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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Erika speaks with Adi Omesy, co-founder of Brick, a tech-driven real estate company. Adi shares his journey from the tech industry to real estate, discussing how Brick aims to revolutionize deal sourcing for investors. The conversation covers the importance of leveraging technology in real estate, user feedback on Brick’s platform, future growth plans, and the impact of AI on the industry. Adi emphasizes the need for startups to create value and build partnerships, highlighting the supportive nature of the startup community.
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Adi Omesy (00:00)
In addition to that, we created an AI agent that can actually do the negotiation for you. So you can actually leverage AI to do the negotiation on your behalf and come to terms with the seller.But the rest of the funnel is on you. We don’t handle anything from the legal side, we don’t handle anything from the financial side as well.
Erika (01:56)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Erika and today I’m excited to be chatting with Adi Omesy. He’s been shaking things up with his tech real estate company, Brick. Adi, I’m glad to have you here.Adi Omesy (02:13)
Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you, Erika.Erika (02:16)
I think our listeners are really going to have a lot to learn with how you’re revolutionizing deal sourcing. you know, let’s dive on in. Adi, can you share with our listeners how you got started in real estate? What, you know, what made you start to get tech and real estate, blend those two things together?Adi Omesy (02:37)
Perfect. So I actually started in the tech industry about 19 years ago. But around eight years ago, I founded my first real estate company. ⁓ It was WeCheck. It was a company based in Israel. We partnered with the ZILO of Israel and the biggest credit card company. And what WeCheck did is basically help homeowners get to know the tenants and insure the payments.It’s a great startup. I was running it for five years. It’s still running in Israel, still scaling. They’re probably going to move in the direction of an IPO and sell in the near future. But right now they’re still scaling and they’re performing amazing. After that, I decided to join JLL. JLL, for the people who don’t know, it’s a Fortune 500 company.
It’s a huge corporation with more than a hundred thousand employees, but they focus on the commercial real estate. I was leading the data and AI group over there and did that for the last three years. And in last June, I decided to leave JLL and my co-founder Nir Berko joined me and together we founded Brik. And we’ve been doing it for the last four months and it’s been quite a ride.
It’s a journey.
Erika (04:06)
Yes, yes, I’m sure in the startup world it really is. Can you share with our listeners, Adi, who Brick is for, what kind of problems are you solving with how your technology is being used?Adi Omesy (04:15)
⁓So BRICK is predominantly for real estate investors in the US. We try to focus on residential real estate that are looking to get better deals and are looking to maximize their return on investment. The idea of BRICK is basically trying to leverage what you already have access to.
whether it’s on market or off market deals, putting everything in one single spot and try to analyze them in the same framework, meaning apples to apples. Then what you can do is actually look at the bottom line. Instead of looking at, okay, I have an asset, I have a property
starting to analyze it and then realizing there are no comps or you can’t really evaluate the asset properly because you’re missing data. We basically do everything for you and bring you
the bottom line, the end result, and then you can decide which asset you want to focus on. So you can do it in a much more scalable way, much more faster, and you can do it as a team, which makes a lot of impact. Yes, absolutely. Real estate.
Erika (06:14)
Yeah, I’m assuming we’re seeing a lot of time being saved by all this work being done with the tech up front.Adi Omesy (06:25)
As a market, it’s something that is a little bit behind in terms of technology. And what people are doing is basically throwing more employees into the problem instead of actually leveraging technology. So a lot of the companies we’ve been spoken arehiring more analysts in order to solve the problem of a scale. So instead of having a hundred or a thousand analysts on your team, you can actually leverage technology.
do everything in an automated way, in a scalable way, and then you can see more deals, you can evaluate more deals, you can understand how they are performing, and actually project the ROI of the assets. We actually also use AI to estimate the renovation prices, the renovation cost, and at the end of the day, once you understand what are the renovation costs, what is the…
property cost and what other properties that are sold in the same neighborhood with a similar profile, you can actually determine the potential value of a deal. And that’s what we are trying to do in a single platform.
In addition to that, we created an AI agent that can actually do the negotiation for you. So you can actually leverage AI to do the negotiation on your behalf and come to terms with the seller.
But the rest of the funnel is on you. We don’t handle anything from the legal side, we don’t handle anything from the financial side as well.
Erika (08:03)
When it comes to users implementing that technology there, Adi, what kind of feedback have you gotten? Do you have any success stories from investors looking for deals?Adi Omesy (08:14)
Yes,that’s a great question. So we’ve been talking to a lot of investors before we even started building it, because we wanted to understand how they are working, what’s their method and what their methodology to actually evaluate each deal. And what we understood is, first of all, there is a huge need for the product itself. A lot of people told us we are going to be super excited to use it. And what we did is we built the product.
