Why Real Estate Investors Need Better Data Before Marketing, Lending, or Buying Deals

Alicia Jarrett (00:00)
Yeah yeah, awesome. Let me share a couple of things on that because I think it’s important to give some context before as well because most people out there guys, when you’re out there buying data from the different data aggregators or different providers, you have to purchase all that data in order to make sense of what the data is telling you. And Michelle, I think you and I, because we have a little bit of this tech background, we understand that data at the end of the day, folks, data tells a story. But here’s what I noticed. Most people download the data and then they’re trying to make head or tail of it, right?

Michelle Tack (00:25)
Hi everyone. I’m Michelle Tack. I am the leader of Real Estate Pros Investors podcast today. And we have Alicia Jarrett, who I think very highly of that’s here today. Alicia, do you want to just say hi to the group?

Alicia Jarrett (02:15)
Hey everyone, thanks Michelle for having me. I’m really happy to be here.

Michelle Tack (02:19)
Thank you. We’re excited that people notice that accent is from Melbourne, Australia, but solidly now planted in Florida. So Alicia, again, welcome to the podcast. When we were talking previously and getting prepared for today’s podcast, I really thought it was interesting as to what you are doing and how you differentiate your business. You are providing critical data.

Alicia Jarrett (02:49)
Yep.

Michelle Tack (02:49)
to companies within the real estate ⁓ marketplace, whether it be mortgage or lending or ⁓ commercial buyers or non-commercial buyers, really important information. as I shared with you, my background was also, you’re still in it, but I left about a year ago, in high tech. And we both know that only about 20 % of the data that exists is really what you need.

Alicia Jarrett (03:02)
All of it.

Yep.

Yeah.

Michelle Tack (03:18)
It’s

sort of like, you know, not 100 % of it. So I’m really psyched to listen and hear what you have to say and what the people can learn from you today. So if we can just look at what you are doing today, can you tell me a little bit about, you know, ⁓ those that may not come from your world, may not come from a technology world, what you do and what markets you serve?

Alicia Jarrett (03:44)
Yeah, fantastic. Thanks, Michelle. So hi, everyone. Alicia here. And what we do and what markets we serve. So SIFTR, we are a data processing as a service organization, but we’re so much more than that. And I’ll talk a little bit more about where we sit squarely in between data and products out there. We serve anyone, Michelle, in the real estate construction and related industry. So as you said, mortgage, real estate investors, realtors, brokers, contractors, HVAC, pretty much anybody that needs to use real estate data to

their business, we sew.

Michelle Tack (04:17)
So

can you get into more detail in that? Not necessarily how it works, because we obviously people that may have interest, you’ll provide your contact information at the end of this, but what utilization would they get out of this for their own business from a case study

Alicia Jarrett (04:33)
Chop.

Yeah,

yeah, awesome. Let me share a couple of things on that because I think it’s important to give some context before as well because most people out there guys, when you’re out there buying data from the different data aggregators or different providers, you have to purchase all that data in order to make sense of what the data is telling you. And Michelle, I think you and I, because we have a little bit of this tech background, we understand that data at the end of the day, folks, data tells a story.

But here’s what I noticed. Most people download the data and then they’re trying to make head or tail of it, right?

Michelle Tack (05:48)
It does.

Alicia Jarrett (05:53)
not data people. They’re like, I don’t know what data to use, what’s right, what’s wrong, what do I need? What we do first, Michelle, is we’re an insights first company. So when you go on and use our platform, which is about to be launched, but we do have some customers using it right now. When you go into our platform, we’re really about showing you the story and the data to begin with. So you could be searching for single family homes, vacant land, commercial properties, all these things. We’re going to give you how much data is available, how much will be after skip tracing and DNC checks.

Michelle Tack (06:06)
Good.

Alicia Jarrett (06:23)
What are the market statistics on sell-through rates? What’s the difference between assess value and what things are selling for? What’s the min, median, max valuations that are going on? The list goes on. We want to tell you what the data is telling you before you buy. Why are we doing that? Because we were also, you know, after a decade of working in the real estate space, we were also tired of buying all this data and then getting it and going, well, half of that’s going to go to waste. So we want to be able to give the power back to the user here, Michelle.

Michelle Tack (06:39)
Exactly.

Right.

That’s that’s an awesome description that was very succinct. Can you describe how you’re able? I you’re growing wildly. You’re doing you know some great things. You’re bringing out a new product etc and you know to market. Can you talk to us about how you’re keeping your business effectively and fluently running as a machine? Like what component tree have you set up that really makes it it?

Alicia Jarrett (07:07)
Yep.

