May 13, 2025 • 21 mins
Additional Resources:
- Clark St Capital: https://www.clarkst.com
- Clark St Digital: https://www.clarkstdigital.com
- Keyholders Collective: https://www.keyholderscollective.com
- Podcast: https://bit.ly/3LzZdDx
Find Us On Social Media:
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clarkstcapital
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/clark-st-capital
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/clarkstcapital1
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClarkStCapital
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clarkstcapital
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ed Mathews (00:01):
So the big question is this how do real estate
investors who don't have a tonof free time, don't have access
to off market deals and didn'tstart life on third base, how do
we conservatively grow our realestate business to support our
families, finally leave thecorporate rat race and build a
legacy?
That is the question.
In this podcast, we'll give youthe answers.
(00:23):
I'm Ed Mathews and this is RealEstate Underground.
Greetings and salutations, RealEstate Undergrounders.
It is Ed Mathews with the RealEstate Underground.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
With me today is Bob Frady.
He is the CEO of Property Lensand, being a recovering
technology guy, this popped upon my radar a few weeks ago and
(00:47):
I started to dig into it.
Bob and I were just talkingbefore we hit record and I
cannot believe that someonedidn't come up with this earlier
.
So I'm kicking myself because Iprobably should have been one
of those guys.
But to each their own.
Bob was the one that was smartenough to pull the trigger.
So, bob, congratulations onproperty lens and I can't wait
to talk about it.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, ed.
I'm happy to be here.
Excellent For those folks whohaven't heard of you or Property
(01:10):
Lens, yet why don't you tell usa little bit?
Bob Frady (01:12):
Sure.
My name is Bob Frady.
I'm the CEO and co-founder ofProperty Lens.
Basically, Property Lens islike a Carfax for Houses.
Plus, we not only tell youwhat's happened, we tell you
what could happen.
And I started this company.
I had another company calledHazard Hub which did natural
hazard predictions, sold it, andthey tell you never to do
(01:34):
anything rash after you sellyour company.
And I live in Edina,Minnesota, I do now, but I
didn't then.
And I knew a lot of stuff aboutthe house that wasn't disclosed
to me and I didn't want to waitfor an inspection to figure it
out.
So I went to the seller andsaid, hey, here's all the things
that I see about this property.
(01:54):
Can you verify this for me?
And they said sure, and Ioffered them 10% less and they
took it.
It's because I looked aroundfor a Carfax for houses and
there wasn't one.
Being an entrepreneur and beinga little bit of an idiot
sometimes, I decided to startPropertyLens.
Ed Mathews (02:09):
You already sold.
Yeah, you exited to thepositive and then you dove right
back in.
What were you thinking?
Bob Frady (02:16):
I had tried to retire , and before I left the company
that we sold to, I took a coupleof weeks off and after the
first day I had played nineholes of golf and I went to the
Best Buy and then I sat in theparking lot of the Best Buy.
I'm like I'm bored.
So I knew I'd drive my wifecrazy if I hadn't done something
else.
So I decided what the heckStill got a little gas in the
(02:37):
tank, let's go.
Ed Mathews (02:38):
A good friend of mine.
He plays the IPO game inSilicon Valley and plays it very
well.
So he went to one companycalled Salesforce and they went
public and he participated inthat.
I think he's since participatedin at least two other IPOs and
each time he takes about sixmonths off, which was the advice
he gave me.
He said don't you know?
Just breathe.
(02:58):
Are you going hard?
80 plus hours a week?
For however many years you'vebeen there, take a breath,
decide what you want to do andthen do whatever.
That is Right.
And I said why six months?
He goes because after aboutthree months your wife is going
to get tired of you followingher around in the grocery store
and all the other things thatyou're going to do to annoy the
hell out of her.
And by about six months it'seither go get a job or I'm
(03:20):
leaving you, and that's when youcrank up the engine and go find
another gig.
Bob Frady (03:24):
Ignored that six month rule.
It's an excellent rule.
Ed Mathews (03:26):
So I listened to him and by the time I hit six
months, my wife Patricia wasjust about sick of having me at
home.
Bob Frady (03:32):
As my wife likes to say to me on occasion, it's time
for you to go to a trade show.
Ed Mathews (03:36):
Yes, I'm done with you.
So Carfax for properties andobviously we're a real estate
investor show and I can think ofinnumerable ways that I could
leverage a house, a propertylens report, you know, in terms
of either getting additionalinformation as I walk into an
auction, which I tend not to dobecause there is no information
(03:57):
but if I was able to uncoverthat then I've got an unfair
advantage walking into thatauction.
I'm curious.
You know this is aconsumer-based product with an
application in the real estateinvestor world, not vice versa.
But how would an investoryou've you bought a house?
So you know, how would a guylike me who's looking to get an
(04:18):
unfair advantage in terms ofinformation about a property?
How would I use this to myadvantage?
Bob Frady (04:25):
I think that the short answer is would you rather
know upfront?
And if the answer is yes, thenget a single report, take a look
at it and see whether it givesyou, or download the sample from
our website and say does thisgive me an advantage that I
wouldn't have otherwise had, andis it worth the 69 or so
dollars I'm going to spend on itto help get me an advantage
that I wouldn't have otherwisehad?
