Episode 417 - From Code to Commerce: Sam Mehrbod's Transition into Real Estate

But one thing, I think One thing the PhD teaches you is it's very similar to an entrepreneurial journey because you're there by yourself. Like, no one is going to save you. No one is going to give you the silver bullet to go through and get it done. So you just have to figure it out.Like, it's, there's no, there is no golden recipe for it. There is no this amazing way that someone's going to save you. You just have to grind through it.You just have to burn through the midnight oil and get it done.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers and really anyone with a story to tell.It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me in my 10th year and over 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Three, two, one. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 417 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Gonna stay in the prop tech space.It's been a little bit of a run here with recommendations from people like Marcy James and Eleni Summershield and a few other people that have just been awesome. Introducing me to some of the really brightest minds and just good people this week.It's going to be Sam Merbod, who is the founder of Roomview, but also has a very interesting background. I love doing research and coming up with like, wow, this person's traveled this path and this path and ended up here. This is amazing.Sam is one of those guys. So let's get this thing started. Sam, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me, Bill. Super excited to be here and super excited to talk a lot of things real estate and a lot of things marketing and a lot of things how we got here.I think that's, that's, that's what you're about. The stories of every real estate person in this industry.

Yeah, that's. Look, I, I'm, I'm just, I'm a very curious person. I was a big Ted Lasso guy. There's a great quote which is be curious, not judgmental. And that's.I work on that every day. Right. Always trying to just, just ask questions, find out about people. That's what, that's how we grow.That's how we build relationships and in our world, in Real estate. That's everything.

That is. That is everything. That's amazing.

So I'm going to start off the way I always start off. I know, I know. You're.You're based in Vancouver, British Columbia, which, by the way, in 1987, my wife and I, our honeymoon started in Vancouver, which was super cool. We stayed down near the park, Stanley park, the W Hotel, and ended up over. By the time we were done with our trip, we ended up in Calgary.

Wow.

So we went through the Rockies, Lake Louise, Banff. You know, you can imagine the trip we had. It was all of our friends went cruising in the 80s. I'm not. I got the wrong complexion for cruising. So.So we, we went to Canada and had a blast.

Did you have like a physical map going through the Rockies?

You go to AAA back in the day. And they created what was called a triptych. Ooh. You know, you just told them where you're starting, where you're ending, and then it was a flip map.

Interesting.

You would flip the pages and eventually. Yeah, yeah, you have to look it up. Look up trip tips.

I've seen those. I've seen. I always like, wondered how you navigate through them because, like, without a gps, now I'm like, what's going on?It just doesn't make sense. Why do you need two people to read a direction for you?

But yeah, that's what it was. Thanks for bringing that up and dating me. That's okay. So are you. Are you a native of Vancouver?

No. I moved to Vancouver about 20 years ago. So I was 15 or 16. Then I got a scholarship to go to the UK. I was born in Iran.And then I got a scholarship to go to the uk, study computer science. And I was super excited. And I thought, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, just become a computer scientist.So I was like, I was a coder. I was writing a lot of like.I'm proud to say that I wrote the first virus that I could and I started like fishing and all this other jazz that I could do at a young age. It was really fun. And then my parents started putting me on the right path where I go to go to go to put this in a competing Olympics and so on.So that's a good thing that I did. And then I got a scholarship, went to the uk, studied passion and Masters then, which is pretty fun. And well, it was like an hour away from London.

What school?

So it was University of Southampton. Their the proudest moment is Titanic left From there. And it's.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So.

Yikes.

Okay. That's the.

Well, they're trying to. Well, I know they have a soccer club.

Yeah.

Or were you into soccer at the time? They might. Were they, like, champions or.

Yeah, I think they got better. They got better. When I was there, it wasn't that good, but they got better over time, so. Okay.Yeah, it definitely, it definitely has a soccer thing to it, but that's with every city in the uk, so.

No, they all do, depending. They might be five divisions down from the Premier League, but they got a club.

Yeah, they definitely got it clocked. They're super religious about it. It's like. It's like hockey in Canada. They're like, super, super religious about it. And you don't.You don't mess with them. It's something super serious. Born.

Born in Iran, but you. So you, you, you. You do four, six, eight years in, In. In. In London, south of London then. Now you're in Canada. Have you become, like, a hockey fan or.

