it's called a blind trust so you're there's a very complicated way of doing this where you buy it in an llc held by a trust held by another trust with some like beneficiary being a lawyer whose offices is you know in new york that's what i saw yeah like anytime like celebrity doesn't want to show that they own the home it's somehow their lawyer's name on the on like the online that's what they're going to do probably for this property that's what i've seen done uh because we've represented a few celebrities that do exactly that the llc blind child everyone signs ndas usually it slips usually someone else what ends up happening is that the some of these people are followed around and so if they see a moving truck um like i'm i won't mention who it is but this one actress that i represented she was moving can you say we'll bleep it out oh okay yeah but she was moving but they had the paparazzi see the moving truck oh and they followed the moving truck to the new house how would they know it was that actress because they knew where she lived from neighbors yeah dude it's tough to be celebrated and then here's the other thing too is they'll get mail records you can't have anything in your name that gets sent to the property like you think oh let me know why that's illegal to to go through someone's money they they have ins they have ends they know if if you even sign up for a magazine to go to the property with your name on it a hundred percent that name gets sold and leaked you can't have anything i don't realize this but yeah utilities that's not in your name cable not your name nothing is in your name it's all done through a lawyer everything yeah yeah and even and then even like you do everything perfectly but then you know the neighbor and the neighbor somehow tells somebody you tell somebody and they trace it back to you it's over so yeah for that level of privacy would be really tough honestly yeah it's tough and la's not a cheap place even a lot of celebrities struggle to get that privacy yeah because it's just expensive yeah and think of it too let's say that this house sells all it takes is for a few people to park outside of the house and just sit there with cameras yeah guaranteed they'd be able to get a shot even if you're driving in and like you know a completely blacked out escalator you'd be able to get a picture from the front or sometimes people are like with drones and like you should call the police but like by then it's too late all it takes is one telescope figure out who it is track it i agree yeah there's no way of true privacy like that yeah it's nuts it's tough everybody wants privacy but it's tough to get it in la unless you have a lot of money yeah wow so what do you think the land is worth of the one because he bought it for i think a blow up right what was it like 18 million dollars back in 2011. i mean i can easily see trading like you see what i would have done is it's four acres i would have built a 30 000 square foot spec home ask 120 million and it would have sold yeah that's what i would have done yeah i mean that's like my automatic initial gut instinct i would have had a sick backyard just 150 feet pool just all out with the outdoor space and let the outdoor space be the focus and priority rather than like this mega home and he would have he would have easily gone hundred twenty on like a six thirty forty thousand square foot but the issue that i see with that is that the reason why developers build so much square footage as you know is it it's cheap to add that extra few square feet but once you're building it adding in that little extra bit isn't it yes high roi yes and no like at a scale of like between 25 000 to 30 000 sure but when you go 100 plus like the mass or weight that you hold there now your case i feel like his oversize probably add up so much in the engineering now you have to run multiple breakers like it's not just like you have a little bit more it's like then you got to design the whole thing then you have flaws you have now a huge roof that you want to make sure it doesn't leak and it's flat i don't know i don't know if it's worth it to me like i said for the price he's gone i think it's a bargain i can see that land trading for like 50 million easy right now 60 million event just a land alone i would have just put a 35 000 square foot modern you know something timeless get it beautifully designed ask hundred fifty hundred forty you know would do well as uh just a very sustainable house up there like honestly if he could have designed something that was completely off the grid off the grid or you know it's not like off the grid but it could be if you wanted to be off the grid something something eco-friendly with a whole bunch of trees like like really create like a forest because that doesn't exist something unique almost yeah yeah speaking of which the one house that i that i saw online recently is ashton kutcher's house have you seen it yeah it's pretty cool we got to throw up pictures of this yeah it is in my opinion one of my favorite properties ever that i've ever seen it's it's built as a barn it's like a modern barn with privacy surrounded by greenery and nature and it's open but but it's but it's contemporary like it feels like something that is built today but it has that charm of something that's like a hundred years old i've never seen anything like it i saw it too i was like oh maybe we get lucky we get a chance to tour it but uh no it's a pretty nice home right not a doubt so what do you think the developers cost is on the one you i want you to estimate um gosh because you know what i'm gonna write down a number yeah yeah and then we'll compare yeah so then i'm gonna guess i'll guess too i'll go we can't say any numbers here so i have a number and i have it on my phone okay who wants to jack i want you to go first jack all right 175 million dollars is how much i think it cost to build the one and we're talking about just cost cost of the property not the land just to build not the land as well i'm just saying all in like developers cost no no we're just going to land is around 18 million so you can come up with like your exact number on how much do you think it could be 157 then okay 100 wait 157 is your cost to build the house that's what we're talking about wait the house but what about like the trees and the grass and all that well that's included that's like that's improvements yeah yeah not the land okay so just that okay 157 million okay 55 155 no one just sorry sir just 55 million oh you think it's 55 million without a doubt at lowest he's at 900 a square foot which would be about 95 million i say this because it took over eight years seven eight years for this property to be built up just the carrying costs and being able to maintain the property up there it should build up oh we're not talking about carrying cost so i did 600 square foot no 600 square