279: Marketing, Screening, Leasing & Collecting Rent using Self-Management Tool UpTop by Frank Barletta

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It's my pleasure to welcome Frank Barletta to the show. He is the CEO and co founder of an app that can give you institutional grade power as a mom and pop investor. And the app is called Up Top. And Frank, welcome. How are you?

Thank you very much for having me, Jason. I appreciate it.

It's good to have you. You know, it's so great to see how there are so many tools in the marketplace that formerly were only only available to sort of enterprise level companies and landlords and now the technology is just trickling down. So mom and pop investors with very small portfolios can take advantage of this. Right.

It's a great opportunity today to be in technology and also to be able to provide that level of expertise and tools to anyone from the institution to the mom and pop. It is awesome.

So tell us about the application now. Is it an app? Is it desktop software? Is it both? You know, give us an overview.

We've created an ecosystem and the ecosystem is a cloud based product that, that allows landlords and property managers of any size to connect directly with the tenants and prospective tenants. We do have mobile apps and those mobile apps have been designed to create a phenomenal experience for renters. So renters want to do things on the go. They want to find their next apartment, they want to pay their rent, put in their maintenance requests. So we've developed mobile apps and a web app for them to do that. So on any device and for your landlord and property manager or agency, you can use it on any iPad or any a tablet as well as any computer desktop browser.

Okay, what does it do? Tell us a little bit more about what it does. I mean, you described it when you talked about the tenant side, but there's a lot of backend stuff available to landlords too, right?

Yes. So Up Top is the first free end to end rental ecosystem. And when we think about how everyone does business in this space, we think that there's a couple different buckets of services that are provided. So you have your marketing side, you have Your lease up and you have your back office and what up tops designed to do is facilitate or streamline the entire process and the property management or the management process end to end, at no cost again to the landlord, property manager, or to the agency. So that's for marketing your current or existing vacancies. You have the ability to screen and communicate in real time. You can have leases signed online, you can collect rent. You can use our accounting tool to generate reports and manage your expenses, as well as offer a maintenance solution. So your tenants can let you know when there's issues, you can record them, you can submit those to third parties that you work with and really just manage the entire experience in one place.

Good stuff. So tell us about the marketing. I mean, what specifically would an owner do? Maybe you want to kind of take us through the steps to does your system syndicate ads to different rental property platforms or give us a little more of an idea about that.

We've created our own ils, which is an Internet listing site. So similar to what they Zillow or Apartments.com is, as a core business, we've developed ourself. We also know that we are new to the space and to maximize traction and to ensure that there's brand awareness and that the units that are vacant or have the most exposure, we do syndicate as well.

So what does a landlord do? They sign up for your service, I guess, at the website, right?

Correct.

Okay.

So they would sign up. They go through an onboarding process, and if they're looking to list their vacancies, they list similar to any other ils. They put all the information that they believe is important for any prospective tenant to know right into our app and they push publish to Marketplace and it will send out to all of the different places that you would want them to go to, as well as through our own channels. LiveUpTop.com is an ILS that renters are finding in various cities growing in 30 states. And we're able to attract tenants as well as same thing. We want to make sure that we get maximum exposure by pushing out to other places as well.

I assume that includes pictures and maybe videos or virtual tours.

Exactly.

Okay.

Amenities. All of the important things that are necessary and what's really great about us is as a tech company, there are things we may not know. So we like to have a close relationship with our clientele so they can tell us the things that they see, the things that they feel are important or would make their jobs a lot easier so that we can help and we can build that, and we do that all at no cost.

It's interesting, Frank, that this is, it's becoming such a large, I can't even call it a cottage industry, but it's like a large, behind the scenes interesting. I mean, you know, we hear a lot about fintech. This is really a segment called rental tech, right? Kind of tell us who some of the big players are in the rental tech market and what makes up top different.

So the rental tech focus is really a new focus and unfortunately the market is very segmented. If you think about how everyone does business today, you have your needs for an ils, you have to list your vacancies. There are tools for communication, there are tools for online lease signings, there's different property management softwares, there's different maintenance tools, different types of fintech products to collect rent. There's so much that's out there. What we want to focus on is resegmenting that whole space and transforming it into, instead of having to pay for software and use several things that you don't need, go to one place and not pay for something that you do need. In terms of how new this industry is, there have been property management softwares and there have been Internet listing sites out for many years, but there hasn't been much love or attention put onto this space. And we hope that we will be and continue to be the catalyst and the game changer in that space to drive more growth.

I mean, we've had a few of the players in the marketplace on the show really quite a while ago. I mean, we even had them speak at one of our conferences. We had the cozy people at the time, their thing was mostly centered around simply rent collection and screening. But your app really sort of does the end to end solution. Tell us how that works. I mean, where's the business model for you guys making money? Is it on the. Is there a fee for the collection and the payment transfers or is it sort of just a float on that money out there with. With all of your users? What's the business model for you guys?

Our business model is focused on the transactions. We empower the landlord and property manager to do a full screening of their prospective tenants. There's a cost of doing that business. So obviously if you wanted a credit and background check, there's a cost to the bureaus like Experian and TransUnion and these different vendors. So we have a small fee on top of that to resell the service. And if renters want to pay their rent online instead of paying a paper Check. They can either do credit card, debit card, E check, ach, and and there is a small convenience fee that allows us to continue to grow our business. It's a lean model. And while you've mentioned cozy, which is a great tool and that does focus on a few things, I want to emphasize that that doesn't re segment how people do business. It just adds additional tools that are necessary. What we focus on is improving bottom lines. And if I can say we are innovators in this space by allowing everyone to abandon their current way of doing business for a new process that's going to make their operations much smoother, save them time, save them money and make them money. I think that's a conversation that hasn't been had before and that's something that I'm welcoming and putting a big emphasis on.

