What Are The Dos and Don'ts of Wholesaling in The Land Community?

Hey, it's Mark Pudolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website. And on this week's roundtable, we've all the usual stuff. I'm just going to quickly go through it because you know everybody if you don't listen to an old podcast. But we got the Zen master Mike Zano. We got Dude Buddy, Nightcap, OG Scott Bossman. We got the technician Eric Peterson. I love it when he called me Big Papa Tay.

Litchfield.

You know you love them. The brand, the professor, sky.netlandmoto.com and learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott. Todd, is that the fastest intro we've ever done on the, on the roundtable?

I think that is the absolute fastest, yes.

Do. Do you remember, like, there was a guy who did a commercial really fast? This is my revenge for everybody that starts the podcast on 2x speed. Revenge is mine.

What if we just like, launched into the material? So then they're like, okay, fast forward. And they're like, oh, wait, what happened? I gotta go back.

Yeah, we're changing it all up. Don't get too comfortable, listeners. They're coming. So this week's topic is from last week. We talked about wholesaling and some of the issues with wholesaling, but Mike Zana wasn't even there and he's like our resident wholesaler. So we're going to do a part two on wholesaling, the do's and don'ts of wholesaling. So, Mike Zaino.

Yes, sir.

We might as well start with you. And we should probably just end with you.

I don't know what you guys said last week. I don't.

No, no, we didn't even get into it. We really didn't even get into it. Okay, what are some of the do's and don'ts of wholesaling?

Do's and don'ts. Okay, well, first off, I would say that don't try to sell wholesale retail. I think that happens quite a bit. I think people try to bump their prices up, which is understandable. They want to make a profit. But listen, I don't always double my money on wholes, but I do make money on wholesale. And, you know, especially when I do multiple properties, like when I. If I buy like 20 or 30 or more, I've bought up. You know, we all have like 50, 100 properties at once. And then you negotiate a really good price. But, but still, if you have that many properties, I don't.

If I'm.

If it's one transaction and I'M making, you know, four, $500 per property and say I got 10 of them, that's five grand quick. You know, I don't have to double my money. So I think that my first rule would be that don't try to gouge people, because if you're gonna wholesale, you're gonna want to probably continue to wholesale, and your customer base is gonna get real small. I do enjoy. I mean, does it sting?

No.

I hear we go into the boot camps and people like, yeah, I made, I think was Kevin Sue. I made the best yield. Or his ROI was insane.

And that was a wholesale die I bought from Mike, so. So it doesn't bother me, though.

It really doesn't, because I know he'll come back and buy more. Right? And I made money on that deal too, right.

Maybe I could have made some more.

That's okay. I'll know that next time, Kevin. But, you know, I think that's the first rule I'd say, Mark, don't gouge people.

Don't gouge people. Scott Bossman, the nightcap og, do you want to riff on that as well? What are some wholesale do's and don'ts you see in the marketplace?

Yeah, I mean, I just think to expand upon what Mike said, you have to be fair, you know, in our community, right? If you want to be a long. I mean, this is not a threat, obviously, but to be a long standing, good member of this community, right? You want to be fair, you want to come across as fair, you want to make sure there's enough meat on the bone for everybody. I would say also, when you come to the table with some wholesale property, you do need to give good information. I think the more information you give, the quicker you're gonna sell it. I think if you have a due diligence report, I think that's great. I think if you have some pictures, I think that's great. I don't think you need actual pictures of the property, maybe some aerial screenshots, that type of thing. But if you come to the table with a little bit of information like that, I think that's gonna really be an appropriate thing when you're selling. And then I touched on this a little bit last week, but I think it's kosher to not charge a doc fee on wholesale deals in our community. I mean, really, what does the doc fee do? Recoup some of our costs, right? Our marketing costs, that type of thing, our mailing costs. But really, you can take a property and sell it wholesale the next day. In our group, there's not a lot of work that took place there. So I don't think the need for recouping costs is there on wholesale deals. Therefore, I think the doc fee would be something I would definitely stay away from when I'm trying to sell to somebody else.

Eric Peterson, what would you say if somebody tried to charge you a doc fee on a wholesale deal?

