This is the show.

This week, we are talking about buying and reselling a piece of property from start to finish in as much detail as we can in this fifteen-minute episode-per-day format.

That’s pretty much our whole business model, start to finish.

In this episode, we’re talking specifically about setting your land acquisition criteria and then finding places to send mail. We don’t make guesses here.

I know it all starts with this. This is so important. I’ve heard you say that. Many times, I’ve asked you, “What is it? What do you think’s the number one thing people need to focus on right now?” They need to buy great property in the great areas. If you can’t figure that out, that will sink the ship.

You need to identify places in the country where it makes sense to send mail.

You need to identify places in the country where it makes sense to send mail. Share on X

It changes all the time. It could be for events that you didn’t plan on, like storms and hurricanes. It dawned on me as we’re recording this in early October 2024 that the second hurricane hasn’t hit yet. I know a lot of people who do a lot of deals in Florida.

That’s really going to impact that.

How much are they holding onto that they’re like, “Oh.” There are people that are making payments on them and they’re going to be like, “Maybe that wasn’t the best thing. Why would they pay for something that they’re never going to be able to use at this point?” It puts a damper on the investment world, for sure. Here’s the layout for the five days this week. On Monday, we’re going to talk about setting your actual acquisition criteria, how much money you want to make, and then finding places to send mail. On Tuesday, we’re going to talk about pricing and sending out your mailer.

Land Academy Member Question

On Wednesday, we can call it Magical Wednesday. That’s where Jill steps in. She creates a land deal where there is none. She does that by answering the phone and talking to sellers. On Thursday, we’re going to talk about buying the property. On Friday, we’re going to talk about reselling it. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics at your request. Let’s take a question.

Lori wrote, “My husband and I did four land deals this year. I believe that if we really apply ourselves next year, one of us can quit our jobs. What should we be doing at the end of the year to prepare for 2025?”

I love reading between the lines here in these questions. In this case, it’s super positive. Lori, what you did for yourself, maybe consciously or not, is you tested the concept. Maybe this is your 3rd or 4th year, we don’t know, but you have proof of concept. We all know buying and selling land is very successful and you can make a ton of money doing it. In fact, for that matter, there’s tons of money to be made in all types of real estate.

You two have proved the concept to yourselves that you specifically are okay with buying and reselling land and making some money. This is a logical progression, which is why Jill and I have always said for years that it takes a couple of years to really get anything going. Hopefully, 2025 is your 2nd year and you’re ready to ramp up.

What should they be doing?

You go first.

I have two things. Get organized and get some funding partners lined up. That’s what I would do. It’s true. When you find a great deal, people will come out of the woodwork to fund it. Don’t worry about that. It’s nice if you can start some of these relationships and call some people. You can go, “This is how I roll. This is what we’ve done. We’re looking to find ten more of those next year. I don’t have the funds to close them. Would you be interested?” You have all these people on speed dial. It can make it go that much faster.

When you find a great deal, people will come out of the woodwork to fund it. Share on X

What I would do is a couple of things. The very first thing I would do is sit down with either yourself or your husband, depending on how you guys work together. In our case, I would sit down by myself on a spreadsheet and I would look at the four deals that we did. My job in our work relationship is to take a step back and see where we all want it to go. I’m comfortable with that. Jill has the magic. She’s going to talk about it this Wednesday. She has the magic of creating real estate deals where there wasn’t one an hour ago. Both are necessary. My point is one of you, hopefully, is the Jack, and one of you is the Jill in an ideal scenario.

I would take a step back, look at these four deals, and look at what went really well, what you’d like to repeat, and what you would like to avoid in the future. You’re like, “We bought this property,” or, “We got a great price. We didn’t realize our due diligence was a little bit light. There’s some stuff we had to fix and we resold it. It consequently didn’t make as much money or it took too long to sell,” or whatever you want to improve on.

Make sure that you set new rules or acquisition criteria. A great example would be, “We bought a property. 1 of the 4 properties we bought this year didn’t have access.” You either have had a great outcome because it was so cheap you resold it to the neighbor or, in most cases, and we don’t buy accessless property anymore because of this, it took too long to sell. We had to explain a lot to the new buyer and all of that. Assess those four deals, positives and negatives.

The second thing I would do, and this is imperative that everybody should do this, is take a look at where you would like to be in December 2025 financially. In our case, I always use $2.5 million to $3 million wealthier. From December to November, October, and all the way back 52 weeks in the year, decide what you have to do to get to that point in December.

That’s what Jill said. Get organized. Get yourself Microsoft Outlook so you and your husband, your partners, or your employees can all communicate with each other very effectively. In fact, get Microsoft 365. It will keep you organized from a file structure standpoint, application standpoint, and all of that. Everybody can see what the other person’s doing regardless of where they are. You get ultra-organized.

Land Acquisition Criteria

Organization, goals, keeping yourself on track, and execution are life 101 stuff. This is what has to happen to ramp up. We’re in the fourth quarter of ‘24. This is a perfect time to ask this question and do it. For this episode’s topic, we’re talking about setting your land acquisition criteria and then finding places to send mail based on those criteria.

