Land Investing: An Untapped Model for Money, Time & Location Freedom w/Brent Bowers

This is Real Estate Team Builders and I'm your host, Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. The real estate team building world is driven by big egos who boast about how many homes they've sold or how much GCI they've earned. We don't hear much about their low profit margins, the long hours they put in each week, or the unbearable stress they endure. In fact, I've discovered that most real estate teams are losing money when you consider the amount of personal production their owners must do to make ends meet. I believe that if you want to profitably scale your real estate team without working crazy hours, enduring unhealthy levels of stress, or coming up short at home, then thinking like a business owner, building sustainable systems and empowering your team are absolute musts. You won't find any smoke and mirrors or hype here on my podcast, just the real world tools, systems and strategies that work. So if you struggle to balance growing your real estate business or with focusing on the areas of life that truly matter, then this show is for you.

Welcome back, Real Estate Team Builders. Lars Hedinburg, founder of Real Estate B School. And I've got a kind of like a left field episode for us that I know you all are going to want to hear about. Brent Bowers, the Landsharks.com up until like four minutes ago, I didn't even know what land notes were. But in a world where it is increasingly difficult to get your money to work for you, what he does is kind of blowing my mind. And one of the things that is even harder to achieve is location freedom. So Brent is physically in Florida and doing these land note deals around the country. So for this group that is actively looking to grow and scale and hopefully put our money to work for us. Brent, welcome to Real Estate Team Builders, man. Tell us a little bit about your background, maybe the journey into this business. Give us the nuts and bolts of it and how you think you know, anyone looking to put their money to work, why would they want to learn this?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if a failing realtor like myself, actually, I'm not even a realtor anymore. I let my license go because I was sucking so bad at it. If a guy that couldn't even do like be successful as a real estate agent can do this, the land investing and building notes to give you time freedom and financial freedom and geography freedom, anybody can really do this. And I love how the real estate team builders because ultimately that's why I'm able to do this is because I Have an amazing team that supports me and they do what they do best and I do what I do best and I find other people to help me with the rest. So there's only a couple things I do very well. Maybe, maybe one thing, actually, maybe I.

Was going to say, man, you got two. That's really good.

Being really ambitious. One thing I do really well and that's find smart people to help me out to get the vision. So I got my real estate license in 2007, bought that first rental property, got it handed to me several times on that property. The biggest mistake I ever made was selling that property in 2019 because I had already been through the gutter. Now the good times were finally starting to happen because it was starting to get paid off. It was actually building appreciation. However, I didn't have a crystal ball and we learned a lot from our failures. So I look at that one as a learning experience. But 2009, I took a break from real estate, joined the military. I was out of the country for several years, a couple deployments, and then 2013 I got back into real estate and I started house hacking. And that kind of gave me the ability to get my feet back on the ground. And then I started buying rental properties, turned into a wholesaler because I was like, man, this rental game is so slow. So I started wholesaling houses, then ultimately stumbled on land about 2016, which allowed me to get out of the military because that was a great time while it lasted. But I was for eight and a half years. I may have only slept in my bed about three, maybe four of those years. And now I had a small family, I wanted to be home to see my wife every night preferably. And I started flipping land and then eventually built the passive income side of it by seller financing the land. And that's really what gave me the time, freedom. I was talking to you a little bit about the commissions we earn as realtors and I'm getting my license because I'm so on board with the EXP model and I can't wait to get involved with that. But I'm looking at a two and a half million dollar deal right now where I'll make 3% of that as long as I have my license to where I can take that 75,000. Is that what 3% of 2.5 million is?

Yeah, that math is super easy for an agent. We know 3% of any numbers.

Well, thank God you prepared me in advance for that. Luckily, because I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how much it was going to be. I knew it was a good chunk of money. But if I buy a piece of land at 50 cents on the dollar, so I buy $150,000 parcel of land for the 75 grand commission, I'm going to sell that land for 150,000, not what I paid for it. And then I'm going to let someone maybe like a 5 or 6 or $7,000 down payment and then let them make monthly payments to me for 30 years. And I'm ultimately going to take that 75,000 and turn it into like 300,000 with the amount of interest I'll gain. So ultimately that's my play for land. They haven't always been that big. They started out with $275, lots of. And they just kept getting bigger and bigger, which gives us a passive income each month of about 100 notes. So that gives me the time freedom. Ultimately, what I want to build with EXP as well, I just want to build another machine that's passive income. Because ultimately we only have so much time in our day. If we can get all these streams of passive income, it really makes life kind of on our terms. And I'm not going to say that the military was, was forced slavery, but it was, it was definitely. I didn't like being told what to do every day, where to be, what to look like, get a haircut, shave. So I really. That's why I'm an entrepreneur, because I'm a rebel. But that was a really long intro, but that's kind of it.