I think I'd tell them that I'm not buying that property if they're going.

To charge me a doc fee.

Have you ever charged a doc fee in a wholesale deal?

Absolutely.

You're on mute. Well, my way, Mike.

Oh, you asked me, Mark.

Yeah, yeah. Have you anybody?

Oh, dog fee. But sometimes I've advised people that, you know, they haven't dealt with another investor before. They could say, listen, I'm gonna, you know, get a geek pay down payment link for $100. It's not a dog fee, it's gonna come off the total price, but it's a good faith payment to sort of have the deed and all that created. So it's not a doc fee, but it could serve as in a similar fashion because we don't want to create documents wholesale or retail without some money in our hands because we all know people ghost us and so not a doc fee, Mark, but in similar sort of strategy, I guess, but it comes off a total price.

Great. So, Ari Peterson, when you're dealing with a wholesaler, you know, just to riff on what Scott and Mike said, what, what else, if anything, would you also be looking for?

Well, I'm going to give an example. Today I had a recent wholesale transaction which I will probably not go back to that person to purchase wholesale again because of the way the transaction was done. There are a couple things to, to note about what happened in that transaction. Typically it would be my expectation that when I'm buying wholesale from another investor, unless otherwise noted, I'm going to get the properties on a warranty deed. I think that's kind of what we kind of teach in the community. That's the expectation that's out there. In this particular case, the seller sold me the properties on a special warranty deed without ever telling me. So that was problem one. The second problem was they didn't record the deed. They gave me the deed and expected.

Me to record it.

I just, I've never dealt with a wholesaler that worked like that. I would never do that. But that's the way this person worked. Now admittedly they were not probably the most experienced land investor and maybe not A member of our community, but nonetheless, you know, I'm not going to work with somebody that treats me as a wholesale buyer like that. I think that it's reasonable to expect when you're buying wholesale from a wholesaler, the number one, if it's not a warranty deed, they're going to tell you about it beforehand. And number two, they're going to record the document for you and complete the documents for you. This particular transaction happened to be in a state where there was a state specific form, and they didn't complete that form. I had to do that too. So it was just all this extra stuff. The deal was good enough. I was. I was just gonna move forward with it anyways, but I won't be going back because of all those things that came up.

You know, I had that happen to me once because just like you said, I'm not going back. It's just. Yeah, I 100% agree. Tate, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, that's. That's interesting. I mean, I don't think I've. I've had people who asked me to record a deed on behalf of the transaction because maybe they didn't have access to simply file or something like that. And I said, yeah, no problem. I'll take it out of the. The amount that, you know, I typically would have paid you for the property, and. And that's totally fine. But to have somebody kind of leave you waiting and hanging around, I mean, that's just. Just not cool. And I think the important thing to remember about working with Wholesale is you're working with a colleague, right? Like you're working with somebody who you hope to work with many more times in the future. I've done deals with everybody on this call. And the one thing that I like about working with Mike is if he sends me a list because he and I have developed a relationship, if I say I'll take them, he doesn't really need to worry about it because I told him, hey, they're mine, I'm buying them, right? And, you know, that's because we've developed a rapport and a relationship. And if I was working with somebody I didn't know, I say, you know, hey, secure the property. I need to know that you're serious, because paperwork and all of that goes into my team. But with Mike, no, he doesn't make me do that because he knows the check's going to come, right? And I think that's just good etiquette, you know, things that I look for when doing wholesale deals. I Mean, I ask everybody, hey, is there anything fishy with these properties?

Right.

Are they going to come on a special warranty? I don't ask that specifically, but I would expect that to be told to me up front. The other thing I want to know is, hey, any liens? Back taxes owed? No. Okay, fine. And it comes down to who you work with, if you trust the person you work with. We're all human, we've all missed things. But the good thing is, if you work with somebody who you trust and they come to you and say, look, there's a mistake. This property's not what we thought it was, they're going to tell you, here's your money back or let me fix it.

No problem.

