The Shocking Profits Of Vacant Land Investing | From Zero To $1M In Net Profit

We are live right now here with my man Ray. What's up, brother?

Hey, what's up, Nathan? Good to be here. It's a pleasure.

Dang, man. Look at that studio you got going on back there. Is that— what is that? Is that your studio?

Yeah, my wife set it up. She's a professional photographer. I'm trying to do the course recording right now. So it's a lot of stuff.

Oh, dang, bro. You looking legit back there. Look at my screen. I got a fake background. You got a real one. That's cool.

Yeah. Yeah. So that, that thing cost me a lot of money. That, that TV thing.

You said the TV cost you a lot?

Yeah. That's like almost $5,000, something like that.

What kind of TV is that? Is that one of those Evo boards where you can touch it or what?

Google made those. It's called Jamboard. And, you know, Grant Cardone, when you watch their livestream and he is writing on that board.

I got a— I have a Vibeboard in my office. I'm not in my office right now, but yeah. Yeah, same thing. It's— they're cool, brother. Well, hey, Ray, it's awesome to have you on here. For the people that don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself.

All right, so my name is Ray and I'm a land expert. I do land only flip, and I flip infill lots nationwide. And our profit this year, uh, net profit is about, uh, very close to a million right now. Uh, I started land investing about 4 years ago. Um, I joined all the programs that I can imagine, and, uh, I summarize everything I have learned last year I started to do the thing in my way and it works, works out good.

Well, let's freaking go, bro. So you just do land. When you first started, were you dabbling in single family? Were you doing anything or was it just always land and that's all you did?

Yeah, definitely. I've been trying real estate for at least 9 years and I started to have a little bit of stuff going on about 4 years ago when I started to do land because I tried everything else. I tried wholesaling houses. I was in Hawaii. And wholesaling houses won't work. So some people tell me you should go virtual. I tried virtual wholesaling houses. That's even harder. And, and so that one didn't work. I, I did one deal there, but not too much. And after that, some people said, why do you do houses? You gotta do apartments, right? So I did apartments, apartment investing.

Even harder.

Yeah. So nothing works. I was like, is this going to work or not? And so I joined another program in land investing, and he was doing buy land for very cheap and you sell on terms, get a monthly cash flow. But I didn't really like the model. I want cash like now. I don't want to create a lifetime cash flow. But so I've been doing something during that for 3 years and I got a deal here and there, but not too much until I met a military who was introduced to me by Tom Crow, our mutual friend.

Yeah.

That guy really changed the way I see my business and I followed majority of his teaching and then started to blow up.

So who's this guy? You said, who were you introduced to?

Uh, he's a military and he don't want me to say the name, but, uh, he, he's still active military.

Oh man. You got to tell us who it is so we can reach out to him, man. Yeah.

His name is Ray.

Rachel.

Yeah. So, so I— yeah, he did about $1.4 million profit in 10 months. So I love it.

So yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing, bro. So look, this show is mainly for wholesaling. I wholesale, you know, I do the reverse wholesaling strategy. The market has shifted, so I basically reverse engineer. I get buyers and I find them what they want, and it's been working well for me. You got land. So basically, I mean, I already talked to you. I want to have you come into my community and just be the guy that, you know, people can reach out to about land because I think that's awesome. And, you know, so I'd like to invite you to the club. We've already talked about it. So you will be kind of— people can reach out to you about your program and stuff. And I'd love to be able to help out because I get— I just got off the phone with someone that did a land— that has land. Right, right. And I'm like, I just got off the call. We just did a live call and the guy's like, yeah, I'm selling my lot. And I'm in a position where I'm like, I'm looking at it as a wholesaler. Or creative financing, right? Like, how can I make this a deal? But I mean, you might have some things that I don't know that would make this a deal.

Yeah, yeah. So, uh, in the land business, there are different niches as well, just like, uh, houses. So, uh, what I primarily doing is I buy a land in the infill lots area, and then I flip it right away on the market. So it just, uh—

what do you mean by infill lots? What is that?

