Innovations in Real Estate Tech with David Lecko

Nate Trunfio: Here we are for another exciting action packed episode on the Real Estate of Things. I'm your host, Nate Trunfio, with Lima One, and we are in for a treat. Someone who is not only an investor himself but a tech aficionado, has built a phenomenal platform called the DealMachine. He is the Deal Machine himself. In this episode we're going to talk about the platform and Driving for Dollars, how you can maximize that strategy in order to find off market deals, some tips and tricks on that. We're going to get deep into the world of AI, how it works, how it's affecting real estate investing, and much, much more from my good friend David Lecko at the DealMachine. Let's get into the episode now.

Audio: You are listening to the Real Estate of Things podcast.

Nate Trunfio: David, man, welcome to the show. Let's start getting wild, man. How are you doing?

David Lecko: I'm doing really great., man, it's so funny you called me the Deal Machine because that's why I named my company that. It's like I had this job and I was actually selling software as an employee and they actually said every time I close a deal my boss was like, " Man, David's a Deal Machine." Whenever it came time to name this app that I created, I called it DealMachine. Because I thought that people would like that, people would like using the DealMachine.

Nate Trunfio: Man, I'm jealous because there's like a salesperson at heart, I just wish people called me the Deal Machine. I call myself a deal junkie but I don't know, DealMachine sounds a little bit better. Actually let's start there, man. DealMachine. What is DealMachine? Talk to us about the platform product.

David Lecko: Of course, yeah. You know how house flippers, they need to find rundown properties to flip? And the common advice that brand new investors get is go look for rundown properties and then look up who owns it and send a postcard to the owner. It's called Driving for Dollars and 80% of new investors get their deals that way. I know I certainly did but DealMachine is just a software that helps do that easier. Instead of writing it down you can pin it on a map and then you can also see who owns it in the app and then send a postcard to the owner right from the app and keep on driving around and finding those rundown houses and then having your follow up handled for you. It also does pulling pre- probate lists or expired listings, high equity and runs comps and all that stuff. It does other stuff. It's the highest rated mobile app out there for somebody who's trying to discover opportunities and outreach to the owners of those rundown motivated sellers.

Nate Trunfio: Nah, it's a great short and sweet one, man, and Driving for Dollars has really gotten a ton of attention and I mean, I really, I'm sure you won't probably take the credit but I'm confident would like to think the DealMachine is a huge reason why this buzzword of Driving for Dollars has really continued to evolve. And I don't know if you know, I've been a user on the platform so I've also seen some of the evolution. Will you talk a little bit more about... I'm excited. We're going to get to AI here because it's a hot topic and I know you're an expert and I go to you for a lot of tech stuff, but what was some of the evolution of DealMachine and how did you work through some of the call it solutions that were continued to be added and why'd you come up with that stuff?

David Lecko: Well, actually, I mean, thanks for saying we should have credit for calling it Driving for Dollars. I mean, we definitely had an impact on how it was done, but it was a word that was used for decades as far as I could tell because there was so much stuff on the internet, so many recommendations saying go drive for dollars. But I think why DealMachine worked is because we made what people were already doing easier and we took just best practices from other industries and then brought them to real estate investing. A lot of the tools were always just desktop only, but Driving for Dollars is when you're out in the field. Making a best in class product for being out in the field is something that we did. It made what they were already doing easier. I mean, the origin story is back in 2016 I wanted to get a rental property. I was told to drive for dollars, I missed out on this deal. I went from feeling really motivated to feeling really discouraged. Like, " Man, I just wasted so much time" or, " Man, I don't know if this can work in my market," but instead of just giving up, I spent the next weekend making a widget for my phone that would help me with my follow- up. Then somebody asked me to put it on their phone and they were like, " Well, I buy 30 houses a month. I'd spend a thousand dollars to try any new marketing." And I was like, my jaw dropped. I was like, " A thousand dollars?" I didn't even try to sell this thing and I put it on the app store and it organically grew from there. That's the story, that's how it became an actual company. It wasn't even meant to be a company, it was just trying to help me to get my first real estate investment.

