Find your Next Off Market Real Estate Deal with PropStream!

Hey, welcome to the Brick and Bloom Podcast. Follow along as co-hosts Shona and Pasha document their real estate investment journey, providing transparent and honest views of the process with a healthy dose of inspiration and candor. Let them unpack and demystify the different pieces of investment strategies through expert interviews. Whether it's flipping, multifamily, long-term, short-term, or vacation rentals, their goal is to educate and inspire others. To financial freedom and wisdom.

Hi everybody. Welcome to Brick and Bloom with Pashana Daryanajan and Shona Leppis. We are so excited to have our guest for this week, Burton Alicando. And I really want to like sing that because it's such an amazing last name. We had the amazing pleasure, like I'm sure many of you who are at the conference, to actually meet Burton in person. And if you're like us, we are total fangirls of Burton because he is, he He is somebody who's been so incredibly valuable to our investment journey. Yeah, absolutely. If you ever have a chance to jump on any of his webinars with PropStream, they are invaluable, and I cannot speak more highly about all of the content that Burton is willing to share and just such a great, great teacher in this space. Definitely has a very natural talent. And, and I hope that everybody has a chance to, yeah, connect with him. So thank you, Burton, for being on our podcast. We're absolutely giddy to have you on here. And thanks for making time. And just like we shared earlier, ladies, this is not a webinar. We're not gonna like make Burton go through every technical aspect of PropStream. This is really about learning about Burton and his value and just his story and just like how he can set us up for success with, with with PropStream. So, uh, yeah, we'd love to hear a bit about your story, Burton, and just your background.

Well, thank you so much. I'm honored first and foremost, uh, to be here and, and to share, you know, my story and, you know, how I came to who I am today. Um, so a little bit about my background. I'm actually Filipino, um, born in the Philippines, and at the age of about a year and a half, 2 years old, um, came into the United States. I have dual citizenship. My mother's father was a war hero during World War II, so there are some benefits along with that. And so here I am today. We didn't grow up with a silver spoon in our mouths. Both of our parents worked hard and kind of struggled to make ends meet, to make sure that me and my older brother had, you know, roof over our head, clothes on our back when we went to school, and some shoes and so forth. I guess my talent really is just being able to translate things effectively. I grew up with immigrant parents who really weren't familiar with the many documents they'd have to fill out over the years, you know, for loans and schooling and all of that stuff. So it pretty much landed on my older brother and myself to take these documents and translate them. In a much more effective way or a much easier way or easier understanding for our parents to understand it and then go from there. Right. So I guess that's kind of like one of my talents. And then here it is, it kind of trickled along, but I grew up in LA County in Southern California and had just kind of a normal childhood. I wasn't like a 4.0 GPA student or any of that, but I wasn't also a failure or anything. I kind of just was in the middle and just kind of cruised along and just became a people person. If there's one thing about me, I'm really good with socializing. I was the individual that can go from like one group to the next group to the next group and no one would bat an eye. So that's a really unique thing about me, being able to take complex information and give it in a way that's easier to to digest, and also a people person. So as I grew up, as high school came to an end, as community college came around and all that, got into the workforce, started working for restaurants, and then landed a job at GameStop and became a store manager at GameStop. And this is where I really got to understand profit and loss and just how an individual retail operates. And how to work with people, especially. That's the hard thing. You think, you know, GameStop, you're just gonna be playing with games. No, it's a job. Like, you actually have to sell product and work with people. Um, and that's really something that I think is one of my major talents. It's just I'm a people person. I understand emotions. I understand how to be empathetic. I understand how to be honest and genuine, a role model, someone to look forward to, someone to provide information and advice. Too, and so forth. So GameStop finally came to an end. My wife was about— my wife at the time, I'm divorced now, but my wife at the time, she was about 7 months pregnant, and my job came to an end. Not something I controlled, but it came to an end. And in my desperation, I went on Craigslist to look for a job and found the PropStream application. So I signed up or sent my cover letter and application to PropStream. And one thing led to another and I ended up getting the job a week later. I started as tech support. And I'm just going to give you a quick background on Burton and how real estate comes together. I knew nothing about real estate. Like I didn't even know what equity was. I didn't even know what comping was. Um, I used to think that you had to only buy houses through realtors. That's how bad it was, right? I didn't know you can do things privately and buy properties in cash. Again, I didn't have that background. I didn't think anybody could buy properties in cash, right? So that's just my mindset. So when I started with PropStream in 2013, I was tech support, and this was actually our first product here. I keep this as a reminder, but we would install this on your computer, right? And my job was to answer that phone call. If you got that error message on your Windows 95 or Windows XP computer, and I would make sure that our product worked, right? So that was my background, was to just be tech support. But I'm a very curious and sociable person. So as you guys were calling us and asking for tech support, I would ask a lot of questions. Hey, what is it that you're doing with our data? What do you do for a living? Et cetera, et cetera. And then it kind of dawned upon me that this was a lucrative industry. I'm not gonna lie. And a lot of retired police officers and doctors and just very successful people were parking their money in real estate. And I felt like I was providing a disservice by not knowing what they were doing. So I started taking real estate courses on my free time. I went to the community college, took real estate practice, real estate principal, real estate appraisal, a few other courses, started talking to investors like yourselves to understand the strategies that you're applying. Just absorbing, absorbing, absorbing, absorbing so that I can take that information back to PropStream. And that's essentially my role today is I'm out there doing on the ground level research and educating while also absorbing information and taking that back to our office. So it all kind of was like a domino effect and that's what has created me to who I am today. So Thank you for allowing me to share that. I'm sure there's a lot more in between, but I shared that little brief timeline of, you know, where I was and who I am today.

Burton, that is just so powerful, and I think you just ooze this authenticity every time you talk. And, you know, to be able to share and be so transparent about your story and that honesty just really is like so like just kudos to you for being who you are, and that shows up in everything you do. And even though we've met virtually, now in person, you can— you just— you can feel the qualities you bring. So there's just so much to unpack there. So first of all, um, I won't tell my boys that you worked at GameStop because they will go bananas. I'm glad you said it's a job, not just playing video games.

