Understanding Condo & Strata Documents with OctoAI CEO Thomas Beattie

In this episode of Building Wealth Through Real Estate, Nico speaks with Thomas Beattie, CEO of OctoAI, about the Eli Report, a tool designed to simplify and clarify condominium documentation for buyers, realtors, and property managers. Discussed are the report's features, accessibility, and benefits for various stakeholders, including property managers and developers. The conversation also touches on the importance of transparency in the real estate industry and the potential for collaboration with CondoWiz™  to enhance consumer understanding of condominium and other multi-unit residential communities.

Key Takeaways

• The Eli Report simplifies complex condominium documents for buyers.
• OctoAI aims to provide comprehensive insights into condo communities.
• Property managers can use Eli Reports to quickly onboard new properties.
• The report is available for free, with additional features at a cost.
• Eli Reports can be beneficial for developers to benchmark budgets.
• Transparency in condominium management is crucial for consumer trust.
• The Eli Report is available across North America, including in French.
• Nico emphasizes the importance of status certificates in condo purchases.
• The synergy between Eli Report and CondoWiz enhances consumer knowledge.
• Information accessibility empowers consumers in real estate decisions.

Thomas Beattie

Co-Founder & CEO @ OctoAI | Helping Everyone Understand Condo Communities & Serve them Better with Eli Report
thomas@elireport.com
https://elireport.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasbbeattie/

Thank you Thomas and thank you all for tuning into today's episode.

CondoWiz™ - Toronto GTHA+ app for iOS and Android devices is available now in Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store
 
Ciao ciao

Transcript

Nico James-Bock (00:01.654)
Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Thomas Beattie, who is the co-founder of OctoAI, an innovative platform that takes all of the information from a condo or strata document and provides it in a legible form, understandable to realtors, consumers and property managers. The report is called an Eli Report.

And it's a comprehensive report that outlines all of the information pertaining to the particular CondoWiz™ unit and the CondoWiz™ corporation. I'll have Thomas join me in a couple of seconds. My name is Nico James-Bock. I am the CondoWiz™ whiz, the founder of the CondoWiz™ whiz Group at Royal Page Signature in downtown Toronto.

While I wait for Thomas to join the meeting, I'll give a brief overview. Here, Thomas, how are you? Okay, yeah, at least I can hear you. So I'm using a new platform. I've started the recording already of the podcast. I provided a brief introduction as to who you are, but now that you've joined the podcast.

Thomas Beattie (01:11.55)
I'm well. Thanks, Nico.

Nico James-Bock (01:28.02)
I'll allow you to introduce yourself and your innovative product, OptoAI and the Eli Report.

Thomas Beattie (01:35.531)
Fantastic. Thanks, Nico. Yes, I'm Tom Beattie. I'm the CEO of OctoAI. We've been offering the e-light report service in British Columbia for several years and are pleased to have introduced it across North America. This is a tool that helps everyone understand their condominiums when they are looking at making a purchase, whether they're an existing owner or an investor. So this is just a great way to get up to speed with what's happening in your community.

Nico James-Bock (02:01.728)
Can you give me a brief explanation as to how you came up with that name, OptoAI?

Thomas Beattie (02:07.547)
yeah, OctoAI was a playoff of the character that we created when we did our branding exercise for Eli Report. Eli stands for Every Little Item, which is what we want you to understand about your CondoWiz™ . And our mascot is a purple octopus. And that led to the corporate rename of OctoAI.

Nico James-Bock (02:28.547)
interesting. So this report, it's a deep dive into the condominium documents. Is that correct?

Thomas Beattie (02:39.473)
It is. So when you're a buyer, you get a status certificate package. When you're an owner, you're privy to all of the appropriate documents, whether those be minutes or engineering reports, obviously the bylaws and rules. And those are the things that we analyze with every ELI report. We've done over 25,000 of these over the last several years. And, you know, within Ontario, we now have a couple of thousand communities that we've looked at. It's a big focus area for us in the year ahead.

Nico James-Bock (03:10.023)
You mentioned the CondoWiz™ minutes. That is not part of a typical status certificate review or a part of the documents that a buyer has access to. In your market, you're in Vancouver, British Columbia, correct? Yeah. Do the buyers, potential future buyers of condominiums have access to the minutes? Because we in Ontario, we don't. really?

