What really drives success in today’s housing market? It’s not guesses. It’s data.
In this episode of The Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain sits down with Jim Belfiore, founder of Belfiore Analytics, to unpack how high-quality, on-the-ground data is reshaping decision-making in the home building industry.
Jim shares why he returned to the market with a new analytics firm, how Belfiore Analytics collects data differently than competitors, and why builders, developers, and investors are hungry for more accurate, real-time market intelligence—especially in fast-moving markets like Phoenix real estate.
You’ll hear deep insights on:
- How home builders use market data to track competitors, pricing, incentives, and absorption
- The real impact of mortgage rates, incentives, and affordability on new home sales
- Why build-to-rent and rental housing are surging
- Market feasibility studies and how developers decide what to build, where to build, and for whom
- The future of housing data across Phoenix, Tucson, Colorado, California, Utah, and Nevada
- Leadership, entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to build a durable data-driven business
Jim also shares candid lessons from COVID, the Great Recession, expanding across markets, and why “giving a damn” might be the most underrated leadership skill of all.
Whether you’re a home builder, real estate developer, investor, analyst, or entrepreneur, this episode delivers a masterclass in housing market analytics, real estate data, and strategic decision-making.
If you care about where housing is headed—and how smart data creates an edge—this is a must-listen.
Transcription
Rosaria Cain 00:00
So welcome, Jim, glad you could make it in today.
Jim Belfiore 00:03
Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.
Rosaria Cain 00:05
We’re excited to hear about Belfiore Analytics,
Jim Belfiore 00:08
As you know, I’m always excited to talk about it
Rosaria Cain 00:11
And a return engagement for you. Tell us about Belfiore Analytics and how it came to be and how things are looking as you’re getting started with your new startup,
Jim Belfiore 00:22
yeah, as you know, I sold my original research firm at the end of 2020. Had a non compete and really didn’t anticipate going directly back into the same, precisely the same thing I was knowing. But as it worked out, over the last four or five years, I’ve had numerous folks in the home building industry approach me and say, “Hey, we need your data. We need the information quality that’s available to us today isn’t all that great. We want we want you back. We want you back”. And finally, enough folks said it enough times, and so I decided it was time to jump back in
Rosaria Cain 01:00
Well, how are you positioning Belfiore Analytics. So it’s a little different than your first company. I imagine
Jim Belfiore 01:06
A little bit, you know, we’re relying a little bit more on technology to create some efficiencies. So, there’s that the last time around, when I started, you know, you go into something new, kind of bright eyed and bushy tailed, and you learn a lot along the way. Well, we were, you know, kind of cash poor back then in 2006 and just started the downturn here in Phoenix, Arizona for the housing industry. And it only got worse for four or five years there. So it was a it was a rough start, and it was just me initially. This time around, we opened up shop the first week. Got loaded up with some custom feasibility work, which I did not anticipate, and it required us to staff up really, really quick. So we have six people today. I think I didn’t have six people the first time around until we were six, seven years into the process. So we’ve ramped up really quick. Have a great team. We’ve been collecting data aggressively. We’re rolling products out. It’s it’s an exciting time for our team.
Rosaria Cain 02:14
That’s great. Tell us how you’re positioning Belfiore analytics compared to the other guys like maybe Zonda,
Jim Belfiore 02:21
yeah, yeah. We’re much, much different, I would suggest, than, than our competitors, the other data products out there, you know, they’re utilizing the Internet to scrape information off in some regards, some of them, they’re making phone calls from different locations to collect information, or they’re utilizing strictly public data, and they’re adding doing some value add and releasing that into the market. Certainly, the information has value, but we feel as though our methodology for collection is superior. Our data analysts are visiting every new home community in the metropolitan Phoenix area today, at least every other month, and we’re collecting standard information from those sales offices that we visit. They’re about 500 today we’re loading that information into our our database platform the it enables them us to see what’s going on in communities, as well as communicate with the sales people to find out what’s going on on the ground. And then we couple that information with closing data with other public data sources, permit data that we collect for municipalities, information from the county assessor’s offices, and kind of gives more of a holistic picture of what’s going on on the ground. I would argue that there really is nothing comparable to our product in the United States today. Back when we were doing a similar methodology, you know, up until five years ago, we were voted the number one product in the country by one of the largest home builders in the nation that gets together every year and compares products. And I think that soon you’ll you’ll hear similar information coming out this time around will be a little bigger operation. So I think we should spread pretty quickly. We’re getting a lot of interest already, and we don’t even have a product that we’ve released.
Rosaria Cain 04:21
So what do home builders do with this information?
Jim Belfiore 04:24
Well, homebuilders, particularly, they utilize it to track their competition, to see what’s going on in terms of incentives and sales, to see if they’re lagging or they’re, you know, they’re leading, and to adjust operations as well. I would say that land acquisition folks, they’re utilizing it to determine whether or not projects are actually feasible. So they’re on the front end. They’re they’re comparing, you know, what could happen at their site, and projecting, putting together performance based upon what’s going on with other builders in that. Particular market area, sales folks are using it again to adjust what’s going on. Division presidents are utilizing it to advise their corporate offices as to what, what, how they’re performing versus others. It really is a leading indicator, as well as providing a history of what’s happened recently in the marketplace, it’s exciting.
