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

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low.

Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land.

Oh, eat baloney, buy land.

Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filling, let the sandwiches stand.

Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land. 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 25, 35 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 Mark J. Podolsky a land mother?

We should say land father. John Handsome Rob. Yummy Eight Is Enough Burnett. Good to see you, John. Good to see you. And Mike Zen Master Zeno. Breathe in the mark— breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing. What's up, buddy?

Not much. We forgot to say we also wear pretty cool vests. Look what you're wearing there. That— you were 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, uh, Mark J. Podolsky, 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. Um, he does not have COVID. Oh, do you remember that, Mike, back in, uh—

he does have COVID when you say it 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 expressed that to the entire Land Geek Nation and interweb, basically threw it right out there.

I was like, isn't that a HIPAA violation?

He's like, yeah, exactly. That's when you got COVID and everybody looked at you like a little side eye. So, uh, well, Don, thank you. Don said, uh, he gave me a fashion shout out. Said I'm very fashionable.

Thank you, Don.

Well, good to see everybody.

Me and John.

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

Is he really the governor?

No, he's like, wait a minute, you just glossed over— Scott Walker used to be the governor of Wisconsin. I doubt this is Governor Scott Walker. I I mean, it could be, you never know.

If, uh, put a 1 in the chat if you're Governor Scott Walker.

Mike Cavie is here. Joe Frank. Joe, Joe, you had a killer deal last week, we should revisit that tonight, that was fun. Uh, Aaron Giroux is here. Uh, Rick Colcock 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 going to try to figure something out with that. But before I do, Mike Zaino, 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.

Got 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 you're successfully hearing us on YouTube.

Shouldn't it be like a YT?

Why? Oh, he got it. Oh, he said you 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, um, Zeno. 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. Um, but you know, here's the thing, we buy land anywhere from $500 to $5,000 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 investment and I talk to them now, Scott, I always say, and by the way, and, uh you know, just a throwback to how much it— anyway, um, I digress. We buy land anywhere from $400 or $500 to $5,000 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 can turn into $2,000. So you might say, oh, it's only $50 a month, 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 going to 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 $2,000, or $1,000 turn into $3,000 or $4,000, you're going to get pretty creative finding the money, right? Because this is a really, um, 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. 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, uh, 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're here to sort of trample on top of other real estate models, right? They all have their place. Ours 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, 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.

Um, 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, um, you know, traditional real estate investing, you might need $50,000 to get started, right? Um, we— you can start with $50,000 in land, but as Mike said, you can get started with a few thousand dollars as well. To me, there's a kind of a delineation between, uh, 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 $1,000 or a few thousand dollars to, to start doing some land deals, I think that's great. But I think if you have more capital to deploy, you're, you're on the, you're on, uh, the trajectory for growing a land business. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think so. And I, I do think that there's a certain point, like I guess, um, like 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 art, right? And, um, 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, uh, 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, um, I just started having some Landart properties in inventory, and I'd buy them for $100 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, it's a— yes, of course you did. It's all, 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, uh, you know, but look, you know, Zano, 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 2 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 whole fake it till you make it, or, you know, just, uh, I just hit me that, wow, I, I am a land investor. And, um, it was kind of a cool moment.

Hey, we just got a comment that we lost audio, but I don't know if, uh, I don't know if it's for everybody or just—

can we get an A for audio?

Uh, Daniel Bryan says, uh, 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, uh, 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, uh, we, we created four, uh, different, I guess, uh, 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, uh, we're going to talk about a budget now between $100 and $1,000 to get started, and we're going to call these people, we're going to call these people the Bootstrap Builders. Bootstrapped builders. What I look— what I love about this though is really there, there's no excuse for not starting, right? Because we all have $100. So Mike Zaino, let's talk about the bootstrap builder strategy here. You have $100 to $1,000. 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 could certainly pay $50, $75, or maybe $100 a month for a property and get it sold, build up that proof of concept, and, uh, 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 arbitrage. 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 it? Talk to me like a third grade, a third grade.

I just thought I'd be— whatever that Scrabble word would 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 gonna 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 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 go and resell it because you have control, and you make the, um, 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, uh, 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 that's what 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, do tell.

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

I do feel like John has a business with his AI, uh, agent. I have a feeling he's got like this machine in the corner doing deals for him. Um, but anyway, uh 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— like, 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? No, you get a 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 LandARb is just, you know, we're just selling to another land investor at a discount on owner financing. Um, you know what though, I think it's a strategy that works even when you've been doing this a long time, because I just bought a bunch of properties LandARB. 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, or wholesale, 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 Land Art properties?