Get in there, get in there, get in there, get in there. Still. Still. Like, I'm like, how does this game work? I'm still, I'm still like. I'm more of a football guy right now.But, yeah, the hockey is definitely growing on me because that's what you do. Like, you just take your friends, watch a hockey game. So it's. It's definitely a Canadian thing now.

Go Canucks. Yeah.

Go Canucks. Yeah. I even know. I know a team. Look at that.

Awesome. Yeah, I was gonna say, right now I'm in Tampa, and so we got smoked by the Panthers last night. It's the Battle of Florida.It's Florida versus the Lightning, so that's a sore spot. I'm not gonna talk about that right now. Obviously, you know, you talked about it. You know, you had some.You, you, you were very aggressive with your early coding, and then your, Your parents did the right thing. But when were you aware of the fact that.That you were going to be an entrepreneur, that that was your mindset, that it wasn't going to be like you're going to work for somebody, you were going to do your own thing. How old were you?

I think this was around age 20 something. I was a residence advisor, like a warden at a campus at UBC here in Vancouver. And I just realized I'm unemployable.It's just like, I have a terrible work ethic. I don't. I question authority, and I probably am better off doing my own thing. Rather than just being employed. So I did it for a year. It was fun.But I always questioned everything. I was like, why are we doing this this way? Like, why. Why is this thing supposed to be this way? You can imagine, like it's like an army.When you're, when you're working on residence advisory and campus, like you have to follow like ton of rules. If you document it, you have to be super organized. I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to compare it to the army, but it was similar style of leadership.Like 16,000 residents. You have to just be super, super organized and do all that.

Looking at your background things I could kind of pick out of it.One of them was that you were into real estate early now, not necessarily, you know, residential real estate, selling homes, but you're development investor. I mean, you do some. This was. You were rather young when you started in this world.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

What pulled you in?

So I realized there's no money in academia. So I started like looking at my university professor and looking at what is happening with my supervisors and so on.Essentially, I think here's the problem with academia. There's way too many PhDs graduating. There's not enough jobs for them. And simply the academics don't die. So there's less positions opening up.So I think from Stanford, like the number one university, you go to UBC, which is number 30th in the world. And then from UBC you don't go to 200, you go to like a thousand universities. It's just not that many positions opened up.So I figured that I'm not going to do this.So I started like partnering up with friends and family, friends and so on, where I could find them, partner up with them, create a fund, build real estate, sell real estate. And like we did a lot of flipping to this date. We still have that development company. It builds around 30 units a year, I would say.And what I've done is I've kind of just stepped out of that business. Now I'm just a silent partner. And there are amazing leaders in it that drive it.And at one point I realized there's a ton of money selling real estate. So I got my license, I started looking at stats, and I started like building a team. To this day, I still have that team.That's five agents that work on the deals that I have or on the deals that I created over the years or the units that we've build and all that jazz. And then, right. I think it was 2016. I met this guy who was a techie. So I bought his home, like a super expensive home in a decent area.And he's like, well, tell me about your background. I'm like, yeah, I'm a quarter. I did this, I did this and that. And then he started thinking, okay, can we get analytics in real estate?Can we build a platform for real estate analytics to. And give it to people so home buyers and sellers use it. So that's probably how everyone enters real estate.They think it's so easy and they can break the market and they can run realtors out of business and they can do an online brokerage and all that jazz. So that's what we did too.We burned a few hundred thousand dollars each going into it, spending like three years building it, doing like deep analytics into homes and like trying to understand home valuation models and things like that. But we missed one critical component.We didn't know who's going to pay for the product, so we thought it's going to be the buyer or the seller, but obviously no one did. The realtor didn't, the buyer didn't, the seller didn't. So he had this amazing product that was so technical, but no one would use it.So think of it as like a huge home valuation report that gives you like Airbnb estimates, like investment estimates, the growth estimates. It was like a super cool tool, but no one would know about it and no one would pay for it. So that was the, that was the problem.

Yeah, it almost sounds like an investor tool. Almost.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, how am I gonna, how am I gonna use this money I got? Because here's all the options I can use with this market, with these, with these properties, that sort of thing.But yeah, it's having that, having that audience that wants to give you money is kind of important in a startup.

Yeah, right. Yeah.And you always think, though, well, we've always heard of these stories in real estate where this guy just had a pitch deck, he sold the idea for a million and he got rich. And you're like, wow, of course I could do that. How hard can it be?