I bought a property recently and the property was recorded into our name. And it turns out that the death certificate from the previous buyer didn't get recorded in the right sequence. And so we own it. With a dead guy. Well, I called the previous guy who sold us the property and they said, my bad, I'll take care of it. And they emailed me and said, look, we got it resolved, you're good to go. That's why you work wholesale, right? You want to work with somebody who says, my bad, mea culpa, let me take care of this. No hard feelings.

Yeah, absolutely. That sounds very Zano esque, but I could be wrong. It could be another wholesaler.

No, Mike's good, his properties are right. But I mean, I've bought property from lots of people and it's like, oh, made a mistake on the legal description. We made a mistake on the apn. Whatever. As long as they fix it, it doesn't negatively impact my relationship with them by any means.

Yeah. You know, we should talk about Tate. What's that? I mean, is how great we are to work with as wholesale buyers. We're kind of like, these are the do's and don'ts of wholesale. What makes a good buyer? You know what makes a good buyer?

Somebody who's got money right now, right now.

We're ready to go right now. We know exactly, we know exactly the questions to ask. If we can close right away, there's no waiting, you know? Well, I mean, that money is good.

You know, money loves speed, right? And if you can call somebody up and say, hey Mike, I know you want 500 a lot, but I'm going to give you 450 and the checks in the mail tonight, he's going to say, do you have the right address? Right. That's the only way he's going to respond to that question because I'm buying all of it, right. And he knows that if I say I want it, then the money's coming. So, yeah, you want to work with people who aren't going to beat you up too much. And it's a painless transaction.

Yeah, yeah. So, Scott Todd, on all this.

You know, the. I was going to ask, like, why is the person selling the property wholesale? Why do they have to record the deed? Right? Like, man, you're getting a good deal. And obviously, I think Eric kind of talked on that, right? Like, it's just the normal standard. Typically, whoever sells the property is the one who records the deed. That's just the way that it is. One thing I would think that would also just word of caution, like, if you're going to buy land wholesale, this is something that, like, I see this happen all the time, is you get in such a hurry because you want to buy the land. You're like, someone sends out, like, I don't know, a list. Zano sends out a list, and you're like, you know what? I want it all. And Mike's like, well, okay, no problem. Because, you know, he has no reason to doubt you. And then all of a sudden, you start going, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What exactly can I do on this property? Like, you did no due diligence in advance. You don't know anything about the area. You just saw something, and you're like, I want it. And then you want to go and ask a million questions. Well, look, I get it, okay? Like, I understand that. But you know what? There are people that, like, work in these areas who know them. Like, you say, hey, this is the property. And they're like, oh, yeah, I sell this all the time. Great. Now, I'm not saying that you're wrong for jumping in and buying it, but before you do that, you might want to research and do a little bit of advanced due diligence, some county research. You want to know what you're doing? Don't just jump on a wholesale deal because you think it's not going to. Land offers and deals, they come all the time. They're like the bus. So use some time, understand what you're getting yourself into before you jump in and make a payment. And then you want to say, well, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe this is wrong. Because, look, the way that the credit card companies work and the way this does, time is money. And if I have to Issue you a refund. Well, I'm not happy about issuing a refund. Not because. Not because I lost all the money, because I'll resell the land. You know what drives me crazy about the refunds is that now they keep the merchant fee. So whenever I have to give someone a refund, I'm like, oh, 20 bucks or 30 bucks, you do that a couple times and man, that's a meal. Okay. It's a few meals depending on where you eat.

It's a few donuts.

Few donuts.

$1.06 a day, man, that's a lot of donuts.

Yeah. But Scott, I think what you're bringing up is a great point because as a buyer, I remember back in the day, I was that buyer that would feel a tremendous amount of pressure to take down the entire deal because I didn't want Eric Peterson swooping in, right. So I didn't do enough due diligence. I felt a lot of pressure. I'm nervous writing the check and sure enough, after I own it, I start finding all the flaws. So the only reason I had to buy it so fast in such an undisciplined way was out of fear. And you never make a good decision ever in life, whether it's land or anything. In an emotional state when you, if you feel rushed, that's. That should be a red flag. Hey, I'm probably not the buyer for this. And if your wholesalers and saying you got 24 hours to make this, so many other people interested in it and you don't want to take those 24 hours and you feel pressure, just say, pass. I'm not the person for this. Come back to me when I have a little bit more time to do proper due diligence. And I think that's a don't in selling world world is don't be the person that pressures the buyers. Even if you have a whole queue of people ready to buy, they're not going anywhere. Give people the proper time to do proper due diligence so they want to work with you again. What do you think, Zaino?

