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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Micah Johnson interviews Aaron Aryeh, who shares his journey in the real estate industry and the innovative tools he is building to help investors find off-market deals. Aaron discusses the importance of owner motivation, the challenges of identifying viable properties, and how his real estate background shaped his approach to developing personalized investment tools. The conversation highlights the need for technology that adapts to each investor’s unique strategy and the role of honest feedback in improving product development.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (00:00)
The intelligence tools are just places that structure data, right? The way you’re searching is reactive. I heard something from this guy. I saw this house. Let me see what’s going on next door and then going house by house. That’s not efficient at all. If you want to find a good deal, most of the time it can’t be a listing.So you have to look through these intelligence tools. And if this is how you’re doing it, you’re not going to find anything. So that’s when I realized when I was at this market research company, that’s when I realized that somebody needs to build a proactive deal discovery. How do we build something that’s looking for you so you don’t have to spend all this time?
Micah Johnson (00:31)
Right.Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Micah Johnson. And today I’m joined by Aaron, who’s been making some serious moves in real estate now for the last eight years. Aaron, welcome in, man. Glad to have you.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (02:19)
Thanks for having me, man. I’m really excited to be here.Micah Johnson (02:21)
I’m pumped for it. think our listeners are going to take away some value from what you’re creating and how it services real estate investors and particularly the fact that you have experience in the business doing it. So I’m excited to dig in there. So first off, for folks who may not be familiar with your world, give us a short version. What’s your main focus these days and what markets you operate in?Aaron Aryeh – Conin (02:41)
So we’re focused on helping investors find good deals easily. We wanna build a system that people are gonna use, that people are going to really depend on to find their next deal. And we’re currently operating in the New York City market where we got major requests to go into the rest of the country. But we like the New York City market to test our grounds because super data rich, a lot of different types of investor types and many of these investors are what I call sharks.So they’re brutally honest and the more brutal honest feedback we got, the better we get quickly.
Micah Johnson (03:12)
Love that man. They’re pros. That’s the thing about professional investors. They know their stuff and they’re with a good heart. They’re willing to tell you about it. Like, Hey man, this just ain’t cutting it. And that’s where, you know, some folks get offended in real estate with a little bit of thin skin, but it’s not personal. It’s literally business. It’s this is not a mystery. How this works. People have been doing it over a hundred years. It’s can you actually deliver to that high level? So I love that. That’s your focus, man, that you’re taking that on upfront. I think that’s what creates the best product. If you can expose it toAaron Aryeh – Conin (03:14)
That’s it. Yes.Micah Johnson (03:43)
solid, even harsh feedback upfront, your chances of building something useful for the long-term, which is what we’re after anyways, man, that goes way up. So take me back. How’d you get to where you are today? What led you to wanting to solve this particular problem?Aaron Aryeh – Conin (03:52)
Yeah, absolutely.Absolutely. So eight years ago, just gonna give you a little bit of a storyline. My father runs a real estate business. He buys, you know, different creative type of assets in Brooklyn, in upper Manhattan. And, you know, at some point, he wanted me to try to find more more assets. So we use many different tools. In addition to that, he wanted to do some cross border investing, you know, in, you know, down down south in Florida as well.
So we decided that we need to use intelligence tools like CoStar, Property Shark, so on and so forth. So I was on there all day and I realized that the process in finding something that’s useful took a little bit of time. Why? Because we have many different filters that we need to use. And if it’s CoStar, they’re ready listings. And by the time I find something that’s useful, it’s already two months in. Just one deal to look into.
Micah Johnson (04:46)
Right.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (04:48)
So that’s where I realized the problem is. And after that, I went to go get my MBA in finance. And that’s where I, I guess I got a good understanding on how to manage tech, right? It was a very tech focused MBA. And I realized that there there’s an opportunity to build a tech company there. I didn’t know if it was this, but I realized there was an opportunity to build a tech company there. Wanted to go lead market research by a private lender.where I got access to more intelligence tools and the thesis that I had from when I worked with my father was still there.
The intelligence tools are just places that structure data, right? The way you’re searching is reactive. I heard something from this guy. I saw this house. Let me see what’s going on next door and then going house by house. That’s not efficient at all. If you want to find a good deal, most of the time it can’t be a listing.
So you have to look through these intelligence tools. And if this is how you’re doing it, you’re not going to find anything. So that’s when I realized when I was at this market research company, that’s when I realized that somebody needs to build a proactive deal discovery. How do we build something that’s looking for you so you don’t have to spend all this time?
