Patrick Carino: Developing Apartments & CRM's

Tell the audience about how you got started in the middle of the day. Welcome to the Masters in Real Estate Podcast, with your host, Tanner Webster. So you're building apartments today, and pretty much nobody else is. How are you doing that? I'm in a market. I'm in a strong market. It has high rents and higher bay area to entry, and I'm at a shop that needs to keep the engine going. So what markets work all of the ones that you're in? So I cover the Northeast, which we define as New Jersey Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts. And now, since rates have moved, it's really the deals that check all the boxes. More marginal deals would work when the exit caps could be low fours and threes, crazy stuff like that. But now it needs to be high rent, low basis, meaning like wood frame, low or no affordable component, and then some sort of tax deal to keep the taxes either low or just constant. And so there's still deals out there like that. It's still competitive, but they exist, and they work for us. So does it definitely need the tax component, or do you think you could get away without one? I need like three or four of those now. Before I could, like before, when the exit caps are really low, I could get, I don't know, a deal with two of those to work, but now I need at least three. So right now, I'm looking at a deal that doesn't have a tax, a tax abatement, but the rents are really high, like over $4 a square foot, and the affordable components only 10% and the parking ratios, only 0.5, so like the amount of concrete in the building is really low. It's mostly wood. And so it works with those three things on its own. What does that tax incentive look like? Is it like a tiff agreement, or is it a tax abatement, like how do those work in your market? Depends on the state, I would say the most favorable that I've seen, which is kind of my favorite just because it's the easiest and most standardized is in New Jersey, where they do a percent of EGI, and the negotiation is just how big of a percent is. So the last deal I did in New Jersey, it was 30 years along, 10 years at 10%, 10 years at 11% and then 10 years at 12%. And it just grows with the deal, and the way you've got most buyers on the exit, like institutions that's buying the stabilized asset, value it at a present value of the cash flows. And so that's how we look at it, too. And then the negotiations, just how deep the, or how small we can keep the number. Okay. And so is it all, it sounded like you were doing a podium deal to spare layer, you're looking at one partially mostly garden, podium, four story elevator walk up, like what does that look like? So the company 30 years has been around for 30 years, started in Cleveland and then spread out over the last 30 years and historically has been a suburban developer. And so true garden, surface park, walk up, and podium are the bread and butter. That said, the company in the Northeast in Mid-Atlantic mostly has been doing like-age steel, block and plank deals. And so we have the capability to do them all, but just the way the market is now, wood frame is the best. So of the three deals, I've 200 contract, one negotiating right now that I'm working on since joining. One is true garden, just all surface parks, lab on grade, up in suburban Massachusetts. One is partial podium. So half the building is just resi and then half is podium parking, then resi. And then the third deal is like as tight as you can get with wood frame, which is like 5/2, and goes underground. You can justify underground parking. So that one has a tax deal, only 10% affordable. It's on the water with great views and we think we can get really high rent. So that one kind of checks off all four of the boxes we were talking about before. Yeah. Okay. And like you're not doing garden style in like urban areas, are you? Like these are in the burbs. Like how rural do you go? So the garden one we're looking at is South Shore Boston, which is pretty rural, right? It's like it's actually an industrial former, not former current industrial park and this was a legacy piece of land they've just been using to do some kind of like what the family's been using to kind of manage a earth work and stuff. And so it's huge parcel and just there's enough land to do all that. And then rents are high enough to really justify all podium anyway. But then the other deals are in ones in Jersey City, which is a pretty urban market across the river from New York. But it's like just outside the waterfront, which is like the true, you know, that's related in Tishman or doing high rises there. And we're just like a couple light rail stops behind that where zoning is in place to do high rise, but rents aren't really there. So it allows us to do wood frame. And the other one is in a city called New Rochelle, which is in Westchester, suburb of New York. And that's again, there's like high rises being built there by Arxar and some other institutions and this is just outside of the downtown. And that's kind of been my strategy, like I don't, high rises just multi-stuff. As you said, multi-stuff to work already high