I’m Steven Jack Butala.

I’m Jill DeWit. This is the Land Academy Show. For ten years and counting, Land Academy has been the place to go for the education, tools, and support you need to start or grow your land investment business. We are the most seasoned and experienced land investor group on the internet.

Our topic is How a 5,000 Unit Mailer Can Turn Into a $100,000 Land Deal. We’ve got a new format for you. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve spent some time on it. It’s three segments actually. Segment one, what other Land Academy members are experiencing. Segment two, our topic as I just said, 5,000-unit mailer will turn into a $100,000 deal in the steps that we take. Segment three, Jill and I are going to answer member and audience questions. Let’s get right into Segment one unless you have some funny stuff to share.

I always do.

Market Sentiment & “Thriving on Change”

We have a couple of deals closing. We just got off the Thursday call every week that we have with our Land Academy membership group. All of us seem, for some reason, have properties under contract on the South side that we’ve had listed for quite some time.

It’s like steel inventory is moving. I know what’s changing. You’re the best at sharing that but it’s wonderful to see things. I’m like, “Is this ever going to move?” All of a sudden, there it goes at the price I wanted.

We thrive on change in the real estate business. Hopefully, every business is like that. There’s ups and downs. You can make money on the way up and on the way down. It sounds like we’re coming out of this stagnant phase. It’s good news.

People are getting more comfortable. There’s always a lot of change. We’re all settled in with money. We’ve got a full year of this administration. We know where we are. We can do some deals.

In segment one, let’s hear about what the land community at Land Academy is experiencing, Jill.

I have several wins. I love this part that I’m going to share with some of our members. Ayesha said, “I realized I’ve been stuck in analysis paralysis. I finally sent my first mailer.” I’m so glad. Carla said, “I wrapped up 2025 with ten deals with just over $100,000 in total profit. That’s beyond what I expected when the year started.” Can you imagine? That is life-changing.

She’s on the trajectory like a lot of Land Academy members are. I don’t know if that was her first or second year. A $100,000 in profit probably sounds like a lot to most people. At Land Academy, it’s not. I’ve been through this. How many years have we been doing this in Land Academy?

We’re going on eleven in 2026.

We see her on a Thursday call all the time. She’ll do five times that in 2026, I’m sure.

Henry said, “This quarter I flipped two small rural lots on Facebook Marketplace, making about $15,000 profit on each. The gains were modest compared to others but I’m on the slow and steady path and proud of this progress.” I am too. Isn’t that great?

Fantastic. This makes my day. These wins.

I love this. Kevin said, “I had my fastest flip ever on a small lot. I listed it on Monday and I had it under contract by Wednesday for a $7,000 profit.” Isn’t that great? $7,000 in three days.

That’s fantastic. If that doesn’t get you all jazzed, not you the reader but just you as a person, I don’t know what does.

Jade said, “I got my biggest deal to date under contract. If all goes to plan, it’s going to be a $75,000 profit.” I remember before I got on this business full time with you, I got raised to make $75,000 a year. I was pretty proud of that. This is amazing. Jade’s got it on one deal. I love that.

It’s weird when you start throwing these numbers around. At first it sounds like this is a lot of money and then you get into it. You start doing these deals and now you’re so comfortable talking about these big numbers. It’s crazy. Laura said, “In December, I officially closed my 50th land deal.”

What do you make of all this? I feel pride.

I do too. I get goosebumps.

After many years of doing this, that’s good. What are your wins? I know we have a couple of deals on the South side closing that we’ve owned for a long time.

A couple of wins I have is the team is rolling. I love that they’re busy. Do you know what it is that my team does the best? They hate it when there’s walls in our business. They love it when there’s a lot happening. Some of these things that had sat a little too long. Too long to me and too long to you are two different things. It hasn’t been that long but, in my world, it’s a long time. I’m like, “Finally, those are moving.” That’s good. Those are some wins.

Isn’t it funny that it’s not about money anymore? For more than a decade, we accepted the fact that this is our business. We’re making a bunch of money. It’s our life. It’s more like, “Are the people that work for us happy? Are our members happy?” There’s a whole thing just moving forward. It’s a good place to be.

It’s a nice little retirement plan. It’s not bad.

Here in Segment two, we’re going to talk about how a 5,000-unit mailer can turn into a $100,000 land deal. Jill and I have done it many times. In any real estate transaction, it’s broken down into three segments. First, you’re going to create a pipeline of deal opportunities for yourself and choose the best one or two. Second, you’re going to buy the property. This is Jill’s expertise.

Most women can shop. I can buy things.

It’s a very different talent.