Nate Trunfio: Well, anything that services real estate investors should be started by real estate investors, which is exactly what this is. And I just, I think I guess from my deal junkie side personally, there's a time when I flipped very few deals but very, very few. And when you're a deal junkie, you drive down the road and you train yourself to look for all these opportunities and to your point, if you can't have something that's mobile and actionable quickly, shoot, what are I going to pull on the side of the road? Write down the mailbox number, go back. Again, you guys are pulling property records. You guys allow for skip tracing of that, of the owners of those assets. You have a mail integration which is fricking awesome because you can be a creeper and take a picture of the house. How effective is that? A lot of people do direct mail in general. How would you dissect the effectiveness of taking a picture of somebody's home and trying to get to speak with them as a result?

David Lecko: Well, yeah, I just bought a house off market last week and somebody actually called me and they said they got a few other pieces of mail but they threw those away and they kept mine because they could see the real picture of their house. It wasn't from Google, it was from somebody who took the picture of their house and that's why they called me first. I hear that most of the time when somebody truly wants to sell their house and they're calling me. Just through the anecdotal evidence, I think it's really powerful to use that type of marketing.

Nate Trunfio: People want things personalized too. I mean, that it just shows sort of that extra TLC.

David Lecko: Now people get worried though because they'll actually be taking a photo of a house on the actual street or on the sidewalk and then they'll try to hide what they're doing, which makes you look sketchy. Then somebody asks like, " Hey, what are you doing?" The best thing to do is just say, " I'm interested in buying a house on the street, I really like that one. Do you know anything about it?" Then it really turns the conversation and they'll tell you stuff you didn't even want to know like, " Oh, this person has nine cats" and stuff like that. My biggest advice is don't be a creeper, don't try to hide taking a photo, just hold your phone out here so anyone who sees you knows what you're doing and that actually will open people up and make you feel more comfortable doing it.

Nate Trunfio: So I want to ask you a story and I really shouldn't be talking this much on a podcast, but I also want to tell a DealMachine story myself. But let me ask you first, so from a success story perspective, you got any cool success stories that you can share?

David Lecko: I actually just started my own podcast about getting your first wholesale deal this year and it's called the DealMachine Real Estate Investing Podcast. And my co- host is one of the most successful DealMachine users. In 2019, he found on social media this 30 day wholesaling challenge and at the time he was selling telecommunication service and he was making so much money that they cut his comp plan. He was making more money than this CEO of this reseller that he worked for. They kept cutting his comp plan and he was finally so fed up that this 30 day wholesaling challenge was the breath of fresh air he needed to quit his nine to five job and he actually got his first deal in 14 days and he made$ 8, 500 when he found the deal, got on contract. Then posted it on Facebook marketplace, found a buyer, made the 8, 500 bucks and he actually went on to do 73 deals that year. Which is wild because most people, including myself, take six plus months to find a deal. My first deal didn't come until he had seven postcards from me. Some people take their sales experience or past business experience and then they do this thing and they just jump right into it and have a ton of success. That's why I wanted him to be the co- host of my podcast because he brings that experience. He's done over 400 wholesale deals now and what he does is it's all word of mouth and/ or Driving for Dollars. That's the only marketing that he does. His name's Ryan Haywood, his wife Meg Haywood, was a big encouragement for making him do that challenge because she knew he was unhappy. Now it's kind of like they're spending weeks in Branson while they've got a few people working their wholesale business. I would say his life has greatly improved. He's got kids he can spend more time with and they're making more money than he was back at the telecom sales job. Ryan Haywood is who I would point to for a great success story.

Nate Trunfio: That's awesome, man. That's awesome. If you don't mind, just a quick share on not so successful story. It's funny because you talk about Driving for Dollars and using DealMachine, you want to show that you're taking pictures. Well, so I was in a suburban neighborhood in Philly suburbs, average home price about 400,000. It was actually fairly nice, a nice neighborhood, wasn't a bunch of rundown stuff. And I was doing it with, when I was was driving and I rolled the passenger window down, taking a picture out the window. It was just creeping, literally creeping along the road taking pictures of all the houses that I thought could be good prospective opportunities. Then sure enough, after about 15 minutes I got surrounded by two cop cars who knocked on my window and, "What are you doing?" And I'm like... Well, at that point I was extremely transparent and I couldn't really like you suggest, I couldn't pick any good information or, " Do you know anybody selling a house?" But anyways, so that's my story there and I mean, I was innocently doing nothing so they got nothing on me. But I think to your point from that, it's always good to let people know what you're doing in general and whether that's through social media and posting, " Hey, I'm an active buyer and this and that" or you're waving your phone around taking pictures of houses and openly telling people what you're doing and hopefully you can use that to get some more information on things.