foot because of how much square footage there was i'll be really curious if this information won the leaks i would say without a doubt minimum 900 dollars a square foot 95 million i can see it as high as 1300 a foot 140 million yeah you've seen it i've i've only seen the video of it you know why because it's just like not even like the finishes thing but when skill changes he has these huge marble walls those are full slabs i have a feeling they got big cranes up there the trees he got those are not just like brought by trucks you know like you add these little things up that movie theater that's not a just a movie theater he must have spent ridiculous amount of money and he has custom stuff in there so i would like a movie theater alone would be five six million dollars exactly minimum he has that like second floor roof that means the whole thing is probably still cantilever and i don't know my gut tells me lowest 90 million highest 140 for the construction cost not the land wow that's insane so you don't think he's gonna make much money on this considering how much time he's put in and how much he's spent because right now he's in foreclosure and he's behind he's behind us there has been that article and i think like he actually talked about it in the video that producer michael did that uh he's behind his payments i honestly don't know and it's one of those things that uh because i'm not involved in it i don't want to make that many comments on it i would like just to kind of stay out of it but uh it's just an interesting bold take you know that's kind of all i have how do you finance a home like that like to be able to borrow that much money investors and partially bank but not all of it that's such a spec home that i have a feeling bank wouldn't finance at all i'd be like we'll throw in some what rate do you think bank did finance it for him because he has a track record of building these these houses i thought a bank did i thought a bank is involved i don't know if they financed at all yeah i have a feeling big chunk of it is probably the bank um but again who knows yeah you know what's funny did that saying where it's like if you owe the bank a million dollars that's your problem if you had the bank 100 million dollars that's their problem yeah it's true yeah yeah and now and now niles the one who could call the shots because if if that property gets foreclosed it's losing 30 value like you can't foreclose on that house yeah you you have to work with him you don't have a choice like you literally have to hire a few people to manage that foreclosure as an asset because it's so expensive you're like imagine trying to figure out the electronics on that thing yeah out of the blue it's it's crazy yeah so we should probably swing the conversation into like youtube success okay so what do you think set you apart from other you know youtubers that tour these homes why did your channel blow up so quickly instead of theirs so that's a the way i mean there's so many things to talk about that but number one thing i would say is we really try to showcase these homes in a way that uh that honors the property right like i want to make sure owners are happy with the end product developers are proud and we you know i felt like a lot of these homes that are 20 30 million in la people are like these are just ridiculously priced i'm like well nobody knows how to talk about them and they're not easy to develop they take years to develop permitting process is insane and some of these details look so sim simple but they're not easy to execute on so we just try to cover those things and i think people appreciate understanding why they are 30 million dollars right and we explain it from a point of view of like not being a realtor like it's like hey this is how it works and let me explain it to you so i don't like salesmanship i'm not a good salesman i don't think when i was a realtor i was probably not the best realtor from a point of view like i wasn't pushy i was like you you weren't pushy either you were like hey work with me if you like me i'm kind of that way and i think people like that so and on top of that the whole production side of things we really take pride in what we do and i think we put mind-boggling amounts of hours in the videos how many hours would you say each video takes you're talking about like the post-production side of the security hours start defending before even like getting the house yeah from the time i see it and somehow i get introduced to the owner or like i re i reach out or they reach out to me meeting preparing for the house planning shooting editing it's got to be 120 to 140 hours perfect easily man hours easily and that's like between me mikey and the rest of the team like easily one video and we do it every week that's that's honestly the most challenging part of it keeping the quality and raising the bar while maintaining this with the type of homes in the type of style we shoot them this is the one of the most difficult puzzles we've ever had to put like it i lose my hair over this every day and you were bringing up all of your expenses like like your equipment yeah what are your expenses on this i mean for the production gear you gotta be probably around hundred thousand if not more no yeah two imacs wow hard drive after hard drive small hard drives multiple sony cameras audio equipment shotgun mics multiple drones big drone uh we have inspire memory cards lenses i believe our expensive drone the lens set alone on that the lens kit with like multiple lenses is like 12 grand wow and you know what i guarantee people are at home watching your video think that's easy look at that two cameras walk through for an hour oh yeah gets to see cool houses all day it's a it's a big challenge that we put together you know where it becomes really difficult is with your videos or what you guys do you guys can control the product like the video core itself with us the product that we make the video off of is someone else's that's such a delicate balance to manage and be able to make the content around their product where they're on board and you still manage to pull off your vision on it you know we don't get the freedom that you guys have where you can take the conversation wherever you want you can make fun of it or not we can't so it's a really difficult balance that we deal with every day so how is it for you to see all of our equipment over here in our setup with our lights and our towel light diffusers what do you think of all of this do you think it would be in our best interest to upgrade some of our equipment um i feel like jack is really putting graham on a tough spot here so here's where i'm at tell me a way to improve the content or whatever we're doing better as long as i can get behind the cost of it like i will spend whatever money it takes like i literally were talking to mikey i was like you have