Podcasts about homeunion

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with Nani Narayanan Srinivasan, who is the leader, Data Sciences at HomeUnion and has been in the IT industry for over four decades.In this conversation, Nani talks about:Studying metallurgy and getting exposed to programming to design a blast furnace.Wanting to be in the systems software, Telecom and R&D side of computing.Opportunity to work on a project which was more of R&D, to implement a hot standby and takeover algorithm for mainframes.Realizing the need to understand a client's business side, learning banking as a domain.How the thinking process is similar across solving business problems or systems software solutions.The need to understand why something needs to be done to be able to think strategically and understand the business.Handling time constraints for a consultant, who is expected to solve problems in a short time.Prioritize what is to be done, before jumping into how it is to be done.A ‘horror story' when a design worked in principle and in the test environment, but resulted in a ‘race' condition that led to the system being unusable in a production environment, and how this problem was resolved.Considerations of teams to be scalable: how this may be different based on the size of the company.How to bring efficiency with remote teams, or even when the team members are not of a homogeneous background.The need to understand various members, backgrounds and the business context to build high performance teams.The Prostyle model explained in the book Producing results with others.Career tips: for new entrants to the field : a combination of data science, bio-studies, to get into analytics or data science careers; or security for those looking at software application solutions.Data science as a technique will get embedded in everything we do, like internet has now become a basic component in most solutions.Learning Python, Kotlin, R etc for those interested in programming.For the mid-career professionals, understand the business side and go with the flow of business; in whatever you do, contribute to the revenue side of business, for an assured career.Many technologies are coming back - like old wine in new bottles.Entrepreneur and seasoned technology professional with senior leadership roles in Financial Services (Real Estate Investment, Banking/ Mortgage), High Tech R&D, Telecommunications and SI Consulting. Led successful delivery of large and complex engagements in product development, data sciences and modeling, CRM, online banking, web applications, and mortgage servicing – many with original contributions to Intellectual Property. Guided teams implementing over 200+ industrial strength websites. A strategic thinker, designer and architect of key products with hands on practical delivery approach.You can reach him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nanin/

Searching here, searching there...How do investors find rental properties that align with their financial goals? Is there a way to provide them access to these assets? Today, I am talking with Dan Ganguly, president of HomeUnion and founder of INVESTimate. As an entrepreneur, he’s always looking for a new solution to an existing problem. So, if a realtor needs a feed for homeowners, a property manager needs a feed of investment properties to present to potential buyers. You’ll Learn... [04:05] Questions for Investors: What’s your budget? Risk preference? Age and stage in life? Do you need cash? [05:13] Two Brands Connected: HomeUnion’s where investors search for properties; INVESTimate’s where property managers and realtors work with investors. [06:30] Business Model Change: Internet-only to tool that increases engagement between property managers dealing with investors. [07:43] Where to Start: Build a relationship sooner than later in the sales cycle process. [09:00] Help property managers build better Websites as a front door for people. [13:53] What does the local property manager do? Signs up with service, pays monthly fee, and puts on private/white labels. [14:58] Realtor gets MLS feed for home buying; property manager gets MLS feed with intelligent filters and big data for investment buying. [15:15] Everybody knows their #1 prospect is their existing customer because they already know, like, and trust you. [16:12] Other Options: MLS, Zillow, and similar Websites focus on finding stuff (schools, pools, etc.) that get people into a neighborhood. [16:35] INVESTimate: Offers big data platform with 110 million properties, 20 years of transactions, 200,000 neighborhoods, and more than 9 million rentals. [19:30] Is everything 100% accurate? No. Property is highly individual. [20:15] INVESTimate: Investors get best of both worlds when making a transaction. [21:45] Different risk-reward gradients/categories help people make the right decision. [26:45] Feedback from Property Managers: How has this changed their business? [32:05] Bottom Line: Business owners make money, get a door, and much more. Tweetables It’s a fish net to grab fish, and then we nurture the fish until they buy. Your #1 prospect is an existing customer because they already know, like, and trust you. We can’t force them to buy, but give them a reason and product to buy. Bottom Line: Business owners make money and get a door. Resources HomeUnion INVESTimate MLS Zillow Realtor.com DoorGrowClub Facebook Group DoorGrowLive Transcript Jason: Welcome, DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrow Show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing your business and life, and you are open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you’re crazy for doing it, you think they’re crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high-trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management businesses and their owners. