The ROOST Investment Gateway
If you are looking for your next investment property, you don’t want to miss our conversation with Morgan Cole, the creator of Rescover – a cutting-edge investment property search and analysis tool that’s helping investors across the country maximize their returns and grow their portfolios.
Rescover is more than just a search tool; it’s a game-changer for anyone serious about making smart, data-driven investment decisions and it is what drives our new ROOST Investment Gateway site.
With over 15 years of experience in real estate and prestigious designations like CCIM® and CPM®, Morgan has a deep understanding of the industry and the challenges investors face.
Over the course of our conversation, we discuss Morgan’s journey, the story behind Rescover, and how it’s empowering landlords, investors, and real estate professionals to succeed in today’s market. We’ll also explore some practical tips and insights you won’t want to miss.
Chris McAllister: Hi, I’m Chris McAllister with ROOST Real Estate Company, and I am here today to go over a new product feature we have for our investors, and it’s called the ROOST Investment Gateway. And I’m really happy to have Morgan Cole here with me, and he is the creator of the technology that drives the ROOST Investment Gateway, and his company is called Rescover.
So, Morgan, thanks for being here. You want to give us a quick rundown of what Rescover is all about?
Morgan Cole: Yeah. Hey, Chris. Thank you very much for having me. Rescover is a software that we created to make the process of finding investment properties more efficient and also to provide a platform where you can compare the properties on a apples to apples basis with all the, you know, associated fees and expenses that go along with the properties.
So it’s a way that you can quickly cut through Properties that are listed on the MLS, you can find the ones that have the highest IRR or the highest cap rate, or some other metric that pleases you. And you can do a little bit of research and figure out if it’s worth adding to your portfolio.
Chris McAllister: Yeah, it’s pretty darn cool.
So let me share my screen and I’ll show everybody how to find this on our website. So here’s the website. And if we come up here to invest with ROOST, That drop down opens up and we come down to here where it says ROOST investment gateway search for your next investment property. So I’m going to click here now.
Um, I’m glad Morgan’s here because this I don’t want to say this is a beta version of this website. But there are some things that, uh, are going to be changing in the weeks ahead. So it’s an odd thing, but Morgan and I discovered that sometimes you have to jiggle your mouse a little bit to get the full page to open.
Is that a fair assessment, Morgan?
Morgan Cole: Yeah, it’s an interesting deal. It only responds sometimes on some browsers if you actually scroll your mouse or move your mouse. And we’re trying to, we’re trying to work through that little, little glitch there. And as, as Chris mentioned, and he’ll go over it or I’ll go over it with him here, there’s a, the search interface.
Uh, it works great, it’ll return you the properties, but, uh, you know, as people use it, they’re suggesting we move a button or add a little feature, and we’re, we’re of course open to making the search interface, uh, as, as smooth as possible.
Chris McAllister: Well, here’s the cool thing. So you come to this page and it says ROOST Investment Gateway.
Are you a residential real estate investor looking to expand your portfolio, generate more income and all the stuff that we’re here for. And I, I just, and still every time I look at this, I’m so excited about it. So what happens when you first open up the screen, you see. What what are called featured properties, and I actually select these based on a safe search that I see every morning.
And the general criteria is I think it’s at least a 4 percent cap rate and an 8 percent internal rate of return. And we’re going to have some blog posts go up here shortly. That’s going to sort of, um. You know, better define those terms. Now, having said that, you’ve got a couple here. This is a 7 percent IRR.
This one’s a 6%. And the reason I went ahead and selected those anyway was because I thought they were interesting properties, either because of where they were or, or how they were priced. So these, as you can see, are, are the featured properties. And, um, this is what we also call. Best Bets. And we’re going to talk about that here in a second, but first of all, I want to just have Morgan, uh, kind of walk us through how you as a real estate investor can use this today.
Morgan Cole: Awesome. Yeah. So, Chris, let’s go ahead and, um, open a property up just to familiarize them with what a property looks like before we go searching for different properties, because this is a great group of properties here and people might not even need to do their own search. So, Chris just clicked on one of the tiles and it opened up, um, it’s a, you know, kind of a relatively standard presentation of a property.
You’ve got your photo gallery and you have your list price and things like that. But if you scroll down just a little bit, what Rescover is showing you here are the metrics that it’s calculated on the property, how it would perform. So you have some sliders there, the purchase price is set at the list price, uh, down payment.
Generally for an investment property, you’re going to be putting 25%, maybe even more down. And then the rental rate, um, is, uh, when, when Chris adjusts these and puts them on his MLS, if his, these MLS listings on his website. If he has set a rental rate, it will be reflected here. Um, and Chris, I don’t know if you know that, but, but when you go and look at these, if you see risk covers predicted price and adjusted, it travels with it.
Chris McAllister: Okay. So this is what’s so cool is. So I, I, I like the idea that let’s, let’s say just on general principle, you think that, uh, what is this one listed at two 69, nine is too much. And, and you might be interested at 248, 000. The cool thing is. You can adjust these sliders, whether for purchase price, down payment, or what you think the rental rate’s going to be, and it goes ahead and it changes all the numbers for you.
