High Interest Rates = Land Investing Opportunities

I once dined on steak with a candle soft glow. But the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me so simple, so grand. Eat baloney, buy land. Eat baloney, buy land. Play 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. I love it. It's nightcap, fellas, and we've got a great topic. A great topic. Interest rates are at their highest levels in decades. Traditional real estate investors are panicking. House flippers can't get financing. Rental property investors are watching the cash flow disappear. The entire real estate market seems to be grinding to a halt. And if you're listening to the mainstream financial media, you think this is terrible news for anyone trying to build wealth through real estate. Wait for rates to come down, they say. Sit on the sidelines until the market improves. But what if I told you that high interest rates aren't killing real estate opportunities? They're creating the best land investing environment we've seen in years. While everyone else is complaining about expensive money, smart land investors are capitalizing on a perfect storm of motivated sellers and desperate buyers. That only happens when traditional financing becomes prohibitively expensive. In today's episode, we are revealing exactly why high interest rates are land investors best friend and how to position yourself to profit while everyone else is paralyzed by fear. So whether you're worried that high rates have killed your real estate dreams, you're looking for opportunities that others are missing. This episode will show you how to thrive when traditional investors can't even survive. How about that? I love it. Props to the land geek marketing team. I'm joined tonight on Nightcap with Handsome Rob John Burnett, professional land investor whose passive income has exceeded his fixed expenses. And he can eat baloney, buy land as much as he wants.

I can eat as much bologna as I want.

You can eat steak bologna if you wanted.

I mean, I could. Yeah, like a big old thick piece of bologna.

Joining you at the Jersey Mike's is the Nightcap OG the dude buddy Scott Bossman, who also has created so much passive income that he could not just, you know, eat the bologna, but buy the Jersey Mics if he wants.

So.

But do we want to do that? No, we want freedom. That sounds like a job.

Yeah. We don't want no job anymore. No, no.

No job. Our job is to help other people get out of their job.

Yeah, I like that.

That's a good job.

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Yeah. So this might be the most exciting and. And deep concept of. Of the decade. Really. Of the Nightcap history. High interest rates equal land investing opportunities. We're joking about it because interest rates really don't affect us. So we feel like this is going to be the shortest podcast in the history of Nightcap. What are we going to say? We pay cash.

It doesn't affect us.

The end. The end. Good show. Yeah. Thank you, everybody.

Cheers.

See you next week.

See you next week.

All right.

So should we talk a little bit more in depth about interest rates?

Well, sure, I think, you know, a lot of folks tuning into this podcast for the first time, they may not know that interest rates don't affect us. So we could spend a few minutes talking about that. Right. Like we should talk about what we.

Do first, because they might not even know what we do.

John, I think you should tell us what we do.

What do we do?

I've never told us what we do. This is my baby's first.

I feel the spotlight and background music.

This is great. So we are land investors. We buy land at a discount, 25 cents to 35 cents on the dollar. We sell it for a dollar on the dollar or more with owner financing.

We.

Acquire and we send out mailers. We acquire large quantities of land. We rinse and repeat over and over and over again. Our model is highly repeatable and build up passive income by building up a note portfolio. Because we sell without our financing. And as we do that, our goal is that our passive income would exceed our fixed expenses, because then you have time, freedom, which is what all of us wanted when we started. So how did I do? Was that a good baby's first? I'll do better next time.

Yeah.

I feel like the judge from Russia is giving you a 7.2. Just, you know.

Right.

Weather, weather, beaten face. Nothing. Nothing's impressing that. Nothing's impressing that judge now.

No, yeah, exactly, exactly.

But I think for your first time, it was great.

That's great.

Hey, Don Thrasher's here. Cheers to that. Thrasher.

Hopefully he's not. I think Don's trying to get out of his hospital job asap. We know you work hard at the hospital.

Now Don's gonna be at the Dervish summit, too. That's awesome.

Three more weeks, Austin.

Wow. Three weeks. That's crazy.

Michael Leone, I think.

Michael Leon. Michael, are you gonna be there? I assume so. He knows it's gonna be in three weeks. Unless he's literally plugging the Dirt Ridge summer for us, which is super cool, Michael Leon.

Very cool.

Yeah. So if. If you haven't gotten your dirt Rich summit ticket yet? There's still time to do so. Yeah. Awesome. He's there, he's there. So Scott, interest rates do typically affect real estate investors. We're seeing it right now in multi family. We're sitting actually on all the, in all the real estate sectors because basically if they didn't buy down their rate, the cost of capital goes up, which means that their debt service is higher, which means that there's no profits than to pay out investors, essentially. Long story short, a basic real estate economics with interest rates. So it hasn't been a great time to be a syndicator, hasn't been a great time to be a real estate investor. If you are, you know, looking to be a, you know, a single family landlord, let's say, well again your cost of capital is so high it's squeezing out your margins, really tough to do. And then what you're finding is that the, the equity appreciation on that house is also not keeping up with inflation. In fact if anything, prices are going down. So this is a huge opportunity for us because we're coming in on these lower value rural pieces of land. We don't need to go to a bank and borrow money. And if we do need money, we can go to Uncle John who might loan at a really lower interest rate.

