Frank Furman - Growing Affordable Housing Through Room-For-Rent Properties
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Oftentimes people think that affordable housing has to come at the expense of income for owners. Frank Furman is working to create a win-win situation for both. Meet PadSplit, an affordable housing marketplace that connects property owners with pre-screened residents seeking an affordable place to live by leveraging under-utilized space in existing properties. Prior to PadSplit, Frank served in the Marine Corps (serving two tours in Afghanistan), has a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy, a M.S. in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University, and has worked for Georgia Pacific and MicKinsey & Company. Hear Frank share how he's doing good in the community and helping owners increase NOI by 100% at the same time!
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed
- His role as CEO of PadSplit, the largest co-living marketplace in the workforce in the country
- The room rental model was something on Frank's mind, which became his idea of Padsplit.
- They got cash flow by serving a need. There's a secret to it by creating value.
- Padsplit has a goal to increase hosts returns by 100% or more vs being a traditional landlord.
- Online ads, Google & Facebook are some of his main advertising strategies
- When an investor lists a property, they put it on over 40 aggregator sites, like Zumper, Roomster to find the best tenants for their properties
Timestamps
00:00 - Intro and overview on Frank ‘s career.
06:31 - Creative ways to increase your profit through Padsplits model
16:58 - How they address zoning and capacity issues
22:52 - His success & launching 10 locations
28:01 - How their advertising places great tenants
33:00 - How to get ahold of Frank to learn more
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Real freedom stories. And today I'm here to talk with Frank Furman. And Frank has a company that has a unique take on working with local investors and helping to fill their unit. So he is the CEO of PadSplit, the largest co living marketplace in the workforce in the country. And prior to PadSplit, Frank, you were working as a category director at Georgia Pacific, as well as Engagement Manager for McKinsey and Company out of London and Atlanta. And just a little bit quickly about pad split. And obviously, we'll we'll talk a lot about that a housing marketplace that connects property owners with pre screened residents seeking an affordable place to live. And so this is a unique model, I'm excited to talk about it. So in the model that addresses the lack of accessibility and growing barriers to entry for lower income workers, as well as the desire for property owners to still turn a profit but desire to support their community.
Mike Swenson
So you guys are based out of Atlanta, and you operated without public subsidies as well. So taxpayers benefit cities don't have to spend years to construct affordable housing. And so right now pad split is located in nine markets. We've got Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Richmond, Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Tampa. So a little bit about pad split there a little bit about you, Frank, we're so excited to have you on the show. Welcome. So why don't you just share a little bit more about your background, how you got to where you're at, and how pad split and your role with pad split came to be?
Frank Furman
Yeah, no, appreciate that. So I am, you know, like you said, you know, prior to pass, but I work for a couple corporate kind of companies. I spent seven years in the Marine Corps, I was an infantry officer and did two tours in Afghanistan. And so from there, I went to McKinsey, and was management consultant, and so on. And I went to Georgia Pacific, which is really a great company, a lot of ways and my wife and I were, were I guess we had our second child. By that time, we were talking before the In the Green Room, if you will, about our our three children. So now up to three, I've had two. And, you know, I taken this job where needed a little bit more work life balance, I've been on the road a ton in consulting, and I'll be honest, I got a little bit bored. And I love Georgia Pacific, it's a great place, but I kind of looked, I was looking for something else, you know, looking for something new, something a little more entrepreneurial.
Frank Furman
And my brother in law, Atticus, who's our CEO, had, it always been in real estate is really as kind of background, he was an architecture major Yale, and he built up this successful real estate investment company, but at the time, this is 2017 had kind of gotten to the point where, you know, it handed off most of the day to day responsibilities to partners. And, you know, I was I was working a pretty standard job. He, he, you know, he was having a ton of time on his hands. He said, What are you up to say, oh, you know, I'm bored. What are you up to I, you know, I'm bored, too. And so we talked about this and say, you know, I've got this idea in the back of my head, you know, doing it for several years, this room rental model, on a couple houses, there's some operational quirks, there's a, there's some nuance to it, but you know, it serves a part of the market that is wildly underserved, and no one understands it.
