Frank Furman is the Chief Growth Officer at PadSplit. Prior to PadSplit, he worked as a Category Director at Georgia Pacific and as an Engagement Manager for McKinsey & Company in London and Atlanta.
A former infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, he commanded at the platoon and company levels and served two tours in Afghanistan. He has a B.S in Aeronautical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and an M.S. in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University. He and his wife Caelyn live in Atlanta and have three children, Rudyard, Byron, and Winnie.
PadSplit – a privatized housing company focused on providing affordable houses. They have over 1,700 units (within just 3.5 years), including single and multi-family properties. PadSplit also increases yield by more than 100 percent for property owners by using existing housing stock as shared housing.
Numbers-wise, PadSplit was founded in 2017 and has raised $14.6M in the capital, and was also named one of the top 10 tech companies in Georgia, as well. PadSplit has also been featured in CoStar, Bloomberg, Fast Company, TechCrunch, and other publications.
Timestamps:
0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money
1:14 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now”- https://www.JayConner.com/Book
2:28 – Today’s guest: Frank Furman
4:45 – Frank Furman talks about his company PadSplit
6:54 – How does sharing space with other people work?
8:00 – How is this similar to student housing?
9:33 – What problem does the PadSplit company fix?
14:12 – In terms of numbers, what is the difference in profit between the traditional rental market and the PadSplit model?
18:30 – How to invest in PadSplit – https://www.PadSplit.com
22:29 – PadSplit goals and future plans for growth.
26:15 – How do you handle non-paying renters?
27:47 – How can you market PadSplit in secluded areas?
29:42 – Connect with Frank Furman – https://www.PadSplit.com
Private Money Academy Conference: https://www.jayconner.com/learnrealestate
Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book
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Join the Private Money Academy: https://www.JayConner.com/trial/
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Discover Affordable Housing with Frank Furman & Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority
Jay Conner
00:02:33
He’s actually a former infantry officer and he was in the United States Marine Corps. What experiences he’s had. He commanded at the platoon levels and company level, and actually served 2 tours over in Afghanistan. What an education he’s got. He’s got a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering at the United States Naval Academy. Also an M.S. in Applied Physics from John Hopkins University. He and his wife and kids are down in Atlanta, Georgia. Well, today, the reason we have him on the show is because he’s with a very, very interesting company. In fact, he’s the brainchild behind it. He is the Chief Growth Officer at a company called PadSplit. Our guest is going to tell us a lot more about it. It’s a housing company that actually focuses on providing affordable houses.
Jay Conner
00:03:38
And that ties right back into my background from years ago when I was in the manufactured housing industry. So right now PadSplit has over 1700 units. And this has all come about in just the past 3 and a half years. And these units include single-family houses and also multi-family properties as well. Now, PadSplit also increases yield by more than 100% for property owners by using existing housing stock as shared housing. What I just said might not make sense to you, but you’re going to learn what it means here in just a second. Well, PadSplit was founded in 2017 and has already raised $14.6 million in capital. And it was also named one of the Top 10 Tech Companies in Georgia as well. With that, welcome to the show, my special guest, Mr. Frank Furman.
Frank Furman
00:04:39
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Jay Conner
00:04:42
Absolutely! Glad to have you. So, Frank, now I know my audience still doesn’t know what PadSplit is. Pull the curtain back and in very, very simple terms for my sake, at least, tell us what PadSplit is, what it’s all about, and what’s its purpose and its mission and all that.
Frank Furman
00:05:07
Got it. So, we’re a marketplace platform. So think like Airbnb, but instead of being fractional in terms of time, so one occupancy, another occupancy, another. We’re fractional in terms of space, right? So it’s room rentals. And a lot of times people look at us and say, “Oh, I kind of get it. Maybe I should ask my kids if they get it as young people don’t understand.” I say, “No, no. Ask your grandmother because this is how working singles used to live in the United States.” And to a large extent still do today. The concept of someone getting their start or someone who’s working in kind of manufacturing or security guard and fast food or what have you, having their own apartment with all the kind of lease obligations and expenses that entails is kind of a new construct.
