From Acres to Assets: One Family's Tale of Transforming Land into Legacy

Oh, that's right, you can't hear.

Hey, what's up, you guys? Welcome back to the podcast, The New and Experienced Investor Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Alex Barnett. I'm the new guy.

And I'm Joe Homs. I guess that makes me the old guy.

That's right.

Or the experienced guy, as we say.

The experienced one. That's right. You've been through it all and more.

Yes. And continue.

Exactly. And you're a wealth of knowledge. And that's why, uh, we're here to give 2 different perspectives. Really excited. We got another in-studio guest today. Um, we're gonna bring him on in just a second, but first we wanna tell you guys about our event that we have coming up on November 20th. So if you're in the Orange County area, come to Hangar 24. 6 PM to 9 PM, and we're doing something really cool this time. Do you want to break it down for them?

I don't know, what are we doing?

I forgot. Yeah, we're talking about our wholesaling.

Yeah, wholesaling.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's exciting buzzword.

We get lots of questions on wholesaling and how to get started and what to do, so we're going to break it down for you. We're going to tell you exactly what to do. We're going to connect you with our team, and Alex and I will be there to hold your hand the entire way. Yep.

And we're starting a new course, um, Wholesaling Startup Club, for anybody new, or if you've been doing it for a while and you just want to join a team, it's going to be completely free. Um, we want to get as many people involved as possible. So come out on November 20th, and it's just an all-around great networking event as well. Um, I have a blast every time.

Back up. You said free?

It's free.

No 10% for the big guy?

That'll come later on.

Okay. Okay. Just want to make sure. Yeah.

But, uh, the course is completely free.

Okay. You know, so, and then you're also having an event on Saturday as well, right?

I'm going to one. Yes.

Oh no. Are you? I'm talking about the Power Hour. Yeah.

No, I won't be here for that, but that is still going on.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So Jen Shelton, Queen Closer from Sub2, um, she and I have a calling Club, I guess, if you want to call it that, where we meet up every 2nd and 4th Saturday and we just do straight calls. We just hit the phones, we pull a list, and, um, you know, no excuses, just complete action taking. So it's a great place to learn if you're brand new.

It is. Absolutely. Don't, uh, don't order the coffee there.

It takes 45 minutes.

Takes 45 minutes.

Yeah.

Go to McDonald's, which is like across the way. And grab some coffee there. Because if you order a coffee from the coffee shop, it literally takes 45 minutes. Uh, but anyway, that's a good way to, to like actually see people on phone calls.

Yeah.

Calling people.

Yeah, exactly.

It's, it's, I, I went once to check it out and it was very interesting.

Yeah. Because, you know, a lot of people will talk about wanting to get into this stuff, but it's like really taking the action that gets you far. And that leads me into one of my favorite action takers who's here in studio. We're talking to a guy, he's flipping land, he's working with his family, he's building a legacy and an empire. And his name is Dan Romer. Dan, welcome.

Wow, man, I'm so cool. That's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes, I'm doing that. So happy to be with you guys. This is super fun.

Absolutely. We'll jump on into it. Who are you and how'd you get into real estate?

Oh yeah, yeah. So I'm from London, England, moved out to the States in 2000, and my wife and I were there in St. Louis, Missouri. And in the early days, early years, just wanted a bigger adventure than England could offer us and did some postgrad study. And I was over at a friend's house, saw a TV commercial by Carlton Sheets.

Ooh!

Now Joe knows who that is.

I know who it is!

Because we're both old.

Yeah, all right, all right.

Yeah, we're not the same age. Yeah, you're a bit younger.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah, he's 22.

You saying I look older?

No, no, no, no, no, you're good. No, you're good. I just don't know, I'm new to— I'm newer to real estate, so I don't know, it sounds familiar.

But I, uh, well, yeah, so Carlton Sheets comes on, does a terrific TV commercial, and says buy my course. So I bought the course, went on eBay, bought it cheap, and, um, And then that summer, I just went through every chapter. Am I doing how I got into real estate?

Is that one of these questions? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good.

Yeah, this is good. Yeah, so that's the beginnings. I got into it, I read the chapter, did what he said, and it was super practical, and I just got super excited about it, and I wanted to make some money, and the market was climbing. It was going good, and I bought one house and then another house and then did a light rehab. And in St. Louis, you can do basements, and so I just Fix up the basement, some light drywall and carpet, and got a friend to help me, and just value add. And then, and then I got really excited when it got to the chapter on doing a double close.

Oh yeah, yeah, nice.

Oh, juicy. He said I can, I can find a property and put a contract on it, the A/B. transaction, if you will.

Mhm.

And, uh, and then do any, any improvements on, on not, and find my buyer, the BC contract, and then make it all buy and sell it same day. And I just, I, I thought, this is amazing. So I went out and found a 3-bed house. It didn't need any work done on it. And I put a contract on it, and I thought I was being really creative by extending the 30 days to 40.

I thought, genius, like, really? Yeah.

Hey, yeah, yeah.

So, um, they agreed to it. I thought that was amazing because, you know, you assume stuff, and I assumed it was only 30. And so I had a little extra time. I was looking around in the house, sniffing around, thinking, what do I do? Do I just put up some bunch of furniture in here? Do I just you know, put the coffee on, make it smell nice to it. And it was just— it was just ready to go. There's just nothing else you could really do to improve this house. Um, but I'd been talking with enough people locally. This family wanted a house, and, and I— they needed the $5,000. I think it was about $5,000 down payment to get the deal done. So I said, I'll, I'll help you with that. We'll do it all at closing. Went back to my Carlton Sheets manual, read that through. And it worked. And I left that table with cash. They were crying happy.

Wow.

Because the only thing in their way was a little bit of money that they just did not have. They just didn't have it. So they got into this house, sold it to them, the appraisal. So I bought it a little squeak under, sold it right there at a value that fit the appraisal. And I think appraisal rules were a little easier back then. But, you know, it was within their value. They were super happy. They were winning and I was winning. That was just absolutely amazing.

What year?

So that would've been around 2000 and 2004, 2003, 2004.

Okay.

Yeah.

Those were the early days. Great times.

Yeah. Yeah, they were. Absolutely.

Oh, I love that. So kind of like paint a picture of like, how are you finding leads back then? Like, how are you? Yeah. You know? Yeah, I guess getting the lead generation, like what was the way to do it?

I was finding the houses by driving around.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, that was, that was early enough to, to not really— I don't think I was aware of any kind of tech at all, and I was even putting ads in the paper to find my buyers.

Okay.

So, but yeah, I was driving around. I was just driving around the neighborhoods and getting, uh, you know, getting used to the area and kind of what, what looked a bit run down and knocking on the door. And then I was also looking at properties on market. As well. So I found a couple of realtors. I was actually renting a house from a realtor, and so that turned into a relationship of trust. And I told him exactly what I need, and he fed me some, some really good leads. And we picked up some houses, rehabbed some, kept some for rentals.

And why the double closing?

I just read it in Carlton Sheets' chapter, and it worked.

Okay.

And that was amazing.

Usually the, the people, the real estate companies that we have now, they do a double closing because they have a, a big fee up front and they want to hide that from the end user. But that's why they do a double closing. Um, was that not your case? I'm—

I made around $20,000, maybe a little under, with title fees. And at the time, as a newbie, I was I just thought, this is incredible.

