Land Investing vs. Traditional Real Estate

I once dined on steak with the candle soft glow. But the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me so simple, so grand. Eat baloney, buy on, eat baloney by land. Trade the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the filet, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land. Well, that was a catty tune.

Favorite one so far.

John Burnett. Like Zeno, Scott. I'm Scott Bossman. This is Nightcap with the Land Geek. Guys. No gals tonight. That's okay. And tonight we have a very exciting topic. So, Mike and John, you're standing at a crossroads eight to ten years ago in your investing journey. One path, traditional real estate rentals flips commercial deals. Today, Airbnbs slow flips, the ones everybody talks about, but also the ones filled with headaches and competition. The other path, land investing. It sounds a little boring, sounds too simple. It's often overlooked, but it might just be the smartest financial decision you've ever made. Tonight, we're putting land head to head with traditional real estate to see which path truly leads to freedom. And if you guys are catching us on the replay, don't forget to join us live every Tuesday night, 9pm Eastern on Facebook and YouTube. So you can jump into the conversation live.

That's good. You know, people, we talked about this last time. People probably like, wait a minute, I guess they're going to find out in this discussion. They might be like, what do you guys talk about? Land investing. Right?

Let's dial back before we get into the discussion here. Like, Mike, who are you and what are you doing here online? Tell us about yourself.

Why are you even here?

Why am I even here? Yeah.

Well, this is actually an interview, Mike.

We are.

Better than an intervention. I'll take an interview intervention any day of the week. So why am I here? I don't. Geez. I met this gentleman named Mark Badolski over a decade ago. I was $45,000 plus in debt and needed a way to get out of that. What was great was that I didn't have a lot of capital. And I guess we can get into the. This is gonna. I don't want to go too deep because that kind of takes us into our discussion tonight. But I was able to buy land. 5, 600, $400. 500 pieces of land and flip them to other investors wholesale. Double my money. And, you know, I paid my debt off in a year. And then fast forward. What our model is, is after, you know, that's one particular niche within the Niche. But here's the better part. You could take those pieces of land, if you don't want to wholesale them, you could sell them retail. And owner financing means someone pays us a small payment every month. We have the contract deed. So we. We don't need the property over. When they're done paying in three to four or five years, we'll deed them the property. So we create a revenue stream for ourselves. And the revenue stream is such that we earn back our initial investment within the first 12 months, typically even sooner than that. So you don't need a lot of capital. So anyway, I'm here because I did that a whole bunch of times and eventually started, you know, join Mark's team to help other people learn how to do this.

That's Mike Zano for you right there.

You passed the interview, Mike.

I gotta get rid of those. I might have to sit down.

I'm.

I'm trying. I'm using the old Eric Peterson. You know that thing? It's a skateboard thing. Remember, they used to stand on it and you. What's it called?

It's like a wobble board or something. That helps.

I might have to sit down because the light is really distracting.

Just waiting for you to just tip and then just fall at some point.

But this made a pretty good dance to the opening intro song. I could just.

I was so that's. So that's my Zano. No, that's okay. We used to have display names on here. They're not showing up anymore, so. So that's Mike Zano on the bottom of the screen. In the upper right part of your screen, that's John Burnett. So, John Burnett, tell us in 30 seconds why you're here tonight, what we do.

Oh, my goodness. In 30 seconds. So I started this back in 2017. It was me and Valerie. We lived in Jackson Hole. We were trying to figure out a way to find financial freedom. And we were looking at a bunch of different models, watched a million podcasts. We settled on long term buy and hold rentals, and we invested in a program, realized that it wasn't going to work in Jackson Holes. We were trying to find something that we could do remotely. We ended up settling on land investing because we can do that fully remotely. We can create cash flow. We did that. I replaced my income, and now this is what I do. So it's amazing. Was that 30 seconds?

Yeah, it was close.

I feel like he gave you a time limit because I took too long. That was his way of digging at me. It's like all right, John, can you do it and not take it?

Not at all. Not at all.

Well, Scott, I guess the question begs to be asked. Why are you here?

I'm here because I needed a side hustle. I needed side income in my life 10 years ago, and I needed more time, I needed more freedom with my finances. And I found this thing called land investing one day on a podcast. And actually, the topic of this podcast is in line with where I was 10 years ago, because. And John as well, and Mike, you've done a little real estate investing too, I think. But I was on the verge of going into traditional real estate investing, right? Like we were gonna buy a duplex. We were gonna spend 40 grand on a down payment and get into buy and hold real estate and start, you know, maybe collecting some type of duplex portfolio, right? And then, lo and behold, I found this guy named Mark Podolski on a podcast one day talking about land investing and how you buy land at a deep discount and turn around and sell it for cash or owner financing. And I think tonight we're. Now, we don't. We don't have a ton of experience in other traditional real estate models. However, I think we can speak based on our experience and based on the fact that we talked a lot of folks, we talked to a lot of real estate investors, I think we can speak pretty highly about land and how it's maybe just a little bit better than some of these other models. So that's really the topic for tonight. Not to upset anyone. We're not trying to upset the apple cart. Is that what we'll say?

Yeah, it's what we say now.

Let's throw that on a T shirt.

Definitely what we say now. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't think anything we're going to say tonight is going to be a dig at any type, because I always tell people when they get on, called a discovery call. Oh, look at that. I got a shout out right out of the gate. Steve.

Multiple shout outs tonight. Popular guy. It's a trendy outfit you have on.

Well, I appreciate that. I was just out, you know, had a little dinner with the wife, a little cigar. So, you know, this is the outfit. But the thing is, we're not here to crank another types of real estate, right? Or knock them down. I tell people when I get on calls, and I was like, I love all types of real estate, but it's certainly nice to have a recurring income coming in each month, which would allow you to open the door to bigger opportunities. Right? So I don't think we turn our eye away from other things. It's just that we focus on something that brings security and brings recurring payments, one time transactions that lead to, you know, multiple years of payments coming in at a low cost for that asset. And that asset delivers a huge upside. So I don't, I don't think we hate other types of real estate. We're not hating on them. We're just saying this is a unique model that doesn't require a lot of other things. They would.