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I’m your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now, let’s get into the show. And today, I have a very special guest. I’m hanging out here with Don Ganguly. Don is the CEO of Homeunion, is that correct? Don: Yeah. I’m the president of Homeunion and founder of Investimate. Jason: President and the founder of Investimate. Don, I want to welcome you to being here on the Door Grow Show. Don: I’m glad to be here. Jason: Don, you have an interesting background. You have a lot of experience in entrepreneurism, I think people would be really interested here some tidbits from you today, and some insights. I’m excited to get it into your business and service. But let’s start with you. Can you give us a little background on you and just some of your experience and what lead you to where you are now in business? Don: Sure. I’m sort of a vocationally reformed engineer. This is my third company. The last one we did was actually an outsourcing service company for mortgage banks and services. We were actually helping originators doing the big boom and people [...] were getting a loan. When everything fell apart we were helping the services service those loans and try to keep people in their houses. We touched I think over $75 billion of service. That company ended up getting sold to Oracle, to a banking software company. But it was the progenitor to this whole Homeunion and Investimate thing that we founded because we were able to see all these properties all over the country that had some pretty decent prices and a good rental price ratio. When we looked at that, we figured there are all these homes that made good investments and people that live in the coast don’t get access to these assets. We looked at that and said, “Is there a way that we could provide access to rental properties the way people buy stocks and bonds?” If you look at the way rental properties are bought, we base them a little how homes are bought. So people go to a listing site, they get a list of properties, they do some back and beyond below calculations, figure out the rent, go to the neighborhood, or pick up the neighborhood, call a realtor, and then bounce around and try to find the right property that they like. If you’re look at an analog to that and say, “Hey, if you go to a wealth advisor and say, ‘I’ve got this much money to invest, what should I buy?’” The wealth advisors are going to say, “Okay. I got some stocks, here’s the idea, and here’s the score, here’s Apple, here’s Facebook, which one of these do you think you want in your portfolio and let’s go through a list.” The question they ask you often is, “Hey, what’s your budget? What’s your risk preference? What’s your age and state in life? Do you need cash?” And then they put a portfolio together that’s got a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it all enlines to your financial goal. We took that playbook and we brought it to this Investimate product that we built which says, “We can ask investors the same type of questions about their real estate investments and then let the system go out and find the right assets and build them a portfolio or a set of assets that need those financial criteria.” The non trivial exercise because to do that, we actually had to calibrate everything from a risk and reward stand point. Right? How risky is this house? And what’s in that house type of thing. That’s how we came to this. As an entrepreneur, you’re always looking for a new solution to an existing problem. Often, the existing stakeholders don’t have the answers. You got to think of something a little bit different. That’s how we got into this business. Jason: Help us understand these two brands, how they’re connected first and what they are. Just the overview. Don: No, I’m happy to. Homeunion used to be a retail platform where investors can come in and basically search for properties and invest. The first incarnation of Homeunion, we were actually serving as overall asset managers for these properties and then farming out the actual work to property managers on the ground. And then last year we made the call, it was becoming too big a business for us. We’ve done over 200 other transactions and we didn’t want to be in property management. We ended up giving those properties out to the property managers that were managing it, productized it and provided it as a platform for property managers and realtors that are working with investors. The product itself has been tested for four and a half years, it’d done $200 million of transaction within 5% of forecast and a good use by investors to buy properties all around the country, highly exercised. What we just see is the business model from being an internet only model that brought consumers to my front door to a product that would then serve people like property managers who are actually dealing with investors day to day, giving them a tool to engage with their investors. That’s the connection between the two. The Homeunion brand is an internal user of the investment product. So any leads that come in there are fed to our property management partners in various locations because we are not in the business. When we engage with that investor and they want to buy a property, then that property is managed by one of our partners. Both of them actually feed into the advantage of the property management tool. Jason: Let’s take our typical listeners. We’ve got a property management business owner, they got a small business, maybe they’ve got 100-200 doors on their management. They’re wanting to grow their business, they’re trying to deal with team changes, and staffing, and operations, and trying to systemize things for the first time ever. And then we have these solutions available that they can use to support in bringing investors. Where would they start with your services? Don: Yes. If I look at businesses such as yours and others, you’re helping them grow doors. How do you grow doors? You grow doors by finding more investors and having investors buying more doors, right? The property manager either at the bottom of the food chain which is that when the investors already bought that property, then they put their hand up and compete with four other property managers and say, “I’m the best guy in this market and you should come and put your property with me.” Or they can be more proactive and go up the food channel and up that funnel and have a conversation with the investor when the investor starts looking for that property. Be early in the solutions process. What happened to them is if you’re at that point in the fulcrum then you are actually able to participate in the property management process more naturally rather than doing it after the fact. Jason: If you’re part of this process earlier in the sales cycle then they’re going to have this relationship with you that’s already set and you’re by default mostly going to get the management contract. Don: You got it. Because you've been partnering with them ahead of time. At the same token, let me just take the other side of the coin there, the good work that you’re doing and others are doing is that saying, “Okay, listen, you need to market your business in some fashion. You need to get traffic on your website. You need to put content up.” There are various stakeholders that are helping property managers build better websites, you have a business in that, and a better front door for people to come in. When those people come in, then what