The Real Estate UNLOCKED Podcast
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The Real Estate UNLOCKED Podcast
How To Use Privy Real Estate Software Like A Pro | Episode 15
Join us on The Real Estate UNLOCKED Podcast as we welcome Benson Juarez, co-founder of Privy. In this episode, "How to Use Privy Real Estate Software Like a Pro," Benson shares his journey from entrepreneur to real estate innovator, detailing the origins and mission behind Privy
🔍 What You'll Learn:
- Comp Properties: Discover how to analyze properties nationwide from your desktop
- Market Insights: Learn to identify and connect with end buyers in your specific market
- Lead Generation: Strategies for pulling targeted investor lists effectively
- Networking: Tips on finding investor-friendly real estate agents
- Rental Analysis: How to locate and analyze accurate rental comps
🌟 Software Showcase: Experience a live demonstration of Privy's powerful features and see firsthand how it revolutionizes real estate investing. Whether you're a seasoned user or new to Privy, this episode promises valuable insights to elevate your investing game.
📈 Transform Your Investing: With Privy, streamline your operations and make data-driven decisions. Don't miss out on learning how this tool can change your investment strategy for the better!
✅ Subscribe and Learn: If you're already using Privy, this episode will unveil advanced tips and tricks to enhance your proficiency. For newcomers, get ready to transform how you invest. Enjoy and don't forget to hit subscribe for more expert real estate insights!
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What up everyone and welcome back to the Real Estate Unlocked podcast. I'm your host, Joseph Marohn, and today we're going to be doing a walkthrough on one of the best softwares you can use for your real estate business, a must-have tool for your property compings, a strategic way to identify profitable opportunities. Today we're going to be going over how to properly use Privy. Privy is a real estate investment software designed to streamline the process of finding, analyzing and tracking real estate deals. It primarily targets real estate investors who need efficient tools to assess market values, perform comparative market analysis aka comping and identify profitable opportunities a lot more quicker. Now, if you're currently struggling with finding the right opportunities, frustrated not having access to real-time data, or maybe tired of using clunky tools to comp your properties, then stay tuned, because we're going to lift the curtains up and show you exactly what the pros are doing to beat out the rest of the competition. Now you know how we do it on the Real Estate Unlocked podcast. If we're going to do it, we got to do it right. We can't just bring on anyone to speak about Privy. We got to bring on the co-owner of Privy.
Joseph Marohn:Today, our special guest on the podcast is Mr Benson Juarez. Benson is an accomplished entrepreneur with 20 plus years experience in real estate technology, sales and business development. Benson has co-founded several companies in the real estate and technology industries. He's currently a licensed real estate agent, investor and partner at Privy Real Estate Investment Software. Vincent joins us today to share with us how to get the most out of this cutting edge software and all the tips and tricks you can start utilizing today to help you get ahead of the competition. So, without further ado I've been talking long enough Everyone if you will, please allow me to formally introduce to you Benson Juarez. Benson, what up, brother? How are you doing today?
Benson Juarez:What's going on, Joe? Good to see you, brother. It seems like just a couple of days ago, we were hanging out together in Phoenix.
Joseph Marohn:Absolutely, man. That was an awesome turnout man. I had a great time out there. How's your week starting off, brother?
Benson Juarez:Oh, it's going good. It's a weird one, right? Because this is the week 4th of July and people are already traveling, or they're mentally checked out and they're traveling in their heads. They're just thinking about sitting on the beach, drinking Mai Tais and hanging out with family and friends, and that's all awesome too. So I actually I enjoy these kinds of weeks because I can catch up on a lot of stuff that's been being stacked up on my to do list and I can focus, not worrying about having to take meetings and calls when everybody else out there is traveling. So I like these kinds of weeks.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, I agree with you, man. Everybody's kind of checked out right now in vacation mode, and for us it's just another day in the office, right. So it gives us time to really take care of the things that we're currently working on and, hey, locking up more deals, right? So absolutely Well, benson, welcome to the Real Estate Unlocked podcast, a place where we bring value to new and intermediate investors by covering real estate topics on a very basic entry level. Now, I know you as a business owner of multiple companies. You have a very tight schedule, so thank you for making it happen and joining us today to talk about, in my opinion, one of the best softwares that you can possibly use in your real estate business, and I know personally that Pace Marby and Jamil Damji will back that statement. So thank you.
Benson Juarez:Thank you, man. I appreciate you having me here. I always love coming on and I've watched some of your other episodes with some other people and you do it right here, man. I love, I love your thumbnail art, your thumbnail arts on point. I will. I will give you that. And then you've had some great guests on here too, so I'm honored.
Joseph Marohn:Thank you, man. I appreciate that, man. We put our best foot forward, so we're trying here. So we'll see how it goes. So, before we dive into it, I'm curious about how this journey began for you, bro. Like, did you just always have this entrepreneurial mindset? Do you come from a poor family? Like, what sparked the interest of wanting to become a real estate entrepreneur and owning multiple businesses?
Benson Juarez:You know, it's a weird thing. I don't know where the spark came from. My dad was a Denver police officer for 33 years. My mom was a bank teller, so real, it's like modest middle America kind of like, you know, families that are hustling right? We I don't remember ever like struggling financially, but we certainly didn't have a lot Right. So you know, my mom was like a coupon queen. I learned so much from her about being frugal and being really intentional about what I spend my money on. And to this day, like I was, just I bought some groceries for my pops, because he's getting older and up there, so he doesn't go to the store anymore. And like I was so proud because, like I spent, I saved him 50 bucks Right, because, like I was like using the app and I was making sure of getting all the deals. It was going to be $150, but I saved him $50. That was one of the best accomplishments of that day was saving my pops that $50.
