We built REI Runner because the call kept going to voicemail.
A marketplace for the moment an investor needs eyes on a property — and the moment a local runner wants a job to claim.
The investor problem
Real estate investors buy properties across the country, but they can't physically be in every city. Wholesalers ghost. Agents won't pull lockbox photos. Property managers take days to respond. Hiring a one-off photographer means a Craigslist gamble.
Meanwhile the deal clock is ticking. By the time you confirm condition, the property is gone — or worse, you closed without knowing what you bought.
The runner problem
Plenty of people want flexible local work — drivers between rides, real estate hopefuls building experience, retirees, parents on a school schedule. But the existing gig platforms don't pay well for site visits, and finding investor clients on your own is a cold-call grind.
There was no obvious place to plug in, prove yourself, and get paid for the field work investors will gladly pay for.
One place to match the request to the runner.
REI Runner is a per-task marketplace. Investors post the address, the deliverables, and the budget. A vetted local runner claims the task, completes it, uploads the proof, and gets paid. No retainers. No overhead. No ghosting.
What we believe
Solve a real problem
Out-of-state investors lose deals every week because they can't get eyes on a property. We fix that.
Treat runners as partners
Runners aren't a faceless workforce. Their work is the product. We design the platform around that.
Grow market-by-market
We'd rather have deep, reliable coverage in eight cities than a thin map of unfilled requests in fifty.
"I've been on both sides of this. The investor who needed photos by noon and the local who would have happily driven across town for $40 — if there had been a way to connect us. REI Runner is that connection, built with the trust and accountability the industry actually needs."
Brian has spent a decade buying and managing real estate across multiple US markets — wholesales, rehabs, and rental portfolios. The runner network he wished existed every time a deal moved to a new city is the network he's building now.
Where we're going
Our long-term goal is an on-demand field operations layer for real estate — vetted local runners in every priority US market, every common investor task standardized, every job documented end-to-end. We're launching market-by-market across the U.S., building runner coverage where investors need it first.