Expats Winning The Future

SWIPE AND INVEST: How Fractional Ownership Makes U.S. Real Estate Accessible for Expat Investors with RealBricks Founder Chris Gerardi

• GT Radio • Season 2 • Episode 4

Share episode

Let's Win The Future: Building Wealth Through Real Estate 

In this episode of HELPING EXPATS BUILD WEALTH, we’re joined by Chris Gerardi, founder of RealBricks, to explore a groundbreaking approach to real estate investing. Chris introduces us to RealBricks, his innovative app that brings fractional ownership to U.S. real estate, empowering individual investors to participate in high-quality real estate investments without the typical barriers of high net worth requirements or excessive fees.

RealBricks offers a unique opportunity for investors to own shares of rental properties, providing proportional rights to rental income and potential appreciation. We dive into the benefits of this model, which allows for portfolio diversification with minimal upfront capital, making real estate investment more accessible and efficient for everyone—including expats looking to build wealth in foreign markets. Join us as we discuss how RealBricks is reshaping real estate investment, bringing institutional-grade opportunities to everyday investors.

Audio Streams & Downloads

Buzzsprout | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Podcasts
IHeartRadio | ListenNotes | Deezer | Player FM | Podcast Index | Podcast Addict | Podchaser

Resources



Johnny Punish (00:01.185)
And we're on with Chris Girardi. Chris, how are you doing today? Good, let's talk some money because we came here to talk about building wealth and earning income for people around the world, investors. Obviously, you have an in in the United States and the real estate market. So go ahead and explain briefly what that's about and kind of give us an example of what we're talking about here today.

Chris Gerardi (00:04.898)
I'm good, I'm good.

Chris Gerardi (00:23.692)
Yeah, so basically what I realized a few, well, it's been about four years now since I started the project, but essentially prior to that, I was involved in, you know, understanding Bitcoin and cryptos and early, I'd say early 2015. And I realized that there needed to be kind of a way for people to invest in assets from a digital standpoint, but also be connected to assets that are tangible and have value. So in 20...

19, I started kind of spearheading this idea that I was going to create a platform that allowed people to invest in real estate assets digitally that would be compliant for them. And that would basically give them the ability to have a digital portfolio that they could buy and sell their shares in but also have the ability to get the reward of rental incomes, things of that nature.

Johnny Punish (01:17.657)
awesome so are we talking about blockchain technology here?

Chris Gerardi (01:22.068)
No, no, no blockchain with what I'm doing currently, no.

Johnny Punish (01:26.893)
Okay, so kind of explain it more in terms of the real estate investment part of it. How does it actually work?

Chris Gerardi (01:33.1)
Yeah, so essentially what happens is that we've created a technology that allows everyday investors to be able to invest in real estate via an app, right? Or a web app. But how it works is we go out, we find these properties, and then we bring them to the app and we allow people from all over the US to be able to invest in it. You don't have to be a credited investor, you can be just like an everyday person and have the ability to buy in. Generally starting, you know, on the primary markets or $100 minimum buy-in.

And then when they moved to secondary, it kind of just depends on what the value is and what people decide they think the value is. And they want to sell those shares, whether it's for an increase or decrease.

Johnny Punish (02:11.491)
Okay, so let's say I'm an investor, I'm a small investor, I have $100 to invest. I want to start with $100. What am I supposed to do to get into the program with you so I can reap the rewards of investing in real estate?

Chris Gerardi (02:23.894)
Yeah, so mean, the biggest thing is, is that people have to take action, right? You have to go down to realbricks, download the app, or go to real bricks.com. And basically, you go through it,  It's about a five-minute sign-up. It's like any other financial app, right? You go through Robin Hood or E-trade or anything. It takes about five minutes, you go through your typical KYC AML, which is just your government regulatory stuff. And then you upload your ID, you get approved. And then which happens really momentarily while you're doing it.

And then you can pick which asset you want to buy into and then you swipe and that's it. That's really it.

Johnny Punish (02:58.297)
Okay, so am I supposed to know as an investor which asset I want to buy? How am I going to be a savvy investor into this project?