David Lecko: I love that story because I was worried at first you were going to get in trouble, but look, you obviously didn't get put in jail, you're recording a podcast right now. If somebody listening's just worried about doing this, that should be proof enough. You're totally allowed to do this. There's no problem doing this. And Google takes pictures of everyone's house, right? I hate to tell you, but that's totally okay and effective when somebody who does actually want to sell sees that you were there in person. They want to do business with somebody locally.

Nate Trunfio: That is so true. That is so true. I want to ask one more question on DealMachine and specifically Driving for Dollars and maybe using the app. How effective of an ROI do you feel that DealMachine is or the combination therein with Driving for Dollars? Have you got any sort of points you want to make on that? I'd be really curious.

David Lecko: A hundred percent. It depends on your market price. The average price in Indianapolis is like$150, 000. In Philadelphia, I bet it's a little bit higher. In Indianapolis you'd probably have to find 500 rundown homes and then send mail six times each. Total investment would be what? 55 cents a postcard? Let me do the math here real quick just so we know. 55 cents a postcard times 500 times six would be like$1, 500. Typically if you're sending to a big list that you can just easily buy, let me go send direct mail to the absentee owner list who's got high equity, you're typically going to spend$4, 000 to get one deal in Indianapolis because you're sending it to such a broad list that a lot of people can easily get. There's more competition. $ 4, 000 is what you'd spend to get that. But if you're Driving for Dollars, look how the cost went down to 1600 bucks and if you're cold calling, it brings it down even lower. So you put in a little time upfront and then you spend less money to get that deal. And in Indianapolis, I would say the average wholesale fee was like$10, 000. It's like a lower price market. In Philadelphia, maybe you need to find 800 properties because the average home price is higher. The math still works there. It's cheaper to drive for dollars and you get a better ROI and I bet the wholesale fee is higher too because typically your wholesale fee is 10 to 20% of the total total deal. You're getting a good deal and the higher price is going to get you a bigger reward even though it takes longer and more properties to actually find the deal in the first place.

Nate Trunfio: No, I think that's what I was looking for, man. Appreciate the education there. Last one actually, so I lied. What other layers of marketing are people doing on top of then DealMachine and Driving for Dollars? I mean, your app incorporates a lot of that, but talk to me there.

David Lecko: Yeah. We've helped people do deals, 10, 000 deals in all 50 states. One thing I've realized is that all strategies work if you're committed to executing them and doing enough. If somebody's not successful, it's like well, they didn't actually execute well and they didn't execute enough. What I mean by that is somebody might pick up DealMachine and then add 20 properties, not get any results and say, "Oh, this just doesn't work in my market." But we know that every single... There's multiple ways to get a deal. It just depends on knowing your KPIs and if you're a beginner, maybe doubling it because you've got to make up for your lack of experience where you might not close as big a percentage as you as an expert would. But yeah, people would do pay- per- click marketing, they might be marketing with a website that they've used to get SEO ranked. The website's always nice too because you can put that on your postcard and people typically will Google your name or your company before they give you a call. And just having that website, especially putting the phone number on the website too, they can google the phone number and go to your website and then you can see you've got a good presence. That would be what I would say I see most often people are combining with DealMachine.

Nate Trunfio: That's awesome, man. And you guys have built such a great platform, you also have such a great community. I'm glad that you're getting your pretty face and voice out there with the podcast because I think it's just only going to help. And again, you just got so many good people that I've met that use DealMachine and it always speaks so highly. My man. All right, let's get to probably one of the biggest tech topics and buzz topics that there is out there right now, whether it's real estate investing related or not, AI, artificial intelligence, man. Let's start with how is AI affecting and even changing the REI game right now?

