Digital Social Hour
Houston Crosta: He Bought a Bugatti Then Lost 25% Overnight | DSH #1593
29 Oct 2025
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What factors are causing the current economic instability?
We have a roller coaster economy right now.
What's causing that?
I think our president's causing that because he's a very unpredictable person, whether you like him or not.
There's a lot of people saying the middle class won't exist in our lifetime.
It's probably possible like even faster than that. I mean, we see third world countries all over the globe have dictatorships and, you know, we call it communism or whatever. But I mean, in reality, it's more so having an ultra wealthy and an ultra poor class. The absence of a middle class is kind of what sparks all that. You know, people don't fight for something if they have nothing to lose.
All right, guys, got Houston here.
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Chapter 2: How is the absence of a middle class impacting society?
Still doing a lot of buying and selling these days, man.
You know, I would say yes and no, because things are just changing on a daily basis. We have a roller coaster economy right now.
What's causing that?
I think our president's causing that. Right. Because he's a very unpredictable person, whether you like him or not. I typically would say that most days I do like him. Right. But I think there's a lot of us out there that are saying, like, what the hell's going on? Yeah.
This week, a lot of people don't like him.
Yeah, it's just so wild. Like, you know, every other day he's changing it. I'm in the automotive world, right? So for us, like the tariffs are really, really changing the market so fast. You know, I mean, I would say cars, the value of cars probably changes on a weekly basis by double digit percentages right now. At the auctions. Right. Holy crap.
Because just a couple of days ago, we have a new tariff on Japan. Right. And last week we had no tariffs on Japan. And then next week we have this tariff on this. And it's like no one knows what to do. So basically no one's selling and no one's buying.
Hmm.
So it's a standstill. I would say that that's probably 80 percent of people are on standstill. Wow. Right. There's a lot of guys like I'm one of the guys that go out, try to take advantage of the situation. And whenever there's fear in the market, right, people that have a little bit of ability can go out there and spend money and get really good deals.
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Chapter 3: What role do tariffs play in the automotive market?
it's more so having an ultra wealthy and an ultra poor class. And the absence of a middle class is, is kind of what sparks all that, you know, because there's no one, no one fights for anything. If you don't have any, I mean, Larry phrase that. People don't fight for something if they have nothing to lose, right? But we, as the middle class, like in America, a lot of people have a lot to lose.
So we stand up for our stuff. We want our rights. We want our guns. We want our this. We want our cars and our private schools and all the luxuries that we have here. But, you know, we're willing to fight, right? A lot of places aren't.
A lot of people aren't. I grew up middle class, you know, and I go back to that old neighborhood and the house I grew up in is like a million dollars now.
Think about that. Like, think about like my parents, it's actually really similar. In 1988, my parents bought a house for 112,000 here in Las Vegas. That house today is worth eight 50, right? 2,400 square foot house. You know, it's in a place called desert shores. So a little bit older community now, right. I was obviously born, you know, in the eighties and, uh,
the same people can't live there. Like my mom worked in casinos, right? And my dad manufactured textiles. So like that, those same exact people couldn't live in that same exact house, right? Like what is our world coming to? You know, where are the people that are working at the casinos?
Like let's say here in Vegas, they're probably making, you know, dealers, I would say make between 80 and 120,000 a year, depending on the properties they work at, because there's a lot of it's tips. Right. And I think this new law where they don't tax tips is going to help them. Right. Cause that's like a huge bonus and not paying tax on that.
But at $120,000 a year, I mean, you really net like two grand a week. How could you pay a $4,500 mortgage?
Yeah, when you break it down like that, it's pretty mind-blowing.
And where do you get the $150,000 to put down? How could you, as making $120,000 a year, save $150,000 to put down?
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Chapter 4: How are hedge funds influencing the housing market?
That can't go out of style. It can't evolve out of living, right? So at the end of the day, that's probably the safest investment. And the market won't go down if you don't sell. So if the hedge funds have 60% of the standing inventory in Las Vegas... They don't have to sell it for less.
And then people will just be like, well, I guess I'm never going to get a better deal, so I might as well buy now. So the market's stable. Is that true? They have 60% of Vegas? No, I'm just saying it's an estimated thing for these people to buy out. They own a lot of Vegas. They probably own 6% to 8% of Vegas, if I had to give an actual estimation.
