Anatomy of a Land Deal Gone Wrong: What Killed It Step by Step

Hey!

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Land Geek Nightcap. Good to see you, fellas.

Cheers.

Before before we get into tonight's topic, we are officially one month away from the Dirt Rich Summit. Oh, that's October first is coming up fast, and I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about the the DRS tonight. The Dirt Rich Summit. Spectators.

DRS.

Yeah. But uh, but tonight, much to your chagrin, Mike Zano, because I know you don't like to go negative, we're talking mistakes tonight. Okay, because everybody makes mistakes, but we're not going to talk like catastrophic mistakes that like blow up your business. We're going to talk about little mistakes that every land investor makes along the way that makes you a better land investor, right? So some examples might be maybe we overpay for a property, we may— maybe we miss something in due diligence, maybe we price it wrong, maybe we buy a really expensive land parcel that we're nervous about selling. But, uh, but yeah, that's, that's what we're gonna do. The good news is though, most of these mistakes, um, they just end up being minor mistakes. You make money anyway and you move on to the next deal. How's that sound, Mike? Is that all right?

By the way, I love the word chagrin. It's one of my favorite words.

Well, I'm glad I say all of your favorite words. That's good.

I don't even know what chagrin means. I use it a lot, but I'm not sure. I, I kind of know the context, but I don't know the meaning. Is that— is there a lot of words like that in life, right?

Where you kind of know where they go, but you don't really know what they Yeah, well, it, uh, it is the distress, the distress one feels following a humiliation, disappointment, or failure.

Oh wow.

Oh man, I had a lot of chagrin at jiu-jitsu the other night.

I'm going to chagrin you tonight. Can we use it as a verb? I'm gonna use it as a verb. I will cause you much humiliation, disappointment, and failure tonight during tonight's podcast. Yes, very good. All right, let's get to intros. So Scott Bosman, longtime land investor. In the upper right, we have, uh, handsome Rob, John, 8 Is Enough Burnett. John, how are you, sir?

I'm doing great. I'm sipping on some Spindrift. Nice, nice outside.

Sun's still out there.

The sun is still out. Yes, this is why it's nice to live in the West.

Yes, yes, it's bleak and dark here. Mike Zaino in the lower left. Breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing. The Zen Master.

Uh, I was doing well, but you know, thank you. But it's like John has 2 nicknames. How did he acquire 2? He's so extra special. 2 nicknames. Handsome Rob. And I mean, it's enough.

And it is.

I have 2 nicknames also.

Wait a minute, Dude Buddy and The OG.

Nightcap OG.

Oh man. So it all goes back to Mark's love. He shows a lot more love to the people on the upper top, but I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here. Um, no chagrin, just happy.

Not no chagrin yet.

No chagrin yet.

And in the lower right, but at the top of all of our lists The Godfather himself, Mark Podolsky, the Land Geek.

Much to my chagrin. I am chagrined that Mike is not chagrined.

Remember when you used to shake your water bottle? We had the maraca.

Yeah, yeah. Rick Colcock is like, bro, that is so loud. But, you know, Zoom would take out those, those background noises. So yeah, you know, I was just blithely unaware. That I was annoying everyone all the time because I'm not one of those people that goes back and listens to our own podcast. I probably should do any of that.

I don't kind of like deep emotional moment and then it's just like just constantly.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point, Mark. I don't know, I, I don't— I listen to, you know, a tidbit here and there if I'm looking for something to send some— somebody. But John, Scott, you guys listen to the podcasts ever?

No, I, I did, uh, actually after the ice incident, I brought that home and showed it to Valerie.

Which ice incident was that?

Was that the one?

That was Mark's water bottle.

Oh, the ice. Yeah, yeah, I gotcha.

Yeah, yeah. Much to my chagrin. That was probably like, yeah, what are these guys?

It's gotta go.

I used to go back and watch, uh, when I was a little nervous about what Mark would say the next morning when it was just me and Mike back in the day.

Oh yeah, lots of that. Lots of, hey Scott, Did I drink too much? She's like, I don't know, did I drink too much? I'm like, oh boy, let's get that deleted real quick before Mark sees it.

I honestly would watch the, the old ones and I would just fast forward like past like 30 minutes just to see them slur their words. I'm like, this is so entertaining.

Anyway, what a great land deal. Let's tell everybody who we are. Shall we? And then we'll get on to tonight's top— we're gonna call it, uh, we'll call it land investing sins tonight. That'll be good, huh?

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, well, that's a pretty strong word, but—

Mike, Mike's saying, oh, uh, to just let, let everybody know who we are, why we're here.

Well, you know, I appreciate you saying that because I was on a call today with, uh, Maddie, who I think is going to crush this business, and she was like, you know, on one of the podcasts you described flight school. So succinctly—that's a good word, right? And I was like, really? Can you come on and tell Scott that? That would be wonderful. But who are we? Oh, we are the nightcap crew guys. You know what? We learned how to invest in raw land from Mark, the one with the shirt that says Gutland, in case you're not sure who Mark is. And if you're listening. Uh, he's the guy with the cool voice. Uh, so Mark taught us many, many years ago, over a decade for all of us now, I'd say, right? Is that right for all of us?