Benson Juarez:It's in me Taking that way back to when I started to get a little bit of cash, just going out and blowing it on things. The very first thing I bought with my own money because I cause I had a paper out right, a lot of entrepreneurs that have paper outs was, uh, uh. I got my parents to pay for half of my 69 Ford soft top Bronco oh nice, yeah, such a sweet car. I miss that thing all the time. But I raised a thousand dollars on my own. My parents did the rest and that was, like my, my, the first investment.
Benson Juarez:But again, it was just kind of in me at an early age of, like, being very conscious of money where to spend it. And you know, over the years I've done that same thing. I've taken money that I've earned through, you know business ventures and you know, you know, and just earning money and investing it in the companies, and that's something I've done. I've done a dozen, probably investments in the startup companies, technology companies, and most of them don't work out. That's the nature of that business, but some of them have, and Privy is one of those.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that's awesome, man. Thanks for sharing that story with us. Um, you know, I grew up in a family where, you know, my parents were divorced at a young age. Um, we didn't. We didn't really have a whole lot of money, so I just always had that strive to want to, like, you know, I knew what the value of a dollar was, right Cause I didn't have any. So that's something that always pushed me. You talk about a paper route. I had a paper route myself. I think that's like every entrepreneurial story, right, like, we start off with a paper route. I was even selling flowers. You know anything I can really make money at a young age. But, yeah, man, just trying to, you know, I've always had that drive to really just, you know, try to start my own businesses and, like you said, some of them fail, some of them don't. You said some of them fail, some of them don't.
Benson Juarez:and, you know, just keep putting our best foot forward on on trying to make a better financial future for ourselves, right, so I always love to ask you that story man well you learn a lot like paper out, you think about it, right, you don't have a boss.
Benson Juarez:You got to get your butt out of bed every morning at you know 5, 30 or 6, wrap those newspapers. You get that ink all over your, that black fingers, you know. And then you put them on and, like I, I used to walk around with my pet, my, my sack, and, um, you know, I started off with like a you know a decent size route, I think it was like 50 or 60 people. And then, like my, my, a buddy of mine was also a carrier and then he wanted to retire because he was moving on and I took over his route and then I would grow it right and you can go work for tips and so like. There's so many valuable lessons that you can learn at that age for, like self-accountability, you know doing what you say you're going to do, out there hustling rain, sleet or snow, it was. I did it for four years. It was so valuable nice man.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that's, that's awesome. So, benson, let's go ahead and kick things off. I guarantee some people are watching this right now and thinking what the hell is Privy? Right, benson, can you share with us what Privy is and what exactly Privy can do for us as real estate investors?
Benson Juarez:Yeah, so in your intro you basically broke it down right. It's a data platform, it's algorithmic. There's technology back there that helps investors, agents, automate all the tedious tasks of finding, analyzing and tracking investment properties. Over 10 years ago, my business partner and I were in the same real estate office and right after the downturn in the market, we were looking for a way of optimizing and adding efficiencies to the stuff that we were doing, but there was a limit to the amount that we could do effectively before we started dropping balls. And so, you know, that was when the idea of Privy was born as like, okay, can we actually get the raw data from our local MLS and then create algorithms that will help us automate? You know analyzation of properties, tracking deals, you know lead sourcing, and that's where Privy was born out of. So it's it was never intended on being a product that we were going to sell. That was never the intention. The intention was to just be better at investing and being better investor-friendly agents, and that's what we did.
Joseph Marohn:That's awesome, man. You know, for those that are new to real estate investing, how does Privy simplify the process of finding and analyzing deals? Can we kind of get into that?
Benson Juarez:Yeah, so one of the biggest things about analyzing a deal is recognizing what a deal even is right, because a deal in Dallas is different than a deal in Phoenix, different than a deal in Denver versus, say, minneapolis, and so there isn't. You shouldn't apply a universal formula for what a deal is, because you're going to end up either doing two or three, two things. You're either going to pass up on deals you shouldn't pass up on because you don't think there's enough margin there, or you're going to get into deals that you shouldn't be in and you're going to have problems on the back end, either through disposition in the wholesale deal, or getting that thing appraised if you're doing a fix and flip, or getting cash flow if you're keeping it as a rental, or you're doing some sort of a cash flow scenario. So local market intelligence is where Privy really thrives. That's what really sets us apart from the competition is we can see what other investors are already having success with. We can see what they're buying properties for, what they're selling them for, what percentage of ARV they're buying them at, and you can understand their buying criteria because we have examples of deals that they've bought in the past.
Benson Juarez:Privy is basically analyzing and pulling comps on every single house in the United States, 24-7, all behind the scenes, and then when you type an address in, we're just popping up that stored comparative market analysis for the investor or the agent to use to analyze it quickly and run comps, which, with me, even with 20 years of experience and access to the MLS, it could take me an hour or more to properly analyze one property. I can only imagine what the average investor or newer to intermediate investors trying to do when they don't have all of the resources that I have at my disposal, and so Privy now can help anybody analyze a property within a fraction of a second, understand what the as-is value is, what the after repair value is, understand rental comparables in case the extra strategy is better to be like a rental property than it is to be a fix and flip or a wholesale deal, and that's all happening in real time. One of the other things that makes this very unique is we're the only platform in the world that has direct to MLS data on scale, so we have a team and this used to be me, but fortunately I've been able to replace myself is negotiate directly with MLSs to get access to their raw data and then we can curate, make that information actionable for real estate activities, real estate investing activities.
Benson Juarez:The MLS by itself is not designed for real estate investing. It's a place where agents go to put a property on the market where other agents can see it, and then soon after that they figured out a way of syndicating to other sites like Zillow and Trulia, where you can get additional eyeballs for the average person who's just trying to buy a house to live in. But it's designed for just basically agents to see other agents' properties and then once that happens and they close the deal, then that's where it becomes valuable for comping, because the agent's required by their local board of real estate to put that property price back into the MLS so that agents and appraisers can use it for comping and establishing value.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that's awesome that you guys have direct access. That's one of the main reasons why I love your software. I just don't understand why some of the other platforms are missing that. You know they've had it before. They removed it and it really hurts us because we need to see that direct access right. We need to see real time data being able to access this data. For some reason, other platforms are missing that marker right there, so I'm glad that you guys implemented that get Like you can't just go in and be like hey, give me your data, you know.