And is it worth the 69 or sodollars I'm going to spend on it
(04:46):
to help get me that advantage?
And that's the approach that wetake with investors, and we do
have a couple of investors whouse this to help screen
properties.
One of the big things is what'sthe age and condition of the
roof, because the insurancemarket has gotten so tight.
We'll tell you how old we thinkthat roof is, based upon
(05:07):
permits or based upon listingdata or based upon real estate
data that we have.
Ed Mathews (05:11):
So this isn't necessarily just you pulling
risk data.
Hey, it's in a flood zone andover the last hundred years,
here's how many times thisproperty has flooded.
It's also real world events.
Last time there was a permitpulled for HVAC, for plumbing,
for electrical roof, for siding,for windows Yep.
Bob Frady (05:31):
Wow Okay, and it depends upon the municipality.
Some places are really diligentabout making sure you get a
permit and other places are lessdiligent.
Sometimes, if there's animprovement that's like for like
, it doesn't require a permit,but a lot of times they'll put
that in the real estatedescription In an auction
property.
Maybe not because you're doingit before the market, but if
(05:52):
there is a real estatedescription, we read that as
well, because people tend tobrag a little bit in the
description and they'll tell youa lot of things in there that
they won't tell you in all theunderlying data.
Ed Mathews (06:02):
Wow, that's interesting.
Bob Frady (06:03):
How does that process work?
We've got islands of data.
You put in an address, we matchit to a geocode and then we go
to each one of those islands andpull back all the data that's
relevant or that's available forthat location and then we put
it into a report.
So pretty much we build it allin real time.
So the data exists.
(06:23):
But if there was a stormyesterday and there was a
damaging hail event, we'll havethat in the report.
We won't have whether a permitwas pulled, but we'll have the
storm and that's for damagingwinds or damaging hail.
So yeah, it's like you type inan address, we do all the work,
we pull it all together and inabout a minute you get a report
back.
That is in.
Pardon the visual here, butit's not insubstantial.
(06:46):
It's a good 50 page report onthe location.
Ed Mathews (06:51):
Yeah, if I had that for every property I was serious
about buying boy, that wouldmake my life a whole lot easier.
I got to tell you, like I said,I can't, I can't believe I
didn't think of this.
So I'm kicking myself and can'tbelieve somebody else didn't
think of it 20 years ago,because it's maybe the access to
data didn't exist, but that waswith Carfax, but but it's Lots
of people think about this.
Bob Frady (07:12):
The first is the data available, which it's more
available now than it's everbeen, right.
But the second is when it's notavailable, how do you build
systems to go get it and pull itall together?
And that's where we come in.
That's what we do.
I've done it, for most of mycareer is wrangling data.
Ed Mathews (07:28):
Yeah, so walk me through that, because the
garbage in, garbage out thing isreal right.
What's?
Bob Frady (07:38):
the process you go through to assure yourselves,
first, that the data is accurate.
So we do a couple of things.
The first is the data sourceitself.
We have a team ofgeospecialists who bring all
this data in and examine it forcorrectness, consistency, make
sure that we can actually makesomething up.
And then the second is we do alot of QC on properties that we
know, pulling specific dataelements before we release the
(08:00):
product.
So we'll pound it and say, okay, here's 50 properties.
I know because I've beenlooking at them for the last
three years.
Tell me what this data says anddoes it make sense?
And then we'll go through aprocess to publish it.
Ed Mathews (08:14):
Okay, so does it jive with your other sets of
data?
Yep.
Bob Frady (08:18):
Gotcha Does it pass the reasonableness test?
Because we're all homeowners,we've bought homes and sold
homes before.
Does it look right and like,for example, with building
permits?
Building permits are messy andthere's 8,000 different
municipalities and they produceit 8,000 different ways, it
seems like.
So the first step that we do iswe go through a cleaning
routine with the data, try toput it into more of an English
(08:42):
language form, and then we canpull it into the report and we
use that knowledge in the permitto help us figure out how old
is the HPA system, how old isthe roof, how old is the was it
flooded before system, how oldis the roof, how old is the was
it flooded before?
And that's the fun part is notjust assembling the data but
twisting it so that it gives youthe answers that you want.
Ed Mathews (09:03):
So obviously there's risk data, there is claims data
, there is permit data.
What other types of informationare you collecting on these
houses?
Bob Frady (09:11):
We have we start with the real estate data?
same thing that you would seefrom the assessor Property card
type stuff, yes, we start withthe real estate data, same thing
that you would see from theassessor Property card type
stuff.
Yes, we look at aerial imageryfor the roof and we machine read
that aerial imagery to figureout what the condition is.
We look at weather events, sowhether if it's hail over an
(09:34):
inch or winds over 65 miles anhour, we pull that in and then
we do a lot of work to say howold is the root, what's it
composed of, how long does itlast in this state on average
and what's the expectedreplacement cost for that roof.
We pull in flood data from acouple of different sources.
Fema is one of them so we cantell you is it in a 100-year
flood zone or a 500-year zone.
But we can also tell you thelikelihood for flooding from
either the ocean or a river andwe'll use that as a flag to say
(09:57):
you might not be in the hundredyear flood zone but we do
suggest that you get floodinsurance for this property
because it looks like it'ssubjected to it.
