Noah Rosenblatt of UrbanDigs On Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Real Estate Industry
An Interview With Jason Hartman
Build trust. That ties into the newsletter. Create the image perceived as a trusted advisor. Every event you hold, every letter you send out, every email that goes out to your network, how is this enhancing my image as a trusted advisor who knows what’s going on with the market? That’s going to get the people to tell their friends and their family — the multiplier effect.
As a part of my series about the ‘Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Real Estate Industry’, I had the pleasure of interviewing Noah Rosenblatt.
Noah Rosenblatt is the CEO and Co-Founder of UrbanDigs, a real estate analytics company that provides in-depth data analysis on the Manhattan and Brooklyn real estate markets. Launching its first chart platform in 2010, UrbanDigs built out a full tech platform for professional real estate agents, providing trusted market research and intelligence, and weekly market updates and events. Professionals today use UrbanDigs as their trusted, unbiased source of data, to help their clients make more informed and confident decisions.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to the Real Estate industry?
I was always driven to be an entrepreneur. My start was as a trader on Wall Street, and, like most things, that didn’t last. So, in the early 2000s, I started a wireless hotspot, directory, and information company called Hotspot Haven, while I was trading, because I knew I was failing. Failing is how I got here. To be honest with you, I failed at a couple of my first ventures. And this led me to real estate.
UrbanDigs was really born out of not succeeding with Hotspot Haven. I thought, “What am I going to do now?” And, at the time, I had two passions: Wall Street and real estate. I was already leaving Wall Street, and winding down with Hotspot Haven. This led me right into New York City real estate.
Can you share with our readers the most interesting or amusing story that occurred to you in your career so far? Can you share the lesson or takeaway you took out of that story?
There was a time we met the founder and CEO of a large regional brokerage chain, who was interested in our services but expected us to cut our price and bend over backward since it had a large number of agents. We realized, at that point, that our services were not a commodity to be handed out like candy to new hires, but rather, expert tools for top-producing agents to truly serve their clients better.
Do you have a favorite “life lesson quote”? Can you share a story or example of how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” — Samuel Beckett
I’ve experienced a lot of failure, but I’ve been good at saying to myself, “all right, this didn’t work,” and then taking different approaches, experimenting, and learning from the failures until I found something that works. That process brought me to where I am today. If I had stopped and lost faith, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have evolved.
In 2009, we were trying to build basic charts, and the data was so bad that we kept failing. I got to a crossroads with my team; after six months, I was told that what we were trying to do was not working. That the data was wrong. The team was concerned that they were going to keep working for another six months, and still be in the exact same spot — or, alternatively, you end up having a product or service that is novel in the market, because nobody else went through the necessary trials and tribulations.
So, I tried to build this system and failed multiple times. We didn’t launch UrbanDigs until mid-2010. And the only reason it took a year and a half was because we kept failing. I almost quit at the end of 2009. I just thought this is not gonna happen. But it did!
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We’re working on a number of exciting new projects.
One of them is called “UrbanDigs Advisor.” It’s a new service that we’re offering to professional real estate agents, investors, data enthusiasts, and developers, who need independent, unbiased interpretation of the markets and property pricing. One example is, “What is my place worth?” Some don’t really want a broker to answer this question, because the broker may have other incentives. So, we provide very custom data you can’t get anywhere else.
Another project that we’re working on is an AI-powered pricing tool, the “where are we now” tool. It is very simple: agents will be able to enter a previous month and year, and it’ll give a full report on how the market has changed since that point in time. Many sellers ask, “How has the market changed since I bought my place?” But that depends on when they purchased it, so we can’t give uniform answers. This helps solve that.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
What makes UrbanDigs stand out is our independent and unbiased nature, and our ability to turn data into a digestible conversation. For a real estate agent who is not a data enthusiast or not good with numbers or charts, this is absolutely critical to succeed in business.
Also, we’ve been around the block — we grew up with the New York City real estate industry. I’ve been in the business since 2005, starting from the ground up, and a lot of the agents that are 20–30 years in the business know me (and my co-founder John Walkup) in one way or another as a trusted, neutral colleague. The combination of trust, data quality, data digestibility, neutrality, independence, and unbiasedness is a very rare find.
Here is a testimonial from a client: “Just wanted to say, firstly, how much I have enjoyed and my career has benefited from watching UrbanDigs YouTube videos over the last 4+ years. I started off in real estate mainly as a rental agent, as I represent a large portfolio of 2,500 units across Manhattan. Watching UrbanDigs’ weekly updates really helped me to get ahead of trends and give my clients the necessary knowledge to become successful sales agents. Now, I’m one of the top StreetEasy expert buyers agents in NYC and came in 1st place in February and 4th in May for the most expert lead sales transactions in all of NYC. So I just want to say thank you, as I know they’ve definitely had a lot to do with my success!”
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
John Lee. I met him when I was doing Hotspot Haven, and he helped me with my venture. He had his doubts, and he eventually ended up bailing on it. He told me it was failing, but I couldn’t let my project go. He told me that I needed to pull the Band-Aid off — it was a life lesson: when something is failing, and you see it failing over and over again, it’s okay to move on and let it go.
