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Improve Efficiency and Visibility with the Help of Technology

The Key is Finding the Right Platform By Ryan Helms Gone are the days of filing cabinets overflowing with lease agreements, tenant communications and maintenance invoices. Technology has revolutionized how investors stay organized and continues to evolve, streamlining processes and improving efficiency along the way. Instead of spending days sifting through paperwork trying to find one document, within minutes a digital management system can sort through an asset’s entire life history to pull vital information. For those who have yet to make the leap, investing in one-stop shop technology can drastically change and enhance the way they manage their portfolio. For those already utilizing digitalized property management systems, ever changing technology and the introduction of machine learning models continue to elevate their processes with automated data analysis, helping them to identify both lucrative and avoid-at-all-cost opportunities quickly. The Why Utilizing technology can improve processes for nearly every area investors touch, down to everyday tasks like rent collection and property management to more complex performance analytics and default remediation. Whether you are a mom-and-pop investor or have a large portfolio of properties, in addition to a global view of the inventory, one of the biggest perks to utilizing a performance management system is the organization it provides. For smaller scale investors, these systems can provide you with exposure to new information and data that you have never seen before, all in one place. Imagine being on vacation or stopping at a local coffee shop and taking out your phone. With one click, you are able to monitor your investments from every angle, saving time and improving efficiency. The benefits for those with larger portfolios are similar. Except in this case, it can provide you with a view of individual properties and transactions that previously could have fallen through the cracks. If your documents are not digitized, this part of the process could take time. But once your systems are automated, things will move much quicker. While digitizing your portfolio can be intimidating, you do not have to go all in and can start with whatever level you feel comfortable. One-Stop Shop In years past, management platforms were much more segmented, where investors needed to utilize different systems to handle varying tasks. Today, we are increasingly seeing more online platforms that are streamlining the process, doing everything from property searches to due diligence and transaction management, increasing efficiency and accessibility. You no longer need to work in a silo. Using one platform not only cuts down on training employees in how a variety of systems operate, but it also can provide you with better visibility into the entirety of your portfolio. With all of the information in one place, it is easier than ever to analyze information on existing investments, as well as identify the potential for new additions. Do Your Due Diligence If you are not doing your due diligence before making a move and you are not reviewing every aspect where an investment could potentially be a risk for you, you are missing out. But this does not need to be a cumbersome process. The integration of big data sources puts the research right at your fingertips. Data can be pulled from a variety of sources, from your own records to census, neighborhood and even weather data to—after analysis—provide a clear look at the property and its potential. Making Decisions for You With new data constantly flowing into the system, loss analysis tools, which use machine learning, can help predict exactly where and how a risk could occur. Data can be tapped to predict high cost, low frequency events. Investors can utilize these systems upfront to identify high risk areas that are prone to flooding or where there is a commonality for mold—linking trends to determine potential outcomes for a property. Using the right platform can provide you with specifics, like “There’s an 80% chance that there is going to be mold in this property at some point in time.” It even goes a step further to tell you the projected cost to get it fixed. For foreclosures or properties in default, it is equally as important to do your due diligence to remediate any losses and recoup every dollar that you can. Without the assistance of technology, due diligence could take weeks to complete. With a loss analysis tool, it can be done within minutes. Having this information can help you be proactive and make the right decision for you without hours or even days of research. While all of these additional resources can be very helpful, it’s important to keep a human touch as well. It is definitely tempting to go on autopilot and let the machine do everything for you. However, that can take you down a slippery slope. These programs complement human intelligence and decision making and are not there to replace it. Find the Right Fit The key to all of this is finding the right platform to meet your needs. There are systems out there that work best for beginner mom-and-pop investors and experienced large-scale organizations alike. Each platform has its benefits and you need to find the one that meets your specific desires. Do you want a platform to help collect rent or are you more focused on default aspects and properties that need foreclosed on? Ask yourself what you would like to accomplish with the help of a platform and participate in demos to find the best fit. Over the next few years, we are going to see a big increase in automation, likely at an unprecedented level. Technology is expanding right in front of our eyes like never before and as we adopt these new processes and add them into our management systems, the world of portfolio management will be able to provide insights that we never before thought were possible.

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A One-Click Real Estate Transaction?