a good idea that you can express to me and justify it i'll invest half a million dollars tomorrow without a blink of an eye i'll empty my stock account and i'll just invest it it's all about to me business i take my emotions out it's about is this worth the investment and it's not just from a money point of view i look at things as a as um for example we buy an equipment how much time do we have to spend on this equipment what kind of returns we're gonna get how are footage is gonna improve is that worth it is that's gonna make our videos better where we get more views or like our overall quality is gonna go up if you can justify it to me i will spend any money needed i'm kind of humbled i i take bold risks i feel like there's diminishing returns like to go from no camera to an iphone boom big big upside there you go to go from an iphone to a dslr boom big upside to go from a dslr to 4k okay maybe five percent to go from 4k to then getting all these fancy lights maybe another few percent better audio you know or or to go from like a shotgun to a wireless mic yeah that's going to do well but to go from the wireless bike to a road it starts tapering off in terms of what you could accomplish and i think i at least feel for my videos the real magic is in the planning and the story behind what i'm talking about and less and like fancy equipment and i i love the homegrown nature of the channel i started in my garage making videos and i'm still kind of in a garage making videos that that isn't changing i like the fact that it's like it's me doing it myself and it's not like it's a big corporation or a production team so i like the fact that i'm using the same camera as i did four years ago that i bought used on ebay because it was cheaper i i feel like that just that that's the organic uh nature of the content and honestly for you and what you guys are trying to do i get it for us without a doubt we want to become the most versatile and the best team in the world like i'll say this out loud in the world to shoot these homes globally and some of these other expensive assets so for us to get to that level if there's a way we can improve the content by 0.01 you have my attention let's talk that's how i see it so i'm brutal when it comes to this stuff where i kind of hold it back is i want it to be like when whatever improvement we're doing it needs to be practically applied or we need to have a plan in place to integrate just because a hundred thousand dollar camera is better yeah but do we know how to shoot with that do we know how to process that if you don't that to me is actually not a good investment yeah but you tell me how we can integrate that into our operation i'll go by tomorrow i was about to say oh do you ever worry about running out of houses or like not having one lined up for a week like how far in advance do you film music right now we do four to five weeks ahead that's smart yeah that's that's the only way we can deal with the fluctuations because last minute it rains last minute owner changes their mind it's too much i wish people can understand the amount of abuse and like stress we go through trying to produce these videos and we're we have a laid back personality me and mikey um where we're like kind of easy about this stuff but uh it's crazy of a logistics that we deal on the back end putting this together but we shouldn't advance i would like to say our second channel we probably have always four to five videos in inventory we may not be able to edit them right away but we have them we do the same thing on ours we always like to be a week ahead on the podcast i'm always one to two videos ahead at any given point on the the main channel we're always about one to three videos ahead on the second channel yeah um and the podcast is week by week gotcha so that that's the most up-to-date stuff nice well yeah i mean yeah to us in order to run it at the level we want we need to be ahead uh that's just the bottom line some of these agents reach out to me they're like can we have it by next week i'm like yeah and that's just the price like you want to be ahead with us you need to let me know two months in advance and i'll schedule you accordingly and i'll book you a slot what if they paid you what if they said hey we want this video to be up next week we'll give you thirty thousand dollars can you can you make it will you we i could probably talk the other owners and like push it i i may be able to make it work obviously any any pay helps to up our operation and all that um but i try to like i don't sell the services meaning if you don't like it i don't care how much they pay us i won't say the name but a big builder reached out to us and i wasn't feeling their property they offered us a really good money i was like no chance can you tell us how much like you don't have to say what it is but twelve thousand dollars and i was like no chance for one video yeah okay yeah were they trying to sell the listing or what was i don't like their product and yeah i i like i can't go there and be like their houses are great yeah no chance but from their perspective did they hope that you would be like this is an amazing house here's how cool it is it would get all these people they wanted us to they wanted us to do exactly what we do but i genuinely wasn't stoked about the house like i turn down like 30 homes a week if i don't like feel like my enthusiasm is not going to be there or it's a good representation of what we do i politely say no what percentage of of sellers pay you to make the videos on their homes um decent amount and it really depends like if it's an easy video to make and if you're going to get ton of views like i just know it's going to be no-brainer we don't necessarily have to get paid or like i'm worried about getting paid but some of these videos are just expensive to produce i mean like our videos are nothing cheap to produce so then i will put a budget together like this is how i can do this at a level that this property deserves like you cannot tour a 3600 acre ranch and produce it in one day like no chance you got to spend three days there you got to run the whole crew so i put budgets together based on the shoots where they are sometimes people want to fly us out i'll be like you got to cover all these and we got to have our fee in there and that's how it makes sense for us to stop everything we're doing in l.a pack all this stuff come to where you're at shoot it and go back and edit it and deliver it at a timely fashion can you can you share oh unless you have a question oh i just wanted to talk about youtube revenue that's what i wanted to talk about we're on the same page can you talk about your analytics i can show the analytics but in terms of revenue we're like let's see anywhere from uh 50 to a hundred thousand on a good month um consider bad revenue for youtube ad revenue considering the views we