BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 39: Dirt Cheap Land Flipping and Reaching Motivated Sellers with Seth Williams

Episode Date: October 10, 2013

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down with Seth Williams, a real estate investor from Michigan, who shares with us his story of finding and flipping vacant land. Although land is often view negatively with investors, the strategies Seth uses will definitely increase your awareness (and desire) for investing in vacant land. In addition, Seth shares his secrets for marketing and speaking with motivated sellers, as well as offering some great tips on generating leads online. This show is packed with ideas and strategies you’ve probably never heard of – so definitely don’t miss a moment of this interview. Read the transcript for episode 39 with Seth Williams here. In This Show, We Cover How to “Flip” land for dirt cheap Why people sell land for pennies on the dollar Selling properties via Craigslist Buying 3 lots for $150 Marketing through direct mail How to buy lists directly from the county Two places to buy your leads The postcards that give Seth the best leads Dealing with angry phone calls… in a humorous way Building a lead generating website Links From the Show BP Podcast 016: Land Contracts, Creative Selling, and Finding Private Money with Clay Huber BP Podcast 012 : Wholesaling and Marketing with Sharon Vornholt Elance.com Fiverr.com Cannon T3i Camera Click2Mail.com LearningDSLRVideo.com Books Mentioned in the Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud Tweetable Topics When people laugh at my offer it tell me I’m doing something right. (Tweet This!) There’s tons of opportunity in land investing – especially for those without a lot of money. (Tweet This!) Connect with Seth Seth’s BiggerPockets’ Profile Seth’s Blog Retipster.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 39. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, everybody. This is Josh Dork and host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with The Bigger Pockets. Brandon Turner. Hey Brandon. Hey, I'm here with the little guy, Josh Dorkin. You fancy yourself a funny guy, don't you? Yeah, I'm a regular stand-up comedian. Look at me.

Oh, my goodness. I just flew in from New York. Boy, are my arms tired. But I'm get it? Flew in. Cricket. Yeah, that was awkward. All right. So how are things, man? Things are awesome. Things are awesome. Yeah, this is show 39. We're growing every week. We're over the hill. We are, man. We're, you know, we're doing really good.

I think we are on pace to hit 100,000 listens to the show this month. Oh, nice. That's, that's insane. That is insane. It is. It is. So, yeah, the show's going well. And we've got a good one ahead.

But before we do, I think we should, we should talk about this little contest we've been doing. We should. And this is, by the way, this is the last week we're running the contest. For now. Maybe bring it back sometime. Yeah, we'll do something. We'll do something. We'll do something.

We'll change things up here. Yeah, we want to announce last week's winner. Joss, Jose, I can't speak. Joshua, Dean Gordon, Twitter account, Joshua Dean Gordo, who said, I think Brandon's favorite quote so far. Favorite quote, yeah. Yes.

One word. The quote is awesome. Awesome. Very clever. Good job. Yes. So thanks, Joshua, and he's the winner of what? Six months of a Bigger Pocket Pro membership. That's pretty cool because now we can market in the marketplace and any deals, opportunities, wants and needs that he has. And what else can he do? He can see who's visiting his profile, promote his company through his signature, all sorts of cool stuff.

And if you're interested in pro. Yeah, where can they find out more about that, Josh? can find out at bigger pockets.com slash pro brayden. Nice plug. Good job. That was awesome. You wonder why we put on this contest. Yeah, now everyone knows.

It's an agenda. But, yes, it was devious. And it was Brandon's idea. So, you know, the king of deiosity. That I am. Yes, yes. All right. So it's a good word.

It doesn't exist, but I think I'm going to start using it. Do it. Yes. All right. So today we've got a great show ahead. we have with us Seth Williams Seth is

Seth's a blogger of Bigger Pockets as well as on his own site RETipster.com He's been investing since 2006 and he's a pretty bright guy

with a unique strategy that we haven't really talked about too much yet but it's definitely stuff that any investor well the show contains lots of stuff that any investor

can use in their own business so with that why don't we why don't we jump into the interview. What do you think? Let's do it. You know what? Before we do, though, I do have a point that I make really quickly, and that is, if you have any questions for Seth, definitely make sure to ask them on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 39. And also, if you like the show, you love the show,

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slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-Pod. Without further ado, what don't we bring him on? Do it. Bring him on. All right. Seth, what's up, man? Welcome to the show.

Good to have you. Thanks very much for having me, guys. Appreciate being here. Yeah, we're glad to have you too. He's got a radio voice, doesn't he? He does have a radio voice. He's got a radio voice and a face that only a mother could love. Oh, thanks, Josh.

I'm just kidding, man. I'm just kidding. Hey, well, thanks for coming on board, man. We're really excited to have you. You've been one of the fun BP guys, man, with your crazy animated jiffs all over the place. Sure, man. Yeah, I just want to keep things alive and happening.

You know, that's the only way I know how to do it. Fabulous. Anything I can do to help. That's great. Well, listen, so let's talk about your business. Tell us about what kind of real estate investing you do. Sure. Well, I guess I got started with real estate investing back in about 2008.

And really what I do is I buy and sell vacant land. That's kind of my bread and butter. That's what I spend most of my time doing. And I guess what exactly do you guys want to know about it? Well, that's a good start. So you do vacant land, all right? And we're going to definitely start digging in and asking questions about that. Are you developing the land?

Are you just flipping it? What's kind of the strategy? Or do you do everything? Well, really, when I first heard about the whole idea of vacant land, I was kind of like, I didn't really get it. I didn't see why that would be such a great thing or why people would be attracted to that. But really, I've found vacant land just to be an awesome opportunity because the, the, The way that I do it is I contact people who are delinquent on their property taxes and send them mailers through direct mail and then they respond.

And oftentimes I find that usually there's a reason why people have delinquent property taxes. It's usually because they don't care about their property and maybe they inherited it and they just don't want it. Maybe they can't afford it. For one reason or another, the fact that somebody has delinquent taxes is just a, sign that something's wrong and there's a problem that needs to be solved. Great. So go ahead. Well, I was thinking, I always hear, I mean, people say a lot of times, don't start with

vacant land. Don't do vacant land in just general because it doesn't cash flow. There's no extra income each month. And so when I heard that you did vacant land, it's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on here because I don't know anybody who does vacant land. Yeah, I don't either. Sure. Yeah, and we've never had a podcast guest do it.

So can you kind of walk us through the whole process? Well, the two reasons you guys just said, first of all, you said that it doesn't cash flow, and then the fact that not many people do vacant land, that's what makes it so awesome. Because first of all, well, exactly. There's no competition. I literally have not ever come across a competitor on a single deal that I've ever done. And also, it does cash flow. It's just a matter of knowing how to work the deal and how to sell the thing so that you're actually turning the purchase price into monthly payments over several years. And really, the whole delinquent tax thing, a lot of times the people who have delinquent

taxes, I mean, like I said before, it's a sign that there's a problem. And because there's a problem, I mean, they literally, in a lot of cases, they're months or even even weeks away from losing this thing completely. And as a result, I'm able to send them just ridiculous, this stupid offers that no normal person should accept. But the fact of the matter is, if they don't accept my offer, they're losing everything. So it's, you know, what's the lesser of two evil? So a lot of times I can send offers for, you know, a couple thousand bucks, a couple hundred bucks, and people will accept that. Can I dig in really quick here? Yeah, because and we'll definitely continue on through the process. So I've got a property, say it's valued,

easy numbers, $100,000. I'm delinquent on taxes. I owe, say, I don't know, a couple thousand bucks in taxes. And what happens next? The government's going to basically take this property away, right? Correct. Okay.