Frank Furman
00:05:57
So, really it’s about bringing a thing that already exists around in every Metro area and democratizing and making it more accountable and making it more widespread. So what it looks like is, it’s a workforce housing company. And so on the one side of the market are landlords, property owners who want to increase their yield. They want to do well by doing good. And on the other side are the residents who are, again, people who work in our communities and are looking for a good value on an inexpensive place to live. But it’s a shared housing company like that.
Jay Conner
00:06:32
Let’s say that I am someone that is needing affordable housing and I can’t afford the mortgage payment or whatever to buy a house or I can’t afford the rent on, say, a single-family house or whatever. So how do I, as a user, as a renter, share the space logistically with other people?
Frank Furman
00:07:01
Yeah. If you’ve ever been in a student housing arrangement or think Golden Girls a little bit. So the bedrooms are private, so it’s singles, one bedroom, and what’s shared are the rest of the parts of the house or apartment. So kitchen, oftentimes the bathroom. Now a big part of what we do on the technology side, and certainly on the customer support side, is making that side of it work, right? The payment processing and all that, maintenance tickets, all that’s relatively straightforward. But we have a whole kind of investment on the side of, how do you worry about the cleanliness of the house? Kind of who does what? Chore wheel, that sort of thing. Think of it as renting a bedroom and sharing common areas.
Jay Conner
00:07:47
Okay. Well actually the example you just gave made it really, really easy to understand. So you said it’s like compared to student housing. So like with student housing, tell everybody how student housing works in case somebody needs some clarification.
Frank Furman
00:08:05
The way that a lot of student housing works now may be a little bit different. Oftentimes there’s a co-signer or you have a bunch of students who are coming together signing on the same lease. For us, they’re individual people, individual contracts, but it’s about moving strangers in together, right? They’re not all students in our case, they may be somebody who works at this Starbucks. Maybe someone who works at this manufacturing center, distribution center, but it’s strangers are moving in together with individual contracts. But oftentimes, student housing, which is oftentimes custom-built, will have individual bedrooms surrounding, called a “suite,” typically, surrounding a common area. We might have the couch and the TV, and I don’t know, where kids play beer pong. And I went to the Naval Academy so we didn’t have any of this nonsense. We were in the barracks, but I heard about it. But yeah, that’s the idea is you have, maybe 4 or 6 bedrooms and student housing and you share the common area in the middle.
Jay Conner
00:09:01
Gotcha. So as far as PadSplit goes, one side of the company are the users or the renters. And another side of the company are your investors that are helping you and your company acquire more properties. Right?
Frank Furman
00:09:19
Exactly.
Jay Conner
00:09:20
Let’s talk about the renters and the users a little bit, and then let’s talk about the investment opportunity and what the investment side of it looks like. But before we do that, let’s first talk about, I’m thinking you saw an opportunity to solve a problem? Most of us are not in business unless we’re solving problems. And so you must have seen an opportunity to solve a problem. And therefore you came up with this idea of PadSplit. So tell us the story, how you even came up with this idea and what problem does it fix?
Frank Furman
00:10:02
Sure. First, I want to give credit where credit is due. So my co-founder CEO, Atticus, he’s also my brother-in-law. So I’ve known him for some time. When you call me the brainchild, I sort of chuckle because the credit goes to him for that. He got his start in real estate. He was living in Atlanta and as a commercial broker in 2007, so kind of pre-crash, but kind of lived through that. And he’s looking around and seeing all these houses for sale for really, really cheap, post-crash kind of 2008, 2009. So he was buying them up, building portfolios, and like things you’re going to stumble into, he bought a house in Southwest Atlanta. And two neighbors came by, Mr. Oates and Mr. Mitch.