Benson Juarez:They're like hey, go pound sand Right. They're like who the heck are you? How are you going to be a good steward of our data? How are you going to resell it? Are you going to, you know, use it for ways that it was never intended to be used? So it's taken us 10 plus years to be able to establish those relationships and build a reputation for ourselves to where now we can go to a new MLS so we can be like yeah, well, we were with a hundred plus already and we're with all of these, you know, top markets, and they're like oh well, that's awesome. Like, well, come on in, right. And so we've established a way of getting it done more effectively and efficiently and built a reputation of making sure that we're using that data properly, based off of our compliance requirements.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, it really says a lot about Privy, because you guys have that access and you know, as you said, it's probably not easy to get. You have to build those relationships over time. So, great stuff, great stuff. Now, maybe others can relate, but I'm one of those guys that gets overly excited, right? I mean rip the packaging off, toss out the manual, don't watch any training videos and just dive into things. Right, action taker, figure things out as we go, which I don't recommend, by the way, because you're really selling yourself short and you're probably not getting the most out of your product. With that being said, what are some of the basic features of Preview that you feel every user should know about?
Benson Juarez:well, we led off with the top one, which is the comping right. So comping, it really is a more of an art than it is a science. There's so many subtleties and there's so much subjectivity that goes into the comping process that it can be pretty overwhelming for the average person who's just starting off, and even for seasoned people. The market's changed constantly, so, like the niche market that you really had your thumb on and you fully understood from last year is no longer the same. And so you know, comping practices change, right. There's some kind of like fundamentals that are standards, right, or like appraisal rules.
Benson Juarez:You know, jamil is one of the best at you know building that the appraisal rules, his criteria for the best practices. But it's based off of what appraisers do right, and so we've implemented a lot of that philosophy and those processes into the algorithm and for our comping algorithm. But so right out of the box you'll have like the most relevant comparables just by letting the comp, the algorithm, do the work. But then we give you the ability to massage that data in case you have like a very unique property right. So comps means comparable, comparable means similar property characteristics, and so we can give you the most relevant comparables.
Benson Juarez:But let's say you have a ranch, three-story, two bath or three, um, three bedroom, two bath, and it's in one of those infill lots where, like, remember they a subdivision, would come in and they'd build all the houses, maybe like two or three lots that they just never built on. Yes, and then my dumb you know as as a kid I'd go over there and I'd be riding my bike and we'd have dirt cloud fights. And then pretty soon somebody buys that lot and comes and builds a brand new house there and it's nothing like the ones around it.
Benson Juarez:So those houses are almost impossible to come to comp. So you have to start loosening the comping criteria to bring in more data that you can use to establish value, and so we have that flexibility built into the platform so you can go further out if you need to. In this scenario where you have the ranch and everything else is two stories around it, well, you can add in two stories and it will add them. So that's one of the biggest things. There is the analyzation. So we have a mobile optimized version of Privy where you can log in right on your phone and you can go in there and just type in the address of any property. It'll pull comparables based off of like right now's data and our direct to MLS data feeds updates several times per hour. So you're really getting the best information for establishing value through that. You can also do list stacking or lead generation with Privy. So if you wanted to pull a list of foreclosures or absentee owners, vacancies, tired landlords, zombie properties, we've got a whole list of different kinds of distressed seller type leads that you can pull from Privy and we allow our users to get up to 10,000 downloads per month to do list stacking and create motivated seller leads, yeah, and we also oh, one of the biggest things, one of the main strategies that I think a lot of people employ is wholesaling, right.
Benson Juarez:So there's acquisition, which is the lead generation, there's the analyzation, which is all built into Privy, and there's the disposition. And so on the disposition side of the thing, you need cash buyers, right, you need people who have the resources to be able to take a property from you and give you an assignment fee. So we track all that investment activity nationwide. So we know every single flipper, we know every single landlord and you can basically be very super targeted and making sure that you're you're targeting a high investment activity area where there's demand for deals, and you can basically export those buyer lists and create a really super like high leveraged list of fix and flippers and landlords who are looking for properties today and you know they have the capability of actually closing the deal because they just did. We know that they just closed a deal and we know, based off of the property they just closed, we know that that house matches their buying criteria. So if they just closed a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch in 80654, and they bought it at 60% of the ARV, well, if you can find another property like that, there's a good chance they'd be interested in it, right, because we know their history.
Benson Juarez:So those are some of the main things that I think help a lot of our users is local market research, really understanding what a deal is and then using that as a model for what a deal looks like, and then also talking with buyers who are actually doing deals and then being like, hey, listen, I saw, you got this house, you got 60% of the ARV. Are you still looking for more properties like that? If so, let me know. I'm coming across stuff all the time that maybe doesn't match my buy box or I don't have the bandwidth for, and I'd love to pass it on to you, you know, for a small assignment fee. And that's what we help people do.
Joseph Marohn:Dude, I'm so glad you brought that up, man Cause that's one of the key features that I use.
Joseph Marohn:I don't think a lot of people understand you can do that, you know, actually going in the area that you see there's high activity, like you just said about fixing and flipping, and then you can actually see what property was listed at you know, and when they bought the property. Then you could see who sold the property and you could just skip, trace that person and reach out to them directly. Now you found yourself your buyer, you know, and people will say, oh, I can't find buyers. I mean, privy has access to these buyers at your disposal, right. So I'm so glad you brought that up. We do that all the time to find buyers outside of just posting on you know, message boards and reaching out directly to people that we do business with Right Now. One of the newest features added to Preview not too long ago was its rental data and rental evaluations, which is awesome, by the way. How accurate is this data compared to other platforms, and where exactly is this data being pulled from?
