By Ayse Kelce for The Ticker
Thomas Petit is a half-time Baruch College professor teaching in the college’s management department and a full-time entrepreneur who co-founded Landis.
Landis is a real estate startup that assists customers in a path to home ownership. For those who are denied a mortgage by a bank, Landis acts as a middleman. Landis buys the house and rents it to the customers until they are ready for mortgage, while some of the rent goes to the down payment savings.
Co-founders Petit and Cyril Berdugo, who are in their early 30s, met during their time in Stanford University.
“We were both interested in real estate and technology. We realized that a lot of people were stuck in a renter cycle where they had to pay rent every month that just went to the landlords. They weren’t building financial stability, and they could be kicked out of their homes at any point,” Petit said.
According to Petit, banks have a very static underwriting process where they would look at someone’s credit record at one point in time as well as savings.
“Often what is missing is some down payment savings, a better credit score and proof of income. Those are the three main reasons why they don’t have access to home ownership,” Petit said about why people get denied mortgages.
Landis has a different underwriting process for while evaluating the applications they receive, compared to the banks. In contrast to the static underwriting processes that the banks use, Landis focuses more on the financial progress of the applicants.
Petit’s expertise on data science and algorithms combined with Berdugo’s knowledge in real estate and financial modeling made it possible for Landis to operate with a system that detects the right applicants and track their progress.
Landis was launched with the question on why some people still could not take a further step to own their own property, especially in a lot of areas in the United States where buying real estate is cheaper compared to states like New York.
Homeownership in the United States was 65.3% as of the first quarter of 2020. While the Northeast and West regions were below the United States average, homeownership in Midwest and South were above average.
Landis currently operates in states like North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
“These are states where home ownership should really be available to everyone. There are states where you can literally save $400 a month by paying a mortgage rather than rent,” Petit said.
One of the most important things contributing to Landis’ success was finding teammates who were willing to take a leap of faith and risk their career to some extent to make an idea a reality, according to Petit.
“We have some teammates who used to work in more traditional jobs. We have people from banks, private equity and large tech companies, and they were all willing to take a bet on making this idea succeed,” he said, highlighting the importance of finding the right teammates to make a startup succeed.
Petit teaches the Technology, Innovation and Design in Entrepreneurship course that is organized around questions of innovation.
Petit challenges students to think about what it takes for an innovation and how innovation succeeds and gains momentum on personal, team and company levels considering the role of technology as well.
“What I love about it is that it’s a way for me to take a step back and reflect what I am doing here at his job, which is trying to innovate and create a new product that is loved by thousands of people and changes how people think about home ownership,” Petit commented on how his mission as a professor affects his day-to-day decision while working for his own startup.
Petit describes a startup as an organization that tries to do great things with limited resources.
“Baruch has that aspect of it,” he said. “Everyone is hustling all the time compared to what I’ve seen at other universities. Everyone has a side job, startup ideas...”
Petit also had a special appreciation for the diversity of Baruch's student body and what everybody brings to the table.
“People are really entrepreneurial in how they think,” Petit also said about the students at Baruch. “It’s perhaps to do with how busy they are. They come with new ideas, and they are scrappy which is great when you think about entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and design.”