It is Not Entirely Out of the Realm of Possibility By Carter Pratt and Bryan Robinette The integration of digital automation in the real estate industry has made valuation, diligence and title services far more streamlined than they had been in the analog days. Today, with artificial intelligence-powered tools coming into the market, the dream of near frictionless real estate transactions seems like an increasingly likely reality. Real estate investing has always been a complicated business involving multiple stakeholders who participate in the transaction, from the buyers and sellers, lenders and lawyers, title companies and notary services all with their own stacks of paperwork to file, verify, sign, and register. In the not-so-distant past, the process of transferring property from one owner to another was an arduous, non-digital, labor-intensive operation of parties manually moving physical documents from one person to another with plenty of room for human errors, any one of which could have dire consequences for the entire transaction leaving all parties bewildered at the conclusion of the process. The Advent of Digitization The advent of digitization was a helpful step forward for both accuracy and speed. The ability to capture documents as digital images allowed paperwork to be filed, sorted, duplicated, and shared among all parties in a common format. For the title industry, uniform records helped eliminate some of the variability that had made searching for title in the past more of an art than a science. For other functions, the ability to see and compare documents helped investors make quick assessments of multiple properties. In a sense, digitization helped change real estate investing from a paper-bound business to a data processing one where information from multiple sources can be extracted, transformed, and loaded into a useable data repository before strategic analysis. Much of this transformation was jumpstarted because of the foreclosure meltdown and financial crisis that followed it in 2008. Deluged with available properties, investors struggled to evaluate opportunities in a heavily distressed market. The legwork required to execute an investment strategy was carried out with actual legs belonging to a national network of brokers, agents, and inspectors who could provide on-the-spot assessments of the condition of each property and an estimation of the cost of any repairs. Then the Covid-19 pandemic further complicated these already inefficient processes by making physical assessments nearly impossible just as the single-family rental (SFR) market was taking off. The industry has solved many of these challenges with technology. Today, there is a digital ecosystem that enables investors to assess dozens of properties, compare one to another, repair what is necessary, and then sell them without ever having seen the property in the real world. This ecosystem is powered by an automated array of technology features such as optical character recognition (OCR), robotic process automation (RPA), and extract, transform, and load processes (ETL). Working in concert, these technologies help review the content of hundreds, or even thousands, of documents and identify anomalies for additional review. A Decade of Progress It is amazing to look back and see how far we have come in a short amount of time. Just a decade ago, many of these technologies that the real estate investment industry now depends on did not exist. For example, the due diligence process was nearly entirely manual a decade ago. Due diligence required highly trained professionals to physically review mortgage documents, title policies, lease agreements, and other recorded documents and manually type inputs into a system. They would spend hours doing side-by-side comparisons of documents and data values to make sure they matched—a tedious process appropriately nicknamed stare-and-compare. As with any manual process, this introduced issues. For example, inconsistencies in how each reviewer entered information oftentimes resulted in repeating these input tasks in order to standardize everything. Today, by overlaying OCR and RPA technology, much of this work can be automated which can help to increase the ability to scale operations efficiently and accurately. This frees up the professionals to focus their attention on higher level decision-making rather than time-consuming and repeatable data entry. However, there are still limitations with the current generation of technology. While optical character recognition is able to extract data from a document, it lacks the ability to decipher nuance or context. But with the introduction of generative AI and large language models (LLM), technology is now better able to contextually understand the content of those documents through question prompts. For example, rather than sifting through a 150-page PDF document, a title insurer could ask, “Who is on title for this property?” and have that information retrieved in a consistent and integrated way. The potential of overlaying AI on top of automated processes could also help avoid some other common chores. AI can help us go beyond extracting data by interpreting the data based on nuances of the property location. For example, recording requirements vary from one of the 3,000+ counties in the United States to another. Generative AI trained on these requirements has the potential to help those without a career’s worth of experience instantly apply these requirements for recording a mortgage in Los Angeles or the requirements for clearing a lien in Westchester. Looking Ahead At the Radian family of companies, we are making huge strides towards judiciously exploring these capabilities. Over the past several years, in a controlled environment, we have invested heavily in building and training AI models to help improve, accelerate, and simplify transactions for clients. Pre-AI enhancements to homegenius Real Estate’s Pyramid Platform operating system and Single-Family Rental Due Diligence and Valuations Dashboards provided by Radian Real Estate Management have helped investors enhance their automation in nearly every step of the funding process based on their internal requirements and the bank’s requirements. These platforms can be accessed by the investor, the capital markets lending institution, and the diligence reviewer so that all parties can see what is occurring with their transactions in real time. A user can see at a glance the diligence requests for each property, who the