Yes, biggest misconception ever. We get a lot of kids saying, I want to work at GameStop. I'm like, no, it's not just playing games here.

I love how I think so many people are in your shoes of didn't know anything about real estate. And I think we have to really recognize that this is sometimes a really new topic for so many of us. I know I thought you had to have a lot of money going into real estate.

You and me both. You and me both. To this very day, I still kind of feel like that.

Yeah.

It's so embedded in us. You know what I mean? And I don't know, it just felt like we have this misconception that was maybe groomed because, hey, again, it's a lucrative business. So maybe we were groomed to believe that. That's just my conspiracy theory there a little bit, but I agree with you there.

Yeah, it's kind of one of the best-kept secrets, I think. But kudos to you for also really, yeah, one, just having that curiosity and to invest in yourself about real estate because You know, really, there aren't— unless you go, you're proactive and go find the information, it's not like you really go to school for this, you know.

Yeah, there's really no straightforward path.

Yeah.

To what, you know, those that are in this field are about to embark into this journey. It's something that, yeah, and then personally, that's why I like it is because every day is different. You know, it's not— there's not this normal routine. Granted, there's still things that are kind of routine, but it's almost like a journey. You never know who you're going to meet, you never know the type of owner you're going to encounter. You know, the users that call us and so forth. So that to me is why I love our industry.

And what I find is like you actually build from those, on those, from those conversations. Like I know that's the value you bring into your education is like, it's not just, um, you know, like book knowledge is truly like you're taking other people's stories and just making it really relatable and also how you can apply, you know, that book knowledge into real life. Either from your own experience or from the stories you've heard, which I think is really, really— it really then resonates more when you actually have a true story to latch on to.

Definitely, I agree with that.

Well, yeah, I will just— we've been talking a lot about PropStream. Maybe before we get further in, if those who haven't had a, you know, previous exposure or knowledge about PropStream, what is PropStream?

So great question, because that was a question I asked about 2 years into my employment. I'm like, what are we doing? Um, what am I helping install into people's computers? Is it a virus or something? No. So look, over the years what I've discovered, um, is that, you know, PropStream kind of is the pioneer of this evolution of our industry, right? And let me explain what I mean by that. Prior to PropStream, investors or anybody in the real estate space, period, lenders and contractors and investors and realtors, they actually, I would say, were like, they had to actually do work physically. They actually had to go somewhere to get their leads. So it wasn't something that you can just sit back in your office and say, "Hey, I'd like to see a property with 2 mortgages today." and go after that because I'm a lender. Or I like to see all the individuals that have a $5,000 tax lien on their property because they didn't pay that right now. That's not something that was available in the '90s, in the '80s, before 2000s. So investors like yourself or anybody in the real estate space had to physically go get that information from the county. And usually, we're talking about one dataset. And actually, I have a PowerPoint, if you guys don't mind me sharing, for those that are going to be watching this. This is just a few examples of the dataset that you could have acquired until this very day, you can go get right now. So, when you went to the county, you had to get a certain list, it could have been a pre-foreclosure list, could have been the cash transactions, it could have been the high equity list, it could have been the lien list, bankruptcy lists, right? You had to— depending what your county had available, could be free, could be something you had to make copies, could be something you had to pay for, but you would go grab that information. And that's what these orange little bubbles are. These are usually like the county information if you're able to get that information. Now, along with that information came the property characteristics. So when you would get that tax information, you'd most likely get that residential property characteristic, the beds, bathroom, building size, lot size, year built. Or if it was a commercial building, same thing. Industrial building, same thing. Vacant land, lot size, being information if it's available in that county, and more, right? That could be an example— transportation, it could be farmland. So what we did was we captured that information and kind of just spread out that information across the board. So we took the tax assessor, kind of made it its own little bubble. We took the characteristics, made its own little bubble, and this is something that you would've done. You probably would've gone to the county, grabbed the tax assessor data, the pre-foreclosure data, and started manually sorting it out. You would've probably put your single-family residential properties in one pile, the single-family two-story buildings in one pile, commercial buildings in another. This is exactly what investors or anybody in the real estate space was doing back in the day, and that's what PropStream saw as a potential opportunity for the company, which is, what if we go get that data on your behalf and put it on a platform that you can just simply click away and get the same data, but at the comfort of your office and that air conditioner? As a matter of fact, I would say PropStream has become the best virtual boots on the ground nationwide. Boots on the ground is a term that Investors Backing, they used to create, they created. It was essentially, I'm not going to go to the office anymore or the recorders. I'm going to hire my nephew or I'm going to hire my niece or I'm going to hire the intern and pay them a dollar per record. Right. So if they come back with 60 records, here's $60. Great. Right. PropStream became just that. So we're going out there and collecting that data on your behalf so you don't have to do that. But here's the other important part, right? We made that data communicate with one another and we're a multi-source data collector. So we're not just collecting collecting data from the county. We're collecting data from the MLS boards nationwide, nearly 800+ MLS boards, that is. Third-party data like document images, so you can actually see a deed or the pre-foreclosure document. We've even collected estimated values. I mean, we have mortgage data, we have sell data. We've added logic to that to give you estimated values that we believe the property could be. right, in its current state. Master address, so that if you send out a postcard with props, it goes to the right address in which the homeowner is receiving that mail. Association data. So if you're— parcel boundaries, because usually when you look at the Google Images, they don't show you parcel boundaries. But on our map, you can see that because we've layered it over Google Maps for you. So my point being is that PropStream has made it its priority to get that data that you were able to get, or sometimes can't get, and put it in our system, make it communicate, so that you could treat our product as if it was a buffet except for data. And that's really what PropStream is in a nutshell. Wow.

Well, I think that's a good segue for our next section about marketing.

Yeah. Thanks, Burton. I just want to say, one of the things I love about real estate is you can leverage whatever your background is into it. Clearly, your background, really your curiosity, the way you translated things, it's just like a beautiful translation to this. I just, that's what I love about real estate. You don't need a certain background or a certain economic class. It's just very, it's all out there, right? If you want to apply to yourself, you can learn it. So I, your background, my, I think both of our, both of our parents are immigrants, so we have that work ethic and curiosity. So you and me both.

