092 | Avoid Buyer’s Remorse: The Smartest Real Estate Move Before Making an Offer with Bob Frady

Patrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever bought a piece of real estate and thought, man, I wish I’d known that before signing the contract. Maybe you found out about an old roof, a nasty flood zone, or sky high insurance cost after you were already committed. Whether it’s happened to you before or you’re determined to have the inside track on information when you negotiate your next real estate deal, this episode gives you the edge.
Most buyers wish they had. Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today I am joined by a brilliant entrepreneur and data expert, Bob Frady, the co-founder of property lens.com, a platform that’s being called the Carfax for Real Estate.
Bob’s built and exited companies in the insurance and data space, and what he’s created with Property Lens is something every entrepreneur, investor, and homeowner needs to know about. In fact, he used this exact tool to negotiate $300,000 off the purchase price of his own home. And today he’s breaking down how it works, what it [00:01:00] reveals, and why this information is often intentionally hidden from buyers like you and me.
We are talking about risks, we’re talking about strategy. We’re talking about making decisions with data just like you would in your business, so you can protect your wealth, avoid bad deals, and make smarter moves in your real estate portfolio. And if you’re serious about keeping more of what you make, not just on real estate deals, but across your entire financial.
And make sure to check out vital strategies.com/tax. That’s where we help high level entrepreneurs like you build a custom tax strategy to save more, grow faster, and protect your hard-earned money. Alright, let’s dive in. Bob Freddy, thank you for joining us today on the podcast. I’m excited about our conversation.
We’re going to get into your business property lens.com. You offer people insight into, into real estate that is really hard to come by and I think is a super valuable tool. So. Thank you so much for joining us here today. It’s my
Bob: pleasure, Patrick.
Patrick: Yeah, so I wanna just walk through a few of the, the concerns that I think people [00:02:00] generally have when they’re buying real estate.
You know, the first one is real estate. Trans transactions lack transparency. You know, oftentimes buyers feel blind to a property’s true condition and they’re like, geez, you know, this is a little scary. And then there’s also the internal fear of. The unexpected expense that, you know, I, I might be taken advantage of.
I buy this thing and then I find out that the foundation or the roof or some issue that, you know, I, I maybe could’ve had learned something about is gonna become a problem. And then finally, I think there’s just this philosophical problem around, it’s just wrong that the biggest. Some of the biggest financial decisions we’re ever gonna make are property related, and those come with, with hidden risks and incomplete data.
And so I, I love that you’re here to solve that problem with, with property lens. So, uh, thank you. Can you give us a little bit of your background, Bob? ’cause I, I think it’s cool that you, uh, are an entrepreneur. You’ve exited a business and now you’re, um. Time and energy’s going into property [00:03:00] lens and it’s, you have a, a data background and so can you just walk us through some of your experience there?
Bob: Sure. I have a little bit of gray hair, so I’ve been around a little while. Mm-hmm. And my career started in data, geospatial data is what we called it at the time before there was a term for it. And it’s not only what’s in the location, but what’s around a location, you know, because when you’re dealing with a place like a house, you know, a lot of things that are around that house can really have an impact.
So I’ve always been in the data world, sales and marketing of data and building systems. I built Live Nation’s email system. I was outbound director of, uh, of Expedia for a a time. So I, I have a lot of experience in working with consumers, with businesses and with data. And about, uh, 15 years ago I was with, who eventually became my co-founder, John.
At a company and I was like, [00:04:00] you’re asking me to sell something that doesn’t have legs? They’re like, all right, smart guy, why don’t you figure it out and show us what you should do? So I came up with this product and I said, here it is. And they said, there’s the door. So I ended up leaving that company it like a little itch, my brainstem for a long time and it was really the idea of hazard hub.
And so I talked to John one day. He got together for lunch with me and one other guy, and we decided to start it as a side project, which was geospatial risk assessment. Like what’s the risk of a wildfire or a flood, or your hail exposure? Where’s the nearest fire station? Where’s the nearest fire hydrant?
