Walker & Dunlop, Inc. (WD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. I'm Susan Weber. And joining Walker & Dunlop's CEO, Willy Walker today is Tech Innovator, CRE developer and best-selling author, Rob Finlay of Thirty Capital. If you miss an episode of the Walker webcast, you can find all our replays on YouTube, just search for @walkerdunlop. Thank you for joining us today, and now over to Willy.

Thanks, Susan, and good afternoon, everybody. It is a real pleasure to have my friend, Rob Finlay, join me today to talk about his book Beyond the Building, the commercial real estate industry, data, technology and a whole lot of other things. Rob, let me do a quick intro and then we will dive in to our discussion. Rob Finlay grew up in a commercial real estate family. His father and grandfather were both in the business. And as it happens in many small family businesses his -- he, his brother and his mom all gravitated towards commercial real estate. By the time Rob was 25, he'd held nearly every job in commercial real estate. He'd leased it, he'd sold it, he'd managed it, he'd developed it, he'd been an on-site superintendent pouring concrete, he'd financed it. There aren't a lot of things in the industry that Rob hasn't done at some point. Rob has spent more than 2 decades bridging the gap between innovation and technology to push the boundaries of commercial real estate. And we'll get into some details about those moves in his career in a moment. He has a unique and long-standing position in the industry that allows him to reserve the best CRE operators and entrepreneurs and understands what makes them successful and also what doesn't work. Rob formed Thirty Capital in 2019, which is a prop tech incubator and accelerator, which currently is invested in 10 technology platforms.

Rob, you start Beyond the Building, stating that the book is for commercial real estate, operators and investors, and you state, "if you don't look beyond the building, you're going to get left behind." How and why?

Well, first, Willy, I've known you for a while and always -- we've always had fun skiing and enjoying time with each other. But I'll tell you, I'm really humbled and honored to be here today. So this is -- for me, this is such a big deal. So first of all, thank you very much for having me. As we talk about Beyond the Building and if you're not paying attention to what's going on, you're going to be left behind, it really is all about focusing and being aware, taking the inputs around you and making sure that you can process and be open to those inputs so that you aren't left behind. And so you're not going to be out of business. I think when you look at everybody right now, they're struggling with either something that's going on in the real estate market. And they're focused on it, and they've got to be so micro focused that sometimes they forget some of the opportunities around them.

So let's take that and back up a little bit to when you were at Deutsche Bank. And you're at Deutsche Bank, you'd originated a loan when you were at Credit Suisse. It had -- it was a loan that needed to be defeased. Your client from Credit Suisse calls you a DB and is super frustrated and says, I don't understand how to defease it, how the process works, and there's no transparency to actual defeasance. And because of that call and because of the frustration you sensed with your customer, you said there's a business to be built around defeasance. For a moment, a lot of us have ideas, about things we see in the marketplace that says, oh, if I had all the time in the world and all the money in the world, I'd jump out and go solve that problem. It's the kind of entrepreneur that sits to some degree in everybody, but very few people actually have the wherewithal to say, I'm going to drop a good job at Deutsche Bank and jump out and go do it. Take us back to that moment, when you're sitting at your second job on Wall Street. You'd been successful. You know you've got a good career in front of you, if you just sit where you are, what was it that said you, I have got to jump out of an investment bank and go follow this opportunity?

Well, first of all, just for clarification, it is my third. I started with Lehman Brothers, went to Credit Suisse, and then I was with Deutsche Bank. And quite frankly, and you and I have talked about this before, right, and part of the book. I don't have a graduate degree. I didn't go to Harvard, and I had an undergraduate degree. And I realize that the growth prospects for me in that kind of work environment just wasn't -- it just wasn't there. And quite frankly, not being in a family with commercial real estate owners and operators as well as sort of entrepreneurs, it's really hard to work for somebody. And so picture this in '99, 29 years old, I think I'm the smartest guy in the world. I shouldn't be working for anybody, and I get this call. And yes, there is a time, where you say, "hey, am I going to go and do this?" And I think sometimes being young, maybe a little naive, maybe not thinking about all the risks, it's the time to do it. And that's what happened. I just felt like at this point, I needed to do it. It was something -- it was something that was just so in me, that I had to do it. I had to just say forget it, I'm going to risk everything. I'm going to put my family's life in jeopardy, I mortgage the house, mortgage the cars, got rid of my 401(k). I did all this stuff just so I can try to start this business. And yes, I'm very fortunate. It worked out.

Well, yes, it worked out. Where did the slogan defease with ease come from, Rob?

