The Platform Tenants Love—and Landlords Can’t Ignore

Aviva (00:00)
This week's Listener of the Week is Ed and Fred. Ed or Fred. Thank you so much for leaving us a five star review. And for those of you listening, if you leave us a five star review below, you might be next week's Listener of the Week.

Week, week. This week on Commercial Real Estate Secrets, we have Rafael Weiss. Mr. Weiss is the CEO and founder of Sytes with a Y. Rafael, thank you for being on the show today.

Rafael Weiss (00:31)
Thank you for having me, Aviva.

Aviva (00:33)
So before we jump into the badass commercial real estate platform that is Sytes, can you introduce yourself to the listeners, who you are, what you do, and how we got here today?

Rafael Weiss (00:46)
I mean how we got here today is an interesting one. I don't know if we want to get into all of that, but who I am I guess I'm a second-generation Real estate developer and landlord My dad was the first one who got into the business in the 1960s Started developing medical office. He was actually the first guy to condominiumized that's a word Medical office, so that's his claim to fame

He also did some other cool stuff, but yeah, just a second generation guy. I didn't stay in the real commercial real estate industry my whole life. I actually was in the music industry before commercial real estate and I had an interesting path kind of getting here. And then I also started sytes with a Y as you talked about before for and

It's been an interesting road, I'll just say that.

Aviva (01:44)
So Rafael and I actually, our experience has collided in the music industry prior to the biz. And I don't know if you feel the same way that I do, but I wouldn't be half of who I am in this industry without my experience in the music industry. yeah.

Rafael Weiss (01:52)
Yeah.

for sure. Yeah,

absolutely. There's nothing like being in an industry that's completely filled with nepotism and absolutely only built through networking or almost 90 % built through networking. And then coming to commercial real estate where you're kind of, I would say...

I don't even know how to describe it. It's more of a meritocracy, if you will, I feel like you kind of earn your chops in music, which I still think is the hardest. There's like nothing compared to how hard music is. It is so hard. In commercial real estate, people are like, what are you talking about? Like, I'm telling you guys, you don't understand. is cutthroat. You guys think getting a lease signed?

is a big deal, try getting a record deal, all right? There's nothing like that.

Aviva (02:53)
No.

You know, I got a record deal. Haven't seen a penny from it, but that's a whole other story. No, I think everything happens for a reason and here we are. But more importantly, what is Sytes for the listeners and how did you come up with this platform?

Rafael Weiss (03:04)
Yeah, right.

So basically what Sytes is, is a marketplace for landlords, developers and brokers to see where tenants need new locations and be able to send tenants deals based on their criteria and where they want to be. So it's a first of its kind. It's a listing marketplace for tenants.

not landlords like we've traditionally seen. So reverse Crexie, reverse CoStar is kind of the easiest way to describe what Sytes is on a most basic level. What we do for tenants on the other side is a whole different story. We have a whole suite of AI and organizational tools for tenant reps and tenant representatives to use. But at its core, we are a

Tenant listing marketplace.

Aviva (04:18)
So how did you come up with this?

Rafael Weiss (04:21)
So before I got into the whole tech world, I was doing single tenant QSR development. I was looking for deals for guys like scooters and Dutch brothers and a bunch of like freestanding QSR and tying up raw land and kind of doing that whole game. And I quickly realized that half my battle was trying to figure out if a tenant even wanted to be here.

And I realized that creating relationships with these tenants and their representatives and tenant rep brokers allowed you to have a huge advantage over the competition because you would be able to know if you have a tenant in tow on a piece of land that you have tied up. So the difference in the timeline between knowing that you have a tenant for a piece of land

Aviva (05:11)
Yeah.