It's awesome. And I'm going to, I'm going to dive into pieces of it. I definitely want to dig into like a few minutes on the Anatomy of a Deal. But first, and you don't even know this yet, so we're, you know, you're in the process of, you know, bringing, bringing your license into EXP and building a tribe of agent investors in the EXP platform. And that's kind of what you alluded to and you're not quite ready to pull the trigger on it. So we can't announce it to the world yet in terms of people rolling in. But, but keep. Based on this conversation, if this intrigues you, I want you to reach out to Brent in some way and we'll give your website and contact information because this is an opportunity for you to build this tribe in sort of brokerage within a brokerage with none of the broker responsibilities. And, you know, it's going to be awesome. So I'M super excited about that part of it. And the part that you don't know is that the community that you're coming into, that I'm one of the leaders. We stand for three things that generally are really hard to achieve. And you literally just said them. Time freedom, money freedom, and location freedom. And so as a real estate agent, you know, 99% never get time freedom. They're working out of bounds evenings and weekends. Money freedom. You know, what is it like, only 2% of agents sell 25 homes or more a year. So average commission check, 10,000 bucks. That's 250 gross, probably 150 take home. That's only 2%, 1.8% of agents. And there is no location freedom because you can't physically, you know, leave your market most of the time. We teach that real estate B school. I've got members in Bozeman, Montana, running $2 million businesses in my market. But so anyway, so your, your message of the, of the three freedoms is going to fit right into the platform, the tribe that you're going to build at out at exp. So take us through the anatomy of a deal, like you said, like buy and then seller, finance and then flip. And honestly, I've been in real estate, thousands of families served on the residential side, and I never would have known that there's, like land fl that's very.

Very, very, very common because we drive by it every day and we don't see a way to make money with it. There's no house to renovate and flip, or house to buy and fix up and rent out, or storage unit to make money with. There's nothing on the land. How do we make money with it? Right.

So take us through the anatomy of a deal, like, generally, because I want people to come into your world, but generally, how do you find a piece of land? What do the numbers look like? Maybe walk us through a deal that went pretty good recently, or maybe one that didn' and how do you flip it into passive income?

