Is Land Investing Really For You? The Truth Revealed

This is episode number 2171. Jill and I talk about why land investing isn’t for everyone. That’s true. If there are 100 people in the room, maybe one of them is potentially set up mentally for buying and selling land. Maybe the same is true for owning any business. There’s probably one entrepreneur out of 100 people in a room.

That ties into my thoughts, too.

Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum. Take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Aaron wrote, “We are now generating more house, both stick built and mobile, leads than we can take down. Is there anyone here who likes equity fund home flips? The latest are in the Missouri area. DM me.” This is good. One person already wrote back, said, “I’d love to, but I’m mostly tapped out.” Look at this, you’re busy.

What does this tell you?

Someone asked a question recently in our workshop that we did for the public. Someone said, “I heard it’s slowing down.” Based on this, it depends on where you are because not all of us are slow. That’s what I’ve got. There are some markets that are really doing well.

Jill and I are buying and selling a lot of houses at pretty high volume. People in our group don’t do this, and I own House Academy should also check it out. Now is the time to buy houses. We’re seeing up foreclosures on a huge uptick. Mortgages were ending the boom cycle of real estate. There’s too much property on the market, which is great. It’s a buyer’s market, and we’re buyers. I’m glad that our groups are buying and selling houses. I’m not saying renovate them. I’m not even saying sweep the floor. Buy the cheapest you can and just resell it. Buy it off the market. Resell it on the market. Our topic is Why Land Investing Isn’t For Everyone. We got to. I know you’re something down.

There are 100 people in the room, and maybe one of them is potentially set up mentally for buying and selling land. Share on X

Land Investing Myths Debunked: Why Most People Just Don’t Get It

I was thinking about this. I have two big picture things that seem to stop people in their tracks when I tell them what we do. One is they just don’t get it. That’s one of the biggies. Here’s how the conversation goes. “Here’s what we do. I buy for this. I sell for that all over the country. Whatever size makes sense. It’s really about the price and if it’s a good property, and that’s the story. I buy for $40,000 and I sell for $110,000, something like that.”

They’re like, “Whoa.” That’s where it stops. “What do do to it?” “Nothing. Is it on the highway?” “Maybe. I don’t know. It depends on the property. I just buy it.” “Great.” “Why would they sell it to you?” It’s because they got my offer, and I made a deal.” They just don’t get it, and the questions keep going. The bottom line is that, in their head, they don’t believe in it. They don’t understand it. It is funny because they’ve probably done this.

If I say this to them, like, “Haven’t you ever gone to a yard sale and found like a vintage watch that you know because your dad had two of those, what it’s worth and this person’s letting it go and you grab it.” “Of course I’ve done that.” I’m like, it’s the same thing. They still cannot get it. That’s usually the analogy that I use. That’s one of the reasons people aren’t for everyone, is they don’t get it. They don’t understand it. They don’t believe in it. My job, and I don’t care too. I don’t care to convince them, especially at this point in my career.

Great. The other thing is, too, I would say they don’t get it, and they don’t like it. They think we’re all vacant land is like, “That’s boring.” “Wouldn’t you rather do an HGTV house? Why?” “I want to do that work.” That’s what they want to do. Again, I wish them well. That’s my number one. My number two point is for people, if we’re past that, you get it. I understand you guys make sense to me. Too bad for those who don’t get it. The number two thing is this is and this covers pretty much all the rest of it for me. It’s a very entrepreneurial life.

Just like starting anything. I don’t care if you’re starting your own mega lemonade stand empire. You’re going to have obstacles. You’re going to have people that don’t want it, they’re going to change their prices on the lemons on you. You’re going to have to overcome where you’re selling it because they don’t want them over here, over here’s okay with it. Your payment processor is going to change on you. All kinds of things are going to happen in any business. You’re going to have these major owner entrepreneurial types of obstacles. If you are not the type of person that’s going to wake up and go, “This is my challenge, and I’m going to figure it out.” If you don’t have that in you, this is hard. What do you have?