Well, look, you're moving down a better path now. We're going to get there, we're going to talk about that. I want to go back just one second.You brushed over quickly, but what drove you to get your Ph.D.while you're not only a full time job, I'm just guessing you're working like 60, 70 hours a week, yet at the same time you're down the path to get your Ph.D. what was driving you there?

I mean, first of all, it took eight years. Well, it can take time, so it took eight years. And I just did it, like, mostly at nights, and I just didn't want to leave it. Not done. Right.So it was a big.

Wow.

It was a big. And it does. Like, the Persian community or Iranian community is very similar to the German community where they value education so much.And my mom wanted a doctor and all that jazz. So whatever, let's just do it. Let's just finish it off and hang it in the back here. Not do much with it, but it's just there.

That's really, like. I think it's super impressive. You're kind of downplaying a little bit, but that's. That's really cool.

Oh, thank you.But, but one thing, I think One thing the PhD teaches you is it's very similar to an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial journey because you're there by yourself. Like, no one is going to save you. No one is going to give you the silver bullet to go through and get it done. So you just have to figure it out.Like, it's. There's no. There is no golden recipe for it. There is no this amazing way that someone's going to save you. You just have to grind through it.You just have to burn through the midnight oil and get it done. And I think that's the. That's the part that I learned from that experience. And I think that's. That's. That's what everyone should see through that.Building a company or building a community or whatever it is that you're building. Right.

That definitely carries with you through the rest of your life. I mean, that process, that experience. That's awesome. Yeah. So there are a lot of prop tech companies. A lot. The number's staggering, I'm sure.And a lot of them are offering marketing solutions. And so I'm trying to figure out, where does roomview come from?Was it a lack of the video options maybe that weren't there as much as the other sorts of marketing? Or was it the quality of the video offerings?Because, you know, obviously video lends itself to being either very high quality or it can be really low quality. So what, what, what was it that got you going and thinking about starting up roomview?

I think. Well, for us, the experience was like this. We were a content, like where the name comes from. We were a 360 company or 360 tools company.And we saw Matterport, we saw iGuide and all these other players that were emerging. And you're like, we're not going to compete with these guys.So we started having 360 Ricoh tours, and we started having just a lot of guys on the ground doing tours. And we wanted just like create amazing content, right? And we had a lot of photographers on contract going into different cities.So we had photographers in San Francisco, Louisiana. And so on. And that was a good business. You do listing content, do a lot of that. And then one day, some people started reaching out to us.Some of the top realtors in Vancouver and Toronto and LA reached out to us and they were like, sam, can you help me create market updates? And we're like, okay, well, let's. Let's create it. So we created this package, like 200 bucks a month. We send you the photographer, we send.Or the videographer. We send you the script. Just read this in front of the camera. And we would create footage and we would send it.And we sold these packages, like yearly packages. That's. That's the evaluation. That's. That's the evolution of the product. And then something else happened, like Covid started happening.People got lazy. They started. They started to cancel a lot of these scheduled appointments. We had to essentially create the footage without the agent in it.They were like, I'll pay you. I'll pay you like, 200 bucks. Create the video for me. Brand it to me, but don't ask me to be in it. Okay, that sounds like an Asian, right?That sounds like a real estate agent, definitely.

Yeah, totally does.

And then we created these videos. Okay. We're like, okay, you know what? We just charge you 20 bucks. Because I was so excited. It was like a SaaS product now.So I'm like, okay, well, we're going to create the video, we're going to brand it to you, and we're going to give you to a landing page and share it with your friends or family, put on social media, whatever you want to do, and just pay us 20 bucks a month. And that grew us to like 3,000 users. 3,000 paying users up to. And that was like 2020ish.One problem happened, and that problem was we created these videos. Then no one did anything with them. So we would deliver it to Bill's inbox, but Bill is like, okay, what do I do with this now?So we started automatically publishing it on calendars, content calendars and Facebooks and Instagrams and YouTube and other tools, because that was the automation that was the way to get it out the window. And then we started adding, like, lots of branding to it.Because branding was super important to these agents because they wanted a video that looks very authentic. It's hyper local. It's, it's as if it was just created for them.And then we added lots of different tools on top, like where you can add your face, where you can personalize it, where you can do all sorts of things.But I think to this day I believe in one thing, and that is if you're spending more than 100 to 200 bucks a month for content creation, you might do it a month, you might do it two months, you might do it three months, but you're not going to continue doing it for four years, five years. And that's the compound effect of content. Right?Like, you just need a lot of content being built over time for a sustained period of time before you get results out of it. I mean, look at your podcast. 400 sessions. That's, that's the thing, right?If it took, if each episode took 20 hours from you and each episode costed you like two grand, there's no way you've done this. Right. You would have just like cut, like you would have created like three amazing episodes. But yeah, right.And I think that's the, that's the trap that we always fall into. Like, we want this amazing, perfect content, but we forget that we have to do it consistently.We forget that it has to be on YouTube, it has to be on Instagram, it has to be on email, it has to be on every channel. So that consistency and automation, I think it's is, is what we focused on.Just making sure that you get really amazing, beautiful content that's personalized, that's hyper local and looks and feels like you created it, but also delivered across every channel. So that's, that's how the product kind of evaluate. That's the, that's the, that's, that's the path that we came. Like it was kind of organic.

