This is the Land Academy Show From the Road. Sorry, I had to just throw that in there.

This is episode number 1,957, and we are talking about the land component of affordable housing. It’s an in-depth discussion that we had in the most recent Career Path Alumni call. Then Jill’s going to talk about the role of marketing in what we call modern land flipping.

The Role Of Marketing In Modern Land Flipping

What I do now is not what I was doing five years ago. This is going to be cool. I want to say too for a few minutes, we’re coming to you from the road. We happen to be in Colorado, and if you could just imagine, as I look at the camera and shift my eyes about 4 inches to the left over the monitors that I’m looking at, it is the most dreamy, beautiful, tree-lined, and blue sky view. It’s what? 70 degrees. We were on our bikes all day yesterday. We had to race home to not get in the rain, and it was fun.

We’re in Durango, by the time this airs, we will not be. And we’ll be out of Ouray also. We’re going up the million-dollar highway in our new RV over the next week.

Exactly, we’re lovin’ it.

I just installed this studio. We’ll see if it works, but I’m pretty happy with myself. I’m generally not happy with myself, and I’m pretty happy with myself right now.

Why? I’m the opposite. I roll around like I am generally happy with myself. If nobody else is, I don’t care. I’m happy with myself. I could be a disaster going down the street, but I might feel good about myself.

You’re strange. Unwarranted positivity offsets my eternal negativity, so we’re always at zero.

Do you know what’s nice? A lot of negative people say, “No, I’m not negative. I’m a realist.” You don’t say that. It’s funny, exactly. I just want to add that this is us on the road. We’re going to be on the road for months. Now, this is our first blog on this trip. This is number one of how many weeks. We should put that in there and keep track of it. It’s episode 1957, but it’s episode one of this particular outing.

Our outing might be 8 weeks, it might be 12 weeks, or it might be 20 weeks, depending on how it goes. You never know how this is going to end, but I just want to add, that the whole point I’m trying to make is, that I’m buying and selling land all over the country. I’m not standing there. I’m not going there. I’m not seeing it. I’m not doing anything. Why do I have to stay in any one state or any one country?

I love this thought, this methodology.

I want to hit this home to all of you. If you’re tired of going to the office, I understand, and you want to be your own boss and have your own life. We got that licked. This is a good gig.

Flexibility Of Land Investing

Yes, we do. It wasn’t much that we couldn’t do it before. It was just that we had children at home, and there were just a lot of things. It’s a good time to bring up Land Academy Ladies. You just had your Land Academy ladies’ discussion, and I think you guys talked a little bit about, “Life gets in the way. Don’t let it.”

Yes, don’t let it. If you’re saying, “I can’t leave.” Really? Think about it. It’s summer, kids are out of school. Why can’t you? We can. You can.

Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member discord forum. We review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and we take a deep dive into two land-related topics by popular request. I just mentioned those. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free in read-only format.

By the way, if you would like us to answer your question or you would like some help getting involved with our community, just text us at (480) 530-7383. We read all the texts, and your question just might be answered here on our next episode, like these two that we’re doing, by the way. These were questions that were texted in.

Stephen wrote, “I have a question about the possible upcoming recession. I heard you guys saying in the last recession you were affected when land transactions slowed down. I was wondering what advice you have for full-time investors if we’re experiencing something similar over the next 6 to 12 months.”

First of all, these two recessions are crazy different when it comes to real estate. The last one was called the Great Recession for a reason. It did nothing short of bringing Jill and me to our knees. It was a terrible time in my professional life and Jill’s too. We got ourselves out of it because we adjusted with the times, but by no means were we in a comfortable place.

This recession is largely Inflationary, the last one was Mortgage and banking-driven. It caused a lot of foreclosures and subprime mortgages, and it was real estate-based worldwide, starting in New York. This one, it’s not the case. It’s not real estate-based. It’s not mortgage-based. It was caused largely, I think, by COVID.

What we’re about to experience, if we do at all, in the next 6 to 12 months is higher interest rates, which means combating inflation. Where are you going to see it in this recession? At the grocery store and if you finance something like a car. You have real control over both of those things. You have a lot less control over housing and accidentally signing a bad mortgage, which is we didn’t sign a bad mortgage, but nobody was buying real estate.

We had all this real estate, so Jill and I had to come up with a very creative idea to take the existing inventory they had, which by the way, we paid way under value for, and liquidated it as we needed it to buy new products. That’s what happened. We adjusted, and then we went out and bought it because it was much lower priced. We got some amazing inventory.

As a full-time investor, the number one thing I would say is, “Buy for cash so then you’re not affected.” Who cares what the interest rates are? You paid cash for it, and there’s a lot of people out there who are going to need the dough. You’re going to get some better deals. That’s what we’re finding. I want to be cash-heavy right now so I can buy these great deals as they come along.

