Welcome to this episode of the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. And today I have Jonathan Fairman with me. He is an expert at joint ventures. In fact, he does so much of them and has made so many connections that he actually has a specific app for it that I've used with success.
Scott Dillingham:So I'll touch on that in a minute, but I want to welcome you. So welcome, Jonathan.
Johnathan Faerman:Thank you so much, Scott. A pleasure to be here with you today.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah, I know that's awesome. So I'm really excited. So I guess before we get into the meat of the subject, one of the things that I always do is I have the investors kind of tell us their stories. How did you get started, you know, from wherever you began and to get to where you are today?
Johnathan Faerman:Absolutely. So I started my investment, my investor journey with a condo downtown Montreal, which is where I live. Bought a condo in a plant, it was being built. Moved there, lived a couple of years, grew a family, and then I moved out to the suburbs, but I kept the condo to rent it out. So I think that's when I became kind of like an investor.
Johnathan Faerman:Held it a couple of years and then came time to sell it. Sold it, made some profit and said, okay, now I'm ready to grow my portfolio. I want to invest in multifamily properties, something bigger with more units. And then I realized at that moment that I didn't want to do it by myself because the time commitments, money commitments, etcetera. And I want to do it with a partner.
Johnathan Faerman:And I realized that I didn't know people to do it. So that's how the idea of Invesqueum came to be, as a place for people to connect and to meet, to invest in real estate together. I had met my wife online. So I kind of knew that meeting people online to go for a long term relationship kind of work. So that's how I created Investium.
Johnathan Faerman:It took a couple of years in the make, and then we are live now. And that's how I got started with this.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. That's awesome. So I don't know if you guys caught that, but his platform's called Investium. Okay. And so did you develop this yourself or did you hire people?
Scott Dillingham:Like there's a lot that goes in it.
Johnathan Faerman:I hired an agency in Montreal, something I'm very proud of to have hired a Canadian business and agency to help me. We partner, we're still obviously in a relationship now. They use state of the art technology and we have this platform online built here in Canada.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome, that's so cool. So, I wanna share a little bit about my story with your platform as well. So when Jonathan and I met, he said that he has this platform that connects investors for joint ventures. And it was actually funny because one of the problems that you said to me was that you have a ton of people with money, but you're struggling to find the investors that have the deals. And from the market that I've seen, it's the opposite, right?
Scott Dillingham:It's you have the deals, but you can't find the money. So I just thought that was an interesting problem that you have because you're going to solve a solution in the marketplace. But, so we met and I was like, you know what, let's try it. There is a multifamily apartment building in The States and you know, I'm aware of it. And so I put it in there just to see what would happen.
Scott Dillingham:And I know the platform was built in Canada with Canadians as like a first model. But I put it in there and there's interest, right? People want to invest into this project. And the project to this point hasn't moved forward because the seller wants a little bit too much money. So the goal is to get the seller to accept a more reasonable value, something that will support an appraisal.
Scott Dillingham:Because right now the seller it's like maybe 5 or 600,000, he's got it overpriced. It just hasn't moved forward, but the interest was there from the investor. So I thought that that was a really cool thing. So literally what you've built works in Canada and The States. And it's super cool.
Scott Dillingham:So that was my story. Now I would love to hear more. Do you have some successes that you can share from the platform?
Johnathan Faerman:I have one personal success that I can share. So after I built the platform, I was ready to use it to invest. So I did exactly what you did. I created a group, spoke with investors. And in a couple of days, I was on a Zoom with one, ready to invest.
Johnathan Faerman:We are prospecting some units outside of Montreal, looking for some more profitable markets, which is another advantage. By myself, I wanted to invest in Montreal because that's kind of like my reach. But with the other investors, you can reach much further like you in The US or with these other people that I met outside of Montreal. You can tap into more profitable markets. To me, that was amazing.
Johnathan Faerman:So that's the success story for me that I actually was able to use it to meet someone with prospecting units to buy. It was great. So in the platform itself, there are no transactions happening to abide to the law. So there are no transactions or money exchange in the platform itself. It's a place where you can make connections and that is happening.
Johnathan Faerman:We are making connections. People are chatting together. There is interest being built, and it's very easy to switch from the online to offline and actually interact with people.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No, absolutely. And the one thing that I really liked about the platform too, is the layer of privacy that you've built in. So one of my concerns was, okay, so there's this deal that we have access to. Is everybody gonna see that?
Scott Dillingham:Does that limit my ability to secure the deal if other people come in and swoop it up? And it's not like that. So you actually create like a group for that project and you can choose if you want to allow somebody to come in and have access to it or not. So I thought that was actually really cool, right? So it does protect you if you've got some really unique and then yeah, you let them join and then you, there's a chat function built in.
Scott Dillingham:So you can communicate with them. They ask questions, you can answer, blah, blah, blah. And then obviously if the deal moves forward, like Jonathan said, then you guys meet up offline and you arrange something with lawyers and whoever else, you know, needs to be part of it, and then get it going. So I really, really liked that. So I wanted to tell you that too.