Chris Gerardi (03:05.454)
So each asset's gonna bring its own APY or its own return. Right now we started off, we just launched with single family rentals. Most of them are gonna be in the 6 % range, but the idea is that you buy into them, you can hold and then the rental rates, depending on what they are, those will get whatever net profits they get distributed based on how much ownership you have. So you could put a lot more than hundred bucks in. You can own up to really 9.8 % of any one of these properties. So you could put thousands of dollars in.

And then you get that percentage of the rental rates that come from it that are net basically, does that make sense?

Johnny Punish (03:41.055)
Absolutely. let's say the property takes in a thousand dollars a month just to make it round that off and easy and there's a cost basis of that. You got to pay all the bills or whatever that is for 200 bucks. And let's say there's a net profit of 800. I'm getting a percentage of the 800 and your company's managing the what the whole property, the buy of the property and the property management as well.

Chris Gerardi (03:55.35)
Yes, exactly. Yep. Yep.

Chris Gerardi (04:05.526)
Yep, our company handles all the property so that way you don't have to handle it, which is a great thing for a lot of investors that that haven't been through this type of thing. You know, obviously, when you first get into investment in real estate, there's a lot of, you know, big down payment stuff like that. That stuff is complex. It's time consuming. It's not really cost effective for a lot of people. This is a way for them to get in basically any day of the week that they want to.

they buy in, they can sit on it and down the road, if they want to sell that share, they can sell it too. But as long as they own that share in their portfolio, they will be compensated based on the net proceeds of that asset.

Johnny Punish (04:40.291)
So that's on the income standpoint. How about the appreciation side of the property? Are we getting involved in that as well?

Chris Gerardi (04:46.732)
Yep. if you go into a property, you know, most of these properties we're going to hold, generally speaking, for five to seven years, right? We may hold them a little bit longer, but the idea is that we're going to hold them for, you know, long enough time for them to appreciate. And then when we sell that property, you get a partake in that appreciation as well, based off of your ownership.

Johnny Punish (05:07.352)
Would be like a dividend payment?

Chris Gerardi (05:09.542)
Yeah, basically, yep. And it's all done through our technology. So it happens, you don't even see it happen. It just ends up in your account. It'll clearly state here's your dividend, it'll show you how much at that point, you can, you can withdraw that dividend, you can leave it in there, you can, you know, what I would suggest reinvest it into another asset on the platform, and you can just keep growing your wealth. But the idea is, is that, you know, you can slowly grow your wealth, if you're willing to take action on it. And anybody at any price can do that.

Johnny Punish (05:37.194)
Okay, so let's talk about the tax issue. Is it treated as just a normal real estate? Do we get the write-offs as well or just it's just a normal capital appreciation when we realize it?

Chris Gerardi (05:48.63)
Yeah, right now it's just it's just, you know, capital appreciation right now. Right? Right. You know, fractionalized real estate is is still very new. It's a very new space. You know, when the jobs act happened, that was really when it opened it up. But there was a timeline where like, the lawyers and stuff, nobody had really figured out exactly how you could do this and offer it to everyday people, because there's a lot of regulatory compliance. So it took a couple of years in really fractionalized real estate or fractionalized assets is still very new.

It's a very new adoption. A lot of people haven't even heard of it. Don't even know it exists. I think as we go down the road into the future and as more people partake, those pieces will probably come into a framework that'll be favorable for the consumers on, know, depending on what they're trying to do.

Johnny Punish (06:36.413)
Okay, you know that GT radio here global thinkerz we focus on a global market for expats and digital nomads And so I wanted to ask you is this opportunity right now only for American citizens and is it only for American citizens living in the United States or is it for American citizens outside or Everybody international investors as well

Chris Gerardi (06:56.654)
Yeah, I mean, as long as you here's here's a key component, right? Like for the most part of the assets are all in America currently. You can most most are going to be people that are in the US if you're a citizen abroad, you can definitely invest it. It's all digital. It's done. We do KYC. It happens automatically. If you are foreign, then you know, it really comes down to whether or not you have a US bank account because we haven't built in the payment railways for international yet. But

That is in the future. And I do believe that we'll move into other markets as we go. Like I said, it's very new. But for the most part, you know, if you're an American citizen anywhere, you can invest in this.

