KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Making Passive Income through Land Deals with Brent Bowers

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Summary:This episode is a tactical guide for real estate professionals on how to generate passive income through land investing. The guest, Brent Bowers, shares his strategies for finding, acquiring, and selling land parcels, highlighting how this niche can be a simpler and more profitable alternative to traditional real estate investing. The discussion provides actionable steps for agents to leverage their existing skills to build a side business and create a long-term source of wealth.

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate podcast. and I am here, your host Chris Craddick.

We've got Jeff Safright will be joining us here shortly. But in the meantime, we have the opportunity to be live with a good buddy of mine who is, who comes in real estate from a just an area and angle that a lot of people don't look at. Like you fall into it if you're in residential real estate. And if you're an investor, you don't really think about it as a place to really buy and invest. But I'll tell you this much, when nobody else is thinking about it, it means that's a place where you can make a lot of money because the competition is not, you're just not competing with everybody. Think about like for a regular real estate agent, for sale by owners and expires. If you call one at like 845, 45 other people have called that person.

And so this is one of those like little niche markets where you can own it and really crush it. So with that said, I'm so excited to have my buddy here. Brent, Brent and I would be in Tampa together at the end of this month. And yeah, he's just a total stud. So with that said, Brent, tell us about your story. Where did you start? Where are you headed? Tell us like a little bit about yourself and about the program that you have and what you teach.

Yeah. Where did I start? I started like everyone else. You know, I wanted to be a real estate rock star. I got my real estate license in 2007. Took me three times to pass a dang test, by the way. So I'm not a test taking guy. I'm not a book smart dude. So basically, I wanted to get into the real estate business. I just,

you know, I liked everyone watches HGTV. They want to get in the game. So I thought if I got a real estate license, I can see all the deals coming across the desk. So the first deal I saw, which was a house, three bedroom, one bath. I bought that thing and got paid a commission. Ended up having to borrow the earnest money deposit for my great grandma. And I'm like just turned 21. So I'm now literally a landlord. Move over to the Coast, 2008, start trying to do buying and selling. Actually, I got my real estate license and I was sucking, man. I was sucking wind.

I was rough time back then. I was watching real estate brokers of 30 years get out of the business and I got in my head. And I quit. I threw in the towel. I was like, I'm going to join the military, go back to school. There's got to be better things. I tried to join the Air Force. They wouldn't let me.

They told me go next door to the Army. they'll take anyone. So I'm really coachable. I went next door of the Army and joined the military. I was a basic training not too long afterwards. Afghanistan, not too long after that. And was out of the United States until about 2013. And guess who was back in the real estate game back in 2013? This guy. I went hard back into it. Bought three rentals in about a year's time. And I was flat, broke. Like I was maxed out, Amex maxed out, Home Depot maxed out, started wholesaling houses, quick money. And that was rough. Every time I turned around, there was another wholesaler I was competing with. And I stopped getting so many houses. And then I came across land. You know, I stumbled across

it. Really, I heard about this guy buying land at massive discounts in his sleep, basically, and literally selling this stuff for, you know, three, sometimes 10 times what he paid for it. And I did a couple of those and just kept rinsing and repeating and looked down the road a few years later. I've done about 280 land deals, virtually no competition, have a passive income paying me every month, built a team around it. And here we are, getting to talk to you guys. You fine, gentlemen. First of all, I want to say thank you for serving. Thank you for your service. Going overseas, putting your life on the line is awesome. So that's one. Number two, all of my Navy friends would absolutely love that soundbite of the whole, you know, went to the Army because they'll take anybody.

I'm sure they will love that soundbite. So yeah, I think that's awesome. And then third, you're talking about land and you're talking about passive income from land. That just seems weird to me. Can you talk about that? Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, let me give you my second. Hey, yes.