do you have for them? That’s where we come in. I’ll give you a simple analog. If you’re a realtor, what do you need? You need an idea speed to your local MLS. Otherwise you can’t show any property. When a company comes in and says, “Hey, I want to buy from you.” If you have a website that doesn’t show any properties or you don’t have an ability to send that buyer of homes to buy then you can’t participate. It’s a minimum stake for a realtor. Jason: [...] tool. Don: If I am an “investor realtor” and that sort of property management, if I’m catering to investors then I need an ability to serve up investment properties or properties that are more likely to be good investment. Or put another way, I need to give you an investment lens through which to look at these properties so that you can then engage in buying a rental property through my system. If I don’t have that then I’m back to the bottom of the food chain because I’m searching here, I’m searching there, I’m doing all of these. If a realtor needs a feed for homeowners, I think a property manager needs a feed of investment properties that it can present to its potential buyer, if the property manager wants to jump up the food chain. That’s what Investimate provides. If you’re a property manager in a particular market and we’re in 15 or 16 markets around the country, we have real time connections to the local lifting services, what we would do is we would white label Investimate for your website so it would say, “ABC Property Manager” with your logo and your color on the front. When you use Door Grow or another service to drive investors to your website, then they come in and they have a way to search for rental properties in your patch or around the country, if you allow them to. Because you still get a referral fee for that and engage with you in that fashion. That’s one part of it. The second part is if you look at the realtors and I go back to the home buying because everyone gets that business. If you go to the home buying end of the business, what happens? The realtors are all over that bill when it reels its head. When a home buyer says I want to buy, you have a short window in which to grab that person and about 20 realtors are all over it from leads, from various places. The name of the game and how quickly can I get that person. On the investment side, nobody wakes up and says, “I just have to buy rental property in the next 24 hours. Otherwise I’m going to have a hissy fit of some kind.” That doesn’t quite work that way. When people make that decision saying, “Hey, maybe I should be in real estate, I know a lot of wealth is built that way. I should be out of the stock market, or I’ve already bought two properties, I think it’s time for me to buy another one. I got some excess cash.” What they need is a steady dive of stuff that fits their preferences and in nurturing. It’s very different from the home buying. The investment platform actually comes with a set of campaign management and a set of investor support services. When you’re under Investimate, and you’re a customer of ABC Property Management. So you come in and say I’m Jason. You register you start using the site, we call you and say, “Jason, we’re investment support with ABC Property Management, we’re here to help you use the system and help you understand what’s in here.” You get acclimatized with the system, you understand what it is, we get an idea of your preferences and the system also captures your preferences. Now, you’ve told me you like sci-fi movies or romcom and I now keep sending you scifi and romcom till one day you watch that movie, because that’s how investors work. They drip feed them until they put their hand up and say, “That’s probably interesting.” Now I got to buy box. Once I get that buy box, then I call ABC Property Manager and say, “Hey, I’ve got Jason who’s got X amount to invest. He’s looking in Austin. This is sort of his buy box, this is the sort of the property he’s looking for. Please help him out and do the local due diligence.” We serve that lead up at that point. It’s the website, it’s a set of intelligence filter that connects to the local listing service, and it’s a whole analytics lens that allows them to search like they would search with stocks and bonds. I can get more into the data side of it, it’s much deeper than that. To answer your question what does that local property manager do? He signs up with the service, it’s a small monthly fee, and he private labels it, white labels it on his website, and he’s off to the races. The way we make money, really, most of it is from when there’s a successful transaction. What we ask for them is to load whatever lead customers they have into that proprietary database that always stays there on and then these people as they come in, it’s a fishnet to grab fish, and then we nurture those fish ‘til they buy. It’s a long term way to keep their brand in front of customers and leads and others. I’ll tell you something that a lot of the property managers are working with, not only loading customers, they’ll think, “Hey, here is a whole bunch of people we touched in the last five years. We didn’t do business with them but we touched them in some fashion. I want those registered to me.” And a lot of them wake up and are prospect of buying stuff. All because once you see the product then they’ll say, “Yeah. I’m interested and I will use this to buy something.” That’s what we bring to the tables. What a realtor gets from a strict MLS feed for home buying, a property manager gets an MLS feed with a bunch of intelligent filters and big data for investment buying. That’s what we’re doing. Jason: I love the idea. Everybody listening knows or should know that their number one prospect is your existing customer. They already know you, trust you, and like you. You’re already probably managing a property for them. They’re one of the most likely to do business with you again, and if you have opportunities, a property’s available and they’re already investors, it would be a very easier thing to get them into an additional property. They’re going to have a high level of trust with you. If you have this easy pull of properties that they could see and view and they’re getting dripped, and they’re getting notified, and they’re in your funnel and system here, then eventually something is going to grab them. They’re going to go, “Hey, this looks like a deal I could sink my teeth into. I’m going to go for this.” For the skeptics that are listening, you’ve got the property managers that also do real estate and they’ve already got the MLS and they’re like, “Wow, why don’t I just put the MLS on.” And they can just look for