Michelle Tack (07:22)
work well for you.

Alicia Jarrett (07:23)
Oof, that’s a very detailed question. Let’s go with that one.

Michelle Tack (07:26)
It is

a detailed question. You can do it detailed or you can give it, you know, high level, mid level and more detailed. However you’d like to do it.

Alicia Jarrett (07:34)
Let me start with the high

level first of all. think the one thing that we’re doing really well is we’re productizing our platform.

So instead of just going, here’s a platform that everyone can use. We’ve actually got five core products within it that can all be monetized, but can all be used by each customer as well in how they choose to. And I think we’re moving, Michelle, you the more and more that we start to work with technology, the more we’re moving to people kind of choosing their own adventure when they’re using different apps and services, right? A standard real estate investor might not need access to our entire mortgage panel. A mortgage customer might not need access to what’s going on with vacant land that doesn’t have any loans on it.

Michelle Tack (07:51)
Mm-hmm.

Alicia Jarrett (08:10)
what we’re really trying to do is productize our entire program. But in that itself, to come back to your question, we’re really looking at a very detailed approach as to how we bring these products to market. our team is really excellent at looking at the ideation, the solution architecture, then how we use the UX UI to bring that solution to life, what we want that customer journey to be that is different to all of the other data companies out there, by the way, and then how we bring that to life and implement.

Michelle Tack (08:10)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Alicia Jarrett (08:40)
that. One of the biggest things that we’re doing at the moment Michelle is we’ve realised like when we started about a year ago and this is with SIFTR our new company because some people watching might know me from Supercharged Offers which was our previous company but when we started you know we started working a lot with mortgage lenders and brokers which we love we’re still doing a lot in that space but we quickly realised that servicing one of them wasn’t as effective if we could service hundreds of them. So now we’re working with more white label where we’re taking our infrastructure with those five core

Michelle Tack (09:04)
Yes, absolutely.

Alicia Jarrett (09:10)
products in it and we’re able to plug and play that as an iframe into our different customers where they can now have reliable data that’s all processed for their customers, that is refreshed for their customers, that is managed for their customers and then we’re able to allow them to make money on it too. Because here’s the thing, data is expensive. I don’t know if you know this Michelle, do you know what the average spend in the US is on data per year, just real estate data?

Michelle Tack (09:37)
Yeah, I don’t. Could you share? That’s a great if people know. my gosh, that’s crazy. Yep, yep.

Alicia Jarrett (09:40)
$30 billion on data and all the systems that

people need to run it. If I give you a use case, you actually asked for a use case, which I think is really cool because our platform really underpins three things, Michelle, big data, AI and blockchain. Now talk about the blockchain stuff in a minute. Cause I think that’s a little bit, you know, that might even be another episode, Michelle. That’s a whole nother thing.

Michelle Tack (09:48)
Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

I’ve that may

be another episode that we could take take you on for when we

go ahead. I’m sorry.

Alicia Jarrett (10:39)
But

if we just think about the big data and the AI component. if I think about about 18 months ago, we were doing a marketing campaign for our previous company where we were doing just like data and marketing for our customers. We were working with a roofing company. Now that roofing company, in order to make that marketing work, we had to get data from five different places. Now, if you’re a roofing company, you’re not a data person. And the company that we worked with, they were like, I don’t know how to bring all this data together and make it work. And we’re like, this is not my thing. My thing’s putting roofs on

houses right? So when we started working with this customer we needed demographic data, permit data, property data, contractor data and then weather data. That’s five different places, five different systems. It’s a lot of data and they’re not all formatted the same. What we’re doing with SIFTR is we are being in the middle of all these things so all these different data aggregators out there whether it’s know weather data, demographic data etc and then you’ve got all these marketing systems that it goes into. We’re sitting in

Michelle Tack (11:10)
Right.

Mm hmm. That’s a lot of data.

Alicia Jarrett (11:39)
middle doing all the processing for them and that processing is making sure that there’s one source, one truth, one data layer. So using this roofing company, five companies we have to go to. Now with our new platform, what this roofer will be able to do because there’s so much AI that’s going to be built in, they come in and say, hey, I’m a roofer in Dallas Fort Worth. Here’s my license ID, SIFTR, so you can see where I’m licensed to put new roofs on. Can you tell me SIFTR, all the properties under my license that

are more than 10 years old or have been owned for more than 10 years. They’ve had zero recorded improvements in that time. Maybe they’ve had a permit pool but that permit was not fulfilled. And can you also tell me out of those properties which ones have got at least 30 % equity that they’ve built up? And SIFTR, can you now tell me which lending companies are licensed in my area that could offer a really good cash out opportunity for that person so that I can help them put a new roof on, therefore staying shrewd? Now that was five different companies

Michelle Tack (12:38)
That’s.

