This is episode number 2159. In this episode, Jill and I are talking about how to target land sellers who are most likely to sell below market value. That’s like an ever-present question.

Let me unpack that for a moment. Targeting land sellers most likely to sell below market value. That’s what we do. Isn’t that interesting? I’m actually looking forward to this. This is the first I read this.

Why is that, Jill? Is it because you’re a professional?

Exactly.

Before we turned the mic on, I said, “Jill, do you want to look at the topic?” “No, I’m a professional.” “Okay.” We’re going to see how professional she is.

My nose is running, too. I got this. Don’t worry about me. No, this is going to be really good. This is what we do. Here’s my whole reasoning about pausing for a moment. Sometimes it’s not just targeting, it’s just letting them come to you. We try to target. In a perfect world, I’d send 5 letters and I’d buy 5 pieces of land, but it doesn’t go like that. If you think we’re going to tell you how to target and perfect this so that every offer you send will be signed and sent back, that’s not the case.

Will that ever happen? Will we be in a technological age at some point where you call somebody and they say, “How did you know? I had a thought in my head three minutes ago and now I got a phone call from you.”

You can’t make it perfect. You can’t scrub out stubborn.

Do you know when you sit around to have a conversation and your phone’s listening to you like Siri is listening to you, or Google’s listening to you? All of a sudden, three minutes later, there’s an advertisement on your phone for the thing that you were talking about.

Sometimes, it’s even in your head. You’re like, “I think I need to whiten my teeth. I’m drinking too much coffee.” Next thing you know,

Unlike Jill, I do believe that that will happen at some point. I don’t think we’re very seriously close. If you have used AI recently, it’s life changing. Most of you have. There are huge differences in types of AI. If you’re on ChatGPT, I would encourage you to type a question into that. Use Grok at the same time and you’ll see the difference.

I don’t think it’ll be 5 for 5. I think it’ll be 3 for 5 as far as offers because I think it’s going to get really good. I believe that.

If we have access to that information, the chances are there’s going to be a cresting wave of opportunity gap, a timeframe. At some point, the market is very inefficient for real estate. The National Association of Realtors has made sure of that so that people get 6% or 3% whenever they represent somebody in the sale of their property. That’s going to stop.

I’ll do it when we’re ready to do the topic because I have a real good story about this. Each week, Jill and I have a single topic that we discuss. This episode is Jack and Jill’s Common Sense Week. On Monday, like I said, we’re talking about targeting land sellers who really want to sell and they want to sell so bad that it’s below market value. On Tuesday, we’re going to talk about 2025 and the second quarter. I’ll give a market real estate update on where we want to buy and what we want to buy for the rest of the year.

On Wednesday, Jill and I will talk about the number one mistake investors make when handling seller calls. That’s a little out of my league, so Jill’s going to handle that one. Thursday, the biggest time wasters in land investing. Friday, finally, the simple daily routine that keeps our land business running smoothly. Here’s a spoiler alert on that. It involves me staying out of everybody’s way.

I was thinking of something else. I have a different answer.

In a perfect real estate world, you can send out five mails and equally buy five pieces of land, but it does not go like that. Share on X

Discord Question: Looking For A Joint Venture

Each day on the show, Jill and I talk about while we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum, and we take a deep dive in a land related topics by popular request.

Erica S. wrote, “Hi, new friends. Erica here from Iowa, my Southwest Iowa. My husband and I are entrepreneurs and own two businesses. My husband is in the commodity ag world. I started my occupational therapy private practice company seven years ago, serving several communities with three clinics.” Good for her.

That’s great.

“We’ve been looking for a joint venture in the real estate world. When I found Jack and Jill’s awesome podcast, we are able to get started and celebrate successes with you.”

Here’s what I hear. You guys are doing great individually and have individual careers, and you want to take a chance and rack it all and work together.

Already business owners. They’re already own two businesses. She didn’t say separately, but I’m guessing they help each other out already.

Agricultural commodities and occupational therapy are pretty different, Jill.

There Is that. That’s true. Maybe one of them can do the books for both of them like our businesses, but either way, good for them.

My glass is half empty and Jill’s is half full.

What’s different from everything?

How To Target Land Sellers Who Are Most Likely To Sell Below Market Value

Here’s the topic. How to target land sellers who are most likely to sell below market value? This has been a question that’s come up in my entire career. For many years, when somebody asks me what I do for a living, the old way was for me to explain it. We buy a piece of land and then we resell it for more. Anybody who cares about this at all, which is less than half the people who a ask the question, they look off into the distance for a second and they look and they think, and they say, “How does that work?”

