The IDEAL Investor Show: The Path to Early Retirement

Outsmart Property Pitfalls & Secure Smarter Deals

• Axel Meierhoefer

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Bob Frady is a data-driven entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of PropertyLens.com, a real estate technology platform helping homebuyers uncover hidden risks—like past floods, unpermitted work, and fire exposure—before they make an offer. A veteran of the insurance and data analytics industries, Bob previously co-founded HazardHub, a property risk platform acquired by Guidewire Software.

EPISODE NOTES: 

[00:00-06:48] Escaping Corporate America

[06:49-10:28] Philosophy of Entrepreneurship

[10:29-13:03] What’s your “why”

[13:04-20:23] Invest in Less Risky Property

[20:24-23:21] Ready to expand internationally?

[23:22-28:01] Get your Property Report

[28:02-32:23 ] Final Thoughts


Connect with Bob at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobfrady/

Any questions?

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Bob: [00:00:00] The starting of a business is an exceptionally difficult time. Going from zero to 10 is harder than going from 10 to a hundred because you don't have any momentum. So belief in that purpose is critical. 

Axel: Welcome to the Ideal Investor Show. This is the podcast where we help you challenge your mindset and discover where you are.

Let's go. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Ideal Investor Show, where we bring you great content and once a week great guests to talk about investing and real estate and growing your wealth and so forth and so forth. And today we have one of those days where we have a great guest. Bob Frady, welcome to the show.

Bob: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. 

Axel: Yeah, thank you. And uh, I wanna thank you again for having me on your show. That was really, uh, fun to be there and looking at the property. So I really. Appreciate that, that we could kind of reciprocate in this way, you know? 

Bob: Sure. Listen, it's fair is fair and you know, and I [00:01:00] love talking about real estate, so it works out.

It worked out really well. 

Axel: Yeah. Very good. So before we go into any other details, tell the audience a little bit, who is Bob? How did Bob get to where he is today? 

Bob: Sure. I, um, I was a guy who worked in corporate America. For the vast majority of my career, the Achilles heel that I had in corporate America is I was spectacularly good at getting myself fired.

So yeah, it's not necessarily a habit that you that, that you brag about to people, but you know, I was always the guy who says, well, why? Why don't we, we've done this, why don't we do this and then do that? And people were like, just focus right here. Just stay. Stay in your lane. And usually I would use some language that can't be repeated in, in pleasant company, and then they would say, okay, you can go.

So at the age of [00:02:00] 52, 53, I started a company called Hazard Hub and I had some background in geospatial data, had worked primarily with data. Uh, for most of my career I. And a couple of co-founders and I, uh, got together and said, there's a better way to do this. So we built a company, we bootstrapped it. Uh, and then five years later we sold it, uh, a very.

Successful, life changing outcome. Uh, and all of a sudden I went from being an idiot to being a savant. So it's pretty funny how that changes when you get a couple zeros behind you. And, uh, then I started another business. So I, I, it turns out that the frustrations I had in corporate America were well founded.

Um, but starting a company, I was able to do all the things I had dreamed about doing. Inside of corporate America, and I [00:03:00] love it. It's very stressful. Uh, but it's stress that I enjoy rather than, you know, worrying about whether somebody's gonna come and fire you. That's very stressful, you know, because you can't control that.

Well, you can, but not as well as you think. But owning your own business, much different stress, much more. Um, uh. Uh, customized for me. So yeah, start another business called Property Land. It's like a Carfax for houses. We tell you the history of a house, stuff that your inspector or a real estate agent can't see or doesn't know or won't tell you.

So we put it all, we put it all in one place. 

Axel: Yeah, that's, that's very cool. Um, it's also kind of funny, right? Like when you said you like borderline world record in getting fired, that it's called selling. When you're firing yourself on your company because you grew it to something and then you sell it, then it's not being fired.

It's being sold. [00:04:00] 

Bob: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting because, you know, we had options. You know, we were profitable and um, and we weren't looking to sell. Then we kept getting inbounded all the time. And our, we had, there were three co-founders, the three headed monster as we like to call it. And one of the heads of the monster wanted to retire, um, because unfortunately he was a little bit more ill than he had let on and, and ended up passing away last year.