Yes, I think that's really important and a good point because that's just not for wholesale market. There's times where you might have a retail buyer giving you that sort of pressure. And the sooner you embrace the fact that there's no shortage of land out there, that there the word infinite isn't probably applicable. But there's so many deals, you're not going to feel pressured by one. No matter how sweet it sounds. There's always another one. I like to say that someone started five years ago. Someone's talked to me about, I guess this is a related subject about an area that's really busy by a lot of investors. I said, well listen, someone started five years ago there has made a million dollars. Someone who's going to start in five years is going to make a million dollars there. The opportunity is never going to go away. So don't feel pressured by these deals. So passing Mark on a deal because of feeling a pressure on time constraint. Yeah, absolutely. There's no shortage out there.

Well, yeah. So any last final words of wisdom? Mike Zaino as a wholesaler on the do's and don'ts.

I will, I think that Mark, I think that sometimes people will move towards wholesale because they're having some difficulty with their marketing and rather than dig deep into their marketing they find the quick out which is the wholesale. Now I needed the wholesale because I was in debt and so on and so forth. I have a business, it's not my particular llc. I have one with a friend. We do wholesale. It's just easier for us to do cash deals. But I wouldn't just gravitate. I talk to of a lot of people because they know I did wholesale and they want to do wholesale. And my advice is go for the terms. Don't just wholesale because you feel like you're having a hard time marketing because that takes a skill to develop, just like buying the property was a skill you developed. So I would say don't go there too quickly because you feel like you're not getting traction on retail. Dig your heels in the retail. Sales will come. So I think that's important.

I think that's actually a whole other roundtable discussion is what is your heuristic when to wholesale a property as opposed to when to retail it. So thank you Mike Zano. We've got a whole new topic for.

Next week and it's on transcript.

Fantastic. It's on the transcript which you know. But now we're, we're going to ask you Mike for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book. Before you do so we've got to give some love to our sponsor which is flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Start going up that mountain of land, investing quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd who's done it thousands of times. And by the way, that tuition investment you're going to make in flight school, get back 180 days or less guaranteed. Just do what Scott tells And let us see your work. And you're all Good. Go to thelandgeek.comtraining to learn more thelandgeek.com training all right, Scott, Tal, you look like you're about to bail out Mike here at the tip of the week, but he looks like he's about to.

Make fun of me. I was just going to ask him to turn his screen black like he used to back in the day because there's always pressure with Scott. There it is. Thank you, Scott.

There it is.

I don't think he was gonna bail me out. I think that he just anticipates a quote. He's ready to just dive into it. But it's not a quote today, Mark. It's not a quote. In fact, it's a two part tip. It's got two parts to it.

He's back.

I gotta look down.

I can't even look at him. All right, so the first one.

I'll go away for you.

I'll go away.

Don't worry, don't worry. I'm out.

Now he's just showing off this new feature. I don't know how he does that. He just fades out. What is that?

Fade to black. Fade to black.

Fade to black.

Always got the coolest gadgets. So, you know, I love Ray Dalio. I love his book principles. So part one of my of the tip of the week is you got to get the app on your phone. I may have mentioned it before, but.

Everybody who has never heard of it.

It'S a free app. You can go in. There's even coaching. Like I'm looking at it right now. I could say, how do I know if my plan is a good one? You click on it and, you know, race principle. Remember that a good plan should resemble a movie script. It shows you where in the book it is. It shows you all. It shows you all relative quotes and it's. It's really super helpful. That guy is a master at, you know, execution, I think.

You know, I don't know too much.

About his world of investing, but his principles for success are, I believe, universal, and we could all use those. So that's, that's part.

Is it principles in action?

Yes, it is. Let me see.

Principles in action. Okay. Yep, I'm downloading it now.

