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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika interviews Igor Lalosevic, a real estate investor and founder of Deals Desk, a platform that automates the analysis and underwriting of rental properties. Igor shares his journey into real estate, the challenges he faced, and how he leveraged his background in data analytics to create a solution for investors. The conversation explores the current market dynamics, the role of AI in real estate, and the future of Deals Desk as it expands into other real estate classes.
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Igor (00:00)
So the reason I built this is the main strength of Deal’s Desk is you just put an address, you click run, and you get everything you need. It looks tax assessor’s office, it gets quotes from the insurance agencies, it looks at comps, ⁓ rent.rent comps, sales comps, it really gives you everything with just one click.
Erika (01:52)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Igor Lalosevic. He’s been shakingup with his investing and his ⁓ real estate tech company Deals Desk. Igor, it’s awesome to have you on the show today.
Igor (02:11)
Thank you, Erika. Glad to be here.Erika (02:14)
So I think our listeners are really going to be fascinated with ⁓ howdesk is shaking things up. So let’s jump on in. Igor, for our listeners who may not be familiar with your world and what you do, can you tell us more about your journey, how you got into real estate and founding deals desk?
Igor (02:37)
Absolutely, sure. So, ⁓ my name is Igor and I’m a real estate investor outside currentlybased in Dallas, Texas. I say currently because in the past decade, I’ve moved probably 10 times, but Dallas now feels like home and I tend to stay here. ⁓ My background is in data analytics and finance. ⁓ I work at a large cloud computing firm.
And I have a pretty demanding job. So between balancing the job and everything else, I have little time to spend on analyzing ⁓ rental real estate, which I consider to be my second profession. This kind of lack of time motivated me to build Deals Desk, which is a platform that really automates the analyzing and underwriting process of rental properties.
My career did not start in real estate or finance or tech. I actually ⁓ started as a banker. I was a salesperson and I quickly, after starting, I realized that ⁓ I don’t really like selling credit cards and auto loans. I decided to pivot, went back to school, ⁓ taught myself data analytics and then started working at a investment management firm based out of San Francisco.
So, moved to California and that’s where I met my business partner who I invest in real estate with. His name is Olek and well, ⁓ technically I met him way before that. I met him in a video game ⁓ and it wasn’t until I moved to California is when we started hanging out and realized that we have a shared passion for entrepreneurship and real estate. ⁓ We decided to try our luck ⁓ by buying
single-family homes and renting them out. But back then, this was all pre-COVID. Back then, we had two issues. The first one was our market. ⁓ Northern California was really tough. mean, the cheapest single-family home was in the low 600s. And on top of that, we really didn’t know anything about real estate. ⁓ So what we did is we joined a bunch of these
know, online communities, we consumed a lot of content,
read books, we went to countless real estate meetups where we met, you know, investors and operators from all parts of the real estate game. And little by little, we built confidence to make that first step and ⁓ buy our first rental property. So, you know, that’s pretty much
⁓ how we got into it, we at the time looked at various markets and there was a lot of opportunities for cash flow across the US. I think this is still the case but back then the South or especially the Sunbelt region was growing ⁓ twice as fast as the North. ⁓ So we knew that that was where we wanted to go but we weren’t sure if this was Phoenix or Dallas.
or Las Vegas. So being that we were both kind of data nerds, we started looking at data. We looked at information from the Census Bureau, Housing and Urban Development. We looked at areas where the population growth is really outpacing the new housing starts. And we decided that Fort Worth was our place. ⁓ We traveled through Fort Worth, with a bunch of agents. ⁓
mortgage brokers, property managers, and we assembled a team and really bought our first property back then. ⁓ Since then, we’ve done numerous transactions. We ⁓ bought and sold, refinanced, and that’s what I intend on doing. But like I said, it requires a lot of time. It really requires you to run the numbers on a lot of properties before
you find the right one. And so this is what it actually looks like. You do a ton of manual work, you’re copying numbers from one platform to another, you have a bunch of tabs open, you’re looking at the assessor’s office, you’re getting quotes from the insurance agencies, and ⁓ really it’s an endless cycle of data entry and research. Now, if you want to do this at scale,
You pretty much have two choices. You can spend hours
this or you can pay for software. ⁓ But here’s the kicker. The software that exists today is completely fragmented. You’ve got one tool for rents, you’ve got another one for pooling comps, ⁓ one for managing the renovation process. I mean, it’s really nothing talks to each other. then there’s institutional software.
but it’s priced like you’re running a hedge fund. Really, the average investor would have to buy like, would have to have 10 to 15 transactions just to justify the price of the subscription. So I looked at all of this and I said, there’s got to be a better way, especially now with the rise of AI. And that’s what ultimately led me to building Deals Desk.