Thomas Beattie (03:26.528)
Yes.

Thomas Beattie (03:34.259)
default they get everything. Two years of meeting minutes. I am aware that in status certificate packages are not required to have minutes. Some do. The buyer or seller can request those, but they are not part of a standard status package, and in my view they should be. Critical information about the issues that are affecting that building are within the meeting minutes. You get a lovely audited set of financials, but that's well out of date. Certainly not relating to the current. You have a current budget, which is good.

Nico James-Bock (03:58.738)
Right, correct.

Thomas Beattie (04:02.255)
But there's a lot that happens in the meeting minutes that should be available to prospective purchasers. And we pull out from that all sorts of categories of information. So we talk about elevators, windows, security, roof, anything that you can imagine that is important in the operation of a CondoWiz™ or townhouse, we pull out of the document sets that are available to us. So if you are a buyer and you haven't been supplied with minutes as part of your status package, I would ask for absolutely.

Nico James-Bock (04:33.884)
Okay, what is the timeframe once this report is requested? How long does it take to generate?

Thomas Beattie (04:40.829)
anywhere from to 30 minutes. What we are manually reviewing during that time is the building's budget, looking at the reserve fund study to digitize upcoming expenses. Ontario is in much better shape than many other jurisdictions across North America because there's a requirement to be fully funded. That does not apply in British Columbia, for example, where instead we have a commitment to put 10 % of the operating budget towards reserves every year. And that's not sufficient. So we have a much higher

surveillance of special assessments, call them special levies at West, but in Ontario that's much more rare. The ELA report is then presented to you as the buyer of that within minutes based on the document set that you've provided.

Nico James-Bock (05:14.585)
Mm-hmm.

Nico James-Bock (05:25.487)
Okay, is there a cost associated to getting these documents?

Thomas Beattie (05:30.975)
The base price is now free. We have a version that allows you to get information out of the documents at no charge. That version is obviously a lighter version of the report. It uses the existing text layers of the documents, which is why we're able to process it at lower cost. As you start to spend a bit more, you can go up to our maximum price of $60, which does include a special assessment forecast, benchmarks for budgets and insurance.

and all of the bells and whistles that come with our fanciest edition. When you sign up for an account, you do get $60 worth of credit so you can try that fancy one for free, as well as unlimited free reports if that's what you choose.

Nico James-Bock (06:12.59)
I see. Okay. And typically it's the realtor who requests this report, but it can also be the consumer. The consumer can create their own account.

Thomas Beattie (06:22.761)
Absolutely. Consumers, lawyers in Ontario, notaries in British Columbia, anyone who's involved in either the transaction process or in serving the community, like a property manager, even an engineer, can run documents through on an Eli report.

Nico James-Bock (06:39.565)
Okay, is this available for all condominiums in southern Ontario?

Thomas Beattie (06:44.573)
all condominiums, any condominium anywhere in North America. We've even had some that came in through French. It is, yeah. So translation capabilities are getting much better. They're not obviously going to be perfect, but we were cautious about offering in Quebec. I said recently that we don't do a lot there because I'm concerned about the quality of translation, but it is improving. So that's, it is available to anyone across North America, no matter your CondoWiz™ , townhouse, HOA,

Nico James-Bock (06:50.059)
it's North America.

Thomas Beattie (07:13.598)
or other association if you live in a multifamily where there is documentation governing its existence, it's possible to run an ELARP.

Nico James-Bock (07:23.0)
Okay, I noticed on the Eli Report website that you also provide these reports to property managers and developers. How can it be of benefit to them, to that Group?

Thomas Beattie (07:34.059)
Yes.

Thomas Beattie (07:37.685)
So a couple of different scenarios for different stakeholders. When you look at a property management firm, property management is a very difficult job. I think it's one of the toughest desk jobs. You have to manage multiple buildings, often hundreds of owners in each. It's a big responsibility and it's a big challenge. Because of the stress of that job, there's fairly high turnover. And as you're bringing on a new property manager, using an Eli report for them to quickly get up to speed on that portfolio that they're inheriting, I think is a great idea.

and we've seen it used for that by property management firms. We've seen others that have run it before doing budget planning in the AGM for the upcoming year. So this allows you to get a bit of a snapshot, which you can share with all of the owners. Eli Report is available to anyone, so it's something that can be shared. We have more sophisticated tools that we're building for CondoWiz™ boards and for property managers. I call it the annual benchmark report, and it's a deeper dive into the operations of communities.