That’s true. I’m good at this.

Setting Financial Parameters Via The “Rule Of Quarters”

Buy the property and then sell the property. First, we’re going to set the deal’s financial parameters. If you’re going to buy a property that makes $100,000. You’re going to look for other properties that can command that type of price in that situation. If you were to buy a property that just needs to make $50,000, it’s a different place.

Might be the difference between Oklahoma and Alaska. I don’t know but we’re looking in Zillow here through this practice called trolling. I created that years ago. That fits these parameters that we’re about to set in the Rule of Quarters. Ultimately, we’ll test our findings. We then complete a mailer and get the mail out, at which point in our real life, Jill takes over.

Let’s take a look at how the Rule of Quarters works. It all starts with the retail value of the property. We are going to go find properties out on Zillow that are regularly trading for between $200,000 and $150,000. Why? It’s because we want to buy them between $50,000 and $100,000. There’s all kinds of profit margins here.

That’s the opportunity to buy for $50,000 and sell for $150,000 to make $100,000 or some number that’s close. This Rule of Quarters sets my trolling range. Let’s go to number two. Now that we’ve set our parameters for $100,000, we’re going to go to Zillow. Start trolling for those types of properties and this is what I do. I set my Zillow parameters to twelve months of days on Zillow for sold. Type is land. My financial property is $150,000 to $200,000 as we have set here.

It’s great. Look at all the red dots and how many there are. This is just land that we’re looking at, too. People don’t believe that there are deals like this out there. This is how many things, just this one screenshot. We’re looking at this many land properties for sale in the price range that we want to put a property for sale in. Think about how much properties in this thing to go find a couple and buying for $50,000. People don’t get it. People go, “There can’t be that many.” Do you want to bet?

There’s a lot of things if you want to become successful in real estate. There’s a lot of things you need to undo in your head. If properties are just trading, we all default to houses for some reason. For most people, you say real estate, they think houses. That’s just not the case. There’s all types of real estate. We know that.

There’s a lot you need to learn to become successful in real estate—and just as much you need to unlearn. Share on X

House valuations are very different from land valuations. People sell real estate for all types of reasons. Let’s take a look around. Let’s do some trolling around. I set the parameters, as I said, $150,000 to $200,000. I always go to Los Angeles because we all know how much property is here. It’s such a ridiculous concentration of real estate.

This is not the place at all to send mail. You’re going to waste your time and money sending mail to Los Angeles if you want to buy properties. Look where they’re trading for $150,000 to $200,000. Let’s start moving around and see where it’s more logical. As I move East into the Las Vegas area, it might even be a little bit too underpriced for this.

All Jack is doing is trying to find areas where this will work to meet his acquisition criteria by backing into it and looking at the sale number. That’s it. We want to put property out there that’s going to sell. That’s moving in these areas.

Colorado Springs looks like it would support sending mail there. If I sent mail right there, nothing’s going to happen. I’m going to waste all kinds of time and money. That’s why we go through this exercise. Here, if I get in a little bit closer, this is a great area. There’s a ton of examples of properties that are for sale. In fact, there’s two in our screenshot, 222 properties for sale and 166 sold. Not really what I want to see. What I want to see is more property sold than active. Nonetheless, it’s a good example. The one in Ohio is better where we just started out.

I like how you’re saying how much you toggle back and forth to see sold versus active.

Six hundred twenty-two sold and 474 for sale. It’s pretty good. It looks like Cincinnati is supporting this. I also can see that the bottom-priced property, as I set the parameters to, is $150,000. That goes up to $200,000. That confirms I did that correctly. The whole point is to send out a mailer priced at a lot less. Send out an offer campaign, to be very specific, priced at around $50,000. You can buy property between $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, or $50,000 and sell it for a lot more than that. Hopefully, $150,000. That’s the goal.

Let’s say I believe that this area of Cincinnati is worth sending. I do, actually. It’s worth exploring. The next step is to test these places because this might be a good area, but I don’t know. I need the data to support it. I’ll run it through the Red-Green-Yellow Test and what I call the equity planner. By the way, you can use DealComplete.com to automate all of this stuff.

The point of this is to let you know what’s possible. I’ve been doing this since the ‘90s. Can you imagine the lack of tools that were available in the ‘90s? It was so different. Times have again changed. We’re fortunate enough to have somebody on our staff who’s a really good developer. He put the Deal Complete together to automate all of this. You should go check it out.

There’s a free version.

The “Red, Green, Yellow” Data Test

In Cincinnati, what I would do is manually pull all the zip codes here. There’s probably 10 or 15 or 20. Line them all up, pull the data from various sources around the internet and spit these zip codes. In this case, it’s at Arizona. For example, these four zip codes against each other. One of them is going to have lower days on market for the most recent month.

