Crafting impactful neighbor letters is a game-changing strategy for land investors. But why aren’t real estate agents leveraging this simple yet effective method to sell property? Today, Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit uncover the power of neighbor letters—a simple, effective way to market land to local buyers with vested interests. They share how to craft standout mailers and why this method delivers results. Plus, they tackle a Land Academy question on using social media to build credibility and close deals. Packed with actionable insights, this episode is a must-listen for land investors!

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Crafting Neighbor Letters That Close Sales

The Hidden Value Of Neighbor Letters In Land Investing

This is Episode 2,111. Jill and I are talking about the hidden value of neighbor letters in land investing. Neighbor letters are letters that this is an underutilized concept, real estate-wide. Why do real estate agents don’t do this? I will never understand. Why do real estate agents don’t market themselves as the neighbor letter answers? Neighbor letters are when you buy a piece of property, any type of property, I don’t care if it’s commercial, you contact, send out mail, emails, and texting, within a certain circumference around that property. Let’s say if you buy a piece of property, a piece of land, you let everybody within 1-mile know that it’s for sale and the statistics are staggeringly positive in your favor that you will sell a property. 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 by popular requests.

Brent and Kaylee wrote, “We are interested in seeing how you all couples especially, are using social media to create an online presence. Trying to get an idea of things we could post both business and personal. Have you noticed your social presence has been a selling factor for deals getting closed?” May I go first, please?

You can go all. No. I have some opinions on this. Go ahead.

I know. This would be the best phrase ever. “Jill, I don’t have an opinion on that.”

That’s how you stay married forever.

I’m trying to imagine.

Whatever you think, sweetheart.

That would be great. That’s not my life. Brent and Kaylee, that ties into this couple thing. You give little gift cards like makeup little coupons or love coupons. I would like to have a few of my pockets that I could slap down and say, “Opinion buster.”

What’s a love coupon?

You don’t know what a love coupon is?

No.

I’m sorry.

What am I doing wrong now?

I could have sworn early on, but it’s been quite a few years since we were courting each other, but you get little coupon books with love things. Like this is a hug or You-can-take-my-hand-and-lead-me-anywhere-you-want coupon thing, or dinner-of-your-choice coupon or something like that. There would be an opinion-freeze coupon.

There should be an opinion coupon about the coupons themselves.

That’s good. I’m going to have both. I get to voice my opinion and there are times I don’t want an opinion coupon. That’s a whole nother thing. Back to the point here, people are going to look you up. The whole point is sellers are going to get your letters and you want them to look up and see you’re a good, fun, probably not politically crazy person/couple maybe with your dog out in your land people and you have stuff going on and then it all ties. That’s the main thing I wanted to say on your social media you buy and sell land as well as your LinkedIn and your landing page or anything else like that, all your social media outlets. You do not need to go crazy and make YouTube videos and show yourselves walking on the land.

You don’t need to do that.

That’s not for selling land. This all ties in. Brent and Kaylee. Look how cute they are, and there they are by a lake camping. You don’t even have to go that far, but outdoorsy pitchers at your land people or just, “Heck, throw on a cowboy hat,” something like that with your dog in a backpack. Be on your bikes with a backpack. Anything like that, that shows your real people, and this is your sweet little company, and that’s all that is needed.

If you want to go and do other things, have at it. We talked about that. Sometimes you want to take it to the next level and you are selling your land on your website. Maybe you write a blog or two on there about how to get power to this area. Maybe you are selling so much land in this one part of Nevada and getting water out there and power was tricky for some of your people.

Maybe you have a blog that you could refer others to because then buyers will come to you too. Sellers will see this as “They are into it,” and then buyers will see it going, “Wow.” You can refer to that and help them. Here’s a solution to your problem, so you know when you buy this land, this is how you are going to get water. Fill in the blank.

How Social Media Influences Land Investing

Social media has dramatically changed in the last several years. It’s all about opinions now. Social media has been, they have never known a time before. Social media has destroyed it. Now you are either on one side or the other, or you are not vocal. Stay out of that. If you are a person who has five years of social media trailing behind you where there are a lot of pictures of whatever you did in college, that’s going to work against you.

Think about how you are portraying yourself when someone gets a letter. They get an offer. “Who is Brent and Kaylee?” They Google Brent and Kaylee and what’s going to pop up? Do it to yourself and see. This is what you want to do. You want to go onto LinkedIn and get a username that’s your full name. You are not hiding anything, and you want to put everything in there about yourself.

I’m a father. I love Shihtzus. I don’t care, but whatever it is, you are going to establish a massive amount of credibility in a venue that’s very respectable. You worked for some company for a bunch of years. You started your land company a couple of years ago and credible stuff. Everything Jill said, do a landing page, a single landing page that’s BrentAndKaylee.com or whatever you decide, whatever your company is, and it shows what she said. These are respectable people I want to sell my land to.

On the sell side, unless you are a marketing professional, go to Landio. He takes it all the way to the end.