So that's another tool that's built specifically with the property manager in mind. It's a scorecard reflecting the use of a community's budget, the health of its reserves. It allows a deeper dive on the budget on line item basis. Again, great for CondoWiz™ boards wanting to understand how they compare. Great for property managers who are responsible for managing them. So that's the property manager side of things.

Nico James-Bock (08:54.528)
Yes.

Thomas Beattie (08:59.359)
Developers are using it primarily to benchmark their budgets and to be able to say to buyers with confidence that the budget that they're presenting is not out of line with what's out there. Everyone wants to put the lowest possible fees, CondoWiz™ fees, maintenance fees, you want to advertise those as being low so that you can allow buyers to qualify and pay the maximum possible price. It can be quite misleading and we've seen lots of different situations where developers have put out preliminary or interim budgets

that don't reflect reality and within the first year or two of operation there are dramatically different fees impacting buyers. So we've been approached by a number of developers who have asked us to benchmark their budgets and we've actually found some interesting things that have helped them refine those budgets in several cases. So it's good exercise.

Nico James-Bock (09:50.218)
Can you give me an idea as to how many developers are currently using that in Ontario, Southern Ontario? Just a rough idea, because I've never heard of this.

Thomas Beattie (09:55.819)
It's just a handful of developers across Canada that have used our budget benchmarking exercise, but it has been interesting. In one case, the property management firm forgot to allocate a budget for water and sewer. In another case, they had budgeted for a garbage compactor lease, which the peer communities didn't use. So it's just insightful information that allows them to sense check and confirm that everything is the way that it should be.

Nico James-Bock (10:01.663)
out.

Nico James-Bock (10:05.236)
Yes, that could have been my turn.

Nico James-Bock (10:24.2)
I see. How are you promoting this platform? Are you reaching out directly to property managers, developers, realtors?

Thomas Beattie (10:35.477)
Yes, that's been a big part of our strategy of late. It started out very small in British Columbia several years ago, spread mostly by word of mouth. So that's been our primary use. I've now started a very small campaign in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario to improve awareness of the product and to make sure that everyone understands when they are buying CondoWiz™ that they should be checking it. And we've often been compared to this car fax for condos. You know, wouldn't buy a used car without getting a report on its history.

Nico James-Bock (10:44.799)
Thank

Nico James-Bock (10:59.035)
Absolutely.

Thomas Beattie (11:05.462)
You get the status certificate package and that forms a really great legal basis to understand what the obligations are. It's less good at telling you about the community and the lifestyle restrictions and what's happening. And that's where we believe we've got a place.

Nico James-Bock (11:06.015)
correct.

Nico James-Bock (11:21.744)
Yeah, I'm in complete agreement. One of the things that I stress as a realtor is that the individual purchasing condominium units, the first, the most important document is the status certificate. And there is often a condition within that, within the offer that the legal representative of the buyer has an opportunity to go through that.

So I imagine lawyers also have access to this, to these reports.

Thomas Beattie (11:55.893)
They do, they do. And we are being used by a number of lawyers that are involved in the transaction process in Ontario. And that's continuing to expand. So those are focus areas for us for the year ahead.

Nico James-Bock (11:59.772)
Yeah.

Nico James-Bock (12:07.646)
Excellent. Okay, I think we've covered all of the bases.

Thomas Beattie (12:11.849)
That's wonderful. What I was going to say is that I'm excited about the way that the information that we're able to process further down the transaction pipeline fits in with what you're doing at CondoWiz. And what you're doing is helping people with that whole discovery process in a really exciting way. I know your listeners will know that from other conversations, but perhaps for my benefit and those that are tuning in for the first time, you could tell them a bit about CondoWiz and how it helps in the discovery process.

Nico James-Bock (12:14.535)
Yes.

Nico James-Bock (12:40.804)
Yes, it's actually I could see a great synergy between these services. Condo is all about the community, the CondoWiz™ community. So it is a way to fully understand what is involved when you purchase a unit in that CondoWiz™ community. So having the Eli Report document as

an additional resource, it creates a full picture of the whole condominium. And that is the focus really that every buyer, every investor, every developer should actually have.