Go ahead, Chris, real quick before we jump in, I think you've missed a major point. You know, just the willingness not to quit. That, like, to me is one of the main things that stuck out there. I think a lot of people jump into any of these avenues of real estate. And they see the glamorous photos on Facebook or other social media and they jump in and it's hard and they jump right back out. But your ability to, you know, to stick with it and then also find your niche is pretty

incredible, at my opinion. But let's jump back into the land. I just want to point that out. I'm glad to said that. Literally, I just got off the phone. Somebody called me earlier and over. I was talking to somebody earlier given like a little five minute like coaching session on how to buy an investment property. And I was talking about driving for dollars, which by the way, if you're,

looking at driving for dollars. Deal machine is awesome and use the code uncommon. It'll get you. It's just one of the best. And I just, I said to her, I was like, here's the problem. Everybody goes and finds three houses, five houses, calls them and says, oh, this doesn't work. It doesn't work. And so, yeah, that's the difference between the common and the uncommon. Jeff, I'm glad you said that because that is, that is like the number one common denominator is people that are successful, don't quit. I love it. Thanks, Jeff. That's perfect. Yeah. So how do you make money in land. I don't I make money in land. Totally agree with that, guys. You got to at least go after 10 houses and a 10 don't work, go after 20. And eventually you're going to get lucky. You're going to find that seller that just needs what you're selling or needs what you're offering. It's all about timing and work. I don't believe in getting lucky. I think God blesses those that work. And he puts them in the right places eventually. Like you just got to keep doing it and want it bad enough. So it's funny that you said, just talk to enough people and you'll get lucky. It's funny.

I'm married to like a number 10. My wife is so beautiful. Like I just didn't stop. I finally found her and I was like, I'm going to pursue. She told me I wasn't her boyfriend for like six months. But guess who, guess who's married to me now with three children?

Like it just worked out type thing. You just got, when you find it, you got to go after it. All right. So I get to say this, because this is one of the things. It just makes me laugh really hard.

There was this guy I met. He came in. He was working for a company I do a lot of business with. And the first day I made him, he's like, you know, I'm just like a really good salesperson. That's what I do. And I was like, oh, okay, that's awesome. He's like, you want me to prove how good of a salesperson I am? And I was like, yeah, he's like, see this bald chubby fat face? I still go on dates.

I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, that is hilarious. He probably has asked 10 people a week, you know. You just got, that's why I do a lot of mail. I got to send mail out every week to keep my deal flow coming in. So let's talk about my second land deal, which is not as cool as the first one. But my first, everyone always asked me like, what's your favorite land deal? It was number one for sure.

The first one I ever did because that showed me like, holy crap, I just turned $285 in the $5 grand overnight. Let's keep doing it. But the second land deal, how to make passive income. I stumbled into this. I bought a piece of land for $500 from a woman that didn't need money. her porch was bigger than my entire house. Her husband was like a stockbroker for 40 years and he picked up this parcel of land that he died and she no longer wanted it. She was three years behind on taxes, about to lose it to foreclosure. And she told me, she's like, I'll give it to you for $500. And I tried my negotiation skills out. And I said, would you take any less? And she said, no, son, you're getting a piece of land almost five acres for $500. Don't waste my time. Like this woman was pushing 90. Like, and I said, yes, ma'am. And I wrote. the check. So I put this thing on Craigslist that night when I got home. I drove from Denver,

Colorado, because that's where I met her, put it on Craigslist, $5,000 total, which here's the thing about the property. There was no access to it. You had to trespass against state land to get to it. And I disclosed all that. I said, $500 down, $400 a month, $500 a month, $400 a month, purchase price. I had a buyer the next day that brought me cash to my house. So now I have a $400 a month passive income. That's paying the car payment, man. And that was my proof of concept. And I just kept doing it and doing it until my mortgage payment was paid, my car, my bills, my utility, my student loans. And eventually I was like, I'm financially free. I can get the heck out of the Army. And that was what I wanted. That was my why. I really wanted out of the military.

And it wasn't just the military. I was just tired of being away from home. Dang. So you bought the land for 500 bucks. You sold it to somebody on installments. for $5,000, is that what you said? $5,000. I got $500 down. I got my money back out of it. I was profitable to 30 days later and no risk. Dang.

That's awesome. And how close to, you said that was in Colorado? Yeah, that was in Colorado. I actually drove by this land every day going to post, going on base. And, you know,

most people do that as well. Thousands and thousands of people drive by every week, but they never look twice at it. That's why there's no competition. They don't realize there's a way to make money with it because there's no house on it. There's no mobile home park. There's the storage units.