Oh, it's free. It's awesome. I just think that guy gives back a lot and I love it. So the second one, this is the one where. I guess for those of you watching, Ray Dalio just joined us on Scott Todd, screen. So the next Tip he's a little off the wall. That's why I gave a solid one for us. But it's not if you think about what I'm about to say. So I've been doing a lot lately with processes because of process moto and just trying to restructure my business, just, you know, go through with a fine tooth and comb and just make it better and make it work more efficiently. But sometimes, you know, you can get to this overload. And I think this happens in our land business and all businesses where your brain's working so fast, maybe you got multiple tabs open, you just start to really, you know, go into that melt. Remember the slide used to show? You show at a boot camp, the guy in the corner with his head down and it's just like, oh man, I'm defeated. And it's just, it's a, it's a feeling that we've all felt, right? You could describe it a multitude of ways. But I off the wall, I found some comfort. And you know, a lot of successful investors do play cards. I'm talking about cards. I like to do something like solitaire. Something that just takes my mind off and I start playing and I let. I just forget about what's going on. I take forcibly take a break.

Because I really believe that sometimes to.

Grow fast, you have to move slow. Like you just have to slow down and you start to just. You take. It's like when you try to remember someone's name and you're like, come on, what's that guy's name? And you're like. Then all of a sudden it pops in your head. I think that we know a lot of these answers to our problems, but we have to create a space for them to come up, to bubble up. So second tip is if you're feeling stressed out and you know, slow down, take a break, take a deep breath, go do something else. It could be meditate, could be play on the guitar like Eric Peterson. Or you could just play a game of solitaire, old fashioned. And you will then reinvigorate yourself and you probably come up with a solution or a piece of a solution to your problem.

Stop. Osman, how do you de stress? What kinds of activities do you do to slow down, to speed up? I like it. Zainab.

I do a few things. I will go exercise and leave my phone behind. I will go read a book and leave my phone behind. And I like doing projects. So I'll leave my phone behind and go work on like we just did a basement just did our basement over and, you know, it's cool. It clears my mind. That's what I do.

Tate, what about you?

Yeah, I mean, reading a book or riding my bike, that's kind of what I tend to do. But it's also helpful to play with the kids. You know, go outside and run around and dig in the dirt. That's what we've been doing recently is my kids are in the age of digging, so.

Nice.

Digging a lot of stuff, but just getting outside and, like, getting out of my own head. Right. Some of the best ideas I've ever had have happened to me while I was riding my bike. Right. Think about different situations. And it's not like I go out there and I say, I'm going to go ride. And while I'm riding, I'm going to think about work. No, that's not the way it typically works. That's kind of that shower metaphor. When you're in the shower, the best ideas come to you because you're not thinking about work. You're thinking, this feels great. You know, like a normal human being is in there with a warm shower. Unlike you, Mark, who's still taking cold showers, which is so weird. But the rest of us are in there getting warm. It's a comfort. And, hey, the good ideas come. You probably don't get those ideas because you're freezing to death. You're shivering.

You know what, though? I've trained my.

I've trained my body, knowing that Theta State.

I don't know if you can have a cold shower in Arizona.

Is there such a thing? Cold shower in Arizona State?

Theta State? I think you may.

What was it? What was the memo that's getting up on Mark on this podcast? I didn't see that. It's just that cold shower. That's.

That's what I was getting at.

Okay, I'll show you the science on why the cold shower is so effective.

Don't forget to show me the science on why a warm shower is such a luxury.

You know what? There's something to be said about getting out of your comfort zone and that every morning you get reminded of it. It's a superpower. I can go anywhere in the world. They don't have hot water. I'll be fine. You know who's going to be crying? You, Tate. Litchfield. You can ruin your whole vacation. Not me. I won't have to switch hotels. I'll be just fine.

You're gonna die. You get the text while you're in the cold shower. Thank you.

Now that we croak. All right, Eric Peterson, what do you do to.

I think you know, oftentimes like changing your environment. So if you have a room in your house or somewhere, that's your office, getting out of that office, being somewhere else is the first step for me. I like to go for a drive or run errands or something like that. To me, like, I don't know, I just enjoy that. And it's, I'm away from everything else. So that's one thing I do of many.

No guitar.