Frank Furman
00:10:48
And they said, “Hey man, our house is being foreclosed on. You’ve got this house, we’re renting rooms and this one, we want to rent rooms in yours.” And he’s like, “Yeah, thanks, but I’m going to rent this out through the housing authority. I appreciate it. But I don’t really know what a rooming house is, you know?” And they’re like, “Hey man, we’ll pay you a hundred bucks a week.” And he looks at anything, gosh, 4 bedrooms, a hundred bucks a week, or I get 800 from the housing authority. So we gave it a try and did another one in 2012 and kind of built up a large portfolio of single-family homes and apartments. And this was always kind of a thing in the background, but over the intervening years, what he noticed was much more profitable and they serve a need that is really hard for other housing providers to serve. What’s that for that income demographic, that’s people who are working, people working full-time, but can’t really afford market rents.
Frank Furman
00:11:44
The way to think about it for investors on the podcast is typically as a landlord, you’re asking for 3 times rent as income. And, you think about it, someone’s making $25,000 a year and if they’re making $20 an hour, what are they qualifying for? A couple hundred bucks a month, 600 bucks a month? There are no apartments available for $600 a month. And that’s before you get into security deposits to turn on utilities. Realistically to set up your own apartment, furnish it all that, you really need to have $3,000 or $4,000 typically in out-of-pocket expenses. For those who can do it, that’s just all well and good. But I don’t think it takes a genius with any great insight to know that there are millions, tens of millions of Americans who are in a position where they don’t have $4,000 to their name to get set up. And certainly not because they have to pay for an apartment. So how do you kind of lower the barrier to entry, still maintaining high standards on underwriting? Collections rates, obviously, that’s our business, but how do you really kind of make it work for this not small sliver of the population, but really enormous unmet need in the market?
Jay Conner
00:13:07
Gotcha. Well, and that’s certainly true. I mean, if these people aren’t having a place to rent, like you and your company are providing, then I guess they’re staying home with mom and daddy or grandmama or uncle or cousins or sisters or brothers, whatever.
Frank Furman
00:13:25
Yeah. Now, it’s a whole host of things. I mean, we talk about imagining someone who’s working full time but is functionally homeless. What does that mean? You know, maybe they drive till they qualify, maybe they work in Atlanta, but they commute from an hour and a half away or 2 hours away because that’s how far you have to go to get a place you can afford, or they crash on someone’s couch or sleep in their cars. Certainly if you go to a lot of big cities, you see a lot of people who are doing that – sleeping at the airport and these are people who are working. So, obviously, people can hold down a job, they can put in the hours. And our conviction is that, we as a society and as a group of investors should be able to provide a product that works.
Jay Conner
00:14:11
So, let’s talk about some numbers for a second. So let’s just use your area because you know your area, like you know these single-family houses that you have right now that make up part of the 1700 units. Give us an example of one of the properties that you’ve got, that if you were just renting it out traditionally, give us a description of what this house looks like. And this can be just like one of your typical single-family houses. Square footage, number of beds, and baths. What would it typically rent out just on the traditional rental market? And in contrast to that now with it being fractionalized with multiple renters inside the same property, how much does that property cash flow under this model compared to the traditional model?
Frank Furman
00:15:08
It’s a great question. Actually, it shows you to some extent how quickly we’re growing and we’re now over 2,500 units. Maybe it’s pretty hard to book time on your show that we’ve had a lot of time to do it, but yeah, we’re up over 2,500 units now. One of our original insights is that, typically, rental properties tend to be relatively small because they’re cheaper to maintain. They’re a little less space, there’s less demand than they’re at for the larger-sized houses. But a lot of these houses exist. There are, say, 4-bedrooms, call it more than 1600 square feet, just to think of the housing stock. So oftentimes it’s houses that have underutilized space. So maybe it’s a basement or garage or a big dining room or big living room where as an investor, you don’t get paid for that space.