So we wanted to have some fun. And there's some debate on who takes credit for it. So I go from everybody from my brother, who's also in commercial real estate, some of the people that I was working with, but we were trying to have some fun with this, right, because it's defeasance. Nobody knows what it is. Everybody knows this is complex process. So this was in 2000. And so we were throwing around slogans like we make it def easy or things like that. And then finally, somebody came up in the room, and there were probably a few peers involved in this. But it basically just said, why not just make it simple, Defease with ease. And that was it. And it sort of stuck. The hard part about it, though, was, we actually, to this day, people know us and as either defease with ease or commercial defeasance. Because the actual legal name of the company is actually Commercial Defeasance. Because I didn't think I could go and sell defeasance services on Wall Street to these big shops with the companies called defease with ease. So Defease with Ease became our slogan, but I've been to a conference and people are like, oh, you are Commercial Defeasance, you know what, actually, I really like using those Defease with Ease guys. And so we just turn around and say, yes, well, you should, they're really good. You should keep on using them.

So you sold the Commercial Defeasance to Summit Partners. I find it interesting that you sold it to a late-stage venture capital firm and not, if you will, an industry player who could leverage off of the client base that you had on using the technology. As you were thinking about either recapitalizing the company, continuing to grow the company on your own or selling it. Why did you end up selling it to a venture capital firm rather than an industry player?

So I think the first things first, right, it's -- think about this once again. Now at this point, right? I've been in this business some 35, 36 years old. Every bit of money, every bit of my life, my being, everything I had was that business. I traveled 400 hours a year on planes. I was constantly involved in, and when your sole asset is just one thing, you start to get nervous. Now I've also been very fortunate that I do look at other things and other sites. I'm not just focused on the defeasance world, but starting to just see this business ramp and ramp and ramp, seeing some trends in the market, where lending might be a little bit more open. Some deals might be getting done that are little more aggressive. You start to look back and say, geez, this is sort of reminiscent of an overblown market. Maybe I should put some chips off the table. Maybe I should take some off. So went out and once again -- and just not knowing, Harvard basically was one step up from a business broker, right? So you go to these guys and I didn't even think about going to like a Goldman Sachs or one of these big shops. I went to this business broker and said, hey, can you help me sell my business? He basically pitched it out to a bunch of people. Ultimately, there were private equity firms. And I think Summit looked at this as an opportunity to take a foundation business, that was rapid growth, because Summit was into rapid growth and perhaps build off on it, use their financial infrastructure and their ability to create Alpha and take this business and grow it to the next level.

And interestingly, your timing was impeccable, as it relates to having done that sale in 2006, and you turn around and after the GFC, go back and invest back in Commercial Defeasance by 50% of it. And then that really is sort of the cornerstone investment that then led to Thirty Capital. In that interim period, Rob, you went sort of back to hard assets. You did a bunch in the tax credit space and created tax credit asset management. You invested in a bunch of multifamily assets. After the GFC where values have come down significantly. What was it that got you to, if you will, go back -- I mean do you think if some -- if you hadn't been able to buy Commercial Defeasance back for the discount it was from Summit, do you think you would have gone back to the technology side or stayed on the hard asset side?

Probably both. I mean quite frankly, Willy, I think the ultimate is combining the 2, right? I mean that's really the way we are in our business right now is, I think one of the reasons why we've been successful is -- we are real estate practitioners. We understand hard assets. And so the technology that we develop and the technology that we invest in, supports commercial real estate owners and is used quickly. The business that -- so in 2008, when I started TCAM, Tax Credit Asset Management, it was because the market there was fractured. If you remember back in that time, the syndicator market where they would buy these tax credits, these low income housing tax credits at a certain point, aggregate them and sell them all, well, that market was fractured because they get paid upfront and then rely on the asset management over a period of time. And so when that market -- when the tax credits were being sold for much less than $1 and these syndicators were starting to be fractured, that's where I saw as an opportunity to do some financial engineering to not only get into the position to acquire large portfolios of these structured products, but also the hard assets. And that's what started that. And that became part of the foundation, but buying those type of assets along with what we were buying in 2009, 2010, the hard asset is just -- it's a great place to be, right? Everybody loves hard assets. And it's always quite frankly, it's always a lot easier to be the owner than to be selling to the owner. So back to that question, I probably would like to be sort of in the same book, both hard and technology.