Yeah. And then your end user ended up getting a loan?

They did.

Okay. Which is another reason you do double closing, because the bank doesn't like it when you're going to make $20,000 on a deal. So they have to see that close. And then they say, okay, well, this property closed at this amount, so now we're buying it from him.

Yeah, basically. Yes.

Yeah.

And we, we have— so we do most of our land deals today double close, about 80, 90% of them. So we have that challenge of, of, um, you know, using the right title companies and setting it up right to do that.

But again, do you, do you do that because you're trying— not that— not trying to hide, but you're trying to hide the profit that you're making?

I, I don't want to disclose how much money I'm making.

Okay.

Um, yeah, because people, um, one minute a parcel of land can fit their criteria perfectly well and they would pay that money for it. The next minute they realize how much I'm profiting and the emotions get involved. That's, that's human nature.

Yeah.

They need to win, so they're buying it at the right price that fits their budget. And, and typically it's a, it's a, you know, it's a builder building a house. But I, um, I'm also double closing because I, I want to save on capital costs on, on funding the deal. So if I can double close with a reputable title company in a good state and it's a win-win-win all around, win-win-win 3 ways, people I'm buying from, 'cause we're solving their problems and often they have some problems we've gotta solve, we're making a profit and then we're selling it to C, the end user, at 80, 90% of market value. We're selling them really quick. So, 'cause I want them gone in 60 to 90 days. I don't want them on the market and land can sit on the market for a year.

Yeah.

very typical. But I want it— I want people knocking the door down and buying it and move it on, generate the cash, keep going.

When you list the properties on the MLS, because I'm assuming you do because as you just said, yeah, um, what commission do you offer for like the, the buyer's agent coming in?

We, we try and, we try and do around 6%, which, you know, is just 3 and 3 split. But with land, um, a lot of brokers will be asking for 8%, and I've even had them at 9%, and I think maybe even 10%.

Correct. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm trying to get at, is what, what is it that you're paying with, yeah, uh, for land? Because I mean, what's the average price that you're selling these properties for?

Um, I don't have the exact number for what the average is. We just did one last week for, uh, $268,000, I think $269,000. Um, we don't do any below $20,000. It doesn't— the numbers don't really work, but we've— we have done them around $20,000 to $30,000, so, and everything in between.

Yeah.

Um, if I had to guess what the average purchase— oh boy, what is this? Right across the board. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's all the way between, you know, $20,000 and, and $260,000. But if I had to If I had to guess, then most of them were probably buying for around $75,000. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you're at $20,000, 6% for commission, we're not talking a lot of money here. It's just like, I don't know if I'd wake up in the morning to list a property at that price. It just doesn't make sense. And that's why agents want 10%.

Yeah, exactly. That makes sense.

Yeah. Plus they're greedy.

Not the good ones. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, they're there for a service. Yeah, exactly. They're all good. Are those— is your— and you're working nationwide now at this point or kind of what you're in?

About in about a dozen different states. Yeah, we've got our favorites and all the favorite states, favorite realtors, favorite title companies, and it just makes it all work much more smoothly.

Nice.

Yeah.

So kind of fill in the gap, I guess, from when you're doing single-family homes in St. Louis And then now you're out in California flipping land. So what's that transition look like?

Yeah, 2008 happened. That was painful. So Joe and I were talking about that a little bit earlier. I, I was in my 20s and I didn't know that. Nobody told me you have an economic downturn every however many years. Is it— what is it?

12?

12?

12?

10?

10?

Nobody said that. And if they were telling me, I was not paying attention. Um, there's a lot of things, you know, when you're in your 20s, you just—

Oh yeah.

You feel like somebody should have told you. So, um, if they told me, I wasn't listening. So this thing happened, felt like overnight, um, and you just kind of— you just sniffed it in the air and the newspapers. And, and, uh, you know, I figured things are just— things were just going so great, they'll just go like that forever. And it was just all the properties were climbing. I just practically had to wait a year Or 2 to know that I'd be— whatever messy rehab I did, it might— I'd be fine, and they'd just come out in the wash, and I'd just sell and be fine. But, um, but that's not reality. So 2008 hit, and I started to— I started to get just, just a couple, maybe 2 or 3 renters were late on their payments. And I figured, what, what is happening?

You don't—

you don't— you live in my house and you pay on time. Don't you understand the rules?

That's the rules.

And I'm like, at the time especially, I was super gracious. And I, you know, people have situations they go through. And I think sometimes you can have a conversation and help them. And I think I was too much on the side of just kind of being patient and being gracious and not having enough boundaries. And so I let them stay there and I was paying the mortgages and it was bad.

Mm-hmm.

And I felt bad for them. And, uh, I don't think that's healthy. I think, I think there's a balance, you know, between being gracious and forgiving and helping people, and, and then you've got to run a business, and you— and it's, you know, you have a, you haven't a, um, you know, you have a contract. So I, um, I tried to figure it out, and by that time we were behind on some mortgages, and, um, we didn't— we had one short sale that was the painful one that hit my credit. And then, um, and so my, my plan was, was panic and sell. And so I panicked first and then sold. And so I just, I just got rid of these as quickly as I could. And it's pretty amazing how, how quickly we actually could sell. But I, I think the emotion and the stress felt like it was a terribly dark hour. It was hard on me and my wife. Um, just the strain trying to figure out what was happening. We had just moved in ourselves to a bigger house, pool, really nice neighborhood in Chesterfield, Missouri, kind of right next to St. Louis. And, uh, I turned to my wife, I said, we got to sell this one too. This is, this is, this is, this is too much. And thankfully we did. We sold that amazingly in a few weeks with a little bit of profit. So, so it's pretty— in hindsight, it wasn't that much of a big deal. But when you're under pressure, you know, everyone has those stories. It just felt terrible. That made me take this dream and, um, just to tell you the brutal facts and the honest, I, I kind of shoved this real estate, the real estate dream down.

Okay.

And I kind of got into marketing and sales, and I did that for a few years.

Okay.

And it's only just recently that through some friends I've had this pretty amazing, uh, somewhat emotional, um, reemerging of this real estate dream. And that— I'll just—

the—

it's a longer story, but the, the bottom line is there's this— these friends of the family, this young couple doing land. And I was curious and I asked them, you know, what are you doing? And they said, we don't normally get into all the details. People don't even understand what we're doing, but we're flipping land. And I was like, I think I understand. How are you flipping land? What are you doing? Who's funding? Who's your capital partner? And they're like, oh, okay, you know a little bit about real estate. And they said, we're double closing. And I said to them, you can't do that. And they said, yes, we can. And I said, no, I'd like my mortgage brokers, my realtors, the title company, they all said that you can't do that anymore. And they're like, they're wrong. I said, no, you can't do. And I had this limiting belief sit on me for years.

Hmm.

And they said, shut up. Yes, we, we do it every day. And so, yeah, and I realized, um, you know, simple things can really change. Like, simple negative belief systems can really hold you back.

Do you do real estate 9 to 5 now, or do you have another job?

Yeah, yeah, 9 to 5.

Oh, excellent.

With, with the family.

Welcome back.

Glad to be back. Yes, welcome back with the dangerous ones.

