I’ve known Naomi Brown for a while, and this conversation covers a side of real estate that rarely gets talked about openly. Commercial multifamily tends to run the way it always has, and Naomi is building a virtual brokerage that rethinks how owners sell, from screening buyers before anyone disturbs a tenant to pricing a building on its income instead of comps. She also shares what it was like to leave a thriving residential business and start over so she could be present for her four kids. We get into the time blocking, documented systems, Loom videos, and small remote team that keep her business running without her in every room. If you want a practical look at building a business that supports your life, this one is worth your time.
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Hello, hello listeners. Welcome back to another episode. I’m Adrienne Green and today we’re here with my friend Naomi Brown. Now, as you know, we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind and create the freedom they wanted at the start. And Naomi is a longtime player in the real estate space who’s a perfect example of that. So Naomi, thanks for taking some time to join me today.
So awesome to hop on this call with you and discuss my favorite topic, which is real estate.
I love giving you the chance then. Now for listeners who haven’t met you before, can you give us a quick version of what you do?
Yes, absolutely. So I have been a real estate broker for ten years and we have created a new company recently that is built on the premise of helping multifamily investors sell their property for more money while paying less in commission. So we follow a pretty straightforward process to help them maximize the value of their building.
And basically act as a virtual broker in order to help them advertise their property, drive buyers and sell their property with a little bit of participation from the owner and connecting them with the buyer.
I am excited to dive into this. As a longtime real estate agent myself and I think for anybody really in the real estate industry or in the investing space, commercial multifamily has room for some innovation, right? For some shakeups, for some forward progress. It tends to be a little old school. So can you walk us through what you were experiencing with the traditional brokerage model for this multifamily investing, which you saw as a broker and an investor, and what were you seeing that you didn’t like?
Yes, absolutely. So I actually started as a residential agent and then worked my way into the commercial realm. And that gave me a unique perspective because I saw how residential agents typically cooperate together. And then when I got over on the commercial side, I realized that there’s not a lot of cooperation happening and that a lot of the commercial brokers are generally older
and men and tend to just live by this is how we’ve always done it. So I recognized within that the opportunity to change some things and especially with technology being what it is, with AI in today’s world, that we’re ripe for change. So we’re working on being on the forefront instead of being drug behind the change.
I love that, for sure. And one of the key parts of the business model you have is being virtual. And so let’s talk about touring the property. What does that look like and what’s made you confident that that’s gonna work?
So when I got into the commercial side of the business and started selling multifamily properties that have a lot of units, I realized that the traditional method of, hey, we’re gonna go in and see a property and walk through every unit. There’s no way that works when you start having properties that are thirty units and more, right? You can’t do that as an investor, right? You might see the one unit,
write an offer and then make it contingent upon doing the rest. So oftentimes what we then instituted in our sale process is just an opportunity for folks to maybe visit the outside of the property, review the financials, and then submit a letter of intent based on the terms that they’d be able to offer. That way it allows the owner to pre-screen and understand
what type of offers they’re going to get, and then a physical walkthrough happens after the owner is able to pre-screen and probably accept one of those letters of intent.
And now I am totally on board for what you’re saying, Naomi. I can feel the pain even when I was helping people get, let’s say, a duplex, right? The odds of getting in and touring both sides of a duplex when it’s a rental property are very low, as it is. And so you have accepted that reality and created a system that is very efficient, accepts that reality, and recognizes that it’s really once you’re under contract and you’re in the due diligence period that
You’re gonna have access to all of the units, right? The tenants are going to actually let you in then. I was just thinking of once, I was actually in Guam for a conference and we toured a duplex. One unit we couldn’t get in at all, and the other one, even though the agent had set up a time, because this was everybody in the conference was touring these properties, right? It was a property tour for everybody who was at this summit in Guam. And even one of these other ones that we went to that we had approval to go
in that unit, somebody was crashed out asleep in the room, walks out in the middle of this group of thirty people touring it, like, why are you guys in my house?
Yep. And of course you probably said, we sent you notice and they’re like, What? I never got a notice, right? Classic. Happens all the time. So
Exactly. Yes. So for everybody who hasn’t toured this multifamily, this is the reality that you’re going into that Naomi is planning around.
