Mar 18

Mar 18 BZ Founder Review 03: Gary Beasley - Roofstock

Founder Bio

Gary Beasley is the CEO and Co-founder of Oakland based startup Roofstock. Gary has spent most of his career building businesses in the real estate, hospitality and tech sectors. After earning his BA in economics from Northwestern, Gary ventured west to earn his MBA from Stanford, where he caught the entrepreneurial bug and still serves as a regular guest lecturer. Previously Gary was instrumental in acquiring and integrating more than $800 million of resort properties for KSL Resorts, and spent five years as CFO of online brokerage pioneer ZipRealty, which he led through its successful IPO in 2004. Gary also served as CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, then the second largest boutique hotel management company in the country. Immediately before starting Roofstock, Gary led one of the largest single-family rental platforms in the U.S. through its IPO as co-CEO of Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust, now part of Colony Starwood Homes.

Roofstock empowers you to get access to rental real estate investments across 40 different markets in the United States. The concept is easy to grasp. You buy a rental property with potential tenants there already. By investing the initial downpayment I(20%-100%), you can collect rents and enjoy the potential equity increase of that property. Roofstock is the middleman to handle all those transactions and afterwards operations. They make investing and operations separate or integrated depends on how you see it.

Here are a few questions, as an investor myself, I would like to ask before I go ahead with the investments:

(1) How to find a property that fits my requirements?

Roofstock provides a variety of information so you can check if they fit into your requirements on return , house interior & exterior, tenants and etc.

Market, neighborhood, and local school insights
Interior & exterior inspection reports
Property valuation & comparables
Tenant payment history & lease details
Preliminary title report
Major repair cost estimates, if applicable
Visualizations of appreciation, income & total returns
Detailed financial pro forma & return estimates

(2) Is it a one-time transaction, what is I have operational problems after the purchase?

Roofstock set you up with a vetted local property manager, and continue to work on your behalf to help everything go smoothly

Vetted Partners - Choose top providers for property management, lending & insurance.
Long-term support - From selecting to post-purchase, our advisors are with you every step.

(3) How do I read and interpret the deal page?

In my separate post, I am going to walk you through the process of reading the interpreting a Roofstock deal page to extract information from those numbers and graphs you see. How to use it and what does they mean.

(4) How is the investing and managing process like, for real?

To actually test this out, I am going to do a deal with Roofstock and write about the entire process. Follow me here to see the live update. m