Brent Bowers on Building a Land Empire With Seller Financing

Original automatic captions. Names, numbers, and punctuation may contain transcription errors.

0:00 Hello and welcome back to the owner meeting podcast. I'm Christian, your channel host today. Joined with Brent Bowers at Land Shark. I'm so excited for
0:07 this episode. Many people don't know this, but I actually started my real estate career at lands.com. Land was my
0:15 intro into real estate. Co-star bottom, worked for loopnet apartments.com, found
0:20 my way into the multif family space, but land was the original entry point for me into real estate. So having Brent on is
0:27 a special treat. He has multiple ways to make money on land. So, I'm really excited to talk about what your business
0:33 strategy is, how you've made this work. I know you put mobiles on some of these, but I'll let you tell your part of this
0:38 episode and welcome to the channel. That's awesome. I did not know that. That's cool. I used to use lands.com.
0:45 So, there we go. We ran into each other. I don't know if you've ever used a land watch, but my the original land was
0:53 bought by Co-Star and rolled into the lands.com network. I worked there for
0:58 two years and I killed it. It was it was an awesome job. They give us a sweet office in Seattle and then the CEO of
1:04 Co-Star visited the office and we're like, "Why the heck do we have inside sales reps in Seattle? We only do this out of DC." Fired everyone on the team.
1:11 Then they kept me for LoopNet. They're like, "Hey, we got another job for you. We like you, but uh everyone's instantly
1:17 fired." I was like, "Oh, well that was a that was a bummer. That was a sweet gig for a long time." Absolutely. Yeah. I'm a fan of LoopNet.
1:23 I I I list our office spaces and buildings on there. And then land watch,
1:29 land and farm, land.com. I was a subscriber to a lot of those for
1:34 years. So there may have crossed at one time. That's very possible. Now, where where
1:40 in the US do you currently buy? Yeah. Where do I buy? Gosh, man. I really like Tennessee and Georgia and
1:46 Florida right now. Oh, yeah. Yes, Carolas as well. But I don't I don't want anybody to get overwhelmed by
1:52 hearing that. I started in my own backyard when I was stationed in El Paso
1:57 County, Colorado. When I was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado in Colorado Springs. So, I always recommend start in
2:03 one spot. Pick that spot and just go deep with it. And it's hard right now in
2:08 this area I'm in in Florida. Uh about, you know, everywhere within about, you
2:13 know, hour driving range is like the land's just unaffordable. So, I go outside of it. There's way more
2:19 opportunity. But um yeah, there's it's it's crazy. That's cool, man. Uh I'm still most people I talk to have no clue
2:26 about land or do anything with land. So that's cool. You're with lands. Yeah, I know. We called them the lands the lands
2:31 websites lit. So I think what lands of America land and farm landing
2:39 it was super confusing. Cocharter usually does a pretty good job of rolling everything in, but they had the hardest time separating each site. So
2:45 they had like that was the hardest piece of my job was explaining all the different packages like well you can be on these sides be on these sides or you can be
2:51 I still don't understand it. You know what I don't know that I ever understood it. I was there for two years. They change it every 3 months.
2:57 You know land watch is really how I got my start. I don't talk about that. I don't know if I've ever told anybody
3:03 that. But um that's where I would figure out what I thought maybe the land was worth. Mhm. Now I use Red Fin and
3:10 Zillow. But uh yeah, Land Watch was one of my I got to thank them or thank you
3:15 for that, you know. Yeah. No, it used to be a little little uh little company based out of
3:21 Belleview, Washington. Uh is where they used to be headquartered there near where my parents uh my parents house
3:27 was. I graduated college and got wanted to get a real estate job. Zillow didn't want to hire me with no experience
3:32 whatsoever. So worked for lands and that's how we uh that's how we got rolling. So uh you said one thing that I
3:38 love. You started in your backyard and you mentioned a bunch of really sexy real estate markets that you're
3:44 investing in right now, but you started in your backyard. And I I don't know that Colorado is the best real estate
3:50 market of all time, but there's a huge advantage to starting where you're at. And you have so much ability and I think
3:57 real estate and business, it's about competitive advantage. And one of those advantages if you're starting is you can
4:02 go out and touch the property and actually see what you're doing. What were the advantages that you found
4:07 starting in your backyard verse trying to start all over the place at the same time? Well, like you just mentioned there was
4:13 just going a and being able to see what I was doing cuz we would advertise on or I would
4:19 when I started this was just me. We would advertise on land.com, land watch, lands of America, land farm, Craigslist,
4:26 Facebook, put signs out. And if I walked the land, man, I could tell people like, "Look, there's a stream about 50 yards
4:33 from this land. you don't actually own it, but it's part of the common space or this or that. It's national forest. And
4:38 I feel like I had a a super advantage of selling this land back then. Um, now I
4:45 don't go and look at any of it. You know, I put boots on ground. There was a certain like uh when you can touch the
4:52 dirt, you feel the dirt, touch the aspen trees or, you know, whatever. Do a
4:58 little improvement. Put a driveway in or a circle. Circle driveways for some reason. are always kick butt. You put a
5:04 board fence and a circle driveway. Like it was like gang busters um on this land. Everybody's like, "How much do you
5:10 improve the land?" Well, usually I don't touch it most of the time. Um but here's the thing. You do 390 plus land
5:16 transactions. They get boring. But we do a little like it's almost like a blank canvas on every one of them. I don't
5:22 like cutting trees down. It's like I only time I'll cut trees down is if I'm putting a brand new mobile home on the
5:27 land. Um but yeah, I'll put fences up. I'll put driveways in. Very limited. I mean, like less than 20 times on 300
5:34 plus land deals. But, um, you know, I think land is the easiest way for people to get started in real estate, and most
5:40 people just pass right by it. Well, and it's an interesting one, right? So, I'm going to go from the standpoint of a
5:46 traditional investor, and I I know a lot of different land plays, but for the average investor, I'm thinking, okay, I
5:52 want to try to build cash flow. I want to get this base. Uh, how much does land make when I buy it day one? No cash
5:59 flow. It's a piece of land. It's dirt. It's going to need development. It's going to need repositioning. It's either be flipped, old built. When you're
6:06 getting into the land game, especially as an entry level, how do you get the liquidity? How do you get the model
6:12 rolling when you're starting in land? Yeah. Well, how I started and and I I agree with you. Like I came from Okchobee, Florida. That's a bunch of
6:19 cows out there. To be a land owner, you own a ranch. You have a cattle operation or you work on the ranch and you don't
6:25 own anything. you have a dairy operation or you're just rich or all three.