Often too, this is an interesting conversation. I just had a deal fall through this week, actually yesterday, because it was a $70,000 property, so it’s not a lot of money in the scheme of things, let’s just say with the deals I’m doing, but these people couldn’t qualify. They could not qualify for the loan. It had nothing to do with the property because it was worth 90 or 100.

They just couldn’t, so we just put it back. But here’s the thing. We had a backup offer, which was better anyway, for $75,000 cash. Here we come. Now we’re okay. It’s working out better in the end. You’re going to be buying for cash and selling for cash. The right people out there are just looking for the deals. Maybe you don’t get three times your money, maybe two and a half times your money. I think you’re going to be just fine.

In regards to the land business, your sales might slow down but the way to look at it is you’re going to be buying property cheaper. Nothing has changed for us since this whole thing started. In fact, COVID kicked our business up from an acquisition and a sales standpoint. What will be affected? Make no mistake, it’s commercial real estate. If you own a bunch of highly leveraged office buildings, you’re probably not reading this because you’re crying somewhere. This is about land, it’s not office building Academy. There’s a reason for that. This is not class C strip mall Academy.

Could you imagine? That’s funny. I hate to say it, but with the office building academy, our first thing would be a suicide hotline. I hate to say this.

My God, that’s not funny.

I know it’s not funny. First of all, don’t do anything crazy. Next. Sorry.

Jill is right. We buy property for 20% of probably what it’s worth on average, maybe less for cash. It’s hard to get hurt in any situation if that’s what you’re doing.

Even 30. I’m good with 30.

Just in general, 20% to 30%. Today’s first topic is called the Land Component of Affordable Housing. Earlier this week, every month we have what we call our Career Path Alumni Call. It happens on every first Tuesday of the month. Everybody who’s ever been through the Career Path program that Jill and I handle, which is like the advanced one-on-one sessions that we have.

It’s an eight-week program that we do twice a year. Everybody that’s ever graduated from that program is on that call. We had a very lengthy and intelligent discussion about affordable housing. Affordable housing is defined as in any given market, there’s an average amount of money that’s made. In any given market, there’s an average cost to buying houses or the cost to live, depending on how you define it. It could be the rental cost for an apartment, could be the payment for a single-family residence. It all gets put together and one is generally higher than the other.

The cost of housing is either higher than the average wage when you look at the payment every month. If the index is at 100, then the world is perfect. The average wage earner household can afford the average price. That’s not happening right now. What’s happening is the wages are lower, and the cost of housing is going up as that percentage, according to the index. I don’t care how you feel about this politically or don’t feel about it. That’s just the math.

Land Component Of Affordable Housing

We all know that. We can all take a step back and look at that. If what I earn right now, I couldn’t afford to live at fill in the blank. We all understand. That’s another way to say that.

Somebody in our group, I won’t name their name, although I have nothing but positive things to say. He said, “Why can’t we as a society figure out how to manufacture houses the same way we manufacture cars? Stamp in, stamp out, put it on assembly lines, make it cheaper and cheaper.” I couldn’t agree more. Why doesn’t that happen? It is because of the variable of land.

Land costs generally the more attractive places that everybody wants to live. The land’s more expensive, and it’s more scarce. Now you’re messing with raw supply and demand, you have a huge demand for very expensive land. Even if you put a very inexpensive product, slap it right down on there. It’s not apples and oranges. If you put that same actual, let’s call it an F-150, you put that F-150 right on top of a rural piece of property.

Affordable housing is the result of raw supply and demand. Share on X

Then to add on top of that, where are you going to get water? If you’re living in California, water’s a real issue. You’ve got municipalities telling you what type of product and project. “Only stick-built homes here.” “Maybe we’ll let you install some manufactured housing, but we have to approve it.” “We’ve got to connect the sewer.” That might cost $8,000 in California and $13 in Detroit.

Don’t forget permits.

There’s a huge variable when it comes to land itself and affordable housing. One of the remedies for that is ADUs, Accessory Dwelling Units, where you slap it in the backyard. You already own a house that’s on a lot. You drop one of these things down and connect it to the existing utilities and you remove a tremendous number of variables. That’s a very viable option to move toward that F-150 model off the assembly line and through politics. Some communities love the idea of putting a couple of ADUs in the backyard. Los Angeles is one of them, for what reason? I’m not sure because Los Angeles is extremely crowded.

They do, but they don’t.

There’s a lot of issues. It’s not a truck where you drop it down in Missouri and you drop it down in Northern, California, and it’s just about the same.

I’m frustrated, places like California, let’s just say it. They have opposing rules. They’ll change the zoning for, “We want everybody to have up to four units on their property or even just two. Whatever it is. Those are automatically across the board pick chunks of areas and change the zoning so that they can allow this. Yet, the permitting things go against it, but then the parking allowances go against it. There are all these opposing things. It’s so hard to untangle.

