Can Blimp Homes help you and your clients centralize the real estate process? CEO Matt Shaw explains

Brokerage Insider

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TRANSCRIPT:

📍 Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann and I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent property technology companies in real estate and provider accustom, brokerage technology to medium and large brokerages in the United States, Canada.

And now even around the world. In addition, I'm the managing partner, Travis capital, a private equity fund focused on the property technology. On today's episode, we have Matt Shaw, the mats, the CEO of a property technology company called blimp homes. Blimp is a mobile only real estate tech company that helps agents connect their clients and other parties in the transaction.

So, Matt, thanks for joining us today. Thanks very much. Great. Well, I'm excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about your company to be honest you know, until we, we chatted here about you coming on the show, I hadn't heard of you guys before, so I'm really interested in learning more about what you guys do.

I did get a chance to play with your app. And so for all those folks listening, you know, feel free to jump into the app store either Google or Apple app stores. You're on both and you can go download the blimp homes app and play with it. But first let's talk a little bit about your history and how you got into real estate, because that's something I'm always very interested in.

Now, when I, when I took a quick peak, it looks like you come from a history in the banking world, the the FinTech world. And then recently you kind of got into the blockchain world. So what, what caused you to have a jump into. Yes. Thanks very much. Well, my background, as you, as you rightly say, is a bit varied.

And I, I started my career in investment banking. I was the best bank for over 20 years, but I was always very much involved on I would say the cutting edge side, you know, the innovation side. So I was very deeply involved for instance, in building the capital markets in the central and Eastern Europe.

And that led me to, to, to, to down various avenues eventually into investing in real estate personally. Really that was probably my first foray into the real estate space. I mean, I guess growing up in London you know, everybody is slightly obsessed with property and you know, certainly, you know, my, my experience was trying to get on the property ladder at a young age.

Going through a bit of a boom and bust and then, and then eventually sort of investing in other properties abroad you know, partly because of my banking background, I traveled around quite a bit. So I've lived in several countries and ended up, you know, buying properties and obviously UK, but also France, Cyprus, Switzerland, Canada, and, and also the U S and I think.

My experience in the U S was one of the reasons where she really piqued my interest to, to get into this. Well, you know, obviously if you've, if you've done that level of investing in ownership of properties, I can see where, where you'd be interested. But do you, do you or anybody around you have any formal brokerage side of the business?

Cause it, the reason I asked the question is that I, a lot of times, you know, people that start in this world, you usually have come from, they were an agent before a broker before a family member was an agent or a broker for before accepting. But from what you just said, it didn't sound like that was the case.

So you were an investor and, and owned property and then decided to jump in and help solve a problem. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah. So that's my personal experience, but of course other people in the team have got deep experience in this space. One of our co-founders Ben Clark was I think a member of the founding team very early on at Zillow, for instance, and has a long experience in the real estate data space.

And some of our advisors have had the illustrious careers in real estate as well, but you're right. My main experience really is I suppose, really an interest in systems and, and problem solving. And then also as a consumer. And I think, you know, my, again, my experience in the U S was quite quite significant from, from, you know, its impact on me.

I mean, I think that every country. Has its own quirks. I mean, the UK, for instance, you're buying a home in, in, in, in England is quite strange in some ways quite quirky. And you know, every country has its own nuances. And I think that what really got me interested in, in real estate on the technical tech technology side was was when I started buying a couple of homes in India.

Gotcha. Well, you know, let's jump in and talk a little bit about blimp then. And how and what the problem is that you're solving, because it does seem to solve somewhat of a, of an issue in the industry, from what I saw. So tell us a little bit about blimp. Tell us about maybe how you got started on the specifics of solving the problem and w where you saw the problem and then a, about the company.

Yeah. So so as I say, I initially bought a property in the U S and I was really surprised about the, you know, how much friction there is in buying real estate in the U S I guess my, my key takeaway was you know, being saved by an amazing realtor, you know, so a realtor really quarterback, quarterback the whole transaction.

At the time I really was, you know, finding my feet and, you know, I, I, this is probably many people who have a similar experience, you know, you really rely on a great realtor, but I also noticed that some of the communication channels. Well you know, very legacy and you know, old fashioned. So I had an amazing realtor who went above and beyond, you know, any sort of call of duty to the point where I left him some keys and he coordinated, you know, some repairs and, you know, things which, you know, we shouldn't really ask a realtor to do, but but equally he communicated with me.

Many different channels. So he would send me a bunch of links, which I would look at. And then I would then try to remember which of those links I liked. So I ended up clicking twice and then making handwritten notes. We would speak by phone. He would send me texts and so forth. So it was, it was quite a disparate communication channel.

