Today on Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner, Jay and his guest Brent Bowers will talk about land deals. Why it’s so profitable, how it’s so easy to do the business, how to locate these land deals and how to make big profits quickly.
Brent is Jay’s friend and a colleague in Mastermind. He is an expert in land deals. Before he entered the world of real estate he used to serve in the army for 8 years then he started investing in single-family houses back in 2007.
In 2016 he discovered the highly profitable opportunity in making land deals.
To learn all about Brent’s successful land deals, watch the full video.
Jay’s new book “Where To Get The Money Now”: www.JayConner.com/Book
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Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.
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Jay Conner:
Well, hello there. If you are a real estate investor and you're looking for more funding for your deals without relying on hard money lenders or any kind of traditional funding, don't go anywhere. They cause I'm getting ready to plug you into the money with my new free book, how and where to get the money. Now don't go anywhere.
Jay Conner:
Well, hello there I'm Jay Conner, the Private Money Authority, and welcome here to Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. Wow. I appreciate you being here so much and I'll tell you why we are fast tracking past 300,000 downloads or listens. Since we launched the podcast, you may be listening to us on iTunes or Google play, or you may be watching one of our YouTube channels in any event. We're glad you're here because here on the show, we talk about all things real estate. We talk about how to find deals before other real estate investors even know they exist. We talk about single family houses. We talk about commercial deals. We talk about self storage and today I've got a very, very special guest I'm going to bring on in just a moment. Not quite yet. And today we're going to be talking about land deals, why it's so profitable, how it's so easy to do the business, how to locate these land deals and how to make big profits very, very quickly.
Jay Conner:
So if you're tuning in and of course you are please like share, subscribe and give us feedback. We'd love to hear your reviews as well, but I promised you a moment ago that I was going to plug you into the money. Now I'm known as Jay Conner, the Private Money Authority, and here's why from 2003 to 2009, I was using the local banks, mortgage companies and et cetera to fund my deals. And in 2009, I got cut off from the banks with no notice. And there I was with no way to fund my deals. Well, my definition of coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous and less than two weeks of being cut off from the banks, I was able to attract and raise over $2 million in private money, private funding. And here it is folks, this money has got nothing to do with any kind of traditional borrowing for your real estate deals, nothing to do with hard money.
Jay Conner :
This is private money. So I've got a free book just released brand new. I got a free book for you where to get the money now, how and where to get money for your real estate deals without relying on traditional or hard money. Lenders just released hot off the press. And this book also includes two tickets valued at $3,000 to the private money Academy conference live event. So don't go. In fact, I'll just go ahead and give it to you right now. So here's the website on how you can get this book for free and all you gotta do is cover the shipping cost. You can go to www.JayConner.com/Book, and we will ship that out to you.
Jay Conner:
We don't even have it in digital version. You're going to get an actual book, autographed shipped in the mail to you right away now onto my guests. As I mentioned a moment ago, my guest today is an expert in land, but he didn't start out in land. In fact, my guest and expert he's been in the army, been the military. He was in it for eight years and then he started investing in single family houses back in 2007. He struggled, he struggled he struggled. And then in 2016, he discovered the highly profitable opportunities in land. And we're going to learn all about it from my guest right now. Y'all welcome here to the show, my friend and mastermind colleague, Mr. Brent Bowers, Brent, welcome to the show.
Brent Bowers:
Jay. So good to be on your show, man, if you would've come, if I would have gotten your book back in 2007, maybe I wouldn't have struggled and struggled and struggled. I would have had all the money and I would've done some more house deals, like c'mon, why do you have to write this book now?
Jay Conner:
And the end of the day, the real world, most, most single family house deals require either all the money or some money. Right?
Brent Bowers:
Yeah.
Jay Conner:
I take, I mean, I do it. I've been doing it since I'm been investing in single-family houses since 2003, then using private money since 2009. And since that time I haven't missed out on a deal for not having the money, but enough about me. I want to talk the rest of the show, Brent, about you. So first of all, where are you and what does your, your what's your real estate investing business look like these days?
