Transcription
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ground Game Podcast. This is your co-host Justin Pchet, and this is your other co-host Klay Heppler.
Dude, I'm looking at this screen here. We have this awesome screen behind us. That's our podcast recording screen. I keep looking up there and I say, "Man, in Dallas, Texas, I got to have some cowboy boots on, but I don't have any cowboy boots on."
You know, you'd be surprised to learn that I own no cowboy boots. That is a shame. Having lived in Texas the vast majority of my life. My wife has cowboy boots. I've just never owned a pair.
You would be really tall if you had cowboy boots.
I know. They're like three, four inches depending on what you, you know, they give you a little lift.
I mean, I thought about it. You know, actually, this is I actually don't own a pair of jeans either. We were just talking about jeans. I wore through I love nice jeans. I wore through a pair like three years ago and I just never bought another one. I also hate shopping for clothing. Like, okay. Despise it.
Fair enough.
So, if my wife had bought me a pair of jeans, then, you know, maybe I would have worn it. But,
yeah, these are some nice, some nice jeans. I got them two, three years ago. Good jeans, man. They're You know what I mean? Right. They're like a piece of land, baby. You know?
Well, um, how does that segue? I was I was hoping you were going to come in with like the perfect segue. Like, talk about a good pair of jeans.
Yeah. No, there's nothing. There's nothing. But um I I do want to talk about I do want to talk about today a conversation I had.
Yeah.
So I was actually on the way to the airport. So I'm in Phoenix. I did two podcasts out in Phoenix. And one of them was Steve Frang's Disruptors podcast.
Yeah. I listened to that a ton of times. That's awesome.
Yeah. I was on Steve's podcast which is great. We actually talked about AI for so long. Yeah. Afterwards, like two hours we stung and hang. And then I was with Brent Daniels. He does the wholesale hotline with Jamal Dan and Paige Morby and then he has his own podcast which we had a great time man. It was really great.
And so by the way they have Whimos there. You know have you ever been in a Whimo?
I've never been in a Whimo.
Completely autonomous. You you get in. It's the weirdest thing.
There's nobody driving.
No one's driving. It was a 30 minute drive from my hotel to Phoenix airport this morning. And on that way is I had a conversation with the broker. And that is the that is the the crux of this conversation. And really what it came down to, man, is inexperienced investors are killing the reputation of investors like you and me because they don't trust us.
So here's the deal. We get this deal under contract in Kentucky. Okay? We get under contract in Kentucky. Not the greatest deal, but we say, "Hey, you know what? We can wholesale this. We can double close on this. Or maybe we just buy and list it." We're buying it for 22, which is lower than what we normally buy. We're like, "We'll probably list it for 50, right? So, I find a local a local guy or my disposal associate finds a local broker. Guy is a land broker. He has 80 listings. I mean, the guy is a land broker, you know, Kentucky.
That's a lot of listings for any one person. Imagine I I'm sure he has a team.
Yeah, he's got a team. Um, so, but this guy's been in the business for 20 years. Okay. So, we hit it off. He goes out to the property and he's like, "Man, this is this will be good." The neighbor actually said, "Hey, would you uh are you listing the property?" He's like, "Well, I'm looking for the buyer. He's buying it. He's probably, you know, or the the the seller." He thought it was the seller. I'm listening for the seller. Um and yeah, of course, I'd take an offer. So, he gets an offer from this guy, right? Um this guy. So, I'm like, "Oh, shoot. Man, this is going to be great. I'll double close it." So, we have it on contract 22. We're going to sell it for 39.
Beautiful.
I'll take that hit. I'll take that hit. But he starts to get sketchy. He's like, "Well, we just sent it over to the title company and you guys don't own it."
Don't own it.
And I said, "Look, I I got on a call with him a couple days ago." I said, "Hey, man. This is we do this all the time, double closing, whatever."
And he starts to get like ghosting me over the last couple days. So the crux of this podcast is this conversation that I'm having in this Whimo, right? So I get on a call with him, 30 minute call, and he's like, "I looked you up online and I looked up your company. I read all your and he starts to get really sketched out." He's like, "There's so many land scams." Which is true. There are a ton of land scams.
I mean, I I've dealt with multiple.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We dealt with we dealt with them, right? But the problem is, how do you tell if you're a broker, if you're a seller, how do you tell the difference between a land scam, an inexperienced investor, which is basically a land scam, and you and me?
And that is the point of this podcast.
Yeah.
So, how do you differentiate yourself as a business?
