In this episode, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit tackle the often-confusing topic of pricing land mailers, debunking common misconceptions and emphasizing the critical role of accurate pricing in achieving efficient and profitable land deals. They dive into the pitfalls of overpricing, the importance of understanding market dynamics, and the need to balance thorough analysis with decisive action to avoid analysis paralysis. Stay ahead of market shifts and learn how to adapt your pricing strategies for success—tune in now!

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The Truth About Pricing Land Mailers: What You Need To Know

This is episode number 2124. Jill and I are talking about common misconceptions about pricing land mailers. What a common question. I love talking about this and love trying to clear it up. One of the reasons it’s so prevalent is because it’s complicated. We’re going to try to remove the complication here and tell you how we do it because we’ve done it wrong many times. Not we, me.

Do you know what one of my common ones is? It’s, “What if I come in and over-offer knowing I’m going to talk them down?” or, “Maybe I’ll get more deals and make less, but let’s put some thought into this and understand why this is all happening the way it is.”

Choosing The Right Phone Number For Land Mailers 

I have a whole list of stuff to talk about. This is up my alley. All week, Jill and I have been talking about staying ahead of the land market in 2025. It’s still January or February by the time this airs. Each  day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into a land-related topic by popular request.

Lisette wrote, “I’m going through the training and I have a question about phone numbers. It seems that there are two options. 1) Get a number that matches my mailing address and use that in the website, mailers, social media, etc., or 2) Get multiple local numbers for each target market. If I go with option two, what number goes in the letter, website, and social media?” I have changed my tune on this because I’m in it. We have a couple of mailers going in multiple areas in two different states. Within those states, each state happened to have an area code for that state. I used to think that was dumb. I used to think that it was not necessary. Back in the day, it wasn’t. That was true.

That’s right. That’s what I think. It didn’t matter before COVID.

All that matters is you didn’t have a New York, Manhattan phone number or a toll-free number.

Los Angeles number.

Something that would piss off the planet type of phone number like the Bay Area or something like that. That did make sense. In the middle there, we had a sweet Arizona 480 phone number for a long time. Things have changed and we are pivoting, as you should too. I would recommend that if you don’t want to do state phone numbers, at least get a regional phone number. We have had an East Coast phone number, which I used for a sweet state on the East Coast that has a good reputation, not like New York or New England, and that has worked for that region.

If you’re going to mail to Delaware, get a Delaware number. If you’re going to mail to New York, we have a member who’s a smashing success in the state of New York. She’s got a New York number.

There you go. It’s not expensive. You could do it through Vumber. I can’t think of the other one that we use. We have a couple of different ones. You’re asking Discord because there are always different discussions. There’s always a new company that someone said, “This one’s cheaper. I got five numbers for this price,” and then you can forward the numbers whenever you want.

This question came right from Discord and the responses are exactly what you’re saying.

That’s what I thought. As far as your website, you could almost put regional phone numbers on there but I don’t even think you need to. You can keep your main one on your website and don’t worry about it. That’s what I would do. That’s what we have done.

I want you to prep for multiple markets at once but I think you’re new. Please focus on one market. At this age and at this stage in our career, Jill and I have about 3 or sometimes 4 markets going. That’s it, and we’re dug in there. We won’t generally do a deal if it’s our deal and not a land funding deal where we don’t make $100,000 to $120,000 per deal. We can get ingrained in that market, pass on the deals that are only going to make $20,000 or $30,000, and then go back to them later. I would encourage you and everybody tuning in, especially if you’re new and newer, to find yourself a good market. In the beginning, send out a bunch of mail to several places but find yourself in 1 or 2 markets where you’re going to dig in and get to know everybody.

There you go.

Why Higher Land Mailer Prices Don’t Lead To Better Responses

This episode’s topic is the common misconceptions about pricing land mailers. This is a very popular question. How to price land mailers is not the topic here. The topic is misconceptions. The biggest one that smacks me personally right in the face when I read this title is, “If I price my mailers higher, I will get a better response.” That’s false.

The idea that pricing your mailers higher will lead to a better response is absolutely false. Share on X

The fact is this. If you retain 1 thing from this entire episode, what you’re looking for is this. You’re going to send out 5,000 to 10,000 mailers that are priced correctly. The way that we do it is at about 20%-ish with testing for reason. You’re going to send it out. A lot of people are going to call back. There are a couple of people if you do it right that are going to say, “Your timing’s perfect. I’m tired of this piece of land. I got the tax bill,” or, “We had a death in the family,” or, “I need to move across the country. I’m tired of it. We’re not never going to use it and I’ve inherited it. What’s the next step? I accept your offer.”

If that offer is higher as a percentage, then you’re going to end up paying too much. You’re going to have to go back. You cause a lot of work for yourself. You want this to be efficient. Please price your mailers as low as possible. Do it exactly how I instruct you, especially if you’re new, in chapters 3 and 4 in Land Academy 3.0 and you’re going to do great.

With what I described, pricing it a little bit better will equal more sales. In traditional, it has nothing to do with real estate but in traditional things like a convenience store or a car dealership because there’s a lot of competition. If you price a 4Runner less than everybody else, you’re going to sell a lot of them. That’s not the case here. What smacks you in the face?