So you come in and you make an offer on this $100,000 property at what price? $100,000. My offer would probably be somewhere around like $10,000 to $15,000. $10,000 to $15,000. Okay. and they take it or they leave it. They get the 10, 15 grand. They pay off the 2,000, 3,000 in taxes that they owe.

They come out ahead slightly and you walk away with a piece of land that's worth eight or so times what you pay for it. Yeah, and usually, I mean, one of the ways that I make it more easy for somebody to accept is I'll tell them, you know what, I'm going to pay for your property taxes, I'm going to pay for your closing costs. There's going to be a cash sale, so we're not going to wait around for months for me to get approved for a mortgage. And a lot of times, the reason somebody is going to be willing to accept, you know, such a dumb offer like that is because they want an easy button and they want things just out of their life.

This thing is a nuisance. It's a hassle for them. And I'm that solution. Got it. Okay. So you've just picked up this property for 15,000 plus your $2,000 in tax payments that you have to pay to help make it square. Now what? Well, once I own the thing, I own it free and clear.

And an interesting thing, a lot of times if somebody has delinquent taxes on a piece of land, it usually means that, I mean, nine times out of ten that they don't have a mortgage on it. So they own this thing free and clear, and that's part of why they're able to sell it for next to nothing. But yeah, I mean, once I own it, I mean, in most cases, my goal is to turn around and resell the thing as soon as I can. And in your situation there, if a property is worth $100,000, I'd probably list it for, I don't know, 40, 50,000. I mean, a really good deal. And as a result, I mean, because I've basically acquired all of this free equity with this piece of land, you know, you're able to list it for a really cheap price and it sells relatively quickly in most cases. And do you sell it on terms at all or do you sell it straight out?

Yeah, I mean, something that I like. to do whenever I can is sell it with seller financing. And with seller financing, I can really just sort of become the bank and I can ask for whatever down payment I need to be made whole. And the rest of it is, I mean, literally pure profit because I paid off everything I have into the property. And then for the next four or five or 10 years, however long I want to make it, you know, it's all, it's all things, it's all money above and beyond what I put into it. Right. Right. And they're Therein lies the cash flow, right? Gotcha.

Gotcha. Are you doing any kind of zoning? Well, first of all, where is this land? Are you buying ag land? What kind of property are you buying? Yeah, no, good question. It's really whatever kind of calls I get. I've had land, you know, right in the middle of the city.

I've had some of the nastiest vacant lots you can imagine in Detroit, which I actually didn't buy, Josh. So you'll be glad to hear that. I have nothing to say about Detroit. Why does everybody think I have a problem with Detroit? I mean, what if I said something over a couple podcasts? I mean, what? I have no idea. I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, I mean, there's anything you can think of really. I mean, I've had farmland. I've had vacant louts out in the middle of nowhere. I've had hunting land. I've had lakefront properties. Really, anything you can think of that qualifies as vacant land. Okay.

So you've acquired various types of land. You pick them up. And so the question was, you know, are you changing the purpose of the property? Are you marketing it as anything but the same thing that it was marketed as before? Are you doing any kind of development or you literally just flipping vacant land? I'm just flipping vacant land. I'm not changing the zoning. The only reason I would do something like that is if, say, I didn't do my homework or if I, you know, if I, I guess if I bought something and it made sense to try to change it at the

value was going to go way up. But I've never done that. So it's not been an unnecessary thing for me. Gotcha. Gotcha. What comes to my mind on that then is you've got this land that you're buying, it seems like, over a pretty broad area now. So I wonder, in terms of the direct

marketing that you're doing, presumably you're not just doing one or two zip codes. I mean, it sounds like you're kind of shooting out over much, much broader swats, how do you decide on that? Yeah. Philis. Yeah. I mean, when I started doing this, I actually, the way that I would market to people is I

would call a county. So it would be county by county. And I'd say, hey, I want to get your list of delinquent property owners, people who owe money on their taxes. And it costs money. I mean, you've got to pay sometimes a lot for these lists. It just depends on the county. what their fee structure is, but you'd get these lists and you'd send the mail out.

And then every person who calls you, you know that they're going to be within that particular county. So there is some predictability there. But as far as, you know, picking and choosing specific neighborhoods and that kind of thing, it's really just luck of the draw who ends up calling you back. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.

Okay. So how did you, how did you get into that? You know, why did you decide on vacant land? Sure. Well, back in 2008, actually, I bought a home study course on the thing. And again, when I first heard about it, it didn't really make sense. But when I heard the explanation of how it all works, it made a lot of sense to me. So I got that course and studied it and have applied some new things to that and kept some things the same and kind of made it my own in a way. Yeah, that's how I found out about it. Okay. And are you doing other strategies or is that really? I mean, are you buying, you know, houses? Are you wholesaling? What, you know, or is that pretty much it? Yeah. Well, I've used the same strategy to get houses under contract and assign them to other people. Something I've been trying to work out a little bit more this past year is applying this more towards wholesaling. So just, just that kind of thing.

I'm wondering if you're buying these properties and then immediately flipping them to others, why not just like put them under contract and sell the contract like wholesaling instead of actually buying them. Is there a reason or do you do both? No, that's a great question. And I, that really is my intent to figure that out. I've never been really a wholesaling expert. I understand most of the mechanics of how it's done and that's something that I'm trying to work on more in my business.

I think really, um, with land, it's a lot. little bit different than houses, which is what most people are wholesaling when they're doing that. Land has, I think, kind of a smaller pool of buyers. Most people are not necessarily looking for just dirt, kind of for the reasons that you guys were thinking earlier, they just don't really get it. Like, why would I want land if it's not going to cash flow? So for that reason, it can take significantly longer to find buyers for certain parcels of land. And sometimes it's hard to know which ones those are going to be until you just buy the thing and you try to sell it. And that was what I was going to ask you.

I'm sitting here thinking, somewhat listening, but somewhat up in my brain now. I dozed off a bit. No, but I'm wondering, all right, so you've got these parcels and who's the buyer? You know, who comes in and picks up? I could see, you know, a plot in the city, you know, potential developers. On the ag side, obviously, I'm guessing somebody who wants to maybe with a plot that's next to one of the plots that you're, you're looking at. But generally it seems like you're now, it seems a little more difficult to turn over these properties than it would a three two, you know, house that your typical wholesaler

is going to probably go for or buy, you know, rehab or so on and so forth. Yeah, it really depends on the property. Some vacant lots are absolutely, they can take forever to sell the things because I guess the uses just aren't there or the zoning is some odd thing. Or, you know, maybe the land doesn't perk or for some reason they can't do exactly what they want to do on it. So, yeah, those can take a while. And I mean, others, though, I mean, it's exactly what everybody wants. And they sell, you know, within the week.

So it just depends. So what's been the longest you've end up stuck with a property? And in that or those cases, have you ended up coming out ahead? or losing money in the end? Yeah, I think the longest, I'm trying to remember, I want to say it's about six months. It's the longest I've ever had one. Okay. Okay.

