This is the Land Academy Show, even though we’re on water. Land Academy is the place to go for the education tools and support you need to start and/or grow your land business.

Our format is a little different. Jill and I are in the back of our boat here in San Diego, attempting to adjust to new equipment and each other. I hope you enjoy it.

Let’s talk more about adjusting to each other. Let me start by saying, do you have any idea what goes into a podcast? Now make it ten times harder because you’re in a different location. Make it 100 times harder because it’s with your partner. You sleep, eat, and do everything within this proximity, by the way. You’d better have a solid relationship going into this thing. That’s a whole other show. We will do that.

This is episode 2255. You would think by now we would know what we were doing. I know how to buy and sell land. This show is what I mean.

Dispelling Funding Misconceptions

Thank you very much. We are talking about how to get any land deal funded in 2025. We want to go into a deeper dive and then have a conversation about everything that goes into land deal funding, because I think there’s a lot of confusion out there. I’m going to start with this topic. I’m going to talk about what goes into it.

What kind of deal should you present, or the big picture? That’s okay. When you’re getting a deal funded, I know a lot of people think, “I’m buying a house. I’m getting a house funded,” that kind of thing. What goes into that, a lot of people tend to either try to save up a lot of money, they’re waiting for somebody to die, or get an inheritance. I’m not kidding. I’ve heard all of these scenarios play out, or they’re going to a bank and getting a loan.

That’s the most likely one. I see people doing that all the time. They’re like, “Here’s what you do. You go to the bank, you get the loan, you borrow this much, you can buy the property, and then maybe even rent it out. Maybe you flip it, fix it, sell it, everybody gets paid back.” That’s one possibility. The other thing is you’re taking the triage, you keep it, take the triage, what you get for the rent and the payments and all that. All this stuff makes my head hurt. It’s not fun.

Where does that confusion come from?

Where does it come from?

All of a sudden, everyone is asking, “How do I have to prove myself to you to get a deal funded?”

That’s not even it. I think people don’t even realize how easy it is.

That’s my point. We’re here to dispel the confusion.

I’m thinking about these people who like to talk about how it is stressful and worrisome, the carrying costs, and all that. Let me fast forward to why we’re talking about this. People come into any type of investment in the world. They always think, “I have to have a couple of $100,000 or somebody behind me with a couple of $100,000 to be an investor. I cannot do it.” I want you to know that you can. That’s the whole point. I’m sure you’re going, “Whoa, I’m pulling over. Now you have my attention. What do you mean I can be a real full-time investor of any type of property? It doesn’t matter what it is. I don’t need to have half a million dollars to do this.” That’s the truth.

Here’s the deal. I want you to take a few steps back. If you have a great business idea, or let’s say even more specifically, you found a piece of real estate because you were sitting at the end of a bar one day and somebody said, “I’ve got this piece of real estate that I want to sell. My dad just died.” I  don’t care what the price is. If you want to buy it, that would be great. Just tell me what the price is.” You give him a ridiculous offer, and he says, “Yes.” “Great. I want to do the deal.” What do you do? The first thing you say is, “I don’t have any money. Who am I going to call?”

Now it comes into the topic, “Where am I going to get the funding?”

Am I supposed to be in the topic?

You are in the topic.

The Power Of The Deal

The first thing you should do is say, “Who’s got money in my life?” “My brother does or my sister does or somebody.” You go to them and you say, “I have this piece of real estate. I offered the guy $30,000. He wants to sell it. I know it’s worth $80,000. Here’s why. I looked on the internet, and all the other properties right in the area have sold for around $80,000. I’m buying it for $30,000. Brother, sister, dad, we buy this thing. Don’t do anything to it, resell it, and make that amount of profit, let’s say, $40,000 or $50,000 by the time it’s all done, and then we split it.”

That is exactly a minus one single page agreement that you would do the deal with us, specifically with Jill and me, or usually with anybody in Land Academy. That’s how we instruct this to go on. The opposite end of that is that it’s that simple. It’s about an amazing real estate transaction. It’s not about you and your credit score or how much money you have or don’t have. It’s about the deal. The absolute opposite of that, and that’s probably where this confusion might be coming from, is if you go and get a mortgage. If you go and get a mortgage, they want to know where you work. They want to know what your credit score is, how much money you make, or don’t make. They’re going to judge you and shame you.