Yep. Yeah, exactly. So really with investment properties, what the investor cares about is does it make money, right? Does the cash flow, the purpose of seeing the property is to A verify that it’s leased and B verify the condition of the property so you know if you need to put in capital expenses or not. So
when we do all the work on the front end of advertising the property, presenting the financials, having buyers write a letter of intent, it’s answering a lot of those questions up front, and I’m providing a lot of that information like how old the roof is, how old the heating system is, so they can do their underwriting before going in and disturbing their tenants
and answering a lot of those questions that investors are going to have. So then once we have a pool of qualified buyers that maybe there’s three that the seller might want to consider their LOIs, we can do a group tour, go into one or two units, minimal disturbance to the tenants, they get to see a few, and then they can proceed forward with an accepted offer and going into their due diligence period. So
It’s reducing a lot of the friction with the physical inspection of the property and helping an owner pre-qualify people so they save time and they save an awful lot of headache and hassle with notifying their tenants before they’re even bringing an investor into the property.
Yeah, it makes sense. I love efficiency and it just seems like it streamlines everything. Now, let’s talk about another challenge that you face in this multifamily space, right? And that is that some investors they’re cool with the full service model. Some investors they want a DIY for sale by owner, they don’t want to pay any real estate agent anything, right? We’ve got this whole spectrum and your model sits between the two. How does that middle ground work?
Yeah, so that’s a great question. And it’s interesting because I haven’t seen anyone else who is offering what we’re introducing into the marketplace, which is paying for the services that you receive. Usually it’s either you go it alone as a multifamily owner if you decide you want to sell your building yourself to try and save on commission and then hope you price it right and hope you get it in front of the right buyers
Or you hire a full service broker, pay them a whole bunch of money, and maybe not even know if they’re bringing all the qualified prospects to your property that you’d like to see, or know that you’re actually getting the best price. So our model is blending the two approaches where an owner can come to us and say, Can you advise me on
what you think the best price for my property is. We do that. We also give them a lot of tips for increasing the value if there’s some simple things they can do before selling to increase that value. And then we are getting it out to the marketplace in all of the public channels, as well as direct marketing with social media, postcards, emails, and direct outreach to prospective buyers.
So that way the owner of the property knows it’s being advertised out to a broad pool of buyers and they’re able to save the sum of the commission that they would otherwise pay to a full service broker and still get the same level of service that they would get with having a higher accountability to them that we’re
bringing them results.
Right, and you can have something that costs less and provides great service because you’ve set up things that are more efficient in how you do stuff, and you’re virtual so you can help a bigger area. I love it. That’s totally all my jam.
Yeah. The virtual side of it is really the key because what I realized is that as a broker, you’re usually limited to a certain area, which is probably how far you can reasonably drive to go to a property, right? Or to go meet with an owner in person. So what I realized is that if we can offer it virtually
then I can serve a whole lot more people, have that efficiency of scale, and then be able to pass on that savings to the owner of that property and allow them to benefit from that efficiency of scale. So I don’t have to meet with them personally, right? We live in the modern era. We do a Zoom call, we go over their property information. We have very specific criteria about showing the property like we just talked about.
Right.
And they can either have their property manager or they themselves, if they’re still actively involved in their properties, open the door to let in prospective buyers and do that physical part of it and in exchange for doing a little bit of that physical part, then they’re able to benefit and save a lot on the commission.
I think that’s fabulous. Now, something you’ve mentioned a few times here is about the marketing piece, right? And marketing multifamily is a different beast, right? It’s not the same as a single family home, even if that is a rental, right? It’s not the same as other commercial spaces. So what are your insights on marketing? What does that system look like that you’ve perfected for this multifamily space?
Yeah, so something that I realized when we really started digging in and specializing in selling multifamily is when you’re talking about commercial multifamily, five units or more, it’s valued based on the income, right? It’s all about your net operating income. So instead of it being just, we’re pulling comps from the marketplace, we’re really having a deep knowledge of what people will pay for that income.
And allowing us to bring that knowledge of the market to that owner. So that owner, maybe they have a hundred units spread out over five buildings, let’s say, and they’re not in the market on a constant basis talking to buyers, dealing with investment property, underwriting the way we are. So we’re able to offer them our expertise. So they’re not going it alone.
Because think about it, right? If you’re gonna sell a two million dollar building, do you really want to take the chance that maybe you’re gonna leave two hundred thousand dollars sitting on the table by mispricing it? Or if you price it too high and then you don’t sell it and you wonder what’s wrong, right? So it’s a big deal to get that part wrong. And that’s why I would highly advise any multifamily owner not to go it alone, but we’re able to
bring them our expertise and help them along that route and make sure they’re making a good decision and all their hard work, owning multifamily is not easy, as I’m sure you know, and all their hard work should be paid off when they go to sell it eventually.
