From Overlooked Land to Extraordinary Wealth with Wayne Seminoff - Episode - 571

And nobody does what I do. Nobody does what I do. It's— I call it stupid simple because it really is simple. Once you learn how to do it, it's really simple. But for the new guy, they have no clue. In fact, even for professionals, they have no clue about a lot of these guys, you know, buy lots and stuff and they don't even know what the tricks are.

Most investors compete for the obvious deals. But what if the real wealth is found in what everyone else dismisses? From overlooked land to extraordinary wealth, we uncover a decades-long strategy of transforming undervalued land into remarkable returns while building a life centered on purpose, spirit, and impact. Welcome to Streams to Impact, brought to you by Steve Talker Capital. I'm your host, Dr. Allen. This podcast is designed for high-achieving professionals who are successful in their careers, ready to stop relying solely on earned income and begin developing multiple streams of passive income through private placements and alternative investments. If you're ready to start putting your money to work so you can create greater freedom, impact, and financial independence, I invite you to access Beyond the Paycheck, a private educational mini masterclass created specifically for professionals like you. And you can access this complimentary experience at www.go.stetaker.com/beyond-paycheck. Just a brief disclaimer: all information shared on Streams to Impact is for educational purposes only. It's not to be construed as investment, financial, legal, or tax advice. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Always consult your legal, tax, and financial advisor before making any investment decisions. So now let's dive into today's episode, From Overlooked Land to Extraordinary Wealth. So what if the best real estate opportunities were the ones everyone else overlooked? Well, our guest today has spent more than 50 years discovering exactly that. Wayne Semenoff entered real estate by accident, but quickly developed a unique niche, finding undervalued, underdeveloped land in prime areas and transforming overlooked properties into extraordinary opportunities. Over the decades, he has refined a strategy focused not just on profit, but also on mindset, spirit, and helping others see possibilities where others see limitations. Today, Wayne teaches investors how to uncover hidden value, think differently, and approach both investing and life with purpose. Please join me in welcoming Wayne to Streams to Impact. So Wayne, as we get going here, you entered real estate by accident more than 50 years ago, yet you stayed and built a lifetime around it. So looking back, what mindset or inner philosophy allowed you to see opportunities where others generally just saw junk land?

That's pretty easy to answer. When I first started, I didn't have any money and I wanted to do real estate and to buy regular real estate required all kinds of money. And so my challenge was, how can I get into real estate with $100 or $200? And that, 'cause that's what I had extra. And so I poked around a little bit and I found a guy who went to tax auctions, the property tax auctions once a year, and you could buy a lot for $100, but junk lots, buy junk lots. These are not prime lots. And I kind of watched him a little bit, and he ended up making millions of dollars off these junk lots. I thought, well, here we go. And so I partnered up with him. And I learned from scratch what to do with a junk lot. And when you first, you buy it and then you go, now what do I do with it? And so, over the 40 years, I learned all that. There's like 7 standard tricks you do to fix junk lots and make them buildable. And once you make them buildable, the multiplier is unbelievable. In fact, I'm going to tell you what I do. Quite often I'll buy a lot. Well, nowadays it's more. I pay $1,000 for a lot. And then after I fix it, make it buildable, which is sometimes really easy with a phone call, it's worth $400,000 to $500,000 a lot. I mean, and these are real multipliers because junk land has no value. Because if people think it's not buildable, it's a burden and they don't even want it. Okay. And you can buy it for peanuts. But, But, let's say the lot's too small. You know, you buy a little lot and it's too small for the zoning code. You can go to the city and they'll give you a variance to build on it even though it's too small. As long as you can get a house footprint on a lot, which is like 20 by 40, theoretically, you can go to a city and they'll help you make it buildable. And, you can do it by variances or you can do it by easements to get to it or if it's too steep, you can get a critical areas permit to build on steep stuff. And, you can actually build on lots that's all wet. Let's say you're in the country area where they have septic systems instead of sewer. A lot of lots don't perk because they're wet.

Mm-hmm.

And, it's so easy to get a septic system on a non-perking lot by just going to the neighbor who has perkable lot and buy an easement from him for $10,000 or something like that.

Mm-hmm.

And, in fact, you don't even need money to get these. And, you go to the guy and you say, if I make this buildable, this lot's worth $400,000. If you'll give me an easement to put my septic system on your lot, I'll give you half of what I make. So, I'll give you $200,000 And I make $200,000 if you give me that, the septic system in your backyard, which you don't use. And so there, it doesn't even cost you anything. So you get the septic system, and that might cost you, you know, $500 or $1,000 or something. And so for $2,000, you make $200,000. So the multiplier is gigantic.

