The Land Geek Podcast #54

Welcome to the Land Geek Podcast, your resource for information and tips to making money by buying and selling land. Let the Land Geek show you how to make a passive income by working smart, not working hard. Learn strategies and tricks to make money buying and selling raw land today. And here is the man that's gonna help you do that, the Land Geek.

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek from your favorite niche real estate land website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today I am pleased that he is safe and sound in his home that has not burnt down. Duran Frazier from landhub.com Duran, what's going on in Carlsbad, man?

It's, it's a lot better today. It was a hectic couple of days. We. Gosh, what was it on Tuesday? Wednesday. Wednesday I get a call from my wife. Hey, honey, I'm just here at the house and I'm looking over, I mean, and there was a big fire the day before or not. I don't know how big it was. Not too. It's called the Bernardo fire. And it was, it was, you know, it was, it was. I don't think it burned too many houses down, but it, there's a lot of areas in San Diego that have, you know, some ravines that these fires, when the winds are blowing offshore, when it's hot, they'll just like fingers, they'll just light these little ravines up. And so we have a lot of those in Carlsbad. And so I get a call from my wife, hey, there's a huge bill of black smoke behind the house. You know, what should I do? And I'm like, so I get in the car. I was up running some errands up in little town, just north. And I think I drove probably worse than I've ever driven in my life in terms of speed on roads.

It was like a movie. It was like one of those movie car, you know, frantic. I've got to get somewhere.

Correct. So I was actually, you know, like, if you, you know, you have two cars and you have a two lane road and you have cars in each lane and then the motorcycles go in between the cars. I actually did that in two different scenarios where I, where there was enough room for me to fit between the cars and just take off and run the red light and it was really interesting. I mean, you know, it felt really empowering to. Just kidding. To drive like a maniac and break the law. No, I, I got home in probably like eight minutes. I told my wife to pick up the Kids. And the fire was probably about 10 blocks away, 8 blocks away, less than a half mile away. But. But the wind was crazy. So the wind was blowing straight offshore. And I think when I, at one point I saw my temperature gauge and I'm pretty close to the beach, it was 107 degrees. So if you guys, you know, want a quick background. San Diego, the beaches very rarely get that hot. I mean, it's very rare.

So average temperature is 72.

Yeah. So. And especially for May now, August, July, August get hot. But even then it's like maybe 80. Like, like 80 degrees would be the average, or 78 degrees. The average just rarely gets to 90, 95 degrees. So dry, dry heat, you know, dry air and, and, you know, and a lot of dry brush can be a problem. And so it was a big fire danger. And so. So it, it burned a friend of mine's house down. And then another person that we know really well, their house burned down. And I think only a. I think somewhere around 15 to 20 structures in this fire burned down, but my friend's house, probably less than half mile away, burned down. And, you know, and a half mile, you know, anybody that knows fires and, and which, you know, I look back and I go, you know, they're outside of Southern California. Fires aren't that common. You know, they have some. Actually they take it back in Texas.

And Arizona, they have some issues now. Arizona, yeah.

So Arizona, Texas, you know, like, there's a handful of states that deal with, with, with wildfires, but very rarely they. They hit like, you know, suburban America, you know, the, you know, housing. Like these, these things were like, in, like in housing subdivisions, which was, you know, crazy. And then, you know, the only thing that was in our favor was that winds were sort of. We're sort of going offshore and then onshore. So it's kind of keeping the fire from getting too far.

Do they think it was arson?

They arrested two kids yesterday and they're. They're questioning them in all the fires. So. Wow.

All right, well, I'm glad you're safe.

Yep, all good.

I'm glad everything's intact. So let's talk about land negotiation. When we talked about negotiation before.

You know what, Mark? We've been doing this podcast for a year and a half, so there's a very good chance we have.

Do you have any special negotiation tactics that you use?

Yes.

What do you use? What's your negotiating protocol, if you will?