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REI INK at IMN East

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Taste Tester Investor Another great culinary networking event with our wonderful friends, clients and supporters. Co-Hosted by RCN Capital & REI INK Sponsored by Home Depot Pro, BCHH, and Swidget

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How Technology has Changed the Construction, Repair & Remodeling Industries

But There is No Replacement for Professionalism By Clint Lien As history shows, technology has a way of making things faster, easier, and much more efficient, in most cases. However, it usually takes time to get these benefits to the masses. If you look back a little way in history, for example, 40 years or so ago, you would rarely find a battery-operated drill in a home or on a construction site. But as they started to become more mass produced, less expensive, and easier to find, more contractors, handymen, and skilled laborers of all types began investing in them. They are much more portable and easier to use and require fewer ancillary tools or support to use them, such as electricity, cords, generators, etc. Now that battery technology has been around for a while and more manufacturers have jumped into the market, you can find almost any tool you may need or want that is battery operated and not nearly as many corded tools. Technology and Materials Now staying with that model of thinking, technology also affects the materials that are being used in today’s construction, repair & remodeling industries and you will see the same type of progression. For example, when I first started working with my dad, there were basic flathead and Philips screws in all different sizes. There were several types of basic nails that required a hammer. They had different screws and nails for different applications, but they all only required basic tools to use them. In today’s market you will see specialty fasteners for specialty types of materials, and this may require specialty tools to install those materials. This process can be very difficult to keep up with and have expensive start-up costs. Some “old school” contractors are sometimes very weary of these new materials and will wait a while before investing in them and selling them to their clients. And in the short term this may save the contractor a little money and time, but this may also limit him, and he might be forced to upgrade regardless. But in the long term it can be very beneficial for the contractor by:  »             making the job faster,  »             providing his client with a superior product that may last longer or be recycled and more accessible, and  »             providing a completely new look that the client desires. There are new materials being developed daily and the true professionals invest and take advantage of these in every way they can and in turn they can make more money faster. Technology and Labor Let’s not forget how technology can affect the labor in this industry. With tools and materials continually improving, training methods and the way labor is tracked and estimated is being directly affected as well. A worker who may have a particular skill set and is trained on a specific new tool may demand more money. With tracking through GPS on phones, vehicles, tools, etc., the contractor can refine his efficiencies much better and cut back on loss of time, workers wasting time by making unnecessary stops, or what route is the fastest to the job or why did it take so long for his crew to get to the job. Also with computers, phones or tablets the contractor can understand, track and record how long a project may take, and when the same project comes up again, he may have that information waiting at the tip of his fingers. This can help the contractor to be much faster and eliminate the guess work while also allowing the contractor to bid on jobs with more confidence and be more competitive. Technology and Estimates Let’s not forget the software and AI developments that have occurred in the last few years. In the past, a contractor may have needed three things to write an estimate: a pen or pencil, paper and a measuring tape. But this typically meant the contractor would have to know in his mind how long the job would take, what are the needed materials and how much do they cost. He may have to spend time looking up materials or calling sub-contractors to validate his thoughts. This process can be very time-consuming and inaccurate, causing undue worry and stress for the contractor. Also, this may prolong the time for delivery of his estimates causing him to lose the job to someone else. In today’s world we have many different estimating systems that are loaded with tools to make this process much more efficient, faster, easier and more repeatable than ever. With the use of cameras, laser measuring tools, blueprint readers, email, text, etc., everything moves at a much quicker pace, even receiving money from the client or paying workers. In today’s world almost anything can be made faster, easier or cheaper using technology. And with how rapidly AI is advancing and the tools that are already being used to validate status, feasibility, times frames, quality, damage or condition simply by feeding photos into your system, the sky is the limit. Understanding that technology has always been a driver of change in various industries, it is an even bigger driver in the construction industry today. As housing shortages and demands increase and as the market seems to be out of control in so many ways, the cost just to be able to have a roof over your head and live somewhat comfortably is increasing by the day and the cost of everything else goes up with it, such as your workers’ wages and his associated work expenses. The contractors’ costs also go up, so he can support his workers, family and his company’s growth. In conclusion, though technology may help in many incredible ways with making things faster, easier and longer lasting, it does not mean that the cost savings are passed directly to the consumer. Furthermore, the demands on the contractor could not be higher. With expectations rising due to more options and the average consumers access to much more information