Johnathan Faerman:Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm very happy to hear. Privacy was one of our main concerns with building, when building the platform. That's the first question everyone asks.
Johnathan Faerman:Okay. How are you going to protect myself? What are you doing to protect me? That's always the first question. And we've created many layers to protect the investors.
Johnathan Faerman:The number one is when you create the account, It's a two factor authentication with your phone, so you cannot create multiple accounts. Then when you log in, you can identify your identity with a government ID. So again, and you obtain a check mark line. Takes two seconds to do another layer. And then what you were referring to is this private investment groups.
Johnathan Faerman:I think it's one of the most cool features of this, where you can create a private investment group, where you will put the deal that you are ready to take or your idea, and you can message people to join you. People they can message join themselves, but you select who is there. I mean, there you can, I've seen people, they share links of properties they are prospecting. They share PDFs with the properties they are seeing or with the deals. All of that is available and no one from outside can breathe into that.
Johnathan Faerman:So you can, like you say, you protect yourself. Otherwise, it will be very easy for someone else to steal your deal and make it more difficult for you. Absolutely.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. Yep. So I love that. Another thing that I love, and I'll let you say it, but let's talk about the price. Let's tell everybody the price of the platform.
Johnathan Faerman:That's a very good point. Yeah. So investment is completely free to use for everyone. So it's free if you want to join as someone with deals and you need to attract investors. It's free to join and use.
Johnathan Faerman:If you're an investor and you want to partner with people, it's basically free for everyone to do everything. That's awesome. And
Scott Dillingham:I'm curious, right? Cause I mean, you could make a business from this, but why did you choose the free model?
Johnathan Faerman:Because I want to lower the barriers of entry to investing in real estate. And I find that if you suddenly put a price tag to it, people are going to be very reticent to create an account. I think nowadays people, have so many apps, they have so many accounts, so many services that everyone is really thinking thoroughly. Okay, do I really want to put my email here and create another account? And then I will have to remember I will start getting emails.
Johnathan Faerman:People are really thinking these things through. So if you, on top of it, you add a price tag into it, you really, really are against your favor here. So what I did is I let it to be free to attract the most investors possible and the most people possible to really build a community. That was the reason behind it.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. It's smart. And I gotta say too, like I've used Facebook groups for different things and even our private investors hub, right? We've taken it off Facebook and off social media and wanted it separate and segregated because through the social media groups and things like that, there's so much scammers. There's so much fake accounts.
Scott Dillingham:Like there's just identity theft, right? There's all these things going on there where I do find, like you said, with the authentication and things that you need when you're signing up with the account, it's literally tied to your phone. So a lot of times people are not gonna make those fake accounts. So even that weans out a lot of the bad people. So I really like that you didn't just set up a Facebook group or whatever.
Johnathan Faerman:Yeah. That's one of the questions I also received. Like what's the difference between this and Facebook? And the difference is not only the features and functionalities that let you really have this private thing and choose who you are, but also the quality of the people. I find that more and more Facebook and LinkedIn, the quality of the people there really decreased as these platforms became more popular.
Johnathan Faerman:Number one. And number two, the fact that at Investium, when you create your profile, you're adding some information that relates specifically to your investment preferences. So when people, they see your profile, they can really know who to contact, not to waste anyone's time. Right? So yeah, if I know that Scott is interested in multi finalists in Ontario, well, I'm not going to contact you for a land development in Alberta, right?
Johnathan Faerman:That's just we wasting everyone's time. Specific features and that specific information makes it way more useful for everyone.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No, I love it. So I know we're gonna put the link in the description of the show for everybody to download the app, but for those watching live right now that maybe wanna just jump on this without waiting for the show to be published to the podcast, what's the link or how do they get your app? So
Johnathan Faerman:it's a web app, so likely there's nothing to install. So you go into the web, You can do it on your mobile or your laptop or tablet or whatever. It's a web app, so you don't need to install. You don't need to download anything. It's www.investium.ai, or you can search on Google Investium.
Johnathan Faerman:It should be the first one. Very easy to see. On the landing page, you will see basically the features. Then you can create an account. It takes literally a minute to create an account.
Johnathan Faerman:You just need your phone number to authenticate and that's it. You answer five questions on your inside and you can start seeing other investors. You can start interacting with people. Create your own investment group. If you have a deal in mind, if you, let's say, you saw a property down the road that you think has potential, but again, you want to do it with someone, you can create a group saying, hey, multi family or building or whatever in Southern Toronto, or something.
Johnathan Faerman:So you don't need to give out all the information and people that will message you to request more information. You can allow them to go inside of the group, and then you can share all the details with a more reduced and select number of people.
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. Awesome. I love it. And I know you said, you know, this is a newer app. It took a couple of years to build and develop.
Scott Dillingham:So what's your vision? Where do you see the app going long term or what would you like to see from it?
