Best Deal Ever Show: Buying Land at Pennies on the Dollar

In this episode, we talk with Jack Bosch from Phoenix, Arizona. Jack is originally from Germany but moved here to get his college degree. After graduating, he got a job at a software company, which allowed him to get his green card and stay in the states.

Five-and-a-half years later, he transitioned to real estate investing and has since become known as “the land guy” in real estate. Jack started out doing deals in Phoenix and now does deals from Florida to Hawaii to Texas—and all over the country.

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Flipping Land for Profit

Jack’s business model is land-flipping. They do wholesaling, and seller financing (his favorite method) in the $10K-$100K range. They do about 80% of their deals this way.

His model is simple: He finds people who have been sitting on land for 20 to 25 years and are willing to sell it for literally $.05 to $.25 per dollar. A lot of times his purchase price is completely recovered by the down payment he gets when he sells the property… then they get straight cash flow from the monthly payment.

Being that it’s land, they don’t have to worry about other expenses, like repairs, maintenance, etc. And the best part is that there’s no competition.

He says that with land deals, finding a seller is easy. In fact, they get up to a 14% response rate on their direct mail! While finding the deals is easy, the challenge in this model is finding the buyer willing to purchase via owner finance. They never sell their notes—unless the buyer decides to build on the land. Jack says it’s great cash flow, and when the market crashed years ago, they had over $70K a month of residual income coming in from these notes. That amount of cash flow allowed them to invest in 50 rental houses, which have since tripled in value.

This Investor’s Best Deal Ever

Jack’s best deal ever was a one-acre lot he bought on top of a hill in Prescott, Arizona—one of the top 50 retirement places in the U.S. The lead came from a direct mail campaign. When they inspected the property, they couldn’t believe the amazing views this property had.

The seller loved the property but was motivated to sell for sentimental reasons after his mother passed away. Jack ended up purchasing the property for $1,850 and sold it two weeks later for a whopping $86,000 at a land auction!

That’s right, Jack used to do land auctions, selling up to 80 properties every quarter throughout the year. This particular property stirred up a bidding war and ended up netting Jack some serious profit!

Of course, as was typically the case with the properties they sold, it was marketed with an owner financing option. The buyer ended up putting $17,000 down ($15K more than what Jack paid for it!) and signed onto a 12.9% interest loan on a 15-year amortization. Jack was collecting $850/month in straight profit from this deal!

Amazingly, two years into the financing, the buyer actually stopped making payments. You’d think this was bad news, right? No way—Jack simply took the property back and resold the land a second time for $86,000 and is still getting cash flow to this day.

Deal by the Numbers

Purchase: $1,850
Sold: $86K twice!
PROFIT = Over $120K when it’s all said and done

Advice for Other Investors

Seller financing is a tremendous way to build stable, residual income over a long period of time.

What was your best deal ever or the best deal you’ve ever heard about?

Share in the comment section below.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.