Many aspiring real estate investors are held back by the belief that they need significant capital, personal connections, or a background in real estate to get started. However, the journey of Alex Kononov demonstrates that it’s possible to break into the field with limited resources, strategic thinking, and the willingness to leverage new technology.
Alex began his investing career in 2018, starting with a W2 job and $30,000 in savings—no family wealth, no real estate experience. Instead of seeking out large deals, Alex focused on the basics: finding the right property and mastering the fundamentals. His first purchase was a two-family house in Trenton, New Jersey, introduced to him by a relative. The initial project was proof that the “BRRRR” strategy—Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat—could work even without abundant resources. By carefully underwriting hundreds of properties before buying, Alex was able to identify an opportunity where the numbers made sense and forced appreciation through strategic renovations. His first deal was far from smooth; he overcame setbacks with contractors and even had to supervise renovations himself, but he ultimately cashed out through refinancing, regaining his investment, and setting the stage for rapid growth.
Within two years, Alex scaled his portfolio to 30 units. He continually refined his approach, forcing appreciation through smart renovations and focusing on value-add opportunities like finishing attics, basements, or converting office spaces into bedrooms. These improvements increased both rent potential and property value, providing a blueprint for other investors to follow.
A core skill that set Alex’s strategy apart was his focus on underwriting—the process of analyzing deals, understanding market comps, and evaluating risk factors. Underwriting isn’t just crunching numbers; it involves reversing the appraisal process, understanding property types, market dynamics, rental rates, cash flow projections, and the factors that influence long-term value. Alex spent time analyzing hundreds of deals, which taught him how to spot great opportunities and avoid costly pitfalls. He emphasized that effective underwriting goes beyond spreadsheets; investors should consider neighborhood trends, school proximity, local businesses, hospitals, and universities—all of which can influence demand and property performance.
Recognizing inefficiencies in traditional underwriting, Alex built uWise, an AI-powered platform for deal analysis and pipeline management. The system aggregates multiple AI tools and trusted data sources, guiding users through questions about property type, rental comps, renovation plans, and market conditions. Rather than making assumptions or relying on a single data provider, uWise creates a guided report that helps investors and passive lenders evaluate deals quickly and accurately. For example, investors can compare AI-generated reports with sponsor projections to spark informed conversations and deeper due diligence. The platform’s design ensures flexibility, letting users adjust risk appetite and customize their analysis to fit their business strategy.
From the perspective of private lenders and passive investors, tools like uWise offer third-party perspectives on potential deals. If the sponsor’s numbers differ from the AI’s projections, the technology serves as a conversation starter—helping stakeholders discuss renovation plans, rental income assumptions, and other critical elements before committing capital.
Alex underscores that, while AI speeds up underwriting and reduces the risk of bad assumptions, it doesn’t replace relationships and trust. Real estate is fundamentally built on networks, and effective technology supports better decision-making, not the removal of human judgment. By embracing AI solutions, investors can move faster and smarter—positioning themselves as reliable partners for private funding.
The message from Alex’s journey is clear: starting from scratch is possible. With disciplined underwriting, strategic renovations, and openness to new technology, anyone can build credibility, attract private money, and scale a real estate portfolio. Trust remains at the center, but AI-driven tools make the path of progress accessible to more investors. Whether you’re a proactive investor or a potential private lender, platforms like uWise are reshaping how deals are found, analyzed, and funded in today’s rapidly evolving market.
10 Discussion Questions from this Episode:
- Alex Kononov started his real estate investing journey with just $30,000 in savings and no prior industry connections. What mindset shifts or practical strategies do you think were most essential for him to get started?
- The episode emphasizes the importance of “underwriting” a deal. How would you define underwriting in your own words after hearing
Alex Kononov ’s explanation? - Alex Kononov discussed the BRRR strategy (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat). What do you see as the biggest advantages and potential risks of using the BRRR method?
- How did Alex Kononov leverage proof of concept and past deal success to raise capital, even before having established credibility?
- The conversation touched on value-add levers, such as converting unused spaces into bedrooms. What creative strategies have you seen or used to increase property value?
- Alex Kononov mentioned analyzing hundreds of deals before making his first purchase. How do you think this level of discipline and deal analysis sets apart successful investors?
