The Personal Finance Podcast - How to go from 0 to $4 Million in 2 years flipping land with Pete Reese
Episode Date: January 16, 2023In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, we’re going to talk to Pete Reese about how to flip land. Join Our Newsletter here! Index Fund Pro Pre Launch https://mastermoney.co/index-fund-pr...o-pre-launch/ Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors!: Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/pfp. Fundrise: My favorite place to invest in passive real estate! Visit fundrise.com/PERSONALFINANCE to join them in just minutes. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Policygenius: This is where I got my term life insurance. Policygenius made is so easy. To get your term policy go to policygenius.com and make sure your loved ones are safe. Checklist of relevant episodes: From House Hacking to Future Millionaire with John Eringham (Johnefinance) Is it Worthwhile to Invest in the Top 10 Holdings of an Index Fund? Buy VS. Rent: Is Buying a House a Good Investment? From Flipping Couches to Flipping Houses With Ryan Pineda 10 Incredible Tax Benefits of Real Estate Investing How to Invest In Real Estate Without the Headaches (Fundrise VS REITS!) 26 Ways to Find Real Estate Deals (Some You Have Never Heard Of!) Connect with Pete Reese: Pete’s Linkedin Pete’s Twitter Pete’s Instagram Pete’s Website Pete’s Youtube Personal Finance Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@thepersonalfinancepodcast FREE GUIDES: ============== -Check out the free guide on where to put your money in what order! https://www.mastermoney.co/stairway-to-wealth -Here is the free How to Ask for A Raise ebook! https://www.mastermoney.co/get-a-raise-ebook -Get Access to the 75-Day Challenge: https://www.mastermoney.co/75daychallenge ============= We have a YOUTUBE channel! Check it out here! Our Latest Videos: How To Grow A Podcast Organically What Would Happen If You Maxed Out Your Roth IRA By Age?! (These Results Will Amaze You!) How to Become a Millionaire With a Small Amount of Money (Is it Really This Easy!?) Pre-tax moves for high earners Got questions? Ask me on Instagram Here. @mastermoneyco This is the fastest way to get in touch with me. ============ Want to Support the Show? Follow on Spotify or Follow and Leave a 5-Star Review on Apple Podcasts! ============ Check out all the Stuff I Recommend! Check out all my favorite Credit Cards https://milevalue.com/top-offers-mastermoney/ USEFUL RESOURCES: The Year-End Money Checklist https://mastermoney.co/year-end-money-checklist/ The 75 Day Money Challenge https://mastermoney.co/75-day-challenge/ Finally, Get That Raise https://mastermoney.co/resources/ ============ DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser. This Podcast is for educational purposes only. Investing of any kind involves risk. While it is possible to minimize risk, your investments are solely your responsibility. It is imperative that you conduct your own research. I am sharing my opinion. AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links on this channel are affiliate links, meaning, at NO additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase and/or subscribe. However, this does not impact my opinion. ============ Check us out on social fam! Twitter Tiktok www.thepersonalfinancepodcast.com www.mastermoney.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk to Pete Reese about how to flip land.
What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast.
I'm your host, Andrew founder of mastermuddy.com.
And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking to Pete Reese about
how to flip land.
If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram or TikTok at MasterMoney Co.
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Now, today, we are going to be talking to Pete Reese about how to flip land.
And Pete has an incredible business where he is going out and buying raw land,
and he's taking that land and flipping it within 60 days.
And Pete started two years ago with no experience in the land flipping business.
And now, two years later, his business is all.
already generating $4 million every single year in profit.
Now, this is absolutely incredible.
And the trajectory of what Pete has done is incredible.
And you'll see he went all in from the very beginning.
Because what he does is he has a very specific funnel on how he actually acquires these
deals and maintains a very large pipeline because of the amount of dollars that he
invested up front.
Now, this is a really cool systematic way to invest in real estate.
If you don't want to deal with tenants, if you don't want to deal with fixing properties
or exploding toilets or any of those types of things,
then you can invest in raw land and flip raw land.
I think it's a very cool way to actually get into investing in real estate.
There's a number of different ways to flip raw land,
including buying properties from people who have backed taxes and helping them out,
or buying properties from people who maybe don't live in that state anymore,
inherited properties.