Yeah, I love that we have that connection because, yeah, and again, this is my— the reason I love the industry personally, reason why I fell in love with PropStream is, you know, we provide data to investors like you. And I'm sure you're an investor or an individual who's trying to better yourself in life. But then you're also— remember what you're doing with this data. You're using this data to then help that homeowner who needs your help. So it's like a win-win-win. Like, I'm happy, You, the investor, or whoever in the real estate space is going to be happy, and that homeowner you're going to be helping is obviously going to be happy. And so, best industry in my life. I mean, selling video games was fun, right? But I would always get that parent that would come in and be like, you sold this to my son. And like, you bought it, you were just on the phone, you forgot. And so that was again, a transition and why I personally, personally love our industry. There's a lot to it than, you know, just obviously profit and this and that. It's a, it's a people industry. And I love people. So that's just my thing.

That is so true. Yeah, no, I'm angling for my son to be like a wholesaler in high school. I'm like, this is a great start.

That's a great thing to get started. Hey, I will say if he figures it out at that age, huge, huge jumpstart or lead in the pack. That, you know, the rat race that we're all in essentially.

Yeah, I dragged them around to flips and rental turnover. But yeah, so speaking of background, so my background is, it's in marketing, kind of content marketing. So obviously, this is the part of like my background that I can bring to real estate. So yeah, I mean, like, obviously, you know, we just would love to unpack how you can leverage PropStream in your marketing. And, you know, I think an industry— we did some training, as always, like motivated and distressed sellers, that's you're going after. But like, how do you actually, you know, how do you craft that list in a smart way? So if you can just unpack that, I know this is, you know, you can take it from there.

Yeah, great, great question. So again, I like to refer to how things were done in the past. So let's go back to like 1995. I'm an investor, you're an investor. We would have to go to the county and grab a certain record type. And it was very limited. So it could have been like the pre-foreclosure list, the lien list. For wholesaler, probably we need to go grab the cash buyers list as well. So we grab that tax lien list, and then we take it back to the office, and then we start separating things. But then there's a catch to that, right? Unless we're a realtor, we don't know whether those houses that are on that pile of properties are either listed or not listed. So it was almost like a flip of a coin back then. You would grab the records and yeah, you would separate all the single-family. So now you'd have 100 records to call, great. But which of those 100 records are on market or not on market? So the next best thing was that these investors or whoever that was in that real estate space at the time would either become the realtor, meaning they'd have to go to school, And it was, there was no online at that time. So you actually had to sit through like the whole semester, right? And then take the state exam and there was no online cheat sheet. So you actually had to study for the test and pass that test. And then after doing that, you had to go find a brokerage to hang your license to. Some of these brokerages wouldn't give you immediate access to the MLS. You actually had to do a transaction or two, then they get that data. Finally, you have the data. So after working through that to be the realtor, you now can cross-reference the public data records with the MLS data and to know which properties were on or off market. So there's just how things work back then to what it is today. So brings me back to my point. We've collected all of that data and we've connected it. So today you can do the exact same thing, just much faster. You can go in PropStream, search your market, whatever market you want to work in, Pick a list and then just immediately make sure that it's off-market, especially for those that are looking for off-market properties. If you want on-market, you can do that, but usually it's pick a list. Off-market is the next best bet. The third thing you want to do when you're building a list is what is it that you're doing? What's your strategy? What's your exit strategy? Because that's going to dictate whether you need to have equity or not. So if you're only a fix and flipper, you're probably going to need equity. If you're a wholesaler, probably going to need equity. If you do short sales or maybe something creative like sub-2s or lease options, you probably don't need to have equity, or maybe you can have a very low amount of equity. Negative equity might even work for them. So I realized that the third thing was equity. You need to put your minimum or maximum out. And the fourth and final thing that when you're building a list, is what is it that you want in terms of property and owner characteristics? And those are the best practices when you're building any list in any product or in any approach. You need to go grab a list first, whatever that source may be, then make sure it's off market unless you're going to be buying it through the realtor, apply that equity amount you need so you can perform your exit strategy, and then your property and owner characteristics because you might be wanting to do mobile home while your friend might want to do single-family while I might want to do quadruplexes, right? And that's usually the best approach you want to take when you're building any lists within PropStream.

Oh, that's really great. I love, I love that history. So just we have so much at our fingertips, right? Just to be kind of appreciate that, right? I love, I don't know, I'd love for you, I think we're on a webinar and you kind of, I guess for me, I'm a landlord. So I always, I think, resonate with tired landlords, kind of the difference between using kind of a pre-built list versus, you know, the analogy of making a sandwich, like non-owner, occupied, out-of-state owner, like, you know, can you kind of unpack that? Like, if you were to build a kind of a list, like, what's the difference between custom and kind of pre-built, I guess?

Yeah, so I call it the traditional method. And then there's this new method that I would say just showed up because of technology called the Four Golden Rules. But Let me unpack it by using a PowerPoint here really quick.

Awesome.

And I call this, well, these are the types of searches that you can perform in PropStream. And so I hope this can get my point across a little bit easier, but hang on a second here and I'm gonna get my screen up here for you. And here you go. Let me know if you could see the screen.

Yep. Yeah, it's up.