Brent Bowers:
So I'm currently standing right now, my office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It's actually a commercial building that we purchased for very inexpensive, but we pay with it with land, you know, land is what allowed us to buy this commercial building. And what's great about that is, you know, you've got all these tax write offs, enterprise zone, but I'm in Colorado Springs and I'm a land investor. We buy land at massive, massive discounts. And then we turn around and sell this land at a premium retail price to people that can afford monthly payments. That's it that's me in a nutshell, I love land and it's provided a financial time freedom. The ability to go on two vacations in six months to three week vacations in the last six months you know, it's just provides something that I wasn't able to accomplish with, you know, flipping houses and wholesaling houses and apartment complexes. So here I am, you know, shouting the word from the rooftops of why land is so incredible. And you know, I get a lot of questions of how the heck do you make land and why land and this and that. So that's why I'm on the show today. And it's an honor to be with the Private Money Authority, Jay Conner.
Jay Conner:
Well, thank you. Brandon says I'm excited to have you here because the niche that you're in, in my experience, there's not that much competition out there. As far as people really going after the land and of the business, but before we dive in on why land and really, you know, how the process works. I want to hear your backstory. How'd you get into real estate to start with and you know, what led up to that?
Brent Bowers:
I love it. So 2007, I had just gotten my real estate license. I graduated high school, 2004.
Jay Conner:
You wanted to work for tips?
Brent Bowers:
Yeah, literally I didn't realize what I was getting into. I had a lawn and landscape company that was, I was making pretty good money. So I wanted to buy my first house. I also had just gotten my license, like I had just said, but the reason why I got my license is because I wanted to have that inside track. I wanted to see all the deals come across my desk and I was going to cherry pick what I was going to buy. So I found the deal and I was like, I'm going to actually move into this one. So call great-grandma. And I asked, I said, Hey, I'd like to borrow a thousand dollars from my earnest money deposit. I'll pay you back when you get my real estate commission. Cause I'm actually the buyer's agent on this as well. Grandma's said, okay.
Brent Bowers:
If you don't pay me back, it comes out of your inheritance. I said, no worries, grandma. I'm going to pay you back. By the way, when she died, I never saw that thousand dollars I should have just kept it. No, I never got an inheritance obviously. So long story short, I get my commission check and everyone knows what happened in 2008. And I actually lived in that house like four or five months, and then I turned it into a rental. Now I'm a landlord. So I'm extremely sophisticated. I've got a real estate license, I'm a landlord. And I move it to the coast and I'm going to sell real estate and hit it big. So I moved to West Palm beach, Florida rent this house out at the top of the market. So I'm getting the, or no, I'm getting 950 a month on a house that I want you to get in about 850 a month on.
Brent Bowers:
So what does that tell you? I probably rented it to somebody with bad credit. And they're going to trash my house in a year. Right. That's what happened to me two or three times. So I had to learn through hard knocks. You know, I, the third, the second time it got trashed, I had just come back from a year long deployment in Afghanistan. So that's where all my extra money went for that one, but I'm jumping ahead of myself. So I'm now a landlord, I'm hitting the streets in 2008 real estate. Market's crashing financial industries crash and all these things are crashing, and I'm not making any money in real estate. So I was like, I've got to just do something different. I was married not getting by, you know, bills were adding up and I was like, I'm going to go back to school.
Brent Bowers:
So I joined the military and I was in the military for about eight and a half years. And the entire time I'm in the military for the first three years I'm overseas. So I had to kind of put everything on hold. So I thought virtual investing was not in my mind back then, except for that one rental that just kept causing me heartache. So I get back to the States. I get right into it, I'm now hold on houses. Cause the army sent me to college to be an army officer. And I picked up a very expensive private college. So I had to wholesale houses to pay for classes. And then I kinda, you know, got that going. And I actually ended up hiring a mentor a friend of ours that we both know, Tom Crowell, we got a system going and I'm now being moved Colorado Springs.
Brent Bowers:
And then I'm doing missions. All these other States, I'm literally like doing a virtual wholesaling company and I never get to go see sellers. And I'm like, this is really hard to buy a house when you don't get to see sellers. So I heard this podcast of what this guy was doing with land. And I was like, well, Tom Crowell, you know, said that, throw away all my vacant land records on the tax legal list. I was like, I'm just going to mail it. Just see what happens. Well, my phone exploded. I must've, I think I mailed 687 letters to vacant land. I got 85 phone calls and I got two deals out of it.
Jay Conner:
Oh my land!