Perfect, let's do it. I'm going to kind of walk you. Well, let's just go through my first deal. I told you, I was a house wholesaler. I was an army officer working 12 hours a day, and I was sending out postcards. And really how I stumbled on land is I was searching for answers, listening to all the podcasts, reading all the books, and I heard a gentleman talking about buying land at crazy discounts and flipping it and doubling and sometimes, like quadrupling his money overnight. Already had the postcard it was as simple as saying, hey, my name is Brent. I'd like to buy your house at 123 Main Street. Call me or text me if you're interested in a fair, all cash, no hassle offer. So I just changed house to land and I got the tax delinquent list. Actually, I'd already had the tax delinquent list. People that were behind on their taxes for the entire county for properties. And I just had to figure out which one was land, which one was mobile homes, which one was houses. Well, I was only mailing the houses, so I was like, okay, which one's the land? So we figured out, we looked at the percentage of improvements, which was zero. And some counties have dollar improvement, which was zero. And then some counties have like a three digit code. It's like 2, 3, 1 is land, 2, 3, 2 is mobile homes. So some have a legend on the assessor's parcel number that they make it really easy for you or the schedule number. So we figured that out and I used my virtual assistant in. This girl was literally getting her PhD, so she's like way smarter than me and she's scrubbing my list and I'm paying her $5 an hour to do it. So I'm like thrilled as I'm working my army officer job. So she shot me back that list. It was 687 records of people that were behind on their taxes for their land. I had my mailhouse send that postcard I just gave an example of and my phone blew up. And the first, I remember the first call, I called the guy back. I'm hiding in the locker room because we're not supposed to have jobs as army officers. So I'm trying to keep this on the down low. And it was a retired cpa, nicest man ever. I ended up meeting him for coffee at this coffee shop right outside of the gate of Fort Carson, Colorado. The coffee shop was closed because it was too late. So we sat on the deck and I still owe that place so much money because I can't tell you how much business I did after hours there. So I really should go and give them a big chunk of change, this as a tithe or something. But I digress. He told me the price. He's like, look, I'll sell you the land for $285. It's not buildable. I'm behind on the taxes, I'm about to lose it. And I was like, let me just go look at it. So me and my wife and my newborn baby in 2016 drove to this land. It was about an hour away from us. It overlooks the Pike National Forest. Two lots actually not buildable. And I had no clue like what it was worth. So guess what? I called the best person I could think of. And there was a real estate office down the hill. It's like as if God himself planted that office for me to call. And I mean that with all sincerity. So I call on a Saturday and there's a realtor in there. And she answered the phone and goes, you know, how may I help you? So I told her the situation. I'm buying this land. What is your 30 day blowout price? What is your get it done now price? I want to like, because $285 back then, Lars, was, was a lot of money for me. And I hate to say it, but like I was not going to waste it because that's diaper money. We just bought a new house, we just moved across the country. And like, I have a wife and she likes to spend money on food and stuff. So she goes, I don't know about get it done now price, but I think you can list it for about ten grand. And I was just over the moon. I was like, this is incredible. I'm buying it for 285. It's worth 10 grand. I thanked her for a time. I told her I'll call her back as soon as I buy it and hung up with her. Well, she calls me right back immediately. Within five minutes while I'm explaining this to my wife, she goes, brent, what if I bought it from you? I was like, what are you offering? She said, five grand. I was like, when can you close? She said, Wednesday, four days from now. I was like, great, please just send me the purchase agreement by the time I got home. The purchase agreement was in the email. I signed it, I called the seller, I said, hey, can I pay you on Tuesday? And so I did. I brought on the check. He brought me a notarized quitclaim deed. I drove to the title company and got my $5,000 check on Wednesday. And then that next week I did another deal. But this one I seller financed because I didn't think the land was that good. So I sell or financed it for 500,000 down. That's what I paid for the land. Got my money back out of the deal and got $400 a month for the next, I think 11 and a half months, 12 months call it. Sold that one for five grand too. And that's the one that changed my Life, because that was covering my truck payment now and seller finance. So I had already owned. I think I owned five or six rentals at the time. One of them was a triplex, and I wasn't making $400 net on any of them. Maybe I can add a couple of them up and that would've added $400 a month net. But that land deal was like, holy crap. I didn't have to borrow the money. I didn't have to insure this house. I didn't have to beg for a loan. And I'm netting $400 a month, really positively netting it. And that's where I just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. Before I knew it, six months later, I had replaced my entire. My entire expenditures. Sell financial free. I got the first one out of the way. The rest is history. I hope that gave you. Well, how did I sell it? Craigslist? Both or the second deal I sold on Craigslist. I hope I gave you all the nuts and bolts to how it worked.

Yeah, it's awesome. So how do you go from. Man, I have a lot of questions. The biggest questions. Is it because the land angle? Is it because land is just generally, as a market, less efficient, like bitcoin? It's a wild roller coaster, but it's really efficient. And you can see all the trades we know people are buying when people. It's all public, the stock market, same thing. These companies are telling people in advance what's going on or whatnot. What is it about land that makes this an exciting opportunity? And why would. Why would anyone think that? And I'm not a stupid guy, but I've never really even heard of this. So how do I not even know that this exists?

So the smart guys are chasing the houses and the apartments in the mobile home parks. And you're right, you also hit it. It's very inefficient market now. I mean, I couldn't explain it any better because banks aren't lending on this kind of stuff. Like, most of my land deals I'm buying are under $30,000. And generally I try and 3x my money. So if I'm buying a $30,000 parcel of land, I prefer it to be worth about 90. That's if I'm going to sell or finance it. Now, if I'm going to flip it really quickly, like buy it and sell it, I'd be fine buying it for 30 and selling it for 50 or assigning my contract, get it under contract for 30, assign it for 40 make a quick 10 grand. That's all cool, but it's inefficient because the banks aren't lending on this kind of stuff and it's just no one's looking at it. People are driving by it every single day. There's virtually no competition. I mean, when's the last? I mean, I don't know if you own any vacant land, but I have almost 300 plus parcels plus a few houses. I get more letters and text messages and phone calls for these few houses I have than all of my land put together. You know, I can say one of my houses that's paid off, I must get a phone call or a text message every single week. But the land, no one's mailing me on that. It's like no copy.