Rafael Weiss (05:16)
versus trying to find that tenant once you tied it up is completely different. It's the difference between that deal getting done or not. And after a while, I just couldn't understand why there wasn't a way to just see where every tenant wanted to be across the entire United States on just a map. And that was kind of like my whole dream idea is like,

Aviva (05:38)
You

Rafael Weiss (05:42)
I want to build a marketplace where I can see where every tenant wants to be on a map and they show within a one mile radius that they want to be on this intersection and they can even highlight corridors and I know all of their criteria and I know if this tenant works for this site or not with the click of a button. partnered up with my partner Dean and we built it.

Aviva (06:03)
How long did it take to build it?

Rafael Weiss (06:05)
It took about a year to really get it going. I would say that that's when we hit our inflection point. We've only been around a year and a half, but in this last six months, it's been moving and shaking. We've only been on the market about eight months. So it's been relatively all new, but we have ⁓ over 200 tenants now using the software. It's kind of been amazing to see.

We have thousands of listings And we just keep signing up tenants every day. I mean literally today we signed up ⁓ Fantastic brand. I think I can talk about it. I guess I mean they signed up so it's propelled brands They are a I Guess franchiser for multiple different brands. They have salon suites my salon suites. I believe they have bark

pet, man, I can't remember that one, but they have US pack and ship and fast signs as well. And, Camp Bow Wow I'm sorry. That's what it is. Camp Bow Wow. So yeah. they're across the entire United States. They're going to list all of their site requirements for, the entire US. So, you know, just another great, tenant on there who's going to be looking for deals and landlords and developers can sign up and.

send them deals based on where they want to be. Kind of a dream come true.

Aviva (07:27)
So do they choose the sytes with the Y based on demographics, location, or is it different depending on the user?

Rafael Weiss (07:41)
It's different depending on every user. Typically, a tenant comes on to our platform when they already kind of know where they want to be. So they use various different analytics tools like SitesUSA or Placer AI and map out where they want to be. And then they come to us for the marketplace aspect and the sytes of middle aspect of kind of their expansion plan.

Aviva (08:08)
Is there any standout deal that you've seen get done as a result of sytes?

Rafael Weiss (08:14)
Yeah, I've seen some demises take place that were fantastic. I saw a friend of mine immediately land a lease, the second that they hopped on in a market that was extremely difficult to penetrate. And the tenant was looking for a site there forever. I knew this firsthand. And it was just kind of like,

this is exactly why this platform works. Of course, this tenant didn't know about this development that was going on because there's no place to list an active development, right? And the tenant immediately got sent the site because the developer needed tenants for their development. So it got done and created probably a million dollars of value in terms of that lease alone. So at least a million dollars, I would say, in profit probably.

So it's just really cool to see that happen kind of just like within a week's time, you know, the second they signed up, was like, boom. So, yeah, it's been been pretty awesome. So I would say a few different deals stand out. Obviously, I have to be a little bit vague about the actual like tenants that I got these deals done, I guess, for now. I don't know. I have to ask if I can like fully talk about them.

Aviva (09:19)
you

Sure, that's fair. That's smart to ask instead of divulge and then ask for forgiveness on this one. So I think we have this in, I know we have this in common, right? We're at an inflection point in commercial real estate where our dads were in the business. They, you know, literally pounded the pavement with their Rolodex and

Rafael Weiss (09:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Aviva (09:56)
their briefcases or whatever. My dad rocks a day timer. And then they have millennials, we'll say, and cue the internet. I am totally obsessed with talking about how the internet is going to change commercial real estate. And I'm also convinced we are only getting started. You know, we have apps like CoStar, Crexi

And for the listeners, CoStar and Crexi are the MLS for commercial real estate. They leave a lot to be desired, which is fine. It's like I said, we're at an inflection point. We're just getting started here. Where do you see sytes in five years?

