Where to sell land in 2026

I once dined on steak with a candle's soft glow, but the bill left my savings despairingly low. Now wisdom has taught me, so simple, so grand, Eat baloney, buy land. Oh, eat baloney, buy land. Play the fork for the deed in your hand. Skip the fillet, let the sandwiches stand. Your fortune will grow when you buy your own land.

Welcome everybody to Land Geek Nightcap. We're gonna clear something up right away from the get-go here. Land is still selling. In fact, good deals are still moving every day. But in 2026, the market's a little more sophisticated than it was a few years ago. Buyers have more options. And the investors who sell it the fastest aren't just listing properties, they're running a marketing system. The difference between a property that sells in 2 weeks and one that takes 2 months to sell usually comes down to a couple things. Where you list it, how you stack your channels, and whether you actually follow up with buyers. So tonight we're breaking down the 2026 land marketing playbook so you can move properties faster and keep buyers flowing, uh, whether you're selling for cash or terms. What's up everybody? Good to see you guys. You're so quiet.

It's just so good at the intro, it's like captivating.

I felt the same way. I just wanted to keep going.

Yeah, we're all going on mute.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll just, uh, I'll just run this thing. Yeah, uh, welcome back to Land Geek Nightcap, everybody. Tuesday, 9 PM Eastern. It's when we talk deals, we talk mechanics of buying land. If you're new here, uh, Mike, uh, for the people that are new here, do you mind telling everybody who we are and what we're doing?

Sure, sure. So we're the Nightcap Land Geek guys, um, uh, the three of us on this side. We all learned from the guy in the bottom right there, Mark J. Podolsky. He's the land geek. He taught us how to invest in land. We bought— we buy land from, uh, $5,000, a little pocket, you know, $4,500 to $5,000. We sell it on owner financing, we make our money back within a year, then we have years of payments thereafter. That's the one-time transaction with recurring payments. We do it over and over again. We build a little portfolio, and then we retire our wives, retire ourselves, we go and have fun, and, uh, then we come talk about it.

How much caffeine you had today, Mike? That was really good.

Not too much, but I have a new Rocketbook that's got me excited. You guys ever use one of those?

The, uh, you know, you wash it away, you put it in the microwave, and then the ink goes away.

Like a shrinky dink?

I don't see it. I just got—

microwave. You use a little wipey.

You always got new gadgets over there.

I don't know, I think it was like— was it the Forbes one showed me this thing and you might microwave it?

I don't know. I don't know about the microwave, but I just—

when you microwave it, the ink goes away.

I just had this one thing today, uh, this week where I made myself completely mobile for doing nightcaps and things, so I bought like my Rocketbook. I bought a little thing to put my phone on. I bought a portable Wi-Fi. I bought a recharge. I have, I have, I have Wi-Fi everywhere I go. And I just got kind of geeky this week and bought a bunch of stuff, so I feel pretty cool. And a new backpack because I love that.

Ah, I mean, you only have 20 of those.

We need 21. That's the rule.

Oh man. Well, it's good to see everybody here tonight. So tonight we're talking marketing. Well, I mean, oh wait, let's do some more intros first. So we got Mike Zaino, the Zen Master. Tonight he's calling himself the Land Buddy in the lower left. I'm the Dude Buddy. Mike's the Land Buddy. John's John in the upper right. He's the Nutter Buddy.

Nutter Buddy.

And the godfather himself, Mark J. Podolsky, has knighted himself the Dirt Buddy.

Nice, I like it.

Yeah, Dirty Buddy, Dirt Buddy, Dirt Buddy. Yeah, I like it. I think it is better. So good to see everybody here, and thanks everybody for, as always, for your comments and questions in the chat. We'll definitely entertain those as we go. As well. And we'll celebrate some wins, hopefully. Well, let's kick it off here. Let's start with the big picture. So I know for all of us, land is still selling, right? So let's talk, Mark. If some— yeah, let's start with Mark. Mark, if somebody had inventory right now, what are the core listing platforms people are utilizing to move property as quick as possible?

Okay, so it, it kind of depends, like, like the bucket of land. If it's in our, in our niche, like what Mike was saying, say more, uh, not more, less expensive property, say your cost basis was $500 to $5,000, then I would be looking at the neighbors Facebook Marketplace and the groups, and like a landmodo.com, landandfarm.com, landflip.com, maybe, you know, Landcentric. It's like the lands, right? If it's more expensive property, then I might invest in like a land.com, um, subscription, but not, not for, for our properties. So that's, that's kind of how I, I think about it. But I really loved in the intro I found it so captivating that you need a marketing system. You just can't sort of just create an ad and follow up the lead. Like, you need an actual marketing system. So I would say that this is part of your system, is this—

the platforms.

The platforms.