Wow.

And nobody does what I do. Nobody does what I do. It's— I call it stupid simple because it really is simple. Once you learn how to do it, it's really simple. But for the new guy, they have no clue. In fact, even for professionals, they have no clue about a lot of these guys, you know, buy lots and stuff and they don't even know what the tricks are, you know. And so I've got— what I did is I wrote a program. I wrote 50 videos. I did 50 videos and 2 books, taking all my knowledge I have from those 50 years, and I put them in a program called junklandintogold.com. And it's available. People can buy it. And it's a— if you want to buy it, it's $500, which is nothing. And it's huge. It's got everything I know. And if people wanna go online and buy it today, they get, normally I sell it for $1,000. So if you say fun, F-U-N, then you get it for half. So it's half, it's $500, it's half price.

Wow.

And I say fun because it's really fun what I do. I mean, it's like playing Monopoly, you know, playing a game, except when you win the game, then you take the Monopoly money, which is, you know, silly fun. And you'd go to the bank and you'd give it to them and you'd get real dollars. And it doesn't take a lot. Sometimes, like I bought a lot for $1,000, another one I bought for $1,000. And it had everything except they wouldn't, the sewer company wouldn't let you connect to the sewer line, which was 15 feet in front of the lot.

Hmm.

And because it was in a different jurisdiction, you know, they put the lines, those artificial lines. And I said, well, it's only 15. And the other sewer line is like a mile away And it would cost $600,000 to run a sewer line, you know. So I called the sewer company and I talked to the first guy and he says, no, you can't connect. And I said, well, let me talk to your boss. Called him. He said, no, you can't connect. And I finally got the head guy and I chatted with him a couple phone calls. But I finally said, look, it's going to cost me $600,000 to do this lot that's only worth $100,000. And he says, okay, I'll let you connect. So, I put it on the market 30 days after I bought it, sold it for $60,000, and my total investment was $1,000. So, I made 60 times my money, you know.

Yeah.

And so, that's what I do. That's what I do. And what's good about it is that anybody can do it. You just, like, I'm in King County, Washington, but the rules pretty much apply anywhere. They have tax sales once a year, and you get the list of the tax sale properties, and you just go through them, and you you sort through them all. There's usually you know 100 or 200 in there, and you find one that's a a shine. I call them golden nuggets. They're small, but they you know they're I can see one of my thing one of my seven rules applies, and when one does, I buy it, and then I go through with the rest of it. Sometimes you have to invest more money, you know, like. you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, depending on the property. And sometimes you don't have to invest anything. You know, you do the half, you make a deal, you make a deal with the person you need, you give them half the income. So then it doesn't cost you anymore. So for a poor guy, which I was, if you got $1,000 extra, you could start, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's kind of what I do. And And there's 2 main rules that people need to know that most people don't understand. You never buy property from people who want their property or love their property because they're called wanters. They want their property.

Mm-hmm.

And then they'll ask top price or way above top price. So, if you buy from a person who's a don't wanter, and there's a huge category of don't wanters, people who don't want their property will sell it for nothing. And what that means is a don't-wanter is a guy who inherited his property from his family and he hates his family and he hates the property because he reminds him of it. And so he's letting it go in the tax sale because he hates it. He won't pay the taxes.

Hmm.

And what I do is I call him before the sale and I say, do you want your property? Are you going to let it go in the sale? And if they say yes, I say, well, I'll buy it. And then I offer them, you know, $500 or $1,000 or whatever. And a lot of the time, they'll say, I want to sell it, but I'm not going to sell it to you for that. You know, it's not enough. And I go, well, how much do you want? And they say $2,000 or $4,000 or, you know, and then I say, I'll buy it. And I just buy it right away. And another category is people who don't live in Washington. So I look through the list for everybody who lives out of state. You know, if you live in Manhattan or whatever, New York or Florida, and you own property, junk property in Seattle, you don't want the property generally. So I call them up and say, I'll take the burden off your hand and I'll give you some money. And then I buy it from them. And a lot of times I go to a sale, I'll buy maybe 2 or 3 properties. One time I bought 10, you know, at a time. But usually I just pick out 1 or 2. nuggets and fix them up and sell them.

Mm-hmm.

