Mail Forwarding Service

All week, Jill and I are talking about the eight As and how to make the portion of your due diligence and responsibility in your land company easier and work for you in a really positive way to help you make good acquisition decisions. In this episode specifically, we’re talking about the 2nd and 3rd A, which is Access and Adjacent. In the last episode, we talked about the first A, which was Affordable. Before we do that though, let’s take a question. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into a land-related topic at your request.

Elaine wrote, “How frequently do you use the mail forwarding service? When it comes to closing, is it necessary to forward the original signed purchase agreement from the seller’s mailbox to the title company, or will scanning and storing it in the Cloud suffice? I’m in the process of selecting a mailbox provider, but I’ve noticed that some companies charge more for forwarding mail while offering unlimited scanning whereas others have lower forwarding fees but limit the amount of scanning. If we anticipate needing to forward the original purchase agreement frequently, it might be more practical to opt for the service with the lower forwarding costs. I’m 100% about scanning and no paper.”

It was weird at first when you taught me this. You don’t need to keep these deeds. You feel like you need to have a physical piece of paper, like a pink slip. You know what it is because it’s a car and a pink slip. You do need a physical piece of paper. How weird is this? When it comes to property and land, you don’t need that original piece of paper. Isn’t that the craziest thing? You could have nothing. You could have a photocopy three times ago that the seller found that has coffee stains all over it. They scan it for you to transfer the property, and then you use that information to make a brand new deed with wet signatures and all that to buy the property and get that recorded. That works.

Back to this, you don’t need paper. I love scanning. I love emailing. You could even do a photocopy. I have had sellers take a picture from their cell phone and text it to me. I make that a little attachment and send it to the escrow company and that’s good enough to open escrow. For all the other documents, they’ll get what they need, like a new deed with a wet signature and a notary. All that will come. I would go with whatever the best-priced one is with the scanning service for you.

Elaine, I’m glad you asked this question. I’m reading between the lines here. You want to get it right the first time. That’s it. I caution everyone with this type of back process. We live in a world where mistakes are unforgiving, which is too bad. The business that Jill and I have looks nothing like when I started many years ago. It looks nothing like when Jill and I started together several years ago. Land Academy itself looks nothing like when we started a couple of years ago.

This isn’t the first mailbox situation you’re going to have. It’s probably the 1st of 10 or 15. There are about 6, 7, or 8 things you need to do to start this business. As compared to other businesses, it’s minuscule. One of them is to get a mailbox and a phone number that’s not your cell phone. There are a few other things that you need to put together that are beyond the scope of this. Whatever mailbox scenario that you choose, it’s going to change next year. It might be because Wisconsin ends up being a massive profit center for you so you need one locally there. There are all kinds of things that change.

If you ever talked to an extremely successful startup entrepreneur and you say, “You’re super successful. What mailbox scenario did you use?” They’re going to say, “What are you talking about? I don’t know. I picked the first one. It works for us.” You’re like, “Is it cheaper?” They’re like, “I don’t know how much it costs.” They’re focusing on buying property that’s cheap. I’m not picking on her. It’s a really good question. It’s super helpful. To everybody who’s reading, don’t sweat the small stuff.

I’m sure a lot of people chimed in like, “Use this one. Use that one.” It’s great. That’s perfect.

Access

For this episode’s topic, we’re talking about Access and Adjacent as 2 of the 8 As in your due diligence program.

Let’s talk about Access. There are two types of Access, physical and legal. What’s the difference? Physical is, “Is there a road there? Even as rough as it is, can I get there? Do I need a four-wheel drive? Can my Subaru get there? Can my little Miata get there?” Access can be, can your broker get out there with the brush not so thick that it scrapes the side of their car and they’re not calling and yelling at you?

It’s a true story.

I’m like, Why did you drive there? You should have stopped.”

I don’t need to make up stories and falsities about real estate agents. They do it themselves.

We have enough stories.

I remember that phone call. She called you and said, “I’m not looking at this property. It’s scratching my car.”

We’ve got physical access. Another part of physical access is not, “Is there a road? What is the condition of the road? What do you need to get there?” Also, it is, “Is there a gate?” That’s something to think about. It’s not that it’s legal, but is there a gate there? Is it locked? I’m going to talk about Access for a minute here, the physical. In a perfect world, people can drive out there. I don’t care if it’s dirt or gravel. That’s fine. I would like to be able to take out any normal vehicle even if they go slow. They can go slow, get out there, and be able to stand and see the property without any worries. That is the ideal Access.

