How AI Is Helping Real Estate Investors Find Better Value-Add Deals in Today’s Market

Sean Kirk (00:00)
The second thing I would say is that because of the AI boom at a high level, ⁓ everyone is building these massive workflows of automation.

And it’s creating a lot of noise in any industry you’re in, but in particular for investors, I mean, people will blow up your phone with an automation click. They click a button and it sends out, they have 10,000 people on their buyer list. Many of us know Investor Lift or other things like that. It’s just you get bombarded with emails and text messages and calls and none of them really match your fit of where you want to place capital or a home that you would want to buy.

Michelle Tack (02:09)
Hi folks. Thanks for joining our Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Michelle Tack. It is sponsored by investorfuel.com. We’ve got a great operator here with us today. Sean Kirk, who I think has some really great strengths to discuss with the team specifically how to find the value added properties that really are going to fit into an investment profile for a good returns.

And with that, Sean, can you just say hi and talk to the folks in terms of what your main focus is today?

Sean Kirk (02:46)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Michelle. Yeah, my name. Thanks. My name is Sean Kirk. I run a company that is the name of it is Rehouzd And our goal is to help investors place capital in single family home investments. And so with current market conditions right now, with interest rates up, prices of homes very high, we find that the best place to find yield

Michelle Tack (02:48)
Absolutely.

Sean Kirk (03:13)
for an investor is a value add play. So that could be a single family home that needs to be flipped, right? Maybe it’s 40 years old, the owner hadn’t done any repairs to it in 20 years. So there’s good margin there for someone to come in, revitalize that home for the neighborhood and get a new family living in it. You also have your bird plays, which are for, you know, kind of more of a rental thing. Let’s say you’re an investor, you don’t have a ton of capital or access to capital.

but you want to continuously invest and make it your, be a primary operator as your job. And so that way you can get your return of capital. So those are also great investments, as well as there are some operators that just want to buy like a buy and hold property ⁓ as a rental. And they are just looking for the amortization value of that, owning that home and then, or owning that home, having someone pay off the mortgage for them, and then they can have it for their children or the next generation. Hey, here’s a free home, a good setup.

for their life and their future.

Michelle Tack (04:12)
That’s great. what markets you’re operating in? Some folks are limited to certain areas, but can you talk about the markets that you are doing this for and where?

Sean Kirk (04:23)
Yeah, it’s an interesting question because some markets are much stronger and there’s different strategies to each market. So the strongest market in the US and for us, I would say is Memphis, Tennessee. If you’re an investor, there’s a lot of yield there. Yes. So you got like Memphis, Tennessee, you got like Cleveland, Ohio. I think a lot of people are familiar with. And the reason why these markets are really strong, Birmingham, Alabama is one of them, is the price point for a home is below that $200,000 range, right?

Michelle Tack (04:29)
Yep.

Really? Okay.

Sean Kirk (04:52)
but you can get rents that are in the, let’s say, $1,000 to $1,500 range or even more. And so because of that, you’re able to get that yield even with a mortgage on it, even where interest rates are. And so a lot of investors can buy there and you can flip a property there, you can buy and hold there, and you can also do a burr there. So it makes sense for all three of those investment categories to work.

Michelle Tack (04:53)
Got it.

Sean Kirk (05:19)
And so any market that has that price point in below, I’d say that 250, 200 range, you see a ton of investors buying up properties, right? ⁓ And so we service that heavily, those markets, because a lot of our investors on our platform wanna place capital in those markets. So we help them underwrite those deals, we help them know an investment strategy, we help source, which is the most important thing. We get a ton of properties that come through from wholesalers and brokers that want to…

Michelle Tack (05:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (05:46)
sell an investment property and we have the buyers and we help match them and get it sold. Now for other markets that you’re talking about, let’s say like Texas or so is another big market for us. We have institutional players still placing capital in Texas and Georgia and some other places. And so that’s where you can get a higher price point home above that 250 range. They usually want a home that doesn’t need a lot of work.

and they’re willing to buy that home at a 5.5 cap. And I know that’s not much for the investor side, but that’s for our brokers and agent side, right? If you have a home that someone wants to sell quickly in those markets, then you can get the institutional capital as well.