- The episode introduced uWise, an AI-driven underwriting and deal analysis platform. What are your thoughts on the role AI can play in reducing mistakes and speeding up deal evaluation?
- How important are trust and relationships in real estate investing, even as technology and AI become more influential in the field?
- Alex Kononov shared that uWise not only benefits buyers but also private lenders and passive investors. How could transparent deal analysis change how people assess partnership or investment opportunities?
- Reflecting on Jay Conner’s advice about becoming the kind of real estate investor people want to fund, what steps do you think are most important for building credibility with private money sources?
Fun facts that were revealed in the episode:
- Alex Kononov started his real estate investing journey in 2018 with only a W2 job, $30,000 in savings, and no background in money or real estate—his very first deal was a BRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) property that he still owns today.
- Within just two years, Alex Kononov scaled up to 30 real estate units by focusing on smart renovations and strategic refinances—he even underwrote over 500 properties in one year to find the right deals!
- Frustrated by slow and messy underwriting processes, Alex Kononov built Uwise, an AI-powered platform that helps investors quickly analyze deals, generate offers, and manage their acquisition pipeline—all in one place.
Timestamps:
00:01 Building Wealth Without Capital
06:21 Cash-Out Refinancing Explained
09:45 Underwriting and Scaling Insights
11:44 Property Underwriting Simplified
15:33 Market Exploration and Analysis
17:27 Renovation Strategy and Valuation Guide
19:10 Connect with Alex Kononov
23:21 Enabling Investor-Sponsor Conversations
25:55 Scaling Real Estate with Strategy
Connect With Jay Conner:
Private Money Academy Conference:
Free Report:
https://www.jayconner.com/MoneyReport
Join the Private Money Academy:
https://www.JayConner.com/trial/
Have you read Jay’s new book, Where to Get the Money Now?
It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book
What is Private Money? Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner
http://www.JayConner.com/MoneyPodcast
Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $67,000 per deal.
#RealEstate #RealEstateInvesting #RealEstateInvestingForBeginners #Foreclosures #FlippingHouses #PrivateMoney #RaisingPrivateMoney #JayConner
YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner
Apple Podcast:
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/jay.conner.marketing
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/JayConner01
Pinterest:
https://www.pinterest.com/JConner_PrivateMoneyAuthority
Scaling Real Estate with AI Underwriting and Private Money: Alex Kononov’s Journey
Jay Conner [00:00:01]:
What if you didn’t grow up with money? What if you didn’t come from real estate? What if all you had was a W2 job, $30,000 in savings, and the willingness to ask people for help? That’s exactly how today’s guest got started. Welcome to Raising Private Money. I’m your host, Jay Conner, the Private Money Authority. And today you’re going to hear how real estate investors actually scale when they don’t have capital connections or a safety net. My guest today is Alex Komanoff. Alex started investing in 2018 with his very first BRRR deal, a deal he still owns today. And within two years, he scaled to 30 units, forcing appreciation by three to four times through smart renovations and strategic refinances. No hype, just execution.
Jay Conner [00:00:52]:
Now, later, he moved into commercial multifamily, became a Commercial Co GP on a 105-unit apartment deal, and along the way learned what really matters: relationships, underwriting, discipline, and speed. That frustration with slow, broken underwriting led Alex to build uis, an AI native platform to help investors analyze deals, write real ooffersnd track their entire acquisition pipeline in one place. Now today, Alex is actively pursuing 50 to 150 unit value-add multifamily deals and hosting his own podcast, Path of Progress. Now, if you want to learn how to raise capital before you have credibility, analyze deals faster, and think like a real acquirer. This episode is for you. Don’t go anywhere. You’re going to meet my guest, Alex, right after this.
Narrator [00:01:50]:
If you’re a real estate investor and are wondering how to raise and leverage private money to make more profit on every deal, then you’re in the right place to raise private money. We’ll speak with new and seasoned investors to dissect their deals and extract the best tips and strategies to help you get the money. Because the money comes first. Now here’s your host, Jay Conner, Foreign.
Jay Conner [00:02:17]:
Welcome to the show, Alex.
Alex Kononov [00:02:20]:
Hi, Jay. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here today.