Frank Furman
00:16:02
You don’t get paid for the dining room, and for us, you get paid for the bedrooms. So how do you kind of capture and monetize that? That underutilized space? So again, starting with a house that’s maybe 3 or 4 bedrooms and call it 1600 square feet plus. Maybe it’s in a transitioning neighborhood or close to public transit. Maybe it rents for 1700 bucks a month, traditionally, or even say $2,000 a month. Okay, great. As a traditional rental, you’re renting it out. You think you’re doing okay, paying some maintenance, paying your property manager 10%. Hey, that’s a good investment. You’re maybe clearing 1500 bucks before your note. Hey, that’s pretty good. Our view is you take the 4-bedroom house and maybe take the living room or the dining room or basement and turn it into 6 or 7 bedrooms.
Frank Furman
00:16:52
So you’re capturing them and monetizing that under-utilized space. Well, you’re renting it out by the room, your rooms are your revenue-generating units. And so, our average prices you’re talking about are between 600 and 700 bucks a month, kind of all-in with utilities. So again, much less than the cost of an apartment and more flexible. So, great value for the renter. But again, you know I’m a former Marine so making me do math in public is a little bit harsh. But with 600 bucks a month on 7 bedrooms, that’s over $4,000 a month. Now, look, you’re paying utilities on the property. You’re paying PadSplit, we’ve got our fee, that’s a cut of revenue. I got those kids, you know, they gotta eat, we gotta pay for them somehow. Again, you’re paying your property manager, you have expenses, but again, going from $2,000 in gross rent, over $4,000, that’s the magic, right?
Frank Furman
00:17:46
So even net of expenses, you’re typically clearing about double the net operating income. And that’s kind of why investors work with us. Now many do because they say they have a conviction with the way that we do that. People who work in our communities should be able to live in our communities. Okay, that’s wonderful, but the numbers have to work. And that’s one of our original insights was, we have this affordable housing crisis in our country, but it’s a supply problem in that, if you can make the yields work, if you can make it as profitable or more profitable than market rate housing, then you don’t have a problem because you’re tapping into the capital and the intellect and the energy and creativity of the investors. Private investors in the market. So if you can make that happen, the supply fixes itself.
Jay Conner
00:18:30
Gotcha. So let’s talk about the investor side. So let’s say we’ve got audience members here that would be interested in investing and get a really nice return and yield. What does that look like on that side, on the investor side?
Frank Furman
00:18:48
So the way that people do it, and we’ve investors across the spectrum, from retail investors who are new to investing in real estate but just want to try something new, to institutional operators who own thousands and thousands of homes and perhaps generate a higher yield on their part that’s with PadSplit. The first step is easy though. It’s going to our website, PadSplit.com and signing up as a host. Our sales team will reach out and really kind of walk people through the process. And the reason for that is, is that it is a little bit different from operating a traditional rental, right? It’s not rocket science, but all of the steps are a little bit different. You’re looking for different kinds of assets. We’ve partnered with brokers and agents in several markets to help you think through your buy box. Same thing on the renovation and staging their furnished units.
Frank Furman
00:19:44
It’s not hard, but it’s a little bit of an aspect. And even another side of it, again, we’ve done this on hundreds and hundreds of homes and utilities are a good example where most landlords don’t think about utilities because they don’t pay the bills. And most tenants don’t think about it, the property, because they don’t know, right? They’re not going to make tax investments, but in our model, those incentives are aligned. You, as a landlord, want to drive down utility costs because that’s coming out of your bottom line. So really simple, thinking through kind of passive investments, like smart thermostats that are locked with a pin. Now you control the HVAC that’s most of the energy bill. Or low-flow fixtures, like low-flow shower heads to drive down your water bill that really make it much more profitable. So that’s what our team is trained to do with investors is walk them through this process.