Michelle Tack (07:13)
Thank you very much. It gives a real pinpoint. Obviously, this is a very complex data that you have to use to decide where you can get the right return for your investors. And I know that you have a network and you’re doing multiple markets and different, as you mentioned, every case is a little bit different. Can you highlight?

the things that you are utilizing and doing that are allowing you to have your business run smoothly like a machine. Can you talk to that a little bit? Thank you.

Sean Kirk (07:50)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

and I would say it’s really hard to get smooth, right? So, for us, right, Rehouzd functions as an exchange, right? So we have two parties that we have to kind of cater to, right? You have your people who have the deal and you have the people who are gonna buy the deal. And nowadays everyone wants instant gratification, right? So,

Michelle Tack (08:06)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sean Kirk (08:12)
Pretty much you have to say within 30 seconds, I can figure this all out for you and you click a button and this deal is gonna sell, right? You get a place capital, this person gets to sell. Now how do you do that smoothly is one, we have a giant funnel that allows with two clicks of a button, real estate broker, agent, wholesaler, property manager, even lenders, they can drop in an address, quickly tell us the condition of the home.

Michelle Tack (08:20)
Yep, right.

Sean Kirk (08:38)
And then we have AI underwriting everything in the background. And what will happen is we’ll go and say, we’ll estimate the repair estimates. We’ll look at it at multiple different investment strategies, right? That could be a BRRR, that could be a FLIP, it could be a buy and hold, it could be creative financing. And we’ll say, okay, in this pocket where we have buyers buy boxes and buy orders, who is most likely to buy this property? Okay, there’s a pool of flippers. Let’s just say it’s them.

Michelle Tack (09:01)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (09:05)
with traditional hard money financing. We have 20 of those investors on the platform and they’re repeat buyers. So we would say, hey, your most likely trade price is for in a flip an investor if you wanna sell this home kind of within a 72 hour period. If you’re looking for more money, there’s actually some buy and hold guys who will do like medium sized repairs. They’re not too worried about the yield.

on the value add side, they just wanna make sure cash flows at a certain cash on cash return. And so if you wanna stretch the price and we work these guys, they’re gonna be slower to transact. They’re going through traditional lending avenues, maybe a conventional loan, right? So then we’ll gauge that and tell you, hey, this is the best investor for you. And you don’t have to see all that, by the way. And on the smooth part, that’s all happening in the background. We just put up a slider for you that says, yeah, yeah.

Michelle Tack (09:55)
I was going to say, I’m like overwhelmed. my gosh. Yeah, right.

Sean Kirk (09:58)
there’s just a slider on our website

that says like, hey, sell this property really fast, like right now. And then you move that slider and then it’s like, this is getting harder to sell, this is getting harder to sell type of thing. So it’s very easy for you to know. And then your next button, you just have to click is sell this, this property. And so that will go to our buyers and our buyers, we have a system where again, for them, it’s really easy. They just put a bid in and it goes back to the seller to agree.

Michelle Tack (10:16)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

This is where obviously being a subject matter expert, which you are Sean, combined with the AI that it’s actually utilizing it, I would say in a really powerful way for the end user, right? That regardless if it’s a local mom and pop group or what have you, that’s really impressive. Like everything in every business, regardless of your Elon Musk or your two people and a dog.

There’s always challenges to a business. Can you describe for the group, you know, potential challenges that you have or, you know, currently and that you are able to adapt to quickly? Can you talk to any examples that you might have of that? I think the group would find this very interesting.

Sean Kirk (11:48)
Yeah, I’ll start at a high level and you can tell me to dive deeper if you’d like. We’re a scrappy startup, right? So we’re moving fast and kind of our headwinds are more of like a bigger picture headwind. Where is this industry going to be in a year, two years, right? And so one thing that’s a difficult challenge right now is the market as a whole. We know that prices have never been as high for homes, right? We know that interest rates are really high.

Michelle Tack (12:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (12:15)
So you have this huge affordability problem, and that also affects investors, right? If you have, let’s say, $100,000 to invest or a similar type of money and you want to place capital somewhere, you might not get a good return in real estate right now unless you find the right deal that is catered to get you that return. You might want to just go invest in Nvidia, right, like everyone else is doing and follow that trend. You could do equities, could do commodities, whatever it is.

Michelle Tack (12:32)
Mm-hmm.

Right, yeah, right, right, right.