So on that, as you -- in the book, you talked about differentiation. And one of the areas that you talked about differentiation is on data. But it feels like in our industry, a lot of people either say I'm going to differentiate at the asset level. So that's going to be either it's going to be better amenities, it's going to be better management, it's going to be better unit layout, whatever the case might be, but they try and differentiate at the asset level. And then there are also people who differentiate on the data side of things of why are they buying a certain asset, it's sort of a data-driven investment thesis, if you will. I guess the core question I have for you is A, which is more challenging or difficult. And then B, which has greater returns because you've done both.

So the first thing first is, I believe strongly, and this is really what the book is about is that in many cases, the real estate owner and operator takes it from a bottom-up approach, right? We look at our properties and every year, we do our budgets. We look at each individual thing, we look at occupancy. And we don't think about the company as a whole, the operating company. And in the book, I'm challenging people on giving them a framework to take a top-down approach. Because I think by taking a top-down approach is really the only way that you're going to create alpha in the entire organization because it's the things that you have to do at an organizational level, that is going to provide real impact to the property and to all of your investments. So for example, we talk about leadership and we talk about data and we talk about innovation and employees and OKRs and all these things. These are corporate levels. In order for you to really maximize and create alpha at the asset and entity level. So back to your question, so which one is harder?

Which one is harder? Then which one has better returns?

I think clearly, having it at an organizational level will have the clearer returns because you're solving the problem and you're flowing it down as opposed to looking at individual assets and trying to build them up. I just -- that's a very hard way to operate a business. And if you look at a lot of the organizations, a lot of businesses -- and you and I have been very blessed in these last years, where part of our job is to go out and meet customers, right? We get to meet people, right, and we get to meet -- we get to advise people, but we get to listen to them and we get to listen to their stories and really understand their organizations. And if you look at some of these organizations, that is we can walk into them when we know, that's really smart. That's actually -- that's creative, that's different. And by doing that, I think you can look at those ones that do it at an organizational level. They're creating the OKRs at an organizational level. They're data forward, they're innovative forward. Their leadership is there. Those are the companies that quite frankly, I want to invest with. And quite frankly, you can see are outperforming the market.

So talk about data a little bit further, though, because in the book, you talk about a PwC study, that says that those companies that are, if you will, data informed, use data are 3x better at decision-making than those that don't. I think a lot of people get tripped up a little bit in am I using data, like a lot of people think that they make really good decisions. So they can't sit there and say, I'm going to get 3x better decisions by investing in this data strategy. Whereas I think a lot of people also look at data of unless it's going to make money for me, unless I can go sell that data, unless it creates some new revenue stream for me, why am I going to invest in it? Help for a moment, Rob, talk about, like, if you will, baby steps before you go to big leaps because you've gone all in on data. You've created companies around data and commercialize data. But very few people who are on the operating side of the business are sitting there saying, I own assets, and I'm going to create some offshoot data company that I'm going to monetize. And without that as a prospect, they then may not invest in a data strategy.

Sure. Sure. Well, let's take -- let's separate it first. Let's talk about data and then let's talk about innovation, right? Because I think we use them sort of interchangeably, and I probably incorrectly so, do that in the book, right, because I believe they're separate. Data -- think about data. Everybody has data. And I use this analogy and especially for you, because you're -- everybody who knows you knows that you're this tremendous asset, right? You're riding and running. Think about data like oxygen, right? And think about the way that we consume data as your lungs, right? Your lungs are very trained. They're powerful. You can ingest oxygen and use it better than somebody like me, who doesn't do the biking and the running and all the stuff that you do. And I think that's the way that people need to look at these organizations, that they have data all around. They do make decisions off of data, but to effectively have a strategy around data doesn't necessarily involve a huge undertaking, a huge investment in a data strategy. So to be clear on that, point is, you make decisions that are based upon either artificial intelligence, business intelligence or human intelligence, right? You're using some component of data to make those decisions. It's where on the spectrum do you want to be, to make those decisions. How comfortable do you want to be making those decisions. Why do you think back in -- when I first wanted to go on Wall Street back in the '80s and you watched early, early programs, where the Bloomberg Terminal hadn't quite existed, right? So you still had runners, I was applying for jobs, where I wanted to be a trader and guys are on the phone telling, they would sit there and they'd be calling down to their desk and they be -- and these runners are doing this stuff. Nowadays, you go to a trading floor, there's guys with 35 screens up in front of them because it's data. Could you imagine if you wanted to go into an investment with somebody and said, hey, you know what, this guy is -- look this guy is still on -- using his red marker and doesn't use any data sources whatsoever versus, oh, I want to go to somebody who actually uses data and looks at stuff. Even [ Peter Litman ], he was on your show a little while ago. He's like, why didn't people see this happening? Because people weren't looking at data, right? I mean it's -- data is around us. It's critical. You can consume and you can use the data to the way you want to, but be advised. If you're not using data, you're going to be out of business. I don't care what blockbuster. It's like look at data. People want streaming. No, people want to come to the store. People want to guess if the video is there, right? You can go through all these examples. So to your earlier question, like, hey, be left behind. Now in particular, is a true -- an absolute visualization of those who know what they're doing and those who don't know what they're doing because the market is the way it is.