Perfect. So we just talked about the traditional search a few moments ago and what that looks like. And again, I called it traditional search because Let's pretend PropStream doesn't exist. This is how the real estate professional would have to capture their leads, right? They would have to go grab a list. So they would go to the county and pick a list, and then they're either the realtor or need to partner with the realtor to make sure that whatever results they have left are either off-market, right? So they would speak to that realtor and say, hey, go through these 100 properties and let me know which ones are not listed. Realtor would get back to you in a day or maybe a week and say, "Okay, these are the 60 properties that are not listed." Great. And then after you get those 60 properties, it was then a flip of a coin because then you would have to call the homeowner or send a postcard. And when they would call you back, you would discover whether it has equity or not. And this is why 3 became a priority when you're building a list. And 4, single-family, individual owner, corporate owner. This is the traditional way to approach building a list. Pick a list, make sure it's off market, has the equity you need, and the property owner characteristics. But if you were to ask me, hey, how would you build a list? Remember, PropStream has done the hard work of connecting data together that has never been connected together. So if you go back to this image of our data, what I'm talking about is that our pre-foreclosure data communicates with the MLS data. So I could go in PropStream and say, hey, I want a pre-foreclosure that's off market, just like in the traditional sense, right? This is why it's much faster to build lists in PropStream than it was ever before. But all of this data is connected. Property details, the sale records, the MLS history, the estimated value, the HOA data. And what that means for you is that you don't have to take that traditional stance or approach anymore, especially if you're in a very competitive market, or maybe you did do the traditional search already and you've already pulled every list possibly imagined. I can tell you right now, there are still homeowners out there that would love to sell, but are not on any of those lists. So I have this philosophy after working with PropStream for nearly 10 years and investors like yourself, that a lead is not a list. So I'm gonna repeat that. Okay. A lead is not a list. Now, granted, there are some leads that are obvious, like pre-foreclosures and liens. That's why they're the most sought after. But remember, a lead is not a list. A lead is a homeowner going through a situation, right? So let me repeat that. A lead is not a list. A lead is a homeowner going through a situation. And if you understand that, then you can take full advantage of what I call the 4 golden rules that go like this: 1, off-market; 2, equity; 3, the property owner preferences you'd like; and 4, the homeowner situation. So let me go over this and explain why it's in this order. When you're in your market, whatever that market may be, Right? Let's say Phoenix, Arizona, and let's actually use PropStream for this. Phoenix, Arizona is a very hot market. For those that are very familiar with Phoenix, they call it the wholesale capital or the investment capital because everybody's there. So if that is the case, I assume every pre-foreclosure has gotten like 50 postcards a pop. I assume every lien has been called 10 times a piece, right? Does that mean I no longer have an opportunity here? No. Because a lead is not a list. A lead is a homeowner situation. But before we discover what that situation is, don't we need to make sure it's off-market first? Like, whatever the situation you're about to create, make sure it's off-market. So when you're using PropStream and you pull up your market, first thing you should actually do is go in our filter, go to MLS status, and just make sure it's off-market. As you're figuring out what that situation is, make sure it's off market first. Next, no matter what the situation is, it could be a tired landlord, it could be a pre-foreclosure, tons of situations that you can create, it still needs to have that certain amount of equity for you to do your exit strategy. So if I'm a fix and flipper and it needs to be off market and the equity probably needs to be about 45% or more. Third, property and owner characteristics, right? No matter what the situation is that you're about to create, don't you want a certain type of property and a certain type of owner you'd like to speak with? Because some of us only do single families built before 2000. So if that's the case, tell us in the property characteristics, you know, you want a residential single-family property, maybe it has 2 to 5 bedrooms. And it's built before 2000. So apply your property characteristics. Don't forget your owner characteristics, right? Maybe you don't want an owner that just bought a house 6 months ago. So you want an owner that has owned the property for 6 years or more, and you don't want to speak to an LLC. So you prefer the individual owners. So the whole thing about the 4 golden rules is in the past, you had to pick a list because that was just the standard. There was no way around that. You had to start with the list. And then apply these other 3 things, off-market, equity, property owner characteristics. Today, because of technology, those should be the first things you should apply, off-market, equity, property owner characteristics, just like what I did right now. And then you apply the situation. And remember, a lead is not always a list. It doesn't have to be a lien. It doesn't have to be a pre-foreclosure, a lead. Could be maybe someone who has 2 mortgage payments, right? Because hey, 2 mortgage payments for some of us could be the breaking point. So here are homeowners that have owned their property for 6 months or more, and they're on 2 mortgage payments. And we have so much mortgage data filters that— listen to current events. I've been hearing interest rates are increasing, interest rates are increasing. How many of these 2-mortgage homeowners have an adjustable rate mortgage? 10 of them, right? These 10, if the interest rate increase does impact them, these 10 can turn into a bankruptcy, can turn into a lien, or even a pre-foreclosure because they stop paying the mortgage. To prove my point, how many of them are in pre-foreclosure right now? None of them. So if we wait for them to show up in pre-foreclosure, you're probably already too late. While you can actually call them now and essentially plant the seed, and as, you know, the situation gets worse— hopefully it doesn't— they'll be reaching out to you versus you calling very last moment. So this, ladies and gentlemen, for those that you're watching, this is building situation. And remember, it doesn't have to be mortgage. It could even be property characteristics or the location, or even when they bought the property. I would say maybe a person that bought the property before 2020, before the pandemic. Show me all the individuals in Phoenix that bought a house in 2018, January to the end of December 2019. Show me everybody that bought a house before The pandemic. Those are individuals I like to have a conversation with, right? Because they might be going through a situation and that situation could be that they can't make that payment anymore, or they had a tenant that wasn't able to make that payment anymore for them, right? And so as you can see here, 55 homeowners that bought a house in 2018 to 2019, these are potential opportunities. Again, situations that people are going through. And that is the 4 golden rules. Cool thing about PropStream, you can take that traditional approach, which you should definitely start with. But remember, as you get better at this, as you realize that your job is a problem solver, you can use PropStream to create situations that you know you can solve. And I'm going to end my TED Talks there.

I love that.

And I also mean, you, you know, there's so many things you said to unpack, but I think especially like, you know, people are buying these lists and everyone is going after the same list. Right? But if you can reach those people maybe earlier and help them out, so it really is a win-win. It's not just buying some pre-foreclosure list. I feel like it's just a lot more tailored and you're maybe getting in front of them sooner than everyone else is when they get inundated by buying these lists.