Rosaria Cain 05:23
Well, for now, you’re in just Phoenix, correct?
Jim Belfiore 05:26
We’re in Phoenix presently. That’s right.
Rosaria Cain 05:28
And what are your future plans look like?
Jim Belfiore 05:30
Well, we’ll be in Tucson in March. We’re already contacting builders there and working with them to get off the ground, and by the end of the year, we anticipate being in Colorado in the coming years. We’ll be we’ll enter into Southern California, likely Utah, in Nevada. That’s kind of our growth plan. Presently, we’ve done a little bit in the New Mexico markets. It’s not necessarily big enough to have a local office, but that is our goal. Our goal is to to have a local office in each of the markets, the bigger markets that we’re in, with a local staff that’s familiar with what’s going on in that market. Our data will be the starting point and kind of the ending point, right? So we believe everything kind of starts with the data and ends with the data. Our data folks are tremendous. They’re on the ground, they’re collecting the information, and then we’re utilizing that information internally. We’re selling the data, of course, but we’re also utilizing it internally to create custom advisory products. So we have an off the shelf product called The Pulse here in Phoenix that’s been launched in other markets. We’ll have a Pulse product, similar an advisory publication product that’s supplemented with quarterly meetings that we get the industry together our subscribers together and talk about what’s going on the market. We’ll have a round table event at those once quarterly, and then we’ll utilize it to create custom market feasibility studies. So since we’ve been in business. We’ve completed about eight of those. We have a couple more under contract presently. I, honestly, did not anticipate having a single report signed up until January of 2026. We got off the ground the first week we signed up three so there’s some pent up demand out there. We’ll do local studies after we’ve started collecting data in every market, and while the local, you know, kind of head of feasibility in that market area, high level individual that’s experienced and knows what, what to look for, and has some some experience in that marketplace, in order to give some opinions on what’s what’s to come for new communities,
Rosaria Cain 07:35
There’s a lot on your plate, especially with all the expanding markets.
Jim Belfiore 07:39
Oh, absolutely. It’s a crazy thing. I just, you and I, I’ve talked you, and I have talked about it, off of this, you know, prior to this, but it’s been just a whirlwind since we opened our doors on September 23rd I’m, I’m honored, and, you know, humbled and very much appreciate the builders that builders and investors and you know, anybody really that has to with the housing industry that’s come to us and said, “Hey, you know, we’ve missed you. We have some work for you. We’d like to get you started off, get your company off to a good start”. And frankly, I’m just really excited about what’s happened and what’s to come.
Rosaria Cain 08:17
That’s great. Well, how, as you’re going into new markets, how do you explain what you do in an elevator speech?
Jim Belfiore 08:24
Well, the short version of it is we tell we tell builders and developers what to build, where to build it, what it should include, who the buyers are, how fast it’ll sell, and what sort of revenue will come from, from what you build in in reality, you know, a more in depth kind of explanation is, look, if you, if you just want to know, you want to have an overview of what’s going on in a market, and have the pulse, you know, that’s kind of the the product, the Pulse is named after, what we really think it the product conveys, It conveys the pulse on the market, anything and everything about the home building industry. If you want a little more information, if you want to really dig into the details and know what’s going on real time, as most real time as you can be with data in our industry, real time, an accurate view of what’s going on in individual market areas with individual communities, 500 here in the metropolitan Phoenix area, to be exact, you would subscribe to our data product, which is called Street Smarts. Belfiore Street Smarts, if you if you want to take it a step further and understand what a project in a particular area might look like, and you have a piece of land that you’re looking at, or a piece of land that you’ve tied up, you want to know what lot sizes you should develop, who the buyers would be, and what type of product will actually perform in that market. What should be in it, in terms of standard features, what it should look like, square footages, prices, premium, revenue, options and upgrades. You know, really, really in depth stuff you’d want to hire us for a market feasibility study. We are, to the industry, what an advisor should be. It’s really you come to us, you want to know what’s going on in a market area or a project piece of land. We’re going to help you out with that.
Rosaria Cain 10:28
So what problem is it that you solve as an advisor?
Jim Belfiore 10:32
Really, it’s the revenue side of the business, right? So we do have some experience on the expense side, but our expertise is on revenue. So revenue and pace, whether you’re an equity player, a debt player, that’s investing in a project, a home builder, a broker, an investor, a home builder, you want to know what kind of revenue a piece of land will drive, and that’s what we can help you out with, both on the home building side and on the rental side. Rental, you know, we didn’t even hit on that. Rental is really kind of one of the busiest places in the marketplace. Today, rentals are hot. In the Metropolitan Phoenix area, we have seen absorption of new communities at the fastest pace in the history of our markets.
Rosaria Cain 11:19
The build to rents.
Jim Belfiore 11:21
Well, not only build to rent, but apartment apartments. But today, I’d say the bill to rent this the single, single family rental business, it’s taken off. And so of those market feasibility studies that we talked about, four of them have been in the rental space. We’re looking at doing a couple of additional on traditional apartment communities. So that market kind of stalled out in mid, mid 23, 2022-23 as mortgage interest rates, or, I guess, finance rates increased, and we kind of hit a plateau in the number of communities that were being delivered. We’re starting to see those becoming fully absorbed the ones that have been built over the last few years, and that market’s starting to come back. So there’s some optimism in that space, and we should see some new products, some additional new product coming up in the next few years. And we’re hopeful that we’re going to be helping as we have the couple of groups that we have in analyzing what’s going to happen with those projects.