Yeah, 9 years for me.

For me, yeah.

Yeah, so close to it. Mark's been doing it for 25 years, basically be, you know, went out, learned how to do this and became an expert at it and taught other people to buy land between $400 or $500 and $5,000-ish. And, you know, we buy it at 25, 30 cents on the dollar and then we sell it on owner financing. You know, somebody asked me today, Mark, like, oh, you know, Mark talks in a book about buying these properties for— I mean, that's going to be so 2017. I'm like, no, I just bought 75 properties for $420 apiece. Like, it still happens today. Um, so, you know, we buy these small parcels, we cash flow them, which is super crazy. The ROI, if we calculate it, it's like astronomical. It's almost embarrassing to tell somebody the ROI we get on these deals because like, there's no way. I'm like, yeah way, yeah way. We definitely do this, and we do it over and over again. So we build a note portfolio. And that can, you know, replace, uh, you know, you know, these days starts out with a cable bill about $400, and then it goes up to the car payment, which is now probably about $1,000, and it goes to the mortgage about $2,000 or $3,000, and then it can replace your income. Uh, Mark, uh, you've retired. Too many— you don't have enough hands to count how many people are— even if you use your feet and hands at this point, you don't have enough of those that are retired, myself included. My wife hasn't worked a W-2 in over a decade. I retired early from the fire department. Scott's retired. John, I don't know what you did, but I know you're retired. Um, Just enjoy this life of freedom from land investing. So thank you, Mark, and that's who we are.

I love it. I love it. I'd say one thing— that was all very excellent, but dude, $400 for cable? Cut the cord, man.

Well, you know, here's the thing. You want to hear something funny? I did. I did a revamp. I got it down to $130. Now my grandson, who's 2, comes over and he'll watch Disney. He'll go, Grandpa, commercial! Now we get commercials on Disney because I went down. He just like looks at me and rolls his eyes like And Lala said, I want to cut the cable bill, Mason. He's like, Grandpa, commercials? Like, so my cable bill came down, but my grandson, much to his chagrin, I'd have to say.

Yes, yeah, yes, that's for sure. Uh, awesome. Well, thank you for that. And, and Kelly's a little upset, um, Mike. She thought you were her favorite, so— oh, there you go.

I wasn't picking favorites. I was just saying that Somebody, Kelly, had mentioned, uh, my, uh, you know, ability to describe the flight school. But yes, Kelly, one of the favorites for sure.

And Kelly's coming to Summit.

Yes, can't wait. Summit's gonna be awesome. I can't believe it's a month, you know.

Wow, a month. I'm gonna see you Jamooks in a month.

Mark, what's the hair gonna look like? Are you gonna keep it wild and crazy? You're gonna tame it? What— that, you know, we all want to know.

So, you know, John actually described it really well. It's gonna be like Back to the Future, just crazy.

Like Marty?

What?

No, like Doc.

Like Doc? Oh, like you took a shower, stuck your head out the car, drove 60 miles an hour, and just let it dry that way? Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Yeah, no, no, so I, I've got a haircut on Friday, so it's gonna be trimmed up a bit, but like I'll definitely get a haircut before the summit.

You don't want to do it.

Much to my chagrin, I cannot take Kelly Lozano and be like, bro, that hair? You came here?

Yeah, you don't want to have like a 2-day-old haircut. You need to let it mature a little bit, the haircut. You're right, because yeah, that's important. Yeah, yeah.

But I'm in a rough spot actually with the haircut because I'm wondering— because I'm 4 weeks out.

You got it really short last time. We all saw.

Very short. I know. So do I just get it really short again and just wait it out, or I might have to get—

I think you grow the mullet. I need 2.

Grow the mullet.

We should all do matching mullets for Server Summit.

Kelly used to be a hairdresser.

Oh, perfect.

Help us out. Just save it and Kelly can cut our hair. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. All right, well, let's get on to our topic. So let's talk about some mistakes. Uh, let's talk about Mistakes, uh, with acquisition of properties. Have you guys ever made a mistake acquiring a property? Uh, did you pay too much? Did you analyze the market wrong? Anything come to mind?

I think we probably all have at some point or another. Yeah.

John Burnett, I'm going to start with you.

Oh, great. Yeah, so, um, Let's see. I would say that one that comes to mind is one of the things we do when we check title is we make sure that everybody who is selling to you is alive.

Mm-hmm.

That is important. They must be alive. And then, um, if there's anybody who's passed away, then the deed has to read correctly for the surviving member to be able to deed to you. without going through a court process. And we had one instance where we missed that, and I paid $1,250 for a property that was worth, uh, I mean, now it's worth probably $15,000. And I could have paid $3,000 and put it through quiet title and cleared all that up, and I didn't. I just let it go back to county. So now I kick myself for it. But, you know, that was something where, you know, um, yeah, where we got— we ended up owning half of the property and then there was a dead person that owned the other half. That's pretty rare. And if you are doing your, um, if you're doing your title checks, you catch that. So that's, that's the one that comes to mind for me.

I love that. Yeah, I think you need to take the scissors out. Cut yourself some slack. What show?

Hmm. Oh, it's a show.

