All Forum Posts by: Seth Williams

Hi @Chris Seveney - you bet. 

I just sent you the same message I sent James. Hope it helps!

Hi @James Theron Erwin III

Thanks for checking out the podcast! Those are all good questions.

Personally, I wouldn't want to give out my personal number to a bunch of strangers...  so I would work on setting up a separate business number pretty early on. It's not the end of the world if you don't, but it's not a bad idea to keep some separation between your business and personal phone activity. At the very least, you might want to set up a free number with Google Voice for this.

Regarding the websites - no, these aren't and absolute necessity from Day 1 (I even know people who have been doing this for years, and they STILL don't have a website). So while it's not a "must", they can still be extremely helpful on a number of levels (saving you tons of time, giving yourself better credibility, making yourself "available" 24/7, weaving some other helpful technologies into your business, etc). But to answer your question...   you can certainly survive without it (i.e. - I wouldn't stall the process of getting started just because you don't have a website yet).

And yes, I've got some examples of postcards I can send you, and I can point you in the right direction on the offer-making process too. I'll send you a PM with some more direction on this.

Your ability to find financing for land has a lot to do with the property itself, and what (if anything) you're planning to do with it. In most cases, if you're just trying to flip a vacant lot, t's going to be difficult - even with hard money lenders. 

On the same coin, this is part of why it's so advantageous to be dealing find motivated sellers. When you're dealing with the right people, you'll be able to get these properties for pennies on the dollar, which will make it much more feasible to buy these properties with the cash in your pocket (because they won't require much cash in the first place).

It's difficult to give an accurate answer without diving much deeper into your personal financial situation @Steven J. and finding out more about the specific lender you have in mind. 

Most banks aren't going to be interested in lending on vacant land, especially if you don't have an immediate plan to develop it. Unless the property has unquestionable value (which is almost never the case with land), it usually won't be enough to act as sufficient collateral for most lenders, not without some kind of additional guarantee from the borrower (i.e. - you).

I wouldn't necessarily say "never", but I also wouldn't expect to have much success with this unless you're bringing more substantial collateral to the table.

You got it @Billy Rogers - that's pretty much what I was going to say. You beat me to it!

@John Oberlin - your question about land value is well warranted, because this number can be very difficult to define. A lot of professional appraisers have difficulty in this area too - because there is usually a severe lack of data to work with in most markets.

The county's valuation can certainly be used as a starting point, but it's almost never "spot on" and their number by itself isn't enough to draw any final conclusions (remember, these guys earn more tax revenue for properties that are assessed higher...  little bit of bias here). The recent sale price can be helpful to know as well, but even this can fluctuate wildly based on the economy at the time of the transaction, and what the seller had in mind when they bought it.

Ultimately, I think there are several factors that need to be considered. To get an accurate read on this, it's usually going to take at least a little bit of digging. You can check out the whole process I go through right here: http://retipster.com/valueofland/

Hope it helps.

It sounds like you're getting some decent tips here @John Oberlin. Regarding the easement by necessity, this isn't necessarily a "legal right" in all municipalities. I've tried to play this card a few times and was always met with a hard and fast "No" from local counsel and county offices in the places I've worked (not saying it's impossible, but I would definitely research this before you sink any money into anything). 

To find out about the easement, you could order up a title commitment (which costs nothing until you close the deal) and then hand the title work off to a surveyor. Depending on the surveyor and the property, this would cost at least a few hundred dollars - maybe more...   but if both parties are doing their job right, this would tell you if there's an easement and if so, where it is.

I've bought and sold a number of landlocked properties and in my experience, the primary benefit is in the fact that you have a lot of negotiating power on the front end. When a vacant lot has no road access, you're basically willing to take on a "useless" property, you can get these properties for VERY cheap (I've been able to get some really nice 5+ acre properties for just a couple hundred bucks on more than one occasion, and sell them for thousands on the back end).

On the selling end, it obviously helps if you can prove the existence of an easement (definitely shoot for this if you can), but it's not always a necessity. If you buy it cheap enough, some people will still be willing to pay enough to give you a decent profit...   the trick is to market it well and be patient enough to find the right buyer, because not all people value properties the same way (Person B may be willing to pay 5x more for the same property than Person A - pricing raw land definitely ISN'T an exact science).

No problem y'all. :)

Hi @Benjamin Cowles, you might find this video helpful:

I hear what you're saying @Jake Hartnett and you have a point. Over planning can be just as dangerous as no planning at all. I guess it's a tricky thing to balance, especially in the beginning when there are so many unknowns. Some people may be better served by simply taking action, whereas others (like myself) need to take a more calculated approach.

It's been several years since my first direct mail campaign, but from what I can recall - I sent out 106 postcards on my first try, and I got 6 responses. If I remember right, I sent out 4 or 5 offers, and none of them were accepted (since it was such a small sample, I knew it wasn't enough to draw any real conclusions...  other than the fact that the response rate was high enough to keep trying).

On my second campaign, I sent out approx 330 postcards, from which I got about 20 responses. From the offers I sent out, I got 3 acceptances (a couple of which took a few months to materialize and close, btw). After buying and selling each of these properties (I bought each of them for a few hundred dollars), I made anywhere from $1k - $2K a piece.

These weren't necessarily huge deals, but they were successes - because they proved to me that these kinds of motivated sellers did exist in large enough numbers...   but the only reason I found them this easily was because I got the right list, sorted it adequately and sent out a thoughtful message. I've done other campaigns where I was "less-careful", and the results were far less favorable. In my experience, the shoot-from-the-hip method has never gotten the best results...   but I realize there are other variables, and that's just what I've seen.