You may not even be qualified. Let’s assume everything goes in there. That’s what’s so interesting and why I want to talk about this. I say this from people who ask us questions about it all the time, especially this summer. We have a good, healthy group of new, fired-up investors who have joined Land Academy. I know this is one of the reasons because we did a three-day session in July, and this was one of the topics that I’m trying to get. That’s the whole point.

You can be an investor as soon as tomorrow. You don’t need thousands of dollars, a loan, or maxed-out credit cards—just focus on finding great deals. Share on X

The Funding Process

We’re trying to get the word out. You can be an investor tomorrow. You don’t have to have a couple of grand, go take out a loan, run up your credit cards, or whatever it is. Find those great deals like Jack was talking about. You perfectly described an amazing deal. I want to caution you, too, because when you go to a family member, they don’t get it. Our first instinct is probably, “I cannot do this. I cannot be an investor. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money. Nobody in my family has the dough,” which is most likely.

The second thing is, “Wait a minute, what if I don’t have to worry about the dough?” That’s the point. You don’t have to worry about the dough. It just has to be an amazing deal as Jack spelled out, buy for $30,000 because it’s worth $90,000. You sell it for $60,000, $70,000, $75,000. Your buyer is happy, everybody is happy, and it sells fast, because it’s worth $90,000. That’s the whole thing. The investor piece and the deal funding are the whole thing.

We understand the process now, or let me back up and explain again the whole process, from start to finish. You would only have to be, which is what we’re very good at, an acquisition machine. That’s it. You need to find them and secure them. Go, “I’ve got the deal. I’m ready to open escrow. I don’t know where the money is coming from, but it is amazing and I’m locked in.” That’s step one in the process. Step two, you reach out to someone like us. We have a website, it’s LandFunding.com. Anybody can use it. You don’t have to be a member.

If you’ve got a great deal, I don’t care where it came from or who you are. We’ll figure this out together because it’s a great deal. You need to now submit that deal and get it in front of the right people, the people like us, people with Land Academy. We’ll look at it and go, “Shoot, you are right. This is a great deal.” I’m glad you opened escrow. I’m standing by. Tell me what you need and tell me where to wire the money, when you want it, and where you want it.” That’s it.

As Jack was saying, we do a simple two-page agreement. That’s all that we do. It doesn’t go to escrow. It’s not shared with the planet. It’s between us and you of what we all outline, what we’re going to do, what you’re going to do, whose name is on the deed, who is going to market it, how we’re going to make the decision together, how the money is going to get split at the end, and when each of us is going to get paid back?

This isn’t new. We’re not here to complicate things. Hundreds and hundreds of deals get funded like this every year in our group, probably more. Those are just the ones we know about. This isn’t a new process. We’re not new at this. Jill and I have done over 16,000 deals. As you know, if you’ve been following us, we’ve been in business for ten years. Our process is correct, and it’s freeform. This whole process was created for you to focus on one thing. It’s finding great real estate deals and then leaning on the lifelong experts or career experts to guide you through cashing a check at the end.

I’ll be honest with you, preferably, you know what you’re doing. Those are my favorite deals. Now you’ve got the deal, submit it to us. For us, it’s a 24, sometimes less, 24, 48, depending on if it’s a weekend or something, for me to get off the boat, get logged in. Not off the boat, but be in the harbor, let’s just say, and have time to look at the deal. That’s what goes on. It’s easy.

When I have time, when I get to sit down and look at deals, and I’ll do several at a time, it takes me five minutes per deal to have an idea like, “This is going to be good. Let’s move forward, or “I’ll write you back.” Here’s going to be the response time, 24 to 48 hours, as a response time, then you’re either going to get a green light right away or going to get, “I love it. I need these three things checked,” or you’re going to get a, “Shucks. I wish it were this price,” or “I’m not sure about this.” That’s option three.

Option four is “This doesn’t make sense. Here’s why. If you could solve this, we can do it. If not, I don’t think anybody should do this deal.” That’s what you’re going to get back from me. It comes from me through my team right back to you. No matter what, you’re going to get some good constructive feedback on why I like or don’t like the deal. It’s not always money. I’m not always saying, “It’s great, can you get it for half?”

