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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Joseph Noor, co-founder of OWNWELL, a technology-driven service aimed at helping homeowners save money on property taxes. Joseph shares insights into the challenges of property tax assessments, the technology behind their service, and their vision for expanding support to other home-related expenses. The conversation highlights the importance of having a dedicated team, the simplicity of their service, and the future potential of a digital assistant for optimizing home finances.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Joseph Noor (00:00)
So it was not my idea, it was my co-founder’s idea. He was an asset manager at a family office and they invested a lot in real estate and in order to maximize the quality of their investment, they would appeal the property taxes every single year. And he thought it was crazy that this billionaire in this billionaire’s family office was contesting their appraisals and nobody else really is, right? His dad doesn’t, the average American doesn’t even know this is something you can do, nevermind actually takes advantage of it. And so he really wanted tobuild a solution that could make it accessible to everybody. Where no matter what kind of home you live in, no matter what kind of property you live in, you have a fair shake at making sure that you’re not paying any more than your fair share in property taxes.
Michelle Kesil (02:10)
everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Joseph Noor who’s been making serious moves in the technology space, creating a new product to help people save money on the cost of owning real estate. So,Really excited to have you here today, Joseph. I think the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching creating this new technology and yeah, just helping people save money. So let’s dive in.
Joseph Noor (02:50)
Sounds good, pleasure to be here.Michelle Kesil (02:52)
Awesome, so just first off for those who are not familiar with you and your world, can you give a short version of what your main focus is?Joseph Noor (03:01)
Yeah, sure. So we started the company.because we saw that there was opportunities to help real estate owners save money on their assets. In particular, we focused on expenses and the first expense that we hyper focused on was property taxes. so property taxes, everybody pays them every single year. They’re based on the value of your real estate and that value is dictated by a county assessor who comes up with a number based on the information and tools they have. Oftentimes they get that number wrong and you can actually through a formal process by which you can test that assessor.
you can lower that assessment and thereby lower your property taxes and we do that as a service. So we have an entire team and if you sign up with us we will essentially evaluate your property, file all the relevant paperwork, attend any hearings and negotiate a lower assessment for your real estate and thereby save customers money on their property taxes.
Michelle Kesil (03:49)
Do you provide this service nationwide or is it specific to a market?Joseph Noor (03:55)
Yeah, so we decided to go pretty deep in particular markets and expand from there. So we currently only service seven states, and we’re experimenting and exploring and piloting new states every month.But those are the seven that we’ve gotten pretty deep on. And so we’re currently not nationwide. But what I would love to do in the near future is offer a service that anybody can use, like a free CMA or something like that, even if I don’t have necessarily a team of experts in that particular market that are able to service the appeal itself.
Michelle Kesil (04:24)
Awesome. So what like kind of got you started with creating this software or service?Joseph Noor (04:31)
Yeah.So it was not my idea, it was my co-founder’s idea. He was an asset manager at a family office and they invested a lot in real estate and in order to maximize the quality of their investment, they would appeal the property taxes every single year. And he thought it was crazy that this billionaire in this billionaire’s family office was contesting their appraisals and nobody else really is, right? His dad doesn’t, the average American doesn’t even know this is something you can do, nevermind actually takes advantage of it. And so he really wanted to
build a solution that could make it accessible to everybody. Where no matter what kind of home you live in, no matter what kind of property you live in, you have a fair shake at making sure that you’re not paying any more than your fair share in property taxes.
And that’s why he thought that with technology we could kind of build a system and a machine that can scale and help everyone. And so when I met him at school, he presented this idea, I got very excited about it. My family’s involved in real estate pretty heavily. My father’s a real estate investor, my grandfather’s a real estate developer, or was a real estate
developer and actually my great-grandfather was a property tax collector in Lebanon. I’m the son of immigrants. And so I felt this personal connection to the business and to the idea and so I kind of latched on to it and started building with my co-founder and that’s how we got started.