We look at building permit data.
We look at all sorts ofneighborhood information when
are the fire stations?
Where are the fire hydrants?
Where are the hospitals?
What's the quality of the water?
What's the soil that the houseis built on?
(10:18):
Because if you have a lot ofclay oriented soils, they tend
to have more water leaks than ifyou don't.
Tons and tons of data that wetry to bring together, but
really the answer is we'retrying to just give you the
questions that you should ask tomake sure that you go in to an
offer with your eyes wide open,okay, and so I'm also curious
about property types.
Ed Mathews (10:38):
So, single family homes, obviously, but are there
any other asset classes that youpay attention to?
Bob Frady (10:43):
Yeah, the system works on any type of house.
Where it gets tricky is whenyou have I grew up in a three
family house in Boston andthey're all condos now yeah,
each unit might not the permitmight be assigned to the address
and not to the unit, so it getsa little tricky in those
situations.
(11:03):
But it still gives you like theroof and the value and all that
stuff, because we'll prompt youis this unit one, two or three,
so anything up to pretty much afour.
A four by, if you will, willgive you really good data.
Works on commercial properties.
Commercial properties don't havean MLS listing the way that
(11:24):
residential properties do, soyou miss some of that juice.
But we can tell you the roofcondition of pretty much any
property in the US and sometimeswith commercial properties the
permits are yay long becausethey have a ton of permits on
commercial.
We don't pursue the commercialpiece of the market just yet but
we get asked a lot so we'reconsidering it.
(11:46):
But it works pretty much on allproperties.
But the strength is SFDUs up tofours, yeah, up to a quad.
Ed Mathews (11:53):
I can tell you as someone who's bought them if I
was spending a few milliondollars on an apartment complex,
I would pay you way more than$69 to make sure I wasn't buying
a lemon.
Bob Frady (12:02):
I tell you what.
If you find it valuable, thenreach me afterwards and we'll
develop a product.
You, sir, have a deal.
Ed Mathews (12:09):
In terms of the product, cloud-based, I assume.
Bob Frady (12:13):
So you access the web , access it from the web, and
what we do is we have a portalwhere you can look at the report
or you can download it to a PDFif you want to.
Ed Mathews (12:23):
And so the other thing I'm curious about you've
mentioned it a couple of timesis the quality of a roof.
Like, I use a tool and I'm notgoing to mention it here, but
it's an aerial tool,satellite-based, I presume where
they give me access.
They don't give me quality, soI don't know the condition, but
I do get the measurements interms of the.
You probably know which toolI'm talking about, the.
(12:47):
You probably know which toolI'm talking about, and if I want
, I can get the window and doorcount, I can get the siding
squares, I can get the floorplan from an aerial perspective,
not the interior, and it'shugely valuable to me when I'm
sitting here trying to figureout okay, I know I have to
replace the roof, I know whatthis building needs windows, the
facade is shot and I need toreplace the siding at some point
in the next five years and thathelps me construct a plan.
(13:09):
So when you talk about thequality of the roof, is it
binary, like good, bad, or areyou also providing another layer
of, like, sizing, informationor measurements?
Bob Frady (13:20):
It's on a scale of one to five.
Where one is I can't believethere's not a new roof on this
house and five it's in greatcondition.
So we'll tell you things likeponding, algae, staining, as
much as we can.
There's always going to besituations where hail is tricky
to give the overall condition.
So we'll give you a score oneto five on what the condition of
(13:41):
the roof is.
But then we'll tell you is thisa high exposure or a low
exposure roof, like in NewEngland?
It's a relatively low exposureroof.
Rain and ice dams are big inNew England as well, versus in
Texas.
You get everything.
You get wind, hail, tornadoes,all that stuff.
So we'll tell you what theexposure level is as well.
Ed Mathews (14:01):
Okay, wow, that's phenomenal.
All right, let's get into thefinal five.
So I'm always interested inentrepreneurs and leaders and
how their brain works, becauseyou've had a lot of success
already and you're not sweatingthe mortgage.
The college tuitions areprobably handled, retirement is
pretty good, but younevertheless get out of bed on
Monday morning.
So I'm curious what yourpurpose is.
(14:23):
What drives you and causes youto shoot out of bed on Monday
morning to take on the world?
You know.
Bob Frady (14:29):
I'm a huge believer in fairness and I think that
home buyers get screwed becausethe seller knows this and the
buyer knows that, but from abusiness standpoint, what gets
me out of bed is I'm pushingtowards fairness.
I love that.
As a kid growing up, fairnesswas always like that's not fair.
So let's try to make it fair,and that's always fun to do.
Yep, I love that.
(15:02):
So what is the best advice youever got?
And go, do it and believe inyourself.
And he saw it way before I did,because I did the corporate
thing and then I finally jumpedinto my own driver's seat, if
you will.
So Joffer, who was a wonderfulfriend, was the first person to
believe in me as an entrepreneur, and I finally listened to him.
Ed Mathews (15:22):
Smart man.
I think that I really, trulybelieve that you learn more from
your mistakes than you do fromyour successes and, like in my
company, mistakes are notfrowned upon, right?