Rosaria Cain 12:18
Well, we’ve seen a lot of shifts, and you’ve been in this business, Covid being a major harbinger of things to come. What did you learn from Covid on the home building side?
Jim Belfiore 12:28
Well, I learned that you know what you initially see and expect may not be the case. I think, early on, everything obviously shut down. We still had an obligation to deliver data to our subscribers. And we have a methodology that is in contracts. You know, we have an obligation to visit sales offices initially. You know, there were several builders that shut down their sales offices for two or three weeks and then they were back in business. We expected there to be no feasibility work. We actually signed up post Covid immediately, post-Covid Within a month, more market feasibility studies than we had in any six week period of time than we ever had. So demand actually skyrocketed for housing following Covid. Six months after Covid, this market was really, really hopping, in large part because of the stimulus that was thrown out there on the market. But I would say, you have to be ready for everything. Is what I learned. You have to kind of kind of expect the unexpected. We actually ended up hiring one net new person during that period of time and was to help us with that additional study business that we had learned a lot. Not happy we went through it. Of course, I don’t think anybody’s happy we went through Covid, but learned a lot during that period. It was exciting and it was good for our company, too.
Rosaria Cain 13:55
It’s amazing how these things have an effect that we don’t expect. When you look ahead at the next five years, what challenges do you see?
Jim Belfiore 14:03
Well, I think I’m going to learn a lot from expansion, because Belfiore Real Estate Consulting was an Arizona company, right? We collected data throughout the state of Arizona. We visited almost every new home community in the state every other month. So it was a lot of surveying. It was like Groundhog Day every every month, at the beginning of the month, we great, a great team that did that. This time around, we’ll do that and a lot more obviously, right? I don’t have that experience of growing a business across state lines. What I have is a road map for what the industry wants and desires and what they need. And I know for a fact, I am 100% confident that the industry wants high quality information, and that information is not being delivered at at least at the quality level that they want today. I know the products that they want we have that deliberately designed kind of advisory, lower price product. We have a mid price product, which is that data product for self users that want to do their own analysis. And then we have an in depth kind of higher quality product. We know a lot about events as you know, you all have been a sponsor of our events in the past. Very, very appreciative of the relationship that we have with Knoodle. You all have been fantastic. You bring so much credibility to the table, and your experience in marketing is amazing for the industry and knowledge of the industry. So we’re very appreciative of that. Our events, as you know, are very high quality. It is a high quality production. Our quarterly events are very exclusive. They commonly sell out to our subscribers within a very short period of period of time. Historically, of them being offered. Our first event is March 20th for our quarterly subscribers, that will be held at the Western Kierland Resort and Spa. And then our first large event is going to be held at the Western Kierland as well. That likely. It’s not booked yet, but it’ll be in early January 2027, and we would anticipate bringing 600 to 1000 industry professionals out to that we know what people want. They want quality information, and that’s what brings us credibility. That’s why people have come out of the woodwork and said, “Hey, we’re ready for you. We have some work for you” they’re yearning for our product, and I’m really excited about it. I mean, I’m thankful, of course, but it comes down to the quality, and that’s something I think that’s that’s lacking in the marketplace today.
Rosaria Cain 16:36
What other kind of challenges are you seeing, both with the business you’re working on, but also home builders. I mean, we’ve got interest rates, we’ve got dynamics, we’ve got the economy. What do you see there?