Right.

Or we could do an equity deal to buy that, that piece of land and we can structure in such a way that we're going to cash flow and be profitable either way. So the deals I do, I typically pay cash. So interest rates can do whatever they want. We don't care. And I think that's the beautiful thing about this model is that we've de risked the macroeconomic component of it that we can't control which is interest rates, Unemployment, for example. Unemployment occurs. Well, we're going to get more defaults. We have no cost. Foreclosure, our cost basis was down. Great, the world's on sale, we're buying. So in my mind I really think, and of course I'm biased, that we have the, the best passive income model. And if you're new to land investing, here's my argument and I know these guys are so ornery that they're going to argue with me. It's a one time sale. So you know, you could get your money out of the down payment or you could go six to 10 months out, you're getting a recurring payment automatically through GeekPay IO shameless plug. You can charge interest, you don't have to charge interest to your buyer. And as John Said you create this stream, this river of nickels, the stream of land notes. And to the point where like, oh, wow, my passive income succeeds, my fixed expenses, and then you can scale it and you build team and you've really built yourself a land investing machine that can actually eventually operate without you. And you become as ambitiously lazy as me. And you work about two hours a month in your land business, which is phenomenal. I mean, there it is.

I think one takeaway I have is that we need two new Suno songs. One should be called river of Nickels and the other should be called ambitiously Lazy.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that right now. I'm doing that. So I'm putting that in my calendar. Two pseudo songs. Actually, no, it's three pseudo songs.

Okay.

Okay. So ambitiously lazy.

And this is the most important thing on Mark's calendar tomorrow, which is the amazing thing about being a lady.

Two hours he spends on. Yeah, yeah, don't, don't.

Yeah, okay. This is important, though. Ambitiously lazy.

River of nickels.

River of nickels. And then shaming Zano.

Oh, yes. You haven't even mentioned we're missing our fourth wheel. We're a tricycle tonight.

We're miss. We're missing. Yeah, we're a tricycle instead of a quadra quad.

A car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it'd be a fun game. Like, let's speculate. Where is Mike tonight? What do you think Mike is doing on a Tuesday night in Boston? He's down by the chat. Where is he?

He's actually down by the harbor. I know this.

He's in the Haba Haba eating lobster with a.

He's a lobster. Or not. But, but I do, I do know he's out for dinner in Boston tonight.

Okay. Khed's got it. Follow the nickel built road. That is fantastic.

Are we going to stay in the heavy metal genre as kind of a part B to our opening?

I, I don't, I don't think so. I, I, I just watched on, on hbo the documentary, two part documentary about Billy Joel. I forgot how good that guy is.

Yeah, he's amazing.

He's amazing. So talented. So I think I'm, I'm gonna do like more piano.

Piano man.

Yeah. So you know something like, I don't know, bottle of red, bottle of white, eat baloney and buy some land. You know what's crazy is, is bossman actually can sing.

Yeah, I'm kind of a witness.

That's gonna take, that's gonna Take more alcohol though.

Yeah. Wedding karaoke singer guy.

Yeah.

So I thought it was a great show.

This looks great.

Questions? Yeah. Does anybody out there have questions for us about land investing, about interest rates? You know, the interesting thing about interest rates too, Mark, is like, we were even thinking about possibly moving a few months ago, and we have a, we have a very low rate mortgage, like 3.025%, which is crazy.

Yeah.

And mortgage rates right now are just nuts to where it doesn't make sense, does not make sense to move to a similar, a lap. Not even a lateral move. It does not make sense to do a lateral move from where we are to a similar or slightly nicer house. Our mortgage payment, like double, which is crazy. So a lot of people are feeling that right now that housing sales are way down. Right. People who own at a very low interest rate. They're, they're sitting on their, they're sitting on their homes, which is good for them in the end. But, but yeah, I just love how land does not. We don't even, we don't even have to consider that equation when we're talking about land. You know, people ask me all the time, oh, what interest do you charge? Well, Mr. Well, Mr. Buyer, here's the good news. I'm not going to charge you interest on this. And they're like, what? Yeah, I'm gonna charge you 199 bucks a month. And, and in 72 months you're going to own this property and it's probably going to be 15 to 20% higher in value by that time. And it's going to be a really smart purchase for you. And look how easy it is. No banks, right? That's. The other thing is like, we're out of the banking world with this, this whole thing. We don't. Interest rates are not tied to land. Banks are not tied to land. We are the bank. We can charge interest if we want to. Not many of us do. I think it helps sell the land more quickly. And we like giving people a fair deal. It's fun to help people become landowners when maybe they couldn't afford, you know, paying a property, paying me cash for property. Maybe they can't afford, paying me 5 or 10 or $20,000 cash for property, but they can afford a couple hundred bucks a month. It's fun to watch that play out in the end. So those are my thoughts.

I love it. I mean, really, if we're gonna get nerdy about it or geeky about it, we're just putting, we're Just bringing liquidity to this inefficient market where it doesn't exist.