But I didn't, you know, as part of building a business, you gotta decide what you want to have happen. So I could have been a businessman. And screwed that guy over, uh, and taken advantage of the fact that he wanted to leave or I could honor him and give him what I thought he deserved. And the only way to successfully do that was to sell the company.

And listen, I got a lot out of it too. I'm not gonna lie, but. He was able to do some things with [00:05:00] the remainder of his life that still to this day, we think about so joyfully that is it. It it was a choice that we made. So yeah, we did fire ourselves. Um. And, but yeah, you, when you start a business, you have a choice.

You have, you have choices you can make every day about how that business is gonna operate. And we chose to operate from a position of, you know, one for all, all for 1 0, 1 for all. And so, yeah, we sold the business, we fired ourselves. And, you know, listen, a, a cash, parachutes a nice thing. So no, absolutely turned out they provide a very soft landing.

Axel: Right. And, uh, if I may ask and, and feel free to refuse to answer that, but, uh, since you're now working in the second, um, business that you founded, just theoretically would you be profitable and, and in good enough place if somebody came and say, Hey, you know, um, we would like to take that over? Is, is that something that you would consider?[00:06:00] 

Bob: Of course. You know, it's funny, the, when we were. When we sold the first, the last company, I should say, um, we were talking about having a partnership with the company who eventually acquired us. They asked us a bunch of questions and they said, I said, these aren't partnership questions. These are, are you for sale questions?

Right. And, and they're like, well, are you? And I said, well, everything is for sale. Yeah. Listen, if somebody came along and wrote the right sized check for this house, I would sell this house in a second. Right. You know, it would have to be outsized, you know, compared to what the market would bear. But everything's for sale.

Well, not everything. Not everything, most things are for sale for the right price. And when it comes to businesses, absolutely. I would absolutely sell it if, if the right offer came along. 

Axel: Right. So in in this context of entrepreneurship that we touched on a little bit before we started recording, would you say this is something that people that are [00:07:00] considering starting and developing a business should have in mind early on?

Or is that something that you mature into? How would you describe that? 

Bob: You know, it was really interesting for me where I had some friends who told me constantly, you should be an entrepreneur. And I was afraid I wasn't ready for it. And then I had started Hazard Hub as a side business and then got fired again and, and then needed to make it work.

So I would say that. Starting a business will challenge you in ways that you don't expect, and not everybody has the flexibility to take no money for a period of time. You know when, especially when you get older, you get mortgages, you get. Tuitions, you get all those things that cost a lot of money and that in a startup, you, your salary might go away.

And that's, uh, that's [00:08:00] very challenging mentally to get past. So I would say if you want to be an entrepreneur, there's a couple of things that you gotta do. The first is you have to decide what you are really good at. And then the second is you gotta figure out what you are really bad at. And if those bad things are critical to the business, then you gotta hire somebody who can do all those bad things.

So you can focus on the good things. And luckily we had that with our three headed monster where we all had specialties. And because I had those two partners, I was able to feel comfortable in starting a business where I would never would've done it by myself. Yeah, that makes sense. It really depends on who you are as a person.

You know, some people wanna control everything and that's great. Some people are afraid and sometimes it's easier to. Like bees don't kill intruders one at a time, you know, they do it as a group, so there's a strength in the group and yeah. Um, so that was the, that was [00:09:00] a, you always listen, it's, it's, it's the fastest way to generational wealth is Yeah, absolutely.

I, 

Axel: I agree with it. I mean, there's a couple of of other things. I mean, I have for example, worked for somebody who founded a business that was initially quite successful, but he was the. Basically starting singer founder. Mm-hmm. And discovered about himself, and it wasn't something, at least I don't think, or let's put it the other way around.