And I think that I, I sort of realized that maybe there is a, a way where the consumer could be guided through a transaction in a more logical fashion where they can understand, you know, all of the tasks in front of you, all the core services, which you need to engage and above all, perhaps finding all these core services in one place.

I think there's some reasons why. Some of the legacy systems have a lot of friction for consumers is because, you know, you have different channels, you know, different core services competing for consumer attention, essentially. And so in some ways, you know, the consumer is getting dragged from one, you, you know you know, sales funnel to another in, you know, which doesn't enhance the consumer experience.

So I think. What really struck me from my experience and what the problem, one of the key problems we're trying to solve is really helping the guide the consumer. It's truly the prime prime buying process in a way, which is, you know, logical. There are no surprises. So again, I'm a, I'm a, you know, a Brit living in Canada and I bought a home in, in the U S and I'll be really honest.

I didn't actually know what title insurance was at that point. So that was, I sort of surprised at the end, but again, it was all smoothly navigated thanks to my thanks to my age. But I think the idea really is that the consumers can navigate this process in a more seamless way. It feels like one end to end transaction, not a series of, you know, sort of disparate transactions.

You know, I need my mortgage now. I need my insurance. Now they might talk to the insurance and so forth. So it seems like a seamless end to end transaction. And equally for the, for the professionals, you have the consumer in one place where they're basically saying, well, I understand that this is at this point in the process, I really realize I do need to put in place insurance.

So I do need to find an insurance solution as an example, so that you know, in this example, the, the consumer is a willing participant in, in actively seeking those services. So I think it really, the idea really is to solve those. Those friction points for the consumer, but equally solve some problems for the professionals in terms of how do you reach those reach those consumers.

And then I think also overlaid onto this. There is an incentive and reward system to incentivize both professionals and Well, I think we'll get to that part and talking about the crypto side which is certainly an interesting part of what you're doing. And just a little bit, I have a number of questions for you about that, that portion of it.

But I want to step back for a second because, you know, you said something kind of interesting. And, and if for frequent listeners of the show you'll know that we, we had a series of shows that we did about international real estate and how different it was to the United States and even in Canada As somebody who's not from the United States and is used to how things are done in other countries.

What do you think are the biggest differences that are there between, you know, maybe purchasing a home in the United States versus in London? I know you mentioned the title insurance thing. Certainly we can start there, but, but what else have you seen? That's different. That's probably, yeah. You put your finger probably on one of the biggest differences, you know, in England, for instance, This is probably an example of, I think in the U S does it much better, but in, in, in England, you know, if you, if you find a house you'd like to buy and you, you basically reached an agreement with the seller.

And by the way, the, in, in, typically in England, the, an agent only represents the seller. It's actually quite unusual to have an agent representing a buyer that's normally just sort of you know, pop styles or something like this, or people who are extremely busy hire an agent to help them find a home.

So typically you just have an agent representing one side of the transaction, and let's just say you found a home, which you arranged to buy. And let's for the sake of argument, say it's a million pound home in London. Quite a small house, to be honest in London these days. And all parties are agreed.

You then go through a process where the, the lawyers check back through the, the land registry to make sure they're in those sorts of strange aspects which could impact the title. And since a lot of these houses have very, very old, you know, I remember I bought a house in England, I think was built in 1850 or, and it had a previous condition on the land that you weren't allowed to graze sheep on the land as an example.

So it goes really, really way, way back some of these items and, and other strange things about how, you know, you can't use the house for certain activities and things like this. But the key thing that takes typically takes about three weeks for the lawyer to check all these old covenants and rights of way to make sure that no one can walk across your land and things like this.

And during that three week period somebody else could come along and just outbid you. So the there's a word in England in a new school cause something which just means that, you know, somebody just comes along in that three week closing period that says, well, 1.1 million and you've lost the you've lost the house.

And in a, in a weak market buyers do the, do the opposite. You know, they, they, they, they reduce that bit at the last minute and, you know, quite often the person has no alternative, but to accept that low bid. So I think, you know, the title side is handled quite differently. You clear all the title You know, deficiency, deficiencies and do all the analysis during the closing process, but you haven't actually bought the home.

So of course that's very, very different from the U S and I have to say, I think the U S is a much more satisfactory system, you know? So, you know obviously when, when somebody goes under contract here, you know, that does seem to be better. I I'm very glad in the United States and Canada, for that matter, we don't have dumping.

