What Are Some Creative Ways To Land Deals In Our Niche?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's roundtable podcast, we have almost all the usual suspects. We've got the dude buddy, the nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Scott Bossman, how are you?

I'm doing well. It's 99 here in Wisconsin.

Wow, that is fall for Phoenix and Vegas. But I can imagine you're hot there. Yeah.

Swamp Cooler on.

Speaking of how hot that Nashville hot fried chicken, the technician, Eric Peterson. Eric, how are you?

I'm good.

Happy to be here today.

Good to see you. And we got Terea putting in the reps. Harris, how's it, Lanta?

Muggy.

A little sticky, but not 99. It's not 99.

All right. And of course, I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate Litchfield. Tate, how are things?

Things are good, man. We're busy. Really busy.

You know, it'd be cool. It wouldn't be great if I just look over your shoulder and watch you work. Oh, I can go to landgeek.com lots of. Check it out. This week's roundtable discussion is an interesting one. Eric Peterson, what are we discussing?

So, a common theme I'm hearing from some of my coaching students right now is, you know, when we're working in these maybe more congested areas, probably higher dollar purchase price properties, counter offers are coming back that are well above what we're used to paying for these properties. And the common question is, do I move forward with this? This is a desirable property. I know I could sell it if I buy it, but the counter is substantially higher than I offered and substantially higher than I would typically pay in this area. What do I do?

All right, dude, buddy. Scott Bossman, what do you do? You get. I mean, is it. Is it even reasonable? Is it like a million dollar counter or is it just some. Just more.

Let's just put some round numbers to it. Let's say, you know, you're used to buying at, I don't know, five to 8,000. And maybe counters are coming back at 10 to 12.

Okay, five to eight counters, 10 to 12. Scott Bossman, what do you do?

I mean, I think it depends on a number of factors. Number, number one, I guess for me is that land seems to be moving really quickly right now. There are a lot of cash buyers right now, so that would maybe motivate me to purchase the property at more than 25 cents on the dollar. Now, I still want there to be meat on bone like, if I can get it for a wholesale price, you know, 5,000. My offer is 5,000, and that's 25 cents on the dollar, and I can get it for 10,000. I think in this market right now, when it's a little bit harder to buy property, but it's very easy to sell property, I might move on. Really depends on where you are in the business, though, too, I think. I think, you know, you really have to. You don't want to overpay right now. When you're first starting out, you need some wins, and you may not, you know, may not be able to outlay the capital for those type of deals. So I think it comes down to the market. It comes down to what's in your bank account. It comes down to your marketing, your buyers list a lot of factors, but we're not hesitating right now to buy for a little bit more than what our offer prices are. Sometimes we've even bought double. Because people, they seem to be sticking to their guns. Some of the property owners are sticking to their guns a little bit more with. With, hey, I want this much. I'm not selling it for less. And it's. It's been a little bit hard to. Harder to negotiate with them lately.

Okay. Okay. So that being said, what is. Are you negotiating it or are you passing?

No, we'll try to negotiate.

You try to negotiate it.

Yeah. But people, like I said, they're sticking to their guns a little bit, and we've had some lost opportunities that. That we've let go because we kind of stuck to our guns. And then we thought, well, property's moving so fast right now in that area particular. In particular, maybe we should have jumped on it. So the numbers still have to make sense. For me, I'm probably not gonna buy a property for more than 50 cents on the dollar, but if I have to at that amount, I think we would do it.

Interesting. Interesting. Terea, putting in the rep terrace, how do you handle the dreaded really high counteroffer? That being said, I love a meek counteroffer, where it's like $100 more. Those are the best. But like a higher, aggressive counteroffer, we.

Also try to start off and negotiate, especially if it's in an area that we desire. It's our main area. We try to negotiate. If we can't, then we kind of let our inventory dictate how high we go and how we'll do it. Like, if we're really hurting for property in this area, then. Then we may pay A little bit more even beyond what we normally expect to pay. If we have an abundance of offers in this particular area, which we haven't had in a while, but let's say we did, then we could pass on that one because we had other offers that we could purchase the land. So we let our inventory, we let our intake sometimes determine how high we're willing to go if we need it. Sometimes we'll jump up and get it, even though it hurts a little bit.

