Revolutionizing Real Estate: The Swipe Home Journey

Stephen Schmidt (00:02.574)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs It’s your host Stephen Schmidt and I’m back at it like a bad habit and I got a special treat for you guys here in the studio We got Jered Dennis in the house Jered Dennis has been in the real estate space now for the last eight plus years almost a decade in it He is one of those that decided instead of hiring a realtor. He was just gonna go become one. So

Jered Dennis (00:28.888)
Yeah

Stephen Schmidt (00:29.442)
We’ve had a few of those on the show that have had some pretty incredible stories and that’s led to a really interesting career for them. And he’s also the founder and co-founder of Swipe Home, which is a veteran led company, which we’re gonna dive into a little bit where they’ve created what he calls the first real estate operating system, which is a really incredible tool that I think is gonna have some pretty interesting application.

Jered Dennis (00:38.059)
you

Stephen Schmidt (00:56.398)
over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, now on into the future. So we’re going to get right into our conversation today. Just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses so they can build the businesses they’ve always wanted in order to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. And with that being said, Jered, welcome to the show today.

Jered Dennis (01:00.887)
hope so.

Jered Dennis (01:16.29)
Thank you so much. Appreciate being here.

Stephen Schmidt (01:18.51)
And you bet my friend. So tell us a little bit more about what you got going on man. So you decided, hey, you know what? I don’t want to have one of these other people sell my house. So I’m just going to go become a realtor. And then that’s what itself to eight years later. Now we’re here. So give us a little bit of how you got started in the business and what got you to where you’re at today.

Jered Dennis (01:30.04)
Yeah.

Jered Dennis (01:37.166)
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, like you said even, I became a realtor to save money and basically do it myself, you know. I kind of saw, you know, I had some friends of family who were realtors and I saw them living in a big house, nice lifestyle, stuff like that. I could probably do that myself. I have a few years experience in sales and peer to peer, you know, everything. So, may as well give it a go.

So I spent the time, did the class, and got my license, ended up selling my home.

and yeah just made tons and tons of connections from that. It’s often part-time realty but it’s been just full-time connections and just full-time experience. I absolutely love being a realtor, love being in the space but then I decided to kind of take it a completely different turn and

get into the for sale by owner aspect of it. It’s a pretty big portion of the market that’s being left out.

Stephen Schmidt (02:47.533)
100%. So let me ask you this. Because you could just sell your house as an owner. What made you decide to go and full send? Like, I’m going to go become a realtor. Like, what was that all about?

Jered Dennis (03:01.026)
You know, I’m not quite sure actually. I want to say I figured that I could probably write myself a commission into it too. Pay myself for selling my own home. It didn’t work like that, but… It was fun.

Stephen Schmidt (03:14.541)
Sure.

Stephen Schmidt (03:18.775)
Yeah, right. And then he just kept it and eight years later, here we are. So at what point in your career did you transition from, know, this selling houses thing is cool, but there’s a gap that’s in this market right now. And I think I can fill it with some tech that really is the way of the future. At what point did you hit that realization and how did that whole thing get started?

Jered Dennis (03:22.285)
Yeah.

Jered Dennis (03:46.574)
last year. I don’t know, was just thinking about how this could be done easier. I’ve always been one to think of how can we streamline this, how can we streamline that? I once thought of digital menus would be cool. I don’t know, I just saw an opportunity the way that people already do things.

You date online, you find a car online, you shop for houses online. You basically do everything online. So why can’t you do it all in one space? So that’s where Swipe Home came about. We gave the ease of use of the Swipe dating apps, but we’ve added in layer after layer of trust and security that you would expect from the bigger for sale by owner apps.

But no longer are these people alone when they do it. So I took my toolkit as a realtor, something that I would charge somebody to list their house with, and I’m giving it away. It’s kind of a novel concept for somebody in this position, but it means a lot. Why shouldn’t everybody have the same opportunity?

Stephen Schmidt (05:02.733)
Hmm.

Stephen Schmidt (05:13.645)
So what’s your perfect user for this?

Jered Dennis (05:18.606)
The user, there’s quite a few. Once we get the market built up, you’ll be able to buy, you’ll be able to sell, you’ll be able just to go look around. The perfect user is just anybody looking to go peer to peer. The perfect user for sale by owner or anything like that would be somebody who’s looking to save commission, but not be left in the dark when it comes to negotiating and…

getting everything straight and make it to closing. lot of these for sale by owner deals fall apart way before closing happens.

Stephen Schmidt (05:54.99)
Yeah, 100%. What would you say has been one of the biggest risks that you took early on in your business maybe is you were deciding to go on this new venture as well?

Jered Dennis (06:08.098)
Basically, kind of tanking my local real estate career. Kind of been blackballed a little bit already. I was with a prominent brokerage and they told me I need to hang my license someplace else. So, but from that I fell into a group of other

Stephen Schmidt (06:17.41)
Mm.

Jered Dennis (06:34.062)
people who are like-minded and they want to see real estate reform. So, you know, there’s no sissies, things, accidents in my opinion, you know, it’s no coincidence. It all happens for a reason. Absolutely, know, God shut that door, but he opened this one. I’m fully prepared to take it on.