We launched it a month and a half ago with selected design partners and the feedback was amazing. First of all, they gave us a lot of feedback on how to improve the platform, what features they’re missing, how to do it better. Second of all, we learned how they are operating. And our approach was we’re not going to educate the market. We’re going to help you with your current processes. So we want to understand how they are working and just empower them in the existing process in the market.
And then I think nine days ago, we launched the product officially and the feedback was amazing. We started talking to our users. We started seeing their behavior on different analytic platforms and ⁓ we feel a strong buy-in from the different users to the platform. And I can say that we had four deals that actually came into the stage of the contract, which is outside of our platform.
But to see different deals from different users coming to the stage of actually let’s sign a contract, that was amazing from our side. And we were just at the beginning. We’re at stage one and there are already four deals that are ready to be signed. That for us, that was a very strong signal from the market.
Erika (10:36)
That’s really great. Well, you said you’re at stage one. So can I ask what’s coming in stage two?Adi Omesy (10:44)
Definitely. So we want to focus right now on growth and actually bring in more users on scale and actually understand what our users are missing because there is always room for growth and innovation. But the main vertical we want to focus on ⁓ after we ⁓ actually scale enough is start to ⁓ find different lending opportunities.So the idea is for people to come to our platform and actually get ⁓ loan opportunities from different loan providers. We’re not going to be the one providing the loans, but once you see all the potential in the loans, it’s going to be a one-stop shop for people to actually acquire the estate because you can come to us, find the deals. We’re going to connect you to the different loan providers.
And we already know the background for the deal. We already know the history of the company. So we know exactly what kind of a loan to tailor to your specific needs. ⁓ And we can be a one-stop shop for people to come and close the deal all the way to the end. So that’s where we want to be. We want to be some sort of an operating system for people to acquire real estate. ⁓
the potential of actually automating a lot of those efforts and a lot of those processes is enormous because ⁓ in a lot of different markets, everything is automated. For example, let’s say you wanna buy a stock. If you wanna buy a stock today, you can go into different platforms and just click several buttons and that’s it. You’re the owner of the stock. But somehow in real estate, it became much more complex.
And people are spending a lot of time doing a lot of manual efforts instead of having everything automatically. So that’s where we want to be. We want to automate a lot of the stuff. It will require a lot of efforts from our side of building the trust and showing people that it can be done. But we believe it can be done.
Erika (12:50)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. you, know, when you have that built out, that’s going to be so amazing because as you know, the market is constantly changing. And I know that you’re very interested in what’s going on with the real estate market right now. I wanted to share more on that end.Adi Omesy (13:10)
Yes, so the real estate market itself is going through a huge transition right now. So for example, the AI itself is leaving a real mark on the market itself because we see a lot of startups coming in with different technologies and different ways to scale and implement. We see a lot of appetite from the companies itself.They want to implement different technologies and they want to implement different processes within their current companies. And then you see other companies in other industries replacing human power with technology. Amazon was talking about laying off a lot of employees right now and replacing a lot of the storage facilities with robots. And we’re going to see a lot of changes in our market as well. ⁓
I believe that the impact is going to have on us is going to be huge because right now we see a huge trend of companies moving from offices to work remotely. And the impact that it’s going to have on the residential market is going to be big because people kind of missed it. But since COVID, we are basically pushed to be working from home, to be working remotely. And then everybody that has several people at home.
has to have an office, he has to have an extra room just to make ends meet. And at the end of the day, we basically, the companies basically transition the load into the employees. He has to get a bigger house, he has to accommodate the fact that he has to work from home. And that shift, I think it’s gonna have a tremendous impact because we’re gonna see people getting bigger and bigger houses in order to actually work comfortably. So in a given family of two parents and a few kids.
Both parents have to work from home. Both parents have to have an office. It’s going to have a huge impact on the market itself. Now, right now, a lot of people are still on the fence because of the interest rate, because there is a lot of uncertainty, because there is a little bit of uncertainty about the agenda of the companies. It’s not really settled in the fact that everybody’s working remotely or at least hybrid.
Once people will understand that that’s the new, the new today, the new era, I think it’s going to shift the way people are looking at the residential real estate and they will understand that we’ll have to adapt. So combining the AI and the fact that people have to be working from home and have to have a home office, I think we’re going to see a lot of changes and a lot of different approaches into how do we do that and how do we address it as a company.