Micah Johnson (06:42)
Right.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (06:46)
Anyways, I put that in the back of my mind. About eight months ago was when I decided to build it myself.And I said, I’m going to build something that people are going to use, people are going to depend on, and people are going to look towards to find their next deal. Where I’m combining these massive amounts of data. We’re looking through about 400 or 500 million data points a day. I’m combining that data with a really, really smart system that’s looking through the data and trying to cherry pick the ones, the deals that make the most sense.
And then at the same time, we add other mechanisms like scoring based on the points that it founds, the parameters that it founds, and then also the best strategy based on that. This is great for development value, add so on and so forth. and that’s, that’s currently where we are right now. We got astronomical amount of feedback, which was great. I told anyone that’s using the product, you’re using the product as much as you are paying pilots. some of you are paying pilots. I want you to be brutally honest. And the feedback was very simple.
We’re giving created silver platter type of properties that are ready for them to go. But every investor has their own unique strategy. So we’re building a system that’s going to allow every investor to talk to it from their own perspective. I think this is a great deal, right? Can you find me properties that fit this description? And yeah, we started this build, this version two, and what it’s going to be able to do is it’s going to give where our total addressable market is about 10 million investors.
Micah Johnson (07:46)
OK.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (08:11)
it’s going to give these 10 million people, again, assuming that we get them, these 10 million people the ability to have 10 million variations, right, of strategies, of property types to looking for. So that’s where we are right now.Micah Johnson (08:19)
Right.Man, I love that because that second piece that you’re adding is the critical piece. Real estate investing is extremely personality-based. It has everything to do, like even the reason your dad buys the deals he buys. There’s a reason he does that and it’s really based on him and his personal choice and what he wants to do. No matter the data it’s based on, it’s that first decision, okay, that’s what I actually like to do. So the fact that y’all are building a machine that can read those individual desires and then
create, send them properties for possible investment based on that. Yeah, you’re out a ton of time there. A ⁓ of, man, time spent where you’re trying to sift through things. And you said now y’all are taking it to the off-market level, which every professional investor knows, that’s where the deals are. Like if you’re trying to build an investment company, you’re not gonna do it just getting leads from the MLS. That’s not the way it’s gonna work. There’s not enough there.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (09:11)
So.Micah Johnson (09:19)
If you want that company, you gotta go off market. So can you dig into a little bit more with us on how y’all are being able to generate those, get those in front of your customers?Aaron Aryeh – Conin (09:28)
Absolutely. It’s a very, very good question. I’m happy to ask because I happen to love this topic. There’s three levels. Number one, we have to see if the property is viable, right? If the property is viable and the viability of a property is dependent on whether we find that there is a possibility to do something with this property, depending on the strategy. If we do, then we look for owner motivation, right?⁓ Owner motivation comes in many different forms. The I guess the weakest form is how long they own the property. Was there refinance in a certain we like we like to look over a 15 year period if there was no refinance and that’s something that we start looking into we add points to and then there’s more extreme cases like high distress where it’s a Lispendance, Aureo or we’re starting to start look at involuntary liens as well like tax liens and municipality liens and so on and so forth but
we want to make sure that you would be able to get this type of deal. So number one, we look at the asset is good. Does the asset make sense? Number two, is there a higher possibility for this owner to want to give you the property or want to sell you this property? And that’s just a skill as to what type of motivation there is, right? And then number three is we like to see…
a different type of owner motivation, which I’m not sure many people really know about, which is very creative types. If a property is moved to an estate, right? And we find that the heirs live in different states and we also see that there’s code violations on this property, right? That is an ideal candidate to buy that property 100%. I would say 85 % of the time, the heirs are going to want to sell off that asset, right? They don’t care about it. They live in different states, so on and so forth. So that’s something that we’re still working on and how to do properly.