Benson Juarez:Yeah, it's been super exciting to have that rental data because it's valuable for so many different things. Number one if you're just if you're going out and you want to buy a rental property that cash flows, you want to know what true rental comps are. You know a lot of people in our community are doing a subject to and creative and from those angles, you know it isn't so much about, you know, getting properties at a discount, but making sure that it can cash flow, and being able to look at a sub two deal and understand what the real rents are is crucial for making the numbers work on those deals. We partnered up with a company and I can't disclose who they are, but they're the largest provider of rental data nationwide and they source all of their data from property management companies. So the property management companies they have the actual good data when it comes to knowing what a property was listed for and then it would eventually rent it for.
Benson Juarez:Because those are two different things and for a long time people would go to Craigslist, they'd go to Facebook Marketplace and they'd see a rental, but that was just the list price of that rental property, not what it actually leased for. We know what it leased for. So that's the difference between what a house let's just say it was like a sales comp. Well, we know what it was listed for in the MLS the price but we wouldn't know what it would be under contract for. But we would know what the final sold price is. So this is similar to that grade rehab with linoleum and Formica countertops and original cabinets with like new pulls. Compared to a fix and flip, that's the exact same house but that one's been fully flipped. That could be an $800 difference in rent. So knowing what condition the house is in and seeing those photos is really important in making sure you're nailing your rental comps and making sure your property will actually cashflow.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that data is gold man and I'm so glad that you guys implemented that into the platform, because we've been using other platforms and other sites and they're okay to kind of get a rough idea of what a property would do as a rental, but they're not exactly accurate and I've been kind of comparing the two and it looks like your guys' data is a lot more cleaner, a lot more accurate, so glad that you guys put that on. You did talk a little bit about the comping tools of Pri Privy. My opinion that's one of the dopest features of Privy and its comping capabilities. Can you explain, like, how these tools work and why they are so much better to use in other platforms? Like, what did you guys do different here?
Benson Juarez:It's hard to say that what we did different, but because we do have direct to MLS data in over 100 markets. When you're looking at sales comparables that came directly from the MLS, that's going to be the most valuable comping data and it's the most timely as well. And there's about 10 states that are non-disclosure states, including Texas and Oklahoma. You won't even know the final sales price of a property in those markets because they believe it's a privacy issue and they don't display it. So even if you're, you're, if I don't know how anybody is doing deals in Texas if they don't have direct to MLS like we do. And the reason why we can have it and why other platforms don't is because we don't.
Benson Juarez:We're not a publicly facing website. We're not like a Zillow or a Redfin or you know some other platform where someone can just go on the internet and see those prices. You actually have to have registered and signed up for Privy and we have your data in our system. That's the only reason why we can show it to you. So it's it's a it's a private reason why we can show it to you. So it's a private system where we can show you the actual sold price of a property and in most cases, we still have the photos too, and those are all things that you won't get off of a normal site out there, or even most of our competitors.
Joseph Marohn:No, that's a good point that you brought up with the MLS. I mean, you're an investor man, you've tried these other platforms and, to be honest, man, some of their stuff is just very inaccurate. Right, you comp a property and you're just like this data is outdated, it's not accurate data and so it's hard to really base your comps off.
Benson Juarez:So like we've gone out and we've got that direct to MLS and over a hundred markets and we're continuing to add more and more. But there's certain markets that just have, you know, low investor activity. It's more rural. You know, we may never go and get direct to MLS in South Dakota, for example, because it's just not. We're not going to get a good ROI on our investment into that market.
Benson Juarez:Do we still have data there? Absolutely, we still have county record data, public record data, so you can see owner information, mortgage data, distressed seller leads and we also have what's called third-party MLS data in those areas. It's just not as accurate, it doesn't get updated as often and it typically doesn't include photos. Now that isn't. That's just kind of like the standard of the industry anyway. So that's what you're going to find in like a prop stream or a batch leads or any of our great competitors. They're going to have that level there. We just stack the direct to MLS data on top of it. So everyone's already kind of familiar and used to the standard data sets and the quality of those and the timeliness of them. We're just trying to improve them in all these other markets.
Joseph Marohn:That's awesome, yeah, so something I'm thinking about, benson. I mean, if you're up to it and want to grab the wheel, by all means, man, I think people would get a ton of value if you could share maybe a quick demo on how to navigate on the platform and maybe even do a basic live comp analysis if you're up for it.
Benson Juarez:Yeah, sure, let me go ahead and get this set up here. All right, right, okay, my screen. Yeah, I can see it. Perfect, very cool.
Benson Juarez:So you guys, this is the Privy platform. It's web-based. You can access it from any device that has an internet connection. Like I mentioned earlier, we do have a mobile optimized version of Privy where you can use it on your phone. It's not an app you download from the App Store, it's on the phone. You log in through your normal mobile browser, but it looks exactly like an app. You just need internet.
Benson Juarez:And so right here on the map, you can see where the blue areas are at is where we've already negotiated those direct to MLS data feeds. Anything that's pink is markets that we're currently working on in some way or another, and then where you see yellow and gray is that third party and county record data. So you're going to be able to still operate and say, casper, wyoming, if you wanted to. It's just the experience is going to be a little different than if you're down here in Denver. All right Now. Earlier I mentioned that if you wanted to run comps on any property, all you got to do is just type the address right in here to the search bar and then privy will build a comparative market analysis, pull comps on it, show you the photos, show you the, the actual um, the comparables with the, the, the understanding that those are like properties. Right, we've already matched it all up for you using the comping algorithm. Same processes, like what you would do if you did it manually. And, by the way, a lot of people think that the MLS is like the holy grail of comping data and it's the source of the data, but it's still manual. Like if you're an agent and you log in your MLS, you're still manually going in and trying to figure out what comps are. There's no algorithm that does it, and that's one of the things about Privy is it's all automated and in a fraction of a second you can start to understand what the value is of home.