And, you know, You still have real estate agents out there, mortgage brokers. They're the same. They're still the same. You know, you can't do this. You can't do that. Subject to is, you know, big and getting bigger right now. And you hear the same thing. Oh, you can't do this. You can't do this.

Yeah.

You know, you can get the loan called by the bank, which is not true. You know, just whatever. You kind of have to steer around these people and move in the right direction. So I'm glad you met. The family members that, you know, set you straight.

Yeah.

And me too. And you're back in, and it sounds like you're being very successful, and it looks like you're real happy.

Love it. Yeah, I'm back in my adventure.

Okay, so how do you source deals today? I mean, back then you were doing door knocking and driving and all that stuff, which people still do. Well, how do you source your deals today?

Yeah, um, We do text messaging, we do a bunch. Uh, so we're, we're sending between 5,000 and 7,000 text messages a day. Um, we're doing cold calling. Uh, we've only got 2 cold callers on the team, but they're, they're doing well. It's been a little bit up and down to, to put it together how we want, but it's, it's working good now. Um, and the, the new regulations with cold calling means we're shifting a little— uh, with texting means we're shifting a little more to cold calling. But that's, that's been how we're doing it, and we're just about to start up some ringless voicemail as well. But Texting has been the biggest one for me. So I pull the list on PropStream, put my filters in. I want off-market land. I love it when we can get a list of— with filters with people that have owned it 10 to 20 years and they're out of state and they're, you know, they're very happy to get a, you know, cash offer.

Yeah, that's— I don't use PropStream as much as Alex does, but does it tell you the age of the owner as well?

I don't think so. That's more PropertyRadar.

Okay.

Where it'll show you like, oh, this person's like 70 years old or something like that. Yeah, because you can—

one of my questions was, are you targeting older people that own these land, that land that's just been sitting there forever?

Not— no, not necessarily. I don't use it as my filters, but we've noticed most people of middle years, 50s, yeah, we're really careful when they are elderly because we you know, you've got to— there's laws and you've got to be careful and get an attorney involved or other family members.

Yeah.

Just to be sure that there's somebody, you know, isn't confused or—

Well, I didn't look at it as taking advantage of them. I looked at it as I'm getting older. I mean, how much longer am I going to be around? Why do I need this, you know, piece of land here that's not doing anything for me? I don't necessarily want my kids to handle it because they don't know anything about real estate. So Thank God for you. You called and, and I, and I said, yeah, I think it's time for me to sell. So is that the type of conversation you're having?

It is, it is people in that second half of life anyway. Yeah, from kind of 50s onwards. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And often, um, often they say things like you just said, they, you know, the kids don't want it, they're doing something else out of state somewhere else. Often we're solving problems. They've got tax liens on there, they're behind on taxes, there's some measure of embarrassment, they don't want to contact a realtor anyway. to, um, you know, even begin to talk about it. They, um, they have access issues, there's title issues, there's a railway company that owns a slither of land right across the front, and it's, you know, on paper it's useless. But, um, so we've got a great team and we solve a bunch of those problems that just require a little bit of patience and phoning around and normal conversations.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

I like the way he said the second half of life. Yeah, instead of calling people old, you know, I like that.

That's good.

The second half of life.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's true.

I like that. Yeah, so what's—

I mean, I, I know more of like, um, direct-to-seller with houses and all that stuff. That's more of my realm. But like, I guess with like a land buyer, are they— were they Did they buy this piece of land back in the day thinking that it was gonna be built up around them and someone was gonna offer them a cash price because like a developer was gonna come in? Is that like their thinking, you think, for most of these people? Or what's the reasoning to buy just a vacant plot of land if you're not a developer?

Yeah, that's a common one. Probably the top 3, that's probably in the top 3. Yeah, they're prospecting, they're thinking it's gonna grow in value, they're thinking things are gonna build up. And for a lot of people that just didn't happen. And it's in a reasonable area. It's not too far from the city. It's not too far from, you know, hospitals, schools. Um, people are working remotely much, much more, so they want land and, you know, an hour outside of town. Um, another one is they, they inherited the land.

Hmm.

They have no vision for it, no use for it, don't know what to do with it. Maybe, maybe a couple of siblings. Um, Another one is their plans changed. They had some kind of plan, they're getting engaged, and then they just figured, no, we're going to live somewhere else. Or they had some— wanted to live near family there, or family moved, or just whatever reasons. Those are the top 3 kind of stories we hear. Yeah, but there's a whole variety. People want to sell land, people want to buy land.

Yeah, it sounds familiar because I inherited— not me, but Well, me and my wife inherited a property from my mother-in-law that she bought back in the '30s, '40s in San Bernardino.

Yeah.

In the middle of nowhere.

Right.

10 acres. Real estate agent sold it to her for, I think it was like $1,000, which was a lot of money back then. Sold it to her for $1,000. And his idea was, well, when we have that big earthquake down San Andreas Fault and everything falls into the ocean, you're gonna have oceanfront property.

That's how it works.

It's like, okay.

That checks out.

So she passed away, we inherited. And I was paying the property taxes, not that they're a lot. They were like, you know, $100 a year or something, you know, 'cause it was worth nothing. But it was just the matter of, you know what, I'm paying these stupid property taxes. I'm not using this at all. So I did put it on the market. We sold it real quick 'cause I put it on there real cheap. For 10 acres, I sold it for $10,000.

Oh. I could probably sell it for more now, You know, let's not go there.

Okay.

That's every real estate.

Yeah, let's not go. Yeah, let's think of this. So I fell into your category. I mean, I could have been sure a person that you were reaching out to at the time because I did get a lot of postcards. You send postcards out?

I don't know. Okay. A lot of my peers do.

I was getting postcards, you know, once a month. Hey, you want to sell your land? We'll pay you cash and you know blah blah blah blah. Okay. So finally I said, you know what, do we want to do anything with this? Well, we can, you know, leave it for our kids. I'm going, leave it for our kids? What the hell are they going to do with it? You know? So we ended up selling it. Yeah.

There you go. Textbook case.

Yeah. Textbook case. Yeah.

Yeah.

Happens all the time.

Yeah. And land is sort of like, even for me, it's like an enigma when I come across, you know, I'm doing texting and stuff, I'll come across like a land and And I'm just— I have no idea how to value it, you know, and, and I don't even know what questions to ask.

Yeah.

So that's, that's great. I'm glad we met so I can just send you leads.

For sure. Send leads. Yeah, send them now.

I mean, I know a lot of other wholesalers are like, it's freaking land. I got no idea. Like, what is this worth? Maybe it's a deal. I have no idea. And they just end up passing on it.

Um, so— If, if it's land, someone somewhere will buy it for the right price.

Yeah.

It will sell. You have some really junky pieces that are hard, right? They're way off in the desert, don't have accessibility. So all else being equal, you've got a parcel and you can travel to a city within 2, like 1 to 3 hours. If it's got— and, and, you know, stuff that's unbuildable, people buy it because it's interesting for recreation.

Right.

And they just go, you know, put a little cabin on it.

When I sold the 10 acres in the middle of the desert, the guy that bought it said he just wanted to take his motorhome out there and his motor toys and have a place that he knew was his own and putt around. That's why he bought it.

Yeah.

I said, good for you.

Yeah.

I don't have any of that stuff and I don't have any interest in doing any of that stuff. So there you go.