Sometimes I do, because I know that. Usually, you’re going to know, too. If you’re in that world, you’re going to go, “I thought you would say that. Thank you for telling me.” Sometimes I have people go, “Thank you for finding that. I didn’t even spot that.” Sometimes you’re going to go, “Got it. Thank you. I’ll call the county. I’m going to figure that out.” Sometimes you’re like, “You’re right. I missed that. Thank you for saving us.”

That’s a nice thing, too, about deal funding. I know a lot of people have said this to us, even on our Thursday, remember call when you and I spotted things and people were like, “I would have totally missed that. That’s why I have you guys.” We can lean into our 16,000-plus, I don’t know what it is now, transaction memory bank, and go, “I’ve been in this situation. This doesn’t work,” or “We can get around this and here’s how you do it.” Most people don’t know that. That’s another huge one, too, that you get with working with us.

It’s a perfect deal. What would you like to know?

That’s a good question.

A great deal that you want to see submitted, that you’re going to go over and fund this. We’re going to do great.

It is in a state that has a year-round great temperature. I don’t have to worry about too many seasonality swings. I’ll be honest with you. It does have some seasonality, so I can see what’s coming. I know how it goes. I know it by now. I know so then, but not drastic like, “You’re right, Colorado.” The deal is, it’s still a great area. They did their red, yellow, green tests 30 days ago, and this is the first group that’s coming in.

It’s beautiful. It has all eight A’s. The person tells me all eight A’s in the posting. It’s the acreage I want. It’s affordable. It’s got this attribute. Everybody is alive. Everything adjacent is beautiful. I’m not afraid. I’ve got six more people I’ve got to call back. I have my abundance. Those are the A’s. The person who is like, “I know what to do. I’m already open to escrow.”

I love this person, Carol, with an ABC title. She says we can close in three weeks, and I need nothing. I’ve already found an agent that I love in the area, and I talked to them, and they cannot wait to get this listing because they think they’ve got three potential buyers that they couldn’t find properties for for them a month ago and one of them is this is going to fill what they’re looking for.

What’s funny? I didn’t even talk math. I didn’t even talk about money yet. It’s like the situation and the person, and we all know it’s going to sell and so then the math is for me. This is me personally. I want there to be at least a 30% or $30,000 profit. The minimum that we’re splitting. I want to make 15, and you make at least 15 or whatever, depending on the work and how we work it out. I feel good about it.

I’ll tell you, I know the people in the Land Academy, they’ll split $5,000 with you. Don’t worry about it. You can have a property that you buy for 4 and sell for 10. By the time you back out closing costs and things like that, you’re splitting $5,000, and they’re happy with that because it went fast.

I  can tell you from serious experience. If the deals don’t have a serious fatal flaw or unsolvable attribute, let’s say it that way, then somebody is going to fund it. It might not be us, but somebody will. This is why we started Land Academy. We started Land Academy because we were constantly running out of our own money. This is a good real estate deal. What we found out is that everybody else is in the same situation. You have a bunch of experience, and you’re running out of money all the time. A lot of times, it’s happening because you’re buying and reselling houses, because it’s so capital-intensive. We own a company called House Academy, too. We do the same thing. Did you finish the speech on what the perfect deal was? I’m sorry.

I’m not sure I lost my train of thought.

I wonder why.

I think I did. I think I answered it, and it’s that’s my perfect deal. It wasn’t about the math. It’s more about the situation and the individual, and the property checks all the boxes, and that’s how I roll anyway. One of the things about us is that I have more experience. You would think I’d be a little more relaxed about some deals, because I know how to solve them.

I know how to get out of that jam. The more deals that we’ve done, and I oversee that, I’m even pickier now because I can be. I don’t have to be. I’m not going to take any risks with that. That’s a good thing, too. For me, especially with our deal funding, I’m going to save you and make sure we don’t make any mistakes or take any risks. That’s important. What we’re going to add now that I’ve finished my perfect deal.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Jill and I have decades and decades of experience doing this. We didn’t create this environment to cause problems for you. We have truly made this as easy as possible. We’ve tried everything. We tried different ways to reach the sellers. We tried using bank financing and all that. The Land Academy is the result of all of those things. We have figured out over 40-plus years, this is the right way to do it, or the easiest way to do it, or the most profitable way to do it.