Benson Juarez:Over here on the left is where we're tracking that investment activity. Over here on the left is where we're tracking that investment activity. So earlier I said that the best way to understand what a deal is is to look at, like, what was the house that just closed a couple of days ago, that was fix and flip or it was purchased as a rental? That will really help you to understand what a deal is today. So this button right here, if I click fix and flip, that's going to plot on the map where all the fix and flip activity is nationwide and then you're able to really see which markets are hot and which ones aren't. So wherever you see blue are markets that are hot, where there's lots of investment activity. The larger the circle, the higher the number, the more activity there is.
Benson Juarez:And, joe, what I've learned over the years is that most investors and I'm using investors as kind of like the catch-all for anybody who's doing deals wholesers, fixing flippers, landlords they typically look for deals where they live because it's what it's convenient, it's what's comfortable, it's what they know and and most people just don't know better to believe that okay, well, you know, if I live in south dakota, like there's no one doing deals here. So even if I had a quote-unquote motivated seller who's saying sioux Falls, south Dakota, and I go in there and I try to run comps, maybe I'll find a comparable of a property, but it's most likely not going to be renovated. And the only way that we can accurately determine the after repair value of a house is by comparing our subject property to a house that was just fixed and flipped and sold recently. So the strategy that I teach is called the reverse REI strategy. Basically, you begin with the end in mind Instead of just looking for deals where I live because it's convenient. I'm very specific and intentional about where I look for deals because that way, if I end up finding a lead in an area like Sioux Falls, there's no comps. I just wasted all my time because I'm not going to be able to make the numbers work.
Benson Juarez:The only way you can make the numbers work on a property where it's unrenovated and you got all a bunch of unrenovated comparables is to submit a really low ball offer, because you have to make the margins and what that does is that increases the chances that you're going to get. You're going to offend somebody, right? They're going to be like oh, I can't believe you submitted that low ball offer to me. In a high investor activity area, you can offer asking price or even go over asking price and still find properties that are at 40, 50, 60% of the after repair value, because the the, the houses around them that are driving the value for those neighborhoods are fix and flips. The unrenovated house isn't a deal unless you've got a fix and flipped house. That creates the margin. That's the easiest way to find a deal is to find the unrenovated home that's down the street that was fix and flipped and sold yesterday, right?
Benson Juarez:So when I look at the map here, there are several markets that we might consider, right? So if you guys are watching or thinking about well, we're thinking about doing something virtual or you know, cleveland, philadelphia, atlanta, nashville, charlotte, jacksonville, tampa, orlando, dallas, oklahoma City those are just some of the markets that kind of jump out at me when looking at this map. But you don't need all of those, you just need one that's viable. And that's two years ago, joe, when I was looking for a market to invest in out of, outside of Colorado. I was considering between Chicago, indianapolis and St Louis, and I ended up choosing St Louis because it had high investor activity and it had a good price point and, based off the data that I was seeing, I could find viable deals there. So I just basically did deals there virtually for, um, you know, good six months doing 100% virtual wholesale on market leads.
Benson Juarez:So the the funny thing about investors is they're always looking for motivated sellers, right? Well, I'll tell you what somebody who's in foreclosure who doesn't pay their mortgage. They're not motivated to do anything. Right Facts. Who's the most motivated person out there? Well, it's the people who list their houses on the MLS. All you got to do is just get it for the right price. Now, if you're in a high investor activity area like this, you could literally find properties on the MLS every single day that are at good margins, that are deals based off of what other investors in that market are already doing.
Benson Juarez:And, joe, when I first started the St Louis market, I didn't know that area. I'd never been there. But just by doing a little bit of research I was able to figure out that this neighborhood right in here Benton Park, dutchtown these are areas that were all high investor activity and all I had to do was look at some of the most recent transactions to figure out what they were buying them for, what they're selling them for and the percentage of ARV, and I could start to really understand what a deal is. So every one of these properties right here is representative of what a flip is. Now there's no flag or tag in the MLS data or in county record data that tells us that a house was definitively flipped, so we have to infer that it was by looking at the two transactions, looking at what they bought it for, at what they bought it for what they sold it for. If those two transactions happened within a short time period and they got it at lower than a certain percentage of ARV and we use 75% as that marker then we consider it a flat. So right, here is one of those properties that sold just a couple days ago.
Benson Juarez:If I click this property card, it's going to open up this report, which is called a Comparative Market Analysis or a CMA. It's just a fancy name for a report of a property where, if I was going to try to do this with the MLS, I'd have to go in there and I'd have to pull stuff from County Record and get stuff from the MLS and I'd have to run comps manually. But we have all this in one place. So here's the property remarks. If you're licensed as an agent, we can show you the agent and office information. The algorithm automatically pulls comps.
Benson Juarez:So these are all the properties that are true comparables, based off of a 1700 square foot ranch, all within a half a mile of the subject property, which is in the center of this box, and then below that we have this little thing called settings and this is where I said you can massage the data to get more data points in to help you establish value.
Benson Juarez:But if you see, here we got 17 solds, one pending to rentals. If I click, all that actually removes the comping algorithm and we're going to see there's a lot more properties here that we hid. There's 90 sold properties in that area. We hid 85% of all the houses because they weren't similar enough to this. That's what somebody would have to do manually if they were trying to. Just think how long it would take you to get rid of those properties. It would take you all day to do one. So now we got under contract pending active comparables and there's actually 45 rental comps. So we hid 42 properties that were rental comps that didn't have the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms as our subject property did.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, sometimes we have to open that up because we can't find a comparable property within the nearest area or subdivision of the property we're currently comping. So sometimes we do have to open that up just to kind of, you know, get more variety.
