By Luke Smith For Land Academy
February 26, 2019
As I look at my possible buys list, I see 38 pending accepted deals since last week. Among those, 9 look good enough to buy, 5 are probably good enough but require some more due diligence, 13 are probably money makers but not quite run-to-the-bank deals, and 11 are mainly problems with having deceased owners, messy titles, cliff sides, bad counter offers, no access, or some other weirdness.
If I had not sent any mail out, I would not be evaluating these deals. I’m writing to myself to remind me to send more mail. I’m writing to whoever is on the fence. I’m writing to those of you who sent out one mailer or many and are stuck on your deals. Let’s all send out more mail.
The path to deal flow is sending more mail. Some of the 9 that look good enough to buy will not make it. I’m trying to get them all into title and funded as fast as I can. Some of the sellers will fall along the wayside, some will turn out to be messy title problems, and some will close and I get to market them for as much as I can sell them for. Of these 9 deals, 3 of them look like they may make over $100K each. I’ll believe it when they close.
Of the 5 that require more due diligence, I hope to either learn enough to walk away before getting stuck with bad deals or learn new markets. If they are good looking markets and I can sell them, I will go back for more. It’s easy, just send more mail. I can probably even use the old data. Heck I got 4 of my own offers in the mail this last week doing that.
When it comes to the 13 ok deals, I’ll ask them for options. The conversation should be something like thank you for accepting my offer, I ran out of money (I’m always out of money), but I would still like to market your land and before I pay for it, I would like to find you a buyer. Let’s come to an agreement; I could pay you what I have now, or offer you more if and when I can sell your land in the future. Depending on the deal I may pay for professional pictures or I may use Land Academy pictures. It’s ok if none of them take my deal, but I bet some do so I keep asking for it.
Then there are the 11 messy deals. I won’t even call them back because I’m too focused in on closing the others. Some of them may call in some day and ask what’s up. I can search them out in my spreadsheets and see my notes: “Really big hill, no access, back taxes, back HOA fees, dead owner and an unsettled deed of trust,” and after reading that to them see how fast they try to get off the phone.
All these deals could be beat out by sending more mail. Sending mail is making offers. Sending mail is doing something most people don’t have the nerve to do. They don’t even start. Land Academy teaches how to send out systematic cash offers to buy real estate. They have all the tools to get the data and show you how to get it into the mail. They even mail it for you. It’s easy, you just have to start and the rest will follow naturally.
For the next mailer, I’m mailing cash offers to all the zip codes in California who have the lowest listed inventory compared to the number of properties in that zip code. I’m skipping Encinitas and other freak zip codes mostly concentrated in the Bay Area that have really high median house sales. It’s amazing how correlated low inventory is to average listed days on the market. Low inventory, means low days on the market and low days on the market means my deals sell faster. Time to send more mail.
By Luke Smith, Land Academy Member #4