6:32 So, I was like, how the heck do people make money with with land? Like, how do you get cash flow from it? Cuz that's
6:37 the name of the game. You want someone else to pay for your real estate. So, with land, here's how I made money with
6:43 it. I would uh buy it for super cheap and just sell it for a little bit more quick. I usually wouldn't buy it unless
6:48 I had my buyer uh lined up. Um, and then I worked my way into getting the land
6:55 under contract and then selling to someone with a lot more cash uh that wanted the deal. So, we call that
7:01 wholesaling land. And then I got even more advanced strategy. I I would get this seller to let me make payments and
7:07 then I would find a buyer that would make payments to me and I would be the middleman. And then I got to where it's
7:12 like I had people start lending me money anywhere from like 8 to 9 12% interest. and I would buy this land for 60 and
7:19 then I turn around and sell it for 97 at, you know, 11% interest. So, I'm paying my lender 9% on 60 and I'm I'm
7:27 getting, you know, 11% on 97. So, it was positive arbitrage. It was almost like getting, you know, having that $400 $500
7:34 a month extra. Plus, I'd get a down payment as well from my buyer. Um, so I get paid in the front, I'd get paid through the middle,
7:40 and I'd get paid at the end when I would pay the seller off. I pay my payments get much larger. I got one that's about to uh I'm about to pay my lender off
7:46 here in about a year. Like my payment I'm going to keep u about $900 more a
7:52 month. I'll make $105 grand on that deal and I have zero of my own money in to it. The buyer has never missed a
7:58 payment. They've been on time. Basically, when I got more advanced is when I started having other people lend
8:04 money to me and then I stopped being limited to what was in my bank account.
8:10 Um, and it's almost like having rentals that I get monthly payments on every single month. So, I get a big fat check
8:15 up front and then get monthly payments and I never have to fix a toilet, never have a roof repair, no no toilets, none
8:22 of that stuff because land does not break. You know, it's pretty. How often How often do you find yourself
8:28 using creative finance in land? Because I know a lot of people are in a position where the debt stack is usually a lot
8:34 lower on land. So, your creative options tend to be more abundant. Yeah. I've never used a bank to buy land
8:41 ever. So, I say it's all creative. I say it's all creative. Either I'll wholesale it. Um, which I think is creative by
8:47 selling it to a cash buyer. And there's so there's so many ways to find these cash buyers or the seller will seller
8:52 finance me um and then I'll do an arbitrage. The best deals I get though is when I pay cash for the land because
8:59 some sometimes people think cash up front is a better deal for them. So, they will give less, which and and
9:05 really at the end of the day, if these sellers wanted to make more, they'd be the bank. You know, that's what I'm doing. So, that's fine. I'll I'll do it.
9:12 But, uh I think they're all creative. Every single one of them are creative. But, uh it just becomes another way to
9:19 sell it to me. And then we track it by an Excel spreadsheet. My bookkeeper plugs in what we received that month and
9:25 the lender gets paid. Some of them I bought with partners where they paid paid for the deal and I pay them out um
9:30 profits. I don't do that anymore. That's a pain in the butt to track. I was Yes, it is. That created a nightmare for
9:36 accountants. Yeah, you really got to do well in the software integration to make that even remotely manageable.
9:42 Yeah. And then I have a um it's called easyynotracking.com where we plug all of our notes in. That
9:47 way our buyers know how much they owe. We pull it directly from their bank account. Um the accountant has access to
9:53 it so she knows, you know, what she's got to do that year for our taxes. But it's none of this is none of this is
9:59 like earthshattering. like I didn't create it. I just had a series of coaches that have taught me stuff and
10:06 then I've made a bunch of trial and error. Um and it's really about what you like as well. My system might not be
10:12 perfect. That's the point of the meeting podcast is meet with people who've done interesting things that you want to do. That's how I built my whole career.
10:18 That's all we ever do. No entrepreneur Well, okay, fine. Maybe for Elon Musk, but for the most part, no entrepreneur
10:23 is going to go come in and reinvent the world wheel. You know, land is land. It's been around for a while. All the
10:28 different creative structures have been around forever. Uh there's nothing there's really nothing new in real estate. At least not often.
10:35 No, there's not. And there's nothing simpler than it's land. It's there. Dirt and trees. You
10:41 don't have any of the other sticks, bricks, plumbing, electric. You don't have all that to deal with on a land purchase. At least not every time.
10:46 Sticks, bricks, plumbing, electric. I like that. Sticks, bricks, and money, I suppose. And there's also
10:51 money. That's about all there is to the game. It's not a very emotional game. Real estate. It's pretty simple when you're finding land. So, this is the
10:58 piece that was overwhelming for I think a lot of people. You hop on the a land.com site. You're on land watch.