Just don't make them twice.
Stubbing your toe is a goodthing, because it's something
that we overlooked and we canfix it and never have to worry
about it again, or?
Bob Frady (15:48):
professional life.
That is that you made, and whatwas it and how'd you recover
from it?
I made a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, I know co-founder, and Ihave a bet who gets fired more.
The biggest mistake is notbetting on myself earlier in the
process.
Right later, it's like I keptworking for these companies and
I'm like, okay, now this is thenext thing we can do, and
they're like, no, we don't wantto do that, you need to leave
because I would make trouble.
(16:08):
So I like building stuff, andso the biggest mistake I would
say is telling my boss to go Fhimself if he didn't want me to
solve problems.
And then I was gone two dayslater, surprise.
Ed Mathews (16:22):
It's funny, how that works.
Bob Frady (16:23):
Had similar experiences, yeah, and then I
realized I just need to bettermyself.
Ed Mathews (16:28):
Excellent.
Yeah, that's good advice.
I bet you I could give you guysa run for your money on who got
fired more, because I'm cutfrom a similar cloth and I don't
know that I ever told a boss togo F himself, but I came pretty
darn close yeah.
Bob Frady (16:39):
It was fun and I knew HR was going to come in,
because that wasn't the first.
I'm like let's go.
Yeah, all right, I don'trecommend it.
Ed Mathews (16:47):
I'm going on a blaze of glory.
Bob Frady (16:48):
I don't recommend it, but it was stressful.
Ed Mathews (16:52):
Yeah, obviously you're somebody that you've got
leadership responsibility, andwith that comes the urgency to
continue growing and learning,and so I'm curious about how you
take in information.
The question I'm really drivingat is what's the book on your
either physical or virtualnightstand?
Who are you paying attention toand what are you learning from?
Bob Frady (17:12):
them is not to be emotionless.
It is to understand what youcan control and what you can't.
That was a massive change in mylife, and it was relatively
(17:38):
recently as in the last fiveyears, that I picked that book
up, and I still go back to itall the time.
You can control certain things.
Those are the things that youshould pay attention to, and
things you can't control areones that you should pay as much
attention to.
You can't control are ones thatyou should not pay as much
attention to.
Breakfast with Seneca sobrilliant.
Ed Mathews (17:53):
I can't wait to read Control and control.
That one I wasn't familiar with, so I'm so glad you just
mentioned that, because now I'vegot a new book.
I was literally inaudible today.
And what's my next book?
Bob Frady (18:01):
It is a fantastic book and it's listen and it's
listen.
It might not be for everybody.
For me it's like.
My wife is an incredible reader.
She reads everything.
I don't read a lot of books.
I read the internet, it seems,every single day, so I'm always
ingesting information.
But that book was?
It changed my life.
Ed Mathews (18:20):
Can't wait to read it.
I will have that in my eithermy Kindle library or my Audible
fleet this afternoon.
All right, cool.
The other thing I'm alwaysinterested in is how leaders
like you define success in theirown lives.
How do you do that?
Bob Frady (18:33):
You know, I got divorced once, never want to do
it again and I changed mytenants in my life and I have
three.
Number one am I a good husband?
Number two am I a good father?
And number three husband?
Number two am I a good father?
And number three am I a goodfriend?
If I'm doing those three things, that defines success to me.
All the money and the housesand the Rolexes are all great,
(18:57):
but they don't mean anything.
Those three things for mearen't?
Ed Mathews (19:02):
Yeah, it doesn't mean a darn thing if you're
being buried with your niceRolex, but the funeral home's
empty, right, yeah, exactly, allright.
So when you're not saving theworld from people buying lemons
in the real estate business orpersonally buying their homes,
what do you like to do?
How do you spend your time?
Bob Frady (19:19):
I am a terrible golfer, yet I remain undaunted.
I love the competitiveness ofsports.
I love the fact that I canstill feel like I'm 15 again by
getting out there and even atthe old man level, still get out
there and compete.
Ed Mathews (19:34):
So when you compete, what do you play?
Bob Frady (19:36):
I actually still play a little bit of softball, play
a little golf.
I was runner up for New YorkCity dark champion one year.
One guy tried to roll me onetime.
He was slow playing it.
He wanted to bet me money and Inever bet money Smart.
But then I'd bet beer and hegot hammered and I didn't.
Ed Mathews (19:55):
So that was a big day he sees oh, that's right,
I'm not lefty, I'm a righty Boom.
Bob Frady (19:59):
Yeah, I see you.
Ed Mathews (20:03):
Yeah, I've learned a bunch and I can't wait to use
your product.
How can people learn more aboutyou and Property Lens if they
want to do something?
Bob Frady (20:10):
The easiest thing is to go to Property Lens, www.
propertylens.
com.
There's a sample report onthere.
You can order a report.
Listen, if you order a singlereport and you don't like it,
just let us know.
We'll give you your money back.
That's how much we believe inthe product.
I'm on LinkedIn, we're on thesocials, is my Property Lens and
I'm Bob@PropertyLens.
(20:30):
If you want to reach out andtalk individually, I'm happy to
Ed Mathews (20:33):
Excellent! Bob Frady from Property Lens.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
Continued success, and I can'twait to use your product.
