The Imperative Mindset Shift For 2025

This is episode number 2228. Jill and I talk about the Mindset Shift 2025, which I believe is imperative. Why the old ways of land investing won’t work anymore? For four days, we’ve been talking about this topic. I’m going to use some examples here when the time comes.

I have some things to share, too. Spoiler alert. It’s not been all about me. It’s been more about mail, data, digging deeper, upping numbers, and all things. I agree, whether it’s mail for properties or dating, upping numbers is good.

Delete your risk is what you’re saying.

Yeah. That’s another story.

Each day 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.

We have a subsection in our closed Land Academy Member Discord Forum, if you will, where there’s a section called Partnership Wanted. This is someone putting in their details about a property that they need. Either they need a partner for part of their business is what it’s for, or a partner for funding, or some part of a deal that they’re working on.

Josh wrote, “It’s 39.19 acres in redacted County, Texas. Buy for $225,000, sell for $437,000 after a minor subdivide. We can cut it into 2 or 3 parcels up to the funder. The subdivide will be minor, meets platting exceptions, and only requires a survey. We have a survey estimate already for $3,500, and the cost of the survey needs to be paid by the deal funder.” This individual doesn’t have the dough.

“We’re looking for JV funding, hoping for a 70/30 split in our favor or the best offer. The agent estimates that the value of the improvements is $50,000. Pictures of the cabin are provided. There’s a fence around the perimeter of the property. Electricity is in the cabin, and it has oversized service because the seller was planning to build a barndominium in the back.”

“Now, there’s a sand spot near the front of the property where he plans to feed deer, turkeys, hogs, and quail. There’s also an additional build spot in the property. There’s a meter for water. There is a minimum of $40 per month. Hunting cabin has plumbing, hot water, a shower, soap, bunks, and a toilet in the sink. Please see additional information in the folder.” This sounds like something you would buy, Jack, and move into today.

That’s good news before the bad news.

How much was the purchase? Too bad. It’s so expensive. I would buy it for you, but at $225,000, I don’t know. Here’s the thing, if I can jump in right away. I don’t like that I have to do something to it to make $437,000.

You’ve got to do stuff.

What’s the buy? What’s the selling price right now? If it is $335,000, then I’ll think about it. If it’s $335,000, I want it to be bought for $100,000 or $150,000. That’s where I’m in. I’m not into buying that for $225,000. What do you want?

Our model, in general, especially if you’re new, is not to buy, improve, and resell. That’s not what we do. That’s a real estate disease that’s been perpetuated by HGTV for a very long time. Our model is buy super low, sell it for more, but not retail it, and do nothing. Never leave your desk. It’s not granted.

The whole theme this week is you’ve got to do some different stuff if you want to survive, grow, and thrive. What concerns me the most about this is this sentence, “Buy for $225,000, sell for $437,000 after a minor subdivide.” You should never buy property on anything that’s going to happen in the future.

The Peril Of Future-Dependent Property Acquisitions

You should buy property based on what’s happened right now, because all the stuff that you do in the future should be your risk and your reward. I’m buying a piece of property for 39 acres on a cabin that’s got some pretty substantial flaws for an undervalued amount of money. Theoretically, if it all goes wrong or if I get lazy next week, both of those things will happen.

You should never buy property based on what might happen in the future. You should buy property based on what’s happening right now, because anything that happens in the future should be your risk and your reward. Share on X

All the time.

I’m just going to resell it.

I have options.

Buy for $225,000 and sell for $275,000. That was the whole model here, and leave out all this subdivision stuff, after JV funding for splits, agent estimates, and value of improvements, I’ve never met a real estate agent who can value anything correctly. If this one says it’s going to cost $50,000, that’s fine. There’s a lot of stuff that has to happen. I wouldn’t fund this.

I wouldn’t buy it for $225,000 and sell it for $275,000.

How do you know that without analyzing the whole deal and looking at what’s around it? Do you just need to get money off to feel good about the deal?

No, I’m backing into the sales price. I take the sales price that the agent says, I back off money for their probable error, and then I divide it by two.

Let’s say $275,000 is a good number. Do you want to buy for $175,000?

No, I want to buy for $125,000.

I need to see the value of the whole prop.

I got it. I have to back into it. Again, I’m going to count for our market going down, and I’m going to count for agent error. What if they’re lazy? Some things happen. They miss something. I need to have all that baked in.

It’s very rare, if ever, that we do physical improvements. If that was the difference between staying in business and not being in the business, then I would consider it. There are a lot of people who go broke doing improvements on their property. You just get in there. You don’t know what you’re going to find. There are too many unknowns. Buying it and reselling it, let that next person, whoever decides that they’re going to take a risk on that, let them do that.