Thomas Beattie (13:26.069)
When a buyer is using CondoWiz to look for condos with specific attributes, you'd mentioned hard lofts in our first conversation, how do you do that and how does that then connect with the realtor?

Nico James-Bock (13:38.981)
There are filters built into the CondoWiz app. So there are smart terms. a smart term would be, for example, KiTech. So KiTech plumbing is a banned plumbing in most parts of Canada because... Exactly. Exactly. So that is an important consideration. And a lot of people aren't aware of KiTech. A lot of...

Thomas Beattie (13:56.405)
I tech and poly B, I tell ya, we see a lot of that.

Nico James-Bock (14:08.379)
properties, property managers don't mention Ki-tech. So CondoWiz™ waste as one trigger word, let's say, you can just enter Ki-tech in the universal search field and it'll bring you a list of all of those buildings and projects that allegedly still have Ki-tech. So then you are then, and that's in three seconds. So then you can then go and further investigate.

whether the individual units still have contact, whether the building as a whole has undergone any kind of remediation. Another filter would be direct access to the subway. So in under three seconds, you have a list of all of those condominiums and projects that have direct access to the subway. You don't have to go outside. Another filter would be no pets or no dogs. So it filters it down.

Thomas Beattie (14:57.739)
That's fantastic.

Nico James-Bock (15:05.291)
and provides information that Realtor.ca doesn't provide, a Google search doesn't provide. It is like a chat GPT and Google service combined when you, and you do not have to fill it in with all of those prompts. You just use either a trigger word or you select a filter. So that saves time. And that's really what the purpose is. It's to save time. And with your report at an additional layer,

Thomas Beattie (15:27.295)
Love it.

Nico James-Bock (15:34.771)
of information that also saves time because you mentioned that you can provide this report within 30 minutes, which is amazing. It takes 10 days legally to get a CondoWiz™ report from you have to exactly, exactly. you provide it in a concise manner that a consumer can actually understand.

Thomas Beattie (15:49.513)
Yeah, you've got to get those documents, but once you've got them, we'll give you this report within that 30 minutes. Yeah, it is that fast.

Nico James-Bock (16:04.18)
and have those conversations with their legal representative and with their realtor. So it's a complete service. Very, very interesting.

Thomas Beattie (16:12.265)
Fantastic. Well, I see some opportunities there as well, Nico. I hope we can get this into CondoWiz and hopefully your listeners now understand that there is this thing out there that will allow them to understand a bit more about what lies behind their investment, their home, and their prospective purchase.

Nico James-Bock (16:18.432)
Yes.

Nico James-Bock (16:28.759)
Yeah, I believe it's a huge, huge benefit because that is really the focus. It's having a deep understanding of the community in which you're purchasing, in which you live. So thank you. Thank you for that.

Thomas Beattie (16:41.931)
Thank you, I really appreciate it. It's been great to talk about that. mean, our ambitions, just so you know, Nico, are to go a little bit further to help those community owners save money. If we can find them someone that's able to provide them a better price on insurance, landscaping, concierge, other capital projects, then that's a mutual win. And so we're doing more of that, working with more partners in the space, trying to bring a bit more transparency to an industry and to a world that has been a little averse to that.

Nico James-Bock (16:45.846)
Yes.

Nico James-Bock (16:54.912)
Correct.

Nico James-Bock (17:07.296)
Yes, I'm in full agreement. Information is power and the more information people have at their disposal and quickly, I think the better off everyone would be. Thank you for your time again, Thomas. I look forward to exploring this collaboration and to learning more about what you provide. Thank you very much. You too. That concludes this episode of

Thomas Beattie (17:20.117)
Thanks, Nico.

Thomas Beattie (17:29.611)
Thanks, have a great day.

Nico James-Bock (17:36.597)
Building Wealth Through Real Estate Brick by Brick. My name is Nico James-Bock. I am the founder of the Condo with Group at Royal LePage Signature. That concludes this episode. All of the information will be in the show notes as well as Thomas's contact information. So you can check that out. And we will look out for more information from Thomas in the coming weeks. 

Ciao ciao.