Bob Frady (20:40):
Ed Mathews, good to see you.
Ed Mathews (20:42):
Thank you, sir, take care.
So the big question is this how do real estate
investors who don't have a tonof free time, don't have access
to off market deals and didn'tstart life on third base, how do
we conservatively grow our realestate business to support our
families, finally leave thecorporate rat race and build a
legacy?
That is the question.
In this podcast, we'll give youthe answers.
(00:23):
I'm Ed Mathews and this is RealEstate Underground.
Greetings and salutations, RealEstate Undergrounders.
It is Ed Mathews with the RealEstate Underground.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
With me today is Bob Frady.
He is the CEO of Property Lensand, being a recovering
technology guy, this popped upon my radar a few weeks ago and
(00:47):
I started to dig into it.
Bob and I were just talkingbefore we hit record and I
cannot believe that someonedidn't come up with this earlier
.
So I'm kicking myself because Iprobably should have been one
of those guys.
But to each their own.
Bob was the one that was smartenough to pull the trigger.
So, bob, congratulations onproperty lens and I can't wait
to talk about it.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you, ed.
I'm happy to be here.
Excellent For those folks whohaven't heard of you or Property
(01:10):
Lens, yet why don't you tell usa little bit?
Bob Frady (01:12):
Sure.
My name is Bob Frady.
I'm the CEO and co-founder ofProperty Lens.
Basically, Property Lens islike a Carfax for Houses.
Plus, we not only tell youwhat's happened, we tell you
what could happen.
And I started this company.
I had another company calledHazard Hub which did natural
hazard predictions, sold it, andthey tell you never to do
(01:34):
anything rash after you sellyour company.
And I live in Edina,Minnesota, I do now, but I
didn't then.
And I knew a lot of stuff aboutthe house that wasn't disclosed
to me and I didn't want to waitfor an inspection to figure it
out.
So I went to the seller andsaid, hey, here's all the things
that I see about this property.
(01:54):
Can you verify this for me?
And they said sure, and Ioffered them 10% less and they
took it.
It's because I looked aroundfor a Carfax for houses and
there wasn't one.
Being an entrepreneur and beinga little bit of an idiot
sometimes, I decided to startPropertyLens.
Ed Mathews (02:09):
You already sold.
Yeah, you exited to thepositive and then you dove right
back in.
What were you thinking?
Bob Frady (02:16):
I had tried to retire , and before I left the company
that we sold to, I took a coupleof weeks off and after the
first day I had played nineholes of golf and I went to the
Best Buy and then I sat in theparking lot of the Best Buy.
I'm like I'm bored.
So I knew I'd drive my wifecrazy if I hadn't done something
else.
So I decided what the heckStill got a little gas in the
(02:37):
tank, let's go.
Ed Mathews (02:38):
A good friend of mine.
He plays the IPO game inSilicon Valley and plays it very
well.
So he went to one companycalled Salesforce and they went
public and he participated inthat.
I think he's since participatedin at least two other IPOs and
each time he takes about sixmonths off, which was the advice
he gave me.
He said don't you know?
Just breathe.
(02:58):
Are you going hard?
80 plus hours a week?
For however many years you'vebeen there, take a breath,
decide what you want to do andthen do whatever.
That is Right.
And I said why six months?
He goes because after aboutthree months your wife is going
to get tired of you followingher around in the grocery store
and all the other things thatyou're going to do to annoy the
hell out of her.
And by about six months it'seither go get a job or I'm
(03:20):
leaving you, and that's when youcrank up the engine and go find
another gig.
Bob Frady (03:24):
Ignored that six month rule.
It's an excellent rule.
Ed Mathews (03:26):
So I listened to him and by the time I hit six
months, my wife Patricia wasjust about sick of having me at
home.
Bob Frady (03:32):
As my wife likes to say to me on occasion, it's time
for you to go to a trade show.
Ed Mathews (03:36):
Yes, I'm done with you.
So Carfax for properties andobviously we're a real estate
investor show and I can think ofinnumerable ways that I could
leverage a house, a propertylens report, you know, in terms
of either getting additionalinformation as I walk into an
auction, which I tend not to dobecause there is no information
(03:57):
but if I was able to uncoverthat then I've got an unfair
advantage walking into thatauction.
I'm curious.
You know this is aconsumer-based product with an
application in the real estateinvestor world, not vice versa.
But how would an investoryou've you bought a house?
So you know, how would a guylike me who's looking to get an
(04:18):
unfair advantage in terms ofinformation about a property?
How would I use this to myadvantage?
Bob Frady (04:25):
I think that the short answer is would you rather
know upfront?
And if the answer is yes, thenget a single report, take a look
at it and see whether it givesyou, or download the sample from
our website and say does thisgive me an advantage that I
wouldn't have otherwise had, andis it worth the 69 or so
dollars I'm going to spend on itto help get me an advantage
that I wouldn't have otherwisehad?
And is it worth the 69 or sodollars I'm going to spend on it
(04:46):
to help get me that advantage?
And that's the approach that wetake with investors, and we do
have a couple of investors whouse this to help screen
properties.