There's a bunch of different things that Pete and I are going to go into.
So we're going to talk about how he actually acquires properties.
We're going to talk about how he actually finds properties to buy off market.
And we're going to talk about how he finds his seller so that he could
flip those properties very quickly. Like I said, his timeline is he wants to flip that property
in 60 days. So in order to do that, you have to have amazing systems in place. And Pete dives into
those systems as well. So I'm incredibly excited to share this episode with you guys. So without
further ado, let's welcome Pete to the personal finance podcast. So Pete, welcome to the personal
finance podcast. Well, thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate the invite and glad to be here.
We are so incredibly excited to have you here because you do something that I've been interested in for a
long time and that's land flipping. And I think this is an underutilized and a lot of people don't
talk about this in the real estate world. A lot of people talk about rental properties and buying
apartment buildings and all those other things, but they don't talk about the actual land flipping
that is available out there. So can you tell us about how you got started in land flipping and how
your business is doing now? Sure. I actually got started in land flipping in March of 2021.
So not even two years at this point. And on this year, we're on track to actually do close to $4 million
in revenue, and that's about a 50% gross profit margin. So on average, we try to, anything we buy,
we try to double it. That's absolutely incredible. So in two years, you went from just starting off,
learning how to landflip all the way to getting to $4 million in revenue just in those two years.
So that is, that is absolutely amazing. And one thing we really need to understand, though,
is how we can go about finding these deals? Because if somebody wants to start doing this,
say somebody's interested in land flipping, how do you go about finding deals? And what are some of the
best places that you go in source deals. Sure. Yeah, it's all about bringing in the deal flow. And for us,
we use direct mail. And we use that in a very specific way, too, because we compile a list like
anyone else, but we take that list and then we actually send out offers to people in the mail.
And it's a two-page letter. Page one is kind of introducing who we are and what we do and what we
can do for them. And page two is an actual purchase agreement document.
Interesting. So you actually send out the offers ahead of time. So you send a letter with the offer
inside of the letter. Interesting. So are you analyzing a large number of deals prior to even sending
out those direct mails? You know, what we do is we base those offer prices off of averages for a
certain area. So say we're sending to a particular county in Maryland, for example, what we'll do
is we'll take a look at the properties that have recently sold. Say we're interested in 10 acre plus
parcels. We'll take a look at what those properties have recently sold for and we'll come up with an average.
and then based off of that, we'll back off a percentage that we would need to purchase it for,
and that's where our offer price comes from.
In a many cases, it's kind of just a starting point in reality.
Sometimes we're right on.
Sometimes we're too high.
Sometimes we're too low.
But it gets the phone ringing pretty good, and then we just see what we can work out from there.
Interesting.
So as you go through this process, say you start to compile your list to send out letters, for example.
What type of deals are you looking for?
Are you looking for out-of-state owners that may be owned properties in specific?
locations? Are you looking for people who are behind on their taxes? What type of deals are you
looking for? I think some of those types of properties that you're mentioning, you probably have
a higher percentage of potential deals out of them. But we send out just a ton of mail, so I don't
really filter them down that far. I mean, we're sending out probably 50,000 letters per month
at this point. So it's more about the area and the property type. So we'll take a look at,
using that county in Maryland as an example, we'll take anything 10 acres plus in.
in that county, and we'll send them out to everyone. Now, we filter out obvious property owners
that will never sell to us, like a railroad, a city, a municipality, utility companies,
things like that. But everyone else, we leave them in there, we send them out and then see what
happens. Is there a specific tool that you use to source your list? Do you use some, like you use
county websites? Do you go through and maybe use a third party? How do you find your lists of people
to go out and find deals? Yeah, we subscribe to a service.
called a data tree. It's a first American company. And they compile data from all over the country.
And it's pretty robust in that you can filter down to many different variables, assessed value,
you know, how long the owner has owned the property, like lots of different things. So we don't
use a lot of those filters because we send out so much mail, but it does really allow us to
compile our lists. And then we can export them and then, you know, send them to the direct mailhouse that
we're using. Interesting. So what is your cost?
to source some of these leads.
Like if you're sending out 50,000 letters a month,
obviously there's a major cost just in stamps alone, for example.
And did you start off with this amount?
Or how did you start off in terms of sending out your letters?