I believe him when he said that he didn't see this as a weakness. But what happened is that when the business had gotten to the point where you started, what you needed to start having. Dedicated parts in the business, right? Where you couldn't, as the founder, run everything yourself anymore. You needed accounting, you needed marketing and sales, you needed production and, and those kind of things.

So basically like the typ, typical divisions that you have, uh, as far as the, and obviously sooner or later you get to the point where each [00:10:00] has budget needs. And what he just couldn't cope with was to basically trust those people. Even though he hired them, he selected them. Right. But, and, and they were like the director of marketing or the director of training or the whatever.

Mm-hmm. But when they said, okay, I need some money to do this and this and this, in my area of specialty, he couldn't handle it. Right. And ultimately the business failed. Um, so what I'm getting at, um, with that story is to us. How important is the purpose of the business? Like, and it obviously makes a big difference if you have like a software based business that analyzes real estate where you say, the purpose of my business is to purchase an ever-growing portfolio of real estate.

Right? So how much would you say the purpose of the business is important for? For the possibility of either ha, either having it forever or having it as a means to an end. 

Bob: That is a, that is a very [00:11:00] layered and complex question. Um, I do, and it depends upon what stage of the business that you're at when you first start a business.

The purpose of the business is critical. The purpose is what gets you up and gets you rolling and gets you to go through the hard parts is you believe in the vision and you believe in the purpose of the business. Now, if the purpose of the business is to make money. Then, you know, I don't know. I, I can't, I can't relate to that.

Some people can, 

yeah. I'm 

Bob: not particularly money driven. Money's just a scorecard, you know, as, as I used to tell friends of mine, you know, businesses like a puzzle. You put all the pieces together and money falls out. You know, that's really how it works. And you gotta put those pieces together. So I would say that the per.

This is incredibly important because the starting of a business is an exceptionally difficult time. You know, every business phase has its challenges, but getting it off [00:12:00] going from zero to 10 is harder than going from 10 to a hundred because you don't have any momentum. So belief in that, um, purpose is critical at the beginning.

Now in later stages. You know, you either solidify that belief and continue to use it or you change it. 'cause sometimes businesses pivot and you have to change your belief set slightly. Um. But I, and then it becomes a thing of pride after a while, after you believe in this vision, like, like as, as, as an entrepreneur, you're just betting, you know, am I right about this?

Right? You're, and, and so you make this bet you're correct, you're happy, and you keep reinforcing that good decision that you made. Sometimes it chokes you off like your friend who couldn't trust anybody else, and sometimes it, it, it keeps you going. So it depends. It, it's critical that you have. An idea of what you want to become, but understand that that idea may change depending [00:13:00] upon the realities of the market.

Axel: Okay, cool. Yeah. Thank you for describing that. Um, now when we think about property lens, it's obviously the purpose that you described, uh, when we started talking about it, wood property lens, be an owner of properties. 

Bob: Uh, well we are, but not necessarily because of property lens. Um, we all own properties, so property lens, per se, would not become a real estate holding company.

Um, that's a little, when you're dealing with software, it's best to keep those separate. Okay. Um. But we would probably own, I mean, I own three properties. John owns two, so we own some properties, but not as property investors. You know, the, the world of property investing for us is how dangerous is this place to buy, you know, beyond that, the operational part where you specialize, it scares the bejesus outta me, you know?

So it, it's like. [00:14:00] Because I, you know, when I was a kid, I grew up, we had a three family house in Boston and we rented out to the floors. And so I, I saw what it was like, well, my dad was a landlord and it was a pain in the butt. But you seem to have, um, found ways to overcome that or at least minimize that pain for your investors, which is great.

So property loans could become an investor in properties, but. Not as property lens, it would be as John and Bob, the founders. 

Axel: Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, I mean, I assumed you would probably go in that direction. It's just on the hand. Almost border and obvious to say if you have all the best information about the properties, you probably would be able to pick the good ones if you wanted to be investing in properties.

Um, by the way, in our case, you know, I use the analogy of of building a house, right? If we stay within real estate and it's ultra, ultra rare. Somebody is really a master in like plumbing and carpentry and masonry and electric and in all the different traits, right? [00:15:00] You might be good in one or two, but then for the rest you need masters in the other ones.