Right.

And you can't go on Zillow and figure out the value of the land, and you can't go to a bank and get a landlord. So we're filling this need that's there. And it's been there since, gosh, 25 years. It's been like this. It's, It's. It hasn't changed. And, and everything's changing. And yet this land business remains remarkably.

Boring.

And remarkably steady. It's. It's. It's crazy. It's crazy. So, John, what are your thoughts?

I concur. I feel.

I feel like that's like a new segment.

Yeah.

I concur.

You just.

Yeah, that's great.

But.

Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, ultimately, interest rates don't. I mean, I get. People ask me that, they're like, how are the interest rates impacting you? And I'm. It's like. I mean, they're not, you know, like, I'm still selling and I'm still buying, and Because I buy outright, because I sell and I'm the bank, you know, it really empowers me, if anything, like, the harder it is for other people to buy other real estate, the more appealing it is for them for you to. To open up that opportunity for them. Right. So.

Yeah. And if we're, you know, if our average yield on a deal is 72%, and let's say we need to go out and actually we do need to raise money privately. Well, we can raise as much money as we want at any interest rate, because even at usury laws, we're.

We're.

We're still making money. And they couldn't even, like, you know. You know, Bobby Banana can't even in, you know, in New York City with the big stogie. Can't even loan us money that we wouldn't be like, oh, Bobby Bananas, whatever his nickname is. He's. He's, you know, he.

He's.

He's your, you know, your lovable loan shark.

Yes. Is that a scrambles reference that I'm unaware of or.

I just. I honestly, I just made it up.

No, I think it's pretty good. Pretty good.

Yeah.

Let's throw it on a T shirt.

Yeah, it's got the. Kind of. The baloney thing, too. Yeah. Bobby Baloney.

Bobby Baloney.

I mean, sure. Why not? But how about. I just thought of a song. Bobby Baloney's Boring Land Blues. That's good.

Didn't write it. Down.

Boring Land Blues.

All right.

Another song.

Fine.

I'm gonna write it down. Bobby Baloney. Boring Land Blues.

This is from Anna. Not charging interest. May give a small discount for one lump sum payment. Exactly. Let's see. Andrew had a question. Let's see. Oh, we just answered his questions. Sorry for the alerts coming through. I don't know how to quiet those. What's that?

We're enjoying them.

Okay, good.

I'll be right back.

You're popular and I'm just happy.

Here's a question, John, from Jacob Pennington. From Jacob. If. Oh, this is a good one. All right. Well, I mean, this is a completely different topic, but we're happy to go into it because we digress all the time. A nightcap from the topic at hand.

We have topic add.

Yeah, right. John, if you hustle, if you hustle, how fast can you go from no Land investing experience to starting your first automated processing form out of. To starting your first automated processes?

So I would say, I mean, ultimately what you want to do before you automate is understand what you're doing. Right? But I mean, the way we, like, as far as, like the way we train people is it's pretty dang quick, right? Like you're hiring a virtual assistant week eight.

Right.

So you're two months in, and then you're starting to delegate and you can really start. I mean, some of this stuff is automated kind of from the get go. And I guess, I don't know, like our paperwork generation, mailing generation. There's a lot of tools that we use that automate a lot of processes, like from day one. But in terms of starting to pull yourself out of parts of the business that you were doing early on, you know, within a couple months, you should be in that spot where you are starting to pull things off of your plate and put them on the other people.

Yeah. Jacob, you don't realize how spoiled you are because even 10 years ago, I was licking and sticking and stuffing envelopes because we didn't have us. We didn't have a process, an automated process for sending out a direct mailing campaign. And now we have a software that helps us do that. You know, Mark, I tell people all the time, and it's the truth. It used to take me three hours to send out 100 mailers, maybe even more. Now it takes like you can. You can do your pricing analysis, you can get your list, you can organize your list, and you can mail in when you get good at it. 15 minutes.

Yeah, 20 minutes. It's. It's like the, the technology and the tools today compared to when we started is insane. And it's only getting better. Like I can't wait for the day. And I think it's, that day is coming sooner than we think where it's just all AI agents. Like we have our intake agent, we have our posting agent, we have our, our sales assistant agent, we have our closer agent, we have our paperwork agent, we have our follow up agent and we're just as CEOs like just tapping around and, and watching the agents and iterating and being creative. Like what they do, what they can do, what they can't do. And then basically that's our, that's our team. Can you imagine?

Yeah, it's crazy one even on a small scale like looping in the AI kind of stuff. Like my, I feel like AI is empowering my team to just be way more capable in their roles than they used to be and they could do a lot more. Like it's an extension of our company. So we use like a lot of cloud projects and we build out applets with like, you know, with chat GPT and stuff and it's been great, you know.

No, it's, it's incredible. And this is the worst it's ever going to be. I know. I mean, I mean think about Sora too and making just a quick land video about, about your land. Like yeah, it's incredible. So everything's getting better, everything's getting cheaper and it's just, it's just insane. It's, it's the best time to ever be an entrepreneur. But John, I don't, I don't think we're gonna have high unemployment. You know, people think oh there aren't gonna be any jobs anymore. I think to your point, we're, you know, there's still judgment involved that yeah, I think it's, we're just gonna be more productive.