Sean Kirk (12:42)
So the challenge to find a really good investment for our buyers and cater that to them to match the yield return they need is one of the hardest challenges in this market. Five years ago was super easy. Any home was profitable.

The second thing I would say is that because of the AI boom at a high level, ⁓ everyone is building these massive workflows of automation.

And it’s creating a lot of noise in any industry you’re in, but in particular for investors, I mean, people will blow up your phone with an automation click. They click a button and it sends out, they have 10,000 people on their buyer list. Many of us know Investor Lift or other things like that. It’s just you get bombarded with emails and text messages and calls and none of them really match your fit of where you want to place capital or a home that you would want to buy.

think getting through that noise and trying to figure out, how do we leverage AI to benefit people’s lives and not just ourselves, right? We don’t wanna be just the blasters. We wanna help. It’s like, hey, you have so much decisions to make in a day. You just wanna say, hey, this person actually brought me a real deal right in front of me that makes sense to my buying criteria in a market that I want, blah, blah, blah. And they made it easy.

Michelle Tack (13:48)
Right, absolutely.

Sean Kirk (14:02)
and they didn’t bombard me and bother me. And I think those are two like high level challenges and I’m happy to go deeper into the company if you’d like.

Michelle Tack (14:07)
Yeah.

No, I think that’s perfect. And I know there have been also challenges in terms of everyone tries to network and do that. But from an institutional investment perspective, that might be a little bit more challenging than spending your time out in the field talking to or giving

know, maybe a lecture, what have you, what are your thoughts about that in terms of networking and and try to break up, you know, the facts are that there is more money going to AI. That doesn’t mean that’s going to be sustained forever. And real estate over the as we all know, for long term hold some are aren’t but even to, you know, I know that you specialize in value add taking a property, perhaps flipping it adding value to it. You know,

can a challenge. So what are your thoughts on the networking piece maybe for those people out there in terms of some things you might think about or recommend?

Sean Kirk (15:53)
I think that there’s no stronger ⁓ business tool that someone has than the network or the community. Now, as I think is the future of, again, we talked about AI kind of changing how people work and everything, it’s really going to be these personal connections. And the saying is, as old as real estate, like you said, in the long term, it always wins, is it’s a relationship business. And so I have relationships from my institutional background with title companies, with different lenders.

Michelle Tack (16:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (16:22)
different brokerages, especially a ton of partnerships there. And those are the people you can pick up a phone and get a deal done, right? And a lot of times when you’re investing, right, if you’re an investor, it’s all about the numbers, right? And if you don’t have a relationship, the second someone sends something over to me, an example, I got a portfolio just yesterday of 23 homes in Florida. And no relationship with that person already. They sent it over and the first thought in my head was like,

Michelle Tack (16:30)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right, absolutely.

Sean Kirk (16:51)
you’re sending me a portfolio at a four and a half cap, there’s no way that trades like it’s gotta be closer to six and a half, right? Now I’m a person that understands you can kind of walk someone through to the trade. They may have underwrote it wrong in the beginning. It’s like, hey, let’s get to realism. If you want the money, here’s, let’s find the price that this is gonna actually trade at for what you need, right? And, if, let’s say you’re someone that’s not like me, that’s gonna walk through that deal and put the time into it. If you don’t have a relationship with that person,

Michelle Tack (16:58)
Yeah, okay, yep.

Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (17:20)
they’re instantly just gonna be like, this isn’t a deal, bye. If it is a person you have a relationship with, they’re gonna go there and sit like, hey, let’s figure out a way to make this work. You have a seller who’s trying to sell something, and because I care about you and we know each other, I’m gonna help us figure out a way to get this closed because it’s worth my time. And so if you’re an investor that wants to find capital, like,

Michelle Tack (17:24)
Yeah, right, right, right, right. Yep.

Exactly.

Sean Kirk (17:44)
you still need to make those relationships. And I think the relationships are gonna come back into life and be more meaningful as AI continues to make noise. I just call it noise. There’s a lot of noise from it.