David Lecko: Yeah, so AI came out about four or five months ago in a big way led by the company OpenAI. And one of the amazing things is OpenAI has this chat version of the artificial intelligence where you could say, " Please write me a caption for this photo" and it'll do it for you. Or you could actually say, "Write me a blog article on this topic" and it'll do it for you. One of the downsides of it though is it doesn't have access to real estate information. We use OpenAI's chat version of their AI, we give it access to the real estate data that we have. A lot of the data, we license it from First American Title Company, it's updated daily, it knows the estimated values, how those have changed over time, who owns the property and it knows how much the property's probably worth when it's combined with our comping engine in DealMachine. So if you're a new person looking to get into real estate investing, I used to get hung up all the time. Just, "I don't know how to evaluate this deal." When I'm talking to this seller, I'm actually kind of quite uncomfortable and so it doesn't make me a good conversationalist because I'm worried about this stuff. You could just ask the AI, now there's the AI chat inside of DealMachine. You can say, "What's the after repair value of this property?" Then it'll tell you what it is and how it got that answer. You could say, "Well, how should I make an offer on this property? What would I say to the seller?" For you and me, we've done it, but for somebody who's brand new, they kind of get in analysis paralysis mode and even though they've seen a YouTube video, it's in the heat of the moment, they'd really just like a doubled confirm, make sure that's actually the right thing to say. Those are two ways that I'm seeing AI change the game because people have chatted, individuals have sent 2000 chats I think is the record since we launched that about three weeks ago in our AI inside the app.

Nate Trunfio: Wow, man. Wait, remind me, I remember the one utilization which is cost. The other one is?

David Lecko: What's this property worth and how should I make an offer on this property? What should I say to this seller? Those were two examples.

Nate Trunfio: Does that mean that you've trained the AI to bring in sales scripting?

David Lecko: Yeah, it knows it. I mean, we didn't have to bring that in. It's actually in ChatGPT. The difference is now we give it access to the real estate data so it can help analyze the deal, it can figure out if it's a good... Could be a good rental property, what you'd have to buy it for if you wanted it to be a good rental property, analyzing it for fix and flip wholesale and all that good stuff.

Nate Trunfio: If you run a tech platform, do you think that AI is something that just sort of your average real estate investor can use on their own? And if so, ideas, suggestions, how somebody does that?

David Lecko: I mean, I asked it for repair costs on a property that it hadn't seen, but it knew the assessed value was lower than others in the neighborhood and it told me$ 25 to $ 50 per square foot depending on the condition of the property. And one of the biggest experts out there who's done thousand plus deals is Jerry Norton. You might think you need to be in the actual property to figure out what the actual costs of the repairs need to be. Jerry himself teaches, " Look, guys, there's three tiers. If it's carpet and paint, $ 17 a square foot. If it's actually going to need a bathroom and kitchen remodel, $ 35 a square foot. And if it needs everything else, like the roof and mechanicals, $ 50 a square foot." The fact that he can do it means that the AI can help you figure that out too. I do think it's very helpful. I think it's very helpful, especially for a beginner and those are the people that are mostly using DealMachine to be quite honest, is they come to us to learn how to get into real estate investing. I think it's game changer for them.

Nate Trunfio: That's awesome, man. Any crystal ball perspective and outlook on what you may see AI continue to transition and grow into in real estate investing?

David Lecko: Yeah, in real estate investing I think we've heard a lot of fake AI in the past where for a long time people would sell lists that were like, " Hey, well AI generated this list of properties that want to sell." I don't know that that's AI, right? We've all been familiar with things that we've called AI until this generative AI came out. The next thing, I mean, I think AI could be chatting with your customers on your website and stuff. I personally wouldn't trust it to do that because it's still not perfect and I wouldn't want to potentially lose a lead because it said something wrong. I think it'll get smarter. I think people will start using that, but I don't think it's there yet. I think using it myself to create output that I need, which as an investor is just the negotiation. Like cold calling scripts, ideas on getting unstuck from a negotiation. It can do that now and I can check, " Oh, does this make sense? Does this feel good to say that? Do I think that would actually help?" And I have that human check that's actually going to be what I'm using it for, what I feel comfortable with right now. I think it could be also once we are able to give it access to all of our data at once, then because right now it looks at property by property. Once we're able to give it all the data at once, then I think you'll be able to ask it things more along the lines of like, " Hey, look at all this data now, which properties do you think would be a good cash transaction?" That's a little bit more challenging, but I think that'll come too