And that's basically how we look at our, um, approach, is to say, okay, there are people who are masters in property management. I don't want to do it myself. There are people in Masters in Lending. There are people in masters, in appraising, in inspecting, and so forth and so forth, right? So the trick in my opinion is that you need to build the relationships to all these masters in a good way so that when you actually consider a deal, either for yourself or for, in our case, our clients, they're all happy to work with us.

So that we can at least try our very best, including property, lets, uh, to mm-hmm. To make sure that we buy properties who are, you know, the right properties to buy. 

Bob: You know, it's, it's a. Some, sometimes it's a factor of market conditions, right? You know, if you're in an extremely hot market or a tight market where there's multiple bids and, and prices keep just going up [00:16:00] and up and up, and you have to wave contingencies and things like that, property lens is a defensive mechanism to say, okay, I know it's gonna be competitive.

I'm probably gonna have to waive an inspection contingency. What can I learn about this in advance? But before I make an offer on the house, for example, some friends of mine wanted to buy a house in Seattle and they ran a property lens report and they discovered that the roof was 30 years old. Nobody had told 'em that.

So there's a $30,000 expense that they're gonna have to take, but they knew it going in, so they were comfortable with it. Uh, they didn't get the house unfortunately, 'cause the price was crazy. Now, in a, in a softer market. The equation changes quite a bit where you can use property lens to be more aggressive in saying, okay, here's a house in this area.

I know that it's gonna require probably 30 to $50,000 worth of repairs before I even walk on the door. So I know that I can bid aggressively on this house because [00:17:00] I know that there are issues with it versus something that's recently been renovated is up to date. All the permits are current, the roofs in great condition.

I have less flexibility to negotiate on that outside of the normal market conditions. So I would, yeah, I, whenever we look at properties, the first thing we do is eat our own dog food and run a property lens report and say, okay, yay, nay, or maybe. 

Axel: Right. Right. Exactly. Well, I, I mean, I appreciate that you, you brought in the market condition as an aspect.

The other thing is, you know, you want, in my opinion, and that's why I see there's a, a beauty in it. Not just the functionality is that you make an informed decision. Mm-hmm. And this goes back to, in a way, purpose, right? Like when I asked earlier about purpose, when, when our clients set up their their LLC and then start using it to start investing.

The purpose is typically not so much on appreciation, it's more on long term passive [00:18:00] income, right? Mm-hmm. And so if you're going in and you say, I want to acquire a portfolio of properties for the long term, the more information including property lens, you have to make this informed decision. The more likely it is that you can have an investment for the long run.

And yes, obviously the appreciation is always appreciated, you know, pun intended. Yeah. But, but, but the, the main purpose in most cases nowadays for us is, is the, um, passive income. Because people, I think, rightfully so are saying, okay, with all this debt and all these kind of crazy things that are going on, we have to be responsible ourselves of where money is gonna come.

In the future with all the changes that are most likely going to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. And, and if they don't have to wait until 67 or 70 or whatever the government is gonna say it's gonna be, then so much the better, you know? 

Bob: Yeah. It's, it's, um, [00:19:00] is interesting. I had a personal investment in a hard money lender for quite a while and I was.

Happy to do it, but also it made me a little uncomfortable because it didn't align with, I mean, these the, when you're in the hard running market, you're in the tough to fit stuff, and I didn't necessarily feel completely comfortable there. So the purpose of the fund was great, and the returns were great, and if I looked at it just as, okay, it's giving me a solid 11% return every year.

Great. But if I look at it as I want to not just make money, I want it to be aligned with my own personal right values. Maybe I would do it again, maybe I would not. Um, but yeah, you got, you know, at the end of the day, money is just stuff. It's, it's nice. No money stinks. Having no money's terrible or having debt is terrible.

Right. But once you get to a certain point, it's all just. More of the same. And, and [00:20:00] so you want to make sure that you're living your life the way that you want to and aligned with what you want to, and I think it's smart to say, okay, here's what I see happening. You make your own bets and you say, now I wanna align my life in the way that I want, which is the great freedom of success is it allows you to do what you want to do.

