This is episode number 2226. Jill and I are talking about From Stale to Scalable: 2025’s New Rules for Land Mailers and Market Moves. All week, Jill and I will be talking about mailers, markets, and mindset, what is changing, and what we have changed in 2025 to react to this changing market.

Why? It’s because you are noticing it.

It’s mandatory.

We’ve been talking about this since 2024, even before the election was done. It was all screwed back then. It was screwed because of election. Now the election is over, and everything is in place, but it’s still screwed. People are like, “I guess there is stuff happening.” Especially Jack, he’s been bringing this up for over a year now. I think the rest of the land investing communities are like, “Maybe they’re right.” Our team asked us, as you said, to be a little louder about it, so here we are.

The Need To Adapt

Around 2020, or if you joined the industry or business around 2020 or maybe slightly before COVID happened, we all thought it was over. The exact opposite happened. It was the hottest real estate market we’ve experienced in a long time, with low interest rates. Everybody was on the internet buying real estate. You can get a loan. Anything you bought, the result of that for us was that we bought something and resold it for a lot more. That party is over. That party specifically is over, and it’s time to find a new party. That’s what this week is about.

Maybe that’s it. There are a lot of people I know in the land investing education community who haven’t done this before. They came in at a great time. They learned from us and said, “I got this,” and went off. Now they’re struggling because they don’t know how to recover, how to pivot, or what to do when there are shifts and changes. Lord knows we’ve been through them.

Maybe they’re just young.

They don’t have experience.

They haven’t weathered the storm yet.

That’s what I’m saying.

Not just a business storm, but any storm.

Good point. “Everything came so easily. What do I do now?”Guess what? You’re 30 and things are different, aren’t they?

You only have a certain number of eggs left. You’re 30.

Your hair is balding. You may have that many eggs. Life is going to pass you by. I didn’t want to have this conversation when you’re 40, so let’s address it now when you’re 30.

I had a marriage counselor say that to me, “We can have this conversation now or when you’re 40 or when you’re 50. It will be the same conversation.”

That one sure stuck with you.

Each week on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy Member Discord Forum. We take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Easements For Landlocked Properties

Matt wrote, “I have a landlocked property that we’re looking to acquire, and I’d like to have an easement agreement and document in place before closing. It would be on a family member’s property that is adjacent. Two questions: Does it need to be notarized? Does anyone have a sample document they can share?” I’ve done this.

Go ahead.

It didn’t need to be notarized, and it didn’t need documenting, but I did get it in writing. That’s what I wanted. Interestingly enough, that’s what my broker needed to. We found out after the fact that we didn’t have legal access. He’s like, “Can someone get you legal access?” I said, “Give me a minute.” He said, “Once somebody proves it, here’s what it’s going to happen. I know how much it costs and I know how long it takes.”

It was like a couple of grand and 90 days or something like that. My broker had done that before. He said, “Jill, I need you to come up with someone who’s going to comply.” I said, “Alright.” I went around and found someone. I did some neighbor letters and found a very nice neighbor who would comply and reply to me in writing. I sent it to my broker, and he said, “That’s all I need. Thank you,” and then we happily sold the property.

Easement, for everybody else who doesn’t fully understand, is a right-of-way to cross someone’s property to get to your property. You don’t have a property that’s right on a county road, for the sake of argument. You’ve got to cross through Farmer John’s property, even if it’s just a few feet, to get legal access to your property. What ends up happening is that Farmer John agrees to do this. You haven’t purchased the property you’re going to buy yet. Matt is asking, “How do I make sure this isn’t writing that he’s agreed to it, but he did it with a beer in his hand on Saturday night at 12:00?” We want to put it in writing and make sure that once it’s closed, we execute this easement.

Maybe you sell it, or your buyer can do it. It’s up to you, Matt, if you want to do it or just pass it off and let the other person take care of it. I know which I picked.

Jill historically has no idea in trusting when it comes to easements and a bunch of other stuff, and it almost always works out. I don’t have an example when it hasn’t worked out. It’s just because that’s how she does it, but I go in there and I demand that everything is signed. I would do the easement and then have it sit on the desk in a deed format, and simultaneously execute the easement with the deal in closing. If you go to anyone, that’s what they’re going to say about how to do it. If you go to any accountant, that’s how you do it, but a salesperson like Jill gets away with all this.

Prepare the easement in a deed format and execute it simultaneously with the deal at closing. That's the standard procedure. Share on X

I’m going to make this seller do it for me, or the buyer is going to do it. I’m in the middle, and I’ve had that. It’s funny you brought up the feet. I’ve had a deal that was down to 10 feet. I’m like, “Can we jump it? Is it enough that I can jump onto my property?” The seller was already doing it and missed a little. There was one actual form or something that was filed, but it didn’t get processed, if you will. He had to scramble and pay a fee to reopen it and get it done. Remember, I’m not going to do it. I’m the guy in the middle here, just putting the deal. I’m the buyer or the seller. Call me when it’s done. He wants to sell it badly, no kidding, he got it done.