But also, what is my process? And I, I need to know if I get 3 leads on Land Moto, I can convert that to a sale. I might need 50 leads on Facebook to convert to a sale. And what is my speed to lead? So is that lead comes in, how quickly am I or my team responding? And in what way are we responding? And are we tracking it? Are we— do we know it? Do we have the system? And then we can sort of play the game Okay, well, I'm— I feel like I'm talking a lot, but we're gonna like do the Pareto principle. So I know that if 20% of my marketing on this platform is giving me 80% of my leads and sales, I'm gonna go invest more in there and I'm gonna cut this off, especially if I'm a startup and I'm new. So I might need to get that data and then focus.

I love it, I love it. But John Burnett, isn't this stuff expensive, what Mark's talking about?

I mean, a lot of the, the land.com part that he mentioned is expensive, but, um, only for more expensive property. It's for more expensive properties, right? Or like, if you use land.com, you have to figure out a way to cycle because it's so expensive per listing exposure. You have to figure out a way to cycle that exposure across all of your properties and not just spend $500 on an expensive listing for one $5,000 property, right, for a month. You know, like that, it just gets crazy expensive. So I— but the other things, you know, you can build a system around it and you can run a lot of these really cost-effectively, right? And so you need to— if you, if you invest effectively, then you can get a good return on that.

So I love it. I love it. Yeah, I think a lot of people, they have the, the notion that marketing can be really expensive. We talk to people all the time. Now, what, you know, how much am I going to earmark every month for marketing? I mean, you can be really cheap, you know. Facebook Marketplace is free. Craigslist is free. We still get leads on Craigslist. Craigslist is not dead, right? Uh, the best, cheapest lead though, Mike, You know, are you gonna— are you gonna complete me here? Best, the best, cheapest lead. Yeah, oh, I mean, yeah, okay, you have complete me, but I was thinking of somebody— I was thinking of somebody different. The best, cheapest lead I think is the neighbor.

Oh yeah, I thought Mark already covered that, that's why I didn't want to—

oh, I don't think I said the buyer's list.

You said neighbor. You said neighbor. That's why I didn't say it.

I see. My fault.

That's okay. Mark completed you. It's okay. I half completed you. Mark fully completed you.

I'm just sitting here in the upper right-hand corner.

But, but listen, I think we should talk about the neighbors for a minute, because how many people don't market to the neighbors? A lot of people. They don't reach out. I think you need to have a process for that. I think that's part of your marketing process, is not only have— having like a stack of areas where you market, but the neighbor needs to be in there. And what process do you have for reaching out to them, whether it's a letter or reach out via email or text or that type of thing? Uh, don't overlook that for sure.

Yeah, and I think it's important, like The money's in the follow-up. Like, I want, I want that prospect to be embarrassed to ghost me. Like, you said you were interested in land, now it's my job to keep following up. Yeah, keep following up. I'm gonna, you know, keep following it. Like, and then eventually, like, they're gonna be embarrassed. That's right. Like, you 7 times you followed up with me. Oh, I'm so sorry, I just got really busy.

Right.

Uh, no, I'm not interested in land anymore. Okay, good. But if you are going to be interested at some point later, is it okay if I email you? Now they're on my buyers list. Or, oh yeah, I've got some questions. Great, can we schedule a call? Or let's chat about it on, you know, the, the Insta chats, the DMers, whatever, right? My, uh, DMers. DM us on the, on the interwebs somehow, right?

You are definitely dating yourself.

Yes, just go to my AOL email, let's talk.

Yeah, exactly. We go to chat room, my MSN chat.

Yeah.

All right, awesome. Okay, well, let's get back to the buyers list, Mike. I know you're a big fan of the buyers list, so Uh, you know, it's another part of the marketing process. So, well, what are your thoughts on, on that?

It is— well, I have other thoughts, but if you want me to talk about that, I'll talk about that thought.

Um, so we'll go talk about that first, please.

Yes, the buyer's list. I think that, uh, it's important, you know. It's one of the reasons we tend to focus— oh, can I do this? Like, I have this area in West Texas that I like. Scott hates when I point at my map. This is just a great talking point, you know. This. Look, I feel like I'm on some sort of very pretentious—

it's actually a little, little bit pretentious.

Thousands of properties out here.

Look at all the land.

Look at all the land. And so if you have people that are interested in a specific area, well, now you can sell a lot of property there because they're the ones that you're going to engage with over and over again. It's like, I'm always all of a sudden going to throw these people a piece of property in Florida. Maybe they'll like it. Everybody likes Florida. Let's try like, uh, I don't know, uh, Utah or Oregon. Like, these people want to be in West Texas, so that's what they need to see. So I think buyers list needs to be focused. But that's not all I have, Scott. I have a Rocketbook with more information.

Can I, can I ask a quick question? Can you pronounce the word O-R-E-G-O-N again?

Oregon.

Oregon. You know he's never done any deals there because that, uh, yeah, that would not be accepted.

Acceptable deals in Klamath County, Oregon.

It's more like, it's more like O-R-G-A-N is, is pretty much what it is. Organ. Okay, okay, there you go. Good job.

I took the liberty to write some key, uh, principles of marketing in my, in my Rocketbook. You like to hear them?

Okay, this is literally devolved into a Rocketbook commercial. Like, if you're just joining us, we have no affiliation with Rocketbook.