And I'll tell you my best story that I did, which is recent. I just did it a year ago. I bought a half-acre free and clear, water, sewer, and power. And it's right across the street from a shopping center in Issaquah, which is a high-rent district. Lots in that area sell for $500,000. I called the guy up. And I said, well, how come you're going to let it go on the sale? It's perfect. And he said, he said, the reason I'm going to do that is that the title's messed up and I can't, I can't even give it away to the city. I offered to the city, they turned me down. And one of my tricks is clearing title. That's one of the things. And it's easy to clear title. People think it's impossible. It's very easy. So I said, I'll buy it from you for $500. He says, no. He says, I got to divide it with my sister. So you make it $1,000. So I sent him money. I sent him $1,000, got the deed, gave it to my attorney. I said this. I told him how to do it. I said, go ahead and clear the title. And in 3 months, he cleared the title with all the legal stuff you have to do. So at the end of 3 months, that $1,000 lot was worth $500,000.

Hmm.

Okay. Then I went to the city. I used another trick. I did a short subdivision and I turned it into 2 lots. Because it's a half-acre, I can do quarter-acre lots. And, this is prime residential property right next to shopping center, right next to the freeway. I mean, anybody would want to live there. The lots in that area are now selling for $600,000 actually.

Hmm.

And so, I finished the subdivision. Now, I have 2 lots, each worth $500,000. That's $1 million. And, I had to pay $15,000 to my attorney and I had to pay about another $15,000 to do the short plat with all the studies and stuff they asked for. So, $31,000. I've got a lot that's now worth $1 million. And I'm going to put it on the market soon. But there's another tweak I'm doing. If I can do one more tweak, if I can get a better sewer access, right now it has one, but it costs $600,000 to connect because it's far away. And there's another one uphill, but I have to go through 2 other people's property. So if I can get through the 2 other people's property, I can put 3 houses on each lot and I can sell each lot for $500,000. And that makes the total project worth $3 million.

Wow.

I mean, it's, it's way beyond rationality. And if I tell people this, they don't believe me because it seems incredible. But it's not. It's not incredible. It's, it's realistic. And all I did is ABC, stupid simple. I followed my own rules. You know, I called the guy who lived in Omaha, Nebraska. You know, he was a don't-wanter who inherited his property. Perfect. You know, he was, you know, and so that's the best deal I've ever done. But you can do, you know, like small deals like that one I told you about. You can make $60,000 in a month, you know, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what I do. And I, Personally, when I turned 80, I decided I want to use all my knowledge and wisdom to help young people not have to stumble through life like I did when I was a young man. You know, I did it the hard way, and it took me forever to learn the lessons. And so I put the lessons in a book right now, and they're right there.

Wow.

And it's easy to do. You know, you don't have to learn everything. All you have to do is learn one of the tricks and find a lot that meets that one criteria. You know, like it's too small, doesn't have access, too steep, too wet, you know. And I— and it's fun. I mean, it's fun. It's like solving a puzzle. If people like to play games on their computers and stuff, this is what it's like. It's a computer game. Except it's reality. And you can win. You can win.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if you don't win, let's say you bought a piece of property that no matter what you did, it wouldn't work. You can let it go back in the tax sale 3 years later. And any monies above what the taxes are, you get to keep. So, they actually sell the property for you and you get the surplus. And I bought a lot, a real nice lot in downtown Seattle for $75,000. And with all my experience, it looked perfect, cordon, you know, I didn't see anything wrong with it. After I bought it, I found out that the owner had started using, put a fence up on the property, the buildable part, and fenced in that piece. And by legally by adverse possession, they own that lot if they've done it for more than 10 years. And I didn't know that because I didn't go and walk the property. I just looked online.

Mm-hmm.