Frank Furman
So that was the kind of kernel of the idea that became pad split, ultimately, this idea that there is an opportunity, when at the time, you know, now, think about how naive we were four years ago, thinking the market was was kind of too hot. Maybe we were a touch early, but you know, looking at things and saying, you know, yields are compressed, you know, he really built his real estate business buying and kind of 2008 through 2010 or alert, that was good timing. But, you know, come 2017 assets that appreciate so much you couldn't walk into these, you know, eight cat deals, you know, just kind of wild return deals. And so how do you get cash flow? You know, how do you generate yield the way that you could while serving kind of a need in the marketplace, because that's really the only way you get return in anything is by serving a need. There's a secret to it by creating value.
Frank Furman
So we kind of started from there. And the vision was to create this marketplace, as you said, where you know, one way to think about is two sided marketplace so like Airbnb, but instead of being fractional in terms of time, one occupancy, one occupancy, it's fractional in terms of face one room, one room one room. So long term tenants who live in house, but there they are short term right there. They live and work in the communities, their security guards, people work in fast food, hospitality, that sort of thing. But who simply, you know, average incomes about 30k a year, and let's just struggle to afford market rents, especially as they've gone up over the recent years. And so the way to think about it is they, it's pretty clear why they work with us and what their value proposition is the renters, right, they're paying a fraction of what they would for apartments, they're saving money. And the reason that landlords work for us is it about doubles your yield, right. So as loans have been compressed by, you know, rising asset prices, and of course, rents always lag asset prices a little bit. You know, we're able to generally about double those yields using this housing model.
Frank Furman
And so we build out from there. So now we've, we've diverged a bit, you know, again, we've worked in a couple different markets, we've also built out a sidecar fund, that sells turnkey properties to investors in some of these markets as well. But that's kind of where we were at GM. So we're, you know, we're still on our way, we've raised three venture rounds, we're up to about 100, and just 140 folks today, so kind of grind actually, that even seems a little bit wild, to be honest, because it was it was all about, you know, three of us four years ago. So a lot of growth. And that's kind of where we are.
Mike Swenson
So let's talk a little bit about some of the questions that people naturally would have. Because I think, you know, a lot of the folks listening to this are investors in some way, shape, or form. And they're, they're looking for creative ways, right? They're, they're entrepreneurial, they're looking for the next cool thing, the next shiny object and, and creative ways to increase their profits. So something like this naturally, would would appeal to a lot of investors. So let's talk a little bit how that looks in a new market. You know, if I'm looking at at doing this, you know, this the idea sounds good. We love helping people providing affordable housing. What does this look like in a new market,
Frank Furman
We are very intentional about how we approach new markets. And the reason for that is that this is the kind of business where you have network effects. So if you were to open one pad split home and say, Minneapolis where you are, it probably wouldn't be great, right? So the residents in the home, they wouldn't be able to transfer between houses, if they have any sort of conflict, obviously, you know, or they change jobs and are on the other side of town or that kind of thing. So having a network is valuable to them. And then for the landlord, most of our residents come from referrals. So getting that flywheel turning takes a bit of a critical mass.
Mike Swenson
So the tenants are paying a membership fee to be able to stay in the so what's the benefit of them? Is it simple, I pay one bill a week, I don't have to have the utilities in my name and set all that up. I'm essentially keeping it small and simple. And so maybe just quick cover kind of the the quick benefits to the to the tenants here.
Frank Furman
Exactly. The way to think about it for for the residents is in traditional housing, apartments, houses, whatever have you, the barrier to entry is really high. Right? So especially for low income residents, right, you come in and the landlords aren't dummies, right? You know, they want to see proof of income, they want to see that you have income, you know, maybe 3x The rent, so that, you know, you can cover it usually have to do first month upfront plus a security deposit, in some cases, first and last month's rent, especially for maybe lower credit individuals.