Yeah, good stuff. So property management companies are using your system and then individual owners are also using it, right?

Yes.

Okay. Is there any distinction that you want to share about the way a manager would use it? A management company versus an individual really.

Depends on the organization themselves. So your typical property managers have several clients. The ability to onboard their clients and their portfolios as easy as possible is key. So we'll say property manager A has 10 clients. Each client has their own bank accounts, each client has their own portfolio. We've designed our product to make that so simple that reporting at the end of the month, transactions that happen in real time get paid to the right people on time. We've made it so that everything is very seamless. And if they have clients that want to log in and see what's going on, or just be responsible for approving who joins their community, that is something that we've done and enabled. For your independent property owner or manager, say property owner here in this scenario, they're welcome to go in, use the tool on their own, at their own pace. They get all of the support that they need from our team, chat with us, talk to us, we provide as much guidance as we can, and it's really designed to help them save a lot of time and money. In the operations aspect, being a landlord is not easy. Being a property manager is not easy. So making it so that their time could be reallocated to improving their practices and making their product better and just enjoying the things outside of work I think is very, very important or I believe is very important. So that's something that we wanted to put a lot of emphasis on as well.

So are there any geographical restrictions or does it work nationwide in the US.

Nationwide, currently in 30 states and growing.

Okay. Why is it in 30 states only? Is it because. I mean, it also drafts leases and managed leases. I want to ask you about that, but is there a reason it's not in every state yet?

Just coming out of stealth this year, so fully with our early markets, we focused and were able to grow from there. I would say give us another 12 months and we'll see how many more states we can. We can get into.

Yeah, I mean, 30 states is definitely impressive, but the reason I asked that question is it's a platform. Right. So why wouldn't it work anywhere? I'm just kind of curious about. Is there a legal issue or.

No, not at all. It's mainly marketing and just outreach.

Okay.

No limitation on geographic. It was more. That's where we've been able to do business so far and grow so far. The opportunity is everywhere. So expect us to keep going.

Sure, sure. So if someone uses your system in some state in which you're not sort of open yet, it'll still work, right? I mean, it's a platform, right?

Yes. There's no limitations. We have people that take our system, they set it up, they're in other countries traveling, and they're managing their business on the road. So really no limit to what can be done.

Yeah, good stuff. And when you say their business, I just want to distinguish. Of course, real estate investing, like any endeavor, is a business, but it's not really a business business business in the way that some might think of it. It's, you know, an investment portfolio. So they're managing their portfolios on the road. Right. How does it handle the leases? Do you have sort of standardized lease documents in there and other tenant documents, and it does it through a signing platform like a DocuSign or. Tell us a little bit about that, how it handles leases.

Our system is. We're not a legal company, so our system's not designed to provide legal expertise or boilerplate templates. What we do allow is for your property owner or manager to use their own leases. And we encourage to get from their own legal counsel to utilize our online lease signing tool to have it uploaded, have your forms ready to be E signed, and for the transaction to happen within the platform.

Okay, great. So they can upload their own leases and just make it all work from there and do it via E signing. Awesome. Another thing that just frustrates owners and tenants when owners can't take care of it easily is maintenance issues. Maintenance issues. So how does your platform handle that?

Couple different ways. Renters can go on our mobile apps into their account and submit a maintenance request on the fly. They take photos, can take a video, can put in all of the details that are required to let the landlord or property manager know, hey, I'm having this issue. Please help grant permission to enter the unit, all of the details that are really important. We also provide a free hotline which is built on our back end with some AI that listens to the phone call, automatically knows who the tenant is, assigns the transcribed maintenance request to the account that it's appropriate for, and also includes a voice recording so that if any maintenance provides person or team member of the property management side listens to it, they know exactly what's going on. They don't miss a detail.

That's pretty cool.

It's also designed to know who the vendors are, who your contacts are. So if you have a specific plumber that you want to have all the maintenance requests go to that are plumbing, you can also have it assigned and auto assigned. Same thing goes for electricity and appliances. Or if you have a general super, you can do that as well. So it's versatile and obviously growing. The focus is really on making the process a little bit more streamlined, a little more automated and much more to come from that, of course.

Excellent. So I was going to ask you about the way it engages with the contractors and the service providers. Are any of those people on the platform already and does it do anything with that, if you will? And I don't exactly know what question to ask you or how to phrase that, but. Or is it strictly the maintenance people that that each individual owner or manager put in their network or is there.

A network already at this time? It is focused solely on the vendors that are being used by the individual account holders.

Got it.

However, anything is possible.

Yep. Okay. Good stuff, good stuff. Anything else you want people to know? Maybe. Any questions I didn't ask you, you wanted to share?

I want to put emphasis on up top being a tech company and not a real estate company. And the reason for that is we work with industry professionals and industry leaders to learn and ensure we're continuing to innovate and through our technology process and ability to develop enterprise level software. We want to continue to add value to the market by working with as many people as we can and taking a different approach than what's currently out on the market.

Excellent. And give out the website if you.

Would liveuptop.com please visit. We'd love to work with you, Frank.

Thanks so much for joining us. And keep up the good work.

Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

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