That’s exactly right. What she’s saying is there’s a tremendous number of variables in LA city versus, let’s say, on most of the beach, which is in LA County. Now you’ve got a different set of rules all over the place, and they’re adjacent to each other.

Are we pro or against this? I guess I’m not sure where we’re going.

I’m neither. I know what I am personally. I’m glad that you brought that up.

I was like, “Where are we going with this? I feel like I don’t need to undermine our positivity.”

That’s all the math, that’s all the variables, and that’s it. What Jill’s getting at is, in our day and certainly every single generation before us, if you can’t afford it, then go somewhere else.

Move where you can.

You don’t look at statistics and say, “I live in an unaffordable area.” You do it because you can’t afford it.

You need to get another job or do something else.

We did an episode probably a year ago, maybe more. Affordable housing is a huge topic right now. I did a show called Affordable Escalades since we’re comparing cars. If you can’t afford an Escalade, you don’t whine about it. You just buy a cheaper car or you buy a used one. You have the same options with housing if you can’t afford where you want to live, which is my entire life, excluding right now.

I can afford where I want to live. I live somewhere else. What Jill’s getting at is there’s a massive whining component to this instead of just actually doing something about it. I won’t get a better job if you want to live there.

Hold on a moment. I’m not saying there’s whining but there’s just like a posing. Here’s how I was thinking of this. How I see affordable housing in our world is, that there are a lot of places you can go and a lot of things that you can do that are very affordable. The tiny house thing is still not done. I still think there’s a buzz for tiny houses. It’s quieted down though, have you noticed? It’s not like everybody’s all excited like they were.

Not that fun to live in a hundred square feet.

When it first came out, every single person said, “I want a tiny house.” “I’m going to do this.” “It’s cute.” “Isn’t this great?” “Look at my boyfriend and I, our kid, and our two dogs or whatever it is.” I’m like, “Really? You’re all living in that thing?” We only need a four-by-eight or something. That has worn off but legislature doesn’t necessarily make it easy.

Which makes it harder.

They do but the beautiful thing is there are places that are. This is my thing. If you’re trying to do this in San Francisco, it may be a little difficult. However, maybe you’re somewhere in Texas. There are a lot of places in this country that are beautiful, that are way more tax-friendly, and have a lot fewer regulations where you can afford to have a nice life. I think what’s bringing this up too, is what we’re doing right now.

We leave Arizona, we’re going to Colorado. We’re in Colorado. We’re all over Colorado. There are even parts of where we are right now where I ask, “Why is this bad?” Come on, I’m not in Denver. I don’t want to be in Denver, by the way. You can drive not too far, have a nice life, and it’s a lot less expensive and beautiful. We’re driving around the country for the next several months and most of the time we keep saying, “What’s wrong with this?”

We’re saying that right now in Durango.

This is so sweet. There are so many times Steven says, “Look at that guy driving his tractor around. What a sweet life that guy has.” His little downtown over here looks like there are three bars. They have a grocery store, and I’m sure he’s growing his own vegetables.

Talk about healthy outdoor living.

What’s wrong with this life? I think sometimes we all get just a little too, I don’t know what it is. It used to be Keeping Up With The Joneses or something stupid. That’s what the saying was when we were raised. It is like you’re trying to one-up the next guy and you’re trying to have the cooler car in the driveway or the bigger house or the fancier watch. Yes, you need a Rolex or whatever it is.

I don’t think that’s that. That’s not this. I don’t know what you mean. It used to be that.

Just take a step back, see what you can afford, and make some changes.

Whining Component To Affordable Housing

What she’s saying is that the phrase affordable housing has never been brought up since, and it began around COVID. Around that time. I’m not saying it’s a result of that but affordable housing is a result of raw supply and demand. There’s less demand in a rural community so it’s cheaper. There’s more demand in an urban community so it’s more expensive.

You have complete control over how much money you make and I would argue, 100% control over where you live. I’ve asked several people throughout my entire professional life, “Why do you live here?” I’m from Detroit. I grew up asking that question. Even to my parents and to everybody, “Why do you live here?” They’ll say things, “This is where my family is.” You have control over that.

One person’s answer was, “It is where I get my dry cleaning done?” The problem is, there seems to be this sentiment that someone is pushing the buttons in a control tower somewhere about how expensive the real estate is over here versus over there. There’s no government manipulation on housing. If there was, it would be called The Projects. Those were all removed during the 70s because it was not a good environment for anyone living there or not living there. You have control.

For me, I’ll end on this for this topic, but as a land investor, knowing about this is a personal thing for all of us. Where we can afford to live, but then also we need to think ahead about who our buyers are and what they’re doing. Even if you’re like, “I can do whatever I want, Jill, we’re doing great.” I get it, and I love that, but you need to know and think about this because this is where you’re going to be buying and selling land for a lot of people and maybe try to be ahead of it. Just watch where they’re going and watch where people are moving to, what they’re trying to buy, and cue up that land.