Oh, Ted Lasso.

Back into Ted Lasso.

But the reason I say that is that everyone's gonna make mistakes. But I think what's great about a relatively painful mistake, it doesn't— it doesn't knock you out of the game, is that you won't make that mistake again. Yeah, I think, you know, no one learns from great success. Yeah.

So, you know, and the nice thing is that, like, within our industry, like, hey, if you make a mistake, like, it's so rare that you— I mean, Mark, I don't think you've ever lost money on a deal, right? Like, I haven't. I know. And like, and anytime I've lost money, it's been a situation like this. There are 2 times I can think of it. Both times I'm like, I would have made a lot of money if I just did the thing. If I, like, in this instance, if I did quiet title. There was another time I missed some back taxes and I was like, I'm just gonna let it go back to county. And I could have paid the back taxes and I could have doubled my money, you know. But doubling my money isn't good enough for me, dang it. And so, you know, it's—

Land snob.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, like, to that point There's a big margin of safety. And even if you lose money, you're not losing crazy money. And, you know, and across hundreds and thousands of deals with the 4 of us, like, that's just like almost unheard of, right?

Yeah, for sure. What about you, Mike? Do you ever feel like you've ever paid too much for—

Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's the thing, you know, sometimes I step out of the model a little bit. I want to get a little Brazen, and I'll buy a bigger property here or there. And typically it works out, you know, but I don't do a lot of it. But I did one recently, and it was like a $20,000 purchase. This is not our model, by the way, for these people listening, right? But, you know, someone brought a deal, it looked pretty good to me. I did, and it looked like we were going to make this home run. Like, this thing is going to be worth $60,000, like $70,000, like all day long. Cash, let's put on the market, give it to a realtor. Oh, come to find out this flood zone thing, this thing, that thing. And it's like, oh my God, it's just like it just kept devaluing. And so here's the crazy part, you know, I did have it with a realtor, you know, this property, and the neighbor wanted to buy it— just to— is buying it, I should say— but because they wanted to protect it. And I'm gonna make— and see, this is the thing, it's a horrible deal for land, but I want to make a 20% annualized return on it. So it's like, it's not horrible. compared to other investment, but it's horrible compared to our land deal. So that's why I don't like to do that very often. But every so often, you know, I, I see something and, you know, I can make a mistake like anybody else. And when you make a mistake on a $20,000 property, it's nowhere near as, uh, it's more catastrophic than on a $2,000 property, right? Because—

Mm-hmm.

And sometimes it's harder to value these other properties. What's nice about the smaller properties is they're just about always in a subdivision where we've worked before. We know the values. It's, there's a, like, I can tell you what it's worth to buy a property. here, so I know I'm buying it right. When you buy a one-off, there's some variables maybe you didn't really consider. So, um, I think that's a lesson. We've talked, John, you do a great presentation on, uh, you've done it twice I've seen so far, I believe, right? On the, uh, on the, you know, what, what could go wrong doing bigger land deals and how initially it seems very attractive and similar to our model because it can run through our system, but ultimately there are mistakes that can be made that can cost you real money. Now, it's not horrible. People say, oh, you make it 20%. Yeah, but when I— if I buy a $420 property in Luna County, New Mexico, and I sell for $50 a month for 40 months, $2,000, that ROI is insane. Like, I'll do those over and over again, right? So it's just different. So yeah, I've definitely made mistakes over the years. That's a recent one. Not horrible in terms of— it's still a good use of capital, right? But I, I think that, uh, I'm a bit of a land snob. It's really, uh, it bothers me that I'm only getting 20% return. So that's my story. Yeah, I mean, that's— and I don't do a lot of those, Scott, you know, but every so often I, I see someone might bring something to me and I'm like, yeah, it looks pretty good. And, you know, I did not do enough of a deep due diligence on this property to find that it had a little flood zone issue. So thank God for the neighbor who was giving me 20% return.

No, that's great. Yeah, I think, uh, you know, though, you know, the bigger deals can be a little scary like that sometimes. You know, you, uh, you, you have— you could, like, sounds like you overpaid, right? So you're making a smaller return. But sometimes it's just a bigger property and you're putting all of your, your money into one property and then it sits there forever as well.

I could never have done this when I first started. I mean, there's First of all, I wouldn't have that capital. And second of all, like, if I had anything near that, it would, it would cannibalize all my money that I could be making a great return. Because think about that, that $20,000 property, I could have bought, um, 10 $2,000 properties with a return that would, you know, be 4x, 5x, crazy, right? So it's just kick yourself when you go outside the model sometimes. But, you know, it reinforces how good what we do is. And, uh, And so it's a lesson that, you know, fail forward. I didn't lose money. I make a decent, as by all accounts, return. But man, it would have been well, a lot better if I bought 10 $2,000 properties, right? That would have been a lot better.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, good. All good points. You know, I could think of one other thing on the acquisition side where, you know, even with the smaller properties, sometimes If it's a new area or, um, you know, maybe we're not completely in tune to the market, sometimes we might overpay a little bit for the— for a first property or that type of thing. And, and, um, you know, I remember one time I bought a property for like $3,000, and then, you know, you're talking to somebody else who's buying them for like $2,000. Mark, you talk about that all the time with, uh, uh, with Mike's buddy, uh, He didn't— he come in and start buying property cheaper than what you were buying it for?