And you still presumably turned it over making a profit. Yep. I think, I'm trying to think, there's only been like one or two times where I've not made a profit. One of them was when I tried to sell it with seller financing and the guy sent me two payments and then just stopped. And that was it. I never heard from him again, and he moved away, and I basically just disappeared. So that time, I didn't really make money on it.

Did you take that back? Did you end up foreclosing on him? Well, it was a land contract. So it's actually the deed is still in my name. The whole, it was a pretty cheap property, the whole foreclosure process. I actually haven't gone through yet. The land contract is not matured yet. So as long as I do it in the next couple of years, I can presumably get that back.

but okay um that's right it's it's some different michigan has the land contract thing that clay uh huber talked about on his podcast oh yeah which we'll link to in the show notes which are at biggerpockets.com slash show 39 but uh yeah it's a little bit different i think maybe other places might um i don't know seller finance is a little bit different but you can maybe equate it to kind of a combination between a lease option and a seller financing that's kind of the way i think of it in my head. Does that make sense to you at all? Yeah. Yeah. And actually the money that that guy has paid me, I don't remember exactly the balance that he still owed, or I'm sorry, the balance that I still need to get totally paid off, but it was like really close. Like I wasn't really out a lot.

It was just kind of, I don't know, like he mostly covered what I needed. So, gotcha. And are you only buying in Michigan then? Or do you buy anywhere in the country? Yeah. When I started, I was only buying in Michigan. But actually, now I actually get leads from a lot of places on one of my websites. And I send offers all the time all over the place. I actually just had one accepted last week for three lots, one of them in New Mexico, one of them in Texas, and one of them in Arizona for 150 bucks. So yeah, I mean, I do buy stuff like that whenever it comes in. So talk to us about the three lots for 150 bucks. What, what, uh, same thing was it just delinquent taxes and, and, uh, what are the properties worth? Yeah. Um, well, Brandon's smiling. I could see his,

he got 150 bucks. I want a couple of, I'll put up a tent and go camp there. Anyway. Exactly. Yeah, well, the, the interesting things about the ones that come in, uh, from the internet is that these people just find me through doing a Google search. And, uh, when I get those leads, this is, not necessarily because they have delinquent taxes. Like, I didn't send them mail because they showed up on some list. So there can be a lot of various reasons why people just don't care and they just want somebody to take it out of their life.

This guy does not have delinquent taxes. I actually have not gotten down to the actual reason why he just wants to get rid of him so bad. It could be he just doesn't want to pay tax bills. Or it could be that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, not that there's really much liability with land because there's just, there's not. But, I mean, it could be something psychological. He just doesn't want these loose ends in his life.

I don't know. But for some reason. So what are the properties worth? Not a lot. They're all mostly like, well, they are all very rural. Like I think the one in New Mexico was like way out in the desert in a subdivision that had been plotted but no roads made. So I mean, we're talking out in the sticks. From what I was looking at it, it was probably a few thousand bucks per parcel.

So, I mean, we're not talking huge dollars, but the nice thing is, it's just there's very low barriers to entry with this. I mean, you don't have to have 10 grand in the bank and you don't have to take out loans. I mean, the ability to buy these things and own them free and clear is huge. I mean, to not make monthly payments on anything. It's a big deal. Yeah, that would be awesome. So the thing that kind of pops in my mind that would be difficult is, knowing the value.

Because land, I mean, if you got a lot that's in the middle of the desert, I mean, how do you know, how do you even know it's worth a couple thousand? Yeah. No, that's one of the big dilemmas of land investing. Even if it's not in the middle of the desert, even if it's in the middle of New York City, those can even be hard because I don't know what the reason is, but land just does not have a lot a good, accurate, recent comps available. So, I mean, you can, you can search high and low, but as far as getting, like, really concrete data to base it on, it's usually not going to be there.

Usually what you have to do is find similar properties that I listed for sale within, I don't know, a 10 square mile radius or something like that. And this isn't necessarily giving you the value of the property, but it's showing you what your competition is. So if you list this thing for sale, I mean, who else is out there in the market trying to sell the same thing? And if you can price yours below that or have some terms that are significantly more attractive, again, it's not a guarantee that you can sell it quick. But, I mean, it's just going to indicate that you're probably going to be sitting in a better position than they are. Gotcha.

How do you find the buyers then? Yeah. The buyers, I have found, I want to say, almost all of them, just on Craigslist. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, and I mean, a caveat to that, usually when I'm putting them on Craigslist, they're also going on postlets, which you guys have probably heard of. Yep. And that syndicates to a lot of other websites as well. So I shouldn't necessarily say it's purely from Craigslist, but that's usually where the business comes in from. And that service is a pretty convenient one, right? I mean, you can upload the information, upload some photos, and postlets will just push it out, you know, pretty much back page.

Dillow, truly, everywhere, right? Yep, for the most part. Is that your primary marketing tool other than your website? Yeah, I mean, I'd say, you know, post-litz, Craigslist, my website, I know back page is another, it's kind of like Craigslist, little brother. There's not nearly as much traffic, but it's still worth doing. So, yeah, those are the main ones. Nice, nice.

No, that's great. Now, are you working a full-time job or do this on the side? Tell us a little bit about your, you know, where do you come from and had you? Sure. I mean, you talked about how you found this course and it kind of got you into the game. But, you know, what drove you here? Sure. Well, my job is I actually work for a small business financing company.

And we do SBA loans as kind of our main bread and butter. So essentially what my day job is is being a commercial real estate banker. And there's, it's really, I didn't have. actually plan it this way. I kind of, ever since college, wanted to do something with real estate. But really, the way my job has worked out is there's a lot of overlap with what I do and just a lot of skills and just general knowledge that applies to both worlds. So it's actually been really, really helpful. Got it. Yeah. Let's go back to something. You know, a lot of people, you know, a lot of our listeners, the land thing is brand new to them. They've never heard of that

before. And they don't invest in land right now. So let's go to something that applies to every single person probably, and that's marketing. Sure. You do a lot of advice in the forums about marketing. So I guess why don't we just start with direct mail a little bit? You said you do that. Do you want to just explain kind of what you do for direct mail right now and what's working for you?

Sure. Well, really with direct mail, there's a number of places that you can pull your lists from when you're mailing to these people. The two sources that I've used the most, first one is actually calling. a county and getting that list directly from them. And the nice thing about that is that the information is as current as it's ever going to get. And as far as delinquent tax information, that's, you really need that to be current. Like if it's more than a couple weeks old, you're probably going to get in trouble because you're going to send mail to people who don't

have delinquent taxes and, you know, you just don't want to do that. So getting a direct from the county is great, but it's a lot of expensive. You're calling the assessor's office, yeah? Is that? Um, usually it is the, uh, treasure or tax collector or treasure, depending on what states you're in. Okay. So you'll call them literally say, hey, I'm, I'm interested in getting a list of the delinquent folks in your county and, you know, because I think what a lot of people are afraid of is they start getting 100 questions. Why do you want that? What are you going to do with it? Presumably, there's no questions asked really, right? Well, it's a, it's a good question. It's kind of usually when you call these people, you know, the treasures or the tax collectors, I don't think I've ever had it where I've called them. And the first person I talked to knew what I was talking about. Usually they got to pass me off to somebody else and then somebody else. And I mean, it's almost like they don't even understand their own system. And so I really have to explain exactly what I want. I don't want the properties that are going to tax sale. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the people who currently are delinquent on their taxes, but they still own the property, that kind of thing. And I mean, regardless of what they tell you, everybody has this list because they have to monitor the taxes

in some way, shape, or form. So they all have the information. It's just a matter of how easily they're going to give it to you and what they're going to charge you to do it. And usually, I think, like, the cheapest I've ever seen a list was like a penny per parcel. And the most expensive I've ever seen was like a buck 50 per partial. So, I mean, you can, I mean, I never, if a list costs more than like 500 bucks, I don't, I'm just like forget it. I'm going to some other county. But usually, you know, the few hundred dollar range is kind of the sweet spot.