That's a good— that's a great illustration of just positioning. You know, some people look at that and think, why do I want dirt? You know, but you position it, it's a getaway.

Yeah, it's a retreat.

Yeah, it's yours.

Wow. Ride your four-wheeler, do Airbnb on it.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, throw a couple sleeping bags.

Yeah, yeah.

What do they call those things? Uh, yurts. Yurts.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

Or like you said, put a bunch of motorhomes on there and Airbnb them. I don't know if the county or the city would like that, but—

Yeah, you don't gotta tell them.

I'm just kidding.

Now they're all over your property.

Until you become successful, profitable, and then they go, wait, what the heck's Alex doing over there?

Hold on a second.

Yeah.

Okay.

So he had a great question. How do you value land?

Yeah, great question.

Yeah.

That's really important. So we, um, our manager that manages our overseas VAs, they do all the comping on it. So they'll do a 5-step, very, very practical and very, very quick kind of review of the land.

Time out. You have somebody overseas that's—

We do.

Doing a comping of something here?

We do.

Yeah. They've never been here?

It's really common. Yeah, really popular.

Wow, see, you learn something new every day.

That's what I'm saying.

Go ahead, keep going. Sorry to time you out there, but no, not at all.

We, um, yeah, we've had Egyptian VAs in Egypt, really sharp, um, pretty, pretty decent American accent as well for cold calling. We've got several Filipino VAs Um, super sharp. And, uh, you know, a dollar buys your food for, for a day. And so you have some sharp, reasonably experienced people on $5 a day making a boatload— relative to their culture, a boatload of money. You give a $50 bonus, $100 bonus, it's really, really generous.

For— so what tools are they using to evaluate how much this piece of property's worth?

Yeah, they're, they're using, um, I mean, we jump on Zillow like, like you do with, with residential, and, uh, instead of, you know, clicking houses, we click land, so it just filters it for us. So we can do comps that way. The 5 steps they take is we give them an acronym so it's really easy to remember: FACTS. F-A-C-T-S. So just want to check flood zone, so they'll— our CRM is just uh, linked to Maprite, or LandID it's called now, whatever it is. It gives you a really nice view of, of the parcel of land in color, and then you just kind of make a couple of selections and it— you can see if there's any crazy stuff like power lines overhead or flood zone, flood issues. So they'll click the, click the flood zone selection and just see, is, you know, there— is there a river, you know, because obviously you can't build within a certain Buffer depending on the county and the state, 75 feet or 100 feet of a, of a river. Even if it's dry, you know, the county, you know, might, may have an issue with that. So then that affects the value. So they just pay attention to that. 9 times out of 10, no flood zone issues anyway, because we've already selected the geographical region, the county that doesn't have a lot of those issues to make it easy. But we need to know real quick, seconds, a minute. Um, F. So A, accessibility. So we, we just need to know briefly a couple of things, legal accessibility and And physical accessibility, because as you know, as you know, they they can be a little different. So, so you know, just because you've got physical access and people are you know driving on a dirt track might not necessarily mean that that that's a true easement, or maybe it's an easement by virtue of them having driven on there for five years or more, or whatever the you know local laws are, or whatever. But most of all, we just want to know: Can can can someone even view the property? Can they just drive their vehicle on there? And is there a clearing, or can we make a clearing? Get a— get like a brush hog or whatever, just, you know, mow the grass, but make it look nice in the photographs so that you can get on there. So that's A, accessibility. C, they'll check the comps. So jump on Zillow, check the comps. Comps can be a little bit, a little bit fishy, but, but we teach them. Like, if it's practical and you've got 3 parcels of land, they're also 5 acres, they're similar to that, they're nice, you know, it is what it is, write it down.

Yeah.

If you don't have anything that close Find one point of reference within whatever the, you know, go a little further out than a mile radius, find something, put it in the notes. And it's, it's a little bit of guesstimation, you know, guesstimate work. And we can, we can ask a realtor later on. FAC comps. T, uh, taxes. We've actually, actually relaxed this one. We don't, we don't actually need to dig into this early on, but it's helpful at some point to figure that out and that we can do it during title search. So we actually, actually don't do that anymore. And then S is— does it have— S is for slope. So does it have a slope? So, you know, 30% or more can be problematic, but just put it in the notes and it could be a recreational parcel of land that nobody builds on anyway. We did one like that in Nevada. It was awesome. It was 144 acres.

Wow.

Reno, Nevada. Guy snapped it up. It was a great deal. We bought that for $30,000 and sold for $100,000 and Um, 100 and good money thousand.

Nice.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Nice.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, no plans to build, no, no due diligence. I think he had a short due diligence when he just wanted to look around. He just wanted to shoot his guns. And so, yeah, so is— yeah, is there a slope? So the, um, you know, that can— I'm typically looking for something that just doesn't have much of a slope. So that's real quick. They can do that in 10 minutes. So they'll do kind of like 5-ish or more per hour comped. So we'll end up with something like 3— between 250 and 350 leads in a week. And then we'll, we'll go through those, uh, to get about 40 hot leads, the ones we're excited about, seem more motivated to sell, and we'll get our closer on the, on the phone with them. But that's, that's prospecting, to answer that question.

Nice.

That's a good system.

Due diligence was the question.

I mean, it's similar to what we do.

Yeah, I'm doing all the comping and the closing.

Yeah.

I need to hire some people.

Oh yeah.

Oh, I don't know if you would be happy. I think you're the happiest when you're talking to somebody.

No, I don't mind closing.

You walked in today talking on your phone and then you literally walk back out and then you're walking the parking lot.

In the zone.

Yeah.

In the zone. And then it's time for lunch. This is an hour later and he's still out there and I'm kind of doing this and he says, oh, I'm ready. I've been waiting for you guys.

Yeah.

For an hour out there. Waiting on you.

Yeah. No, no, I, I enjoy the closing and, and talking to people, but it's like, um, it can get bottlenecked when it, you know, it's like the comping and the closing and the underwriting for creative deals and all that kind of stuff.

Oh yeah.

That's when it gets a little—

Comping is systematic. You can, you can have, uh, We have some VAs at $3 an hour in the Philippines with an agency, and we trained them to comp. Oh, yeah.

Oh, you mind, uh, passing along a couple names, or—

Since it's you. Okay.

Yeah, nice. So are you doing like— so what's your role within the business? Um, seems like you're, you're up here and kind of just managing everything. Are you still getting on the phones and help closing, or—

Uh, I'm, I'm on the phones just rarely. Okay, rarely now. Um, yeah, I'm a starter. I'm a sort of build the teams. I like to think 5 steps ahead, solve problems, and I don't, I don't want to maintain and manage things. And I think that's been a helpful self-discovery. You know, you kind of think about your personality, you think about where you're happiest and most productive. And so I want to start stuff. I don't want to, I don't want to manage stuff.

Right.

Um, so I have an incredible operations manager Um, Rachel, she's amazing, uh, and she's just, she's just ninja fast, faster than a speeding bullet.

Wow.

Yeah, there's me overthinking something. Yeah, so that's a, that's a blessing. That's great. 3 of my older kids are in the business, which I love. So my daughter manages the, the VAs and the comping team, um, so she handles all the, all the, all the leads. Um, so my other son does the marketing and the data. So he buys our data, scrubs it, gets rid of any nasty litigators, or the best he can, because they're out there in, um, you know, it's, it's a, it's a marketing business. Um, it's how, how I view it. And, uh, then my other son, he's— I trained him to do all the sales calls. So he's on Follow Up Boss, so he knows exactly who he's calling. Triple dial morning, triple dial evening. He's going to chase that lead. for about 15 to 20 times.