The lower days on market tells me that when you list a property, it gets sold faster. That’s what I want. New list are pending and lower is better so that all the new listings against properties that are pending. I want way more pending listings than new listings. I want to play in that zip code where there’s more properties going under contract than is being listed. Ultimately, parcels on market to all meeting this.

How many properties are in that zip code in the universe of that zip code? What percentage are for sale? In this case, 1.3% of the entire zip code is for sale. I would have to mark this red. That’s a lot. This is probably yellow. Again, with Deal Complete, we’ll do all this for you. You don’t have to make these judgment calls like I have in the past. I hope this makes sense.

I’m confirming that in the 3 or 4 or 8 zip codes that are around Cincinnati that I think are a good idea. This one zip code, for sake of argument, supports what I’m trying to do. I know where to send mail to make $100,000. I know what to expect because of the Red-Green-Yellow test as a percentage of can it happen.

I’m going to address the analytical individuals in the room. It’s deliberate that we’re using something different. We’re using an old spreadsheet with old stuff. I know this isn’t the zip code, not the county and the state we talked about it in that example. It’s showing you what it looks like and what goes on behind the scenes.

We don’t guess here. If you’re new to real estate or even if you’ve been in real estate for a long time and it hasn’t hit you. All these decisions are data-driven. That’s the whole point to this. You send out mail using Offers2Owners. You send out an offer campaign and price your mailers out. You can do that. Take a look at Offers2Owners, but really look at Deal Complete.

Deal Complete does that for you, too. I don’t want to steal your thunder. This has saved not only a lot of people. A lot of you that are not even Land Academy members I know are using Deal Complete. I’m loving it. I’m glad. You don’t have to be a Land Academy member, by the way, to use it. I don’t care what space you’re in, what group you’re in. You learn from whoever. It doesn’t matter. This can help you as far as downloading data, scrubbing data, getting a price, and getting in the mail. It’s a CRM. All kinds of things, too. It is a good tool for any investor. Any real estate investor. It doesn’t even have to be land, by the way.

Makes this a lot easier.

It does. You look at a spreadsheet and say, “This hurts my head.”

I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch because it’s not. Deal Complete is cheap for what you got. The main thing to focus on here is the process. If this process is something like, the light bulb’s going off in your head, this could be for you.

I know how to find them. You taught me how I set my goals. My parameters are my goals. I go look for those things that hit my numbers or my goals. You showed me how to test it. I make sure I’m doing the right thing. I’ll pick the best zip codes out of whatever market I zone in on. I get the offers out. I know how to price them because you just told me about that Rule of Quarters.

You sent all this mail out and a lot of people called you back. Go ahead.

That’s where I come in. Jack’s whole career, at least since we got together and before me too, is make the phone ring. That’s the whole thing. I always tell them I don’t care if it’s on the buy side or the sell side. Make my phone ring. That’s what happens. What’s going to happen? These offers are going to go out by the tens of thousands if you’re doing it right. Don’t mess around.

You want to send out 10,000 a month. That sounds like a lot. Save it up until you can do it because that’s where you’re going to win. By the way, if you’re doing numbers like we’re doing and you’re making $100,000 per deal. You’re not going to care about the mail after three deals. We can cross that concern off the list.

The offers go out and here come the calls and the signed purchase agreement. What do you do? Take it all in. Fill it all in your spreadsheet. Check it against all the Land Academy 8As and making sure you’re doing all your due diligence. You pick the best ones. Part of the reason too why we want so much mail to go out is I want you to have twenty that you’re reviewing. Not two.

Managing The “1% Response” & Negative Feedback

Before you get too far into that, let’s look at the phone response. These are general statistics that are universal for what we do in general. Your response will vary significantly based on your experience. If you send out 5,000, you’re going to get a 1% response. If you send out 50,000, you’re going to get a 1% response. About 3% of that 1% will be potential deals.

“What happened? Why did it go from 50 to two?” Sometimes properties, you don’t like them. You run into due diligence. Sometimes, people end up not being alive. The structure of the deal is just one person’s alive, one person’s dead. It’s not dated correctly, all of that. Things happen with these deals all the time.

Maybe the numbers don’t work. Maybe you priced it incorrectly. They want more money than you want to spend. These are universal percentages. The tire kickers are bad property, as I said, is 48 out of these 50. Again, the point here is this. If you send a lot more, you’re going to get potentially buy fifteen transactions, not just one or two. Sorry, Jill. Go ahead.