Jim Belfiore 16:46
Right? It is an extremely difficult time, because today, such a high percentage, you know, 60, 70% of the homeowners have a locked in mortgage that is below 4% right? And mortgage rates today, the market rate is six and a quarter percent, 6.35% the last time I looked, which is lower than it was a year ago. So thankful for that. But you know, we have this kind of lock in effect for the home builder, for the home buyers that own homes today, if you bought your home 567, years ago, the prices were significant below, significantly lower than what they are today. You get a lot less for your money today. The costs are higher to build new homes today, and so you don’t have a lot of home buyers that are looking to move today, and that you have that lock in effect. There’s a high percentage of folks that just don’t want to trade out their mortgage that they have. They might want a new house, they might want a bigger house, they might want something different, they might want to move down, but they’re feeling locked in. They don’t want to trade out that lower mortgage rate. So home builders are grappling with that, and then you just have, generally speaking, that high run up in prices that occurred from 2000 to 2023 it’s significant. And that’s locked out a lot of otherwise would be buyers. The rental prices are actually lower than than the purchase prices today, on a monthly payment basis, to a significant extent, greater than we’ve seen in decades, and that’s creating a challenge for the home building industry. So to get buyers into houses wisely, home builders are throwing out incentives that they haven’t thrown out since the Great Recession. A lot of them are doing great these rate buy downs to help home buyers overcome that, that lock in effect, you know, they’re saying “Look, yeah, interest rates, mortgage interest rates today are six and a half, 6.3 6.4% we’re going to buy down your rate, so we’ll get you into a rate that’s, you know, four, four and a half percent, in some cases, three and a half percent” . To get them in. That costs home buyers money, right? So I always look at that. Any concession or incentive that a builder is offering is is truly it’s a discount off of the home price. And so we’re seeing builders grapple with that cost. We’re seeing that home buy home, that that cost can equate to 30 to $75,000 in real dollars for that home builder the day that that home closes, that builder must put that money out right. In some cases, are buying those buy downs, those rate buy downs and tranches ahead of time, but it’s that’s how much it’s costing them. They’re also doing closing cost credits, which is a common incentive in this marketplace, we’ve historically always given 2 to 3% in closing cost credits. We’ve helped buyers with their their closing costs. You know the buyers, you know they’re coming to the table with a down payment. There’s a required down payment if you’re doing an FHA loan, that’s three and a half percent. If you’re doing a conventional loan, that ranges from 10 to 20% Cent the closing cost. Credit helps buyers as well. There are discounts, right? So I think that’s really what the industry is struggling with. And I think what we’re going to see in, over the next 12 to 24, months, and we’re kind of already seeing it, is builders stepping back those incentives, minimally as they can, to become more profitable. In some cases, builders are now offering, instead of the incentives, the the rate buy down and the closing costs are saying, “Look, you can take that incentive, or we’ll just discount the house by 40 or $50,000” and that lowers the buy down. You know, that lowers the amount that, you know, a new buyer looking at a house might have to, you know, it might make them more, you know, less reticent to actually step into the game. It creates more affordability for them. And so we’re seeing some more creativity on that side. I would expect to see more of that. I would expect mortgage interest rates, really, to come down over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months, we’ve seen some of that over the last few that’s a positive, but those challenges are have been persistent for the last few years, and we’ll see how the industry grows through that over the next couple of years.
Rosaria Cain 21:13
Well, as an observer and a researcher, I know getting more people into the market would be helpful for home builders. Do you see any relief on the affordability issue, anything?
Jim Belfiore 21:23
Well, I think, I think mortgage, I think mortgage interest rates, you know, that that really is, is the help that they need, or price discounts, you know, and so it’s not something builders really want to talk about, you know, we don’t want to discount the houses. I think if you were to take a look at closing data, you’d see that new home prices have barely budged. They barely come down versus resale prices. Resale prices are down pretty dramatically over the last three years. New Home prices haven’t come down, and that’s because the incentives that builders have offered. They’re largely hidden. They’re not they don’t show up in closing prices. Rate buy downs are paid directly by the builder, outside of the closing process. Closing cost credits, depending upon how the contract is written up, they’re paid outside of the closing price. And so all you see from a closing perspective, and this is what makes our data so valuable. All you really see is that closing price. I think we’ll start seeing first, second, third quarter, as the quarterly closing data comes out, you’ll start to see that prices are coming down slowly, and that’s because a lot of builders are now just saying, look, take the rate, buy down, take the closing cost credit or pay the lower price, and they’re giving buyers more options to make that choice, which I think is a good thing.
Rosaria Cain 22:48
Well, there’s municipalities piling on fees and things like that. Do you see any relief there?
Jim Belfiore 22:54
Well, I would say no, we’re all hopeful. I think that’s a discussion. It’s something that’s always ongoing. It’s, it’s the balance between, you know, these impact fees, you know, municipalities need infrastructure, right? And they want, they utilize their power to say, hey, you know, you guys are creating the growth you’re creating infrastructure need. You need to pay for that infrastructure need, and so they charge these impact fees. Do they need gigantic community centers? Is that something that new construction should take on their shoulders, or is that something the existing community should pay for? I think you know that’s it’s a constant battle. You know, builders, developers want to pay less. The municipalities are always pushing up the fees. Municipalities seem to always have a shortage of folks processing permits and process and going out and doing site inspections on new homes and things like that. And they slow down the process. And the builders are saying, you need to, you know, you need to get on the ball. You need to help us. You’re delaying our project. Time is money, and so they’re pushing for more labor in that space, but they don’t want to pay for that labor. So it’s a balance. I don’t necessarily see fees going down, but hopefully we’ll see, hopefully we’ve seen some leveling off. Hopefully we continue to see that. I think infrastructure is a challenge period. It costs so much to run water and sewer. It costs so much electrical costs are are kind of peaking today because of electrical demand. I think something that that would help, continue to help, and we should see more of in this market is financing districts. Financing districts are a tool that’s heavily utilized in certain states, in California, in Texas, they have not been utilized heavily here, large master plan communities, the largest Verrado, Vistancia, Estrella You know those communities at Eastmark, Blossom Rock, Superstition Vistas, those communities do have financing districts. We need to start bringing financing districts more into conversations with the municipalities and utilize those more. That’s a great tool to amortize the costs of development and bring more communities to market at an affordable level for home buyers. So I think I’m hopeful we’ll see more of that. But to date, we haven’t seen a lot of it outside of those really, really large, extraordinary Master Plan communities.
Rosaria Cain 25:37
What misconceptions Do you see that people have about the home building industry?