And I'll go into the conversation, the end of this the end of the conversation. is pretty crazy. But I'll go into the end of the conversation uh at the towards the end of this podcast, but tell me how you differentiate yourself.
Well, one, we have we are honest with people.
Yeah.
Like that's that's like the number one thing. If we are doing a double close, the seller knows we're doing a double close. So we may we may we may do te test marketing on a property but with no intent to actually double close it with 100% intent to close and then sell. So like that's the I think that's the probably the most important thing. Uh secondly, we do exactly what we say we're going to do. So if we're talking to somebody and we say we're going to call you back in this time or we're going to get this thing and then you're going to get an email from this title company or whatever. Like all that stuff happens because we're actually doing our job. We're not just taking a contract and like holding it and then you know trying to sell it. Not going to title and paying any money to title until after we found the buyer etc. Like there's actually a title title work being happening on this. One thing we don't have to deal with though from a broker perspective. The only deal right now that I have a broker listing that I haven't already purchased is an entitlement deal. So, like it's pretty normal to be listing and selling an entitlement deal to find a buyer, find a builder for it when you don't own it yet because you're you have this long contract. So, this and it was pretty clear up front that I wasn't the owner of the of the land. So, I didn't really have to deal with that so much.
So, you're saying good question.
You're basically saying, hey, you know, do I'm going to stick to what I say do. I'm going to be honest, but what happens if that doesn't work? And that's the point of this conversation. Okay. So, this guy looks me up online. He's like, "Oh, I see you have uh YouTube and I see your ch your wife and and uh your Instagram and everything like that." And so he's like, "My parents have been scammed twice. Uh they were buying a piece of land and they put $15,000 down and they were going to owner finance it. The guy left. I've been scammed once on land. And how do I know you're legit? How do I know you're legit?"
And so I said, 'Look, this is this is important for investors to number one do.
Yeah.
They have to have transparent conversations. Have a online presence. Have a Google My Business profile. That's huge. Google My Business profile is huge. Maybe a Trust Pilot profile. Even though the Better Business Bureau was set up by the mob, I don't know if you knew that. Did you know that? Literally set up by the mob. Better Business Bureau. Look it up. Italian mob, total total fake, but boomers, which is the majority of our buying and selling profile,
they uh love the Better Business Bureau. So, having those types of third party credibility, whether that's on social media or these places, will immediately establish yourself as a non-tire kicker. I think honesty is a big thing. If I get on a call with a seller or a broker, I never get on calls with a seller actually anymore, but if I get on a call with a broker or I have to get in to to make sure that a seller is, you know, is like, "Hey, I'm I'm going to back out, whatever. I feel uncomfortable." That doesn't ever happen. But in that case, I would jump in. I just say, "Yeah, I can totally understand. I'm I lead with honesty and transparency. I can understand why you feel this way. Check us out online, but making sure you have a legitimate website."
Yep. you have um a legitimate Google My Business profile. If you don't, maybe Trust Pilot or maybe Better Business Bureau or some other form of verification. It's so weird, man. People trust Google My Business more than they trust the title company.
That is weird.
Have you noticed that?
We've Well, we have used title companies to establish credibility for us from from sellers or buyers. We've had multiple times when people have been like, "Oh, I don't know. You know, this is some kind of scam." And we're like, "No, like this is the title company we're working with. We have title opened up here. Why don't you give them a call? I won't even give you their number. Just Google them and call the phone number that you get from Google and ask about Scout Land Group or ask about Land Legacy Partners or whatever. Like, ask about us. We've done hundreds of transactions with this title company or that title company or whatever it is." And that's worked every time we've ever like been in doubt and needed to establish credibility. However, I'm sure there's o other other times where we didn't even know, right, that the that the person didn't want to work with us or didn't call us back because they thought we were not credible, right?
I'm sure that's a there's a lot of that that probably happens. I mean, we're marketing to thousands of people%.
So, I think that there's the third party credibility, which is super important, right? Google My Business, uh, uh, Better Business Bureau, Trust Pilot. You know what I love to do?
I love to get testimonials from sellers.
Yeah.
So, we have video testimonials from sellers that we will send.
What do you typically do for that?
Do you get that?
Yeah. Because we I mean, we've looked at it a whole bunch of times and it's always been I pay them money.
Right. That's what I've told my team. Like, give them a gift card or whatever. Give them cash. But it's always been something that has fallen below all of the other priorities. So, we've never really put
testimonial. Dude, testimonials can't be more important. Yeah.
can't fake them.