Mike Swenson
You know, if you think about it, like, you know, let's say rent 1000 bucks, that's that's a $3,000 check that somebody got to write if it's first month last month, and then your your next month of rent. I mean, that's, that's a significant amount.
Frank Furman
It's a tall order. Exactly. So there's so that's a struggle. I mean, most Americans don't have $3,000 in their savings accounts, that's just the sad reality of it. So the barrier to entry is relatively high. And then even beyond that, you turn it on utilities, depending on where you are, you might have deposits on your utilities, maybe that's another 500 bucks to turn everything on Wi Fi and, and all that takes effort and time. And then of course furniture, you know, furnishing a house, if it's a rental, maybe cost you another couple 1000 bucks. So really a tall order for for a lot of folks, especially for people who certainly have low income but maybe don't have the kind of social network that many others enjoy. Don't have family in the area, you know, they can stay for two months to build up reserves or maybe borrow furniture, that kind of thing. And so, you know, when I when we really kind of started the business for me, I looked at and said this is something that I've always done. You know, when I was in grad school, I rented a room I didn't think anything of it.
Frank Furman
When I was in the Marine Corps, I got a house and rented out the rooms to my buddies, you know, we split a house. It's the kind of thing that people in high Your you know, socio economic classes, if you will think of as something they do during a time of their lives, they don't think anything of it. And it's relatively easy to access, you know, even if it's just staying with friends, even if it's staying with family. But for folks who perhaps have a lower credit score, lower kind of social network, you know, kind of credibility and so on, maybe they haven't been to college so that no one to fall back on, it can be pretty difficult to access.
Frank Furman
So our our thinking was, how do you democratize it? How do you make that accessible to everybody, for when they can't afford to buy, you know, their own house, they can't afford the 1000s of dollars out of pocket to do it. So that part of the point was while keeping underwriting standards high in terms of income verification, which we do and background checks, which we do and credit checks, which we do, to lower the barrier to entry as much as you possibly can. And to simplify it as much as you possibly can and to bundle it all up. So now, a resident pad split, they come in, they pay this membership fee, they're members of pads split, and bundled into that is certainly the rent effectively, but also the utilities, you know, our water, Wi Fi, you know, kind of the whole bit, and then furniture because they're furnished units. So one thing that is, we get asked a lot as well, that is along the same lines is around the weekly billing and why do we do it that way? And for us, that's that was kind of an early insight in terms of how you keep collection rates high. Right?
Frank Furman
So traditional rentals, why do we build on the first of the month? Well, it's easy for the accountants, it's easy for your lender. We're lazy, right? It's easier for collections people, that's, you know, we've always done it that way. That's, that's kind of the long and short of it. But for in particular workforce housing, people are much more likely to pay weekly or bi weekly. And it just always kind of keeping on it's more in the mode of how people think. So once the first of the month, you know, I don't really know, I guess it was about a week or so ago, once Friday. Well, I know what day it is today. I get paid on Friday get billed on Friday. So it's always keeping in mind. And you know, one anecdote I like to use is, if you're familiar with rent a center, the furniture rental place, you know, they're smart, right? They bill at the end of the month. Why? Because people pay bills sequentially.
Frank Furman
So, you know, you talk to someone who maybe has been evicted, you know, how are you here? Well, you know, I paid for my furniture bill that came on the 28th. Because I don't wanna lose my couch, I paid my cell phone bills, I don't lose my cell phone, and I paid my gas bill because I don't want to lose my heat. And I know enough for my rent on the first and it's like, well, I was a terrible idea. Because you could have lost the couch, that'd be fine. Now the couch is gone anyway. So just kind of breaking that model that landlords have, why do we build the first because it's way we've always build, kind of turning around making more customer friendly and customer focus. Now we of course, handle that on our end and from the landlord's perspective, we pay out one payment at the beginning of the month, make lenders happy and your bookkeeper happy and all that all that kind of good stuff. So we handle that complexity. But to get back to your question around launching markets, again, we're very intentional about how we do it. And so we've done a top to bottom screen of the of the top 100 metros in the US for regulatory space and availability of housing stock and sort of the intrinsics that we think are kind of your min threshold.