Johnathan Faerman:Absolutely. So we just recently added a feature to enable people to create their investment investment team. To invest in real estate, you need a team to help you. You know it better than me. You are basically the team that helps everyone invest in real estate.
Johnathan Faerman:So we are adding a feature. We just added a feature to create a team to help you invest. And in the future, something I want to do is to help people with finding deals. That's something I want to do. Go through perhaps the web and contacting specific people to create some kind of place where you can see the deals.
Johnathan Faerman:And I think that would really help investors. I think there are lot of people looking for deals all the time and it's not easy to find, right? Even going to MLS, it's impossible, right? It's very difficult to see what's good from VAL. If you contacted someone, they promise you they're going to send you a list with off market properties, but what they send you, you don't know of the quality of those things.
Johnathan Faerman:So I think there is a need for that to help find the right deals, at least help create a short list. And then you will, as an investor, you will assess based on what your preferences are. But I think there is a need for that and that's something I want to do. Plus giving extra help perhaps with partnership agreements. That's also something very, very complex that requires help.
Johnathan Faerman:I think number one thing to create a partnership is to have a very exhaustive partnership agreement to know exactly what everyone needs to do and what's going to happen. So those are some of the things I want to do next.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. And you know what, you are right about the properties and reviewing the deals. We do that on a very minor level. Of course, we're never gonna be to the extent of you, because we provide more of the general education plus mortgage financing, right? That's what we do.
Scott Dillingham:But we do have a spot to list properties. And one of the things that we do just to share, and this is why it's so important because anybody can say, oh, this is an awesome property. And you kind of don't know the motivation behind why they're selling it. Like, are they tied to the property? Is there some type of gain that they're going to get that they're not telling you?
Scott Dillingham:Why are they promoting it if it's such a good deal? So one of the things that we do is we filter them. So even this week I had a realtor who sent me a property and on paper, it sounded great. It was a $1,200,000 like luxury home with a mother-in-law suite. And it had a garage that could be rented.
Scott Dillingham:And, so it brought in like a substantial amount of money, but when you factor in the debts and stuff and you actually underwrite it, it looked like the deal was gonna be about 40% down, to make it cash flow. Right. So that's not a good deal. I mean, maybe to some people, right. If they wanna live in that home, but this was all being structured as a rental.
Scott Dillingham:So it wasn't a good deal. So we told the realtor, sorry, like we're not going to post it for you. So I think that that's really important because you don't wanna see a deal and think it's great because it's on some platform and then you wanna buy it, has to be underwritten. So we do have a filter. So I'm hoping you have something similar, some type of filter or make it so people have to list the actual expenses and income of the property, that type of thing.
Scott Dillingham:Just a thought, just a suggestion, but
Johnathan Faerman:Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. That's something that's why I'm still developing this and it's not there yet. There are a lot of nuisance. Also some, even perhaps some liabilities into this.
Johnathan Faerman:Something that you propose something, someone may come back to you later saying, 'Hey, you told me to invest here.' So that's why it's very tricky subject, right? Between suggesting something or showing, look, this is something for you to consider versus you should invest here.
Scott Dillingham:That's right.
Johnathan Faerman:A of nuisance there. You need to be very careful with people's money and these deals could be a lot of money, savings. You need to be very, very careful in vetting. I think you're doing great how you vet them even like manually one by one. So you really look at everything.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah and we're doing it from like a mortgage financing standpoint, right? Like we see it the way that the lenders will see it, so we kinda know what they will or will not use, but again, like you said, that doesn't mean if it works from a lending standpoint, that that's still a good investment, right? So it depends on the client, right? What's great for someone might be terrible for somebody else. So I think that's where, again, your feature of where you list your niche and where you want to invest is so important as well.
Scott Dillingham:So that's super cool. But no, that's awesome. So I mean, we're gonna be wrapping up here. Is there any other things that you would like to say or to touch on? We'll make sure that the investium.ai link is down below so people can join for free.
Scott Dillingham:Is there any final thoughts that you have for everybody?
Johnathan Faerman:Final thoughts. Yeah. So I would say to give it a try. That's something I've seen from others. A couple of questions I received is like, how do I get started?
Johnathan Faerman:Because I think once you're before starting this, it looks like something daunting. How do I? And the best way just to get started is just to say hi. As soon as you should say hi to someone and you introduce yourself in a group, you create a group and you invite someone. It's just taking that first step of saying, Hey, hi, I'm Skolt.
Johnathan Faerman:I'm looking to invest in this kind of property in this area. That's it. That's all that it takes for someone else to say, Oh yeah, you know, me too. Let's go into business together. Let's look into this.
Johnathan Faerman:People, they get really excited about this. Everyone that I'm talking with, they get really excited about this. So it's just to say hi. That's all that it takes. It's just to say hi.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. Yeah, no, thanks for sharing that, Jonathan. So we're gonna let you guys go. Thanks so much for tuning in today and for listening and look forward to seeing your platform grow, Jonathan.
Johnathan Faerman:Thank you so much, Tony. Was a pleasure. Take care.