Jill, that’s the greatest way to end this topic. We, as land investors, have total control over this. The statistics are everywhere. You can see where it’s affordable and where it’s not affordable, or you can see where people are moving. Buy land there. Let’s take a look at one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

Land investors have the power to shape affordable housing. Know the market, see the trends, and make informed decisions. Share on X

We’re in Polk County, Wisconsin. No HOA. Now we have two properties, one’s 5, one’s 3.3. Hopefully, they’re together. $48,000 for both. Thinks we can sell them for $55,000 and $40,000. It is like buying one for $24,000 and selling for $55,000 and $40,000.

Now I’m in. What?

You’re like a kid right now, “No. I don’t like it. I don’t like that.” The green one came up.

The one that’ll sell. That’s the one I want.

Baker has access there. I wanted to see where the other one was.

It’s got a road all in here to this guy.

That’s the one. That’s one, the 3.3 has legal access along the West line. Where’s the 3.31?

We’re looking for 600. This is 800.

You have to travel along there to get to the back one. It’s more like a trail. Wooded, power nearby, area developing, commuting distance to Eastern Mayapa, St. Paul.

This is better than the Upper Peninsula.

The only thing I do not love is the numbers. I think if I’m buying for $24,000 a piece and selling one for $55,000, one for $40,000, I don’t like those numbers. There’s too much room for error. I would buy them both maybe for $20,000 combined because then I can’t move up. Tell me what you think.

I think that there’s a whole full-blown relatively newer subdivision here. We’re going to check the numbers on these houses where it’s sold out.

This is in that sub.

Yes. It’s adjacent to the property.

I need to see, bought in 1,958, and they paid 45,000 for it less than ten years ago. That concerns me, even though it’s now they say worth that. That’s the best-case scenario.

Both of these properties. I’m going to cut to the chase here. I’m going to say what Jill’s thinking. You’re paying retail. You need to pay $20,000 for both, and then everybody sleeps at night. That’s my final answer. That’s what I think too, and I know that.

Click on that. Let’s see what that will be. Please open up the details. See if there’s a price in there. There you go. $70,000 in 2014, probably bought it new or no, it was built in the 60s. That’s right. Said to the West, there’s newer stuff. You look at these over here. Those are nice. I want to see one of those.

$66,000 in 2002.

We do due diligence differently.

Yes, we do. We do a lot of stuff differently.

Yes. It’s sold in 2019 for something great, and I didn’t get to see it. There it is for 125, that’s a trailer.

That’s adjacent on the other side. 2.81 acres.

Sticking to my $20,000 for both.

Yes. If you didn’t catch it last week, Jill announced the new dates for our Career Path fall. You can either announce them now or we can ask you to go back and take a look. Do you want to announce it now?

How about this? It may or may not be open to the public at the moment. I always give the love to our members first, but go check out the site. Go to LandAcademy.com. On the LandAcademy.com website, there’s a drop-down that has Career Path dates, it has times, and tells you what it is. It’s our eight-week intense highest level of coaching, still done by Jack and me. We’re doing two more sessions this year.

They’re going to go concurrently in the fall, September, October, and November 2024. It’s amazing. The results that are coming back from our alumni right now, we don’t have a class going at the moment, our alumni are staggering. We have repeat alumni people that come back and do it even more than twice. They come back and do Career Path again because they get so much out of it. It’s launched new products like Land Academy Pro and other things that you’ll hear more about.

Do you have dates?

I jabbed off the top of my head. End of September 2024.

Let’s take another question posted by one of our members on the Land Academy Discord online community. Again, if you want a sneak peek at it, go to LandAcademy.com. It’s free.

Robert wrote or texted in, “Hi, I just joined your group and my first question is, how do I find a good title company to work with? Do I find one near where I’m buying property or is there a good title company that works nationwide on land deals?” Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?

Go ahead.

Three Ways To Handle Title Companies

I’ve been down this path, trying to do this path about doing just one company, like First American Title. “Let’s just get in bed together.” Seriously, you know what I’m saying? Get in bed together, we’re going to use you exclusively. I’m doing all these deals, my community’s doing all those deals. That did not work. We can get some great rates. I might circle back around, I’ll tell you honestly, it’s been five years since I was working on this, but they just didn’t understand it.

I tried this and they didn’t get it. “What do you mean you’re doing all these deals and you have all these people?” I’m like, “Never mind.” Here’s what you should do. The first thing I would do since you’re in our community, which is awesome, Robert, I would drop a note in Discord first with my peers and say, “Guys, I need a good title company or a title agent in this county, in this state.”

There’s a pretty good chance someone’s going to say, “Call Sally over at your title are us.” I don’t know something like that. That’s my favorite, a word amount, somebody’s used them, they understand us, they know how we roll, cash, and we’re investors, and there’s going to be more coming at you. I would start there.