Brent Bowers:
Two deals. Each one of those parcels of land, one was $285. And the second one's $500 and I sold both of them for five grand, a piece.
Jay Conner:
Wow! Talk about a return on investment.
Brent Bowers:
Super return. I didn't believe it was real. So I tried it again. And it just kept happening, kept happening. And finally, like the fourth of the fifth deal was a bank, a bank sold me a 44 acre parcel of land next to an air force base in Colorado for 25 grand. And I literally like wholesaled it the next day for 38 grand. So I was like, this stuff's real, I'm now going all into land. And here we are, you know, fast forward from 2007. Well, I don't want to date this, but not looking back.
Jay Conner:
So how long were you working the single family business model?
Brent Bowers:
So you know what? I was probably working it from, I started back up again in 2013. I did a couple half hazard wholesales and then I hired the coach and the end of 2015, early 2016. So really from 2016, to current, I still got my house buying company. It's not as cool and as glamorous to me, cause it doesn't pay me every single month like the land does. But I've still got that, that I guess, division, but it's being ran by an amazing person on that loves houses way more than I do. So kind of still working it, but the land has just been consistent, constant checks coming in. I can count on it. I can go on vacation. I don't have to take the phone calls from the rodents or the rents I mean the renters. It's just the land buyers. So I guess to answer your question, we're still doing the houses, you know.
Jay Conner:
So first of all, help me make a list as to as many benefits that you know of, why, what does land, the land business offer that other, you know, realms and real estate doesn't such as single family, commercial, small apartments, large apartments, commercial, self storage, all that other stuff that we could be doing. Why are you focusing on the land, gimme as many reasons as you can.
Brent Bowers:
Yeah. Real quick. You said hardly any competition, that's so true. I think that reason why is they don't know how to make money with the land. Another benefit is I can get my money back out of this land really, really quickly. And how I'm doing that is I'm usually paying a massive or I'm usually getting a massive discount on this land when I buy it and when I pay that seller. And generally I try and get a down payment, big enough to get most of my money back out, so where I'm profitable as soon as possible with that monthly payment. So we, we sell it on terms most of the time with seller financing. So we'll get a down payment and then a monthly payment for a certain amount of time. It could be anywhere from 5 to 30 years, we've been toying with 30 year mortgages lately because there's a reason why the banks do it.
Brent Bowers:
Right. You know, the first five to seven years is interest only. We do it on bigger parcels of land, more benefits. You don't have to go to the land. You know, you could do this. Virtually could do this from anywhere in the world. My father he's, I think he's on his 39th land deal. He just bought a piece of land from someone in Canada. That just didn't want it anymore. She hadn't been paying her taxes in years. So it's easy to kind of just go on Google earth and see it virtually more benefits. You know, you, every one of these parcels of land we do, we're not starting the clock over. We know that we're going to be paid for the next, you know, five, seven, ten, thirty years on this land. So if we could do, for example, a week or so ago, my my land specialist sold five parcels of land in one week. So Monday she sold one Tuesday. She sold once a five in one week and they average anywhere from 299, a month to 498 a month, those five, but let's just, I really like easy math. Let's just say each one of those was only $200 a month. She just added $1,000 a month to my passive income. And we still got three other weeks in the month. You know, it's, there's no limit, you have that buying machine and you have the selling machine of the land. So I think that's quite a few benefits I could probably make some more
Jay Conner:
So here's what I want to do. And I know due to the time limits of the show, we can only dive so deep, but let's go through the steps, step by step and break it down as to the process of, you know, first of all, finding the prospect of the seller. So how do you go about finding these sellers or potential sellers that now, first of all, I assume this is raw land, right? Raw land.
Brent Bowers:
Correct.
Jay Conner:
Are you, I mean, are you, is it all just parcels or are you sometime targeting you know, just like lots of land that's already been subdivided or is it, buying largest parcels of land?