Now, is there anything that we have to click to get it to recalculate, or does it recalculate automatically?
Morgan Cole: No, it recalculates automatically. The only time you would need to click away is if you had inputted it into one of the text boxes there. So if you highlight the number 248. You would just need to get outside of that field to get it to commit the change to the, to the calculator.
Chris McAllister: So it shows purchase price now is 248 title charges, loan fees, you know, good estimates, loan amount, total investment. And then. What else do we see here?
Morgan Cole: Yeah, so you can see there that the four boxes, uh, below. So we have cap rate, uh, which is the year one relationship between the net operating income and the purchase price.
And then the cash on cash is also the first year, but instead of net operating income, that’s net cash flow. So we take the net operating income and we remove the loan payment, which Loan payments are a little higher today than we’d like them to be. So that’s eating up more than more than our available net operating income, causing the cash on cash to be negative.
But the internal rate of return in spite of that is 7. 7%. You could compare this to a long term investment in the stock market, you know, S and P 500 fund or something like that. And what the, what the annual returns are on one of those investments, you could compare it to the internal rate of return here to see if this is something that meets your needs.
Chris McAllister: It’s also so cool that you can just sit here and move these sliders arbitrarily and get those, get those into the yellow or get them into the green. So, you know, obviously less down payment cashflow analysis is negative. More down payment, you know, we, we, we get into the positive and obviously you change the rental rate around, you know, that, that makes things completely different too.
So I, you know, I don’t get out much Morgan, but I get a kick out of this. This is,
Morgan Cole: well, I love that you’re, I love you’re enjoying that, you know, and the. The down payment slider there is a perfect example of the difference between using your money versus somebody else’s money. Um, if you noticed, the IRR fell slightly as you put a higher down payment in and you were using more of your money so you’re not getting a yield on someone else’s money.
Right. Um, so, if you look at those four tiles there, the total investment is pretty straightforward. Hold period, we just have that static right now. Um, it’s You know, we could maybe add a slider or a dropdown for hold period, but if you don’t really, if the percent numbers don’t resonate with you, what could resonate with you is the simple concept that if you put 113, 000 or 114, 000 into this house in a decade, it’s going to be 239, 000.
And that’s something that pretty much anybody can understand, even if the concept of internal rate of return is not one that you want to, you want to get into.
Chris McAllister: Yeah, I love that. And I love this little, uh, chart down here that, um, I mean, obviously, I think you’re using very conservative numbers, but I think appropriate numbers.
And it’s so cool just to see, you know, right in front of you without having to do a whole bunch of arithmetic. What, what the. What the different, uh, property value, loan balance and so forth are over those 10 years. And, you know, if you bought that property for 257, 000 today, you should be looking at 350 K, especially in a place like Columbus in 10 years.
And I, I just, uh, I just love seeing that on paper. I think it’s just such a great visual to get people excited about real estate investing.
Morgan Cole: Well, it’s it’s you know, the appreciation is one of the primary drivers for people getting into real estate. So we want to be sure and illustrate that and immediately underneath that you have your amortization of your loan.
You know, so many people want someone else to pay their mortgage. And when you have a rental property, it’s becoming worth more every year. And the mortgage is going down because somebody else is living there and paying you for it. So, you know, we put those concepts right there on the page for you so that, so that you can see, you know, in, in, in clear black and white writing how this property is expected to change over the years.
Chris McAllister: And then as you scroll down, we, we get into the property description and all the information that comes directly from the MLS. And then if you, uh, are interested in the property, you can always click here and get ahold of me, uh, directly. We are also going to have, uh, some, uh, accounts available for some of our ROOST Real Estate Company agents who work with investors also.
So this just happens to be a page where. Or I’m featured here. So all of this is, you know, it’s just so much stuff when you click through on each and every property that quite frankly, you’re not going to see anywhere else. And we’re going to actually do an in depth podcast and video with Morgan in early December.
So we can really dig deep into all of this. So that’s what you’re going to see when you. Um, when you click on one of the properties now, what’s the best way to back out to get back to the main page here?
Morgan Cole: So every property opens in a new tab. So just go back to the original tab that you that you were on.
Um, we do that so you can keep your spot and we don’t like, you know, take you away from the search that you had created. So if we want to do a search on our own now, instead of looking at featured MLS listings, there you go. So you’re going to click the button that says all MLS listings. So
Chris McAllister: now this is all Columbus, Ohio MLS listings, but I think in a few more days, hopefully by the end of next week, we’re actually going to have, um, uh, more areas.
We’re going to have additional areas in Ohio and also, uh, information about the space coast of Florida. But for now, today, we’re looking at Columbus.
Morgan Cole: That’s exactly right. Yes. So, and we’ll have all those merged in one search interface, uh, on this, on this, uh, on this system here for, for Chris. Um, so when you’re looking here at all MLS listings, the, the search option, uh, right now is by zip codes.
So you could type in a few zip codes. If you knew that that was the area you wanted to be in. Um, you can also, as Chris just did, he drops down the home type filter. What did you click on, uh, by the way, Chris.