I think too. Like there's a, I don't think that people will ever be comfortable selling to a robot. And so there's going to be a level of, of the relationship side that I think is you're not going to be able to, to automate AI.

But yeah, I, yeah, I think so. I think it's, I think it's going to be one of those things where, yeah, that, that can, I mean especially in land we want to connect with, with another human being that I think that human being wants when they're selling us their land, they want to tell another human being the story of how they acquired the Land, Why they got the land, what their dream was for the land. And then, and then sell it to, like, somebody like us. And then I think when we're selling it to somebody, they, we, we do that human connection to sort of differentiate. I, I, I agree. I could be wrong. I mean, could it, could the AI be so good that we don't care and they, they just. I don't know.

I think, yeah, there might be. I mean, sorry, we're getting out. I mean, I guess we're getting into, into tangents here on AI, but I have thought, I think that there's a level of comfort that people have talking to a robot that they actually don't have talking to a person too.

Right.

Like you're, you kind of, you know, you'll mess around with that. You'll say things that you wouldn't actually say to a person. And so there are, there is, I think there's a place for it even, even on the intake side where you can have a robot talking to people and, and asking them their story, and they'll actually get into it.

So, yeah, I mean, now that we're on this tangent, I mean, there's, you know, in recovery circles, they, they say you're only as sick as your secrets. So imagine you're just talking to your, you know, chat gbt or, you know, your robot therapist, and you're just telling them all your deepest, darkest stuff. Does that translate or is it not? Is it still not really fair, so not really doing the work.

I think it's both.

Is it both?

That's like the very 2D answer.

Well, I, I think that we should just pivot, like, what's your secret? Let us, let us, let us all know.

Oh, yeah, and a million of people.

Right now in Nightcap, that's like, unburden yourself.

Each of us gives our deepest, darkest secret.

Okay, you start.

Let's go.

You start.

Okay. Okay, I'll start.

That was great.

We're waiting.

Oh, I thought Mark was going to start.

I thought John was starting.

No, clockwise, you're going to start.

But basically, I think what this is really illustrates how sick the three of us are.

Speak for yourselves.

Yeah, but, yeah, but, I mean, but Jacob, to your point that it's, it's just getting better when it comes to the automating experience. So we just leave Scott and that. And then there were two.

He didn't want to give a secret.

No, he's like, he's like, aaron, they're, they're asking you for secrets.

I'm believing Good one.

Yeah. I mean, I, I do, I do think that the, the time involved in the, in the land business is going to be less and less. I think the tools are just going.

To get better and better.

I think they're cheaper and cheaper and it, it's not going to surprise me if one day there might be a one or two person big land business team. Now that'd be kind of lonely, I think.

Yeah, for sure.

Which is why I think what we're doing is so valuable with the language community because we are sort of on these little islands and it's great to get together and share, you know, our secrets and what we're doing and how we're doing it, what's working for us, what's not working for us. And in giving out our best ideas together as a community, I think is that is going to become extremely valuable as more and more things become so crazy with AI, we're not going to know what's real, we're not going to know what's trust. It's going to be this belly to belly transaction. I mean, a year from now, we could literally just go to, you know, a Google LLM and, and use our, our robot avatars to do a nightcap and no one would know. That's not even us. It sound like us, it'll look like us would have our mannerisms and we were just putting the, into the prompt, like talk about interest rates as a land investor and it would just go off because, like, you could do a podcast now like that and it sounds amazing.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's a crazy time.

It is crazy. Yeah. Don wanted you to pivot back quickly before you went into anything too personally, so.

Oh, thank you, Don.

Yeah.

Saved by Don Thrasher again.

He's watching on for us.

Yeah, I appreciate it. He's like, oh, no.

We do have a, we do have a question. If we pivot back about the interest rates here. This is from Call in Sick Outdoors. Okay. I like that. I've seen some charging no interest, but a little more on. A little more on terms. Is there a certain percentage some go by, or is it best to just charge the same price for cash and terms? Great question. Question. We see it always, don't we?

We really do. John, you, you want to take this one? Yeah.

I mean, I have an opinion, which is that you should charge more for terms and you should charge more if it's a longer loan.

Yeah. But yeah, explain why we charge more for terms.

We charge more for terms because. Well, the, the Return is for us is stretched out over a longer period of time.

Right. Time value of money.

Right? Yeah. And so if, if I'm charging like, I mean it just varies a little bit. So if I've got a four year note then the price is going to be a lot more squished. If I've got a seven year note then it's going to be, it's going to be higher. So it's kind of the way that I structure it. So I would say, I mean for me it's generally someone asked if it was a 10% reduction for cash. I do more than a 10% increase for terms. Right. And part of it is if you think about it like if you were to look at that as though it were an interest rate, the question is, are you charging like a 2% interest rate on the equivalent? Is that kind of what you'd be making on that? And for me that's too low, so.

