Lake Travis Waterfront - Home Run Deal

[Mike Lawrence]

Investment Info:

Other other investment.

Purchase price: $400,000
Cash invested: $40,000
Sale price: $933,000

We found a pocket listing on a Lake Travis waterfront lot and the seller was asking 400K. We played it cool, but soon followed up with a full price offer knowing it was well below market value. We used hard money to buy the lot and negotiated a 10% down payment at 9.9% with 2.5 points to close. We hired the top real estate videographer in Austin, JP Morales, to make an awesome video and take some fantastic drone shots. My wife and I built a custom website and listed the lot ourselves through an MLS listing service. In less than 6 months, we closed on the lot for 933K, generating about 470K in profit after all interest, marketing, buyer's agent fee, and all closing costs on both sides of the transaction.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Massive upside

How did you add value to the deal?

Investing in fantastic videography, pictures, website, marketing. My wife and I own a marketing firm, so we are always looking at marketing. It blows our mind how many times we see poor marketing, whether it's bad videos, pictures, writing, websites, etc. And we've noticed it's even worse when it comes to land. Land in Austin is EXPENSIVE, and many times you will see lots 400K-1MM+ and they just throw up a few crappy pics and a short description. We did the opposite and it PAID OFF!!!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Sometimes real estate agents can be an amazing source for leads. That was the case in this deal. Because we were actively looking for land and meeting several agents that were selling land, this deal came to be.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Gabe Correll from Easy Street Capital came through with the best hard money loan option for our project. We called several of the top rated lenders in Austin, and narrowed it down to the top 3. The process with Easy Street was as advertised, pretty easy, and it worked out great for us.