One of the big things is what'sthe age and condition of the
roof, because the insurancemarket has gotten so tight.
We'll tell you how old we thinkthat roof is, based upon
(05:07):
permits or based upon listingdata or based upon real estate
data that we have.
Ed Mathews (05:11):
So this isn't necessarily just you pulling
risk data.
Hey, it's in a flood zone andover the last hundred years,
here's how many times thisproperty has flooded.
It's also real world events.
Last time there was a permitpulled for HVAC, for plumbing,
for electrical roof, for siding,for windows Yep.
Bob Frady (05:31):
Wow Okay, and it depends upon the municipality.
Some places are really diligentabout making sure you get a
permit and other places are lessdiligent.
Sometimes, if there's animprovement that's like for like
, it doesn't require a permit,but a lot of times they'll put
that in the real estatedescription In an auction
property.
Maybe not because you're doingit before the market, but if
(05:52):
there is a real estatedescription, we read that as
well, because people tend tobrag a little bit in the
description and they'll tell youa lot of things in there that
they won't tell you in all theunderlying data.
Ed Mathews (06:02):
Wow, that's interesting.
Bob Frady (06:03):
How does that process work?
We've got islands of data.
You put in an address, we matchit to a geocode and then we go
to each one of those islands andpull back all the data that's
relevant or that's available forthat location and then we put
it into a report.
So pretty much we build it allin real time.
So the data exists.
(06:23):
But if there was a stormyesterday and there was a
damaging hail event, we'll havethat in the report.
We won't have whether a permitwas pulled, but we'll have the
storm and that's for damagingwinds or damaging hail.
So yeah, it's like you type inan address, we do all the work,
we pull it all together and inabout a minute you get a report
back.
That is in.
Pardon the visual here, butit's not insubstantial.
(06:46):
It's a good 50 page report onthe location.
Ed Mathews (06:51):
Yeah, if I had that for every property I was serious
about buying boy, that wouldmake my life a whole lot easier.
I got to tell you, like I said,I can't, I can't believe I
didn't think of this.
So I'm kicking myself and can'tbelieve somebody else didn't
think of it 20 years ago,because it's maybe the access to
data didn't exist, but that waswith Carfax, but but it's Lots
of people think about this.
Bob Frady (07:12):
The first is the data available, which it's more
available now than it's everbeen, right.
But the second is when it's notavailable, how do you build
systems to go get it and pull itall together?
And that's where we come in.
That's what we do.
I've done it, for most of mycareer is wrangling data.
Ed Mathews (07:28):
Yeah, so walk me through that, because the
garbage in, garbage out thing isreal right.
What's?
Bob Frady (07:38):
the process you go through to assure yourselves,
first, that the data is accurate.
So we do a couple of things.
The first is the data sourceitself.
We have a team ofgeospecialists who bring all
this data in and examine it forcorrectness, consistency, make
sure that we can actually makesomething up.
And then the second is we do alot of QC on properties that we
know, pulling specific dataelements before we release the
(08:00):
product.
So we'll pound it and say, okay, here's 50 properties.
I know because I've beenlooking at them for the last
three years.
Tell me what this data says anddoes it make sense?
And then we'll go through aprocess to publish it.
Ed Mathews (08:14):
Okay, so does it jive with your other sets of
data?
Yep.
Bob Frady (08:18):
Gotcha Does it pass the reasonableness test?
Because we're all homeowners,we've bought homes and sold
homes before.
Does it look right and like,for example, with building
permits?
Building permits are messy andthere's 8,000 different
municipalities and they produceit 8,000 different ways, it
seems like.
So the first step that we do iswe go through a cleaning
routine with the data, try toput it into more of an English
(08:42):
language form, and then we canpull it into the report and we
use that knowledge in the permitto help us figure out how old
is the HPA system, how old isthe roof, how old is the was it
flooded before system, how oldis the roof, how old is the was
it flooded before?
And that's the fun part is notjust assembling the data but
twisting it so that it gives youthe answers that you want.
Ed Mathews (09:03):
So obviously there's risk data, there is claims data
, there is permit data.
What other types of informationare you collecting on these
houses?
Bob Frady (09:11):
We have we start with the real estate data?
same thing that you would seefrom the assessor Property card
type stuff, yes, we start withthe real estate data, same thing
that you would see from theassessor Property card type
stuff.
Yes, we look at aerial imageryfor the roof and we machine read
that aerial imagery to figureout what the condition is.
We look at weather events, sowhether if it's hail over an
(09:34):
inch or winds over 65 miles anhour, we pull that in and then
we do a lot of work to say howold is the root, what's it
composed of, how long does itlast in this state on average
and what's the expectedreplacement cost for that roof.
We pull in flood data from acouple of different sources.
Fema is one of them so we cantell you is it in a 100-year
flood zone or a 500-year zone.
But we can also tell you thelikelihood for flooding from
either the ocean or a river andwe'll use that as a flag to say
(09:57):
you might not be in the hundredyear flood zone but we do
suggest that you get floodinsurance for this property
because it looks like it'ssubjected to it.
We look at building permit data.
We look at all sorts ofneighborhood information when
are the fire stations?
Where are the fire hydrants?
Where are the hospitals?
What's the quality of the water?