Michelle Kesil (06:29)
Amazing, I love that story. yeah, what has been like the key to keeping this business running smoothly with all of these moving parts and yeah, so many things to consider.Joseph Noor (06:42)
Yeah, I think there’s a few things. The first thing is you gotta have the best people. If you don’t have great people, you’re never gonna succeed. Especially when, you know, somebody, if you hire somebody and put them in the role, like, are they gonna take the same amount of care and attention that you would put in that role? So having the absolute best team is essential to, you know, having a successful business. You know, I think the other thing too is just this constant desire to improve.if you get complacent or stagnate or are satisfied with the current state of affairs, then you’re not going to improve and you’re not going to make it better. So I have this probably unhealthy dissatisfaction always. And I always want to make things better. And I think that’s part of the reason why we continue to improve in everything that we do.
Michelle Kesil (07:23)
Amazing, yeah, that’s so important. So what are some of like the features of these technologies that you offer?Joseph Noor (07:32)
Yeah, I mean, we’ve built what I would say is the at our core.You know, we are a service where, you you sign up and there’s some expert that’s going to try to negotiate a reduction on your behalf. so, you know, what are the features? We tried to make it as simple as possible to sign up. So to give you some examples, it’s like a purely online sign up. You basically just put in your information and hit submit and we do everything from there. Another thing is we don’t charge anything upfront. So you don’t put your credit card in or anything like that. You literally just let us know that you want us to go to work for you and our team kicks it off.
And then on the back end, I spend a lot of time making sure that I bring all the tools and resources available to our people to make sure that they are seeing everything. They get like a superhuman view of the status of that appeal. Basically get a view of the area, get a few, all the different, you know, sales and comparable data that we can use to actually present the case and making sure that we’re building the best possible case. And then on the back end, you know, integrating with county systems, making sure that we’re uploading things to the right place, submitting the right paperwork at the right time with the right, with the right information.
at that moment to be as compelling as possible and get the best reduction that we can for our clients. think every single step of the way, trying to do what we can to maximize the quality of the outcome.
Michelle Kesil (08:44)
Yeah, awesome. Are there any sort of criteria for someone that does qualify or doesn’t qualify? What does that look like?Joseph Noor (08:53)
Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting thing because typically the way that property tax appraisal works.is you’ve got these county appraisal models that most of your, whatever county you own your real estate in, there’s some appraisal office that dictates the values and they use some sort of software to spit out the values because they’re not going home to home looking at the condition of the home, looking at the backyard and so on and so forth to come up with their value every single year. They use these off the shelf models typically, which do something like multiple regression where they assign, I could go pretty deep on what they’re doing, but typically
what they’re doing is imagine like a scatter plot and they’re gonna assign a best fit line to the scatter plot, something like that. And so some people are lucky and they’re on the wrong side of the best fit line and they get brought down and so they’re actually technically under assessed relative to maybe what their true market value is. And a lot of people know that, you know, they get their appraisal in the mail, they look at it, they look at the number, they think about how much their house is worth and they’re like, this is a little bit lower, I’m good to go.
And on the flip side, you’ll have other people who are on the wrong side of that curve. And they get approximated up, and they get over-assessed. And what we found is that in both cases, we can have a successful outcome. Now, obviously, it’s less likely that I’m going to have a good outcome if you’re under-assessed. But oftentimes, what we see in the real estate data are arguments that we can use to bring the number down even further.
just based on what the actual real estate data says. Even if you think this is an under assessment, sometimes we can even bring it down further. And then of course, when the evidence is undeniable and incredibly compelling, typically we have a really good chance at saving people money.
Michelle Kesil (11:02)
Yeah, and what does that process look like on your end for helping people bring that rate down?Joseph Noor (11:09)
Yeah, well you go on our website, type in your address, verify some basic details about the property. You can upload any information that you think would help strengthen our case. Things like, obviously the no brainers are cracked foundation or a roof that desperately needs repairs and you have a repair quote or something like that. Those are always really helpful in negotiating a larger reduction. Besides that, once you sign up, we pretty much do everything on our end.You’ll hear from us occasionally as the process progresses, as we begin building your case, as we file your case with the County Appraisal District, as we follow up with them and schedule your hearing, whether we have to submit evidence when we file initially, whether we have to submit supplemental evidence later on in the process, and we go through that process. We basically notify you through email and you can always log in to our website and check the status of things. And at some point, you’ll hear the result of it, whether it was successful or whether it wasn’t successful, you’ll hear from us.
That’s pretty much the process. So after that initial sign up, there’s really nothing else to do besides sit there and wait for good news.
