Mark J. Podolsky bought cheap land in a gated Pennsylvania community with 1,000 unsold lots and $500 annual POA fees. He spent $100,000 to make $100,000, breaking even, because he never tested the market first. Skip POA deals unless you know what you're doing.
Hey, it's Mark Podolski with the lane geek@thelanegeek.com let's have another cup of coffee together this morning. I'm drinking it black. It's a little bitter. Ah, but man, do I love that caffeine buzz. Okay, so let's talk about when I first got started. One of the biggest mistakes I made was getting involved with a property owners association. So they're slow moving. They have an unprofessional board. So basically property owners associations will just hire people that live in the community to be on the board. And it's really, really tough to deal with. So anyways, I'm working this deal in Pennsylvania and they have, it's over developed. They have about a thousand lots that are just sitting at tax sale. So the county's not making any money on it, but the property owners association isn't making any money. It's dead money. So I go in there, I fly out, I make my presentation and it makes sense to them, hey, Mark can sell these properties for us. And even if we make, you know, nothing on the property they were giving me, the property that on the property owners association side they'd make money because right now they're dead money. Big mistake by Mark. First of all, very difficult to deal with. Second of all, I didn't test the market. I thought, well, if I'm getting free land, this can't be difficult to sell. Well, when there's a property owners association, even though it's a gated community, it had two PGA rated golf courses, three lakes. It was beautiful. It was in western Pennsylvania and it cost about 500 bucks a year just in POA fees. The market at that time, at least my market didn't want it. So it didn't matter that I was getting it for nothing. At the end of the day, I think I spent maybe $100,000 on that deal and I made about $100,000 on that deal. So there are a lot of mistakes made along the way. Which if you want to learn more about my mistakes, go to thelandgeek.com and hey, if you like these little coffee talks, please leave me a comment. Keeps me motivated to do it. Anyways, thanks a lot and I'll see you another morning. This is Mark Podolski, the land geek out reminding you, be careful those poas don't make the same mistake I did.
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