How do I find land/lots to wholesale ?

[DeAnthony Barrett]

Trying to figure out the best strategies to find land or lots for sale by owners. I’m looking for land that will be used for high end flips specifically looking for new development and up coming areas. How do I find the land that no one is paying attention to? What steps should I take ? I’m currently residing in Kansas City MO

[Linda Hastings]

@DeAnthony Barrett Don't limit yourself to just properties that are listed FSBO, or even those listed with a realtor. Just because it doesn't have a sign on it doesn't mean it isn't for sale. When we were looking for a lot to build a personal residence on a few years ago, we drove around the neighborhoods we wanted to be in and noted down any empty parcels that we liked. Then we looked up the owner's information on the county assessors's website and contacted them asking if they were interested in selling. We actually bought two lots this way (not for a huge discount, but definitely less than market value...keep in mind it was for a personal residence, so we weren't as interested in getting a killer price). We ended up selling one of the lots for a profit though.

Fast forward a few years, and we heard some podcasts with people who flip vacant land for a living. We didn’t even know it was a thing back when we accidentally did it. 

Now, I intentionally flip vacant land part-time in addition to our other real estate activities. If you have some areas you want to target, you can go about it two different ways. You can look on the county assessor’s website or GIS maps and look for vacant parcels in those areas, get the owner’s information and either send them a letter or try searching public info for a phone number to call them (this method is more time consuming and only really works for a very small area as a lot of county website can’t just be searched for vacant land). Or, you can use a list provider, set your search area and criteria, pull a list and mail them (or try to find a number and call them).