Nate Trunfio: That's interesting, man. And personally fool around with ChatGPT, I really need to invest myself in it more. I like what you said, some basic output. To me, it helps me spur some creative thought a lot of times too. But I'm curious because I'm fairly a layman when it comes to tech- based stuff. You hired specific staff yourself to really... I mean, it sounds pretty dang complicated what you're doing, but talk to me on that because that's what I've always just been curious, how good at tech and this stuff do you need to be to really get AI to continue to iterate, evolve and just really continue to help and accelerate you?

David Lecko: Yeah, so I think we tell everybody at our company they need to use AI to have superpowers, to become more accomplished to what they're actually doing. I personally take DealMachine real estate investing podcast episode descriptions or transcripts and I post it to ChatGPT. I say, " Can you write me a podcast title and description?" And I'll say, " Oh, can you do that again? But focus more on how he got his first wholesale deal." I'll do that and I'm using that as an example. My co- founder, he was writing something and it needed to be in Python. He doesn't know Python, but he wrote a whole thing in Python because ChatGPT could write it for him and he just had to tell it what to do. That's actually how he's able to have superpowers too. Because he'd have to learn the language, it knows the syntax. He just has to tell it what he wants to do. Now one tip in general, if you're just free prompting the AI, which you can as well in DealMachine, it's got 10 common prompts, analyze this for a fix and flip or wholesaler, help me negotiate, et cetera. You could also just chat with it. And here's one thing the AI is not good at. AI is not good at math, it's good at writing words that make sense. One thing that you can use is called recursion, which is basically like what's eight plus four times 10? It might get it wrong, you could ask the same thing, but at the end you could say and show your step along the way. Now that it has to show its step, it's actually quite right. It does it very, very well. That's really interesting. Another thing is if it does get something wrong, it's very good at correcting itself. You could say, " Okay, I think you were wrong on that." And it'll say, " Oh, I'm sorry that was wrong. Here's what's right." And this is why it's so good at correcting itself. The way it works is it analyzes like all this text, all this data and then it creates an opinion on what should be the next word. It generates one word at a time. If it gets one word wrong, it can go down this path because that one word was wrong. If you tell it, " Oh, you got that wrong," then it will select the next best word and go on the right path. That's why it's confidently wrong, but that's two tips for using AI, whether in DealMachine or whether just any AI that's out there like ChatGPT is use recursion and if it's wrong, just tell it it was wrong, it'll fix it.

Nate Trunfio: Dang, man. That's what I was looking for. One that I've heard, and again I'm a layman on this is as you're asking it to write for you, use in the voice of and describe whether it's an actual famous person or a sales manager, whatever you may want to write. But, man, those are some great tips and tricks, man, this is good stuff. I think we've covered up and down on AI, but I mean, it's crazy that this is going to continue to evolve and like you said, it's going to continue to make itself sharper. I guess I'll ask this question that I think comes synonymously at least from a lot of employers when it comes to AI. Do you personally think that AI is going to replace a lot of people's jobs?

David Lecko: Well, it hasn't yet. When it does, I'll talk to you about it, but I think it's got to... It can't just replace jobs. If we're more productive then I think we're going to keep the people we have because we want all that productivity. It just has that, I don't trust it enough to talk to my customers as a support channel. If it did, I think all those people know my company so much, I would just free them up to do more productive things for my company. I think you could also look at other inventions in the past and how they've actually reduced jobs. And if we look back, I mean, I'm so glad we're not all farmers, right? Thanks to tractors, less people could be farmers and that freed people up to invent things like AI. It's always going to be progress made. And I don't think it's killed a lot of jobs since. It's been out for five months. I'm not sure. I'm not seeing the unemployment skyrocketing because of that.

Nate Trunfio: If anything, the good old Fed may be pushing for it even more. But no, I think that's great perspective. I absolutely agree. I just would've never articulated it nearly as soundly as you just did. Thanks for share sharing that nugget. Let's zoom out a little bit, man, because again, I'm always so impressed with just anything tech- wise when it comes to you and so to real estate investors, what would you suggest in regards to how real estate investors should use tech to maximize their REI business?