property, any property. Let’s really clarify the difference between just having the MLS and having the Investimate tool. Don: Great question. The MLS or Zillow or Realtor.com or any of these sites, are geared towards you looking for school pools, stuff that gets you into a neighborhood to live in. What we did is we created a big data platform where we have 110 million properties, we have the entire US Housing Stock, we have 20 years of transactions. We have 200,000 neighborhoods, we have an initiative here with University of California where we collect over 9 million rentals all over the internet so we could put that into our model, and we do a couple of different things with it. We process over $200 billion of properties to bill them out. What we do with it is first thing we’ve done is we calibrated neighborhoods from A to D as a neighborhood investment grading. Think of this as a bond grading so the D is not, we’re not in D neighborhood. C is not necessarily saying it’s a bad neighborhood, it just says it’s a neighborhood that’s a little bit more volatile, you get in with the lower quantum of money, it’s a high yield property, that neighborhood property isn’t going to give you as much growth. But you can pull me a portfolio depending on what else you’re trying to buy. An E neighborhood has a higher quantum of investment. It’s a more expensive neighborhood, view is not going to be that great, and you are going to see a lot more growth. The question is should I buy Apple stock at $800 and buy five units of Apple stocks or should I buy something that’s $50 and buy hundred units of it? Or should I do a little bit of both? We’ve given them a risk reward calibration so they can look at both of these things. Then we forecast, we have a model that estimates the rent. We have a rent valuation model, we have a cascade waterfall where we compare to [...] and a bunch of other things to say here’s a range of the rent. We then estimate the price and see if it’s above or below what we model the price to be at. Based on that we come up with a big range on their property. Then, we provide a con of rich neighborhood information on the renter. If you go to an investment, you’ll see how much money do the renters make, what’s the average income, how come they can afford the rent, where are the rents on this neighborhood, am I an outlier rent? Once my renter goes, “I’ll never be able to fulfill it because I’m the only guy in that neighborhood where my renter’s paying higher among everybody.” There’s a ton of good strategic data and there’s price trends and rent trends on that neighborhood. When investors go in, it’s a shame when you look at the stock. What’s my risk in this stock? What’s the previous growth has been? What’s my dividend play? What had done historically? What is it expected to do? What other research can I get around it? It’s that one place where all that information is encapsulated. The potential rental property buyers are doing what [...]. They’re going to go to Zillow, find new property, we’re doing a back of the napkin, going to a rental meter, finding the rent and then coming back, going to a realtor, looking at the neighborhood, they don’t like it, go to another one. We put all of that into one piece on the back of big data. Like in many model, is everything 100% accurate? No. Property is highly individual. You and I may be living next door to each other and you’ve done a lot of great things in your property. You may be a little bit different than mine. How do we do that? The property manager solved that last mile problems. The model, the data helps them create a buy box, instead of guard rails, instead of neighborhood, it’s a type of property. And then the property manager goes and then says, “Yes, the data is right on this one. The renter’s exactly what we said.” or “You know what, this property is gutted on the inside and it’s not going to work.” It’s a combination of that site, of the platform, and the local property manager at the point of purchase. Investimate, you get the best of both in terms of making a transaction. Now, why is the property manager the best partner? Because he or she has to manage that property afterwards. They’re not going to go in and say yeah, the rent’s going to be $2,000, no problem. The moment it closes, then they come back and say the rent’s $1,500, that’s the beginning of the end as far as their whole credibility goes. All that big data is underlying the investment lens of [...], just going in that a little bit more. When we look at the MLS, we pull the listing services every 30 minutes. It’s real time. We apply 50 to 60 different filters to pull stuff in. We exclude stuff. If they’re common, if we don’t like them, we exclude those things, exclude D neighborhood. There’s a set of filters that go in, then we [...] the rich data, then there’s a que where a set of eyeballs do a quality check. Then, it makes it into the platform. It’s a highly curated investment focused platform that’s available for the property manager to showcase to his or her client. Jason: Alright, that was a great explanation. Basically, what I’m hearing is this is like MLS. It includes all the MLS stuff but it’s better. It includes more tools, more resources geared specifically towards the investor, and they’re able to make decisions. This is maybe a random question but I’m really curious about these different gradients or different categorizations that you have of risk reward and how are people making this decision whether they want As or Ds? Don: It really depends on the risk profile, at the end of the day. If you go for a C property, when do you buy a Triple C bond? A Triple C bond is a high yield bond for sure, because it’s not an A bond. But when you buy Triple C bond, you also know that there could be defaults, there could be things that wreck your returns. You’re getting that high yield to compensate for the risk. When you buy a Triple A bond, it’s more deterministic. In a higher end neighborhood, you’ve got rents that are not quite as high to the ratio of the property price, but you’ve got renters that tend to be more stable, that have been there longer period of time, and their homes tend to appreciate. But it requires more money to get in. It all depends in the investor’s personal preferences, are they looking for money now, are they looking more to build a portfolio and after 15 years when it’s all paid off that’s [...]