Michelle Kesil (12:07)
Amazing. love that. And is there like anything else that you guys support people with or it’s just specifically that property assessment?Joseph Noor (12:16)
Yeah.So I would say like the core of our business is definitely focused on saving people money on property taxes, but we have little teams throughout the company that are exploring and building out support for other ways that we can help people save. just as an example, one thing that we’re piloting is helping people with their home insurance renewal. So every year you have to pay a new premium for your home insurance. And for me, every single year that number keeps going up and it’s a pain to shop every year.
I’m
gonna put my name and number and all my details and all these different insurance sites and then I’m gonna get harassed with phone calls and emails and so on and so forth. And usually I’m not even getting a decent quote when I do it. It’s gonna be more than my renewal. So every once in a while I have a successful outcome but it’s kind of a pain. And so we’re piloting an internal program. We have a team with licensed insurance agents and brokers where essentially we’ll shop for you and you don’t have to get harassed or annoyed by anybody.
You just put in your details, we go do the shopping for you and we present you the best quotes that we found and then you can compare that to your renewal and decide whether it makes sense to switch. So things like that, that’s something that we see clear opportunity along with property taxes. You to pay every year, you have to pay your insurance every year. And so there’s an opportunity to save there.
While rates have not come down at all yet, I’m excited for the idea that for anybody that’s bought in the last few years, they should absolutely be refinancing their mortgage as rates begin to drop. so getting ahead of that and making sure that we have the tools in place that we can help provide people with smart recommendations when we believe that it’s an opportune moment to refinance your mortgage, I think is another clear play that we’re focused on internally as well. And then we have a long tail of little things that we think we can help with. Things like some people have PMI, private mortgage insurance,
and because they didn’t put more than 20 % down and there are moments when you can actually get that removed before it organically falls off of your mortgage bill and so we see a lot of opportunity there where we’re helping people and you know we’re just going deeper and deeper looking at essentially all those different expenses and seeing how we can help people.
Michelle Kesil (14:56)
Amazing, I love that. So what are you guys most focused on solving or scaling next?Joseph Noor (15:03)
Yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it. mean, one of your first questions is, we nationwide? And the answer is no. And the reason that we’re not wasting nationwide is I want to be really, really good in the markets that we currently service, as opposed to just like, sure, we’re nationwide, and then we’re not very good. So I would say that one of the key focuses that we have internally is how do we continue to refine our expertise in our existing markets and be able to expand while maintaining the quality of service? So that’s definitely one of the main focuses moving forward.Michelle Kesil (15:07)
Yeah.Right.
Yeah, so like what is the ultimate kind of goal for where this service is headed?
Joseph Noor (15:36)
Yeah, I think the way that I think about it, your home finances, for the average American, myself included, is the most expensive thing that comes out of your budget, or that you budget for every single month. And I believe that the statistic was that it’s over 50 % of the average American’s expenses are in some way, or form tied to their home.So it’s this huge thing that we just all pay and we silently pay and we just think that’s the way it has to be because what’s the alternative, right? You have to pay your rent or you have to pay your mortgage and all those other auxiliary expenses. And how often do we actually analyze those expenses and look for opportunities to save? And I would say for most of us, myself included, not that often.
And so the vision here is I dream of a future where you have a digital assistant, a super intelligent digital assistant that is particularly focused on your home finances and making sure that it is optimizing every single line item, making sure that you’re taking advantage of all exemptions that you qualify for, making sure that you’re doing everything you can to minimize any of those individual expenses and essentially optimize the most expensive thing that you deal with every month. And so that’s ultimately the vision that I see is creating that super
intelligent digital assistant that is optimizing your home expenses.
Michelle Kesil (16:51)
Yeah, amazing. I love that. That’s something that would be very useful and needed in the world. Amazing. what exactly like are you guys, like how does this service work? Do people just go online and find you or how are you like growing this business and building your network?Joseph Noor (16:57)
Agreed.Yeah, I think, yeah, it’s typical marketing motions that we engage in. anybody can go on our website and sign up. One thing that we offer is if you go on our website and you type in an address, we’ll immediately provide a recommended or approximate savings that we think we can save you on, whatever services you’re interested in. And that’s done.