It's like you know when someone comes to perfect example, right?
There is the testimonials which is third party. Then there's like you talking on this podcast, dude. You you sound like you know what you're doing. Hopefully people think I sound like I know what you're doing, right? They're like this guy this guy's like why is he on this podcast? Get him off. Right. But um that like just being able to speak cohesively with confidence and clarity about a specific subject gives you authority, right? Because you can't
I I I have a BS detector. I think I have a good BS detector. Uh and you can tell pretty quickly if you listen to enough podcast, 52 podcast, 53 on this one, who's legitimate or not. Um, but that's like that's why we love the testimonials, man. be my my point was people come to you to invest with you. People come to me, they want to invest with me. They want to do deals. They want to do coaching with you, whatever. Because we actually execute. We actually know what we're doing. But the testimonials of this and so you can think about lining this up. I think about three like if you're thinking about a bowling alley, but you have three pins. First pin is online, Google, Facebook credibility. You can have Facebook post too. Google my um, you know, uh, Better Business Bureau Trust Pilot. Then you have the the center one is the testimonials, right? A video testimonial. Nothing's better than that. And then you have your profile, your online profile. And so in your your your business and so that you can always just point to that, right? But illegitimate investors don't spend the time to do that. They don't spend the time to build up the credibility online. Um, and you know, imagine the biggest credibility would be like a real estate broker,
right? With 80 listings,
right? That that has their name on the line and say, "I like Clay. I've worked with Clay. He's a good high integrity guy with like his branding on it. Get out of here."
Yeah, we've we've done that on We have Facebook reviews. So, I guess we do have some reviews. Cool. You got Facebook on Facebook. We don't have anything on our like landing page. Um, yeah. I I I think that I agree. I agree. Getting a broker to do it. One of our brokers did that with us and that was I think that was helpful. We've also gotten bad reviews from people that have never worked with us before. So, that's the that's the other side of of like reviews on like Google and Facebook is it kind of sucks. We did a we did a this is just a quick aside and we'll get back to the real topic which is what are inexperienced land investors doing that is making it harder for the rest of us to do to do business. Um, but we developed this property. It was barren, scarred, timbered land. 50 acres, clearcut. I mean, anybody who's been in the land space knows what a clear-cut property looks like. It's bad.
It looks terrible.
So, I bought it really cheaply. It's in Alabama. 50 50,000 for 50 acre. 48 acres. So, it's like a thousand an acre. Road cutting through the middle of it. So with water line and power. So water, power, road cutting through the middle of it. There were some houses around, but it was pretty rural. So I bought it. I put about $45,000 into it. I had bulldozers clear the stumps and like clear everything down to dirt for the first like front half of the property. It was it was eight five to seven acre tracks basically. So the first half of all the property off the road got totally cleared for grass to grow and like for plants to grow and so it wasn't just this barren wasteland anymore. Yeah.
And then I sold the lots and it ended up being a fantastic deal. I think I I my total in I did it all cash. My total investment was like 88 89,000. I think our gross profit at the end of it after we sold all the notes was like 110.
Let's go.
So good deal.
It was a good deal. It was a good deal. However, because of that deal, I got one horrible Facebook review from somebody that was like, "This company just comes into your town and they just split up land and sell it off to anybody or like something like that." I'm like, "Yeah, like we turn crappy land into something somebody wants to live on."
Like, we're providing the American dream.
Yeah. The American dream. We're making it affordable. We owner financed it. Like, there's so many things we did. I think that were good. We created value out of something that was had very low value.
But
yeah, those those dude those properties are the worst. They're the worst. They're
the worst. They are the worst.
But you actually did you beautified the neighborhood. Yeah. I mean, wait, it didn't work. It didn't look like it didn't look great, right? Because it was still barren in the back with not barren. It was like totally packed and tree limbs and stumps and stuff in the back acorage, but the front people could see. It's like, oh wow, they like really cleared this land. All the stumps were gone. It's not like it was perfect virgin dirt, like nice and smoothed over. But it was it was like, "Oh, we could put a build pad here. We could put a driveway. Like we can plant grass. We can put trees. We don't have to like wade through thicket of random tiny trees and stumps and stuff, you know."
Yes, I do know.
Anyway, okay. So, back to And one thing I'll say real quick for newer land investors who might be listening, you are not a scammer. Like, we get it. You're not a scammer.
