Offerpad
Providing Investors with “Certainty & Control” By Carole VanSickle Ellis When Offerpad founder, CEO, and chairman Brian Bair founded Offerpad nine years ago, he did so with a clear goal of control. Bair was not seeking authority for himself, however. He wanted to establish a platform where buyers and sellers could take control of their own transactions and, in his words, “make the real estate experience much easier, take the friction out of it, and give buyers and sellers certainty and control.” Before founding Offerpad, Bair had spent decades in retail real estate, successfully blending traditional transactions with a personalized “concierge approach” in which he listed and facilitated the sale of properties in addition to offering complimentary landscaping, basic handyman services, and even pool services. This “white glove” approach to sales created a positive selling experience and a compelling reason for buyers to take a closer look at Bair’s properties. Also at that time, he was acquiring large volumes of single-family properties at auction to renovate and sell. “I was entrenched in real estate from all different aspects,” Bair recalled, adding, “Two things happened during that time: I saw the value of the cash offer, and I also saw the value of providing a seller with more control over their closing date. For us, providing that control has always been key.” Once Bair identified the allure of a controlled closing date, he leveraged that element of his business to stand out from the crowd of emerging single-family buyers. “One of the biggest challenges we faced in those early days was trying to communicate with homeowners and homebuyers that we are in real estate as a service. We are looking more for people who value their time, certainty, and control than for people in distressed situations. We are very proud of that,” he said. “Growing Up” as Real Estate Started to Change In 2015, when Offerpad formally opened its doors, Bair’s prized element of consumer control was only just entering the mainstream in a variety of sectors. For example, Uber, founded in 2009, was in a period of massive growth; Carvana and DoorDash were both still in their nascent phases, and Bitcoin was valued at roughly $400 and had recently debuted on internet marketplaces that enabled owners to trade it from their iPhones. It was the perfect time for an innovative real estate platform to make its mark on the market as well. “People were just starting to sell (and buy) most of the other elements of their lives on their smartphones, and I felt strongly that they would just want more and more of that control,” Bair recalled. “That became our mission, and that is why we are really as much of a logistics company as we are a tech company or real estate company today. We learned as we grew in those early days that deals should be treated like math problems and every day should be treated like it matters.” Eventually, the company became so effective at problem-solving it expanded into a full-scale renovation operation and, recently, into a partnership format with other real estate investors. Bobby Triplett, senior vice president of renovations at Offerpad, said the company handles hundreds of its own renovations each month in addition to renovating properties for investors, REIT funds, SFR funds, and other third-party partners. “We renovate every property, whether it is one of ours or an independent investor’s property, as if it were our own,” Triplett explained. “That means every one of our partners gets our buying power, our vendor loyalty, our boots-on-the-ground expertise, and our front-of-line access to the things needed for large-scale renovations.” Investors working with Offerpad also gain access to local teams that can assist with writing out scope of work on projects and access insights and resources not available to most individual investors. Triplett noted that Offerpad works with investors on all scales, from a client in Jacksonville working on three homes a month through Offerpad to institutional investors purchasing hundreds of homes in a variety of markets each month. “Our goal is to help investors free up their energy while still ending up with a superior product when we are done,” Triplett said. “We operate in a lot of markets, and we believe that investors who partner alongside us can save themselves a significant amount of money, headaches, and time by working with us in those markets. We believe we are the cure-all to the hang-ups most investors face in the renovation world.” Boots on the Ground in Every Active Market When you operate in more than two dozen markets around the country and handle more than 400 projects in most quarters, you know from experience that every single market is different. “The key to handling those differences is to do the best and most suitable renovations and repairs in every market, and the key to that lies in having local experts equipped to handle any situation,” said Triplett. “Every market has its own idiosyncrasies, that is for sure,” said Triplett. He continued, “In Florida, for example, everything is hurricane-regulated, whereas in the Carolinas and Georgia, most houses have crawl spaces, which you will not usually find in Florida. When you are doing renovations in the Midwest, you will encounter old basements more often than in other regions, and certain soils around the country can create serious foundation issues.” The list of geographic peccadillos goes on and on, but Triplett says Offerpad has the answer to dealing with the unique demands of renovating real estate in any market. “We hire local experts,” he explained. “The renovation director in Atlanta is, of course, from Atlanta, and our renovation directors in Indianapolis and Ohio are Midwest guys. Instead of going the one-size-fits-all route, we hire local experts who will make smarter decisions on the homes in their area and will be better stewards of our resources than someone who is not familiar with the market.” Triplett described the Offerpad process of determining what renovations will be needed
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