Everyone wants to be wealthy. You put a hundred people in a room, 99% of them are going to say, “I want to be wealthy.” Most of them are expecting that to happen. The 100th person is some version of a socialist, and we won’t even get into that. We’ll just kick them right out of the room and just deal with the 99. That’s fine. Socialism is good for some people, I guess. I don’t know. If you’re a socialist, you’re not reading. We’re in good company. I’m going to tell you a real brief story. I’ll make this, we drive this point home.

Jill and I know a lot of people in Scottsdale, Arizona. We know a lot of people socially. We’ve both been here since the early ‘90s. Let’s separately and then together. Some people came to us that I’ve known for years and years, came to me specifically and said, “We’re opening a restaurant. We have an existing restaurant. It’s doing well. We want to open another one. Do you want to be an investor?” I said, “Sure, let’s talk about it.” It’s not something I want to be involved in actively, but I said, “Describe it to me.”

Now is the time to buy a house as we're seeing foreclosures on a huge uptick. Share on X

They said, “Here’s the concept. It’s a restaurant concept. There’s this food we’re going to serve. We’ve got this location that everybody knows about the restaurant. That place the owners are retiring.” I said, “Instead of opening a restaurant, why wouldn’t you just open a bar? It’s because what you have now is like a bar, and I’ll eat the vast majority of the money that comes in is from alcohol. It stays on the shelf forever. Every bar around here does well.”

In fact, this is what I said, “I’ve never known a bar to go out of business in Scottsdale as long as I’ve lived here. I’ve known a lot of restaurants to go out of business.” Why is that?” It’s this and this.” I said, “I love your idea. Let’s open a bar. Let’s get a license where you serve alcohol and beer and wine only. Let’s start printing money together.” “No, you don’t understand. Wait a second, Steve. I have this concept, this culinary concept. I want to deliver to the world, and I want to have bigger peacock feathers than I have now. I need some stuff.

The Hard Truth About Land Investing: Skills And Commitment Required

I got to get it out of my system and show what I’m capable of.” To which I said, “I wish you the best.” I’m here to make money. I have nothing to prove. Jill and I have nothing to prove by doing this. Land investing, if you ask yourself, “Why do you want to buy and sell land?” The answer is “To make money.” There’s a good chance you’re going to be successful at this. If you have something to prove or you want it to be easy. We’ve been doing this so long that we can talk to somebody in just minutes and realize that there are a lot of reactions.

When we describe, there’s a ten-step process to this. When we get to about step three, many people say something like this, “What? Can I just give you $10,000?” “Why are you making this complicated? This sounds complicated.” It is complicated. This is very complicated, and Jill and I have been correctly charged with in the past, making this sound too easy. It’s complicated. There are a lot of moving parts. There’s a huge social piece, which Jill has covered. There’s a huge tactical piece, which I have covered, which is hard for most people to have both of those personality types.

If you’ve ever taken apart of a toaster when you were younger, you’re probably going to be good at this. You don’t care if you put it back together or not. If you have an engineering degree in anything, you have a good shot at doing this. If you’ve owned businesses in the past or you own one now and you want to create a new income stream, there’s a real good chance you’re going to succeed. If you’ve been in corporate sales successfully for more than 5 or 10 years in anything, I don’t care what you’re selling.

It doesn’t matter if it’s real estate or not, like Jill has been, there’s a good chance you’re going to work this out. The process is, which we’ll talk about more tomorrow, and the habits that you form are forced to form to be successful habits and the organization skills and all that, they’re imperative or you won’t survive. If you want to just get wealthy and your friends making some money in real estate, or if you’re a disgruntled real estate agent, you have no chance at this.

You have to make a commitment, and you have to be a smart person with some experience in the first place and some serious ambition. That’s why land investing is not for everyone. If you look on Facebook and the number of people that are attempting to hawk this stuff, you would think it’s for everyone. Jill and I have decided a couple of years ago, we’re just tell it like it is the period we always have. We are now.

This is good.

Join us tomorrow where we discuss Why Consistency Beats Talent In Land Investing Every Time. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.