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Driving Real Estate Tech Forward

Utilizing a Collaborative Approach to Venture Capital By Aaron Ru Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in the number of technology tools available to the real estate industry. Innovation has occurred in all facets of real estate, from new methods of construction to improvements in the leasing process all the way to better technology to manage the full resident and asset lifecycle. Products such as smart locks and 3D tours have improved the touring and leasing process dramatically, enabling prospective residents to view a property either digitally or in-person outside the confines of a leasing agent’s 9 to 5 schedule. Better access to big data and new methods of modular construction have unlocked more efficient asset acquisitions and construction. On the property management side, owners have benefited from maintenance technology platforms that help facilitate better resident communication on maintenance issues and provide better service on the actual maintenance work through leveraging technology such as computer vision to better scope problems. Yet, even with a significant amount of real estate technology development from both startups and incumbents, adoption within the industry has been slower than expected. While some of this is a general technology implementation phenomenon — it is never easy for entrepreneurs to create a product that can perfectly meet end user needs and penetrate the market — there are a number of ways in which it is particularly challenging to roll out technology in the real estate industry. The Challenges of Real Estate Technology As opposed to most industries where operations are based out of either one or several large corporate offices, a huge amount of real estate operations happen at distributed portfolios across a region or country. This slows down tech adoption in a few ways. Let us consider an apartment owner-operator based in Dallas whose construction, leasing, and property management are happening across the eastern seaboard. There might be significant inefficiencies involved in property operations in North Carolina and Georgia, but because corporate decision makers are 1,000+ miles away, gaining approval for a tech expenditure is a challenge. Meanwhile, if the corporate COO is approached directly by a tech vendor and immediately buys into the vision of the technology, onsite teams in another state may be reluctant to use the tech. Even for tech that is easy to deploy, there are inevitably learning and implementation curves, and onsite teams will sometimes roll their eyes at corporate decisions without considering the long-term efficiencies. Another issue is that real estate tech is more than just technology. Typical software products are easy to roll out; once the company has signed up for fintech or martech tools, users receive temporary passwords, and they are able to log in in a matter of minutes. Real estate tech is much more complicated. Because of the nature of real estate, many tech solutions are not pure software, but have a hardware element to them. For example, SmartRent and other smart locks require physical installation in each unit. Similarly, some construction tech tools — even software-heavy ones — require a technician’s presence onsite. Effectively, this means that building a great software product is just the first step. Companies also need to exhibit excellent execution when physically deploying products, which makes the process of scaling that much harder for those technologies. A New Approach to VC Facilitates Improved Innovation and Execution These challenges are not minor, but they are solvable, and we have found that in our investing as a venture capital firm, we are able to create an approach that helps address and mitigate many of these issues. The core of our approach is our close relationship with 50+ institutional real estate firms, which goes all the way back to our founding in 2017. Seven years ago, real estate technology was just beginning to come into its own, but there was a significant disconnect between the “disruptive technologies” Silicon Valley venture capital firms were trying to fund and how the real estate industry actually vetted and deployed technologies to drive value. To address this, RET Ventures was founded with a unique model — instead of being backed by endowments or family offices like most VCs, RET raised money from residential real estate (multifamily and single-family rental) owners and operators. This created an ecosystem of innovation that helps us ameliorate many of the issues that slow down technology deployment. In addition to investing capital into our funds, most of our strategic investors are active partners who help us vet technology startups before we back them financially. More importantly, they typically collaborate with the leadership of our portfolio companies and provide them with guidance to help them deliver a product optimized for the way real estate professionals do business. This has tremendous value to any startup. New companies — whether in real estate or beyond — often pivot repeatedly as they struggle to establish product-market fit. The ability to have leading real estate companies giving them guidance is a huge advantage. With our investment capital coming from leading multifamily and SFR companies, RET is focused largely on technology for those property segments, and that focus helps alleviate many of the rollout and execution issues. Like any VC, we work closely with our portfolio companies to help them scale their growth. But unlike many VCs, we have a thorough understanding of the industry in which our portfolio companies operate. With three dozen plus real estate tech investments, our team has helped numerous startups gain the operational expertise required to roll out combined hardware/software products and get buy-in from groups of tech users distributed across many properties. The Importance of a Collaborative Approach If the approach we have taken has been innovative in the world of VC, the idea behind it could not be more simple: The real estate industry has to work collaboratively to drive real estate tech forward. Real estate has a host of unique processes, quirks and hurdles, and even brilliant tech entrepreneurs will not be able to figure them all out