Yeah, my first batch of mail.
When I do something, I go big on it.
So that's just kind of the way I'm wired.
I don't like to just dip my toe in and see how it's going.
I try to go all in.
My first batch of mail I sent out was in,
I think it was end of November or December of 2020.
And I sent out a batch of 10,000 letters.
And on average, with data costs and with the mail costs and everything, it's about 50 cents per letter because we send out standard mail.
We don't do first class mail or anything like that.
So pretty much if we send out 10,000 pieces of mail, that's $5,000.
So it's pretty easy to figure out in that way.
So to compile all these letters, because this is obviously a large volume of letters that you're sending out, do you use a third party to do that?
Or do you do it yourself and kind of, you know, source it all and then kind of print off all the letters yourself and kind of go through those deals as well?
Or do you use another company?
Yeah, we use another company.
Right now we're using a company called Rocket Print.
Rocket Print and Mail, I think, is their actual company name.
They also go by Postcard Mania.
But they do all of that for us.
So basically what we do is we'll send them our letter and our purchase agreement
with a bunch of merge-type fields in there.
And then we also send them a spreadsheet of our list each time we send out a batch of mail.
And then they merge them all together, send them all out.
You know, they send us a proof to make sure it looks good.
But.
And how are you automating those offers?
So you're sitting an offer inside of those letters.
Is there some system that you're utilizing to automate those offers so that you can get in that range?
Because obviously you're using the range, like you said earlier.
Is there something you're using there?
Are you using Excel formulas?
How are you actually doing that?
Yeah, it's pretty basic in the way that I do it.
Maybe some people are more advanced than me when it comes to that.
But I view it kind of as a starting point in a way.
So what I'll do, then I'll look at all the sales in that particular count.
for that acreage range.
And then I'll just kind of do a rough average.
Like, hey, on average, these properties are selling for 3,000 acre retail.
And then I know that my goal is to double my money.
So then I'll set a price per acre of $1,500 per acre.
And then we'll just do a simple multiplication formula, you know, once we have the list,
because I know what acreage they have.
And then I know what our price per acreage is.
And then it's easy to fill out that offer price.
And that's just another variable that goes into the letter.
Okay, that makes complete sense.
So as you go through this process and you are starting to source deals and maybe you're
getting some calls back, how are you handling those inbound calls?
And then when you do that, are they just all handled by you?
And then you kind of start negotiating with the seller at that point in time?
Well, at this point of a pretty big team buildup.
But the first level, basically, is a call answering service that I use.
And what they do is that any calls that come in, they'll go through a basic list of questions
that we have. You know, they get a reference number, which also goes on their offers. And then we can
look them up and see kind of what we offered and some details about the property. And, you know, that gets
sent to us. I've got another person on my team then that's a lead manager and they kind of input
everything into our CRM. Some people also email in and some people actually send a letter back
as well. So we get all kinds of responses. And then from that point, I've got an acquisition
manager on her team and her job is to simply make contact with all these property owners that
showed some level of interest and then you know see what kind of deal we can work out and the other
thing is too that that are these properties that come back probably about 80 to 90 percent of them
we don't move forward with because they're undesirable properties in some way at this point we're
only purchasing what I consider to be good quality properties. So things that like landlocked
properties or properties that are all swamp or properties on the side of a mountain or something like
that, like we don't even move forward with them at this point anymore. That makes complete sense because
I have seen land investors out there who will buy property, say, for example, in the middle of the
desert. And then it's like, what are you going to do with that property? There's just not a ton
that you can do with it. There's not a ton of utility. So when you're evaluating these properties,
what are some of the things you look for to ensure that it's going to be a profitable flip?
I love properties that have road frontage.
They're always easier to sell.
I love properties that actually look nice on site.
Like they have nice trees.
They have meadow.
A property like you go on and you say, boy, this is a nice property.
It's just kind of a feel in a way.
But you try to avoid stuff like wetlands, FEMA flood zone, really bad topography.
Some things like that can really kill your, you know, potential resale on a property.
And then, you know, even things like what are the neighboring properties look?
like. And, you know, if the neighbors have like a ton of junk out there or something like that,
it really hurts the resale of our properties. So that makes sense as well. So are there any big
mistakes that you look for to try to avoid when you do your due diligence? In most cases, we try to
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I guess you could say. So we'll go through the whole due diligence process and we'll call the
county or the city and we have a whole list of questions that we go through and ask them.
to try to determine if there's going to be any sort of big barriers to building on those properties.