Rafael Weiss (10:38)
I definitely see sytes being the go-to place to know if you have a tenant. I don't do a deal anymore without checking on sytes first if a tenant wants to be there or not. I will never tie up a piece of land again without knowing at least one tenant from sytes wants to be on that piece of land because the amount of time, energy, and effort that it saves me personally as a developer knowing that I at least have one tenant ready to go on this piece of land,

ever before I get it under contract makes literally all of the difference. I I have deals that I have gotten done where I didn't even have to wait for the inspection period to end before I had leases signed because of the information that I gained through Sytes.

Aviva (11:25)
So you created essentially a solution to your own issue.

Rafael Weiss (11:30)
Oh yeah, this was a completely selfish

idea and plan. The only problem is there's so many damn deals on there, I literally cannot do them all. So I have to share. I get anxiety sometimes. I wish I could do every single deal on sytes. I see all of them, like, oh, I wanna do them all, because I'm such a deal junkie. I need to go to deal rehab, I think.

Aviva (11:56)
You're too young to go to Deal Rehab.

Rafael Weiss (11:57)
Yeah. You see those guys. There should be like

a deal junkies anonymous at ICSC Vegas.

Aviva (12:08)
There's probably a Facebook group for it, it's

Rafael Weiss (12:10)
Yeah, so like some 80 year old

broker, he's like, I just can't stop.

Aviva (12:14)
Hey,

I hope we get there.

Rafael Weiss (12:19)
I want to retrade.

Aviva (12:23)
Those aren't my deal junkies, but we are. Retrading is part of the biz.

Rafael Weiss (12:28)
Yeah.

Retrading is part of the biz lie lying

is unfortunately part of the biz, but we don't have to get into all that

Aviva (12:37)
Yeah, we'll have to bring my therapist on for that one.

Rafael Weiss (12:42)
Yeah, for sure. That

needs its own podcast. Times that like brokers lying to us stories. Yeah.

Aviva (12:51)
Stories. I wish

I, you know, that was just a day to day, but.

Rafael Weiss (12:56)
my god, my dad could write a book.

Aviva (12:58)
Trust but verify my friends. Trust but verify.

Rafael Weiss (13:02)
That is, that was my dad's favorite saying. He would say, it says that

in the Talmud, trust but verify. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aviva (13:08)
Wow, that's funny.

Your dad is very proud of you, I have no doubt.

Rafael Weiss (13:15)
Yeah, yeah, he should be. ⁓

Aviva (13:18)
Okay, so if I'm a landlord, we've got a lot of landlords who listen to this podcast. How am I using sytes? Can I cut out a broker? Not implying that's a bad thing, right? What's the va, yeah.

Rafael Weiss (13:23)
Mm-hmm.

I'm

this,

it's not really for cutting out brokers. I don't know why everyone always assumes that's what we're trying to do. It's like, they're trying to cut the broker out. No, actually brokers could sign up. They could use the platform. If you're a landlord, you can just have a broker handle it for you. You know, if you don't want to do that and you want to handle it and be hands on, then you're not the kind of guy who would be using a, a broker to begin with. So, it's just kind of, ⁓

your choice. But if you're a landlord, all you do is you go on sytes, you sign up for your state. We do have a feature called Landlord Alert coming out soon where a landlord can just upload their address, see if tenants want to be there and then pay to unlock those tenants with credits. And that's it. So you can literally just upload all of the different sites that you have across the entire United States. And you'll know if a tenant has interest in that market and it fits your criteria for your site.

If they work for your site, all you do is buy some credits, unlock that tenant, and then you're good to go. You'll have a tenant that's interested in your site and potentially will sign a lease.

Aviva (14:38)
Damn, it's a really interesting industry to me just because the upside is tremendous, right? Like how much is a credit or how do your credit packages work?

Rafael Weiss (14:51)
So the Landlord Alert side isn't fully fleshed out yet. We haven't released it. But sytes full, which is like the pro version or the enterprise version where you could see on a map where every single tenant wants to be, regardless if you have a site there or not, we charge $1,200 a state annually. And there are some premium states that get like a little bit higher in pricing. But generally, just $1,200 a year.