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Four Myths About the Single-Family Rental Home Industry

Shedding Light on Reality By David Howard In recent years, the explosive growth of the single-family rental home market has attracted widespread attention from the public, the media, and policymakers alike. Landlords have rented out single-family homes for generations. But the recent professionalization of the industry has transformed the market. For decades, the overwhelming majority of rental homes were owned by landlords who hold a single property. While that’s still the case today, over the past decade or so, companies have emerged that own and operate portfolios of single-family rental homes. These companies have demonstrated that by owning a portfolio of homes, they can provide higher-quality customer and property management services that lead to an enhanced housing experience for all residents. The National Rental Home Council (NRHC) — the nonprofit trade association representing the single-family rental home industry — seeks to educate the public about the economic value and benefits of this dynamic industry. This fact sheet dispels some myths and sheds light on the reality of the market. MYTH #1: THE SFR INDUSTRY IS A PRODUCT OF THE GREAT RECESSION Reality // The SFR industry has been around for decades. In fact, there were more single-family rental homes, as a percentage of total rental housing stock, in 1999 near the height of the dot-com boom than in 2009, during the depths of the recession. It’s certainly true that SFR companies were active buyers of properties during the recession. But their presence brought much needed capital and liquidity to markets undergoing upheaval from bank-directed foreclosures, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. SFR companies also contributed to a recovery in home values without a significant impact on rental rates or eviction rates, and they supported local labor market conditions by increasing rates of employment in construction and home renovation businesses. MYTH #2: WALL STREET CONTROLS THE SFR INDUSTRY Reality // “Mom-and-pop” investors own 99% of single-family rentals. Institutional investors — including public sector pension funds, private equity firms, and other entities — own just 1%. Almost 90% of SFR investors own fewer than ten units. By contrast, institutional investors own 55% of multifamily rental units. Institutional investors occasionally hold investment positions in SFR companies, just as they do in other major sectors of the economy. The fact that they are drawn, in part, to the single-family rental home industry is a testament to the strength, vibrancy, and legitimacy of the market. MYTH #3: AMERICANS RENT BECAUSE THEY CAN’T AFFORD TO BUY Reality // More and more Americans are renting single-family homes by choice — and it’s easy to see why. SFRs offer families access to newly-renovated homes complete with a range of amenities, including good schools, parks and open spaces, shopping venues, and entertainment destinations. SFRs especially appeal to millennials, who are often focused on paying down student debt and do not want the commitment of buying a house. The median SFR costs just $1,600 a month. By comparison, the median down payment was $15,500 in 2018. SFRs cost less than apartments per square foot. The SFR industry also serves aging Americans hoping to downsize and move closer to their children and grandchildren without incurring the full costs of homeownership. MYTH #4: SFR LANDLORDS OFTEN SPIKE RENTS, PRICING FAMILIES OUT OF THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS Reality // SFR landlords, just like multifamily landlords, set rents based on market dynamics. If they overprice their units, tenants will simply go elsewhere. SFR landlords frequently perform extensive rehabs that make properties more attractive, which benefits tenants, nearby homeowners, and entire local communities. SFR companies have cumulatively poured $4.4 billion into home rehabs — an average of about $21,000 per house. These investments have supported more than 50,000 jobs and generated more than $300 million in local taxes and revenue. For additional information and resources, please visit NRHC online at www.rentalhomecouncil.org.

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