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and they may not even want to build on them.
But it does really help our buyer pool when we're reselling them to have that option.
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So I'm thinking about the funnel here as you start to do this.
So you're sending out 50,000 letters every single month.
month. And then once those letters are sent out, how many of those do you actually end up
truly talking to the seller and making offers on to actually make a deal with?
I would say that probably, you know, we're trying to purchase at this point about 10 properties
per month. That's kind of our benchmark right now. We're probably getting pretty serious with
about 20 to 30. And then maybe 10 of them end up kind of working out, you know, the price is good.
the title work is good once we get under contract. We pass all the due diligence and everything. So it's kind of a filtering process as you get down there. But it starts out with that really big number of letters mailed and then it kind of works its way down from there. So that makes sense because I think a lot of times I remember when we were really heavily buying rental properties, for example, we would have to make tons and tons of offers before it would filter down all the way to one. And it'd be like hundreds of offers before we actually got one that actually was a great deal. And it's just part of real estate is making a bunch of offers to kind of get some of those deals.
It's a volume game a lot of times.
Yeah, it's all about the numbers.
Exactly.
So when you're making these offers, what contingencies do you have in place
so that you can kind of safeguard your company in the way that you're making this deal?
Sure.
Our purchase agreements are really pretty basic.
It's a one-page deal.
And it basically says we have up until the close of escrow in order to get out of the deal.
So it says that we can conduct any kind of due diligence that we want to conduct pretty much
and that we have until close of escrow in order to pull out.
But I mean, our goal is to buy these properties.
And we normally, once we commit, we'll normally, we'll always buy it unless there's some sort of major red flag that came up along the way.
So due diligence, like you said, is probably a major factor when you go through this process.
And you have a certain amount of days that you can do that based on the deal that you're putting into play.
So what does the due diligence process look like for you?
Yeah.
Once we get a property under contract, it kind of triggers a whole chain reaction of events within our system and our team.
first thing we do is we get a photographer lined up and that photographer is normally a drone photographer
so they'll go out they'll walk the property they'll also do drone shots they'll do a report on the ground
and the property and actually walk it another thing that we do is we have local broker partners that
we work with and they're a big part of our process as well so we get their opinion on the property
you know are there anything that we should know about this particular area because we never see any of
I mean, like personally, I never see any of these properties in person.
I have in the past, but generally that's an exception to the rule.
So we leverage our broker partners pretty heavily.
And, you know, as far as their price opinions and, you know, any insight about the local area.
And then we use those broker partners to resell the properties for us.
So it's kind of, there's an incentive for them to kind of help us with our due diligence portion as well.
And then also we have a whole list of questions that we dig in.
with the county, the city, the municipality to kind of determine, you know, potential buildability
or restrictions on the property. And we get into things like utilities available and maybe any
red flags that are in the property file, like if it failed a perk test in the past or if there's some
sort of weird zoning on a property, which would not make it buildable, you know, things like
that are the things that we look for on that side of things. And then it's kind of multiple
layers of review. Once we get all that information collected, I've got a team member that's a property
analyst, he's really good at digging into all the property specific things and he knows what to look out for.
And then I review the property as well. The other piece that comes into play a lot of times is once we get the
title search back, you know, sometimes there are issues that come up in the title search that we don't
know about until the title company brings us to our attention, whether it be some sort of maybe they
sold off the mineral rights years ago or something odd along those lines. And those type of situations
have come up in the past. And it's just a matter of reviewing everything that comes back on that
title prelim and making sure there's nothing weird in there that's going to make it harder for us
to resell, obviously. Now, how do you find, because you're doing such a high volume and I'm sure
in a bunch of different areas, how do you find these broker partners or how did you put that program
together to have these broker partners available? Are you sending letters to the same areas every single
month or are you working in casting a wide net across the country?
What our process is sort of is casting more of a wider net. I mean, most of our stuff right now
is we do on the East Coast. And then we look at certain areas where there's a lot of activity.