11:04 You're looking at this. How do you identify what a great deal is going to be for land? Because traditionally
11:09 multif family, it's a simple numbers game. What does cash flow look like? Do I have day one cash flow? Is my debt
11:15 service coverage in the right spot? It's obviously a different game with land. What are you doing to determine what is
11:21 an acquisition that you want to make having done hundreds of these? Yeah, good question. So, I follow what
11:27 Warren Buffett does. You know, he's got some very solid principles that worked for a long and he's old as heck. So, you
11:34 know, he's got some, you know, wisdom behind him. But one of his ma many, one
11:40 of his rules is don't lose money. Well, I know a lot of smart people that have
11:45 lost a lot of money in multif family to include myself. And there's people out there way smarter than I am. I don't
11:53 feel like I'm ever the smartest guy in the room. And I mean, I can say kudos to me because I
11:58 surround myself with smart people or I'm just really dumb. One or the other. But I don't believe I'm really dumb because
12:04 I think what we tell our subconscious will believe it. So, I'm starting to
12:10 believe I'm pretty darn freaking smart because I I hang out with smart people all the time. And maybe I don't hang out with them. I listen to their podcast
12:16 like yours, Christian, or I read books that Elon Musk writes or Donald Trump writes, whatever you think about him in
12:22 politics. I don't care. Not you, anybody listening. But I used to read these books growing up because I didn't know
12:29 anything about real estate. I just knew my parents bought their own home and they can they you know spent years
12:34 trying to pay for it. But asking what you just asked there. Gosh, I think I got a little sidetracked. Can you repeat the
12:40 question? My apologies. No, no, that's okay. On traditional, you know, a traditional business, right? Uh
12:45 so, so it could be multif family, office, retail, anything real estate, you typically going to be looking at your cash flows, your metrics, your
12:51 DSCR. What makes a good land transaction? How do you know what you want to buy? I easier way to ask what is
12:58 the buy box for you today after you've done hundreds of transactions? Yeah. Yeah. Like how to how to know if
13:05 it's a good deal, right? Because that was the biggest thing for me. Like I used to look at Land Watch and it was
13:11 like a guessing game, man. I would see what people were selling it for, what they were asking for it. But there's a
13:17 difference between what people ask and what they actually get for it. Um, so there was a lot of just uncertainty and
13:23 then the whole don't lose money thing with lands. I've only lost money on two
13:28 land deals out of almost 400 now at this point. So I think that's I've done pretty darn well. But in the beginning I
13:35 didn't know what I was doing. I was just buying the stuff for as cheap as possible. I mean like pennies on the
13:40 dollar and thank god I would find someone that just give me a little bit more. And now that whole entire process
13:46 just changed quite a bit. I look on Redfin, I look on Zillow, and I see where land is selling, where it's in
13:51 demand. We price it out with our software program. We make offers uh every day with our software program. Um,
13:57 and if anybody wants to get access to the software program, it's nothing I created, by the way. Uh, just just go to
14:04 the land sharks, that's plural,.comcrm. They have a free version of it. Um, and
14:10 you can start actually making offers to land owners. But that's what I do. I make these offers and when they come back signed, I have a contract in my
14:17 inbox that I'm going to make at least $10,000 on. So, that's how I know if it's a good deal. I'm I'm looking at the
14:23 comps. I'm looking at what stuff is actually selling for, not what people are asking. But before I buy it, I'll do
14:29 a couple things. I will, you know, reach out to cash buyers or I will reach out
14:35 to the realtors in that area selling it and see what the, you know, the blowout price is for it. Uh, and then hopefully
14:40 I have a buyer lined up ahead of time and then we'll go ahead and purchase that land and we'll either sell it on
14:46 seller financing for a nice down payment, monthly payment, or we'll flip it or wholesale it. Um, so that's how I
14:52 know I'm getting good deals. Usually with land, I make money immediately. Like that multifamily uh deal that I
14:58 lost money on, I could have assigned that contract and made $85,000 back in 2017 or it's actually 2018. I wish I
15:05 would have just taken the money uh because that was a long arduous process of renovation and then it took me so
15:12 darn long to renovate it. Colorado Springs built all these beautiful apartments with pools and you know bars
15:18 on the rooftop and hot tubs and gardens and no one wanted my, you know, lipstick
15:23 pigs that I renovated. So, and then the interest rates went up. So, now I'm like $1,600 a month in the negative. That's
15:30 You don't want to be in the negative cash flow when you're doing a real estate deal. No, no. The model that I'd
15:36 always adopted is buy where it cash flows day one and have long-term fixed rate debt. I don't like doing the big
15:43 redevelopment projects or the like, hey, I've gone in and I've renovated buildings and done a fantastic job and
15:48 found that the market doesn't want a fantastic building. They wanted entry-level lame housing and now we have
15:54 an overimproved building and they're really hard to work with. I've never lost money on a deal, but my goodness,
16:00 the less speculation the better. So, when you're doing these transactions, you mentioned you're making money day
16:06 one. So, of course, on a wholesale, day one, you're going to make money. I assume on your wraps, it's probably
16:11 pretty similar. If you're doing if you're getting financing on a piece of land and then you're financing it at a higher price, is that all executed
16:17 simultaneously at the close? Are you buying seller financed and then finding a buyer afterwards? What's your what's your timeline on
16:23 those? If I'm buying a piece of land, creatively financed or in cash, what is my timeline between close and I now have
16:30 this note to someone else? Yeah. 45 days max. If I can't find a buyer in 45 days, we shouldn't buy it.
16:37 Um, and if I have a couple rules, make money on the close, make money when you close on it.
16:42 Make money consistently throughout it, and make money at the end. And then sometimes it's simple like we just
16:47 assign the contract and make a quick cash deal or we're gonna we're going to flip it. Uh, so if we're going to flip
16:53 it, we want to see, you know, to where it's like, okay, here's our here's what
16:58 we will list it for today. We will get paid on this thing in 30 days from now. And the profits will be well over, you
17:07 know, a certain amount. And now I have a threshold. Depending on how much we spend, we got to make more profit cuz
17:12 the higher the land is, the faster it could fall. So, we want to see a bigger
17:17 like if I'm going to spend 500k on a piece of land, I want to make every bit of at least 250,000,
17:23 you know, but if I'm if I'm spending 30 grand on a piece of land, you know, I'm fine only making 10 or 12 grand for the
17:30 12 to 15k side. Um because land has slowown down a little bit. Right now, uh
17:36 two years ago, I could sell something in a day. Now, it's taking me 30 to 45 days. And that's just fine. that I'm
17:42 just making sure the spreads are a little bit larger where uncertainty is. I just make sure the profit's bigger.