So why would someone, what do they use the land for? So in that example where it's 11 months to pay off the $400 a month, they see it for themselves like they're going to put a unit on it or do something with it. What's the typical end game for someone that goes through you in a seller finance situation?

So let's talk about that first buyer, the realtor. She's a speculator. She knows that eventually the city is going to be, I don't know what the correct term for this levied to put. So the reason why it wasn't buildable is because there was on only one egress, one ingress, one ingress, one egress. The fire department would not allow them to build on that one street because they needed to put a second exit for in case the firefighters got stuck on that road. And basically that's all it took. And they had to get the railroad company that owns that set of railroad tracks to allow it. That one right there, once that lot is buildable, it's probably worth a hundred grand. I sold it for five. The second buyer, this parcel was landlocked by a state park. So once they get that right ingress or access attorney that you could find through a title company once, and I didn't have the money to pay for it back then, I just needed to turn and burn. Once that guy gets access, which I know he's working on it, that property, 4 acres next to NORAD and Colorado Springs on the mountainside, is worth an incredible amount of money. I didn't want to think about how much money it's probably worth. A lot of my buyers are, someday maybe I'm going to build a cabin in Colorado. Some of my buyers for the Infill, buildable. Lots of their plan is to build their dream home one day, or a developer buys it or a builder buys it. That stuff I don't generally sell or finance on a note that I get monthly payments on because the builders are usually walking around with the cash because they've got a line of credit or a partner. So that's the stuff I usually make my quick income for my quick cash.

Awesome. Awesome. And I guess one question. Do you suffer the same problems like, you know, Chris Craddock and his whole REI revive and dead leads? Are you stepping over a whole bunch of dead leads that don't work, or is it a different dynamic in your world?

Yeah, there's not as many dead leads. I don't believe. It's not like houses. So we do have a house buying company as well, and we do get a lot of people that, you know, they just need to list with a realtor, you know, that's houses, now the land. A lot of times we can't help them and they're not as emotionally attached to the property, so they'll a lot of times sell for less or they inherited it. Houses are. Yes, we get a lot more dead leads on our house. We don't get as many leads for the land because we're not mailing nearly as much either.

Yeah, well, it's a good point too. I mean, there's so much emotion tied into residential real estate. Like, I've had $700,000 deals fall apart because the seller won't fix the drippy faucet in the master. It's like it's $2 washer, and they're like, we're the deals off the day before closing. It's like, what are we doing here?

Unbelievable.

Yeah. So what's the best way to. For people to enter your world? So really, is there, you know, someone that's a good fit for this business model to earn this passive income? Is there there a perfect kind of person you're looking for?

Yeah, I don't know if there's a perfect person, but I would just say someone that wants to, you know, build some additional income, passive income, or just have another stream of income. Because I found that a lot of our house sellers also have land. I've found that land sellers also have houses. I just hung up this morning. I did a really early call with one of my acquisition managers this morning, and she was telling me, Christy was telling me that this gentleman, you know, just, he's selling the house. They've been in it since 1975, he grew up and his parents passed away in the house and it's just like he won't even open their bedroom door. But, you know, these things go hand in hand. So as far as who's the best person for this, I don't know if I got an answer for that. I seem to attract a lot of people in the military. A lot of people that are tied to their phone and they got to answer it on Sundays, sometimes at dinner or during a birthday party. You know how many land buyer phone calls I've taken in the last six months? Not freaking, not one of them. And a couple of the OGs from like years ago when I was selling the land myself still have my phone number and they text me from time to time. But it's cool stuff, like a picture of them like, you know, camping and whatnot. They're not saying, hey, the toilets broke or hey, you know, this, this realtor left the lights on and the air conditioner down low. Like I'm not getting problem calls. You know, it's. So that's what I love mostly about it. And I still have rentals. I have apartments and that stuff. I expect the phone ring, but not from my land buyers.

Yeah, man, that's awesome. So what's the best place for someone to go that wants to learn more about actually doing this with you?