Uh, I have bought dozens of Land Art properties. Um, I haven't, um, I haven't bought any recently.

So, but I'm not— recently sold any recently, land arbitrage?

I sold one recently, land arbitrage. So, which was a great deal.

So what, and then what motivated you to do a land arbitrage on that?

Was just for me, um, I just had too much— like, I had a bunch of inventory in this one area.

Yeah.

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, uh, you know, Benny and the Jets. Who's that guy?

Come on.

Uh, Elton John. He says the word leave on and Leon. I don't know, right? Someone, someone out there.

Kathy Hollingsworth. Kathy's gonna let us know here in a minute. Uh, 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 refinancing. Can you, uh, can you help him out? Nice. Uh, let's see, here's a question from Matthew Woods: How does one find reputable folks to get land deals from? Asking for a friend.

I love that. Is that going to be part of the new group Mark's creating? Will also be land arbitrage in there?

Yeah, he's got a wholesale, uh, 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, uh, if there's going to be land arbitrage on there? If he's not watching, then that's okay. By the way, the song is called Leave On, 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 Leave On, released in 1971, remastered in 2016 by Elton John.

I got you. Leave On. Did you answer— did you answer, uh, 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, uh, that this new platform, but Essentially, for right now, you go in the Facebook group, whether it is LandARB 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, uh, process. You 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 comps. 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, um, some— there's 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 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 you a property for, for $60 a month and you could sell it on the marketplace at $100 a month and you sell it right away, yeah, it's still a really amazing return for you, right? Yeah. So I'm seeing 50, 60 cents on the dollar for some of these LandR deals. Um, Uh, and what about fees, guys? You charge fees on your Landar deals?

I can't remember if I charged fees.

I can't remember, he says. He's so out of touch. I'm so out of touch with what's going on over there.

What was that? Was that when we were on the, uh, was it the roundtable? 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 fees, right? Like, you're generally not charging—

you charge a dock fee. Do you charge a $250 doc fee, John, for Landarm?

I don't charge.

No, I actually—

I bump it up to $1,000 fee for Landarm.

So only Mike charges the $499 doc fee. Landarm deals.

Yeah, no, I don't charge a land or a doc fee for Landarm.

I'd say most of us don't charge doc fees. And then there, of course, we're gonna have the monthly taxes. We'll charge you for the monthly taxes, but Uh, 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, um, so yeah, I always just said if you take all the numbers, add them up, does it 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, uh, recommendation for everyone.

Just add it all up.

Add your ones and twos and your zeros, your threes, your fours, add it all up. Leave.

Yeah, no, no, I don't know.

We'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 $100 to $1,000 to get started. Hey, I mean, if you have $500, you can buy 5 Landlord properties for $100 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 landlord property.

It's all right. I'm sorry, I'm—

no, go ahead.

Should I digress? No, but I, I think that LandARV 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 LandARV 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 LandARV 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 to— 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 $2,000 and $7,000 here. Uh, we're gonna call you, uh, what are we gonna call you? I, I'm having a hard time finding my term here on this side. Where did it go? Um, oh, we're going to call you the launch— the launch pad build— the launch phase builder. That's a kind of a weird name, but, but you have between $2,000 and $7,000. What are you doing differently, Mike, than—

well, on 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 $5,000 to $7,000 range, I think you could 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 $5,000, $2,000 to $5,000, I'm probably thinking I'm going to mail an area where I can buy property acquisition price probably well under $1,000 because those are the easiest to wholesale. People are going to be picking those up all day long. And you could take, you know, buy something for $500, $600, make $400, $500 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— uh, not lucky, just get— it happens with consistent mailing. You find someone 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 LandArbs just to do my owner financing and get that going, but might 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, uh, buy a LandArt 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 a day.

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

It's only, uh, like, it's like one bourbon for you out, uh, at the, at the Peddler's Daughter or whatever the, the These—

I like to sip on some tequila. Blanco. Tequila restaurant. Yeah, blanco or reposado. We were in, um, 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, uh, what's that band called, Boyz II Men, and, uh, all that.

Yeah, yeah, in Vegas.

I chose to go to a, uh, uh, uh, jazz lounge instead myself. But yeah, anyway, we went to Mexican first. All together was unbelievable. And I sipped on this— you know, that's like a whiskey when you sip on a nice tequila.

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

remember that episode of 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 The Brady Bunch for all out there who remember that.