rise is just like, it's like impossible for the most part. Yeah. I don't know how the people do it. I've looked at the deals, so they just don't work for us. And how are you guys looking at deals, is it just like a, is it a merchant bill? Is it buy and hold forever? What do you think? Yeah, we're a merchant builder. And so all of our deals need to underwrite with a merchant model execution, which is why a recent deal didn't work out for us. It had a lot of brownfield tax credits that needed to be taken advantage of. And the way those are paid out with our company's tax structure, it would have delayed the payment, which kills the IRR, which doesn't allow us to do the merchant model. And so it didn't work for us. But yeah, we need to have a good spread between the going in and the exit and make about 20%. Yeah. How are you feeling about exit caps these days? I just kind of feel like I'm putting my finger in the air and saying that somewhere around here. So the Boston market has been seeing tons of trades, strong trades too, like low fours. No, not low, maybe mid fours, but with a forehand on it, which is crazy to me. But it bosses really strong market. What about per unit pricing on those though? Is it still high? Yeah. Yeah. Still up there. Four. What are those people buying those? Yeah, we have any idea. Basically money in an incredibly difficult market to build in. And yeah, I mean, like there's just not a lot of product out there, and there's still drop growth. Like Boston's a Boston, I think, had the, I just did a committee presentation on this. And it's, it was number five of large cities in the U.S. that had the most growth between 2014 and 2024, Fitz City, with the most job growth, yeah, or no, population growth. Speaking of that, how does the Investment Committee work for you guys? There's two main committee meetings, Investment Committee and Executive. And then there's two kind of pre-committee meetings, one before each of those. And it's pretty interesting, I've just, my whole career, I've worked for family offices, so you just go to a guy and show him like a one-pager, and you're like, who we do this or not. And now I'm learning kind of the process and politics of a whole committee process. And it's, the good thing is that it's just pretty standardized and numbers based, like you need a story and everything, and needs to be a compelling asset. But also, if you hit the metrics, you hit the metrics kind of thing. And it works both ways. If it doesn't hit the metrics, then I get out of here, but if it works, then it works. And you move forward. And so, different people are on each one, you have to hit different return thresholds on each one. It's the final committee meeting if they hit the highest. Some contingencies come off as you go through the process. So as we do more due diligence and as we're more comfortable in our construction numbers and soft costs and assumptions, like some of the contingencies will come off. So it's kind of a fun little ride. Yeah. Are you guys ever buying a entitled site, so are you running the entire process? We'll do both. The challenge with entitled sites is that we are pretty particular with what we want to build. So if it doesn't check our standard, like match our standards, we need to go back, ask for time and go back. And all those sellers never want to do that, right? I'm sure you want to deal with that. Yeah, exactly. I'll be ready. And they're like, all right, close in 30 days and we're like, nah, can't do that. Yeah. It's like close in 30 days and make no money in four years and like, it's down to great. I'd love to. Yeah. We'll do both. We just don't ever buy us is. And tell them they risk ever. What do you think is like the biggest, I guess, misstep on like the entitled deals that you see? Like is it too dense? Is it different? Wrong product type? Is it? No. So the two, the two biggest things I always see and I know the exact reason. It's just they want to fit more units to then be able to try to get more money. But they do micro units and they do mechanical parking. Yeah. And no one in this and I mainly am in the suburbs. So it's when I see those things in the suburbs in a super urban area like New York City, that's a different story. But in the suburbs, everyone has a car and no one wants to wait for their car. So you need at least one to one parking ratio and no one wants to go to an elevator and press a button and wait for their car to come down and have it potentially get stuck. And then some ask go fix it. So like the mechanical parking situations. Every time I see those, I know the person's going to try to flip it because they were able to squeeze more units in and they always, always has to go back and get it redesigned. And then the micro units, you know, we'll try to tell some story that lots of singles and there's a demand for it. And then, you know, not one comp has those types of units and you're like, I can't do that either. Okay. That makes sense. Do you guys also do in house management, right? Yeah. We do in house. And so what is your scope, is it site selection up to entitlements and then you hand it off to the construction guy or where do you