Jay Conner [00:02:23]:
Absolutely. I’m excited to have you. But let’s dive in. Alex, as I said there a minute ago, you didn’t come from money, you didn’t come from real estate. You had a W2 job and $30,000 in savings. My question is, what did you do first that most people, real estate investors, skip when they’re trying to break into real estate without capital or credibility?
Alex Kononov [00:02:50]:
You know, everyone is sold the sex idea. You have to go as big as possible as soon as possible. I was just, you know, humble. Easy, easy ways to start, right? I listened to the Bigger Pockets podcast, and I got excited about this BRR strategy, and I looked for the right property. At that time, Ilivede in Boston, and you can imagine nothing can pencil in Boston. Everything was oversold in cash. I couldn’t buy anything. And the first properties I found were actually brought to me by my relative, and we partnered up to buy our first two-family house in Trenton, New Jersey, in central New Jersey.
Alex Kononov [00:03:24]:
It was my first houseint Venice. Many mistakes were made there. But I wasn’t looking for 50 units, 10 units, 20 units. I was looking for just the first properties that I could validate this idea of BRR, and I actually made it work. You know, it was a long process, but from the very beginning, I knew the numbers worked. I, before getting this first property, I underwrote hundreds of properties, which were in Boston, New Jersey, and out of state. I looked everywhere, but when I found the right one, I knew the numbers should work. And it did work.
Alex Kononov [00:03:54]:
I made a lot of mistakes on this first deal. You know, I read a lot of books before that and listened to podcasts to all of the podcasts that are available there. But you know what they learned, hey, don’t make this mistake, and watch out, contractors. And I did all, I, I heard it all, but I did anyway. I made all of these mistakes, and in the first deal, I lost two general contractors and I lost a deposit. I had to drive five hours back from Boston to New Jersey to finish this project, and supervise it myself So this was my first proof of concept project that instead of three months, it was planned, it took me eight months, but I was able to cash out, refinance, take entire capital stock out of the deal and it gave me my proof of concept and it propelled me. I got another, another two-family house next year, and in a year, bought another 25 units.
Alex Kononov [00:04:42]:
And that year, on a second year I propelled this is, I already got my proof of concept. I got two or three projects under my belt, and when I have deals, I know the numbers work. So it was simple to me to approach people and say hey, I have this deal, and do you want to invest or not? I mean, I, I, I have friends and families that were interested, you know, in real estate, but never doubled in this space. But when I told them what I did and when I brought this up, it was just an easy pass. I, I raised capital for those deals. I, after the third deal, didn’t invest a penny in my, the next next five deals from my own money. I just did it because I was over, you know, I had these projects ongoing. So I had to, I had to be creative.
Alex Kononov [00:05:24]:
So I found partners in the places that I thought I would never find. But I just had this conversation.
Jay Conner [00:05:32]:
Perfect. Now you’re talking about this strategy that you used on your very first deal. And that’s the BRRR method, or the B R R R R method to make sure everybody understands what that stands for and how that strategy works. Explain that method.
Alex Kononov [00:05:48]:
Absolutely. It’s my favorite strategy for everyone who’s starting. Guys, you should check it out and should listen to it. So brrr. This stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. This is a great strategy, you guys. You should look for value-add properties that you can build sweat equity. You can work at a property yourself, or you can hire contractors, have enough equity, build up equity in the property, and rent this property, right? It should be an investment property. And when you rent it, you should pay your bills, and you have a cash flow.
Alex Kononov [00:06:21]:
And because you build this equity in this property, you go for refinancing, cash out refinancing, we call it, right? And what happens is you go to the bank and say, listen, I have this property I bought not a long time ago. Usually season period is on the bank, sometimes it’s six months, sometimes 12 months, that you have to hold the property before you can go for refinancing. But you go, I bought this property super cheap, and I’ve worked on it very hard with my contractors by myself. How did it go? And they say, okay, let’s check out how much value it is. They send a new appraiser, you start a new process like a new financing, and they bring up a new value. And if you did bring up the value as a building, which you should have calculated in advance from your comps from local. It’s either a strategy on how to do it, but the bank will tell you, yeah, your property is now totally 200,000, versus you bought it 100,000 years ago, and now you can take out 75 to 80% LTV on your property and leave some equity. Because the bank needs equity, right? They cannot just give away money for free, but they leave 20% cushion, 25% cushion on the property,y and the rest money they loan back to you as a loan, and you can use it to accelerate your business and buy more properties.