Infill lot is, uh, there are houses nearby, but it's not all the way developed like major cities, but maybe about 1 hour to 2 hours drive from major cities. Yeah, some, somewhere around there, because first of all, not very competitive, and secondly, you still can do business there because people are buying their houses nearby. You don't want to buy land in the middle of nowhere, right?

Oh, so, so for example, the guy that I called, he, he was, uh, he had an empty lot in a neighborhood and he wanted he wanted like close to re— he wanted retail obviously for his land. And he's like, yeah, people want to build in this neighborhood. It's a great lot. So you don't really mess with that. Like you don't go to like a really developed city like Atlanta and then buy the lot that's not developed yet. You don't really do that.

I don't buy in major markets such as Atlanta, but I will go to 30 minutes or 1 hour away from Atlanta because when Atlanta starts to get expensive, where do people move out? They'll move to those places. Do they mind driving an hour to go to work? Probably not. So they will still buy.

Oh, I love it, man. So is this a strategy that you were taught or do you just figure this out over time? How did this come about?

Yeah. So my friend, that military guy, taught me that and I changed it a little bit and how to really do that in a massive scale. And we have a system that you can find the exact market of those secondary markets, I guess.

I love it, brother.

I love it.

So then you find these markets, you market to them. You call them, you buy it on— do you buy on terms or you buy it on cash?

Buy on cash. And we do a direct mail to them with the offer on there. Normally the offer price will be about 40 to 50% of the sold price nearby.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. So you mail out the offer and then once you mail the offer, they call you back if they're interested, right?

Normally the people who call us back, they already know the offer price. If they call us, we already have a discount. Motivate seller, and then we negotiate again so we can get an even deeper discount.

Okay.

And then we buy.

Then you buy it. Do you buy— and you say you buy with cash?

I buy with cash, yeah.

Is it your cash, or is it, uh, whose money is it?

Uh, I started with, uh, my own cash, um, but, uh, I started with, uh, $10,000 because it was all in my mind as a theory, right? I didn't know if it worked or not, so I said— I told myself this is $10,000, I'm gonna spend this much. So I did that, and I got my first deal for $6,000 and put that in. And that $6,000, uh, you know, I got a good deal on that. I sold it for $55,000 about a week later, something around there.

And how do you resell them? You list it with a real estate agent?

Yeah, and put it on the MLS.

And people buy it?

People buy it right away. Yeah, it's, it's cheaper than houses, right?

Wow, I gotta start this, huh?

Why not? I mean, you can do it nationally.

So yeah, I mean, it sounds like a good strategy. So you, you help people develop, find the markets, the secondary markets, not the primary markets, but the secondary. They call, they mail the motivated sellers, or they mail the people that have the properties. They call, you negotiate, you purchase it with cash. Do you ever try to wholesale it, or it's not about wholesaling, it's about buying it and then listing it?

Wholesaling definitely works. You can wholesale them. But the thing about wholesale is, first of all, you have to build a cash buyer. Normally you just look at the neighborhood to see who already you bought it, that's your cash buyer. And, uh, but, uh, my strategy is more like you buy it completely and then you put in the market. So people will be like, oh, where do I get the money? So the money is not a problem when you get a good deal.

Yes, of course, right?

Yeah.

Are you worried? Is that affecting— is your business getting affected right now by the market shift? Are people still buying your deals, or, or what's going on?

Yeah, definitely. What do you see? And, uh, is what I see too. Um, But, uh, you know, for example, 2, uh, 2 months ago, uh, our profit that month is $155 grand, something like that.

Yeah, you're crushing.

Yes. So right, right now, this month, I have like 2 deals closed, not too much, you know, maybe about 50.

So, uh, which is still amazing, which is still great. So, so you're telling me that, um, just like wholesaling, just like everybody, you've seen maybe a shift in the amount of people that want to buy those kind of deals, just like that investors want to buy flips? It'd be people a little hesitant, right? So I'm curious about your mailing strategy. You mail with the offer. Have you tested not mailing with the low offer and just mailing to see the difference? Or do you— what's the— I mean, what's the difference with mailing without an offer and mailing with an offer?