go? Yeah. So NRP's pretty, um, has like the specialized model versus souped nuts and those are two different options that the two big institutions kind of go by. And so my role here is pre-development, I'd call it. So I'm sourcing the deals, I'm tying them up, I'm getting working with in house people as well as consultants to entitle them and design them. And then towards the end of that process, we have a capital markets team that comes in and they're raising the debt and equity. And then once it closes, our goal is to break ground the day closes and then our construction team goes in and they lead that. And I'm still the developer, not really quotes, like I'm the developer that owns the deal and I'm paid throughout the process as well, like my, my, um, compensation is tied throughout the deal. Uh, when our company gets its fees and then at the end, if it's a promote and everything, um, but I'm not daily, like I'm not responsible, I don't turn into a pro, like a development manager or anything. I'm the awful model, the, the, the idea is that if everyone's just an expert in their one field that allows each person to go and do more and then more deals and, yeah. And on the capital market side, I'm guessing this is all like private equity type of stuff, like higher octane, like, what does that look like? Yeah, we've, again, 30 years, uh, been, been doing this and, um, it's mostly big institutions, pension funds. We've got a little more creative just because it's been more difficult. So we have some family office money, uh, uh, so overseas, last couple deals, um, have been interesting, but, but it's a mix. A. G. It was on one of our last projects that we sold recently in suburban New York. Yeah. How are you finding the fundraising environment? So I, it's not my focus, um, yeah, I've been pulled into a couple calls with our capital market. Seem because again, I'm like, I own the deal and I'm, I'm kind of like, I present it, I'll present it with the capital markets team. Um, I'd say it's definitely more difficult from what I hear from that team, but one of the, the good things about our setup is, and everything is that there's a lot of capital out there that is more focused on the GP, not, not more focused, but equally interested in like a blue chip GP, as well as a good deal. And so the fact that we have this, this track record and we have a history of good returns and a, and, um, and good deals that make money, that's allowed us to just be able to, to just cater to like certain capital with our deals. Yeah. And going back to, uh, question on entitlements, um, do you always have to, are you always able to close like subject to permit or do you take entitlement risk? Never. And so that's the main reason I lose deals. Yeah. It's usually never price or deposit sizes or whatever it's money going hard. And so when, when I'm up against these like family offices that have 100 year time horizons and they're like, we'll figure it out and, you know, they're, they, there's bodies with the mayor. Yeah. And they're like, we own some guns street, like I can never compete with that. And so what happened, for me, it's usually like special situations where the person, the seller, either has the, doesn't mind giving me the time, like they have the time, like they've, you know, long term owner that's been paying carry forever or, um, they need the time. So like there was a deal once where it was an owner occupier and they needed time to go find a new space. And so they were like, we need a year and a half. And I was like, perfect. That's not long in need for my, my entitlements. Okay. How, what are the entitlement processes like, I mean, you're in a bunch of different markets is that like, is it, do you find it's extremely difficult or are you in places that welcome apartments? Like, how do you think about that? So strategically, I try to be in places where someone wants me, whether it's, you know, the, the, the, the staff in the city or the mayor or the neighbors around it, or we're, we have a deal or contract right now where the site is currently just like a dilapidated industrial building that has homeless people in there and they're causing, you know, they're doing graffiti and sleeping there and there's been a crime. And so all the surrounding houses when we did a, when we did a community meeting, they were like applauding us. And it was great. They were like, knock that down and build something there. And so we made sure that you're lying to me. No, it's what it got. There's, there's homeless people across the street, you know, shooting up and so like they, the people literally across the street were like, we want anything that's there besides what's there now. And so we made sure we went into that and they still are just like, we'd love trade or just, you know, like me too, but like that's not going to happen. Listen, it's not common, but it's just that something kind of shocked me too, but we made sure that they, we made sure to tell them to tell the decision makers in the city. We submitted the, the application recently, it's in a city that has a pretty professional and formalized process and it's still going to probably take, you