Jim Belfiore 25:42
Well, I think just generally speaking, there is this constant tension. I think buyers, the general population, even, and sometimes it’s a political issue. They feel as though developers and home builders are making all of this, just tremendous piles of money. Prices haven’t come down. They’re going up because the big, bad developer, that is undoubtedly not true, in my opinion. I see the numbers. So I think that any business is built on the notion that, in order, for me as an investor, whether that’s a developer or a home builder, they’re all investors, right? They’re investing their capital. They’re taking a risk. In order to take that risk, they have to underwrite to a certain profit level. And so you can go and look at a builder. You know, there are a lot of publicly traded home builders. Financials are available. They release them. It’s available to the public. You can go online, and you can look at the last quarter’s worth of financial documents and financials for DR Horton and Lennar and and Richmond American, all these big, publicly traded home builders, you can look at their financials, and you can see their pre tax and post tax profits. They’re not sitting on a pile of profit. They are profiting, but it’s a reasonable profit for the risk that they’re taking. And the markets today, you know, the we have a world economy, so the markets drive expected returns, expected returns in the oil industries to go drill for new oil, the expected profits for home builders to make the expected profits for developers, I think they underwrite to a reasonable profit. And yes, sometimes they hit a home run and they do really, really well. Sometimes they have losing projects. But in order to have investment, you have to have profit. And so I don’t think that there’s this extraordinary amount of profit sitting out there. I think that they’re expecting reasonable profit for what they’re getting on the home builder side, you look back historically over the past 2030 years, I’ve been in this industry since mid 1990s when I soon after I graduated college, you know, a 17, 18% pre tax profit has been reasonable. And their post tax profits are 6,8,9, percent. It’s not overly significant. And on a project by project level, when they’re underwriting new projects, that’s what they’re underwriting, too. So I think the challenge on a go forward basis is finding land opportunities. Specifically here in the state of Arizona, a lot of our land is owned by public entities, the federal government, state government. We have a lot of state land in Arizona. It’s owned by tribal communities. And so when you look at a gigantic aerial, and we have one in our office of the Metropolitan Phoenix area that we just had shot by land to score at the beginning of 20 or at the end of 2025, it just got put up in our office. It’s a gigantic aerial it takes up almost an entire wall, and you can see the blank spots where there’s no land and there’s no color. Those are developable today. The other stuff is all state and federal lands. It needs infrastructure to it. It needs to go to a public auction, through a process in order to release it. The tribal lands, of course, are not available for for residential development, for non tribal members, and so you look at what’s available out there, we do have a lot of land constraints, despite what you see when you drive around, and that’s a challenge for home builders coming, go on a go forward basis. And so what we’ve seen, it’s really interesting. We’ve just seen this surge in home builders bidding on developable, state land. But that goes back to that, you know, that CFD kind of process and infrastructure. How do we get infrastructure back back to those sites? I think we’ll see a lot more of that coming to market here in the future.
Rosaria Cain 29:46
Well, you kind of just alluded to it. How did you get into this business? How did you fall in love with building?
Jim Belfiore 29:52
Yeah, so there was a period of time that I worked for this company called Acacia Capital Corporation, in the early 2000s. I started to there. I had been a research director for large brokerage firm. Helped them expand through I was the research part of it from eight eight offices in the western US to 23 offices over a couple year period. And I was recruited by Acacia. Acacia had two business lines, an income producing business line, which is a rental side. They purchased apartment communities, did some value add to them, did some improvements to them, and then boosted the rents and managed those for 10 years. And then the other division was a land banking division. And land banking was kind of a niche market back in the early 2000s late 1990s but Acacia was one of a few groups that helped to grow that business across the United States, and and I was an integral part of that. That division, and I helped underwrite initially markets and then deals in the top 20 markets across the United States. We underwrote deals for publicly traded home builders. We did market studies internally Mark custom market feasibility when we were looking at projects for home builders. And then we also hired a third party group as well as an appraisal to do appraiser to do both a market study and an appraisal. And so I got to know data and market feasibility really, really well. I worked largely with large individuals in markets or small companies in the top 20 markets across the country. Learn the good and the bad. What the holes were. And I learned a lot about underwriting projects and that that, you know, I saw a great need. And at the end of 2005 when I received my bonus from Acacia, which I great company, loved working for them, I said, “You know what, it’s time for me to do something different. I’ve been here for five and a half years. I’m ready for a challenge”. And I started my my company, and really kind of launched into the data within a few months. We had some custom market feasibility, but the market was shrinking. Learned a lot during the Great Recession, very fortunate to have made it through that period. But that’s really what piqued my interest, and I’ve just grown to love it even more, since I have a true passion when I get in front of people and we’re talking about it, I I like to say I’m not really a salesperson, but I think my passion for data and information and high quality just comes through. And I think that’s the culture that we had at Belle Fiore real estate consulting. That’s a culture that I think our team, even though they’ve only been together for a few months, has today, and it just shines through, and it makes people say, gosh, I have to take a look at this. And they look at it and they’re like, that’s that’s like, how did I live without this information? And I hope that continues to be the case. I’m really excited
Rosaria Cain 33:01
about it. Well, technology always marches on.