17:47 Like Warren Buffett has a 3x rule. If he's going to buy it for $33, he wants to he wants to be able to sell it for
17:53 90, you know, something dollars type thing. But you talked about that cash flow today. Like the the um mobile home
18:01 parks. I love mobile home parks because I want the lot rent. I will sell the unit to the tenant for like almost next
18:07 to nothing. But I want the lot rent. And if it doesn't cash flow today on a fixed
18:13 15-year note or less to pay itself off, I mean, I'm not going to buy it. It
18:18 could have 13 available spaces and I've got a dealer's license. I get these things real cheap, these mobile real
18:23 cheap, but if it doesn't cash flow today, like we're just going to pass on it, you know, because it there's too
18:29 many other deals out there that will. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a simple economic theory, right? And it's like, okay, so if you only buy deals that cash
18:35 flow on day one, then you only give yourself raises. And if you have either long-term fixed rate debt or in your
18:41 case, you're taking, you know, on some of these deals, you're just taking the cash up front or a contract, it's just profit. Like you either gave yourself a
18:49 permanent raise or you got cash in the bank. Really hard to go bankrupt when every deal you do increases your income.
18:56 It was easy for me. Very, very hard to lose. Yeah. And it was so easy to set it up like this cuz I didn't have money. I
19:02 mean, I didn't have any cash. You know, it's like I got people all the time like, "Hey, Brandon, I got $25,000. What
19:07 do I do with it?" Well, put half of it in the bank account and the other half of it spread it out over several months
19:12 making offers and get a piece of land under contract at 60 cents on the
19:18 dollar. Now, you can turn that 25K into maybe 45K in the next 90 days. That's
19:24 it. Like, you know, I don't want you locking that money up in a piece of real estate. can
19:29 um then you become real estate rich cash poor which is a very common problem for a lot of landlords that
19:34 real estate builds some crazy wealth but it is not traditionally a heavy cash
19:40 flow business and the reason being is because it is more passive than most businesses. You can do jobs where you trade time for money and you build a
19:46 company they're going to be more cash flow heavy. Real estate buy and hold is a long game. You can build cash flow but
19:52 it's slow takes a lot of transactions. You got to buy bigger. It's a it's a slow process to build very significant
19:58 cash flow and you end up a lot of people in their first five to 10 years end up in that position of they're cash poor
20:05 real estate rich and you hang on long enough and that eventually does flip and you can pull liquidity but it is a uh
20:10 it's a slower game. I like the land transactions because you can do a ton of transactions like you mentioned. You
20:17 have high velocity. You're getting paid to close. You're getting paid within 45 days of close doing contracts. You have
20:22 note revenue of R or I guess not RV but mobile home park uh revenue. You have a
20:28 lot of different ways to monetize land. How are you finding your deals primarily for these? If if I'm if I'm hunting for
20:34 deals, where are you finding them primarily today? Yeah, with that software program we gave you, the
20:40 landsharks.com/crm. Um, I use that to send offer letters.
20:46 What I'm sending is a what's called a land offer letter or an LOL. Um, so if you, let's just say you own a piece of
20:52 land in Georgia, uh, it's worth, I don't know, $100,000. I'm going to offer you
20:58 $69,000 for it or 61 anywhere between 61 and $69,000
21:03 for that land. You sign it and you send it back. It's a series of offers basically. And how do I know what to
21:09 offer? Well, I go in ahead of time and we we price it out. We map it out and we send those offers every single day. You
21:16 know, it's like people don't always accept it on the first. Sometimes they accept it on the third or the fourth. And most people are not going to accept
21:22 it. At the end of the day, that's how we're creating money out of thin air is we're getting these at discounts. Like
21:28 that's I'm not having to renovate it and increase the value. Like I make money on the buy because we're getting it at a
21:35 discount. Why would someone sell at a discount? We're just a pawn shop for land. That's it. People sell things all
21:41 the time to pawn shops at discounts. And you know, they sell jewelry and Rolexes and guns and it's like, why do we trade
21:48 our vehicles in? We know we're losing thousands of dollars to do it, but it's convenient. Mhm.
21:54 Well, I like So, so the model for the land game, the way that you're playing, it's it's a it's a volume game. You're
22:00 going to go and you're going to be just consistently lots of LOL's. Many won't be accepted, some will. Once you get one
22:06 that's accepted. So, because you're doing in mass, I assume there's a limited amount of due diligence that could be done on the front end. Someone
22:12 now accepts it. What does the DD period look like and the process look like for a chunk of land?
22:18 Yeah, I actually have a due diligence checklist or a land buying road map that I follow. Um, anybody can get a copy of
22:25 that if they go to the landsharks.comd as in due diligence.
22:31 Perfect. I asked an appropriate question for this one. Yeah, that link will be below by the way in the show notes.
22:36 Yeah, it'll ask you for your email and I'll email it to you. Check your spam folder because it seems to go there a
22:41 lot. But, um, you know, we want to know if it's buildable. Like, will the county
22:47 allow you to build on it? What's the road access? What's the water look like? what's the, you know, septic or sewer,
22:53 all these things to see exactly what it looks like. And, you know, I found with land, people are willing to give you
23:00 longer due diligence periods. While we're in that due diligence period, 15, we call an inspection period, whether it
23:06 be 20 days, 15 days, 30 days. I also have on my purchase agreement the rights
23:13 to market that purchase agreement. And I always I don't ever blindside a seller with this. I say, "Hey, you know, um,
23:19 I'm not actually going to be building on this land or moving on this land. I do this for a business." When I was in the
23:25 military, I used to say, "I do this, you know, to pay for diapers and formula. Are you cool with me making a little
23:30 profit on this?" Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to market this thing like crazy. I'm a gorilla marketer. I
23:36 put it on Craigslist. I put it on Facebook. I put it on the MLS. I put signs out. I go and literally stand on
23:41 your land with a bullhorn to try and sell it. And I've never had a seller say, "No, I don't I think you
23:46 should make no money." Like when you explain it like that, they're super cool about it and they're like rooting for you. And when they see it on Facebook,
23:54 they're like, "Yeah, he kept his promise." They see a sign out there like, "Oh yeah, Brent's just doing what he say he's going to do." It's a whole
24:00 different conversation than what the heck is this? My land's on Facebook. You know?