Got it. Got it, got it. Now that's great. So the first way is directly through calling the county and the second is through one of these list companies, right? Like list sources. Is that what you're? The one that I use is called Agent Pro 247. And it's a I was actually just doing some research on that earlier this morning trying to figure out what the differences are between that and list source because I know that's a hugely popular one.

Yeah. And really as far as what I can see, I'm pretty sure they both pull their data from the same places. And it's about as recent. List source appears to be a little bit more user friendly. And you can buy stuff on a per lead basis if you want to. Agent Pro is significantly less expensive. It's set up more as like a subscription type service. I pay $18 a month for it.

And it's, you know, they basically, I think with that you get like 2,000 leads a month, which is more than enough for what I need. Yeah. And not only can you pull lists, but it's also great for property research. So if you just give me any parcel anywhere in the country, I can go and find out pretty much everything I'm going to need to know about that in order to make an educated buying decision. So it's kind of a one-two punch where it's not only for pulling lists, but also for property research. Now you said Agent Pro is significantly less expensive.

How does list source fare in terms of pricing on their data, or at least in your research? Yeah, I was just talking with somebody at List Source this morning, and they were telling me that their monthly subscription, I think, is $300 a month. And that allows you to pull up to 5,000 leads. or if you wanted to buy them on a per lead basis, I believe it is $0.8 per lead. So even if I wanted a list of like a thousand people, that's $80 right there. So we're talking pretty significant price difference,

and you've got the ability to do all the research and all of that. Interesting, interesting. Well, we'll put links to both in the show notes. So anybody can check them out. And it's biggerpockets.com slash show 39. All right. So let's get into a little more specifics into the direct mail stuff. So you've got this list, right? You've gone out. You've acquired a list of a thousand, a couple hundred, whatever you've got. What do you do then? Presumably you're going to send mail to them. Are you doing it by hand? Are you paying a service? What kind of messaging? What kind of actual mail are you sending yellow letters or postcards or fill us in on the digital? Sure. Yeah, I've actually just being in the bigger pockets forum and just hearing different ideas and philosophies on how people handle direct mail, I was kind of surprised to see people do it differently than I do. What I do, I don't do repetition. I hit everybody once and that's it. If they don't call me back, I'm done with them. And the reason for that is... You're dead to me. Exactly. You're not listening to Sharon Vornholt's advice now, aren't you?

No, I've actually, I think everybody I've really heard has said the repetition is what you're supposed to do. And, you know, I mean, that's maybe that makes sense for what they're doing. But when it comes to the delinquent taxes, it's a problem that's not going to be around forever. Either they're going to pay their taxes off or they're going to lose their property. And, you know, repetition just doesn't make sense. So really quick, what's the time frame, right? So I get a notice that, you know, I haven't paid my taxes. is how long can a parcel have delinquent taxes?

How quickly do they deal with it? That depends what state you're in. I know in Michigan it's two years. And I think, I want to say, don't quote me in this, I think in California it's like five years or something like that. So you kind of have to know your state's laws and where you're working. Also in Michigan, I want to say the date at which properties are seized after two years is on like March 31st every year. So it also helps to know that because if you send something out on, say, January 1,

people are going to have a little bit more desperation if they understand the situation or you can at least say, look, man, you've got four weeks to pay this offer. You're done. So what's it going to be? That kind of thing. Yeah, that seems like a great strategy. Yeah, absolutely. But with two and five years, you know, I mean, you know, let me call you out here, man.

Yeah, that gives you some time to send more than one mailer, right? I mean, come on now. It does. And really, I mean, I know when I'm the sweet spot for me that I've found, usually sending them out when people have two years of delinquent taxes and they're about to get permanently foreclosed on has been the time that works best for me. And at times, if you wait too long, it can kind of kill a deal because, I mean, it depends on the county and the certain situation that's going on. But, I mean, usually these taxes, once they become delinquent, they start multiplying because the. the county starts adding all these fees to the mix because you're late. And I mean, I've seen some ridiculous tax bills where it's like, dude, this makes it not worth it by a long stretch because paying off your taxes is going to totally eat up all of my potential profit in this deal.

So if you wait too long, like saying California, if you waited four years or something, you could have no hope. So it's kind of a matter of just keeping that piece of it in mind as well. And do you find out how delinquent a property actually is? Yeah, usually when I'm sending out the offer, before I send it, I'll actually call the county and talk to the treasurer and say, hey, here's the parcel number. Can you tell me if I wanted to pay these taxes off this month, what would the balance be? And they tell me the number, and I just sort of insert that into my offer so they're aware. Not only are you getting this cash, but your taxes of this amount are also being paid off, that kind of thing. And do they care who, do they care who pays it off?

I mean, or. Oh, I see what you're saying. Do they care if I pay it off? Yeah. No. Nope, they don't care at all. It's just if somebody gives them the money, they're good. Got it.

Got it. So are you sending postcards then or yellow letters or? Yeah. I am sending yellow postcards that are size 4.25 by 6. And usually they're double-sided. But I've found about an equal success rate with both single-sided and double-sided. And the reason I do postcards is because, a couple of reasons. First of all, they're a lot cheaper. And when you're talking about sending out

thousands of pieces of mail, I mean, it's about maybe a little bit less than half the price of doing a full letter. So that's a pretty big deal. And then also with a postcard, I mean, again, a lot of it has to do with the message you're putting on that and how persuasive you're being and what kind of attention you're able to grab from people. I've done a lot of experimenting with that over there. It's kind of fun. But with a postcard, a person literally has to look at your message before they throw it away. With a letter, I don't know what you guys, but I mean, I get stuff and I just know it's junk mail, and I don't even look at it. I just chuck it. So that, I mean, those are the two main reasons why I do postcards. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Do you do any kind of like split testing or, yeah, tweaking your message? I'm assuming you do some of that. Yeah, I mean, in the past, I have tried letters and I've tried, you know, a lot of the things like, you know, printing them off on my own computer and using the handwriting font and all that stuff. And I mean, I don't know that I have done enough to really know definitively, but I honestly didn't see really any difference in my response rate. It was more about the situation that these recipients were in and the solution that I was proposing to them versus, you know, the type of card stack I was using or something like that. What kind of conversion rates are those? That was my question.

Yeah, it varies. I know, I mean, for most generic direct mail marketers out there who are selling, who knows what response rates are just pretty terrible in general. I mean, it's obviously worth enough for them to do it, but it's not great. Usually my response rate, the lowest I think I've ever seen it is like 4 or 5%. the highest I've seen it is probably like 18%. So it, again, it's, and it's really, it's tough for me to tell you specifically why that happens. Sometimes it's just luck.