What's the soil that the houseis built on?
(10:18):
Because if you have a lot ofclay oriented soils, they tend
to have more water leaks than ifyou don't.
Tons and tons of data that wetry to bring together, but
really the answer is we'retrying to just give you the
questions that you should ask tomake sure that you go in to an
offer with your eyes wide open,okay, and so I'm also curious
about property types.
Ed Mathews (10:38):
So, single family homes, obviously, but are there
any other asset classes that youpay attention to?
Bob Frady (10:43):
Yeah, the system works on any type of house.
Where it gets tricky is whenyou have I grew up in a three
family house in Boston andthey're all condos now yeah,
each unit might not the permitmight be assigned to the address
and not to the unit, so it getsa little tricky in those
situations.
(11:03):
But it still gives you like theroof and the value and all that
stuff, because we'll prompt youis this unit one, two or three,
so anything up to pretty much afour.
A four by, if you will, willgive you really good data.
Works on commercial properties.
Commercial properties don't havean MLS listing the way that
(11:24):
residential properties do, soyou miss some of that juice.
But we can tell you the roofcondition of pretty much any
property in the US and sometimeswith commercial properties the
permits are yay long becausethey have a ton of permits on
commercial.
We don't pursue the commercialpiece of the market just yet but
we get asked a lot so we'reconsidering it.
(11:46):
But it works pretty much on allproperties.
But the strength is SFDUs up tofours, yeah, up to a quad.
Ed Mathews (11:53):
I can tell you as someone who's bought them if I
was spending a few milliondollars on an apartment complex,
I would pay you way more than$69 to make sure I wasn't buying
a lemon.
Bob Frady (12:02):
I tell you what.
If you find it valuable, thenreach me afterwards and we'll
develop a product.
You, sir, have a deal.
Ed Mathews (12:09):
In terms of the product, cloud-based, I assume.
Bob Frady (12:13):
So you access the web , access it from the web, and
what we do is we have a portalwhere you can look at the report
or you can download it to a PDFif you want to.
Ed Mathews (12:23):
And so the other thing I'm curious about you've
mentioned it a couple of timesis the quality of a roof.
Like, I use a tool and I'm notgoing to mention it here, but
it's an aerial tool,satellite-based, I presume where
they give me access.
They don't give me quality, soI don't know the condition, but
I do get the measurements interms of the.
You probably know which toolI'm talking about, the.
(12:47):
You probably know which toolI'm talking about, and if I want
, I can get the window and doorcount, I can get the siding
squares, I can get the floorplan from an aerial perspective,
not the interior, and it'shugely valuable to me when I'm
sitting here trying to figureout okay, I know I have to
replace the roof, I know whatthis building needs windows, the
facade is shot and I need toreplace the siding at some point
in the next five years and thathelps me construct a plan.
(13:09):
So when you talk about thequality of the roof, is it
binary, like good, bad, or areyou also providing another layer
of, like, sizing, informationor measurements?
Bob Frady (13:20):
It's on a scale of one to five.
Where one is I can't believethere's not a new roof on this
house and five it's in greatcondition.
So we'll tell you things likeponding, algae, staining, as
much as we can.
There's always going to besituations where hail is tricky
to give the overall condition.
So we'll give you a score oneto five on what the condition of
(13:41):
the roof is.
But then we'll tell you is thisa high exposure or a low
exposure roof, like in NewEngland?
It's a relatively low exposureroof.
Rain and ice dams are big inNew England as well, versus in
Texas.
You get everything.
You get wind, hail, tornadoes,all that stuff.
So we'll tell you what theexposure level is as well.
Ed Mathews (14:01):
Okay, wow, that's phenomenal.
All right, let's get into thefinal five.
So I'm always interested inentrepreneurs and leaders and
how their brain works, becauseyou've had a lot of success
already and you're not sweatingthe mortgage.
The college tuitions areprobably handled, retirement is
pretty good, but younevertheless get out of bed on
Monday morning.
So I'm curious what yourpurpose is.
(14:23):
What drives you and causes youto shoot out of bed on Monday
morning to take on the world?
You know.
Bob Frady (14:29):
I'm a huge believer in fairness and I think that
home buyers get screwed becausethe seller knows this and the
buyer knows that, but from abusiness standpoint, what gets
me out of bed is I'm pushingtowards fairness.
I love that.
As a kid growing up, fairnesswas always like that's not fair.
So let's try to make it fair,and that's always fun to do.
Yep, I love that.
(15:02):
So what is the best advice youever got?
And go, do it and believe inyourself.
And he saw it way before I did,because I did the corporate
thing and then I finally jumpedinto my own driver's seat, if
you will.
So Joffer, who was a wonderfulfriend, was the first person to
believe in me as an entrepreneur, and I finally listened to him.
Ed Mathews (15:22):
Smart man.
I think that I really, trulybelieve that you learn more from
your mistakes than you do fromyour successes and, like in my
company, mistakes are notfrowned upon, right?
Just don't make them twice.
Stubbing your toe is a goodthing, because it's something
that we overlooked and we canfix it and never have to worry
about it again, or?
Bob Frady (15:48):
professional life.
That is that you made, and whatwas it and how'd you recover
from it?