And so I couldn't build on it. So I let it go in the tax sale. And at the end of the tax sale, it sold for $150,000 because it's a gorgeous looking lot. And nobody knows that you can't build on it. So, I made a $75,000 profit off of letting— of a piece of property that was bad and not buildable. So, even on bad property, you can win, you know? Yeah. So, that's what I do. That's what I do. And not only that, I like helping people. I decided when I'm 80, I'm gonna help all the young people with my knowledge do whatever they do. And I know a lot about everything. You know, I really have a lot of experience. So, you know, if people get stuck, they can call me. You know, I say, hey, what do I do with this now? I'm stuck. And I can, you know, help them out. Yeah, I do stuff like that. And also, besides just the real estate stuff, I decided I want to help people be happier in their lives. And I know so much about making people happier. I went— additionally, I have another direction I'm going, and I spend about 2/3 of my time. I have a site called Activate Love Energy. And what that teaches people to do is how to be in happiness every day by doing a 1-minute meditation in the morning. 1 minute. When you get up in the morning, you do this 1-minute meditation and it changes your whole day. Because most people, when they wake up, they probably wake up like me. I'm in what they call survival brain. Survival brain is not very happy. You know, oh, what am I going to do today? Do I have to pay any bills? You know, is it raining? What's for breakfast? What are the kids doing? And that's all survival bullshit. And it's not happy. So you have to immediately before you go on the rest of your day, do this little short meditation. And it's a I'll show you. These are my sites, but the first one is activateloveenergy.com. And you go there and it shows you what I do. And then what I tell people is, see if you can customize what I do to what they do, you know, so it becomes your own thing. But to do it 1 minute a day to alter your state from survival mind into love mind, where you feel love in your body and feel happiness. And it's easy to do. And then you get in this love energy. And as you go through your day, if you start drifting off into negativity, you remind yourself of what you did that morning. And you've, you know, and it's right there because you can feel it because you just did it an hour ago or whatever. And so basically you stay mostly in love energy during the day if you do this meditation. And another one I do is a lot of people have fear, fear of the future. Okay. Nuclear war. Okay. So I made another site called The Future Was Perfect. That's the second one there. And what that— if you say the future was perfect, after you just saw a nuclear war thing on the news or something, if you say it and feel it for a second that you went in the future, it was perfect, and you're here now, you get a sense of relief. And most people, when they say it, they laugh. Because when they come back to where they are, they laugh because it's relieved all that tension of the worry about the future. It's called thefuturewasperfect.com. And it's a little trick. That's the whole program. That's it.

Yeah.

You know, you go to the site, I elaborate on it. But that's all there is. As soon as you find yourself in fear about the future, Just stop for a second and just say that line. The future was perfect. And then see it, you know, kind of feel that you went to the future and came back. You're here and go, wow, I survived the future. So that makes people anti-fear. Yeah. And, okay, what else I have? There's another one I use, but I don't know if people might I don't know if they'll like the language, but sometimes when I'm in fear, I have a fear thought. I use another one. It's called fuck fear and laugh. And I go, fuck fear. When I say that, it sounds so silly when I say it. It makes me laugh. And as soon as you laugh, you diffuse all the fear energy. It's a short little trick. Or you can say anything. It could be that any saying that triggers your laughter will work.

Yeah.

And so I use that one too, personally, because it makes me laugh. I go, that's the stupidest thing you could say, you know. And but it works. And you say it, but you got to laugh. You say it and laugh. And as soon as you laugh, as soon as you laugh, basically, I said, you're touching God. When you're laughing, you're touching God. You're in pure happiness. You're as pure, happy person as you could ever be in your whole life at that moment. And that's what the love energy thing does too. When I do my 1-minute meditation, it makes me laugh. And when I laugh, I know I'm there because then I'm in pure happiness. So the goal is to keep people in the happy part of their body and not let their monkey mind go into negativity or worry or all that bullshit. So that one's cool. And Oh, and I've got one more. This one is really valuable. These are all valuable. This one is, this can change people's lives forever and make them rational and happy and enjoy life. And I call it Change the Record, but I just did a new card here. I just put it on just this week. It's called, where am I here? It says the second one down there. Activate happiness now. Okay. And how you do it, people don't know that emotions come from the words you say to yourself. People think they have an emotion and they think about the emotion. They say, well, I'm sad and my— I'm unhappy, so it's making me sad. And then they tell themselves something, but it doesn't go that way. You say, I'm sad, to your brain. You say the words and then the emotion comes second.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the key. If you realize that whatever word you say to your mind over and over again creates the emotion, it could be, has nothing to do with reality. You know, you can say, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm, whatever you say, your body will believe it and your emotion will respond to it, you know. And the easiest way to fix it, like saying sad, is you have to watch your thoughts that you say in your mind, which is very hard to do because we all do things kind of subconsciously. And you make those subconscious thoughts conscious. Like, I feel sad and you go, well, what was the— what'd I just tell myself? I'm sad because my dog died, you know, or I'm sad because of whatever. And the way to heal it is all you do is change the record. You say, I'm not sad, I'm happy. And But as soon as you see the sad thing, you flip the record over and say, I'm happy. And you can do it repetitively because the sad thing will keep coming up over and over. And as it comes up, you always counter it. And eventually this becomes your new habit. I'm happy. And then the sad thing drifts away. And believe it or not, you're going to feel happy. And it works. I mean, it does work. And I do it myself. I was in a negative situation, a big argument full of fear and anger. And I went back and sat in my car and I went, and you know, when you're in anger, you just get your record runs really fast right after, or fear or whatever. And so I said, I'm going to do my, what I teach. So I sat in my car and I decided not to do the opposite, but to do the happiest moment in my life picture. So I had this happy moment. And every time the bad thought came, I switched the record to this wonderful happy picture. And after 20 minutes, All the negative stuff was gone and I was laughing my sides out. And it took 20 minutes. So I had to do it 20 minutes because it was a big, you know, it was a big anger. It wasn't just a little bit, you know, or big fear. And, but it works. And after that, the next day, whenever that fear thought popped up, instantly I went to the happy thing naturally and it made that go away. So it disappeared the whole day after that. You know, maybe popped up once and then maybe the third day it didn't pop up at all. And all the pretty picture popped up, you know, the happy picture.