Well, so, so let's do this though. Traditional real estate is, I mean, many, too many people do well with traditional modes of real estate investing that we mentioned. Right. Let's talk about, let's talk about some of the, let's talk about some of the cons though, with traditional real estate. I think that's, that's where we should start. Right. Because that's going to lead into a conversation about why, why we think land is a little bit better. So, John, for, for people just tuning in tonight, for the first time ever, they, they found, they found us on a podcast just like we found Mark on a podcast years ago. We're talking about traditional real estate versus land. What are some things down with traditional real estate that are maybe, that are maybe pain points or difficult things to deal with?

Yeah. So let me answer this with a story.

Get out the baloney sandwiches. Here we go.

No, I mean, so Valerie and I, I alluded this in my 30 seconds, but when Valerie and I jumped into land investing, so we read Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor dad, or excuse me, actually we read Cash Flow Quadrant. That was the book that kind of started us on everything. And then we were just consuming so many podcasts. Right. Because you, you get sold on the idea of cash flow and the idea of creating a level of passive income that your lifestyle and actually getting time, freedom. And then it's just a question of like, okay, I know this is what I need to do, but what is, like, what is my vehicle of actually achieving this? Right. And so listen to a bunch of podcasts and consumed a lot of content around that. And for us, we settled on single family Buy and hold was going to be the model that we were going to use and focusing on long term rentals and we invested in a program around that. But at the time we lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And if you know anything about Jackson Hole, Wyoming, it is expensive and even more expensive now than it was back then. But we knew pretty much right out the gate that we weren't going to be investing in that market still. But we were trying to figure out where and how and how we could do this remotely. And one of the things that we realized is that in that particular industry, you either need to be in the market or within spinning distance of the market that you were in, or you needed to have some fantastic systems in place. And for us, we were like, I mean, we were going to make it happen. We were looking at Cincinnati, Ohio, we were looking at a neighboring city, talking about driving out there every weekend, putting up bandits signs and driving at an hour and a half both ways to do that, you know, and it, we're just realizing it was going to be very challenging. So for us, like the big clincher for land investing first and foremost. You know, I heard Mark on a podcast as I was going through a McDonald's drive through and ordering an Egg McMuffin. My daughter, because my daughter was very young and I was eating Egg McMuffins at the time. And, and then I came home and told my wife about it because I never really thought of land as a potentially income generating asset. Right. I kind of saw it as like, like gold or like, you know, just something tangible that generally doesn't go up a ton in value or down a ton in value. It's relatively stable, but you didn't really think of it as something that could actually be income generating. So anyways, I, I came home and I shared it with my wife.

We had.

Our daughter was like a week old at this time and we both listed and she's like, we need to do this. And we ended up hopping on the phone and moving forward with this model specifically because we could do it remotely, which was important to us, and the fact that it had a much higher level of simplicity.

Right.

So when you're dealing with homes, there's a lot of opportunity, right. But there's a lot of complexity in that. Each individual deal is a snowflake, right? It's. Every single one of them is unique and it takes a lot more of you to bring it across the finish line. Whereas our focus is simplicity and repeatability. And so, yeah, so those are the two things. The simplicity for me and then the.

Ability to do it remotely.

To this day, the only piece of land that I put my feet on is the one that's underneath my house, you know, and that's across hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of transactions. Right. So anyways, there's the end of my, my monologuing story, but great.

It's a great story. And I mean you bring up, bring up a great point, John. Like it's very difficult to buy and sell a house online I think. Right. Sight unseen. There's just a lot more risk associated with it. I'm a lot more comfortable buying a property sight unseen because it's very much a numbers business. We, we can really dial in on our numbers here and determine, hey, we're able to purchase this property at a deep discount compared to the market value. Why are you laughing at me, John? You're laughing.

Oh, I'm just, I'm just glad I'm reading the comments and Anna just gave me a shout out and I'm glad for my first shout out. So it's like babies first.

I've never, Mike and John getting the shout outs. Isn't that sweet? That's wonderful. No, that's all good. So thank you Anna. Thank you. Thank you all for chiming in. Anna, Daniel, Don is here. Steve Aylor's here. Jim. Jim is here. I spoke with Jim today. Nice to see you here. Andrew Pond is here. Nice to see all you guys here. If you have any real estate investing stories, throw them in the chat. Tell us why land is easier. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you a few reasons why land is easier. Mike Zanella. I mean we say it all the time. There's no headaches, there's no emergencies, right?

Yeah, no, we're not dealing.

There's, there's no people problems. There's no air conditioner problems. There's no furnace dying in the middle of the night. There's no rodent problems which are, I mean rodent problems are nothing to mess with, right? Hey, I don't care if I have a mole digging in my lambs, but I care if I have a rat in my house. So that's another thing, right? There are no maintenance nightmares. And with that just, I think it's a lot more stress free real estate investing model and then also it doesn't take as much money to get started. What are your thoughts?

Well, that was one of the things I think I lean to when or I hear a lot from people that are getting involved in this model is that, you know, they really want to do something. They, they know real estate in general is a way to make money. It's a solid way to make money and to invest but they don't have a ton of capital to begin with. So the idea of going to buy a multi family, single family, anything, it's just not approachable. Right. With, but they can save up A little bit of money and they can get some traction with this model. Right. With land investing. So I think that's one of the, one of the big differences, right. It's approachable. It's something that the average person can, can get involved with without a ton of upfront capital, you know, and that, that's huge. That, that's probably one of the number one reasons people will gravitate towards what we do. I mean, there's a lot of other reasons. You know, you guys have already talked about the simplicity, sight unseen. I don't think most of us would be comfortable buying a house without putting some eyes on it. Right. But these land properties, we become very comfortable. And this is, that's still a point of. It's still something. People are new coming into this. That's one of the questions I hear a lot is like, yeah, but I'm never going to look at it. Like, that's kind of weird, right? It is, but it's just a new normal that you learn to become accustomed to because we can gather enough information about these properties, but we feel very comfortable about purchasing them. I don't think that would be the same if it was a house with all the complexities that you guys are mentioning. But the biggest one, the biggest difference, like right out of the gate is that, you know, if I have five grand, I can get up and running here. If I have five grand, I probably am not going to get up and running with most other types of real estate. Right. I'm gonna have to save some more and I'm also going to have to risk more. Right. I mean, if I buy a $500 property like I started out doing, or a thousand or two thousand, five thousand, that's what's at risk. Right. But when I buy a house, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars is at stake, Right. And so a mistake there is going to be very costly and very difficult to recover from. Right. So there's a lot of, a lot more fear there, a lot more anxiety there than, than what we would have buying these small properties to start with. So I think it's just, just a nice entry level form of real estate investing that is just low risk. Right. It's so approachable.