Yep. We've been there. We started there. But you need to quickly establish a level of credibility online or else you might get confused for a scammer, right? Especially with buyers and sellers. That's the big the big challenge.
Yeah. I think that the inexperienced investor makes us seem illegitimate because they communicate once and never again.
Yes.
They make a call, they don't follow up.
Yes.
They say that they're going to do something, they don't. And the way that we buttress against the hey you guys are scammers whatever is you have an online presence but you also do what you say you're going to do. Yeah
I think I love that point that you made earlier. Um, and the reality is you just see every other guru dude I get it all the time. These guys are like, "Buy this info lot whatever in Florida or I see all these people popping up selling courses and they teach the wrong thing." Um, I think in general there's a level of professionalism and integrity that true business owners have. Well, I wouldn't say true business owners, some business owners have, some people don't. And you have to fight against the tide of the people that we were talking about in a previous podcast that have came in scorched earth and they're like, "Oh, shoot. I don't actually run a legitimate business." And one of the key things is accountability and communication, which is calling someone up saying, "I'm going to call you up. I'm actually going to call you in the time I say I'm going to call you."
Right.
Right. So that's why I think man they're just people are tearing through the reputations of of land investors. That's what you do with house slippers. Investors are like developers. Developers are good for a lot of communities but people just glaze over and they just make hasty generalizations and then we have to fight that.
Yeah, I agree. There's I mean, there's a lot of I think misconceptions of most quality land investors. One is I've seen this before and this is true like of wholesalers. This is a complaint again against wholesalers as well is like you just call up old people and like take their property from them and then make a bunch of money on the backside. Things like that. And there are people that do that. I specifically talked to my team about if anybody sounds like they need or should have somebody else involved in this decision, you cannot sign a contract with them. Like you've got to get somebody involved. And on no less than 10 occasions, we've asked them to speak if they have like family members we can also speak to because it it I would call it amoral, right? Yes. Immoral rather is the right thing. Not without morals, but no morals or anti antimoral. Yeah. I guess if you will,
to do that type of thing.
So So the step-by-step process is like at the base level, there's like the macro thing, there's the philosophy. is like do what you say you're going to do and then you can start to build up the actual um presence online. So like how do you start this? Like Google Google My Business, you can get a Google My Business profile pretty easily. Yep.
And you just got to pay to play with um
Yeah. You got to have a website.
I think it's I think I mean you don't you don't have to have a website to to actually operate a business, but if you want more credibility and less people thinking that you're a scam, you need to have some sort of website that talks about who you are. And I think the no-name websites at this point are a disadvantage. I think if you have a website that just says that's basically like a carrot site or some kind of like generic sales buy land for cash now website, I think you're at a disadvantage when it comes to establishing credibility. Hey guys, Justin here interrupting our podcast to say thank you for listening. Uh today Clay and I are talking about some of the mistakes that new investors make that make it more challenging for the rest of us. How do you not make those mistakes? Uh, and I share a story at the end of this podcast about a mistake that I recently made and the lessons I learned from it. So, stay tuned to the end. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Well, I think without any personal stuff on there, you know, and I think I I I I'm open to people pushing back on this. So, I'm not saying that I'm like the the absolute right thing. My belief is that adding your own kind of personality, a photo of you, like a little bit about your story, Yeah. It opens you up to kind of like less privacy online because now your like story is on on your, you know, on your website. But it does add to your credibility. And if we're talking about establishing credibility uh as a land investor, then that's a an easy step someone can make is like actually put themselves on their website, stand behind their brand,
right? I I agree with you. I think the boilerplate website
Yeah. Nothing against carrot or or SEO optimized like sales websites. No, they're those those serve a great purpose. I just mean the no name ones. The ones with no face, no name, a generic business photo of some guy, you know, holding a calculator or some random thing like that. You know, that type of website.
You ever like the the the shop images?
Yeah.
Like a like a guy with like a lit up Yeah. Right. like a lit up background with like windows.
Dude, you know who has like the best website I've seen?
I know who you're going to say.
Who? No.
Josiah.
Yes. That's exactly what I was going to say. Yeah, he's an amaz spent a lot of money on that website,
dude. He is he is Josiah Josiah Ronco is amazing amazing guy, friend. Uh, we were just Yeah, he his website though.
It's amazing.
It's amazing. And his and his his video,
dude.
That's my point. That's the best video from any land investor I have seen. Just like immediate trust.
Testimonials are in there.
Like sitting down with PE like amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
He crushed it.