There's sales happening. There's not a huge glut of inventory and limited sales, which we know
is going to make it harder for us to actually sell the properties at the end. And then we work with
a lot of land-specific brokers. And many of these land-specific brokers kind of cover
a wide area, you know, like multiple counties or a big portion of a state. And that's just what they
focus on land. And then we look for the best ones in each particular area. And when we get a
potential deal or whatever, generally I'll give them a call and introduce myself and what we do
and how we're looking for assistance from them. I mean, we pay 10% commissions on a resale. So we do
try to make it appealing for them. And we try to make it a win-win situation. And most of them are
on board. And there's certain brokers that we've done tons and tons of deals with. And when we find a
really good one, we try to do as many deals in that areas as possible because it really makes everything
a lot easier. So as you go through this process, maybe you and the seller are working together.
You get the title search back. Everything looks good. And you're ready to go buy the property.
How do you actually close on that property? Do you use traditional title companies? Because I know the
cost would come into play if you did that or is there a different way that you close on these properties.
We always close through a title company, a title company or an attorney depending on the state or escrowing company.
And it's just simply more of an insurance thing. I mean, you'd be surprised how many issues come up with land and title issues.
And a lot of times these properties are, you know, inherited. And the people that have been paying the property taxes are listed in the county records as the owner.
They may not even be the full owner. You know, a lot of times the title report will come back.
And it's like, well, did you know that there are 16 errors on this property?
And they, you know, they just had no idea because of the way that the inheritance laws in a particular area work.
So, you know, certain situations like that, you know, I'm just always very cautious when it comes to the title stuff.
I want to make sure everything's rock solid because the last thing I want to do is buy a property and then find out that there's some sort of cloud on the title or something like that, which is going to make it an eventual problem for us to resell.
So we get that straightened out before we close on it because,
I know I'm going to have to go through it on the resale side of things.
So it better get that all straightened out at first.
So typically you close with the title company.
So how long does it take for you to speak to a seller all the way to go to closing typically?
Is it a time frame that maybe takes 30 days or is it less than that where you're trying to close as fast as possible?
We try to close them as quickly as possible.
It's the title companies pretty much are slowing us down.
I'd close in a week if we could.
The quickest we've gotten done really is about two weeks, probably on average, though, it takes roughly 30 days.
So once you close on these properties and you have this property in your possession,
how do you go about finding buyers to flip this property?
Because you said you wanted to find a buyer and sell that property within 60 days after buying
the property. So how do you go about finding those buyers?
We always list our properties with the broker resale partners.
So they're part of our process and we keep them updated as we're getting close to closing.
So then they can be ready to go with the listing as soon as we do close on it.
And then they get it listed in the MLS.
and normally land.com and some other related sites like that.
And then, you know, we'll do things like we'll put it on Facebook marketplace.
Sometimes we get some leads from there.
But the great majority of the deals come from listing them on the MLS through our broker partners.
So those broker partners look like, they sound like they're really important in terms of your process because what's happening here is they're helping you look at the property, go through that whole process.
But they also help you on the buyer side and then on the selling side as well.
So that makes complete sense.
Exactly.
Because I've seen a lot of people do it where they kind of keep it off market.
But it makes complete sense for that situation so that, especially at the high volume that you're doing,
so that you can get those properties moved quickly and at the highest dollar amount by putting them on the MLS.
Yeah, I kind of view it as somewhat of an arbitrage situation.
So I'm buying it off market.
Sometimes we're doing some minor improvements to the property, but then we're taking it and we're putting on the public like retail market.
And it's important, especially for the, you know, as you get into the higher dollar properties, I think to have them marketed.
professionally like that with someone who's kind of a local broker in an area because, you know,
you get some additional credibility. If you're just, you know, listing something by owner,
off market, I think you're going to have a harder time getting the exposure that you want to get
and also the high dollar prices that you want to get as well. So as you go through this process,
then, is there a specific size of property you won't buy? Like, will you not buy properties that are
too small? Or is there like a sweet spot, I guess, of properties that would be the highest profitability
that you're finding. A real good sweet spot, honestly, is if you're buying properties, it seems like
buying properties in the $30,000 to $50,000 purchase price range and then reselling them for
double to triple, that's a pretty good range right now. But I also like higher dollar
properties as well as we can get them. I did one deal where it was a purchase price of $315,000,
and we sold it for $5.95. So that's a big chunk of money right there just from one deal.