Brent Bowers:
We do mostly parcels of land. That's my bread and butter, but we will buy lots in fill lots buildable lots, but not as many, I would say 90% of my business is, you know, the vacant role parcels of land. So let's answer question, you know, if you drop me in a brand new County and I was just going to get started, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to contact that County treasurer. I want to find the people that are behind on their taxes, on their, on their properties. So generally, you know, that's a call was saying, Hey, can you send me your tax delinquent list? And most of the time they think I'm a tax lien investor. They're going to, yeah. The list comes out in October. No, I don't want to buy the tax liens. I want to see the people that are paying your taxes. Who's in charge of keeping track of those people. So they finally get you to the right person. I get a list and then we figure out what's vacant land. What's mobile home, what's single family and we get rid of everything, but the land. And
Jay Conner:
So you're not. So in this business model, you're not wanting to buy the role in any land got anything on it. Typically you just want it vacant, right?
Brent Bowers:
Exactly. Vacant, unimproved, no well, no structures, no nothing.
Jay Conner:
Okay. So it sounds like, and please clarify, it sounds like you are not marketing to the masses of owners of land. Are you only, or do you just start out with people that are, or do you mount off or do you target all of them?
Brent Bowers:
I do usually start out with the tax delinquent and then that kind of gives a good indication, like what we're looking at after I met. And that's usually a really small list. You can exhaust that in a couple of weeks, you know? So if you, if you're listening to the show and you've got a limited budget, I recommend start out with that tax delinquent list. Now, if you've got a marketing budget and you can spend some money, like I recommend going to the land sharks list, the land sharks lists get a seven day free trial to a prop stream and pulling the entire vacant land list for that County, because that's going to give you some people to mail. And then you want to kind of focus in on little areas, little pockets and figure out what that land goes for per acre and per lot, because that's how we're going to figure out what we're going to come up with our offer price on our LOL is our Land Offer Letters is what I call them. Because every time I get one back signed, we laugh out loud because we know we just got a piece of land under contract at a massive discount.
Jay Conner:
That's awesome. So, you have a service, your company has a service that provides lists in pretty much every County in the nation of vacant land.
Brent Bowers:
Yeah to the land sharks list.com. That's a seven day free trial to the www.TheLandSharkslists.com. That's a free seven day free trial to prop stream. They have been the best people I've ever worked with as far as purchasing lists for rate or that. So tongue tied there for vacant raw land in a County. And generally, if you're going to go straight to that list and start pulling land records, I like to make sure that these people have owned this land for over three years. And I'm kind of, I don't want a huge, massive list. I don't want like 20,000 that's way too much. I'm looking for generally around 3000 names because that's going to give me a great indication of the County. After I mailed 3000 or set, let's just say 1500. I'm going to know if I'm offering too little or offering too much.
Brent Bowers:
If I've sent out 1500, LOL's the land offer letters, we call them blind offers really. And a lot of the industry calls and blind offers. If I've sent out 1500 and I haven't gotten any accepted offers that tells me I'm offering too little for this land now let's, let's do the reverse side of the coin. If I've sent out, you know, 1500 and I've gotten like, let's just say 15 accepted offers that tells me on paying, I'm offering way too much. I want to be less than around. I want to be less than a half percent acceptance rate because you know, you don't want to pay too much for the lane. It's like you find a little hole. Let's dry it up when you're go efficient and it's drowning and you throw a worm in there and you catch a fish right away. Well, eventually you can get cheap with the worms, not put anywhere I'm on the hook and maybe throw the hook in and still catch a fish. So I want to throw that hook with no worm in there and see if I catch a fish. So I want to offer as little as possible and see if I can catch it, catch a deal first. And then we'll increase the price if need be, or we'll adjust it as needed.
Jay Conner:
Well, that's interesting. So your criteria or your formula, rather for the offer that you're going to make on the land varies after you test the market, right?
Brent Bowers:
Exactly. Cause it's not what Brent Bowers thinks, it's what the land sellers think in that area. You know, it's, we want to go off because I mean, there's over 3,100 counties in the United States. You gotta figure on averages. You know, when you're figuring out what the land's worth, we're looking at averages and we're going to offer a percentage on the average. Generally, I usually start around 30 cents on the dollar. So if the land seller for 10,000 an acre, I'm going to offer 3000 acre.