Can I interject? This is the thing I said earlier. I want to hit this home. This is so important. You said to Lori and her husband, “You need to sit down, pick your criteria, and think about where you’re sending mail.” A lot of that is where the numbers make sense. It is not what you think you heard. It is not where you love. It is not because it’s pretty. What’s the math telling you? What’s your math goal for 2025? Be realistic. Let’s say you’re like, “My goal is $1 million.” That’s great and awesome. You’re like, “If I screw it all up, I make $500,000, am I happy with that? Yeah, but I’m going to go for $1 million.”

We’re both still working full-time. We have to think about how much time we have to devote and how many deals. You know how long it takes to do deals because you did four. You know if you put your head down how long it would take to do 40. You’re then like, “I can’t do 40 but I can do 20. How many is that a month? What do they look like?” You back into it. It starts with you and your financial goal. When you go, and Jack’s going to explain this more, and start looking around the country and look at the deals that fit those numbers, that’s going to tell you where you’re going to go and where you’re going to send mail.

Finding Places To Send Mail

It all starts with the idyllic deal. I’m going to buy it for $30,000 and sell it for $90,000. For whatever reason, I’m very comfortable in this zone. There could be all kinds of reasons. Who knows why? After it all goes sideways, I lose $30,000. That almost never happens. People have different motivations for putting together an avatar-type deal. That’s your acquisition criteria. You’re like, “I’ll buy for $30,000 and sell for $90,999. I would like to make $1 million this year. I’m making $60,000 a transaction.”

I was going to say an average of $50,000 because it’s an easy number to do math with. That could be a good average.

My acquisition criteria is to make $50,000 on a land deal without spending a ton of time.

How many a month is that?

I need to complete 2 transactions to make $100,000, or I need to complete 20 transactions, 2 a month, to make $1 million. I always leave a couple extra months of fluff in there because stuff happens. Holiday seasons happen. Kids start school. All kinds of things happen. I consciously look at the year. It is 10 months, not 12. I give myself two extra months to make up for whatever happened that I didn’t foresee. I’ve got my acquisition criteria. I need to make $50,000 and I need to do 20 transactions. There are a lot of deals that fit that criteria where I can make $50,000. I buy for $30,000 and sell for $70,000.

I like $30,000 for $90,000. I would go for that.

We’re throwing a lot of numbers out. Both of us are like $30,000, $90,000, $50,000, or $200,000.

I’m keeping it really simple. If your goal is to buy for $30,000 and sell for $90,000, then the way it all shakes out is you’re averaging $50,000 and then you do 2 a month. That was easy math to do. If you do two a month, great. You’re like, “I’ll make $1.2 million next year.” It didn’t go that well. I didn’t do all of them. Some did less. Some did more. I only made 760,000 that year. I’m good with that.

The first part of this topic is setting your acquisition criteria. We’ve done that. The second part is finding places to send mail that can fulfill the accomplishment of your acquisition criteria. I’m not going to send mail to the city of Los Angeles to accomplish those numbers. There are no deals there. We have formulated a concept called trolling. It’s very similar to fishing. You don’t fish for a blue marlin in a lake in upstate Michigan. It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to find a transaction that fits that acquisition criteria in a major city unless you’re looking for infill lots in certain cities but certainly not in Los Angeles. It’s too cheap to find any usable land in that criteria.

You open Zillow or Realtor.com. Those are pretty easy to use for this. You set that acquisition criteria. You’re like, “Where are a lot of properties that are selling at a pretty good pace in the $100,000 range?” Why $100,000? You want to sell it for $70,000. You buy for $30,000 and sell for $70,000. You always want to be lower. You don’t want to sell for retail like everybody else. Everybody else who’s selling their properties for retail takes them too long to sell it. I want mine to be the cheapest, so I need to buy it even cheaper than what I’m going to sell it for.

I’ll put those criteria into Zillow and start trolling around the country. Maybe Southwestern Nevada fits that criteria. Maybe Oklahoma fits that criteria. Maybe North Dakota fits the criteria well but properties don’t sell as fast. Florida fits that criteria fantastically well, and so does North Carolina, but they’re on fire from a hurricane standpoint, unfortunately. You need to move around this country. While you implement your acquisition criteria, that’s going to result in $1 million a year for you. Test those places that you think could work based on your trolling.

We’ve implemented a concept called the Red Green Yellow Test. We test each ZIP code where we think we can send mail to confirm to send the mail there. That’s the second part. We don’t guess. We don’t splatter, let’s say Texas, with the offers and see what comes back. You can do that and it will work. It’s going to be very inefficient, time-consuming, and expensive.

Why not zero in on what you want? That’s a thing. I haven’t said this in a while. If you’re not a data nut, you’re, you may not be in the right place.

You could also find a guy like me.

Most people appreciate that when I say, “This is how we roll. We use data. We double-check things. We make sure we’re making really smart, strategic decisions backed by data.” They’re like, “I get that. Thank you.”

If you are used to making life decisions based on feelings, this might not be the best place for you.

If you are used to making life decisions based on feelings, land investing might not be the best place for you. Share on X

Do I need to talk it through for hours? Maybe not.

Data, nuts, and feelings. That’s for the next episode.

That’s good.

Join us in the next episode where we discuss the second part of this five-part series. Pricing and sending your land mailer. You’ve got your acquisition down. You’ve tested several places and ZIP codes. If you’re confident that there is already an existing land market for buying and selling in the criteria you’ve established, then you’re ready to send mail. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.