How much money do you need to flip land in 2026?

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. Pay the fork for the de in your hand get the filling, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Fellas, welcome to Nightcap. All right, everybody. If you've ever wondered how much money you actually need to flip land in 2026, tonight we're breaking it down. We're going to show you how this business works at any budget level, whether you've got a few hundred dollars or you're ready to deploy some serious capital. We're also going to talk about why land is dramatically less risky and less expensive than traditional real estate. You don't need $50,000 down for a down payment. You don't need tenants. You don't need to swing hammers and make improvements on a property. What you need is the right structure and the right expectations and the right plan for land business. So tonight, we're going to get into some real numbers. If you're new here, here's what we do. We buy land at 2535 cents on the dollar, and we resell it either for cash or on owner financing to create monthly passive income. No tenants, no rehabs, no toilets. Simple, repeatable transactions that can be run from anywhere with a laptop. And between the three of us, we've done thousands of these deals across the country. As always, I'm joined by my two brothers from another land mother.

Is marker a land mother?

We should say Landfather. John. Handsome Rob. Yummy. Eight is enough. Burnett. Good to see you. John, good to see you. And Mike, Zen Master Zano, breathing in the. Mark, breathe in the mailing. Read off. Marketing. What's up, buddy?

Not much. We forgot to say we also wear pretty cool vests. Look what you're wearing there. That. Are you a rocking something? What is that? I see it.

It's just a. No, it's just like one of those. I don't know what you call them.

I call it cool.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that.

You know, warm torso. Keep those arms cool.

Yeah, it's even more cool when. In the summer when I don't wear a shirt underneath. Ooh, that is really cool.

You unzip it halfway.

Oh, we digress.

Always.

Welcome everybody to. To Land Geek Nightcap. Mark. The Godfather. Mark Podolski, the Land Geek is out tonight. He's a little under the weather. So, Mark, we hope you feel good. We Hope you feel better. He does not have Covid. Oh, do you remember that, Mike back in.

He does have Covid. When you say like that. Specifically not Covid.

Do you remember back in 2020 when it wasn't cool. When it was not cool to have Covid and some guy on this call got Covid.

Yeah.

And Mark. Mark expressed that to the entire land. Geek Nation and Inter.

Interweb basically threw it right out there. And I was like, isn't that a HIPAA violation? He's like, yeah, exactly.

That's when. That's when you got code and everybody looked at you like, little side eye. So. Well, Don, thank you. Don said. He gave me. He gave me a fashion shout out to said I'm very fashionable. Thank you, Don. Well, this is good to see everybody.

Me and John.

Yeah, good to see everybody here. Governor Scott Walker is here from Wisconsin. Scott, good to see you. Kathy's here. Don Thrasher.

Is he really the governor?

No, he's like, wait a minute.

You just gloss.

Scott Walker used to be the governor of Wisconsin. I doubt this is Governor Scott Walker.

I mean, it could be.

You never know.

If put a one in the chat if you're a governor. Scott Walker.

Mike Cavier is here. Joe Frank. Joe. Joe, you had a killer deal last week. We should revisit that tonight. That was fun. Aaron J. Is here. Rick Colac is here. Got a. Got a bunch of. Bunch of fans on the call. Daniel Barbier. Barbier is here. Our Facebook link is broken again. So, yeah, I don't know what's going on, so I'm gonna try to figure something out with that. But before I do, Mike Zano, we have a topic. Remember we used to come to these and we didn't have a topic.

Yeah, we would just sort of just, well, talk.

We just talk. We would talk.

Governor Scott Walker saying YouTube issues. Is that happening?

YouTube issues?

Well, he says, is everybody having a problem with YouTube?

Oh, I don't know. We have a lot of comments coming in. So put it. Put a Y in the chat. If, if you're successfully hearing us on.

YouTube, shouldn't it be like a YT?

Oh, he got it. No, he said he got it now.

All right. Just saying Y is like, yes. YT could be YouTube.

Don Thrasher knows us too well. So, so, so let's. Let's delve into the topic just a little bit. All right, Zano.

Yes.

First of all, let's talk money. Let's talk mindset a little bit. When you hear from somebody.

Yes.

I only have $5,000. I don't think I can start this. What goes through your head?

Well, first off, that's plenty of money to start this with. I started with a lot less. Although I think ideally that's a good number right in that range. But you know, here's the thing. We buy land anywhere from 500 to 5 or 6,000. Scott loves when I point to my map. That's why I do that. I do that in all my. Anybody who's like interested in land, invest and I talk to them now, Scott, I always say. And by the way. And you know, just a throwback to how much it. Anyway, I digress. We buy land anywhere from 4 or $500 to 5 or $6,000. That's our typical range. So we got 5,000. I mean you could buy a number of these smaller properties. I mean a 500 property could turn into $2,000. So you might say, oh, it's only 50amonth. Right. But you're still taking 500, converting into 2,000, bringing back your whole, the whole invested amount of money within the first year. And you're having a crazy return. And you're also building proof of concept inside the business. You're getting some momentum, you're building out your structure, something that you can grow into. And once you start to do a few deals and gain that confidence, you're gonna find the money. Trust me. When you all of a sudden realize that you can do this and you can take 500, turn it to 2000 or 1000, turn to 3 or 4000, you going to get pretty creative finding the money. Right. Because this is a really eye opener, right? A big eye opener. When that happens to you at first. Would you guys agree?

Yes, I would concur. That was a nice setup. Concur. Nice setup for the. Concur there, man.

But it can be.

I don't, I don't think it's. I don't think it's right to fish for concurs.

I wasn't fishing. I really just said do you agree? But anyway, listen, what other type of real estate can you get into with that small amount? I mean people are looking to build. I love all types of real estate. I don't think we here to sort of trample on top of other real estate models. Right? They all have their place. Our shines with repeatable recurring income. Something that you can depend upon right now if you get $5,000 a month, $10,000 a month, you might think well that's awesome. So maybe I'll play a little bit in different areas of real estate now that I have this secure amount of money coming each month. So it just really opens up a window of opportunity. So really, where else are you going to go? What other real estate model you're going to find where you can start with that small amount of money, start gaining traction, building significant returns, building momentum, building proof of concept, building your business mindset, Right. Where else can you do that? Tell me.