Jeff Axton. Jeff, much to my chagrin. Yes, chagrin. But, you know, I was trapped by expertise. He didn't know the market. He's like, yeah, Mark, I'm getting these for, you know, way less. Sorry.

No, that's not bad. Well, I had a friend do the same thing, Mark. He came in, I was buying these properties for $400,000 or so, and he came in and I said, that's a good area. Instead of buying it for like $50, he bought one for $25. I was like, what? $100? I was like, what? He's like, yeah, if I just tell him that's all I can pay. And I'm like, okay, that's good.

Yeah, man.

But yeah, it's nutty. It's nutty sometimes.

It is, it is. But, uh, even on that one property where I bought it for like $1,000 more than maybe what other people were buying it for Um, I got a higher down payment when I sold it on owner financing, right? So it just kind of was all— it was all great returns in the end anyway. So the numbers really work out when we're dealing with these— when we're dealing with these properties that we're buying for between $1,000 and $5,000. If you're off a little bit here and there, it's not as big a deal.

There's room for error, you know? Yeah, for sure. But not when you go bigger. That margin of error shrinks.

Dramatically. Well, let's talk due diligence mistakes. So not necessarily chain of title or back taxes because we already talked about that, but what about like property characteristics? Have you guys ever bought a property that you thought was fine? We talked about this last week a little bit. Thought, thought it was fine, but then you find something out about it and then you're starting to freak out a little bit, like, oh my gosh, am I ever gonna be able to sell this thing? John Burnett, you're smiling.

Uh, yeah, I mean, one thing is if you buy a property, when you look on When you look at it on GIS, you'll see like the subdivision, you'll see the grid, and then you'll see the roads, right, between all the different properties. And then what can happen is you turn off those lines and then the roads disappear because they only exist in our imaginations, right? Like the roads are legal roads, like it's legally platted to be a road, but nobody has ever actually put in a dirt road there. So that means that you could legally get to the property, but there's not really a physical way for you to do it.

Legal versus actual, right?

Yeah, so, so that I think is a big thing to check. I also think sometimes road conditions can bite you if you're not careful, you know. So I bought a property and then found out that there was like You know, this was in Texas, also branching away from the model a little bit, and bought it and found out that the road was like completely like there's just this canyon just running through the road, you know. And so, but I still sold it and I still made money, right? It just took longer and it was at less, less of a profit than I had initially thought. But, um, but yeah, so those are, those are things that kind of come to mind.

That, that's interesting because, Mark, you made a ton of money on land, if I recall correctly, that had no road access. Correct, correct.

But to John's point, it's not ideal, right?

Yeah. Is it because you bought it so good? Do you think that's what it was?

I bought it so low. Yeah, I bought it so low. And you, you know, you could blade a road through and people just, you know, they liked the, the dream of it and they could afford it.

Yeah.

So no one was really going out there. I had one guy go out there and tell me this terrible story. He got a, uh, he's with his son and they're 30 miles out looking at land, and they get a flat tire, and there's no one around. And it's just this, you know, terrible story. You know, they feel like they're gonna die. They're running out of water before someone rescues them.

Oh, man.

And the whole time I'm like, when's he gonna ask me for the refund? So I'm like, I sheepishly was like, Much to my chagrin. I'm like, uh, so what'd you think of the land? He's like, we loved it. Is there a joining lot available? Like, yes. So he bought another 40. But, you know, it just goes to show you, like, you just never— you never know.

That's so funny. Reminds me, there's only one place I've ever been to look at land, and I actually went with Scott Todd because we were going to buy a whole bunch of it in West Texas, and Jack wanted us to see it. And we went out there and it was like hundreds of thousands of acres, and we got a flat. 2 land investors with Laura looking at us like, can either one of you change a flat? We're like, I think between the two of us, I think we could figure it out. Uh, we don't— there's no blisters on these hands. Uh, it was, uh, quite a predicament.

You know Laura was changing that tire for you too.

I'm not gonna say anything. I'm not gonna give away any conclusions, but it was, uh, it was rather interesting.

Oh man. Well, I think that, yeah, I think the moral of the story is we, we probably all bought properties with maybe some access issues that we didn't think were there initially. Or, you know, maybe it was, um, maybe we missed a wetland thing on due diligence, but there's lots of properties in the wetlands that sell, right?

Right.

Um, so little things like that. I talked last week, you know, about how I bought a slab of rock. Mark bought the side of a mountain. Mike, we bought a swamp, right?

I actually— you and I actually talking about— we have— we're looking at buying a mountain down in Arizona to name it the, uh, the BZ Mountain. We'd like to do that with it. So that's in the works potentially. We just— and that's just a bunch of hubris, right?

Another time we're gonna carve your faces into the mountainside.

Yeah, the BZ Mountain. I think it's a great idea.

You know, family compound out there.

Yeah. Oh, compound's a bad word. I wouldn't say that. Okay. All right. We're not gonna have a compound. No compounds, folks. No compounds.