Nice.

And make them say yes or no, but not be quiet. So he's a hunter. So in getting those contracts signed, that's that— what's that book calls it? The Queen Bee Role or something. It's like the indispensable key metric of the business. Contracts signed. So yeah, so that's the kind of resource we've got. We've, we've got 2, 2 ladies in the, in the UK, um, and then we've got the team, uh, my kids in the US, and then, um, and then we, we have some over— yeah, the overseas virtual assistants, maybe about something like 15 or 16 if I include all of them.

Nice.

Okay, so that's a lot of time zones working together. How you, uh—

The Filipinos work in the night, right? Work on US hours. And, um, the uh, the Brits, they, they travel between the US and the UK, but they're mostly on American hours when they work.

Okay.

It's only— it's like an 8-hour difference, right? So they can work from like noon or 2 o'clock into about 10 PM, and they like that schedule.

Oh, perfect.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah.

So I'm, um, yeah, I mean, I kind of bought into the EOS philosophy, the Entrepreneur Operating System, and, you know, being like a thinker, a dreamer, a people person, I need those systems in a business to, you know, keep a scorecard, keep us quantifiable so we're not just drifting here and there. And it forces me to create a, you know, what EOS calls a VTO, like, you know, vision but with traction. So vision traction organizer.

Right.

So I'm responsible for that, do some hiring, a little bit of phoning like I said. And we're just, we're new, so we've been growing and learning what it means to grow and scale, learning Like cash flow and profit-first stuff that's, you know, just nearly killed me over the years. But trying to, trying to be a big boy with, yeah, with managing money, just a big part of business is for me, yeah, managing. So that's kind of what I do.

The, the, the relatives that got you back in, are they with you or are they doing their own thing?

They, uh, they're friends of the family. They're doing their own thing. And, uh, their mom Um, she was very much a coach to me. Just absolute super sharp woman. Angie McDonald, wherever you are, you are amazing. Super generous. Um, an amazing woman. Um, yeah, really helped me, and I asked her so many questions. Changed my life. She really did.

Nice.

And became a capital funding partner. She's, she's amazing. Surprises me how amazing she is. You know, one text and she's sending $260,000 to— what was it, Nevada Title or something? And nice super relationships. Awesome.

Nice.

Are you using her as a transaction, like transactional funding? Because you're mostly just— Mostly wholesaling it. Well, I guess you're double closing a lot of them, so you need that to close.

Nevada. Was it Nevada? Yes, I think that deal was Nevada. And then there was there was a title company, man.

Where?

What state are we in now?

Oh boy!

Or is that North Carolina? The title company we really like working with in North Carolina, they just said they don't want to do double closes anymore. And they said that days before a deal. Oh, like Angie.

Yeah. Help!

Who you got?

I need a I need a Big, big, big, big bunch of your money for about 4 days. So we buy it and then sell it a couple of days later.

Do you already have the B2C already lined up? It's just a matter of logistics at that point.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, are there any places doing pass-through to where you can— I mean, it's not really double close if you use B2C to fund—

That's the double close.

Yeah, it sounds like that's what he's describing as double close, but it's more of a pass-through that you were talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah, the double closing was actually closing with your funds. And then 3 or 4 days later, isn't it?

Well, I've done it to where I've used transactional funding.

Yeah, but you're, you're using somebody else's money to close first.

Yeah, but it'll be same day. It'll fund.

My description of double closing is that, not a pass-through.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. Well, I don't know many title companies or Around here, escrow companies that'll do pass-throughs. They just won't do them.

We we have a few. So when you say pass-through, you mean the BSC will fund the AB?

Yes.

Yes. There's a few.

Okay.

Yeah. Not not in. I haven't found any in California. Yeah.

You'll find any around here.

They're very fussy here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gosh.

Yeah.

It's just like Tennessee, Georgia.

Okay, nice.

North Carolina did until they called us and said they didn't want to. Yeah, Tennessee will, Georgia will, North— I think South Carolina we've done deals there. I'd have to ask if— pretty sure we double closed there. Colorado we have.

Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah, that seems— it's just like so much cleaner that way, you know what I mean? Well, for you. Yeah, you gotta come up with anything.

But what happens, and have you ever had this happen, you close and then C says, I changed my mind?

I have not. Angie has.

Okay.

Yeah, I have not. I think we're readying ourselves for that eventuality where when I've used Angie as a capital partner. I've walked myself through that scenario. If they back out, I owe Angie this money. Can I sell this parcel of land? And so the idea is buy it well, buy it right, so you've got plenty of margin. So I could, I could say to her, I'm going to need your money for another 30 days. She knows that. She's aware this is a potential.

And in your contracts with C, do you put down, you know, a large deposit and nonrefundable?

No, I avoid that as much as I possibly can.

Why?

I don't want to have money tied up everywhere. We've, we've got a bunch on the, on the MLS, so I don't want all my money just sat.

No, no, I'm talking about once you find C, the buyer, Yeah. Of your property.

Yeah.

You require them to put—

Oh, them to, to pay. Yes. Sorry, the other way. Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry.

And it's non-refundable.

Um, you know, we've, we've left it to the realtor. Um, yeah, in all of our deals, the realtor has, has, has left it to them to put down sometimes $500, sometimes $1,000. Sometimes it's a refundable earnest EMD, and plus a non-refundable due diligence fee. And, um, and so we— I know, I know another guy in that's doing what we're doing, and he, he's much stronger on get a solid deposit, get a solid— and I think he, um, man, it's a big percentage. I can't remember what it is, but it surprised me. I heard this just the other day.

Yeah.

But for us, no, we, we have never asked anything specific. And I'm often surprised when I literally get a check. It's like, here's $1,000 due diligence fee, non-refundable if the deal doesn't go through. I'm surprised.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's honestly, that's all we do around here is if it goes under the contract and the buyer's there, he's putting $20,000 to $30,000 down on a deal. Yeah. And it's non-refundable.

Yeah.

You know, so because if you don't do it that way, you're going to have a lot of tire kickers. They're going to, you know, say, hey, we'll buy it and we'll put down $20,000, but we want it back if we change our mind.

Yeah, that's right.

And they do, or they renegotiate with you.

Yeah. You know, that's good. Yeah, there's plenty of things like that we need to, we need to get give a lot of attention to. So that's a good one. Yeah.

You mentioned you're, you know, you're working with your family at this point.

Yeah.

Can you shed a little light on how, you know, how that works and how you can, you know, take dad hat off and, you know, put the boss hat on? Or how does that, how does that play out?

Yeah, that's, that's good. I've given that a lot of, a lot of thinking. We're, we're an entrepreneurial family where everyone's fiery and outspoken and headstrong, and I don't know where they get that from. But, um, so yeah, so one thing was a big breath of fresh air was having an operations manager so I can be good cop. And I, and I told—

Nice, nice.