Funding As A Growth Tool

Another thing I want to hit home, I think, is my last point for deal funding, or getting a land deal funded in 2025. You don’t have to be a pro. It’s perfect for newbies. Let me tell you how this goes. You’re brand new to Land Academy, you’re all excited, you saved up enough money to get going, get some mail, send it out there, you don’t have to buy the deals, which is perfect. We don’t need that. Get the mail out there.

You don’t need money to buy the deals—just get the mail out there. That’s where all your money should go. Share on X

That’s where all your money should go. Understand everything. Spend a good 3 to 6 months learning everything. Get your mail out. Let the deals come back to you. Let somebody else be the bank. This is perfect for people who are new to this. Let someone else be the bank. Why did we talk about it? A) You’re not spending your own money, and B) You have another pair of eyes, and then C) If you need any help through the process, we’re going to help you with this deal. I don’t have to fail because my money is on it.

I’m going to make sure that we do this right and that it goes well. If you need me, call me. I’m here, I can answer any questions and help you with it. You’re a newbie. You’ve been using other people’s money. You’ve done 5, 6, or 7 deals, let’s say. You’re making sure you’re doing it with me, you’re banking $15,000. Now you’re in December, and now you have $100,000 of your own money. Maybe more. Maybe you have $150,000 now in your bank, and then here’s what will happen. Again, speaking from experience.

I can tell when you’re getting excited.

I call you and I say, “You got any more? What’s going on?” You’re like, “Thank you, Jill. I appreciate it. I no longer need your money.” I get it. I understand. You’re like, “Thank you. I can now fund my own deals. I don’t have to split the profit.” I know, and I get it. I’m proud of you and I’m happy for you. Now you go along, let’s say you’re rolling in year two. You’ve come up for air, you’ve got $300,000 to $500,000 of your own money in your bank.

Now you’re like, “I’m rolling into year three, how do I want to make that grow even faster and not work that hard?” Again, this is because it’s happened. We’ve been doing Land Academy now for over ten years, investing ourselves way before that, but Land Academy is ten years and I watch people do this.

You’re in year three and you’re like, “No, I’m going to be the bank for the new guy.” That’s what happens. You can be doing your own deals while you’re quietly over here funding deals for some of your peers in Land Academy. They’re doing all the work. You’re like, “Look, check showed up. Great.” You’re not even thinking about it. It totally took you a few minutes at the very front-end for a member to approve the deal.

Take another few minutes in the middle when you were sending over the bank wire and any LLC or whatever documents they need, because you’re going off the deed. The next thing you know, the money pops in. You’re up and running. I love that. That’s a natural progression. What could happen? I’m being conservative. I’m not going to tell you either. I’m trying to be like, there are people in Land Academy that go, “Man, they go for it with these crazy numbers.” I’m like, “Let’s be calm and realistic. I want you to be in your comfort zone, but a little bit out of your comfort zone.”

That’s the greatest advice ever.

Thank you.

We bought a sailboat. We’re getting out of our comfort zone.

I’m going to say we’re a little bit in our comfort zone, which is true, but I like being on the water. Boat ownership is nothing new to you. This is new to me.

Really?

Yeah, because boat number, whatever boat it was. The last San Diego boat was you. The middle California boat was still you. I looked at it as your boat that I would get to go on and have mimosas with my friends, and go whale watching.

That’s specific.

It was all that was. That’s what I did on that. I don’t even remember that during COVID, we had a lot of pictures of us on the boat, because we could take the boat out. That was allowed to be done then. Anyway, here we are doing this. This is new.

This is the boat. This is a slip in downtown San Diego. A pretty serious warship went by. I say this not to brag, but to encourage you.

That was awesome. Now we’re going into the second segment of our show, which is what you’re working on. We have a win that our team posted for us. It’s a win. Sometimes we do a little topic and talk about something someone is working on. Sometimes we share something great. This comes from a member named Mark, who shared, “Just joined Land Academy. I couldn’t be more ready for this.” I love that. That’s not “I’m more excited, I’m more whatever about it.” “I’m ready.” I am curious, what’s your definition of ready? If you come into Land Academy, you said, “Jill, out of my way, I’m ready.”