Exactly. And when somebody is an expert in multifamily like you, or like when I was an agent dealing with residential real estate, when you’re seeing so many deals, it’s what you do all day, every day, you’re gonna know a lot more about that than somebody where this is just one small piece of their overall life and business world.
Yep, yep, absolutely. That’s what you’re hiring is the expertise.
Exactly. And while I love AI, I will tell you AI does not know all the things that we know.
That is so true. And you had asked me about the marketing as well. And with multifamily, oftentimes there’s this perception in the industry that if a property is publicly marketed, that there’s something wrong with it.
And this is a really interesting observation that I’ve come across with a lot of investors because they’re like, I just want the off market deals, right? Somehow magically they’re gonna be better if they’re not on the market. And what I think this has contributed to is that a lot of brokers will, if they list a property, they won’t publicly put it out on the market and they hide it because they want to
keep it to themselves and they want to keep all the commission to themselves. And then that results in it only getting to a small pool of buyers, which is actually the opposite of what you think you hire a broker to do, right? You hire a broker to get in front of as many people as possible. So you drive up the price. So you get more money for the property.
And if your broker’s not actually putting it out on the market and advertising it widely, you’re not getting that result. So there’s a funny little nuance with investors that we’re setting out to change, that it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it by it not being on the market.
Right, right. Yes, it’s interesting the little cultural nuances that can happen in communities like this, right?
So what I would love to do, Naomi, we’ve talked a lot about this multifamily space. That’s a lot of great wisdom. And I’d love to talk about the entrepreneurship and the business piece of it. You have ten years as a broker, you have this new specific brokerage you’ve recently started, and I know you’ve learned a lot about being an entrepreneur, being a business owner in the real estate space during that time. So go ahead.
Yeah, I have definitely, a lot of years of experience will teach you things as you grow. And one of the biggest things I’ve learned is that sometimes it’s really better to let go of one thing in order to be able to grow into the next thing. So I actually realized when there was the opportunity to create this new company that
it’s a lot of work to change people’s stigma around a certain industry and a certain opportunity, but because there’s been so much growth in the AI space, I realized there’s probably a lot of people who would really love to receive a new opportunity within real estate, specifically multifamily in my region.
And I have the expertise in order to bring that to this space. And so I married my idea with the opportunity that I saw in the market with a lot of technology coming to the space. And so that’s what I think is the key piece for a lot of AI innovation is, okay, it still needs the human person with the expertise in order to be able to bring that
into the AI space and revolutionize a lot of different industries and that’s what we’re doing here with our new brokerage.
Well, and one of the first things you hinted at there, I think is something we could dig into more, the idea of as you have more time in an industry, let’s say real estate, you have the choice whether or not you’re going to evolve in how you are functioning within that. You could have stayed, so you were originally a residential real estate agent, right? You could have stayed there, right? You could have.
Right.
And you didn’t. You evolved into the commercial space. You’ve now evolved into having your own brokerage. And you’ve had to let go, as you mentioned, of these prior roles in order to do these new ones. And that can be tough for people. That can be really tough to let go of what they have now when they’re especially not sure of what this next level will look like.
Yeah. And I know you’ve done a similar thing as well, Adrian. You build a business and then sometimes it’s tough to realize there could be something better, but that means letting go of the old familiar category in order to grow into what’s next. But I’ve always been a very go oriented person and so that’s helped me to be able to say, Okay, what I have here is good and that’s comfortable, but
I really want to grow into something new and something better in the next phase. So yeah, when I was in residential, I had a great clientele base. I liked what I did. I just didn’t like working twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, like there’s an expectation. And I realized, okay, I like what I’m doing, but I wanna grow too.
Right.
And what I like about that too, you mentioned another great piece of being willing to evolve, is you can say, Hey, here’s what I liked and here’s what I dislike and I can evolve into something that is more of what I like and less of what I dislike. The commercial space is not as twenty four seven as the residential space.
Yeah, that was actually my primary motivation in moving into the commercial space is because I have four kids and I said I really don’t wanna work this much around the clock and miss their growing up years. So I made a transition primarily for that. And to be honest, I made that transition and the first year was really, really difficult because it feels like you’re going back to
the beginning where you didn’t know anything, when you’re just starting out in the industry, you’re like, I don’t know anything, I have to ask for help all the time. And it was really challenging. And then the income as well goes back to zero. So you’re starting over, but you have to remind yourself, hey, I already did this once, that means I’m going to do it again and this time I’m gonna do it better.