I told, uh, Rachel, Rach, um, hey, this— I need help in this area. Um, I do not want to be cracking the whip with my kids, but I want you to. And so they have a scorecard. They show up at the Monday Level 10 meeting and they need to deliver their number. And they know if it's under, they know it's— we're gonna like have a meeting and we're gonna start talking about it. And so they know what their number is. But she— and she's really great with them and she's obviously a friend of the family and knows, you know, loves my kids. So my wife grew up with her.

Okay.

And she owns real estate. So it's very unique and it's wonderful. It's a gift. Um, yeah, so that's very helpful. Um, there are— then in addition to that, I've got to lead with vision. So I think when it doesn't go good and the kids are frustrated with me, or, you know, Dad's unclear or whatever, it's because I've neglected that proximity and the time to just sit down over lunch and talk it all through. I just met with my—

Lunch?

It's very powerful.

Yeah, I love lunch.

That's my whole thing.

Solves problems, right?

It does. I get so much work done at lunch.

Yes. You know?

Yes, yes, yes. I like— we think alike.

Yeah, I like that. I just had lunch with Lily, my daughter, and, uh, she lives in Costa Mesa. We just talked about everything, and we eventually got around to work. And she's talking about 20, you know, 2024. Yeah, we're talking about goals, from our salary, talking, you know, she's getting her realtor license, she— which she'll head up. Um, we're learning to subdivide land. We haven't done any yet, but we're— some— it just makes sense. It's just so close to what we do. So, um, yeah, so we're just— and that just, you know, that proximity, that's just, you know, it's even— you don't even have to figure out Everything is just— I don't know if like osmosis is just— so I think that's big, you know, for the kids. So we have a lot of fun. We, we ski season, we're, we're skiing once a week together and we're trying to do work. It's like everyone stops for an hour and has lunch. Yeah, lunch.

Let me, let me ask you this. So you've got family lunch and then you have investor lunch. Family lunch, who pays?

Oh, I pay.

I'm always paying. Okay, thank you. And investor lunch, you have investor lunches?

No, should I?

What is that?

Yeah, like newbie land flippers.

Oh, absolutely. You should be on the road, you know, just saying, hey, I can teach you how to do all this stuff, but you need to pay for lunch. You've got an hour of my time. Yeah, you know, that's what I do. I, I do.

I, I take calls from guys, you know, but they're in other states. I don't—

okay.

Yeah, but I have them Venmo you lunch.

Yeah, yeah, lunch. Like a good one, right?

Exactly. Nobu, like sushi lunch, lunch, Starbucks, whatever, you know. This was good.

Yeah, if you're special— I mean, if you're willing to sit down with somebody like you are with us today, and we've been highly paying you for this interview, but anyways, um, yeah, you deserve something. You, you have something of value there, you know. You don't have to be a guru and charge them, you know, 10, 20 grand for it, but No, it's like, I can do that.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, there's some people—

No, I agree. I think it's a great thing to share. Yeah, there's— the world is big enough for everyone to do well. So yeah, I love to share. People have been so generous with me. Yeah, I just need to, need to let them know they're buying me lunch.

Yes, it's easy to do.

Yeah, you gotta eat.

Yeah, I mean, I've got a, a Calendly account that you should check into it.

Yeah.

Calendly.com.

Yeah.

And I've got all my favorite restaurants on there.

Okay.

And, you know, you can meet anywhere here. You can meet at Starbucks. I've even got the option you can come to the office for free, you know, but it's like, hello, like if you want an hour of my time, you know.

Don't do that.

Yeah, don't do that. But I'll give them the option, you know, but it's like—

He'll be mad when you show up.

Starbucks, you know, at the end of the day.

So can I, can I book on your Calendly, book you?

Yes, absolutely.

Take you for coffee?

Coffee?

Oh, he loves it. See, this is where it's going.

Lunch is better. Are you kidding? Yeah, lunch is better. And, and I hear you, lunch. I hear you when it comes to family. Yeah, the big guy pays all the time.

Yeah, you know, the big guy wants to pay.

He does.

Yeah, he does, because that's the big guy's Yeah, thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I pay. So I, I, man, we're just like getting along here, aren't we?

Hey, yeah, wow.

Yeah, but you ought to think about, you know, hey, if you're interested in doing, um, you know what I'm doing, I'm happy to sit down with you for an hour. Here's my favorite restaurants lunch. Pick one and I'll meet you for lunch and tell you what I'm doing. Yeah, just like you're doing here today. Yeah, you're telling Our audience, what it is that you're doing and how you're doing it. I don't know if you want the competition, you know, because I don't care. One of the first flips that we did together was a mobile home in Hemet, and he comes to me with it and he says, "Hey, you know, let's do this home mobile home in Hemet." I go, "Mobile home?" I go, "I don't flip mobile homes. I've never flipped mobile homes." He goes, "Oh no no wait wait wait timeout." It's a mobile home in a senior community and you own the land underneath it. Ah, it's not in a park.

Yeah.

I go, whoa, that's interesting.

Yeah.

So he got it under contract for $60,000. We went out there. Um, I acted like his contractor and I'm walking around going, hey, Alex, it's gonna cost you 10 grand to do this. It's way more than you had told me. You know, it's like really bad. So we get done and I tell him, I go, you need to renegotiate this. He renegotiated the contract down to $40,000. We went in and spent $60,000. So we're at $100,000 and we sold it for $215,000.

That works. Those numbers work.

Yes. That's what I said.

I can bring—

the problem that we had was me being so nice and the big mouth is I told a bunch of my agents. And so now they're doing it in the same place we were doing it. And so there goes all our deals, you know.

Yeah, there's plenty.

From where I'm seated, you're doing well.

Yeah, sounds like one of my agents was talking to him the other day, said, yeah, Joe told me just to sell this, you know. I'm probably going to lose like $25,000. I'm sure he, he can afford losing $25,000, but I can't.

He's like, Joe's a very rich man, he wouldn't care about $25,000. I was like, um, I'm sure you would care about losing $20,000.

Anybody cares, you know?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. Nobody likes that.

So yeah, no, I think you ought to put a program together and—

Whole lunch mentorship.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Become the land guru, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, people are starving, honestly. You come, you come to our meetup and there's 75 to 100 people that are coming there to find out what it is that we're doing or our guest speakers doing. Okay. And they're starving for attention. They're starving for somebody to sit down with them and say, here, son, I need to hold your hand, but let's go.

Yeah.

It's good. You know, mentorship.

Powerful.

Yeah.

So I love that.

Think about it.

Thank you.

Free lunches. Okay.

Yeah. And maybe 10.

I go, I go anywhere. For free lunches anywhere.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm just, I'm excited I could have more time with Joe. I only, only had a few minutes. I know I did not get enough time to extract some really juicy real estate knowledge.

Exactly.

There's a lot.

Yeah, there is a lot.

I know there's a lot.

And you've been through the 2008 thing, so I can, I can talk to you from the other end because it was very profitable for me. Okay. You know, Warren Buffett, you know who Warren Buffett is? Everybody does. Says, when people are running away from investment, you should be running in. That was me. I'm running in. But again, by that point in time, I had probably 25 years of experience and had been, this is opportunity. This is opportunity.

Do you think there'll be a downfall?

Gosh, we're there.