I think the audience should tell us because, because I can never think of, of any better model than ours for getting started, for just, with just a little bit of money, which we're going to talk a little bit here, a little bit about here in a minute for sure.

These messages, Right?

Right. So. Well, John, so let's talk about that a little bit for, for the people new to this whole, whole idea of land investing, like, you know, traditional real estate investing, you might need $50,000 to get started, right? We, you can start with $50,000 in land, but as Mike said, you can get started with, with a few thousand dollars as well. To me, there's a kind of a, a delineation between doing, doing some land deals, like some transactional land deals, and growing a business. So I think if you think about it that way as well, like if you have just a thousand or a few thousand dollars to start doing some land deals, I think that's great. But I think if you have more capital to deploy, you're on the trajectory for growing a land business. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think so. And I do think that there's a certain point, I guess I hit a point in my business where I had all this momentum, right? And I was like selling a bunch of, a bunch of property. But then I reached a point where I was like, I need, I need more capital to get as much land as I can sell right now. Right? And so that's where I kind of approached it with. Well, I, I just did land arb. Right? And, and so there are ways to kind of be creative even with, like, there are ways to utilize momentum and build your business even if you don't have a ridiculous amount of capital, right? Like, you do need some capital. Like you need to send mailers, you know, you need to, you need to get things rolling as far as just general business operations. But that doesn't take a ton. And you know, like, so for me, I just started having some land, our properties and inventory, and I buy them for a hundred dollars a month and then I would sell them for $200 a month. In like a month. And so my holding costs were extremely low, and I did really well off of those properties and was able to build and maintain that momentum, you know, as I went. So did I answer your question at all?

Yeah. Yes, of course you did. It's, it's. It's all about momentum and growing a business, right? So. And I think we just kind of. I think we all have that moment. We. We start this thinking, okay, let's start doing some land deals and as maybe a side hustle. Let's make this, you know, but you know, Zaino, you were, you know, you were in this to pay off some bills, right? But didn't you guys all wake up one day and you're like, this is no longer a side hustle. That's what, that's what I did. I woke up at like year two when my passive income exceeded my physical therapist salary, and I'm like, this is no longer a side hustle. And that's what I was initially looking for, take a little pressure off of me financially.

It's funny you say that. That's exactly sort of. It just dawned upon me one day that I was a land investor. I don't know when exactly that was. It was kind of like, well, wait a minute, you know, this will fake it till you make it, or, you know, just. I just hit me that, wow, I, I am a land investor. And it was kind of cool moment.

Hey, we just got a comment that we lost audio, but I don't know if, I don't know if it's for everybody or just can we get an A for audio?

Daniel Bryan says YouTube is a bit slow tonight. So I did hear there was a big outage in Canada today, so maybe it's drifting down this way. I don't know.

I think it's all the viewers trying to get on and watch us.

Yes.

YouTube could only handle so much.

Only so much.

All right, well, awesome, guys. Well, so I think we should give some. Some value to the folks out there tonight who are thinking about doing this, and maybe they have different budgets in mind for getting started. Okay, so I, we, we created four different, I guess, tiers of capital commitment for the, for the land business. And I think it'd be just helpful to chat for a few minutes about what it looks like for each of these people as they're getting started in the land business. And we gave them little terms as well. Okay, so. So we're going to talk about a budget now. Between 100 and a thousand dollars to get started and we're going to call these people, we're going to call these people the bootstrap Builders. Bootstrap builders. What I, what I love about this, though, is really there, there's no excuse for not starting, right, because we all have 100 bucks. So, Mike Zano, let's talk about the boops bootstrap builder strategy here. You have a hundred to a thousand bucks. How do you get started in this business and create a little momentum for yourself?

I would have to go with land arbitrage at that point. I mean, I don't think we're right at the point where you can start looking to mail and buy wholesale, sell wholesale. You'd run out of capital. But you can certainly pay 50, 75 or maybe a hundred dollars a month for a property and get it sold. Build up that proof of concept and repeat that over and over again because now you'll have the cash flow from that property added to the current. And then you can do another land job and you can keep stacking your wins until you get enough in there that maybe you decide to send out some mailers yourself.

Now, this is going to be very boring for Kathy Hollingsworth on the call, but could you explain for our new viewers what land arbitrage is? Because a couple people watching may not know.

Making the spread.

What does that mean, though? How am I buying a. Talk to me like a third grade. A third grade.

I just thought I'd be whatever that travel word would be, but that's what I'd be. So essentially, you know, you could control a property by having an agreement with another person, another investor, typically, who does own that property. And you're going to say, hey, I agree to pay you X amount of dollars per month. Maybe it's 50, maybe it's 75, maybe it's 100 and that. And then you now have control and you can go out and sell it through another agreement and another monthly payment to somebody else. And that's typically in the range of double what you're, what you're paying, right? So you, you strike this good deal with another investor and then you and go and resell it because you have control and you make the, you make the spread. And then people say, oh, why would this person sell it to you at that, at that price? Well, there's a lot of reasons. As many times any one of the three of us on this call might have dozens of properties in one area, we're going to sell them. But, you know, in the meantime, why not move them, get some cash Flow going. Right. It just makes sense for everybody involved. Simple.

Well, and a lot of us come into bulk deals where we get properties even cheaper than 25 cents on the dollar. You know, Mike, it's no secret you and I have a. Have a business together. We have our own businesses, but we have one together as well.

And we bought John makes him feel bad.

I know.

I'm not. I didn't know. Why didn't you guys tell me?

You have a secret business?

John has. John has his own side ventures.

Oh, do tell, John. Do tell.

I've got a business with myself, so you guys should feel left out.