Johnny Punish (07:35.169)
Okay, so let's say I'm an American citizen, obviously, I live outside the United States as an expat, of course, but of course I have a US bank account, so that would be open for me. Okay, but let's say a Mexican citizen who has a US bank account, would that be open for them as well?

Chris Gerardi (07:44.29)
Yes, yes, absolutely.

Chris Gerardi (07:52.108)
that you know, absolutely you can you can go through the process and really we don't determine you know, who's allowed to from a from a know your customer standpoint, right? That's that's a third party. You don't see it as a user. It's all internally integrated. But, know, those things are just decided through them basically, and kind of what's on their registry and lists, right? But for the most part, yeah. You know, I welcome anyone to sign up and to invest, I think most people are going to get through.

Johnny Punish (08:20.761)
Okay, and when do you think your company is going to open it up officially for international investors? When is that possibly gonna happen? Where it's gonna be, you know, very clear.

Chris Gerardi (08:31.446)
Yeah, you know, I think the biggest piece for us is getting into the payment railways, right? There's a little bit of complexity. mean, obviously, our platform is extremely complex just because of all the regulatory aspects of it. But I'm thinking Q4 of 2025 is probably when we'll have those railways fitted in and then we can allow for more international investment. sanctioned countries, you know, that's a whole other story. But if it's, you know,

Most countries, yeah, are going to be able, people will be allowed to partake.

Johnny Punish (09:03.769)
Yeah, think we did the numbers. Believe it or not, there's 280 million expats around the world and we're expecting 350 million in 10 years. Obviously not all of them are American citizens, right? But American citizens are a very big part of that. So here in Mexico where I'm at, we have over 1.5 million Americans living in Mexico as expats. we're talking about significant numbers, not a few hundred thousand people here. So I was just looking to...

Find a way to get into that market. You know what mean?

Chris Gerardi (09:35.328)
100%. mean, I think as time goes on, you know, I mean, I think people are thinking more on global levels, right? Like I think we have to think globally, right? Like we can't isolate ourselves to one fixated mindset all the time. We have to be open. And I think that's really the huge benefit of the technology that we've created is, you know, when I first thought about this, I mean, I knew there was going to be a lot of hurdles. There have been monumental hurdles just to get into the space and get through the regulatory piece.

and be able to make it compliant so that way you can do this legally. But I do believe as we expand, that is going to be one of the biggest focal points because, you know, overall, I mean, I think we have to look at things from not only investors from a global level but how about assets from a global level?

Johnny Punish (10:21.089)
Right. Now you talk about the democratization of the market. Can you explain what you mean by that? Because you said that on your website, and I'm more curious for you to expand on that idea so we help our people understand.

Chris Gerardi (10:33.57)
Yeah, the idea here is, that, you know, letting anybody partake in real estate assets down the road, we might expand on those assets, we will expand on those assets. But the idea is that we're going to democratize the ability for anybody to be able to invest in real estate with a swipe. Like if you go on to the web onto the application now, you could pick which asset you want to invest in, you literally swipe in and you're done. And that's never it's

There's one other company that's gotten there that obviously is a competitor of ours. However, it's never been done to the effect where we have a marketplace so people can transact in those assets kind of when they want, right? Generally speaking, you're stuck in that asset for a long period of time and you don't have a path to any type of liquidity. So our whole thought was we have to take care of our customers, right? What do our customers want? They want to be able to invest, they want to be able to get returns, and they want to path to liquidity if they need it.

That's really what it is, right?

Johnny Punish (11:33.849)
Speaking to the liquidity part of it, how do we liquidate if that's what we want to do?