get which is okay wait so i was i was gonna say uh 90. i was going to say 80. really where why usually jack and i are pretty close with it do you know how it works i'm going to see it all right i'm gonna can i screen record uh yeah sure okay so you have a million real-time views which is incredible and it's super consistent your watch time man incredible watch so i've i've i've never seen watch time as high as yours really one million six hundred fifty thousand hours of watch time the only thing i don't like man your revenue should be double yes and i think that's just because you're not putting enough mid-roll ads in the video we don't want to we don't want to upset the audience we're like too gentle you know no it's okay how many how many minerals do you put in your videos if it's like a 30 to 35 minute video we'll put like four or five maybe five minerals and then a pre-roll post roll yeah and you do non-skippables yeah our cpms are not that high guys why are they so low i don't know i mean we garner a big international audience you know what's crazy the average view duration i have a feeling it's weird the average view duration you're getting is the same as our second channel jack it's under 10 minutes for a 30 minute video but i have a feeling it's because your videos get recommended so much so much people click on it watch a miniature click off but those people that watch all the way through that they give you it could be because his audience is not very heavily based in the united states yeah it's like 25 percent oh you have a huge international oh united states yeah see ours is about 80 no it's like 80 percent i bet that plays a big big role india 10 india we have a big indian audience too on the main channel a lot of people watch from india nope yeah you know what that's what it is it's just your audience yeah is only 26 i bet that 26 from the u.s united kingdom is great but it's such a small percentage here yeah 26 united states that's probably driving 80 of your revenue yeah it has up upside and downside upside like i like that our audience is international that gives great exposure to these listings you know um but downside this cpm is low but you know we make it work and uh we're lucky enough to be able to cover our operations and run the team and keep everybody happy so you have great analytics thank you yeah coming from you guys you know what the uh you know why it's so good do you mind if i throw it it's so consistent thank you but you know why it's because every video is an evergreen video that you push yes correct every single thing you it doesn't matter when you watch it like with our videos they usually die after a few days because like nobody cares about what happened to stock market on a tuesday three months ago your videos every agreement you can come back in a few years that's the good thing about what you're doing you could literally walk away today and forever your videos would still generate probably five to twelve thousand dollars a month yeah if you just decide i'm i'm done five to twelve thousand dollars doing nothing i'm shocked how impressed you guys are with the analytics it's just so consistent and surprising what surprised me also was that the top search term was your name and i figured that the top search term would be like mansion tour but people are searching for your name i guess i i honestly haven't even looked at that yeah i noticed that too yeah yeah yeah and you're last night i have a tough last name to you this is absolutely right dude yeah yeah but here's the thing uh youtube auto recommends so like every time i if you type in just ns yeah it automatically populates there was like all right that's it yeah like if you do en e like we're already up there that's awesome what was my recommendation to you for for the channel name because you asked me about that i did so i figured i told you so you were like look your name is tough you're like i would consider something that's a little bit easier to remember or like something that like you read it and it kind of would make sense like something like manchester un like you were like this isn't the ideal scenario and mikey was kind of on the same boat and my thing was like and i still believe that concept to this day if content is good people don't care about anything else like content has to be good and my thing was like my name is so odd but i have a very simple first name people will just like remember it like it'll be all right and my problem with these like mansion tours or these things as soon as you put like these generic names it becomes like a almost like a tv i wanted to be about me in a sense of like a personality from there we'll build the different channels like we started ns plus and the logic behind an s plus was like it has just enough connotation that it has to do with me but it's plus it's everything else it's the team it's the vlogs it's us storing the rv it's mikey being on camera it's like featuring other people down the road so i knew that model would work and i just kind of stick to my guns i was like if you want to build the name to scale and then do businesses and uh endorsements and that kind of stuff it has to be on the name so i just kind of stuck with it oh it's worked i think i think my recommendation would have been to to shorten your last name yeah or do something that would be easier to spell that way people just have an anna because your first name easy easy yeah and a lot of people just call my first name and yeah even like i'm not one of those people they can call it wrong like i have no problem yeah we should talk a little bit more about your past because i heard yeah what did you do before you did these mansion tours in real estate work um so born and raised in turkey age of 17 moved to texas got a scholarship at texas a m um when i moved to us couldn't speak a word of english like i would have to grab other turkish kids be like talk to the teacher this is what i need like i sucked at it um it's super lonely like my first two years in u.s is like no friendships like i sucked at the language and then um graduated from texas a m at the age of 22 at the time applied for green card because i was between the ages of 13 to 26 i was a professional wind surfer for 12 years seven sponsors traveled across the country around the world over 35 countries i was flying 200 000 miles a year wow another cool fact i was sponsored by turkish airlines for seven years for seven years straight i flew nothing but a business class wow everywhere around the world and i had 200 kilos so that's like about i had 900 pounds worth of free luggage allowance for me to carry all my windsurfing gear around the world i had the weirdest life that is like that's like a dream if you're 22 years old yeah did that get the ladies i feel like i'm a professional winston you know what i was never the craziest or like the best about ladies i was