Why Pricing Land Mailers Right Leads To Fast, Profitable Deals

I have two points on this. One is when you get into this and you start doing these deals, you do realize that it is the situation. It’s not the dollar amount that’s on that offer. It’s that they need the money. That’s what you’re looking for. If you don’t go for it and price them well as Jack does, and we always talk about this but it’s true, you remove some of the home run possibilities. Someone’s going to get this software and go, “Let’s go because I need the money today.” You’re telling me we can do it this fast. That’s the beauty of this.

The other point I want to make, too, is when you price well, you know you can’t lose. That’s the whole point here. You are pricing these offers at a number that if within reason they accept that, you can double your money, sell it way below retail, and have all kinds of wiggle room in case anything goofy shows up here. If you need to bring in an agent and their commission is X percent, you could afford all of that and do great. That’s what you’re trying to do.

I also want to highlight the little bit of wiggle room there. When we send out offers to buy something, with the way Jack prices them, I know I have wiggle room. I love that because sometimes, that’s all people need. They’re like, “You sent this to me for $16,798.42. Can you make it $20,000? That’s what’s going to get me out of my stupid car debt right now. I owe $20,000.”

That’s great advice.

I know the way he did it, I can probably make that $20,000 work because it is worth probably $60,000. I’m going to buy it for $20,000, sell it for $40,000 or $50,000, and do spectacular because it’s worth $60,000. My buyer loved it. That’s why it sold quickly. That’s what you’re going for.

Overcoming Analysis Paralysis In Pricing Land Mailers

Here’s another misconception about pricing land mailers. It stops people from sending mail, which is tragic. It is overthinking it and analysis paralysis. There is no such thing as a perfectly priced mailer. Am I saying sloppily price it at 20% of retail and send it out and see what happens? Absolutely not. Due to our personalities and the way Land Academy is structured, we attract a lot of STEM-type personalities, personalities that have been or are in engineering professions and things like that. It’s the type of person that took apart the toaster when they were four years old to see how it works.

There is no such thing as a perfectly priced mailer. Share on X

That’s not what this is. Follow what I do in 3.0, which is price the mailer, get fined for retail price per acre, and spend hours testing for a reason. It’s not every line item or every offer, but test for reason in blocks to see if you’re close to where you want to be from pricing the mailer, and then go through the motions of seeing if the mailer came back at that price and jump up and down. It’s analysis paralysis. There’s no such thing as, “I need five more hours to price this better. I know my response is going to get better.” It’s not. You’re not going to get a better response if you spend a week more on pricing your mailer.

That’s what people think. They think, “I need to make it perfect.” The only way that you might think you’re going to make it perfect is that you do it line by line. Do you know how long that’s going to take you? The last thing you want to do is go through your mailer line by line because your unit is $6,000. That’s not effective.

Why You Must Answer The Phone In Land Mailer Deals

Here’s another point. I was guilty of this many years ago. I said, “If I price this mailer perfectly, I don’t have to answer the phone. I don’t like talking to people. I don’t like talking to sellers. I can get out of that by sending a great mailer out or sending fourteen times more mail.” I did this. I said, “I know I only need to send 5,000 units out to get a deal. I’m going to send out 50,000 and get the ones that are signed and sent back. I’ll do those deals and not answer the phone.”

You will be out of business very quickly if you do that. I got away with that back in the day because I was the only person doing this in the entire country since Jill and I joined forces. She makes up for that. No pricing scheme that you can come up with is going to prevent you from very positively answering the phone and creating a real estate deal over the phone.

That’s the key.

Jill’s in the middle of two large mailers, so she’s walking around the house with her earpiece in. This has been going on for more than a decade and a half. She gets better at it. It makes my job easy.

Thanks.

There’s a huge margin of error that I can create in pricing these mailers and she can make up for it. If you’re new, you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to put that load on your shoulders. You want to make this easy. What you’re looking for is a seller’s life circumstance. You’re not there to negotiate prices with sellers for hours on end.

If you’re going to make a mistake, I’d rather you make a mistake where you price too low, not too high. We’re still talking about the biggest one we talked about first. It was like, “Overdo it and take money away.” It’s a lot easier to add money than it is to take money away. You don’t want to be that guy.

It’s a lot easier to add money than it is to take money away. Share on X

Adjusting Land Mailer Pricing For Different Market Conditions In 2025

My final point is this, and I don’t want to glom on it but it’s becoming more relevant in 2025. There are real estate cultures out there more than I have ever seen in my entire career. We’re in two markets, two slamming-them-with-mail markets. Market number one is still reeling from the COVID jack-up pricing that they got true in 2020. They all have numbers in their heads that are 2020. The truth is their land is worth probably half or close to it. Maybe 60%. Jill’s got her work cut out for her. You may want to think about adjusting your pricing so that the ridge can tone down a little bit. Is it going to get you more real estate? No.

The other culture is exactly the opposite. It is what I would call a real estate-friendly, real estate-aware market. Everybody is a lot more chilled out about it. Everybody’s used to having properties trade hands. The first market that I mentioned, it’s a lot of inherited generational property. Sending them an offer at 20% sends them in a tailspin and they’ll let you know about it. It’s the exact opposite of market number two.

You need to know what’s going on in these markets before you slam it out. Do some research. Get on your Zillow and all of that and find out what’s happening. That’s why we test for a retail price per acre before we send out the mailer. We’re not shooting in the dark. Join us in the next episode where we discuss why land sellers ghost after accepting an offer and what to do about it. This is Jill’s topic.

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