From HostGator to Real Estate Mogul: Lance Custen on Scaling, AI, and Nationwide Deals

Lance Custen (00:00)
If you have good systems, you’ll be able to scale. If you don’t have good systems, you won’t be able to scale. That’s the best way to put it. I’m not going to name any systems that people, you know, I’m not going to push one particular one, but, you know, having a great property management system for your tenants and having a great CRM for your customers, those are the two key things I’d recommend. You can’t just use a Google Doc these days, especially that most of these CRMs have AI built in.

that will do automatic calling, automatic texting, automatic reminders to pay rent, automatic reminders to pay your bills. There’s so much automation you can do at this point. It’s just amazing. What you used to need to hire two or three people to do, one system can do for you now.

Erika (02:05)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m excited to be joined by Lance Custen, who’s shaking things up in the real estate world. Lance, it’s awesome to have you here.

Lance Custen (02:18)
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Erika (02:20)
So Lance, let’s jump on in. For those who don’t know you yet, give us the rundown. How did you get started in real estate?

Lance Custen (02:26)
⁓ I was a former CEO of a company called Hostgator. We hosted about seven million websites. At the time while was at the company, we bought our own commercial office buildings and I also bought my own homes and flipped them back then while I was in the tech space. And after we sold the company, ⁓ I started investing heavily into real estate on the commercial on the residential side. And then I became a realtor myself. And then after that, basically, I just went on from here to where we are today, owning a nationwide brokerage in all 50 states and an investor.

heavy lead portal.

Erika (02:55)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a really exciting for you with the work that you do in real estate and investing. What kind of markets are you in and what kind of properties are you looking at?

Lance Custen (03:05)
For me personally, I go a lot single family condos, all that good stuff. I invest in condos in South Florida, which is like the worst thing you can do right now with the 40 year assessments and the recertifications and the special assessments. then, know, single family is great too, but I just look for ⁓ properties that I want to live in myself that I know I can get a good rental on. And then on the office side, I’ve got about a million square feet of class A and B office space between Houston and Dallas.

Erika (03:31)
That’s really awesome. And with having those properties, what’s been the key to managing that? Seems like you got a lot of plates going at once.

Lance Custen (03:39)
⁓ For my commercial, have a full staff management and construction team. So have a full in-house construction team, a full in-house management team. All works out really well. one of the best things is when you have over a million square feet, you could kind of group all the buildings together in the same cities. And I even send my Houston teams to Dallas to do work, but it’s buying in bulk, buying the paint in bulk, buying the sheetrock in bulk, keeping these employees busy and working every single day. When you’ve got class B office and class A office, you’ve got tenants moving in and out every day.

And every day a tenant moves out, you gotta paint it, you gotta carpet it. New tenant moves in, they want a wall move, they want this, they want that. One of the biggest things about managing commercial office is just being able to keep the client happy. And every client has a different needs, and if you can figure out the needs, you’re gonna win the lease.

Erika (04:21)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure it took time to build a team like that too to manage everything. What was that journey like?

Lance Custen (04:29)
It was a pretty long journey. all started with I had a maintenance guy and somebody was touring a suite with me and they were like, hey, I’ll rent this if you’ll put a sink in. And I’m like, how do I put a sink in a suite where there’s the bathrooms 1500 feet all the way on the other side? Like there’s no bathrooms anywhere near this suite. And the maintenance guy’s like, I think there’s some plumbing under here we can tie into. after that, we would like lease that space on the next tour.

I kind of looked at the plumbing plans for the building, the drainage plans, and I start being the guy being like, hey, you want to sink? You want a private bathroom? As long as we can pull permits and get this done, no problem. We can do it for you. And kind of going from there, it’s gone to, we’ll build you your custom suite. You use our building standard materials that we buy in bulk, but we’ll put up the walls where you want. We’ll put up the outlets where you want. We’ll put in the lighting. We’ll do the painting wherever, whatever you want. There’s not many people that say,

a Class B price point that will do that on a short-term lease.

Erika (06:11)
Yeah. And now that you have that team and that you’re growing, what are you looking for on the horizon?