They don't realize how to make money. I made money because I bought a margin of safety. I got it for a stupid massive discount and turn around and sold it for a massive discount. So is this something you can only do in areas where there's tons and tons of land or can you do it like in more suburban areas? Can you do it? Like how like somebody that doesn't like I know Jeff's from. Kansas. Like I think of Kansas and I think of land. I live in the D.C. area and I don't think of land here in the D.C. area. But if you go a little bit further out, their neighborhoods and other places with that, can you just tell us like where can you do this kind of stuff?

Yeah. And you're right. There's like the areas that's super dense like Virginia where there's like no, no land available or it's large tracks owned by, you know, ranchers and whatnot. I'm not mailing that stuff. Now, granted, there will be some infill buildable lots in areas like, you're. What's an infill and billable lot? It's basically ready to build on. It's already got sewer and electric close by. That kind of stuff. If I can get that land for a discount, you know, let's just say 60 cents on the dollar. I get it under contract and I'm using really easy numbers.

I get it under contract for $60,000. It's worth $100. I'm sure I can get a developer or a builder or a spec home buyer or builder or a flipper that's tired of chasing after the dirty old stinky cat pee houses. I'm sure I can get them to pay. you know, 70,000. So I make a quick 10, 10 grand on it. That's awesome. That's awesome. And how are you finding, you know, the right people to mail to reach out to? How like, like, what are you doing to narrow down who you want to reach out to? You know, there's a couple things I like to do,

but let me just keep it super simple. Like those first two deals I did, those were guys that were behind on their taxes. I got the list from the county. At that time it was free. I'm starting to see counties charge for these lists so that you can go to a list provider. It's this simple. You can go to priced.com, price.com. You can pull a list of landowners and just mail those guys. At the end of the day, we just got to find the right people to talk to. Now, there's ways to micro that down, you know, figure out, okay, in this county, I see a lot of one acre lots. Those are the biggest volume sales. That's the one I'd go after because those are easy to price. Those are easy to see what they're selling for, what we call hot zip

codes in the wholesaling world. That's awesome. So, so this actually happened near my dad's property. My dad has a nice 20 acre lot in Kansas. It's got a kind of like a seven acre pond on it. Right next to it is this small lake that's been, we thought it was divided in in three different sections, two of which had been built on. Anyways, my dad had been trying to purchase this property. You found the owner. He did all these different things. And, you know, They said they weren't willing to sell. They weren't interested selling. Another guy comes in, his wife's an attorney, and they go to the tax record,

find out that the guy hadn't paid taxes on this inherited property for like a decade. He goes, ask them if he could buy it. The gentleman says, no, it's not for sell. And then he goes to the court, he goes to accounting or something, and brings this tax, this back tax situation up and essentially gets the land by paying off the back taxes and getting this guy out of debt, essentially. how often does that happen and what's the actual process for that? Because it seems easy, but at the same time, it's not exactly clear to me the whole process.

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And what he could have done too, which is, I think he's a little shady. I love the fact that he went to landowner and showed him like, look, you're in hot water. You're about to lose this land because we catch people all the time about to lose their land. And that's not the only land I buy. Let me just make that really clear. because some people think that you can only buy tax to land.

I've literally bought land from people that lived in the same county and were not behind in their taxes and they still gave me an amazing deal. But yeah, that does make sense. I can tell you on two hands now that I can count where I've literally just purchased the land at the back tax value. One example, we purchased an acre of land in Calhant, Colorado. It actually had a structure on it and it had asbestos in it. Like so I understood from the seller.

He told me that. So I told my team, I said, don't buy it. I don't want anything with asbestos. We're just going to get it under contract for the price of the back taxes and give this guy a dollar. So we got it a dollar over for what he owed on the back taxes. And we assigned this to a guy who wanted to be in this area. And he was actually going to revamp that at the spasas building. But we made a $27,000 net profit on that deal.

And we didn't know what we were getting into. We just got it for free. and we threw it out there and it just got taken over. So that's one right there. And I can tell you multiple other times where the seller is just like, get this thing off my back. I'm so tired of getting these letters. I inherited this land.

Grandpa bought it. My husband was a developer, like literally like the last lot in the neighborhood. We purchased those before. We've had to like start LL or start in corporations back up just to get legal acts or legal ownership of this land. So all the time, it happens all the time. You do enough deals. You see all kinds of crazy stuff with this.