Jay Conner [00:07:39]:
Perfect, perfect. Now, Alex, you have scaled, or you scaled your real estate business to 30 units in less than two years by forcing appreciation; you were using that strategy. What are some of the value-add levers that some real estate investors completely underestimate? When you’re trying to increase, you know that no return.
Alex Kononov [00:08:07]:
You know, you should understand where you’re buying. I mean, it’s not only about increasing, but it’s also about buying, right? So when you understand, when you buy property, it should already be in a good spot. I don’t buy properties, just hey, I want to buy property just, just to hold it. I want to be in this game. It has to make sense from the beginning. I have to find a good deal. So, just from there, you already should have some built-in equity in the property. But then you have a different lever that you do, right? Some people have different additional spaces.
Alex Kononov [00:08:35]:
The attic is not finished. You can finish the attic, you go through the permitting process, you go with the city, you work, you can finish the attic, sometimes you can finish the basement, and also add additional square footage. There are some rules on how to do it. You have to have an egress window, and you have a separate exit. Depends on the municipality, depends on what they allow in the city. But it’s one of the most common value-added products. Also, you need to understand where it’s considered a bedroom, what’s considered an office, and sometimes an office. I bought a building that had an office space.
Alex Kononov [00:09:03]:
There was a window, but he had enough room to be a bedroom. So what I did was just add a closet there. And when the room has a closet and a window, it’s considered a bedroom. So that’s just the most simple value add process that you can do there.
Jay Conner [00:09:18]:
Yeah, that’s great advice. Now, you know, you talk a lot about underwriting and how underwriting of real estate deals is one of the most important skills that you can have. So, two-part question, just to make sure everybody understands what you mean when you say underwriting a real estate deal? And then what are some, some advice can you give on what to look for when you’re underwriting a real estate deal?
Alex Kononov [00:09:45]:
Just, just a little backup like underwriting is, in a nutshell, analysis of the deal, right? We understand from the numbers that actually this deal is worth this much or even more. In a nutshell, when I’m trying to buy a deal, I’m trying to buy it with building equity, already trying to buy 75 cents on a dollar. So I have my exit strategy down the road. So when we’re talking about underwriting, it’s like when you get an appraisal, right, they underwrite your properties, they tell you how much the value of the properties will be. So when you underwrite the Property, you reverse engineer the same idea of processes, and you understand, okay. Based on comps in the area, you need to understand this much. I have this many bedrooms, this many bathrooms, and my comps in the area are compatible properties, right? They have similar bedrooms, bathrooms,t and square footage, right? It depends on the unit size. Now, what’s interesting, and I want to back up to my story, right? How did I scale to 25 unitsin yearr two? It’s a very rapid growth.
Alex Kononov [00:10:45]:
So what I did in the first year alone, I underwrote almost 100 properties, and I bought only 2 family houses. On a second year,r I bought 5 units. But that year, I underwrote 500 properties. 500 properties were underwritten through the bigger pockets calculator. In year 2, after I was done with 500, I was already under contract for 7 units for another duplex. And by the end of the year,r I got another like 1718 units. But the point is that it. It’s a process, right? You need to teach yourself to go through the process to understand your market.
Alex Kononov [00:11:19]:
The market is varied, right? Market dynamics. It’s not only underwriting and underwriting as analysis. In a nutshell, it’s not only about numbers, but you also need to look into the area to see what the local dynamics in the area are. Will this property appreciate? Will it cash flow? Will someone rent there? Or. It’s a war zone. It’s a, it’s a part of the underwriting cycle. So that in. That’s in a nutshell how I created ui.