All sorts of stuff like that. That was a really laborious process for companies to get. So, um, it was supposed to be a side project. And then I got fired from my main project and it’s like, oh, better make this work. So we ended up [00:05:00] bootstrapping it. We had one investor and just kept grinding and kept grinding and kept grinding, and finally became a pretty good sized player in the insurance space.
So we would provide data. We had about 150 customers by the time we exited, and then 2021 rolled around and we were profitable, we were bootstrapped, we were in a good spot, and money was cheap. And people kept calling us every week, you know? Mm-hmm. Hey, you’re for sale. And finally someone came along and our third co-founder wanted to retire.
And we said, well, okay, if we can get this much for the business, we’ll take it. And we said that when we started, this was the number, and then we’re out. And then we doubled that number and went above that number again, where we finally exited. Wow. And so decided to sell the business to Guidewire Software.
Mm-hmm. And. Tell you don’t do anything rash. Mm-hmm. After you leave your, you know, after you get that check. [00:06:00] Mm-hmm. And, and had a very funny conversation. What I thought was very funny with my wife, who was just a rockstar doing the whole startup journey. And I said, Hey, listen, if you, if you leave me today, half of this money is yours.
Won’t argue. I won’t argue. It’s your payment. Mm-hmm. And she said, don’t be, don’t be silly. Yeah. Uh, and I said, but if you stay one more day, I gotta fight you for every penny. Mm-hmm. But I’ve always viewed that half of the transaction as her half, because mm-hmm. She had to suffer through all this stuff and couldn’t do anything about it.
She supported us for a long time. Mm-hmm. And so she said, well, with my half, I wanna buy a house in Minnesota. Yeah. So, I, I looked at property, we, it’s the house that we’re in here. Mm-hmm. And I knew a lot about the property. Because I had all the data and so I walked in and I said, there’s this, this, and this.
None of it’s disclosed. I like your [00:07:00] house, I don’t like your price. Yeah. And I’m gonna knock $300,000 off the asking price. And they said, okay, we’ll take it. Yeah. And I was like, I should have knocked 400 off. Yeah. And, and, but I looked around, where’s the Carfax for houses? Mm-hmm. And there wasn’t one. So yeah.
You know, that’s one of the, and then, and then it sat in my head for a couple of years and finally it’s like I’m getting older, I still got a lot of energy, so go build it.
Patrick: Mm-hmm.
Bob: Yeah. Property lens got started.
Patrick: I love it. I love it. And I think you just gave us a fantastic overview of how Property Lens can, can be such a tremendous asset.
And then you gave a great description of property lenses to Carfax for house buying. But, mm-hmm. Can you dig a little bit more into what is property lens? What does it do for a buyer? And then I think we can start unpacking from there.
Bob: So one of the things that we’re really good at is data collection, standardization, creation, [00:08:00] manipulation, whatever you wanna call it.
We’re really good at data and. It turns out that after I bought my place, my co-founder bought a place and he saved a lot of money on the house because of information we were able. So what Property Lens tries to do essentially, is to give you insight to a property before you walk in the front door.
We’re not saying that this property’s good. We’re not saying that this property’s bad. We’re saying Here’s the conditions that we see. Here’s how long we expect certain things to. You know, when you walk in the door, here’s a list of questions that you should ask of the selling agent to make sure that you are not gonna find surprises for you to get committed to the house, to help you decide whether you should buy that house or not.
Yeah, and it’s real simple. It’s like a pregame analysis for a house. You know, when you walk in the door, you wanna know what you’re walking into and not just believe all the hype that everybody tells you because they want their commission. [00:09:00]
Patrick: Yeah. And yeah, Bob, I think that’s, that’s great because I, I think there’s a level of emotion that comes with buying real estate that we should get on the front end of, and, and I think so much of house buying and property buying is done online anymore.
I had a client that we were talking to yesterday, they’re looking for a second home in Florida, and he’s like, I am so on top of those properties. Right. I know basically everything for sale in the area that I’m interested in. And I think if buyers know that the properties that are available, when something comes up that gets their attention, they should probably go buy a report.