Michelle Tack (17:54)
Yeah, yeah, like, let’s use that noise, right? Yeah. And I, you know, we all, for us that, you know, or, you know, all of us on the phone that have, you know, gone or in the podcast and have gone from, you know, we used to, you know, in my prior life, as I told you in our pre podcast, getting to know each other, you know, I used to get on a, I sold technology and I would get on a plane, go visit someone, try to do three or four meetings in that city. And then I come home.

and it was at it even with all that travel, it was a lot less stressful than what happened in COVID where everything was zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, eight hours of zoom. And then you had to work another five hours because obviously anytime you have an interaction with a client or prospect, there’s a to do. And so I think you’re spot on in terms of personalizing, which is really what you’re talking about, personalizing that environment where maybe you know,

on that this this couple this mom and pop or you know a bigger group have the money they want to invest they’re right on the fence right where they maybe didn’t make their exact profile but you know if you can talk through it it’s not selling it’s saying hey have you thought about this because these are the benefits to that and in the situation so that that’s great.

Sean Kirk (19:20)
Absolutely.

Michelle Tack (19:22)
I have one last question for you before we leave is what’s next goal for you in the next six months or a year or even longer?

Sean Kirk (19:32)
Yeah, think for us in the short term, it’s really making the process easier to place capital in single family home investments. So even like you mentioned, it’s very complex. Everyone has a different under a, everyone views something differently. You send a contractor to a property, you get two completely different bids. It’s a very hard thing to nail down.

And so what we want to do is make it easy. There’s so many people that want to invest in real estate, build long-term wealth, want to pass things on to their children, generational, or want to have passive income. And right now, it is so hard to do, one, because of market conditions, but two, to find the experts and the people that help guide you. And so what we want to do in the next six months or a year is to make that to where I call it a click of a button. I know with AI, it’s not going to be a click of a button anymore. It’s going to be talking or something.

But I want people to say, hey, look, I want to make a decision for my family or for myself to invest in real estate. And it should be so easy that I can just click a button and get that done. And so that is what we are absolutely striving for is just how can we make this as frictionless as possible for someone to place capital in a safe and sound investment, right? that’s the short-term goal. The long-term goal is to really

Michelle Tack (20:51)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (20:55)
change and revitalize the housing stock in the U.S. So many homes are very old, but they’re built in great locations, right? You don’t want to have to drive an hour and half to your job or an hour out or whatever it is, right? There are great homes that have kind of over the years not been able to be maintained because it’s been difficult. So what we want to do is to help revitalize these neighborhoods, help the new family grow up in that school and enjoy that neighborhood. And so

Michelle Tack (21:00)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sean Kirk (21:24)
What we need to do is the mom and pop investors, the local heroes, I call them, they’re the ones that are gonna do that. They place much more capital than an institutional player. You see it in the news, this person bought or owns 80,000 homes, right? But that’s nothing compared to if you add up all the mom and pops, right? They own millions of homes. They’re the ones changing the neighborhoods. They’re the ones deciding and revitalizing these homes for the next generation.

Michelle Tack (21:40)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yes, right. Right, that’s right.

Sean Kirk (21:51)
And like that’s really a big goal of mine is to help revitalize all these homes and neighborhoods and do it in a way that it’s not going to Wall Street, right? Even though that’s my background and I come from institution, right? ⁓ You know, let’s make it easy.

Michelle Tack (21:58)
That’s awesome.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, that is awesome. mean, at the end of the day, the statistics still are by the government that the majority of businesses are still small businesses in the United States. They still are. So there’s lots of opportunity in there. You’ve been a Sean. I really

Sean Kirk (22:19)
Yes.

Michelle Tack (22:26)
I’m sure there’s a lot of excited people in the podcast. Can you provide your details so they can reach out to you?

Sean Kirk (22:33)
Absolutely, and thanks for having me Michelle So the the best way to get a hold of me is one you can go to our website, which is rehouzd.com that’s R-E-H-O-U-Z and zebra D’s as in dog dot com and there’s literally a chat there You can sign up and you can chat with me anytime. I get all of those messages I do read through them and I respond so it’s a great way to do it the second way is you can email me and that is Sean [email protected]

Michelle Tack (22:36)
Absolutely.

Sean Kirk (23:01)
I’ll also respond there as well. But we can just talk about investments or if you want to learn about our platform, happy to help anything.

Michelle Tack (23:08)
That’s awesome, Sean. You’ve been great. For those of you that have tuned into the podcast and have found this valuable, we would encourage you to subscribe if you have not as of yet, because we have other operators and other podcasts for different things. And we’re super excited about the future. Sean, thanks so much.

Sean Kirk (23:27)
Thank you, Michelle.