A short interview between Mark J. Podolsky (Land Geek) and Seth Williams (REtipster.com) focusing on tactics to sell real estate parcels that are not moving. They discuss testing marketing approaches (headlines, photos, multiple listings), pricing strategies (lower cash prices, easy seller-financing terms), buyer outreach (VIP lists, mailings), and iterative ad testing; Mark shares an anecdote about flipping lots in Texas. The interview closes with contact directions for Seth.
Chapters
Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with. You know him, you love him. Seth Williams. Retipster.com. hey, everybody. Your source for all things just real estate related. Seth, how are you? Let's have a virtual cup of coffee together.
You got it. I'm doing great. How are you doing, man?
Pulse is still normal, respiration's fine. I can't complain. So before we started about our coffee talk, Seth asked me a question. And of course I'm gonna boomerang it back to him. Do you feel the boomerang?
I do feel it. I'm ready for it.
So, Seth, what was your question?
Well, my question for you, something I think we can both share, share some light on would be what is it that you do when you have a property that just isn't selling? Or say, if you bought a property that, I don't know, maybe just wasn't the wisest investment in the first place. It was kind of a lemon and you just kind of ended up with it. And if you list that thing and you know, it's just crickets, nobody's interested. What do you do? Like, how do you get around that obstacle and find a buyer?
Right. Okay, so that is a great question. And let me just spin it back to you. So what are you currently doing? And I'll tell you what I do.
Yeah, Well, I mean, the typical, you know, run of the mill process is to, you know, put some time and effort into getting a really good listing. You know, get good photographs of it, put on postlets, put it on Craigslist, put it on all the major arteries out there and just making sure that I'm continually renewing that and sort of keeping it front and center in front of people. And a lot of times if a property is a good property, it's not going to take long because I don't, you know, just the price that I can price it at. It's just kind of easy to beat the competition and have a really good looking property that sells relatively quickly. But it doesn't always work that way. And I think there's actually, it's a very multifaceted issue. There's a lot of different things you can do to kind of play with it and make a property look more appealing. And it's not that you're, you know, it's not like you're tricking people into it. It's just that you weren't really doing the best representation in the first place. So, I mean, things like, I mean, if you don't have Good pictures. Get good pictures. If that means you have to pay somebody to get them, you know, go do that. Sometimes things like your headline, you know, maybe sometimes you just need to promote it in more places or more frequently. Things like adding seller financing to the mix can be a huge thing that will open doors for a lot of buyers who otherwise wouldn't really even have the option of buying your property. I mean, those are just a few things off the top of my head, but what kind of stuff do you do?
Okay, so number one, if it doesn't sell within 30 days, I freak out. Yeah, I freak out. My team freaks out. What happened? Right? So number one, you know, we're always listing on Craigslist and back page land and farm land watch, Right? You might do a Facebook page. I love Arizona land. Right, sure. My head groups, whatever it is. 30 days. Crickets. That's crazy. So what we determine is, like, we're not giving what the market wants, so we make it. And this is a secret, Seth, and you can use it. We make it absolutely irresistible. So first thing I do is I get on the phone and talk to old buyers and start getting them excited about the property. And I might do. And here's an example. I might do a promotion to my VIP buyers list. And if your property was priced at cash, I might do easy, easy terms, like ridiculously easy terms to get that property sold. And then it sells. Usually at that point, if we have high terms, right. And it's not selling, then we might flip it to cash. We always figure out really quickly what the market wants to make it sell. So we might give it 30 days to test the market, and then we do that. So here's another example. I bought a subdivision in Texas and the POA went under. There's no poa. They had hundreds of lots. I bought them all. I mean, for nothing.
Wow. It's awesome.
There's utilities, there's a lake, it's near a city. It's nice stuff. These lots are selling for like 20 grand back in the day. So me being a nice capitalist, I figured I'd sell them for 10,000. Crickets.
Yeah.
I lowered it to, you know, easy terms at 5,000. Right now I'm into it for hundreds. Right. Crickets, totally freak out.
Yeah.
I flip them all for super cheap for cash. All of a sudden, flying off the shelves, boom, boom, boom. Look, it wasn't the home run deal I thought it was going to be, but the 300 to 500% ROI. I'll take it.
Yeah.
So does that does that help answer your question or what? I do.
Yeah, man.
So.
So you find that in some cases, I mean, seller financing may be what people want. In other cases, cash at a lower price. Could be. I mean, it's not necessarily a, you know, do this every time, and it will always fix the problem. It's more of, you know, maybe exploring a little bit and testing the waters and figuring out what is the real solution. Right. Yeah.
I mean that. And that's why marketing is like this multi billion dollar industry. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. I wish it were the, you know, it were math, but it's just not. You've got to test headlines. You've got to test ads. And, you know, it's funny because we were just talking at boot camp about Coke, right? Everybody knows Coke. There's not a person on the planet that has never heard of Coca Cola yet. Why do they spend a billion dollars a year on advertising? Why not just have a board of directors meeting? You know what? This year we won't market, and we'll take that billion dollars and we'll buy the Lower Antilles. But what happens? They stop marketing, Their revenue goes down, and we forget about Coke. They want to stay top of mind, but they're always testing ads. They'll run 16 ads at one time and see which one converts better.
Mm.
It's crazy. So we have to do this. We don't need to spend, you know, even a fraction of that in our land investing businesses. But we do need to be out there and testing and, you know, abm, always be marketing.
Yeah. Yeah. I was actually just talking to somebody about that earlier today. It's the marketing just never stops. Like, it is a constant wheel that's always going, regardless of how busy you are or how great things are going. I mean, there's never a point where you just don't need it anymore.
So.
So, yeah, I agree.
Right. So M&MS. In our business, what moves the needle? Mailing and marketing. Seth Williams. Retipster.com. thanks for having a virtual cup of coffee with me.
Absolutely.
Seth, where can we learn more about you?
Yeah, the best place would just be over at my blog, which is retipster.com and that's. There's a contact page if you want to get ahold of me or also, really any of the, you know, any of the major social media outlets, and pretty much all of them for the most part. So.
Yeah, yeah, because you're always marketing.
Yeah, exactly. It's always going.
So. Yeah. So the. The key is, you know, create a system create a process and again, get yourself out of it as much as you can so you can just work on the strategy. Seth Williams, I really appreciate you taking time out of your crazy busy schedule to to help enlighten the best passive income model listeners and the land geek community on how the man, the myth, the retipster legend gets properties sold very quickly. Thanks, Seth.