Rocketbook is really so 2019. Like, I thought Rocketbook was done and over.

No, no, no, never.

Cool kids are using Remarkable.

Uh, Mark, he has a Remarkable too.

I love a Remarkable, but I like the Rocketbook a little better.

Okay, I mean, John, what do you have, an iPad?

I've got a Kindle Scribe. It's not my Post-its.

You want to talk 1930, then you got Post-it notes over there. I mean, come on, wagon, and go buy some more of those at the store.

Yeah, yeah, I'm old school.

Can I, can I talk about what I wrote?

Please. Oh yes, please.

So I would think if we talk like— because I don't know what, uh, like what got you to say that thing in the beginning about land still selling. Because if somebody challenged you that land's not selling, you kind of said it.

I've just heard some things out there lately that lands— maybe it's the interwebs, some of the social media platforms. People are talking about how it's hard to sell land right now, and I disagree. But it could be different types of land. As well.

Here's the thing, I wrote down temperature check. If you think it's hard to sell land, come on, land will always— land will always sell forever. It's always— everybody always wants land. I mean, come on, that's— this— that is like a sought-after commodity. I don't care what market you're in, people want land. It's just you have to price it right to sell it, right? So if you're asking too much or you're not making it attractive— I think what we specialize in, the 4 of us, and then all of us at Land Geek and people that work in these small deals, is pricing at a point that is super attractive, right? But also gets our money back quick. It's like that sweet spot. That's why $5,000 and lower is great, right? We can have an affordable monthly payment, we can move it quickly, we can recapture our money, we can redeploy to do it again and back and forth and again and again. That's how you can take a small amount of money and scale it. So first of all, you got to price it right. But think about this: if you mailed one letter a day, that's a tiny amount of acquisitions. Right? One letter a day goes up. If you have one ad a day, it's a tiny amount of sales, right? I mean, it's kind of the same thing. We talk about mailing and marketing. I think we need to embrace that. So the secret here is scale to win, and systems is what you need, and systems equal freedom. I'm just going to shut the book.

Wow, put that aside. No more— no reason to use it anymore tonight.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to erase it and take notes.

I concur.

Oh, There you go.

Oh yes, that was an alley-oop, Mark. Thank you.

I think the key word here is system. What was your little equation again? Say it again.

Scale systems equal freedom.

Systems equal freedom. All right. And with the marketing, there are multiple systems here, right? You have not only the ad posting system and the stack of areas where you need to post the properties, Right. But if we talk a little bit more about follow-up again, I think we were— I think we should talk about that briefly as well, because you really need some key systems in the follow-up with people in order to get those leads. You know, Mark talked about hitting them up 7 times, but let's talk a little bit more about like what specific processes do you guys have for follow-up? John Burnett, you want to start with that while I deal with my stupid dog?

John, he passed the baton to you.

John's frozen.

Is he pretending?

He's frozen. My, my— can you see me? Can you hear me?

No, you're frozen though.

Yeah, frozen. We can hear you.

Oh, I'm frozen.

Let it go, let it go.

But for Frozen Face, it's pretty good.

Yeah, you didn't get caught.

But it's great. What, what was the question? What was the question?

Is, John, what, what systems do you have for follow-up with your potential buyers?

So systems for follow-up, I mean, honestly, like, a lot of it is just my salesperson is my system for follow-up. So It's not the best answer.

So, okay, go ahead.

But is your salesperson using Follow Up Boss?

Yes, she is. So she's using Follow Up Boss. Um, and so I think it's important, and I do think like sometimes people are marketing enough, right? So sometimes there's a sales problem. People are saying, I don't— I'm not selling property, right? And they're actually marketing enough to sell property. It's the follow-ups. That are an issue, right? And so I think that from a systems standpoint, you want to have good systems there, but you also want to be making sure that you're really pushing to get people on the phone, right? You're generally not going to sell property to people just through email and text communication alone. You have to work to get people on the phone. So if you've got a bunch of messages coming through Facebook and you're only having written communication and you're never pushing for that phone call, it's going to be really hard to convert anyone. So am I still frozen?

Now you're, you're live. You're live again.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's like a little—

John, do you—

it feels like— go ahead, Mark. Like a martial arts movie. It's like— it does.

You're right. Come on, John.

Another buddy's a little delayed. Uh, John, do you have some type of, uh, do you have some type of email marketing sequence for everybody who opts into your, to your buyers list, or they opt into a certain property landing page or that type of thing?

You know, I don't right now. I really should. So right now we don't have a marketing sequence, but we do, um, we do some content marketing right now, and we just have like blogs that we send everybody on our buyers list that we just put together with AI. And so that goes out and that like helps us to kind of establish trust with, um, with our buyers. So we send that out on Mondays.

But you have a system for that, right? You have a routine for sending out your Monday blog. A lot of us have weekly blogs, a lot of us have weekly deals of the week for our buyers list, a lot of us have email drip series after somebody opts into our buyers list. And then, you know, like you mentioned, the sales assistant processes are very important, I think, right? And what was— why are you shaking your head, Zainal?

You just love that word. I don't even know if it's real. Processes.