Uh, yeah. For property lens or, because now they can, they can preempt some of the emotion by going, oh, okay, cool. I’m not gonna look past these foundational issues, you know, roof issues, you know, other issues. So can you talk us through a little bit of the. I’ll say the different levels of information that I’m gonna get with, uh, a report so I can go, all right, cool.[00:10:00]
I’m, ’cause I love the idea. Sure. If I can spend $70 to get a $300,000 discount, hey, your mileage,
Bob: your mileage may differ, but your mileage, right? Absolutely.
Patrick: But that, that’s clearly an example of like, Hey, when I come equipped with information, it gives me the, the tools to negotiate a fair deal. Right. I’m not walking into something that’s going to be a problem down the road.
And so, yeah, can you just walk us through, uh, what kind of access? Um, sure. Uh, the data getting,
Bob: there’s the basic information, like the same thing that you’ll see in a real estate report, like how big is it, where is it, how many beds and baths and all that stuff. Mm-hmm. Because we use some of that information, you’ll see the real estate description because what we found is that, you know, what the assessor believes your house is sized and what.
It’s actually sized is a huge difference. Mm-hmm. And that’s a big red flag, or it’s a big yellow flag because for example, the assessor thinks that my house is [00:11:00] 3,800 square feet. It’s wrong. It’s way wrong. It means a lot of different things for things like insurance or taxes, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. So we look at that basic level of information, then we look at aerial information to say, what’s the condition of the roof?
How old do we think it is? What’s it made of? What’s the condition? You know, is there tree overhang, all that good stuff. We put a lot of effort around that raw information to turn it into, you know, how many times has it been replaced in the last 20 years? Yeah. Things like we look at data sets of prior damages.
So was the house destroyed in a wildfire? Was it involved in a flood where we can get that information? W was it involved in a hurricane or tornado? Or was the fire department called to the house, uh, for a damaging event? Not, mm-hmm. If it’s EMT stuff, we skip all that. We look at weather events like have there been winds over [00:12:00] 65 miles an hour?
Has there been hail over an inch at that location? So you can start to see what’s the probable level of damage to a location. Like we looked at a house yesterday in Bowie, Maryland. The roof was in okay condition. But it’s had three hailstorms in three years and one more hailstorm means you’re replacing that route.
Yeah. So that’s, so then we’ll build in, we bring in building permit information. You know, especially in the state of Florida, they’re really tight about building permits these days. You, you need one to basically go to the bathroom in Florida, it seems like. Yeah. But we pull all that information. We pull in crime data, we pull in sex offender data.
We pull in lots and lots of peril data. Like what’s the risk of. Hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, all sorts of stuff like that. Uh, we pull in where the fire stations and where the fire hydrants are, lots and lots of data to about 40 different sources of data altogether. So that’s the forms, the basis. [00:13:00] And then we put a series of rules on top of it.
And we use a lot of AI to help us make sense of that data. Yeah. To say, here’s the top five things you should look for in this property. Here’s the. Top, here’s the bottom five things you should be concerned about in this property. Here’s the questions you should add. Here’s how the tax rate has changed on an annualized basis over the last six years.
Mm-hmm. Here’s how the insurance rates have changed over the last six years for that location. So lots and lots of data designed to give you knowledge that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Yeah. Some of it you can look up. Most of it you can. The real estate listing sites won’t tell you that stuff. And so it’s, it’s really just a tool to help you make a better decision.
Patrick: Yeah, no, I, I think that’s fantastic. And I also think how important data is. Okay. I think of our, our most successful clients, clients that are making over a million dollars a year, take home, uh, they understand the data really well. They’re able to look [00:14:00] at their scorecards, their. Profit and loss statements, you know, balance sheet, and they’re able to make decisions based on that data so they have new levels of success.
And I, I think this is very much in that category. You know, we, we were talking about Warren Buffet. And Warren Buffet has two rules of investing. The first rule is don’t lose principle. The second rule is don’t forget the first rule. And so when I think about, you know, one of my major investments being a, um, a piece of real estate.
For a relatively low cost to have new data that can help me protect my principal. You know? Uh, so I’m not doing a bad deal. That’s tremendously valuable. So, um,
Bob: I’ll give, I’ll give you an example. Before we bought this house, we looked at some places down in Southern California that, uh, ’cause it was, well, are we gonna buy a different house there?