We take no commission. We don't take any extra fees, any success fees, anything like that. You pay 1200 bucks for a state and you could potentially do millions of dollars of business. So it's a pretty good trade off for the moment. We're probably gonna increase pricing soon with the amount of tenants that we're getting on here. But for right now, it's kind of where we have our pricing set.

Aviva (15:43)
It's practically free at that.

Rafael Weiss (15:46)
I mean,

the way you think about it is like, okay, you get one lease signed, it's paying for itself 100 times over. you know, if you have enough deals in a state, if you have three, four vacancies in a state, it's probably gonna be worth it for you. Landlord alert is really for like the smaller landlord that has, you know, one or two sites that are maybe in a few different states or something like that, that it just doesn't make sense to buy multiple states. So they can just pop that in.

but you can't hunt based on that data, right? So if you want to know where a tenant's going and then get a piece of land under contract based on that data, you need the Sytes Pro or Sytes Premium.

Aviva (16:19)
Hmph.

Hmm. I talk a lot about like the barrier of entry to our business. You know, a site like CoStar in full transparency for me, for one use per year of CoStar, it's $6,000. And people are like, my God, $6,000. And it's like, boy, I smile when I pay that bill because.

Rafael Weiss (16:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, that's cheap. was going to say you got

a deal. don't even know how the hell did you even get that price? That's amazing.

Aviva (16:57)
Well, they price differently between owners and brokers and they do it, you know, so I was able to separate myself from our holdings and I'm sure they'll listen to this and I'll get a phone call. So no, but no, it's a ridiculous industry when it comes to opportunity and upside. And it's fun to talk to people like you who are at the forefront of it.

Rafael Weiss (17:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're trying to do something different here. We're trying to shake things up. We want to increase deal velocity. We want to increase volume. And we think that this is the way to do it. There are some people that are hesitant about putting their market plans out there. There are tenants that don't want people to know where they want to be. But in our opinion, that's kind of a defensive posture where, OK, you'll save

on I guess some privacy, maybe a competitor won't know that you're looking in that area, but what are you losing out on? Well, now every single developer and landlord that owns in that market isn't gonna know that you wanna be there, right? So is it really worth it to lose out on a potential site when you could have access to thousands of those just to save on your competitor knowing that you wanna be in a certain market or not?

It's really up to the tenant, but if you're aggressive enough, like a Dutch Brothers or something along those lines, it's a no-brainer.

Aviva (18:35)
If you could buy only one QSR brand, which brand would it be?

Rafael Weiss (18:39)
Ooh.

my God. You're to get me in trouble. ⁓ man. that's a tough one. my God. I feel like if anything I say is going to get me heat from every, any competitor. ⁓ Let me think. Let me think. If I could buy, no, I want to answer. That's fun. If I could buy any QSR. So you're saying in terms of like from an investor's perspective,

Aviva (18:54)
that's funny. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Rafael Weiss (19:09)
Like, I am golden, I'm safe with this investment.

I mean, I don't want to be basic, but I guess Chick-fil-A, you know, Chick-fil-A is fantastic. But that's such an obvious answer. You want to say outside of Chick-fil-A maybe? Because there's no real QSR that can compare to Chick-fil-A. I mean, it's like its own category. Those things sell for like four caps. They're like, they trade worse than treasury bonds. Like, you'll literally make more yield on a T-bill than you on a Chick-fil-A. So like...

Aviva (19:21)
Well, sure.

Yeah.

Well, I feel like Dutch Brothers is like the Chick-fil-A of coffee today.

Rafael Weiss (19:47)
Yeah, I was going to say outside of Chick, you got to go Dutch. I think Dutch is strong. They're so good and they sell for great cap rates. They hold value. They do a ton of business. People love them. Coffee is not going anywhere. No matter what, I feel like people still want to get coffee. If there's a nuclear apocalypse, there's still going to be people.