I made a lot of mistakes.
Yeah, I know co-founder, and Ihave a bet who gets fired more.
The biggest mistake is notbetting on myself earlier in the
process.
Right later, it's like I keptworking for these companies and
I'm like, okay, now this is thenext thing we can do, and
they're like, no, we don't wantto do that, you need to leave
because I would make trouble.
(16:08):
So I like building stuff, andso the biggest mistake I would
say is telling my boss to go Fhimself if he didn't want me to
solve problems.
And then I was gone two dayslater, surprise.
Ed Mathews (16:22):
It's funny, how that works.
Bob Frady (16:23):
Had similar experiences, yeah, and then I
realized I just need to bettermyself.
Ed Mathews (16:28):
Excellent.
Yeah, that's good advice.
I bet you I could give you guysa run for your money on who got
fired more, because I'm cutfrom a similar cloth and I don't
know that I ever told a boss togo F himself, but I came pretty
darn close yeah.
Bob Frady (16:39):
It was fun and I knew HR was going to come in,
because that wasn't the first.
I'm like let's go.
Yeah, all right, I don'trecommend it.
Ed Mathews (16:47):
I'm going on a blaze of glory.
Bob Frady (16:48):
I don't recommend it, but it was stressful.
Ed Mathews (16:52):
Yeah, obviously you're somebody that you've got
leadership responsibility, andwith that comes the urgency to
continue growing and learning,and so I'm curious about how you
take in information.
The question I'm really drivingat is what's the book on your
either physical or virtualnightstand?
Who are you paying attention toand what are you learning from?
Bob Frady (17:12):
them is not to be emotionless.
It is to understand what youcan control and what you can't.
That was a massive change in mylife, and it was relatively
(17:38):
recently as in the last fiveyears, that I picked that book
up, and I still go back to itall the time.
You can control certain things.
Those are the things that youshould pay attention to, and
things you can't control areones that you should pay as much
attention to.
You can't control are ones thatyou should not pay as much
attention to.
Breakfast with Seneca sobrilliant.
Ed Mathews (17:53):
I can't wait to read Control and control.
That one I wasn't familiar with, so I'm so glad you just
mentioned that, because now I'vegot a new book.
I was literally inaudible today.
And what's my next book?
Bob Frady (18:01):
It is a fantastic book and it's listen and it's
listen.
It might not be for everybody.
For me it's like.
My wife is an incredible reader.
She reads everything.
I don't read a lot of books.
I read the internet, it seems,every single day, so I'm always
ingesting information.
But that book was?
It changed my life.
Ed Mathews (18:20):
Can't wait to read it.
I will have that in my eithermy Kindle library or my Audible
fleet this afternoon.
All right, cool.
The other thing I'm alwaysinterested in is how leaders
like you define success in theirown lives.
How do you do that?
Bob Frady (18:33):
You know, I got divorced once, never want to do
it again and I changed mytenants in my life and I have
three.
Number one am I a good husband?
Number two am I a good father?
And number three husband?
Number two am I a good father?
And number three am I a goodfriend?
If I'm doing those three things, that defines success to me.
All the money and the housesand the Rolexes are all great,
(18:57):
but they don't mean anything.
Those three things for mearen't?
Ed Mathews (19:02):
Yeah, it doesn't mean a darn thing if you're
being buried with your niceRolex, but the funeral home's
empty, right, yeah, exactly, allright.
So when you're not saving theworld from people buying lemons
in the real estate business orpersonally buying their homes,
what do you like to do?
How do you spend your time?
Bob Frady (19:19):
I am a terrible golfer, yet I remain undaunted.
I love the competitiveness ofsports.
I love the fact that I canstill feel like I'm 15 again by
getting out there and even atthe old man level, still get out
there and compete.
Ed Mathews (19:34):
So when you compete, what do you play?
Bob Frady (19:36):
I actually still play a little bit of softball, play
a little golf.
I was runner up for New YorkCity dark champion one year.
One guy tried to roll me onetime.
He was slow playing it.
He wanted to bet me money and Inever bet money Smart.
But then I'd bet beer and hegot hammered and I didn't.
Ed Mathews (19:55):
So that was a big day he sees oh, that's right,
I'm not lefty, I'm a righty Boom.
Bob Frady (19:59):
Yeah, I see you.
Ed Mathews (20:03):
Yeah, I've learned a bunch and I can't wait to use
your product.
How can people learn more aboutyou and Property Lens if they
want to do something?
Bob Frady (20:10):
The easiest thing is to go to Property Lens, www.
propertylens.
com.
There's a sample report onthere.
You can order a report.
Listen, if you order a singlereport and you don't like it,
just let us know.
We'll give you your money back.
That's how much we believe inthe product.
I'm on LinkedIn, we're on thesocials, is my Property Lens and
I'm Bob@PropertyLens.
(20:30):
If you want to reach out andtalk individually, I'm happy to
Ed Mathews (20:33):
Excellent! Bob Frady from Property Lens.
Thank you so much for joining ustoday.
Continued success, and I can'twait to use your product.
Bob Frady (20:40):
Ed Mathews, good to see you.
Ed Mathews (20:42):
Thank you, sir, take care.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.