So go back to when you were building trader tool, and the opportunity to buy Tableau because I think that in the book, you described why you didn't buy Tableau, and I think it's very applicable, if you will, to what you just said as it relates to the use of data.

Yes. Well, so that once again, it comes down to the usage of data. Data is this anomaly, right? And I think unfortunately, we all get trapped of it, and I did that, that story about Tableau. And for those who haven't read the book yet, it was basically -- we had this big data warehouse. I wanted to take this data and apply to other things that I have. And so I bought this business intelligence tool, which is going to synthesize all this data and make -- give me great decision-making capabilities. Unfortunately, data if it's not organized is useless, right? It's just scrambled stuff. And no matter what kind of technology you have, AI, BI, whatever, without having structured data, you can't -- you won't be able to enjoy the benefits of having these data-driven decisions. And that's why I come back, in the book, I'm like, look, don't -- you don't want to have a huge data warehouse, that's fine. Don't worry it. But you need to start somewhere and understanding the data that you have that you've created is an asset because you're going to be comparing yourself to people, who are using data. And we're making decisions off of data.

And when someone -- let's just say that somebody, a, hasn't written the book and b, doesn't really have a data strategy in place today. To talk for a moment about the operating data, OKRs, KPIs, things of that nature, which make people better at running their business and making decisions versus I'm going to use this data to be a more savvy investor. I'm going to find value or others can't find value or go to the ultimate, which is, I'm going to commercialize this data and actually make money off of it. But talk about -- if you're sitting there right now saying, I've got to create a data strategy, which one of those 3, if you will, areas would you first invest in? How does somebody kind of frame it to get moving on it?

So I think the first thing, most important thing, right, this all starts at the top. An organization's decision to become more innovative and data-centric has to start at the top, right? So let's get the third one out of the way, right? If you have this idea that you're going to create a data platform and you're going to be able to monetize that data platform, go spend your time, go do something else. I promise you. I promise you, you are better off, go buy a boat, quite frankly, you go buy a big plane, you go buy a big book because that's what you're going to spend in order to go do that. So you figure out what you want. So look at the 2 in between then, right? It's the first one was, hey, do I start this data strategy or how do I start this data strategy? And then what do I do with it? And I think that comes down to the first part, leadership. Understanding the direction, and that comes down to these OKRs, right? What do you really want to do in your organization? Where do you set your North star? Where do you set your goals? And where do you want to be as a company? And where is the leader going to take you to that company? And the data strategy is around that direction. So to me, a company without a data plan or without OKRs, without strategy is basically leaderless and really not is, is going to be out of business for not going to -- it's not going to create alpha.

And is there any size or scale, Rob, that one has to be to create a data strategy. One of the things I thought was really interesting in one of the suggestions in the book was that you suggest that in senior management of any firm, you have 2 sort of new people in that senior executive ranks, which is one is someone who is managing data or a data manager and the other one is a client engagement leader. Talk about those 2 ads that a lot of org charts quite honestly, don't have today.

Yes. Well, you can go through almost any commercial real estate organization. You go look at the work chart. Right now it's going to be -- that's your head guy and then you've got your acquisitions, you've got your operations and you got your finance. The 2 positions that we talk about adding is really data for data strategy and somebody who's engagement and really understanding your customer because that's just as important for the organization, for long-term value. If you get to the data side, having somebody there who is focused, and it doesn't need to be their full-time job, right? So if you're a smaller organization, focus on what you can achieve with the dollars that you have, right? So you don't have a sidebar on the book. You don't need a data scientist, right. Somebody says, I need a data scientist, you don't. You need somebody who's going to be able to collect and maybe you're early on and you collect data and you visualize it through Excel. You collect data, but understanding that there's value there. As you go along the spectrum, as your company size grows and as the return that you want to have, your investment will have to be bigger. Ultimately, you're going to need to have a database, you're going to need to have a centralized place for data. You're going to need to have tools to be able to visualize and analyze that data. And you're going to have tools that are going to be able to make sure that, that data stays fresh and current. Those are investments. Absolutely. But I guarantee you that those investments will pale in comparison to the return that you're going to get an increase in value and increase in not only value of the assets, but increasing value in the asset value -- or sorry, your enterprise value in the way that your investors and other people are going to see you.