I would say the number one way that I approach negotiating is relationship based. So I look at Building relationships. Funny, because I have a partner in one of my businesses and he's like, man, you. The way you, the way you negotiate is hilarious because he's just all business. So he goes in and just takes his smiley face off and goes to the kill. For me, I like to build a relationship. I like to sort of ease into the conversation of what we're trying to accomplish in terms of whether it's negotiating price or anything else, and then show them why. But yeah, mine is, you're similar, Mark. You're a relationship guy, you're a friendly guy. And I think that's one tactic for me that I like to use when I'm going in. And a lot of people may not be as social or as friendly and that's okay. But it is really helpful to kind of build rapport with something that you're doing business with.

Right, right. I'm definitely tougher on my sellers that I'm sending offers to than my actual buyers and customers. I'll say that for negotiating because bottom line is they owe back taxes and I'm giving them a low ball offer. But there's 10 other people like them down the pike. If you don't like it, I'm not going to spend 15, 20 minutes negotiating with you because it's just not a good use of my time. So I'm nice about it and I'll just say, look, why do you think your property is worth what, worth more than that? I mean, you're clearly not valuing the property. You haven't paid their taxes, you haven't paid your taxes. So what's going on? And the fact that they're getting back with me and they're sending in the purchase agreement tells me that they're interested in selling. So I don't do a whole lot of back and forth on that. Do you have anything similar with that?

With the sellers? Yeah, no, I'm, I am similar. I mean, again, it depends on the situation. Some people will want to call you and talk to you. So, you know, some people, if they have your number, some people, you know, every. Everyone's different. Like, why do you want my land or what? You know, they want more information or they want to feel more comfortable. So in that situation, you have to sort of take the next step and sort of build that relationship to potentially get that sale.

Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, there are some people out there that, you know, say, look, you know, put up a landing page, have them fill out a form and you don't want, you know, and then you get back to them and start negotiating from there and make 50, 100 calls a day. I don't think it's a good use of time. I don't want to be in the appraisal business. Yeah, at all.

I agree.

People do it. Jeff Axton's got a buddy. He, that's what he loves to do. He, he's on the phone all day long negotiating these deals. So it's not for me now, on the buyer end of it, I'm absolutely with you. I think it always has to start with a relationship, even if it's a cash sale and you're not going to have a long term relationship with them, potentially, because it's on a note, right?

Yeah.

But for sure, like, you know, you want to come to an agreement and you definitely want to build that rapport, find out what their real needs are and, and meet them. So I don't see it adversarially at all, do you?

Yeah, you know, no, not at all. I, in fact, I just sold the property a couple days ago to a gentleman and he, he was, we went back and forth a couple times, went to go check out the property, was really excited. But I built. It took about three or four days to sort of build that relationship. So he felt comfortable knowing who I was, how the contract worked. And you just have to be very good and articulate what you're trying to say in the email. And if you can't pick up the phone and articulate on the telephone, because at the end of the day when you're talking to these people, you need to make them feel comfortable. And sometimes those phone calls or those emails, one or the other, don't always get the job done some.

Right, Right. Yeah. I mean, what was. I negotiated for three years with a property owners association in Pennsylvania. A three year negotiation for a thousand lots. And it was miserable. I mean, I've talked about that deal, but can you imagine going back and forth for three years, the travel involved, the time involved, and it was such a simple, you know, deal because they had a thousand lots that are just sitting at the county and they had liens on them because it was a property owner's association. So my idea was, look, that's dead money. It's sitting at the county. No one's paying taxes on it. Right, Right. So the county's not benefiting at all. And when they would do auctions, no one would buy them because nobody wanted to pay the lien off for the properties owners association. So I went to the property owners Association Said, look, I'll buy these thousand lots in this overdeveloped subdivision on the basis that you remove the liens and the county removes the taxes. So I was saying, look, even if I get them for free, as soon as I sell it to a new buyer, everyone's making money. You're getting a new buyer who's going to hopefully value that lot, pay their POA fee, the county is going to have a new owner that's paying the property taxes and I'm going to make money for the privilege of solving your problem. Three years I had to negotiate and their big issue was who are these people going to be? Where are they coming from? It was fear based. They didn't like the idea that I would be selling property in Pennsylvania to somebody in New York that might come down there and party on the weekends and kind of mess up their little community. Have you had any kind of long term negotiations like that besides sides? I know you got stuff going on. The mining.