If no one comes back with one, then you just start picking up the phone, and you’re going to find a title company in the county, in the area where you’re buying the property, not where you are or where the property is because that’s where your seller is, because they’re going to be working with them, getting documents in and out, getting it recorded in that area and all that. That’s what you want to do.

The conversation is easy. You’re going to have a couple of questions right off the bat. My first one is going to be, how much does it cost and how fast can you close? Those are the two most important things I want you to cover. I want you to let them know that you’re an investor. If this goes well, you’re going to have more than one for them that you’re going to be sending their way.

“This is the first one and I want to know how fast are you guys taking. Remember, I’m an investor, super easy to buy for cash. There’s no financing. By the way, there are no agents involved. It’s just myself and the seller.” It’s going to be your easiest deal ever. Hopefully, on the other end, the right title agent is going to say, “I’ve worked with you guys before.” This is great. You may not have to deal with a bank and I don’t have to deal with an agent or a broker. Awesome.

Great, right now I’m running about 14 days. If I presented something on the first, we could close by the 15th or give her something like that. You could start getting technical there and lock them in when you have one but they’re like, totally I could do two weeks on these things. No problem with tile insurance. Don’t think about it. That’s what you do. There’s more to it, but that gets you going.

There’s one of three ways to handle this. 1) If you’re brand new or a DIY-type of person, you may want to find a title agent like Jill said, close to the property. One that will hopefully be recommended by the recorder at the county where it’ll be recorded. 2) Is what we do, which is we’ve gotten big enough and we do a lot of deals.

Jill hired her Transaction Coordinator, her name’s Jan, and she does all of our deals. If we buy a piece of property in Florida, she will seek out. We never talk to anybody in Florida. We only talk to Jan and Jan puts it all together whether we’re doing real estate deals in nineteen states, she handles it all. We only talk to her.

3) Is to join LA Land Academy Pro. Then you get to utilize our employees so you don’t have to go out and do this stuff. If you are on a career path or a career path alumni, at some point. It’s closed right now and we’re full but that’s the best of both worlds because it’s a lot cheaper and easier than hiring your person. The second topic is The Role Of Marketing In Modern Landflipping by Jill.

That’s not by me. I should just get up. It looks like you’re standing up to walk away. You’re going to get up and leave.

My God, I should do that.

That would be hilarious.

Watch the numbers improve on the show.

There he goes. Once again, welcome to my world. No, I was just going to talk about marketing and land flipping. This is what we do. First, let me describe what I used to do, and let me describe what I do now. This is awesome. Here’s what I used to do. Back in the day, it was me. First, it was you, then it was your people. Company changes, then it was me, and now it’s somebody else. I’m going to get to that but I’m going to talk about me.

Five or ten years ago, I learned from Jack what good photos look like. Do I go out and take my photos? No, but I know how to hire somebody. I know how to tell them what to look like. I would give them a laundry list of photos of what I want. This angle, that angle, looking from here, looking from there. I want a blue sky, I want no snow on the ground. I want the town. There was a lot.

My role in marketing was writing my description, writing my title, getting my photos, and getting my drone shots. Even back then drones weren’t even a big thing. It was just photos. Now it’s easy to get one guy to do it all. Then getting it posted. By the way, I had to take all the calls, inbound, all the people asking all the questions.

The more they asked the same question, I had to go back and update the posting. I would have it on our website. I’d have it every darn website I could think of. I would have it on social media. I would have it on flat-rate MLS listings. The point is, that I did it. We had to do it ourselves. Let me fast forward to today. I wrote down a note here.

Yes, we are eating our own words because this came up this week, someone was asking me some point-blank questions, on the Land Academy ladies, but it’s soon to be Land Academy W. That’s it. We are Land Academy W. We officially voted, and that’s it. We love it. It’s Land Academy Women, like ESPNW, by the way, that’s where I stole it.

We are now not doing any of that. I am baking in on all of my deals, somebody else, just all the property to me, for me, I should say. They are brokers and they are agents. I will spend more extra time now. How’s my time spent? Not with a photographer, not with a drone guy, or not writing the description. Now my time is spent while my property is in escrow, getting ready to close.

I am trolling all the brokers in that area. I’m on all the land-selling websites and just a regular realtor, Zillow. I’m finding my favorites with those who have recently sold properties that are just like mine in my area. I like the numbers. I’m looking at how fast they did the transaction. I’m looking at their listings. I’m looking at what they wrote. I’m looking at the photographs and then I’m calling those guys.

I can do this in one afternoon, by the way. It’s not like I’m spending weeks on this. One afternoon, I’m sitting down. If I don’t have one already, Now I need to find a guy to sell this property and I’ve got more to come in this area. Let’s see, who do I want to start with? I’m going to call like three or four brokers and see who answers the phone, see how we communicate, see what the commissions are like, and how we connect.