Frank Furman
00:20:33
And oftentimes, even pre-acquisition to say, “Hey, Jay, you know, you’ve brought me this property at 123 Main Street. It’s on a cul-de-sac, it’ll be really tight with parking. Let’s look for a better one where you’ll have a better experience and better return. Oh, hey, this one is a corner lot close to public transit.” “You know, I love it. That’d be great.” And kind of go from there. So we kind of walk you through, we can oftentimes refer a general contractor or a property manager if those aren’t queued up for you to make it as easy as possible. And we are actually even now selling turnkey properties through an affiliated fund for investors who really want to kind of push these events.
Jay Conner
00:21:13
Gotcha. So just to make sure everybody understands what you and PadSplit are offering, you’re not looking for people to just invest money with PadSplit. You’re looking for investors that already have properties that they may want to use this strategy to increase their gross revenue. Is that right?
Frank Furman
00:21:33
Either or. We work with both. We work with investors who already have a portfolio of single-family rentals, and we’ll go through and say, “Hey, this one you’re already at highest and best use. Keep it as a traditional rental or as an Airbnb. But, hey, this one that’s maybe bigger or you struggle with or what have you, we think you can go from a 5 cap to a 10. Let’s talk through that.” Or in many cases, we work with investors who say, “I’m interested. I don’t own any properties that would fit.” Let’s go buy some and we help you through that process.
Jay Conner
00:22:05
So you’ve got the opportunity for people to just invest in PadSplit, right? For those that already have properties, maybe look for a way to maximize revenue. Right?
Frank Furman
00:22:21
Absolutely.
Jay Conner
00:22:22
All right. Excellent. So what an interesting, interesting concept, I believe that. Have you all got any projections as to how big you’re going to get and how quick? Cause you’re growing pretty fast.
Frank Furman
00:22:37
They don’t make computer programs strong. No, I’m just kidding. I mean, we’re very ambitious. We started this company with the idea that it has to be big. We wanted to build this thing into a nationwide company that helps hundreds of thousands of people. So there’s no way about it. Today, we’re primarily located in the Southeast. We’re kind of Texas through Florida through Virginia and a little bit in the Midwest. We’d like to be coast to coast. Again, we’re over 2,500 units today. We’d like to be 10,000 by the end of next year as in our mind, there’s such an enormous unmet need for this product in the market. And we joke a lot of times, obviously, our marketing team does wonderful things to find folks and scream and get them through that funnel.
Frank Furman
00:23:26
But if we added 10,000 units tomorrow, they’d panic a bit, but we could fill them because for better, for worse, there’s just an enormous shortage of affordable units in the country. So really, we’re in a supply-constrained market and which is why we’re enjoying opportunities like this, to reach out to investors who are interested in solving a problem and also want to get paid for it. They want to generate a yield, as they should as investors. So we came at this from a real estate investor focus, that’s our background. And so we know that that part has to work.
Jay Conner
00:24:04
So if a real estate investor, that’s listening to the show here has got some houses or a portfolio of houses where they just want to take a look at converting some of their houses, is part of the service that PadSplit offers actually helping the real estate investor market their houses and find renters for this usage?
Frank Furman
00:24:28
Exactly. That is really our core offering. So again, similar to the way to think about it, similar to Airbnb and that they’re listed on our platform, but we do all of the marketing and lease up for the properties to get people moved in and booked. And we do all of the screening and background check, credit check, income verification, employment verification, all that’s done and part of the process.
Jay Conner
00:24:51
Got you. So PadSplit actually makes the decision for the real estate investor as to whether this person should be accepted as a renter or not, right?
Frank Furman
00:25:03
Right. We do that upfront screening.
Jay Conner
00:25:04
Yep. Gotcha. And y’all collect the money?