Are we gonna buy a house here? Mm-hmm. And the problem was they were all in wildfire zones. And that was a hard no for me, like, [00:15:00] and now all of those people can’t get standard insurance. They have to go to the specialty market. So you’re looking at an insurance cost going from maybe five or $6,000 to a year to maybe $20,000 a year.
Mm-hmm. That’s not a lot of money to some people, but to some people it’s a huge expense, right. That they weren’t otherwise. And plus the risk of the loss itself. So, um. For me, everybody’s tastes are different. Everybody’s capacities for risk are different. So we’re not gonna say, yes, you should buy this house, or no, you shouldn’t.
Mm-hmm. What we’re gonna say is, here’s the decision points to help you decide whether the risk is worth it.
Patrick: Yep. Yep. Yeah. I’ve bought property. That’s an absolute disaster. You know, like, uh. Some that I’ve walked into and there’s, you know, I see sun coming through this ceiling and it’s not because there’s a skylight, it’s because there’s a hole in the roof, you know?
Mm-hmm. And it’s like, well, uh, I was willing to buy just about anything at the right price. And that was some of it. [00:16:00] So appreciate that, that factor. Like, Hey, we’re not gonna tell you what to do. We’re just gonna give you sort of the, I don’t know, the range of risk you’re taking on, right? Like, this is a beat, you know, there’s not a huge amount of risk, but if there’s some available, or this might be like, massive amount of risk.
And, uh, you just need to be, be aware of that. So.
Bob: You know, we, for example, we looked at a house in Southern California the other day, and the HVA system, HVAC system is original to the house. So that means it’s 20 years old or, or 18 years old. Well, the average lifespan in Southern California for an HVAC system is 20 years, and there’s two of them.
So you’re gonna have to replace those at some point sooner rather than later. Yeah. Better to know that you’re gonna be walking into a 20 or $30,000 expense Yep. Than to not know or get surprised by it after you’re already in love with it and after you’ve already put your earnest.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s fantastic.
And, and one of the things that I think is interesting is you’re so [00:17:00] good at data, and I think about, I’m glad I’m not trying to, to solve this problem, but I, I just think about the county by county, state by state. Like data sources, and they’re all different. Some of them were designed in 1998 when the internet became like, you know, a thing.
I’m sort of fascinated by the fact that you’re able to collect all this good data. Like, you know, I’m thinking about permitting information, right? Like, um, that that could vary greatly across the country. And, uh, the fact that you’re able to put together your systems and processes to, to be able to extract all that information for people at what I consider a very, very low cost is, um,
Bob: one of the.
It’s great. The great usages of AI is making sense of that stuff because you’re right. You know, all the county cares about, or the municipality cares about is the municipality. It’s like they don’t care if other people can read this data. That’s not their concern. Yeah. So everybody builds these. There’s, there’s 8,000 municipalities in the us, another [00:18:00] 3000 counties, so it’s about 11 to 12,000 distinct entities where you have to.
Pull data from. Mm-hmm. And there’s probably four to 5,000 different formats of that same data. Yeah. And some are easier than others. You know, New York City’s very automated. You just plug an API in. But, you know, Ankeny, Iowa is a little trickier because they put it into a PDF on their, on their website that you have to extract.
It’s like, okay. You know, it’s no and no disrespect to an lots of people do it that way. Sure. But it’s a challenge for sure. Yeah, it’s fun.
Patrick: Let’s face it, real estate isn’t the only place where hidden risks can cost you big. Your tax strategy is another area where most entrepreneurs leave money on the table, not because they’re doing anything wrong, because they don’t have the right data structure or support at Vital Wealth.
We help high level entrepreneurs take control of their taxes and build a custom [00:19:00] plan that works for them, not the IRS. If you’re making strong income, but still feel like you’re getting crushed, come tax season, it’s time to change that. Just like today’s episode showed you how to de-risk your real estate decisions, we can help you de-risk your financial future if you’re ready to keep more of what you earn.
And build long-term wealth with intention. Head over to vital strategies.com/tax to get started. You’ve worked hard for it. Let’s make sure you keep it.