This is the family estate.

Estate. The family estate.

Ranchette.

Ranchette. That's cute. Ranchettes are cute.

Anyway, anywho, anywho, uh, I digress. It's okay. We have some comments coming in here. We have a good number of people watching tonight. Uh, let's see. Oh, Handle of— a Handle of ETOH is here again. I love that nickname. Don Thrasher's here.

Is Don coming to the Summit?

I hope so. Yeah, Don's gonna be there.

He told me. Group hug, Don.

Yeah, Don, the subject of the last like 3 nightcaps has been where the heck is Don Thrasher.

Yeah, so yeah, we're glad you're here. We used to have a song, was it Larry Overstreet?

Yeah, you know the song, Where in the World Is Larry Overstreet? Yeah, we used to have a little travel, right?

Every week. Yeah, I think, Mark, he did the land business in an RV or something is what it was.

Yeah, yeah, he was, he was a pilot too.

Oh, he was? I didn't know.

He's retired now. Yep, he's still doing the land business in his RV. Yeah, yeah.

Kelly LaZanne is here, as we know. Jeff Evenson is here. Scott Walker, Tim Schmidt, Brad Kelly, Hobson Investments, Charles Jones, Mary Neely, Brad Kelly. Awesome, guys. Thanks for all for being here. If anybody made mistakes, Rick Colcock, has anybody made a mistake on a land deal? Throw it in the chat.

What's up, Rick?

Good to see you.

I'll tell you what's an interesting mistake is a softer mistake. Remember Mimi Schmidt sent out 1,000 offers in LG Pass with no offer amount? Mailing mistakes. A mailing mistake, and she still got deals.

Yeah, that's a great strategy. Cause confusion. Make people just get irritated enough to call you and say, what is this? What is this? Yeah, that's actually a pretty good tactic.

I've done that blank, blank offer, just a dollar sign. Or I had one line off on the spreadsheet one time. So, so Stan Smith was getting an offer for— or no, yes, like people were getting offers that matched their address but not their name. Okay. And the property was all wonky, everything too on the offer letter. They're still calling me like, hey, I got this offer letter, but But like the address is wrong and the name is wrong, but I have property that I need to sell and I bought property, right? It was a mess.

Tactic. I think I might try that tactic, a version of that. I think it could work.

Uh, whoa, on tonight's office hours call from Kelly, someone said they sent an offer out for $46,000. That's probably a mailing mistake.

Yeah, it's a bit out of our price range.

We accepted. Yeah. That's why we say it's a 3 to 5.

To me, and I officially—

yeah, yeah, yeah. Brad Kelly made a massive typo mistake on a development property that thought was going to be a home run, ended up too steep. Barely. Barley? Barely.

Barley.

Barley or barely? Yeah.

Why do I think of Barley and Marley? What's the people from A Christmas Story? Barley and Marley and Marley? Jacob Marley? Yeah, the 2 countens or whatever, you know, the ghost. Yeah, Jacob Marley was—

yeah, he's the one that passed. He was— he was— another name. They're both Arleys.

Was it Barley and Marley?

No, it's, uh, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Uh, oh no, Marley and Marley, that's from the, uh, the Muppets. Okay.

Uh, another great show, another great Christmas classic, which, by the way, We're pretty close to Christmas right now, if you—

Yeah, we were talking about Christmas now in September.

Yeah, well, what I told Laura—

It all started with barley.

Yeah, right, it did. And I'm thinking beer. Well, I'm gonna have another. Mike's thinking Christmas.

I told Laura what we should do, and I guess a lot of people do this because the grandkids now want to get the most out of the tree. We'll decorate it for Halloween, then we'll decorate it for Thanksgiving, then we'll decorate it for Christmas. We're going to get the most value out of that tree. Not a light tree, by the way.

By the way, I, I think a great Christmas gift, and I'm not joking, is to put a deed in one of the stocking stuffers and make sure like the kid's like 8 years old, like he just knows enough to be like, what is this? And then you're like, you know, you're like filming it for, you know, TikTok or Instagram, whatever it is, like a great reaction video of You know, little Stevie doesn't understand this is the greatest gift he's ever gotten.

I love that. That's way better because it's gonna last forever. Star, you know, people, Mark, they like to give them a star or something. They can't go visit that, at least for a little bit of time now, but they can go visit their land. I think it's a much better idea. So any of you guys out there, I have lots of land, little half acres in New Mexico that are great Christmas presents.

They're great stocking stuffers. And then they even put like a little bit of dirt in the stocking stuffer.

Yes.

You know, like a picture of it. Like, you know, one day you're gonna be able to camp or hunt out there, fish. It's like, wait, Mom, Dad, are you gonna take us camping? Like, we know we don't care.

This is a great marketing ploy. Come to— come right now to start marketing these little half acres as Christmas presents. Stocking stuffer, that's a great title. The ultimate stocking stuffer.

Yeah, yeah. But like, the deed is a gift. Yeah, I love that.