Aviva (19:53)
Yeah.

you

Rafael Weiss (20:12)
waiting in line at Dutch Brothers. So I think you got to go Dutch, you know.

Aviva (20:13)
you ⁓

That's funny. Yeah, it's like some people's like their whole personality is buying Dutch Brothers. Hey. Hey. ⁓

Rafael Weiss (20:23)
Literally and God bless them. You know, that's the kind of tenant you want You want your

tenant to be a personality trait?

Aviva (20:31)
niches get riches.

Rafael Weiss (20:33)
Exactly.

Are we allowed to curse?

Aviva (20:37)
Yeah, we're all adults here

listening to commercial real estate secrets. But yeah, niches get riches.

Rafael Weiss (20:42)
That's it. That's it.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I would say that. You're trying to get me in trouble here, Aviva.

Aviva (20:53)
How do you sign on these tenants?

Rafael Weiss (20:55)
So, you know, at first people thought we were crazy. They were laughing us out of the room, like, you're gonna put our info on there? Like, hell no. And then we got Go2Foods, we got a couple early guys like the Zig guys, Aaron Zucker, who is a great man. He's a franchisee of multiple different brands now, and Syndicate Steals as well.

Aviva (20:59)
you

Done.

Hmm.

Hmph.

Rafael Weiss (21:21)
him and Matt Maring from Go2foods gave us the first votes of confidence. We started in Florida and kind of the Southeast. So we had some initial success there. I remember like, I think they got like a swig deal done or something like that. Like a piece of land got sent to them and I think it got done. If I'm not mistaken, I don't remember. But that was kind of like an early sign of like, wow.

man, they're a first tenant and they already got a deal done. And then the guy who sent the deal was really happy about like how the process was, how easy it was to send a site to them via sytes that he made like a LinkedIn post. And he's like, every tenant should use this. I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. Like we got something. And then like, we had no action for months after that. And finally we started getting other tenants on board once we were able to kind of show.

Aviva (21:59)
you

Well.

Rafael Weiss (22:13)
success with Go2Foods. Go2Foods started opening up other states, so we got into the Northeast with them, then Texas. Texas was like the game changer. ⁓ Once we had Texas with Go2Foods, which is like McAlister's, ⁓ Schlotzky's, Auntie Anne's, Cinnabon, Carvel Ice Cream, Mo's Southwest Grill, those are all their brands. Once we penetrated Texas, was like everything was on fire.

And we ended up getting a ton of different brands coming on So that was really cool But yeah, it was tough at first to convince these tenants, but now that they see other tenants It's kind of like the snowballs rolling. Let's catch up here. Let's get on board You know hey now we want to be the first chicken tenant on here now. We want to be the first tire repair tenant on sytes, you know because if you corner a market

Aviva (22:39)
Well.

Rafael Weiss (23:03)
on here, you get access to all these developers and landlords, it's like, you're kind of getting a gold mine from the tenant side and then vice versa. on the landlord side, you want to know where these tenants are going. we're starting to get at, go ahead. I know, right? Yeah, we need to start charging more, but we're okay for now. We want to, we want to just get the network going. We don't need to be greedy.

Aviva (23:15)
that's why you should charge more money sorry I interrupted you

Okay, okay, that's good. That's fair. That's fair. It'll be interesting to see after sytes has, you know, I know you guys are younger, a year, two, three, it'll be interesting to see how you can just get data and understand actually what's happening from a larger perspective of the market, be it's.

Rafael Weiss (23:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Aviva (23:50)
be it state by state, nationally, and when you go international, if you ever want to do that.

Rafael Weiss (23:54)
Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely.

And also I feel like we've been focusing on retail a lot. We do have industrial tenants on sytes. I know you've even posted one industrial tenant in the Denver area. so we have a lot of industrial on there. I would say that's like probably our second most populated asset class, maybe tied with like medical. And then we have some very few office tenants. So we have all different.

Aviva (24:16)
Hmph.