And that's going to be a, maybe a new, a new word in my vernacular here of making sure you don't. Because dumped. But that, you know, that is a PR that does seem like a problem where you have almost no security in, in the deal. Because I know, you know, when, when I've purchased homes for example, I purchased a home last year and two weeks later I purchased it right at the beginning of the pandemic on purpose because I recognize the data that showed the real estate was going.

Rebound very quickly. And I got a crazy deal and I definitely would've gotten gazumped because somebody else would have definitely come along. Had it been a different rule and seeing that the property was for sale made a higher bid because of the seller, you know, wanting to sell quickly worried about the pandemic.

So definitely seems like a better model there also, you know, that what you said about buyer's agent. It's still shocking to me. I have a friend in Georgia, not the state, the country and he is has been actively going around to different countries, trying to essentially push the concept of the value of a buyer's agent in representing the buyer and making sure that they had, you know, somebody fighting for their behalf on their behalf.

And it seems like that's not the way it is on a lot of places. So. You know, let's, let's you know, talk a little bit about the the, the, the app and what we're doing here, because in playing with it, it seems like the idea, the main idea is, is we're connecting up a number of, of Hardy stakeholders in the system.

Right? So being the idea is I can go in. As an agent set up a transaction and then invite multiple people in. So, you know, it kind of begs the question of You know, is it, is the idea that there's this one place for all of communication, because I think today a lot of this is just done over text messages.

You know, the agent goes in there, I messages app on their phone and texts the lender and said, Hey, what's the status? And then they click and text the, the buyer or the seller and just kind of give them an update on what's going on. So is the idea here to have more of a centralized location for that?

Or, or what's the long-term goal? Maybe, maybe you've got something that you're working on. That's adding on to that that will provide more functional. Yeah, I think I mean, I think the idea of communicating through text, it, it, it definitely works to a certain, certain, a certain point, but here's an example.

My daughters were looking for a house to rent actually in, in California you know, a year or two ago. And they were sharing, you know, properties with us, you know, do we think this is a good run or not? And they were, they were obviously sharing it with the other, the other. Students who are looking to live in the same house.

So, you know, there's multiple people on this and literally people were saying, sending texts around, you know you know, and people are, people are pulling in listings from, you know, different, different you know, Zillow listings and so forth. And then people would say, well, What did you think of the one which I marked with an exclamation point or what do you think about the one I put a heart next to?

So once you get into sort of multiple parties looking to look at properties and share their share their thoughts on the property, it actually gets complicated quite, quite quickly. And email doesn't solve it very well either. As I say, you know, if you get a series of links you know, somehow the human brain.

Well, maybe it's just my brain, but if somebody sends me 10 links and open them all, and it's four houses, I'd quite like to see for some reason, I'm I sort of have to go back and remember which, which, what, which those were. So I think one of the, one of the. Key advantages of our, of our app is that people, even before they select a realtor, for instance, to help them, consumers could just simply share listings and exchange views.

You can pull in listings from different sources and basically just chat about them. So it's a little bit, you know, a little bit like slack for real estate, if you like. And I think this is, this is, you know, a superior experience to. So texting, and then, then they can then invite the consumer can invite you know, the various professionals.

They need to help them probably very likely guided by, you know, their realtor. So for instance, you know, they can then bring in you know, somebody on the mortgage side, somebody on the insurance insurance side and so forth, and then they can have, you know, multiple chance of course. Some of the communication is, is just in private chats.

You know, what, what is discussed between the mortgage broker and the consumer would not be for instance, necessarily shown to the realtor. Although some, sometimes that's a very, very key sort of you know, communication channel with those three parties very often they're very cool to it, but there's some information which shouldn't be shared.

So for instance, uploading documents or just sharing, sharing, more confidential things So it really puts the power back in the hands of the consumer in terms of they understand the transaction. They can look at lots of different puppet properties, share properties, discuss them. I mean, a very typical flow would be.

You know, they would, they would have shared, you know, three or four properties among themselves. For instance, you know, if there's more than one party buying, then they bring a realtor into the, into the mix and say, look, these are the homes. This is the type of home I've been looking at. And and you know, probably these days let's say, and every time we looked at it, it's already gone, but this could you now help us.

And then, and then the realtor would then say, well, here's 10 others, which we think you should take a look at. And then you start this you know, rich communication, which is, you know, very, very good for all parties. And I think on the task side, there's a task management side. Again, you know, I was the stupid Bret from Canada who didn't really understand, fully understand the process in the U S but if I'd had that tool, which basically said that at these stages, in the transaction, you're going to need these professionals to support you that have been very, very helpful.

And you know, would, it would have led to less surprises on my side. So I think it's, it's really, it's very much trying to work with, with the industry, working with professionals sending that a good agent is really...