Yeah. And, and Bob, can you talk us through, we’ve been talking a lot about this information from the buyer side. Mm-hmm. Is this information valuable as a seller? Like, is there, is there a good reason why? I would, I would lean into property lens from the seller side.
Bob: I would think
Patrick: so.
Bob: Most of our activity has been on the buyer’s side.
Mm-hmm. We do have some sellers who want to know what everybody’s gonna be looking at. Yeah. When they walk up to the property. So they’ll get a [00:20:00] report and they’ll say, okay, here’s what property lens is saying about this. I need to be able to combat this because sometimes they might not to report data that we’re gonna pick up on.
So, uh, to be able to be proactive about that. We will be adding capabilities for homeowners to upload their receipts. So if they’ve done work on house, they’ll be able to upload the receipt and we’ll be able to drop it into the timeline. So I think that there’s usage for it today. I think there will be more usage for it, especially as we add those homeowner type capabilities in there, because we think that as the market gets softer, which it is in many places.
That the best cared for houses will be the ones that fetch the best price. Yep.
Patrick: Yeah. I see that regularly. You know, being a real estate investor that’s willing to take the, you know, the property with the hole in the roof, uh, the charmer, right? Or bringing Yeah, yeah. Or bring your toolkit properties. [00:21:00] Yeah.
Handyman’s special. Most people are not that way. They want the thing that they can move into that is done that they don’t have to worry about. And I love the property lens, giving people confidence. And also I think it’s, I just think about the. I dunno where we’re at societally with litigation and all those other things.
If I know where I’m at from a, a seller’s point of view on disclosing everything, right? Because the disclosure, disclosure, disclosure is kind of the key. And if I’m like, oh yeah, I forgot about that thing, that property lens reminded me of, uh, I think that is great and can help avoid, you know, ounce of prevention is a, you know, worth a pound of cure on, on the back end.
So. Yeah. If I,
Bob: if I was ever gonna sell a listen, not everybody is in the same financial position, but if I was ever gonna sell a house again, I would get it inspected first. Mm-hmm. And, and say, okay, here’s what the inspector says. Just so I’m not blindsided by any post closed inspection issues. Because you’ve got an inspection report, it doesn’t substitute for the buyer’s inspection report.
Mm-hmm. [00:22:00] Because you know, the buyer has to protect themselves. Sure. But at the same time, you should do that in advance and. Make it part of the real estate transaction and say, here you go. Because you’re right people, some people want to do the fixers. They love it, they love the challenge. This is the fifth house I’ve renovated.
I love renovating houses as long as I know what I have to renovate going in. Right? Yeah. And other people just want it smooth. They want de-risk the situation. So the the smartest thing that the seller can do is to get the inspection done up front.
Patrick: Yep. I think this is great. Let’s see. Bob, we’ve talked about a number of different opportunities for using Property Lens.
Is there anything else we should be thinking about? Is there other use case or, you know, I could see this being a valuable tool for real estate agents to help their clients as well. But yeah. Anything else on, on your end that you’re like, Hey, here’s a valuable um, application.
Bob: Real estate agents are notoriously resistant to change, in fact, a real estate agent a couple of weeks ago, and she said, [00:23:00] I hope.
That no one ever shows up to one of my open houses with a property lens report. And, and I was like, why? Mm-hmm. She says, too much advantage to the buyer in that case. And I’m like, that, that just exposes, you know what’s kind of wrong with the real estate mark model? Doesn’t happen everywhere. You know, it doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen.
And most. Home transactions are buyer beware. Mm-hmm. So beware. Yeah. The second thing is that in the process of, you know, we have a good reputation, multiple industries as data guide, so, and we’ve built a lot of data for property lens to actually work. So one of the things that we do is we’re able to unbundle that data.
So if there’s an insurance company or an inspection company, or any sort of company that really needs robust real estate data. We can pump that right back into their system to let them make [00:24:00] decisions with that data and then it leads to a whole nother set successes as well. So yeah, it’s both the consumer application, but we’re also cognizant of the fact that there’s a B2B application in here as well.