Low risk and simple. Yeah. How many people can buy and sell a home on their computer?

Right, right.

That's a little bit more difficult to do, right?

Yeah.

In land, like we're buying these things for very little money.

Yeah.

And there are ways nowadays where we can. So, so low risk, like you mentioned, right?

Yeah.

And, and before we buy these, we do a. We do a careful market analysis to make sure we're buying them at a great price. Yeah, we're making money on the buy. Like Mark always says, we're buying these things at 25 of what they're worth. Right. And we're buying these things for a thousand bucks or 5,000. Between 1 and $5,000. And those deals, I think our confidence is higher on navigating the deal. Right. And we can get the deal done ourselves with our online tools rather than going through expensive title companies and realtors and that type of thing. So the land is less risky, it's more simple, and the simplicity leads to speed. It all leads to speed, in my opinion.

What a great way to cut your teeth, so to speak, in real estate. Right. With something that's this low risk. Right. You know, and the same. The knowledge you're going to gain in land investing, the process, it's very similar to other types of real estate. I mean, you have your initial contact with a potential seller, you have your conversations, you have your due diligence, you have your closing, you have your marketing and sales.

So.

But you're learning in this micro environment. That's actually you. You know, I. I've owned all types of real estate, and I know a lot of people that have as well. Average, positive cash flow. Average. You know, when someone buys some sort of a rental unit, maybe one to three or four hundred dollars per month, positive cash flow. Now, I know there's appreciation on that asset. I know there's depreciation on your taxes. I get that. But we're just talking about cash flow.

Which pays off later.

Right. So what is somebody going to pay for that door to bring in that positive $300 cash flow? I can tell you what, I could do that with a $3,000 property. I guarantee you that's a fraction, a fraction of what they would have to invest to get that. So if we're looking at cash flow only. Right. These small assets have a huge punch to deliver. Right. A huge upside. A $3,000 property created 300amonth or even those 200. That's. That's incredible. That really is.

Yeah.

I think the other side, too is like, you don't get. Well, obviously we don't buy with an appreciation play in mind. But when you sell with owner financing, the other side of things is the fact that, like, defaults aren't necessarily. They aren't a negative.

Right. For. For us.

Because when you, like, I have people default who have purchased property from me. I try to work with them when I can. Right. And then there's a point in which either they ghost me or it's not in either of our best interests for us to string this thing along. Right. And we take the property back. And in that scenario, like, I can't tell you how many times we've taken a property back and somebody's paid a lot of money on that property, 3, 4, 5, $6,000. The property has gone up in value 3, 4, 5, $6000 in that period of time. And I mean I, like I added up a while ago all of the funds that I'd received prior to that point of default. And it was substantial. Like it, it was like I did well right off of that. So it is a way, like even though we don't get the appreciation, there is still additional value that we receive beyond just the sale price of that property.

But there is, but the appreciation is there too. Because I know even in, you know, over the past decade plus I've been doing this properties that I was buying at one and selling at another price, like those of, you know, and the economy's gone up and down and waved and all that, but they've, they have grown, have appreciated in their value. So like, I'm always going to be buying and even if, like, I don't, I would be comfortable buying property right now. And even if I couldn't get to selling it for a year, I'd be fine. I know I'm buying it at a discount and I know that it's going to appreciate in value. I know the opportunity to sell, it's always going to be there. So you're right, we don't buy for that play. But that underlying truth is still there, right? It is going to appreciate in value.

I love it. Guys, thank you very much. So I'm gonna throw up a comment here by Jared Bell. I'm feeling very jealous because John got a shout out, Mike got a shout out. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna claim this shout out even though my name isn't in it because I brought up the forest app. So Jared, thanks for the shout out. I appreciate it. Jared took two pieces of advice from us last week. He took a social media fast and he tried out the Forest Focus app and he was so productive. I love that I gotta use it more often. I really do. So that's nice for him to shout me out.

I gotta confess, I kind of, I, I, I lay, I pepper the crowd, I layer them with people. I'm like, you gotta come and you know, because it's gonna make my, my partner a little jealous. So I, I kind of like.

That'S what it is.

Yeah, Mike actually paid them. I'm not 20.

Yeah. I'm not shy.

See how it is Now, Daniel Bryan took a low risk gamble about a month ago and it paid off. Closed on a 20 to 25,000. Do me for 3, 500 cash.

Wow.

Right there.

That doesn't sound like a gamble to me. That sounds like a great decision.

It's not a low risk gamble. It's a low risk guarantee.