Yeah, you know, Mark, the mining side for sure. I've had, I've had negotiations that have, have lasted a year, year and a half. But you know, I, I go back to that situation with you and I, and I. You deserve it, Mark. You know, you didn't. This is the deal that you deserve it. You could have brought me in on and if you had brought me in on, I would have solved the problem. I'm a problem solver, Mark. I'm gonna.

You're glad I didn't bring you on that deal. So anyway, that was a miserable deal.

Oh man, I'm just kidding. But no, I, you know, sometimes, and you know, it's funny you talk about that deal, but there's another one in, in Nevada that we had discussed a subdivision of properties of which just same situation, you know, just property tied up and they just, there's rules and regulations and how they can release the property. They've got to go to, you know, they've got to go to the board to vote and generally speaking, politics and red tape keep, keep these properties from being sold.

So yeah. Did you tell your rancher story? Because there was a rancher that did not want that property subdivided. We were, we were subdividing all day long, chopping up six 40s in the 40s. And then one rancher in that one county said no, no, no, this is bad for my business and local politics got involved and really hurt us financially.

Who is this?

I can't remember his name. It was, it wasn't the guy that we went to visit that. That was. Wasn't him. Remember, I went to his house?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. You know what?

It might have been Pete.

No, it wasn't Pete. You know what? It's funny just how these things come full circle. I. I'm actually in the middle. There's. When you own a lot of land, you tend to. You tend to get, you know, you know, certain things in the mail from people that want an easement or want, you know, want certain things. Like Mark and I both, we talked about, I think last week, the week before, had a property that they were building a geothermal project on. They needed easements for the transmission lines. And so I, I, you know, negotiate with these guys. And, you know, I did play a little hardball with these guys on negotiating side.

But.

But. And it. Funny enough, it, you know, things came full circle back to the company. The guy was the. The CEO was kind of a jerk to us, and. And his company ended up going. But going back to another scenario, these people that Mark, I think is talking about, they right now are going to the Supreme Court to get some sort of, like, large easement that goes over several properties.

Estate, Supreme Court.

Yes, yes. And so is this over your property? Correct. And so I'm dealing with a really interesting scenario right now because I'm thinking to myself, I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to be nice to these people, and I've offered them, but they basically want to put a pipeline that pipes water through a creek that I have on my property. And I'm thinking to myself, and it's from like 1800 90, 1890s or something. I say, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's for me to. For me to go through a process of allowing that to happen on a property when you've kind of already burned me in the past. It's just interesting. So I don't want to get into too much detail, but. But it's a situation where, you know, it goes to show you things come full circle. You're at. You need a favor from somebody. You want somebody to do you a favor by signing a piece of paper. And generally speaking, I'm really nice about that.

Why don't you just sell them the property?

Oh, they won't buy it.

Why won't they buy it? They need it.

No, no, no, they won't buy it. Trust me. It's a big. It's a. It's a much bigger issue because they'd have to go buy a lot of property.

So okay, so they don't, they don't want to buy all the surrounding property, they just want the easement.

Correct.

And you're stopping them from getting these.

Men, me and several other people. I think it's not just me. So.

So why don't they, why don't you just charge them for these men?

Because they've that. Well, I, I sort of brought that up. So I don't want to get into too much detail. I don't even want to talk about it, be honest with you. Because just it just the whole fact was for me bringing up the fact that people that sort of like, it's. It's such a small world when in, in like these rural towns that, like, you end up meeting people and they don't realize, you know, that eventually if you own enough land, something's going to come back to bite you in the butt. And in this, whether it does or does not, or we figure something out, you know, it's just, that's in the back of my head as I'm working, negotiating deals because they sort of burned me and they kept you and I from making money for no real reason other than the fact that they kind of wanted to be in control, so is what it is.

All right, well, that's good. That's good. So getting back to negotiation, there's no, like, if you, if you Google, like negotiation and, you know, all this stuff comes up. I mean, there's classes and courses and I mean, it's not that complicated, is it?

No, it's.