Oh, I was just saying that like something that's been fun to do with my kids, because like even when I started buying land, like this is the first time I really owned any level of acreage. And like I remember going to— we've got this great park here in town and I measured it once And I was like, this is 4 acres. That's crazy. Like, a lot of my properties are bigger than this, you know? And like, to be able to like talk to a kid and be like, this is how much land you have, or we have, you know, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's fun. Really cool. Except, uh, I will tell you a funny story. Can I tell a funny story real quick? So, so my, uh, my grandma is, uh, God bless her, she's 97. And she, uh— now, do you call her Grandma, or she called like something else? No, I call her Grandma. Yeah, okay, I call her Grandma. Uh, she's lived on the farm all her life. Well, except for the last 20 years, she lived in town, but she's lived on her farm, uh, on the farm all her life. And my grandma is a very, uh, staunch, uh, Norwegian, uh, woman. Um, you know, who— she's never said like, I love you, to anybody her entire life. So it's a competition amongst all us grandkids to say I love you, Grandma, and see what response we get back. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that's gotten like, love you too, like really, you know, under her breath. But anyway, I was, I was talking to her one year, a number of years ago now about my land business. And I said, Grandma, you'll never guess, I actually own 100 acres of land now. And she looked at me and she goes, well, whoop-de-doo.

That's awesome.

She humbled me very quickly. So now I have a running tally of how many acres of land I own now. So I'll look at the acreage and I'll look at it and I chuckle every time I look at it. I'm like, yep, Grandma would be like, well, whoop-de-doo.

Oh my gosh, that is something you should try.

Isn't that awesome?

So yeah, that should be some Nightcap merch. I own 1,000 acres in Luna County. Well, whoop-de-doo.

Oh man, the hubris. As Zana was saying, you know, you gotta, gotta keep it— tone it down, right? Tone it down.

What a great word, hubris. We have so many good words on this show. It's like word soup.

Uh, let's see.

I'm sure she was proud of you, she just didn't know how to express it.

Yeah, she's— yeah, maybe, maybe not, but that's okay. It's all good. Um, well, yeah, any other mistakes we can think— so I can think of a couple other mistakes. So, um, I've made pricing mistakes in the past, like I price a property wrong and then you, and then you adjust the pricing and then it's better.

Too low or too high? Both.

Yeah, too low hurts.

Have you, have you guys ever like had a property come back on default and then it sells again and you realize, oh my goodness, I could have priced that up by like, yeah, 50%?

Yeah, like on a weekly basis.

Or how about a lost property? You guys ever lost property in your inventory? And those are—

they're, they're like, it's like disappointing, and then you're like, free property.

Yes. Yeah, well, I— yeah, so I bought a property a year ago from, from another investor, uh, wholesale, and, and, uh, we just didn't market it. I don't know what happened, but wasn't tagged right or whatever, and it wasn't marketed. I'm like, whatever happened to that property? So I go back a year later and I look at the comps and I'm like, what the heck? Like, okay, I haven't marketed it for a year, but now I'm excited to market this thing because the comps are like crazy compared to what they were a year ago. So the mistake ended up being in my favor because—

Fortuitous. I'll tell you what's an annoying mistake, and this just happened to us. Is the county misappraised the property. So all these other properties had like, you know, taxes are like $100, and this one was like $8,000. And, you know, we have a team, so like, of course they're paying the taxes. And then like, we're looking at it like, wait, why is this $8,000? It was a mistake. They made a mistake on the appraisal because they added like another zero to the acreage.

Wow.

Like, no, that's not right. No. And they're like, well, you paid it. Like, well, no, you appraised it, you charged— overcharged us.

So, wow, wow, that's a mistake.

See, counties make mistakes, and then people make mistakes.

People make mistakes. Uh, any other mistakes, uh, out there from, from folks, uh, watching? Oh, here's one from Rick. This is a good one. We've all done this too. I bought some property that had trash on it, posted pictures of the trash on the property and called it a fixer-upper. One of the best sales he's ever had. Rick, that's genius.

Amazing. That is amazing. Yeah, that's unbelievable. That's awesome.

There are people out there that like projects. Yeah. Well, Mark, marketing.

I've done that too. Like the same thing, like where I've had trash and I'll be like, I just discounted this thing by X amount of money because, you know, so you get, you get savings.

I think what Rick did there, something that you taught years ago to me, Mark, is that when you're buying a property, you devalue it because of something, and then when you sell it, you use that as an increase in value. So, you know, you could devalue that because of the trash, but then you like call it a fixer-upper, which gets in someone's mind like, oh, this is a great deal, it's a fixer-upper. So I think, yeah, he did that He, he worked that philosophy really well there.

No, I love it. And I think I'm gonna contact our marketing team tomorrow and we're gonna use AI and we're gonna put trash everywhere, every property, and then we're gonna call them all fixer-uppers. And then when they get out there, they're gonna be pleasantly surprised. Oh yeah, we took care of it.

Oh my God, happy, happy.

Yeah, that is—

by the way, I'm joking, and that would be very unethical. Don't do that.

Just like instead of what everybody else is doing, like using AI to make their properties beautiful, you're just like—

Make them worse.

Thrashing them up, just posting pictures of them on fire. It's great.

I wonder if you did that, put it on fire, put a bunch of zombies on it, call it an apocalyptic property, if it would sell.

