Land Investing - Finding Deals

[Fred Venturini]

I know some pretty talented land investors who also have the ability to deploy their own farming operations to get value out of tillable acres, and as a newly minted real estate agent in IL, I'm hoping to invest along with them on the next couple of pieces.

We also have a system to optimize and better position land to extract maximum value. 

Being located in south/central Illinois, the problem we see around here is finding decent deals, let alone good deals. Land deals are done away from most residential MLS's, and if they're listed on land websites, they are typically overpriced in general, let alone for the savvy investor. "Ugly" land is usually marketed to hunters for a value that takes into account the emotion of owning hunting ground. There is some opportunity for "baskets" of land that really aren't positioned for a specific buyer (think of one parcel that is half hunting timber and half tillable, with maybe a wetland issue or two or some work to clean up a square piece for farming) where you could go in, tidy things up and do some savvy dividing.

I was thinking of applying the same tactics that deal-hunters use when flipping or wholesaling houses ("We buy ugly land!"), but since I'm new to the community, I wanted to let you know what I was up to in the interest of discussion (I find these types of investments fascinating and don't know ALL about them yet, but the guys I work with are savants) and to see if anyone had some clever tactics to uncover a decent deals on messy acreage. 

The perfect property is 60 acres or more, and a bit of a mess--perhaps has drainage issues or timber needs to be cleared, super-motivated seller who wants nothing to do with farm acreage, among other warts--in order to get a decent price. We also have the ability to speed up the rather long process of appraising this type of ground (sometimes this takes up to 60 days around here) so we could push the ability to close within 2 weeks for ground. 

Was thinking of Craiglist ads, possibly Facebook ads targeting farmers, going after probate or pre-foreclosure leads . . . anyone else want to add an idea or discuss this further?