It's really about relationships at the end of the day and being fair. So I'm not sure. I mean, I guess if you were, if you were in the kind of business where the negotiation and, you know, let's say like a bigger ticket item, like, you know, if you're negotiating a fleet of jets or a million acres, something like that, I guess I could see where that value would come in. But for what we do in the smaller transactions, it's really just relationship based. Once you agree.

100%.

All right. You seem bored.

I'm not bored. You know, negotiation, it comes really easy to you and I, so the conversation sounds like maybe gets a little boring, but I'm actually looking for my tip of the week while you're talking. That's why I'm bored.

You're looking for the tip of the week? I thought we, I thought we had our tip of the week.

I don't think we did. I think I lost mine.

Oh, my gosh. All right, well, don't worry about it.

I'm just teasing. I'm teasing. I am losing my voice, though, so I can't. So. So if it sounds like I'm falling asleep, it's because I probably talk to too many people in the day.

It's. It's from all the smoke.

That's true. That's probably part of it.

Yeah. So.

Or screaming at the Clipper game last night, which I was a little frustrated with.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That whole thing is crazy with, with the Donald Sterling.

Yeah. Very interesting.

That's bad business.

That's bad business.

That's really bad business.

That's not how you negotiate or it's actually how you negotiate. Right. How do you take your 12 million and turn into a billion dollars? You say something really dumb that forced you to sell a team at the height of its.

Yeah, right, exactly. He did that in the 80s.

Yeah. I mean, the Clippers had died. He bought it for 12 million in 81, I think. And they're worth, I don't know, between 600 and 1 billion. I'm sure somebody or a group would pay a billion dollars for that, for that team. I mean, they're an incredible team. And so that'd be a nice little return for him.

All right, so this is, you know, right now we're recording this on May 16th. So by the time that it airs, which will be on May 22, it will be only a week away before we are all in Vegas. Are you psyched for Vegas?

Super psyched for Vegas. Mark, let me tell you.

Yeah. If you can't make this Vegas trip, there will be others coming down the park. In fact, Duran and I were talking about it. I think we're doing. I think we're going to do either one in Carlsbad or another one in Vegas in August. So if you couldn't make the May event, contact the office. And if you have the Investors Toolkit, you have two free tickets anyways and come in August. So. But if you don't have the Investors Toolkit, you still want to come, then contact the office and we'll get you going. What do you think? Vegas or Carlsbad?

You know, I'll be honest.

I think Vegas is more fun. Really? Come on, Mark, what's your argument for Carlsbad? Just the fact that you can walk to the event.

No, no, no, it's not. And I can't walk to the event. But just so you guys know, Carlsbad has a lot to offer. In fact, it's a great place to actually take the family, you or you know, your husband, you know, whether it's your husband or your wife can hang out. The kids. There's a little place called Kid Topia there for the kids and then you can, there's an adult pool there, there's a bunch of water slides for the kids, all sorts of stuff. It's just, to me it's kind of a family place. You go conference for a couple days and you hang out at La Costa for a day or two and enjoy, enjoy North County, San Diego.

So yeah, I, I, but don't you think Vegas is so much better, so much easier to get to. Everyone loves Vegas. What are you going to do at night in Carlsbad?

Are you serious?

I will say, is there any nightlife at all?

There's plenty, I will say. Right, right down the way in an area, plenty of nightlife.

Your idea of nightlife is, is going to what, PF Changs and getting a massage.

Correct. Pier change massage and be home and then be home by 8:45 and be with the kids. Be with the kids. Well, last night, last night was up till one in the morning driving home the 405 which if you live, if you've driven in LA and you know it was traffic Armageddon last night again, but they closed the 405. They had the five shut down. And if those two threes are shut down, basically you're taking side roads to do everything. And so yeah, driving home from Staples center last night at, at 11 o', clock, 10:30 after the game and it took us like two and a half hours to get home from Staples center because the freeways were shut down. So it was a bit of a, bit of a frustrating nightmare. But I do get out once in a while till late night so we can make something happen in NC Dismark. Trust me.

All right, so what's going on with Land Hub? What's the Land Hub latest?