Right.
Right.
Right, we can always use those lessons learned in every new start. But there’s a lot of good points you make there for people who are listening who may be thinking about that transition is recognize you’re gonna go from being let’s say the college professor to the kindergarten student again. So if you anticipate that transition, it’s easier to take it. And recognize you’re gonna go from making good money to maybe restarting on building that snowball. So if you can set some money aside or do some other thing.
Yeah. Funny story, I actually made that transition officially January two thousand and twenty. And then of course, two months later, COVID nineteen happened. And a month after that, I’m sitting under my desk crying. And I was like, This is a terrible idea. What was I thinking? Right? But then a year later it came roaring back, right? So, speaking to all the other entrepreneurs and
Yeah.
investors out there, I’m like, there is gonna be some tough times, but just imagine what all the good stuff is once you get past that tough time.
Yeah.
Right. I think that’s really relevant right now. I mean the real estate market, our days on market is going up, going up, prices are flatter than they have been. It’s a tougher time for agents, it’s a tougher time for investors who maybe wish they could sell or, ten thirty one into something else. It’s just a tougher time, but you can get through it and persevere and you did with that like you said with twenty twenty.
Yep.
Yeah, absolutely. We came through it. And even now I still have clients who are fighting deals out there in the marketplace. I just had somebody close on one yesterday because there was a seller who was under a whole lot of distress because his loan had reset after the low lows of twenty twenty one. So don’t give up. There’s great deals out there. Keep persevering.
Yes, yes. And I’d like to talk about something else you mentioned there. I know it wasn’t in our initial thoughts, but here on this podcast I really like to focus about that we use our real estate entrepreneurship to create the freedom we wanted in the first place, right? So that we don’t have to be in that W two desk job with two weeks of vacation a year or whatever that looks like. And so you said that you made this transition for your time with your family and with your kids. And so I’d love to hear for people who
are intrigued or want that same thing, what are some of the things you set up in your real estate entrepreneur life? What are some of the systems, rules, whatever that you’ve put in place that helps you have that freedom to have time with your family?
I am first and foremost a huge time blocker. So it was a big mental shift for me to be able to say, hey, if it’s after six o’clock, I’m not gonna answer that email. And that was initially really hard for me, but if I put a time block on my calendar from eight to nine, I’m answering all my emails, I’m taking care of all that stuff, and then I’m going to do my marketing videos from nine to ten.
And then really stick to it. And that’s of course the hard part, right? The discipline of, yeah, we are actually gonna do this, have accountability group, which helps me a lot to say, yeah, did I actually do those things I was going to do? In order to be able to create that system so that you have the freedom during the other hours of the day when I don’t wanna be working. So
for me it really came back to the time blocking, figuring out the things I need to do and then putting in my schedule so that I’m making a commitment to myself to get it done.
You’re preaching to the choir on that one. I am such a huge fan of time blocks and you really hinted at there. Systems can give you freedom. People who may be scared of systems, maybe scared of committing that time, but the truth is when you do that and you’re like, I know, like you said, I know I’m gonna handle those emails eight to nine AM, people don’t need me to handle it at eight PM at night, right? I know that it’s gonna get handled and taken care of, so I don’t have to worry about doing it after six o’clock. I can be with my family. Love that.
Yep. Yeah, exactly. Yep.
And then the second piece of that is what are some of your favorite memories or experiences that you’ve been able to have because of this life of freedom that you’ve created?
So one of the first times I sold a property without having to go see it, I actually sold a development site that was down in the south. Never went and saw the property, but I connected the buyer and the seller, virtual closing, all of it, right? Everything was virtual. And I was like, wow, I can use my knowledge to create value for people without having to be there in person.
And I can do it with a clear system in place. So that was an aha light bulb moment for me. I did try and make the buyer promise they would fly me down there to see the site at some point. And it hasn’t happened yet, so I might have to take a road trip sometime to go see this property I sold. But it was just a fun revelation of, a lot of the time, especially for investors,
there might be one time they go view the property for their due diligence and then that’s it, right? They wanna have everything virtual so they can have the freedom as well. So just getting past that mindset of I have to be there in person. And I have learned to make prolific use of Loom videos because that has helped me tremendously be able to communicate with
Right.