I’ve already seen their work, I wouldn’t have called them anyway if I didn’t know they couldn’t do it in that area because I’ve done it. I like their work. It’s how we connect and then I want to find out too, “By the way, what do you think you could sell this for, and how fast you think you could sell it?” It’s that kind of thing. I’m letting them do it. “Whoa, Jack and Jill, hold on a moment. I’ve been binge listening to you and in episode number 492, you were still cursing out brokers.” Yes, you’re right.

No, we all still feel the same way about brokers. There’s no change there. There are just a couple of good ones. You have to find them.

There is some of that. There is still going to be stuff that’s not perfect, but you know what? I accept it. I’ll tell you even now, I just sent my transaction coordinator a note. We were messaging back and forth. I said, “What is this stupid form that this person is asking me to sign?” Yes, I know. I hadn’t seen this before. I don’t even understand the verbiage, but she said, “You’re signing because buyer number one couldn’t qualify. Remember you told me, I just talked to you, and buyer number two is moving into the lead position.”

I said, “We have to do a stupid form for this? Okay, fine, whatever.” I wrote her a note, saying, “This is why. I would never survive if this was my job. I’d be putting my middle finger up to the state I’m licensed in saying, “Are you flipping kidding me? I got to do this form because this is ridiculous.” Anyway, I couldn’t do it. My point is though, there are some good ones out there. You were right in episode 492.

It’s not 492 exactly.

Maybe it’s the first 800 episodes. Let’s just say from episode 1 to 898. We were poopooing agents at all costs. Don’t call them and now I say, “No, no. I love them and they’re great.” You know what? I bake them in but I bake in good ones.

10%.

Do you know what? Even less. 6% to 10%. Let’s just say I’ve never paid more than 10%. As little as 3%. Bake it into your costs.

Working With Brokers

He’s the classic example of productive outsourcing. Now, you’re removing almost half of what you do for a living so you can concentrate on one thing, which is buying undervalued land. If you or your transaction coordinator can find and vet good land agents in the area, you’re theoretically going to do twice as many deals because you have that much more time to spend on finding great properties.

Can I give a little disclaimer here though? Land Academy Pro does not get agents for you. That’s one thing you need to do, but again, you can do that in two hours. Once you have that, we’ll get everything going so you’re good.

Let’s take a look at another one of our favorite land acquisitions from our weekly Thursday member webinar.

“In Gwinnett County, Georgia, two acres. We have access, it’s next to some houses and a school. Good. No flood zone. Partially cleared last year to pay for taxes. Purchase price $30,000. Thanks. We can sell it for $70,000 to $80,000 nearest comp is a little bit bigger for $100,000 in 2021. I’m looking for something wrong.

Me too. I don’t see anything wrong with the dirt. If you look at it from an A standpoint access. Adjacent. There’s amazing stuff going on from an adjacent standpoint, access acreage. Let’s see how many acres. Two acres in a town here. That’s good. We’ll check about affordability last adjacent. It passes our tests and attributes. Just look at it and be alive.

I’m not loving it.

The floodplain looks great. It’s not in one. Tech slope.

My only questions are about money and how many properties are for sale.

Access can be created here very easily. It’s just money. There’s no real slope.

Good. No guardrail. No problems like that. I didn’t see a whole lot of property available which makes me concerned there too.

We’ll see here.

Just empty lots in there. Not like 75% empty.

What Jill means is, that there are a ton of properties that are vacant and these are all subdivisions. This is super healthy. Here’s Atlanta, by the way. This is a fantastic deal. If it’s buildable. What’s the price of it?

$30,000.

How could this fail? Small piece of potential in the lot, $30,000, 1 acre $69,000, 2 acres, $65,000, all cut up, which is maybe an example of what you could do with this property.

Are these prices a little high right now too? I would say those are loaded data markets. That concerns me but they probably had just one acre for $60,000 that concerns me. Could have some problems.

Towards the bottom of the lake. Okay. Price cut just like we were talking about.

The ones for $15,000, ones for $30,000. Why is that?

140 days, 118 days. It’s Karl’s Career Path.

Why is one for $15,000 and one for $30,000?

Can you let us know what your concern is and why this of the property deals that you’re doing? What are you on the fence about here? Look at this property here. This is way out there. This is an infolot. Like this house, 345 and you’re paying $30,000 for a property that’s a lot larger. That passes the 10% test. About the same size?

That’s my only concern right now, Karl and Sam. I’m also questioning, I hate to say it. I feel better if it were $20,000. $30,000 is assuming a lot. I could screw it all up and it only sells it for $40,000. That’s my concern.

Versus selling it for $30,000 to $60,000, which is what you’re shooting for. You still can sell it for $40,000 and get out but see what the local agents say.

I’m feeling it. I just want it a little cheaper, especially the way things are going right now. Price cut time. Purchase price cut. That’s my new thing.

I’ll leave it at that. Jill, do you have something inspirational to share?