Jim Belfiore 33:04
It always marches on, that’s right. So delivery of the information is what we’re working on today, but we’ve been collecting the information for a few months now, and we’re ready to unveil it. We’re so excited about it,
Rosaria Cain 33:15
that’s great. What else are you doing different with the second time around? Well, as
Jim Belfiore 33:19
I mentioned, we’re utilizing a little bit of the technology, right? So there’s some old school in our methodology, tried and true. I believe you have to go in and you have to see what’s going on, right? You have to drive into the communities that your builders, your clients, are building, and you have to see what they’re building. How is this community different? What’s under construction? Is there a slab poured on that, on that particular lot? Is there a frame, how quick are they building? How many homes do they have under construction? Or is there nothing occurring? Because that tells you something too, right? If there’s nothing occurring, and you’re being told, or you’re being led to believe, that there are, you know, 20 houses that sold last month. There’s a disconnect. There should be some building going on. So what’s occurring? What are the different amenities being built in? What’s the feeling you get when you drive into that community and drive around the area in which the community is located, and then getting in and talking to the people on the ground? It’s so, so important. They don’t want to talk to you on the phone. They want to see somebody in person. They want to see a recognizable face that they trust. And it can’t be one way. It has to be two way. It has to be a conversation. They understand that we’re out shopping all of the competition in the entire market. They understand we have a global view. Sales people in sales offices. They have a smaller world, right? They’re focused on selling homes for that builder in that community. They know what their challenges are. They know their immediate competitors, but they don’t know what’s going on in Buckeye, if they’re in South Phoenix or in Queen Creek or in Gilbert, right? But. You’re able to deliver that information to them in a quick and concise they quick and concise manner. They they want to know what’s going on, right? So you get to see and feel what’s going on in the home, new home community. But that’s also how we’re collecting data. So that’s the old school side of it. We’re collecting the data both not recognizing we’re collecting it just by viewing things, but also by asking questions. Then we’re coming back to the office and we’re putting it into our system. Some of the data that we’re collecting, we’re putting into a tablet today, right? So we’ve got some efficiencies. So the our analyst, we call them Junior analysts. They walk into a sales office. We have three of them today. They walk into a sales office, they collect a bunch of information, and they enter it into a tablet, instead of missing information like getting back to the office the next day and saying, “Gosh, I miss I didn’t collect that information”, They’re able to look at that data relative to what we collected previously. We have this database product and application. They have it on the tablet. They have it on their phone. They’re able to look and see what was collected last time, and they’re able to enter new information. And that tablet tells them our database product tells them, hey, you missed something, or there’s a disconnect. Home builders don’t generally go from selling three homes per month every month for the last four or five months to selling 20 in one month. Something had to have changed to get more people to come out, right? So what was that? Because if you’re getting information that suggests there were 20 sales this time and there were three every month for the past four or five months. There better be a good reason, right? Or our data is wrong, so you need to go back in there and talk with the salesperson. Say, “hold on a minute. These incentives look the same as what you were offering before”. Or actually, you lowered the incentives, or you increase them, or whatever, right? What’s different? Why did you have 20 sales? You know, where, what am I missing? And you find data errors a lot quicker. Our goal really is to get that information, quality information, into our subscribers hands within minutes. So if the if that, if our surveyor, if our junior analyst, is able to get that information, the correct information put in the database, information that that makes sense, they can press send it goes to somebody in our office, and that person can compare the information to the last couple of surveys and say, this looks good, and make it go live so it can be live to our subscribers within minutes.
Rosaria Cain 33:19
Instantaneous, almost
Jim Belfiore 33:19
Almost instantaneous. Whereas that process, we had a process before that required so many people. There was some analysis that had to occur in the office. It was to our subscribers within seven days. Today, we can guarantee that our information will be to our subscribers within 48 hours. That’s a maximum period, but it also can be to our subscribers within minutes. It’s amazing. So we’re able to bring, utilize technology to bring the information quicker. And that’s what builders want. They want accurate information, but they want it quick too, so they can make good decisions.
Rosaria Cain 33:19
Well, when did you experience when you wanted to be an entrepreneur? So some some are born, and some are made tell me about how that-
Jim Belfiore 33:19
Good conversation. That’s a good conversation. I feel like I’ve had some of that in me my entire life, right? I’ve had that desire. I’ve always wanted a business. I didn’t have plans to do what I did it. It was a situation where I just said it’s time to make a change. But I’ll tell you one turning point was the it was getting late in 2005 and I was, choosing to make a decision. I was on the cusp of making decision. I just need to do something different. I didn’t know what that was, and I met with a good friend of mine named Joe Blackbourn. You might know Joe. Joe is with Everest Holdings, an extremely intelligent investor, a great, just a great human being. And we met for a coffee at AJ’s is up the road in Scottsdale, and I’ll never forget the meeting. We were sitting outside and he said, and he was giving me a little little bit of advice. And he said, “The question, really, for you, Jim, is, you know, do you see yourself as an entrepreneur, or do you see yourself working for someone you know, long term, like, deep down”, right? I was talking to him about a job opportunity, and he said, “Look, what you’re talking about with this company, that’s a job, right? When you talk some of the things you’re saying make me think that maybe you’re an entrepreneur. And so I think that’s the first core thing you need to figure out. Do you think you’re an entrepreneur? Do you think you’re somebody that wants to work for somebody and continue along that path”. And I went home, and I thought about that. I really deeply thought about it for a couple of weeks. And that was ultimately that conversation. And I thank Joe all the time. That was the catalyst for the start of Belfiore Real Estate Consulting.