Processes. That's a real word.

So weird if you just casually had a conversation and said that to somebody, right? So I don't know. This guy's presumptuous. Like, come on.

But what I'm getting at is we have these systems on the, the follow-up side, right? And, uh, yes. Anyway, I think we've covered marketing. Did we miss anything else?

I would say we didn't discuss the text piece of the marketing, which I think is important. Like, think about the last retail store you went to, and they said to get 15% off, give us your, your phone number, and, and you opt in to SMS communication. Because we're all addicted to our phones. Maybe not John because he's frozen, but the three of us are addicted to our phones. And so it's just so easy to start texting them as long as you have permission. Now you have to be careful. Texas, you have to be TCPA compliant. Texas does not allow it without these restrictive things, so you don't want to text in Texas. But otherwise you can do that. And just like you want them to opt into your email list and get permission, you want to get permission to text them. And I have a, a buddy who has a startup where you can get a Twilio number that you can basically warm up, and then once people opt in, it will, it will send the blue bubble. So it looks like a friend is texting you. It's very psychologically powerful. So I'm really excited about, uh, that piece of technology.

Are you saying that only blue bubbles are, are friend bubbles?

Yes.

Okay, just want to clear that.

I'm drawing a white line in the iPhone sand.

Yes, yes you are, yes you are. Uh, all right, blue bubbles are friend bubbles.

By the way, it's a great marketing tactic. Because if you're not, you know, offending someone by noon, you're not marketing hard enough. Like, I'm choosing to, you know, offend the Android people. And oh yeah, so I'm picking my people. But that's okay.

Rumor has it they have a pretty decent camera.

I don't know.

No, it's great. But it's who wants to deal with the green bubble. I know, I know.

The green— that's about it.

I'm saying the UI is horrible too. I don't know, just saying.

Anyway, we should get the chat going.

I think John's on an Android right now. That's why he's frozen.

Am I still frozen?

Yeah, you're—

now you're blurry. Frozen and blurry.

Oh, can somebody help John pay Starlink bill?

Oh man, uh, I'm gonna refresh.

I'm gonna pop out and pop in. We'll see.

Let's actually talk about one more marketing thing before we get to some questions, because we have some questions, uh, coming through here. Um, I think it's, it's frequency of ad posting, but also, um, tweaking your ad postings if the property hasn't sold, right? I think we should talk about that because We want to sell these things in 30 to 60 days, and if they're not moving, something needs to be changed in the marketing. So Mark, I know you talk about this a lot. What, what suggestions do you have to people if they haven't sold the property in 30 to 60 days? I like— what do we look at?

Yeah, I like to isolate one variable because if I change too many things, yeah, then I don't know what didn't resonate. So the first thing I'll look at is the number of views. So if I'm not getting a lot of views on my ad and no one's seeing it, that's the first thing I want to fix. And so I'm going to fix the headline. Now, somewhere in the headline, I'd like to make it irresistible. And maybe it's either the language— it could be, it could be the price. Maybe I need to somehow show the that this is a great deal in, in the headline in some way, shape, or form. But that's where I, I would start first is that first variable is headline. Then I might work on pricing and then I might work on, on copy. But that's, that's the way I think about it. I'd be curious how the Zen Master thinks about it.

Well, first of all, am I the only one getting any feedback? Anybody get any feedback?

I'm getting feedback as well.

Is it John? Is he haunting us?

Oh wait, there, John is back.

I'm not getting—

I was haunting you.

That was just me going—

I think it was you actually, because now it went away. Yeah, it's gone.

No, Mark, what I find interesting about that is we talk about when we're mailing that the market can speak to us, right, depending on if we get too many responses or too few. But now you're sort of talking about how the market speaks to us on the other side of the equation, selling. I like that. And then making minor tweaks to sort of see if that is what's necessary, rather than just make a whole bunch of adjustments and then not know what really was the cause of the change, right? So I think that's pretty astute. I look at Scott when I say my new words.

Yes. Yeah.

So I would, I would, uh, I would also, uh Concurred.

Oh, concurred. Would you guys say, uh, I think we find success, uh, with this in our business, highlighting the monthly payment in, in the title of the ad. Would you say that that's, uh, um, has it been a good technique for you to utilize in your ads?

I want to hear what John says.

Any thoughts on that?

John, I think—

do you highlight the monthly payment in your ad title? And if so, do you think that's beneficial?

Uh, yeah, sometimes I do, and I do think it can be helpful for sure. So I do think that I found to be one of the most helpful leveraging features of an ad to be the picture too. So like you can pick a subdivision like and look at it and you've got basically an identical property, but this one looks like a place you want to be and this looks like a barren wasteland, right? Like, and, you know, we— I've, I've had multiple times where we get pictures back and they just look super drab, and then you just pull it up and just play with the saturation and the contrast and the brightness and just drag things around a little bit, and all of a sudden it just looks— it just really pops. And so sometimes if your lead flow is really low, it's just as simple as, as having, you know, editing your pictures and making them pop.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Now that rings a bell, because I remember when I was in the fire department, I'd be going to a fire, same fire as somebody else, I'd hear them tell the story and I'd be like, it sounds like a version of Backdraft. Like, what, what, we were at the same fire? So same story, same experience, I mean same event, but from different perspectives can create different imagery in your mind. So I like what you're saying there, John. It resonates, you know. That's why, uh, anyway, I just thought that was interesting, you know. We'd be at the same event and one person telling the story, you're like, man, I was there, what are you talking about? Like, it sounds like, you know, uh, you know, a scene out of Backdraft. You're like, are you sure that's what happened? So I think the imagery is vivid.