I guess you can find out what fits you the best, because my style is I don't want to, like, be on the calls with the seller all day long with non-motivated sellers, right? And if you send a neutral letter with no offers, people will call you like crazy. You got to figure out who is motivated, who is not. And of course you can get deals there, you know. But as for me, it works best is I want to work on this business as minimum as possible because I have this coaching business right now. So, you know, I don't want to spend more than, more than 3 hours every day on this. So I just mail the offer letter. I tell my student, this is your offer letter. It's like little armies. They kill the non-motivated sellers.

It's true, bro. Man, so that's so cool. I think it's a great idea. So, okay, so you do the offer so you don't have to mess with a bunch of calls, correct? Okay.

It's hard to do it with houses with the offer letter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and you found out— I mean, you did wholesaling. I mean, I do wholesaling, Tom Crowe, we all do it. That's how we met. But you, you found this little niche that you like more. Why don't you think more people do it?

Uh, I think, uh, right now actually there are more people doing that than like when I first started, because people start to realize, oh, land is, you know, you cannot build a house without the land, right? So you gotta buy land. And of course the land value jumped because of our economy. Right now it's dipping a little bit, but it jumped already. So people started to realize, oh, my land is valuable. So there are people start to get into the business more and more.

That's awesome, man. I freaking love it. And I think it's a great strategy to have because to be real, I don't see myself as a wholesaler. I don't even think wholesaling should be a business that people do, like Specifically, like, only if you're only wholesaling, I think that's a mistake. I think you need to be able to do all, uh, strategies, right? Like, so land, you need to be able to do fix and flip, seller finance, renovation, like whatever comes your way. Obviously you have to be specific with your marketing, but you need to be able to do everything. That's my, that's my opinion.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's right. I mean, right now it's very competitive. If you stick on one, you're probably not survive.

So yeah, well, let me ask you this. So you know Tom Kroll, it sounds like you've known him. I just met him through the Family Mastermind like a couple months ago. Have you known him for a while?

I, you know, he is the guy that changed my life completely. Yeah, so 10 years ago I was actually homeless in the United States because I immigrated from China. I didn't speak any English by then, but if you can understand me a little bit right now, that's, uh, that's maybe you're, you're smart, right? And if you couldn't understand me, that's fine, I'll speak Chinese to you, right? But I came to the country, you know, as a student. And then, um, I tried to do something, some business, and I listened to the podcast. And I was— I remember I was laying on the bench, you know, listening to him, and he was like, bam bam. I was like, who is this bam bam guy, right? And, uh, he is that style. And instantly I like his style. And he's super simple. I mean, he doesn't share any crap that unnecessary, right? He only tell you what to do, and you do it, you have results. That's That's why his, uh, business is so successful. And, uh, that's why right now I try to adapt his, uh, psychology into my own coaching business. But over the years, you know, we have talked, uh, here and there, but, uh, you know, just completely changed the way.

Wow.

Yeah.

So when you immigrated from China to the United States, was that scary for you?

Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, my, my mother gave me, uh, $3,000 American dollars, and she thought, uh, 4 years of tuition that's enough, right? But it's not, it's not even good enough for one semester, right? So I have to figure out how I can support myself for the rest of the semester. So I started to do a lot of flipping. I go to Craigslist and find the free stuff, and then I sell it back to the Facebook group.

Wow.

Marketplace. And I remember I saw like mattress, microwave, you know, all the small stuff, you name it. And then I changed that to cars. I started to buy and sell cars, and all the campus are filled with our cars. And I remember, remember one break, spring break, the, the principal came out of his office and he was like, is this summer break? And security said, yes, it's summer break. And the principal said, why there are so many cars? Because I didn't go back to China, right? And they started to investigate and they find out we are selling cars. So, so they kick us out the school.

Oh my gosh, what school are you going to, bro?

I was in the Brigham Young University in Hawaii.

Yeah, yeah. So, oh my, that's crazy. Where'd you go? Did you finish school or were you like, forget that, I'm gonna flip cars?

Yeah, no, I didn't finish it because I couldn't. They kicked me out and my wife kind of saved me because she's American and we got married and, you know, and I could stay here. Otherwise I have to go back. Saved you, bro. Yeah, that's crazy.

We're Members of the same church, man. So you joined the church in, uh, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, uh, in China. Is that right?