[Speaker:JUSTIN DONALDSON] You know, and I will say it's funny enough that you say that because over the years, I realized that, you know, when you are going after a list like a pre-foreclosure list, a lien list, it is a highly sought-after list. And so, I've realized, and maybe I could be entirely wrong here, but in my personal head, the data is showing me that when you're going after a very sought-after list, pre-foreclosures, liens, you have to be more creative with marketing. Because remember, everybody else is going after that list. You have investors that are still in that old way of grabbing a list. You have people using PropStream today that are still doing it that way. So you're competing against something that's already competitive. And so I've realized, that when you're working on a very competitive list, you got to put a little bit more into the marketing. Might make your postcard bright yellow, maybe, right? Um, maybe make your voicemails a little bit friendlier or joyful, or say something funny, or come in with a funny joke, right? Because they've gotten so many postcards already, they've gotten so many phone numbers. Again, this is my personal experience. So the higher the, the, the more sought-after lists that you're going after, And there's nothing wrong with that. The more creative you have to be with marketing. This is why going after situations is powerful is because when you find a situation that no other individual is probably searching for at the moment, because they're so used to getting a list, you're probably the 4th or 5th, or maybe even the first postcard that they're going to see gives you a higher advantage. The more competitive the list is, the more you'll have to invest in your marketing to stand out. Versus creating a situation that others haven't gone after yet, that you'll have a higher advantage of exposure. My opinion there.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I just have to say, side note, but on list building, when we look at the property and it's free and clear, it's just a very exciting moment. Maybe owner financing is an option, but just knowing that, and that's not list building, it's a side note, but just knowing if someone has a lot of equity or they have they're free and clear, they might, you know, there's a lot of tax advantages to kind of pitching owner financing. So, um, I think we kind of covered, you know, the advantage of lists, kind of unique list building versus buying a list. I feel like you covered that really well. I love the golden rules. I love the kind of situation and I think putting yourself into kind of a distressed homeowner's mind, but also looking at it, you know, as like we're helping them, we're not taking advantage of them. I love that, you know, because there's a lot of misperceptions, I think, about investors. But, you know, these people generally don't have the means, or they, they couldn't list it on, you know, an MLS. It's not market ready, so to speak. So I love that kind of helping aspect.

Exactly.

Um, so, you know, that was great kind of overview of list building. I think obviously, you know, you build a list and that kind of goes into, you know, how are you going to market to these people? Is it cold calling, postcards? So I don't know if you want to touch on kind of the different strategies that PropStream kind of has built in to, you know, get a hold of these potential people that may be interested in selling?

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we've broken PropStream into 3 phases or 3 parts. Part 1 is just the list building part. And so you can build a list again in the traditional method or create a situation, save that list, and then export that list. And so you'll get the address, the mailing address and the homeowner's first and last name with the property information. Now, for some of us, that's perfectly fine. We can now knock on doors or we can go, you know, I don't know, maybe send postcards on our own. But there are two other parts to PropStream. The second part of PropStream is skip tracing. Within PropStream, you can skip trace any list you built, and that means capturing a landline a mobile number or an email. So for those that are cold calling, for those that, you know, maybe have assistant or call center, you can build a list and for a few pennies get the cell phone, landline. So part 2 is skip tracing, capturing a cell phone, a landline, or an email. And then part 3, for those that need that, is actually marketing. You can set up a website so you can build a list, skip trace it, and then set up a website for that list. Right? So if your list is a, a tired landlord list, for example, you can build a tired landlord list, get the cell phones and emails if you want to call them, maybe send your own emails, or you can go to our campaign area, set up a website, maybe a website that says, hey, I can help you with your rental property, or tired of tenants or something like that. And then after you set up that website, you can send postcards directly to those addresses of theirs or mailing addresses. You can also send emails directly. So those are the 3 parts of PropStream. Either build a list and get the addresses out of here, or build a list and get the phone numbers and emails and landlines out of here, or build a list, get their cell phones and emails, as well as send out postcards, create a website, and emails to their addresses and email addresses.

I love that because then you can really tailor your messaging to like that unique— if it's a landlord or You know, someone behind on their mortgage, not just the general, I'll buy your house fast.

You know, I love that you mentioned that, Shawna, because we also give you a landing page or a website for each campaign you create. So if you have like 4 different lists, let's say a pre-foreclosure list, a tired landlord list, a senior owner list, and a cash buyers list, you can create 4 different campaigns. Each has their own website. So your first website could say, hey, I can help with pre-foreclosure. Your second one could say, I can help with you know, your rental property. Your third one could be, I can help you senior homeowners. And then the fourth one could be, hey, cash buyers, how would you like to buy a contract? Right. So that's the cool part about our application.

I love that. And is that accessible via QR code or like a specific URL? Or I mean, if you're sending a postcard, how do they get to that?

So the cool thing about our postcard is that it's customizable. So after you create the website, you'll have the URL. When you're creating the postcard, you just hit advanced edit and then just copy and paste the URL into your postcard.

So I have to ask probably the crystal ball question. I think marketing is kind of— you pick what resonates with you, but I mean, like, what's your favorite marketing strategy? I mean, there's so many out there, right? But between like postcards and emails, I'm just curious what your point of view is.

Ooh, great question. So I would say personally, my favorite would probably be cold calling. I think cold calling is very effective. I mean, I like speaking to people, so that's just me personally. But the reality is it's going to be demographics-based and then your list-based environment where there's probably, let's say, your yards or maybe knock on doors, right? Because that's probably going to resonate more with that type of audience. If you're, let's say, dealing in Seattle, Washington, right? Where a lot of Gen Zs, millennials buying houses now, right? Probably want to reach out using cold calling or an email that might be more effective that way. So my personal favorite's cold calling, but I think your lists, the age group, the area that you're in will dictate the type of marketing that will be more effective for them.

That makes sense. Okay. Final question on the cold calling. I don't know. I'm curious if you've talked to investors that have personally cold called versus use like a virtual assistant. It's always kind of a debate, right? Because that's a lot of volume that you're potentially talking to. So I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Well, again, it depends on your, your capabilities. So if, if you're starting out, I mean, are you trying to jump to the, you know, the top of the podium right away? If so, you're probably going to need to set up a bunch of virtual assistants or a bunch of people that to take these inbound calls for you. But if you're starting out one man, one woman operation, the cool thing about PropStream is again, you can get very niche on your list. You don't have to go after 500 addresses. You can add a few filters. So you're going after specific targeted motivation that way. You know, you're only sending out maybe 2, 3 dozen postcards and then getting maybe 1, 2, 3, phone calls a day versus 10 to 15 that you just cannot handle. But whether you are getting 1 to 3 phone calls or 10 to 15, our system is capable to handle, you know, one user or multiple users if you need that. So as you evolve, we can evolve with you. But I would say take full advantage of the filters because you're in full control on whether you want a lot of addresses or just a few amount of addresses.