And there are certain people on certain properties that will type in a number and they’re going to see zero dollars because we genuinely do not think that we’re going to save you any money on your property taxes, for example. And so we basically do an upfront analysis everywhere.
to see, essentially build our algorithms and do the analysis to see where we think the biggest opportunities are. And when we see that there are people who can save quite a bit, then we go through whatever marketing motions we can to help them become aware of the opportunity that they have to reduce their, whether it’s property taxes or anything else. And so I would say that’s definitely one of our core focuses. in general, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a online product that you can discover, find out about in some way, and you can sign up, and we’ll go to bat.
Michelle Kesil (18:11)
Amazing. Yeah. How has like this process been of creating it like on the back end? What did that look like for you guys?Joseph Noor (18:19)
It’s changed so much over the years. When we first got started, I was managing everything out of an Excel sheet. every time somebody signed up, I added them to the Excel sheet, and I went and I…filed the paperwork myself and I scheduled everything myself and I added a little event to the calendar when the hearing was and so on and so forth. And over time, we’ve built a software platform that helps us essentially manage the entire logistical process from start to finish. So essentially the moment somebody signs up, they get inputted into our system, they show up in our system and we begin the process of validating their sign-up details, pulling their property details, evaluating those details, preparing.
all the evidence in the packets and the paperwork and so on. And so a lot of it has been like software automation of like documents and things like that. A lot of it has been integrations with, you know, county systems. And a lot of it has been really specialized knowledge that we’ve developed about how to tune your algorithm to be most effective.
you know, as an example, you know, I’m in Austin, Texas, and what we see is, for example, in Dallas, Texas, they love to focus on price per square foot, whereas in Austin, Texas, that’s not so much of a consideration, and there’s other features that they focus on more than the actual price per square foot. And so, like, that’s kind of something that we’ve seen across the board, is as the deeper that we go, the more, you know, it’s not necessarily tricks, but it’s more like…
the way, what are the most effective arguments that our team can make, and then how do we make sure that as an individual is working up a case and they’re looking at the details of a property that it’s like, hey, make sure that you focus on these details, because these details we see are the most effective, and so we make sure that they’re kind of presented front and center. So I’d say that those are the kinds of things that I just continue to iterate, continue to refine and improve on.
Michelle Kesil (20:06)
Yeah, absolutely. So as far as like the customer journey, is there anything that the clients, customers need to do besides submit the information or it’s pretty hands off after that?Joseph Noor (20:17)
It’s totally hands off after that. I occasionally we’ll need an intervention from the customer.Like if you do a really, so one of the things you have to do when you sign up, you put in your property, confirm your details, and you actually sign a digital signature for the appointment of agent. And what you’re doing is actually appointing our company as your tax agent. And that gives us the authority to go communicate to the assessor on your behalf. If you don’t do that, then we don’t have any authority to speak. so sometimes people will give a really kind of not the best scribble, you know, like when I sign things, I’m getting a coffee and I have to sign, it’s just a scribble.
Michelle Kesil (20:43)
Right.Joseph Noor (20:52)
Which I totally get it, but sometimes that scribble just isn’t quite gonna cut it. And so, you know, sometimes we’ll send you a notice that says, hey, we need a new scribble. Can you make it a slightly nicer scribble? You know, things like that. But besides that, for the vast majority of people, you sign up, hands off, you do nothing, and you just wait to hear the good news.Michelle Kesil (21:08)
Amazing, I love that. Sounds like a really streamlined process. So yeah, amazing. So yeah, for anyone that wants to reach out, learn more, connect with you guys, where can people find you?Joseph Noor (21:13)
We’ve tried to make it that way.Yeah, so you can visit us online at OWNWELL.com. That’s O-W-N-W-E-L-L.com. You can visit us. There’s a lot of blog details. You can hear about some case studies and so on and so forth. And you can type in your address or anybody’s address and get an approximate savings estimate of what we think, basically the potential that we think we can save for you.
Michelle Kesil (21:43)
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. We need more people that are doing these innovative things, so thank you for being here.Joseph Noor (21:53)
I appreciate it. Pleasure chatting.Michelle Kesil (21:54)
Amazing and for those of you that are tuning in if you got value from this make sure that you’ve subscribed We have more conversations coming with operators just like Joseph who are building real businesses, and we’ll see you all on our next
