In this episode, we dive into the exciting world of land purchase and what it takes to acquire a property successfully. Jack and Jill guide you through the key steps in the land-buying process, from evaluating deals to securing the best opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned land investor or just starting, you’ll learn valuable tips and insights to help you make smarter land investments. Join us as we explore how to navigate the complexities of buying property and set yourself up for a profitable transaction.

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Start To Finish 4: Land Purchase Strategies To Maximize Profits

Introduction To Land Purchase Process

This is the show.

This is episode number 2047. In this episode, we’re talking about going through the process of buying a piece of land. This is a theme. All five days, we’re buying and reselling a piece of property or a piece of land from start to finish. On Monday, we talked about setting your acquisition criteria and finding places to send mail.

Creating A Land Deal Where There Was None

On Tuesday, Jill and I, mostly me, talked about pricing and sending out your land mailer. On Wednesday, I didn’t talk at all. She talked about creating a land deal where there was none, how to answer the phone, and the magic that there is in creating your own real estate deal. In this episode, we talk about buying the property. In the next episode, we talk about selling it.

This is my favorite part, all of it. My favorite is when the deal is done and I feel great about it because we wouldn’t be buying it. This is 100% my favorite part of everything we do. It is buying property. It is not selling it but buying it. I know what’s going to happen.

How many people do you know who have amazing ambition that start something and never finish it?

A lot.

That’s what buying a piece of property is for our household.

What does that mean?

 If you don’t follow through on the sell side.

That’s true.

Every successful land investor, us included, buys and resells a property. The vast majority of the time everything’s peachy. Sometimes, you have leftover properties.

Every successful land investor buys and resells property. But remember, sometimes leftover properties can be worth holding onto. Share on X

Is it because you don’t want to sell them?

This is Jill’s favorite part. It is buying it and selling it later. 

Real Estate Deals That Pay Off Later

It’s paying off. There’s stuff that I’m like, “I forgot about that. I’m so glad I didn’t sell it last summer because look what it’s worth.”

We have hundreds of thousands of dollars of real estate. I’ll talk about getting high-buying property here in a minute. We haven’t sold it largely because I priced it too high because I love it.

That’s what I was going to say. If you weren’t going to answer it, I was going to throw it in there. We did it with an Idaho property. We looked at it, stood there, and were like, “We can’t sell that. It’s great.”

It’s got water going through the whole thing. It’s got a mobile home on it.

It’s got power. It’s got that ridge behind it. It’s pretty cool.

In the next episode, we’ll talk about selling the property. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request. Let’s take a question.

Ivan and Randy wrote, “I got a call from a seller today who wants to give away his property because he is tired of paying taxes. The property’s thirteen acres and is landlocked but with an easement.”

It’s not landlocked, 

I was going to get to the end and then cover that.

I don’t like this landlocked description.

Dealing With Complicated Ownership Structures

I know. He wrote, “The issue is he owns 8 acres of the 13 with the remaining 5 being divided with 5 other siblings. He says he wants to sell his eight acres only but I don’t think it’s possible. The property is in Blank County, North Carolina.” Here’s the thing.

I’ll go after you.

Do you know what this is? The exact scenario is my dad left off his classic car and I own this door and the bumper. I’m going to sell those. That’s it.

I own the engine.

Can I take them off? You could. A) A car’s no good without them. We go with that. The other thing is when you go to title it, you’re not going to walk in with a, “I have the door and the bumper.” It’s the same thing with land like this. You can’t say, “I’m only going to sell this percentage or this part of it,” and they’re going to keep that that easy. There’s stuff that has to happen. First of all, the other five have to be on board.

We are in the business of buying and selling APNs, assessors, and parcel numbers. We are not in the business of creating 16 APNs out of 1. We are not in the business of consolidating many little APNs into one big one. Many people think, and it gets taught out there, that it’s easy and that’s what you do. These types of things per each deal take years.

