Why Speed-to-Lead Wins in Real Estate Investing | AI Automation & Multifamily Strategy

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In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Ed Mathews, founder of Clark Street Capital and Elavista. Ed shares his journey from the tech industry to real estate investing, discussing the growth of his multifamily firm and the innovative AI tool, Elavista Connect, designed to streamline lead management for real estate investors. He emphasizes the importance of technology in enhancing business efficiency and provides valuable insights for new investors, including the significance of mentorship and starting small in the real estate market.

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Ed Mathews (00:00)
if a lead comes in at six o’clock ⁓ on a Friday night, I’ve gone home, ⁓ my team has gone home, and we were missing, you know, really good opportunities, like for instance, in our Clark Street Homes, our flip business, you know, someone

would fill out a form and say, hey, I want to sell you our house. And we wouldn’t get to it till Monday morning. By the time I got to it, they’d already met with two or three investors and the deal was dead. It was gone.

Michelle Kesil (01:58)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Ed Mathews, who has created Clark Street Capital, a multifamily firm for real estate investing, as well as Elevista, which is an AI tech for real estate investors. So, excited to have you here today, Ed.

Ed Mathews (02:26)
Thanks, Michelle, good to see you.

Michelle Kesil (02:28)
Good to see you as well. So yeah, let’s dive in. First off, for those not yet familiar with you and your work, can you share what you’re up to these days?

Ed Mathews (02:38)
Yeah, so I’m Ed Mathews. run Clark Street Capital here in Connecticut. I’ve spent about, well, actually, I spent about 24 or so years in the tech world working for a whole bunch of Silicon Valley companies, most of which you’ve never heard of, but that’s OK. And on the side, I started building a real estate portfolio back in 2011.

and got to about the end of 2017 and had had enough about had enough with the 150 nights a year ⁓ business travel and decided that real estate you we were going to head jump headfirst into the real estate business because the portfolio had basically gotten to the point where it was replacing my w-2 income and ⁓

So we did and have been full time with Clark Street Capital ⁓ since February of 2018. it’s just a goodness about eight years. ⁓ so we’ve been doing this quite a bit, quite a long time.

Michelle Kesil (03:42)
Yeah, definitely. And so is Clark Street, capital, just local to Connecticut, or do you work nationwide?

Ed Mathews (03:48)
Yeah, so we have done deals outside of Connecticut. We’ve owned property in Vermont. We’ve owned property in North Carolina. We have since kind of pulled all that back. And I am now big fish hunting. So we’re looking for properties in the 50 to 150 unit range.

We’re also developing quite a bit of land right now. We have a 58 acre development cooking as we speak here in Connecticut. ⁓ And kind of just taking what the market gives.

Michelle Kesil (04:22)
Awesome. And can you expand a little bit on what it is that you guys are focusing on right now? Like whether that’s solving or scaling to the next thing.

Ed Mathews (04:35)
So right now we’re focused on a 58 acre development that is a combination of development lots that will be single family homes as well as a solar field. And we’re actually flipping the house that actually exists on that property. And ⁓ I’m in the market for.

large multifamily right now

based in Connecticut, I think is where we’re pretty well focused these days, although I do see deals from all over the country. I’m one of those guys that I like to, I’m also a general contractor, so I like to be able to go out and touch the building at least once a week and make sure that things are moving the way they should be moving. so yeah, we stay pretty close to home these days.

Michelle Kesil (06:18)
Awesome. And what would you say are some of the main keys that make the biggest difference in allowing your business to be able to grow and run smoothly?

Ed Mathews (06:29)
Yeah, so being a recovering technology guy, I find that I’m very system oriented. And so we use technology quite liberally, AI as well as just traditional tech to run our business. And I view technology as a force multiplier. And so it allows us to grow.

to run our operation way more efficiently. allows us to grow. It allows us to manage risk probably better than most folks. And it allows us to quite frankly see opportunities that a lot of our colleagues don’t see because we’re able to A, see a volume that

that our competitors don’t necessarily see and process those deals and also be able to stress test them and figure out where there are opportunities. And we use technology for all of that.

Michelle Kesil (07:31)
Yeah, absolutely. And what would you say has been like an obstacle or a big pivot that you had to make as an investor that now you’re looking back, you can see like the bigger lesson.

Ed Mathews (07:44)
Yeah, so three, four years ago, I was all in on multifamily and I still am. I still believe in the asset class. The challenge was that I was having these conversations with with property owners and sellers really. And, you know, they were it was two thousand twenty four or twenty five. And I was getting two thousand twenty two thousand twenty one pricing. And, you know, the typical conversation of I will gladly pay your two thousand twenty one price.

if you give me 2021 terms, which means 3 % and not the seven-ish percent, that seven or 8 % at that point, that is the reality of debt cost. I need two points spread between my debt cost and the cap rate I’m going to acquire, or at least a visibility to get to that place. And if I don’t see that, then there’s no deal. ⁓

know sellers understand that if they were looking to sell they probably should have sold you know three four years ago not today

Michelle Kesil (08:54)
Yeah, absolutely. And so now you’re working on Elevista. How does that kind of flow with your business and what was the kind of spark of that creation?