That's incredible.
And so it sounds like what you're doing is a lot of times you're selling them on the MLS,
so a lot of these deals are probably coming in cash.
But do you ever do deals where you do seller financing on some of the land deals?
I don't personally.
I know there are other land investors that do seller financing,
but I just actually recently started working with another investor.
And basically what he does is he'll buy the note from me at closing.
So essentially I can offer owner financing.
but what happens is at closing, he actually comes in and pays for the note at a discount,
but then the buyer gets to utilize that financing.
So it's kind of a win-win.
I don't like to do that strategy off the bat is probably not the best because, you know,
I have to take a discount when I sell the note, but maybe some properties that have been
inventory for a little bit of time or something where we could market up a little bit
higher to begin with, and then, you know, the numbers might work out well with that as well.
I would kind of side with you on that as well because a lot of times I just feel like
you'd be chasing down your money on some of these longer term notes. And I feel like there'd be more
headaches in play if you had to do it that way. So that makes complete sense as well. So what are
some big mistakes that you have made along the way that, you know, that you would caution for others to
avoid? Well, thankfully, I haven't lost money on any deal to this point and done about 100 so far.
So knock on wood. But the one thing that really, and this wasn't like a huge mistake in retrospect,
but it was kind of a situation where a big learning thing for me,
I used to be under the impression that, hey, any of these properties are great if I can get them for the right price.
So if it's cheap enough, I'll go for it.
This one property in particular is a 12-acre property, and I was able to pick it up for $3,000.
I thought it was just such a great deal.
I was like, I'm going to sell this for $20,000 and, you know, just be a very easy deal.
But the property was landlocked, so that was the big problem with that one.
And the reason why it was so cheap, it had no physical or legal access to the property.
I mean, rightfully in the state, you could access your property, you know, just by right,
but there's no potential to ever build on the property or actually do anything with it.
So I put it on the market and just had a ton of interest.
And it cost so much of my time, actually, to try to market this property.
And I had to keep reducing it and everything.
And, you know, I still made it like a couple thousand dollars when it all of a sudden done.
But it kind of like, so it didn't cost me anything in money, but it did cost me my time.
and then it taught me a valuable lesson.
And I'm just not really going to deal with landlock properties anymore,
no matter how cheap they are.
Exactly.
Sometimes some of those properties,
I can think of rental properties that we had the same way
where they just teach you the most lessons of anything else.
And sometimes it's the best education to have
because you'll just never do that again.
And it's one of the most frustrating things.
But as long as you make a little bit of money,
at least it comes out okay.
And you learn those lessons along the way.
So that's absolutely perfect.
So what is the best deal that you've ever done?
The best deal, I think, was that property I mentioned,
that we bought it for 315 and sold it for 595. Now, a couple of things about that deal that were
interesting. This is a 650 acre property. Beautiful property. Lots of nice pine trees, really level. I mean,
just a nice trails going through the property. It was a beautiful property. Generally, I buy most of
all of our properties with cash and then myself and then we resell them, obviously cash,
that we get cashed out at that side as well. But this property was only one of two properties at the time
that I'd purchased with a partner.
And in this business, you can, you really can't find hard money, lenders for properties,
but you can find partners that are willing to do the deal with you.
And in this case, the partner brought the money.
And then I did all the marketing and all the, you know, I found the deal,
did all the marketing side of things with the broker partner.
And then we split the profits.
So in that situation, we bought the property for 315.
we put a little bit of money into getting some extra trails cut in the property.
But when all was said and done, we each got to check for 108,000 or something like that.
And when you look at the return on investment, I mean, for me, my investment was finding the deal.
So I have that cost to acquire a deal.
But really, it's kind of an infinite return of investment because I didn't put any money into the deal.
That's absolutely incredible.
Sometimes those are some of the best deals, those sweat equity deals where you can,
especially as fast as you're moving on some of these, those sweat equity deals can be absolutely
incredible because all you're investing is your time. So a lot of people listening, if you don't have
as much money as you do time, maybe you have more time in play, this is something you can definitely
do to start to get into this as find partners who can be your cash partners and then you can find
deals and source the deals and go through the whole process and then you guys split the profit.