So AI is obviously a big issue today. I listened to an interview with Marc Benioff last night on CNBC, talking about Salesforce and what Salesforce is doing to competing with Microsoft and others in AI. There are a lot of people who sort of say, I don't really know what to do there. Do I have to invest? I mean, if you want to build your own AI tools, good luck competing against Microsoft. And at the same time, to sit around and wait for an off-the-shelf tool from a Microsoft, that allows you to actually manipulate your data and use AI is something that a lot of people are sort of saying, do I jump in? Do I stay out? What do I do? So at this point, where the technology is still being developed, and where there is so much focus on it and people sort of feel like, if I'm not doing something there, I'm getting left behind. But at the same time, the dollars that actually play in that space are so big. What do you suggest people do at this point in time as it relates to AI?

Well, I think there's -- AI is a buzzword, right? Just like years ago, there was BI, right? And so it's interesting. It's -- and to put this to an analogy, I thought I'm a local developer here in Charlotte. I bought a couple of single-family homes that I rent. You know what, I think I'm going to go buy -- I'm going to go compete against Greystar and Cortland, I'm going to go start buying. I'm going to go raise a $5 billion fund, and I'm just going to go and buy and operate 300-unit Class A multis in urban core. Well, that's a big jump, right? You've missed the steps along the way. So I've gone from low single -- a couple of single-family home rentals to a big scale. That's sort of what that discussion is, right? So AI, there's a couple of parts to it. One, if you don't understand AI and you don't understand ChatGPT and understand sort of the benefit of it, you should, because it's going to be incredibly impactful. And it is impactful now. If you think it's going to change, make you smarter and do better things in your business, that's not going to happen right now. So what you need to think about is as an organization, if you think about the data cycle, the way that we believe in data and the way I believe in the data cycle, is if you take on a high level, you have artificial intelligence, AI. You have business intelligence, BI, and then you have human intelligence, HI, right? And so each one of those platforms make a data, an intelligent strategy capable. Right now, there's the availability for people to have BI and HI but it comes back to the same thing. You need to have, at first, you need to have the data, in order for you to make any decision before you can even have BI or even HI. Still need to have the data. And that's sort of -- that's the biggest part. That's the biggest challenge that I've had in my job. I mean in the last few years, as we've started to talk about more of data strategy to organizations, it -- we sell data warehouses. And we say, hey, we make a commercial real estate data warehouse. And we go to people there, why do I need this? I don't need this. I don't need this. It reminds me a lot of 2015 when I started a company called IMS, Investor Management Services. This was when the Jobs Act just came out and people were like, hey, now retail investors can get into syndicating and people can now syndicate through retail investors and have these retail investors. So we started this software to help real estate owners manage retail investors. I went around the country talking about this to our clients. And the majority of them said, why would I want retail investors? Their pain in the a** -- sorry, excuse my language, they are a pain, why do I want them? No, they always want data. They always want this stuff and all that. And all of those companies now have turned around, 7 years later, are like, how do I get retail investors, right? They have gone and said, no, Rob, now I really want these retail investors because Institutional investors have dried up or they've gone after different things or it's too competitive or they're deal structures. It's the same approach now. You need to be thinking to be innovative. You need to be forward-looking. If you want to create health in your organization, you need to look beyond the building, beyond and around the corner, and you need to look at data as a true asset, one of the biggest assets that you have.

So you mentioned just 2 amazing firms, Greystar and Cortland, as you were talking about going from only a couple single-family rental properties to actually owning a big apartment building. And without saying, you said sort of good luck competing with those 2 behemoths because they've got more data and more scale than someone who's just converting from being a small player. One of the things, Rob, that I think a lot of our clients struggle with is that the BI, the business intelligence data set is somewhat ubiquitous and somewhat -- well, everyone can access it. Everyone can go buy CoStar data. Everyone can go buy [ Trek ] data. Everyone can go and leaving some people out of there, but they can go buy -- they can use Yardi to manage their rents, that the competitive landscape as it relates to business intelligence of third-party data, which those data providers obviously have access to more data streams than anybody else, maybe the BREIT and Greystar have as much access to data as CoStar or Trek does. But the point being is that most people are using the same business intelligence feeds to make those business decisions and therefore, how do you create alpha, when everyone's getting data from essentially the same sources?