Alex Kononov [00:11:44]:
Because throughout the year, I underwrote thousands of properties from single-family, small, multifamily, large, and commercial. I underwrote self-storage and mobile home parks. The idea is the same for all of the properties. And you need to understand first, you need to understand what kind of property you have, right? And this i,s I’m walking you through my process of UI, sort of underwrite-wise made it shorter UIs. But the idea here is very simple. First, you need to understand what kind of property you have there, right? Is it single-family or small, multifamily, commercial, or retail? You need to understand what it is. And by understanding it you need to go deeper and understand, okay, how many bedrooms and bathrooms in this property, what, how many square feet in this property and, and, and, and so on and so forth.
Alex Kononov [00:12:31]:
And if you have multiple units, you have to have a breakdown of each unit type. You have a couple of one bedrooms in that building, you have one studio, I have three, two bedrooms, and so on and so forth. And you havea garagee. It’s an additional value add. Right. And after you’re done understanding what you have as a basis, then you can understand. Okay, now I need to dive deeper and understand specific dynamics. Let’s underwrite the market.
Alex Kononov [00:12:57]:
Where is the property located? And by that I mean. Okay, what we need to understand is the vacancy rate in this market, how many months of the year they usually have. The property is considered to be vacant. It depends on every market separately. For a commercial, we also look for a cap rate. It’s a whole other story. I’m not going to go there right now. But from simple stuff, you need to understandwhats your rental rates are. Right.
Alex Kononov [00:13:19]:
Each property has a rental rate, market rent, and its rating and market rent can vary, right?. Sometimes people have put lipstick on a pic, and they just rent it as this very old,d outdated property. It has very low rental income. And there are some people who like to do granite countertops, and this is high rental income. I always like to stay at a median level. I don’t overdo my renovations, but I don’t like putting lipstick on a bag. I like to change kitchen cabinets. I like to update what I need to update in the property and have nice vinyl floors, a beautifully painted, and renovated apartment.
Alex Kononov [00:13:58]:
So after you understand your rental rates, I usually take five comps for each rental rate for, for each unit type. And after you’re done with that, you go to okay, what are our sales comps? Because when you underwrite residential or commercial, it’s also important that it’s property cash flow. It’s not only hey, what’s the value, what’s speculation on the values of the buildings, but it’s also understanding,g okay, what’s the rental income for this property, how much it can generate, and the cash flow per month. So I need to understand if it’s, if, if it’s going to be profitable, it’s going to bea money pit for me. Right? And after that, I need to understand the path of progress. Like the name of my podcast, passive Progress. We need to understand how far Whole Foods is, how far Starbucks and Trader joints. The reason is that when major retailers, when they are located near your property, it’s a signal that this area is already developedisit’s developing.
Alex Kononov [00:14:53]:
It’s a good sign because those major retailers don’t put their location for no reason. They only want to target a specific audience specific customer with a specific income base, so they can bring their income up. They have big marketing research groups that do that for them. And of course, from a local standpoint, I want to understand what kind of school is nearby. So we look for elementary, middle, and high school. We want to understand how far the hospital is, how far the university is. Because the business plan varies on the location. And you can have one plan, maybe not gonna work, but hey, if the university next door needs student housing, maybe you can maximize that potential, that direction.
Alex Kononov [00:15:33]:
And this is all about exploration, right? Step two in UIs and in real life, that’s what I did before by hands is all about understanding what’s going on in the market and, of course, census, local demographics. We need to understand household income and the population in this particular area. And pros and cons. I’m just doing, before you guys, I was just doing research. Hey, what’s happening in the area? What’s is there any pros and cons investment in the area? Are there any shootings, or is there any major business leaving that city for good, and now you have unemployment?. You want to do this research before jumping into the new areas that you know about. And thankfully, in UI, S I already have those AI tools that help me to find this data and give you the links for that. After you understand the core idea of the area and the market in which you invest in where youplang to invest, you go to the next stage, the next stage and then realize the same.
Alex Kononov [00:16:26]:
You need to understand your assumption. So, your business plan. Okay, how much are you planning to spend on renovation for this unit? And which beauty of UIS is it’s. It’s self-guided. We don’t provide estimates like Zillow because it doesn’t work. You know, they lost a lot of money using their models to acquire properties. And five different investors can underwrite one deal in five different ways. Because everyone has their own risk appetite, everyone has their own teams around it.
