Andrew Jewett is the Founder at Aperture Real Estate, a vertically integrated, real estate technology and investment company. Aperture is bringing to the market, a decentralized Property investment; PropertyCoin, and Andrew will be telling us more about Propertycoin in this interview;
1) Hello Andrew, could you please tell us about yourself?
Hi and thanks so much for having us. Matt Miles, my business partner, and I are both east coast transplants living on the west coast now and have known each other since 2005. We first met while we were working as investment bankers focused on the residential real estate space. After our time on Wall St., we both moved to the west coast to take senior roles at one of the largest residential fix and flip operators in the U.S. where we jointly ran capital markets. We founded Aperture in 2016 to capitalize on the opportunity we saw to implement unique and innovative sourcing and process management technology into a market that has traditionally lagged behind the innovations of the technology industry.
2) Tell us about Aperture and what are your main services?
For starters, we just made this short video detailing our plan: https://youtu.be/amZEuHNLpnw
More detail: Aperture is the result of nearly two year’s worth of thought, development and personal investment in a technology and operating platform that primarily focuses on two sectors of the residential real estate market:
- the acquisition, rehabilitation, and disposition of distressed residential real estate (“flips”) and
- writing short duration loans to other, smaller investors doing the same thing (“investor loans”).
At its core, our business revitalizes neighborhoods, creates jobs and improves communities, and we’re already profitable. We have developed and implemented a sophisticated, data-driven and proprietary technology platform that identifies potential assets for the acquisition of homes and origination of loans. And…
More importantly, we have an incredibly talented team of professionals on staff. We estimate that they have, in their careers, been involved in the closing of more than $150B of structured finance transactions, the flipping of more than 3,000 properties, the origination of more than $10B of mortgage loans and have created proprietary mortgage information technology platforms for some of the world’s largest investment banks. We really believe that our team and our tech are best in class and we are uniquely positioned to make a major impact in this space.
3) Revolutionizing the way real estate is transacted is a bold statement, why has Aperture chosen to change the real estate market?
Residential Real Estate is the single largest asset class in the world, at approximately $162 trillion of invested assets so what better asset class to focus on innovating? The way houses are bought and sold today is completely arcane and the market is slowly adopting technology as a tool for innovation and growth rather than displacement and disruption. Enter Aperture. Our systems and processes have been designed to provide our customers with a fully online and hassle-free experience from start to finish. Whether you’re buying a house from us, selling us your house or obtaining a loan, why shouldn’t you be able to do that from the convenience of your own home and on your own schedule? We answer a similar question in our first YouTube QA: https://youtu.be/qrcD9XOYw68
4) So, how do you plan to achieve this, what is your roadmap?
Currently, our operations are focused on select markets across the U.S. that we think are attractive. These markets currently represent about 8% of the Continental U.S. Our system analyzes an estimated 1,000 properties per day (on average), looking for attractive investment properties in those markets. At this volume, and given that we focus on only 8% of the U.S. population, we see far more opportunities than we currently have the capital to invest and tremendous growth potential. While we could easily put $100M of capital to work, we want to be measured and responsible in our growth. Our current growth plan calls for a $50+ million capital raise via our Initial Coin Offering (ICO), Property Coin, and a ramp in staff over the next 9-12 months. From there, we see tremendous opportunity to expand into new markets across the U.S., and even globally, based on where we think the most attractive opportunities lie.
5) You are bringing big data and IT to the real estate, what about cryptocurrencies?
That’s one of the reasons we truly believe we are “revolutionizing the way real estate is transacted.” Blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency markets that have been created on the technology represent a fundamental ground shift in how people invest in assets, transfer wealth, and fund companies. As we watched this market grow in popularity, we saw an opportunity to merge traditional securitization and structured finance governance with blockchain and coin technology as well as to bring a legitimate, well-structured coin, backed by real estate assets to that market. Property Coin represents the only opportunity that we are aware of, anywhere, to directly invest in diversified exposure to the residential “fix and flip” asset class, particularly in the coin format. We will invest 100% of the net proceeds from the Property Coin ICO in real estate properties and loans and each Property Coin holder will own a fractional percentage of the real estate and loan assets purchased using that money.
Coin holders will also be entitled to 50% of the net profits from these property and loan investments. We will re-invest those profits in new real estate related investments, with the intent of creating a natural price appreciation effect for coin holders. Depending on the level of success of our ICO, we hope to allow people to use cryptocurrencies, ie Property Coin, to purchase any property listed for sale on our platform.
6) You are operating in Los Angeles, St. Louis, and New Jersey, any expansion plans in the near future?
Yes, we’re headquartered in Los Angeles, with additional offices in St. Louis and New Jersey. Additionally, we’re operating in 11 markets across the country and considering adding staff in new locations outside of our main 3. Part of the beauty of our tech platform is that it is 100% cloud-based, and our team can perform job functions from anywhere in the U.S., or even world!
7) Where do you see the value of Aperture in the next 5 years?
The competitive landscapes for nationally (and internationally) focused institutional “fix and flip” companies with investor loan originators are extremely limited. We’ve held senior positions at one of the largest operators in this space and we know how to grow and operate a company on a significant scale. Our vision is to grow Property Coin into a $1 billion+ property and loan portfolio that revitalizes neighborhoods and promotes affordable housing while delivering profits and value appreciation to our investors.
8) What are your marketing and sales strategies to achieve that?
Marketing and sales strategies are so unique and tailored to our individual business that it would be hard to give a blanket statement but we hope that we can remain at the cutting edge of technological developments in the Fintech space while maintaining a best in class customer experience to all our current and future users.
9) What would you like to tell us about your team?
They rock! We’re really proud of the team we’ve assembled so far and are very excited about where they’re going to take us! Join our Telegram group to meet them: http://t.me/property_coin
10) Any last words or final thoughts for real estate startups and investors?
Our headquarters are in El Segundo, CA, just minutes from LAX which is quickly becoming a tech innovation hub. Being here gives us such unique exposure to so many cool, local companies that have come up with such fascinating and ground-breaking ideas. If you have an idea or thoughts on how to improve the Fintech landscape, give us a ring, we’d love to figure out a way to collaborate with you! In the meantime, check out www.propertycoin.re for more info on Property Coin. Office line: (310) 870-1730
And if you’re curious to stay up to date on our happenings week by week, we encourage you to tune into our QA sessions held on our social media accounts. Our latest video can be viewed below https://youtu.be/vH2TaaJxIro
Telegram: http://t.me/property_coin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Property_Coin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/propertycoin