Mike Swenson
So that's that's the only place in the United States that has that. You are the one your market is so unique.
Frank Furman
Once I find that one. Yeah, it's, you know, and it really speaks to the universality of this challenge because it is true. I mean, the these people are speaking the truth when they say, Hey, we got affordable housing challenge because, you know, if you work at Burger King or your security guard or whatever, you know, you're working person. It's tough to afford market rates, and it doesn't matter. You don't it doesn't need to be New York, it doesn't need To be in Los Angeles. That's true in St. Louis. And it's true in Philadelphia. And it's true in essentially any metro area, or even non metro areas, right, even in more rural areas. So that's true, because the barrier to entry is still high and rents are still high. But we're pulled in by investors. So we worked investors to come in, you know, on mass, because we, again, we want to do it, right, we want to do it where we have enough properties in a reasonable amount of time, such that people can transfer, they have options in the marketplace. And we get those economies of scale with marketing, and everything else.
Frank Furman
So for us, it's a matter of really partnering and working tightly to introduce ourselves to the market. Well, where we, you know, market, the units work with the investors make sure they're coming up with good outcomes, because for us, we're on our growth side hyper focus on investor outcomes, because if investors do well, they're human, and they, you know, do what humans do, they do more of it, and they brag to their their buddies, right? And if they do poorly, the opposite, right, they do less of it. And then they tell everyone don't work with that split. And so they don't pay me enough to put up with bad outcomes for investors, because all those things are bad.
Frank Furman
So we're hyper focused on investor outcomes. And, and that means saying 'no' to business, potentially wrong markets, potentially wrong investors, certainly wrong assets, right? I mean, every day, we'll have someone come to someone on our sales team or growth team and say, Hey, what do you think about, you know, 123 Main Street, I'll say, Oh, I don't know it's on a cul de sac, parking will be really tight, or would send an HOA I will, you know, wave off. Or, hey, it's too small, you're not going to get the lift in yield that you think you would get, you know, won't have enough bedrooms. And you know, you shouldn't be doing a little bit better, you should be doing a lot better. That's that's kind of maybe you should think about the next one. And really kind of taking it from there.
Mike Swenson
So what's the because naturally, and I know the questions come up from investors about, you know, zoning and the number of occupants, because if we're renting out a unit as a three bedroom unit, and now we have three individual tenants, how do you work through those questions of kind of the zoning and the capacity pieces in those markets?
Frank Furman
Right? We have an incredibly overworked legal team is the book that now there's so there's a few ways to think about it. So part of it is just from a pragmatic standpoint, what matters a lot more than the specific zoning code is actually kind of the, the asset itself. And what I mean by that is that, you know, zoning is in sending around SWAT teams and counting toothbrushes or what have you. It's all bottom up, right? Neighbors complain about issues that draws code enforcement to create issues for landlords. And that's true of any rental property. But the effect is magnified for CO living, right. So, you know, when I said earlier, hey, I might wave off this property, because it's on cul de sac? Well, it's because if you have, say, six people in a house, and you have six cars, and you've two parking spots, someone's gonna park in front of someone's mailbox, that person can call code enforcement, and you're gonna have issues. So how do you kind of avoid those issues.
Frank Furman
And so there's a little bit of an art and a science completely independent of the regulatory space to say, hey, this house has, you know, close to public transit, it looks good on the street that it's on, there's other renters in the neighborhood, there's maybe parking around the back, or one of you know, different framework for how you think about the asset, to say, Hey, this is something that will be in harmony with the neighbors. And if it is, you're not going to have issues. Or this thing's gonna stick out like a sore thumb, your neighbors are gonna go crazy. It doesn't matter if it's by the book. If your neighbors hate you, you're gonna have problems, right? It doesn't matter what, you know, zoning says if the lady across the street despises you so. So there's kind of a, that's something that we go through all the time. And then the second part of that is really just operational excellence.