But if they're the ones selling or buying the homes... The amount of money that they control, they can control any market, right? Like they can control Bitcoin. If they just buy up as much Bitcoin as they want, it will never drop again because the retail investors, they're the ones that panic. BlackRock doesn't panic, right?
They control the stock market. That's already been proven.
Correct. So what market's next? Hmm. Cars. Really anything, any tangible assets, right? Homes. I mean, BTC is a big one that they're getting into. I mean, institutional investors are buying up Bitcoin like crazy now. So that's definitely something that they're looking at at all times, right? Damn, that's nuts.
So are you optimistic about the real estate market in Vegas or no?
You know, I go back and forth, right? Like I've lived here my whole life and living in Vegas my whole life. I used to, like, I'll give you an example. My first house that I bought after I started my business was in Henderson. It was about 8,500 square feet in a guard gated neighborhood. And I paid 1.2 million for it. It was a pretty big stretch for me at the time.
And I remember thinking like, man, this is going to be a good investment for me. It was built in the late 90s. So it wasn't too old. Right. But it wasn't like brand new. That house today, they just transacted on that exact same house. So I bought the house in 2017. So it transacted in 2024, 3.6 million. Whoa. It went up three times in value in seven years.
Wow.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do younger generations face in home ownership?
So I use my marketing ability to create a restaurant concept that was like very centered on cars and, and just really cool like events and car shows and stuff. So it was a little unique. Right. Right. But, opening up a restaurant is probably the hardest business in the world.
It's got to be. I mean, the margins are single digit percentages out here.
You also don't have control, right? Like, especially in Vegas, you have to think like, let's just say there's a shortage on chicken wings and you sell wings. Who do you think is going to get the chicken wings that are actually available? Not you. MGM. MGM. Exactly. They have the allocation for everything. So you're always third tier, right?
As an independent restaurant, you're third tier because first it goes to the biggest buyers, which is going to be the casinos, right? Second is going to be the corporate stores. Like, you know, most of those guys have distribution agreements, right? Like Chili's and, you know, Applebee's and whatnot. But... Chicken wings are chicken wings. They all come from the same place, right?
So first it's MGM, then it's Chili's, and then it's you. And most likely, you won't get any of the leftovers because there won't be any. Wow. So you could just be facing a shortage of food as a normal restaurant, right? And it doesn't matter. Screw you. That's what they say, right? Because... They don't really have to take care of you.
I didn't know they dealt with that law. That's good to know.
Here locally we do. California would be different, right? Because they don't have global corporations like the MGM that feed 400,000 people a day. Holy shit. Think about how many people come to Vegas every weekend. Right. Like the statistics are, I mean, 50 or 60 million people travel here a year. So what is there, 52 weeks in a year?
So more than a million people a week come here and every single person that's coming here is eating a few meals a day. And usually when you're on vacation, you eat more. Right. So just the logistics of obviously eating are crazy in the city. Yeah.
I heard the casinos make more now of the dining than the gambling. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How is the repossession crisis affecting car owners?
They bought them all. They went full blown corporate everything and did everything in their power to keep the people traveling to Las Vegas inside the building. to maximize the revenue, right? They laid off, you know, 30% of their support staff. There's no concierge anymore at most of the hotels.
Some of the really expensive hotels still have the service, but your basic property, you know, Luxor and, you know, Luxor Excalibur, Manly Bay, they don't have concierge services. They don't have guest services. It's no different than walking into the Hilton now, just fancier and they have gaming, right?
And so they've done a really good job of cutting all those people out to keep people inside the casino.
Yeah.
Is that because private equity came in during the pandemic? Well, I think that the margins for everybody changed, right? And the casino margins, they have obviously shareholders. They want to make people richer than they are, right? Why would you buy MGM stock if it's not going to go up? The only way to make it go up is to show a better P&L, right? Or to show vision.