Jim Belfiore 33:19
Hmm, surprise them about me. Well, I think most people know I really love the outdoors. So that’s, you know, I talk a lot about that, and kind of weave it into my conversations. They obviously know I love data and information.
Jim Belfiore 33:19
I hope that I can be that person who knows the market better than anyone else. Today. I don’t I’m learning it, relearning it to that level, because we’re just getting this data product so I can look at the data that we’re putting in there. I’m not putting the data in, you know, between two and four every day. That’s definitely not sustainable, and I’m not going to go back to that. But probably there are a lot of people out there that would go, Wow, you went into the office between two and four every day for 15 years, like literally for 15 years.
Jim Belfiore 33:19
Good deal. Yeah. So I’ve been telling people the past couple of years the number one thing it takes, the first and foremost thing it takes, and I’m going to write a book about this, it takes giving a shit. And so the book’s going to be called, just give a shit.
Rosaria Cain 33:40
See, I always find it so interesting what that moment was, when someone decides to go on their own
Jim Belfiore 33:40
I’m sure you had something similar that-
Rosaria Cain 33:40
I did. I did. I did. Strangely. I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur, but the moment changed my mind.
Jim Belfiore 33:40
Right?
Rosaria Cain 33:40
So sometimes that happens.
Jim Belfiore 33:40
Well, and thankfully, for all of us.
Rosaria Cain 33:40
Well, and for you. So being a leader, what do you think makes a good leader?
Jim Belfiore 33:40
Well, I think there’s some empathy, you know, there’s some there’s recognizing what’s important to the people that are working for you. I talk a lot about, and I always refer back to this, a hierarchy of needs, right today. The hierarchy of needs, you know, is a little bit probably poignant, you know, it’s, it’s a little bit different than it has been in the past. Of course, you know, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you know, shelter. Everybody needs shelter.
Rosaria Cain 33:40
Now we have to add, we have to add Wi Fi.
Jim Belfiore 33:40
Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, I need a Wi Fi sponsor. Everyone, anyone who’s listening to this, for the Wi Fi sponsor for my next event, because the hotels they want like 10, $12,000 crazy, but you’re absolutely true. That’s absolutely true. You know, there’s shelter, there’s food. We all need food. We all need to have some sense of security, right? I would add healthcare to that today, right? And this is not a moment of political discussion for me. It’s just a reality, right? Healthcare costs have skyrocketed. I’m not talking about health insurance costs. I’m talking about healthcare costs period. They are outrageous. It is so expensive just to go get a checkup. It is a huge risk for people on a go forward basis, particularly with cancer rates skyrocketing with people under 50. It’s amazing the phenomenon. We don’t know what that’s caused by, but we have skyrocketing cancer rates for people under 50 today, particular types of cancer, it’s scary stuff, right? We all should be tested, right? We all need annual physicals. Out of pocket, it’s just it’s impossible to share, to have that burden and not have someone help take care of that, right? The government has shortfalls, right? We’re looking at social security shortfall like the government’s not kicking out money for healthcare. We’re trying, they’re trying to shrink costs to an extent on certain things. Definitely, healthcare hot point in our political environment today, to me, it is a burden that I feel we have to help take care of benefits are extremely important, and health care is one of those. And I know that you share a similar feeling on this, because we’ve talked about it. We have to take care of our employees, right? We just have to. And so health care is one of those benefits that you have to have. And so I think recognizing the things that are important, obviously rental costs and for purchase costs are so high, it costs a lot of money for folks to be able to live. You have to pay a realistic salary. There has to be the salary level, has to be at a level that people can afford. And I can tell you, when I was putting together the Performa for my business, I said, Look, you know, our data product back in 2020 when we shut down, we had two levels of our data product, which is now, we call our current data products belfaore street smarts. We called our old one new home subdivision database, similar data,
Rosaria Cain 34:05
I was going to ask, what would you name your book? But I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to. But I love that.
Jim Belfiore 34:22
That’s what it takes, right? It in, you know, it’d probably be banned for from schools, but I think that every high schooler should have a copy.
Rosaria Cain 34:51
So that’s something you’d do differently.
Jim Belfiore 34:51
I would do it differently, but I would guess that there are a lot of folks that utilized our information that did not know that. And gosh, don’t want to go back to that, but I’m happy I did it. It got me where I am, right, my mom, who passed away in 2020 she passed of cancer, fortunately, right before covid. I’m not happy she passed, but I’m happy she didn’t have to go through that with cancer. She taught me two great things. Her greatest asset was love. She loved everyone. She had the most unconditional love, more so than anybody I’ve ever met in my entire life. She’s just a fantastic human being, and she when I say unconditional love, it was unconditional if she loved you, she loved you unconditionally, and it extended to a lot of people, definitely to her children, my brother and I, but the second thing is, hard work. When I grew up, grew up with a single mom. She was a single mom. I grew up with her solely. And that woman worked her rear end off to the nth degree, and she taught me the value of hard work. And people say, what does it take for success? I wouldn’t say it takes being up at two to four o’clock in the morning. That’s just not healthy. But it does take hard work, and that’s something that I would say, you know, we all need to keep in mind, even today. You know, I think even once you’ve hit successful, you want to continue anything you do. I think I’ve told you about my book. I don’t know if we can use the word on camera, can we?