The picture and tell a story Yeah, yeah, it's the most important part of the ad, right? Painting pictures, telling a story. Um, what irks me about people today getting into this business— do you remember the tools we used to use for marketing 8 to 10 years ago? Mark, you referred one to me, like it's a way to doctor your pictures and manually put in text overlays, and then, you know, you gotta save it and download it. It was just a process, right, to create these to create these marketing overlays on your pictures. Now in seconds, John Brunell, there's no dealing with hue and saturation and brightness and all that. You go to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and say, yeah, create this text overlay for my picture, and it's done, right?

Yeah, it's true. Like, sometimes I'll do— you know how they like— you'll watch those like movies from the '90s and they're like zooming in and they say, enhance? Enhance. Yeah, you get like— I do that. Like, sometimes I'll be like, I don't like this picture. It looks really— and then I'll be like, but I like this one, like, 3-inch square. So I'll zoom in and I say enhance. And then I get this beautiful image.

Like you're making a movie over there, John.

Well, pretty soon we're gonna be like Tom Cruise on Minority Report, where we're just moving stuff around with our fingers and zooming in and zooming out. It's gonna be fun. I can't wait for that.

Yeah, but I love what Mike said though, like, because the facts tell and the stories sell. And so if you're not tapping into a story, you don't have a hook. Let's call the hook the headline.

Write it down, Mike.

Learn more, right?

That's good.

Did you hear Mark say that again slowly? That's worth repeating.

Facts tell stories. Sell. Well, I'm so happy I made the Rocketbook. I'm leaving. Good night.

That's clutch. That might be the quote of the evening.

Oh, I don't, I don't know.

I really like this segment, quote of the evening, uh, point of the evening. Right now, Mark, you're in the running for point of the evening.

I appreciate it, but Scott, I do think that Mike's initial quote about scaling the product, like system scale, I can't even quote it. Was so good.

I already erased it.

I don't remember.

I hope you guys are just joining. Systems equal freedom. That was it.

Systems equal freedom. That's great.

Yeah. Uh, quite well. If we start with a quote of the night, uh, segment, Zane is going to win them all because he's got a lot of quotes, a lot of great quotes.

Those are the days. Tip of the week was a quote. Oh, we're going way back now, aren't we?

Yeah, we are. All right, well, let's get to some questions, shall we? I think we've covered marketing pretty well.

Um, do we have watchers? Is there people to ask?

We have watchers. Yeah, we got a lot of people watching. Uh, Chastity Hooks, they have 5 parcels are trying to market. Scott Todd taught, uh, post 2 per week in Facebook Marketplace within a 400-mile radius of the property. How do you schedule these to not take a month to get them all posted in all areas? It's a good question. So we typically teach be a little more conservative with your Facebook ads initially, start with maybe 2 a week, but I think Once the ads are hitting and once your account is seasoned, you could probably up the frequency a little bit. But another tactic that we really like is getting your hands on another account or two. So Chassidy, if there's somebody in your life who has another Facebook account that you can utilize, you can double your ads, triple your ads, right? And get, get a lot more eyes on, on those ads out there. And that's a strategy that I utilized really early on. Started selling land on Facebook, even though Scott Todd and Mark made fun of me. And they're like, "Land's not gonna sell on Facebook." And I started doing it anyway.

You were literally a pioneer.

I was a pioneer, yeah. And so I got my hands on my wife's account and I created a dummy account. I got my hands on as many accounts as I could to post as many ads as I could. So that would be my best recommendation for that. I don't know if you guys have anything else. For Chastity.

I mean, didn't you guys sell on TikTok? I remember making fun of you on TikTok.

No, but Paul Ellsworth is on the call, or Tom Ellsworth is on the call, and they're talking TikTok. We're going to get to that here in a minute.

Amazing.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so I would say Chastity, you know, Facebook is just one platform, and then do the same thing on different platforms and just keep track of it, have a system, and then keep doing those things.

Yeah, don't forget your buyers list. Even if you only have 5 people on there, engage with them. Don't forget Craigslist. All right, Tom Ellsworth, I love this. Go ahead, Mike.

I was just thinking more about Mark's method, and I feel like we could call it like the Bonsai Tree Method. The one, the bonsai tree method, because you're just slowly snipping away, changing little things at a time, right? You're just like, you know, picture like, look, I think it's got some value. I think we should call that the bonsai marketing.

Bonsai, bonsai tree marketing. You better buy it.

Next business book, bonsai marketing.

Bonsai marketing.