Lance Custen (06:18)
It’s just continuing to acquire office buildings probably within the Houston area and just knowing the great team. At this point, we might even start just doing remodeling of homes. Remodeling a home and an office are pretty similar. So when you’re remodeling an office, it’s a little bit easier because you have partitioned walls and you have dropped ceilings and you have easy access to everything. And where remodeling a home is everything’s an extra step, I believe. And a home, people are going to be much more committed to how they want it exactly perfect for us in office.

you eventually if we run out of work to do in our commercial offices, you know, I just want to start flipping homes with this team, even building homes one day maybe.

Erika (06:53)
exciting. And Lance, I also want to talk about realt.com. Tell me the inspiration behind that.

Lance Custen (06:59)
So I have a real estate team and basically with having a real estate team, was buying leads from all the other portals. There’s no loyalty. I had no clue how to convert a lead. I didn’t know about the 10 days of pain where you got to call leads seven or eight times to get ahold of them 50 % of the time. I didn’t know that if you’re converting at two or 3 % on a lead portal, you’re actually doing amazing. I didn’t know any of that stuff back then and I ended up starting up realty.com. It was an eight figure transaction for the company and rebooted it from the ground up. We’re a brokerage in all 50 states and we generate

over 60,000 seller leads a month through Realty.com and Estimate.com that are investor heavy and most of the people are looking for cash offers where we have partnerships with Homeward, have partnerships with Epic Realty and a lot of those products and basically just getting it to the right either agent or investor and helping those clients out there either looking to sell their home or if they’re looking to find a home or they’re even looking for a loan, we can help them with all of those things.

Erika (07:52)
That’s awesome. When it came to reconstructing realty.com, what was the biggest challenge that you had along the way?

Lance Custen (07:59)
Building a nationwide brokerage in all 50 states. 50 of everything is a good way to put it. And hundreds of MLSs and agents and all that good stuff.

Erika (08:07)
Yeah. And then what are you most proud of with runningrealti.com?

Lance Custen (08:12)
It’s just our great client base and our great employees. It’s amazing to work with some of the top agents in America, whether it’s the Fig team out in Orlando with Veronica Figueroa or Kyle Whistle in San Diego, or Josh Miller, the CEO of Epic Realty, or Leo, the CEO of EXP Realty. Just working with these top people in the industry every single day is amazing. These are the people that shaping the real estate industry and I have a seat at the table with them, helping them shape that industry and it’s just been great, especially our EXP and Epic partnerships.

At Epic, all 5,000 of their agents are Realty.com customers, so it’s kind of amazing over there.

Erika (08:44)
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s quite a network that, you’ve built, you know, on our podcast, we really value networking and building those relationships. What kind of advice would you give to someone when it comes to building their network in the real estate world?

Lance Custen (08:58)
It’s just getting out there to know people. It’s one of the great groups. It’s the Real Estate Agent and Referrals Group. It’s run by someone named Debbie. And if you join that group, there’s over 300,000 members in there. And it’s a great place to network, a great place to introduce yourself. And when you join the group, you get a personal email and call from Debbie introducing herself, inviting you to her events. So that’s another one. That’s one of the best recommendations for agents I can do for free networking through the entire industry.

Erika (10:00)
Yeah, yeah, that’s really awesome. Lance, I want to go back and talk a little bit more about the different ⁓ properties and deals that you’ve done. Has there ever been a moment where you had a deal that went sideways or you had to pivot? Do you have a story like that and what did you learn from it?

Lance Custen (10:18)
Yeah, I had one in Dallas. can’t talk too much about it, but basically I had a deal that just blew up in the middle of it and I learned that not all deals are set in stone until the day you get your money. I learned that everybody likes to talk big game, but at the end of the day, the people that can close, those are the people you need to continue working with.

Erika (10:37)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. there, you know, are there any, is there anything different about your process that you do now with that in mind?

Lance Custen (10:45)
Yeah, we’re a little bit more stricter on who we would sell a building to, who we’d buy a building to. We’re really open with due diligence. Anytime we sell a building, we say, look all you want, do a phase one, do whatever you got to do. We’ve got nothing to hide. I’m buying the building. We do our own due diligence too. A little bit stricter than we used to be. I bought buildings at Notnode. At the parking garage, needed a half a million dollars at work because I didn’t have an engineer go do a structural analysis on it because I’m like, oh, there’s cars in there. I’m sure it’s fine.