. Are they looking for growth where they wanna spin around and flip it in five years? That’s a whole different discussion, they you go after more growth properties. You need at least five years for real estate before you cover all your transaction costs, or three plus years. It just totally depends on the investment and their requirements. They might buy some properties for cash flow, they might buy some for growth, and they might buy some that’s in between. We hear investors say hey, I need cash flow, that’s my number one determinant. Other investors might say I don’t really need any money right now, but I wanna build up a portfolio that will grow and be safe. Others will say I need to cover my mortgage, and maybe make a little bit of money, then the balance in the middle, but I really need properties that are going to appreciate. I don’t really care about cash flow, but I don’t want to be out of pocket. Those decisions then drive the type of properties, neighborhoods, locations, cities they end up with. Jason: In your platform, curious, what do you see being the most popular for the investors that are typically using this with property managers in that categorization? Don: Where people buy, 40% is what I call the B neighborhoods, 40% are on the C neighborhoods which are the high yield neighborhoods, and 20% are the As. As are obviously more expensive, and your buy will shrink when you get to the A neighborhood. That’s roughly what I see. Jason: Got it. This would obviously work for non-property managers that are using it. Maybe their intention is just to use and look at this for their own stuff, or to look for flips, or turnkeys, or different types of deals than just some sort of long term management situation. Don: It would work for realtors, any realtors that’s dealing with investors, they are also using the platform. We’ve got a number of realtors that signed up. The realtor piece is a little bit different. I’d sell you a home and you’re not going to buy another home from me for the next 7 to 10 years typically, I’m not going to come every year and sell you a home. Once I sell you a home, if I’m smart, I know you could be a potential investor. I say hey, if you’re looking for rental properties now, here’s a site that gives you local and national rental properties, and I’ll help you out with it. For the realtor, it becomes a cross sell. For a property manager, it’s an upsell, it’s one more property or a new guy coming in. But for the realtor it’s a cross sell to a customer or lead that already spent the money getting that customer or the lead. Now you say what else can I get out of their wallet? And this product does that. In terms of flippers, we’re not really geared towards flippers. We’re not showing the big distressed assets out there that you can find and rehab. The big thing for the flippers are rehab numbers. How much do I have to put into this property to actually make money on it? I’m buying it $40,000 on the market, I put $20,000 in it so I’m already in $20,000. I can make another $20,000 because I can sell it at market. That requires on the ground running around and understanding what those rehab cost. They can use the system to identify stuff, I’m sure. But at the end of the day, I think these are people driving around neighborhoods or trying to find distressed assets that need that. There’s not an inordinate focus and people on that on that platform, just because our partners are not really chasing those types of deals. We need a partner on the ground for this, solving the last model. Any investor can come in and use it for sure. Jason: Property managers that are already working with you and using your system in doing this, what sort of changes or feedback or results have you been hearing from them? What are they noticing and how has this changed their business? Don: One thing a lot of them are noticing is that a lot of their customers or their leads are waking up and they are engaged in looking at properties. There’s two, three things they’re saying. One is they’re making offers and new properties, in some cases they’re selling properties to the system which helps the property manager get a listing. They get that listing, and if the investor is selling the property, they can get to keep the property management because it’s a rental property that they’re selling it as and they’re not kicking out the renter going to a homeowner. I think a lot of people like that because there’s no erosion or churn of their portfolio from that perspective. Jason: What’s happening is even though properties are selling, which would normally turned into a property management business, they’re able to retain the management contracts and keep the tenants in place. Don: That’s right. Jason: Love it. Don: For those investors that are willing to do that, there’s some that will want to sell in the open market for whatever reason. I think if we can increase the velocity of this, and as more and more people get connected to the investment network when you push something into that, it goes across, gets eyeballs everywhere. It may move a lot faster because the investment on the other end will want a rental property that’s already rented with a track record of history from that property manager, because the property manager will be able to give us what’s been happening in the last two or three years in performance on this property. That becomes a lot more attractive than to buy a new one and then do all this stuff to it. Jason: So this is a proven property, they’re able to see that it’s rent rolled effectively, and this extends the reach then of this ability far beyond what the local MLS would provide because investors would be out of state and beyond are able to see this opportunity. Don: And realtors are not that interested in selling rental properties to investors. The MLS and stuff like that, they get the least amount of attention from realtors. Putting it on this platform puts many more eyeballs. We get 120,000 users on the platform today. Remember, we’ve been at this for four years, four and a half years. As the assigning of these property managers, they’re going into this. The [...] account is increasing dramatically month over month. Out of that, not everyone’s a buyer today but big enough sample size there that people would look at it and say this is something I want to buy. And the more product you put in there, the better you are. Jason: Say they sign up, how easy is this to get connected into the website? Is it just some javascript code snippet that would be added to a page, or just some HTML like an iframe… Don: Good question. It’s not iframe, it’s a hyperlink linked with their subdomain that gets added to their website and we can put it right over… For example the DMI franchise is rolling this out to a lot of their franchisees. We spoke to their website company and made sure that the logos and the colors and all that was consistent in how they wanted the brand to