Ed Mathews (09:09)
Yeah, so I’m a huge believer in virtual assistants. In fact, our entire back office is run out of the Philippines with a phenomenally talented group of people. ⁓ But the problem is that they require sleep.

And so, ⁓ you know, they’re on the other side of the world, so they’re literally 12 hours difference in terms of timeline. And, you know, we try to manage that as best we can, but, you know, the fact is, is

if a lead comes in at six o’clock ⁓ on a Friday night, I’ve gone home, ⁓ my team has gone home, and we were missing, you know, really good opportunities, like for instance, in our Clark Street Homes, our flip business, you know, someone

would fill out a form and say, hey, I want to sell you our house. And we wouldn’t get to it till Monday morning. By the time I got to it, they’d already met with two or three investors and the deal was dead. It was gone.

And that happened enough times where it kind of ticked me off. ⁓ again, the way we think is, how can we apply technology and systems to solve the problem? basically, we built the

a tool that I affectionately call Katie, who is my oldest daughter. But Elevista Connect is a lead automation tool that whenever someone hits our website, fills out a form, they get a phone call back within 30 to 60 seconds. And the AI has gotten to the point where it can carry a realistic natural conversation, ⁓ ask all the right questions to qualify the lead, and be able to determine if that

is a motivated seller or someone who’s you know kicking tires or you know someone who needs help and you know within about 60 seconds we’re able to diagnose that person’s situation and see if we can figure out if we can help them and if we can then a meeting gets set on my calendar and I know I get a notification on my cell phone you know 24 7 365

as to when my next meeting is with that person. And so I’m able to be probably the first person that they speak with. And usually if you’re the first person there and we sincerely go out there and try and do our best to help whether we buy the property or not, ⁓ we get our unfair share of deals now. And so it solved a really big problem for us. ⁓

And so I was using it for our companies and I showed it to a couple of buddies and they’re like, we would buy that. And so I gave it to them just to let them kick the daylights out of it and see if they could break it. And so that was actually a really useful exercise because we were able to really improve the solution. And about a month ago, we released it into the wild and now it’s available commercially ⁓ as Elevista Connect. And so we’ve got a whole team here

that is building and evolving the tool even further than it is now. But right now, it solves a really big speed to lead problem for real estate investors. And that’s all we do is real estate investor support. We’re not selling this to dentists and med spas and things like that. This is a real estate tool.

Michelle Kesil (13:08)
Wow, that’s amazing. I love that you used a challenge to create something.

Ed Mathews (13:11)
fun.

Yeah, just when I thought I was out of tech, it pulled me back in.

Michelle Kesil (13:16)
Yeah, yeah and so what are some of the main features of this that you would say make it super unique?

Ed Mathews (13:26)
So ⁓ Katie is a natural ⁓ conversationalist. Michelle, if you hit one of our websites and you fill out your information, on average, about 35 seconds later, you’re going to get a phone call from Katie. She sounds just like a human being, although I feel ethically we have to disclose. So she lets them know, hey, I’m an AI agent. ⁓

The fact is that they have a conversation with Katie. Katie asks them all the questions I would ask if I were on the phone with that person. ⁓ And she figures out pretty quickly if we can help. And when we can, her next move is to make a decision about whether they get to meet me in person or we do a Zoom call first to figure out

if there’s a way for us to either help them or acquire the property from them. And so everything’s automated. It happens in a matter of a minute or two. And it solves a problem for our end client, person, the motivated seller. And it solves a huge problem for us because now I’m no longer missing.

you know those leads and we pay a lot of money to drive leads right between search engine optimization and lead programs and our own direct mail and all the other things that we do you know the last thing I want to do is waste that money and there was a time where we were wasting a pretty big chunk of that money because we just couldn’t get to the calls and now that problem solved

Michelle Kesil (15:49)
Yeah, awesome. And so how are other real estate investors implementing it? Are they using it in the same way? And is it something that, you know, it’s just like a pretty easy service that people can sign up for.

Ed Mathews (16:04)
Yeah, great question. I try, you know, and when we build systems, I met with this guy and fascinating. I interviewed him for my show, Real Estate Underground. His name is Nick Huber and he’s pretty big on Twitter. And ⁓ one thing he said to me during that interview that really stuck with me is, you know, our job as leaders of a business is not to hire A players all across the board. Because in a lot of cases, those humans don’t exist, right?

Our job is to create systems that an average person can walk in and succeed at and so the you know, you don’t need to be a technical genius to be able to set this up ⁓ You know when you sign up for Connect there’s a what’s called a wizard and basically it’s a step-by-step process, you

asks questions, you give it answers that you should know off the top of your head, and it automatically sets everything up. ⁓ It connects to your calendar, and I mean you can be up and running in a matter of about five minutes.