Erika (09:10)
Yeah, that’s really awesome. And I’m sure as you know, there’s a lot of things exploding right now in terms of there’s a lot of companies out there using AI. So what would you say sets Deals Desk apart? How is it using AI?Igor (09:29)
Great. So to go back to my point, yes, there’s a bunch of software out there, right? There’s, I won’t name names, but there’s a bunch of these things that we tried. There’s a great one where you put an address and it will give you a few comps and it will give you a median or ⁓ average rent. But there’s another one where you can upload pictures and it will give you a scope of work. There’s one that just pulls the comps and get you the ARV.But
if you want to have them all together at the same time, you’re going to be paying around $250 in subscriptions, and you’re not really sure which one you need the most.
So the reason I built this is the main strength of Deal’s Desk is you just put an address, you click run, and you get everything you need. It looks tax assessor’s office, it gets quotes from the insurance agencies, it looks at comps, ⁓ rent.
rent comps, sales comps, it really gives you everything with just one click.
Erika (11:07)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s really awesome.Igor, I want to talk about, you know, the the markets that you’re operating in when it comes to investing. You know, what kind of opportunities are you seeing around your area that our listeners should be aware of?
Igor (11:23)
Yeah, so ⁓ right now I’m definitely seeing, because I can analyze deals ⁓ at scale, I can run numbers and thousands of properties ⁓ using Deals Desk. what I’m seeing is, I mean, it’s no surprise, but this is a buyer’s market right now. I feel like there are sellers, ⁓ you know, getting pretty desperate and lowering prices and…For somebody who’s looking at rental properties, I’m sure you’ve heard of the 1 % rule, is for somebody who wants to invest in a rental property, he or she wants to know if the property can rent for at least 1 % of the purchase price. So if the house is 250K, you want to make sure that he can rent for 2,500. Those properties are very rare, right? And I remember back then I would go through hundreds of them in my Excel spreadsheet and…
I would maybe find two or three. Right now, I’m seeing 15 to 20. So I feel like, even though the interest rates are high right now, I feel like if you can find something that can cash flow, ⁓ then that’s really going to be a great investment for the future, for the long term.
Erika (12:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Igor, when it comes to Deal Desk, what do you see as next on the horizon or what is the next stage for your business there?Igor (12:55)
Sure. So the ultimate goal is for Deals Desk to be kind of the engine behind every ⁓ investor’s decision making process. ⁓ Right now, I am focusing on expanding Deals Desk to other classes of real estate. Right now, it works great for single family homes, and I’m getting a lot of good feedback from agents and investors, but there’s also a demand to…expanded onto condos, apartments, ⁓ and multifamily. So that’s where I’m working on right now.
Erika (13:31)
That’s really, really exciting. with using AI, is it pretty cut and dry when it comes to that expansion or are there some hurdles with that?Igor (13:44)
So yeah, there are hurdles, especially because the data itself is very fragmented, right? Let’s say you want to look at the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There is, I think, six or seven counties out here, and each county has its own ⁓ tax assessor’s office. They have different kind of types of…of data or they just look different inside, you have to kind of distinguish what’s what. ⁓ But so that’s one hurdle being that the data is very fragmented. ⁓ And then it’s also kind of validating that I’m providing ⁓ accurate results, which is getting better and better over time. The more deals I pull through it, the better it gets. That’s the ultimate benefit.
Erika (14:41)
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. Do you have any stories or feedback that you want to share from people’s experiences using the software and how it’s helped them?Igor (14:53)
Yes, so one of the best feedback thatgotten was in the beginning when I built it, I wasn’t sure how to figure out the annual tax, because let’s say you look at a property and you see that the tax bill was maybe like $4,000 last year.
but you can buy that property and then your tax bill jumps next year because of the exemptions. The person who was living there might have had some exemptions. So I built a layer of knowledge that looks at this and says, okay, like the average tax rate in this area is 2.2%. ⁓ But looking at the tax bill, you know, it’s only like 1%. So there’s gotta be exemptions. ⁓
⁓ factored in the tax bill here. So really kind of building these layers and layers of knowledge so the AI can really know what to estimate for each of these assumptions.
Erika (16:46)
Yeah, absolutely. Well,you know, this has been great. If someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about Deals Desk, or maybe they want to collaborate on a deal with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?
Igor (17:03)
So you can reach me at Igor at Deals Desk or contact at Deals Desk. ⁓ That will be the best email address to reach me at.Erika (17:15)
Well, Igor, this has been fantastic. It’s awesome to see what you’ve built with Deals Desk. And I know it’s going to help a lot of people out there.Igor (17:22)
Thank you.For sure. Thank you, Erika.
Erika (17:26)
And for our listeners, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with experts like Igor who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode.