Stephen Schmidt (06:56.503)
Hmm. Yeah. That’s great, man. So what do you use? You’re like three days out from having a beta for this, right?

Jered Dennis (07:06.86)
Yeah, I am. am. How would you say that back to me, actually? It scares me little bit. But yeah, I’ve been working nonstop. My wife can attest to it. She absolutely hates the fact that I’ve been sitting at my computer for hundreds of hours now since mid-April. But I think she understands that she knows my work ethic. She knows that I’m…

I like to grind it out and I’m three days away from actually having a product that people can use and to give them the freedom and ability to save money and you know currently on average the for sale by owner loses up to a hundred grand because they don’t use an agent. I’m trying to give them that hundred grand back and save them that six percent so whatever I can do.

Stephen Schmidt (08:01.143)
So what’s a…

What’s a mistake that’s cost you time or money and what have you learned from it?

Jered Dennis (08:14.584)
Probably.

and then I can do it all myself.

Stephen Schmidt (08:21.1)
Hmm.

Jered Dennis (08:24.97)
If that makes sense, know, kind of everybody that has a good idea wants to be able to want to orchestrate that from every aspect. You want to be able to architect and engineer it, how you see it fit. But sometimes, you know, you have recent experience, you know, if you do that, you’re closing people out. You’re closing out the other.

ideas and out of the box thinking that you may not see because you’re zoned in. know, that can happen with anything. You know, get locked in and you’re focused. Which is a good thing sometimes until you’re too locked in, you know. Luckily it hasn’t cost me money yet. It has cost me time and it could have potentially cost me money if I didn’t catch it.

Stephen Schmidt (09:13.367)
Hmm.

Stephen Schmidt (09:17.175)
What do you think the real big problem that your tech solution is gonna solve for people? If you had to pinpoint that, what do you think the real big problem it’s actually gonna solve is?

Jered Dennis (09:27.278)
trust transparency. So right now with the whole thing with Zillow and NAR and all that and Zillow’s been gatekeeping listings, know, off-market listings or whatever they want to call them, that’s not fair. The sellers, I mean sure they might get their home sold but it’s not fair to everybody else involved. It’s not fair to…

Stephen Schmidt (09:30.125)
Hmm.

Jered Dennis (09:53.026)
you know the ones that truly think that their home is going to hit the market and it doesn’t because it’s being gate-catched. Unfortunately realtors know that that’s happening and a lot of them are okay with it. A lot of them are still willing to take that both sides of the commission. Dual agency, that’s a big thing. mean heck, NAR just settled for over a hundred million dollars last week, two weeks ago maybe.

Stephen Schmidt (09:59.182)
sure.

Stephen Schmidt (10:07.798)
Mm.

Jered Dennis (10:20.066)
But yeah, you see stuff like that and that’s the issue. So I mean, if we can bring trust and transparency and security all together just to let people know that we do still care and it’s not all about the money, that’s my main goal. But it’s still one, it’s probably one of the hills to overcome.

Stephen Schmidt (10:45.613)
How do you see yourself making money from it?

Jered Dennis (10:48.782)
So that’s one of the cool things. It’s free to list on the site. It’s free to go in there and buy. You go and search the website. Whatever else you gotta do is log in and register and make sure you’re real person. Our monetization model comes from contractor subscriptions. So contractors will subscribe anywhere between 99 and 1,000 bucks a month. And they’ll get X amount of zip codes.

and they’ll be able to be the first ones in our marketplace that gets, excuse me, that gets not just like chosen but recommended for certain jobs based off of their qualifications and skills that have been thoroughly vetted and tested and reviewed by their peers.

Stephen Schmidt (11:36.365)
How do you put that together? That’s really interesting. How do you put together the recommendations? I mean, is it fair to say like, well, someone could just come in and say they’re the best at whatever and pay a thousand bucks and then now they’re the thing. How do you actually vet them?

Jered Dennis (11:52.28)
Sure, sure. So that’s actually.

At one point I was thinking we were going to automate that and let a computer do it, but I don’t think that would be fair to anybody. So we’re going to do it manually. We’re going to check reviews. We’re going to make phone calls. We’re going to truly vet these people. Make sure you have the people who they say they are walking in your house doing whatever work or wherever you’re at, you know?

That’s part of our big things, know, trust and security. If you don’t have that, the model’s broken to start.

Stephen Schmidt (12:28.599)
So how do you quantify that? Like what are gonna be some of your criteria that they have to hit? Like is it X amount of positive reviews or like what are some of those things that they would have to have in check? Cause I mean, I know guys with 205 star views, their work sucks.

Jered Dennis (12:40.214)
Yeah, absolutely.

Jered Dennis (12:45.55)
Absolutely, know, a lot of those reviews aren’t necessarily real reviews, you know. I’ve been approached by several people online who said, hey man, I have 19 different accounts and we can all leave you a five star. I said, well that’s cool and all, but it’s also a little concerning. We are going to make sure that everybody, if their service requires it, they will be licensed, they will be insured fully.