Yes. From the Land Academy W, I love that now. I’m going to get some swag. We’re going to get a logo and some swag coming. Hang on, everybody. It’s cool. We were talking about, alternating every month what our topics are. We get together at the beginning of every month and connect. It’s our community and we go from a real technical thing to a mindset.

We flip-flopped from technical issues to mindset issues every other month. This month, June 2024, was a mindset issue. We were talking about being productive and not getting hung up on stuff. Things that are getting in your way. One of the things that we talked about and came out of this was, “Are you rewarding yourself along the way?”

For me, I dangle a carrot to myself and give myself little rewards when I follow through with things. I stick to my schedule, I get things done, and I sell properties and things close. I’ll never forget that we have this career path member from either session 3 or 4, I don’t remember which it is, but he’s working hard for his family, this is their gig.

He might have a day job too, I can’t remember, but anyway, when a property closes, here’s what he did for his wife because his wife is picking up some of the slack with the kids and some of the responsibilities around the house. He found out that she has a very good taste in wine. He bought a case of her favorite wine.

Every time a property closes, he brings out a bottle of her favorite wine and that’s the reward. She gets excited. Every time it closes, she sees a bottle of wine coming out and she goes, “Ding ding.” I know this is working. This is our reward. I know this is going well for our family. That’s one way of doing it. For me, I do personal little treats for myself, which is, I’m a massage person and I’m a spa day person. I’m that kind of a reward person.

Whatever it is to you, again, this is the Land Academy W. We talked about getting a house cleaner. What I think too is something like, that’s not only a reward, I never have to clean my house again, but also, it’s saving time and energy for me. I’m focused on this other stuff too. I want to make sure that you’re rewarding yourself along the way. I think it helps keep you motivated.

I think it’s a little bit of a celebration too. Why not? If you’re not celebrating yourself and celebrating your company, celebrating your deals, and celebrating your wins, then why are you here? I know you want to get this big bank balance, but I want you to celebrate little things along the way because I think it’ll keep you going.

Celebrate your wins, big and small. It keeps you motivated and reminds you why you're in the game. Share on X

Men don’t have this.

Hold on, what about the men going out and having some beers, celebrating like that?

That’s going to happen anyway. That’s going to happen on Friday or Saturday.

Even if you have a bad day, you’re going to go out and celebrate like that?

Even more. Not celebrate.

What do you guys do?

If you’re the same age or older, during daytime TV, the six times you watched it in your entire life, you remember that Calgon commercial, “Calgon, take me away.” This is what Jill’s talking about. Now what you see are these commercials for chocolate. Just take a little moment out of your day and treat yourself.

Like a Lindt chocolate or the Dove.

See? She knows even the brands. You don’t see, “Have a Budweiser during the middle of the day.” You don’t see that and you won’t. Men play the long game. At the end of the year, they might say, “Wow, it’s a pretty good year. I did 13 deals, I made about $780,000, I’m going to go buy a new truck.”

That counts too.

I’m going to pay the taxes on the year, I’m going to put half a million bucks into the bank and slam it towards my goal of $9 million to retire. It’s not a daily little pat on the back, “I need a little break.”

I never said mine was.

No. It happens annually, and it happens in a big way. Men are Pennywise and Pound foolish.

Sweetie, you are agreeing with me. You don’t know that.

No, I’m not because I don’t have a little chocolate during the day and I don’t clink my glass of wine.

How about this? I’m trying to say whatever it is to you. I brought up my version of it. You’re sharing your version of it. It’s all the same thing. Now I’ll be realistic.

She asked me a question, I answered it, and she didn’t like the answer.

No, you did. How are you rewarding yourself along the way?

Don't get hung up on setbacks. Reward yourself for your hard work and keep pushing forward. Share on X

Or she twisted it around and made sure it fit in that.

No. Seriously, Babe, I liked your answer and that was good. You informed me that we don’t need those things. I’m sure there are a lot of women who feel that way too. There may be guys who do. Maybe they go golfing. I take Tuesday off, whatever.

They’re going to do that anyway.

I’m sure some women do it your way too. At the end of the year, maybe I’m doing this vacation. Now, my family, we can do this. Maybe we’re going to go do something.

I’m not disagreeing with you here at all. I just think men are different in general. Not all men, not all women.

However, it seems to you, I hope whether it’s a monthly treat, as you close a deal, or at the end of the year, whatever it is that you reward yourself or you’ve got something to motivate you like that. That you work hard for, that you let yourself do it, buy it, and have it. I hope you’re doing that because I think that helps.

Yes.

Sheesh, that was difficult. What do you have to share with us today?

Men are afraid of getting out of a groove and rewarding themselves because it makes them soft. I don’t speak on behalf of all men but most of the guys I know will say, “Let’s see the whole thing out, and then let’s celebrate when we’re good.” Let me give you an example.

Are we still talking about this?

Yes. What do you think a coach says in the middle of a hockey period? If the team scored two goals and the other team scored three goals, he doesn’t say, “Great job on those two goals.”