No, I love that. That's definitely really— you can really target down, like you said, the niche. Well, I could go on for a long time, ask you a lot more marketing questions. I'll pass it back to Pasha.

Thanks, Bern. I actually just wanted to add some color to what, um, what you said. I mean, you know, it just— the proof is in the pudding. I've, uh, used PropStream now for over a year and a half, and, um, the— I did exactly all those steps that you mentioned. I had a specific criteria list of tired landlords, out-of-state, high equity, built the list, exported into the campaign, and then sent out a postcard campaign. I uploaded my own creative, which you can do, or what's great about PropStream is that you can also use their own creative. They have a lot of templates depending on the motivation of of the seller or potential seller. And yeah, I mean, I got a lot of leads and actually one really great, yeah, conversion from, from that postcard campaign. I think people need to definitely manage expectations. You know, it's not like you're sending out 1,000 and you're gonna get, you know, 1,000 calls. You definitely get a lot of returns back your postcards, but I can't endorse it enough when you have a really targeted list and are clear about the seller's motivation. And the messaging you use in your campaign can really separate you from, from all the other investors. So yeah, so I can't sing the praise enough of PropStream. I did have one question though. Can you jog my memory? Do you guys also do RVMs? Ringless voicemail, or do you have to export that to another?

No, so we did actually. We had RVMs for version 2.0, the web-based version, but because of the Federal Trade Commission's, um, and regulations from the FTC, we put an end to it. Um, it— you can look it up yourself. It's called the Traced Act, like you're tracing a piece of paper. Okay, for anybody wondering why we had put an end to it. Search the TraceStack, it'll educate you onto the regulations into ringless voicemail. But long story short, the reason we had to stop it is because now with RVMs, the person that's getting the RVM needs to opt in for it. They need to actually agree to get that voicemail from you. And if you don't follow, it can cause legal ramifications. And so, as a company and dealing on a nationwide level, we don't want that to happen to any of our users. So, we had to put an end to that. But again, if you want to take that road, you can definitely export our data after you skip trace it and then do what you need to do with it.

Yeah. That's what I like about your program, the versatility as well, because like, I like to keep it all kind of under one roof, but you know, You definitely— people can export data to other sources.

So I agree with that. I mean, and I mean, look at your contractor. He doesn't just have a hammer, right? Like, I always tell people, we're several pieces to the puzzle, and you got to get all the pieces. And hey, we might be 10 of the 20 pieces, right? And so I would love to say we're everything you need, but we're not going to be at times, right? And that's where, again, being a people person and being curious is going to help you. You know, we might be able to paint 80% of the situation, and then the other 20% is because you have to physically go talk to somebody or speak to a local realtor, et cetera, et cetera.

I do have one last question just on this is, and again, sorry if I'm throwing you a curveball because this wasn't on our list of questions, but—

That's okay.

How about CRM? Do you feel that that's something you guys will venture into in the future? Is that on your radar or is not? Just in terms of repeat, um, um, the answer.

Yeah, I'm sorry, the answer, and I think I'm lagging just a little bit here. Um, the answer is we haven't dismissed the idea. Um, again, PropStream is just data. Our whole thing has been data collection, data collection, big data, bring it over so that the real estate professionals can manipulate it. A CRM only kind of came into existence because, yeah, now you have all this data that needs to be managed. And so to create a CRM really would be kind of distracting us from our main thing, which is absorbing the, the data that you need. And so the answer is currently not in this version. Will it be something that we might look into in the future? Possibly. I just can confirm right now we haven't dismissed the idea, which is a good sign. Um, that means there possibly could be one in the very near future, or again, there could be maybe a bridge in which you can connect one into PropStream. All the ideas that you've suggested, not just you, but other users are still on the table. And that's the most important part is that we're very open-minded to what our users need. And this is how we got here today. So the answer is no in its current version, but the possibility is still there.

That's what I appreciate. I actually think you guys do such a good job of listening to your, your customers, because to be able to have that direct communication and influence over the product is like, I mean, especially for such a big company. It's really impressive. So thank you. So speaking of data, I am— I love data. And so this was my, my section about asking you around comps. I'm religiously in PropStream every day, just, you know, checking neighborhoods, checking offers, checking you know, just what the landscape is. Um, can you talk a little bit about how to use PropStream in that capacity of really getting some sound comps? And how does that compare with MLS?