We have some committed investors. We are moving forward, which is very nice. We have a new cfo, which is a very talented guy who will be sort of helping us and he brings along with himself a team of guys that are going to be helping us. So I'm pretty excited. We got a lot of good stuff happening on the software side. We are working on it, which is really cool. We're working on migration to Land up right now. So we're building on a separate platform and moving that platform over and then we'll do our beta testing of the first initial phase of the software and then start pushing forward with Some, some new tools within that suite of software that we're creating.

So just so everyone knows, Land Hub is a syndication site. So you take your real estate ad and then Land Hub blasts it out to Craigslist, right? Land and Farm, Land Watch, it's basically.

Like a control panel. So that's just one aspect. So you're going to have a syndication aspect for. We have what's called a built in API which allows you to send, send and receive XML feed. So if you have property, if you want to send properties out to Land Watch, Lands of America lands and you know, Land and farm, we can send those properties out for you. And then, and then you're also going to have a tool where you can build your own website, host your own site, put your properties on it. So you have your own website. We'll have a CRM which you'll be able to, you know, you'll be able to have, you know, sort of a back end sales tool. You'll have an email marketing component to sort of blast out emails. So it's going to basically give you. And then our final component will be a, basically a sales facilitation which will have a forms aspect and a potential. We're still working on it. Notary aspect which will allow you to basically facilitate the transaction online. So do like a DocuSign or Adobe Echo Sign. So working on some cool stuff. The idea is to have a. The idea is guys like Mark and I have really needed something like this. But there are tons of land sellers and brokers that need something to give them complete control of their asset through a search platform. So we're having the search side, you know, up and running already and then through that we're going to offer a suite of software behind it to kind of give sellers complete control of their asset.

Yeah, it's a huge time saver. Huge. What's your time worth exactly?

And my time is invaluable. Just kidding.

And you're charging what, 1500amonth?

Yeah, 15. Around. Around 40. Like $39.99 for like just some of the search aspect just to list your property. And we actually get quite a bit of traffic on the site just from a search perspective organically. And then on the back end up to 99 bucks a month for the full suite of software tools. And then some of the brokerage firms will be getting charged more depending on how many properties are listed on the site. But all in all it's going to be a huge time saver.

So I love it.

So it's Cool. And it's a tool that's not just going to work for Land Hub. It's a tool that's being built scalable to work elsewhere. Yeah.

There's tons of different applications for it. Absolutely.

So I'm excited. But anyway, Mark, I will, I will lead this into the tip of the week for you.

You can't do that. You love doing this.

Sorry, dude, you're in.

I have to say, Duran, I'm going to put you on the spot. What is your tip of the week? I know you're losing your voice, so.

Okay. My tip of the week is a company called Realty Mogul. Realty Mogul is a really interesting, interesting platform. Okay. Yeah.

All right, let's see. Real estate investing simplified. The trusted online marketplace for real estate investments.

So what it, what it is, it's a crowdfunding platform for real estate. Really interesting. So if you're looking to create a development project and you need a funding for the project and these guys will help you market it. And then they have the investors say they have accredited investors that invest in real estate. So these guys raised a bunch of money and they started and they're doing really well.

Do they do land?

They don't do land at the moment, but they probably will be moving there at some point. But I'm sure they do. If it's a development project. Yes, I'm sure. But I mean, what, you know, it's not, they're not going to be selling your land. What they're going to be doing is helping raise money to, you know, as an investment. Like what's the ROI on my investment? To invest in a commercial building. So there's no real. Unless it's like a grazing lease or something that's got some value. They probably wouldn't go raise capital because what's the ROI for the investor?

Oh, okay, let's say we've got $10 million notes. Right. Could we come here and sell our discounted notes? No, no, that's a good investment.

Yeah, I mean that's what you'd say.

You could make 12, 13, 14% maybe.

I mean, but I don't think these guys are focused on hard assets.

They want hard assets. Okay. So I'm looking inside says, how would you like to own the Hard Rock Hotel, Palm Springs? Invest now. So I'm gonna invest. Oh, first of all, you have to be an accredited investor, which means that you either make 250 a year or have over a million dollar net worth. Correct.

So yeah.

Do you want my login unless they change it. Yeah, I do want your login.