And then we will go through and we will make them provide references, not a cousin or a brother or a friend, but real references and real photos of real work that they’ve completed. You know, and then I’m probably going to talk to the homeowner and say, hey, how did they do? Were they professional? Were they acceptable? Were they exceptional? You know, and from there, we’re going to start building. if we can start that

just starting that, you know, that will hopefully get other contractors who know that they’re up to par wanting to become part of our marketplace. And then hopefully they’ll also know that we’re not here to mess around with. We will boot you. We won’t even let you on the system. So.

Stephen Schmidt (14:03.405)
Which I mean, to an extent when you think about it, mean, shoot, if this blows up and has a larger, large enough reach, then, you know, that’d be a no brainer for a company that they could spend thousand bucks and potentially get 50, 60, 100 high quality leads.

Jered Dennis (14:21.076)
you would think so. absolutely. I would love to see us be the one. So right now with other lead generation platforms that contractors use, I’m sure you can name them, but we won’t here. It’s a pay to play way to do it. So they pay to get on the platform, and then they pay to get a lead that is shared between two or three or five other contractors.

And majority of the time, it’s a bad phone number, the person doesn’t answer, or you’re too late. This is all your specialty going directly to you from a warm to hot lead generation system. These people are actively looking for people to do the work, and they want professionals to do the work. And it only makes sense to match them up together. You know, once they get into our peer-to-peer format that we’re…

is accomplished.

Stephen Schmidt (15:24.215)
How long do you think it’ll be before it gets mass adopted? And what’s your marketing strategy for it?

Jered Dennis (15:24.398)
Thank you.

Jered Dennis (15:31.276)
Yeah, so right now we’re grassroots. Right now we’ve incorporated something called Swipe Partners. So because we have the ability to decentralize our rollout.

If anybody in the country wanted to be a swipe partner, all they would have to do is let me know. We’d get them a little number, and they go out and they canvas their neighborhoods, and they try to collect contractors and general users and for sale by owners. If they can do that, they’ll end up getting equity in our company. We’re providing people the opportunity to get in on the ground level if they want to help.

It kind of sounds like we’re just selling pieces of our dreams, but if we get enough people that want to make this theirs as well, it could be theirs. You know, I have no problem sharing. We just got to get people to do the work, you know. I can’t be everywhere at once, but if you’re out there and you know five contractors that do good work, and you know ten other people that would love to use their work but don’t know how to get connected with one another, tell all 15 of them.

Get all those guys on the platform and get some equity in the company and then when we do turn into you know a multi-billion dollar company your shares are worth money Because you’ve decided to do a little bit of work in the beginning you decided to bootstrap with us So that’s a little bit of our marketing As far as the full rollout my roadmap is about 15 to 16 months out from alpha launch We are aggressively

looking for fundraising angels, like that. May not even necessarily need to get into a VC round if we don’t have to. For the first couple months here, we’re offering all the contractors that do get on board free service until September 1st. We’re gonna market for them, we’re gonna do everything, we’re let them know that they’re our partners and we’re, you know, that they’re founding fathers of this company with us. You know, we’re trying to bring as many people to the top. What’s that?

Stephen Schmidt (17:33.389)
How many markets are you rolling out to to start? How many markets are you rolling out to to start? I would think something like this you would want to test in a few large markets before expanding, but what does that look like?

Jered Dennis (17:39.33)
Look.

Jered Dennis (17:45.486)
Yes, so right now we’re in Springfield, Illinois. We’ve got about 120,000 people. There’s about 170 in the county and then probably around 500 in the major metro area, Peoria, stuff like that. But, heck, we’re only about…

And now we’re away from St. Louis. I got a few friends all across the country who are willing to be Swipe partners. We’re thinking about near Racine, Wisconsin. We’re thinking about down in the Branson area.

you know, of the Ozarks, stuff like that. I got a couple people in Georgia, a couple people in Texas, you know. It’s kind of random right now, but I think that’s kind of the cool part about it too. Because we’re not necessarily looking for giant hubs, we’re looking for communities where there are blue collar workers out there and there are contractors out there that want to get their name to more people.

We hopefully will have the ability to do that for them.

Stephen Schmidt (18:51.853)
Well Jered thanks for being on the show today. We appreciate you coming on, sharing some insights and what you got going on. It’s pretty exciting. So if people want to connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, where should they go for that?

Jered Dennis (19:03.288)
You know what, right now they can go to swipehomeapp.com. That’s for right now, that’s our landing page. You can go to the wait list on the contact us. You can learn all about Operation Swipe Back, our eventual give back to veterans and all that, building micro communities and putting veterans in there, just trying to help back as much as we possibly can to the community.

but yes wipehomeapp.com where you can get in touch that’s where we’ll get back in touch find us on LinkedIn find us everywhere

Stephen Schmidt (19:38.733)
Well there you go folks, go check them out. Show them some love from the real estate pros in the Investor Field Community. Appreciate them being on the show. We’ll see you all in the next episode.

Jered Dennis (19:44.822)
Hey thanks, Steven. Appreciate you having me, brother.