I did a bunch of research. I did what I needed to do in my head with my pocketbook and with people who are in my life, my immediate environment, and I’ve spoken with them, and I’m ready for this meeting. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it and moved some stuff around in my life. It’s not a flippant decision. That’s what it means to me.

I like that. I appreciate that. That’s awesome.

This is segment three. It’s not that we talked about what you’re working on. This is what we’re working on. We are making a concentrated effort to shift, because we’re getting a little bit older, to be more intentional with our time. What that means to me, and I love this topic, I love the entire topic of intent.

Instead of letting things happen to you, you’re making them happen, or you’re intentionally saying, “I’m going to work from do something from 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 in the morning, then from 10:00 until 12:00, or some version of being more intentional with your time.” Honestly, this is truly one of the things that I’ve been wanting to do is buy a boat like this. Jill and I sat down and took a look at all the aspects of deciding this, and decided that it was time for us to be more intentional about everything instead of letting our schedule take over our lives.

We said, “We’re going to make this more specific. I want to encourage you. I remember the last time I did this, which was when I started buying and selling land in the mid-1990s, and I had a lot of stuff going on. I had a regular job almost until the year 2000 and then had two entire businesses on the side. You have no choice at that point but to be intentional. I asked Jill this recently. This is somewhat an unrelated topic, but it’ll come back to it, “Why are you so successful? How did this happen to us?” She said, “It’s because we are consistent.”

We did it. We put our heads down.

We’re consistent.

That’s true.

What she said was without thinking about it, which is another way of saying we’re intentional. I cannot encourage this enough. You have to be organized and be intentional with your time.

Here’s the jail word. I’ve got to show you that. That was a beautiful speech, and it sounds like it, which is good, that is for Jack, it’s true. You’re good at chunking out time. My way of doing this is clearing the calendar. My way of being intentional with my time is like, I want all the time. Does that make sense? I like it when I have a day and there’s nothing on there.

There’s nothing intentional about that.

No, I intentionally put nothing on my calendar. That’s my point. Tomorrow is Friday. I can look at Friday and go, “That’s awesome. What do I want to do tomorrow?” We do look at things differently. I agree with you. I got to say, I think what’s happening with us, too, I think we’re scaling back. I love what you’re saying, being intentional about what we’re doing, and it’s also, we’re also intentionally saying no to a lot of things. Whatever we say yes to, we’re committed. We still do that.

This is episode 2255. That didn’t happen because we did a podcast whenever Jill feels like it.

Which was my first choice.

“Do you feel like recording, Jill?” “No, not really.”

I don’t have anything to talk about.

My answer would be, “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. We don’t have to record.” That’s not what happened. It’s in the calendar.

I’m going to stop right here and get to a reader question before we go down that dark rabbit hole that I cannot get out of. This question came to us from Jose. It came from one of our Land Academy Facebook groups. Jose wrote, “I’m working with a list of parcel numbers, and they are tax delinquent. Does anyone know the best way to get information about the owner for direct mail? My first question is. I wonder where he got the list.”

Back Tax Properties

I cut my teeth on back tax property long before Land Academy and long before I sent out mailers. I can tell you it’s an incredibly difficult way to go. Here’s why. Not picking on you, Jose, but here’s the deal. You can go get a list of back tax deed parcels from a lot of counties in the county, where there will be a huge list of accessible parcel numbers, and you have to go through them one by one. See if you want to buy it anyway. Imagine that you go through 200 of those, and you decide you want to buy three of those.

Guess what? Everybody else is doing the thing. It took you, I don’t know, a day and a half to review all those properties. When you could have been spending a day and a half doing a 10,000-unit mailer reaching 10,000 people, and having the hundreds of people or so who are interested in selling their properties contact you. You let the mail do the work, all the leverage of work for you. I don’t think that analyzing back tax properties, all those properties have back taxes on for a reason.

They’ll be included in the mailer anyway. I used to have a saying, I don’t discriminate at all, whether or not you pay your taxes. I’m going to hit everybody when I say me. It’s Jack sending the mail out, but I’ve always loved that. I would find that on the very first phone call. Do you know where you are with the taxes? I go look it up anyway, but I always ask.

