How Disrupt Equity is Disrupting the Real Estate Industry through Technology

In today’s episode, I welcome Feras Moussa, who is a successful entrepreneur with a tech background. He is the co-founder and managing partner at Disrupt Equity, a real-estate services platform focusing on multifamily acquisition and investments for investors. Feras graduated from the University of Texas with a Computer Science degree and worked at Microsoft straight from college. He later resigned from the company to bring tech to industries that lack it, where he later found his passion for real estate. He has helped raise millions of dollars for multifamily syndications across 2000 units, in addition to managing his own portfolio of properties.

Feras shares how his search for new opportunities and love for entrepreneurship landed him in the world of real estate. After starting in single-family home rental investing, Feras later decided to scale up into apartment complexes, where started Disrupt Equity with his partner. Disrupt Equity is focused on multifamily acquisitions and investments, and in doing so, has helped leverage his strengths in tech to better identify quality investments for others. He shares how he’s always been an entrepreneur at heart as he started his own web company while still in high school.

We get to know the ups and downs he faced while starting his business, and what the specific challenges were that he faced in the journey. He also cites how his tech background has helped him grow his business and bring changes to the real estate investment sector altogether, something he had envisioned while leaving Microsoft as a developer.

Feras talks about real-estate investing as being a numbers game, and that by investing in apartments and not single family houses, you can make better profits. He also shares with us his way of viewing an apartment deal. He weighs the price factor to check for the risks as well as the rewards, and also keeps a check if syndication is a possibility with each deal.

We also discuss how Feras views software such as Asana, Slack, and email and why these are better to use than normal ways of texting. He also discusses how he makes use of these software applications to assign tasks to his virtual assistants and teammates. We learn how trust is a highlighted major factor in relationships with VAs, and that appropriate pay and understanding can help them feel more connected to your business and enhance their productivity.

Feras explains what disrupt management actually is, and how he scaled his business to 1500 units in three years. Coming from this background of education and practical experience, Feras shared valuable information on a lot of topics ranging such as handling property management through COVID-19, finding investors and building the right partnerships, handling nightmare syndications and bouncing back after major setbacks, and facilitating a great relationship with brokers, while also giving away tips for sourcing off-market deals.

Feras is a great guy and I loved getting to know him better, both for his real estate knowledge and also because he is a generous and charitable human being. You do not want to miss this fascinating and informative episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with guest, Feras Moussa!

Notable quotes:

“Obviously, coming from the tech world, stocks are the thing everyone thinks about, but I was looking for different opportunities.”

Feras Moussa

“We just ended up pivoting to do full-blown property management, because it's a much bigger bang for the buck.”

Feras Moussa

“Even if you have that one employee that goes to 10 different houses, that's a lot of time wasted in transit.”

Feras Moussa

“It's just how much we use tech to really give visibility.”

Feras Moussa

“What I have found is, if you have a very linear straightforward task that's well defined and doesn't allow for a lot of variables, you can hire a VA and it can work. “