What ended up happening here is that Dad had a couple of scotches and he said, “See that land? Look out the window. That’s all yours. Yours is five. This eight is mine. We clink our glasses. You are now landowners.” It doesn’t work that way. There are surveys that have to happen. There are also very different taxing authorities.

You have to all agree with it too. If you get one person holding out and say, “I’m not doing it,” then there’s a mess. 

This happens often. We get calls like this all the time. It’s like, “We don’t want the property anymore. Here it is but subdivide it, please.”

It’s too bad. 

It’s very complicated.

For me, it’s pretty much, “Call me when you have this all worked out. You have one APN. I’m happy to buy it. I’ll buy your eight when you’re all ready to go.”

Armed with that information, there are places in the country where this is virtually impossible, and there are places in the country, mostly the Southwest, where this is encouraged. It’s not easy. It’s time-consuming, but it’s not difficult. You have to have a survey, somebody to process the paperwork correctly, and all kinds of things.

There are new deeds and new legal descriptions. You got to make sure the easement is in there and all that good stuff. 

Plus, the math doesn’t work here. 13 acres minus 8 minus 5. This would require a full-blown entitled subdivision.

If I was new, I wouldn’t touch this. I’d move on. Even at our level, I still would move on. I’m like, “I’m not taking this one.” I’m way past it. Somewhere in the middle when I was bored and I had a lot of energy, I might try to work on this on the side while doing all these other deals. What happens is you forget about it. You’re like, “I’m not going back to that. That’s a headache.”

If you’re in any other group and they’re saying, “Please join because you can subdivide the property,” I want you to ask them how many deals they’ve done and where they’ve done them. They are lying to you if they tell you that they’ve done a substantial number of deals. This episode’s topic is we’re going to buy the property. We decided how much money we wanted to make and sent the mail out. Jill answered the phone. She’s got somebody who wants to sell her their property. What’s the number one thing you do when someone calls back and says, “I do want to sell a property.”

I’d say, “Get a PA and open escrow and get it going. Lock it up. Don’t let anybody change your mind.”

Here’s what I’d do before that. I decide with myself in front of a mirror if I want the thing.

I’m past that, but you’re right.

Deciding If You Want The Property

You have to run through what Jill and I have established, the due diligence, to see if you want to buy the properties or the eight As. We talked to all about the eight As. Please go back and check that out. Each day of the week, we talked about one of the As or a couple to fit 8 into 5.

It’s your due diligence.

It’s like, “Does it have access? Is it priced correctly? Did I price the mailer correctly? Is the person that I’m talking to the person who owns it?” That’s Alive. You run through that and decide, “I do want to buy this property. I priced it correctly. In fact, I’m pretty excited about it.” Go ahead.

When you're buying property, make sure the person you're talking to actually owns it. That's rule number one in due diligence. Share on X

Open escrow. Get a signed purchase agreement or some form of it. It could be a screenshot from their phone after they signed it and they crossed it off. Even if you have a different number, whatever it is, I’ll send that to you and then I can open the escrow and get the ball going.

If the property’s in Texas, the seller is in South Dakota, and you are in New York City, where do you open escrow?

Where the property is in Texas. Is that right?

Yes. Wherever the property is, you open escrow.

It is not where you are and not where they are. It is where the property is. That’s where you’re going to open escrow. In buying the property, there are a couple of ways to do it. I don’t do it very much anymore, but there’s a way that you can do it on your own. It’s like buying a car. 

I wouldn’t even cover that. 

We’re going to skip that then. We’re going to go right to the way that I do it 99.9% of the time. I factor this money into it. You’re like, “You’re talking about spending $1,500 added to the acquisition to buy this property.” That’s part of why I’m getting it so cheap and making it so easy for these people. That’s part of why they’re agreeing to sell something to me for $23,000 that’s worth probably $75,000. I’m going to cover the cost. I’m going to pay $1,500. I’m going to go through escrow and do it all that way. It’s going to be great.