I think. You know what, Scott, it might be a good. Just quick point to pause because. All right, this is the first podcast anybody's ever hearing on Lana Vest. And they're like, yeah, this all sounds great, but I'm going to call a bluff. You guys are buying these 25, 30 cents in the dollar. That could, someone could be thinking that right now, right? Like, how? Come on, how is that even possible? Well, wouldn't. And so that's the elephant in the room maybe, right? Well, if I was going to buy a $50,000 property or $25,000 property, I'm probably not going to buy it. $0.25 $. We target properties that have low emotional attachment. The people are typically out of state owners. They've owned the property for a long period of time. Land is an inefficient market. Meaning that like you, it's very difficult for people to really understand sometimes if they're not involved in this. Like, what is the property worth really? So when we come along with a simple solution and we're not taking advantage of them, I know I've heard that from people like, oh, I feel really, I feel like you guys must be taking advantage of people. It's like, no, because I actually tell people or my team does now because I don't do the intake, but I train them the same way I would do it. You know, Scott, they would say, what are you going to do with this property when you buy it? And boy, my. I used to bite my nails. What am I going to tell them? I want to make a whole bunch of money. Like, like, how do I, how do I ethically talk about. And I would say, you know what? Let the truth be the answer. So I would say I like to offer these properties to people at owner financing. It helps them own a property where I can give them an easy payment. I don't earn back my money for a while, then, you know, it's small payments, but I make profit Over a long period of time. And I just like to do that. I prefer that over the stock market. In fact, if you want to make more money, you should do that. You should offer and 99.9. No, no, that sounds complicated because they don't know what we do. And it's not complicated what we do. But if you hear that right, and no one has any context. No, I just want cash now. I'm okay with that. You go do what you got to do. I want the cash now. So I think just to address that. Right. There are properties out there you can buy. 25, 30 cents on the dollar. We're in what I call the penny stocks of real estate. Right. We're in this little area that was where we dwell. Big money's not coming for us because they don't want to. They can't deploy millions of dollars in 1, 2, 3, 4, $5,000 property. So the market is ours to control and to have fun with. But yes, this, if anybody's listening for the first time, it is completely. It is very real that we buy these properties 25, 30 cents a dollar. But it's a very unique niche in a market that we're in. Do that in.

Yeah, it's kind of mind boggling. Sometimes when you talk to folks and you tell them, you know, I can buy 20 acres in this county for 3,000 bucks or 5,000 bucks. Right. It's a little bit mind blowing because, you know, a lot of people. I talked to people, I talked to a couple people this week. They're from out east. It's hard to conceptualize. Zano, you're out east. It's hard to conceptualize people out there.

I'm not. My land. 25 cents on a dollar in Massachusetts, it's not.

Yeah. And let alone 20 acres for five grand or one acre for one grand. Right. But the other reason we love land so much is because out west, the land is just vast. Right. It's hard to conceptualize how much land is out there.

Yeah.

And then there's hundreds of these subdivisions. Right. That John Burnett loves because they're all cookie cutter. And when there's a cookie cutter subdivision, we can get really tight on our numbers and we can buy. We can. We can really get to know these areas and get to know these numbers. And to. To Jim's question. It's kind of in line with Jim's question. How often do you miss on your evaluations? I would say not very often, Jim, because we teach you guys how to do a very thorough valuation of your numbers in an area.

We start with the win, James. Yeah, we, we know the value before we go there and. But I'd be curious too. Maybe I'll ask John this, if you don't mind. I'm curious because somebody else now again, they're listening to us for the first time. Okay, I get it. You buy 25 cents a lot, but this must be land that. Who's going to want to use this land, John? I mean, come on now, you must be talking about desert squares and nobody's gonna want to go there.

Mine are usually rectangles, so I don't fit that stereotype.

Remember, a rectangle square is a rectangle.

But oh, my goodness, don't even get me started.

Great, John, I believe you can buy these. I believe you can buy these, John. No problem. But, yeah, right. Who's buying them? Right. You must be offered them to other investors, right? And creating like a little submarket in there, right? Where you just go to inside trading with other people. Who's buying these, John?

Yeah, and the reality is, like, I very, very rarely sell to other investors. I sell to the end buyer and my end buyer, like, generally, like when I, when I talk to people about what I'm looking for in a piece of land, I'm looking for access, right? I want there to be a road to the property that is both platted and actually like developed, like, exactly. It could be a dirt road, but you should be able to actually get to this piece of land. Right? And then I want there to be, ideally, some potential to build and off grid is totally fine. Right? But the ability to build on that property is something I generally look for. And then the, the third thing is recreation. Can you camp on the property? Can you enjoy the property? And when I've got those three things in place, I can sell that thing. And the reason I can sell that thing is because that is a product type that my audience is interested in. Right. I sell to a lot of people who like, this is the first piece of real estate that they have ever owned, right? And the idea of owning a piece of real estate is maybe just, it's like outside of the realm of possibility in that moment.

Right, right.

But you make it a possibility. Right? And so, like, that's, that's one motivator. It's just the idea of owning something. Owning your own piece of land. My own five acres. Right. And so that's one thing. Another thing is, is recreation. People like the idea of having their own little private campsite. And then the third Thing is the.

Ability to build people.

Like the idea of having their own off grid cabin someday. Right. And so there are, you know, we get a lot of leads, a lot of people, the end buyers reaching out to us and with interest in our specific properties because we really scratch the itch of what it is that they're looking for. And what we're selling ultimately is freedom. Right? Like some level of freedom from. I mean, from whatever it is they're looking for. I don't know. Sorry. I started rambling.

It got off track.

Is years ago, the egg McMuffin was scratching that itch, wasn't it? Yeah. Oh, my God. That's too funny. No, that's. Thank you. Because that's a common thing, right? Like who we sell them to. Right. Who wants these things? So we must be just inside trading in our community. Right. And nobody really wants these. But the reality is there's a lot of demand.

Now you're muting me. You muted me.

How could I mute you? I don't have control.

Mute each other.

I don't know. I'm giving a hard time. I like, try to talk. Mike's talking over me. I'm like, come on. Oh, Mike muted me. That's.

I don't have the power.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

I'm like. I'm looking for the mute Scott button right now. I can't find it.

I was trying to make a funny. I was trying. John brought up the egg McMuffin earlier and I'm like, Nowadays it's the McGriddle. The McGriddle kills the McMuffin.

I'm about to do the sweet and savory.

It's just, oh, I'm about to overeat my one right now.

Like, McGriddle.

Yeah. Like, I don't know if they'd make one this late at night. I don't know. I don't know.