Yeah, I would say that the easiest, fastest way to learn is go to YouTube and search Brent Bowers. Subscribe to my channel. I work hard to post videos five days a week. But if you really want to schedule a call right now, just head on over to the landsharks.com and so it's Brent Bowers land.

I'm going on YouTube right now. So Brent Bowers land.

Yeah, that's an easy way to find me.

Awesome, awesome. I love it. So, I mean, I'm interested. So I might be the first one that goes over there before this even airs. Brother, I appreciate it. I look forward to building another income stream with you and helping you build this tribe in of land investor agent types at exp. I think it's going to be an awesome ride. So I appreciate, appreciate your time today. This was one last question. So you mentioned that there's a way to do this where you can actually scale it and you can build sort of a team. You mentioned a VA that you're not taking calls. Do you have like a sort of a Navy seals team that kind of helps you run this business? What does your business look like on just the land flipping note side of things.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, I couldn't do this without my team. Holy cow. Because, you know, I'm one of those people that after I do it a couple times, I get bored of it, so I have to pass it on. I just. At the end of the day, I just want the whole machine going. I don't want to be the guy cranking this and then oiling this and just. Because it's just not what entrepreneurs and business owners usually do. So I've got my team that makes sure the mail gets out every single day, you know, or every single week, I should say more. More like that. That way. The phone rings, and then I got the acquisition managers, two of them. And you don't have to start there. Like, start with an assistant. Start with someone that will get things off your plate and just keep a list of what you do daily and anything you're seeing pop up more than once. And if you don't love doing it, if it doesn't literally charge your batteries, find someone to help you with it. And you might not have the funds right now to pay an employee, but that's the wrong word to use. I don't have employees. I have team members. Like, they are investments. Because if I invest a dollar in them to pay them, I want to see $2 come out. I'm not calling them ATMs, but they are literally investments. So I have the acquisition managers answering the phones or collecting the mail where they sign that land offer letter, and then it goes to my Filipino virtual assistant where she starts the due diligence process, and then it goes to closing. We purchase it, and then it goes to the sales side to get the photos, which the girl that does the due diligence, she also requests the photos. So it's all happening simultaneously. Then she posts all of it all over our sites to sell it. And they either go to our website and click Buy now or they talk to my land sales specialist that will take the down payment, write up the contract for deed, and then it goes to our company executive assistant to make sure that their note stays good and stays in good, good standing.

What percentage of these things do you need to take back? Or, you know, what's any default rate significant?

Oh, for the land defaults. You know, one out of every 15 parcels we sell, someone will stop paying for. And we try and modify their loan, and we don't charge them to do it. We want. Just want to make sure that if we've already sold it, we want them to keep paying because it is so much easier to buy this stuff than it is to find a good buyer for it. So we will do anything possible. We'll pause the payments for a couple months, we'll extend it. If we've got to go down to zero percent interest, we'll do it. Because at the end of the day, there's no shortage in this business.

That's crazy. And you've already made back. Typically you've already made back your initial investment. So is that kind of the model, if you pay 5,000 for it, you're taking 5,000 down and then you're getting them to pay 10,000 over 20 months or whatever?

Yes, that's the preferable model. Is it like that now? No, because I have so much volume, I buy so much at one time. There's no way at this point, I just wanted to sell our. I want to get it sold. So we start receiving some ass. Basically turn it into an asset receiving income. In the beginning, when I was only working one land deal at a time, Yes. I tried to get my investment back out of it.

Now I'm like, how many notes are you holding right now?

Almost. I think we just got down to like 94 or something like that.

Awesome. And is that like, that's a level where you're getting the cash flow that you want? You can pay the team and earn a reasonable return?

Yeah, it's pretty good. And now do I want to increase it? Absolutely. You know, am I building it still? We're actually hired someone today to keep, keep building. So yeah, it's definitely comfortable, but can we have more? Absolutely, yeah.

That's awesome. So go to YouTube. Brent Bowers B O W E R S Land. The land came up automatically when I typed your name in, by the way. So Google the algorithm knows that you're the land shark. Or go to thelandsharks.com Brent this has been awesome. I will be in touch for sure. And everyone out there, take action. There are only but so many ways to put your brains or a system or some resources or people to work where you can turn that into a residual income stream. And this is a new one for me. So this has been. This has been really awesome. Appreciate you, brother.

Thank you, Lars.

All right, talk to you soon.

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