This is episode number 2,146. Jill and I are talking about the most common mistakes new land investors make. Another super popular topic. It’s confidence and motivation week all week.

I could talk for a long time on this one.

We made them all.

I made them all. Just a reminder, it’s ten years of Land Academy this 2025, ten years of working with other investors and watching them succeed and goof up.

Discord Question: Mailing Absentee Owners

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum. Take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Matt wrote, “For those of you mailing mobile homes, I was thinking that maybe folks that currently live in the properties are less likely to sell than those whose mailing address is not the subject property. I was considering mailing only absentee owners. Again, I’m not sure I want to weed out that much of my list. Thoughts?”

One of our members piped right in here, and Erin wrote, “We’ve been mailing absentee homes, mobile and stick built. Neutral letters, though, and have had success. Experience so far is that it’s working, but it takes a lot more capital, and there’s more drama versus land. I hang out at local REI meetups sometimes, and the guys that have a thousand doors seem to have found a lot of them off-market like this. So far, we’ve just been flipping them.” Love it.

I don’t think this is a good idea. If you are starting down the path of profiling, why not send them all? The reason the mailers work so well is because you’re intelligently leveraging the power of the mail. If I send out 10,000 letters, I’m probably making 100 phone calls back and end up with ten logical acquisitions. Those are pretty good numbers. Ten logical acquisition candidates. If I start making my mailer smaller, I’m reducing my chances of buying a successful property because, as Jill said, we’re looking for a circumstance. I don’t think there’s more likelihood of an absentee person having a circumstance than somebody who lives there in the case of mobile homes.

I can speak to this personally. I have a good solid percentage of recent mobile and stick-built home situations where mom and her dad were there, and they were getting older. It came at the right time as the kids were in the process of moving them to other places where they could get care and things like that. You would miss all those.

Most Common Mistakes New Land Investors Make

I’m going to go on to the topic because this is one of the most common mistakes new land investors make. That’s our topic.

Overthinking it?

Making your mailer smaller is not a good idea. I understand, in your soul, you would rather spend $3,000 on mail instead of $5,000, or whatever the numbers end up being for you, and get an acquisition or two.

Making your mailer smaller and overthinking it is not a good idea. Share on X

Here’s what a lot of people think. I’m going to mail everyone who’s behind on their taxes. They don’t live there. Let’s see what else.

Dead.

They’ve owned it for more than fifteen years or something like that. These are a couple of things that people automatically gravitate to all the time and think are going to get a better yield on their offers. I’m here to tell you that you’re missing a lot.

Here are two opposite extreme scenarios that hopefully prove this. I want to make one phone call or one text and buy a piece of property. Guess what? So do I. What I choose to do instead is spend about two hours creating a mailer of about 10,000 units, cough up to $7,000. Now I have 100 callbacks and usually 10 good solid properties to look at with spending a lot less time, a lot less mental energy. Just letting the leverage of the mail work to my benefit. Does it cost more upfront? Yep, that my friends, keeps everybody out of this business.

Do you know what’s interesting about that? I love what you said. My second mistake people make is not sending out enough mail, not having the abundance, and the deal’s coming back like you just did, because here’s what happens. They make mistakes. When you have twenty good properties coming back at you and what this week of phone calls, let’s just say, you’re not going to screw it up. You’re going to be able to go well. These two are the best ones. No kidding. If you have only five or fewer that came back to you this week because you didn’t send out as much mail like Jack just said, now you’re going to make a mistake, and you’re going to probably overspend or buy a not-good property.

I’m going to run down my mental list of other mistakes, and then you can comment. Next on my list is overanalyzing the data perspective to the point where you never pull the trigger on sending the mail out because you’re chasing something that doesn’t exist, which is a perfect mailer. Number two, you’re such a data person, like me, that you really kind of altogether forget the emphasis that needs to be put on doing Jill’s job, which is answering the phone and creating the real estate deal.

You love the data part, you love the dark room analysis part, and you believe your pricing is so amazing that you won’t have to answer the phone. I’m talking about myself now because I’m the avatar of this. I’m going to do it with the greatest mailer there ever was. The deals are going to smash me back in the face. That’s just not the case. No matter how you slice it, you need somebody, whether it’s you or somebody like Jill, to answer the phone and create those real estate deals.

That’s a real common mistake. Another common mistake that I see, and these are big ones, not little ones, is thinking that you can do this by yourself and thinking that you have to have money to buy a piece of real estate. This is a big mistake I made when I started. I’m only going to use my own money. I’m not going to utilize equity for minded people like the group in the Land Academy. It’s stopping me from buying a $25,000 piece of property because I only have $5,000 to spend. Those are the big ones.

One of the biggest mistakes in real estate is thinking that you can do the work all by yourself and that you need to have money to buy a piece of land. Share on X

That’s a bummer. You’re exactly right. I’m trying to think timeliness, follow up. Those are some mistakes people make, too. I’m thinking of my side of the sheet. Your side of the sheet is data pricing, picking the areas, all that really important stuff. If that doesn’t go well, it doesn’t matter how great I am.

My part is talking to the sellers, like you said, creating a deal, having someone answering the phone when these people call and being Johnny on the spot and following up as you say you will and doing a good amount of due diligence and moving forward and buying the property and just pushing it through the system.

That’s two people, could sometimes get hung up on different parts. Put it in escrow and then walk away. You need to babysit it all the way through, and you’ve got to hurry up and put it in escrow. You could lose some sellers right there if you take too long, and you give them time to change their mind or sell it to somebody else like their brother who comes along and says, “I’ll buy it.” I’m trying to think what else.

Biggest mistakes. This is my final comment that people make, and it has nothing to do with buying and selling real estate. That’s a fact. The older I get, the more I understand this. The biggest mistake that people make is they don’t have the confidence. They don’t have the self-control, the follow-through, and the organizational skills that it takes to be successful in this business. It’s not just this business. It’s everything. Discipline, intensity, fallbacks, and mechanisms, too. Make sure that you implement and finish what you start.

It’s all over the internet. There’s a talk, tons of self-help industries that address this stuff, but they’re all going to say some version of what I just said. If you’re very organized, you have to finish what you start. You have surrounded yourself with people who have the same kind of attitude you do and want the same thing in the end. You’re going to do great. Learning and buying, selling, subverting, learning to buy and sell land, or any other real estate, or learning anything will be a breeze for you.

I’ll end on mine. My biggest thing is forgetting/ignoring your opinions, you need to do that, of what you think is going to happen and how you think this should go. I remember we’ve had so many ultra successful Land Academy members, and they said the same thing. I said, “What advice do you have?” If you go back to old podcasts, Luke, you’ll hear him say this, “I had to just shut down what I thought, follow the steps that you guys taught me and watch what happens.”

Check your emotions in the dark.

This doesn’t make sense. I’m like, I don’t care. Do it, and then watch what happens.

Next Topic: Staying Motivated When Not Seeing Results Yet

Join us tomorrow where we will discuss how to stay motivated when you’re not seeing the results yet. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.