Love that.
buyers and sellers and my admin folks, what needs done and when. So
Right. One of the other things I admire about you, Naomi, that I think you may have some insights to share with our audience as we approach the end here is you mentioned your admin team. And what I think is that from what I’ve seen, and I’d love to dig into a little more, it seems like you’re really good at leveraging without over leveraging, right? You bring in the help just when you need, in a really precise manner. What does your team look like and where have you found that bringing someone in really gives outsized value?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I have a full-time administrator that lives only 10 minutes away from me, but we both work remotely from home. And another part-time person who does all of our underwriting remotely as well, but is located in the same state. And then we also have assistants overseas as well, which is common for a lot of real estate investors and entrepreneurs.
So putting those all together has really forced me to have some good documented SOPs along with our Loom videos, which I embed into my SOP process to make it easy for them to see and hear me talking about exactly what I need done and having an accountability to make sure it does. So it’s worked. I’m not a detailed person like a lot of
entrepreneurs tend to be, right? But I’ve forced myself to be a little more detail oriented in documenting that process so that later on I don’t have to repeat myself three times.
I feel like moms especially can be like, Hey, we’re gonna do what we need to get done to do this job well. So even if we’re not detailed people we can get detailed if that’s what we need to do to get the job done.
That’s right. Yes. And I actually both of my more local folks are moms who, like you said, they’re good at getting stuff done. So if you need it done, ask your mom to do it, right?
Yes, for sure. And one other thing that real estate can be so relational, right? And having a business can also be so relational, right? And I’m curious what your wisdom would be to real estate entrepreneurs in terms of building relationships, building that connection either with clients or with your team members when you are virtual. How does that work for you?
I have learned to spend a lot of time on the phone. But being able to send Loom videos to my clients so they can watch it at ten o’clock at night when they have time to do that, to explain a project, that type of thing has really helped me be able to connect with them.
And for our marketing I do a lot of videos just so you can have that human interaction, the face to face. So they can see me. I might not be seeing them, but they can see me and be able to benefit from the information and expertise we’re offering them in a face to face manner.
And nobody loves to see themselves on camera, right? But that was one thing that I had to learn to get past in order to be able to communicate well with my client base as well as our admin team.
Right. And what that reminds me of is I when I was learning to be an Asian and they were talking about that hierarchy of communication, right? And it’s
Text, email, those things are at the very bottom and the more you can be voice to voice, face to face, eyeball to eyeball kind of thing. And you obviously prioritize that with the phone calls, with the videos, you are very present and you’re not just sending a text. And so for our listeners, I want to emphasize that point for you guys. It can be so easy to just send that text or send that email instead, but if we make that call, if we send that voice message, if we send a video, that is much more impactful.
Yeah, absolutely. And I have also found too, when you are able to speak their language, and I use that term, if you’re speaking one investor to another, that opens up a bridge of communication that you wouldn’t normally have with someone else. So that enables you to form a connection a whole lot faster than you would if it was just like, Hey, I don’t have a whole lot of
information to share with you, but you share a horror story about a maintenance call on Christmas Day, you’ll be right in there communicating faster than nobody’s business.
It’s a very good point. Now, if you zoom out five years as we wrap up, I’d love your five year vision because that helps me and all of our listeners think about how we can help you and your business. What does Clear Multifamily’s role in the multifamily investing space look like five years down the road?
That’s a great question. So what I’ve realized is that much younger generation of multifamily owners, business owners are coming up and are growing up with the technology tools that we have, right? But there’s a lot of older owners in the market that I think will still be doing brokerage business dealings, the traditional method.
So in five years we anticipate having a much broader base of people who are probably fifty and under who will be owning a lot of the investment properties that right now in the United States are owned by the baby boomer generation, but that’s all in the process of being transitioned over. So
as that transition happens, there will be a whole lot more tech savvy investors, business owners out there in that space who will relate well with our product and our services because we’ll have grown up with AI, we’ll be very comfortable with the internet versus some of the older generation maybe not so much. So that transition is going to continue to take place and as more technology comes into our world,
that typically reduces the cost to investors, business owners across the board. And so we’re on the forefront of reducing that cost and helping them implement that technology into their businesses.
I love it. And Naomi, if somebody would like to reach out to you and learn more about the brokerage or continue the conversation, what is the best way for them to do so?
They can visit our website at Clear Multifamily dot com. We have a contact form if they want to sign up for our weekly newsletter we send out with lots of helpful information for investors who are growing their portfolios and connect with us there at Clear Multifamily dot com.
Perfect. Well, thank you for being here and that is a wrap on today’s episode. I appreciate all of our listeners and join me again next week for another amazing conversation.