Okay. Okay. Eric, how about you?

So I think that it comes down to a couple factors. I mean, some of the points that have been made, I think, are really good. A lot of it has to do with how much capital you have to invest in this business. If your counter is at 10, and you've got 10, 12, or 15 in the bank for acquisitions, that's a huge chunk of your working capital. And on top of that, you're buying at that higher price, your returns. It's gonna take much longer. You might be looking at two years to regain your capital, rather than what we talk about as one year. So you have to kind of weigh out all of those things and determine if it makes sense for you and your business. I think that if you know that property is in high demand, another option would be to see if you could find an investor to help you out with it. If you don't have that kind of excess of capital available in the bank, that could be a scenario where you can acquire the property, you can control it, and you can market and sell it, but have a lot less risk involved in terms of your capital in play, and then leaving whatever capital you may have in the bank for future purchases. But I think ultimately, if the situation was right, we're probably going to buy it if we believe that we can sell it fast. And I think the other factor right now is that we are able to get higher down payments than we've typically gotten in the past. So that might be another instance of, you know, kind of switching up the model a little bit and asking for a much higher down payment to help recoup some of our capital faster. It is going to limit your potential buyers. But I believe there's probably more of those buyers out there right now that have a little more capital to invest from what we've seen in our business.

No, I agree. I mean, this economy is a little weird. The market's a little weird as we come out of COVID and the government's putting all these dollars back into the economy. Just an example, personal example, is My son's college had a thing like these kids are just writing like a two page, I'm sorry, two sentence request from the university saying, you know, if I had some extra money, it would help me with groceries. And they're sending a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars based on that alone. Right. So things, you know, so now you got, you know, kids with an extra thousand fifteen hundred dollars. You know, it's not like they're going to go put that in a mutual fund. They're spending it now. So it's just going to be kind of this thing where, where the economy is getting this kind of sort of, for lack of a better word, it's inflation. Right. So we're just seeing it everywhere. I had a point, Eric.

I think it was around there being more money in the economy available to purchase things, invest in things, et cetera.

Correct. Okay, so, yeah, so. So I had a senior moment. That being said, you're right. What I wanted to talk about was, you know, the model, it's a little different than our model. Well, we have to be flexible with the model now because things are different. It's just. And you've got to play with different things. To your point, Eric, get the higher down point, down, down payments. We all want to do owner financing, but right now a lot of people want to pay cash and that's okay. So my point was you need to be flexible in this market. Okay. Pete, I love when you call me Big Papa. What about you? What do you, what do you do with your counters?

You know, there used to be a time when we didn't even really look at them. We would get a counter and we'd just be like, it's, you know, above 10%. We're not even going to take a peek at it. We don't need your deal. And I think today it's not that I need the deal anymore, it's just property's moving so much quicker that I can afford to take a look at your deal. I can afford to maybe expend a little bit more than I'm comfortable with. I think Eric's point, or the question that he's seen come up a lot really is, is a much bigger talking point than just, should I buy it or not? I think it has to go down to the ability to acknowledge that things are changing, times are changing. Right. And you've got really two choices. Buy the land at the new market value at a new fair price, or don't. And if you don't, you're going to be sitting on the sidelines, waiting for things to correct and go back down to the good old glory days. And I don't know. I'm not saying that that's not gonna happen. I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball or anything. But I do believe that our markets are shifting, and this is a good thing, guys. Properties that I used to sell for a hundred bucks a month are now going for 180. You know, this is so good for us. And for years, I've discussed it with Mark on, hey, man, why is this property only selling for this? And it's like, well, that's what the market justifies. And now I look at it, I'm like, finally, you know, where else in the world can you get three acres for $200? You can't. So we're starting to see the prices climb up with a new surge in demand, and that's going to set a new benchmark. These comps are going to be comps for a long time. They're established. So do I think you should go out and put yourself in a bind and overpay for something? No, absolutely not. But if you got the money in the bank, put it somewhere safe, put it in land. That's what I'm doing. We're buying as much land as we possibly can. And if I look at what we're buying the properties for compared to what I was buying them for four years ago, five years ago, I'm not buying them at 20 cents on the dollar. But if I shift my pricing matrix to reflect today's pricing, I'm buying them not far from that price point. And I even bought a property. We bought a property the other day. We spent, I don't know, probably 45 cents on the dollar. It's not a cheap one, but I'm looking at it. I'm like, this is gonna go. I give it 72 hours, and when it does, it'll be a really good sale. So velocity, right, Mark? Time value of money.