David Lecko: Yeah, I think if there's a way to speed up what they're already doing, it's a system and process and it's better than systems and processes that have to be run by people because the machine's not going to get hungry, the machine's not going to take breaks and the machine's going to do it exactly how you tell it every single time. I personally think that's why DealMachine was so successful. I wasn't changing behavior, I was making it easier to do the behaviors we were already doing. I think anytime a technology can do that for you, you shouldn't think twice about implementing it. You can easily see what it costs and how much it saves you. That would be my main advice for using technology and real estate investing.

Nate Trunfio: So let me ask the inverse question then. What do a lot of investors make mistakes on in trying to use technology? Any thoughts on that?

David Lecko: Yeah, so I see a lot of people use Podio for their CRM. And I think that that is oftentimes they're buying too much technology before they're actually, it makes sense to make the investment. Classic example, brand new person, they did three deals using Driving for Dollars and then they go buy a cold call software, they go buy a CRM that needs to be customized, they go buy a website and they start doing text messaging marketing as well. Then they throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and nothing sticks because they've immediately kind of spread themselves too thin. I'd really focus on implementing one thing at a time and really mastering that before just trying to implement a ton of stuff at once and then nothing possibly sticking because when your resources get spread really thin, well, I mean, time and energy is a resource, it becomes less efficient and then it can really get you into trouble there. I would just say implement one thing at a time.

Nate Trunfio: Oh, that's a good one. It's hard for the real estate investor community. It's easy to hear that. It's hard for the community to follow it. I mean, you and I have been blessed to be in a mastermind together, shout out to the collective genius. I think there's just so many different things that people can and do do, and a lot of shiny objects and a lot of people just want to do things because it seems cool. Or at times reality is people want to do it for some vanity and talk about their great technology, but if you don't have the people and the processes and the systems and then the activity behind it, you're really just doing yourself a disservice and it's going to detract from stuff rather than helping it along. Again, I just very, very much agree with that. I guess within all the access to data that you and your team and company have, you definitely have to know a lot about what and where and how to invest in a smart fashion. And today's market is ever changing and supply's nominal still. In today's market, but even in any market, what do you think it takes to be a smart real estate investor in the market?

David Lecko: Well, I think if you believe there's no deals, you're not going to find deals. But if you actually continue finding deals that you know are out there, you're going to find them. As real estate investors. We're in the business of helping people solve problems. Even if there's a short supply of properties that are for sale, people still have problems all the time. People unfortunately pass away, people's health decline where they need to sell a house that's in really bad condition, or they may not be able to pay their mortgage because they're unemployed. Even though there's a shorter big supply of houses, people still have those problems. And I think focusing on that as a real estate investor is the way that you continue to find success. Even though the interest rates are high, they've been way higher in the past, by the way, and people have been investing in real estate for decades. We get in our minds that interest rates are too high. We can't start investing right now, but I just bought a property, meets the 1% rule, even with my higher mortgage payment because of the higher interest rate. The deals are out there, people always have problems that need solving. And I think if you focus on solving them instead of what's not going your way, I mean, you'll never find a deal if you're waiting for the perfect moment. And that's one thing that I've learned.

Nate Trunfio: That's great advice. I think that goes to a lot of other things in life and business and entrepreneurship as well. Let me take a similar but different step then just related to finding off- market properties, any just broad best practice advice? Because again, I know you built platform and process and tech and data to help facilitate finding off market properties, but what are some maybe best practices or tips that you'd have for the investors listening?