Chris McAllister: Right now houses works so that’s single families. So if you click on houses, everything you get is single family.
And then the only other choice in that drop down that works with our particular MLS is. Um, multi. So if I got it, click houses, and then I click multi and apply, then I get all the multifamilies that are currently listed in Columbus. And then I don’t wanna steal your thunder, but you can sort these by price and it looks a single clip click, uh, you know, leads off with the highest price.
Multifamily building currently available. In the Columbus market. And, uh, and again, you get to see IRR, you get to see cap rate, you get to see everything there is about them. So you can sort by price. You can also sort by days on market, you know, and see newer listings versus. Um, I guess older listings and then again, I think this is the one that is just so cool is being able to search by internal rate of return and obviously it’s not, not every, every number is going to be accurate.
You know, clearly this is, this happens to be a listing that’s for rent, so it’s sort of a garbage in garbage out. If we’ve got a MLS, you’re going to find properties here and there that just don’t make any sense. But the cool thing is. You know, you can see here, and, and these happen to be, uh, featured properties or what Morgan calls blue chip properties.
You know, you can see some pretty interesting opportunities in the multi family space in Columbus, Ohio that, um, you’re just not going to see presented like this anywhere else that I’ve ever found.
Morgan Cole: Yeah, it’s a I love that you’re enjoying it. And you know, Chris, you’re doing the way that you’re using this is the exact way that we designed it.
I, I’m a real estate broker in Texas. And I work with investors. And I took the manual process that I had always done of searching the MLS, imagining in my mind what neighborhood or street or zip code probably had listings that would be good listings, finding the properties, etc. Analyzing them in Excel, this does all of that automatically and you don’t really get any fatigue of, Oh, I’ve analyzed 10 properties so far.
I don’t want to do another one. Probably one of these is good enough. You know, with ReSCOVER, you just keep searching and you narrow down your, your search area or you, or you, you know, rely on, I mean, the work that Chris is doing, to be honest with the featured MLS listings, that is where I would, I would recommend anybody who’s listening to this.
Uh, to start because, because Chris is going in and he’s, he’s doing the search. He’s finding the areas where he knows good properties exist and he’s calling, calling them to your attention. Um, but if you want to go find your own, you know, you can do that.
Chris McAllister: So you can, you can search around and, um. And, and just enjoy yourself on here like I do, but, um, the other thing I want to show everybody quickly, cause you know, we don’t want to make this a forever video and we’re going to have an in depth video coming out in a few weeks, but speaking of the Best Bets.
So if you go back to invest at the top and you come down where it says, ROOST Best Bets, you come to this screen. And again, you may have to wiggle the mouse a little bit. So this is just where anything that I have clicked that caught my attention in the zip codes that we, our investors have the most success in, in Columbus, that that’s what comes up.
So the featured investment properties below are in our opinion, the Best Bets for residential real estate investors who are looking to expand their portfolio, generate more income and grow their wealth. Now to be chosen as a best bet, a property must have an estimated cap rate of four percent and an internal rate of return of eight.
And as I said, I’ve already broken that rule on a couple of these properties because I found them interesting. But I do have some fine print here. You know, the financial information provided is based on multiple listing service data provided by the listing agents for each property. And it’s best to look at this for comparison purposes only.
Basically, when you’ve got two or three properties that you find interesting, you can use this as a basis to compare which one of those, uh, you know, two or three properties might make the most sense. So if you’re currently, um, in the Landlord Profitable Playbook database, if you’ve downloaded my books or listened to the podcast or anything, then you’re automatically getting an email.
Every Thursday, um, called Best Bets. And if you aren’t currently in that database and you’d like to get Best Bets, you can go ahead and scroll down. And there’s a box here where you can get our Best Bets in your inbox every week. And you have to give us your name and email and phone number, and then you’ll automatically get.
Um, get Best Bets every Thursday, and you’ll also get some hopefully helpful information from us every Sunday evening into Monday as well.
Morgan Cole: I love it. I love it, Chris. And I’m looking forward to, well, first of all, making a couple of the improvements that you mentioned, but then doing our, doing our full deep dive on this in a month.
Chris McAllister: Okay, thanks for doing this, Morgan. We appreciate it. If you have any questions, everybody, just, uh, please feel free to reach out.
Morgan Cole: Thanks, Chris.
Invest with Confidence—Invest with ROOST
At ROOST Real Estate Co., we strive to give you peace of mind by offering a property management experience that’s both transparent and efficient. With the Property Meld Owner Portal, you’ll have the tools you need to stay informed and confident in the management of your investment.
PLUS… Whenever you’re ready, here are three ways we can help you automate your rent collection and get on with your life:
- Get a FREE Market Rate Rent Analysis for your properties. Sometimes a second opinion can make a big difference in your business. www.MarketRateRent.com
- Get a Personalized Property Management Quote and free property management consultation with Gretchen Mitchell at www.PMServicesQuote.com.
- Learn practical ways to free up your time and increase your profits. Listen to The Landlord Profitability Playbook Podcast at www.LandlordProfitabilityPlaybookPodcast.com