All right, so you're gonna buy a few land or are you gonna get on a mailing campaign? Kind of send out 500, 600 mailers a month. It really comes out to 500, 600 mailers a month if you want to do it that way. Complicated for you?

Yeah, you're going to get traction, you're going to get some deals, you're going to 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. It's called the mailing diet.

When, when you build the Lampe physique, you can wear these, uh, sleeveless hoodies.

He's got a subdivision tattoo underneath there.

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. Uh, you have between $10,000 and $20,000. How does that change things for you, uh, 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. Um, 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 am I missing something? No, no, it just gives you more options, right? It gives you— you can buy $1,000 properties, $2,000 properties, $3,000 properties if you start with $20 grand, right? I think it's all about creating some momentum. I wouldn't go out and buy 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 $1,000 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 $2,000 and $3,000 properties with a $20,000 starting budget. Rather than just one property, uh, because especially right now you don't know how long it's going to take for it to sell. Mike, do you have any bigger properties right now that are kind of sitting?

Um, I have some bigger properties, you know, they, they— and always tell people that this is 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, they might sell in a year, you never know. Right? So this stuff can sit, but, um, 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 gonna go buy a couple of these because when they will— they will sell. And then when they do sell, uh, you can, uh, you know, really buy more small properties, right? More of these low-cost owner-financed 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 Caviez 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 Carriole, 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 boy's voice changes?

Yeah, that's a great one too. The Brady Bunch, the 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 nose. Even was that Davy 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 Monkees guy? Was it Davy Jones?

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

Oh no, the Monkees. The Monkees.

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 Monkees, they were on Scooby-Doo. Pretty sure.

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 that from Zeno.

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

Uh, 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 Hardy I did enjoy the, the Hottie Boys.

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've covered the $2,000 to $7,000 starting budget, we covered the $10,000 to $20,000 starting budget. Now some people were 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. Uh, 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 $25,000, $50,000. So Mike, talk a little bit about that and how that, uh, changes things for folks.

First of all, I do concur with you on the, uh— and that was not—

you didn't— 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, uh, George something beer. It 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, uh, was it an 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 to many— 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, $100 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, isn't 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 $5,000, 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 $6,000 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 3 or 4. 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 $7,000 to $10,000 a month in their first year because they have all this capital they can bring in. But my only advice to them in the beginning is honor the process. We walk you through a 16-week, a 4-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 easy to overspend on systems, right?

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

Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh, with that budget, you're going to have more capability to to, uh, grow systems more quickly, to hire VAs more quickly, right? Right. But we always talk about this balance, right? They're 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, um 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. And then they're bleeding money, right? So I recommend find the middle, right? Find the balance between being effective and efficient. There's gotta be a term for that. What's the term for the middle? Affectionate.

Would you call it—

smash those words together—

affectionate? I like that. Affectionate. Okay, I like it. Affectionate. Ah, very good.

How many points we can dig into this, Scott? That 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 have to respect the skill set that you have, the experience you have, but you've got to wait to bring that in at the right moment. When that moment is not out of the gate, that moment is 4 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 100 miles an hour your first run around, you're probably gonna break a leg. We 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 fish in here?

I can. Another fishing, another fishing concur.

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

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

I think it'd be affection.

In fact, she owns. All right, that's, uh, 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. Uh, the, the, uh Lightning round, lightning round, Q&A.

Lightning round has begun.

Uh, let's see here. Scott Walker. Oh no, Scott, did you tell us, are you, are you governor? Uh, Don Thrasher is a governor. Hello from Houston, Devon.

I would vote for Don Thrasher.

I would too. I would too. Questions, comments, concerns? I, uh, topics for, uh, topics you'd like us to talk about? Uh, we're always, uh, trying to be creative with our topics, but is there something out there you'd like us to talk about?

Oh, we'd love to do that. Wait 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.

All right, here's a comment for BMK Property Solutions. So this is, this is, this is something we hear sometimes, right? Uh, BMK Property Solutions: I made $185,000 in 2023, spent over $100,000 on a massive amount of marketing, made $30,000 total in 2024, and then lost 6 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 one. I always, I always love, and I am, um, 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, the story is not over yet. So I think that's awesome for just, uh, 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.

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

I'm not gonna say it right. Go ahead, you say it.

It's, uh, stick-to-itiveness.

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

Dust yourself off and try again. Bring a little Beyoncé 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 think that's amazing. And 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 respect to other folks. Uh, from John: who has the deed when you do land arbitrage? So if I'm selling a property to my buddy Mike Zaino at a discounted monthly rate, I hold the deed, but Mike can assign that property to another buyer. Uh, I will still hold the deed though until Mike drops me off, right?