Right, right. Scott, what about you?

Yeah, I kind of the same philosophy as John. You know, I think what I love about this business is you can do it however you want.

Right.

There are people in our community who have cash brightness, cash price and the terms price are the same. Makes it really simple. Right. We have people like John and, and myself. I do a, maybe a discounted cash price. I might market it as a discounted cash price. Maybe it's, maybe the market value is 10, but my discount cash price is not. My terms price is 12. Right. There's, there's a little inherent interest built into it because you know, like John said, time value, money. We're providing a service to these folks over time. We're not charging interest per se or an inordinate amount of interest. We're helping them to be able to own this piece of property without going through, without going through banks. There's no credit checks. Right. So I've seen it that way. I've seen it get really complicated with a 1 year, 3 year, 5 year, 7 year price. I don't get that complicated. Everything's also negotiable. Right. So if we have a, we have a buyer on the hook and they say, hey, you know, I see the discounted cash price is 9, your terms price is 12. Could we do, you know, 10 if I pay it off in a year? Well yeah, right. Like no big deal. So the cool thing is you can do whatever you want. I think it just makes sense to, you know, maybe mirror what most investors are doing in the market so that you're not doing anything too Too crazy outside the box. But those are my thoughts, I guess.

Yeah, I'm, I'm. I'm in the same boat as these guys. I, I like to keep it as simple as possible. I don't want to give too many options. In fact, we only advertise a terms price and then somebody has to ask for cash. Cash.

Yeah.

And it just makes it really simple. And I feel like simple scales, but I've seen it done other ways. And I always think about that, that famous jam experiment where there's. There's two jam shops, like, or Jellies, Smuckers, Think Jams, gems, whatever. And there's like, you know, One store is 30 and they get way more traffic, then the other one has seven and they get less traffic but more sales because a confused mind doesn't make a decision. And so if we can keep it as simple as possible, like, here's your option, then if they want another option, they can ask. To Scott's point, like, yeah, I feel like one of the. The great thrills of life could be negotiating with Scott Bossman. Like, I could imagine people literally just buying land to try to win in that negotiation.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a pretty empowering, magical experience for, for all involved.

Right.

Except I'm not doing it anymore, so.

You're not doing anymore.

Do you miss it, the sales calls? I don't really miss the sales calls for land very much. I kind of like, I like the intake calls better for some reason. But no, I. Every once in a while, I'll still get on the phone every once in a while if I have a request from my sales assistant or whatnot. And every once in a while I'll drop a little video. I like the videos because the buyers convert them. Right. You know, you have a sales assistant maybe, and, and they've warmed the lead up and they're like, Scott, they just need to push over. So I do a lot of little videos, right. Talking about the land and how this great opportunity for you and. And let's get the deal done and. And those are fun. So I'll do those every once in a while and. But otherwise, no, I'm pretty hands off. Pretty hands off on everything, really. It's. It's more just kind of overseeing the whole. The whole shebang.

Yeah, you're.

You're.

You're the conductor of the machine, right? And you're just playing this beautiful music. I don't know if that's like the worst conductor hands of all time, by the way. I apologize to every Conductor ever.

I was a major in high school, so I got the conducting down.

Okay, let's see your conducting hands.

Why I don't conduct.

That's the deepest, darkest thing.

Not. Not.

I choose not to conduct.

Oh, man. Here's another question. Let's see. With the Fed lowering interest rates. Oh, this is from Daniel McCallum. He's got the coded name. Daniel's coming to Texas, I think. With the Fed lowering interest rates, will that make it harder to attract buyers in the future as mortgage rates drop when selling through financing?

Nope.

Nope.

Next question.

It's the triple. The triple. Nope. Nope.

John, do you want to explain what to Daniel, why that is?

I mean, I guess for me, I'm just thinking about when the interest rates were insanely low, right. When we were looking at, like, during COVID and all of us were selling, like, bonkers, like, it was crazy and. Because part of that is. I mean, so here's my. I don't know, like, Mark, you're the finance guy. But my thought is interest rates go down. Generally it's because the economy is going up. And the economy goes up, people have excess capital and they're buying as well. So that's kind of my thought.

Okay, so close. Close. But usually, usually, you know, there's a lot of different reasons why.

What.

What's going on with interest rates. And there's a lot of, you know, government manipulation going on right now for various reasons. You know, when you owe so many trillions of dollars, you can't have two of high interest rates. You can't even make your own. Your own debt payments. And then, you know, you're going to default on your own loans. And now you have a, you know, a bankrupt country, which is no good. But what, what you basically see when we're in a low interest rate environment is like, yeah, to your point, you've got cheap capital, and with that cheap capital that's flowing into the markets that. Yeah, essentially that is going to, you know, heat up the economy. To your point. But usually when you're seeing them lowering interest rates, it's because the. The Fed is seeing an economy that's actually slowing now at that point, then you had an overheated economy. You have to raise interest rates to, to slow it down. We saw what happened with COVID Right. So there it's. It is a delicate dance. And this is why no one likes economists. And this is why this is such a terrible topic. Like, I'm literally boring my. Thanks for joining Night Account.