Jay Conner:
So you start out at 30% of the value. Now let's talk about the value. Are you talking 30% of tax value or what kind of value,
Brent Bowers:
What it's actually worth? So a lot that's one of my biggest questions from people was like, how in the world do you comp land? It's not a three bedroom, two bath house with a one-car garage on the North side of main street. So that's where I say, I deal in averages. I deal in averages and we offer such a low offer at a massive discount. If we get it under contract, we can always renegotiate. If we got a too high or sometimes we get it so low, it's like just literally a smoking hot deal. So how do we figure it out is I rely on the experts. I'm not an expert of much, you know, I rely on the experts on what the land's worth, you know, who are the experts, realtors call a realtor. The first realtor you call is probably not going to deal on land or know anything about land or even care about land, but ask that realtor who is the land expert in this area, this city, this town, and you might have to call two or three people.
Brent Bowers:
Once you get that person on the phone. I generally like to find the people that list the land in that area, because they're going to be the smartest people on the land, figure out what that area is worth. You know, price per acre. What is actually worked, not assessed, not, not County property value. And then next look on Zillow. Look, what's for sale out there in the last six months. Look what's sold in the last six months. There's another average for sale sold. And then the final ones I like to look at are the land websites, www.landwatch.com, landflip.com land, I don't know, landcentury.com. You know, if you take all three of those sources, you're going to come up with an average, add them all up, divided by three. And then there's your average price per acre and an average price per school per actual lot. Now, obviously you want to kind of get that as small as possible, like in the town, in a zip code and you never going to be perfect. You just got to get your mail out the door and see what the sellers say, see what the landowners
Jay Conner:
Say. So you get the list from www.TheLandSharkslist.com. Right?
Brent Bowers:
Got it.
Jay Conner:
And so there is the www.TheLandSharkslist.com for the list, right?
Brent Bowers:
That's correct Jay.
Jay Conner:
So you get your list, I guess you can search by County or whatever, zip code, County, whatever across the nation. So you've got your list now is your magic bullet a letter?
Brent Bowers:
You know, what is a lot of debate across the country? There's two ways to look at it. I would rather do the work upfront by coming up with the offer price and just receive signed, offer letters back via fax email in the mail, because then we know we got a deal, rather than send a postcard, like an actual neutral postcard saying, Hey, we'd like to buy your land because then we're going to get a ton of phone calls. I don't want my acquisition manager overwhelmed with those phone calls. My acquisition manager makes hundreds of dollars an hour. I'd rather pay someone, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, $10 an hour to figure out what those offer prices should look like. So that's just my opinion. You know, my, I don't want my acquisition manager having to, you know, become an literally a land appraiser. I'd rather pay someone in the Philippines or someone minimum wage to come up with those offers and then keep my acquisition manager from getting stressed out, receiving 150 phone calls a day.
Jay Conner:
Okay. So you can actually locate a virtual assistant and have them trained on what the offer should be. So you can really automate this initial marketing. Right?
Brent Bowers:
Yes Sir. And then that's the thing. And I don't do, I mean, we have virtual assistants doing most of it. Like I've got someone that buys the land. I got someone that sends the letter or something that comes up with the offer price. Like that's, I don't want any of that on my plate. I just want to be the business owner. I want the business to serve me. So we love virtual assistants and we treat them like family, because that's what they are, they are family.
Jay Conner:
Absolutely. Yeah. Virtual assistants are very, very critical in my business as well. So is that what you're doing is your business model is you look at, you got the list, you've got an assistant virtual assistant that figures out what the offer should be. And is that the initial point of contact is a cover letter with an offer with instruction going, if you want to accept our offer, sign it and mail it back. Or how does it work?
Brent Bowers:
We actually just saying one page, you know, we're, we're actually about to test out another, another offer. It's actually a company that sends off gonna send offers for us. They say, we need a cover letter. So we're going to try it their way. But I just, we just sent a one page land offer letter and they sign it and they can fax it back, mail it back. And a lot of people will hear facts. What are you talking about? Yes. We get facts offers back all the time.
Jay Conner:
Right. Yeah. I got a fax machine right outside my door. So here comes the letter and you're wanting somewhere around as a, as a measurement of, okay. We're paying the right amount for these properties about a half percent. So if you mail out 200 letters, you won't want to accept it.
Brent Bowers:
Yes Sir.
Jay Conner:
Right. That's right about, okay, so now you've got your letter of intent. We got the list. We mailed it. Okay. Now we got so-and-so. Yes. Buy my land. You got a virtual assistant that came up with the offer amount. Now we got to buy this baby because they have accepted your offer. They've signed it. So let's talk about the closing process as far as purchasing where do you get the money to fund buying this land? What kind of closing is it? Do you check title? How do you close the deal once you got an acceptance?