I do feel love. John is a business with his AI agent. I have a feeling he's got like this machine in the corner doing deals for him. But anyway. Well, we'll come into deals sometimes where we can. We get them even cheaper than 25 cents on the dollar. We might get them at. Mike, we've gotten properties at 10 cents.

On the dollar, cheaper by the dozen.

Yeah. And when we. When we control property for that little amount, that gives us options. Right. We can sell them retail, we can sell them wholesale.

Right.

Now you get the land arbitrage play.

Yeah. You buy in bulk, you get a major discount. Now you have an opportunity to help other people out, helping yourself out at the same point. I mean, you just have that capability.

Yeah. So land Arb is just, you know, we're just selling to another landmaster at a discount on owner financing. You know what, though? I think it's a strategy that works even when you've been doing a long time. Because I just bought a bunch of properties. Land Arp.

Yeah.

And I sold them all within the first few months. Not all of them. I sold good. A handful of them in the first few months. It's a good way to pick up more property.

I think when you're a seasoned land investor, you're making use of all these levers that we talk about. Wholesale hotel, which is where you're the one buying sale. You're the one selling land. Arbitrage on both sides of the equation. Retail terms, cash. I mean, selling your note, buying a note. I mean, you're doing all of it. Right. If wouldn't you agree when you get to a certain level, you're involved, it just whatever makes sense at that moment, you're ready to take action on it. And you're not afraid to take that action because you've been developing this skill set over the years and now you feel very comfortable in whatever direction you need to pivot for sure, for sure.

John Burnett, do you buy land? Have you bought any Lander properties?

I have bought dozens of land. Our properties. I haven't, I haven't bought any recently, so.

But I'm sold any recently. Land arbitrage.

I sold one recently. Land arbitrage, so. Which was a great deal.

So what, what. And then what motivated you to do a land arbitrage on that? Was it just for me?

I just had too much, like I had a bunch of inventory in this one area.

Yep.

And it was these properties and I, I can sell them for a lot of money, but they, you know, it just takes me a while to sell all of these. And so what I did is I had one where I'd already got my money out of it, and so I sold it. Land arbitrage and so just kind of lowered the amount of inventory that I had in that particular area.

Just the lever you pulled?

Yeah.

A lever. Lever or a lever.

What's that song leave on? Is it. How does that go?

I don't know.

Oh, it's a famous song by, you know, Benny and the Jets. Who's that guy? Come on. Elton John. He says the word Levon and Leon. I don't know. Someone out there?

Kathy Owings? Kathy didn't let us know. Here. In a minute. Billy Swinton wants to buy some land arms. So if anybody on the call's got a. Got a property to sell to Billy at a discount on refinancing, can you, can you help him out?

Nice.

Let's see. Here's a question from Matthew Woods. How does one find reputable folks to get land arb deals from asking for a friend.

I love that.

Is that going to be part of the new group? Mocks creating will also be land arbitrage in there.

Yeah, he's got a wholesale platform coming out here.

Mark's probably watching. Mark, if you're watching, which I'm sure you are, could you throw in the comments if there's going to be land arbitrage on there? If he's not watching, then that's okay. The song is called Levon. It's by Elton John and it was released in 2016. Wait a minute. Maybe 1971. 1971, remastered in 2016. Yeah, 1971. That's why, Scott, it was. It's called levon. Released in 1971, remastered in 2016 by Elton John.

I got you, Levon. Did you answer? Did you answer?

I don't think we've answered it yet.

Nancy's questions.

We started to say we that's why we asked Mark to comment if he was watching. But not this new platform, but essentially for right now, you go in the Facebook group, whether it is land arb or it is wholesale, you treat it as if it's an offer you mailed and someone said yes. You still do your due diligence. You still verify the comps. So you never take anybody's word for it. So you're pretty much safe anywhere as long as you follow the proper due diligence process. You'd be bought from the one of the three of us. You should still, you know, don't ever assume anything. Use it as a. We would clearly never do anything that's going to be in the wrong with the numbers. But you still want to practice getting that routine of checking. Yeah.

And the big thing you want to do is just look at local comp. So it should be, you know, ideally, you're buying at half of what you could sell it for on terms.

Right.

And so you want to look right in that area and see what other properties like this one are selling for. So some. There are some land platforms like land.com. you can even do a map search. You could zoom right into the location of the property and start looking at some of the nearest comps. And then that gives you an idea of market value, because it all just comes down to market value. What can you sell this thing for with owner financing?

I like it. And that touches on Daniel's question here, too. When offering land art to another, how do you structure the terms? I would say 50 cents on the dollar is typical. I've seen deals a little bit higher than that as well, but really, you know, John, if I was going to sell. Sell you a property for. For $60 a month, and you could sell it on the marketplace at a hundred dollars a month, and you sell it right away. Yeah. It's still a really amazing return for you.

Right? Yeah.

So I. I'm seeing 50, 60 cents on the dollar for some of these Landau deals. And what about fees, guys? You charge fees on your land? Our bills.

I can't remember if I charged fees. I can't remember.

He says he's so out of touch. So out of touch with what's going on over there.

What was that? Was that when we were on the. Was it the round table? We used to have some lively discussions about that. Yeah, didn't we? Am I wrong?

Usually it's gonna be like, it's. It's at least gonna be less fee. Right. Like, you're generally not Charging.

Charge a doc fee. Do you charge a two dock fee, John, for Lander?

I don't charge.

No.

I actually, I bump it up. It's a thousand dollar fee for Lander.

So only Mike charges the 4.99 dock fee. Land arm deals.

Yeah. No, I don't charge a land or a dock fee for land arm.

I'd say most of us don't charge dock fees. And then there. Of. Of course we're gonna have the monthly taxes. We'll charge you for the monthly taxes, but monthly note fee. I've heard some people charge that. I've heard some people cut it in half or some people don't charge it, but.

So, yeah, I always just said if you take all the numbers, add them up. Doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if there's this, that, if it isn't that, just add it all up. Does it make sense? If it makes sense, go for it.

That was a very simplistic mathematical recommendation.