Got that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Inflation's a good one too. Oh my God, we're there. It's like, it's like I'm, I'm back in 1980, right when Jimmy Carter was in office, right before Reagan came into office. Same thing's happening right now. The only thing, the only difference is that the big, the big thing is unemployment and we're not facing a big unemployment. I mean, unemployment's at what, 3.2 or? Something like that. It's like everybody who wants a job, wants a job, has a job. And so when that's the case, people can afford their rent. They can afford to buy things. So I don't see a downturn. So you do?

It feels very different to you.

It feels very different. Yeah. I don't see a downturn. I've been expecting it for, you know, the last 10 years.

Yeah.

And here it is, you know, and then you hear all these YouTubers. Alex tells me all the time, it's clickbait. That's clickbait. Yeah. You know, it's like the world's falling apart. You know, it's like foreclosures are coming left and right. You know, it's like, no, no, that's not the case.

There's so much just nonsense.

Yeah. That's not the case. It's not happening. I don't see it, you know, at all.

That's helpful.

You know, and I like that. Back in 2008, I kind of, you know, personally, I've kind of predicted that that's what was going to happen. When you're giving people free loans, you know—

That was me. They were giving them to me.

See? When you're giving people free loans, there's got to be consequences at the end of the day.

Yeah, absolutely. And the UK was buying a lot of that debt.

Oh yeah.

Buying a lot of those mortgages. So the knock-on to— and probably other European countries, I don't know which ones, but Was just you know very disappointing. Yeah, yeah.

So coffee, coffee, or lunch?

Lunch is better.

That's the big thing.

I like you did mention the ten K fee of coaching something that stuck in my head as well.

No, I didn't.

Even down the road.

I did.

Well, you're saying it doesn't cost that, but no, it doesn't cost that. Yeah, it's a possibility. Yeah, package a nice little thing.

But I mean, you know. 10% for the big guy though. I'm good with that. Yeah, I'm good with that. Yeah, I mean, I have people that I meet with and, you know, um, yeah, Joe, Joe, we're like, what do you get out of it? And honestly, to be very honest, I like giving back to people. I like educating people, and that's what I, I get from it.

Yeah.

You know, just simple as that. A lot of people don't believe me and they say, well, geez, I just Pay $10,000 for this course. I go, just give me $10,000. If, if that makes you happy, then give me $10,000. But I can help you. I'm still waiting for that $10,000.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting. You know, people like yourself, Joe, that I've met, and I've watched quite a few of them, the, the 2 traits I think are very interesting, like in a, in a mature— like a maturity of personality and experiences. I, I've listened to them say these 2 things. I think you're saying is there's, there's enough to go around, there's enough deals for everyone. And secondly, you personally, you— nobody's perfect, but you know what you're doing and you know how to generate deals. Even if someone else grabs a deal close by that could have been yours, you're competent and valuable and experienced enough to get on with it.

Yeah.

Which is a beautiful place Courage and like a humble, quiet strength.

I have agents, I have people, I have investors tell me, well, why, why are you teaching me all this stuff? And why are you doing this stuff? Because like, I'd be your competition. No, you're not my competition.

No, I love that.

You're not. Yeah, you're not even close. I love that. Yeah, you may, you may get a deal, but then that's it. That's all you're gonna do. I, I'm doing 20, 30 deals, you know, a year or more. Depending on you know the year. Yep. But yeah, you're you're nowhere close to being my competition.

I love that.

I don't want to brag, but that was the best moment in this conversation.

Yeah, black belt versus white belt. You're just like meh. Oh gee. Yeah, for sure. Okay, wow. So yeah, and then we met actually at a like a like sort of like a power hour thing.

Yeah.

And you mentioned that you are now getting back into the residential space. You're looking to pick up some properties, buy and hold. And what's the reasoning behind that?

Well, land is great. It's good business, but there's more in my heart with vision. I want to hold assets for the future. So my kids are You know, they're growing into their 20s. We're a big family.

How big?

7 kids.

Oh yeah.

Wow.

Love it.

Yeah, I love it.

And you finally woke up and said, wow, the kids, I got to leave them a legacy. How did you take care of schooling all of them?

We've home educated.

Oh, okay.

My wife.

Okay.

Who's the superstar in the family?

Okay.

We yeah, we've loved. We've lived in a couple of different cities and enjoyed travel, and we lived back in the UK for about five years, and then kind of just got out of there as quick as we could. It was during COVID that we were like, "Oh, it's just horrible here." The restrictions, the shutdown. Like everyone was California. Get me. Get me back to USA. as quick as possible. So, um, yeah, so we— that's when we made the move back here to California, 2 and a half, nearly 3 years ago. So we've home educated and, and loved it. And the big, um, like the big piece of value we've learned from that is, is just having flexibility as a family. We just love to, to do stuff. So we'd go on vacation to like Greece when all the other kids are back in school, you know. And that's nice.

Yeah, that's cool.

We love that. We'd, um, We— the other big value added, I mean, for just from a family perspective, is we just really enjoy it. We thought we'd have one, one or two.

Yes. Yeah.

And then you, you do change as you grow older. And like, we wanted— and then we had twins. And wow, we, um, we loved kind of just noticing our— the personalities in our kids. So, um, you know, it's not, it's not like you can tell exactly kind of what they're personality and giftings and kind of calling is or anything. But sometimes you can tell this, this is the sociable one. Like, this is the jokester in the family. This is the sales. This one's like technically minded. This one's the end. This one's like everyone gets this kid to fix the Wi-Fi and then, you know, the technical stuff. And it's been super fun to put skills in their hands. So yeah, the 2, the 2 older boys that are working with me, We've done a— just had a bunch of fun being entrepreneurial and doing life together. And so they went into the marketplace early and they love it. They buy their own cars, they save their own money, they pay for their own flights.

They do?

Oh yeah.

Does that really work?

Yeah.

I'm still paying for my oldest son and his wife's cell phone. Yeah. And he's in his 40s. That actually works. Kick him out of the house and everything.

You need to tell Joe some things. Wow. At lunch. At lunch. You guys keep it to lunch.

Yeah.

On me. Is that? Yeah. Yeah.

Off topic real quick. Have you been to Stonehenge?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So I loved it when I was there.

It was small, right?

It was small. Yeah. Yeah. And they didn't let us go in.

No.

Even though Obama was there like a week before me and they let him touch everything. It's like, I don't know. What's the difference here?

Who is even Ogbonna?

Yeah, it's like, what?

Have you touched the rock?

What do you think? What's the story with that? Again, real quick.

Yeah, I really don't know. There's, you know, I've heard all kinds of things during my British schooling and connected with the Druids, I think. I don't even know if I know anything about the Druids. But we have a house in Bath right by there.

Oh, yes, I've been there.

Yeah, we Airbnb. So we would and drive by there from time to time. And having lived in the States and Texas especially, you know, I kind of look and I think, how did the British have a small pile of upright rocks that are a tourist attraction with nothing? No restaurants, no coffee shops, no infrastructure. I don't think there's a parking lot there.

No.

Nothing.

Yeah.

It's not monetized. Like, it's not No.

What?

How? It's, it's the British, like, slightly disappointing methodology. And it's, it's just, has no reason to exist.

Well, you just see land now and you just want to develop it.

Yeah, I'll take the land, see if we can get us—

you're like, get it.

How much I could get for this? Yeah, for sure. I just, I don't know, just, I find it boring, you know. I'm out here in the States, me and my wife went up to see the redwoods. Yeah, that's a tree.