Yes, I did.

And that's probably a really— that's probably a really interesting story. Can you tell me about that, how that happened?

Yeah, so, um, so I was a very lazy guy. I mean, even though I was lazy, I played video games very diligently. I was like, I went to the internet bar in the morning, Monday morning, and I'm not gonna come out on the Friday night. So I stay and live on the chair playing games.

No, you— are you serious?

Yeah, so that was, uh, that was how I was like, whatever I do, I completely immersed, right? And, uh, and then the school find out, and because I never go to school, and then they kicked me out in China too. And, uh, I was like, what I'm gonna do, right? So, and then my, my aunt told me, oh, I'm going to this church and this and that. I was like, I'm not religious, I don't want to go to church. And she said, we have a lot of good food. I was like, I'm into food, let's go. I went there and they said we might have an opportunity to send people out, out aboard to preach our church. I was like, you know, I, I want to try that. So I, I did that. I, I applied that. And then we, in our church, we call it missionaries, right?

You got baptized first, right?

Yeah, I was baptized because I didn't— it's not because I believe in the, the church. I was I believe in America, right? So I was like, let's go. So I went to Canada as a missionary, and so there's a lot of fun there. I was actually the first missionary in Beijing, in the capital of China.

Wow, dude, that is amazing. So you went on a mission to Canada. What part of Canada?

I went to Toronto.

Wow. My wife is from Toronto.

Oh yeah, maybe I met her. Yeah.

Are you— were you specifically in Toronto or were you up north or what part?

I mean nearby, not in Toronto. I wish I was in Toronto because that's a very intense China— Chinese community. But I was in Hamilton, London, and, uh, you know, Kitchener or whatever.

Do you know, uh, so she, she was raised in Lindsay, Lindsay, and then there's, uh, Peterborough, I think Whitby. Um, do you know those areas or is that kind of Little—

no, that's probably— that's the West Side. I was in the East Mission.

Yeah, so she— yeah, so she's actually 2 hours north of, uh, so she's like more— I think it's Muskogee, or I can't remember, but it's just, just up north. So that's cool.

So I learned all that negotiation stuff during that, that, that time.

Did you learn English too?

Yeah, I learned a little bit there because, uh, when, when you go to like serve a mission like that, you practice a lot of negotiation. You know, you try to initially talk to a stranger and allow, invite him to listen to you, right?

Right.

Yeah, that was very hard at the beginning. All I did at the beginning is, hi, my name is Ray, or whatever, my name is Elder something.

Yeah.

Do you have a phone number? This is all I say, right? The people gave me fake numbers.

Yes, of course they always do, right? Yeah. So you met your wife. Did you speak— were you speaking English to her? Did she speak, you know, your language, or how did that work?

Yeah, she's American Chinese, so she knows how to speak Chinese.

Okay, so that's how you guys— you were talking mainly in Chinese?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it Mandarin, right?

Mandarin and Cantonese. Yeah.

Cantonese. Okay. Do you obviously speak both, right? Or is that just one language, Mandarin Cantonese?

Cantonese? Uh, I mainly speak Mandarin. She does Cantonese more.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow. So you go to BYU after your mission, and then you're flipping cars, and they kick you out because you got all these cars in the parking lot during the summer term, and they're like, what's all this going on? So they investigate, they see that you're, you're parking your cars that you're selling in at the school. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Why did they, why did they think that's a big deal? Was it, is it, is, are you, were you not allowed to do that because you were, um, international? International. So they were like, hey, you can't do that. And you said, I got to make money. And then they kicked you out.

Yeah, they gave us 21 days to sell 80 cars. We did it. We did it. Yeah.

So I'm assuming you're buying these cars. I mean, with cash, you're probably buying like $500,000, selling them for like $2,000, $3,000, something like that.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Wow.

So do you kind of miss the car business?

Uh, yeah, I still do it sometime, but right now I'm pretty packed with a lot of stuff. But it's fun, it's really fun. You don't have to do a lot of work, you just go to show it and sell it, right?

So when did you, um, want to get into coaching? Because you, you said— you told me the journey of the real estate, 10 years, Tom Kroll got you in, you tried everything, now you're doing land. What made you decide, hey, I'm going to start teaching this?