Okay, I'll give it to you later. And I'm not gonna give John mine, obviously, but anyway.

Well, this is, this is an interesting little site. You know, I'll tell you what's interesting about this is the Education Center. Six Secrets to Successfully Crowdfunding Real Estate. I think there's some crowdfunding marketing applications for what we're doing, and it'd be nice if someone would create that platform for us. And I think that could really, you know, kind of like land hub in a way. But maybe I'm, I'm overthinking this.

Here's the problem.

You know what I'm saying? Like, okay, I've got, I've got. I'm gonna buy a million acres, right?

Yeah.

And I know I can make 3 million on the deal. I'd like to have that crowdfunded and raise the million.

Yeah. Now that would probably something you could.

Do that we could do at realty Mogul. Correct.

Correct. Correct.

But they're not doing land now.

I don't think so. I don't think so. I'm gonna have to go. I'd have to go and check it. I haven't really snooped around too much. I signed up for them and I started getting blasted four emails a day. And I was like, hey guys, settle down a little bit here. Need to figure this platform out first. But yeah, they've got some. It's very interesting what they've got going on there, but. But yeah, if you've got like a single family home that you're trying to pick up, right. And the, you know, you know, your cash on cash is, you know, 25% return or 30% return or whatever it is. You know, you can. Somebody will help you buy that house. So it's kind of cool. So if you like, you want to go. If you've got a house, you got an option to go purchase a house, and it's got a 25. You know. You know, there's a. There's a 25% rate of return on the house or whatever. However it's structured, you just take it up there and then somebody would invest and take a piece of that equity.

How does this different than syndication, though?

It's very similar.

It's very similar. So we're just calling crowdfunding crowdfunding. Even though it's the same thing as, well, it's the same thing as syndicating.

But what's different is the back end is you have accredited Investors that are looking at all these assets. So, like in syndication, there was never really a simple way to get the properties out there to the right investors. Now you have accredited investors coming to your site, looking at the assets on your site. Does that make sense?

This is a more efficient way to syndicate your deal.

Correct.

That makes sense. I like this site. That's a great tip.

So.

All right, well, my tip of the week is going to be landreport.com. is it landreport.com or the landreport? Yeah, it's landreport.com and it's the magazine of the American landowner. Duran is friends with the owner, correct?

Correct. Well, we just met. We met last week and we ended up chatting and, you know, hopefully down the line, we'll all be working together at some point doing some stuff. But, yeah, Land Report is a great, great magazine that's been around for quite some time. And the publisher's name is Eddie, and really good guy. And so, yeah, so the three of.

Us will podcast one of these days.

I have to talk to Eddie, but I'm sure he'll be open to it.

We'll do it. All right, great. So, yeah, check out landreport.com and you can see the top 100 landowners, how much land they own. You can see these big ranches for sale. And, you know, there's. There's some education in there as well. It doesn't really apply to everything that we do in our niche, but it is interesting. So check out the landreport.com especially if you're doing larger deals, if you're doing ranches. This is a pretty interesting resource and a good marketing platform, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

So, Duran, are we good? I know you're losing your voice.

Yeah, we better be good, because if we keep talking, it's gonna. It's gonna disappear.

All right, well, I want to thank Duran for being on today's podcast, and I'm glad he's safe and sound. And look, if you want to learn more tips, tricks, techniques on how to make an incredible income actively and Passively, go to www.thelandgeek.com, download the Passive Income blueprint, get the ebook how to Avoid the three Fatal Land Buying Mistakes, and get this. Always wonderful, engaging, informative. Although today wasn't that engaging podcast delivered each week to your email inbox. And, you know, give Duran some love. If you want to buy some wholesale land, go to reserveland.com. if he doesn't have anything you want, check out my site, frontierpropertiesusa.com and thanks for listening. We'll see everybody next week.

See you guys next week. And I'm just gonna apologize for sounding boring to you, Mark, and everybody else here, but like I said, I'm losing my voice, so I apologize.

Yeah, there's. There's this new thing out there called throat lozenges.

Oh, okay.

All right, buddy.

Okay. Have a good day.

Talk to you.

Bye.

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