know, nine months a year, but yeah, there's, there's no like nonsense. It's just, are these rezone projects or are they like, by right, with like design review or in that type of stuff? So the one I was just referencing to is actually a down zone. So we have to change the zoning, but it's, we're hoping it'll be pretty smooth because we're proposing less high, less units, higher parking ratio, all the things that community wants. Another, another deal we have under contract is, as of right, the only thing we're going to try to do is they need the, the town wants to per unit parking, which is just not, of course, not necessary, but there's some precedent in town of, of projects, having the space set aside for the two per unit, but then only building one and a half. So that's, that's our plan. So it won't technically be a variance, but it will, won't be, it'll allow save some money. Interesting. Do you guys do like the hairy entitlement processes like, or is that like where it's a huge contentious rezone? Like is that up your alley? Like we could, like no one internally would say don't do that, but it's up to the local developer of me. Like I, I don't want to do that. The deals are already hard enough, and I'm trying to make money and do deals. Yeah. And these are all market rate deals, right? Is there outside of like a mandatory affordable component like are you guys doing anything else? Yes, the light tech stuff. So NRP is actually one of the biggest affordable developers in the country. That's how we started 30 years ago in Cleveland, and our company does strictly ground up multi-family development, and then there's just two buckets. There's market rate, which was started maybe 15 years ago, and then affordable. I cover market rate in the Northeast, and then I've teammates that cover affordable. So affordable definitely is a whole other animal that I don't want to pretend I know anything about, but we don't only buy subject to approvals, but we have to buy subject to the funding, all those credits and everything, so just, yeah, even tougher. Yeah. Do you guys, have you guys liked that build for rent stuff? I actually just submitted an offer on, it was the highest pre-know-offer price I've ever made in my career, which would be a build for rent, but the challenges, price land prices around here are so high that the four-sale builders just can't be competitive for rentals. Yeah. This is such a high demand, and see, you think you're going to lose or no? Oh, I'm 100% going to lose. The broker already killed me, like, it was kind of fun. I've been tracking the deal for two years and heckling the sellers, and then it came out. Actually, this was a tweet the other day, it was like, it's always fun sending an offer for 45 seconds after a broker launches a deal because I've been chasing it for two years, so I had already underwritten it, already made an offer, and then the broker came out, he's a friend of mine. He told me that it's probably going to go to toll or linar or someone, and I was like, it's, you know, for fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm guessing you were just finding that at your former job, which was working at that family office, right? I've been on the development side since I left CBRE, which is where I started in my career, and I've been tracking deals since then that are, and yeah, somewhere coming around. So the answer question, yes, and there's even ones that have been coming back from you and further. What was like the, you worked at the family office, now you're working like a larger institutional place. There are the differences there, because I've only, I haven't even worked with like a lot of family offices. It's mostly just high net worth people and the occasional family office, RAA type of investor, like what is the difference for you on that? There's so many differences. Every single aspect you get to think of, the gap in how it's handled is so different. The biggest one is just speed and decision making. So before I went to one guy whose office was five feet from me, and I asked a question, and he says yes or no, and then we like moved on. Here it's, there's like five people above me before the CEO, and there are SOPs, I didn't know SOP was before I moved here, there's pages and pages of SOPs of different processes of each step, and there's a whole internal software that tracks deals, and if there are requests for your budget, it's just, here there's stages and steps and checkmarks and other people that are kind of alongside you, and there, it's just, yeah, not the hip, like he has, he also has 30 years experience, but it's just, he can make the decisions immediately, because based on his experience, and that was it, here it's just a lot of people making a lot of decisions. The other thing that I enjoy about, the thing I enjoy about here is the fact, there's like, I've never, since I've always been at family offices, there's never been like a development team, right? It's just me, I'm like the person, and here you have a team, and there's like camaraderie, and it's like fun, because everyone's working towards the same goal, most people are incentivized the same