I have control. I have the power.

You have control. You have control.

Um, 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 Bantooth. Uh, if Wes wants to gain momentum while in flight school, is a good idea to shoot lower than 4 times return to see that it works and get some traction with a more attractive selling price.

Listen, there's nothing wrong with 2x, 3x. 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, uh, 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 there's— 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 2x. Yeah. Return. Yeah.

Right. Yesterday, Mike, so we had a cash sale yesterday, $10,000, and I bought it for $5,000. 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, those.

They're not— remember how I had vertigo at the Derby Summit?

Yes. Yeah.

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 little left out here. All right, these are my readers. So I got to lean in a little. Or I can do this in the house.

Roy Orbison 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. Uh, 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 and 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 0.10 acres.

Yeah, right. Or 0.01 acres.

Just 0.01 acres, it fits on there. Just, uh, all right, awesome. Tell us more about LG Pass and Geek Pay. All right, John, give us 30 seconds on Geek Pay.

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.

Not so much.

So basically, Geek Pay allows us to automate those monthly payments. So I load all of my notes into GeekPay. 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 Zaino, LG Pass in 30 seconds.

It's a virtual office to run your business. Uh, 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 to be— that was about 29.67 seconds. That's perfect. Uh, 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 VAs too soon. Oh, good point.

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

I concur.

Oh, concur.

I definitely think too late is better than too soon. All right, uh, 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, uh, Laura pushes me around while I sip coffee. It's great.

Yeah, do you put your legs through the little holes in the front of the cart?

No, we get the one that has like the, you know, the kids— you don't even 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 Laura will push us around. We'll drink hot chocolate.

You actually do sit in the little, like, the— in the little bus?

No, no, not the part where you put your legs through, but they have the ex— you know what 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, yeah.

Yeah, like the Costco cart.

Yeah, I sit there and just film Laura as she drives me around.

Oh 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 6 feet 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, I haven't been. I like the Costco hamburger, I do. I'm not gonna lie.

Oh, love it. All right, uh, here's a question from John.

Okay.

Would you start Land Arb no matter what in flight school? I would. Show of hands?

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

Yeah, because the easiest way to control a 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 county that you're working in, you'll see people who are selling Landarb in that county, and, uh, or the state maybe you're working in, right? And people are always selling Landarb. So it's a, it's a great way to pick a property. I've picked up Landarb properties that have amazing marketing materials. They have property reports, marketing materials. Pick one up today, you market tomorrow, you could sell it the next day, right? Um, so I, I love Landarb. Uh, for that reason you can control multiple products.

Arb today, cash tomorrow.

Ooh, arb today, cash tomorrow. Arb market sell. Yeah, for sure. Um, 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. We still have not claimed here.

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

Just curious. Uh, 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 where 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, little, uh, you know, virtual office. LG Pass connected to LOB for your mailers and for your deal flow management, and then Google Voice with a Gmail. And, uh, I think that's pretty simple in the beginning.

You know what else I'd recommend? Is, uh, 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. Uh, it's a place that you can, um, 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 get 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. But you know, Trello is free. Airtable is free up to a point. You know, Slack is free.

Like, you know what else is free? What?

Nightcap.

Nightcap is free. Yeah, it's true. Come get your questions answered. From Bryce McGee, one big question he has: Dirt Rich was written 8 years ago. 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, uh, you know, software we can use to, you know, to get data that's not ours from 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 um, 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 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 Um, you know, in terms of, in terms of marketing, like, um, 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 the— if you've got a picture of your property and it's just kind of gray and sad, dead sagebrush 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 on 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 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've got a property that's 5 acres in a 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, uh, helps. And then price is a really effective lever as well.

It got me thinking of that song, Scott. You know this song, Sad Eyes? 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. Uh, you know what, Daniel, I, I've had properties like this and, uh, 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 doc fee but do $0 down. And even if they default, you've made a little bit of money back on your doc fee, right? Right. Uh, do $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 for these properties, if you can charge $50 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 10BII and 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 10BII?

No, you love— you just love saying that, the 10BII.

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'll 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 fun. So much fun. Excuse me. So much fun. 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, it's because it's good to leave. We are using XAMPP, Wes. A lot of us are using XAMPP.

That 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 bat channel. Not sure 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.

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 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, never played Trivial Pursuit.

I'm Star Wars Trivial Pursuit guy, you're Brady Bunch Trivial 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.