The “Buying Strategy” & Professional Escrow

Thank you very much. You choose the best ones as you just said, with the response that we’re getting back. You buy it. That’s one of the things too. We don’t mess around with anything other than owning the property. I put down the money. I believe in it that much. My name’s on the deed. To do that, especially in this price range that we’re talking about. We’re talking about high-level making big dollar amounts. These command title insurance.

You’re going to use a traditional escrow. Let them do the work for you, by the way. It’s so much easier. You call and you open escrow. You pass all the information off. You manage it through escrow. It’s not just, “Call me when it’s done.” You’re going to keep an eye on it and manage it through escrow. They’re doing all the heavy lifting for you. Guess what? I’m working on the next one in the next area, maybe.

We own it and I’m moving on to selling it. Again, some properties, I could sell it myself. I often do. Maybe I do a neighbor letter. I sell it myself before I list it with an agent. That’s a great tip. I do that all the time. Most of the time I’ve got established agents. Maybe I found a new area, a new agent. I get to know them. I hand them a deal and see how they do. I let them do the work. They’re taking the pictures. They’re answering the phone calls. We agree on the price and the timeline and they’re doing the work. Why? It’s because I’m working on bringing in more. I’m constantly working on the next ones and they’re doing that work.

That’s what this is. It’s a big circle.

We go through escrow again on sell side. It’s wonderful.

There’s a lot of outsourcing here to the escrow agent and to the real estate agent.

Don’t forget. Remember my numbers. Buy for $50,000 to sell for $150,000 or so. Even if I sell it for $120,000, I baked in my cost for agents on the sell side. When an agent’s selling it for me, I baked in their commission. I also baked in my escrow fees. I’m not sweating it.

Here in Segment three, I answer a few questions from you and our Land Academy community.

Emil asks, “What is a good response rate for a 5,000-unit mailer? At what point do you consider a campaign a success or a failure?” We answered that in the first part. What’s so interesting about this is, the percentages that we’re using. I feel you are very cautious. My numbers are different than a lot of people’s numbers, let’s just say.

I’ve been doing this for many years. If you’re brand new, my numbers are going to be different than your numbers. We have to remember that. The other thing is, we’re talking about the initial volume that comes in. When your 5,000 unit goes out, your phone’s going to start ringing. You are going to start getting emails. Things are going to start coming in right away.

Don’t count what happens in 90 days. Don’t count what happens in six months and from our experience, what happens in six years and sometimes sixteen years. I’m not kidding. Our offers sings to people. They’re professional. It’s respectful. I’ve had so many people that weren’t ready at the time. They saved our offer letter. They put it in a file and called us years later or a decade later.

That’s where I’m always like, “I don’t like this question.” I’m like, “What do you call success?” It’s because you’re to go back and redo your numbers. You were starting out. You only sent out three units or 3,000 or 5,000-unit mailer because you were brand new. You ended up buying twelve properties by the time it was all done. That’s amazing numbers.

You’re starting on an investment and staggering no matter how you look at it. A successful mailer is when you buy one property. If you send out 30,000 offers and it costs you $15,000 or $18,000 or some crazy number like that. You buy a property and make $100,000 like we talked about. Is that successful or not? It’s crazy successful.

A mailer is successful if you buy just one property. Even if you spend $15,000–$18,000 sending 30,000 offers, turning that into a $100,000 profit is wildly successful. Share on X

The return on investment is staggering. Everybody wants to know the answer to this. I’ll tell you what. It’s very different if you send mail out. You just saw the Red-Green-Yellow test. If you pick the wrong zip codes in the right area, you’re going to have a problem trying to achieve what you want to achieve. You have to listen to the data. The data will tell you what to do. That’s the real answer to that.

That’s beautiful.

Question number two from our Land Academy group.

Evaluating Market Diversification

Anthony wrote, “Jack, is Levy County, Florida a good place to send offers? Thank you very much.”

Let’s look. I’ve got this set to land. I want to look at completed sales for the last twelve months. Everything else is untouched. Six hundred three active properties in the entire county and 651 sold in the last twelve months. Those are pretty good numbers. That supports the county so far.Let’s look at the variances and prices.

On the cheap side, we’ve got infill lots here on the West side of the county, which is strange because it’s closer to the ocean. They’re for $3,000, $4,000 and $5,000 that are sold. It’s the same thing. Let’s see with the active. Numbers are a little bit higher. Active properties are nine and 10th. It looks like the same type of property.

On the flip side, I noticed when you look at the higher range. These are in the millions. These properties in there are $7 million to $8 million. Granted they’re large but that’s a huge variance. This is why it’s important to realize that there’s more than one zip code in a county. The East part of the county commands a higher price. The Western part of the county commands a lesser price.

