All Forum Posts by: Matthew Bailey

@Garret Anthony

Hey Garret, I’m a land investor, but not a land banker, ie I don’t buy and hold land, I flip it.

My advice would be to make sure you're purchasing it well below market value so if you had to liquidate it you could still sell quickly and maybe still make some money. I would also avoid HOA/POA/LOAs and try to find something with low taxes, as those will be your holding costs.

@Dina Pearson some banks will loan on land if there is an official plan in place to start building immediately. If you go this route then you should ensure that you can sell part of the land without triggering a "due on sale” clause from the mortgage.

@Alma Ott depending on the area you can do hunting leases. Perhaps solar.

@Ed L. I'm a land investor and I was expecting to see an awful listing as typically the land listings I see are atrocious haha.  Truth be told your realtor did a decent job, there's a parcel map on there, there's a nice description, good photos, and it's on the land selling websites (LandWatch, LandsofAmerica).  It's a beautiful piece of property.  I think the disconnect may be pricing.  And in real estate if something isn't selling it's one of two things, you either aren't reaching the buyers (i.e. not marketing sufficiently, which it appears you are) or your price isn't resonating, which I suspect is the case.  I looked at the 13 acres lot and I think it's probably too high.  It is priced within 10k of lakefront property, which sells higher than riverfront property (which sells higher than land with no water).  There is a 10 acre comp with 300ft of riverfront property for sale for $69.5k.  It owns land on both sides of the river, so if that's the same rules as it is in NY where I fly fish, I think that means that section of the river is yours and nobody else can fish it, which is cool.

I suspect your issue resides in the price your realtor thinks it's worth.  If I were looking to buy this lot, I'd use that 69.5k comp, and as an investor, I'd buy well below that.  If you are looking to get the most you can for it, you might want to just undercut that and see what you get.  

As @Keri Middaugh said, you can expect it to take 6-12 months to sell.  Not to mention it's probably pretty cold up there now, that can't help land sales, but spring will!

@Cory Osborn I myself am a land investor and I use tools like AgentPro247, DataTreee, and RealQuestPro to pull lists of vacant land in my target area.  There's a bit of a learning curve to figuring out what exactly you need to type into these tools to get them to spit out a vacant land list, then there's an art to scrubbing this data down into something that you can use for a mailer.  That being said I think that's the best way to drum up off market leads.  You'll get a lot of tire kickers but can usually pull out one or two deals from a sizable mailer, say 1500 units depending on the price range you're targeting.  My response rate over my past 2800 letters was about 4.6%, so expect to talk to about that many people.  I don't imagine that you're looking for super cheap lots so your close rate will be a bit lower, but it'll be worth it.  

@Greg Dickerson is correct, you can start with a list from the county if you'd like.  I mail about 1500 units per month currently so it makes sense for me to subscribe to the 3 data providers mentioned above but it's not cheap.  That being said the data you get from them is exponentially easier to deal with than what some counties give you.  I've gotten county data before that I honestly could not scrub down because it was that confusing, and I've developed and coded my own highly automated CRM, so I'm not exactly tech-illiterate haha.  The price of a list from a county can also vary.

Off market is the way to go!

@Ryan Burnham yup, @Linda Hastings nailed it. Go check out Seth’s website. He has a ton of content that can help you figure out what counties to choose and why. You can also listen to his podcast, the REtipster podcast and the LandAcademy Podcast

@Ryan Burnham

Hey Ryan, I’d encourage you to mail more people than just the tax delinquent list. While you may get a high response rate from that list there tends to be problems in that list which is why they’re tax delinquent, so you end up with a lot of headaches. I mail vacant land and I mail everyone in the county regardless of tax delinquency.

There are plenty of people who may be interested in selling the land because they’ve inherited it, or they’re tired of paying the taxes, or any number of reasons. I’d suggest not limiting yourself to the tax delinquent list. Even Seth mails everyone now.

Hey Bert, I'm a land investor so I do this stuff all the time.  Here's what I include in my due diligence:

1. Are the taxes current - call the county and ask
2. Does the property have access to water (city utilities or well) and what's that mean for your intended use
3. Does the property have access to septic/sewer (city utilities or well) and what's that mean for your intended use
4. What is the property zoned and can you use it for whatever you're intending to use it for
5. Is it in an HOA /POA/LOA (Home/property/land owners association) if so, does that add certain usage restrictions and what are the monthly fees
6. Does the property have electric (and does that matter to me)
7. Is the property in a flood plain or wetlands
8. Does the property have access (this is huge), does it have road access - perfect, if not then does it have an easement of some kind that lets you get to it - I'd be very hesitant to buy something without an easement without talking to a lawyer
9. Have you seen it in person? Google earth is great, but you want to get boots on the ground

If you check all of those things, that should be about as much due diligence as you can do.  Each one may be it's own little rabbit hole but that'll get you started!

Hello! I am a land investor and I often have a bunch of craigslist ads up and running at any given time. I have a nice system in place to generate the ads so I can quickly post them and I think it’s time improve the design of the ads.

I have heard that you can use HTML code on Craigslist to spruce up the ads. I’ve found a few templates online. I wanted to reach out on the forums to see if anyone has a preferred template or tool that they use to create awesome Craigslist ads.

Any tips or tricks are appreciated!

@Asad Shaikh

Hey Asad! I invest in vacant land myself and I pull lists like this all the time. In short, there are a few days providers, AgentPro247, RealQuestPro, and DataTree all provide good data. You need to know how to input filters to remove everything but vacant land. I think the best way to provide the answer to your immediate question would be to point you to Seth Williams’ video (below) on AgentPro247, which is specific to pulling land lists. You’ll have to do some post processing to clean up the data and get it ready to mail, come up with a letter, etc, but as far as pulling a list goes, I think this video will get that step completed.

https://youtu.be/iyD-SDm-PCQ