like you would be like the ultimate bachelor you know like the most suave sweet talking you know that really evolved after like 23 24 i really found my way and i was like oh this is actually pretty easy uh i just have to say the right things kind of thing i was honestly workaholic my whole life like when i was windsurfing i was practicing 12 14 hours a day like i just enjoy working i just love improving i love progress i'm addicted to progress it's like progress turns me on it's like tell me a way to make things better let's talk like it's i'm excited about i don't know what it is it's not even like we need that much progress um but windsurfing career shaped really who i am work ethic is such an abusive sport like i'm so used to competing in like tough conditions i always tell now we wear suits shoots home like what are you talking i sit on a desk all day talk to people like this is easy like easy so um windsurfing really shaped who i am got me a green card i have eb1 extraordinary ability green card that's how i became u.s citizen in fact i'm currently in my application right now to like get my password like fully become a us citizen my dad has the same thing he's really he's canadian yeah really extraordinary ability yeah they call it eb1 yeah so you prove the us government that whatever profession you're in you're in the top five percent i had three world titles in windsurfing yeah three worlds that means you were the best windsurfer in the world yeah for three years so that really shaped who i am and age of 21 in texas right after like the 2008 crisis i saved up quite a bit of money i bought myself a house and it was a flip that the owners couldn't finish it was like 85 done and it was like 200 000 no it was 170 000 i spent all my savings on it i was really frugal i was kind of like you and i bought this house i was like oh my god i have to finish the remaining because i have no money left and me and my dad for 40 days straight fixed up the house it was the greatest 40 days of my life i was like whatever whenever windsurfing ends real estate is my next path and any money i made from windsurfing i started buying land any off time i had i was at project sites learning about real estate uh talking to developers i became addicted with it over the course of between 2011 to 2018 i bought over 40 pieces of land in texas which i still own to this day i invested all my money in land and i started getting involved with like people's projects uh development and the age of 26 right at when i turned 26 i retired from wood surfing and i went in all in on flipping properties like i'm talking about construction belt on running cruise 12 to 16 hours a day hands-on building that's where my knowledge from about homes comes from like i learned how to sewer line an entire house i learned how to run water lines and water heater from the city tap to water heater to distributing to fixtures i learned how to plumb an entire house by myself i learned i learned how to frame additions i can literally genuinely build a house from ground up i have every skill set wiring an entire room running panels troubleshooting installing fixtures roofing stainless seam metal roofs uh building block a laying brick i learned it all and that gave me such a it was such a humbling experience like imagine you're at age of 26 you were a three-time world champion with surfer sponsored by turkish airlines making really good money for for that kind of job how much were you could you say i was making around like two hundred thousand dollars a year which is a lot that's more and i quit that just so like literally i had this moment i have to tell you guys this story i took on this like huge project this house was partially burned down no one wanted to buy it i was crazy enough to be like i'll finish this it's one of my biggest flips i got a plumbing bed to do sewer line and water line it was fourteen thousand dollars i was like you're kidding right he's like yeah dude this is my rate i was like okay i know i know how to do all this it's an insane project to manage i can run the cruise generally i have about eight to twelve guys at the house at a time and i can on the side do this myself over a two week period since i know how to do it i had to do pex lines and pvc sewer line the whole place because it was a old home it was all cast iron and it was a pier and beam home so it was about two feet above the ground i remember this moment it's like 10 pm at night because i'm behind so i catch up working late and i'm replacing a sewer line and literally partial sewer was like sitting and it like leaked all over my body i'm like what are you doing dude like you're you have money like you're like but when i put my mind into something i get so dedicated i've still aligned the entire house myself and it cost me 1200 in material i saved like 12 000 bucks while running the crew because material cost was nothing it was all labor that's worth it then it was worth it but like that kind of humbling experience so now i go into these houses and i talk about them it's not like i have a full of language i genuinely know like so that gave me like our channel's core knowledge comes from the fact that i ate for like last two to three years flipping homes i flipped i mean the amount of concrete i broke with a jackhammer with my own hands it's got to be over like 20 000 square feet i'm not joking so that three intense years of like non-stop work and flipping homes is gave me a huge upside and like knowledge and understanding flips and understanding developments so when i came to l.a when i started touring these homes i would meet with developers i would make like four or five comments they're like who are you how do you know these things i would come in i'll be like right in the center of your uh living room you have a half inch step he's like no i don't i was like put the laser up i was like i leveled so many homes i was like you have a half inch dip right there they will put a level up it would be like half inch to three quarters they're like holy crap i'll be like i told you you have no idea how many foundations i corrected in texas so it's weird backgrounds all accumulated to this point with the youtube channel do you share that on your channel never why not um let's do it on the second channel eventually we'll do it on a second channel like it's it's fun to talk about it when people ask but it just like i don't know i i'm kind of a guy that's like we'll just do good work and then people will recognize it i i like seeing loki like where did you get that work ethic from um i think i'm i'm i'm really competitive and it's not like a competitive of like i'm gonna beat this guy i just don't know how to stop like when i was flipping homes um more than half the homes i flipped still to this day no one has beaten those prizes like i tell this all the time i get appraisers call me to this day they're like