I think. Yeah, we probably won't do a repeat of this podcast.

Let me show you a curve.

Let me show you a chart. Oh, this works.

Get the pointer out.

Get the pointer out. Yeah.

Nobody uses pointers anymore. You notice that?

Yeah, I noticed that.

I'm gonna get a pointer for Dirt Rich Summit.

A laser pointer?

No, a real pointer.

A real pointer.

Like nobody uses a. Remember John did? Yeah, like the tv.

I want one of those old school projectors with like the little see through slides. That's how I'm doing my presentation. It's gonna be great.

No, I had a guy that actually used an antenna from his TV as his pointer for the lecture.

That's awesome.

That's what I'm doing. Let's see here.

Dyl Oaks is coming.

Coming to VIP Durage Summit. Is there an itinerary with start times? It's. It's coming. I think it starts Thursday morning.

Thursday morning. I think we start Wednesday night. We had something going on Wednesday night. Like a reception or something.

Like a social or something, right? Probably.

Probably something with Scott and Mike and John. Just the three of them.

I don't know.

Nightcap and then nine in the morning.

I think. Okay, you're too cool too tool for nightcap on, you know, at Dirt Summit. That's fine.

No, no, I'll.

I'll do it.

Summit. I'm not too cool.

I know you're not. I think, but I know, I think registration starts at eight in the morning on Wednesday. Like registration is eight to nine and then it's nine to. It's like nine to six or something on Wednesday.

I thought we're going Thursday. Friday. Saturday night.

Yeah, Thursday, Thursday. I. I thought I said Thursday. Thursday morning. Sorry. Yeah, Thursday morning is the registration.

Right.

Starting at eight and then it's nine. Nine and all day Thursday, Friday and then like nine to three on Saturday. Something like that.

Yeah. But I, I mean honestly, I know the self serving, it is going to be an incredible event. It really is. I mean just the people, the community alone, like. Yeah, the information will be good, but to just meet fellow land investors, it's really special. And to meet John and Scott is amazing.

Daniel wants to know what the dress code is, Mark, if he can't find a Buy Baloney eat baloney by land T shirt.

You're not allowed in if you don't bring.

Yeah, I mean that's. If you. Yeah, you're gonna have to know like the, the secret passcode to get in then. Which would be.

I love, like if you pin a real piece of baloney to your t. Shirt like that would be amazing.

That would be really good T shirt. I like it.

No pimentos. None of the olive stuff in there, though. It's just.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's too bad it's bologna. It could have been by filet. You know, sell land, bring us like little, little mini fillets. Yeah, but Daniel, I think it's going to be like business casual.

Let's give some, some nuts and bolts advice to Mr. J.M. past. Mark, do you dip your toe into new markets, try different offer prices and batches in multiple markets, or do you mostly just focus on one or two and remail? If so, how do you think about it?

So when we go into a new market, what we like to do is really test it just with a.

A.

Few, a few sort of marketing pieces just to gauge interest before we even mail. So we're not really marketing a piece of land, like a fake piece of land, but we're sort of gauging interest in there. We're really studying it and just seeing like, okay, if we go into this market, is there anyone there first? So I think that's how we kind of dip our toe first. But once we're there, then absolutely, we'll, we'll do tiered pricing. So 100 at this price, another 100 this price, another 100 this price, and see where the market comes in. We wanted that 3 to 5% response rate. And that's kind of how I think about. We'll read mail every 90 days as well. That's, that's, that's how, that's how we think about it. John, what do you do?

I concur. I mean, I haven't done the testing at the market with blind marketing ads or something like that, or test marketing ads. I do think it's important to, it's helpful to test out the market because the way I think about it, I was talking to somebody about this today. There's kind of the market rate of what I sell something for, but then there's also the market rate of what our sellers sell for.

Right.

You kind of have to figure out what that, what that figure is. And so, and as you send your mailers, like, my goal is to figure out that number as quickly as I can. And so like you were saying, Mark, if you do kind of some AV testing and you send out, you know, you're sending out a batch and you can test out multiple price points and just see what sticks and what your response rate is. But I do think it's important to not just jump from county to county to county to county to county, because then you don't ever, like, you run the risk of never actually finding out what that market rate is for the sellers. And so you start learning and then instead of going the next step, then you jump and go to another county in another county.

So yeah, dude, buddy, what about you.

Concur with both of you on, on all strategies there? I do. I definitely agree with John. You know, if you do a deal in an area, don't leave. I, I think they're, I think I had this misconception early on that, okay, I did a deal in this area, the deals must be done here. Now, like, I gotta move on to a different area. I didn't realize, I didn't realize early on how massive the market is. And I'm like, oh, well, I got a deal here now I should probably go somewhere else. No, like, some of these counties are just humongous. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of vacant land parcels, sometimes even in the same small area, right? And there in turn then there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are, you know. Well, I shouldn't say thousands of people, but there is a percentage of those thousands of people that are, that are looking for us to swoop in and help them solve a problem and getting rid of their land that they no longer want.