This stuff can happen in your career. If you’re a Land Academy member and you can go on Discord or utilize relationships that you have within our community. This is a Land Academy shameless plug now. We’ll help you. We’ve been through it, and a bunch of people in the group, I’m sure, have been through it. You don’t want to do that stuff on your own. That’s what I did. It took many years. It will only take you three months.

Land Academy is speeding up the learning curve by 30 years. That’s our new slogan.

I’m grossly exaggerating. I’m just saying it to make Jill laugh.

Be loud.

Shifting Market Strategy: From Broad To Sub-Markets & Diversifying Property Types

Our topic is from Stale to Scalable: 2025’s New Rules for Land Mailers and Market Moves. We’ve talked about mailers. You need to send a lot more to get the same results that you’ve had 5 to 8 years or 10 years ago. To counterbalance that, make them count. Buy larger properties. Buy properties and make sure that you’re including houses and mobile homes in that, so that you can make a bunch more money on each deal to justify the mailing cost.

Let’s talk about markets now. We didn’t say, “Does the Red, Green, Yellow test work? Do I want to troll or fish? Now, I’m looking for new markets. Has that changed? Here’s what’s changed. I want you to think about markets that you have already had success in, or that you like, or you live there, markets that you know, and I want you to start thinking about the submarkets within those markets. We haven’t had to do that. When I started this, it was state-based.

I remember sending on a mailer for every 5-acre property in Arizona, every single one for $500, and it worked. I bought so much property. It was silly, and I resold them quickly. You could never do that now. You get no response, or you get laughed at. Why? It’s because of how many years later that people sent mail out, then it became counties. Let’s focus on the county. I’m going to look at Maricopa County, which is where Phoenix is. It is a lot different than, let’s say, Navajo County, which is very rural with not a lot of private land.

That didn’t matter to me in the beginning because I got away with it. Now, I looked at Maricopa County a little further into my career and got away with some stuff there. At some point, I had to break down Maricopa County into ZIP codes, which you hear us talk about all the time, ZIP code-based pricing, and pulling mail.

Now, I want you to look within those markets. For pricing, I want you to think about wherever you’re sitting now, two blocks over, and how different it is, or five blocks over from there, or the other side of town, the other side of the tracks, markets within markets. This will be the future. Jill and I have already been doing that. I’m realizing now subconsciously, because we know these markets well, the ones where we make money, and the ones where we continually make money.

Do you know why? It’s because if that works, we’ll go back and do more. If that works, I’ll go back and do more. When you say markets within markets, we were talking on our member call. They were talking about how this mailer started out big, and they went down to this size. They had a cap. They wouldn’t go below a certain acreage or above a certain acreage. Here’s an easy little thing that you could be doing. Let’s say all the 5 to 10 acres fly off the shelves. Why would you not go back and buy all the 1 to 5 acres? That’s a sub little area. If that works, why did you buy all 10 to 20 acres? Go work on all the 40 acres and above. You could stay, not even just a property type, like Jack has been talking about with mobiles and houses. Say, “I don’t want to do that. I’m locked it on land and learned that first, and I’ll get there.” That’s fine. Go with different acre sizes.

If you’re having a lot of success in a single market, let’s say Tennessee, look at the submarkets within that market and find out. Do some analysis on your own successes. If you find out they’re on the Eastern part of the ZIP code, or that’s where you’re doing all your deals, then amp that up. Maybe start buying houses there. Do a house mailer or do a mobile home mailer. Utilize what your past success has been.

This is what you don’t want to do. We’ve had multiple members come to us, and sometimes in the distant past, in our advanced group, our career path alumni group. They say sentences like, “For three years, I lived in California. I’ve been emailing the Austin market for infill lots. I’ve been buying properties for $60,000 and selling for $80,000. I’ve done 40 deals there. With the last two mailers I did, it doesn’t work anymore. This sucks. I hate it. Goodbye.” That person has long been in our group still. We just met, he and his new partners, in person. I don’t want you to do that. This business model is totally viable and doable. You can make a hoard of money, more money than you could before. It’s just different. There are different skillsets involved.

One thing we haven’t talked about in a while is that it’s like everything. Every business goes through ups and downs and changes. I can’t even imagine. Look at car companies going from people building the car to machines building the car. Now, with AI and robotics and things like that, there are going to be changes. You have to learn to roll with them, just like anything.

Every business goes through ups, downs, and changes. You have to learn to roll with them, just like anything else. Share on X

If you’re in a relationship and you’re doing the same thing that you did 40 years ago, you’re lucky because most people wouldn’t put up with that.

Please give me an example. I like to know what you’re thinking.

If you’re eating the same bowl of Cheerios in the same bowl 40 years ago, and you’re a man, there are not a lot of women who are going to put up with that or encourage that. You’ve got to change stuff up. Everybody wants a refresher on everything all the time.

If you’re wearing the same shirts or the same pants.

Jill doesn’t like that. I’m telling you, first hand.

It’s a battle.

I change my shirts out every three years to make her happy.

I choose my battles. Do you know how long I’ve been asking for this beard?

You have.

I finally got it ten years later.

Here’s the beard, but it can’t be too long. We tried that. Nope. Join us in the next episode where we discuss Mailing Smarter and Thinking Bigger: The 2025 Investor Reset You Didn’t Know You Needed. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill. Information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.