Chris Gerardi (11:39.278)
So once you know, in the world of these types of assets that are considered securities, there's what's called a primary offering. So let's just do example, right? We're going to take this $400,000 single-family rental. We're gonna assign 40,000 shares at $10 a share. That's 400 grand. When that is fully filled. when however many investors it takes to get that fully funded, it then moves to a marketplace, which is still in our app, right? You can hit the marketplace, it'll bring you to it. And at that point,

That property will show up and that property will then show is current as possible values of that asset Live right so we use a feed-in to get that data and say maybe we originally started this property at four hundred thousand dollars But that was your initial investment. Maybe this property is appreciated. Maybe it's worth four hundred ten four hundred twenty whatever it may be and that's due to The information that we gather through our system

and then it'll show that on the share. At that point, can signal a sell, you can go look for other people's shares to buy. Maybe you think that there's are a value, you can buy theirs or that assets of value. It's really up to the user at the end of the day.

Johnny Punish (12:53.027)
Incredible brilliant by the way, but I may say so myself. That's a tremendous that you've done this Answer this question before you existed this company existed real bricks What was the chances of getting into the marketplace for a real estate investor or someone that wanted in the market? What was what was the past like?

Chris Gerardi (13:13.962)
The past was fundamentally large down payments, lots of paperwork. Then you got to manage the property. You've got taxes, insurance, you have all these things. I think we're moving into a world now where the idea of physically owning some of these things may be more of a headache and more of a bandwidth taker than it used to be. So it used to be a lot harder.

And now it's what we've done is we've said, okay, we have the technology, we can build the technology. But what we were missing for a long time was the regulatory ability to do this. And then they opened up the regulatory ability to do this. And now it's like, okay, we have to merge the tech with the regulation. So that way we can create an available place for people to partake in real estate with swiping. And you can just manage your portfolio, you can be literally mountain biking, and then you know, hopping in your sprinter.

driving across country, you can enter and exit the real estate market in minutes, which has never been fundamentally done. I think that's the biggest thing. And I think for the younger generation, I'm 42. Even for my generation, it's a lot of bandwidth taking care of all these properties. If you have multiple properties that are rentals, a dryer breaks or a...

AC unit, you mean you're you're fixing it you're paying for it. You're fixing it You're it's gonna take your bandwidth you take 15 or 20 30 properties 40 100 a thousand you start to realize real quick It's a full-on operation I'll be honest with you You know to me. It's like it's a lot easier just to swipe and be invested collect ROI on those investments and then when I want to liquidate out of them down the road I can then to basically

You know have all these properties that that you have to fundamentally if you want to get out of sell the old traditional way Which is going to be you know through a you know through some you know? Sale that's going to take a lot of bandwidth and time right you got you've got all these expenses

Johnny Punish (15:18.649)
Right, right. You for me as an investor here in Mexico, for me to get involved in US real estate, generally I need to fly in. I need to go look at the property. I need to do all the due diligence and then get that done. And because I don't live there, I'd have to hire a property manager and all that stuff. So, you I agree with you. That's a lot of work. And to get involved in your app, it's just a matter of logging in and doing the Venmo thing, kind of moving a swipe or something, you know. It sounds like that's what you're becoming, just like another...

cool app that works, know, maybe like, you know, when I invest in crypto or Bitcoin, I just go to my app on my phone, you know, and I just go buy and sell or, even Charles Schwab, right? So is that what we're talking about here?

Chris Gerardi (15:58.956)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, literally, the app is swipe functionality. The idea here is exactly that, right? Like there's a lot of bandwidth that goes into owning properties, renting properties out, whether it's commercial or residential or multifamily. It's a full time. It's a full time job. When you get a few of them, it becomes a full time job. And I think there's a lot of people out there that are like me that are like, hey, even for me, like, like, I have my property.

It's an acreage. It's a full time job in itself. mean, like, you know, continuing to try to grow a portfolio, the traditional way, it's just, it's absurd the amount of time, effort, work, legal fees, and most importantly, your time, right? What have we created? We created a solution for people who value time, right? That is the biggest piece. We are basically allowing you to have your time, which is valuable.

Johnny Punish (16:48.94)
it.

Chris Gerardi (16:55.426)
very valuable, but the most valuable commodity is your time really in many respects. So we've created a way for people to be able to value their time and be able to use our app, invest in things that are vetted that, know, they're almost every one of them is brand new. And we manage all that we take care of all the headache. Our company takes care of the headache, what they're good at is dealing with real estate and tech. And what you're good at is enjoying your life, right? Like that's what we're trying to do.