Well, it's, it's, it's an amazing website to just go visit if someone hasn't been there yet and you're, you've got to go check it out because the, the, the, you, you talked about it, but the different levels of the product that you have available and the different ways someone can go if they want to. And, and then the key obviously is automation.

Yeah.

You know, I think, I think anyone who, who's trying to do anything in the prop tech space right now better find a way to, I don't know how to say this other than this way is keep the agent's hands off of it. Just let them, let them know it's being taken care of in a, in a great way with great content.

Yeah. And don't make it too expensive. The moment you go $300, $400, you just lose the battle. Like it's, they don't have that much money.And that's the, that's the thing.Like a majority of agents, if you ask for like even like we have a $40 tier or $30 tier that we offer to agents and a lot of agents are just that like it. But. And they're happy paying that. They get something out of it and then you have the high producing agents.And I think some, like something that I'm always worried about in this industry is like as companies grows and grow this path, they start to cater to the top producing teams and top producing agents because they have all the money and they are spent. They're the top spenders.So if you look at every proptech tool in the past like 20 years, they even call themselves the top producers of the industry or the teams or whatever it is. And the problem is what happens to that agent that's rising to the top?What happens to that agent that's just building their brand, building the things.Instead of charging them thousands of dollars, can you just charge them something reasonable so they start using the product and start getting value out of it and.

Become a, and become an ambassador. Right.Somebody who talks about your product and all of a sudden, you know, getting a lot of those types of agents is a very, very successful operation.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

I have to ask you this. So you've got a development company doing stuff off the side and someone's running that.You've got a brokerage or you know, a team in a brokerage doing some things as well. You're now handling Room View. Is there, is there going to be a day where you're going to say you take over roomview? I'm going on to this next thing.I just can't imagine that's not true. I mean that, that has to be true, right?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

I think, I think someday it's going to happen.

Yeah, I think it's the. So like it's interesting.We had an acquisition offer like about two, three years ago from leading industry player and to this day we don't know if he made the right decision selling or not selling.It was a really good offer and the idea was we always asked like, can we grow this before, like even further or more before we, before we kind of Hand it over to someone else to grow it more and do better with it. So that's definitely the question.I think one major problem in proptech space is that most companies are bleeding money and done not cash positive or cash flow positive. We've tried to be bootstrapped since like 2020.We never raised and we've been always like we have 80 people on the staff right now and it's been, it's been, it's been a journey of keeping it lean but at the same time try to grow. Right.And that's the idea there, just, just making sure that we are, that we're going above and beyond to keep it consistent and at the same time keep it attractive for growth and the next steps.

Sam, I want to ask you about your take because you know you're, you live in Canada and you know you're not, you're not part of the NAR lawsuits in any way, shape or form really, I don't think.But, but what's your take on what's going on in the US and does it, does it, is it making conversations occur in Canada about like hey, we should think about this because maybe we need to worry about this. I don't know. I'm going to defer to you on this.