Brent Bowers:
Absolutely. So if I'm paying him more than $5,000 for this piece of land, my rule of thumb is I'm going to use a title company. And it seems to be that way with some other big time land investors out there. So if it's under $5,000, I'm going to do like an owner encumbrance. I'm going to use my title guy to kind of do, you know, a title search and make sure there's no funny things going on, no broken chain of title, any of that stuff. So if everything looks good and it's under $5,000, we're going to send a mobile notary, but we're going to have them bring that transfer document, which is a warranty we bought on a warranty deed. They get it all filled out. They notarize it and they send it to me via email. And then they send me the actual original.
Brent Bowers:
So this seller is already tracking. Here's our process. Here's exactly how we work. Most people have no problem being told what to do as long as you're respectful and kind about it. So they like to hear that we have a process, as soon as we receive this deed, we're going to present it to the County recorder. And if after they approve it, we're cutting check. So they know that they're going to get a check. As soon as the County recorder approves that the, how do we get the money for this? So there's so many ways to get money out there. Originally I used to have a buyer lined up in the very beginning. I would market this land and I'd talk to the seller about this. I'd say, look, I'm not buying this piece of land for myself. I'm going to turn around and sell it.
Brent Bowers:
Is it okay if I find a buyer before I pay you for the land? And 9 out of 10 had no, no care whatsoever about that. So we've already got a buyer lined up to pay us a down payment. That's almost equivalent to what we're paying for the land. So if we're paying 5,000 for the land, I'm going to try and get somewhere around a $5,000 down payment for this land because we're buying it at a discount. Number two, the second way to find money is partners. There's plenty of people out there looking to put their money to good use. There's plenty of people out there that are afraid of the stock market or people that have, you know self-directed IRAs. I'm sure we can learn all about that and your Private Money Authority or where to get the money now book. And then there's plenty of people out there that they're just sitting in the same house for the last 10 years. Their house is paid for, they're 55 plus. And they'd like to see their money get put to good use. So there's so many ways to find money. That's just talking to people, going to meet ups, going to real estate, investor associations, talking like we are right now. You know, we're always looking for money to buy more land. So that's how we get the money. And that's the closing process and.
Jay Conner:
Do you use your own money or you use other people's money?
Brent Bowers:
Literally, that's it. And guess what? I run out of money all the time. Who'd a think? It I'm sure you probably have it before too Jay. So, but there's plenty people out there that have like a lot of people you don't even know they've got money.
Jay Conner:
That's right.
Brent Bowers:
It's really see you're doing well.
Jay Conner:
So you got the list, you mailed the list you met them an offer. They accepted the offer. You got closing, you're using a warranty deed. Now you have closed the deal. Now let's suppose there is that you already haven't found a buyer. So how are you marketing now to find the buyers of this land? And you say, so you already told us your business model says, I'm going to pay, you know, X I'm going to pay two, three, $4,000 for the land. Now I'm going to sell it on. What are you selling it on? Are you selling it on a land contract? I mean, what's your instrument?
Brent Bowers:
Land, contract, or contract for deed.
Jay Conner:
Okay. So you're selling it on land contract, contract for deed, but then you want a down payment to cover what you paid for the land right? Now, if you're using a joint venture partner or a private lender, once you get a buyer that pays you back on the down payment, do you maybe keep that money and keep borrowing the private money? Or do you go ahead and pay the private money off? Or what do you do?
Brent Bowers:
So, I'm not using a lot of private money and I've done it both ways. Sometimes private money lenders don't want to get their money back right away.
Jay Conner:
They never want to get it back right away.
Brent Bowers:
They want you to use it for like a year. But if I've got a buyer already, that's going to pay me a down payment. That's equivalent to what I'm paying my seller. You better believe I'm not getting a private money lender for that one because I'm going to be profitable in 30 days. I'm not going to deal with that. I'm sure that might make cash flow easier. But let me put this disclaimer out there. I do not always get the down payment back, you know, as far as I don't get always up down payment, big enough to pay the seller. So there's times when I've got a lot of money in this deal and it could take me six, seven, eight months to get most of my money back out in the beginning.
