Sean O’Toole Podcast Transcript
Sean O’Toole joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Sean O’Toole. Sean O’Toole’s career reflects a dynamic blend of technology, real estate, and marketing expertise anchored by a deep commitment to empowering small local businesses.
After a successful tenure in Silicon Valley, working with three venture backed startups, Sean launched Foreclosure Radar.com in 2007. This platform revolutionized real estate investment by enabling users to acquire billions in real estate assets during the foreclosure crisis. In 2012, he broadened his vision with PropertyRadar.com, a tool designed to help investors discover and purchase off market properties. With over two decades of experience as a real estate broker and investor, Sean has flipped 160 properties and managed a diverse portfolio, including commercial real estate and apartments. His extensive background has also involved advising thousands of investors, agents, and brokers showcasing his deep industry knowledge.
Well, good afternoon, Sean. Welcome to the show!
Sean O’Toole: Thanks for having me!
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time hailing out of Lake Tahoe. That’s just an amazing place. I’m in Kansas city, so I’m very jealous. Been out there many times, but Sean, you know, the deal we could talk about Lake Tahoe all day long.
So, let’s just jump right into your first question, Sean. You have a rich background in both technology and real estate. How did your early experiences in Silicon Valley shape your approach to real estate investing, particularly during the foreclosure crisis?
Sean O’Toole: Well, I learned so many great lessons being in Silicon Valley in the in the nineties, three great startups. And I learned a lot about, you know, finance, but I was a software guy and, you know, it was really the. com crash in 2000 that led me to real estate. It’s very hard to do a startup in 2000 and ended up flipping properties over 160 properties before the crash, actually. Right. And, you know, really coming into the crash and say the biggest lesson I learned from Silicon Valley is, you know, in Silicon Valley, we’re always trying to solve other people’s problems and building software for myself and exploring data and using all those data science tools that I learned in Silicon Valley and applied to my investing really helped.
And then I brought those to other investors through the foreclosure crisis.
Brian Thomas: Thank you for sharing. You know, we’ve had a lot of people on this podcast that have, they started in tech, and they got into a different industry or, helped others in a different industry or vice versa. And it’s interesting how that works.
So, I appreciate the share and what you learned just beyond technology, obviously. And so, Sean foreclosure radar was a game changer for real estate professionals during the 2008 housing crisis. What were some of the key insights or aha moments that led you to develop this platform and how did it help investors navigate such a volatile market?
Sean O’Toole: Yeah. So, you know, after I said, after the dot com crash, I started investing, discovered public records and in that discovered, you know, these foreclosure records and found them to be a rich opportunity to find deals because those folks obviously either going to sell or they were going to lose their own.
And. You know, that just that public records data provided so much, you know, rich opportunity. I wanted to bring that to other folks. And so the big aha moment, I think, was in about May of 2007. We crossed our first month as I was gathering all this data of a billion dollars of property sold at foreclosure auction, just in California.
Yeah. And that’s when I went, Oh, wow. I knew the market was in trouble, but that’s when I said, this is a huge shift and people are going to need to be, be ready for it. Not just investors, but realtors and everybody else as well.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. I remember the time very well, actually, it was. Unbelievable how just my home value, I was upside down in a home I just purchased the year prior.
And I was just like, what’s going on? What I’m really glad about you having that aha moment, seeing that and notice there was definitely a shift in the market. So very helpful, of course sharing those insights with folks that really needed that help, especially the bankers too. So, Sean, given your experience with economic downturns from the dot com bubble to the 2008 financial crisis, what are some of the key indicators you monitor to predict market shifts and how do you apply this knowledge in your current work?
Sean O’Toole: Yeah. So, you know, the thing that tipped me off in late 2005 was rising inventories, declining sales volumes, And outside of the data that we collected, you know, just being out on the street, talking to sales agents, remember going into a subdivision and they mentioned that they were now giving away free swimming pools, whereas folks who had just bought two months prior.
I paid that same price and didn’t get a swimming pool. And I thought to myself, wow, those folks didn’t put any money down and the rest. And this is, this is going to be a problem. You know, I’m still looking at those things today, but I think the biggest thing to look at, and the thing we don’t think about very much is the regulatory environment.
So, you know, in 2008. Banks had to get bad assets off their books as in foreclosures as fast as possible and sell them at any price the market would bear. At the same time, they took away lending at the low end of the market and that caused an absolute collapse. You know, today we have sales volumes that are almost as low.
As that period of time. So declining sales volumes are here right now, but we don’t have people who haven’t put anything down with no credit. The pulse loans is, and you have a pulse, you can get a loan. That’s not really an issue today. And the regulators have shifted from forcing the banks to sell to forcing them to try to keep homeowners in their homes.
So that regulatory piece is super important as well. We don’t live in a free market. You know, our markets are, are greatly impacted by both monetary and fiscal policy and current regulatory policy. So, you need to watch those things as well.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I did see a major shift. I think there was a lot of backlash, even though I don’t know if you saw that movie, “The Big Short”, that was such a great movie.
But yeah, there’s been a major shift in how we’re approaching housing crisis like these versus when we did back in 2008. But I appreciate you having the insights to share and predict some of this stuff. It’s very helpful for sure.
And Sean, last question of the day. You have a long history of combining data science with real estate, how has AI and advanced data analytics transformed real estate investing? And where do you see this trend heading in the next decade?
Sean O’Toole: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it has yet, but it’s starting to, and I think one of the biggest places that we’re going to see change is in better messaging in our marketing, you know, right now, most investor marketing is, you know, I buy for cash.
I close quickly, you know, I buy order homes. It’s all I and has very little understanding of the customer, the person in distress, The person who needs to sell and what their needs are, and I’m hopeful that as a I moves into more marketing platforms, we’ll see messages that are a little less. I and a little bit more about the customer and have a little more empathy and do a little bit better job connecting.
I also think it’s going to. Allow smaller companies to compete with the big boys more effectively because, you know, pop talent is hard to find, you know, for writing those messages, building the marketing campaigns and all the other pieces throughout the investing life cycle. And when you can tap into that same expertise. Without having to pay those salaries. I think that’s a real game changer.
Brian Thomas: For sure. AI has really come to the forefront the last year and a half. Going on two years now. And we’re seeing some of the massive gains around, whether it’s data analytics, data science. Or other large data sets that we need to scan through, you know, billions of records, right?
So, this is certainly going to be a game changer across the industries. But I do appreciate your insights, and you’ve got a lot of background and expertise to share with our audience and I appreciate that. And Sean, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Sean O’Toole: Thank you, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Sean O’Toole Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