Benson Juarez:Yeah, yeah, sometimes you need to right Because it's just the availability of the data isn't there. We also have like a drawing tool here. See how this comp zone crossed over this major road. We also have like a drawing tool here. See how this comp zone crossed over this major road. Well, we actually give you the ability of just going in and redrawing this comp zone based off of what we see here and based off of like standard comping rules. But because the algorithm uses a half a mile, sometimes you cross over roads like this, but it's really easily editable. And now this adjusts not only the properties that are on the map but also in the table view, making sure we're only looking at the most relevant ones and then below. That, joe, is one of my favorite features, but I get people telling me this all the time that they love this feature where you can see the before and after. This property was purchased in January of this year and this is what it looked like before it was fix and flip.
Joseph Marohn:We love it, man. We get to see the before and after and see what the fix and flipper did to it.
Benson Juarez:You know, get some ideas from him. Oh yeah, you can get ideas and you can figure out. You know the where the bar has been set Like is this a neighborhood where you can get away with a rental grade rehab or do you have to do something more high end that has? You know, like you know granite countertops and you know crown molding and maybe like a sub-zero freezer with a viking um, you know stovetop. You don't want to build because it's what you saw on some fix and flip show on tv, right, like if you need to be in that sweet spot so you don't leave money on the table.
Benson Juarez:But this one came out amazing. I want to get really good. They did this in five months, right, which is, you know that's a little long. But when you look at the timelines here, you know 130 days under construction, 31 days on days on market for a whole time of 161 days. And then we can see here look at the numbers. So they got this from the MLS, no marketing. They didn't have to be a salesperson, they didn't have to go knock on doors or drive for dollars. They went to the most motivated seller out there, which was this person, and they got it at 54% of the ARV and they ended up grossing $185,000 on this property.
Joseph Marohn:How do you know that they got it from the MLS?
Benson Juarez:Because there's an MLS ID right here, okay, and we got all the photos, got it, got it, okay. If this was off market, it would have been a street view, and then it would have said public records right here.
Joseph Marohn:Oh, so glad you brought that up. I didn't even know that. Good info.
Benson Juarez:Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. I didn't even know that. Good info, yeah, and that's good too. If I want to build a list of buyers and I know that a buyer will buy from the M in St Louis is like I wanted to find buyers like Sella properties, because I was doing all my lead gen from the MLS. So if I could lock a property up, get under contract with an assignment clause and take it to Sella, they're not going to be like oh yeah, I only do stuff direct from Seller. Well, no, you don't, you just did this one from the.
Benson Juarez:MLS right, and if I can find another property for you that's at 54% of the ARV or lower, that's in 63139, that's in a similar condition to that one, would you be interested in it? They're going to be like, yeah, of course I would. And so then I had those buyers that I knew would buy from the mls. I knew what percentage of airway they would buy at and I knew they had the capability to actually close a deal. That was how I started to build my buyers list and I just started reaching out, building those relationships and really, you know, getting that buy box super dialed in. But I already was privy to what their buy box was before I even talked to them, because I'm looking at a house they just closed.
Joseph Marohn:Right.
Benson Juarez:The other thing that I wanted to do was find an investor friendly agent who could be my eyes and ears and boots on the ground. And so, right here, see Susan Raimondo. It was the agent that represented this flipper. See, susan Raimondo, it was the agent that represented this flipper. And so if you're trying to find investor-friendly agents, the easiest way to find them is not by just Googling the internet and been looking for investor-friendly agents. It's just to look at the last closed transaction and see who's actually working with investors. And we know that Susan is here because she represented this flipper on this deal.
Joseph Marohn:Oh, you mean we don't got to use bigger pockets website.
Benson Juarez:No, you don't need to. And the people that are on bigger pockets, those are people that are paying to be there, right? So if they've got enough money, they can be on there as an investor friendly agent or investor focused agent. But are they really doing transactions? Have they ever? Do they know how to run numbers? Do they know how to close a deal? Who knows? But we know Susan does, because she just represented Scylla on this fix and flip.
Joseph Marohn:You know it'd be cool if you can click on Scylla properties and then you could see all the flips they've done on in the area. That'd be pretty cool. I don't think you could probably implement that, but that'd be pretty cool.
Benson Juarez:We actually have plans of doing something like that in the near future. Um, I think we're we're calling it connected properties, um, but we don't currently do that. But that is that is definitely a use case for that Um. But if I know they did at least one deal. That's enough for me to at least start a conversation with them. So we got mortgage data here as well. We got the property history so you can see here, like if there's price reductions or if there's status changes. Obviously the tax assessed value as well. But this is a buyer right, so sell up.
Benson Juarez:So if I come back over here and I click download, I can download 157 buyers into a CSV file and then I can take that file and go to, like my favorite skip tracing company, skip trace them, get phone numbers, email addresses and start reaching out to those people and then getting to have a conversation with them and get their buy box dialed in and then get them on my list. So that's really powerful. So you know, within a short period of time I can really start to understand. You know what a deal is, who are the action takers in that market, who are their buyers, who are the agents. I can start to assemble my team and then I can flip the switch and start looking for deals out there where I would market.
Benson Juarez:So if I was going to pull a list of safe foreclosures, I would pull out of this neighborhood because I know this is where the demand is and I know this is where my comps are located. Right Comps is what is going to drive value. If I was in Sioux Falls, south Dakota, I wouldn't have any of this comping data to help me establish ARV on a property that I might find there. So then you have to low ball. But with this, if I can find the unrenovated house that's down the street from this house right here, that just was flipped and sold for $258, then I can find the deal, just like Sella did, from the MLS and how do you select that pre-foreclosure criteria on there?
Benson Juarez:Oh, it's right here in the filter. So down here at the bottom of the filter are the options of pre foreclosures, foreclosures All of these are distressed seller opportunities and you can pull them. But again, you want to be very super specific about where you're pulling your list from. You had a way better ROI on your marketing efforts if you target a high investor activity area like this than if you're targeting a low to moderate investor activity area.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, I wanted you to point that out, just in case somebody didn't know how to find that data. Yeah, you touched on some good points there, though, ben, because me personally like I live in California but I don't really do deals in California, so my market's in Texas and North Carolina, texas and North Carolina. So, just with you know, some people may be intimidated to do virtual wholesaling or doing deals outside of their market using something like Privy man. Just a couple hours of research. You can find out who's your buyers, you know, you know where's all the activity in that area and you can see what they're going for and you have a good idea of what. You know, what you could sell that property, do an assignment fee or whatnot.