When you price your mailer, you need to price it based on the fact that there’s cheaper. You don’t want $80,000 offers to properties that are set buy and sell for $10,000 and vice versa. You don’t want to send a $5,000 offer to it. I can tell you now. This portion of the county won’t support a Red-Green-Yellow test.

A real expensive property like this takes a long time to sell. Yes, this is a great place. This has all the markings for me of a great place to send mail. We’ve never sent mail here. Since the county is so diverse, you have to isolate where the expensive properties are. The inexpensive ones are, and proceed that way. Question number three, Jill.

Converting “Hate Mail” Into Market Intelligence

Jessica wrote, “How do you handle the hate mail or angry phone calls that inevitably come when you send out 5,000 blind offers at once?” Do you know what I do first? You’re going to love this. This might not be the response that you’re expecting. When the mail goes out, a week or two, whatever it is goes by, and the calls start coming back. The first one I pick up and they are livid. Do you know what that tells me? We did it right. That’s my first thing.

I don’t want everybody to call me and love me. I don’t want to go like, “I can’t sign fast enough. What are we going to do?” Can you imagine? If all the calls come back and everybody loves you. This is an example that we were just showing in Levy County. What if I price the whole county together? We have the million-dollar properties over here. We have the $10,000 properties over here and we price them the same. That would be a disaster.

I’d have the million-dollar people pissed at me. I’d have the other people calling me that love me. You have to dig in and price it accordingly. My point is I much prefer when they call back. They’re like, “What were you drinking when you sent me this offer?” My response is, “Tell me, what did I miss?” I start a conversation. That’s what I do.

You’re going to get angry people. You’re going to get all kinds of things. It’s the same thing. How many times are we bombarded with the same flyers on our door or postcards in the mail? I’m like, “For the last time, I don’t need a new roof. I just got a new roof. Did you guys not look? You keep sending me the same note.”

I could call him and get mad at him but I don’t. I throw it away. That’s the main thing I want you to take away from. The people who aren’t interested like me are like, “I’m not going to sell my house. I don’t want to sell my house.” Do I get caught? For sure. Do you? Sure. We throw them all away. Think like that. I always believe that. That people who picks up the phone and calls you are calling for a reason. They may not like that price. That’s your job to uncover why. They may have a valid why.

They may say this when they call in, “What were you thinking?” “I don’t know. What am I missing?” Let them start talking. “Amazon moved in and we’re getting a new grocery store and three new schools.” I did not know that. How would I know that? The data won’t uncover that future stuff that maybe they know because they’re into their community as they should be. Maybe the property is worth a little bit more.

As I said, I expect it. I am excited when it happens. I set out to make them my friend, by the way. I always tell them, “I’m not trying to offend you. That’s not what I’m doing. What did I miss? How can we get on the same page? Do you want to sell? What number makes sense to you?” That’s what you do and how you turn around. That’s how you create a deal that wasn’t there before.

I’m going to read between the lines in her question. She says, “How do you handle the hate mail or the angry phone calls inevitably when you send out a 5,000-unit blind offers all at once?” You only get a 1% response. You’re not dealing with 5,000 people. You’re dealing with less than about 50. Fifty people are going to call you. That’s a very manageable number over, let’s say, the course of two weeks. It runs its course, maybe three weeks.

There might be more people.

She’s thinking this is a large mailer. It’s not. It’s very small. We’ll allow you to spend the time that is needed to pick the people out that you can deal with and those who want to sell the property.

Jessica, take them one at a time. This is my number one job. Seriously, get on the phone and calm them down. I’m good at that. You can. You will get good at that. Be ready for it. Roll right off. Who flipping cares? If they don’t want to sell and they give you a make-me number. You wish them well. I want to let you know as we wrap up. Don’t forget DealComplete.com is there and available for you. It’s brand-new. We just released it.

There’s free training that shows you exactly how to use it and what’s inside. If you want to jump in and go play around with it and get the free version. Do it. Watch the training video because it’s great. It shows you how to automate your entire land business from pricing to mailing to managing your database, to opening escrow. There’s even a place in there to get deal funding, by the way. All kinds of amazing tools are in there. Go to DealComplete.com/training and watch that. It’s amazing.

If you liked the episode, please drop a comment. If you share a win or a question, we might feature it on the next episode or thereafter. Join us in the next episode where we discuss why we stopped rehabbing houses. The real reasons are boring. Is this boring to you? Boring land investments are making us millions.

Thank you for joining us.

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