Just add it all up. Add your ones and your twos and your zeros, your threes, your four.

Add it all up. Yeah.

No, No. I don't know.

You're gonna turn this into a karaoke episode.

We've had those. They're not pretty.

That was a play. That was a play on Moving on up the Jefferson song.

I did think that's what you were saying, but I didn't.

Yeah. All right, awesome. So. So that's the bootstrap builder. You have a hundred to a thousand dollars to get started. Hey, I mean, if you have 500, you can buy our properties for 100 bucks a month. Right. You just got to pay for them next month. But if you turn around and sell them right away, your return on investment is infinite. So that's a great way to pick up some properties if you're looking to, you know, if you're looking for a little trial by fire, learn how to be a land investor, go to our Facebook group and buy a. Buy a land or property. It's.

I. Sorry, I'm digress. Should I digress?

No.

But I. I think that Lander is also just a great way to try out an area. Like, I've done that before where I had a county and I was like, can I sell land here? I'm not. I'm not entirely sure. And so I just picked up Landar in that particular area and then I just had something I could market right away and sell and prove that concept to myself. So I think it's great. I do think, like, one thing to think of if you're getting land arbitrary is that if it's this, if. If you've got duplicates of the same property, you don't need to get like 10 of them all at once, because you're really only going to market kind of one thing, right? And so I think it's good, good to not beef it up too much with just one product.

I love it. I love it. Solid, Solid.

Very solid as a rock.

All right, Mike, so that's our first budget category. Okay, now we. Now we have another budget category. So we're talking between. You have between two and $7,000 here. We're gonna call you. What are we gonna call you? I'm having a hard time finding my term here on this side. Where did they go? Oh, we're going to call you the launch. The Launch Pad built. The Launch phase Builder. That's a kind of a weird name, but. But you have between two and seven thousand dollars. What are you doing differently, Mike?

The lower end of that, I'm going to mail Target an area where I can get properties and wholesale them because I want to build up some more capital. But if you're getting over the 5 to 7,000 range, I think you can start to look at building some passive income because you're going to get some cash sales. You might sell a note when you set it up. So I think you can start going more traditional when you get to that price point. But below the 5, 2 to 5. I'm probably thinking I'm going to mail an area where I can buy property. Acquisition price, probably well under a thousand, because those are the easiest wholesale. People are going to be picking those up all day long. And you could take, you know, buy something for five, six hundred bucks, make four or five hundred bucks on that and just do that over and over again. Because here's the key. When you go to these areas where these small properties are, you can get very lucky with. Not lucky, just get. It happens with consistent mailing. You find someone who owns 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 20, 30 properties, and now you fall into a really great opportunity. So I think at the lower end of that, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start looking at wholesale, and I might at the same time. Now, the land arbitrage, I might pull some land arms just to do my owner financing and get that going. But my target, an area to start wholesaling as well, to build up my cash reserves. Big words there, cash reserves.

All right, so, Mike, you're talking buy a land or property or Two, Right. That's going to be a few hundred.

With your owner financing skills. Yep, yep.

And then you're going to mail an area. Now, what do you recommend for mailing for somebody new at this. How many mailers you send out a month? What does that look like?

Well, it's about 14 a day. What? I recommend 20 mailers a day.

$14. 20 mailers a day.

All right, 14. I've done the math.

It's only like. It's like one bourbon for you out at the. At the Peddler's Daughter. Whatever. The. The.

The. I like to sip on some tequila. Tequila restaurant. Yeah. Blanco or reposado? We were in Boston the other day, and I'll tell you, this Mexican food was top notch. I forget the name of it, but it was before Laura and her sister went to see. What's that band called? Boys to Men and all that. Yeah, yeah.

In Vegas.

I chose to go to a jazz. Jazz lounge instead myself, but yeah. Anyway, we went to Mexican first all together. It was unbelievable. And I sipped on this. You know, that's like a whiskey when you sip on a nice tequila.

Thanks for the. Thanks for the sound effects there. That was awesome. It was awesome. Slurping through a straw, your tequila. It was very.

Remember that episode on the Brady Bunch when she taught them how to drink hot tea? The aunt from far away places. Do you remember that episode?

No. Again.

They were sitting around the living room and the aunt told them, when you have hot tea, you have to.

Slurp it.

You just kind of reminded me of that with that statement. It was a great episode of Brady Bunch for all out there who remember that.

All right, so you're gonna buy a few land ar. You're gonna get on a mailing campaign trying to send out 5, 600 mailers. It really comes out to 5, 600 mailers a month. If you want to do it that way.

Yeah, you're gonna get traction. You're gonna get some deals, you're gonna flip them wholesale. You're going to sell some stuff, owner financing, and you're going to work out those land investing muscles and you start to really build the land physique, and you're going to start getting ready to crush it.

You go to the land.

It's called the mailing diet.

When. When you build the land physique, you can wear these sleeveless. Sleeveless hoodies.

He's got a subdivision tattoo underneath there.

Yeah. Oh, man. All right. Okay, John, so that. That's our second budget level. Okay. Third budget level. You Have a little bit more money here, John, you have between 10 and $20,000. How does that change things for you in learning this business?

I think a lot of it is really similar to what Mike said, except that you're branching out and not just focusing on wholesale. Right. And you can go slightly up in budget. Right. And so you can acquire property and you're looking to sell it for retail. And I, I mean, honestly, you're going to be in the same spot, like 20 to 30 mailers a day, right. It's where you're targeting. You can bump up your budget. So you're not just necessarily hitting those areas where you're looking to buy property for $500 a pop. You can, right, if you want to, but you can also branch up and start going slightly higher in, in budget.

So.

Yeah, I love that.