Right.

Or like right now. I mean, I think there is some economic uncertainty in the United States. And I don't know about you, John, but we're, we're buying a lot of land from people. I think people. Our response rates are up. Our, our purchase rates are up. And you know, we're, we're able to negotiate a really good deal with these folks. And they're not really bad. Again, right? Another alert. Sorry, my earpods are out. I'm lost. But so, so, you know, Mark, you had mentioned earlier how in times like this, you know, it can be really smart to get into this business because we are buying these assets at a deep discount. We are helping people in all honesty, right? And a lot of people say to me, well, how are you helping people? Like, how are you helping people buy new land at 25 cents on the dollar? Well, you know, I even tell the seller, you know, we have a business to run. There are costs associated with that business. We're doing you a favor. We were getting you money quickly for this property. You may need the money quickly. I have a team to pay. I have legal costs, I have back taxes to pay. I have a business to run. I have AI tools to pay for. Right. I got a. And then. And then I have an end buyer who we're trying to create an opportunity for as well, and their marketing costs associated with that. So. So we're not. I don't think we're hurting people. Right. I think we're helping people on. On all ends of the business, and then we're helping our employees. Because the longer you do this, you start having mouths to feed in your business, which is pretty cool, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in Mr. Gem Pass, if you're an ankle biter, you're starting.

You know, this is.

This is a more sophisticated type of thinking. Like, I think when you start, you just go to where the other successful land investors are going. You don't even test the new market until you. You've been in the business a long time, honestly. And I remember as a kid watching Winnie the Pooh, and I thought Winnie the Pooh wasn't very bright. I really didn't. I thought, you know, all the other characters, Tigger, you know, he. They. They just seem like they're all thinking faster than Winnie the Pooh. But at the end of the day, he was by far the most bright, the most wise of all those characters because he would just sit there and he'd eat the honey. He'd just keep eating the honey. And he wouldn't go and be like, oh, I guess I'm going to leave the fours now. Half the honey. No, he's eating the honey. And. And he does it joyfully. And so I think when you find that honey pot of a county, you just keep eating the honey. You keep eating fat and happy. And to Scott's point, like, a lot of people get bored making money and they want to go a new county because they're bored with it. And we see it a lot. Yeah, you're probably listening to this, like, how can anybody get bored of eating honey? But people do.

So when we remail from Don Thrasher, how much price adjustment do we factor in? John Burnett?

I typically don't. I mean, it depends on, like, I have adjusted my price point. If I send out a mailer, and I'm like, I'm really just not getting the responses that I would expect. I mean, there's basically, there's three options, right? Free responses. Like, one is, like, not enough responses. The other is responses are through the roof. And then the other is the Goldilocks. Right. Like, right in the middle. And so if your response rate is too low and it's crickets, then that probably means that your pricing is too low. If it's going bananas, you're probably offering way too much. And if you're right in the middle, that's the Goldilocks rate.

Right.

And so for me, like, I've had. I probably told this story before, but I had a. There was one county I went into, and I saw how much a friend of mine had bought property in this county, and I was like, well, he can do it. I could do it.

Right?

And so I wanted to buy these properties for $2,000. And so I sent out all these mailers and I could not do it right. And I got it up and up and up, and I finally hit the right mark. And then I did dozens of deals in that county. You know, so it was a great county for me, but I had. I had to bump it up to a reasonable price point in order to make that work.

Yeah, I still think that you gotta have some metric to follow and, and then, you know, you just keep bumping it up, maybe 5%, 10%, and just see. Scott, what about you? Do you guys have a. A formula?

I think the formula just comes down to, like, in our last batch of mailers, what was the response rate and what was the purchase rate? And, you know, we want to. We want to push the numbers up to ideally half to 1% purchase rate. So. So that's, that's kind of what we do. We gather the data and then we refocus and reframe and, and sometimes up it. Sometimes keep it the same. I think recently we actually decreased her offer a little bit because we're a little too high. Right. We were getting response rates were higher and purchase rates were higher than normal, so we, we dropped them a little bit. So, you know, Don said he thinks he lowballed his first mailings. It's happened, all of us, right? Don, like, it still happens sometimes, right? So, I mean, you get better at it as you go, obviously, but. But yeah, don't be the. I think what I would say to the ankle biters out there is, you know, don't use your first couple batches of mailings as the end all, be all data.

Right.

In your. In your new entrepreneurial endeavor. Because it takes a while to figure out these markets. Takes a while to figure out the pricing. It takes, you know, mailing, and you're going to get knocked down. You got to get back up again.

Right.

We've all had horrible mailers. We've all, you know, a lot of us have sent out mailers with Mimi Schmidt did it. I've done it with $0 in the offer. Right. I sent out a mailer that was one, one line item off on the spreadsheet. So I spent. I sent offers to the wrong property owner for the wrong property. And I still got deals, but they're. But you know, there's just mistakes that happen in the beginning. So just don't quit and you'll get to learn these markets and you'll work in them for years. Right? Yeah.