how the hell you sold this one for this price in this neighborhood i've hacked the whole flipping procedure i would go find like really nice cabinetry stores and buy the open boxes have it in the inventory when the right flip hits i would put a thousand dollar vanity on a home that's 140 000 my homes were so standalone so good that i broke every single neighborhood record that i was in and uh that just comes from the fact that i was like i could have made money i was like i could make better i can put a half a million dollar home cabinetry in a 200 000 home and i love that challenge and i love over giving the value same thing with these tours we can get away with doing less but we can do more and did people see it the best compliment is where your work speaks for you so this kind of stuff it's almost like why don't we just shut up and do good work and we just let the people dictate growing up did you did your parents have a similar work ethic or is this something my dad is one of the hardest working person and uh like my dad will never complain about anything that's what i learned like you know like look at my hands i have cut after cut building the van uh just shut up and build it yeah like i know how to do it when am i going to hire someone and like get a plan design i was like okay we work a lot we're shooting all this content to get ahead i'm like if i can get my assistance to help me mikey will help me a little bit i'll stay to like 11 or 12. we built the van so it's just like uh you take pride in it and i don't know i'm just competitive and uh i appreciate progress yeah this van that you're building you want to talk a little bit about oh yeah you're stopping here on a trip yes yeah so this has been me and mikey's goal for a while that like we want to drive across the country and like shoot cool content especially now that we have the second channel where we can kind of shoot anything really and then uh mikey in fact do you want to come out here like give your thoughts on this so for those not aware mikey you're the uh the voice and the the camera behind the scenes i love your little sometimes you'll you'll throw in like a little comment or like go get a close-up of it it's it's this it's this cool little catch phrase that that people know you through your voice so some people may have heard you but they have no idea what you look like so now it's now here you are yeah it's weird to have people like recognize my voice i was telling you yesterday i got an uber a few weeks ago and uh they were listening to a song from our channel and i started talking to them and they're like your voice sounds really familiar are you in this cameraman and i was like this is weird uh so um yeah it's weird sitting in front of cameras now though yeah yeah but coming back to the trip question yeah we wanted to do this across the country trip and flying is difficult we got a ton of camera gear and like we have so many different skill sets i mean we have this like 14 000 random jetboard that we wanted to use it around the country and then we want to shoot other stuff we were like well we like our production to be high so how are we going to carry all this stuff we were like let's rent a suburban but that doesn't solve it we have so much stuff we need like a trailer too yeah we were like maybe we take like i was literally i have an s class i was like maybe i sell my s-class get it i escalated a trailer you know because of my contractor background i have two cars so i have my regular business car like my mercedes and then i have this transit van that like i was literally running my contracting business in texas i brought it to la because i genuinely didn't know what i was going to do in l.a full of still with my construction tools i was like enes stop delaying this dude this van is probably perfect the problem is the cargo van it's super loud it's metal to metal um so we spent probably 100 hours roughly first demoing the whole thing rebuilding the decking installing a back seat so the rest of the team can ride with us putting this metal rack like a garage shelf rack and retrofitting it into the van sound dampening the whole thing uh you know covering the inside with their phone so it's the sick now travel production van that we built and we literally have all of our camera gear we can ride up to five people also it's it's a good starting point because it'll get better but it's like over time the van will improve and improve and improve slightly right now right now it's like stage one of the video yeah the van's first life you got to get something on the side of it something is a joke it's just like i think a plumbing company or something like that doge logo yeah yeah oh my god yeah that would be cool on our way to the moon yeah something like that yeah yeah um so that's the story behind it i i think people like our friendship between me and mikey they like that we're not a big shot like i and i wear a suit because i respect my job and i i address what i'm about to say appropriately to the house you're towing a 50 million home you better put a suit on that is sharp you need to own up to that job and you need to deliver the information in the right way this is not something to be joked about so i think people respect how we carry ourselves a lot and we get these comments so many times uh literally our last week's video someone made a comment it's like one of the most popular comments underneath ryan sarhan's comment we threw this home that ryan's heard ryan comment was like i quit because the views they've gone in two weeks we've gone in less than one day and we just passed by them and the second comment was like let's talk about something that is unspoken these guys and ns started this trend of like detailed walk-throughs and everybody else pretty much copied it yeah like and it had like the most liked comments so yeah just to clarify like there was a few people out there filming home yeah but they're like this is a view you know or like yeah this is a 100 million dollar home and it's like two like here we have shots it's like eight minute video of uh like this is where the kids you know what's interesting is more about him and his personality yeah less about the house producer michael i feel like it's more about what he's gonna say and what he's wearing uh in his watch than it is about the house it has more of a backdrop when you watch more from michael with yours you really focus on the property and by doing that we actually have more personality in my opinion because we set ourselves so distinctly apart yeah and kind of goes back to like good luck copying it i i genuinely look forward to someone tackling a chat a challenge as big as what we tackle on a weekly basis and try to truly compete with us at both on knowledge and production uh i've been a three-time world champion when server i attack a lot of big challenges this is without a doubt one