way, so the more and better deals, the more conversation people make, and so everyone wants to help, everyone wants, ways to get deals to work, and the vibe is just different. Yeah, I mean, there's only so many levers that you can pull on multi-family though, right? Like how else can you make something work? I mean, this is, this is my ignorance, like I haven't done these big projects, but I would just love it. It's a big question. But, so at the family office, there was like a, there was a construction number that we knew what we built for, and we would look at the best comp, and we had a general exit cap that we were using, and like those were the three numbers, it was literally one pager, and it was like, that was the deal, and we'd talk about it with the principal, and that was it. Here, we have a whole, we have teams that help with every aspect of the underwriting, and so, if the rents aren't, if the initial comms we're looking at for rents aren't doing it for us, there's a team that will help us think about the layout and the, of the building, and the, the unit mix, and the position of the units, and other income that we could be charging based on our portfolio across the country, and other comps in the market, and how to add revenue there. And then there's a whole construction team that will say, what about you doing this for the, the garage construction, and there was a, there was a construction call recently where like the, the architect laid out this whole site plan, and they had a bunch of retaining walls behind the podium of these individual building, and the construction guy was like, why do we have both? Can't we use the building to hold back the dirt, and then we can get rid of the retaining walls and save money there? So there's these just like teams of people that are digging, dialing in, and shaving money off here and there to like get a deal to work versus, yeah, we didn't have the bandwidth at the family office, so like you couldn't do all those things, it, it, it, you like had a look high level and only see if the deal worked. Here you can like spend more time refining it to get the deal to, to work. Yeah, by the way, what are the amenity packages usually look like for you guys? I feel like everybody has like their strong opinion on like you need a clubhouse, you don't need a clubhouse, you need like a pool, and it has to be this big, and like the gym's gotta look like this, like what do you think about that stuff, so it's like depends, but. Yeah, so we definitely have like internal standards that the company has preferences towards, but at the end of the day it's really just the comps, so if all the comps have a pool and we're assuming the same rents, we need to have a pool. If all, if all the comps have all sports simulator and a pet washings that like we need to have all those things, or maybe we're charging a premium rent and none of the comps have those things, then we'll add them to justify the premium rent. So it's really just looking at the comps and deciding if we need to be above or at. How far, how often do you think you are like setting the new comp? Like is it? We're trying to see new time. No. Oh, okay. No, we're pretty compared to our, I think compared to our peers just because, I feel like we lose deals, sometimes for, for certain reasons, but I don't love only having the deal work because we're breaking records and rents, like that. Yeah. It has to be a compelling story. So like all the comps need to be absolute garbage, or being horrible locations, or have no amandies, or 20 years old, for me to be like having a huge spread and being like the top of the market. I definitely need something to point to. Even if it's further away, I'd want to be able to say like we're always going to be below this comp. Okay. That makes sense. And then who's like your exit buyer? Is it just like always some REIT, some Japanese pension fund? Like, do you design it for like a specific exit, or is it just institutional grade exit? Yeah. Some private equity firm bought the last, the last one in Westchester. So, yeah, just institutions and buying on the exit, but one thing that Capital Markets has been telling us is just those buyers right now are focusing on like lower, lower check size deals. And so they're pushing us to be looking at deals between like two and 300 units versus three and four. Okay. That makes sense to me. There's just more of them. If you get to like $100 million deal, whatever, it's just there's less people out there. For sure. Okay. And how are Rents in your guys markets, are they, I mean here in Utah owning apartments is not like a great time right now with how low rents have gotten or how much they've dropped. Are you seeing that as well, or is it not nearly as bad? No. Rents aren't going down around here. They aren't like growing like they were before to encover and all that, but they haven't gone down in the Northeast. And they range anywhere from like within my markets, they range anywhere from $2 to $250, which I can't get deals to work in those types of markets. And then there's a town where they were answered $10 per square foot per month. Where is that? Like the United