Alicia Jarrett (12:39)
before, now it’s one.

Michelle Tack (12:41)
That’s that’s fabulous. I mean, I I’m sure there are people you know, listening there going wow, that’s a lot of data. Basically what you can do is pull the most important data in your analytics from all of these different sources, aggregate it and then supply it to the end user. And I think that’s where we’re going. Getting away from the noise and you know here it is. That’s fabulous.

Alicia Jarrett (12:58)
Got it.

Yep.

Michelle Tack (13:05)
Every owner and operator that I know of a business comes into some challenges, whether it’s my business, your business, or Elon Musk. Can you talk about how maybe you had a recent, something went sideways in the business, but you were able to definitely ⁓ recover and maybe share that with a team here.

Alicia Jarrett (13:13)
Yeah

something going sideways.

I think I’m going to be honest here and really kind of open the kimono a bit here, right? Because as much as I talk about data and AI and tech, underneath all that is people. We still need people in our businesses, right? And we had a really great tech guy that came and joined us last year. And I think where we went wrong is we were looking at everything that he had as knowledge. Here’s what he knows. Here’s how he can do this. Here’s how we can do that. What we were so desperate to get that knowledge into our business.

Michelle Tack (13:42)
Yep. Yes. We do. We do.

Mm-hmm.

Alicia Jarrett (14:03)
Michelle that we really forgot to look at values and we forgot to look at approach, at mindset, at ethics, at integrity and all those things that really should be looking at when you’re bringing on people, especially when you’re a small team and a startup, right? So we brought this guy on. We’re like, yes, this is fantastic. He’s going to get all these things done within a matter of about three months. He’d actually done more damage to what we were trying to with the project because of his way of being as opposed to ⁓

Michelle Tack (14:06)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

my gosh. my gosh.

Alicia Jarrett (14:33)
we were looking at. Now that’s not to say he was a bad person, he wasn’t a bad person, he just wasn’t the right fit for us. And I think sometimes when you’re business building you really can’t not put attention on who you bring on because when you’re in even a smaller team one person can run a ripple through everything without you even realising it. So what we’ve done since then and how we’ve pivoted we’ve gotten a lot smarter with recruitment, we’ve also started to look at our team and started to give them ownership in the company.

Michelle Tack (14:40)
Yeah, I understand.

Alicia Jarrett (15:03)
so that they have a lot more skin in the game. Because we want to build something and we want them to be a part of it too.

Michelle Tack (15:04)
That’s great.

Yeah, I mean, I’ve talked to a variety of business owners, large, medium and small, around the real estate business. And I continue to hear the same thing, which is, to a really fascinating guy earlier in the week that actually over hires. And he’s done exceptionally well. He’s hiring ahead of time. ⁓ Rarely do people do that anymore because of costs, what have you, but you’re spot on. That makes a huge difference.

Alicia Jarrett (16:09)
Yeah.

It really does.

Michelle Tack (16:20)
to companies

and they feel part of it, so well done. When we look at, can you talk to, we talked about this a little bit previously, for the folks on the call, on the podcast, you have a background before you got into this in doing flips, in real estate. Can you talk about how your network has contributed to your success even now?

Alicia Jarrett (16:45)
Yeah.

Michelle Tack (16:45)
⁓

and what you did, you know, to grow that network. Cause I always want to make sure people that are listening go, let’s not forget about the network that we can tap into.

Alicia Jarrett (16:53)
Yeah.

100 % Michelle and I’ll go so far as to say for me, I probably had one extra level going against me and that is that up until last year when I moved to Florida, I was doing this business remotely from Australia. So being able to have FaceTime with people was often very challenging, right? ⁓ But I think I’m naturally bit of a people person if you haven’t guessed that. So when it came to our network, so for everyone listening on this call, if you’re a real estate investor or you’re doing anything with real estate, I know your world because 10 years ago,

Michelle Tack (17:06)
my gosh.

Absolutely, yep.

I can tell that.