You don’t have to do that. That’s a lot.

As far as the sell side, if you buy great property and list it the way you should or utilize Facebook Marketplace, no one cares who you are. They only care about the land. I want you to focus on that initial Google search when somebody gets a mailer from you. No one cares about your political opinions.

You made a funny reference to college. Maybe my college was all very studious and didn’t involve a beer bong. That you can leave.

You had a different college experience.

That’s what I was going to say. Back then there was no posting, and thank goodness there weren’t a lot of cameras.

We went to college way before cell phones and any of that.

That was good. Everybody else our age is like, “We know. We dodged that bullet too.”

Our topic is the hidden value of neighbor letters in land investing.

What’s neighbor letters, as Jack was talking about, why agents don’t do this is a way to reach out to potential buyers around your property and let them know it’s for sale. We talked about consistently getting offers in the mail to buy property, and you can’t buy anything if no one knows you are there and want to buy it, sitting with your checkbook open. It’s the same thing for selling. They need to know it’s for sale, and they may not be looking. The whole point of this is, statistically, there is a percentage, whether it’s mileage-based. There’s some radius. There’s a staggering amount of data that proves a large amount of people buy properties in an area where they already own property.

You can't buy anything if no one knows you're there and ready to buy, sitting with your checkbook open. The same goes for selling—they need to know it's for sale. Share on X

The Effectiveness Of Neighbor Letters In Selling Land

It’s 50%. HUD came out with a study several years ago that said if you have a house this is houses now, not land. That 50% of houses are sold within a 1-mile radius to somebody who already owns property within that radius or to the relatives of somebody who owns that property. With land, it’s a little more complicated. That radius is going to be a little larger depending on how rural it is or the specific use that it is. The thing to digest here is neighbor letters work.

The point Jack was saying with houses is what do you mean? Think about you right now in your neighborhood. Isn’t there a house? It happens often like, “I wish I had an extra bedroom like that guy.” “That guy’s pool is better than mine. That’s done and beautiful.” That happens. Maybe you are so happy. You love your little neighborhood, and everything’s great, and now your best friend is moving into town, or your parents are retiring and moving to town. These are real scenarios, and that’s why that percentage is so high.

When it comes to land, land ownership can be a little different. Often it’s land people loving what they have. Why wouldn’t I want more acreage? I’ve already got 5 acres. Why wouldn’t I want 10? I would if I’m happy and loving it here. Two things. 1) I would love to have more acreage so I own more and 2) I don’t have to deal with anybody else moving in next door right now. It’s mine.

You were showing me a listing. We sit on the couch because we are weirdos. We are land weirdos. You texted me like, “Look at this property that’s for sale,” and I looked at it. It was 20 acres, but it had BLM on all three sides. I said, “That’s not 20 acres. That’s 3,000 acres,” because it’s got three sides of it bordered by BLM land. That’s a land person’s dream.

With an off-grid cabin on it on the water.

It was off the grid. That’s who a lot of land people are. I can’t say all, but that’s a lot of land people and the mentality. The point is, here a good agent, the minute they get your listing, that’s what they are doing. They are sending out neighbor letters. If you have the time, the energy, and the staff, or if you are into it, I would say it would be smart to send out your neighbor letters before you list the property with an agent and put that in there. Draw a circle around it. 5 or 10 miles, whatever gives you a good, healthy number of letters. It doesn’t need to be 1,000. It may be 50 or 100 because it is that small of a community. For neighbor letters, that’s a good healthy number.

Your letter should say a version of, “I’m going to put this property up for sale.” I don’t want to say I bought it. They don’t need to know how long you’ve owned it. They need to know it’s about to go on the market, and this is your chance. Before I list it and get an agent involved. “I wanted to throw it out to you as a neighbor. I would be happy to sell it to you for this price. I’m going to list it for this price. For you, I would sell it for $50,000, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m going to sell it for, probably, at least starting around $65,000,” and get it out there and send it out, and watch what happens.

You should have a checklist when buying a piece of property, and sending out a neighbor letter should be at the top of it. Share on X

Here’s what our letter says, “Neighbor, we are going to list this property to the universe here in about a couple of weeks. I love the area. You clearly see something in it too because you own property here. Here’s the address or here’s the APN. For this amount of money, I’d rather sell it to you because you’re already invested in the area, and we can get the deal done for X price without real estate agents and all the mess that causes in the universe, traipses and around the area.” You’ll get a shocking number of calls. We have done neighbor letters where we at, and 50% of the people called us back. If you do it correctly and make friends with them the way Jill does, some of them are going to say, “We need to sell our property too.”

You might get something out of it to buy. That’s true, or they might go, “What else do you have?” There are two things that can happen.

Relationship building for sure. Make it part of your routine. You should have a checklist when you are buying a piece of property, and this should be at the top of it. Send out a neighbor letter. Join us for the next episode. We are going to talk about how we evaluate twenty properties to buy one single piece of real estate. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.

We are Jack and Jill.

Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.

Important Links

• Landio