So having a thesis and having a approach is, is wonderful, wonderful. 

Axel: Absolutely. Uh, I have one more question about property lands that, uh, we didn't touch on when we last spoke, and that is, is there any intentional, maybe or already a possibility to look at properties that are not in the us? 

Bob: There is a.

Possibility. The, there's a couple of things that prevent us from doing that. The first is the US is a big market, so we have to conquer that one first. Yeah, it's gonna take a long time. The the second is that there's a lot of data that exists in the US that doesn't exist [00:21:00] in other places. Like last time, my last company, they.

Pressured us to build a Canadian model. I'm like, okay, fine. But the government of Canada is like, no, you can't have that. No, you can't have that. No, you can't have that. It's all controlled centrally. It's not controlled by the individual. No. So the like gathering the data in the US is, you know, there's 8,000 different municipalities that we generate data from.

And not to mention every single real estate listing. If the market is right for that sort of thing, then yeah, we would look internationally, let's get the US first, and then yes, it, it, it does scale if the data is available in, uh, in other countries. 

Axel: Right. And why, the reason I asked the question is more from a diversification perspective, because I see that some of our clients who have now been able over the years to build a portfolio.

Kind of start realizing I, myself included, where you have to say, okay, well, if the [00:22:00] rules, for example, and you, I'm, I'm very sure you're aware that there were in the last few years, several times where there was at least a threat that certain rules would be changed. Like I just, one example that you couldn't do 10 31 exchanges anymore or anything like that, or that, that, um.

Capital gains taxes would be changed or, or that, all kinds of things. So basically, if there's a threat of changing the rules. Since that is, most of it is federal, right? That would change it regardless where within those 50 states, you basically have your property. That's where this idea or this reason for the question came from to say, okay, if somebody says, well, you know, I would like to have a place in Panama and the Caribbean or in wherever.

You know, like, is there any chance to have something similar? But I understand that obviously if the data isn't there, then you can't really make a good property lens report. Right? 

Bob: Yeah, the, the aerial imagery is usually there, so we can tell stuff about the roof. It's the underlying data [00:23:00] that's, that's a little more challenging.

And I would love for Costa Rica and Australia both to make data available. 'cause I like going both of those places. It'd be fun to go visit them. 

Axel: Oh yeah. Well, you know, we have some clients who desperately want to go to Bali, so, you know, maybe you can throw that into 

Bob: Yeah, a little bit of a storm surge risk there in Bali.

But you know, we can, well, it's our timing, right? Yep. 

Axel: It's all timing. Okay. Um, Bob, if people have now been hopefully sufficiently intrigued to say, well, maybe for the next one that I'm getting, I want to have a property lens report. I want to find out how this works. Am I even. The right kind of person to do this.

How do they, what's the next step? How do they go from here? 

Bob: If you're looking to get a report on any property in the US outside of the state of Alaska, that's the one state we don't do. Just go to property lens.com and type in an address and start the process. If you don't like what you see. We'll give you your money back, uh, on the first report.

If you order 10 and then tell me you don't like what you want, then I know you're trying to cheat me. [00:24:00] Uh, but on the first report, we're happy to give you a money back guarantee. Uh, if you wanna reach me personally, it's Bobbit property lens, uh, or I'm on the LinkedIn and, and all the socials, um, as well. So happy to, to talk to folks about, uh, about any of this stuff and, um, great to connect.

Axel: Yeah, absolutely. And we put obviously all the links and all the contact information in the show notes. And I mean, like I said at the very beginning, I had the opportunity to literally go through one of those reports with Bob and John. And one thing I can say by just seeing it myself, it is very, very, very thorough.

Right? And that's, that's I think, the biggest thing. You know, you, you can look at Zillow and you can look at maybe some Google Earth pictures and stuff. And maybe listen to what the agent is telling you, but it's not even close to what the full report really has. 