Michelle Kesil (17:15)
Awesome.

Ed Mathews (17:16)
So it’s what I like to call in my house, Edproof.

Michelle Kesil (17:19)
Yeah. And is this like connected to Clark’s stream anyway or they’re separate?

Ed Mathews (17:25)
They are separate companies, yeah. Yeah, I run both of them. I guess I’m the connection. But different teams, different people. ⁓

Michelle Kesil (17:28)
awesome.

Yeah.

Awesome. And so what would you say are like some of the biggest opportunities that you’re excited about, whether it’s with the new companies or anything that you’re looking to capitalize on in real estate?

Ed Mathews (17:53)
I still fundamentally believe in real estate and that’s across multiple asset classes. We’re evaluating, I’m sitting here evaluating deals in the flex industrial space, land. ⁓

at flips we’re looking at value add multifamily I’m looking at you know class B multifamily deals as well I’m even looking at ⁓ a multifamily development deal right now and so I see opportunity all across the board ⁓ you know

But it’s got to meet our buy box and our criteria. And so we’re very disciplined in terms of how we approach those deals and making sure that the returns are commensurate with what our investors, our partners are expecting. The 12, 16 plus percent IRR is still, you

the standard metric that we operate to. I think the days of 20 plus percent are probably behind us for a little while. But we’ve gone back to a traditional ⁓ multifamily return model. And I think that that is. ⁓

really exciting because there’s a whole lot of people on the sidelines and that just presents us with opportunities because fewer competitors means ⁓ you know in a lot of cases we’re able to get a better deal.

Michelle Kesil (19:30)
Yeah, absolutely that makes sense.

Ed Mathews (19:32)
Yeah, and I’m obviously really excited about the Elevista thing, ⁓ mainly because it’s a really cool, useful tool that doesn’t take a lot to get going. And actually, we were able to do it very economically as well. So it doesn’t cost a lot either.

Michelle Kesil (19:49)
Awesome. And so what advice would you give to investors, maybe those that are newer in the industry?

Ed Mathews (19:59)
⁓ So I mentor a whole bunch of people as well. ⁓

I’ve been blessed with mentors and one of the things that they had always said was they didn’t really want anything from me other than for me to succeed and ultimately to pay it forward. So that’s what I do. And when I meet with somebody for a cup of coffee, I always joke I’m a cheap date, right? If you pick up the phone and call me and ask me, hey, can I have 15 minutes of your time to talk about a deal? I will do that. If I’ve got the time, I will do that all the time, right? It’s just fun. And I love seeing people succeed.

that I always tell people is stick to something you understand. ⁓ If you’re just starting out, then start small. ⁓ Aim small, miss small. And so maybe not buy the 200 unit apartment building as your first deal. Maybe buy a four family instead and see what it’s like.

because it’s a, you you’re dealing with human beings and where they live and. ⁓

It’s hard. This this business is difficult. And so you need to work out your systems. You need to work out your policies. And it’s better to do that with a much smaller property than a much larger one. ⁓ The other piece of advice I would get give is ⁓ well actually it’s kind of two pronged. One get a mentor get somebody who will throw an arm around you and tell you the 19 ways you’re screwing up and how to fix them. And.

and also don’t spend.

you know, massive dollars on training. Yes, there are entities out there that will charge you, you know, 10, 20, 30,000 plus dollars to teach you everything you need to know about real estate. But my response to that almost always is yes, that that training is worthwhile, but it’s also something you can get from an audible account for 15 bucks a month and a mentor and your local RIA.

And so that you know $30,000 that you’re spending on training is actually your down payment on your first deal. So take a breath and ⁓ seek out the help that’s right around you instead of going and buying a mentor for tens of thousands of dollars. And if you get and for those folks out there if you can’t find one call me at the end of this we’re probably going to tell you how to reach me so. I’ll do it for free.

Michelle Kesil (22:30)
Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great advice. Thank you. And yeah, before we start to wrap up here, if people do want to connect, learn more, reach out, where can people find you and connect with you?

Ed Mathews (22:51)
Yeah, so if you want to learn more about Clark Street and the projects we’re working on and our new debt fund, ⁓ that is clarkst.com, C-L-A-R-K-S-T.com. If you want to learn more about Katie and the technology that we’ve built, that’s elevista.com, that’s E-L-E-V-I-S-T-A.com. And I’m ed at clarkst.com. ⁓ Email me and we’ll certainly do what we can to serve you.

And I’m EdMathews4 on everything social media, so I’m very easy to find.

Michelle Kesil (23:21)
Awesome.

Awesome, Ed, thank you. I’ll appreciate your time and your story. Thanks for being here. Great. And for those listeners tuning in, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Ed who are building real businesses, and we will see you all on the next episode.

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Why Speed-to-Lead Wins in Real Estate Investing | AI Automation & Multifamily Strategy

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