of the most difficult things we've ever had to work around and like truly run it and figure out a way to do it efficiently it's refreshing to hear you jack like how you get it right like being around graham or being able to work with him and learn and observe and do stuff around graham would be opportunity of a lifetime i'll do it in a heartbeat and you know when we're hiring i'm like i would kill to be around people like me people like mikey um i want to tell this story how i got into la which is really interesting i think you will get a really good kick out of it so i started flipping homes in texas quit being a windsurfer and anytime i could see like three four days of like opening where i could take a vacation i was obsessed with million dollar listing i watched every episode this is not a joke more than 20 30 times like i'm not joking and i was just obsessed with la i don't know what it is it's like the architecture the fanciness you know million dollar listing made it look really good glamorized now that i'm in it oh my god it's totally the opposite um it's like it's almost funny i remember you were kind of heartbroken when you realized how fake that show was real heartbroken is understating yeah i thought the two agents would really meet each other in the car off of the freeway side by side negotiating back and forth rolling down the window i thought that's what it was like yeah throwing offers now you see these mean emails you're like we need a response by 12 p.m um anyway so i would come to l.a not only not knowing a single person i'll just drive around look properties i would just hope for a glimpse of like inspiration or like something that i'm like that's my end right so my third time coming to like literally coming in just like driving around i didn't even have friends here i was following literally everyone a million dollar listing and like anybody that i saw on the show or a big list agent in la and i was following sam real and i know you know sam right i booked a ticket three months in advance to go to la and it was the night i was packing the next day i was gonna leave to la and send me the post on instagram he's like i'm gonna pick two of you guys to come and shout out of me for a day all you have to do is follow me you know like leave the comment and share my post something like that like something random where he was trying to grow his audience i was like wow what an opportunity i was like i would kill to hang out with this guy then of course i've like made the comment and shared and all that and like within an hour he had like 150 people i was like i'm not going to win this i was like what can i do to win this i was obsessed i was like this opportunity is killer and i really want to give sam credit for this because sam is the reason i made my move to la quicker than i normally would have um so i was like i grabbed my camera last minute i landed in l.a i landed until around like 3 a.m the next morning i slept like two hours i went up the hollywood hills put my tripod set the camera i had like a really nice view not knowingly i had two of sam's listings right behind me on that backdrop i didn't even knew it it's two upcoming listings and i shot a bunch of takes on like who i am what i do why he should chose me how much like this really means to me i went down to beverly hills edited it all day and i made him a 10-minute reel of who i am why he should chose me and i was like i was like i'm just gonna drop it off at nessicur's i went there i'm like what if he doesn't see it like this would kill me i spent i was there for like three days i burned my first full day trying to make this video i was like i'm just gonna dress nice and go there be like i'm a client i want to talk to samurail so i went over there like i'm like can i talk to sam they're like wait a minute and his assistant at the time uh uh came down which i'm really good friends with now and he's like hey man what's up how can i help you i'm like dude this is embarrassing i really wanted to win this um giveaway and i made this video i'm so afraid he may not see it uh but now that i know you're having it can you show it to him like i really want to win this he goes you made a video for that instagram post he's like i made that post as a like fine like will grove said you made a full video i'm like yeah like i spent the whole day on it it's really good like please make sure sam sees that he goes no no no he's like sam is coming in an hour you want to pitch it in person so hour later i'm in the office with sam and uh sam is like you made like he curses a lot in a good way he's like you made a video i'm like dude this would mean a lot that like i'm trying to like figure out my way to l.a he's like you're nuts he watched the video he couldn't stop smiling the whole time he goes he goes what are you doing tonight i was like i don't and you know what i have such gut instincts i brought a suit with me i was like i'm gonna make this work like this is gonna work i knew it i brought a suit with me he goes million dollar listing season eight premier party is tonight you want to meet the whole cast he's like i'm gonna take you that very night i met sam sam took me a million dollar listing los angeles party i met josh i made everybody i'm like oh my god how did this happen in the last 24 hours this is insane right there i was like this is the city you need to be in your craziness works here you can it does like it works these like ideas of like almost of like you're ridiculous actually works in l.a after hanging out that night i was like i couldn't believe the whole night i was so happy i have a photo with sam if you go to my instagram you can pull the photo uh and then sam was like he's like screw shadowing me for a day he goes what are you doing in december he's like why don't i give you a desk here i went back home texas i worked non-stop for like 50 days finished two of my flips i came to l.a in december this is like three years ago and i spent two full weeks helping sam out running errands with him for free and it was the greatest two weeks i've ever spent and at that point it clicked me i was like if these are if these agents can make it in la i'll figure it out i went back to la i went back to texas five months i sold my home i finished the other couple projects i had i done like 15 garage sales i liquidated my whole life and what i built in texas in the last nine years i packed my van to the grim with my construction tools my desk and my tv i shipped my messages and then literally mikey helped me packing that van like not a joke like he was the last person i saw packing the van and i moved to la and that's the story so yeah i wanted to say this because like partially i'm bummed out with a new generation and like how little initiative they take it's kind of refreshing to hear jack and how he understands the opportunity and sees it and respects it but did