Frank Furman
00:25:07
That’s correct. We do. And we run all of the collections. So if people are behind or late fees, we do all that. And the way to think about it is if you have that house, that’s 7 bedrooms, we bill weekly because, again, one of our early insights in the way that we built the business was, a lot of landlords aren’t very customer-focused, right? You bill on the 1st because it’s easy for your lender. It’s easy for the bank. It’s easier for your accounting team, but it isn’t that easy for renters, right? Because you know, today, what day is it? Okay. I know that it’s Tuesday. When’s Friday? Okay. I get paid on Friday. I get billed on Friday. But when’s the 1st of the month? I have no idea. So it’s all about making it simple for people to pay. And we work through it, it’s all electronic payments, but autopay features and all that. But the idea is how do you have more of a customer-focus to make it as easy as possible? But again, weekly payments, 7 bedrooms, you might have 30-some payments in a month. We kind of bundle it all up together and then remit it in one easy payment to the landlord. So that again, it’s easy for accounting, easy for your lender, that kind of thing.
Jay Conner
00:26:15
Well, when you get a renter that’s not paying, who gets them out?
Frank Furman
00:26:18
We’re able to do that remotely through our customer service team. And we have those conversations when it’s, cause again, it happens, right? Especially in a pandemic and all sorts of things going on, job churn is real. But if it comes down to it, occasionally, it does come to a formal eviction process, unfortunately, when things go south.
Jay Conner
00:26:44
Well, the good news is since you’re collecting weekly, if there’s a problem, you’re going to know it a lot sooner than collecting monthly.
Frank Furman
00:26:51
Yeah. We’re definitely on top of people. It’s not, they don’t trust me with it at PadSplit. I don’t know, maybe I’m too nice, but we’re not tenacious enough. But we have a team that really keeps on top of people all the time.
Jay Conner
00:27:04
Well, another cool thing about billing weekly is like, if you’re just collecting monthly, well, some months got 4 weeks and some months got 5 weeks. And so you have a built-in, maybe a little extra revenue thing there on the weeks that months that’s got 5 weeks.
Frank Furman
00:27:23
Exactly. I’m glad you picked up on that because I don’t know how many times I’ve worked with folks where they’re like, “Why is this month less than that month? What went wrong?” And you’re like, “Well, there’s 4 weeks, 4 Sundays this month, as opposed to 5. It’s the nature of it. So you’re already set up to be a PadSplit house.”
Jay Conner
00:27:42
I love it! So one last question here, and that is, let’s say you have a real estate investor’s portfolio of houses, but it’s in an area where nobody’s ever heard of PadSplit. How would a new market of people find out about this PadSplit house where this affordable rent is? In a new area?
Frank Furman
00:28:11
So let’s say for the sake of argument, one of the viewers of this show is sitting on a hundred properties in Columbus, Ohio, and thinks, “Hey, this is going to be great.” We’re not in Columbus, Ohio just yet. We’re very tied in with investors to make those launches go successfully. So we would do pre-market assessment and get things prepped up. We would make a big push for a new market and we’ve launched 7 markets this year. So we’ve gone and launched in several cities in Texas and Florida and gone from there. So we’d be very tied in to make it work. But it also means we’re very intentional about the markets we choose. For example, we wouldn’t want to go in with one property in Columbus in part, because I think it would be a sub-optimal experience for the investor, right? So there’s network effects to having multiple properties because there’s options for the renters. But at the same time, you don’t get the referrals and so on. And at the same time, it just wouldn’t work. So we’d want to go in with a pipeline of properties so you can have successful outcomes for the investor. Because that’s our growth engine, when investors do well, they tell their friends, they brag about it and they bring on more properties. So that’s how we grow.
Jay Conner
00:29:33
Well, it’s a fascinating concept. And as I say, I see your company just growing like gangbusters here. Final comments, Frank, before we call this show a wrap and one more time as to how people can stay connected with you.
Frank Furman
00:29:49
Yeah. So I’m easy to find. I’m just Frank@Padsplit.com if you want to email me, but the best way is to just go to our website, PadSplit.com. Create a host account and one of our much friendlier and more knowledgeable sales staff will be calling you to help you out and walk you through the entire process. So yeah, we’d love to work with you if you’re interested and again, we’re looking to launch nationwide, so looking forward to it.
Jay Conner
00:30:17
That’s great. So everybody that’s PadSplit.com. Be sure to get over there and check it out.
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