Patrick: Yeah, that’s great. We’ve talked a lot about, I think residential property. How about commercial property? Does property lens apply to to that as well? ’cause I was playing around with the website and I put my. My address for this property, which comes up as commercial into the uh, uh, the address bark. And you’re like, yeah, we can run a report, but this is commercial property.
It, it just sort of identified that. And so can you walk us through the difference between how property lens looks at commercial versus residential?
Bob: Primary difference between residential and commercial is that there really isn’t a good source for MLS type description data for commercial properties. So, or the one source that has it doesn’t like to share it.
Mm-hmm. So like right now, when you look at a real estate listing, the realtor puts in [00:25:00] the description and we use that quite a bit to help determine a lot of things about the property. You don’t have that in commercial insurance, but there are things in commercial insurance that are much more critical than even in residential, uh, insurance, which is flood zone.
You know, we carry every FEMA digital flood zone that’s out there. We’ll tell you how far you are from it. And in commercial properties it’s a much bigger deal because your commercial insurance property carries a flood section to it that residentials don’t. So your insurance cost goes way if you’re in a flood zone, uh, for commercial because it’s a covered peril in commercial and it’s not covered in residential.
Mm. Same thing with storm surge or any of the sort of ocean driven versus river rain driven. Situations so you, you’ll be missing that description. But what you’ll get in return is you’ll still get the roof information and condition. You’ll still get the [00:26:00] perils that it’s subjected to. You’ll get the prior damaging events.
You’ll get everything else, and you’ll get more generally of the permit information because commercial locations tend to have permit requirements a little bit more than residential locations do. So you’ll get.
Patrick: Yeah. Yep. I, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but, uh, one of the, one of the things that’s interesting about Clinton, Iowa, where I live, you’re talking about permitting.
We were the last city, our size in the state of Iowa that didn’t have a building code. Mm-hmm. And so the state applied a building code that said, Hey, if you’re over this size and you don’t have a code, this code applies to you. And there was one city that it applied to, and it was us. ’cause they were like, we’re tired of, you know, this, this, this.
A decent sized city running around without a building code because it’s dangerous. So I totally agree with you. It is like on the residential side, you could have your cousin wire the thing and it was totally fine and that they could use extension cords and No, no problem with that. And uh, yep. Where the commercial side, that just [00:27:00] wasn’t, that wasn’t an opportunity.
You had to apply a real, um, you know, standards to those buildings and have all the permitting and uh, that type of thing done. So that’s, uh,
Bob: you know, it’s really interesting because commercial buildings generally have. Bigger permit requirements because they’re largely open spaces. Mm-hmm. And open spaces burn at a much faster pace than ENC closed spaces do.
And we call this the chip and Joanna effect. And what we’re seeing in residential locations is that they’re burning faster because of the open floor plan design. Right. Yeah. O open floor plan design is wonderful from a livability standpoint. Awful from a fire protection standpoint. ’cause you can’t just close a door and shut the oxygen.
Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of the things that you see in commercial like sprinklers, like detection systems like permitting or sort of moving their way into the residential spaces, because residential spaces are beginning to resemble commercial spaces a little bit more than they [00:28:00] have in the past. Yeah. And you know, cities have to fight these things and it’s pretty gnarly fighting a big old fire with a open space in it because the roof might collapse and you might kill a firefighter God for.
Sure. But it’s, there’s a reason. So I think that we’ll see. Plus if you have bad weather, you know, you at a certain point you gotta, you gotta have a building code. Mm-hmm. And you look at Florida versus Texas, Florida, every time there’s an event, they change their building codes. Yep. But they let them grandfather in, so.
Mm-hmm. So Mexico Beach got wiped out because everything was grandfathered in, but now it’s not. Right. You have to be at the current business code versus Texas. It’s like building code’s optional. And
Patrick: it’s
Bob: like, yeah, yeah. You got in situations like that, you’ve gotta be aware of what you’re walking in.
Patrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that’s really interesting. And Bob, one of the things you’ve been touching on that I think is an important issue that we’ve been seeing with our clients across the country is the cost of insurance. And I think the, the [00:29:00] information that you’re providing helps to show you’re, it sounds like you’re, you’re showing the increase in cost of insurance for, for that property.