I sent that to my to my office manager. I was like, "Look at this website. Like,
we need to do something better."
We don't need to copy it, obviously. It's like it's his website, but like we need something better than what we
the themes. Yeah. The themes.
Yeah. I think that I love that Josiah. Yeah. He is an amazing He's an amazing website. Um, Yeah. So, I mean, put the put some personality. You know, something that we did we we did do as well is so we had the the the prong approach. I told you the three bowling balls or the uh bowling pins, but we also have a credibility packet that we created. So, we say, "Hey, we we've done this subdivide. We've done this flip in this county in this area. Here's me. Here's my executive team." And I'll we send it to every single person that comes in.
So, we have a credibility packet.
Send it via email.
Text and email.
Yeah, that's legit. I like that.
So, people people come in and it's like, "Here's our credibility pack. Here's the CEO. Here's our acquisition manager. Here's our COO. This is the universities. Here's their background. Here's quick write out.
I love that. That's a great idea.
And it's a simple automation. Simple. Somebody submits their email. Boom. Boom. You send it.
Yeah. Or or right. What we like to do is right after the lead manager qualification call because that's a good at that point.
Regardless of what they fall into, just send it. Yeah. Exactly. That's a great idea.
So, we do it right after.
I told you in the last podcast, I take something away every time we talk. Oh man.
But right after the lead met you qualify them like hey look before the next call feel free to check this out
and immediately we have credibility.
Yeah.
So, we never deal with that issue because oh check out this subdivide that we did this, you know, we work with this seller. Oh, here's a testimony from this seller on this subdivide deal. Here's a testimonial for this seller on this flip. And we probably have like six, seven deals in there. Yeah.
Um, in the Canva, like literally showing before, afters, drone shots, testimonials from sellers.
Um,
and does do the sellers read it? Yeah, they probably open it up and read it like we see the open, but it's an instant credibility thing.
Yeah.
So, that's it does have an air of professionalism beyond 99%.
We did what we did on our acquisitions website was I changed. So, when I started it was it was a it was a um, a Pebble website, like one of the one of their lead Yeah. whatever ones. And it worked. I mean, it worked fine, right? Uh, but it was it was one of their templates. So, I like I didn't put a lot of effort into it. I was just starting my business. I was like, I just need something to capture leads from my mail. If people end up wanting to check me out online, they go there, I get I get this this form submission and like I have a lead that I can call. But then we started doing a lot more developments and targeting subdivides and targeting market price on high quality subdivide land, right? Not not necessarily needing to get any kind of discount to market. We just needed the the right area where we could force appreciation. And we changed the brand completely from like a we buy land cash type of a brand to like a to land legacy partners. Like we we we can joint venture. Our goal is to get you the most value for your land. We can subdivide. and we started putting bo blog posts of like subdivides that we'd done. So like writeups, pictures, stuff like that on the website and it it's not great because I stopped doing it. I I could I could probably update it with 50 more subdivid. It's probably I probably should or just tell somebody to do it although all most of the information is up here, right? Because I remember how the project went and what issues and challenges we had. Uh, but that was kind of my idea for credibility was why don't we just have it on our website of the types of projects we've done so when people come to us they can see similar projects. They can say oh this is what they did in this land. This is what they did in this land. And they they no longer feel like you're just trying to make a quick buck off of them by flipping their parcel. They think oh these people legitimately like improve this land in which which a lot of cases we do.
I like that. Yeah. So, it's just like again the different type of testimonial, but you're showing them, hey, we've actually executed these projects in this specific way. Here's how he's helped people. Here's what people have said about us. And you're just having these little nuances at every stage of the, you know, you think about it like a customer journey, right? Yeah.
So, we reach out to people outbound, right, or inbound, whatever it is, and they're looking for our service, which is I want to exchange my equity and my land for cash. And so throughout the whole customer journey by doing what we say we're going to do throughout the whole customer journey we'll call you on this date at this time by setting credibility and slowly dripping it becomes their more credibility. It's like you know imagine you were teleported into 2025 and everyone in the world had iPhones. You'd be like everyone has the same phone. You like didn't know anything about an iPhone. You'd be like okay well what tell me about the iPhone. They'd show you the iPhone and then you'd be like oh that's pretty interesting. and you check out other phones, but you keep seeing everyone has the iPhone. And so you'd be like, "Oh, there's some credibility here because everyone else is everyone's using it." And so that's the same thing that we think about with the customer journey, kind of having that credibility through, oh, everyone's worked with uh Clay and his team.