John Lee helped me get rid of Hotspot Haven and move into the real estate business. Whether or not he’ll remember this, he was part of helping me transition to real estate. Years later, in 2009, he was the one who cleaned all the data when we were starting UrbanDigs. He’s a very skilled data engineer, a brilliant back-end engineer, and he built the first version of UrbanDigs. He built the first shortcode, and he fixed all the data integrity problems. I was working with him every day for a year and a half and I still keep in touch with him. I do a bi-monthly or quarterly call with him, which helps me with general strategy, business strategy, corporate strategy, and how to keep focused.
I’m so glad to have him as a friend. I look up to him. He’s brilliant, successful, a visionary, and very entrepreneurial.
Ok. Thank you for all that. Let’s now jump to the main core of our interview. Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the Real Estate industry? If you can please share a story or example.
- Real estate is mysterious — it’s a very confusing market to navigate and understand. Luckily, I love mystery, and I love challenges.
- Manhattan is hyper-local. Every building in Manhattan trades like its own tiny marketplace. I love that once you step out of a building, what is around may or may not even reflect what your building is trading at.
- The people. The agents, the managers, the executives. The interesting characters I’ve met along the way, I love them. The different opinions and the nature of the beast of the personality in this industry. Again, this is a shark-eat-shark industry. You need thick skin, and you have to be tough and go get it. It’s not going to come to you. Every one of the successful agents out there, managers, executives, innovators, tech guys, etc., all have their own drive and vision.
Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest? Please share stories or examples if possible.
- I wish that there would be more uniform sharing of data. A less disparate incentive of keeping your data private. Right now there’s a perceived incentive not to share data. However, data wants to be free. Data wants to be out there and analyzed and utilized. What you do with that data separates the winning and success, not the best companies and the worst companies and the ones that succeed and the ones that fail.
- I would love a single MLS that shares all of the data in New York City, with everyone participating. It’s a disparate data ecosystem; the only data that’s really public and available for everyone is ACRIS. That data is there, it’s the sales data, it’s the city register data. it’s not great, but you can get it, and you can do what you want with it.
- I worry about whether there are macroeconomic problems brewing, whether the Fed is really going to go nuclear on inflation, and whether real estate might have a low transactional period, for whatever reason. The agents in the industry will make money on transactions and commissions, but go through a period of low transactions. My business is from professional real estate agents. I will flat-out say it: I like it better when transactions are hot, although we actually do okay when transactions are low. But I want more agents to be successful in building businesses, doing transactions, growing transactions, and investing in their business because we are a complementary technology.
What advice would you give to other real estate leaders to help their teams to thrive and to create a really fantastic work culture?
Build out a trusted audience and provide the content that your audience wants to hear, which is how the market is doing.
A lot of agents spend time working on newsletters to promote their listings, their open houses, and local restaurants. That’s not giving consumers the information they want. You should be an advisor and foster that image. I think every agent needs to have an information distribution mechanism. What content are you distributing on a consistent basis that tells a very easy, digestible story of what your consumer wants to hear? They should think about that.
The whole purpose is to have this unbiased, independent, neutral source of transparent market information. And if I were a buyer or seller, and I’m gonna utilize a broker, I want that broker to tell me in a neutral, independent way what’s going on with the market. And how do I navigate it?
Ok, here is the main question of our interview. You are a “Real Estate Insider”. If you had to advise someone about 5 non-intuitive things one should know to succeed in the Real Estate industry, what would you say?
1. Grow your network. If you don’t have a network, you’re dead in the water. if you have a network and are not growing it, it will limit your potential profit potential down the line.
2. Hold events and bring in experts. Bring in attorneys or other selected, vetted people that you trust, who are good speakers and can inform the consumer. Share the products you are recommending that clients are taking advantage of today. Make others aware — send this out to your network, and bring in experts as a part of what you’re doing.
3. Product knowledge. If you don’t have product knowledge — if you don’t know what’s going on in buildings, in your areas, or what new developments are coming in — you’re also dead in the water. Then, you’re just going to rely on close friends and family who are using you because they love you and know you. But you’re not going to get business outside of that. You need to get your level of expertise up.
4. Time management. You should utilize your time properly; there are some agents that spend hours or days creating market reports and not using UrbanDigs. They’re using the same internal method systems that they used 20 years ago. That’s what they’re comfortable with, but it takes them two days to put together a report, and time is money.
5. Build trust. That ties into the newsletter. Create the image perceived as a trusted advisor. Every event you hold, every letter you send out, every email that goes out to your network, how is this enhancing my image as a trusted advisor who knows what’s going on with the market? That’s going to get the people to tell their friends and their family — the multiplier effect.
Because of your position, you are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Data sharing and transparency on behalf of agents, so companies like Zillow and StreetEasy don’t always have the edge. Data wants to be public and accessible, and consumers need data for transparency.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, John Walkup’s Forbes columns, Our podcast talkingmanhattan.com, creditspreadalert.com
Thank you for your time, and your excellent insights! We wish you continued success.
About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.
Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.
While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.