Frank Furman
When we when you look at the issues that cause neighbor complaints, usually, it's not some hyper specific or legalistic argument to say, Oh, this is in violation of zoning code, it's this person in cut the grass or a trash, you know, fell out around the trash cans, and no one picked it up and the place looks bad, or someone parked on the grass or what have you. Things that are annoying. They're true for any rental property. But those are the things that drive neighbors Crazy, right? It's people making their neighborhood look bad or making them feel less safe and what happened. So again, a lot of that falls on the host, you know, the landlord who's operating the property. We have mechanism mechanisms in place. So we have a neighbor's page, neighbors can come direct to us so we can notify the house some of those things that are in place, and it's never perfect, right? Sometimes. They want to call code enforcement because it's a slow Tuesday, you know, or life and part of being a landlord. Yep. So with that out of the way, there is, of course, places that are much more regulatorily friendly than others. Right. And so that's part of why we did that initial screen.
Frank Furman
And again, it's not to, you know, something like 5000 different municipalities in the United States that have their own zoning code. We did not do it for 5000 municipalities. You know, there's 83, just in the Atlanta metro. And we're in about 20 of them, which is part of why we work with local investors who know understand not just the local zoning, and can kind of think through that framework, but also be pragmatic about it and say, Hey, this is maybe a fit for Minneapolis, but it might not be a fit for the suburbs, or what have you. Or maybe it's a fit here, and maybe not because there's a little bit of a look and feel aspect to it. But we do partner closely in our game, we do have a wildly overworked legal team that does look into it for specific examples. Because it is it is a challenge. And we're the way to think about it as municipalities fall, there really have a couple different types. There's somewhere, essentially, it's undefined or CO living is legal. Right? That tends to be relatively rare, but there's there's plenty where that is the case.
Frank Furman
There's others where it is legal, but constrained, right? So capped at a certain number of people, you know, have you all find where there's some sort of registration requirement? And you know, okay, great. It's defined, but not there. There's others where it's pretty gray area, to be perfectly honest. So I'll give an example. I live in DeKalb, County, Georgia, sort of suburb of Atlanta. And they do prohibit boarding houses, but they're defined as, you know, Brent, by the room operations that provide meals, which we don't. So it's one of those things where it's a very kind of awkward prohibition, you know, in many ways where something somewhat close to us candidly, is outlawed.
Frank Furman
But not really. So it's, it's a little bit messy. And then there's other places where it is pretty expressly prohibited. Right. And that's more what we focus on. Because usually, if it's not a, you know, black and white issue, you can get by by operating it well, being responsive, fixing what needs to be fixed or operating within the constraints of that local market. And look, there's again, all the time we say to people, boy, you shouldn't do it there. That'd be a bad idea. And a good example is an HOA where actually an HOA is oftentimes it is gray area, and it's not really defined, but you're sort of self selecting for neighbors that might not want you to do it. So anyway, that's that's kind of a recommendation we make is just to avoid a choice.
Mike Swenson
So we've kind of talked about, you know, conceptually, how it works for the renters, you know, conceptually how it's worked for the landlords. Talk about some of the success here, like some some of the good stories of, of how it's impacted people how it's impacted the landlords, you know, what, what are some of those successes that you can share of words paid off?
Frank Furman
Yeah, I mean, the one, the one that I really kind of, always sticks with me is our first ever host, as we call them, Heather, I'll use her last name, but her name is Heather. She probably won't care. She's, uh, you know, she's married, you know, she's a mom, and she had an interior decorating business that was, you know, it's doing fine. And, you know, her paying her bills and her husband's working. And she was crazy enough to be our first customer, right, which is a certain amount of craziness. You know, this heavy level heavy duty professionalism that we exhibit now. It's just not the case at the time. So so she started with us start with one property did really well came out with another and now she's up to seven. And she's at the point now where she's generating over $300,000 a year in revenue. And she's essentially fired herself from her job and fired her husband from his job.