Johnny Punish (16:55.534)
Right?

Johnny Punish (17:21.517)
Yeah. Well, we are expats over here. That's our basic objective. We're not really, I'm 61, I'm slightly older than you. You're in the game and we're going to get out of the game. know, we're trying to retire here and, you know, enjoy the fruits of the life that we worked for for 40 years. So yeah, we were not really super interested in being hands-on managing properties and, and doing all that work that's involved with that. So this sounds like a perfect way to get into the real estate market in the U S for just an ROI.

So the question I have for you is where do see the industry going in the next 10 years because I need to express this to my clients and to my listeners around the world Where are they where are they going with this? What's gonna happen in 10 years?

Chris Gerardi (18:05.826)
So, you know, once again, disclosure, I could be wrong, but, you know, I think it's fairly clear. Assets are going to be purchased on a fractional basis as we go into the future. What we're gonna realize is, and what we are already realizing, what many people have already shifted and realized is time is money and time is valuable.

Johnny Punish (18:10.037)
Yeah, it's a time.

Chris Gerardi (18:29.802)
And a person's time is limited. And so if a person can spend more time enjoying their life, and in doing the things that they want to do, and less time going through the rigor of trying to manage and facilitate too many things, well, then all leads all roads leads the same place, which is it's going to we're going to live in a world where things are fractionalized. Basically, fractionalization is community ownership. That's really all it is. It's it's Johnny, it's you.

It's me, it's thousands of other people who come together and say, we want to own this, and we want to collect on this, and we want to be able to do it very fast, very efficient. And hey, you know what, today, Johnny's out of this one, and he's into this one, and Chris is out of this. And this is going to be the world. You know, people don't always understand stocks, they don't always understand futures, bonds, things like that. Those are complicated assets. But real estate is not so complicated. Real estate is quite easy. It's

Did it appreciate or did it devalue? Are you collecting, what's your cap rate? How much are you making on your rent versus how much you pay out? It's very simple, very easy to use. And historically, it is held on through every single economic downturn no matter what. I mean, if it hasn't, we wouldn't be here today. Most wealth is built off of this. And I think what we have to realize is we can...

everybody who when you go in Johnny and you invest in an asset on our our app, you are on the cap table of that app that is that is managed. It'll your name shows up whether you own one share or 10,000 shares, you are on it. And it's in its log, you are an owner of that asset that is managed by our company. But essentially, you know, that's never been done before where people can can do that.

I see down the road people being able to borrow against these assets and collateralize them, being able to, you know, I own $40,000 of these assets, banks will come in one day and be able to lend based off of your ownership because it is legal ownership. We are regulated by the SEC. It's not like we're some rogue company that's like, hey, we're gonna do whatever we want. It's a wild west. I mean, that's not how we operate. So I believe down the road that we're gonna see horses

Chris Gerardi (20:48.44)
car collections, homes, you name it, land, farmland. It's all gonna end up here for the masses to partake. For once in the history, the masses will be able to actively partake in what has normally not been something they can partake in. That's the most amazing part. That's why I wanted to do this was because I was like, hey, let's allow people to partake in something they've never been able to do.

Johnny Punish (21:09.017)
Alright.

Johnny Punish (21:17.929)
awesome yeah I totally dig it man I think it's really awesome what you're doing and that's why I had you on today because I really really wanted to bring this subject to our our audience and make them aware of it because I think most people are not aware of this you're definitely treading on new ground you're a trailblazer for sure my friend so that's awesome yeah that's pretty cool well they called me crazy when I'm excited well

Chris Gerardi (21:35.724)
You know, that might be more like crazy to be honest with you. My wife would tell you I'm crazy!

Johnny Punish (21:44.697)
Trailblazers get called crazy, but also trailblazers make the world change and move into new efficient markets and things like that. So yeah, I applaud you for doing it. I'm looking forward to investing myself and I will be doing it myself to share that with my expat community and see how it goes. And so I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions about the market. So as an investor, should I be studying the US markets and saying, I wanna buy a house in California or do I wanna buy the one in Washington or the one in Texas?