Yeah. No, I like that.
So, long story short, with this this conversation, so I'm in the Whimo. were getting close to the airport and and and basically I I the way I ended it was like look Brad these guys Brad check us out in all these ways and I'll just CC you with the title company we'll just CC you when we're doing a double close with the title company and so he is the our broker but he's also representing the seller right and so I was like look we'll be totally transparent I air on the side of being in excessively transparent, right? Could it blow up the deal? Maybe, maybe not. Um, but I'm saying we'll literally, you're not a part of this transaction, the buy side, but we'll show you exactly what's going on. You'll know exactly what's going on because we're He's like, I need the title the title um search back, but I'm like, well, it's going to be weird because we're buying it. It's not going to be like the same exact one from us to you or us to the seller. It's going to be a little different. Um, but so that's why I'm going to actually put you on here. So, I think it comes down to like problem solving, man. Like, yeah, you just got to problem solve and and that's how uh I think you can establish more credibility um as a as a land investor in general.
What are some of the hardest things to overcome as an experienced land investor when there's a problem that comes up in some deal or whatever that you know was caused by uh an inexperienced land investor? like what are the things what are the common problems that you run into and what po and maybe I'll start because I have one propped in my head that I'm thinking of specifically
uh it's the somebody else has this property under contract and the seller has forgotten or doesn't even know it because they haven't heard anything from that investor in months. I have seen this happen a dozen times where we have gotten something under contract only to find out there is another contract somewhere on this property and the seller had no idea. They were like, "Oh, I haven't heard from that guy in six months." But somehow he has signed some like crazy long contract or a random memor. We've got a deal right now where somebody filed a memorandum of contract, never released it a long time ago. Another land investor. So anyway, that's something that popped into my mind. Have you ever dealt with that?
I have.
Yeah.
Um, look, I mean, I also you you get competing bids from people, you know, other land investors trying to buy land and I just scorch the earth. I tell my guys just scorch the earth. Just say, "How much money are they putting down? How much earnest money are they putting down? How serious are them?" Because most land investors can't just throw down 10K.
Yeah, that's true.
So, I'll just
And they actively try not to. I mean I I mean on the flip side like I don't want to tie up 10K
exactly
right on a if I'm I usually do 1%. But even still that means
I don't even do 10 1%
dude. And yeah, because at most at most time most of the time I have a lot of money out. Yeah earnest money.
Right. That's operating cash that could be used for other things. So it does I did I did talk to the team about kind of lowering that recently. I'm like guys I've got a lot of money in earnest right now. Like let's let's dial it back a little bit.
Yeah. Right. Right. So that's Yeah. So when we're competing against another person, we that's what we do. But yeah, I think the the biggest thing is like this propertyy's been under contract two or three times. I'm not trying to BS with this. I don't want a long contract. I want it to be 30 days. You guys want 60 days. I don't want to deal with that. Have you experienced that?
Yeah. Like the the feedback from the seller.
Exactly.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Many times. So,
we're like, I don't understand why you need three months or four months to sell to buy this.
Exactly. And but but the the problem is that that's what it comes down to. Right. Here's the here's the biggest one that I think you and I have not touched on that we're kind of skirting over that we don't really realize. other land investors setting unrealistic prices expectations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That's challenging.
People can't compwell, right? And so you have these guys that aren't comp or you use a service like maybe I shouldn't name drop certain pricing services that send your mail for you, you know?
Right. That's right. I have this letter here, Justin, that is 30% higher than yours. Why is that? Yeah, I already have an offer.
They offer you offer me 70 that I already have an offer for 100.
That's right. That's right. And so that be that then be becomes a sales thing. And are you going to logic someone's way out of logic? Probably not.
Yeah, it does. It is challenging to overcome that.
So
I mean there's obvious talk tracks,
right?
Is it a signed and executed offer? Are you entitled?
Exactly. Right. Did it come Did it come in like a Did they write you a nice letter with an offer number and like your APN and they didn't sign it yet? Or is it like a printed signature from like a printing press? Like there's a lot of questions you can ask to try to deter determine like the legitimacy of that offer. But
so how much earnest money is down on that?
When's the closing date?
Oh, so you have did you sign it in docu sign or did you Well, I haven't signed it yet. Oh,
okay.
Why not? Yeah, why did you sign it?
Right. There's something telling you in your heart of hearts that it is not a legit.