So first of all, I would challenge you. I think the sources that you mentioned, I think if you look at their -- the customer base of those organizations, probably the majority of them are on the acquisition side and on the sort of acquisition and -- or origination side. How many of those organizations actually take their own operating data and compare and benchmark their own operating data and trend and forecast triage and activate and work with inside their own data. And I think you would find that, that number is much smaller because it's not as easy to take your own data and organize it, standardize it on a daily, monthly basis. It's a lot easier to go and have your analysts go do a CoStar report or do a Yardi Matrix reporting and giving these 10 properties in this market. And that's where the challenge is. It is not easy to create your own data strategy. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but it is critical. And so I come back to that. It's a lot of these organizations, with the exception of the 2 that we just mentioned, Greystar, Cortland, I know for a fact, take their own data and manage their own data first, then make decisions based upon other data sources, right? Because once you start getting -- and you talked about just CoStar, that's just real estate data. What about census data? What about traffic? What about WiFi data? What about cell phone data? All the other stuff that comes into it is going to create incredibly powerful analysis. But quite frankly, we're still in the dark ages where, hey, you know what, I've got an analyst, I get my monthly -- I get my weekly traffic reports coming in, okay? So I get it in from this report and this report, and this report. So I'm going to go make my analysts go down and cut and paste from my property management reports, I'm going to paste them, put them together and then I'm going to look at them. Well, that's what we're doing right now. We're not taking advantage of the technology to take that data in one place, be able to visualize, be able to forecast it and, quite frankly, be able to use it in different scenarios. And so being able to benchmark your properties next to other properties will tell you right off the bat. Because I know it will be true. Is it me or the market, right? A lot of people are coming in. Florida, please, Florida is horrible because my insurance is this and this and I can't do it. Well, wait a second, have you really benchmarked your property next to the 5 other properties in your market? And realize that actually, not only is your insurance may be the same as theirs, but maybe your repairs and maintenance is a lot higher than there's. Maybe your payroll cost is double of theirs. Maybe your management fees don't like -- that's being able to truly try and drill and find value in the data.

So I hear that and as someone who scaled a small family-owned company with the concept of ever competing against a CBRE or JLL was just a pipe dream 20 years ago to now competing with them every single day. I know what it's like to sit there and sort of say, well, they've got big brands, and they've got lots of people and they've got access to data, and they have the ability to invest in marketing in ways that we never ever would. So I guess my question to you, Rob, is we've talked about these big companies that have lots of data flow. They have lots of assets to pull that data from. If I own 5 assets in Southern California, and I'm thinking about either moving to Northern California, and buying some assets there or jumping over to Arizona and acquire there. How do you make that bridge without just going and using the commoditized data which you, very clearly said, if you just have your analysts pulling that data from those sources, everyone else is, so how do you create alpha there, how do you differentiate? If you don't have the data feeds that a Cortland or Greystar have?

Sure. So let's go back and let's take this a little bit deeper, right? You're talking about acquisitions, right? And acquisitions, we saw in the last few years, right? Acquisitions, hey, do I go to this market and do I buy? Well, quite frankly, you didn't need data for that. Market was so great and wonderful. What data would you need? Hey, I'm going to go to this market and I know that I'm going to put a couple of new sinks in it and fix up some paint and I'm going to be able to make my money. Well, guess what, when the market is like it is right now, where interest rates are driving in. And by the way, hoping and waiting for interest rates to drop is not a legitimate strategy, right? That is not a good strategy. That will be a strategy which is going to put you out of business very quickly. So I look at this as creating alpha is not hoping that the interest rate market is, right? Creating an alpha is being able to look at markets, look at financial markets and knowing that I'm properly optimizing my debt. But hoping that rates are going to change, it's not it. But looking at your operations, am I, as a company, are we set up to succeed? Do we have the right leadership in place? Do we have the right direction in place? Do we believe in the same thing, right? Do we believe in data and innovation? Do we believe -- do we have the right people on the bus? Do we have -- do we understand our customers? That's where this is all about. Forget buying and selling. That's an acquisition. I want people to own properties, who can't sell them right now because they're underwater or people who don't want to buy because they can't understand the market. I want those people to look and say, wait a second, I've got a business here. This is -- for anybody who's in operations or asset managers, this is our time to rejoice. We are now the darling child of the real estate shop, not the acquisition people. And it's up to the decisions and the operations within an organization, which are going to either save or crush the organizations that bought properties in the last few years.