What should I be looking for for a risk reward basis?

Chris Gerardi (22:17.548)
You know, I think the biggest thing so for like us, we initially launched it in Omaha, which doesn't seem like a place that people are like, Omaha, Nebraska. But if you look at Omaha has very low eviction rates, extremely strong economy, very good growth overall, very strong property rights for for renter or for owners of rentals. And in and so I think when we look at it, we're you know, we're doing we're doing the deep dives right now looking at okay, which markets are we going to purchase from next?

and we'll just bring them to the app for people to partake in. think the biggest thing is, what we have to look at is, think for people, once again, time is important. I think what our goal is to do is to always pick the most efficient markets that we believe are going to grow in value over the next five to seven years, regardless of what the economics go through. And then we look at that and go, let's bring these ones. They may not have a 25 % return every

quarter. But at the same time, they have strong continued growth, they have a return in your money is working for you. Versus it's sitting idle, you know, literally, when the secondary markets up and you know, when it's running now, but when we have the assets on the secondary market, once they initially go through the first offerings, you know, people are going to be able to go in and buy shares of real estate for $15 $20 $10. I mean, literally the price of like coffees.

You know, discipline is a huge piece of it, right? So when I think tell people, you know, the biggest piece, I think is just be disciplined, take action, take action, take action. The biggest step is to first take action. Once you first take action, it becomes easy. But I think those markets that we focus on are the markets that are going to be provable for our investors. And I think that at the end of the day, no matter what real estate asset you get into, it you know, you might see some declines that that's good, that could happen, right? But it is traditionally

going to move its way back up and you just have to be a disciplined person and you will get through it, right? No matter what the storm is, no matter what the storm is, if you're disciplined, you will move through it. You know, it's like the Buffalo, right? Like they go into the storm because they know that if they go into it, they're going to be done with it sooner than if they stay put. Move into it no matter what.

Johnny Punish (24:38.28)
So, I'm a long term investor, I, you know, I think Warren Buffett, believe he's from Omaha, and I was gonna ask you if I can buy a fractional piece of his house. Are we gonna be allowed to buy his house too? Can I, can I buy a fraction of his house?

Chris Gerardi (24:44.226)
Yep. Actually, you know what's funny is I got his book right here.

Chris Gerardi (24:55.342)
That would be cool. That would be cool. I think you know, as we go, we've had internal talks about it, there are strategic properties that I think are very nostalgic, that I'm like, I would love to buy these and even if they don't have a return, because a lot of these homes have covenants, you can't rent them, whatever they're higher, you know, but just being able to own a piece of say, like, Michael Jordan's home, right? Like Michael Jordan has a home that's been for sale for years, but no one will buy it.

You know, but imagine if 2000 people come together on our platform and buy it or 10,000 people. How cool is that? Right? Or Warren Buffett's property. I mean, at the end of the day, like you said, the reason Warren Buffett has done so well is because he's disciplined. He's disciplined. That's the key.

Johnny Punish (25:28.525)
Right?

Johnny Punish (25:42.135)
Yeah. I think he said, if you can't invest for 10 years, don't invest for 10 minutes, you know? So, so that's kind of how I look at my portfolio and investing. I'm very boring. mean, in my rock and roll years, I'm very exciting in my music career. I'm, you know, super aggressive and all this kind of stuff. But when it comes to investing, I'm super boring. I invest, I hold and I write it out and it's completely boring. on the other hand, I was able to build lots of wealth.

by doing that. it's yeah, the gambling part of business, that's Las Vegas stuff. You'll win a million dollars and lose a million dollars and you're putting high, high risk there. yeah, investing is boring. It's very slow. And but over time, it works really strong. And if the young people are listening to me right now, I'm an older person, I'm telling you, do the Warren Buffett thing. You invest, you hold, especially in real estate, right? I mean, if you disagree with me, please let me know.

or least my position at least but in the fractional area it sounds like to me we're going to be buying and maybe holding for five or six now yeah we could liquidate if we need the money but I think your goal should be to hold for strong returns is that right am I in the right area

Chris Gerardi (26:53.794)
Yeah, absolutely. Because if you I think that the key pieces is like, where we have where we have gotten over a major hurdle is, is, you know, the idea that, you know, we buy a property, we're going to hold it for five to seven years. Okay, great. We put that in our disclosures, because it's a possibility. But the reality is, is we can hold that asset forever. Because once that asset moves to the secondary market, it's now getting it's now getting live update feeds on property value.