So no, it just gives you more options, right. Because you can buy thousand dollar properties, $2,000 properties, $3,000 properties if you start with. I think it's all about creating some momentum. I wouldn't go out by a $20,000 property if I start with $20,000. Especially right now. What I love about our model guys is, you know, we're buying these things before between 1 and $5,000 and they typically sell quick. We have, there's a large buyer pool for these cheaper properties. So I would, all day long I'd buy multiple 2 and $3,000 properties with a $20,000 starting budget rather than just one property. Because especially right now, you don't know how long it's gonna take for it to sell. Mike, do you have any bigger properties right now that are kind of sitting?

I have some bigger properties. You know, they, they always tell people that this is a, another thing. Once you build up a certain level of passive income, you might want to buy some bigger properties. They're great when they hit, but they might sell in a week, that might sell in a year. You never know, right? So this stuff can sit, but I think it has its place, right? I think once you have a certain amount of recurring income, you can feel very comfortable. Hey, I'm going to go buy a couple of these because when they will, they will sell. And then when they do sell, you can, you know, really buy more small properties, right? More of these low cost owner finance properties. So yeah, I have a few out there, but no sweat on it. I'm just part of a bigger puzzle that I'm putting together. And as Mike Cavia says, Masha, Masha, Masha. See that? He, he knows, he knows the episode. Do you even remember when she broke her nose with the football?

Oh, yeah, maybe. Maybe I. That rings a bell.

Kitty car. All when they lost the doll out the window. You remember that one?

Wow.

Oh no.

I'm mixing it up.

Am I mixing it up? The one where the boys voice changes.

Yeah, that's a great one too. The Brady Bunch of song. When it's time to change, you got to rearrange.

Oh my God.

I might stop watching that late at night with Laura. Just because it's. It's a cool show. Ah, the broken Nosey Jones was in the Brady Bunch. I think that's who it was. Was he a big singer back then? Was it the, Was it the Monkeys guy? Was it Davy Jones?

I don't know. Are you thinking the Partridge Family guy?

Oh no, the Monkeys.

Okay. Yeah. So yeah. Was he on the Brady Bunch?

Yeah, he had a. He.

They had a guest spot. He was on Scooby Doo.

I remember that.

The Monkeys, they were on Scooby Doo. Pretty sure.

David Jones. Yeah. Davy Jones. He was groovy. Masha went on a date with him.

I think she.

Something. Yeah. I digress. I'm sorry.

I just.

Really.

Join us next week for more Brady Bunch trivia. I never knew we'd get this from Zaino.

I thought that you would be into this, Scott. I thought you would. You're not really a Brady Bunch fan.

More of a cool sci fi, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings guy.

Did you read the Hardy Boys books when you were a kid?

I did actually.

Okay, now we're.

I did enjoy the hearty the. I did enjoy the hottie boys. Enjoy them. Yes.

All right, I digress. Where were we?

No, that's all right. Okay, so we, so we, we've covered the, the $100,000 starting budget. We covered the two to seven thousand dollar starting budget. We covered the ten to twenty thousand dollars starting budget. Now some people are more fortunate to put more into this. Right. And more than ever we're seeing some real estate investors come in. They have 50 grand to deploy, but they're a little bit nervous to. To buy a rent, to buy a rental or put a down payment on a home. Right. Because that stuff's riskier. It's. It's more of a long term play, I think. Right. A little harder to cash flow. Yes. You build up the equity, but then you got the tenants, termites, toilets, you got repairs, you got high insurance costs, you got tenant rules. Right. There's just a lot of stuff with that. So we have a lot of people coming to this business with 25, $50,000. So, Mike, talk a little bit about that and how that changes things for folks.

First of all, I do concur with you on the. And that was not.

I didn't even fish for it.

Didn't fish for it.

Thank you.

By the way. I thought of the other night. I had a beer at a. When I was at that jazz place, and it was a George something beer, was a very hoppy beer. I forget it. I said, what do you guys have that everybody comes here for? I'll forget the name and maybe I'll send you a little ipa. Yeah, it was definitely an ipa. It was very good. But what I was concurring about is the fact that, you know, I talked about concurring. I have a couple rentals, I'm not gonna lie. I think there's a place in a portfolio, right, for whatever tax benefits and whatnot. But if I'm looking to build recurring passive income, you think about the average positive cash flow from a rental property. Average. So don't everybody yell at me. If you get a higher one, that's great. But average, with vacancy rates and expenses, one to $400 a month, positive cash flow per door. That's typical. But you have. I know you have appreciation, I know you have depreciation. So I get it. But if we're talking cash flow, I could get $300 a month with a $3,000 property. The cost of the asset to the cash flow it generates is really crazy. So when someone comes to us, and we do have people that have this sort of capital, my suggestion is, first of all, that's great. You can call it dry powder. People call it that, you know that. Great. All these names, gasoline, dry powder. You got that? Keep it over there, Take a little bit out, take a little bit out, maybe five grand. Get some mailers going, get a couple deals in your pipeline. What you want to do is build something to grow into. You don't want to deploy all that at once and then like not have any structure. Not sure, maybe not. You want to dial in, you only need a few deals. I don't care if they're 500 deals or six thousand dollar deals, it doesn't matter. You're going to get proof of concept. And once you have proof of concept, you turn a dollar into three or four. That's pretty unique, right? Not a lot of people used to that. And they, they feel like this burst of energy and confidence. Now go back, bring in the gasoline, the dry powder, call it what you want. Now you start to acquire more properties and your passive income just spikes. These are the people that are seeing seven to $10,000 a month in their first year because they have all this capital they could bring in. But my only advice to them in the beginning is honor the process. We walk you through a 16 week, a four month process. It's. Some people think it's too slow, too fast. I think it's just right. Without making mistakes. Right. We get you dialed in. You don't have a perfect business, but you have a structure that you can grow into. And now you can start to really grow your passive income. So these people are in a great spot, but they need to be careful. They need to take the measured steps in the beginning.

Yeah. It's easier to overspend on systems, right?

Yeah. Oh yeah. Keep it lean, keep it mean.