So the better P&L is lay off the people that aren't required, right? And so that's going to be the most of the support staff.
uh interim housekeeping now at some resorts so like if you stay for three days to only clean your room once wow right and and you have to request it right like that's a big thing that's crazy so they they've laid off so many people that that do housekeeping and all the cleanliness like vegas is not the service city anymore vegas is like the do-it-yourself go have fun city that's uh that's the change and we were just talking about how you want to move now is that is that why
It used to be like when I bought my house for $1.2 million, that same house in California or any other big city, coastal city, was three to four to five times more. Well, now a lot of people left California and came to Vegas. So the prices in Vegas went up. And I argue that the prices in California have kind of come down.
So they're really meeting to where they're almost at the same level, right? So if that same $3.6 million house in Vegas is 3.6 to maybe even four or 5 million, right? It's kind of negligible at that level. Why would we live in this city? It's 111 degrees today, right? It's dry. There's dust everywhere. It It's not really enjoyable for the traffic.
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Chapter 7: What is the future of the rental market in America?
It didn't pass. Oh, it didn't pass. No, they didn't vote on it in the Senate meeting. So now in either one year or two years, they're going to look at it again.
Whoa.
Right. So, yeah, obviously Mark's going to move here if his entire business operations move here. You know, if there's opportunity, I definitely think there's way less opportunity in California now because there's just so much red tape. I mean, I feel so sorry for those people that their houses burned down because it's going to be so hard to rebuild one. Right.
They're going to have to choose to move somewhere else. Right. We don't have those problems here in Vegas. You want to build a new house, follow the permits, takes a couple months, you build your house. Right. If you want to start a business, go down to the city, you follow some paperwork, pretty much a business owner in a week. Right. Like we have a lot of benefits to live in Vegas.
But when it comes to people that are like huge businesses, like let's say the owner of a multinational corporation, why would he move here? You know, like houses in a neighborhood here called the Summit.
are like 30 million dollars i heard that's apparently the uh it's kind of crazy no that's nuts apparently the panda express founder lives here yeah he lives in mcdonald highlands i've been to andrew's house he's a multi-billionaire right crazy i mean there's a lot of billionaires that live here um andrew lives in a house that is um super cool right but i think he has uh some some roots here
He owns the Waldorf Astoria downtown on the Strip, and he owns a lot of big businesses. Obviously, he owns all the Panda Expresses, right? And he has roots in Hawaii, I think, as well. But he moved here much before the pandemic. He's been here for a long time.
Okay. So he was just here already.
Yeah. He's been here a while, but he's a really nice guy. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: How is technology shaping the future of transportation?
It's like almost like a skillset, right? Like you can argue that there's equal skillset in a professional NFL player and the frugalness of Stefan. Okay. Cause it takes this, it takes someone so dedicated to being cheap that is out of control.
When I first moved here four years ago, I was broke. Like I spent all the money I had on my six month deposit because I had shit credit and I would run into grandma at Sushi Neko like every week. It's like a $20 all you can eat sushi buffet. I'm like, why is he here?
Yeah. And like, you want to, I want to argue with him saying that like, don't you know that all you can eat sushi is like 60% this and farm raise and very unhealthy and all this stuff. Like, If you can afford to eat at Nobu every night, don't you want the highest quality fish? Don't you want the best food for your body?
Aren't you doing the opposite for yourself, being able to afford the quality food in the world and then eating junk instead by choice? But there's just no getting through to him.
He just had Bill Perkins on. I was watching it. And that guy's like the opposite to his thesis of a lifestyle. So we'll see if he changes from that one.
I don't know. I don't think he'll change for anything, right? What is crazy, though, is that there are some people out there in the world, like Graham, that will buy anything if it's a good deal. Right. Like Graham bought a 2005 Ford GT. Right. And I don't think Graham drives his 2005 Ford GT. Right.
But I think he bought that car because he knew like real estate, it was going to go up in value like quite a bit. And so, you know, I don't know exactly what he paid, but when he did buy that car, the market was in the mid 200s for that car. And that was probably about five, four or five years ago. Now the market for that car is about 500,000. Damn.
But I honestly have never seen Graham sit in that car. And I've known him since he's owned the car, so I don't think he's ever driven it. I can't picture him driving that. But to think, he eats $20 all-you-can-eat sushi, and he has a half-million-dollar car sitting in the garage. Does it make any sense?
Shout out to Graham, though. One of a kind, one of a kind. When you're flipping cars at this point, is it all just gut feeling? Or do you have a process for, I guess, picking the cars and everything?
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