From Engineer to Attorney to Founder
Eric Poland's path to building a property intelligence platform is not a straight line — it is a deliberate accumulation of exactly the right credentials. He started in construction, trained as an engineer, spent time in the field, went to law school to understand how buildings and land interact with the legal system, and has spent over a decade as a practicing patent attorney helping inventors protect complex technical ideas.
Eric holds a B.S. in Construction Engineering from Iowa State University (Cum Laude, Sigma Lambda Chi Construction Engineering Honor Society) and a J.D. Magna Cum Laude from Florida State University College of Law — where he graduated in the top 7% of his class and earned book awards for the highest grade in Patent Law, Construction Law, Copyright Law, Commercial Law, and Growth Management. He also holds a Certificate in Environmental and Land Use Law from FSU, a combination that turns out to be unusually relevant to what Egret does.
Before law school, Eric worked as a Project Engineer for Wohlsen Construction Company, helping supervise commercial construction projects ranging from $1 million to $64 million — primarily in the healthcare sector. He handled MEP coordination, subcontractor management, RFIs, change orders, and Department of Health inspections. That field experience gave him something law school never could: a working understanding of what can go wrong in a building, what permits are supposed to capture, and why permit history matters when you are evaluating a property years after the work was done.
"Most buyers look at what they can see. I've learned through experience exactly how much damage can be hidden — legally and structurally — right behind the walls."
A Background Assembled for This Problem
During his undergraduate years at Iowa State, Eric completed an internship with a city engineering office, where he performed roadwork inspections, surveying, GIS data analysis, historical map research including city sewer systems, and CAD work. These were not resume-builders. They were ground-level education in how infrastructure ages, how public records are maintained, and how much institutional knowledge about a property is technically accessible but practically invisible to anyone who does not know where to look. Later, during law school at Florida State, Eric worked as a home energy efficiency inspector — putting him inside homes evaluating insulation, air sealing, HVAC systems, and energy performance.
After graduating from Florida State, Eric joined a large national law firm as a patent attorney. For over a decade he has developed IP portfolios for clients ranging from startups to large international companies, working across technologies including robotics, motors and engines, solar technologies, semiconductors, construction systems, agricultural systems, and manufacturing. He supervises and mentors associates, manages full dockets, and advises in-house counsel and executives directly.
He brings a unique perspective to the intersection of physical defects and legal disclosure requirements that most people in either field simply do not have.
Why Egret Exists — The Real Story
Eric and his family relocated from Colorado to Florida — a move full of excitement about the next chapter in a state they were eager to make home. They found a house they loved in Central Florida. They went through inspection. They closed. And then the reality of what had not been disclosed, not been caught, and not been findable through the usual process started to reveal itself.
The experience was, as Eric puts it plainly, "a disaster for the family." Not catastrophic in the way that makes headlines — but the slow, grinding kind of costly discovery that affects real families every day. The house had hidden records issues and building problems covered up by the sellers.
"I wished there was a platform that could help buyers find potentials issues and hints to what might be hidden when physical inspections fail. So I built it."
The platform Eric built — Egret Property Intelligence — draws on his years of accumulated experience to dig through the numerous public record systems that most homebuyers have no idea exist, let alone know how to access. Permit history. Code enforcement records. Deed chain analysis. Flood zone data. Sex offender registry. Environmental hazards. School assignment and grade data. The platform pulls all of it together and generates easy-to-understand summaries, issue listings, and factual information — delivered in a single report in a few minutes.
The Egret — and What It Means
The name was a family decision, not a branding exercise. After the move to Florida, egrets became a constant presence on the family's property — elegant, patient birds that arrive quietly and signal something peaceful about a place. They became a symbol for what the family was working toward: getting through the difficult discovery of hidden problems and arriving at the home they had hoped for.
The tagline — Healthy Home. No 'Egrets. — carries both meanings intentionally. It is not a promise that every problem will be found — no tool or inspection can guarantee that. It is a commitment to helping you surface at least some of what might be hidden, ask better questions, and feel more confident that you have found the right home for you. The wordplay is a small warmth in what is otherwise a serious tool for serious decisions.
What Eric Brings to Every Article and Report
Eric writes and builds from a place of genuine care — as someone who has been through the experience of buying a home and discovering the hard way what was not disclosed, and as someone who has spent time in and around construction, inspection, public records, and the legal frameworks that govern how property is bought, sold, and documented. He is not writing as an attorney giving legal advice or as an engineer certifying anything. He is writing as someone who has seen what can go wrong and cares deeply about giving other families a better shot than his own had.
When Egret's platform flags a code enforcement violation, an open permit, or an unusual pattern in a deed chain, the logic behind that flag was built by someone who has seen those issues play out in the real world — on job sites, inside homes, and in the aftermath of transactions that went wrong. That lived experience is what drives every article, every risk category, and every flag the platform surfaces.
The platform is currently live and covering properties in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, and Miami-Dade counties in Florida, with expansion to additional counties underway. Patent applications covering the platform's core technical architecture are currently pending.
Eric can be reached at [email protected].