look for all DMI franchises and put it out there so they have the same experience, it’s stuff like that. It’s not a massive task, it’s a quick task of getting it up and running. They don’t even need someone familiar with website development on their end to put it up. Jason: Fantastic. I would imagine besides that, they’re able to feed in maybe their list of clientele, or how do they get clients using or into this system? Don: They send a file of their clients and their leads, and we separate the two. That gets loaded and tagged to them in the CRM for good. Anytime they do anything, they’re forever tagged to them. We look at the clients one way, we look at the leads one way, and they get a mail from Jason at ABC Property Management saying hey, we just implemented this new tool, come check it out, here’s all that it’s got. A series of mails inviting them to come check out the tool, what’s in it, and then we engage with them as investor support for Jason’s property management company, help them utilize the tool. That’s all branded to Jason, it’s not branded to anything else, it’s all branded to Jason. The backend calls are made to investment support to help them use the system, that’s all Jason. Then, they start receiving some weekly properties that are hot in their particular market. If they put their hand up, we answer questions and take [...]. Jason: Great. The bottom line, everybody listening, that business owners are all thinking is this makes me money, right? They’re getting the real estate deals, they’re getting commissions on the real estate deals, anything else that I’m missing? Don: They get a door... Jason: And they get property management contracts. Don: Yup, and let’s say for example we have property managers in California. A California property manager’s customer wants to buy in Austin, so the Austin person then can get a referral from the California buyer because the California buyer is not finding something in the price range they want in California. One thing they always ask, our customers, is do you want to show only your market or do you want to show all markets? There’s pros and cons to it. If you only show your market, then that investor can only buy in your market and that’s all they get and you always get the door. The con is if they ever decide to buy somewhere else, they’re not going to buy through you because you didn’t show that. Or, you show all markets and then if they do decide to buy somewhere else, then you get a referral fee from that. By the same token, you get inbound traffic from someone else. That’s the idea of that. But we give people that option, because we can show one, or two, or all. Most people tend to keep it fully open, but when you have people that say I don’t want to show anything other than my city. We’re okay with that as well, it’s the business owner’s choice. Jason: So this has other potential benefits of really setting up a referral network, getting some deals. Don: Yup. We’ve had situations where property managers just got a door, because somebody is buying a property. Then the person says they need a property manager, so then we get the door. Sometimes, they get the whole thing. If an investor wants to buy in their market, then they become the buyer’s agent, obviously they give up a referral fee back into the system so others can get paid. They get the door and that commission. At the same token then, they refer someone, they get a fee from that person from the door and the commission; it works both ways. Jason: Alright. Don, this sounds fantastic. Is there any other common questions or things that you think people listening might be curious about related to this? And then how can they find out more? Don: I think one thing we had expectations on, this is a long term relationship with your investors. Let’s say you’ve got 400 doors and 150 investors, the investors get exposed to it. It’s not that okay. In 60 days, they all come in and say great, now that you’ve given me this, here are 10 properties that I’m going to buy. They will buy over time, but what’s important is they are now much more connected with your brand and you start seeing deals happening with these investors when they decide to buy. We can’t force them to buy, but we give them a reason to buy, and we give them a product to buy. That’s the one thing. The second thing is we do need the property management person trained on the system. We have a training program and all of that. When we transfer that investor in the right time, they need to be able to use the system to find the next property and the next one if this one doesn’t work out. Because ultimately, they’re the one fulfilling that. A property management company sometimes has not been in the sales process, they’ve always been at the other end of the food chain. They’ve got to think that if they want to climb the food chain, they do need some competence and strive to be able to go and get that property and close the property with the investor. Although we’re taking a lot of the analytical work in a way by systems giving them all of that. They get a very clear buy box, but they still need to fulfill that buy box. Jason: Let’s wrap this up, how would people find out more about your Investimate product, and how would they demo this and learn more about the business, and how do they get started? Don: They would go to investimateroi.com, in there is a little video that talks about the product, an explanation of what it does for property managers and realtors, and an ability to set up an appointment for a demo. The best thing to do is always look at a demo. If they go there and they schedule a time, just like we’re doing here, we’ll get them on an online webinar and we’ll take them through the product and explain what it does, and see if it’s a fit for the business. It’s simple enough, yeah. Jason: Fantastic. Don, this has been really interesting, really insightful. I think a lot of people’s wills returning as they listen to this. I think that you’ll probably be getting some demos of people checking it out. Don: Great, thank you. Jason: Thanks for being on the DoorGrow show. Don: Glad to be here. Jason: You can check that out at investimateroi.com. I appreciate Don being on the show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors and make a difference, then make sure you check us out at doorgrow.com. If you want to join the most awesome community of property management entrepreneurs on the planet, we are hanging out inside the DoorGrow Club. It is a free Facebook group, you can go to doorgrowclub.com, make sure you join the group. We will see you next time on the DoorGrow Show. Until then, to our mutual growth. Bye, everyone.  