24:05 Yep. Oh, it's a it's a great model. So, what does transaction volume look like for you in a in an average year today?
24:11 Like, how how often are you buying a piece of land? Yeah, I'm trying to slow down a little bit, actually. Uh, I always tell people
24:17 I want to do one deal a month, it turns into about a couple several deal deals a month, it seems like. Now that I'm
24:23 putting brand new mobile homes on these parcels of land, I'm I'm really only shooting for one a month. It looks like
24:29 we're going to do about 15 this year in the next 12 months, actually. But, uh, that's my goal. I primed the pump a long
24:35 time ago. I always tell people, imagine a red farmhouse pump, and you just got to go out there and start pumping the
24:40 thing. And sometimes you got to take a little water and put it in there. But you know, in that mason jar, you only got 32 ounces. At 32 ounces, and for
24:48 anybody watching the video, like if I pour it all in there and nothing comes out, then I'm going to die of thirst in
24:55 the next probably 3 days. But if I get that water coming out, I can live for a lifetime. Mhm. Well, it that's a really simple,
25:02 repeatable pace for for like So you're doing a deal a month. That's a that's actually a pretty leisurely pacing.
25:10 That's not an incredibly hard strenuous. You hear some people like so you'll look at like um traditional wholesaling
25:17 businesses where it's a full-time, okay, we got an office. We're trying to rip a
25:22 deal out every, you know, multiple deals a week. It's crazy high volume. You've
25:27 been able to make fantastic living consistently on a deal a month if you're submitting
25:33 consistent offers. I mean, that's not that doesn't sound like a um overwhelming thing for someone to
25:39 emulate. Yeah. And and I was that that person where I had to rip a deal a week. You
25:44 know why I had to do that? I was I had a gun to my head. I had a team. I was
25:49 spending $30,000 a month in marketing. I had the office. We had the cleaning crew, cleaning the office, the snacks. I
25:55 had the ego. I had to present the big truck. All these things. I was on TV, on the radio,
26:01 um hosting a real estate meetup. I was like a puppet. And like one day I had this epiphany like my CFO saw how much
26:09 money we were making in land and then how much money I was losing on flipping houses. This is like 2022 when the
26:16 interest rates just went up and I lost a bunch of cash. Then I got a big IRS tax bill. So it was all at once. It's like a
26:21 perfect storm. The market's hurting. You still get taxed for the good year.
26:27 Oh my gosh. Yeah. Someone should tell the IRS this. Like are you kidding me? So I like I contemplated his suicide
26:33 there for a little bit um for about a couple days and my CFO was like pointing
26:38 out like he was like how much money how much time do you spend on the land? I was like maybe like maybe an hour a day
26:44 maybe. He's like how what's a what a percentage wise? I was like 5% of my time. And he's like how much time do you
26:49 spend on the houses as percentage? I was like 95%. And he's like well I hate to
26:54 tell you you're losing money on the houses but you're actually making money in your land. Maybe you should swap that. And then he's all like he's like,
27:00 "So, how much cash do you have in it?" I was like, "Quart million dollars." Like he's like he's like, "How much cash would you have in the bank if you had
27:06 private lenders and you treated this like a business that rather than real estate?" And I was like, "A million
27:12 dollars." And he's like, "Well, don't you think you should start talking with private lenders?" So that day I started building private lenders list and fired
27:18 everybody, rented out my office. So now the office has been leased out for almost four years on a triple net lease.
27:23 Um, I make money now on the office. It's just I'm just like, "Wow." I had this ego I was trying to present to to hang
27:32 out with my buddies and do what my buddies were doing and I was stressed out. Now I I mean I work pretty hard
27:38 still from 10:00 to 3 every day and I and I work a lot but I'm not leaving the house unless I want to. Uh it's all on
27:45 video. We're way more profitable. I keep more of the money. So I don't know.
27:50 That sounds that sounds unbelievably better. So 10 to three better than almost anyone. You got to do a job that
27:56 you love that you're good at. You've specialized. You don't have the office to maintain. That sounds unbelievably
28:03 better. Yeah. Unbelievably better. I see a lot of people who do get caught up in the ego
28:08 and they have to have the fancy car. And granted, I love a good truck. Drive a Tundra. Love the Tundra. But you don't
28:15 need a whole bunch of fancy things. And oftent times less overhead is better. So that's awesome. So you you shrunk your
28:22 company and increased your profit. Best. Yeah. Excellent. That's the best case scenario.
28:27 I still have problems though. We're not perfect. You know, I have an office manager and she probably thinks I'm
28:32 crazy. You know, she kind of keeps me organized and I still have the accountant, the bookkeeper, and a smart
28:38 CPA. Just surround yourself with smart people. You don't have to have a big team. AI is doing a lot of this for us
28:44 now, too. So, absolutely incredible. How how are primary ways that you are using AI in
28:49 your business right now? Yeah. Um, one thing is like whenever my,
28:54 you know, team member, one of my team members ask me a question, it's like, "Well, did you ask AI? What did what what do you think we should do?" You
29:01 know, it's me asking questions now rather than me being the guy that's like
29:07 paying these people to for them to freaking ask me questions. Like, I'm really I get really upset when my team
29:12 members ask me questions. I like, you know, people pay me to ask me questions, right? Like, I'm paying you, so I should
29:18 be asking you the questions. That sounds like an a-hole. I don't actually tell them that, but I'm thinking it. So, I'm
29:24 just you trying to train them. But AI, I mean, basically, if I can give you any
29:30 advice, anybody any advice is whatever business you're in, let's just say it's plumbing, you should ask Chat GPT or
29:37 Grock or whatever you use. If you're not using one, pick one, um, and just say,
29:42 "Hey, how do I become an AI first plumbing? How do I become an AI first land company? How do I become an AI
29:48 first land branding mobile home package company? And it's crazy like this thing will start helping you build out things.