Yeah, like that.

Erika (11:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, man. Well, Lance, for our listeners who are early in the journey or looking to level up, I’m sure you have a unique perspective with your experience in technology. What kind of advice would you give someone when it comes to leveraging technology to grow their real estate business?

Lance Custen (11:32)
So about automations, like, you know, if you’re working with contacts, you know, get a good CRM, property management system.

If you have good systems, you’ll be able to scale. If you don’t have good systems, you won’t be able to scale. That’s the best way to put it. I’m not going to name any systems that people, you know, I’m not going to push one particular one, but, you know, having a great property management system for your tenants and having a great CRM for your customers, those are the two key things I’d recommend. You can’t just use a Google Doc these days, especially that most of these CRMs have AI built in.

that will do automatic calling, automatic texting, automatic reminders to pay rent, automatic reminders to pay your bills. There’s so much automation you can do at this point. It’s just amazing. What you used to need to hire two or three people to do, one system can do for you now.

Erika (12:12)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely is. And I know you said you don’t want to names, fair enough. You’re welcome to name them if you want to. But is there anything in particular or maybe a certain way you’re using AI that’s been a game changer?

Lance Custen (12:26)
We do a lot of AI phone calls for our leads, just calling them that they’ve consented to be called. One of the biggest things I recommend, make sure when you call through AI, you have consent, or when you text, you have consent. Even if you’re doing it small time, TCPA consent is key. So never call people you don’t have consent for, but it’s just working with different companies like Lofty has a great AI product. They’re a great real estate. They’re a great real estate CRM. Another good real estate CRM is Follow-Up Boss to work with.

⁓ If you’ve got a database of sellers and you’re a realtor, Fellow is great for nurturing those sellers. They use AI to try to get them with their hands up that they want to offer. So they’re great for real estate investors. If you’ve got a big database, Fellow will light it up again. just a couple of quick recommendations on products there.

Erika (13:08)
Yeah, yeah, awesome. And also going back to all your tech experience, what’s one misconception about technology that you hear all the time and how do you set the record straight?

Lance Custen (13:19)
People think AI is a lot more automated than it is. Everything takes time. It’s oversimplification. That’s really what I see. People think things are just super easy, but everything takes development. Everything takes work.

Erika (13:30)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. you know, that technology is going to keep changing and evolving too. How do you see things changing over the years with where we’re at right now with the technology and real estate?

Lance Custen (13:42)
I think five years from now, it’s going to be an entirely different landscape of people that have jobs. you’re buying property, running property, AI can’t replace you. One of the most important things is investing in real estate because a computer can’t replace you owning real estate, earning rental income, earning passive income, or investing and flipping and making money. People think that AI is taking over. It’s not taking over real estate investing. We both know that.

Erika (14:47)
Yeah, yeah, and those, you know, yeah, those personal relationships can’t be replaced.

Lance Custen (14:52)
Now, now if you’ve got a guy that sends you investment deals, keep, stay friendly with them, work those deals. It’s, it’s making, it’s being that friend that everyone calls and be like, Hey, I’ve got a guy on, on this street that wants to sell their house. You want to buy it? It’s getting those off market deals that are amazing. It’s good when you could get a seller lead for me, but those off market deals, even before they hit the market or even before they raise their hand, that’s all personal relationships. And then, you know, people fear AI, but with investment properties, you’re not going to have androids owning homes with property ownership. You’re going to always own the homes as an individual.

Erika (15:21)
Right, right. Going back to earlier in your career, Lance, was there any lessons that you learned along the way that you thought, man, I wish I would have learned that right when I started?

Lance Custen (15:33)
⁓ it’s having it, it’s holding people accountable. used to let people pretty much, you know, give them a bunch of slack to hang themselves, but holding them accountable earlier on and following up with people and keeping, keeping them going through the process. You know, that’s one of the lessons I wish I would have learned earlier on. There’s so many properties I lost that I would have made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on that I just kind of let drag out.

And because I didn’t hold the people accountable, they were part of the deal with me, I lost out on all those deals.

Erika (16:01)
Yeah. And, you know, when it comes to working with different people, what’s been your process for deciding who is worth working with?