I just bought the domain.

I love it, I love it. Uh, so Tom, Tom, good to see you, uh, by the way. Uh, it was nice meeting you in Texas at the Dirt Rich Summit last October. We have another Dirt Rich Summit coming up, it's only like 6 months away, uh, first weekend in October in Austin, Texas. And I hope to see you there, Tom, as well as your son, uh, Paul. But Tom says they started putting videos on TikTok in November and they've closed about 5 sales from those leads. So they're gonna increase their footprint on TikTok. South Harpeth Land Company. Get on TikTok and follow those folks. They got a TikTok shop. TikTok land shop. That's something we all need to be doing more of is TikTok.

I think—

I don't want to say it, but I'm going to say it. I concur.

Yes, I gotta concur. I finally got one today. I was feeling left out.

I think he was concurring with Tom though, Scott.

Oh, so I mean, were you— were you—

no.

Okay.

Kind of a jerk tonight. Anyway, okay, here's a question for Baron. Do you disclose on your ads if a location is in a flood zone? John Burnett.

I, I mean, I do. I think that you just have to— what you have to do is you sell your property. Like, I— so I had a property sell on Saturday to my buyers list, and this property goes like this, and then—

oh really?

And so there's a crevasse which, uh, which trans— well, it goes across the property. And so like, for me to sell this as the ideal place to build your home, it's a little bit tricky of a selling point because people drive to it and they're like, you know, you know, I've heard of walkout basements, but this is a fallout basement situation here. And so Right. So for us, we pitched it as a great hunting property. Right. And we painted— we, we used the story sell method. Right. And really described the property and painted that picture really effectively. And then it sold. So same thing if you had a flood zone, like figure out a way to either pitch that as a positive where you're saving so much money on this property because it's in a flood zone. And, you know, if it's in the 100-year floodplain, like, well, you know, that's a 1% chance. That's not, not too bad, right? I mean, if you need some insurance, but you can give them good savings, right? And picture it as a positive. I've had properties that were burned down before, and you just say it's a fire sale. There's new growth, there's opportunity, right? There's positive. See, what you want to do is think about what the positives are and then pitch those instead of having it just be a negative.

I love that.

Are you a gambling man, Mr. Drebin? Every time I eat out, you have a higher chance of getting food poisoning at your favorite restaurant than you do in this 100-year flood zone. But it is a flood zone. So are you a gambling person? No. I mean, but it is, it is a way to— great, it is a great way to market it. I, I personally like to highlight the flaws of a property, um, up front. So I don't, I don't want to ever hide it, but I like the way John is, is thinking about it and highlighting it as a positive, or it could be a potential positive. Like, but hey, we're not, we're not hiding anything. We're going to come out right away. This isn't a flood zone. This is why I bought it. This is, you know, potential uses of it. And if you're worried about it, don't buy it. If you're going to use it for this person, you know, this reason, like you're going to build your dream house here, this ain't it. But if you are the kind of person that wants to have a moat or a possible moat, this could be fantastic. It's in a flood zone.

Yeah, yeah.

Or, you know, you know, these recreational uses If you have a, uh, what's called ATV right now, again, the probability of flooding is very low, but if it does, you have your own little private playground, right? So there's always a different way to, uh, to reframe it.

Yeah, I like— Mark used to always say, you know, in negotiating to buy the property, you would use that as a tactic to devalue it and get it at a great price, then turn around and just Don't hide it, but use it for some, uh, and advertise it and, and use it in that regard. So I think that, uh, yeah, the property's got some swag, it's got some character. You know, we all know people out there, we grew up that just— they may not have been the best looking people, but they had confidence and they had swag, and then people wanted to be around them. So your property's got some swag.

Swag property. John, I'm curious. You told the hunting story, right? Let's say in a month that didn't work. Any other stories you could tell about that mountainside property that could maybe get that sold?

I think it'd be great for fitness, like for people that wanna practice like, you know, running up and down mountains and obstacle courses. Like that'd be a perfect property.

You know what's funny is sometimes I will, I have had AI write ads as John, Willing, and it basically— it's like, it's kind of like, this isn't your mama's property. Like, it's like, and it's like, it's inspiring, it's great.

No, I love that. Yeah, no, but I think, I think if you just sit down and do a little brainstorming, like, it's a hunting property, sure, but is it a, is it a mountain bike property, right? Like, I like mountain biking.

Yes, you know.

I sold a couple of motocross properties back in the day, right? You couldn't build on them, you couldn't camp on them, but you could motocross on these 2.5 acres, right? So I think the moral of the story here is like, there's multiple stories to be told about each property. And you just have to be a little bit creative with finding use for those. I mean, it could be a bug-out property, could be a prepper property, right? Could be a shelter-in-place property. So there's always a story for the property, I think. So I like that. That's awesome. Very cool. Mark, what's the name of the startup? Can you share that or not?

Let me see if they're live yet. I think they're still in stealth mode. Let me take a look.

All right, uh, John, Mike, Mark, Scott, should we take a poll here? What percentage of your sales are on terms?