Real estate investors are always on the lookout for investment properties. The standard way of doing this has been to research the area, drive around with a realtor, or looking online. However, Don Ganguly joins Bob on this episode of Property Management Brainstorm to chat about a new way for investors to find these properties and to see if they are the right investment. Don is the founder and president of HomeUnion. HomeUnion makes real estate investing more simple. It provides a way for investors to buy and find properties in a similar way that they may find and buy stocks or bonds. Whether you are a real estate investor or property manager, you will want to hear about this product! Listen in. For more information about HomeUnion, click on this link to the HomeUnion website. This episode is always available for listening, sharing, or download at Property Management Brainstorm. Outline of This Episode[2:19] Intro and background on Don and Home Union[7:39] How HomeUnion’s platform is similar to investing in the stock market[9:09] Common terms defined[13:02] How to determine an ideal real estate investment[15:44] What HomeUnion does for real estate investors[20:36] How properties get on the site[23:25] Geographic and market coverage[25:02] How the service and product are promoted[27:05] Closing thoughtsHow HomeUnion makes real estate investing easierHomeUnion is a real estate investing product. With 200 million transactions on its platform, it provides a product that allows real estate investors to research, select and buy real estate or rental properties like stock market investing. Similar to stock market investing, HomeUnion asks investors for a budget and whether they would like cash flow, but this system also lets investors select what kind of property they are looking for, the location of the property - or let the system suggest a location based on the other terms. HomeUnion is able to provide information on cities and neighborhoods and creates models for what rent should be, the expenses of the unit, taxes, and much more! This gives investors a more accurate picture of market comparables and price trends. Information on investment properties is literally at one’s fingertips.Common terms definedDon takes a minute to define terms that are helpful to know for real estate investors.Cost of Capital: What you are getting your money at - the cost of the funds. For instance, a 4% interest rate would be a 4% cost of capital on the money borrowedNet Operating Income: Your rent less all the expenses on the property (insurance, property management, taxes, etc)Cap Rate: The net operating income divided by the priceNet Yield: Everything after expensesWhat HomeUnion does for real estate investorsHomeUnion puts boots on the ground for investors. It is the go-to place to validate prices and rents in the area. It can also help investors know what kind of renters live in the area, backed up by research. HomeUnion also does due diligence for real estate investors. HomeUnion partners with local property managers to do this. The system allows investors to narrow properties down based on the due diligence done by these local partners.HomeUnion’s partnershipsHomeUnion is not only beneficial for real estate investors. It is a great tool for property managers. Property managers don’t typically have the tools to engage investors at the time they purchase a piece of property. By engaging investors in the due diligence process, property managers are able to climb higher on the food chain. Resource Episode Transcript

Don, Steve and Alex discuss how property managers that also have a sales team can use INVESTimate to forecast the performance of a residential property whether a client is selling or buying an investment property. Guest: Don Ganguly from InvestimateHomeUnion®’s INVESTimate® is an all-in-one website that allows investors to evaluate any single-family residential (SFR) property in the U.S. through an investment lens. INVESTimate® predicts a property’s value as an investment by estimating three factors: its price, rent, and operating expenses. Hosts:Steve Rozenberg – Co Founder of Empire Industries LLC, investor, speaker.Alex Osenenko – President and CEO of FourandHalf

I love offering listeners fantastic benefits, such as some great discounts for products, with new offers coming all the time! You can see a complete list at propertymanagementmastermind.com. For all of these offers, use the discount code “Brad” to secure your discount. Don Ganguly from INVESTimate through HomeUnion joins me on the show today. We’ll chat about working with investors, his platform, and his support through NARPM. He’s a key new vendor who you should absolutely check out (once you’re done listening to our conversation in this episode)! A self-described serial entrepreneur, Don came up with the idea of creating a platform that allows investors to invest in rental properties the same way they invest in stocks and bonds, with a risk and rewards calibration. INVESTimate is the result, as he’ll explain today. The system doesn’t calculate the risk and reward based on just a straightforward number like the expected rent amount, but instead takes many different factors into account. In fact, they’ve mapped every neighborhood in the United States and scored it from A to D depending on risk and expected reward. I love the reports that come from Don’s company, because they go so far beyond just school district and curb appeal. That’s right; those factors alone aren’t enough to base your decision on anymore. I’ll let him explain to you what he includes in his awesome reports, and how they can help an investor decide whether to invest in a particular property. Tune into this episode to learn all about those things, as well as to hear Don’s thoughts on pocket listings, turnkey properties, relationship and referral opportunities for property managers using INVESTimate, and more. If you’re ready to move up the food chain of property managers, don’t miss this conversation! Show Notes [02:41] - Brad welcomes listeners, introduces Don, and explains his background with using INVESTimate. [03:19] - Don gives listeners some background into who he is, what he does, and how he got to where he is today. [06:30] - What are some of the factors that investors and the INVESTimate system look at? [08:56] - Don digs into the subject of taxes, pointing out that owner-occupied taxes and non-owner-occupied taxes can vary significantly in some counties. [12:12] - We learn more about whether INVESTimate can factor in depreciation and tax benefits of investing in real estate, or just the subjects that he has already talked about. [13:56] - Don talks listeners through how he guides investors in making purchases. [16:10] - What markets is INVESTimate in, and how could a property management company get involved in their system? [19:09] - Don gives more detail into how to figure out whether INVESTimate is in your specific area. [22:47] - We hear about some of the things included in Don’s reports, and how they can illustrate why someone might want to invest in a particular property. [27:42] - What relationship and referral opportunities would property management company owners have with INVESTimate Home Union? Before answering, Don takes a moment to talk about pocket listings. [30:12] - Don adds to Brad’s point about turnkey listings. [36:43] - We hear another important point from Don: property management companies need to decide where on the food chain they want to be. [38:58] - Don digs deeper into how to climb up the food chain by providing more opportunities in the market. [44:14] - Brad points out that all of what Don has been saying is part of the education that he can provide. [45:55] - How can people learn more about Don and what he does? Links and Resources: Property Management Mastermind Property Management Mastermind Group on Facebook adisarro@sccombank.com (619) 988-6708 (Allison DiSarro from Seacoast Commerce Bank) Seacoast Commerce Bank Insurance Management Group (918) 728 8992 (Derek Scott with Insurance Management Group) zInspector FilterEasy Property Meld Don Ganguly on LinkedIn don@investimateroi.com INVESTimate HomeUnion