Bob: So, so getting back to purpose, the reason why we started this business is because we think that [00:25:00] buyers get the short end of the stick because the sellers know all this stuff and the buyers know this, and, and I was buying a house and I'm like, I know all this stuff.

N nobody is telling me about it. I knew there was a radar issue. I knew there was a flooding issue. I knew there was a roof condition issue. Nobody said anything. But I knew going in that, Hey, you have these issues so I'm gonna offer you 10% less. Saved a boatload on the house and got the house knowing that these are the things we need to tackle.

And it was great. So that's why we started it. 'cause buyers get screwed and we're trying to prevent that from happening. 

Axel: They don't have that switch yet. Right? Like when you know something that the light goes on somewhere that the buyer can, um, actually see that, you know, something that you didn't put in the disclosures.

Bob: Yeah. And, and, and so, you know, we get a lot of flack from inspectors. Like, just get an inspector. But if you read the inspection report, it only. [00:26:00] Gauges what is obvious and visible. So it doesn't tell you a lot of stuff, and it's not that they're doing a bad job. You have to have somebody flip all the switches, but they don't tell you how old the systems are.

They don't tell you what the dangers are around the house. They don't tell you a lot of stuff that we tell you in the process. So we think that both of them together are better than either one of them separately, but. We're giving you a lot of insight. No one, this is the stuff that nobody wants to tell you 'cause they're afraid it'll lower the price of the house.

Axel: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, I mean, I have to say, you know, this is maybe not a topic for right or wrong, but it is a little bit annoying because obviously for our clients, we always recommend to have an inspection report. I find it kind of annoying that some of the things that you just mentioned, which I believe are really fundamentally important to know, they basically exclude, right?

They, they do the report, they write the report, and then in the report it says, this report does [00:27:00] not, uh, include any research on permit. Well, okay, but you know, remember we had that little discussion where the place used to have a two car garage. Now suddenly it doesn't have a two car garage, but a little apartment on the side, right?

Mm-hmm. And you guys would find out if there were any permits drawn for these surprisingly many bedrooms or not. But I Correct. That's not my point. My point is that an inspector can get away with saying, no, I'm, I am too, not inclined to go to the. To the A permitting place and actually find out about it.

Right. And most of their days nowadays you can find it all online. You don't even have to go anywhere. So anyway, I don't want to get on a rant, but I really believe this, hopefully. Go ahead. 

Bob: Just rant away. It's good for you. Get it out. 

Axel: My my point was, I think what you guys are doing is a really important and necessary service.

And, uh, like you just said, the buyer is typically not as well informed as the seller. And if we can do a little bit to alleviate that, I think [00:28:00] it's a great thing. So thank you for doing that. Well, I, 

Bob: I agree with you 1000%. 

Axel: So now that we got that out of the way, um, I always ask at the very end of the show, um, if you could meet anybody dead or life, who would it be and why?

Bob: There's so many. I, I, you know, probably Jesus Christ. Okay. I would wanna meet him and just say, all right, let's talk, let's talk, let's, you and me have a little chat here. Now, outside of that, probably Winston Churchill, because it seemed like he was drunk every day and still managed to win a war. I wanna know what that mindset looks like.

Axel: Um, if you look at some of the stuff that he did and that he said, and how he came through certain things. I sometimes wonder if you have to kind of, I don't give a shit attitude to actually make 

Bob: Well, yeah, and, and, and so like, frankly, when you start a business, you have to have that attitude. It's like, I'm just gonna take what comes my way.

'cause I think I'm right. And [00:29:00] yeah, it, it's, uh, but I'm a huge, yeah, I'm a huge Churchill guy. I love it. Yeah. 

Axel: Yeah. When, when you start a business, anybody listening, don't get drunk, you know? So, yeah. 

Bob: Or do it, you know when no one can see you. Yeah. Only for the 

Axel: celebrations when you, when you close deals and stuff like that.

Exactly. Okay. Well thank you so much for being on the show. 

Bob: It's my pleasure [00:30:00] [00:31:00] [00:32:00] actually.