Frank Furman
And you know, she's she's hanging out and traveling and you know, she she had pretty good timing in many ways. She was buying kind of before the really ramp and appreciation over the past two years, but you know, it's really changed her life. And again, she was I say this with love crazy enough to work with us but there wasn't anything special about her story. In that she didn't have any special skills per se in this you know, she she was buying and renovating. He have skills that are lots of people have and lots of people do the same things that anyone do that when they're in this space. She just took a chance and and followed through and then did it again, you know, got long term debt and did it again and that term long dead did it again. I'm now at a point where just really over the course of a couple of years has built in a business where she doesn't really have to work again, which is, which is life changing.
Frank Furman
So, you know, we've seen it kind of really big to small, and we have investors who are just getting their start, right, this is their first investment property, it's their first foray into real estate investing. And this is, this is how they want to do it, because they just enough to get one property across the line, if they're gonna do it, they want it to be high yield. And we've big institutions, you know, family offices, you know, kind of Wall Street back funds who are doing it, because they've got a lot of money to deploy, and yield is really tight. And, you know, what I'm really passionate about is making it work for both. And having that same sort of core value proposition, which is maximizing yield, you're doing well, and doing good at the same time and having a work for, you know, the banker in New York, and, you know, the young person who's, you know, just trying to scratch their real estate investment itch, and, you know, try not to make a big mistake, that'll put them out of the game kind of thing.
Frank Furman
And so, you know, that it requires having a broad perspective and thinking really kind of about, you know, really honing in on what that value proposition is, and how we make it easy for people, you know, easy for people who either don't have a ton of resources, and we may we build up the vendor network and make it easier for people to kind of do it in a turnkey fashion, or easy for folks who don't do it at the enterprise level and need enterprise level tools, you need to be able to have kind of great analytics and visibility across your portfolio, so they can make better investment decisions and be accountable to their investors. So really kind of, in trying to make a work for everyone, because our our core conviction, you know, when we started the business, and as we operated is that even if we screw things up, and we screw plenty up, certainly me personally, there's just an enormous unmet need for the product in the marketplace.
Frank Furman
So again, the asset doesn't have to be perfect, and the market doesn't have to be perfect. And the investment or the investor doesn't have to be a perfect operator. In fact, rarely are all three of those things perfect. But you're still providing a product that doesn't exist, or at least not at scale, at least not the kind of accountability and kind of ubiquity that we provide it with in these in these markets. So you can still do really well, even if it's not a perfect asset. In fact, it rarely is right. Because if you're buying today, you got to buy whatever you get your hands on your inventory is tight. And so we're always working with investors who are buying imperfect assets and imperfect areas. And you know, rehabbing them in a time where labor costs are as high as they've ever been, you know, maybe they're being rehabbed and imperfect ways. But fortunately, we're in the business of that it can be imperfect, you know, as long?
Mike Swenson
How do you just quickly think about advertising? You know, is there any specific advertising you guys do for rent by the room? Or is it kind of the traditional, you know, rental websites that everybody else uses? Or how are you finding those specific kind of rent by the room crowd that are looking for that.
Frank Furman
So it's a mix of things a lot of it is, I'd like to say traditional, but it could sound I guess, not traditional, you know, performance marketing, online ads, Google Facebook kind of things. That's certainly a big part of it. We also have created the capability to where when investor lists a property, we automatically put it on over 40 aggregator sites, so Zumper, Roomster, those sorts of things where we push it out, and it goes through as more traditional channels. It's not, it's not everywhere, I mean, so I'll give an example. Zillow really doesn't like room rentals being posted on their site, they hate it screws up all their algorithms, they they do block us. Craigslist, we would love to post on but it they don't they want to be peer to peer they don't like businesses kind of posting on mass.