No, I love it. Time, value, money. I mean, I remember, you know, 2000, 2006, it was kind of similar. The prices were going up. It was, you know, very tough to buy at old prices. And you'd get creative, you know, I'd negotiate with someone like Taria, you know, like properties I would be paying for. Let's say, you know, 3200. Back in the day, Tria counters at five grand, right? AM I triathlon? I'm not saying that your counter is unfair. That being said, this is a hotter market than I'm comfortable with. Why don't we do this? If you don't want to meet the middle, you want your five grand, how about we do $100 option for 90 days and well, if I can, you know, I'll sell it. If I can make more, then I will. If not, you know, you keep my hundred bucks and you know, I could lock it up like that. You know, just so you know, during that 90 day time period, you can't sell the property out from under me. Would you be willing to work with me like that?

Would you?

You know Eric's point, right? Let's say that I've already used up all my capital. All right, Tree, Look, I got 3200. I can pay you. Now you own a finance the balance of 1,800. We got a deal. Would that be fair? Now you got a little passive income coming in. This will give me some time to test the market. Would you do that? Something like that. So you get creative. If I'm capital constrained, maybe I go to someone like Tate. Tate, I know you're selling land like crazy. Would you partner with me? Do you have any extra funds you want to invest? I've got this deal locked up type of thing you do. Debt or equity, either one. But you want it. To Tate's point, money loves speed. So don't let money stop you. Don't let the market stop you. Just start getting creative but also be prepared to move quickly in a rising market. And look, the margins are still there, I think. Did we talk about this last week with the ratios? They're still there. So if our margins are still there, our ratios are still there. The fear is that when it turns, you've overpaid. But if you sold it quickly, 30 days or less, it, it's not that bad. It's not that bad because your borrower's paying down your principal anyways. So if they, you know, you get somebody who defaults, you have a whole new, you know, price, you know, essentially. So if I sold it for 5,000, borrow a paid down 1,000, I'm really into it now for 4,000. That's my new cost basis. If I have to resell it again, it's not so bad in our niche. Eric, I'll give you the last word on this.

I think that these deals are probably going to continue to pop up as we're mailing these areas where land is in high demand. And you just need to be prepared to work with those sellers and find creative ways, just like Mark was Saying to make those deals work. Because if you know that on the other side, you can sell this property and you can do it quickly, it's going to be worth what you pay for it to have that next sale. Right. To have that inventory to sell. So of course, we always have to do that within reason. Right. We have to make sure that our numbers are right and we know the area well. But assuming we do, be creative, try different things, be flexible.

Yeah. The one thing you don't want to do, and I saw people do this back in the day, it was broker and they would say, hey, I can help you sell it. And don't do that. You want to own it or you want to option it, Don't. Don't broker it. You can get in trouble doing that type of thing. Scott Bossman, any other creative ways of getting the deal that I didn't mention?

I don't think so. Haven't pulled the option card in a while. I did that when we first started out. I did a few deals like that, that it was definitely a difference maker. And I like the owner financing. I like the financing part. You know, pay him your offer now and finance the rest. I like that idea.

Anything I didn't think of?

No. And I agree with Scott. I've never used the owner financing. That's actually really good, especially for the larger properties.