Alicia Jarrett (17:25)
we were fixing and flipping properties in Jacksonville, Florida remotely from the other side of the world on my ad. ⁓ Then we got into doing vacant land. Then we started our own data and marketing company because we were tired of the different services out there that weren’t giving us what we needed. And then we got into SIFTR last year. So what I do want to say is what I love about that evolution, because a lot of people might look at that and go, you’ve had four different companies in 10 years. Well, yes, we have, but every single one of them is built on the other. So as we roll up and as we

Michelle Tack (17:40)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Alicia Jarrett (17:55)
start to grow we’ve been able to do that. Now what’s been also critical to that is the people that we’ve met along the way. The people that educated us on how to do our first fix and flip. People that educated us on how to do our first piece of vacant land. The customers that we had as a result of supercharged offers which by the way two of them are now investors in SIFTR because of the relationship that I had with them. So for me you can have the best tech company in the world but your people matter and that’s not just the people in your team it’s your wider network.

Michelle Tack (18:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alicia Jarrett (18:25)
well. Lucky enough Michelle to be able to speak on some stages over here in the US and go to some really great events you know with some fantastic people over the years and join some really great networking groups so I feel very blessed that that but what I will say to anyone listening your network is only as good as how much you maintain it and put love into it because one thing I noticed here and unfortunately you know I have people that do this to me they’re takers I’ll take take take what can you give me AJ what

Michelle Tack (18:26)
Mm-hmm.

That’s great.

Yeah, that’s absolutely correct.

Alicia Jarrett (18:55)
can I get from you? And I’m more about how do I pour into that person as much as I can to help them and by proxy of that it starts to come back. So whenever you’re doing this, you guys make it a two-way street.

Michelle Tack (18:59)
Right.

You know it’s interesting.

Yeah,

and I think that some of the most prolific. Business people that I admire they are of service first to someone else and not expecting anything immediately in return and that states because they just love what they do and they want to help people within confines of you know, making their business run and being excellent at what they do. So that’s sage advice. I know that you had mentioned for opportunities going forward that you have a.

Alicia Jarrett (19:24)
Yeah.

Michelle Tack (19:36)
audacious goal of really growing over the next year. And I applaud you for that. But I wanted to let the folks know that you also are seeking some investment monies if appropriate. Can you talk to that a little bit?

Alicia Jarrett (19:41)
Thank you.

Yeah, sure can. I sure can. So what I love about what we’re doing at the moment is how fast we are operating, Michelle. We’ve really started out the gate in May of last year and here we are recording this in May of this year. So when we started last year, we were really smart with how we wanted to grow SIFTR through master service agreements and contracts as opposed to spending a fortune on sales and marketing. And we’ve done that product market fit. So that last 12 months product market fit saw us without any sales and marketing saw us reach just over a million. We now want to get within the next 12

Michelle Tack (20:12)
Sure. Good.

Alicia Jarrett (20:21)
months and where we’re going to get there because we’ve got the contracts already signed. Now we just got to bring them to life. But we want to get to four million by year two. And we are also doing a series A. So we did our friends and family seed round last year. And then this series A is what we’re doing at the moment to really get us ⁓ not only bringing our product to market across the various verticals that we want, but how we really ramp up fast. And the reason why I say that is you and I know Michelle with AI, and you know, I said to you before we were doing

Michelle Tack (20:26)
Awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Alicia Jarrett (20:51)
this when you’re asking me about threats. is a threat but it’s also a really good thing too. But that means the product that we’re building is changing rapidly. So we need to make sure we’ve got the right team on board, which we do, but now we’ve got to grow that team and grow our customer base and really take this to market when like now. You know it’s often said if you go back to like the Alex or Moses of the world, it’s like you know if you own the channel you own the space. We can’t find anybody that’s doing what we’re doing with all the stuff, with those five products and all the stuff in

Michelle Tack (20:53)
Opportunity. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Alicia Jarrett (21:21)
background. So now is the time for us to go and own the channel.

Michelle Tack (21:22)
Mm-hmm.

Understood,

you’ve been a fabulous guest with a lot of very specific information, which I hope everybody has taken note of. Before we conclude, I want you to give the your contact information to anyone that would like to contact you, whether that’s email or whatever you feel comfortable. Can you do that, Alicia? Now before we ⁓ wrap up.

Alicia Jarrett (21:45)
Yep. Yeah, sure can, Michelle. So if anyone

wants to email, it’s probably best. And it’s just alicia, A L I C I A at siftr, which is called S I F T R dot net ([email protected]). They can reach out. I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with anyone about what we’re doing, our white label product, our rev share agreement and how we’re really looking to change the face of how data is consumed and managed across the U.S.

Michelle Tack (22:11)
Alicia, you’ve been on point. You’ve done a great job. Thank you so much for the folks that are listening to our podcast. If you enjoy and find value of this podcast itself, we have many others and other segments. Please stay tuned. And if you haven’t subscribed, please do. Thanks again, Alicia.