I think, uh, for first of all, what I, I heard of where wise man, I forgot his name, from a book. He said, what do you want to know more? You teach it, or you learn more when you teach it. Something like that.

That's very true.

Yeah. So I just, you know, I just believe that. And since I started to teach, right now I have about 20 students. Since I started to teach, the framework of the land business is very clear to me. And so I can apply that framework to many more markets.

That's amazing. Yeah, that's amazing, man. I think that's great. And I would— like I told you at the beginning of our call, I'd love to have you in my community to kind of help and then maybe filter some people to you that want to get into that business. Because for me, it's— there's an abundance mentality. If I can help you get more to help more people in land— I mean, I think wholesaling, fix and flip, all that stuff, I think you need every tool. That's the way I see it. I mean, you gotta— you gotta obviously know how to, um, when you market specifically, go after some, you got to be targeted. But if you can, if you know, like, and it's not even about knowing everything, it's about who you know or who knows you, right? So for example, Ray, if I find a deal like that outside, I can hit you up and we can do a deal together. You can help me through it. I can learn that way. So that's what I'm trying to build in the Investor Thrive, like, community is like, you don't have to be the expert at everything. You just need to be around people that are so that you can network and they can help you out and you can do deals. And it's give and take, right? Like you're giving to the community, they're going to give back. That's the vision I have for this.

That's awesome. Yeah. You're kind of building a platform and can help different kinds of people. Yeah. That's awesome.

That's the goal, man. Because I know for myself, like I can't be the expert. I can't be the jack of all trades to everything. Cause then you're not, if you're, you're, if you're good at everything, you're like okay, right? But you got to be good at one thing and then, you know, leverage, leverage the people. That's why I think being in Tom Kroll's thing is awesome, because, you know, we're meeting a bunch of people that are good at all different things. And I'm actually doing a deal with one of the students in the program, Andrew Lucas. One of my students in my program had a deal. I called him and, uh, you know, now he's— I'm selling him a deal and I'm making $19K on it. And I'm splitting it with my students. So just through the network, you're able to do so much, and I believe, you know, we can do that with you as well.

Absolutely.

Cool, man. Well, hey, it's good chatting with you. Is there, uh, is there anything specific you want to leave with the viewers before we, we wrap it up?

No, I mean, if you have any questions, uh, you can join, uh, Nathan Payne's, uh, community, or you can just Instagram me. My Instagram is, uh, it's my name here. It's called Virtual Flip Land. V-I-R-T-U-A-L, Virtual Flip Land. So easy.

Okay, so, so guys, you heard it here first. If you want to reach out to Ray, go to Virtual Flip Land. Or if you're not inside my community, whether I have a free— you, it's free for everybody, but if you want to, uh, you know, I guess be a part of the coaching calls, if you want to be a part of the resources, you got to be a part of the club or the all-access program. But either way, I'm going to put Ray in the Discord, so, you know, if you have questions, further questions You can hit him up. He's a great resource to have. And that's what we're building, man. We're building a platform of experts in whatever. Ray, if you know anybody crypto, we got to get someone crypto in there too, because it's basically— my company is called Investor Thrive, but my goal is to— anything investing, come on in. Mostly real estate, but come on in and, you know, let's link you up with whoever is the authority, whoever is the expert in, you know, we'll all grow together.

I do have a guy in crypto, uh, he started with, uh, $8,000 in crypto and right now his net worth is somewhere around $600 million.

Get out of here, bro.

Crazy, man.

Do we need to bring— do we need to bring him in the community?

Of course.

Can you say, hey bro, get in here, you're the crypto expert? Yeah, line me up with him because then we can— I can introduce everyone to him and, uh, he can be the crypto guy and Like I said, it's all about networking. It's all about helping people out. And, you know, if more people can be successful because he's in that community, let's freaking go.

Of course. Let's do it.

All right, Ray, appreciate it, man. Well, we'll chat with you guys. Hit up Ray on Virtual Flip Land on Instagram or join the community and you'll be able to talk to him right there and join his program. All right. Thanks, Ray.

Take care, Nathan. Got it.

Peace.