I've always wanted to do Bigfoot AI stuff. I feel like that would go well.

I think it'd be an interesting marketing thing to actually just say, hey, look, this is not real, but you could imagine. Yeah, I don't know.

I've done it. I mean, I've done AI staging for properties and it like, it catches people's eye, you know? And then, but then the next image I use right after that is this same image without the AI stuff. And so it's like pretty clear, like when you page, you're like, oh, Right. But I don't know, it does catch attention.

Yeah, I saw an AI video today on X that was so real. Yeah, it was frightening. But like, I'm so glad they said this is AI. There's no way I would have known that.

Wow. Yeah, they're getting better. Spooky. Yeah, even to the point where like they make— you guys must have seen this, Scott, especially because you love the movies like I do. And like they'll make like fake sequels to movies, like little trailers, and it's like, wow, I can't wait to see that. And you're like, no, it's not real. But it looks so amazing. Yeah, you've seen that, right? Probably like a Marvel or something like they make. Oh yeah. And you're like, oh my God, I didn't know they were making this sequel. And it's like, yeah, this isn't real.

Yeah. Okay, so should we just tell everybody like, this is why you need to come to the Dirt Rich Summit, because it's a 50/50 chance if this is even real right now.

If you don't even know, you don't even know. We're using so many clean credits.

It's like, can't you go to concerts now and see like Tupac, Mark? They put him on stage like in a— like in virtual— like they've done that, right? Where they kind of have— yeah, on stage, and you think, wow, oh my— crowd goes crazy, like there he is, but it's not him.

Yeah, yeah, that's the thing though. Yeah, yeah. Would you— would you see a Dolly Parton Concert now?

Too soon. Oh, too soon?

No, not too soon if it was with Kenny Rogers.

Yeah, it was my first concert.

Little Islands in the Stream. I'm gonna go. You got me.

Yeah.

Uh, so in a way, these artists can live forever.

Yes.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing actually. That part's kind of cool.

Yeah. Uh, Sean McDonough.

Sean McDonough. Okay, so Sean is from Wisconsin and is a fireman. I was like, Sean.

Oh, wow.

And you're gonna resonate with the entire left half of this, of the screen.

That's for sure. But that is for sure. There's, uh, some serendipity here, I think, you know, because if Sean doesn't know, I'm from Wisconsin and Mike's a firefighter.

So there you go. Yeah, his wife was from Wisconsin, so I've been to Wisconsin.

And there's a Burnett County in Wisconsin, so there is something to do with it too.

And I was once invited there a long time ago.

To Burnett County?

Yeah, you were. Wisconsin.

Long, long time ago. Uh, Sean is going to his first auction on Friday, try to do as much due diligence as possible. The county wipes clean the back taxes and liens. If he has a high bid, he gets a quitclaim deed. Will that break the chain? That's a good question.

We're not legal experts, but I think there's a cloud on that title for a bit of time.

It depends on the state though.

Oh, okay. That's why I prefaced it with not a legal expert.

Yeah, is it? Yeah, it depends on the deed, if it's a quitclaim versus a sheriff's deed. But there's things you can do, like you can go to taxtitleservices.com and They can—

I've never got a sheriff's deed. That sounds so old school.

That's kind of exciting.

I've got a sheriff's deed before. Yeah, well, I, I bought a property that had sheriff's deed in the title, but, um, that's kind of cool.

Yeah, I've, I've bought a couple. Billy the Kid. I've caught—

I've bought a couple kind of like over-the-counter properties from counties before, and it seems like they always give a quitclaim deed, so I think maybe that's their way.

Sometimes what I'll do— and, um, it's funny because I, I just talked to Sean, and so it's popping into my head now. But, um, no, shout out. What I'll do is I'll talk to a title company in the area and, um, and just kind of ask them like, hey, if I were to buy this property and then sell through you Like, is this the kind of a thing that you would insure? Is the title clean right now? Is it something that like is clean in a year?

Like, how does that work? That's good, John. Yeah, hypothetical. It's very powerful. Just just say, for example.

Yeah.

Yeah. I know. I think I've done that one.

John Burnett. I've done that one.

John's like the Columbo of land.

Yeah, totally.

Well, I've done that with like— because the recorder, like, they'll tell you, they'll record toilet paper. They don't care. They record everything. But the assessor—

Have you tested this?

Yes, the assessor, the buck stops here. So I've called them before and say, ah, just saying, if I were to send this over to you, you know, one spouse died, would you record this? No, we'd need to have this and that. Okay, thank you very much. Very much. So I've employed a version of that tactic.

Both are so sneaky. Yeah.

Are you reading a love letter, Scott? I hear you opening up a letter there. Was that a love letter? That was not a love letter.

No. You guys all heard it, right?

He was opening a letter.

The noise, the noise filter is horrible on this platform. I just tried. Jeff Evenson lives in Burnett County, John Burnett.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, it's like we're neighbors in spirit.

It's true.

I have purchased— I purchased land in Burnett County, in 2 different Burnett Counties, actually. Fun fact, both in Texas and in Wisconsin.

So I've done a land deal in Burnett, Wisconsin.

Yeah, you're doing deals in Scott's backyard.