Right, right. What if we partnered TRIA on the deal and I'll take 50% ownership of the property, but I'll do all the work now to. You want to get 5,000, fine, I'll buy it from you. I'll buy my 50% for a dollar. Now I'm on the deed with you going to sell the property and anything over 5,000 will do it. A 9010 split because I've done all the work. You're going to get your 5,000, which is what you want. Just between you and me, I'm overpaying my 1800. Right. Don't feel badly about it, but I'm giving you your price.

Right.

I'm doing all the work and I want to participate in the upside audit. Would you do that?

I would.

You would do it?

I would do it.

Tate, would you do it?

Depending upon. Depending upon. If you know how badly they're trying to sell it. Just depend on the seller. But if I didn't want the property anymore and I saw a way to get a chunk in my pocket now and a little bit of passive over time. Yeah, I do it.

Yeah. I mean, the scary thing is, is when they bring up The Eric Peterson card. Because I've lived through this. Well, I got this other guy, Eric Landopia. He's gonna, he's gonna pay cash tomorrow. Can you do that? Can you, like, wait, look, you know, Eric's a great guy, but he's not gonna help you participate in the upside on this. Would you say, do it?

I mean, I think the takeaway here is get creative, people, right? Don't, don't let cash limit your ability to scale. Because buyers out there, or, you know, there's buyers out there ready to go, sellers are, you know, maybe they're getting savvy in certain areas and they know what their property work. That's okay. No issue with that. You know, you're gonna have to pay a little bit more, charge a little bit more, but you can find ways. There's people out there who would love to partner with you. They'd love to fund a deal because they got money in the bank that's losing value every single day. And that's the takeaway. Money in the bank is no good. It's no bueno. Put it to work.

As Ray Dalio would say, cash is trash.

Indeed.

And think about, you know, there's so many people in our community now, they're doing the infinite banking concept. They want to put that money to work. They want to be the bank. You've got so many people who are doing, you know, the self directed type of retirement plan, whether it's an EQRP or a self directed ira. They want to get higher returns. They want to have more control. Aunt Millie has got 100 grand sitting in the bank at 0%. Give her 8%, 10%, pay her interest only for the first year and then quarterly. That gives you time, that helps with your cash flow. Right, Aunt Millie? And if you're listening to this, email me markatthelandgeek.com Let me help you, right?

That's just it, Mark. I think, you know, as a society, people know that one of the ways to grow your net worth is by investing in real estate. And everybody wants to do it. And all they need is somebody like, you know, Eric Peterson or the people who've had the pleasure of working with him to come and say, look, here's my track record, here's what I've done. You want a piece of this? All right, get in line. How much money you got to bring to the table? Because I need, you know, I want to work with people who are, who are committed to this and want to see it grow. And you know, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity for a lot of investors out there. I speak with people all the time who want to invest in the land business and, you know, turn them away because it's not a right fit. We don't like your personality. But they keep calling because they know that it's a good opportunity for them.

Right.

So there's, I mean, money should not limit you guys.

Yeah, it's, it's really, it's the only thing that's limiting is your mindset. Can you be creative? Can you solve someone's problem? Is essentially what it is at the end of the day. So, Eric Peterson, we go full circle on the topic of the counter offer. I think we've all decided that, yeah, in this market we should renegotiate, we should negotiate and then figure out ways to get that deal. Is that the conclusion?

I think that's where we've ended up.

Is that where we've ended up?

I think that.

I agree.

The better job we can do to understand our sellers motivation in their needs, the more opportunity we're going to have to work out a deal with them.

That makes sense for everybody.

Right? Right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, final question then for Scott Bossman. What do you do to find out your seller's motivation?

Well, we interview them. You got to diagnose it. You got to get on the phone with them and feel them out. And it's all about relationships. It's all about having a meaningful conversation with that person. And you never know, you know, they might go into the conversation sticking to their guns, saying, I will accept no less than this amount of money for the property. And then after a nice conversation, like Mike Zano does this to everybody, they're just jelly in his hands by the time the conversation's over. I mean, they're like, yeah, I'll accept your offer. But you know, you got to have good. You know, I'm not doing this anymore. But you got to have somebody on your team that's good at talking to people and spending meaningful time with those people on the phone. Because a lot of times this is a dream lost to them and they want to vent a little bit about it. And when they vent about it, cool things happen sometimes.

Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, you know, you put on your, your PT hat and you diagnose or you train your intake manager. You know, where does it hurt? Right? You know, it might be, I need quick cash. It might be we're looking at an investment. It might be. You know, this just didn't work out and I want to talk to you about it. Who knows? But you want to ask the question for sure. You want your intake manager to have that idea of a Mike Zano in the back of their mind that by the end of this conversation they want to do business with you. Right? And even if you don't, if, even if you miss out on that deal, maybe you'll get the next one. You know, maybe they own multiple lots, maybe one. You know, because usually landowners own multiple pieces of property, so you never know. But I thought this is a really good topic of discussion and Eric, I'm glad you brought it up. But now we're at that point in the podcast where we're going to ask myself for the tip of the week, a website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the auto passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before I tell you, we've got to talk about our sponsor this week. You know them, you love them. It's flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Start building that passive income without any headaches, no renters, no rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. But go up that mountain land investing with Scott Todd as your Sherpa. He's going to take you up there quickly, safely, efficiently. In only 16 weeks. Oh yeah, that tuition ain't going to cost you nothing. You're going to make it back guaranteed 180 days less in cash returns. Deal. Just show us your work, your next step. Learn more. Go to landgeek.com training get on a call with the Zen master Mike Zano or the Nightcap OG dude buddy Scott Bossman. So please do that. Okay, Mark, what is your tip of the week? Well, Mark, thanks for asking. There's a. I have a favorite book. I don't think I've talked about this book nearly enough, but it's one of the books that I have by my nightstand and anytime that I'm just in sort of a rut in any way, anyway, I got shingles, right? Like, ah, this stinks. And I pick up this book, I just feel so much better. I feel smarter, I feel more creative. Everything's just better. It's one of those books and it's just a pleasure to read and it makes you think. It is called 40 Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman, who is a neuroscientist. So basically. Have I talked about this before?

I haven't heard it.

So there's so he writes 40 scenarios of what happens after you die and it's really thought provoking and really like life affirming. It's really interesting. So an example is after you die, you see all the other versions of yourself and they're disappointed with you, you know, or you see like, you know, the. It's just really crazy some of the things. Anyways, do yourself a favor, get this book some 40 tales from the afterlives. It's just one of these crazy, thought provoking, life affirming books that really helps you take a look at your current life by projecting into what the afterlife could possibly look like in these very creative scenarios. So check it out. All right. So are we good?

We are good.

All right. I want to thank the listeners. Remind them that the only way that I can convince all these lanky coaches to keep coming on this roundtable is if you do us three favors. You got to follow rate, review the podcast, send us a screenshot of that review. Supportelangic.com, we're going to send you for free the $97 wholetailing course, how to double your money, 30 days or less. All right, let's do this. One, two, three. Let's read them. Not bad, not bad. Awesome. I had Indian food last night, and you guys would appreciate this because the past two times I've ordered from this place, I said medium spice and I'm just sweating, like Nashville hot fried chicken sweat pouring down my face. Like, how is this medium? I'm like, I want American medium, not an Indian medium. So last night I called, I said, I don't want mild, but I don't want medium. I'm like, I want in between. And sure enough, it was perfect. It was just enough heat, you know, I didn't need to shower after I ate. It was amazing. It was amazing.

What did you order?

Chicken tikka masala and saag paneer and lamb biryani and a little aloo gobi.

Sounds really good.

What do you usually eat yet?

I like saag. I love paneer. Anything with paneer in it and I'll eat it.

Anything with paneer. Yeah. Next time you're here for boot camp, I've got the place goes to the best palak paneer. Taj Mahal. Amazing.

Yeah, we went there.

It was good. It was really good. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, I know after I talked about Indian food, Tate's got to run and go eat lunch. So see you guys.

See ya.

Ya.

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