And if you go into something like flight school, like we teach in depth the three ways to buy land. And you know, mailing is just one of the ways. So you know, you've got wholesaling, got land arb. So there's, there's lots of opportunities while you're waiting for your mailings to get that data back to go out and buy land. And I think even a wholesale strategy in a new market is probably the way to go. Like just call us data. Okay.

I like landorg strategy in a new market.

I like to do. Yeah, that's the best way to do it.

I have done that. And like to go back to your point, Mark, about trying out a new market. Like, I really think that's a great way. Like I've done that before where, you know, I was interested in a market and I just called up Tate and I was like, do you have any land arb in this county? And picked up a property for $100 a month and just started marketing to see how it went and what I thought of it and sold it and then got more, you know. So I think it's a great way to test things out.

Yeah, I think that might be the best data point. And do that and you really mitigate your risk. I mean you're not, you're not sending out mailers. Not. Yeah, that's a great way to do it.

Anna sent one with an extra zero, so of course they wanted to sell.

Nice. Nice.

Your response rate is probably pretty high on that one, Anna. Yeah, it happened. Well, Mark, I know you have a pretentious hard stop tonight. A little bit better than me and John, so should probably let you.

Yeah. Thank you guys. This has been an amazing nightcap as always. So for you dear listeners, please send, send it to one friend, just one friend, and help us build our, our community of late night degenerate drinkers. We talk land and passive income and freedom. What's better?

Nothing better.

Nothing better. Love you guys. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. Have a good night.

Good night.

John. I Guess it's you and me for a minute.

Yeah, we can say whatever we want about Mark. It's great. Exactly.

Yeah. Glad that guy's out of here. Don Thrasher, he's around the 90 day mark, so he's gonna remail. Perfect. That's a great time to remail, I think, especially if it's an area that you like. Yeah.

And you can always test out multiple price points. Mark or Don as well. So like you can, you don't have to remail at just a single rate. You know, you could try a few and just see what sticks. You can always say no if you offered a little bit too much. So.

Awesome. I think we hit most of the comments and questions, so I think I would just encourage everybody to, you know, consider joining us at the Dirt Rich Summit the first weekend in November in Austin, Texas. John, do you remember your first Live Land Geek event?

I do. I remember it vividly.

What, where was it and what year? Yeah, Orlando. In like 2019. 2018.

It was 2018 Orlando. Yeah. I remember sitting in the restaurant, the hotel restaurant, by myself, reading Lord of the Rings.

Oh, nice.

And then Matt Forbes called me over and that was actually where he could never remember my name. He kept on calling me Rob and then he called me and then he gave me the nickname Handsome Rob. So that's where, that's actually where that comes from. If anyone's curious.

I love that. I kind of always wonder where that came from. Yeah. No, that's awesome. But in, in 30 seconds, John, for the people watching, what, what were the best 30 seconds to a minute, what were the best parts of that live event? Like what, what did that mean in the beginning stages of your business?

I think for. There were a few things that I did. One thing was massively just encouraging to be around other people that were in the same spot as me. I was at that point in like I was kind of burning out, honestly, a little bit as, as I was building this, building up my land investing business and just to be around everybody was radically encouraging. I got the advice that I really needed to push me forward and help me to be really successful in my land investing business. And it was, it was more just a mindset shift. But being around other people that are doing what you're doing, that are seeing success, that feel your pain right as you're embracing the sack and pushing forward, and it's just great. I mean, I've been to an obscene amount of live events and just for my own business, I've just grown a lot. I'VE got great friends and friendships that have built out of these events and people that I talk to every week and. And have done for years, and it's been enormously beneficial for me. So that's, I guess, what I would say.

No, that's amazing. Yeah. I think just briefly for me, you know, I think. I think I got into it and I'm. I'm like, I. I already proved myself that it worked because I did a sale, but I'm like, was that a fluke? And I got to this group of, you know, 90 people and saw that, oh, he's doing it, and he's doing. And he's doing it, and he's doing it, too. And this guy replaces income, and this guy is on his way to quitting his job. And it was just a really awesome motivator for me to, you know, because I started this as a side hustle. I'm like, I just need some more money every month. And then I got to that live event, and I'm like, oh, this is bigger than that. Right? Like, people are. People are growing a business with this thing, and it's a. It's very, very. I don't know. I think it's really going to help for. For everybody out there who's new to this, whether you're just learning you're one month into it, you're four months into it. Like Don Thrasher, who said, three sales this week. It is going to provide you with more momentum moving forward to help you grow this to a point where it's impactful in your life. So I'm excited, John. I'm excited to see you. It'll be. It'll be a blast. And, yeah, it will be blast. So, I guess, folks, we will see you next week for another night cap with hopefully a much more, you know, exciting, enjoyable topic then hopefully one will.

Last longer than 20 seconds.

And, John, go warm up by the fire or something. You're making me cold over there. You got your.

Yeah.

Idaho. We're all cold. Idaho.

Okay. All right.

All right, everybody. Cheers. Have a good night, and we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, John.