That’s what I’m saying, just my thing. What is the retail sales price right now from that agent in its current condition? That’s how I need to look at this. This $437,000 is gold. If I want to do it, I have the option, but I need to buy it. Assuming I do nothing, I get lazy and or something happens, I know I did it right. Thank you.

Our topic, The Mindset Shift 2025: Why the Old Ways of Land Investing Won’t Work Anymore.

I would like to start by saying I have thoroughly enjoyed this week because it is not centered around Jill on the phone. We’re not talking about putting Jill on the phone and how Jill does this, and how you talk to them out of that? How do you talk them into this? How do you do this? How do you handle that? I haven’t had those discussions.

I can answer that short version of why Jill is so special on the phone. I have an example.

We’ll get to that. The point I want to make is I love that we’re talking about mindset shifting and things for 2025 that are bigger than customer service. It’s more about what are you mailing? Why are you mailing? What’s your strategy? Are you aiming high enough for the dollar amounts? Are you making smart decisions about the properties that you’re buying and looking at the markets within the markets, the niches within the niches, whatever people are buying?

Are you adding a column to your Red, Yellow, Green test, whatever it takes to make triple sure that this is the area to hit? Are you hitting it in a smart way with enough mail that’s going to come back with some deals? It then goes to my part. It all starts with Jack. Jack has to make my phone ring on the buy side. If I have nothing to buy, I have nothing to sell, and I have no one to talk to. It doesn’t matter how great I am. No pressure.

No, I don’t. I’ve been doing it for many years.

No pressure for you, the audience, but you’ve got to nail that. Your phone has to ring, or you’ve got nothing.

Here’s a customer service story to bring this home about what’s different. What needs to change in your mindset to move forward and do well from this point forward? Jill and I have a bunch of properties in one area in Old Town, Scottsdale, Arizona. We provide high-speed internet service there. The internet service provider for our house, which is not an old town at all, and for all these places that we have as rentals, we have one account with separate little subsections. It’s a mess. We’ve been trying to untie them. Every time we get a new place, we add one, and it’s all wrong.

They don’t get it.

For years, this has been going on, where we would call customer service and try to undo this. One of the tenants is double-paying. They’re paying for the service while we’re paying for it. They cannot figure it out. Recently, I hit the end. I got on the phone, which I never do with the redacted person.

This person ended up being the single greatest customer service experience I’ve ever experienced, not just with internet or cell phones or anything. He undid all this for us and identified it. We went through it. We laughed while we were doing it. I told him at the end, “This is the greatest experience ever. We’ve been trying to do this for years, to undo this.” He’s like, “Yeah, I see that.” That’s the experience. Somewhere, somebody is explaining to their sister, their mother-in-law, their daughter, or whatever that that’s the experience they had with Jill.

Thank you.

That’s what’s needed to move forward in this industry successfully. You don’t have to do it, but you need to find somebody. Every once in a while, somebody joins Land Academy, and they post this in Discord. “I’m a retired corporate salesperson of 35 years. I’ve seen it all. I hate math. I’ve never been in Excel. If you want to send a mailer out with my name on it, we’ll split it.” We never hear from that. They’re all in the Land Academy still, but that person gets so many responses from people like me that now his whole business is he’s the hub, and he’s got nine people doing mail for different parts of the country, and that person is smashing it on the phone.

Elevating Your Entire Business Operation

He wakes up in the morning with a smile on his face, on the phone, and gets done at 6:00 PM. Maybe he doesn’t take a shower. I don’t know. I wouldn’t. That’s how good it is. It’s not just that one thing. Your entire game has to be amped up. All of it. You have to rethink where you’re sending mail and how you analyze the places that you’re choosing to send mail. You need to price better, and you need to add product types, certainly houses and mobile homes.

You need to elevate every part of your game—rethink where you send mail and how you analyze deals. Every aspect now demands more focus, intelligence, and a real-time, adapt-and-overcome mindset. Share on X

You need to increase your contacts for funding. You need to find people who have a very liberal, open mind about the deals that they want to do, the mid-range, and then the conservative ones. We tend to be conservative. Every aspect of this is going to require more of your attention and intelligence, and in real-time, to adapt the overcome mentality. Was that the whole show?

That was the whole show. That was a great wrap-up to the week.

Join us next episode for more original content from more original and non-AI. Jill and I are not AI. We’re real people with 35 years of plus of experience. We talk about land and house investing content. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.