States? What? Is that like Manhattan? Rents? You know, in suburbs. But we don't do anything in the boroughs. And so the challenge with those markets, Tanner, are like the rents are great. And so you could build, you could build a high rise there, right? But those markets usually don't allow for the density that we need for like a minimum deal size. So these people building 10, 20, 30 unit deals there, but no one's building 200 unit deals there. I mean, why is, how is this market like not oversupplied at this point is that just like insane zoning? Yeah, there was a deal in the, that just broke ground. I have a friend that's in the deal a couple months ago that got approvals after 21 years. That should be illegal. That should be a felony for every city council member. There was a lawsuit. Then, and then they got approval, they got site planned, but then they needed sewer. And there were more lawsuits to keep them from getting sewer. And it was, there was a real deal article, it was like the guy on the cover and it was like Connecticut development site finally approved after 20 years, something unbelievable. That sounds awful. We're on year six on a deal out in the Hamptons in a small affordable deal. And you haven't closed yet? No, subject to approvals. Wow. It's pretty incredible. Let's talk about your little side hustle. I wouldn't even call it a little side hustle anymore, I think it's getting pretty big. I am a happy, happy customer of DealNav. What is DealNav? DealNav is the simplest, most affordable, map-based CRM and deal tracking tool that's purpose built for real estate. That's our, that's our position of the market. Okay. How did you start this? I made it because for 13 years in my career, I tracked deals using Excel. So like I told you, after CBRE, I was on the principal side and generally been doing the same thing. And so I had an Excel book per state, tab per town, row per property. And I would tie it to Google MyMaps, it's very visual. And all each property, right, with owner's name, contact info, notes, whatever, every time I called them. And it would be, quote, tie it to Google MyMaps and I looked back and forth and it was great for over a decade. And then a year and a half ago, I was like, all right, I need to step up my game and just like, stopping cheap and lazy and just get a real CRM. And after demoing 12, 15 real estate CRMs, I hated them all. And I was like, let me just build what I want. And so I found a software developer, so it's actually really funny story. He is this Iraqi guy who moved to Indiana, emigrated to Indiana, as a housekeeper. Taught himself to code because he was annoyed with the way he was being given pieces of paper to go clean rooms. And so he taught himself to code. He made a software that helped them manage like room turns in this hotel. And then he, you know, worked his way up and he started getting, he was like an IT at the hotel. And then he went off on his own. And he just a software development now. And that software, that hotel, was then brought over to my last company's boutique hotel portfolio. And the manager of one of our hotels was like, you should, you know, I was talking about this software that I wanted to do at my last firm and they were like, first I reached out to a Salesforce consultant, so you can like make a custom Salesforce. And my colleague at the last firm overheard me was like, why don't you talk to this guy, this guy that made our software. And he gave me a quote, and his quote to build DLNAV was like less than the initiation fee for Deal Path. I didn't tell them that. It bloomed. No, I didn't tell them that. It blew my mind. And why would I spend all this money for these things I don't have features I don't need or want when I can just have exactly what I want and own it myself. Yeah, exactly. And so what, like, what did you not like about all the other CRMs versus what DLNAV has? So there was three main things. One was a lot of them just wanted you to do too much, so they wanted you to do your underwriting in their software, your due diligence, your density studies, your whatever. And I just wanted the prospecting piece. The second thing is a lot of them didn't have a good map feature, which shocked me, right? You'd think like a real estate CRM. That would be the first thing they'd have a good map. And then the third thing was they were just too expensive. And even the ones that were cheap monthly would require like five or ten minimum seats. And I've always been one to my band, and I want to pay for ten accounts if I was using two. Yeah. So when I made my own, I just, I did all the things that, I didn't do all, any of the things that bothered me about on the competitors and I did all the things I wanted. And how long did this take you to get like up and running? Like you have this idea, you talk to the guy who built it, and then what's this timeline look like? So it was probably, and it was, while I was transitioning jobs, so I did, it was kind of slow and I had like downtime to do this. I definitely wouldn't be able to manage or handle this right now, like I have kids now and have a busy full-time job, but it was probably six months of like, when I first gave him like a hand sketch piece of paper of what I wanted, and like some screenshots of some other platforms that I wanted him to base it off of, and then like rounds of comments. And then I started using it, like I just started using it at work just for myself, because I originally had no intention of sharing it with anyone. And so I'd say six months to be like a, there's a tech term, I'm learning all these tech terms, like a viable, a viable product. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know better than me. I'm a, I'm a small venture capital investor. There you go. See how pricey it is. Six months. And then where is it today, like, what does the team look like in terms, is it still just like you and that one guy, or how does it work now? No. So I brought some people on board so we can, which allowed us to bring it to the public and then scale. So I have two co-founders, like equity, people have equity, and considered co-founders. One is the guy who, his name is Anthony, who like actually is the reason that I'm here doing this. So when I told him about it, he's in real estate, and then he had tried some software companies and startups, and they were mildly successful, but they, you know, I think he sold one, but you knew how to do it, right? Start like a software SaaS company because he had done it a couple times. And so I told him about this thing I'd made for myself. I told him that I had tweeted about it, and some strangers on the internet were like, I would pay for that. And he was like, why don't you, why don't you like launch it, why don't you make it available to the public? And I told him I didn't have the time or interest or skill set, and so we made a deal. If he runs the day to day and makes the website and gets the LLC and literally does everything except business development, I would do it with him. And so he was the first teammate. And then both of us realized that we had no technical skills. And so we brought on a third guy named Jack, who's like an actual software developer. And he's both building it out and then also managing these two part time guys on the tech side. So we have a fractional CTO, who we use like ad as needed and pay hourly, who's a CTO, a big company, and now does like a consulting. And then we have a software developer from South America that's part time. He was full time. Now he's part time. He goes up and down with him. But those three are kind of the technical side. And then me and Anthony manage the day to, Anthony manages it today and I just really talk about it during the course of the day. That's really my job. Every time I meet a broker and acquisitions person in real life, I try to weave it into a conversation. Is that who your target selling demographic is, is brokers, acquisitions people, who else uses it? Yeah, so like 80% of our users are acquisitions people, maybe 70, 70, 80% and then 20% brokers. And then the rest is like, like in sales brokers. And then the rest is probably, not probably, it's like that inequity guys and then we have a few non real estate. So there's a guy that paves driveways and then a guy that sells like parking, gate access software. Really? Yeah. And they're just using that as their CRM. They really like the map feature and they found out that you're in as nice. I love maps. It's interesting. Okay, and do all of your customers just come from like your Twitter stuff? So 90% have been inbound organic from Twitter, which is crazy to me. Pretty crazy. Mind boggling, to be honest, especially considering a couple, you know, like 8,000 followers is not like, I have a big count. But the thing that really has helped us is when some, some of the real estate influencers have signed up on their own, maybe with some my prodding, but some of them reached out on their own for demos and signed up and then just on their own talked about it and we'll get like, we'll get like a bunch of users each time. Yeah. How many users are you guys currently at? About 300 users. What is like the goal with this? The short term goal start? That's probably like the long term goal. That would be awesome. That would be sick. The short term goal is to get to a point that will, um, self sustain my two other partners to work full time here. So they're, they're working. Their compensation does not, is not commensurate with the amount of hours they're working right now and the goal is to be able to pay them, uh, yeah, justly, yeah. That makes sense. So I have my, my version of Deal Nav is a shops in yards.com, uh, a marketplace for leasing your shitty industrial site, uh, how, it's me and one other guy and he kind of just vibe code at this on, uh, whatever that AI, replete or whatever, the software is like somewhat functional, but we have like no idea what we're doing, uh, you got any tips for us? So I, I've, I've had a, I've lost a couple of deal nav users because they said they could just, um, vibe code their own. And one of them I followed up with and I was like, oh, do you mind showing me what you came up with? And when he showed it to me, it was horrible, like it didn't work. He was like, oh, like that, that's supposed to work or like, oh, these