Yeah, yeah. I mean with that budget, you're going to have more capability to, to grow systems more quickly, to hire vas more quickly. Right, Right. We always talk about this balance right there. Like, and, and I know from experience because when I started out, I kind of created another job for myself. I didn't, I didn't have enough systems, so I did a ton of deals, but I created too much work for myself. Right. So I was, I was effective, but I wasn't efficient. Right. Then we've got other people on the other side of the spectrum. They tried to build everything out first. They build every single process in the world, but they haven't done a land deal yet. They hire all these VAs, but they haven't done a land deal yet. Another bleeding money. Right. So I recommend find the middle. Right. Find the balance between being effective and efficient. There's got to be a term for that. What's the term for the middle?

Affection.

Would you call it?

Smash those words together.

Affection. I like that. Affectionate. Okay. I like it. Affectionate. Very good.

How many points we can dig into this, Scott? It was really great actually, because you could talk about people that try to build out everything so fast without having any deals.

Yeah.

People that you know or you go any direction with it. Right. But really what does work is a measured pace. Right. That's why 20 mailers a day, a few deals in your pipeline, proof of concept. Then it feels really good. You just gotta honor that beginning even. Here's the hard part. For people that are investors already emptying their cup, this is a whole new model and you need to. I do. I always tell them, you got to respect the skill set that you have the experience you have, but you gotta wait to bring that in at the right moment. When that moment is not out of the gate, that moment is four months away. When you've done a couple of deals through something like flight school. Now you. You bring that all back in, and now you start to really shine. But just. Just. You need to wait a little bit in the beginning. That can be hard.

I love it. I love it. And that's what I love about Mark and what he's created, is we do have a very measured approach to this. We're not saying to people. We're not saying to people, go, mail 5,000 next month, right?

No, we're.

We're saying start measured, start slow. 20 mailers a day. Learn the market, do some deals, then pour fuel on the fire. Once you learn an area right, it's.

Like doing a couple.

This is the way. This is the way, man.

Oh, Mandalorian. This is like you do a couple laps around the track. You know, where the jumps are, the bumps are, the divots are like, if you're gonna go on 100 miles an hour, your first run around, you're probably gonna break a leg. I don't want to break any metaphorical legs here. We want to go around the course a few times, check it all out, then we can throttle up.

Throttle up. Wow.

Makes sense, right?

Come on.

Can I get a concurrent fish in here?

Another fishing. Another fishing concur.

It's called the fishing concur, but it's still a concurrent.

All right, awesome. Well, hopefully that was helpful to everyone. There's the new word of the night. Affections.

I think it'd be affectionate, in fact.

All right, that's. Let's open it up to. Let's open up for questions. Who's got questions out there for us that we can help you with? I'll scan back through the comments as well to see if I missed any.

Solve everybody's problems. Let's go.

Let's do it. Let's do it. The. The lightning round. Lightning round.

Q A Lightning round has begun.

Let's see here. Scott Walker. Oh, no. Scott, did you tell us. Are you. Are you Governor Don Thrasher is a governor.

Hello.

From Houston. Devon.

I would vote for Don Crasher.

I would, too. I would, too. Questions? Comments, Concerns? I. Topics. For topics you'd like us to talk about. We're always trying to be creative with our topics, but is there something out there you'd like us to talk about?

Waiting for them to submit. Is there a way, like a Theme for one of our nightcaps. Can they do that, Scott?

I mean, I don't know if there's a system in place for it, but.

They could type it in the comments right now.

Exactly. Right now.

We will take note. I know Don Thrasher has a. Has a topic. Let's go. Don't.

All right, here's a comment for BMK Property Solutions. So this is. This is. This is something we hear sometimes, right? BMK Property Solutions. I made 185,000 in 2023, spent over a hundred thousand dollars on a massive amount of marketing, made 30,000 total in 2024, and then lost six contracts in 2025 and lost 60,000. So imagine if we. If. If he would have bought land using this method. Right?

Well, that's a good. I always. I always love. And I am. It's pretty awesome when people have gone through some sort of negative experiences in real estate, but that still say, I'm not done. This story is not over yet. So I think that's awesome for just. Resilience. Is that the word? Or what would you say, Scott, like someone who's been. We see these people, right? They've come and they haven't. There's a word. I know. Go ahead, say it.

My favorite word. It's my favorite word, Mike.

I'm not gonna say it.

Right?

Go ahead, you say it.

It's. Stick to itiveness.

I was gonna say not give up. Not give up.

Test yourself off and try again. Brutal Beyonce to the call.

Well, I just think it's amazing that we have some people. And I always. I'm always fascinated, and I think it's a true testament to their grit that they have gone through other types of real estate. Things have gone south, but they didn't throw the towel in. They just shifted. They moved their feet. They pivoted, as we say.

And I.

And I think that's amazing. And I. And I. I think we should always, like, take note of that and be like, yeah, great job. That's amazing.

That is amazing. And thank you for sharing because it gives. It helps other people. Gives disrespected to other folks. From John, who has the deed when you do land arbitrage. So if I'm selling a property to my buddy Mike Zano at a discounted monthly rate, I hold the deed, but Mike can assign that property to another buyer. I will still hold the deed, though, until Mike drops me off.

I have control. I have the power.

You have control. You have control.

Keep that deed.

I'll make Money.

And I'll take the money. I'll take the deed at the end. I win in the end.

You win in the end. Exactly right. From Wes. Wes Mantooth. If Wes wants to gain momentum while in flight school, is a good idea to shoot lower than four times, return to see that it works, and get some traction with a more attractive selling price.

Listen, there's nothing wrong with 2x3x. We talk about 4x, but we don't want to be land snobs. You know, even doubling your money is insane. Right? I mean, if you look at typical returns and other types of investing. So I say whatever's going to move that property quick and give you proof of concept and make you a nice return. There's no negatives to that. You just. Because you're going to do a ton of these deals and, you know, these are just giving you traction, as you said right there. These are giving you momentum. These are giving you, you know, everything you need to grow the business to a higher level. So go for it.

And we still do this. We still do this today, right?

Today.

All three of us. All three of us on this call have sold property this year for two times.

Yeah.

Return. Yeah, Right.