Benson Juarez:So powerful tool, man well, check out where it gets really interesting, right here, right? So we, we did our research and we actually have a patent pending on this little button right here. It looks pretty, uh, you know, pretty basic right fine button yep.
Benson Juarez:So this button right here. What it's going to do? It will take all of this closed data and it basically reverse engineers it. It uses all this data to basically model what a successful deal looks like, and then it will find properties you can buy today that are like these deals here. So let me just click this one button and it's basically just a filter that we've turned into like a one-click button just for optimizing our client's deal flow. But here's some properties that you can buy right now that could be good deals. Look at some of the prices on these things. Yeah, it's crazy $20.
Joseph Marohn:Less than a car.
Benson Juarez:Oh yeah, it's insane. So let's look at a couple of these properties.
Joseph Marohn:So you got that patent, huh that button. Patent pending, patent pending, okay, patent pending, yeah, that's awesome.
Benson Juarez:So here's an example of one right so this house. Right here it's a 4-2. It's 65 grand. We have all these tags here, so grand, we have all these tags here. So if we're looking for different layers of motivation, one we know they want to sell it. They put on the MLS. We know they want to sell it for 65 grand. And these people are absentee owners. They own it free and clear. It's currently vacant. There was an inter-family transfer recently so they transferred title to somebody else.
Benson Juarez:Like, this thing is full of motivation. So it's this property card. Right here, it's going to pull up the comparative market analysis for this house. And then, right here, like a lot of people will use keywords as a way of identifying potential leads, like attention, rehabbers, investors, right, like as is, like all that stuff you like to see. But what's what sucks about keywords is that, like, you're left beholden to what the agent decides to put in the description. Right, if the agent doesn't put investor and rehabbing in in the description, you're not going to find that you're not going to find it.
Benson Juarez:So the best way to find a potential deal is based off the comps. So this property right here we flagged as a potential deal, and the reason why is because this property is available for $65,000. And this property just sold for $279,000. This one is for sale. I'm sorry. It sold for $250,000. And it's a flip right.
Benson Juarez:Remember I said earlier, the easiest way to find a deal is to find the unrenovated house that's down the street from the house that was fixed and flipped and sold yesterday. This is that exactly in action. So ours is a four, two, theirs is a three, three. Now, these might cancel each other out, but a bedroom is definitely worth more than a bathroom is, so but let's just say that it's a one-for-one the ARV of our house, if we can fix it up. And we got a model for the house in Tennessee.
Benson Juarez:This house, at asking price, no marketing, no sales, no knocking on doors is at 26% of the after repair value and probably found that thing in less than a couple seconds. It's amazing. And then all we got to do is we open up that house in tennessee and we got a now a model for what kind of renovation we have to do so. This is basically. I would just hand this over to my contractor and be like do this, give me a bid on this, and right there we'll know that we're basing it off of what the person down the street just did.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, so real quick. Something I want to mention is that I know some of you are watching on YouTube and some people are listening on other platforms, such as Spotify and Apple podcasts. If you guys want to actually see these visuals of what Benson's sharing with us right now, just jump on over to YouTube and watch the actual podcast as a visual. That way you guys can see all these tips and tricks he's kind of showing you right now. But, benson, what are some common misconceptions or mistakes you see users making when they first start using Privy and how can they avoid them?
Benson Juarez:Well, I think a lot of people think that once they have the platform, they don't have to take action. So a common misconception is that, okay, the software will solve many of the problems. It does solve a lot of the problems, but at the end of the day, it's still the user who has to make that phone call. They still have to run their comms, they still have to take action on the automated deal-finding algorithm. Right now we're looking at Tampa.
Benson Juarez:I was have to, you know, take action on the automated deal finding algorithm, like we. Right now we're looking at Tampa. I was going to show you another market, but we can actually save this search and turn on the automation and it will find properties for me and it's going to email me stuff every single day that matches my specific deal criteria and I can get alerts up to every hour. So there's not going to be any shortage of leads. But the user is the one that has to take action and we both know that 95% of the people out there just don't feel confident enough in themselves to actually take action and go write offers every day.
Joseph Marohn:Right, Do you guys living? I feel like you guys thought of everything when you guys created this software. No lie. Like is there anything you guys haven't thought of yet? Like this is crazy. Like what would you say? You know what would you say was the biggest challenges you face when developing privy and how did you overcome it?
Benson Juarez:well, we're early on, when it was just me, my partner and our developer it was just the three of us. So there, we just didn't have a way of doing all the things that we wanted to do from out of the gate. So we had to like, build on and grow organically, get more revenue, build, get more revenue, build, make better tools, get more markets. So that was the largest challenge was being able to grow the company without having to go out and raise money. A lot of startups, when they first start out like they're, the first thing they do is they're out there with the pitch deck, they're trying to raise money, and so they're going to, you know, silicon Valley, or they're going to Silicon Beach and in Santa Monica or they're, you know, in these startup communities and they're all about raising funds. But as soon as you raise money from a hedge fund, private equity firm or like an angel investor or you know some sort of like large company out in Silicon Valley, you lose control. And so what now was your baby is now you and someone else's baby and you've got joint custody and you're fighting over who gets to use the kid on weekends and holidays and you know if you're going to spank them or not spank them, like that's. Those are all the things that you have to deal with when you have investors.
Benson Juarez:We've actually recently brought in an investor with a private equity firm to help us really fuel our growth and grow our team. But we're now up to 23 employees um with. In just three years ago it was three of us, just my partner and I and our developer doug. So we're really putting a lot of work. You know, really grateful to, you know, the communities of people coming on and our great partners like jamil, uh and pace, so we've been able to really kind of keep control of this thing and grow it the right way and not grow it too fast.