Well, they used to do. They used to do breakfast 24 hour, 24 seven. But I think they got rid of that. So. But. And just to remind you, John, Daniel and I concur. All squares are rectangles. But not all rectangles are squares. Little geometry lesson.

All squares are rectangles. Okay, yes, I can. I agree with that. But there was something you said, Scott, that was logically impossible. And I don't remember what it was.

Didn't I?

Wait, all squares are rectangles? No, you said no rectangles. They're squares. You said all squares are rectangles. No rectangle is a square, actually.

Yeah. So not yeah, I'm wrong. I apologize. You're wrong. I was almost right, but not all the way right.

Scott, you. I think another really an interesting or a positive of this type of real estate versus other types.

What's that?

Is the outbound marketing, the mailing cost to acquire a property. I mean, oh sure, if you, I mean, listen, you could involve yourself and all. We do direct mail. I know people out there do direct mail for infill lots or houses. But you know, how many thousands of letters need to go out to acquire that one property when we could send a thousand letters out and get a property? Right. So it's like a lot less invested to find that deal as well, which is huge. Right. Again, this dials back to less capital not only to buy needed. Less capital needed not only to buy the asset, but to acquire it. Right. The amount of spend, ad spend or marketing spend, you'd have to do.

I did that quick math. Purchase rate. Our purchase rate right now is, is half. Is 1%.

Yeah.

Half to 1%. So we're buying properties. The acquisition price for a property through direct mail is about 91 bucks. Yeah, maybe 182 bucks. Right. That's a really great acquisition price. Right. Like you said. Mike Homes, how many guys have you guys. How many people you guys talked to who they said, I sent out 20,000 mailers. I got one deal, I got no deals.

Even in land, we have people that we know. And listen, I am not saying I think entitlement is a great model. I think subdividing is a great model. But I know people personally that sent out tens of thousands of dollars and no deals, right? No deal. So it's a. If you're trying now, if you have excess capital and you're, and you, you know, you have the, the bank big enough to roll it, you can do it. But if that's. You're starting out and this is your first time, like, can you imagine you sent out $10,000 in mailers and nothing's happened. Like you could really easily walk your way away from investing in real estate. I'm done with this. I can't afford this. Right. So another example, that's the truth. That still a great model, you know, entitlement, where they take the properties and they, I know you guys know, but people listening like they, they, they get them, you know, permits and so on and so forth. They get it so it's ready to be developed or closer to that point, so they can make money when they sell it or buy a property and Subdivide it. I think those are all great. But it's a lot easier and a lot cost. A lot more cost effective. A lot more simple to get a small property and get some traction, get some proof of concept, get some return on your investment. Yeah. Just thoughts, right? I mean, we're even talking about different types. Yeah. Deep thought. Different types of land investing. Not just, not just us versus land investing, versus houses and versus this and that, but even other types of land investing. Then you got the people, Scott, that, oh, we're gonna do the big deals. Oh, I like big deals. I feel like that's a song. I like big deals and I cannot lie.

I mean, yeah, yeah.

But I don't just do big deals because if I just did big deals, I always say I had 17 mobile home lots in Newport Richey. It was a great return 18 months later.

Yeah.

I had 40 acres in Pueblo. Great return 12 months later. So what if I was waiting for that to feed the family? Right. It's this. It's not going to work. But, but we do little deals and we can do big deals. So people who do big deals don't build the structure and the teams and the efficiency to do small deals. So we can cross that way. They can't cross backwards. So I think we have an advantage there as well.

I think that's a really good point. I like something. I was talking to this one guy once and this guy was giving this talk. He was talking about he was doing big subdivide deals. And one of the points he made is you can easily go bankrupt waiting on a million dollar payday, you know, for sure. And the way to put it. Yeah. I mean, and it's, it is like, because I like doing big deals too. Right. And you like big deals.

You can't lie.

I like big deals and I cannot lie. Where are we putting this on a T shirt too?

I think Mark's clone should compose us a song to the tune of that tune.

Like, I like big deals and I cannot lie. But little deals, well, they're in high supply or big supply, something like that.

Such supply.

Oh, man.

Off camera. The other day we learned that we could have a band here because John is a musician and Scott is an incredible singer in me. I can watch.

No, you gotta play the spoons. You do the kazoo.

There you go. But go ahead.

You could go broke, you said.

Oh, yeah.

Waiting for a million dollar payday.

So I like doing, I like doing big deals. I like doing creative deals every so often. But also it's really. Sometimes I have had 8, 9, 10 month stretches in between big deals, right? And for me, like, I've got my salary paid, right, because I have recurring revenue coming in and so I can go on a vacation with my family. And I'm not worrying about if there's going to be a big cash flip that comes through. So I think that that's like, it's nice to have stability and then I enjoy doing those other deals, right? But at the same time, like, they're just gravy, right? It's great when it comes through, but it's not something that I'm dependent on. But I think the other thing too is that, you know, like with, with the little deals, there is such supply of these little deals. And, and with them though, there's. There's also high repeatability, right? With repeatability, you can actually get time freedom. Like, I don't know if you guys, have you guys ever been to like, like a big, like real estate convention or something? Like, I went to a real estate convention a while ago with, with a lot of other really successful investors are all doing different models. And there were so many people who were very successful and so tired. Like they were grinding so hard and making a lot of money, but working really, really hard to make that happen. So part of the question is like, well, what is it that you want to accomplish, right? Is it like. And if the answer is time freedom, you should pick something that actually affords you time freedom.

So that's a great point.

Ken Green is here. Ken Green, good to see you. I hope to meet you in person someday. I've seen you online for years and years. I know, I'm jealous. Mike knows you.

Practitioner.

So same amount of work with digging small deals. I would disagree, Ken. Oh, no. But here's the only thing this is. This is actually my next talking point. So the really cool thing about smaller deals, in my opinion also is, Mike, it's no secret you and I have a land business together. We each have our own land business, but we grew our own land business together. Right.

Right, John, you want.