buttons actually are supposed to be here. And so once in a while I freak out and I like go on to stand up that the dev, the software development team has every week and I'm like, AI is going to take over and why are we doing this? I like, you know, just kind of doomsday and what makes me feel better is that what they tell me is that the AI vibe coding is great for the front end. So you can make it with enough work, you can like make it look really pretty, but you still need like real software developers to have, to build out the back end and have something like functional and smooth, especially if you're ever going to have integrations. So like depending how complicated it gets, so DLNAF has, you know, it will send you texts and emails. It's tied to Google Maps on the map. It's integrated with Google Maps. We're planning some other kind of APIs and you need to like write the code for that is my understanding. So depending on how sophisticated it gets, you need to spend a little, a little money. Okay. How much money do you think we need to spend to get this to like MVP? So there's a lot of different options that we've tried and there's like the $7 in our software development farms in India and then there's like the $40 an hour software developers and like Eastern Europe and South America that would probably be paid like $150,000 a year in US and then there's like American guys that you could pay a lot of money and it's based on my experience and what I've been told you kind of just get what you pay for. So when you do this $7 an hour guys, they're doing the same work over and over again because like they send it out and then you see it and you're like this is shit and then they fix it and then they send it out again and then by the time they've spent it's like the same as the $40 an hour guy. Yeah. And then if you had an American that you're just charging $200 an hour, you could just do it all faster but it is more expensive but depending on how complicated it is, you can like a couple, $10, $20,000, you can probably get something good. That said, if you get, I've heard of, I've met some people that have spent $100, $200,000 and then like the product does, it still doesn't work. So you just, I would just spend the time like interviewing and making sure they have experience doing what you're trying to do. That would be my advice. Where do I find these people, by the way? So Upwork and Fiverr, but then the company that I used to, for my CTO, it's called Fractional CTO, I think is the name of the company, and they offer other services such as sourcing you software developers that have this skill set for your product. So like when we, we found a CTO that had the skill set for our product, he had worked for some SaaS companies, he knew what CRMs were, not everyone knows what CRM is, so we kind of got it. And then when the next step was to find a software developer to help us, and he went and found someone with the experience of like the tech stack that we were using, and then also just like a new, the type of product we were building. Okay. So if you use a third party that will help you manage that, it's better than just trying to go and upwork and like interviewing all these people on your own and like hoping that they aren't lying and, you know, having to like go through a couple. Yeah. How does the company work at, do they care about DLNAF? So they're one of our biggest customers. About a year ago, I gave a live in-person demo to all the developers across country, and whoever was interested in joining was able, you know, the company like paid for an account. So they are supportive in that sense. My local team are all users of it. I'm like the main user just because it's my job, but I have like a junior person and a senior person that have accounts and go in there and add notes and look up deal statuses and stuff. And then the other thing is like I've been getting deal flow from it, which is pretty awesome. So I don't, I'm not involved day to day, but like people find out I'm one of the co-founders or maybe I'll give like a demo on a weekend or a night or something, and I usually give an introduction at the beginning of like who I am and what I do. And I've gotten deal referrals so people will be like, oh, like you do stuff in Boston. This actual example was there was a guy who had a cousin who went to shopping center zoned for apartments in suburban Boston. And he was like, he was looking at DLNAF just as to use, he's from Florida and he was like, oh, I have a development site for you in your market, and I was like, great. I went toward it a couple of weeks later, like that has happened more than a couple times. It's awesome. Cool. And if anybody is listening to this podcast and wants a demo, how do they do that? Deal-nav.com and there's a self-scheduling link to demo and Anthony McCovounder is still giving all the demos personally live, and so you get to do that with him or me depending on if you want to do one on the weekend, spend your weekend with me, or you could follow along on Twitter, our handles at DLNAF. Cool. And there's a link there too. Sweet. That must have been fun, dude. Thanks for coming on.