Erika (16:41)
Yeah, speaking of addressing things as as a company, I’m sure, as you know, AI is popping up everywhere. So when when it comes with your company, how are you staying ahead of the competition? And, know, with everything you were talking about, I was just thinking it’s got to be a battle between trying to to build something, but also not lose the quality because you’re you’re in a race with how competitive it is.Adi Omesy (17:11)
Yeah, absolutely. So for us as a startup, we have also, need to put it into the mix, the fact that we have limited resources. Every startup has limited resources. That’s the difference between a startup and a big company. But the way we address it is first of all, ⁓ our background. We come from a very strong technical background. Both my amazing co-founder, Neil and I, we come from a very strong technical background of building technology for many years.And second of all, we have the real estate background that we bring to the table as well for the last eight years. And combining that, we are trying to stay ahead of the curve. We are trying to adopt new technologies. We are trying to lead the market instead of being led by the market. But I think the biggest advantage we have is the fact that we are a startup and startup can bring innovation and move fast as opposed to big corporations that they are usually they are late to adopt new technologies.
and they have much more bureaucracy and regulation as a big company. So for them, the entire process is much more complex. For us, it’s simple. We are trying to stay ahead from the knowledge base. We are trying to stay ahead from technology adoption. We are constantly looking out for what’s coming ahead. And we are in contact with different startups in order to understand how they are tackling different problems. But from my personal experience, ⁓
I can tell you that startups can move very fast and they can adapt fast. When you work in a big corporation, it’s much more challenging because there are so many different points of views. The agenda is to mitigate risk constantly. And you ended up with a much more heavier organization that can adapt much more slowly. So I think for us as a very technical company focusing on AI,
we can adapt very quickly and there is a log we can bring to the table. That’s our core value. That’s what we bring as a young startup with limited resources.
Erika (19:20)
That’s awesome. with what you’ve built so far, and I know you talked a little bit about stage two, what is your plan there to really get that growth in your scale? How are you getting your message out and reaching more people?Adi Omesy (19:38)
Our approach is first of all creating value. If your startup is going to create value, then you’re on the right track. If your startup is not creating value, then there’s not really much you can do about it. You’re destined to fail. So first of all, we want to touch our users as much as we can, get their feedback, talk to them, and see what we can actually bring to the table that’s going to generate value for them.Second part is that we think that the biggest leverage we can put into the table is about partnerships. So we want to find the right partners. We want to find a company that we can collaborate with because from my experience, those kind of relationships are the best ones that can actually drive value both ways. So if you can partner with a big company in the market, I think that they can win from that. We can win from that. There is a lot of room for collaborations.
And that’s what we want to focus on. We believe that’s going to be a huge engine for us for growth.
Erika (20:42)
Yeah, collaboration is so important with ⁓ growing and anything real estate related. I’m sure as you know with the background there have, whether it was your journey in real estate before or the tech company now, have there been any groups or masterminds that have been really influential for you and how you’ve grown and scaled?Adi Omesy (21:07)
Wow, that’s a great question. ⁓ I think that the market itself, the startup market itself is a very empathetic market, meaning every founder I was talking to was happy to help. And it’s not something you need to take for granted. Like everyone I called to, whether it was a VC or a startup or a founder, everybody was so happy to help and lend a hand.And we are super excited to work with everybody we can find to actually understand how we can progress. One of the key factors to our success is our accelerator. We are a part of the Marel accelerator and it’s an amazing ecosystem that actually drive a lot of value for us from the different co-founders in the accelerator from the…
Amir and Prakash, are leading the accelerator from the different advisors that are part of the accelerator. For us, it was a big value generator.
Erika (22:19)
Well, Adi, it’s been so great chatting with you today, learning about what’s going on with Brick. If someone today wants to reach out, connect, they’re interested in using the tech, what’s the best way for them to reach you?Adi Omesy (22:34)
So the best way is an email. Just shoot me an email. We can schedule a one-on-one. Somebody once told me that first time entrepreneurs focusing on the product, second time entrepreneurs focusing on the go-to-market, third time entrepreneurs focusing on the relationship and the connection they can build. So that’s what I want to focus on. I want to focus on meeting people, building relationships. If I can help anyone, more than happy. In any way I can help. ⁓⁓ So feel free to reach me. My email is [email protected] and I’ll be more than happy to set up a one-on-one and talk.
Erika (23:17)
Well, again, I appreciate you coming on the show and I think what you’ve built with Brick is really exciting.Adi Omesy (23:24)
Thank you. We are excited.Erika (23:27)
And for our listeners today, 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 pros like Adi , who are out there building fantastic real estate businesses on the tech side. We’ll see you on the next episode.