Like, who'd have thunk that people, at least 10 people would have given me their land? So, so Brian, I've got a question on that. So if let's say we mail a bunch of people that own land. The avatar of this podcast, you got agents that are also investors. We see real estate agents and investors. Do you see opportunity where people are willing to get rid, like saying, yes, I want to sell. I'm willing to get rid of it. but maybe they're not willing to sell out of discounted price.

Do you see the opportunity where an agent could list that land? Perfect example. We bought three and a half acres from a gentleman. He's in his 70s. We purchased that land from him for $1.2 million. He's holding the seller carryback for $600,000. So I only came up with $600 grand. And I raised the capital to do that.

I have some partners. I only have about $50,000 of my own cash into that. and the seller's carrying it back one year zero percent interest no payments he's got another 1100 acres we can't come to an agreement on price for that he's way too high for that one that's when i brought in a land realtor very similar to what you teach with rye revive thinks your course is amazing with that you talk to this realtor and you figure out a way to legally you know joint venture with that where he can give you 50% of that listing price so that we're actually doing that with another piece of land where this realtor and I are going to create a partnership where he lists

the land gets this seller highest and best use. And I'm going to get a portion of that as a referral. However, the real estate attorney sets it up so I'm not acting as a broker because I no longer have a license. But yeah, all the time, not all the time do my sellers need my discounted price or my speed and my convenience. Sometimes they needed a different route and we're just solving that problem for them. In that case, it's a land specialist realtor. Yeah. Yeah, just make sure you get it structured correctly so that you're not a kickbacker referral fee that you could get everybody in trouble because you don't want. Oh, yeah. But yeah, no, no, that's awesome. That's awesome. So as far as how you typically, what do you think is the hottest list? Like I remember,

we have a mutual friend, Tom Crowell. And I love Tom Crowell because he always comes out, like he's always looking at his stuff. And like you'd hear him on Clubhouse. You You hear I'm speaking, he's like, here's what the hottest list is today. Call this and this. That's where you get the hot leads right now. What would you say is the hottest land lead list or the land list right now? All right. I'm about to let down a lot of your listeners.

There's no such thing. The land list is the hot list. That is the hot list because you want to find, I mail a whole entire county. I'll start with the buildable lots, you know, the 5,000 square foot to quarter acre lots. and then I'll go quarter acre to one acre, then one to three, five to ten. I want the whole county. Like when people think of land and say, for instance, El Paso County, Colorado, they know to call Brent Bowers, the land sharks or, you know, Zach buys houses,

whatever business name, but we are the go-to. So I say the whole dang land list. I go to price.com and I can give an affiliate link and get someone 400 free records and seven-day free trial to just start using it. But you could be mailing land tonight. I'm now telling people, don't even worry about going to the county treasurer's office and getting that tax delinquent list. It's too big of a pain. Let's get you talking to landowners today because that's at the end of the day.

Like some people just need to make money in 30 days. And that's what I needed when I did my first land deal. I needed money quick because I just had a brand new baby. We just bought a new house. I just moved across the country with the military. And the military doesn't pay that much, by the way. And I had student loans. So, you know, I always think that all my students.

that come in are similar to me. Like they don't have time and they don't have money. And I was the same way. So what is like what areas should a person be targeting? Are we in more suburban areas, more rural areas? Like what do you see as the someone just stepping into it or even just anybody? Yeah, I always recommend when someone's starting out, just like I started out, I did my first probably 10 deals within about a two and a half hour radius of where.

I currently live. Like for you, Chris, that's going to be a little hard. You're probably going to stretch that two and a half hour radius. And then Jeff, I'm not sure where you're at in the country. But I recommend if you can, if it all possible, get outside, just outside of the growth, the explosive growth. Like I just had a guy from Phoenix just joined the Landsharks group. I was like, dude, just look out like 30 minutes outside of what's going on. Phoenix, Arizona is exploding. It's on fire. No pun intended. Like just go on the outskirts of that because eventually it's all going to push. out, especially in Virginia. The only way you can go is west type thing. California, the only way you can go is east. So it's all pushing out. So I prefer, I call it the teeter totter method. Just be 30 minutes outside of where the growth is happening because those landowners are still willing to do a deal. Like, they're not willing to wait 10 years for that path of growth to reach them. Like, they need to get rid of it today. So I guess more rural is the quick answer. That's awesome. That's awesome. Are you still seeing students?

get some of your students get deals at like like you said 500 bucks like is that way time's gone by or what's the cheapest you've seen somebody buy land you know one of your students recently Colorado guy just purchased some land for 1800 sold it for 20 grand like literally just happened and he's sitting in Virginia by the way he lives in DC so he chose to come out in Colorado you know and I want to go back to that like the reason why I was getting this land at 250 $285 and $500 and $1,000. It's usually like an inefficient parcel of land. It's not buildable or it's not accessible.