Lance Custen (16:11)
It’s just the people that feel that tell you the truth that don’t that don’t pull your leg they give you honest information And it’s just people like I get a really quick really good vibe if someone’s an honest person or not usually so I just kind of go with my gut

Erika (16:23)
Yeah, yeah. And then also, Lance, you had mentioned that real estate group. Can you remind me what that was called?

Lance Custen (16:29)
It’s the real estate agent and referral network. can look on my phone here so you’ll see me looking down for a second. But it’s the actual group name is…

Erika (16:35)
Yeah.

Lance Custen (16:39)
Yeah, it’s real estate agent and referral network.

Erika (16:41)
That’s really cool. Tell us more about that.

Lance Custen (16:44)
Yeah,

so basically it’s a 300,000 person group and with it being a 300,000 person group, what it is, there’s tons and tons of people that are looking for referrals around the country. I know this is recorded right now, but I’m live right now and the first one I’m seeing is Montgomery, Texas. There’s a seller looking for something or Houston, Texas or Orlando, Florida.

And it’s all people looking for people that are looking to give off a real estate deal. But a lot of the times, it’s a lot of people also looking for an offer. So.

Erika (17:13)
Yeah, yeah, so

there’s a lot of potential there. you, Lance, how do you decide which groups or masterminds are worth your time and energy?

Lance Custen (17:23)
One of the biggest things that I do is the masterminds that are with a lot of EXP agents I’m close with. I kind of stick to those or Epic agents. So I kind of stick to our own ecosystem. Like Bill Pipes is a huge one. I love his masterminds. And then John Shrevelak, I love watching his. I haven’t been to his masterlines, but he’d be one of the big ones I’d really want to go to. Another one would be…

Probably to, know, if there’s a, you know, the EXP top 50 or top 100 agent masterminds, those are huge to go to. Those are just really, really good events. And just trying to get yourself in the room with the right agents is the best way to put it. So the official group name, because I was looking at how you got to look it up. So the official group name is Real Estate Agent Referral Network and Marketing Tips.

Erika (18:03)
fantastic. And you said there’s 300,000 people in that group?

Lance Custen (18:04)
Yep.

There’s 300,000 people in there. Over 300, almost 350,000 at this point. So, and it’s just hundreds and hundreds of agents every day just posting in there every single day.

Erika (18:08)
Mwah.

you

Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, Lance.

Lance Custen (18:19)
And

it’s more of community than a group too. Sorry for interrupting you there. Yeah, Debbie runs it as a community, which is amazing.

Erika (18:23)
yeah.

Yeah, for the, know, going into the community then what, you know, how has that community made a difference for you?

Lance Custen (18:34)
⁓ It’s just the introductions that she’s given. ⁓ They introduced us to Epic and now we’re one of their 99 benefits basically. I offered to every single agent so that was one of the great things. Joining that group made it so I ended up meeting Josh and that’s one of the best things that’s happened with us and we’ve become really good friends.

Erika (18:51)
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. Lance, with realte.com, where do you see that going in a few years?

Lance Custen (18:58)
We want to be one of the largest portals out there becoming seller focused. This weekend, we’re going to be in Daytona at the NASCAR race. We got a car in the race, which is great. So it should be fun and doing all that fun stuff and just continuing to help the customer. I’ve said before, one of our C-trickets is no scope of support will help wherever we can. And that’s the big thing. It’s just whether we have coaches on staff that train the agents, whether we help ISA it, whether we help with the technology, whether we help help someone set up their CRM.

We’re there to help every step of the way.

Erika (19:27)
That’s really cool. Well, I think you guys will get there with all the services and technology that you have. Lance, before we go, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing or talk to you about realty.com, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Lance Custen (19:44)
They can go to realty.com slash advertise. They can fill something out there or they can email sales at realty.com. So, and those are two of the easy ways. Or if they want to take a look at our pro accounts, our simple $25 a month accounts that come with a website and leads and everything, it’s realty.com forward slash pro.

Erika (20:00)
Lance, this has been an incredible conversation. I appreciate all your information, insights. What you have going on at realty.com is really exciting.

Lance Custen (20:09)
Thank you, I appreciate it. It was a pleasure being here.

Erika (20:11)
And for our listeners, if you love this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with innovators like Lance who are shaping the future of real estate. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.