It covers my butt too. I can get title insurance. Usually, these properties need title insurance. They’re in that price range. When I’m selling something for $75,000 or $90,000 that I bought for $20,000-something and I have an agent involved, I want title insurance. I want it all buttoned up beautifully with a bow on it, ready to go for the next person. Maybe they want to build on it or do whatever they want to do. It’s all perfect, good, and ready with access and everything that it needs.

I’m opening escrow. I’m sending them the purchase agreement. Every single step of the way, I have a checklist and a process, and everybody knows what’s going on. My seller knows where to reach me at any moment. My seller is in touch with me or my staff at least twice a week. We stay in contact like, “How are you doing? Have you thought about how you’re going to spend the money? I talked to Susie at ABC Title. She’s still waiting for that document. That’s what that was. I thought I saw an email. I don’t know where it went. Let me get on with it.” You got to stay with it all the way through. Hold their hand and push it to close and push it to close ahead of schedule. That’s how you win.

If you want to win in real estate, hold the seller's hand and push the deal to close, always ahead of schedule! Share on X

Ask yourself this question. If somebody contacted you in a respectful manner and said, “I know that you have a XYZ car in your garage and I know you’re not using it. I’d like to buy the car for $10,000 today. In fact, I can be over there in the next 30 minutes with $10,000 in green cash.” You’ve never thought about selling that car ever. The person who contacted you was right. You’re like, “I haven’t used that car. I don’t even know if it starts.”

Are you the kind of person who would say, “That would make my wife happy” I’ve wanted to start a wood shop back there anyway. This solves all kinds of issues for me. I know the car’s worth $20,000.” Are you the kind of person that would sell it or would you say, “$15,000.” I would sell it. I would say, “If you can get here in eighteen minutes with a suitcase full of money, it’s done.”

There are many people who can’t do that. They have to negotiate. They have to sell. My point in bringing this up in this module is that Jill makes this easy. She’s the person who’s jumping in her car with that suitcase full of money, responding to that person. They’re like, “I do want to sell it. I’m not going to use that piece of property. I could list it. I could call my Aunt Sue who’s a real estate agent. I never liked her anyway. I’ll get it on the MLS, wait a year, and get it at the retail price.” They could also be like, “I can sell it to Jill who I like talking to on the phone anyway,” and be done with it.

That’s what this process is about. It’s not about the mechanics. You got to know that. You have to be really familiar with that and comfortable with describing it. What the seller’s hearing is, “I’m going to get a check for X at the end of this thing from Jill who I trust. I’m going to choose to do this for probably less than the property’s worth.”

This whole week is like the nuances of our business. One of the nuances that I do is I don’t complicate it. I don’t describe every form or tell them every little thing but I make myself available. I’m like, “I know this can get confusing. I know sometimes escrow agents talk in a whole other language. If anything doesn’t make sense, please call me. I’ll walk you through it. I’m happy to help. We’ll get this done really easy and fast together.”

Let me share a mistake that I made when I was starting out in this business. I was a commercial real estate broker. I believed incorrectly that my job was putting a buyer and a seller together and then that’s it. I am wiping my hands off it. The last thing that you want to do, and I see new people in our group do it, is to shove that deal over to the escrow agent. Young boys do this. I know this because I was that guy.

You shove it to Sally, the escrow agent. Unless you manage the person you’re buying it from the way Jill does in a relationship manner and manage the escrow agent in a relationship manner to get this stuff done, it won’t close itself, especially in this day and age. They’ll shove that file at the bottom of all the stuff that they have going on and forget it.

They’ll send one thing that they need to sign and then they forget about it. They don’t call them. They’re like, “I emailed it to them. What are you talking about? They didn’t get back to me, so whatever.” Meanwhile, the poor seller is like, “The deal’s not going to happen,” because the email went to their junk folder.

As a young man, I thought my job was over when the deal got signed. I was like, “Everybody signed the purchase agreement, we agreed on a price, and the document is signed. Goodbye. I’m doing the next deal.” That’s how I get high. I get high off of getting those signatures, not when the deal closes or anything. I don’t care about that. It’s a huge mistake I made. Join us in the next episode where we discuss the sell side. You purchased the property and we’re going to sell it. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.