29:55 Now AI should never be the creator. You're the creator. AI should just help you but it will help you run through it.
30:00 When when we created I I've created a couple of custom AI products for uh for multif family and for my mentorship
30:06 group multi family strategy. When we are building those like you start it with hey uh you know I'll use chat GPT. How
30:14 would I build a custom GPT that does these things and it'll walk you through. It'll literally build itself. It took
30:19 the best tool I have. It took me about 6 hours just alone in the office talking to the computer. And we end goes, "Oh,
30:26 sorry. We have 14,000 lines of prompt. We need to condense this to eight for me to produce this." I was like, "Oh, okay.
30:32 Can you condense your can you condense everything we said into 8,000 lines of prompt?" Like, "Yes, done." I was like,
30:38 "Oh, okay. Good. We've completely customized this thing with like thousands and thousands and thousands of prompt." And it was a day of it asking
30:45 me questions and me answering the questions. Hey, have you thought of this? What what should I respond to these scenarios? What are your core
30:51 beliefs? I was like, it's just an awesome, you know, what tone do you think I should respond in? It will write
30:57 almost anything from you. The idea starts from you. Like you said, you're the entrepreneur, but using AI to help
31:04 craft some of the stuff. AI is amazing at building AI tools.
31:09 Absolutely amazing. Hey AI, how do I use you more in my land business or my
31:14 electrical company? And Christian, I wish I would have known you whenever I bought my multif family because I probably wouldn't have lost money on it.
31:20 You know, it's like that that's one of my biggest mistakes is I got in multifamily and I knew nothing about it.
31:26 I did not have a coach. I didn't have a course. It was it was an arrogant, cocky, egotistical thing for me to do.
31:33 Um, a lot of people started there. I did my first few deals without a mentor and uh They made money, but it's
31:41 very much and I I I've always been transparent about this beautiful market cycle. It was it was
31:47 just that tail end before the interest rates started going up was that two that last two years before like right as
31:56 right before and during COVID where I bought deals and the market just ran up
32:01 and up and up and up and so I look like a hero. The one of those two deals was a duplex. They had permits for all of the
32:08 work that it took to convert this 1911 house into a duplex. They even had two
32:13 separate meters that the city had approved. Apparently, they never actually got it zoned as a legal duplex.
32:20 And when the city did an inspection 5 years into me owning this thing, and they the prior owners had owned it for
32:25 seven, they went, "Hey, this uh this lower unit's never been permitted. Your ceiling is 2 in too low. You need to
32:31 raise the second floor of your building or we're shutting this down." So, my duplex became a house. If that happened
32:37 in the wrong market cycle, I would have just lost the deal. Instead, I lost my cash flow. I sold it for a profit. And
32:44 that is purely market timing. If that was the only deal I did and I didn't get my own set of mentors and scaled the
32:51 business, I could have lost everything on a twounit building. What a lame start
32:56 as an entrepreneur. You time that wrong and you go, I lost it all on a duplex.
33:02 Yeah, we get lucky. We get lucky a lot. I'll tell you what, we definitely get lucky a lot. I'm I'm a lucky guy. That's
33:09 for sure. And that's the kind of luck I have. And that's I'm gonna keep creating that luck. If the weather's good and
33:15 we're out in the boat and we're we're catching fish, I was like, that's just the kind of luck I have. And and that's where we should keep focusing on that. I
33:22 had the same thing. It was a duplex. The dad gum basement was so low. I pretty
33:28 much had the duck to go in there. But that provided some beautiful a beautiful two-bedroom, one bath for many families
33:36 when I had that that building. And I ended up making money on that building, too. But thank God the real estate market was going up. You know, we've got
33:42 these 18-year cycles. Everyone should know about the 18-ear cycles. And it's been happened for 300
33:47 years now. Um, where we at on that? I believe, this is my opinion, we're 2026,
33:53 we're going to see a little bit more of a dip. Now, will it completely crash? I don't know. But
33:58 I'm not fundamentally where we're we're not I don't see anything where it looks like we're bubbled. So, I don't see anything
34:04 where we're going to see a crash. We have none of the fundamentals that caused 2008. We'll either dip or be very
34:09 neutral. We're either going to go slightly down or slightly up. I think in 2026, I think it's going to be a pretty boring year. Personally,
34:15 boring is good. Boring is great. Consistency is fantastic. I want nothing dramatic to
34:21 happen in real estate. In a perfect market, slow, boring, steady growth for an extended period of time would be the
34:28 perfect the perfect market. You don't want a big boom because it causes a more than often it causes a big crash or a
34:35 big correction. I I want as little drama as humanly possible. And then when you
34:41 buy long-term fixed rate, you want to eliminate as many variables as you possibly can. That's the name of the
34:47 game. Speaking of mentorship, huge point of this channel is connect with owners who've done awesome things. We all learn
34:52 expensive lessons along the way. Now, in every episode, we always ask the stupid tax, the highest price that you
34:58 personally paid, learning what you now know today, so someone else cannot make the same mistake. My my largest mistakes
35:05 have both been seven figures. I've shared many times on here. So, I have certainly had decisions that were
35:12 extremely costly. We recently had Rod Clee on the podcast who did a good job of instantly losing 800 homes and $50
35:19 million of pain. So, we've seen all sorts of stupid tax along your journey.