Alex Kononov [00:16:54]:
Everyone likes to do it differently. As I mentioned before, some people like just to paint it and leave it as is. And some people like to go with grand countertops and doat renovation and put everything brand new and don’t touch maintenance for many, many years ahead. It’s a different business plan, a different strategy. But nothing is wrong in this business. It’s whatever you prefer, whatever you like. And so this means in this Stage in step three, in UIs of underwriting analytical tools, you just need to choose what kind of renovation you’re going to be doing. And you need to choosewhats your rental comp will be.
Alex Kononov [00:17:27]:
If you’re doing a granite countertop, you’re going to go high rental, comparable to what we provided before, but we always suggest medium. I like to stay on the median regardless of the level of renovation, and that will help us to go quicker and faster. After this step, you choose your income ratios, your expense ratios,o and we have some national average numbers, 3% increasin e income and expense for annual devices, right? And then on stage four, we look for a stabilized projection of how much the value of the building will be and what it will look like when it’s stabilized. When you renovate the building with your maximum potential, what are you looking for in terms of income, cash flow, and in terms of valuation? And reverse engineer from there, okay, if I’m buying 75 cents on a dollar, this is lines that you can change if you like, 50 cents on a dollar, your wholesaler, or you buy 80 cents on the dollar, that’s totally up to you. It’s your business plan. But you can change it and adopt it and make it as you see fit.
Alex Kononov [00:18:29]:
After you’re done with that, you’ve got your values, you’ve got your offer, and we have tools in UIS to help you to get to the offer. So I’m going a full cycle here from hey, put a property address to draft of offer letter or loi, which the system remembers, and it feeds back to the deal room that we have local CRM, so you never lose a lead again. And you have your notifications, you have your own information saved.
Jay Conner [00:18:55]:
And so this, this service, this tool that you have, excuse me, it’s called U as in the letter u, right? Wisewords. And that website is uwise IO, right?
Alex Kononov [00:19:14]:
That’s correct.
Jay Conner [00:19:14]:
So, www.uis.IO, and so let’s be sure that the audience understands that this does. First of all, it’s AI, right?
Alex Kononov [00:19:28]:
It’s not one AI. We agree on different AIs, and we aggregate different data providers so we can source the best data for you and give more. The problem with AI nowadays is that if you go to ChatGPT, and oh, I can do it by myself. ChatGPT, I put information, the AI is, is tend to trip, to hallucinate. And the problem is, you wouldn’t know until the mistakes are made. And, and what we’re doing to, to avoid this, we have a guided report, right? We don’t lean on one AI. We have different, we’re using strengths and different AIs to balance it out and to hold it in one system aggregate, and we source specific data that we have approved, proven track with,h and we know it’s, it’s good.
Jay Conner [00:20:08]:
So this, this AI software outsources multiple AIs to recap. What it does is it analyzes a deal, it figures out what your offer should be. And does it also create the offer?
Alex Kononov [00:20:29]:
So it’s not figuring out by itself. It helps you to guide you to understand what the value of the property and how much you want. And everyone has a different risk appetite again. So some people like 75 cents on a dollar and have different rental income. And you need to understand that you can tweak the system to what you prefer as a human being, as an investor. But then we have built-in tools. So you put the property address into the LOI or offer draft, right? Offer it for a residential loan for a commercial letter of intent, and you just put your highlighted property address that you already underwrote. It will feed price suggestions automatically, price suggestion and you input your personal information once into the system, and it will remember it forever.
Alex Kononov [00:21:08]:
So next time you do the same process, you will create a new offer. It remembers your information, and it takes you two seconds to draft a new offer letter or LOI for commercial,l which later on it feeds to your deal room, om where you have the list of your propert,ies and you have your offer letter when it was drafted, and then you can update manually what the status of iis t because it’s offline.
Jay Conner [00:21:33]:
Well, that’s great because it’s not only analyzing and creating the offers for single-family houses, it’s also doing it for multif family as well.
Alex Kononov [00:21:44]:
Correct. And by the end of Q1, we are planning to add other assets as a mobile home park, self-storage, hotels, you name it. I want to have one app for all. And Jay, I want to mention something very important for your listeners. This channel is about private money raising, right? And what happened here, guys? This app is not only for buyers or sellers who want to understand the value at the moment, but also for passive investors for private money. Guys. And if you want to invest in this deal, but for example, your sponsor, your investor who invites you to the deal, you never dealt with him before you heard he’s a good guy, you’ve done some deals, so he hasa good track record. But it’s a new area for you, you don’t know about it, and you don’t have time to research this area.