Great question. So PropStream has two datasets. We have the public record dataset, and then we have the MLS dataset. And so with the public record dataset, We have 100% nationwide coverage, right? Meaning we'll get the, the recording date of the sale, we'll get the sale amount if it's not a non-disclosure state, and the property characteristics. What we then do is we then go out there and we look for the MLS data as well to provide you photos, to provide you potential MLS data as well, like an active property. So with all this data in our platform, you're going to be able to go into pretty much any market. Maybe like, here, let's use Phoenix or Miami here. And once you're in that market, you can then click on, let's say, a property with a lien or search a random property. And once you have that property pull up, you can click on the address. Comping is more than just getting a sale value, I always say. It's all of this information. It's knowing the beds and bathrooms of the property, the square footage, the lot size, the year built, if there's a lien you need to worry about, because that's all going to be part of your end value, right? When you're making an offer. But if you are going to need to know what the market value is or the rehab value, or even the as-is value, every property that you click on will give you access to our property details. And you want to go into the comparables and nearby listings. And in this area, you'll have 4 boxes to use to potentially get a value. The first one would be comparables. These are our public records. Flip comps. This will show you anybody buying and selling the house in less than 2 years, because that's what flippers do, right? They'll buy a house, rehab it, and sell it in less than 2 years. So these 12 will show you the address, the beds, bathroom. What I personally like about it too is it will show you the purchase price as well as the flip price, and you can see whether that investor or individual made profits or took a loss. But you're able to see a behavior. For example, I can see what the average purchase amount is and what the average flip amount is based on this data. Very, very, very powerful. So if I'm, let's say, a flipper in this market, I know that most of the flippers aren't paying more than $360,000. If they are, they're probably going to be tapping into the loss at that point. So we have flip comps, you have neighboring records. So in case you wanted to see what the Joneses down the street sold their house for and when they sold their house. You can do that. This will also be very important if you're in a gated community or even in a cul-de-sac where the architecture is very similar. And then cash buyers, because just like you, you're probably going to be buying an off-market, very distressed property, and your next phone call could be an off-market, very distressed property. And so you probably want to know what other cash buyers are buying those off-market distressed properties for. And so in the cash transactions, you're able to see just that, all the off-market. And if you wanted to, on-market, now those are available here, but mainly off-market as-is transactions. You could see the sell amount, and most of them won't come with photos because most as-is transactions never hit the MLS, or they did and then they never sold, and then they became an off-market transaction. So that's the comping section there. Once you make your decision on which dataset you want to use, I, I will be honest with you, comparables is the most commonly sought after Please make sure that you're using filters down below. You'll have the ability to manipulate date ranges. So if you're in an active market, maybe you just need to go back 6 months. If you're in a very, you know, in a non-active market, you might need to go back 2 years. We'll let you decide on what your market is. Bedrooms and bathrooms, apples to apples, right? If you're trying to Specific, don't show me Ferrari prices. So in this case, if we're two bathroom property, we want to look for a four bedroom, two bathroom minimum. Year built, square footage, status, the sell situation. Do you want to see cash transactions? Do you want to see an as-is transaction, like a foreclosure transaction? Distance, half a mile, you can go out a mile. And last but certainly not least, as I mentioned, apples to apples, you also need to let us know what type of property. Otherwise, you'll get cluster homes or condominiums in your search. So for this one, we're going to go for residential and single-family. And last but certainly not least, ask yourself why. Why did this address, 10425 Southwest 139th Court, sell for $352,000 on July of last year? Scroll to the left and right to see the property characteristics, make sure they're similar. And some of them will have photos. So you can take a look at the photos and determine if that was an as-is sale. And as you can see, this property didn't really have great renovation. I'm now getting an idea of why it was selling for $359,000, or why it sold for $359,000. It's livable. We're not talking HGTV here right now. What does a renovated house look like? Well, here's a $590,000 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom, very similar to our subject property, 3 years newer. What does that look like? Click on the photos. Ah, day and night difference, right? And this is the importance about having all this data, the photos, the selling prices, the characteristics, is because most homeowners are going to want full price no matter what. And now for the first time ever, I get to have a very intellectual conversation. Mr. Homeowner, exact— Mr. Homeowner, I'd like to give you, you know, the $590,000 you keep asking for, but you know, it needs to look like this. And last but certainly not least, make sure you check off your results and you can go to actions and generate a report. We actually, again, let you take our data. And I always say when it comes to comping, not only do you need a value, but you need to educate that homeowner. So by hitting the view report button, We're going to give you the comps report where you can show them their property's information, the comps and where they're located on the map, the low and the high value and the average value. But certainly most important part, the pictures of those comps. That way you can show them what full price looks like versus what an as-is value looks like. And that's the importance about running comps. And that's how you would approach it in PropStream.

That's excellent. Gosh, I mean, there, it just makes it a much more fact-based conversation rather than this emotional, like, debate, you know, what the value of your house is, because I'm sure a lot of people, when talking to sellers, they have a very high, you know, perception of what their house is worth, and the value of it. And it becomes, they take it very personally when you say, well, actually, It's not. Whereas if you can just— I feel, I know I feel confident in the conversations when I can just talk about, you know, the corresponding comps and actually show it to them, which I love. You guys can print out your comps because I then feel like a realtor, which I know realtor has a lot more skills than I do, but it lasts a moment to be me.

And I know I didn't show that part, but this is it right here. Just pulled up a property in Miami. This is the property details, which we show you the characteristics. This is the comp section I was referring to where we show you public record data, properties that are being flipped, like what they're selling for and what they're flipping for. So let me just scroll left to right here. We can see, you know, purchase amount, sell amount, the gross profit. We can see those neighboring records I mentioned, the cash buyer records. You can see the as-is values. But as I stated, this is the most important one, comparables, because you can apply your filters. Since I'm looking at a 4/2, I just briefly applied some filters. And then as I stated, the photos, you're going to be able to see the sell prices and photos. So, hey, what does a 590 look like? Click on the camera and that's what a 590 looks like. That way you can have this intellectual conversation. Mr. Homeowner, I'd love to give you 590, but you got to have your bathroom done. Get your kitchen done. And as I mentioned, you can go to actions and print our report, and that report will provide you this. It gives them a comps report, shows them their property and their property's characteristics, the low and high value that you've captured, and the average between those low and high values, the subject property and the comps. And most importantly— and this, I think, to me, it's the most important part— the photos of those comps. And when you're at the homeowner's house, or you email this to them, and they're like, I want $495,000, or I want $590,000, you can show them what $590,000 looks like versus the $495,000 property. And now you've set reality in. And so I'm sorry, I didn't show you guys this during that explanation. But this, to me, is the big selling point is to have this and educate the homeowners. Because I believe the moment you get into this, debate about price, you've lost. But if you educate them about the price, I think you're on the right track.

That is a fantastic takeaway. And I know for the listeners, we're giving a lot of visuals. So we'll definitely include, you know, some of these, these shots in our write-up. But yeah, the visuals are really, really powerful. And I also want to like just touch on, you know, there's a lot of like, I can speak for myself, Shono's way more tech savvy than me, but you know, this is a very intuitive platform. And even if it, if it's not, and you still feel intimidated by it, which I do with a lot of platforms, the PropStream customer service is fantastic. I have called them so many times. You get them on the phone and you guys always spend so much time answering all my questions. And, you know, if I want to do this, how do I do this? Like, they will walk you through everything. So you really do have a team to support you. So I know sometimes this can be intimidating, but it's really— they help really kind of demystify a lot of the application, and it's really a visual, intuitive platform, I would say.