Exactly. So that's I Dude, I think that's the most nefarious one. People just throwing out numbers because you got the guys that are coming from the infill lot world and they want to wholesale everything.
Yeah.
And so everyone's trying to wholesale stuff and so not only you dealing with the I've had this thing under contract for six months and I want to close if you're getting out of contract. I want more earnest money because the guy didn't put any earnest money down and I want I want this thing closed in 30 days.
Yeah,
that's impossible, Mr. Seller.
And and just along with that, you're offering me 25,000 and this guy was I was under contract for 45,000.
It's like, well, that's why you didn't close.
Exactly. Exactly. But that's hard to swallow.
Yeah, it is hard to swallow
because it's this, you know, the sunk cost. Well, I had this Right.
I think that's the biggest one. Yeah.
I mean, there's the I don't like we were talking about earlier what Brad, this agent and I how do I know you're legit? We can we can handle that through building an online presence, credibility, testimonials, all that stuff. But dude, I think that the people throwing out crazy numbers and also brokers throwing out crazy numbers.
Brokers are the worst.
They're the worst. And let me say real quick, I know a ton of fantastic brokers. I'm gonna qualify. If you're a broker and you're a great legitimate broker, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You provide an incredible service. But man, there are so many brokers that are inexperienced. And they're they're in sales, too, right? They only make money if they earn commission. That's right.
They only earn commission if they get the listing. They usually get the listing if they tell people they can sell it for the most money.
That's right. So, whenever a broker's in the conversation, I actually had a deal that some guy submitted to me. Okay. Um, I was on the we have a I have a school community, right? Line school community. And last night I was on this call with this with this guy and he sent a a blind offer to these this this uh seller for like 60,000. The broker has it listed for 300,000 with a a photo of the survey from like the county courthouse. That's like a photo. Oh my god. So, I underwrote it with this guy's like, you know, we were on we were on the call together. I underwrote it with the guy. And
what's it worth? Like 200,
dude? It's worth 180.
180. Yeah. Okay. And so I'm like, "Dude, offer 80." He's like, "What would you find out?" I was probably 100. Probably 100, maybe 90, whatever. Um, but the dude broke. It's like a blurry plat map in like an off color yellow room. Like not all the room lights look like they're on and it's like a zoomed in. It was just It's so bad.
Poor seller. Like
And here's the funniest thing. He calls the the buyer, the guy that wants funding, calls this seller and he's like, "Well, what is the broker said?" He's she the the seller's like, "I haven't been able to get a hold of him in like two or three weeks." So, in other words, we're dealing with a lot of different people.
Yeah.
And so, we were talking earlier on on 52, right? episode 52 about uh the compression the slinky of information arbitrage, right? But that is not helped by wholesalers asking too much and brokers asking too much. So that comes down to sales ability and your own credibility. What else do you think?
Yeah. No, no, I I agree. I think also systems and followup and persistence
Yeah.
is is the is what makes a legitimate operator more successful. If you just say okay to the no, like if you're just like cool with the no, you know, they they're like, "Oh, somebody else offered me 300k. My broker says it's worth 300,000, so no." And that's the end of that deal for you. You're not going to be as successful. I think legitimate operators realize that. I mean, land sales is not the same as house sales in a lot of different ways, but one of the key ways is that generally with a home or house, if somebody wants to move the property for lower than market value, it's because they have a need for that money because they have some debt payment or they have something wrong is wrong really wrong with the house and it's costing them a lot of money. Land is pretty cheap to hold in almost all places. It's relatively cheap to hold. Usually doesn't have leverage against it. there isn't like this credible need for most sellers. Sometimes they come up, right? And so it's it's almost like opportunistic. We could we could send the same mailer, you and I, to the same place or this have our teams call the same location and you're going to pull some deals out of it and I'm going to pull some deals out of it and it's just because we're talking to that person on that day at that time,
right? And there are like there there are legitimate like needs to sell and if you can identify those needs list and right list stacking and getting like there's totally those niche legitimate lists. Uh, but for the most part it's kind of more opportunistic. So if you're in the back of that seller's mind because you have had a conversation with them, you've established credibility in their minds and then every so often you reach out to them, you will win more deals than folks that that don't do that. For sure.
Yes, sir. I believe I'm with you. Um, any last minute takeaways, man, before we This was a short and sweet episode. I think very valuable because it's a pain point, man. We all feel it.
