Carfax for Houses: Inside Property Lens with Bob Frady

Bob Frady built and sold Hazard Hub, a natural hazard prediction company. After the exit he tried to retire. Played nine holes, sat in a Best Buy parking lot, got bored. About six months later he bought a house in Minnesota and immediately spotted things about the property that had not been disclosed. He walked them back to the seller with documentation, asked for 10 percent off the price, and got it. That moment became Property Lens.

Property Lens is a Carfax for houses, with a forecast bolted on. You give it an address. It pulls aerial imagery, weather event history, building permits, FEMA flood data, soil type, neighborhood infrastructure, MLS listing copy, and assessor records. A minute later you get a 50-page report for about $69. It tells you what has happened to the property and what is likely to happen.

What landed in this conversation:

1. The roof score. Bob's team machine-reads aerial imagery and gives every roof a one-to-five condition score plus an exposure rating (New England is low exposure; Texas is wind, hail, and tornadoes). For real estate investors screening properties, that single number is often the call between making an offer and walking away when the insurance market is this tight.
2. Permits as history. Most investors only look at permits when their own deal needs one. Property Lens reverses it: the permit history tells you the age of the roof, the HVAC, the plumbing, and the electrical work. Bob's team translates 8,000 different municipal permit formats into one English-language read.
3. The flood signal beyond the zone. FEMA flood zone designations are a coarse instrument. Property Lens layers in proximity to ocean and river, soil composition, and historical flood events, and will flag a property as flood-insurance-recommended even if it sits outside the 100-year zone. The 500-year zone alone is not the answer.
4. The investor use case Bob did not build for. Property Lens was designed for retail home buyers. Real estate investors found it on their own. Bob's open invitation: if you are running a few-million-dollar apartment or commercial deal and you find the report useful at the consumer price point, reach out and they will build a product for your scale.

The mentor line Bob carries with him, from his late friend Jaffer Ali: "Just quit making excuses, go do it, and believe in yourself." Bob took the corporate route too long before listening to it.

Book on Bob's nightstand: Breakfast with Seneca by David Fideler. The Stoic frame of what you can and cannot control.

Reach Bob at propertylens.com (download the sample report on the homepage) or on LinkedIn.

Real Estate Underground with Ed Mathews. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, at clarkst.com/podcast or elevista.com/podcast

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