Rosaria Cain 34:51
But yes, this is a podcast.
Jim Belfiore 34:51
All right. All right.
Rosaria Cain 34:51
We’re not regulated by the FCC.
Rosaria Cain 35:14
It could be something not work related,
Jim Belfiore 35:14
Yeah, I don’t know if anything would surprise them necessarily. I think, something that would surprise folks that haven’t talked to me and become really, really friendly is that in that last, during that last company, and this is something that I would change, you know, if I was, if I was looking back and talking to my 30 year old self, back in the prior days, I recognized when, and I really, truly believe this. And I think there are some people out there that didn’t, some people that might say, “Well, now you didn’t know it that well”, but I believed that I knew the housing market in Phoenix, Arizona better than anyone. And the reason that I believe that and and talked with great authority on information that I was sharing, whether it was at a big event or sitting at a conference table with a home builder or a developer or an investor, was because I would go into the office between about two and 4am at least five days a week, someday, sometimes six days a week, and I would physically enter the information that was collected in sales offices and processed by somebody else. I would enter that into I was the data input person. I entered that into the database directly five to six days a week. And it was, it was those hours I had to do it then because the phone was ringing, or I had employees walking in, or were you doing a custom market feasibility say I had to do it during those hours. I would do that between two and four. I would go home run. I’m a runner, was a runner, and I would see my family, kids before they went off to school, and then I would get cleaned up and go back to the office and work until five or six, right? That’s not sustainable.
Rosaria Cain 35:14
No.
Rosaria Cain 35:37
I think that makes complete sense. Tell me one thing that would surprise people about you.
Rosaria Cain 36:23
Better marketing name,
Jim Belfiore 36:23
Yeah, yeah. So back then, you know, we were charging anywhere depending upon the level of subscription. You had 66 sides, 6000 to like, $8,000 the new data product, $16,000 right? We’re given a first year discount, but it’s $16,000 I didn’t want to charge $16,000 but I had to put in the Performa realistic salaries, right? And a realistic number of people to collect this data, create a quality data product. And at the end of the day, you know, I took the Performa and I went to several of these builder folks, my contacts, my friends that really are my friends. And I said, “Hey, look, here’s what we’ve have to charge in order to support the staff that we have”. Obviously there’s office rent, there’s electricity, and there’s there’s transportation costs and travel and all this other stuff. There’s data that we subscribe to, we have to pay for. But the labor. You have to be realistic. And I said, “Is this going to work in your budget? Are you going to be able to afford this?” And they said, Yes, fortunately. But I think, that’s another thing that you have to consider. You know, it’s, what does it take realistically? And then, just finally, what, what I’ve learned. I have a degree in Organizational Management, Master’s Degree in Organizational Management. Money is important, but once the money talk is over, it really is about environment in the office, we try to we’re in a business where we have deadlines. It can be stressful. Everybody has to perform, but at the end of the day. We have to have some fun together too, right? We have to have some camaraderie. We get together on a quarterly basis, and we do events. The employees pick those events out. It’s not always something expensive. It could be a barbecue at my house and some cornhole it could be, giving some of our time to a charity and then having some lunch after. It might be golfing. It might be massages, if somebody doesn’t want to play golf, you know, it’s doing things really together. It’s going to a spring training game. It’s having lunch together in the office, occasionally on the company. It’s creating an environment where everybody wants to come and where everybody feels appreciated. It isn’t only giving things, but it’s letting them know that they make a real difference, and that’s really difficult in data, I want them to hear from our clients what our data does for our clients. So when a client comes into our office or we go to a meeting, I take every employee individually, occasionally. I want them to hear those builders say what they say, because they tell me how great the data is. I want the employees to hear that, and I want them to know the difference that they’re making. It motivates them to continue to do a great job, but it also gives them great satisfaction. We all deserve, that is in the hierarchy of needs. We all deserve to know the difference we’re making. We’re all important. We all have something to offer. And you know, not every person that we hire is going to fall in love with information and want to do this for the rest of their lives, but they should know that they’re making a difference. And so I talk a lot about personal brand, and I talk a lot about company brand, what’s really important to me is my company brand and my personal brand, and I want them to have a personal brand and a company brand, and I want to know them, to know they’re valued, and to push what they love, you know, and to enjoy it, and to get great satisfaction out of that really is the key to having satisfied employees, in my own personal opinion,
Rosaria Cain 36:46
A business book! Business book.
Jim Belfiore 36:46
But, yeah, maybe we’ll put an exclamation on or star asterisk, a couple symbols on the end, or something, so we can get past the folks that are protective, and don’t think their kids have heard that word before, but, but what I’d say is, you know, that that really is, it all begins and ends with that. But I would definitely put, you know, I put hard work up there as right underneath that,
Rosaria Cain 53:23
and that’s an excellent way to close things at Jim Belfiore,
Jim Belfiore 53:27
Awesome. I really appreciate you having me.
Rosaria Cain 53:29
Thank you for coming by. Thank you.