List of Secret Counties to Send Blind Offers to Owners
By S. Jack Butala
Land Academy was founded on principles like “constant improvement” and constructive criticism for other investors and would-be education sources. We all want to be better at what we do here.
The concept of “a list of secret counties” is not feasible in both reality and in concept. There is no such list and even if one surfaced, it would be “secret” for a very short time.
What exists is a list of counties where anyone can buy properties for about $50-100 per acre and eventually sell them for me. This is only a secret to new land investors. And it can be valuable as a learning tool to get a few transactions under your belt before you move on to more profitable deals. At the end of this piece, there is a list of qualifying counties.
It all started when one of my former colleagues, Mark Podolsky wrote a blog or completed a video on the secret counties to buy land a few years ago and to his credit, it went viral and has since stuck in the minds of new land investors.
Instead, Jill and I developed what we call the “red, yellow, green test.” It consists of three statistics to test where to send mail.
If you analyze ANY county or zip code in the country for these three statics and your source of data is valid, this will tell you where to send offers to owners. The key is to pit them against each other so the results are relative.
Counties or zip codes that have very low Days on Market for land sales and sufficient data to confirm this fact will be very logical mail candidates. Next year the circumstances in that county may change so consistently running these days before sending mail is always the best choice.
Here’s a list of counties where you can buy properties for less than $100.00 an acre and expect it to take longer to sell due to the high number of properties for sale in most cases: Costilla CO, most rural counties in NV, Imperial, San Bernardino, Inyo and Riverside Counties CA. Apache and Navajo Counties AZ. Many Rural Counties in NM, western Texas counties, Iron UT, and Lake County OR.