Alex Kononov [00:22:29]:
So what do you do? You go to this app, and you get third party report with AI understanding where the values will be. And sometimes it shows,s let’s s, ay 1500 rental income, and it will show the cap rate, 7% cap rate for commercial,l and different vacancy rate. And for example, your sponsor had different numbers when he presented you with the deal. But now you, ou as a passive investor or as a private money lender, can come back to this sponsor and say, listen, why is your 1400 dollars rent showing in the system, but you have 1500 in what you presented to me, and why a cap rate of 7 and 6. And there is a discrepancy in the report that I got from this AI tool and yours. But let me tell you this AI doesn’t. It’s not a bulletproof solution, right? There can be some changes. It’s not.
Alex Kononov [00:23:21]:
It’s not 100% sure thing. You need all this conversation. It enables conversation with a sponsor because first of all, you have yadifferent business model. Maybe this sponsor has a plan to put a grand countertop, add amenities to the property, and do a lot of different new things to add value for the building and change the class of the building. And no,w because it has a manager, because it’s going to be comparing not for low-grade property with low rental, but he will be able to aim for a higher rental rate. And what happens now? You enable a good, healthy conversation between a regular investor or private money guy and a sponsor who brings the deal. And now, instead of sitting this one out, they just maybe okay, maybe now I ask my educated questions, he answered,d and what’s good sponsor should do? He should answer where, and he should explain his position. And now, I feel more comfortable investing in this deal.
Alex Kononov [00:24:17]:
So now we’re not only tackling this issue for buyers and sellers, but we are also helping private money guys, regular investor and passive investors to be more comfortable and educated with investing in real estate. We wanted me to be more attainable and more common for people to use and to invest in real estate.
Jay Conner [00:24:37]:
So the tool can be used for a real estate investor themselves or for a potential investor or private lender that wants to get involved in the deal, but they want to do some research themselves. That website again is www.uwisuwisc.IO.Alexx, my lands, you have covered a lot of territory here. Any final comments or parting thoughts before we wrap up this episode?
Alex Kononov [00:25:07]:
Yes, just once,e and you understand everyone is so scared of AI and nervous. But AI doesn’t replace trust and relationships. At the end of the day, real estate is about network, and your network is your net worth, which is a very meaningful sentence. But what AI helps with is replacing bad assumptions, slow underwriting, and preventable mistakes. Which is exactly what private lenders are doing care about the most. So check it out and don’t be afraid of AI. It’s here to help. And the sooner you realize that it’s possible and it’s it will help you on this journey, the sooner you’ll be ahead of the curve again.
Jay Conner [00:25:45]:
That’s www.u the letter u wise wisc IO Alex, thank you so much for joining me.
Alex Kononov [00:25:54]:
Thanks so much, Jay.
Jay Conner [00:25:55]:
You got it. Well, you heard Alex break down how he went from a W2 job and $30,000 in savings to scaling real units, real deals, and now building systems that help investors like you move faster and smarter. Not by guessing, not by hoping, but by understanding the numbers and backing them with relationships. And this is raising private money. It’s not about convincing people to trust you. It’s about becoming the kind of real estate investor that the right people want to fund and do business with. If this episode helps you see deals differently and opens your eyes to AI a little bit more, do me a favor: follow Raising Private Money, share this episode, follow me, share it with another real estate investor, and leave me a review. That’s how this message gets spread.
Jay Conner [00:26:51]:
And if you’re serious about raising money with confidence, clarity, and credibility, I’ll see you right here on the next episode. I’m Jay Conner, the private money authority. This is raising private Money. And I’ll see you here next time.
Narrator [00:27:08]:
Are you feeling inspired by the knowledge you gained in this episode? Then head over to www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide, that’s www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide, and download your free guide that shares seven reasons why private money will skyrocket your real estate investing business right now. Again, that’s www.JayConner.com/MoneyGuide to get your free guide. We’ll see you next time on Raising Private Money with Jay Conner.