No, only Ted Lasso says that. Everybody else says, “You’re an idiot.” Everybody in the locker room says, “You losers.” No, but Ted Lasso will ask, “Are you having fun?”

Is that what that show’s about?

A little.

That’s why it’s for girls.

Stop it.

Because you’re going to wait at the end of the hockey game. At the end of the series and at the end of the season to start to celebrate.

Can we move on? Are we still using this term, by the way?

Yes, sure.

Do you have something man-plan-ish to share?

I do. Mine’s called rating The 8 Ingredients Needed To Succeed In Land Flipping In Order Of Importance. This is a direct question in the most recent career path by one of the guys in there, and he’s new at this and he’s in a massive planning stage. He said, “You keep talking about these eight things you have to do and then in the anatomy of a land transaction. Which ones are important?”

This is going to be a whole show. You realize that we’re going to turn this into a show.

Eight Components Of Land Flipping

Here’s one through eight in order of occurrence and then we’ll talk about importance. Finding a place to send mail. I call that trolling, and there’s a real specific way that I do it. We talk about it in the Land Academy in an incredible amount of detail. Once you’ve found a place to send mail, you’ve tested it, and you believe that it will work for buying undervalued property and reselling it for more.

You send a direct mail campaign out, you send a mailer out. We call it a Mailer. If you price it correctly, it’s usually around 15% to 30% of the actual retail value of land that’s been active or sold in that area. That’s 2) you send a mailer out. You price it and send it out. 3) You manage the inbound traffic from that mailer. All the thousands and thousands of offers go out.

Some people call in and say, “Go, pound sand.” Some people say, “Do you know what? I’m thinking about selling that property.” The offer you made, that $30,000 offer, if you make it 35,000 bucks, I’ll think about it. Then finally, 3) is, you read my mind. I signed your offer and sent it back. I want to sell. That’s a moment of truth in our business.

4) I sent the mailer out. I’ve got 6, 7, or 8 deals to look at. They’re all staring at me in front of my desk. I’m not going to buy all of them because there’s going to be some flaws. We apply this to what we call due diligence. We apply the 6 or 7 A’s that Jill and I have developed. You go through your diligence and you decide based on hard facts whether or not you want to buy the property.

5) You buy the properties you want. 6) You manage the sale of it. Now, you bought it. You prep, and then you’re going through the management portion of the sale. Like we’ve talked about earlier, you find the right real estate agent and you get the right escrow. 7) Just sell the property, which usually involves you clicking the back of your ballpoint pen and signing your name a bunch of times. It doesn’t take a lot of time.

8) Finally, repeat over and over again until you have enough money and you don’t have to or don’t want to do it anymore. The person who asked this question in our career path group is very statistically minded. He’s heavily planning for how many mailers yield to the acquisition of those acquisitions and on and on. Endless questions like that, which I understand.

In the budgeting stage, you want to get a handle on it. He asked me to rate them in order of importance, to which I immediately responded. They’re all essential. Every single one. 1) If you don’t find the right place to send mail and it’s not supported by data. It is supported by feelings or throwing darts at a board in your office. That’s not good.

It’s going to fail.

2) Then if you don’t send a mailer, nothing’s going to happen. 3) This is what Jill does, and I can’t express this enough because it changed my life permanently. The person who’s answering your phone and putting these deals together needs to have some type of magic about them, which is what Jill has.

I did pretty well at it for a lot of years, many years, well enough to do it on the back of a yacht. When Jill and I joined forces, my job was on the desk for at least a year watching how she handled it. I never said, “Jill, handle it this way,” or “Maybe you should do this over here.” She just did it. It’s like you were born with it.

I was.

This is critical. You can get away with, like I did, being a dud on the phone, but if you have somebody like Jill, you’re going to smash it out of the park. But if you don’t send the mail out, which is what I do in our relationship, she’s not even going to have the opportunity to shine. 4) You’re staring at those 5, 6, or 10 deals that came in out of the mailer.

If you choose all the wrong ones that don’t have access or whatever one of the A’s is, they’re fatally flawed. You’re going to have a really tough time reselling them for more. 5) If you don’t pull the trigger and buy them. This happens with people, they get cold feet. Not going to happen. 6) If you don’t get the right real estate broker and manage that sale and that broker or agent until they find a buyer, fatal.

Number 7) You just don’t sell it. I’ve had this problem personally. I’m good at acquisitions and not interested in selling anything. That’s not good. Number 8) If you don’t do that second mailer, it was all just for nothing. You just made $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, or maybe $100,000 one time and you didn’t repeat. There are eight components to this and all kidding aside, they’re all imperative. Gives a lot of people out of this business, which is what I love.

In land flipping, every step is essential. From finding the right property to closing the deal, each action counts. Share on X

Me too. Don’t forget, you can reach us for questions and help simply by texting (480) 530-7383. Join us next Wednesday for another interesting episode because you are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.