Sometimes it's what you're saying on your postcard. Sometimes it's the information you're working with. It could be timing. It's just, who knows, but. And are you printing those? You said you experimented with different things, but are you ordering the postcards from a company out there? Or are you making them on your picture now? Pretty much for almost all my mailings, I've done it through Click to Mail.

I try doing some stuff at home just to try some experimentation stuff. But for all intents and purposes, Click to Mail is like my go-to spot. Gotcha. And if anybody wants to, we're going to have a link to that in the show notes. But we do have an affiliate relationship with them. So if you do order through Click to Mail and you go through our link, you help out the Bigger Pockets podcast. So do it. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, there you go. That's awesome. Cool. So we've got your conversion rates. We know that you're sending these letters. You're getting hit back by these folks. A lot of our investors who do direct marketing to folks in distress situations find themselves on the other end of a phone call of somebody who's pretty pissed off. Whether you're going to lose your house to foreclosure, divorce, whatever it is. Is that something that you deal with? Do you deal with? you know, the real angry folks. Or is that not really an issue of people like, yeah, I've given up hope, help me out here. Yeah, no, that's, I have learned that that's one of the fun parts of the business that I get to laugh at because the first time, like an angry voice man, I'm back from somebody, I was like,

oh, man, my feelings are hurt, you know, like kind of hurts my heart that they're so mad at me. But I mean, it's not often, I'll say that. But when it does happen, I've gotten some really funny letters back from people. You know, one time a guy tore up my offer sheet and put it in an envelope and mail the back to me. I've had people send me letters just saying, your offer was hilarious. I'm saving it to show people I know. And, you know, whenever I get those voicemails where somebody's cussing me out,

I actually have a folder on my computer where I save them all. So when I want a good laugh, I can go back and listen to them. Why don't we play some of those for our listening? Yeah, I'll upload the file and have a link to it. Put it next to your animated GIF collection. There you go. But yeah, I mean, really, I mean, to me, in a really strange way, it's telling me that I'm doing something right,

because I want every offer I send out to just be laughable. I mean, something where I'm embarrassed at how low it is, because that's how I know, or one of the ways that I know, that if this person says yes, there's going to be a celebration in my house. It's going to be a good day. I don't want to be sending some offer I'm not really sure about where if somebody accepts it. I'm like, oh, shoot, I don't know if that was really the best thing for me to do, you know? So I mean, when I get those kind of responses, I'm like, it's okay. No problem. So what do you do? I mean, you know, let's get into some of the philosophy here a little bit on

this because, you know, that is something that a lot of investors do. And, you know, I say most investors that are that are you know that do particularly particularly well tend to have that as a philosophy i'm going to send embarrassing offers out and and you know one of the challenges is you know as as a group that is one of those things that i think does give us all a bad name right you know hey these guys are trying to lowball me and and i i i you know i like to wonder and think if if there were better offers they would take them right so so ultimately given the situation given the timing and giving the price you're bailing them out right you're helping them you know granted you're not giving them you know you're not making

them rich getting them out of there but you're getting them out with something instead of nothing but what's what's your take on it because you know sure you're giving an embarrassing laughable offer but in the end you're still kind of saving their backsides aren't you yeah no that's um that's a good ethical question, I guess. And I think it kind of comes down to what you said where, yeah, I mean, it's a free market society. And if somebody wants to work hard to find a buyer like I do for all my properties, then you know what?

You might be able to sell it for market value or just below it. So everybody has the ability to do that. It's funny because, for example, on one of my websites where people submit offers to me, I laugh every time because they send me these things. and they indicate, you know, I'm just, I'm desperate. I need this thing sold yesterday. Please buy my property. And one of the questions on there is, is this property currently listed with a realtor?

And the answer is always no. It's like, dude, like just try a little bit. I mean, you might be surprised. Yeah. So it's, I mean, essentially, I don't know if it's laziness or just apathy or what. But, and again, I don't want to group everybody into any particular category. But, I mean, for whatever reason, I mean, they don't care enough to accept my offer. And, you know, that's really what I'm looking for is

people who are in that boat and willing to play that game. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so speaking about the website, you know, you're, you blog on Bigger Pockets. You've got your own blog. You're, you're active on social media. Let's let's talk about internet marketing for leads. What, you know, what are you doing to use the internet beyond just obviously hanging out on BP and finding people. I'm assuming you probably aren't doing deals with BP guys, but maybe just using the site for strategies. But how's the blogging working to build the biz? What are your lead sites kind of look like?

It sounds like you've got a couple of them. So what's your take on that? Yeah, well, my purpose with blogging is actually doesn't have a lot to. do with the land acquisition business. It's really more, you know, I have learned a lot of lessons. Sometimes the hard way. Sometimes you just sort of learn things from doing them. And it's just, it's good stuff that's helped me out a lot.

And it's like, you know, why not just put it out there? And if it helps somebody else, great. And that's, I've really, I've enjoyed it a lot because one of my favorite things is just seeing the interaction that comes from people when I put something out to that really just like, man, that totally answered my question. So it's, I kind of do it for, you know, I guess partial enjoyment, partially just to set up a different stream of income, which is just kind of a side thing that I do. As far as the actual lead generation website, it's really a standalone, very, very simple website. I think it consists of like four different pages, one of which is just a form where people can fill out all the information about their property.

and yeah it's i'd say on average i probably get i don't know a submission every day or every other day on that and when you consider the fact that what i would have to pay with direct mail to get those and the fact that they're just coming in for free it's like that's worth something i mean i'll definitely look at those and um send out offers whenever i can how are you driving traffic to that site is that all organic search engine optimization or are you actually pointing links there and or doing Craigslist stuff? What do you do? Yeah, I tried the Craigslist thing for a little bit.

It didn't really work that well. Really, the primary way that I've gotten traffic there is just SEO. I found somebody on Elant and paid him, I think it was like $600 to really just go to work for a few months for me and just do some of their work. And it works. It's, you know, depending on what you're searching for, I'll show up a number. two or three or sometimes even number one on Google. And it just, it targets those particular people pretty well.

Come on. Tell us what you're targeting. Come on. Come on, I don't want to do that, Josh. I don't want to create competition from my... Yeah, come on, man. You got no competition to start with.

You know, a little up your game, baby. Come on. So these people are, they're actually searching Google for like, sell my vacant land or something like that. He's not going to tell you, Brian. I don't know, Brian. I know what they're searching.

Although nobody really knows anymore, at least through Google, because Google doesn't really share what people are searching for anymore. Yeah, that makes things tougher. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, really, whatever your business is. I mean, it's, you know, you guys have probably heard it's just buy houses, you know, Denver or wherever you live and that kind of thing. Or I'm sorry, sell, you know, sell houses fast, Denver or that kind of thing.

So anybody can do it. It's just a matter of having the patience. and being willing to invest that kind of money for the SEO work. Are you doing any pay-per-click advertising, Google or Facebook? Nope. No, I'm not. Okay. Would you at all?

I mean, have you considered that? You know, I'm not against it. It's a realm that I know a little bit about, but I don't consider myself to be an expert there. So I'm a little hesitant to jump into that in a big way, but maybe at some point I'll go down that road. Yeah, we've had a couple guests on the show who have said that that's one of their main drivers of traffic now. So I don't do a lot of it. I've done a very, very little back about a year ago. But it's definitely an avenue I want to look more into.