An ideal physical access in a property would allow any normal vehicle to go out even if it goes slow. Share on X

Depending on what the property is, a whole nother part of it is physical access for someone that’s going to hunt. A four-wheel drive is appropriate. Another is physical access for someone who’s going to build their luxury home and wants to drive their RV up there and park it in the big RV garage you’re going to build. We need to be looking, hopefully, for some paved access or the possibility of paved access that it can happen. These are all things you need to think about with Access. That’s physical. Legal access is, is there really a road there? Is there an easement? Is it recorded? Is there real, legal, on paper, on a plat map, attached to deed access? That’s another piece.

You skipped from kindergarten to PhD here.

Why?

Can I take a couple of steps back?

Go right ahead.

You’re moving through your list of As. It’s Affordable. You have established that it’s a buy for $30,000 and sell for $80,000. You’re then like, “I’m going to move on to Access. Can I get to it? Can my buyer get to it? I’m staring at ParcelFact and probably Google Earth and there’s a road to it. Do I check the box on Access?” No. It’s slightly more complicated but not that complicated.

90% of the time, the road that’s getting there, if it’s not passing through somebody’s living room and it’s glaringly obvious that property’s got access, check. What you want in a more rural property is subject to some of the things that Jill is bringing up. 90% of the time, if you can see a road there, it’s got access. Physical access is you can drive up to it. Legal access means it is on the plat map. According to the county, there is an easement by way of state or local roads that have been established or through someone else’s property that’s documented. That’s documented easement either in your deed or the deed of the property that you’re driving to. A small amount of deals are that way.

A really good sign is when you’re looking on ParcelFact and you see a situs address, it won’t have a number but it’ll show the street. Let’s say Highway 280 in the city. That’s a good little indication to help you along, like, “I’m feeling better about access here.”

We don’t want to complicate them here. We’re talking the 5% to 8% of the deals that come in where you have to really dig and find out if it does have access. Finally, on Access, there are a huge number of properties that come in that have no access. It’s very clear. You pull it up on ParcelFact or look at it on Google Earth or whatever you’re using and there’s no clear roadway into the property. Most of the time, that means the property does not have legal and/or physical access. For us, and I’m going to keep talking this entire week about acquisition criteria, that’s where we stop. It’s like, “Congratulations. It was affordable, but I can’t get to it.”

There are many people that specialize in this. These properties come back because the seller doesn’t know what to do. Maybe they inherited it. It’s popular and common to get properties back in the mail when you send a bunch of mail out that is accessless. We stop right there because we’re not in the business of getting access to properties that don’t have it. Some people are, and maybe you are. If you are, you’re probably sitting on the back of a yacht reading this because it’s a very viable, profitable way to make money in real estate.

I talked to a guy that’s going to do Career Path. He’s a real estate attorney. This would be another good niche for him. I’m like, “This is great.” He has untangled all these things for other people. Now, he can untangle them for himself. It’s brilliant.”

We could do a whole week on Access. What you need to know for the scope of this episode is, “Does it have access or not? If it’s a no, then I don’t want to buy it. If it’s a yes, I want to buy it.”

Adjacent

There you go. Let’s get to Adjacent because we’re talking about that in this episode too. The thing about Adjacent came along later. I love that it’s almost an attribute. Adjacent could be Attribute too. If you have a five-acre property and you see ranches and your property,

I’m going to take a couple of steps back. Here’s what you need to know about Adjacent. You’re staring at ParcelFact, the property came in, and you’ve established it has access and it’s affordable. They meet your standards. Does it have what we call Adjacent? Are there properties around it? That’s the question. Are there properties that are being used in the way that you believe is the highest and best use for your target property? Is everything in the entire area vacant and unused? That, for us, does not most of the time pass the Adjacent criteria.

I want to see other properties that are being used somehow. There are houses there. There are ranches there. There’s a nuclear power plant that’s next to this property. It’s like, “Do I want that? Does anybody want a property that’s adjacent to a nuclear power plant?” Adjacent is very important. It’s something that I have looked at my entire career with Jill.

We don’t like property where I have to explain the Adjacent use. If it’s a ranch-type property that’s being unused and is surrounded by nineteen other ranches, that’s what it’s going to be used as 99% of the time. That fits our acquisition criteria because we’ve taken the mystery out of how this property’s going to be used and we know with a pretty serious degree of certainty who to market it to, who’s going to buy it, and how fast it’s going to sell because the 3 other properties sold in 3 weeks at X price. It takes the mystery out of it. Adjacent is really important for me.

I agree.

In the next episode, we talk about Acreage, the fourth A. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.