That's a fantastic way to look at it. Right. And believe it or not, there's actually a lot of
a lot of those money partners out there that they want to be more passive in a way that,
you know, but if you can bring a deal and you can prove to them that it's a deal,
then you'll have no problem finding those partners on that side of things.
That's absolutely incredible.
So let's say you were brand new to land investing again.
It's two years ago.
You're starting all over again.
What is the first thing you would do to find your first deal?
And how would you develop pipeline of deals?
Mm-hmm.
Well, I would definitely commit a certain amount of money to doing that outreach, the direct mail.
Even if you put it on the credit card or whatever, I mean, it's kind of an investment to get the business going.
I mean, it's kind of like running a car without gas.
I mean, you need that gas.
And that makes everything move, basically.
So you got to commit a certain amount of budget for that each month to get things going.
So I would just look for some areas, maybe areas that you're familiar with, if you feel best with that starting in.
that way. But I would look for markets where there are land sales that are happening. And the easiest
way to do that is really check on Zillow. So say, for instance, I'm looking at that county in
Maryland. And generally, just to do a basic search like this, I'll put in 10 acres plus of just land,
filtered out for just land. And then over the last year, how many properties within that range
sold? Say 20 sold in that range. And then I look at the active listings that are there for that
particular county and I see that there's 50 active listings, that's really not that great because
that's over two years worth of inventory using that metric. But if I pull it up, you know,
I see 20 sales that have happened and I only see 10 active listings, that's pretty good because
that's about six months worth of inventory. So if you're in a market where you know that things are
actually moving and there's some demand and there's maybe not a glut of inventory, that's really a
good start. Those are fantastic tips as well because I think kind of going through that Zillow process
is something where you can look all over the place areas you're familiar or look somewhere outside
of your geographic area as well and you can kind of see what's moving and what's happening around
there. So is that how you would kind of 80, 20 your results when you first get started is kind of
doing that direct mail side because I think that's the best way to do is what it sounds like
for a lot of people going through like tax sales and all that kind of stuff. It just seems like
it's a major headache and you're not going to get the deal flow that would happen there.
So would that be how you would kind of 80, 20 your results?
I would. Yeah, definitely. And maybe if you don't have as large of a mail budget initially,
maybe you could filter down some of those things, like, for instance, out-of-state owners or something like that.
Like, maybe you could hone in a certain county and then take it a step further and hone in on out-of-state owners or people that have owned the property for quite some time, something like that.
Or maybe delinquent in taxes. You know, that could be a good one as well. So that would kind of be how you kind of make the list more targeted in a way.
Okay, that's absolutely perfect.
Those are fantastic tips as well.
So, Pete, I want to shift gears here for a second because this is a question that we ask a lot of our guests.
And we always get a different answer out of this.
And so I'm really excited for this as well, just because a lot of times we want to kind of, you know, eventually put an episode together where we kind of have everybody's answer on that episode.
But this is a question that we absolutely love.
So what does wealth mean to you?
Well, wealth is really about freedom in my mind.
So if you've got monetary wealth, you've also got freedom generally of your time and kind of like you can do whatever you can do whatever you want to do in a way.
I mean, I've got a pretty good nest egg build up at this point.
And I don't have to work every day like I do, but I do.
And it's what I want to do.
So having that at least that option there that you can call the shots, I guess you could say is wealth in my mind.
Absolutely.
And that freedom is the most valuable thing that you can have.
Well, Pete, thank you so much.
This was amazing insight into land flipping.
I'm so excited for people to hear this episode.
So where can people find more about you and what you have going on?
Sure.
The best place to find me is called turning profit.com.
On that website there, you'll see that I do a monthly income report.
And the monthly income report basically talks about all the revenue we took in that month,
how we did.
Each deal, we break down each deal that we did what went well, what didn't go well,
try to look into each one and learn something a little bit from each one. And then, you know,
how we did on the profit, our average days on the market, and all these different things that we
track in our business. And I think by going through some of those reports, you'll get quite a bit
of insight into the land flipping business, what's possible and what types of results
possibly you can get for yourself. That is absolutely incredible. So I encourage every single person
to go check that out as well. We'll link all those links down in the show notes. And Pete,
Thank you so much for coming on. This was truly a pleasure.
Well, thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate it.
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