Yes, I've been waiting for you to ask that question. We. We buy a lot of property and we sell a lot of property, but we don't do a lot of work, do we?

No, that's.

That's the other really cool thing I think about our model and, and the fact that we're doing smaller deals. We're buying these things for less than 5,000. We can easily train VAs to take over almost every aspect of the business. And per deal, it's very low risk. Right, Right. And per deal, each deal is pretty simple. Right. So we can get our eyes on the deal really quickly and see that, you know what? Hey, we're on the right track. This is a green light property. Let's do it.

Yeah.

And all we have to say is let's do it. Right. And then it's done.

Yes.

And. And there's very little man hours or woman hours on. On the front of a deal. Front end of a deal anymore, or even the back end of a deal anymore.

Right.

So. So I think that now.

Right. People in the right place, he might be saying that the same system handles the big and small deals. Like there could be more to, you know, we don't want to. He unpacked what he's saying there. It could be more to his thought process.

You're right. And I'm not trying. I'm not throwing shades. I wanna. I wanna shout out from Ken Green someday. I'm not throwing shade at him.

Scott's about to get a pity shout out.

Yeah, I know. He. You know what? It's probably, he's probably right. It probably is the same amount of work because when you're doing big deals, what are you doing? You have the title, title company cake, take care of all of the work. Right. You secure the property, you get it under agreement. There's not a lot of work there. You use title. Right. But. But I think what I'm getting at is we can use people in our business to leverage as. As leverage. Right. To create systems when maybe on these bigger deals you can do it as. As much.

Great point, great point. You know, another really big point is.

What's that?

When things get crazy in the economy, interest rates bounce around and you know, people that are relying on traditional financing, it can become difficult. Right. For them to. For buying and selling. Right. Because, you know, interest rates bounce around. You need to get credit checks, approvals, all of this. Right. Neat thing about our model is we are the bank. Right. So I'm curious what you guys think. Like, how does that make it different for us in our ability to sell property versus people on the bank and they're in the federal. In the Federal Reserve and the interest rates and all that. Right. What, what's the. What's the advantage we have here, John?

I mean, speed, right? So the ability to.

I.

You already said it. So I'm just copying.

What do you mean though?

Speed?

Well, I mean, what's the difference? You're the bank. But what do you want? What does that mean?

Yeah, we're the. We're. We're the bank on these properties, right? Banks don't lend for land. They just don't. So when I buy property for 5,000, Mike, and I, I. I'm buying it at a deep discount. That enables me. That gives me the ability to finance it to another buyer.

But I have horrible. I want to own land from you, so I'm. I feel like I could never buy it from you because my credit's just horrible. What a.

You know what? It's okay. Mike. Mike. Hey, no worries about the credit. We. We believe in helping people become landowners. And credit isn't an issue as long as you can secure the down payment and the document fee, we'll set you up on monthly payments moving forward. And no worries. That's as simple as it gets.

Now, because I don't have good credit, meaning I probably prone to default on things. So now, aren't you at a huge risk?

I mean, risk is relative, right? Is it risky for me to sell to someone who has low credit? Possibly. But even people with low credit can afford one or two hundred bucks a month, in my opinion and in my experience. Okay. And if they are motivated to own that piece of property, they will continue paying on that property for three, four, five, six, seven, eight years, even though they wouldn't be able to afford five to $10,000 in cash to start with. Right.

What if I stop paying you?

What's that?

What if I stop paying you?

If they stop paying me, it's okay because I own the asset. It's okay.

Do you have to evict?

Well, we don't, so. That's a good question. Do I have to evict you from the land? In our company, we're clear with our buyers, and we establish boundaries with them and we say, Mr. Buyer, we're happy to sell this property to you over the next five years. You're welcome to use the property for camping, and you're welcome to visit the property. You can bring your guns there if you want. And hunt pigs or whatever you want to do. We just ask that you don't live on the land.

Pigs, Scott.

What.

What do you got against pigs?

Hunt pigs.

All the animals you chose, you pick pigs.

I mean, there's the boar. Hunting is a big thing in Texas, man.

Okay. Okay.

So my buyers are all rabbit hunters. We go small.

Rabbit, squirrel.

Rabbits and squirrels.

Yeah, squirrels. A lot of squirrel huntering in Indiana. So, I mean, we could. We could break this whole thing down. Geographically, if we wanted to. I'm just saying.

That's a good point, though, because people often wonder, like, people aren't going to build in the land, right. If they miss a payment, they get a notice of default. They miss another one. Notice of termination. We reclaim the property. They can't. They're not gonna really get a permit from the county because their name isn't on the deed. The county's not even going to issue them a permit. And then the bank's not going to give them a loan because they don't own the underlying asset. So how many times have you had someone build out of. I guess you guys have probably done close to a thousand deals each. Like, how many times has someone built something, a house on that property that all of a sudden you didn't know about?

Once? Yeah.

I mean, yeah. One time. Oh, sorry. Two times. I can think of. Yeah, but it was campers. It wasn't. They didn't build a house. Oh, so they had a camper there.

Your camper towed off, and it was over.

Yeah, yeah. And then the camper.

I got another shout out. Ah.

If there's no name reference, James, can.

You say zero points?

Who gave the pig hunting reference? James, can you help them out here?

I'm pretty sure that was me.

I mean, oh, man. No. All right.

We're not. We're. It's not. We're not trying to go down that alley, but I think it's worth understanding people listening to us. Like, they could start to. It's natural when you hear something, especially on the Internet. Right. On the. On the web, you know, like, oh, well, this must be some sort of get rich quick scheme. Let me poke some holes in it. Yeah, well, there's no way that's going to work. The guy's going to do this and default and take the property from you. This is not get rich quick. This is a very steady way to build wealth. It's very calculated. It's very safe. We have. This is. We always say, right. And Mark said it, but I think we echo it. Like, we only use land because it's the best model we found that works this way. It's repetitive, redundant. It's boring. We'd be open to something else if something showed up at our door and said, and we would jump on it. Right. But we just haven't found that yet.