And it used to go to, from a rounding error to. There’s substantial costs or you can’t even get coverage. We’ve had some clients in California that are getting canceled and we’re trying to place coverage and it’s really challenging. And so, yeah. Uh, I think that factor, you know, in, in the report that you’re delivering is also something that people should really take into consideration.
Like, what is, what is it gonna cost for me to insure this property? And, uh, I actually forgot, I forgot
Bob: something. One of the things that we do is we. Look at the square footage of the property and then we look at the admitted rates for that state and we tell you how much, what the ranges of insurance costs for this state.
We’ll also tell you what the replacement cost is, which is a little bit more of an Iowa factor because, well not it’s in a, usually in an where there’s older properties. Yep. It [00:30:00] costs more to rebuild them than it does to buy them. Yep. And so when you get insured. If you’re not insured to the replacement cost, you usually don’t have enough money to rebuild it the same way.
Yep. And And that’s a huge problem. So we not only tell you what the expected range of insurance quotes might be, we tell you what the increases have been over the last six years, and then we give you the options. They click here and apply for insurance if you like.
Patrick: I love it. Yeah, Bob, I can see a value right there.
Just. I can almost shop my coverage, uh, without actually going to talk to an insurance agent. I can just be like, all right, what? I’m just gonna go buy the report on my own property, see what it costs to insure my property. If I’m outta that range, I’m gonna go, you know, uh, shop my coverages and see if I can find some opportunity.
So it’s
Bob: crazy. Just house here in Edina. My insurance costs have gone up 70% in three years. Mm-hmm. Because Minnesota had a big hailstorm [00:31:00] in 2022, and everybody got paranoid. Mm-hmm. Now they renew everybody so they get the rate. So my insurance agent, who I’ve never met, has gotten an 80% raise in three years for doing nothing and not talking to me about risk, not helping me to protect myself.
So when one of the. Things that I really like about this report personally is I’m helping to protect myself. Mm-hmm. Because the best claim is one you never have. So if you have an idea of what might happen at this location, like the one regret I have about this house is we didn’t put class four shingles on the roof.
That was the one mist that I had because we get so much hail here in Minnesota. Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s, it’s arm yourself with information. The best armor isn’t always going to protect you, but it’s gonna give you a heck of a lot better chance of survival than if you have.
Patrick: Right. Yep. I, I love this. Bob, is there anything else we should be talking about with property lens?
Because I, I think there’s a few other things we could move on to, but [00:32:00]
Bob: we’re having a sale, it’s the summertime sale. It’s called 25 Summer. You know, we’ve got a little coupon code in there. Just put 25 summer in and you get 25% off your next property lens purchase.
Patrick: Fantastic. That’s where I was gonna go. I think your website, property lens.com has, has lots of useful information.
You can see a sample report, you can put your address in and they’ll, they’ll tell you, yep, yep, we’ve got information for this. But you can, you can buy, I think if you’re in the market for buying real estate, you should probably buy. Four or five reports, the value starts going up dramatically when you, uh, sort of buy them in bulk.
You can check that out and then you start coupling that with the, the 25 summer discount code to get 25% off. I think that’s a fantastic deal. I, I think this is a tremendous value regardless of the discount. You know, if I had to pay, buy one report at $70 and just pay full price, I, I think the value is, is there, and there’s lots of different reasons why I think it could make sense to, to have it, whether you’re buying or selling.
So. We think it’s great value [00:33:00] anyway. And then the discount code is fantastic, and we’ll have links to property lens in the show notes as well if you wanna go check that out along with the, um, the discount code. You are
Bob: smart. You are a smart man Patrick. Very smart man.
Patrick: You get it. I appreciate that. Um, you know, and, and when we’re, I just can’t come up with a scenario where I wouldn’t use this in my due diligence for buying a piece of real estate.
Like,
Bob: here’s the scenario, if someone tells you not to. Whether it’s the selling agent or whether it’s the buying agent, or whether it’s somebody whose uncle’s, cousin’s brother is an inspector and goes, you don’t need that. You just inspection. It’s like the inspector can’t tell you if you’re in a flood zone.