35:25 What has been the highest stupid tax for you learning what you now know today? Man, I don't know. I've got one project.
35:32 I got a about $215,000. I don't know if I'll ever get that money
35:37 back out of it. I don't know. I mean, nothing stops me from keeping it and holding on to I don't know if I can I've
35:44 got anything like super interesting as far as stupid taxes. I've made a bunch
35:49 of different mistakes on deals like uh that due diligence checklist,
35:54 you know, the land buying road map. Most of those things on that is somehow or another where I made a mistake. I don't know if I lost money on all those
36:01 things. I know for sure the buildable one, what is it buildable? That one made me lose money. Um, but I don't know if
36:09 I've got anything crazy to talk about. I already mentioned the 19 unit apartment complex. Yep.
36:14 Um, we'll lose, you know, I'm afraid to say how much. We're We're not done with it yet. Uh,
36:20 I [laughter] did buy a piece of land for $1.2 million. I'm still sitting on that one as well, I'll tell you. Okay, that
36:26 was stupid tax. Um, that one we're still sitting on it. And taxes went up
36:32 dramatically, like to the tune of $8,000 a year. No, is it 8 thou? 18,000 a year.
36:38 So, I'm sorry, 18,000 a year. So, I'm still paying that tax every single year
36:44 till I, you know, unload that property. What's good about it is it's the last piece of vacant land on a four-lane
36:50 highway in Colorado Springs. So, Sunland's eventually Oh, that doesn't suck. Springs has done
36:56 really well. At least it had I I used to help run an office, funny enough, over in Colorado Springs for property
37:01 management. That would have been six years ago now. company expanded over there, but in the spring they've done a
37:08 great like just tremendous job of job growth and population growth over there.
37:13 So you you're holding land on a in the path of growth there. Any of that infill
37:20 highway frontage, I'm imagining you've done you're doing quite well positionally on holding that land.
37:26 Yeah. Yeah. Your mouth to some buyer's ears. [laughter]
37:32 Yeah. And then the question is, how long do you have to hold it? Because sometimes, God willing, we're going to sell it this
37:37 week and I'm going to call you and send you a a gift gift card. Oh, that's funny. There's a one of my
37:44 original mentors, Gary, man. He bought he has most of them tons of multi family, hundreds of of units. He owns
37:50 the whole railroad going into town and all the associated land there. Builds a lot of retail. He does a lot of infill.
37:57 It's a really really fun investor to watch. But he bought a ton of the land
38:04 to just a land bank believing that Moses Lake, Washington would blow up like Tri Cities did. He grew up in Tri Cities and
38:10 they absolutely took off. So he was expecting, hey, he bought these in his 40s. He's in his 70s now. He's in his
38:17 40s. Like, hey, by the time I'm 50, these are going to be worth unbelievably more. I'll have bananked them. He still
38:23 sold off a [laughter] lot of those in his 70s. went, you know, two decades slower than he thought it would for the
38:29 explosive growth. Those the speculative ideas where you have a long-term hold. Sometimes they just don't pan out the
38:36 way that you think they will. Was that one that you bought uh creatively financed? Cash. How'd you buy that? A million, too. That's a big land
38:41 purchase. Cash. Cash. [laughter] Oh, that's great. So, it's parked there.
38:47 You're paying taxes on it. That's true. At the end of the day, I don't have debt on it. I I do have a
38:52 couple partners on it and they unfortunately use their line of credit so that kind of sucks. Um well that's a
38:58 bummer but yeah I use cash. How do you handle those conversations? That can be I I've seen it done wrong so many times.
39:05 Not everything goes to plan. What is your policy for hey because it's a weird
39:10 it's a weird conversation right? Hey we thought this was going to do this. We may not be in a bad position but you guys have a line of credit and it didn't
39:16 do what we thought it would. It's a seven figure transaction. How do you how do you handle that correctly as the deal
39:23 creator? Guys, look, whatever you want to do, it's fine with me. If you want to change it, if you want to sell it at a
39:29 discount, if you want to seller finance it, if you want to fence it off and we'll let people park RVs and motor
39:36 homes and, you know, 18 wheelers on it, I'll make it happen. I'm open to any
39:41 ideas. I'm just being flexible on what they want to do cuz I honestly feel like I'm in the best position cuz I'm the
39:46 only one Well, I'm not the only one. I got I got cash in it. Other guys got lines of credit on it. So yeah, I had I
39:54 don't know if I'm handling it the best, but that's how I'm handling it. Well, the biggest mistake I've seen people do
39:59 with that is they they will have a problem and they spend all their time trying to fix it without informing their
40:04 investors. I've seen people work very very hard on fixing a problem, but they don't bring it up to the team. And so
40:12 when they bring it up now, it's, hey, wait, you sat on this for 4 months and you didn't let us be part of the process
40:17 for solving it. Number one thing you can do in a project doesn't go to plan is just involve everyone, which which is
40:23 exactly what you said to do, right? Oh, we can also flip it or not can also you already own it, but we can flip it. We
40:28 can uh seller finance it. We can fence it off. We can put all RVs on it. Many, many ideas. A project that I got stuck
40:34 on for the longest time. I did this hotel conversion. We bought it at a fantastic price. What we didn't know is
40:40 that 5 years prior, this used to be like a key place for dealing drugs. And even
40:47 though we did a beautiful job on the conversion, roof, lighting, paint, interiors, exteriors, kitchenetses,
40:53 community spaces, filled in the pool, turned it into a community garden. Like, we did a great job on this. Everyone in
40:59 the city still remembers it as it's the drug dealing building. Could not get over the stigma. We got
41:05 stuck at 50% occupancy. It's this is why you only buy deals that cash flow. This is one of two times I didn't do that.