Sure. Yes. All right. So we got blogging. We've got the SEO. You're not doing pay-per-click. Your site is driving traffic. Do you have multiple?

You've got your blog and then you've got your whatever, that vacant land lead magnet site. Is it we buy vacant land in Michigan? Is that what's your target? No. I'm not sure where you got that name. Oh, okay. Okay. So do you have other, I mean, are there multiple sites for multiple keywords?

Yeah, it's a, I've got, I want to say four different websites. One of them is my selling website. And then the other one is my buying one or the one where I accept submissions from people. And these two do not reference each other at all. The reason for that is I don't want people submitting their property and I buy it for a hundred bucks. And then they see that I'm listing it for $5 million the next week and selling it. So yeah. And then I've got a squeeze page and then the blog. What's a squeeze page?

A squeeze page in most cases is just a one page website. And the only purpose of it is to collect somebody's information so that you can solicit them in the future. And the purpose from mine is to create a buyer's list. Got it. Got it. You know, I'm always the skeptic. You know, if I ever end up on a page and it's like a squeeze page, collect my information to do something. I'm gone. Yeah, no, I am too. Six seconds, yeah.

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Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. So tell us, you know, kind of overall what, you know, what's the good, the bad and the ugly about what you do, right? You know, what are the highs, the lows, the positives, the negatives, just, you know, kind of throw them after? Yeah, well, I'd say I guess probably the good with land in particular is that it's low maintenance. There's very little you have to worry about. I mean, you can buy a piece of land and then forget about it for five years.

And nothing will be any different. I mean, it's just dirt, you know. So from that standpoint, I mean, if you're looking for something that's just low stress, excuse me, something that is inexpensive to get into. It's not going to require mortgage payments, that kind of thing. That's why I think land is just awesome. And it's a great way to get into real estate. The bad, I guess, would be land requires quite a bit of due diligence before you purchase it.

A lot of times, if a property is vacant, there's usually a reason behind that. Either, you know, you literally can't build anything on it because the zoning is messed up or it doesn't perk or, you know, there's a slew of different issues that can prohibit somebody from building on it. It's perk really quick. Sorry. Oh, sure. Stands for percolation. And that's basically when you drop water on the soil, how fast it drains away. And the reason that's important is because land has to perk if you want to put in a septic tank, which a lot of times out in the sticks, that's the only way to handle sewers of any kind. Yeah.

So if it doesn't perk, then you really can't build a house there because you can't put a septic tank there. Got it. Got it. But that's just an example. And it is very easy to buy land, especially when it's this cheap, without really thinking things through and really doing your research. And, you know, I've made that mistake on a couple of occasions. I've never gotten burned really badly by it.

But, I mean, it's definitely possible to, you know, walk half-heartedly into a decision and end up with a property. You can't really sell very easily because it's not that useful to people. Yeah. Yeah. I've, you know, it's funny, that land investing is one of those things that I, I kind of dream about. And I have for a long time. I know when I used to live in L.A., I would do the L.A. Vegas drive all the time. And you'll always see plots in the middle of the desert that are for sale. And I'm like, man, you know, you know, you know, at some point that that corridor is going to fill in, you know, and you're like, well, this is, this is a place. You know, I may have to hold it for a long time, but, you know, this is a good opportunity if the corridor fills in.

Denver Boulder is the same thing. I've been here for seven years, and now it's really, really filling in. And I kind of kick myself. I'm like, you know, maybe I should have stepped out and looked at some of those plots that were available because, you know, it's worth much, much more money today than it was when I first looked at it and everything's kind of developing around it. So, you know, I think on the vacant land side, you know, that's, it's kind of a, I guess it is still kind of a gamble, right?

You're speculating for sure. Yeah, I mean, there are definitely ways, you know, it's referred to as land banking where you basically buy land with the assumption that over time it's going to go up in value. And there are ways to kind of figure out which direction and growth is going in. But, I mean, I think you're right. I mean, nobody knows the future. And, you know, nobody knew that 2008 and 2009 were going to happen where everything just stopped. So, I mean, there's always those mysterious things that can happen. But I know, like, just for example, I think it's John J.

Aster who's like the fourth. Yeah, he's like the fourth richest person in American history. And the way that he did it was he bought up all the land that we now know of as Manhattan. And he just bought that when nobody else saw the opportunity. And he made a ton of money, tens of billions of dollars in today's currency. Gotcha. Yeah. So in terms of eliminating the speculation, you do that in the same way that you would with a buy-in-hold.

you buy it a significant discount and you sell it and you're not sitting there and holding based upon the appreciation. But I suppose if you can get one of those properties at a discount to land bank it, I mean, that's kind of the best of all worlds, isn't it? Yeah. And I think with land baking, I mean, the thing to keep in mind is what your costs are going to be over however many years you're going to want to hold that. The nice thing is with land, there's generally not much cost, but there are property taxes. And a lot of times, property taxes on land is very, very low. But there can be, you know, oddball situations where the local township is charging some weird assessment each month and it really brings the cost up. So

it's just a matter of understanding what are my property tax is going to be over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years. And, you know, if it makes sense and if the math works, then go for it. Cool. All right. Well, I'm wondering what, what's an example of a good deal that somebody could do with like, What's a success story that you've had, I guess? What's your best deal or best story? Sure. Well, the best deal that I have to date, it was a couple years ago. I sent out a direct mail campaign in Northern Michigan.

And I was able to buy a 12-acre parcel of land right on Lake Huron about, I don't know, five or six miles away from the Mackinac Bridge, really, really nice area. And when I got this call from this lady, she was just explaining it to me and I'm like, wow, this is a sweet property. And my assumption is that the market value at that time was probably around like, you know, 300, 400, 500,000, like a lot of money for this thing. And at that point, I didn't have a lot of cash available to me. And I was like, you know, whatever. What can happen? I'll just send her an offer.

And I sit there an offer for about 45. $500 and she accepted it. And so I bought this thing and I was... 12 acres. Yep. On the lake. Yep, exactly. And there was a little bit of an issue with it because like a lot of this land was not buildable because it was right on the lake.

And the Army Corps of Engineers has to approve it in order for you to be able to build there. Okay. And there was just kind of a small section on it where it did perk and you could put a house. So it was buildable, but not in the most optimal place on the property. But anyway, I got this thing and listed it for $45,000 and sold it within a couple of months. And just like that, I made more money from that than I did from the entire year for my day job at the time. So it was a great deal. Yeah, that's great.

That's awesome. So what about the worst, you know, the worst mistake that you made? What was the biggest flub that you did? And what would you do differently to avoid such a thing? Yeah, I mean, when I first was trying to do this, I was just excited to get going. I bought anything that anybody would accept. I mean, it was just like, hey, I'm going to just spew offers out to people. And if they accept it, boom, we're doing it.

And I just kind of figured because I'm getting it so cheap, I can't go wrong. But I ended up buying a really odd property. was this little triangle and it was probably like, I don't know, 30 feet long. I mean, you literally couldn't do anything with it. It was a pointless piece of land. And I bought the thing and I just wasn't really thinking about it and wasn't thinking things through. And I was stuck with it. And basically what I ended up doing, I only paid 300 bucks for it, but I ended up just literally giving it to the person who live right next door to it. So they just added on to their property for free. But it was just an example of my lack of foresight and willing to do research and all this stuff.