Yeah, we all feel it. I mean, I don't want this to come off as like a woe is me like new investors are, you know, making it harder for the rest of us because it's not it's not like that. But if you're a new investor, take some of these words of advice. Establish legitimacy and like make sure you have your numbers dialed in. That's why I really don't love blind offers, frankly. I think I don't I'm not like the biggest fan of blind offers just because when you're dealing with the way most people do it is they take too much data and do like too broad of a geographic area and in price. And I was guilty of this. I did range offers. I never did blind, but I did ranged offers and I would go by county like whole county to do pricing.
Oh man.
I know, right? and we got deals from it, but we also got when we mispriced a mailer, we got so many calls, so many calls. And you could always tell it's like the properties you really want to buy near the population centers, you offered way too low for them to bother calling you back. And the properties that suck on the edge of civilization, you offered way too much money. And there's only a couple properties that you were generally right on. And so, uh, that, you know, that's what kind of leads to this. I was that I was that inexperienced investor offering too much on properties funny mail myself.
So that's funny.
No, that's it. That was it. That was this is a good topic. I I um
Yeah, for I would echo that like look like there is a um responsibility that we all have as entrepreneurs to carry the torch of of like this is me, this is how I think. But like conducting business in an ethical way,
right? in a in a way with integrity and that comes down all the way down to doing what you say you're going to do and that reflects on how your online presence is, right? So, we have this amazing responsibility to build these incredibly profitable businesses and we can do it ethically. And I think we the I I take a different approach. I think we should bash the people and call the people out that are doing it in an unethical way because it's not cool to the people and the sellers that are um experiencing it and just people not being able to conduct business transparency. If you're going to wholesale a deal, just tell the person you're going to wholesale, that's fine.
Um, so, if you're listening to this and you do that, I'm talking to you. Um, but yeah, dude, that's
I actually I had something pop into my head. Um, I So, we got my team got a property under contract and and this is this can happen to anybody, but let me I'm gonna maybe just tell you what happened to me. I got this property under contract in Tennessee, five acres. Uh, this is one my team got like I didn't even look at this property. I never valued it. I never comped it. It was comped by the team. We got it under contract. We put earnest money down. We shot drone. I think we intended on buying it. Title took forever. And so we burned and and at that time in in our process, we did not have as quick of a sales feedback loop like where we get the property under contract on acquisitions. It goes to sales to to price. You were actually just talking about it on the App Brothers podcast. Yep.
The video. I watched that this morning. You look great. I I watched it the video. Oh, thanks, bro.
I put it on two times speed, so it was pretty fast.
Yeah. But but it was good. And you talked about this and and got me thinking about this example of a time where we did not have uh a a quick enough sales feedback cycle.
Okay.
And so we waited all the way until we had all the drone work back and all the title work back which took like two months.
And so we're we've only got like a month left in our timeline to buy this property. And I think it like there were things happening. It like fell down the thing. Then finally we valued it and we're like, "Wow, we paid way too much. Like, we can't buy this. We're buying it all basically at market value, you know, and we had to cancel the contract." And the seller was an older lady and her daughter found me and re like messaged me these crazy long messages on LinkedIn, on Facebook, like very angry at me. And I like feel I felt really bad. She was like, "My mom was relying on this this money. Like this was like huge expectation. You guys just backed out at the last minute." D. And I felt like terrible. But like I you know, it's my responsibility as a business owner to like make sure things like that don't happen. And it's not like I was trying to screw this woman by any stretch. It's just we had 60 properties under contract. People were overworked. We just missed it. You know, we just missed it. Um, and so like you can make honest mistakes, you know. I I was I tried to be as polite as I can uh to her. I was polite, frankly. She just like attacked me back. And I I continued to be as like polite as I could. Kind of explain what happened. Uh I even offered to say, "Hey, look, we will sell this property for you like for like free like we won't make any money. We will just like keep the like create a listing for this and use our buyer pool." And she never replied to it. I tried to make it right, but it's still like I still think about kind of how they felt wronged by me without any ill will of any kind. Like I didn't try to wrong anybody. Um, so it can happen even to people who are trying to operate legitimately in
100% 100%. Yeah. Well, look um guys, this is the first episode of the second year of the ground game podcast. Thank you as always for listening. If you got benefit from this podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe down below. Uh, we will be returning to our Riverside screen.
Won't be in person, not as dynamic, but we will keep bringing the heat every single week. Again, we always appreciate you guys and how you show you appreciate us and give us amazing topic ideas is rate, review, subscribe, leave me some comments down below. We appreciate it. Justin, my man.
No, that's it. We'll see you guys next week.