This is episode number 2182. Jill and I are talking about when to walk away from a land deal, even if it looks good. This is perfect timing because Jill and I looked at two deals where this was the situation. I’ll walk you through in detail what those transactions looked like.

Supermodels, Pizza, & Classic Cars

Before we get into this, let me ask you. I’m going to replace the land deal with something else, like when to walk away from a supermodel, even if it looks good.

It’s the same thing.

I’m wondering. Would you do that?

Absolutely.

When would you walk away from a supermodel when it looks good?

When you know how it’s going to end. When you know that there is pain to get the reward. When that pain exceeds the reward. You should know this if you know yourself at all. Unless you’re 17 or 18 years old and you don’t know yourself at all, trust me, you need to walk away. It’s the same thing with the land deal. How about you?

I’m not done yet. When to walk away from a Jet’s Pizza, even if it looks good?

Jet’s Pizza?

Yes.

Do you mean a pizza that came right out of the oven?

When do you walk away from that?

I’ve never done that because there’s no barrier. There’s no problem getting to the reward. You pick the pizza up and put it in your mouth.

When to walk away from a classic car at half price.

If you don’t have a garage space. It happened to me.

Thank you. You answered all three correctly.

I found a 1982 Corvette convertible, 1 of 35 ever made of the C3s.

Are you going to walk away from that?

Yeah.

I’m sorry.

Do you know why? Here’s why. If they were numbered, like all of our other cars, and they came out of the factory that way, it turns out it was a Carroll Shelby-type aftermarket shop that made 35 of them. They never came out of the GM factory that way. They didn’t make them.

We’d have to build a bigger garage.

We have stackers in our garage with a bunch of cars in there.

It’s still not enough. We need to raise a roof.

I can do roof surgery. I’ve thought about that.

I know. Thank you.

When the pain outweighs the reward, it's time to walk away. Share on X

What are we talking about? Supermodels, classic cars, and pizza.

We’re going to go to each day of the show.

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

Work-Life Balance & The Power Of Perception In Relationships

Jason wrote, “I’m brand-new with Land Academy. My wife is on board, but she says I’m always in my office working instead of helping around the house, even though we both have full-time W-2 jobs and 2 kids under the age of 10. What do you guys think the outcome of this will be? We are much younger than you are, Jack and Jill.” I would hope so. Could you imagine if we had kids under ten?

No. What would we do?

I don’t even know how we did it then.

Jason, I have one word for you and your wife. Hopefully, if your kids are at 10 or close to 10, then they can get involved, too. This is the word. Calendar.

That’s fair. Schedule some time.

If she has a perception, even if it’s untrue, that she’s putting in more energy and effort into how to move forward in a relationship and her family, that only ends one way. This is not gender-specific. If you are in an unequal relationship or your spouse perceives that it’s unequal, or it doesn’t even have to be unequal, you have to manage that right away. Trust me.

That was a good answer.

Are you in an unequal relationship?

No, I am not in an unequal relationship. Do you know why? Pretty much anything you ask, I’m going to say yes. That’s our only problem. It is either A) “That sounds like a good idea,” or B) “Baby, if that’s important to you, you go do it.”

Here’s a good example of that. I don’t do the tax returns. I do all the bookkeeping and manage the expenses and all of that stuff. I manage our taxes up to and including signing and everything. I don’t think Jill even left her desk. I got a bunch of extra loving for that. That’s Jill’s love language. That’s how it works out with us. She does a ton of stuff I can’t stand doing. We’re changing health insurance companies. There’s a 5 or 6-year gap between now and when Medicare kicks in. She’s handling the whole thing because I don’t speak that language. I speak the tax language. It ends up being equal, plus or minus 5%. When the kids are little and everybody’s got a job, and you’re trying to do something great with your life from an entrepreneurial standpoint, that’s hard. It’s very hard. Any free time that you have, you better make sure her life is better, not worse. This is not gender-specific.

That’s good.

What is our topic?

Criteria For Walking Away From A “Good-Looking” Land Deal

When to Walk Away From a Land Deal Even If It Looks Good.

Thank you.

You are welcome.

When you look at a piece of real estate or a piece of land and there’s nothing like the supermodel or pizza thing, and you don’t have to go through a lot to get to the good stuff to get the reward, then you should do the deal. If you got the most amazing price where you’re going to buy for $5,000 and sell for $182,000, but there are 19 things you need to do to get this deal done, walk away.

Including a six-month probate.

It doesn’t have Access. That’s what all these As are for.

It’s the side of a cliff.

I’m not going to bore everybody and define it again. Please Google the Land Academy As. When those pass all eight As, then you’re good. You probably don’t have to do anything to the piece of property to buy it for $5,000 and sell it for $180,000 or something. Buy it for $5,000 and sell it for $40,000 or something like that.

That means that what happened is you sent out a mailer, and the mailer worked for you. You utilized the nature of the leverage of the mailer. You’re going to buy it, clean it up on the internet, not the actual asset itself, and resell it. That’s what this business is designed for. It’s not designed for you to go through problems.

This is important. I see a lot of people struggling to make a deal happen because they don’t have the deal flow. They’re pushing deals through when they should walk away. They’re seeing things that are not there. They’re like, “The Access isn’t that bad. This one’s closer to a road than that one was.” I’m like, “You shouldn’t do either of them. Move on.” That’s what I want to bring to light.

You have to have a lot to look at. The more you have to look, you’re going to only pick the best one. That’s one easy way to solve this. If you have twenty coming in this week, next week, and last week, and you’re like, “I’ve got 60 deals right now I’ve got to look at. I don’t know what to do,” guess what? You’re going to line them all up. We have our own CRM. You’re going to pop them in there. You have all the As in there, and you can sort them by which A is your favorite or whatever makes sense to you. Make sure it has all of them. You’re only going to pick the best ones.

Why You Need Volume: One Deal Isn’t Enough

 The last A is Abundance. Meaning, how many deals are you looking at? If your honest answer is, “I’m looking at 3 deals and I know 2 of them are terrible,” you’re looking at 1 deal. You’re a natural. This is human nature. You’re going to try to get that deal done. You don’t want to put yourself in that position. You want twenty, thirty, fifty, and sixty deals, and then it’s easy. The cream is going to rise straight to the top there.

You’ve got 2 or 3 deals that are smacking you in the face. If every single thing works here, you’re going to be like, “I can’t find a pro problem with it. I probably should buy it.” Join us in the next episode where Jill and I discuss what the next five years of landing investing will look like. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.