Benson Juarez:You know, people hear like 10, you guys have been around for 10 years. Yeah, we grew it 100% organically and the first couple of years we didn't even sell it Like it was just in our a tool for ourselves to use. So it's been. It's been a crazy ride. It's been a lot of fun. We're still building. We're building a lot more things. One of the things that we've done recently is added in more benefits for our agent clients. So when an agent uses Privy, you can see right here like they can show themselves as an investor friendly agent in our system and then get leads. We also have just launched an enterprise version of Privy where it's like a private money lender or like a hard money lender can buy accounts for their customers and then when they log in, it'll be branded with the private money lender or the title company or the brokerage up here in the upper right-hand corner, and the investor gets to use that account at no cost because it's funded by that larger company. So that's something we just launched recently too, which is really, really exciting.
Joseph Marohn:That's awesome, man. You guys are doing a hell of a job, that's for sure. Thank you, man you talked about earlier. We're in Scottsdale, you know, and one of the things brought up in our meeting. You know we're talking about change Right and adapting. So we're currently living in one of the greatest periods of change in human history. You know companies have to evolve proactively to keep up with the people they serve. Keep up with the people they serve and, Benson, I think you would agree that smart business owners need to adapt, to change or you end up becoming the next blockbuster or a circuit city, if you will. Now looking towards the future, or should I even say the present? How do you see AI and other emerging technologies influencing Privy? Are there any plans to integrate like new tech that can enhance user experiences or possibly even offer new capabilities?
Benson Juarez:Yeah, there are. There is no concrete plans, but we're keeping a close eye on how AI is developing. One of the challenges with AI is it moves so quickly. Right, and you know with us, if we start building a feature today, it might not be ready to roll out for six months, Like it depends on how complex it is. But just think how much AI will change in just even the next two or three months. Oh, it's changing every day. So if we start building something now in three months, it's obsolete. Yeah, Right, Potentially Right.
Benson Juarez:So there's a real challenge there on how to implement artificial intelligence in any software platform, knowing how quickly those development cycles are changing. One of the big debates within the technology world and amongst, you know, software companies is is how much of it is just you know, shiny object, like fun, kind of cool stuff that that AI can do, compared to like actual delivering value to the people that use it. Right, Like right now, like I personally use AI for, like content creation, doing research projects, summarization of, you know large documents, you know ideation, and those are some of the I see like the real practical uses of it. But as far as like how it could be leveraged in a privy at a deep level to help with the things that we already do. I'm not a hundred percent sure what's going to happen there.
Joseph Marohn:No, and that's a. That's a legit answer. You know, and as you said, you know AI is just still starting to develop. It's not quite there yet. We're starting to see some early stages of it. But no doubt in my mind, man, just seeing what you guys done with Preview so far, I'm a hundred percent positive. You guys are going to adapt and change in the positive way. And you know, I'm pretty sure Preview is going to be around for many, many years. So no doubt in my mind about that?
Benson Juarez:Yeah, I appreciate that, man. We're always looking for new ways, we're always taking feedback, constantly adding the new features, functionality, new markets, new data sets. So we're going to continue to evolve and just taking it and raising the bar.
Joseph Marohn:Absolutely Now. I think we covered most of the basics and groundwork here on how to get started with Privy and how to utilize it properly to get the most out of its features, but is there anything you can think of that we might have missed or didn't cover here today? I just want to make sure everyone is gaining value here and not leaving this episode with unanswered questions or any key points we failed to touch on.
Benson Juarez:Oh man, there's so much. I mean, Joe, we could spend hours and hours and hours going over all this stuff we could, so we kind of just scratched the surface. I think the best thing for anybody to do who's interested in it is to just get in and use it. Like it's such an inexpensive platform to use that you know we have people who are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in assignment fees or they're closing fix and flips or to fund your rental properties. You know for our platform, which is less than you know, 150 bucks a month, like it really delivers a meaningful impact and value to all of our users.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more there. Well, awesome, benson, you crushed it here today. Bro, you're a valuable asset to this industry. You're not only providing value to people, but you're innovating and putting tools in place so people like you and I, and everybody else here that's watching today, can utilize and help them put themselves in the best position as possible to close more deals and provide for our families, getting us all one step closer to financial freedom. So thank you, brother.
Benson Juarez:Oh, it's my pleasure, man. Thank you so much for having me. I always enjoy doing these sorts of things and it's been a ball hanging out with you.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, same here, man. Where can people get ahold of you, benson?
Benson Juarez:Well, I'm all over social. My main platforms are if you just Google me on YouTube, you'll find my channel. We've got a really cool podcast that we publish called the REI Hacker Podcast. Lots of really cool guests and insights into the industry and inspirational stories from all different walks of life, but mainly focused on real estate, investing and entrepreneurship. If you're on Instagram, it's Benson underscore REI. On TikTok, I'm Benson REI and we're always putting out cool clips and tips and tricks and stuff out on all those social media platforms. So yeah, follow me, Check it out.
Joseph Marohn:Awesome man. Everybody, go check out Benson's podcast, Go subscribe and, you know, make sure you guys are following him on Instagram. Now, if you guys are finding value from this podcast, don't forget to show your boy some love. If you like what we're bringing you, don't forget to show your boy some love. If you like what we're bringing you, don't forget to subscribe. It helps us play into the algorithm so we can reach a broader audience. We're out here to serve and help as many people as possible, so be much appreciated. Make sure to also smash that like button and drop a comment down below if you learned something new about Privy or if you're thinking about joining. Appreciate all the continued support and, guys, stay tuned, because we're bringing these episodes to you every two weeks. I got some awesome topics and guests coming up next that will change the entire way you do business Best. Believe I'm going to keep bringing you that fire. Thank you, benson, peace.
Benson Juarez:Thank you so much. Take care, man. Thank you.