Brent Bowers:
I had no choice, Jay. I was using rent money and grocery money to buy land like that first $285 purchase I told you about where, where I sold it for five grand. I actually called the real estate office that was right down the street from that land. I was like, what's this stuff worth? Like, what can I blow this thing out for in 30 days? So I'm going to need to get my money back really quick. It's $285. This is back in 2016. I was, I'm embarrassed to say this. I was like, but I need, I'm going to have to get that money back really quick. What can I list to support? She goes maybe 10,000. Maybe.
Jay Conner:
Maybe?
Brent Bowers:
I was like, fireworks. Fireworks were going off in my head. So I was like, I can maybe call great-grandma again. But so she called me back five minutes later. I now remember it, me and my wife were driving back from this land. And as I spoke through, I took her call and she goes, do you mind if I buy the land in front of you? And I was like, what? What are you offering? She said, I could do it for $5,000. And I was like, well, when, when can you close? She said, well, Saturday I could probably close on Wednesday, like Wednesday in like four days, like a couple of days from now? She goes, yes. So I said, you know, I'm such an amazing negotiator. So I said, let's do it. Let's do it. So I called my seller back, said, can we meet on Tuesday? I'll pay you then. He said, yeah, no problem. This was a CPA. Like he had traded tax work like 10 years ago for this land, so he didn't care. We met right outside the army base, Fort Carson, and I gave him the money. And basically I sent that transfer document to the title company and they pay me the $5,000 check the next day. So all I'm getting at is I had to get my money back really quick back then. Cause that was, that was grocery money. So I know a lot. That's another benefit. I know a lot of people don't just have tons of money sitting around to lock up a land forever.
Jay Conner:
So you just said you sold that you were going to list it in the multiple listing service. So I guess once you buy land, you can put it in the MLS and let's do the realtor. How are you selling most of your parcels of land? You're selling an old land contract. So how do you find the buyers?
Brent Bowers:
Yeah. As far as finding the buyers, we put it on Craigslist. We put it on Facebook. Facebook buy, sell groups are amazing. These people scroll through there and see that they can own a piece of land for $999 down and 399 a month. That it's literally like their minds blown. They didn't realize that they could buy a land and finance it. Facebook marketplace we put literally bandit signs that we had for our house buying comments. Is we buy a house we flipped that thing around and I have my sign guy right on there with a big black Sharpie marker. Five acres must sell we'll finance phone number. Like we get calls all the time. My best KPI, Key Performance Indicator, KPI are signs right now, signs bring us in so much money for the amount of money we spend it. So it's.
Jay Conner:
So I'll ask this question and I know our audience is wanting to know too, who in the world wants to buy raw land that's broke? However, if I'm having to, let's say I'm a buyer of a piece of land you got, and I'm going to put $995 down payment. I'm going to pay, you know, X dollars per month. Me as the buyer, what am I looking to do with that land?
Brent Bowers:
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
Jay Conner:
Not that it should matter to you.
Brent Bowers:
No, Know your avatar know who you're selling to. It's really weird because when I was selling the land myself, my buyer a lot, like I had three truck drivers that bought land from me, like in the middle of nowhere, it was weird. Cause they just thought I'm just drive by that land all the time. I'd love to own it. So that was my avatar. So a lot of times our number one buyer is someday. Maybe they want to build a cabin. They just want to have something to take their RV out and get away from the city especially right now. Like they're just trying to get out of the city, get away from people, you know, build a fire, roast marshmallows, create memories with their children.
Jay Conner:
There are some people, some people just want to buy land and just to have land and have a place to go have a bonfire.
Brent Bowers:
Literally, I kid you not. And the, my number one question from our land buyers is, well, when can we use it? You can use it right now if you want, like it's I want you to enjoy it. And you said, who would buy land? That's broke, you know, broke people, spend their money all the time. They've got to just spend it. They get an extra 299 a month. They're going to find a home for that 299 a month. That's wonderful.
Jay Conner:
So, do some of these buyers buy land for bragging rights say, Hey buddy, I own that parcel lot over there.
Brent Bowers:
Yeah. I'd say the bigger parcels of land like the 160 acre parcels that we have some guys it's like, yeah. I just want to go out there and rip it up with my four Wheeler. And another guy's like one to do a treasure hunt. And you know, this, you, you name it. Like there's some, there's some funny stuff going on out there, but yeah, bragging rights.