Yesterday, like, so. We had a cash sale yesterday. 10 grand and I bought it for 5. I'm okay with that. I'll take it.

Do it all day long, every day.

Yeah.

I love it. Love it. Let's see here.

John, are those new glasses? By the way, you look extra spiffy tonight. Are those.

Yeah, they're not. Remember how I had vertigo at the dirt?

Yes.

I took my contacts out and it went away.

You're not supposed to leave them in, you know, like, weeks at a time, John.

I mean, I don't leave them in weeks at a time, but apparently, like, this is better, so. Oh, look at this.

So you get to do this.

A little left out here. All right, these are my readers, so I gotta lean in a little closer.

In the house. Roy Oberson is in the house.

This is what I do in the house right here.

So, yeah, the library.

I look down and read. Or I just do this. So this. This works. All right. From bj, the land grabber. Do you think the acreage matters to other buyers when it comes to pricing and purchasing?

Not necessarily. I think it comes down to the use they're looking for and the qualities in the property they're looking for. Now, sometimes that might be acreage if they're looking to do something, I don't know, ride horses. I don't know Think of something that requires more acreage. But if they're just trying to have a little bug out place. No, it's just really a matter of individual preference. Yeah, they all sell. There's a buyer for all of them.

An RV fits on 40 acres, and an RV fits on.10 acres. Yeah, right.

Or.01 acres.

Just 01 acres. It fits on there. Just. All right, awesome. Tell us more about LG Pass and Geek Pay. All right, John, give us 30 seconds on Geek.

30 seconds.

Okay.

On Geek Pay. So Geek Pay is effectively a financial CRM. And so none of us, none of the three of us want anybody mailing us checks. Scott does. Scott likes people mailing him checks, but Mike and me, not so much. So basically, Geek Pay allows us to automate those monthly payments. So I load all of my notes into Geek Pay. It automatically runs that monthly payment, the ach, every single month. Got a portal where my buyers can log into if they miss a payment. It sends them a notice, charges a late fee. They've got a portal they can log in, make extra payments, catch up payments, all that kind of stuff. So that's largely out of sight, out of mind for me. Right. So There you go. 30 seconds.

Love it.

Mike Zano, LG Pass in 30 seconds.

It's a virtual office to run your business. This is where you send out your mailers without licking and sticking. You track your deals, you create documents when you buy and sell property. But most importantly, this is where you bring your team. You bring this in here, and you create workflows and you learn how to manage a business. This is where your CEO mindset comes in. This is critical component to running a successful land business. So LG Pass, the virtual office of the land business.

Love it. That was. That had. That was like 29.67 seconds.

That's perfect.

Billy Swinton has a comment. I love this. I love this. Actually, too late is better than too soon. He said he got. He got VA's. Too soon.

Yeah, I. I would concur with you, Billy.

I concur.

Oh, concur.

I definitely think too late is better than too soon. All right, Daniel. Kind of like running your first 5k, start at a pace that's safe, then halfway. Kick it up with the energy you have. For sure.

Nice. Nice.

Yeah. My favorite 5k pace is walking.

Yeah. Mine is being pushed. We go shopping at Target. Laura pushes me around while I sip coffee. It's great.

Yeah. Do you put your legs through the little holes in the. In the front of the cart?

No, we get the one that has, like, the. You know, the kids. You know, you'll see. The one has the extension where the kids can sit on. I'll sit with, like. We're watching one of the kids. I'll sit with them and Laurel, push us around. We'll drink hot.

You actually do sit in the little. Like the. In the little bus.

No, no, not the power links through, but they have the ext. You know I'm talking about John. Right, with the extended part. It's a longer cart and you can have like a. Oh, okay.

Oh, yeah.

Ye.

Like the Costco cart.

Yeah. I sit there and just film Lara. She drives me around, man.

I have reached the point where when I get one of those carts at Costco, I cannot leave without, like, having a giant leaning tower that's just constantly falling.

Is that because the kids are all each throwing things in there individually?

I don't know what it is, but we always end up at about 6ft and me leaning over the side.

So do you. Do you know that I have never been to a Costco?

Wow.

Is that a point of pride?

They're just not around. They're not around here. We got a Sam's Club. That's it.

I haven't been. Laura goes, I like the Costco Hamburg. I do. I'm not gonna lie.

Love it. All right, here's a question from John.

Okay.

Would you start land Arb no matter what in flight school? I would show hands.

Yeah. No, definitely. I don't like to have hard rules, but it's just such a great idea.

Yeah.

Because property and John, if you go to the. If you go to the land Geek Facebook group right now, and you go to the search bar at the top and you just type in land arb. And maybe even the cat county that you're working in, you'll see people who are selling land ar in that county and. Or the state maybe you're working in. Right. And people are always selling Lander, so it's a. It's a great way to pick a property. I picked up Lander properties that have amazing marketing materials. They have property reports, marketing materials. Pick one up today, you mark it. Tomorrow, you could sell it the next day. Right. So I. I love Lander for that reason.

You can control multiple models. Arb. Today cash tomorrow.

Today cash, tomorrow, our market Sell. Yeah, for sure. If Wes wanted to gain momentum on flight school is a good. Oh, we already did that one. Sorry. Scott Walker is not the governor of Wisconsin. All right, I'm glad to hear that.

Here, whatever.

We still love that you're here. No, we're just curious, that's all.

Just curious. Okay, here we go from Billy. Always overwhelmed with the software options for mailing CRM phones, especially when working with VAs. Any pointers? That's a good question.

I. I would say in the very beginning, and so maybe that's not what you are, Billy, but I would say in the beginning it's like for me, it's like you have LG Pass. It does the mailing for phone service. You have a simple Google Voice attached to your Gmail which you can hand off to an intake manager later on. So it's a nice little, you know, virtual office LGPass connected to LOB for your mailers and for your deal flow management and then Google Voice with a Gmail. And I think that's pretty simple in the beginning.

You know what else I'd recommend.

Is the Brady Bunch.