Yeah, I actually put out Scott's backyard and you're like, oh God.

By the way, Scott, yes, you now can buy it from me.

Oh man, do you get cheese curds if you buy the land? It's like, yeah, yeah, that's— you get a gift bag. That's, that's the realtor gift basket here.

Yeah, that's selling, you know, with BZ Scott, cheese curds for every purchase. I like that.

Yeah, yeah, we could do cheese curds. Yeah, all sorts of stuff we could do.

Uh, oh, we're gonna have to geek out about AI. Is he coming? He's coming to Summit.

Brad, you coming?

I think Brad is coming. Yeah.

Yeah. And to that point, like, coming back to, uh, to Sean's question, anytime I run into like, uh, a tax deed and a chain of title or anything like that, um, like one of the first things I do is just pull up ChatGPT and do some research. And you have to take it with a grain of salt. You can't trust AI implicitly, but it can give you a pretty good idea of what, what to expect in that state. Like, what is— what does this actually mean? And so I found that to be just really helpful.

That's a good point, because I feel like AI, a lot of it is built to please. Oh yeah, great property, John, buy it. You should own that property.

Mike, there we go. There, that's gonna be, uh, that's gonna be what we give out for—

Dairy smoked string cheese. But I'd like to have some, Scott. Maybe you should send me some and I'll test it, and then I'll see if it's, uh, worthy of the BZ brand.

Okay, I'll do that. I'll, I'll, uh, I'll use the business account tomorrow to send you some string cheese to test for—

Appreciate it.

Test for, uh—

For all those you don't know, Scott and I, in addition to have our own businesses, have a little partnership going on, which I'll tell you, it's pretty cool because you can't run a partnership with just anybody, right? And we get along very well. Oh. He's a great partner. He's my partner, my land partner.

Hey, speaking of people wondering, Mark and I do not have a partnership. Well, purely on the left side of the screen, we're working on one.

But, but about— back to about this partnership thing. So, and Mark, I know you, you have to leave because you have a pretentious hard stop. He has a pretentious hard stop, fancy podcast you have to go to or something with some New Zealander. Wow. No, I'm kidding. Was it— didn't we talk about doing like a competition?

We're gonna talk about the summit.

We're gonna talk about it at the summit.

Yeah. Yeah. We all together against each other?

No, there's, there's gonna be teams.

Oh, teams. Team Lockstep.

We're gonna give real-world live check-in results. During nightcap.

For what? We're gonna have constraints. It's gonna be amazing.

Oh, I'm excited about it. It's like golf.

I feel like you should have a— who get— I don't play golf, so who gets the handicap? You as the expert or us as the not so expert?

Yeah, the handicap goes to the person who, who doesn't have as good a golf—

So we should have some handicaps. So like, it's only— no, no, it was 25 years, Mark. We want some handicaps.

Yeah, but I'm not gonna be able to use any of my Advantages, right? So I can't use my list, I can't use additional cap. Like, we're gonna have it like— it's gonna be all right. All right, so we're all gonna be— there's guardrails.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right, I like that.

Yeah. Now I still get my experience, but that's it.

All right. Okay. Oh, I can't use any—

anything because his own brain advantages.

How much are we starting with?

Not a lot.

Okay. No, that's all relative. So not a lot could be 500 or 5,000.

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna discuss it at the summit.

Okay. Live in front of people or together?

Yeah, yeah, it's the whole, the whole—

Oh, you're gonna reveal it?

We're gonna reveal it.

No, you're gonna reveal it because we have no clue.

No, we talked about this.

Oh, we did talk about it? I don't know. I don't think we've talked about it on, uh, on Nightcap.

I'm in no matter what. I'm in. I'm ready. Land Monopoly.

It's gonna be a lot of fun.

Yeah, sounds like a lot of fun. All right, guys, well, this was fun. Uh, we'll see you next week, uh, 9 PM Eastern for another fun-filled hour. We gotta get, uh, we gotta get going here so Mark can get to his podcast.

I may or may not. Next week I'll be in California doing some jiu-jitsu. All because of Mark, because if I'd never met Mark, this would never be happening. But every year I go out and I train with the best jiu-jitsu guy, Roger Gracie, in a little camp with 15 people. Well, Laura's coming this year to enjoy the gourmet food, so, um, it's gonna be pretty awesome. I'll get it. That's why I got the hat last year. I gotta get a new hat. I love my hats.

I love this. This episode has been brought to you by the words chagrin and hubris. That is awesome. So good. Thank you, Hannah.

We need like the Sesame Street outro with like the word of the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike, be safe though.

Don't hurt yourself. Oh yeah, no, no, he's jacked. He's amazing.

Yeah, we don't need, you know, we don't need swollen ears at the Dirt Ridge Summit that need to be drained. I don't need that stuff out of this ear anymore.

It's like I'm deaf in one ear. I was like, you're gonna get that checked out? Like, why? It's just gonna happen again. Who needs to hear out of their left ear anyway? Overrated. Yeah, but thank you, Mark. Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Have a good night. We'll see you, uh, we'll see you at the Dirt Rich Summit. We'll see you next week.

The DRS. The DRS.

Talk to you guys later. Later.