Jay Conner:
So realistically, if somebody wants to get involved in this business model, how much money does it take to really get started?
Brent Bowers:
You know what I would say, if you really want to outsource this and have like a mail house, take care of everything. If you sent 300 letters a week, that would be what, 1200 letters a month, call it $1,500 a month to get this business off the ground. Now we can take it to another complete extreme. My dad, I told you is, I think I said this. My dad is on his 39th plan deal. He prints his offer letters out. He'll write the address of the actual seller. And he does it in one County and he's mailing the tax delinquent lists. And you know, he's, he's got a couple other sniper approaches that he'll take. But he places the stamp on there. He literally calls it his postage stamp deals. So it cost him the amount of a postage stamp. And here's, what's really cool as like he's got such a unique way of doing this.
Brent Bowers:
He'll get the land under contract. He tells the seller, look, I'm gonna send you a notary. I'm gonna send you the deed and fill it out, send it back to me. And while he's waiting for that United States postal service to get that deed in his and his mailbox. And he's got something on a United States post service where they scan his mail. So he could see when it comes the whole time he is marketing this land for sale. And as soon as it comes, he tells his buyer, meet me at the courthouse. We'll get this thing recorded, bring your cashier's check or your cash we'll record your deed. And then he goes into posits the money in his bank, right around the corner. And then he writes the seller, the check, and he keeps what's left. Like he does it on literally. So if he sends a hundred letters a month, he's spending $50 a month.
Jay Conner::
Wow. Brent, I tell you, you you explain it as though it's just so simple and everybody could either begin real estate investing. You're using this business model or add this to what they're already doing in a pretty simple counterweight and very quickly can make it really automated.
Brent Bowers:
I love it. That's what I love about it. The most, I would say, that's my number one benefit is the automation of this.
Jay Conner:
That's awesome. Brent thank you so much for being on the show and please let everybody know how they can connect with you. And I believe you have got a free gift offer for everyone that wants to take you up on it, on your land check list, right?
Brent Bowers:
Yeah. So we actually, my team helped me come up with the land checklist. There's like 15 checklist items and it's literally like stuff that tripped me up in the beginning. You know, this is, these are little things like, Hey, is the land buildable are you buying a junk yard type thing and ways to figure it out? Cause we bought a junk yard one time. So yeah. Hit me up on Instagram. @Brent L Bowers. I see it's in my, there it is. @Brent L Bowers. Just shoot me your email. I'll know exactly what you're looking for. I'll send you my due diligence checklist and hopefully save you a lot of tears. Hopefully marriage, no I'm just kidding, a lot of lost money. So I'd be happy to send that.
Jay Conner:
That is awesome. And Brent, I know some of my folks want to know if they really want to learn this land investing business. Have you got some kind of training or some kind of course or whatever, they can really, you know, give them the details and like the kind of letters to mail out and such.
Brent Bowers:
I absolutely do. If you go to www.TheLandSharks.com head over there schedule a call with my team. We'll see what your investing goals are and see if we can help you. But yes, it's a course, recorded modules, weekly coaching calls. Yeah. And it'll be how to get you started as fast as possible. Yeah.
Jay Conner:
You know, I'm so glad you've got that to offer because you know, most people either starting out or starting a new part of the business model. Well, you know, we just really want them to have all the nuts and bolts. We don't want to have to come up with a letter, you know, and all the, you know, step one, step two, step three. Brent, Thank you so much. Parting comments before we call it a wrap.
Brent Bowers:
You know, just one of the thank you saw you on stage many years ago. Good to talk to you. One-On-One I'm going to go buy, I'm going to actually go to www.JayConnor.com/Book, as soon as we hang up here. And I'd love to see what that book says, because I'm sure I can find a lot of private money with it.
Jay Conner:
You got it, Brent, thank you so much for coming on and listen, folks do take Brent up on his free offer. You can get the checklist that he just offered up. And so with that, I'm so glad you joined us folks, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review, like and share we love your feedback. And so thank you for joining us again on the Real Estate Investing with Jay Conner. I am Jay Conner, the Private Money Authority wishing you all the best and here's the taking your business to the next level. We'll see you on the next show.
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