They have this half-disgusted kind of tone because what they’re really thinking is if I go onto the MLS on Zillow or anything, I’m going to see all these pieces of property that are for sale like the stock market. I’m going to pick one that I think is over undervalued, and then I’m going to sell it on the exact same marketplace, just like the NASDAQ or you would with the stock for more, like gambling, like the stock market. That’s not the case.

I don’t answer that question like that anymore because I don’t want to talk about it for an hour to anybody, but the way that I used to answer it is, “Hold on a second. We buy properties off market, super old school, like before the MLS old school. We send out letters, we give people calls, all that stuff. They’re off market. We then go to resell them in a real traditional way, usually with the real estate agent.” That clears it up.

One of the things people often assume is they think that we hold them. You brought up a stock market. You’re holding it until the numbers make sense in the stock market, and it might be if it’s a day trader, it’s going to be that day. In other situations, you might hold it for a long time. You’re waiting to see what happens with that company kind of thing. What’s interesting about us is there’s no holding it. We’re buying it below market value to sell it in five minutes at a much better price. That’s the whole point.

My point in giving that talk is because I believe probably many people reading this have the same question. “What?” The topic is how do you target land sellers really specifically who are most likely to sell below market value. Here’s what you do. This is all explained in all the Land Academy programs. You identify a place, a market, let’s say it’s a zip code, maybe it’s a county, maybe it’s a set of adjacent zip codes in a predetermined way.

You already know that if you actually end up buying a couple of pieces of property in those markets, there’s a very positive good chance that you’re going to be able to do what Jill just described, sell it five minutes later. Number one, we’re not going to target people in North Dakota. That’s just not a market, I can tell you, and I’m not picking on that state. There’s not a lot of innate demand there constantly, like, let’s say, Austin, Texas. We know that through data.

It is not just about trying to find a person or situation that wants to sell their property. It is about identifying a market where everything works out for you. Share on X

Number one, it’s not just about trying to find a person or a situation that wants to sell their property. It’s about identifying a market where this all works for us. Number two. Great, now the outskirts of Austin, Texas work. North Dakota in the rural portion close to Canada doesn’t work. That’s half the battle. If we actually now do find something, it’s going to work.

Now we need a data set, an inclusive database of all the property owners in these identified markets so that we can stare at the data set for a second, take a couple of steps back and choose the ones or make an educated guess about the ones who have a profile that are ready to sell their property below market value. What do you think the makeup is, the recipe or the circumstance for the people who are going to sign those things and send them back or call you back?

Maybe one is they inherited it and they need the dough.

Inheritance. Keep going. This is fun.

They lost their job.

Life event: lost their job. Life event: have children need to move to a new school system. It’s life events. At this time of recording, the assessor database doesn’t care about life events. They only care about the physical property, where it’s located and whatever value of assessment that they’re utilizing so that they can send out tax bills. They only care about that.

The internet and data aggregators like DataTree, and Jill and I are licensed providers, Land Academy members have access to all of this, are starting to go down the path of utilizing other sources of data to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish. The best product that I’ve used to do this is PropStream. PropStream is years away from really being a perfected product where I can narrow down somebody lost their job or somebody passed away. This is the heir to a property. Our answer is and has been to send everybody a letter, an actual offer, a cover letter and a purchase agreement.

We let the mail do the work for us. We send out 10,000 letters, 8,000 letters, 5,000, a pretty predictable number. It’s almost always a life circumstance that are going to call Jill back and say, “I just got your letter. My wife and I are talking about this. Let’s do this.” That’s it. That’s how you target land sellers who are most likely to, and it works this exact same way with office buildings, with candy manufacturing companies, houses. Every type of product out there where you have a real data set, this will work.

Excellent. Thank you.

Sure.

That was correct. You did very well.

I don’t know if you’re in a relationship with somebody where you just don’t know what they’re going to say next, or maybe you have a talk show. You don’t what know what your co-host is going to say next, but it would be very boring if I knew exactly what you were going to say. She could have said, “That’s not how this works at all.”

That’s happened and it’s happened to me. That’s so funny. Most recently, you were like, “That’s great, Jill, but that’s wrong.” I love your energy, but no.

Maybe now that happened.

Yeah, it might happen.

Tomorrow’s Topic: Second Quarter Of 2025

Join us next time where we will discuss the second quarter of 2025 real estate market and I’ll give an update where and what to buy. You are not alone and your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.