Micah Johnson (11:11)
Right.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (11:16)
But that’s what we try to do. We try to peer the asset, good assets with owner motivation so investors could actually get those assets off market.Micah Johnson (12:00)
I love that man, because that’s everything. It’s all about motivation. And you name the one, foreclosure and pre-foreclosure are the heaviest weight nationwide, someone will sell at a discount. And then the other ones, they just kind of stack up back there that really show, because in the end, if we can’t buy it at a discount, it doesn’t matter. And at least 95 % of the deals nationwide, you can’t buy at a discount. So we’re all looking through these sections where, all right, where’s the deal we can actually find? So the fact that you’re upfront loading it withAaron Aryeh – Conin (12:17)
There we go.Micah Johnson (12:29)
understanding what makes someone’s true motivation. Cause you’re right. You see a property in an estate, someone died. That’s what’s happened. Like it didn’t get there randomly. You know what they’re going through. You can have that conversation with them, especially when they’re in the different States. So I like how you’re revealing. I really call it a treasure map for investors. That’s what I used to say about dating the, what, what, what you’re talking about in essence is what are the things that showthis person is worth having a conversation with. Because if I can eliminate useless conversations and capitalize on useful conversations more, well, as an owner, now I’m just living in my activities that generate money. And that’s where you need to be spending the majority of your time anyways, you know, working on the business, not just in the business all the time.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (13:14)
That’s a really great way to put it. Really great way.Micah Johnson (13:16)
Yeah.And it’s powerful, man. So what are you excited about for what’s coming out? What’s this? You’ve got about 250 users right now. You’re building this product, getting that feedback. What’s coming up for folks that they can be excited about for what you’re releasing.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (13:32)
Absolutely. like you were saying before, every investor has their own personality, right? They invest based on their own specific strategies that they developed. They might start with something that’s more uniform, more objective, but then they develop their own subjective views because they see what works in their own way. What we’re currently doing is we’re creating ⁓ an objective view. And most of the feedback we got was I want to put in my own subjective strategies. I sat.tens of hours with my beta users to try to understand how to do this properly and what they look for. And I realized subjective views come from their understanding of the legalities, how we’re using zoning law, how we’re pushing the gray line. Section eights, right? There’s people that invest in certain section eight style properties, right? I’ll just give you an example in Tampa. I have a guy who likes to look at the Tampa market as a
district, right? There’s certain districts, so section eight districts, right? And within those section eight districts, there’s two different style neighborhoods, one with the higher market value among the lower market value. So he wants to find the section eight districts that have that difference in market values and go to the lower market value area because he could get a much better cap rate because it’s getting the same rents as the higher market value one. So many different place. And I was talking to my CTO, I said, we need to build this.
This is not something that’s a year down the line. This is now, right? I realized this is what conin is. We might drop the intelligence side of things, but we need to have this agent now, right? So we started thinking about it. We said, this could actually be something that’s very easy to build on our side because we have so much information from our users and so much information from the interviews that we know what to do. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to build a model that
that is has three components that one is a deal-finder model, one is a legal model, and then the other one is focused on kind of connecting the two and trying to help, you know, help the two talk properly. And then giving that other one is also going to give the response to the query, whoever is querying a strategy. So what we’re moving away from is the uniform objective, you know, kind of deal-finding to the more subjective.
Micah Johnson (15:30)
Mm.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (15:46)
kind of deal finding. Throw in whatever type of parameters you’re looking for, any combination of data points, even your own language, you’re going to be able to speak in proper English. You don’t have to talk in tech language and it’s going to know what you’re looking for. So that’s what we’re moving towards. We’re going to be hopefully live with that in a month and a half. Test that out in New York City market before we launch the entire country in July.Micah Johnson (15:57)
Right.I love that man. Cause again, it goes back to if a tool is going to be useful for a real estate investor, has to mold to their business, right? Like as someone who has sold services to investors before you’re bolting onto a machine. If you, what you’re bolting on requires them to change their machine a lot, you’re never going to get there. Like it’s just not what they need. So I love how much time you’re spending in the details with investors. think that’s the thing that sets these kinds of products apart.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (16:57)
exactlyMicah Johnson (17:19)
is the person behind it understands our industry. And if you’re listening or watching out there and you’re looking into tools and different AI solutions, take the time to research the behind the scenes on that product. Because if the person that’s building it doesn’t understand real estate investing and isn’t taking the time to, then you’re going to land on these objective categories way more often than the subjective that you truly need to get those deals done.And I’ve seen it time and again, and it just slows you down where if you’re having to take all this time to tell this tool to build something out, just start with people that understand it to begin with, right? You come from this. you, you, you’ve not just eight years ago, understood real estate. You’ve grown up around it, man. Like this has been your life for a long time. How many times have you heard your dad just talking about it? You know I mean? You absorb so much over time that for me personally, that’s definitely something I look for and folks I want to work with.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (18:05)
So.Micah Johnson (18:18)
How important and how handy has that been for you and useful to have that background coming into what you’re building?Aaron Aryeh – Conin (18:25)
Very handy because let’s say owner motivation. If I didn’t have an understanding in real estate, I wouldn’t understand that that’s probably the most important component to off-market deals, right? Anyone could learn properties, right? But the question is, how do you learn signals? How do I learn that there are owners that would be more willing to want to talk to you and sell to you over other owners? And that I only would have understood if I was with my father. So that’s that.Micah Johnson (18:52)
Right. Right. Good.Cause you nailed it. Really what that information is laying out is your conversation. If you look at it correctly, it’s setting up the whole, everything you’re fixing to talk about on that call. If you know how to have that conversation. And again, that’s bringing it back to that subjectivity that you, that you’re able to add now with the, with, when you can interact with it and say, you know, I’m, here in Tampa and I’m looking for pre foreclosure properties and this section of this zip code or however you’re going to put it in and it can pull it out.
