Manny Varas On Building For Billionaires & Why It Won't Happen In California

**Adam Carolla** (0:00)
Well, in this episode, Millionaire Builder, interesting guy, Manny Varas joins me, talk some super high-end building. Also, Elisha Krauss has the news, we'll do that right after this.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
From Carolla One Studios in Glendale, California, this is The Adam Carolla Show. Adam's guest today, the Billionaire's Builder, Manny Varas, plus the news with Elisha Krauss, and now, Adam Carolla.

**Adam Carolla** (0:36)
Yeah, get it on. Got to get on the choice. We got to mandate you. Get it on. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for telling a friend.
Manny Varas is joining me. Manny and I, well, we seem to have a lot in common. He just got back from Pebble Beach. I just got back from Pebble Beach. He likes building. He's a contractor. I don't know, are you technically a contractor?

**Manny Varas** (0:59)
I am. I am a licensed general contractor for 20 years.

**Adam Carolla** (1:02)
And builds incredible homes for very interesting people. And there's a lot of, and there's some crossover between the whole car culture and the homes as well.
And it's something I'd heard about, but I didn't know you were involved with it. So tell me.

**Manny Varas** (1:17)
Thank you, Adam. Thank you for having me on.
We've been focused on building for billionaires in the last two years. We've seen a huge transition of billionaires from California relocating to Florida. We currently have about a billion dollars in real estate under construction, primarily for a lot of known celebrities, a lot of known names. For the first time now, we're introducing the reverse engineering of a home by introducing a Pini Farina designed home the first time in a century, where an automotive brand creator has been able to transcend into luxury living, and we're doing limited edition six homes, completely designed, built, and furnished by Pini Farina without a lot. Anywhere in America, they submit the lot to us, we approve it, and we provide the turnkey project.

**Adam Carolla** (2:09)
So they're a design house, Italian, responsible for all the great Italian automobiles you love so much. I mean, I'm not an expert. You'll see it written Pini Farina on the side of a Ferraris and other cars, but they're designers.

**Manny Varas** (2:27)
Correct. So if you look at every LaFerrari or every Alfa Romeo, at basically almost every supercar created by Ferrari, they were the designer of each one of those supercars.

**Adam Carolla** (2:38)
Yes. I mean, starting in the 50s, 96 years ago. Oh, so we're going back to the 40s and then before. Wow.
Yeah. So they're, I mean, they're responsible for all the greatest designs ever in automotive world. And now they're going to take their talents to the construction world or to the to the single family home world. And you're going to be executing that?

**Manny Varas** (3:07)
Correct. So I went to them. I was going to do it with Giorgio Armani a few years back. I wanted to reverse engineer the process of a tailor-made turnkey home, unfortunately.
We did Giorgio's first project in the US in Florida. And then we were going to do a custom home, a reverse engineered, fully designed product with Giorgio Armani. He got sick, unfortunately, and passed. And we weren't able to do it with him. So with Pini Farina being the iconic brand, we thought of creating iconic homes, one per city, six homes. And the lot is submitted to us. And then we approve each one individually. The space, the space.

**Adam Carolla** (3:49)
And are they going to vary a lot in size or is that just kind of predetermined?

**Manny Varas** (3:57)
It's predetermined. It's 8,000 square feet. And it's six homes that the exterior will be really collectible artwork. So each one of those homes will be one per city.

**Adam Carolla** (4:09)
So 8,000 is a good size to go, well, this is a big home, but it's not so big that it's kind of unwieldy or something. But it's definitely a lot of luxury can be squeezed into 8,000 square feet.

**Manny Varas** (4:25)
Exactly. 8,000 square feet fits once in a 20,000 square foot lot. So it's a reasonable size lot. And you're able to have five bedrooms, comfortable living spaces, but it's not enormous. So you don't have 10, 12, 15, 20,000, which becomes a little bit unreasonable and unmanageable, especially it's going to be a second or third home.

**Adam Carolla** (4:46)
You've been building since what year?

**Manny Varas** (4:49)
2005 I received my GC license.

**Adam Carolla** (4:51)
Uh-huh. Is it a family thing?

**Manny Varas** (4:54)
No, I started myself.
I got my general contractor license at 24 years old. I'm 46 now. And I started just doing small apartments. So I was doing a lot of the work myself. Actually, one of my first projects was a government housing project where it was $10,000 a unit in one of the most violent areas in the country. I was in, is in Miami during that time called Liberty Square Apartments. And I got the bid because no one else bid on it because they were scared to go into the area.