So if the property value is going up, your share of that property is going to go up with it. So maybe you bought in in the primary for 10 bucks, right? But in two years, that share is showing 12, 15, $17 a share, 10 years down the road, it could be 40, it could be $50 a share, whatever it may be. You're basically enjoying your life. And yes, real estate, it's not...

It's not always the most like exciting thing out there, right? There's a lot more exciting things in real estate, right? So that's why we were like, hey, how do we make an app that's fun, that's usable, that allows people to get into real estate and they can check their portfolio every day, they know where it's at and go enjoy life, right? Like, that's what we should really be doing. But the first piece is just taking the step to get into it. And you know, putting money in every single week every month and it'll grow, it will grow.

Johnny Punish (28:20.43)
I'm going to say this, definitely going to download the app and get my KYC thing going on and do all that stuff and put my first $100 in and I'll be investing, know, dollar cost averaging into it and see what happens. And I'll report back to my people in six months, let you guys know how it's going. And maybe we can get you back on to talk about that at that time. Is that good?

Chris Gerardi (28:42.348)
Yeah, absolutely. And I would just say, know, whoever gets on there and downloads the app, like, you know, the initial properties are on there that you can invest in. just, you know, they're now live. And we're going to be adding properties as we go. And so I think that it's pretty exciting, right? It's a very new, new world. It's a new era. But I mean, I think at the end of the day, we have to move into a new world, right? We just have to.

Johnny Punish (29:04.461)
Yeah. Gotcha. OK, so let's talk about it again. What is the best way to download this? Where am I going to find this? Do I go to your website? Do I go to the Google Store? Android? What do I do? Apple? What?

Chris Gerardi (29:17.28)
You can go to the Android app, you can go to iOS, whichever you have type in real bricks, it'll pop right up. And you can download it takes a couple of minutes and not even a minute and it's done. And you can sign up very fluidly through the app. If you don't if you don't want to use an app, you can go just to the web, real bricks.com. It'll have a little login area up at the right. Or sign up, hit sign up. It's it's just as easy. I mean, it's it is. It's basically

It mimics Airbnb and Robinhood in various ways as far as like the usability of

Johnny Punish (29:52.414)
Do you offer a newsletter or any way updates for us investors on what's happening in the marketplace? We can keep up to date of what's generally happening with real bricks and what's happening in the general market.

Chris Gerardi (30:01.516)
Yep, yep. When you you invest, you'll get updates through email. We send updates on properties, property values, anything like that. Yeah, those do go out. And you know, I think in the future, as we get going more and more and grow more and more, we're going to have a lot more like investor meetings where we can we'll let people come in. And we talk about, you know, the the last five properties, how they're doing, you know, whatever it may be, and really make it to where you know, the idea is a community, right? It's community investing, right? And so

What's good for me is good for you. What's good for you is good for your partner next to you. And we all work together and create something of value for one another.

Johnny Punish (30:41.163)
Okay, great. Now on that last note, when your company in some future decides to move into the international markets, because right now you're in the US market, but it sounds to me like you have in the back of your head a game plan that can expand into other markets, whereas you can create fractional ownership in other real estate markets. For example, here in Mexico, our

Chris Gerardi (31:01.952)
absolutely.