David Lecko: Yeah, here's three tips for finding off market properties. Tip number one is when you're looking for rundown distressed properties, do not pay attention to who owns the property. Most people look for absentee owned properties only, but most of my deals have been owner occupied. The only thing you're looking for when you're Driving for Dollars is if it's a rundown house. And that's it. Step number two, I would say tip number two is a pitfall that people get into is they think they need to drive in the absolute worst neighborhoods to find these properties. But the flip side is people probably don't want to buy in the worst property neighborhoods. And in a market like Indianapolis, a lot of those houses aren't even worth fixing up. If the best house in the neighborhood's worth 50 grand and you're buying something that had fire damage, it's like how are you going to fix that up for less than 50 grand? You're not. You can't make money in that market. Look in just around, start around your house and you'll start to see properties that aren't keeping up their bushes, that have a gutter dent, that have biological growth on the side of the house and start adding those properties, the ones that look just a little bit less than the rest of the properties in the neighborhood. Then also people think that they can't do it in their market. They think that their market's too saturated. And I'll just tell you what, if people are doing deals in your market, then you can absolutely do it too. And it's better to look at properties that are right there when you're starting out in your backyard because you can actually meet the seller. And that's a big advantage. And you just have to know your KPIs for your market and focus on doing those before you decide if that's not a good market. That's three tips when you're finding off market deals.

Nate Trunfio: Dude, some good ones, brother. You've been bringing the heat, man. I got one last question here that I'm really curious on because you're just continuing... You're always in the game and in my opinion, ahead of the game and you probably think about this and if you can't share anything, because you got something going, let me know that. But if you were to start a whole new company, completely different than DealMachine in any realm, specifically maybe tech, what would it be?

David Lecko: Man, I've got to say this. I wonder... Okay, I feel like I've done a different mortgage with a traditional mortgage. Traditional mortgage, you get 10 and then afterwards you need to have a different-

Nate Trunfio: You need to go through an entity or you can't... Yep.

David Lecko: Like Lima One, right?

Nate Trunfio: Yep.

David Lecko: So in these typical Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac like loans, I feel like those companies don't use a great consistent process for their software managing the documents you've got to send up and back and forth. And I don't know too much about that industry, but I was like, man, that'd be pretty cool to solve. I'm always just trying to solve my own problem and I'm not trying to pitch a business and raise money, but that was one thing I thought of a few years ago that I thought could be a lot better.

Nate Trunfio: Hey, man, as speaking on behalf of my lending peers, I mean, we need some help in that regard. You are welcome to come to the mortgage lending game, my brother. And funny enough, we're actually in the middle of building a customer portal as well as a loan origination software and it's-

David Lecko: See, you guys are ahead of the game. That's what I'm saying.

Nate Trunfio: We're trying to be, man. It's just not easy.

David Lecko: I need to use more rental properties so then I can use Lima One.

Nate Trunfio: Hey, man, we appreciate that. We appreciate that. Well, David, man, this has been extremely insightful. It's just awesome always to catch up to speed with how you're looking at things. And I think it's cool too. A lot of your advice is just sound and true regardless of sort of what's going on. And I love your solution mindedness, man. Last, give us where can we reach you and give one more shout out for the DealMachine podcast as well too?

David Lecko: Oh, thank you so much, man. Yeah, the DealMachine Real Estate Investing Podcast on iTunes. If you're looking to get your first wholesale deal and you want to hear from one of our successful customers as we interview people who have done like their first, second, and third deal and how they did it. I'm on Instagram, DLecko, as well. And I can't wait. Let me know when this episode comes out because I'm going to share it with everyone. Nate, thank you so much for having me on.

Nate Trunfio: That's a wrap. Thank you so much, David Lecko, from the DealMachine. What a phenomenal episode with a ton of knowledge shared. Please make sure you check out our Real Estate of Things episodes dropping every Tuesday, and you can always check us out on our website at www. RealEstateOfThings. co. Please download, subscribe, and follow and stay tuned for our next episode coming soon.

Audio: Are you a real estate investor looking for the right lender that can finance all your deals and help you scale? Lima One Capital has the best suite of loan products in the industry, bar none. Whether that's fix and flips, fix and holds, building new construction or buying rental properties, they have incredible financing solutions for it all. A reliable common sense lender is one of the most important parts of your investment team, and that's exactly what you get with Lima One. Let Lima One Capital show you how they've helped thousands of real estate investors scale and increase their wealth. Check out LimaOne. com or call 800-259-0595 to speak with a consultant in preparation for your next project. Thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate of Things podcast. Subscribe and tune in weekly for new content from the industry's best, while we continue to unpack the nuances of this dynamic market. Follow us across social media for additional insights and analysis on the topics covered in each episode. And remember to rate, review and share the show.