Rafael Weiss (24:20)
categories.

Aviva (24:22)
Yeah, it's so funny, like with industrial demographics is like, I don't want to say entirely an afterthought, but certainly something we don't talk about.

Rafael Weiss (24:31)
Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, it's just unnecessary, you know. It's more like shipping times and, you know, rail access and that kind of stuff.

Aviva (24:35)
Yep.

far can you go north, south, east, How fast can you go north, south, east, west? So, no, it's a crazy, crazy business. And like Bob Knakal said, you learn 80 % in the first year and 20 % the rest of your life.

Rafael Weiss (24:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know about the 80 % for me. I feel like I'm still on the 20%.

Aviva (25:07)
totally fair. We're young. We got some healthy decades ahead of us.

Rafael Weiss (25:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, I've seen my hairline recede every year. I feel like we're also getting into commercial real estate at one of the craziest times. Maybe the 2008, 2007 crisis was a wild time to be getting in, but COVID and now this whole tariff thing, this has got to be up there.

Aviva (25:39)
Pack a lunch, because we just getting started.

Rafael Weiss (25:44)
Yeah, boy.

Aviva (25:46)
No, but I couldn't agree more. think just like I said, with the internet, everything is bound to change and it's cool to be at the forefront of it instead of wishing you would have listened.

Rafael Weiss (26:00)
That's for sure. You don't want to be the

person wishing that you would have listened. That's not a position that is good to be in, that's for sure.

Aviva (26:04)
you ⁓

No. Rafael, this is the Commercial Real Estate Secrets podcast. What is your commercial real estate secret? You are here to divulge with the people.

Rafael Weiss (26:11)
Yeah.

Okay.

Let me see. I mean, we have all the secrets. We know where every tenant wants to be across the United States. So Sytes has it all. But what, I guess, let me think. What's a good secret for the CRE Secrets podcast? I kind of, I want to come at it from like two angles. Like one is like from the developer side and then two is I guess just from the tenant side.

I would say one secret that I've noticed just from seeing what tenants want to expand where on sytes is that, there's going to be parcels that are 0.3, 0.4 acres that people thought were absolutely worthless.

that are now gonna be worth close to half a million, maybe even a million dollars just because of the amount of tenants that are gonna be using these smaller parcels now that all these different tenants are downsizing. This is just from a retail perspective. So I would say that these throwaway like 0.3, 0.4 acre sites that people thought were completely worthless might actually be

Aviva (27:16)
Hmm.

Rafael Weiss (27:32)
worth like a million bucks with a ground lease to a small sliders or a wiener schnitzel or one of these random tenants that's kind of just drive through only. So I would say that would be my secret is that 0.3 acre site that you were going to sell to somebody for 50 bucks just to handle the real estate taxes, you might want to hold on to that one because it might be worth a ton of money. And that's something that people I don't think have fully latched onto yet.

Aviva (27:42)
Hmph.

you

or sell it to us.

Rafael Weiss (28:02)
yeah, that too.

And then they're worth nothing, you know. We just want it for no reason at all.

Aviva (28:05)
Yeah.

Raff, for the listeners. First off, where can they go? How do we get to sytes?

Rafael Weiss (28:15)
So easily, it's just www.sytes with a Y. So that's S-Y-T-E-S-C-R-E.com. And I have a big LinkedIn presence, as do you. You know, we're big social media people. So I'm on LinkedIn as well, just Rafael Weiss, R-A-F-A-E-L, and then W-E-I-S-S. I post a lot of stuff there. And ⁓ I guess this is a good place to announce it, I want to start a group in the next

couple days where we'll be posting different tenant criteria and requirements and expansion plans across the US. It's going to be an invite-only LinkedIn group. Add me on LinkedIn now to get access to it because it's coming soon.

Aviva (29:00)
Raf, thank you so much for being on the show today. All the listeners, head over to sytescre.com and for everybody listening, we'll see you next week.