Johnny Punish (31:03.307)
Our economy here in Mexico is really changing in the last 20 years, big time. I'm talking about when democracy came in in 2000, really changed everything. It used to be a horrible economy pre the year 2000. Now, Mexico is considered to be a top 10 economy in the world in the next 10 years. Every economist internationally says that money's flowing into this country like crazy in terms of investment money. So the properties are no longer cheap like they used to be, but

And the market's not exactly the same as the US in terms of liquidity But it's getting close because the banks are internationally owned now and they're offering mortgages and all this kind of stuff So that it's really becoming very much closer to a US economy in terms of liquidity So when you ever get to that point call me, I have a awesome property here. We can put in the portfolio That I built myself actually it's called Hasein to Echodombs.com. It's awesome. I built out of plastic bags and dirt

fully eco-friendly, it's fully booked all the time, it's a huge business. And so yeah, it's been incredible here and the appreciation has been out the door. So when you're ready for something like that, think Fractual Ocean would be cool to get that going on.

Chris Gerardi (32:10.094)
Well, you're, you're, you're, you're, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you're kind of you're ahead of it, right? Like you move somewhere else. Like, at the end of the day, once again, you know, we have to, we have to think about we have to get past some of these global barriers that we that we that we conjure up in our minds. And we say, you know, you can only buy here. And this is, I mean, could you imagine if you couldn't get, you know, there's there's sports cars that come from Italy that you have that people have to have, or, you know, Germany, or could you imagine if we just said, you know what?

You can't have a Porsche 911 anymore. It's done. can't, I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. Or you can't have this item because it comes from this, like we got to get past this as a humanity that we have to realize that, borders though they may exist, we need to be more open as far as like investing and how we can invest. There are so many areas that could be invested in that have just unlimited potential. And there's unlimited potential here in the US.

We just have to get, you know, be able to understand that like we have to create a world where we can embrace opportunity.

Johnny Punish (33:14.617)
Are you aware of any other companies in international markets in Asia or something that are doing fractional owners, or is this a uniquely US thing going on right now?

Chris Gerardi (33:23.894)
No, mean, there's companies that are trying to do it through means of like maybe some tokenization projects and stuff like that. I think overall, the biggest thing that we really sought out for when we did this was we were like, hey, we want to follow a structure. Now, the SEC has a structure, right? And so we follow that so that way, those things are set in place to protect investors.

And we don't want to bypass those things. So for us, whatever country we look at down the road, we'll definitely go in it with whatever regulation they expect. Because at the end of the day, we have to protect our investors. mean, look, what is the value of creating something if we don't have some type of protection for that thing? That's really what economies are based off of. The reason America for so long has been

you know, blue chip stock for real estate is because, you know, there's a way to protect your investments, right? There's countries that we don't want to go to, right? There's no protection laws for those people, right? Like, you could invest a bunch of money and then it's gone. I mean, this stuff happens. So, but I think down the road, yeah, absolutely. mean, whether I'm with the company or not in 10 years, I would love nothing more than to see it grow.

Johnny Punish (34:40.589)
Right.

Chris Gerardi (34:52.014)
exponentially internationally and just see people partaking in one another's assets. mean, it would be amazing to have some of these properties too, like in the Mediterranean, like you think of like all the places out there. It's crazy.

Johnny Punish (35:05.283)
Yeah, so it's a pretty exciting time for you guys. That's awesome. Well, we'll, right. Well, we're talking about it and we're here leading the edge on global thinkers.com with the global thinkers with a Z and, you know, we're, we're, looking towards the future. We want to help our expats and our digital nomads around the world win their future. And we want you to win your future, Chris. So we wish you the best of luck and best of success. Work hard, work smart, get it done.

Chris Gerardi (35:08.674)
Yeah, yeah, it's exciting and nerve wracking at the same time, you you gotta start somewhere.

Johnny Punish (35:34.871)
I'll be investing, like I say, I'll be reporting the results back to everybody and we'll get you on in about six months and we'll talk about, see where we are and what's happening. Is that cool?

Chris Gerardi (35:43.266)
That sounds awesome, man. I appreciate you having me on, Johnny. And if any of your people have anything, they can always reach out to support at realbricks.com and we'll take care of them.

Johnny Punish (35:51.481)
Gotcha, Chris. OK, man. Have a good day. We'll talk to you soon. OK.

Chris Gerardi (35:53.858)

People on this episode

Head Shot

Charles Bivona Jr.

Host