Today we talk about the top 3 metros predicted to have the highest rent in 2018 Homeunion just released their research into the metros where we will likely see the highest rental income in 2018. Of course, we will take a look at those numbers and turn it on its head just a little to potentially unlock even greater opportunities. Knowing where the highest rent in 2018 can be earned is always a good thing! We will also discuss architectural billings and how those are stacking up. Plus, lets talk a little about one of the metros I think all investors should keep abreast of - Phoenix. Finally, more on the continuing change in the face of employment - something that will heavily impact future buyers in terms of how they find employment. Todays Links: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/01/phoenix-real-estate-in-december-sales.html https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-21/history-making-amazons-first-automated-grocery-store-opens-public http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/01/aia-architecture-billings-end-year-on.html https://www.homeunion.com/where-a-landlord-can-find-high-annual-rents HELP THE SHOW GROW by filling out the audience demographic survey by clicking the button at the top of the page titled "Take the survey to support the show". Follow the prompts and this will automatically enter you for a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift card! Interested in getting free content, advanced notice of upcoming events and real estate exclusives? Then simply join the Rebel Underground by texting the word 'rebelbroker' to 44222 - or click the button below. When prompted, text your email address and you are in! JOIN THE REBEL UNDERGROUND! SPONSOR Audible.com - Audible is offering real estate realities listeners a free audiobook of your choice and a free 30-day trial membership. Just go to http://audibletrial.com/rebel and choose from over 180,000 audio programs – download a title free and start listening! SUBSCRIBE TO AUDIBLE TODAY AND CLAIM YOUR FREE BOOK AND 30 DAY TRIAL!  

Looking at the top metros to make your single family investment sing! The good folks at HomeUnion have released their latest rankings list that is designed to tell us the metros that will perform the best over the next year! So not what have done the best over the last year, but trying to predict the future big players! We will run down the top 10 and chat a bit about metros that did not make the cut that just might surprise some folks. This is specific to single family investment, but the elements they use would benefit just about any brand of real estate investment in these metro areas. Todays Links: https://www.homeunion.com/blog/dallas-investment-housing-market-tops-homeunions-power-rankings-list/ HELP THE SHOW GROW by filling out the audience demographic survey by clicking the button at the top of the page titled "Take the survey to support the show". Follow the prompts and this will automatically enter you for a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift card! Interested in getting free content, advanced notice of upcoming events and real estate exclusives? Then simply join the Rebel Underground by texting the word 'rebelbroker' to 44222 - or click the button below. When prompted, text your email address and you are in! JOIN THE REBEL UNDERGROUND! SPONSOR Audible.com - Audible is offering real estate realities listeners a free audiobook of your choice and a free 30-day trial membership. Just go to http://audibletrial.com/rebel and choose from over 180,000 audio programs – download a title free and start listening! SUBSCRIBE TO AUDIBLE TODAY AND CLAIM YOUR FREE BOOK AND 30 DAY TRIAL!

Real estate investing and building a portfolio has long been accepted as one of the top ways to build wealth in America. As the years have gone by, prices and interest rates have skyrocketd, lending has tightened and the 'average joe' has found themselves left out in the cold while larger commercial investors have snatched up the opportunities.  On todays show, we talk with the CEO of HomeUnion, Don Ganguly, who has developed an online real estate investment platform that matches private investors up with properties in markets they can afford, with risk tolerances they can take.  HomeUnion will research the markets, acquire the facts, assess your risk preferences and even manage the property you purchase so you can avoid the headache of being a landlord!  If you live in a market that is inexhorbenantly expensive for you to invest in, HomeUnion could be your solution for building your real estate portfolio.  Schedule A Free Coaching CallVisit Tim & Julie Harris OnlineListen on iTunesListen on Stitcher

We figure out the areas to get the most treats! Halloween is fast approaching! So what better way to prepare than to figure out the absolutely best neighborhoods where you can rake in the treats and have a great time doing it! The good folks over at HomeUnion have put together their top 20 list of the best places to trick or treat. In addition to covering those, we will also see if we can't figure out a strategy for you to figure out the best place in your town to go trick or treating - just in case the places on this list are just too far away! Please help the show by filling out the audience demographic survey by visiting http://therebelbroker.com then clicking the button at the top of the page titled "Take the survey to support the show". Follow the prompts and this will automatically enter you for a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift card! Interested in getting free content, advanced notice of upcoming events and content? Then simply text the word 'rebelbroker' to 44222. When prompted, text your email address and you are in! Also, check out links to the articles discussed in todays show, check out the show notes at http://www.therebelbroker.com

Dan Ganguly, partner in HomeUnion, joins the show to discuss how HomeUnion's real estate solutions have helped property buyers become true real estate investors and some of the hardships that he has encounter along the way.