Thank you so much. And yes, I mean, I'm very thankful for our customer support. We've grown immensely, especially during the pandemic. We went with— we started with like 10 customer service reps. Now we have well over 40 customer service reps. To make sure that you guys get all your questions addressed right away.

And just another plug for PropStream, but I always watch your webinars and they're super digestible. Like if I have a question about like a lot of things we're talking about, how do you create a, you know, a marketing list? Like what is a comp? Like they have really kind of digestible, what, 2 to 4 minutes where Burton comes on and gives you his great tutorial on the topic. And you know, you're not spending 30 minutes just trying to glean one insight, but they're really quick in and out, and you can move on and implement it. That's what I love about them.

We try to keep it— again, I've been on your—

I applied for a job at PropStream, if you can't tell.

And, you know, we take that approach where, you know, we've been in your shoes. I've been in your shoes. I don't like to be sold. I just like to be shown. And yeah, I feel like if you can show me, I can better understand. What you're trying to explain. And then I could resonate well, and you might just win me over for life at that point, you know. So that's just my— that's just me personally.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Cool.

Shauna, do you want to bring us home?

Yeah, I just— one more thing I want to say, Burton, I think we met you in person, you gave a really great tip, like when you're with a homeowner, and they have this kind of maybe not realistic idea that their house is worth what their neighbor's house sold that was fully rehabbed, you know, pull up— you guys have a PropStream has a really great app, just, you can actually pull up kind of houses that sold for cash and just show that if you didn't have a chance to print something out. And that's just, again, a picture's worth a thousand words. So I just wanted to mention that. But yeah, I'm sort of take it, wrap us up here. Burton, clearly you're— we just kind of like to wrap it up with a little kind of personal stuff on kind of like your, you know, your values and what drives you. So, you know, Clearly, you're— I feel like you're very values-driven. What would you say are your biggest values as far as life and work and all that stuff?

Biggest values would probably be just honesty and transparency. You know, I'm growing up in a society where people want to show you what they want to show you and not really the real them, you know what I mean? And so, I mean, just look at Instagram. Um, love it. I think it's a very powerful platform, but let's face it, people are probably taking 30 pictures before they post that one picture, right? And that's the society that we're in. So I feel that what I value personally is just transparency, being transparent, being honest, and I think that's just the way to go.

I love that. Yes, we have a very curated presence online. I call it family PR when I post. I don't show the meltdowns. Um, and then I think you touched on this, but it's kind of a silly question. Like, what's— if you had to choose a superpower, what do you think that would be? Or what is your superpower?

I think my superpower is just being able to resonate with people. I think being able to just meet someone and then we can literally just become friends in a few moments. Um, And to me, that's my thing. And I say that because in order to get to where you need to get to, you're not going to get there alone. You definitely going to need the help of an entire community to get there. Right. And so I think to me, that's my superpower to be able to just immediately go in a room and just be like your friend. All right. So yeah, now could people end up taking that as a, take advantage of maybe, maybe they would, but So far I've been lucky.

No, I love that. I think that is— I mean, to connect with people is— it's all about connection, right? Um, um, yeah. One more question. I mean, you know, if someone that's influenced you, business or personal, we always just like to ask.

Um, influenced me, I would say you guys. Um, every investor I meet has influenced me in a positive way, uh, only because of the story behind every one of you guys, right? Um, you come from the same background that I come from, right? Just trying to better yourself as an individual, or you come from a rough financial background, or you're maybe an immigrant, um, or from a different country, and you're just trying to live that American dream. That to me are my role models, right? So to hear your story and then to see you guys actually make it— I've worked with people I'm working with people who 5 years ago were not where they're at today. And that to me is, that's my role model, to see that, to see people actually achieving their dreams. Yeah. That every day I meet a new role model. That's just my thing.

I love that. That is really cool to see that. Um, and next question, clearly you, um, like to learn. I can see from your bookshelves. We always like to ask, do you have like a favorite podcast or business book or any just kind of like book that you— it's like your kind of go-to that you read or listen to?

Um, my favorite book, really, I would say it's probably going to be Never Split the Difference, um, with Chris Voss. Um, he was a, like, a hostage negotiator, a tough situation negotiator, and he's just really good at being able to just lay out the truth in a manner that both parties can understand. And I like that. I think words are very, very powerful, right? That's the industry we're in, where your words are very, very powerful and how you use it and how you craft what you're about to say could pay your next bill technically. I mean, let's not face it, right? Let's not lie about it. So That's this book. I would definitely recommend it. Never Split the Difference with Chris Voss.

Perfect.

No, I've definitely— I think I watched part of his masterclass. Definitely great recommendation. Um, thank you. Last thing, um, how can people follow you and PropStream online? You don't have to share a personal one if you want to. I just— how to connect with you guys?

Oh, I'm the only Burton Alicando you'll find, so just Google me, YouTube me, uh, Instagram me, and Send me a message. If it's regarding PropStream and you need immediate support, immediate help, PropStream related, um, call my customer support line, call them directly. Um, I won't be able to— sometimes I'm on the road, I won't be able to solve your billing question, or, you know, if it's like a property discrepancy, which will definitely help you with, um, make sure you get it over to my team. Perfect.

Well, I think that wraps it up. It's been a real treat to have you. Like, thank you again for your time, and I think you added a lot of value. And so Really, really.

And I will be back. I mean, if we need to do a follow-up or— yeah, whatever you need to be. If I made too many funny faces, let me know. We can definitely do this again if we want to.

Uh, thanks, Burton. We really appreciate it. And thanks to all our listeners and viewers. We really appreciate your support. And hopefully you really found as much valuable in this as we did. Thanks for your time, Burton. You're amazing.

All right, you guys are amazing. I'll see you guys soon.

Talk to you soon. Bye.