and then give you that information on the customer, you’re way ahead. If you’re good at this, you’re going to become a stone cold killer. And if you’re just okay, you’re going to get good, right? That’s, what lets you get set up is leads are the lifeblood of every real estate investment company. If you don’t have a property to buy while the rest, everything else you built doesn’t work. So getting those quality at bats, it’s everything. It’s everything for you, for your team, for revenue, for all of it.
is how many more people can we get in front of that actually need to talk to us? Because if you’re listening out there and you’re not into real estate and you’ve gotten the phone calls about buying your home, we’re not there to bug you. I promise you, that’s the last thing I’m trying to do. I don’t want this to be weird either. I just want to talk to people who need that I can solve their problem. Because done well, no matter the asset class, but especially in single family residential.
When you buy that property well, even buying at a discount, the owner will thank you for solving their problem. They have no problems with how much money you’ve made off the deal. When you know how to solve their problem, because particularly pre foreclosure life’s not going well. Life’s hurting you. It’s been hurting you for 90 days minimum here in Florida. It takes that long to even get a Liz Pendants filed. And now you got less than 90 days till you’re losing your house. You’re stressed. That’s not easy. And you’re also embarrassed, man. Like that out of all the folks I’ve talked to.
They don’t like talking about what caused the pre foreclosure. They don’t understand. don’t like that. So when you know that upfront and understand and can lean in and say, Hey, I know this isn’t easy to talk about simply because I understand the information, the data provided and the knowing, okay, this could be a good deal. Confidence before the call to me is everything, right? You get a call or someone talking and you’ve talked to a bunch of people don’t want you all day. By the time you get to the one you want, man, your energy may be down. You might not be in the best place. So I’m all for.
high quality of bats. How do I get in front of the right person more often? That only raises your averages and it’s where you’re doing it upfront, right? Like, that man.
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (21:27)
Yeah, 100%. You could either lose it to the bank or you could make money off it. That’s just a question, you know?Micah Johnson (21:30)
So forRight. Right. Exactly.
I can save your credit. I can save you a lot of things. Like there’s so much that can happen again, but just got to be in the right mindset to get in there and have those calls and the tools that you’re developing are what do that. How can I know upfront that the useful conversation I’m capable of having isn’t going to be wasted and boom, you know, dig into it. So I love what you’re working on, man. You’ve got the experience, you have the dedication, you have all the knowledge you need to build these tools and you’re
Aaron Aryeh – Conin (21:45)
Yes.Micah Johnson (22:00)
You’re regularly working with feedback from investors. So for folks listening in that want to learn more about what you have going on, take a look at your product. What’s the best way for them to find you?Aaron Aryeh – Conin (22:11)
So they can find me on my LinkedIn. I’m going to drop the link to you. Or they could find me on my website. It’s conin C-O-N-I-N dot I-O. They could also access the AI software through there. But if they want to go straight to the software, it’s app, A-P-P dot C-O-N-I-N dot I-O.Micah Johnson (22:29)
Excellent, man. Thanks for sharing. So if you’re listening and watching in and you want to learn more from Aaron, see what he’s got going on, check the show notes. We’ll have all of his links there. Like I say, each time in this show, follow professionals, follow folks who have the background and the credibility to talk about what they’re talking about because there’s a lot of noise in real estate. Work with folks who understand it. That’s how we get that level of success that we’re all after, right? None of us got in this game to lose. Aaron, I appreciate your time today, man, your story.Aaron Aryeh – Conin (22:54)
Yeah.Micah Johnson (22:57)
Thank you for building what you’re building as someone that’s in the industry. I think we need more tools like this, ways to help us grow our businesses more steady, more solid, more successful. Thanks for being with us today. If you’re listening or watching in, thank you for being with us today. If you got value out of today’s episode, please like this episode, share it with someone else you think could get value out of it. Who needs to learn about these tools. As always, please don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast. We appreciate every single one of you that follows along out there with us. We have more conversations coming up with operators just like Aaron.out there building a real business in the industry. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see y’all in the next episode.