I cannot tell you how many wonderful properties we’ve bought over the years, over the decades, from so many people who are not behind on their taxes. People automatically assume that, “Bingo, this is the one.” Maybe not. Many wonderful people are paying their taxes. They still don’t want the property. There’s still something going on. They got to sell. They didn’t know they didn’t have to pay their taxes.

Buying back tax property was profitable. I’d still be doing it. It’s not. Once in a while, you’re going to get lucky and make a couple $1,000, maybe 10. The amount of time and energy that you’ll put into it, lined up against the amount of time and energy you put into it, the Land Academy way, you’re going to make 10 to 20 to 30 times the money. You’re going to burn yourself out looking up APNs and analyzing property.

This is still a big topic because this is the way some people run their whole business. There are people in the land investment space that this is it. There is zero down on the back tax property. For me, I feel bad because they’re missing so much good stuff out there, but on the other hand, I’m like, “They’re not mailing the people I’m mailing.”

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, brokers would call you. You would find deals. How you were sourcing deals was not the right way. We go out and get the deals and create a real estate deal. You as a Land Academy member. We don’t wait for the deal to come to us. Back tax property is not the way to do it. His question was, “Where do you get the information about who owns the property?”

We spent five minutes on why not to do it.

There are a ton of places all over the internet. We own a company called ParcelFact.com. You can look up the APNs there and get about every single thing you need to know to analyze a piece of tax property on ParcelFact.

Just put in state, county, APN, and it’s right there. You don’t have it all, and then you decide. It’s like you said, it’s such a slow way to go. One more point I want to make about this. Too often, these properties are riddled with big problems. I always think of La Jolla Cove, anybody who knows La Jolla Cove and where the sea lions are, where you walk down the hill to the little beachy area there.

There are these two homes that have been there since I was a child, and they were boarded up when I was a child. You can decide how many years ago that was. Anyway, they’re all boarded up, and I’m sure every year some people roll up to them going, “Honey, this is it. This is our investment opportunity. Look where we are.” For some reason, these two houses have slipped through the cracks. There’s some big, somebody died, probate, some mess going on there.

I think maybe they are paying the taxes, and that’s why they can sit there in that condition, and nothing’s happened. No one has built on them or anything like that. I haven’t been by there in the last months, so I haven’t looked at them lately in case something is going on, but that has been that way for so long, I always remember that. I think about these back tax properties often. If things are falling apart, they’re in decay.

I think about a back tax piece of land like a house that’s falling apart, and everybody walked away and left it. There’s usually something else going on. There’s usually some situation that cannot be undone. Sometimes even the taxes can build up so much that this happens you one land. The back taxes can hit this number, this high dollar amount, which doesn’t even make sense now. The only thing that makes sense is to let it go back to the county. Let them take it, reset it, get it out to auction, and start fresh.

There’s a county in Arizona that has 30,000 properties on the back tax list. How long would it take to go through 30,000 properties? It’s not possible. You had an army of VAs in the Philippines, and you still couldn’t get through it. How long would it take you to do a 30,000-unit mail, or to mail everybody and say, “I’ll mail every single person on that back tax list.” Thirty thousand, it would take about five hours. Why wouldn’t you do that?

Call To Action

This has been awesome. I am so glad that you joined us. By the way, you want to spend even more time with us. You can. Every week on Thursday, we host a Land Academy Zoom closed member call, and you are welcome to attend one time as our guest. All you need to do is send a note to support at LandAcademy.com, and you’ll get a ticket via email. It’s a ticket. They call it a ticket. Get a ticket to attend our live member call.

I love it when new people attend this call. I love it when there are new, fresh people who have crazy, weird questions. I get a huge kick out of it. It’s one thing to deliver a message like this on a show like this. It’s another thing to get your questions and responses in real time so that we can engage in the entire process and get you answered. Get a ticket.

It’s a good ticket.

If you like this episode, please drop us a comment. If you share a win or a question, we might feature it on the next episode.

Before we totally wrap this up, I’ve got to ask you a little personal side question. How did all this go?

I think it’s great. I hope we’re delivering the content about this topic. The audience can answer.

Let us know.

Who cares about the background, Jack and Jill? I want to make some dough. I’m going to buy some real estate.

That’s right. The potential for equipment failure was not worth the new setting. That’s right. Run a hotel room. There we go. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to see you next week.

You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued properties.