Yeah.

So that technique will change everybody's life to be happier because you don't wallow in the negative record, which plays, creates a negative emotion, you know, whatever. And we are in complete control of our lives, which we don't realize. By just saying the words to our brain, playing the— whatever record you're playing determines your emotional state. That's my favorite one.

Mm-hmm.

Because I've seen— well, I teach that to people, and I've seen it change people dramatically from being miserable and deep shit, suffering as much as you could possibly suffer. And like this one guy who was in a divorce, and it was blood and guts. The police were coming to his house, and they're trying to arrest him, and the kids are all fighting. They all hate him. His wife hated him. And I talked to him for 2 hours and we practiced changing the record. In a week, he was at good terms with his wife. In 3 weeks, he was back with his wife. His kids loved him. All his relatives loved him. And he became a different, happy person because he was sacrificing— he was ruining his own marriage by saying the wrong words to him that altered his attitude about life. And it was a negative attitude. So I taught him how to make it a positive. And he did. And now he's happy as could be. That was like 6 months ago. His wife loves him. His kids love him. And he's a happier person for real. And it was all a matter of changing the record. So I know it works. And I teach it to everybody I can because most people don't know about it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So All in all, I've really learned a lot of new techniques to make life happier and better for myself. And then I try and teach them to everybody else that I know. And my goal in life is to help one person every day dramatically. That's my goal. And then I do it. You know, I do like 5 out of 7 days a week. I can change people's lives dramatically If I get, if I can talk to them. And my other goal is to stay in happy energy as much as possible. And I'm not there all the time. I'm not perfect. You know, it's just, you know, I always, you know, you always, you go forward and you stumble and da, da, da. But you have to use that technique to get you back, you know. And so that's what I do. That's what I do. And here's a— I'll show you some books I wrote too. This is a new one I just finished. We're going to put it on Amazon here shortly. Activate Love Energy. Yeah. And then my real estate stuff I got. This is the Bible. This has all 7 rules on how to make millions of dollars in real estate realistically for a poor guy.

Yeah.

And then this one is actually how to buy at the tax sales and how to converse with the city to get them to help you solve all the problems. You know, so, so that's what I did. And, and so far, so good. You know, people are really happy to see me after I've talked to them because I improve their lives.

Yeah.

And basically, it's free. You know, everything else is free. You know, the only thing you have to pay for is a real estate course, but everything else is free. I don't do it for money. You know, I spend thousands of dollars to put this out there. I post it on all the sites and stuff. And it's my nickel. I do it. It's my gift to humanity. You know, so it's a— yeah, that's what I do.

Well, extraordinarily fascinating. And so Wayne has shown us that extraordinary opportunities often exist to where others simply are not looking. So with more than 50 years of experience, he has demonstrated that success in real estate is not just about capital or complex strategies, but about mindset, patience, and the ability to recognize hidden value. He also reminded us that investing is not only about financial returns, it is about growth, purpose, and the impact we make along the way. So whether transforming overlooked land into valuable opportunity or encouraging others to reach their full potential, Wayne's message extends well beyond real estate. So if you'd like to learn more about Wayne's approach, he offers a series of online video trainings, including foundational lessons and informal conversations, sharing his insights And his experience, and you can access those resources at www.junklandintogold.com. So that's junklandintogold.com. So if you've enjoyed today's conversation and you're interested in developing multiple streams of passive income and putting your money to work for you, I invite you to access to access our. Beyond the Paycheck, a private mini masterclass created specifically for high-income professionals looking to move beyond earned income and toward financial freedom. And you can access this complimentary experience at www.go.steedtucker.com/beyond-paycheck. And all of these resources you can find in our show notes as well. So thank you all for joining On Streams to Impact, where we help high-achieving professionals build passive income, create financial freedom, and make a meaningful impact. Until next time, this is Dr. Allen reminding you, your greatest opportunity may be closer than you think, sometimes hidden in plain sight. And we'll see you in the next episode.

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