Boring is. Boring is amazing in any business. As you hear. And damn you, John Burnett. Another shout out. I got another shout out.

I told Seth today, I said, if you come here, I Will say your name and I will pronounce your last name correctly.

Let's hear it.

So here we go.

Ready?

Seth Kinty.

All right. Yeah.

All right. I love it. So the GH is silent and the I is an E. Kinty.

Yeah.

The land investor as of today.

So congratulations, Seth.

Nailed it.

Oh, wait, Scott is the man.

I'm gonna call that a pity shout out.

And this is a. This is a funny. Daniel caught himself, but this is pretty funny. And I think this is kind of the ultimate shout out because he said, scott, Todd, you're the man. Looking forward to signing political next month with you. But he's the. Oh, shoot. Wrong Scott. So I. I mean, that's like the king of all shout outs right there, right? To be even in the same sentence as Scott top. That's pretty exciting.

I think we should.

Sorry, wrong number. Shout out.

Can we take this moment to invite everybody to meet us in person?

Yeah, I think we should. And yeah, here, let me put it in the comments together.

When is there a time in the near future where the three of us will be together and people in the same room?

Maybe we're all in the same room right now. I'll just go over like this and I'll appear on my screen.

I think I got the dates right. The dirt rich summit, Nov. 6, 2025 in Austin. It's the sixth of the Thursday, I believe.

Yes.

A lot of people are arriving Wednesday. We might have a Land Geek nightcap, happy hour down in the hotel. Who knows? And we got content. Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

I'm drinking.

All right, sounds good. You can come and rub elbows with Mike Zano. Dress nice, though. He's a trendy dresser and yeah, we'll have a good time.

I don't know what I want to wear. The clothes will be labeled and in the suitcase, and I'll just wear whatever says Wednesday night.

Oh, my God. Wow.

Do you have them in, like, Ziploc bags?

Yeah, she does do that sometimes. She labels them. And the belts and the socks and the underwear. Like, I gotta call. Hey, wait, I don't see my. Oh, there it is. Thank you.

Hey, hey, before we go, we have five minutes left. We gotta go back to some comments, but I do want to give a shout out because there's a gentleman in this community that means a lot to a lot of us. Right?

Yeah.

Scott Todd, he's a mentor to you, Mike. He was a mentor to me. John, I know you've had a lot of FaceTime with Scott Todd as well. I don't Know if the community knows, but Scott Todd is on the verge of releasing a novel. His first novel ever. Mike. John, were you aware of this?

No.

This is not a secret. It's been very well publicized online. So I think I have. I think I'm fine to mention this.

Is it a land investing novel?

So here's the thing. Have you ever read Fix this Next by Mike Michalowicz? No. Okay. I would recommend that for, for every business owner you should read Fix this Next by Mike Michalowicz who is also the author of Profit First.

Yeah.

Which is amazing for entrepreneurs. And what are his other ones? Clockwork and the Pumpkin Plan. Right. Scott Todd was so inspired by Fix this Next by Mike Michalowicz that he is now writing in collaboration or with approval from Mike Michalowicz. Fix this Next for Real Estate Investors by Scott Todd.

Very excellent. Very awesome.

Pretty cool, right? And I know right now, I saw his Instagram video the other day. He is in the process of doing the audiobook version of Fix this Next for Real Estate Investors and the should be published soon. So I'm pretty excited for Scott.

Pretty, pretty awesome.

Pretty, pretty awesome. You could say. Mike, you knew him when because he's gonna be like a best selling author.

I know.

So true. I believe it.

That's awesome.

So check it out. That's our shout out to you, Scott Todd. We love you. Thank you for everything. Let's hit a couple questions before we end.

Quickest night cap I think we've had in a while.

It's been quick. It's been good. John Lowry just completed the first week of flight school. Thank you, Mike for your patience and walking us into this journey. It's just another shout out for Mike. Love it.

You're very welcome.

Anyway, let's see here. We had a question. Let me throw this one up quick. Oh wait, I already threw that one up.

Oh, where that come from again.

Thoughts on John Burnett, thoughts on treasury deeds. So treasury deeds, 30 seconds.

Oh my goodness. 30 seconds. Treasury deeds are where you stop paying your taxes and then the county will deed it across to somebody. Usually there's like an auction or something. And when there's a treasury deed in the chain of title, usually on the other side of that treasury deed, it varies from state to state, but usually there is a redemption period where whoever didn't pay the taxes, there's a period of time where even though it's been deeded, they can get that property back through some kind of a legal process. So in some states that's one Year. And some states that's nine years. It puts a cloud on the title. And so we're to the point where, you know, you. You don't want to, like, guarantee that. That the title is perfect when you're selling the property during that redemption period.

But on the other side of the.

Redemption period, sometimes it's okay. This is getting very complicated. I have so many thoughts about treasury dates generally.

You know what?

But here's the thing.

I'm.

I'm giving you a shout out. That was amazing. That was an amazing explanation.

I'm not.

People may be confused. I'm making those comments. So that's my shout out to you, John.

Well, here's the thing. Treasury, Treasury. Treasury deeds are great, but I'd much rather be a D grabber. I'd much rather.

Deed grabber. It's like a prowler and get some of the person's safe steals.

Wait, let's just do this segment because you walked right into it. It's time for the Boston Legacy segment. This is. This is when. This is when Scott correctly spells a word and Mike Zano just demolishes the word with his Bostonian accent. Okay, ready, Mike? Here's the word. I'm gonna spell it. You say it. Ready? G, R A, B, B, E, R. Grab.

A grabba.

Yeah, it's a grabber. It's called a grabber.

A grr. Grabber. I can't say that. Who wants to be a grabber? I want to be D grabber, and I'll tell you why. I'm gonna get to that guy before it goes to the auction, and I'm gonna buy it. Pennies on the dollar. Then I'm gonna pay the back taxes, and it's not gonna. And the person who's been sitting there with their hands going like this, I can't wait for the auction all of a sudden. Where'd that property go? That D grabber. Got it. That's where it went.