Yeah, they're still in stealth, but when they come— when they go live, I will definitely, uh, let everybody know. But I wanna— I wanna test it first and get ready, like my case study. That's where I'm just like, oh yeah, go do this. So I want to know I'm giving good, good, uh, a good, good marketing advice.

I would say without looking at any numbers, 75-80% are terms. Terms is very much high, a very high percentage. But there are those people that want to buy cash.

John, I'm pretty consistently 90%, so 90% terms. 90% terms.

I would—

but I would— yeah, I would say 90% terms, then the other 10% cash.

Yeah, I'd say 85% terms. 85, 90.

Yeah, I think we're 92%.

92% terms.

Terms, give or take.

Up a little bit more. Than a few years ago. Yeah, I think, yeah.

Why?

I think it's just a way of marketing. Yeah, we don't want cash.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think, uh, I think for the buyer, you know, it just makes good sense, uh, a lot of times because we're selling these things no interest or very low interest. So instead of paying $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 cash now why not just finance it at a lower monthly payment? So I think for the buyers, it makes really good sense for sure. From Bryce McGee, do you all focus solely on tax delinquent, sorry, on delinquent tax rolls and mail to those motivated sellers, or should I aim to obtain and pay for, if necessary, full parcel ownership databases to expand my mailer list? Mike Sano.

Well, we used to exclusively go after, um, Tax to Lincoln, but I like to tell people we were leaving too much meat on the proverbial bone. So we go to this bigger, uh, bigger outreach. Reality is that the thought being that in these areas there are some people that just are the type of people that will pay their taxes, but that doesn't mean they're not motivated to sell. We can sort them out. Remember, all mailing is trying to do is find someone to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm motivated, I want to sell my property during the due diligence process. If we find out they owe back taxes, it's a simple negotiation tactic. Hey Scott, I know that we offered you $2,000, looks like you owe $300 in back taxes. No problem, we'll give you $1,700, we'll take care of the back taxes. Simple, efficient, and it works. But I think we were personally leaving too much meat on the bone, so we have a wider outreach.

Love it, love it. So am I the only one? He says meat on the bone, that like, like it's, it's 10 to 7 here. Like, I want to go out for ribs now. Is that wrong?

I cooked ribs on Sunday. They were great. My kids, children, like a 3, giving a 3-year-old like a big old piece of meat this big doesn't work very well. Take away from ribs.

But you know, you guys remember the old boot camps where Mike Zeno coin the M&Ms in mailing and marketing. I would say to Bryce, like, it's marketing and marketing. You're marketing when you're mailing to buy the land. And to Mike's point, depending on your, your marketing budget when you first start, you want to go after that bigger pool of, of motivated, uh, or just sellers in general. But nothing wrong with doing a land arb deal, nothing wrong doing a wholesale deal. While you wait for your mail to come back to you as well.

Mark, do you remember we would spend whole sessions being taught how to scrub lists?

I mean, we would—

it would be like a whole hour and a half, 2-hour classes just teaching how to scrub lists and all this stuff. And, you know, life has gotten a lot easier, you know. No more walking uphill both ways to school in the snow.

Yeah, you guys are— everyone's so spoiled for sure. Happy for all of you.

Uh, here's a great question, uh, from Charles. Uh, maybe he spent too many years in residential sales, but he has a desire to see the parcels he's purchased and then photograph them for sale. Do I need to avoid this because of the costs? That's a really great question. Who wants to take it?

I don't think you have to avoid anything in this business, like Mark would always say, but it might make logistical and economic sense to avoid that, right? But if you have the wherewithal and you want to, hey, knock yourself out and go. But I don't go to any of the properties. But I don't, I don't, um, I don't think you have to avoid it if you really wanted to. You got the time and you got the inclination and you got the freedom, go do it. But it's going to really take down the profit in the deal for sure. You know, it's not necessary.

Yeah.

So for me, I've done like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of transactions, and the only piece of land I've ever put my feet on that I purchased is the one that's underneath my house. And so you don't like— this is something you can do remotely. It's the benefit in it. I do photograph my picture or my, my properties. I'll have a photographer go out there. Um, so I like doing that. Some people do it without that and they'll find area photographs and they'll use those, but I like hiring a photographer to take pictures. Or if it's on Street View, you can go on Street View and grab some screenshots, stuff like that. So there's some easy ways to do it, but you know, I, I think that, um actually putting your own feet on your properties is, is not something that's going to be— well, for one, it's not scalable, right?

So yeah, putting other people's feet on your properties if needed. But, but, you know, the other thing, Charles, is, you know, a lot of times we work in areas that are just very kind of cookie cutter, right? So, you know, if you want to go to one and take pics of one and keep working that area, you get a really— you get a sense of the area being there one time. Or you can get some boots on the ground to take some pictures of one parcel. And once you know one, you kind of know them all. And you can reuse marketing pictures as long as you're disclosing that in your ads and on your website and that type of thing. So awesome.