Frank Furman
So they also shut things down and make that difficult, but but many are much more open to to that kind of offering. So we do a little bit about that we do some other ads, whether it's print or you know, in transit, that kind of thing. And then referrals are a big part of our business. So we we do pay for them. You know, we offer referral bonuses for for renters when they refer their friends and so on. But you have a 40% of our residents come from referrals. So that's our most effective channels anyways.
Mike Swenson
it's an exciting model. I like new ideas, a way to meet a legitimate need in the market. And you guys are doing that and so I'm excited to hear the story of you know, the the landlord that's now able to fire herself and her husband and ex About the, you know, the residents that can find that affordable housing and meet their need without having to shell out all that money out of pocket. So, so I love what you're doing and excited to highlight it here. Any last, you know, words or thoughts that you want to share?
Frank Furman
if I can maybe share one last landlord story because I feel like I'm missing if I'm not, actually our first employee is a guy named John, who is I joke with him, I say the young guys really, he's really not that young in my book, but it's probably 30 or so. But he's, you know, our first employee, he actually lived in a pad split for a bit. And he bought his first home and then became a passport host as well. And, you know, kind of, again, one of those things where he's since built his career in real estate, many obviously works for us, but he's gotten his agents license, and he's, he's really become an expert, he works for our kind of sidecar fund, and he's become an acquisitions expert, but, you know, he broke into real estate investment where, you know, essentially house hacking, you know, effectively, but he's really kind of paid for, not only is he built his skill set, and essentially bought a home for free, which is pretty hard to do.
Frank Furman
And in the year 2020, to where you're, you know, you own a home and are building equity, but you're not making payments. That's, that's a pretty special thing to do. But he's also kind of enabled things for others. So one of his early members was woman named Kenosha, who saved up enough money living with him, you know, renting a room that she was able to buy her first house, so it kind of come, you know, compounds over time. And, you know, the model seems different for a lot of people, you know, maybe they haven't experienced it, but, you know, they'll say, oh, you know, this is pretty interesting, I should ask my kids about it, you know, they they understand sharing, and millennials or Gen Z or whatever. And I'm like, no, no, ask your grandmother. Because this is the way people used to live. You know, if you were a woman in the 60s, and you're working as a typist, you know, your first job in the big city, you lived in a boarding house, right? If you were a factory worker at that time, as a, you know, a single guy somewhere, you boarded, right.
Frank Furman
And for lots of reasons that we don't have time to go into that mode of living has kind of been beaten out of our culture and our law to some extent. And but it's not strange, it's actually something in some ways we've all done whether it's living in dorms, you know, where you're kind of first house out of college, that kind of thing. It's, it's not as different as you think, you know, there's there's a huge need. It's a product that's been around forever, we're trying to do better we're trying to do with technology to try and do with kind of modern underwriting and marketing and so on. But you know, there's there's someone who's listening to this, who's saying, Oh, this is interesting, but seems a bit out of scope for me, you know, couldn't do it. It's not as different as you think, is what I leave you.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you so much for sharing. We really appreciate it. So Frank, for people that want to learn more about pads split what's what's the best place for them to go? Or what would you encourage them to do?
Frank Furman
Yeah, easiest way just go to our site padsplit.com, sign up. If you create an account, one of our very helpful and knowledgeable account executives will reach out very quickly, I assure you, that they can kind of help you with anything you need. But yeah, we're easy to find.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and sharing the success that you guys have had. It's it's phenomenal and excited to see where it's gonna go in the future.
Frank Furman
Awesome. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
Mike Swenson
Thanks so much for joining us unreal freedom this story that was an awesome episode. And as we look to, to grow in 2022 and beyond, you know, I want to know, what do you guys want to learn more about? We want to hear from you what's going to be relevant to you. So post a comment below. Let us know what's something that we can help you with? What's a question that you have something we can address in an episode to get you answers or something that we can share? So we want to add value? Let us know what you want to hear about in the comments below.