I guess foolishness, for lack of a better word, it cost me. Fantastic. Fantastic. Really quickly, before we move to the next section here, what are some of the biggest misconceptions out there about what you do? Yeah, I think, you know, the biggest misconceptions would be people just hear the word land and they just think it's boring. They think it doesn't cash flow. They just don't understand. They think it's for hunters and farmers, but not people who actually want to make money.

And that's just, it's not true. I found that to be just a huge oversight. There's tons of opportunity, especially for people who don't have gobs of money at their disposal, to get into these properties for really cheap. And the risk is, I don't want to say it's zero because it's not. But, I mean, it's about as close as zero as you can get when it comes to property ownership. And, you know, the whole seller financing. piece of it and there's just for a lot of reasons it makes a lot of sense and a lot of people don't

get that and you know I'm not going to really complain because they're just not my competition as a result but yeah yeah and and so you know we we we didn't really dig in on the seller financing side but but I'll just ask that one quick time the are you are you always holding the note on the seller finance are you always seller financing or are you I mean it sounds like you're also just flip in some of the properties as well, yeah. Yeah, it really depends on, you know, what my cash situation is at that point in time. If I don't need the cash, then absolutely. I'll seller finance it because I can make a lot more money in the long run and have

passive income and all this. So, yeah. Cool. Well, before we go to the final sections here, do you do any other kind of investing? Are you a landlord at all? Yeah, I actually, I bought a duplex a couple years ago. And that's kind of the direction that I intend. tend to go is using some of the cash that the land throws off to buy, you know, more multifamily

rental properties. And yeah, it's been good. I mean, I'd say the first year or so after I bought it, it didn't really generate much because it was, you know, it's a hundred year old property and just a lot of sins of the prior owner that I had to pay for. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's pretty much up the speed now and it's thrown off money every month. So, but yeah, it's, it's been going good. So I plan to keep doing it. Was that a tax distress property as well? No. No, actually, just one of the realtors I knew, he just, he knew that I was in the market for that and he brought it to me before it went for sale. And, you know, things were still pretty slow at that point. So I was able to get pretty good deal on it. So fantastic. Do you manage yourself then?

Nope. I went into it with the intention of being completely hands off. So I have property managers doing everything. You know, that's one, I wrote in an article today about that, how even if you plan on managing yourself, always plan on not managing yourself. Otherwise, you get to the point where you get too many properties or your life gets too busy or you get sick or whatever. And all of a sudden then your cashful positive property is now a cash flow negative because you didn't plan for that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I mean, we've all, we all know the horror stories of, you know, managing rental property. And I mean, I'm, I was definitely not blind to that. And I just knew, I mean, if I had to manage that thing myself, it would be a huge obstacle to me doing a lot of

other things that I intend to do with my life. So, um, and I know it's, you know, there are times when it's, you know, not that difficult and not doesn't require much in other times where it takes a lot. But I just wanted to take that out of my mind and give it to somebody else who knew what they were doing. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. Cool. Well, listen. moving forward what do you think Brandon I think it's I think it's time

what do you I think I also think it's time for our it's time it's time for the fire round wow all right I love Fiver

yeah we made that on Fiver anyway let's jump into the fire round these are all questions that come from the forums you have no idea what's coming so we're just going to fire them at you

and see what you have to say all right number one driving around you're just driving around you see a vacant lot do you pursue it or do you just stick to your direct mail um if i just like see a random vacant lot um no i probably wouldn't do anything about it okay there you go yeah that's is that what you wanted brand is that the answer you were looking yeah i'm curious yeah i mean really i mean what i'm after is properties that have a lot of equity as far as like the beauty of the property or you know all of that stuff i mean there's really

there's not a lot of emotion involved with what I do. It's just, did the numbers make sense? Is the value there? And, you know, I spend my efforts pursuing that specific kind of thing. He wants property that has green in it, Brandon. There you go. Exactly. All right.

How much did somebody start with budget-wise for direct mail? What would you say? Well, I know when I started this, I had about $3,000 to my name. So, I mean, that was enough to get me. through it. I think you could probably do it with less, but I mean, my typical direct mail campaign is usually a few hundred bucks at least. And of course, that's with no guarantee of anything. So just go into it, realizing that that's a possibility, not a very likely possibility, but it could happen. And yeah, so I'd say if you've got enough to do that and then, you know, a thousand, two thousand to

buy some of those really entry-level low-end properties, that'd probably be enough. to get you started. Yeah. You know, that's always my fear with direct mail is, is let's say you got $10,000 of work with and you send out a thousand dollars a month in direct mail. Yeah, you'll probably get a deal in those first 10 months, but what if you don't? Then you're out of money. I mean, that's the fear that people that you have to get over or you have to get more money. And it may happen. And it may happen. There is a chance that that on. Yeah. I used to go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that's, I felt that same way.

And I think probably the reason that I was able to, you know, get okay with it is because the course that I learned it from, I mean, this guy had been doing it for a lot of years. And, I mean, it was very specific about exactly who you need to target and all of that. And I just, I mean, having that much clear direction, it was like, okay, well, there's something to this. I mean, it's not just me wildly throwing money at stuff and hoping that's going to happen. Yeah. And that's the benefit of learning from people who have done it before and not just. just, you know, trying to figure everything out on your own.

Again, that's why bigger pockets is so cool. So, sure. All right, let's move on to the next question, which is if, this is actually my question from the forums. All right. So if you call someone, I know, somebody calls you from a letter you send out and then you offer to them. They reject your offer.

Do you follow up with them then? I mean, like, those of you're close. I mean, like, you just can't quite come to terms. Do you keep following up? Yeah. It kind of depends on the property. how much of a chance I think there is at working with this person. But, yeah, oftentimes I have followed up.

I've got a little one-page letter that I send to people, which basically just keeps the lines of communication open. It's telling them, look, I mean, clearly something about our offer wasn't acceptable to you, and that's totally fine. It doesn't hurt my feelings. But I'm giving you a few options here. You can just tell me, I mean, I guess why exactly you didn't accept it. And what I do is I'll have a little line where they can say,

I will accept blank for my offer and that's my, or for my property, and that's my rock bottom price. And another box says, I don't want to sell anymore. Stop, stop, send a mail to me, just that kind of thing. It basically just, it gives some sort of opportunity for us to keep in contact. And I'd say maybe 10, 20% of the time that, you know, result in a deal getting done as opposed to just being done and not talking to them anymore. So, yeah, it's worth doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, vacant land that once had a gas station on it, do you pursue?

Well, I guess it, I mean, short answer is no, I would not. But that kind of depends on, you know, I guess what your intent is with the property. I know environmental laws are kind of a big deal to follow because if you end up buying a property that's contaminated, and then you can't prove that it's not your fault that it's contaminated, you could have a huge liability on your hands. So for that reason, I mean, it's just not how my business model works. So I wouldn't, but that's not to say it's not worth doing depending on what your goal is. So what you're trying to say is like, you know, do you find a plot of land that has like toxic waste on it?

You're not going to buy it. I mean, is that what you're saying? Personally, I would not. If you want to, you know, I mean, that's your thing. Nice, nice. That's awesome. Cool. All right.