41:11 Now we have a great building with a great basis and guess what? It loses money and
41:16 I bought it on a hard money loan. So while I have a great basis, I'm trying to refinance out a 13 12% debt in the 6
41:22 12% debt. I can't do it half occupied. The solution ended up coming from one of the investors on the team. I let
41:27 everyone know, hey, I love the project and it went well and under budget. Everything went right except lease up
41:33 didn't go as expected. It just didn't. What we ended up doing with it, it used to be known as a drug property and a
41:38 problem property. We work with the Washington State Departments of Corrections. They put their inmate
41:44 release program. So when they get released, they have to go stay paid for by the state anywhere from 6 months to
41:50 in some cases 2 to 3 years. It's almost like a section 8 voucher. You have a voucher program. They pay you directly.
41:57 We ended up turning it into that was the highest and best use for the building and it got his financing and it got 100%
42:03 occupied. wasn't the game plan, but the solution came from letting the investors know and the team know, hey, there's a
42:09 problem. If we're all part of the solution here, your odds of getting sued or having angry investors goes way down
42:15 if they're at least part of the problem or have the ability to be part of the solution. Yeah, that's cool. That's
42:21 communication's everything on those has been my experience. Yeah, you got the power of the mastermind, too, which is even you know who suggested it?
42:28 It was the least experienced investor on the team. The one who came up with the idea was the least qualified to handle
42:33 the problem. Those are usually the best ones to solve the problem. They're outside your industry. They have no idea what the
42:39 usual solutions are. So, he came out with the most out of the box. I didn't realize they needed this. They saw a
42:45 news article that they were going to do a new prison. And they're like, "Huh, I wonder what the programs are available."
42:51 They did some research. I would have never thought of that in a million years as a good use for my converted motel. I
42:57 never would have thought of them. That's really awesome. It's fun how these things come together.
43:02 So, there's some links that we have below in the show notes. Land Sharks, you have all all your details on it. If
43:08 someone wants to get connected to you, they have questions following up the podcast. How does someone best get
43:14 connected with you? They wanted to reach out. Yeah, probably the easiest way is go directly to the landsharks.com and
43:20 schedule a call. Love it. That link is below here, land sharks. And then social media. Where do people find you?
43:26 Uh, I'm pretty active on Facebook. If you want to watch some videos on what we're up to, go to YouTube. I'm about to
43:31 hit 10,000 subscribers. I need some help with that. I think I got like 40 more to go. Oh, there we go. All right. Well,
43:37 everyone listening to this, you have one mission. You already made it through the entire podcast. He's interesting enough
43:44 to hold your attention here. Try him on his own channel. We need 40 of these bad boys. Let's get it done. Everyone who's
43:50 listening, subscribe to the channel and uh let's go. 10,000's awesome, dude. That's a that's a great number to hit.
43:55 It's been a huge milestone, man. I'm telling you, it's just been consistent posting and you know, I have friends
44:00 that just they skyrocket and I'm like, when am I going to take off? You know, [laughter] I guess I'm talking about land. Not
44:06 everyone's interested in looking at it. So, there there there's a market for it though and people love land and it's
44:11 interesting. YouTube's funny. It tends to do nothing until you get a a giant skyrocket of one podcast goes off or you
44:18 do the one thing that one of my my big jump this year I happen to have Tai Lopez on this podcast and then right
44:26 afterwards he gets indicted for his mega Ponzi scheme and I'm like oh what fortunate timing clipping team let's get
44:34 and so that was our big boost this year is you happen to you happen to catch someone right before they massively break the law so you never know
44:41 you never know what will happen on YouTube the algorithm That's crazy. We'll take you off in ways you don't
44:46 expect. Also, if anyone wants to check out that episode, that is live on the Owner Meeting podcast as well. And it's
44:53 a weird episode. I'll be honest. He was a really uh he was a really odd guest to have on the pod. So, check that out.
44:59 Filmed from his what was his super house over in Beverly Hills. I'm I'm fairly certain he doesn't still have that, but
45:05 uh yeah, check that episode, too. It's a weird one. Brett, awesome having you on the pod. Any last thoughts to leave,
45:13 especially the newer investors, if they haven't invested in land, they haven't checked this out yet. Any parting thoughts you would leave to someone
45:19 who's trying to get into the space? I would say just take action. You know, I love talking to new investors because
45:24 at one time I was new. At one time, I didn't believe that this would work for me. I think that was my biggest hurdle
45:31 that I had to get over was what makes me so special. But I would hear all these other people on these podcasts just
45:37 talking all this amazing success and uh that's that's why I love the Wholesaling Inc. podcast. I'm thank God I'm blessed
45:43 to be a host. Every Friday I have an episode. But that's how I grew was listening to podcasts and I would hear
45:49 these regular people just like me that had jobs, had three children, were married, in debt, you know, no time, no
45:57 money, and we learn learn. I probably knew more about real estate than most. And if you're listening to this podcast,
46:03 holy crap, you're probably like at an MBA in this real estate. Now, I just
46:09 recommend take action every single day. Do the income producing activities. And
46:14 that's making offers, making offers, making offers, making offers. Because here's the thing, like it's just like if
46:19 you're married, you made an offer. You you made you asked her out on a date or you asked them out on a date. It went
46:26 out for coffee or lunch and then it became more maybe movies and then it became more dates and eventually it came
46:31 marriage. Like if you're married, you're a closer. You're an absolute closer. Like you just Oh, dude. Best best best clothes I've
46:37 ever had in my uh life was my wife. You got to get out there. Got to take
46:43 action. Get surrounded. Uh reach out to Land Sharks. You want to learn more. You guys want to join a community based on
46:49 multif family, multif family strategy on school. It's completely free. information will always be free on every
46:54 platform that I have. So, you have anything you want to learn, we have it on YouTube, we got it on uh we got it on
47:00 the school community. Get connected with thousands of investors there as well. All of the links will be below in the
47:05 show notes and I will see you all on the next