So.Well, we work with a lot of agents in the US like almost two third of our customer base is in the US and so we definitely feel it, we definitely see it.And there is already waves and similar lawsuits coming up against the Toronto Real Estate Board and against crea, the Canadian Real Estate Association. So you're seeing those and everyone says we are different, but I'm sure there's going to be that.I mean as an agent I can tell you that in the past 10 years the only thing that has kept with real estate inflation was real estate commissions.And I think that's part of the doj, like digging into this like and the public just being a little bit picky on this because well like the heat of pandemic, you could just list the home, get like $50,000 or $60,000 in like expensive areas like Florida or LA or other parts of California. And I think that's where the whole conversation started from.Something interesting about Vancouver has been that since like 20 years ago our standard commission that would be split it between the two agents was two and a half percent, was not 5%. So that's why like Redfins of the industry, they never came here.They were like, well this is already the standard commission here and that's why I suppose that's probably the same reason we're not going to have a similar lawsuit because, well, the commission's already lower.Having said that, I do think that the future of real estate is where an AI or an engine creates the interest, dispatches it to humans to handle the part of the transaction that's very still, that's, that's very emotional. And it's going to be like car dealerships. It's going to be like five grand max. Just flip a home as a, as a commission to that agent.I don't think we're going to see like astronomical commissions for an average home. I mean that home, that's 60 million. Yes. Like it takes a special skill to sell that.But for an average first time home buyer home or a condo, and in like that complex, you probably don't need that much. That's my take on it.I think like 10 years from now you're going to see reduced commissions and a lot more automation in the pipeline of lead generation home tours and everything else in between.

But the agent will still be needed. It's just going to be a different role. A slightly different role. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Did you have the same kind of run that the US did during the pandemic where you thought, oh my God, we're not going to do a, sell anything. And then like three months later they just roof, the roof blew off the top in Canada as well.

It was the same like both interest rates and demand and everything else. I mean, I think, have you seen this probably like multiple times in your career as well. Then the market is good.Everyone thinks that they are the masters of marketing and they're, they're the gurus that know how to do this. It's an expanding market, so everyone is like rushing to buy and everyone thinks like they're the kings of real estate.And then when the market drops, everyone just sits on their assets and it's a game of sustaining until you get capsulated. Right. So I think that's what's happening in the stock market right now, at least at the time of recording this.And, and we see this probably the same way in real estate. Like it's, it's got phases, right. So it's got, it's got the expansion phase, the cooling down phase, and so on.

Sam, this has been great. I am so glad we got a chance to get this finally into the podcast. You're part of the crew now.

Thank you. Thank you.

Which is always good. I end every episode since day one with the same question. And I wanted to ask you this as well. This is. What advice would you give a new agent?Just getting started in the business.

Your friends are the last people that will buy from you and get comfortable with this.

Continue. Yeah, like that.

Yeah. Because, well, I think that the idea is that you think you have a lot of friends and especially the closer friends.They've seen you in a different role for a long time and they've seen you in that different hat, and it's going to be hard for them to see you growing into a different career and doing different things. Family might deal with you. Yes. But friends are usually the last people that would actually work with you. Just get comfortable with it.Just, just, just generate new leads, talk with other people and don't get upset. That's. That's just how it's going to be for the next three years of your career.And then they will start trusting you, and then they will start doing business with you.

Man, I am on a roll here with the podcast. This is episode 417. And no one's ever used that as their response to that question. So congratulations. You and AK both nailed it today.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

Yeah, that's cool.

And Bill, you're doing so much for the industry. I remember, like, I just want to leave this with the audience. I think we met like five years ago in San Diego and I asked Bill, like, what do you do?And like, at that point I'm like, I'm used to getting like, I'm the CEO of this, or I'm, I'm the leader of this. And Bill is like, ah, I'm just a guy. I'm just a mentor. I'm like, can you explain more? And it's like, nah, you'll find out.So, yeah, it took me a while to understand what you do and what impact you are making in the real estate industry. And thank you for all you do. Thank you for all the stuff that you do for the industry.

That's super kind of you. Before we go, if someone wants to reach out to you, what, what should they do?

Just, just come to. Yeah. Samoonvy.com and that's R-O-O-M V U dot com.If you're asking me why we're called this and we are not called video or something, it's just because we rebranded and pivoted in the middle and that's where we are. We're just too lazy to change the name at this point. And. Yeah, that's it.

That's awesome. Sam this is. This really was a lot of fun. We. We knew that going into it, and I appreciate your kind words and. And best of luck as you move forward.I can't wait to see an Inman or a Housing wire or some other Riz Media headline about what Sam's doing now, so. It'll happen. I know it'll happen.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was. It was great spending this hour with you and to see you very soon.