I'm more in the John camp. I mean, when I first started, I would go and I would look at, you know, drive around because I didn't know what I was doing. And then it became, as Scott would say, so boring. It all looked the same. And then learned, oh wait, we can delegate this. And then, you know, this will be the most pretentious thing I say tonight. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause, you know. So, so for investing $1 million or more, I will get on a plane and look at the land, right? It's less than a million, no.

That was very pretentious.

Yeah, so, oh, but if you're first starting, don't do million-dollar land deals.

Yeah, right. Awesome. Any other questions about marketing out there? I think we hit them, uh, hit most of them. Well, guys, This was fun. Oh, we have a win to celebrate though. One second. Any wins out there to celebrate? We love celebrating wins on Nightcap. And anything to remind people of? Let's see, we have a live event coming up at the end of May. May 29th, 30th, and 31st is our next virtual boot camp.

So what about coaching live in Scottsdale in April? Oh yeah, that's for our clients, coaching clients.

Yeah.

What are you gonna say, Mike?

I was gonna say, let's, let's pretend someone finds this through the interweb on YouTube. And they're like, what? I need to know more about this. How do they talk to one of us?

Yeah, go to thelandgeek.com/training. We'd be happy to have a conversation with you about land investing. All right. Oh, here's a win. First Landarb on Friday, first Add Up on Monday. That's from the Fungi of Minnesota. So, fun guy. Fun guy. I don't know why I said fungi. Yeah, fun guy. The fun guy of Minnesota. Oh, it's Cory and Paula Roos. Good to see you guys. Fun guy. Hey, I've had a beer and a half. I'm having a hard time reading over here. Okay, that's awesome. You bought your first LandR property on Friday, you marketed it on Monday. Good for you guys. That's awesome. He hunts mushrooms. All right. There's a lot of mushroom hunting here in Minnesota and Wisconsin. You guys aware of that?

No, no.

Yeah, morel hunting, and it terrifies me.

No, morel mushrooms. Uh, Corey, throw in the chat. It's usually in the fall, right? It's, uh, kind of, kind of early fall when the morels, uh, need to be hunted. You know, a little adventure.

I was pretty—

marketing story. I mean, it could be a good marketing story if you own land in, you know, the Wisconsin-Minnesota area. Oh, sorry, I was wrong. It's in the spring. Mushroom hunting.

Mushroom hunting.

Yeah, it's a thing. I was on a walk, Scott, and a woman was coming out of the woods and she had this mushroom. I was like, I guess they call chicken of the woods or something. You can make like a cutlet out of it. You ever hear this thing?

No.

I looked it up. It's real. I'm like, it's like this massive, like mushroom, and then you can cook it like cutlets.

Ooh, that sounds yummy.

I guess. I don't know.

I guess. Sounds yummy. Here's another one. Paul Ellsworth sold a parcel to a lawyer from Chile.

Chile.

Chile. He will purchase more, he claims. Our first international sale. That's amazing.

That's awesome.

The Ellsworths are killing it, Mark.

The Ellsworths are just special.

They are special. Yeah, they're very special. Awesome. Well, everybody, it was fun. It's fun to get together again tonight. Hopefully this was helpful, helpful discussion about marketing. As always, fun to hang out with you guys.

Always, always.

Any parting words of wisdom from, from you three?

What was our quote of the night? That's a good parting word of wisdom.

It was, uh, backs tell Story.

Story sell.

That's the winner tonight.

The winner, Mark. Mike, I don't know. I don't know if I want to take the win though. I thought yours was great.

No, yours is catchier.

You said you thought it was great, and then you also said you couldn't remember what it was.

Well, it was just true.

It was just longer.

Mine rhymed.

I was more profound.

Runner-up is systems equal freedom. We'll take a runner-up.

We'll drink to the runner-up.

Freedom. All right, runner-up for Mike. Congrats, congrats to both of you for the, the quote of the evening and the runner-up award.

What do we win? What do we win?

I don't know. In our house, we award brownie points in heaven. They can only be redeemed in heaven.

I get a brownie?

Brownie points.

Brownie. I'll take a brownie, John. Homemade brownie. I'll give you the address. Ship it over.

Yeah, I do.

Can I get a—

can I get points?

Fairy Tale Brownies. You can order them. I have sent Fairy Tale Brownies to title companies that give me free advice. Fairy Tale Brownies. They're individually wrapped brownies. They're great.

Wow, I feel like Val should be on here like gamifying this and like we all get brownie points.

Yeah, like, you should just have Val take over an episode one night. John, take a break with the kids. We'll have Val come in. That would be great.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. She's much more interesting than me.

I concur. No kidding. Totally kidding. All right, everybody, that was fun. Join us next week for another exciting topic in the world of land investing. Thanks for joining us. If you're interested to have a chat about whether or not this business could be for you, go to thelandgeek.com, read the book Dirt Rich by Mark J. Podolsky, read the book Dirt Rich 2 by Mark J. Podolsky, and listen to our many podcasts and hear a lot of stories about successful land investors. This is real. People are doing it. People are selling, buying, selling land, and it's changing lives. So check it out. All right, everybody, have a good night. We'll talk soon.

Cue the outro.

Cheers. Bye-bye.