You got to do something to it to get it right. And that's why it was at a discount. The seller wasn't willing, able, or resourceful enough to even do that. And, you know, I don't want to discount either the fact that people can do this in an urban environment. There's buildable lots. There's infill lots. Let's just say you are in, let's just say Miami, Florida or Orlando, Florida.

Florida right in the center of a lot of things going. There's still vacant parcels of land in neighborhoods. Snatch those things up. You just got to get them out of discount and sell it for a little higher, as Tom Crowe would say, look at the three lowest comps, get it for lower, and then sell that thing for a profit. Like people make quick cash. Like, I mean, you could get 25, 35 grand in your bank count in a few weeks time doing that. That's awesome. When you're in a, when you're in an urban, suburban area, how far out are you going for your comps? And just for instance, I have a parcel. I got a lot.

I think it's an acre lot. And but it's pinned up against all these other lots that are similar sizes, but they all have structures on them. And this one is completely vacant. How far out should I go and looking for comps for this to determine a market value for it? And that's hard. Sometimes you have to go, you know, a mile. two miles, but it's still got to be apples to apples.

So if you're looking at a comp like two miles, three miles down the road and there's no electric or water or sewer or maybe you can only do septic. And like Colorado, we need at least one acre for that. So it's still going to be an apple to apple. As long as it's an apple to apple within a few miles, I'm usually fine with that. And then here's another thing. Sometimes like areas like there's nothing's happened in the last six months with an apple to Apple comparison. So you have to go like a year. And it just gets a little tricky. I generally like

to be in an area with more volume happening because like I, that's my biggest fear. I don't want to get something under contract or buy something I can't sell. So I'm obviously getting it at a massive discount. But one way like if you do, let me give you an example. If you do end up buying something like that and you're a little off on your comps or you pay too much, you can dig yourselves out of a lot of holes by offering seller financing. I had to do it. I bought a crater in the ground in Woodland Park, Colorado. I ended up selling this thing, still making a profit, even though it was a huge hole in the ground, because I offered seller financing. You know, it just gave me an out. Yeah, this one that I'm speaking of, he bought it for like 190,000, but there hasn't been,

nothing is sold within a mile radius like this in like the last five years. So, you know, it's been, interesting trying to comp. So I'll continue trying to figure it out. One thing, go ahead, Chris. I was just going to say, I know we're usually on until the top of the hour, and I am leading a training at noon. So this is awesome. I would really love, Brett, how can people get in touch with you? Because like, obviously, anybody listening to this knows this is a blue ocean. If you've read that, if you know what I'm talking about, this is a blue ocean. This is not where people are at. Brent, can people get in touch with you? Yeah, I just started a YouTube channel. Brent Bowers is what it's called. We launched it three months ago and I'm talking to everything land on this thing. I'm the only

one on YouTube doing it, I feel like. That's awesome. Very cool. So go to Brent Bowers YouTube channel. He's also got a coaching program on Wholeselling Inc. I am one of the coaches over there, some really amazing folks that are on there. And I'm just so blessed to be a part of that cadre of amazing individuals. I've known Brent here for a while now, and I can just tell you, he is somebody that, you know, if it's something that you want to learn about land, he's the kind of person you want to learn from because he doesn't just do the bare minimum, but he makes sure that you're going to succeed and he really cares about his students. So I will give that pitch, and I don't give that pitch very often for somebody that does that. So with that said, Brent Bowers, YouTube channel,

Jeff, you want to take us home here and for real people, reach out to Brent. He's a stud. Awesome. Yeah. Hey, for his this conclusion of another episode of Yon, Common Lunchbox for the host, Chris Crite, myself, Jeff, Save Wright. Brent, thanks for being on. Everybody else. We'll be back next Tuesday, same time, same place. Until then, continue crushing it. Have a great weekend.

Bye. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up today with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other Uncommon Real Estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review. And to fast track your real estate career, go to chriscratic.com.