They can’t tell you what the parallel risk is. They usually can’t even tell you the condition of the roof. Unless they do a specialized exam. Yeah. They can’t tell you whether there’s groundwater contamination. They can’t tell you whether there’s radon contamination unless you get a specialized exam.
There’s a ton of stuff they can’t tell you Now. You still wanna use them ’cause you want ’em to go and flip the switches and run the wa. They can’t. They usually can’t [00:34:00] even tell you whether the sewer line is clogged. Unless it’s super obvious, right? Because they let the water run for a few minutes, but a water backup comes after about 10 minutes of run and they don’t keep it on that long.
Yeah. So, but if your property is 50 years old and it’s got a, it’s a lot of trees, as chances are the sewer line’s gotta be, should be inspected. Right. So no one ever thinks to do that. And then that’s an expensive fix. ’cause you’re really digging up stuff at that point.
Patrick: Yep. Yep. And so I’m, I’m just gonna recap what I, I think is a, a great.
Sort of order of operations. I’m shopping online. I find some property that I’m interested in Before I even go look at that property, I think I should, uh, buy my property lens report just to come armed with good data and before I get emotionally charged up about that, that deal and that, and I say that ’cause I can get emotionally charged up about my commercial property as well.
Then I go look at the property I. Get the property under contract, that’s when I bring my inspector out. I don’t think property lens replaces the inspector by any stretch. You know, they’re gonna, they’re gonna [00:35:00] get eyes on things and see things that aren’t available through what I’ll call big data. And I think you start coupling all those things together.
Now what we’re doing is we’re avoiding risk around buying a property with hidden issues, surprises, and expenses that are gonna create that, that future regret. You know, it allows us to make informed, intelligent investments and really. Eliminate that. Buyer’s reor, remorse and sleep, sleep better at night, at the end of the day.
So, yeah. Yeah.
Bob: Value of buying a house or a business is tension inducing. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s really one of the most stressful things you can do. We help to eliminate that stress. Yep. You know, it’s, I love it.
Patrick: Still stressful, but just a little bit less with us. Right? Absolutely. We have enough stress in our life, right.
Let’s remove, uh, let’s remove any that we can and we think this is a great tool, so. Um, you know, it just allows us to make empowered decisions. Data backed, real estate purchases, I think are, are the way to go and this allows you a system to just protect your money and peace of [00:36:00] mind and your, your overall portfolio.
So Bob, I appreciate all of your wisdom and insights and just your development of this tool. You know, I think about Carfax, like nobody buys a car anymore without knowing, uh, and seeing the Carfax and I think property lenses, you know that for. Property. And you, you described it that way, and I think that’s, um, it’s a fantastic tool.
So thank you. Thank you for all your work on that.
Bob: Oh, my pleasure. All right. It’s fun. It’s, what else am I gonna do? I’m a terrible golfer,
Patrick: you know? Yeah. I love it. Thanks so much for joining us, Bob. My pleasure, Patrick. That’s a wrap on today’s episode. Thank you so much for tuning into the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast.
I hope you found value in this conversation with Bob Freddy, and then it gave you a new lens for how to approach real estate with strategy, confidence, and data on your side. If this episode helped you think differently or sparked a new idea, I’d love for you to share it with someone who could benefit a friend, a client, a fellow entrepreneur, someone who’s making big moves that needs better information before their [00:37:00] next real estate decision.
And don’t forget, we release new episodes every single week, so be sure to subscribe and come back next time. We’ve got more high level conversations to help you save, build, and lead with purpose. Before you go, if you’re ready to start building your own tax strategy, head over to vital strategies.com/.
That’s where we help entrepreneurs like you legally minimize taxes, grow their wealth, and take full control of their financial future. And remember, you’re a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities, driving growth, and making an impact. You’re vital to your family, creating abundance in every aspect of life.
You’re vital to me because you’re committed to growing your wealth, leading with purpose, and creating something truly great. Thank you for being a part of this incredible community of vital entrepreneurs. I appreciate you and I look forward to having you back here next time on the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast, where we help entrepreneurs minimize their taxes, master wealth, and optimize their [00:38:00] lives.