No. I'd create a Slack channel. I. I've really grown to like Slack because it's free, number one. And number two, you can just create channels for each portion of each section of your business, right? And as you bring VAs into your business, you invite them to a channel and you can build things out and you can communicate with them. It's a great communication hub. It's a place where you can house information. It's a place that you can, you can, you can create automations and send messages to Slack really easily from, from email or airtable or all sorts of different ways. Right. So. So I like that it's free. What?

Mike, I concur. You had me at Slack.

Really?

Yeah.

Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, awesome. But yeah, I agree with you. I concur with you Mike, about the like don't overthink the tools, right? Just give a Google Voice number. It's fine mailing. Just get. Go ahead, John.

Oh yeah. Somebody once said like the best system is the one that you use. You know, like it's. It's really easy to just over engineer and shoot for the perfect thing. What you need like and there's so many good cheap tools. Like it is nice to just start lean and then gradually build up, up. But you know, Trello's free air table's free up to a point. You know, Slack is free.

Like you know what else is free?

What?

Nightcap is free. Yeah, it's true. Come get your questions answered from Bryce McGee. One big question he has is Dirt Rich was written eight years ago. How much is. How much has changed? How Much is the same, especially post Covid.

A lot of it. There's a lot of stuff tech wise that has changed for the better. We don't have to call counties. We have software we can use. We, you know, software we can use to, you know, to get data that's not ours in the county, but also software to manage our deals. But I think what's core in its essence is the model itself and the mindset behind it, which is why I think it's a great read, particularly when you start out so. And even post Covid, yeah, you know, the model is still the same, but there have been improvements in efficiencies that have come with different softwares and workflows that we can use now. But the core principle remains the same. It really does. So the book really is, I think, well, it's, it's positioned to be a great mindset book.

Right.

And just overall I, you know, concept of this business. But yeah, there are things that have gotten better and simpler, but the model itself is the same. It's just how we play the model out.

All right, here's a good question from Daniel. Tips to get a property to move in a slow area. He picked up a few at a really good price, but there are super low, there's super low sales activity in the area. Thinking he might try offering on very low terms. John, you want to take that one?

Yeah, I mean, I think that like I would say that the levers that I would think of one is just price. So if you got it in a spoken deal, then it sounds like you've got some wiggle room right there. And so I think that's a good way to play with it. And then the other thing is just, you know, in terms of, in terms of marketing, like if, if you can find a way to creatively get your property to really pop and catch eyeballs, you know, then it, it makes a, it makes a big difference. For me, one of the biggest levers is just an image, right? Like if you've got a picture of your property and it's just kind of gray and sad dead sage brush with haze in the background. Right. And it just, you know, it, you just, you can, you can hire a VA to do this or you can just pull it open in your computer and go saturation up and you can turn the contrast up a little bit and turn the brightness up a little bit and just play with those little levers and you can make those, you can, can turn a gray picture into a beautiful picture that makes people want to go there, right? And so I think things like that. Just playing with your marketing materials, thinking about, like, you know, if you got a property that's five acres in subdivision called the something something ranches, why don't you call it a ranch, Right? Like people like ranches. So just thinking about the ways to kind of play with your marketing to make it really pop, I think helps. And then price is a really effective lever as well.

Got me thinking of that song Scott. You know this song? Sad eye, Sad eyes. It's like sad ads. He said, you don't want a sad ad. No sad ads.

No sad ads. No sad ads, dude. Right? You know what, Daniel? I. I've had properties like this, and like John says, just get creative with your marketing. Make your marketing pop a little bit. They're gonna sell, right? If you got them at a great price. I love $0 down, right? Like charge a dock fee, but do $0 down. And even if they default, you've made a little bit money back on your doc fee, right?

Right.

$1 down. Do $29 down. Right? Not sure what your numbers look like on these things, but you can experiment with really low monthly payments, right? If you paid 500 bucks for these properties, if you can charge 50 bucks a month, you owe your money out in 10 months or less. That's a killer land deal.

I think that's a wonderful point too, Scott, of people. Like, when you go through flight school, you learn to use a 10B double I. Look at your yield. I think sometimes people are shocked to see how low they can set their payments and still have a great yield. So what, you don't like the B double I?

No, you love. You just love saying that. The 10B double I.

If you don't know what that is, it's a calculator. Creates. It helps you calculate the yield. And basically you can say, this is, wow, this is a good deal. And you'd be shocked at how good of a deal it is with a smaller monthly payment. So get a good yield and get out and get another deal.

I love it.

I love it. All right, well, we're actually. Over time. I. I didn't notice. I'm having so much, so much fun. Excuse me. Excuse me. So much fun, But. But we really appreciate you all coming. I didn't see any topics that you'd like us to talk about. Throw those in the chat. Kathy called you a slacker, Mike. I don't know why that is, but.

Well, that's because it's good.

We are using Xamplo Wes, A lot of us are using Xamplo.

That was the tool I was referencing. Without referencing, when I said we have easier ways of getting data.

Right, right, right, right, right. All right, guys. Well, this was fun. Thank you for. Thank you for joining us. Next week. We'll be back, same time, same bad channel. Not sure what we're talking about. Oh, she said I was the slacker. Oh, that's not very nice. Kathy.

Do you like the slack tool? She's making a pun there. A little joke.

Oh, so it's a good thing that.

I'm the slacker, Kathy. Right. He's a slacker because he likes slack.

Because I'm a slacker. Yeah. Okay. All right. Very good, guys. Have a good night. Thank you all for attending. John, Mike, thank you, as always.

I want to have some. I want to. I want to be able to have discussions with you.

They probably have. Do you have, like, the Brady Bunch Trivial Pursuit in your home? You probably do. Probably. That guy.

All right. Played Trivial Pursuit.

I'm Star Wars Trivial Pursuit guy. You're Brady Bunch trivia Pursuit guy. Yeah, let's. Who, You. Who. Who do you want to hang out with? People. All right, we'll talk to you later. Have a good night. Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

It.