Grabber.

I like it.

You're a D grabber. Guys, this has been fun. I think I know we left a couple questions unanswered. I feel bad about that.

Hey, they're gonna have to come back next time.

Come back next time. Let's do one more. Maybe I did get them all.

Oh, we got one at the end.

Wait, there's one. Oh, sorry. No.

Oh, whoops. Oh, yeah. Is that a question? God is the man.

What's that?

Mike, if you are listening and you feel like potentially this could be something for you and you haven't taken the leap into any education or any action. Just schedule a call with one of us and we'll talk to you.

Yeah, you can schedule a call. Go, go to the website. Go to, go to the landgeek.com fiddle around on there. There's some good content on there. There, there's probably all. There's probably also a link to book a call like on the website coaching page. So if you guys want to have a. Discuss investing and, and talk about what it might look like for you. Right. Please schedule call with us. We're more than happy to sit down with, with you and talk to you. You know, Mark did that with us with us back in the day, he said, called us up and chatted about it and we got it started on the. You guys start on the path and we're happy to do that for you guys. Here's a great question to end on quick from just, just Allred from Florida. Nice to see you. Is there not a big emphasis on tax delinquent lists anymore? I'm seeing more talk about getting data straight from Zamplo. So I'll just quickly say, I think, you know, that's what, that's what Mark talks about in his book. Right. Keep in mind the book was published quite a while ago. Things change over time, strategies change. And I think what we got, I think what we kind of learned over time in this business is that there are a lot of people out there who pay their taxes who still don't want their land. Have you guys ever talked to those guys on the phone? You ask them, hey, Mr. Smith, would you happen to know if there are any back taxes on the property? There aren't any back taxes on this property. I pay my taxes. People take pride in paying their taxes. Right. But they're still willing to sell the property. So to answer your question, Jessica, yes, now we kind of go after everybody. Now you can filter who you go after. You can go after maybe all out of state owners or you can go after owners, you know, 300 plus miles away if you want.

When we were calling counties and getting lists, it was a lot more scrubbing to isolate everything we wanted. Now we just go into software and we can scrub it to the specifications that we want instantly. So we have a lot more opportunity here. And we're going to mail everybody that potentially might sell to us if they owe money. We'll figure it out in the due diligence process and we'll negotiate that into the deal. Very simple.

Very simple. Awesome, fellas. Well, let's see what we're talking about next week. Next week? Man, it's almost October. Next week? September. September 23, 2025. Ooh, the topic for next week. I better do my homework. The inflation. Just kidding. The inflation hedge. Your financial advisor won't mention. In this episode, we want to talk about how most financial advisors. Sorry. How most financial advice doesn't work. So why listen to outdated advice? The days of saving money are gone. The days of waiting for promotion are gone. Pensions are dead. The old way doesn't work. And the only people that will benefit are the ones that pivot.

Strong language.

Yeah.

That's like the beginning of a zombie movie. We're gonna cheer you up. Trust me, it's not going to be depressing. We're gonna cheer you up. My God.

It'll be very positive. Be a very positive podcast. We promise.

Daryl Dixon passed away. Is that true? Speaking of the. Watch the guy who plays. Is it Daryl Dixon?

No way. Well, Robert Redford passed. Oh, yeah, But Daryl Dixon, Pat. No, he didn't pass, did he? Wait a minute.

Look it up. I think he might have.

I love that guy.

I think he might have passed. No, you can check off screen, on screen. Anybody out there know. I mean, off topic here, but, you know, I just brought you.

I mean, I mean, he might have passed away in the season. He's only been on it for 15 years. Oh, did you. Did you guys see the UFO news, though?

The UFO news? I like. I like to think that Scott, like, subscribes to a newspaper that arrives and it just says the UFO news.

Norman Reedus. That's his name. Don Thrasher. Can you check quick? Did Norman Reeves pass or is Mike just falling? Is he just. Is he just falling for the feed And Robert Redford died. Yes. Thank you, Jim. I agree.

Falling for one of those fake. I. I don't go on the. On the book that often. I. I popped onto the book today and I saw that and I. It could be fake.

Okay, okay, so this. We're gonna. We're gonna leave it at this. But listen, this week there is a congressional hearing about a UFO that was flying over the Indian Ocean in 2024. They show footage and everything. This thing is flying across the ocean. They're trying to shoot it down with Hellfire missiles. The thing's not bringing it down. They have expert panels on the congressional panel saying how they're nervous and scared and they don't know what it is. Just saying the UFOs are here.

Oh, boy.

And was it like.

Look at. Look at.

Like, like Metal craft thing, or was.

Like the light thing. This orb. This orb is flying over the ocean at a great speed, and it's hit by a missile. The missile kind of like, just impacts off of it. Like a hellfire missile just kind of impacts off of it. And then these three little orbs come off the main orb, and they continue flying at the same velocity. And they have all these experts talking about how they don't know what it is, there's no explanation. And the congresswoman asks them, are you scared? And they're like, yeah, we don't know what this is. So I'm just saying.

Crazy.

That's another great reason to invest in land. I mean, UFOs. They want homes, not land. Invest in land.

Invest in land, not light work.

Yeah. Discussions that we let people in on. The podcast has actually ended. But this is just the after hour.

This is what happens when you all go away.

I think maybe. Maybe we should start doing the after hours at the top of the hour. Let's just do another five minutes unscripted. I think that'd be fun.

I think it's fun here. We just did it. And people probably searching the Internet for all these things we talked about. Is Daryl Dixon alive?

I mean, is this aliens alien prepping land? Does.

Does John really secretly still eat Egg McMuffins? Like, people want to know these things. Eggs.

They do. I actually have just a pile of Egg McMuffins below my computer right now.

All right.

Muffin for the show.

We digress. Thanks for the after party. Thanks. Don Thrasher. Thanks. Thanks for the after party, Don Thrasher. Good to see you fellas. We'll see you next week. Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Good night.

Good night.