So why don't we run into our famous four here and wrap it up? First question of the famous four, famous. Famous for. That wasn't very melodic. No. We'll get a fiber gig for that one too. Yeah, we will. All right.

Famous for our first question. What is your favorite real estate book? Not rich dad, poor dad. Wow. That is the first one. No, it's a great book, but I'd say, I was actually just looking at my bookshelf this morning in anticipation of this question. And yeah, I think, you know you've read it and you've talked about it a lot.

It's the ABCs of Real Estate Investing by Ken McElroy. That's how you pronounce his last name. But yeah, it's a great book. It's been a couple years since I've been through it. But it really just opened my eyes to a totally different way of looking at real estate. So I thought it was awesome. Hey, if anybody knows Ken, you should tell them to get in touch with me. We want to have them on the show.

Sure. Yeah, I've actually emailed with them back and forth. So I kind of, he's an acquaintance, I guess, but I could have an email on your behalf. Yeah, hook us up. All right. Next, favorite business book, non-real estate. Yeah, I'd say probably one that I was reading a couple years ago was called Necessary Endings by a guy named Henry Cloud. and the purpose of that book or the idea behind it is for people like both of you guys and myself

where we just have tons of stuff going on in our lives, just like millions of things pulling us in different directions for our attention and our time. And how do you figure out what to get out of your life? How do you say no to things? And how do you, one of the illustrations he has in that book is your life is kind of like a bush or a tree that's growing. and to keep anything like that healthy, you have to prune it. I mean, things have to be cut out of it. You can't say yes to everything.

And it's about just strategically picking the right things and making your life grow in the way that you want it to go. So that was a big eye-opening book for me. That's great. That's great. Yeah, I do that without reading that book. My philosophy is kind of I'm going to work with who I want to work with. You know, it's like I want to work with people who are nice

and who are fun to be around. And, you know, I don't care how big or bad your company is and how much money you're going to make me. If it's going to be a headache to work with you, I'm not going to work with you. That's why you don't return my phone calls, Josh. Well, you're just a headache to begin with. But, you know, I love you, Brandon. Thanks.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know. But anyway, yeah, so I think, you know, I think that's great. And that seems like a cool book to check out and help help folks refine, I guess. their philosophies on what's going to work best for them. So that's awesome. How about hobbies? What do you do for fun? Yeah, I guess just in the past year or so, the things I've spent a lot of time on. I got the blog, spent a lot of time on that. That's, I've been a lot of fun. There's a really cool website that I found called a learning DSLR video. And it's about this guy

who basically just makes videos using his DSLR camera. Oh, I'll have to check that out. This stuff is amazing quality. I mean, this guy does an awesome job. And I just literally following his direction, I got a lot of the same equipment that he has and uses and learned some really cool tricks about how to make a video that really rises above what a lot of other people are posting on YouTube. And you do have good videos. I've always been impressed it. What camera do you have? Thank you. I use the Canon T3I. I have the same one. Nice. Oh, yeah. Cool. Yeah, man. You can start doing it today if you want. So the guy who runs that site, his name's Dave, he's actually a friend of mine out here. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah. He's a super, super cool dude. Yeah, Dave, Dougdale,

he's got a, where'd you meet him? He had a rental site called Rent Vine, I think, which is called. And yeah, we just connected. He's, he's awesome. His photography is amazing. His videos, incredible. And he's like, he's one of the coolest guys. So if, if ever you want to just link up with him, hit him up, and he's, he's super, super nice. Yeah. Yeah, I've sent to a bunch of emails and he always replies and I mean, you can just tell from his videos. It's very down to earth, nice guy. And yeah, he's got an awesome website. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Cool. And we will link to that and the books in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 39. So, all right, last question of the day. What do you believe sets apart real estate investors who succeed and make actually a go at this, a

living at this and those who just come and leave without ever having any kind of impact. Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think I have a couple thoughts on that. First would be the people who really succeed and just knock it out of the park over the long term. But the people who, I guess, figure out what kinds of specific actions result in making money. I mean, really, I mean, the goal, generally speaking, for all investors is to make money. And, to get financial freedom and do all that. And it's a matter of just understanding, like, what do I have to do that's actually going to result in that?

You know, if I waste five hours a day on Facebook, is that going to do it? Or if I go out and send offers to people, is that going to do it? You know, there's a lot of times it's very easy for people like us to think we're doing good work by trying to build up our following and all this stuff. And, you know, I'm sure that comes into play in some way, shape, or form. But, I mean, that is not the specific. action is that I think people should be taking if they really want to start making a lot of money. And I know, Josh, I heard you sit and one of the forum posts a while back,

impulsiveness just gets a lot of people. You know, I mean, they hear about the next new thing and they start wasting their time, trying to be... Shirel. Yeah, exactly. It's, I mean, and I'm guilty of that, too. I've done that over the past, you know, years of trying to do this. And it's, it takes a lot of discipline to just learn what works and just focus on that and become an expert in that.

And remembering that an expert is somebody who knows more and more about less and less. It's not a jack of all trades and somebody who knows how to do everything. So it's just, I'd say just focus and, you know, not getting distracted by the things that waste time and money. Great advice for, I don't. Money or time? What are you talking about? Just mine. Speaking of that, I needed that new computer we talked about. Oh, yeah.

True story. I got to buy a new one. He likes to take his laptop and throw it around or something. Apparently. All right, listen, Seth, it's been awesome. Definitely been a pleasure. I had to say awesome, because I don't think we said it the whole show. Yeah, people are laughing right now. We probably said it like 100 times.

It's been a pleasure of having you on. We definitely appreciate it. And, you know, Seth is blogging for us on BP, so definitely check out his posts on the Bigger Pockets blog. And also check him out on his own site at. E.Tipster.com. R.E.Tipster.com. And he's got the radio voice to go with it. All right, Seth.

Take it easy, man. Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time. Thank you. All right, guys, and that was our show with Seth Williams, the RE tipster. And you definitely should make sure to link up with him on Bigger Pockets, smart, savvy guy who's more than welcome to share his feedback, advice, tips, so on and so forth via Bigger Pockets. And he's all over the web.

He's a funny dude. He likes to share crazy, silly stuff. And he really honestly likes helping people out. So certainly make sure you follow him. Hey, real quick. Today, if you're listening on Thursday, there's a post coming out, which is my absolute favorite post ever on the Bigger Pockets blog. And Seth wrote it. It's 20 gifts or GIFs, however you say that, that only BiggerPockets forums, forum members would get.

So definitely check that out. It's on the blog today later today. At BiggerPockets.com slash R& News blog. Yep. Check it up. Very, very, very funny. My favorite thing I've read in a long time. Great. Wonderful. All right. And if you are a regular listener, you'll know that we're going to tell you to go listen. Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Gplus. We're there. Follow us, get involved. Connect. And most importantly, make sure to join us on Bigger Pockets. Create a profile. And don't just create a profile and disappear, guys. I mean, there's really no point in doing that. You might as well not even show up. You know, it's, you know, the value comes from interacting with people. You know, certainly Bigger Pockets is a

awesome place to read. But, you know, if you want to, if you want to get the full power of, of this community, get involved, participate, connect, ask questions, answer questions. It's pretty much what I got for you. We appreciate having you on board. We appreciate having you as a listener. This is me signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplify Real Estate for Investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the height, you're in right place. You're to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

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