That's another thing. It's like people ask me, when are you gonna retire, Joe? I don't think I'll ever retire. What I mean, boring to me is going to the beach, sitting there. Okay, 15 minutes later, it's like, okay, what do I do now?

Nothing.

You know, there's nothing to do. It's like—

Grab a board and hit the fricking waves, bro. Yeah.

Oh. I'm doing this until I fall down or, you know, hopefully Alex or Lauren will pick me up.

Oh, I'll catch you. I'm not letting you hit the ground.

Are you kidding?

Yeah.

I'll hit the ground. Yeah. Do we have anybody online that has any questions? Uh, this is Brian.

Zero Waste says hi.

Says hi.

All right, there we go.

Hi. Yeah, that's good. Thank you for saying hi. Appreciate it.

Thanks for checking in.

No other questions.

Yeah. Um, so what, what sort of, uh, deals are you looking for? How can people get in touch with you and how can they do deals with you?

Yes, a couple of ways. Um, our bread and butter is, is, is land. So if you know, if there's any vacant land and you certainly, if you've got some sort of relationship with the owner, they could have all kinds of difficulties going on that we would love to take a look at and see if we can, if we can solve that.

I think I have some.

You do?

Yeah, that's right. Right now or while we're live or—

I got to look into CRM. Yeah.

Take a look. So it's amazing. So it's a numbers— from my standpoint, it's a numbers game. I've got to have enough conversations And I, I end up— and, and we have a— we know the stats exactly, how many, um, phone calls, how many text messages have to happen to turn into a deal. So from my perspective, um, it's only a— it's only a matter of, you know, a certain number of conversations. We're talking with someone that would love to sell their land. The, um, second related way is kind of the same thing, but, but I, I am getting into subdividing.

Mm-hmm.

Now that can happen in such a variety of ways that legit helps people, helps the community. Again, from my standpoint, I want it to force appreciation. I want to increase the value of the same amount of dirt. I want the value to go up. So one way of doing that in states like Tennessee and in— is Georgia 10 acres? Well, whatever it is, but states like Tennessee, you can very typically, very easily, uh, get permission to subdivide based on the existing, um, guidelines of 10 acres. So if you have anything like over 30 acres, you could potentially have 2 or 3 parcels of land there, sell them individually. And selling them individually, they, they command a higher price than they would as just a per-acre, you know, price for the, for the whole parcel. So, um, And if it's more than 30 acres, all the better— 50 acres, 100 acres. So if you, if you know that, now that can work out in a variety of interesting, interesting ways as well. We've seen people that wanted to sell their residence on acreage, and because it's on a large amount of acreage, it's typically the market for that is so small, and they want the price they want, and they're being a stickler, they're holding out, and the market and their sale price is not, is not meeting.

Yeah.

So what my colleague Blake Arnold did. We didn't partner, that's— it's, it's his deal. Um, but he, he said to them, look, how, how can I help you? Because I want the land, you want to sell your house. And there was a couple of options he gave them, but the way it worked out was that they, um, you know, civil engineer divided up the land so that their house could sell for a somewhat lower amount with less land as a more normal sale, which opened it way up to the market, and they sold. It was a nicer house. So it was kind of upper market. It was a musician, I think. And then Blake had the land and he could sell it. And there was no house associated with it. It was, you know, so he could do it. He's gone to churches that often will have a big chunk of land.

Mm-hmm.

He'll talk with them. And a lot of churches have suffered a decline financially, COVID, everything, just people, fewer people going to church, you know, in a lot of cities, a lot of areas. So he'll ask them, well, how can I help you? What do you need? You need a parking lot, you need the church building, you want a little bit of green here, you want a half acre, acre, you want a kids playing ground. But these other 9 acres here that you're doing nothing with, that some, you know, somebody put in their will for the church, or it's just, I don't know, it's been there forever, um, we can actually have a— be a service to the community. We can, we can define even you know, pathways, kids' playgrounds, and this can be part of your, you know, your parish, you know. So he's done that a few times. So when you, when you just start to think about repurposing land, there's just, you know, just so much that can happen. There's, um, we've just done a rezoning that just increased the value of the land. Same dirt, dirt, but a rezone, and it opens it up to You know, it's, it's now commercial guys know I don't even have to think about finding something that's residential, turning it into commercial. It's already commercial. Um, and there's multiple steps there. You can, you know, you can go further there. You just make sure you get that perk test done. You can get permits from the county. You, um, you know, go to— or go further to P-PLAT. You can, um, you take it all the way to being shovel ready. And it's, you know, you're solving problems for builders. That is a absolute nightmare for them. So what, uh, what, how could, how could people bring leads? Um, bring me some land and let's, and we'll talk to the owner and we'll talk to the county and see how we can make an amazing deal for them. There's even a novation-style agreement that can work as well if you've got a land seller and he's thinking, I don't just want to let this go and Dan to make a big giant profit. I, I get that, I understand, because we'll tell people what we're doing. We explain. I tell people, why don't I push back Because I need someone to partner with me for—

Yeah.

And I push back and I ask them, why don't you get a realtor yourself and you'll pay their commission and it'll be on the market for perhaps a few months and often a year or so? And they, they will often tell me, I've had a terrible experience with realtors. I don't want it on the market for, for months. I want cash now. And you, in your contract, you said this will be 90 days. And sometimes we'll do 60 days, but 90 days gives me more breathing room. And so I'll put, you know, I'll push back. I'll tell them exactly what we're doing. But if, if someone wants a Novation-style agreement, um, and it's, it's vacant land, we can, um, we can subdivide and they can have a percentage of the profit. So every time we're making money, they're making money. It's just they'll put our team to work to do it. It's a newer area for us.

Okay.

So I, I don't have I have 10 years of case studies to show how I've been subdividing land, but I have some great partners and we're partnered with them and we've got a consulting group and they're helping on the funding side as well. And they've got a great reputation, some great case studies too. So I'll tell them exactly what we're doing, how we're doing, where we're very green and what we're doing. But land is amazing.

Yeah.

And they're not making any more of it.

No. Well, if you subdivide—

Oh, true.

You're making more.

Yeah, Dan is making more.

Elon's gonna take me to Mars.

Okay, that's right. Then we'll start subdividing Mars eventually at some point. Maybe the kids will, I don't know.

Yeah, but not until after lunch.

Right, exactly. Um, and we put your Instagram handle and your email in the show notes, so you guys reach out to Dan if you have any land leads or land questions. And then, um, you're also looking for, uh, sub-2s and rentals and all that stuff. So we'll get your buy box, you know, around to everybody and, uh, you know, start, start filling up the pipeline so you can start taking out some deals.

Houston, Texas for the sub-2.

Houston?

I would like— yeah.

All right.

I'd like to do a bunch there.

Nice.

But for next time.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

We'll, we'll, we'll talk about that. Yeah. Um, awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. Joe, you got anything else to add?

No. Thank you for coming on.

Pleasure. Yeah. So much fun hanging out with you guys. Yeah.

Thank you.

Great synergy. Great business.

Yeah.

I'm booking on for lunch here in Seattle.

There you go. Nice.

Boom.

Just had another lunch taken care of. Yeah.

Cool.

Well, thank you guys so much. Please share with your new and experienced investor friends and we'll see you on the next one.

For advice on real estate investing, reach out to us one-on-one.