No guitar is, hasn't been played in quite some time. One day it'll come back. But I think you got to get the kids out of school first. They keep us busy.

All right, Scott. Todd, I imagine you're living a stress free existence, but if you weren't, what kinds of activities would you do?

I'd go fly the plane.

Wait.

Or for Mike Zano, I'd go fly the plane.

That just was very trippy. I almost just had like a seizure. How'd you do that?

Why, Mike.

That'S like watching like a beat, like one of those 70 shows. I don't know, like the Monkeys or something when they, when they stop playing music and they do that how you did that.

For those of you listening, go watch the video of this on YouTube. It's worth it. It's worth it. Just, just for the special. Todd. So, Scott, when you're flying, then you're not, you're relaxing. I'd be stressed out.

You know, the thing is that, okay, so I guess if you don't know how to fly a plane, be stressful, right? But if you know how to fly a plane, like there's, there is, there is a level of peace up there. Your phone's not ringing. There's like no one can reach you.

Okay.

The air traffic controllers could reach you if you were on the frequency with them. And you know, essentially it's, it's literally peace and quiet up there. And you know, you go up, go up high enough, it's smooth, you get smooth air. And it's just, there's. What it does is, yes, you got to concentrate. It's not like you're just going up there and aimlessly wandering around the sky. You got to think about it. But then what happens is you start to think about other, other things. You stop thinking about what you're dealing with and you start to think about something else. And I'll tell you what, back in, back in December, I was trying to solve some problem. I'm sitting at A computer trying to solve this problem. Trying to solve it, try to solve it.

Couldn't do it.

And my wife's like, hey, you know, let's go. Let's go fly these dogs from Miami to Tampa. And I'm like, okay, let's go. So we get up in the air, we go. And while I'm flying across Florida, it just hit me, like, why haven't you done this? And I'm like, oh, man, why haven't I done that? So I land and get home, and sure enough, the answer came to me while I was up in the air. I find that happens quite often as you get out of your element, stop thinking about it, think about something else, and then the answer will come to you.

I like all the answers. I think I have the best answer, though, which is the power of sleep. You've got a problem you want to solve, write it down. Maybe six o' clock at night, let it go. And then let your unconscious mind over. Good night of sleep. Not a Scott Bossman Mike Zano nightcap, night of sleep. No alcohol before bed. No nightcap. Alcohol free. Don't drink caffeine after, say, 12 in the afternoon and get a good night's sleep, and you'll see in the morning how much more relaxed, how much more focus, focused, and that the answer to that problem will probably come to you. So there you go. I shouldn't even share that after all the hazing. I took this roundtable podcast. It's like my own tip of the week. But that's okay. That's okay. I'll be sending some ice cubes later today to prepare him for a cold bath since he doesn't want to take a cold shower. What do you think, Tate?

No, thanks, man.

I'm good.

All right, well, I want to thank the listeners and just remind you the only way that we're going to get Scott Todd to do these incredible visual effects is if you do this three little subscribe rate, review the podcast, Send a screenshot of that review to support thelandgeek.com we're going to send you for free the $97 wholetailing course. How to double your money, 30 days or less. All right, are we ready to do this? One, two, three. Not bad. Wow. I haven't been ganged up online on that, on something like that since 8th raid.

I don't think it was intentional.

Yeah, it just. It just started to snowball, You know? That was fun. That was a lot of fun.

Good podcast.

Good podcast for sure. The. But now, now, now we gotta write down for next week the here. So for next week, it'll be the heuristic of when should you wholesale? When should you retail? Right. When to wholesale.

You know, people that are still listening to this podcast are like, is this really what happens when the podcast ends? Like, they just start talking about the next podcast. It is. It is so a little behind the scenes baseball. Normally we like banter, but we're starting to banter now before we even let the let freedom ring.

So I know we're, we're mixing it up.

I think we warned everybody. You warned them. Be on your toes. We're mixing it up.

Yeah, we're mixing it up. All right, have a great day, everybody. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Start your journey journey at www.thelandgeek.com and www.scotttog. net Rate and Review the podcast and email support at thelandgeek. Com. Your screenshot for a free passive income launch kit.