you do sam's laundry i have not done sam's laundry without a heartbeat without a doubt in a heartbeat it's it's not but here's the thing do you do great laundry no but i would have okay cool here's the thing um that's unspoken i mean you don't have to be told to do sam's laundry you would have just done it and i think that's a quality that you can't ask of somebody it's just it's already there yeah so that that jack and i made the mistake of saying like we want these qualities in somebody to be willing to do this and everyone said i can't believe you would you would assume that i would do lot but but that's that's the sort of stuff you can't describe graham was referencing when we were going through the hiring so yeah so enos for the channel like i need an assistant editor yeah we saw your we saw your video and how you found um alex alex and we were like this is great let's do this exact same thing you know so even in the video we're like we're copying graham yeah we we like say that um we filmed the whole thing we like we like do it in one take all our requirements we like wrote down bullet points you know what we're paying all this stuff we were inspired by you guys yeah and and uh it's we're starting to get the submissions now but it really didn't work out as well as did for you number one i think because our channel is not as personality based it's more about the houses people don't know us that well yeah we don't have as big of a core audience you know and it was a smaller position it's basically we were looking for a paid intern really yeah maybe we had a bad way of articulating it we we didn't articulate it well enough and we really got destroyed on how much we were paying you know it's like how much are you paying 15. 15 an hour but we're looking for like an 18 19 year old kid who lives with his parents who like wants to learn how to edit something right you can't describe that that's what jack and i learned you can't describe we were we were saying like you got to be willing to like do laundry pick up bailey's poop it's like yeah and jack was like it's not going to be glamorous by any means graham i again disagree with you i thought it was smart and i'm like you know why because you guys need that person that has care you guys are a lean and mean team and that person cannot be like okay i'm gonna come in and put 50 hours no like you guys needed that edge yes you guys might have gone bash on the comments but realistically that's the person you guys are looking for you guys were just brutally honest and if they have a problem i mean this is such an amazing group of team of people to be around you guys are literally moving and shaking things you'll get some great submissions though i watched like 15-20 yeah yeah we we recommend that if by the way if you're watching this if you're looking to hire anybody type in graham stefan interview go down the list of people who uh and and poach those people because i want to say we had five or something that's good got some good support that we wanted to hire it's just we could i mean obviously we could only pick one and there are so many other variables of just like we would feel bad if you quit like there were people making like six figures who were willing to quit their job and move across the country to do jack's laundry pick up basically and whereas like we would feel bad if that didn't work out because that's too big of a risk or you know moving a big family across the country it's like stuff like that it was it was tough it was time but there are people in there in that list who like in the future we're going to go back through that list and i think we're going to yeah we're going to pick more people yeah another thing we're working on we're partnered up with two companies so far one of them is tophab it's a real estate database uh analytics platform basically you know how we in real estate look at like 20 different websites to gather all the information yeah it's a one website gathers all that information puts it into a beautiful interface you can look at how loud a neighborhood is or like how many people in your neighborhood has a pool and when they pull their permit to getting ai to give you a calculated um comparables price per square foot tax analysis so many other aspects a mind-blowing amount of data points mind-blowing and their point was like let's say you want to invest in a certain part of california without leaving your home in an hour or two looking at the right databases you should be able to educate yourself as good as a realtor who works in that field and then you can simply go back and then make your decisions accordingly it's a really efficient kind of like an investing in uh database platform in regards to real estate and the second company we're working with is picasso so that's a really unique concept a lot of people associate that with timeshare but they go and they buy the property they stage the whole thing they fix anything that needs to be done and then from there they set up the management llc on it uh put the property manager maintenance and all that stuff and they divide it to one-fourth or one-eighth of ownerships so you say you buy to one-fourth quarter of the time over a year you own uh the staying rights in the property they have a beautiful app that you go in you type in the dates you want like a hotel they booked a place for you everything is ready when you come in and you own one fourth of the home so as the property i appreciate you get the upside on that they can finance it for you they handle all the transactions you can use a realtor of your choice to sell it and they were just evaluated at one billion dollars the fastest awesome to get to a billion right yeah one of the fastest companies to get to a billion dollar evaluation uh co-founders of dot loop and zillow is back in the company um so it's a pretty exciting project for us it's us and the altman brothers that are kind of like the brand uh partners brand ambassadors for the company so that's very cool congratulations thank you thank you we're really excited about it cool well thank you guys so much both for coming here this has been a really fun episode i've been really happy with hearing some of your stories i had no idea from some of this so it's really cool hearing this from you thank you guys so much for having us thank you for having us i can't imagine uh when we jumped on that open house when you were there it was years ago that we would be on your podcast two years from now yeah pretty crazy a lot could happen in uh what two years two years be sure to watch watch graham's youtube course yeah oh yes and that's right two hundred dollars off for the next seven days and then and then it's done that's it as well mentorship group and subscribe to the channel and smash like button bye step it up jesus we're good yeah i'm probably moving it right i'm so used to moving in the videos