Transcription
I try to avoid mailing counties that have lots of agricultural land. I love green counties. I don't like brown counties. I like green counties. So, when I go to look at the satellite map on Zillow, green. I'm looking for green. It's the color of money.
What's the best dopamine hit is getting that first deal and stack the deck in your guys' favor to get that first deal. Then we can make adjustments. You can get more creative. You can be much more picky about your county selection. There's so many great counties out there. I'm constantly finding great counties for clients. It's like if it's not a heck yes, then it's a heck no.
All right, everybody. Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Ron Aki, joined again by Derek Baja. Derek, welcome back. Thanks, guys. Glad to be here. Yeah, we we're doing this every month, it seems like. Topics, we're coming in with topics and stuff that you're seeing. You you work with so many people, so I think bringing on someone with as much experience who's talking to as many people who are doing this business as you really really valuable. I know you wanted to talk about county selection today. Excited to get into this one.
Yeah, this is like I see a lot of people come into the coaching program who have done some land investing on their own. Usually like they get into the program, they watch the um the boot camp, it's amazing. They start doing the stuff, you know, maybe they get five, six, seven, $10,000 into marketing and they don't have a deal yet. And I fall back on big time on the basics, right? And the first thing I go to is county selection. And I find that probably 80% of the time, this is where they're probably making a a a rel county, but I definitely think that people are missing things in this county selection that uh that they need to be looking at. And I find things like, you know, you can mail bad counties that don't have a lot of good land. So, it's this is like one of those things where I'm like, "Oh, you're not you're not doing county selection correctly." So diving deep into this is going to be big time. And a lot's changed, I think, with county selection. Like as you've been able to filter out with the landport, like you can filter out bad land easier than ever, I think. Um or I know really it's not really I think like you can filter out bad land. So like yes, some of those sloped areas become interesting all of a sudden. Um because like you can filter out unslow properties or however you want to do that. But let's start from the basics. Like you have someone coming in uh they're they're asking like Derek, where should I start? Like what should we be looking for? What traits in a county should we be looking for? And guys, you're not if you're watching this episode to be like, "Yeah, mail these three counties." That's not what you're going to get out of here. You're going to get out of get out um actionable steps, things to look for. What should people be looking for in a county when they're first getting started?
Yeah. So, first of all, you know, obviously we start with the data, which is what we go over in the boot camp, which is paramount, right? You have to have good data in a county. And I I think I look people look at the data as like it needs to be like yeses all the way across the board. And the game has changed so much just like you said like with the land portal and like with what we've learned. And you know I got to do I do have to shout out Mike on this because when I brought when I got Mike as a coach he brought this to my attention and I was like oh my gosh it was like mind-blowing to me. But so much has changed in in the game now especially with stuff like land portal and like even just going to look at county stuff I wasn't doing before. But you always start with the data and obviously you get that if you haven't signed up for the program like get into the program guys and freaking get in on get in on those boot camp videos because they are gold. Um and they teach you how to look at the data. But really what I've seen is that the data gets me about 70% there. Then I need to go actually look at the actual county and what I'm looking for. And obviously we know our program works best with rural vacant land. So right away I'm looking for a county with lots of rural vacant land, right? Like that's Does it work with agriculture land? Yes. Does it work in suburban land? Yes. Does it work in infill lots? Yes. The program works anywhere. But I think it requires a different set of marketing tools to kind of go after those things if that's what you want to target. But if we're going after like countywide rural vacant land, then we want to be sending out our mail to those counties that have lots of rural vacant land. So I think that's like step one. Um, and I always say like one of the things where I see people not going the extra step is they get the data, they think everything looks good and they send the mail and they never went and looked at the county. But when you go look at the county, a lot of times it can be 80% agricultural, right? Um, which isn't ideal. Is it rural vacant land? It's not. A lot of times agricultural land isn't vacant, right? it shows up in our thing is vacant because what they have is they live on like a little small tiny little portion of the land that's zoned residential. And the reason they do that is because that's what they pay property tax on, but they know that they can zone out the rest of their agricultural land as agricultural. They pay less money on that for property taxes. They get subsidies from the government. They're farming it. But it shows up on our end from a data standpoint as a vacant parcel. But it's not, right? they're living on it. So, I try to avoid mailing counties that have lots of agricultural land in general, right? Agricultural land's hard to go after. So, you know, just it's really what it comes down to. Step one is looking at the land and looking for those big green splotches of, you know, trees and vacant land like green count. I love green counties. I don't like brown counties. I like green counties. So, when I go look at a satellite map on Zillow, green. I'm looking for green. It's the color of money. It's the best color. I painted my I painted my wall green. Everything's green.
That's amazing. I I That's a good point because like you said, data will get you about 70% of the way. Look, and you want to be it and we can talk about this down the line. Like you want to be take this step seriously, but it cannot take you 3 weeks to choose a county or something like that. You don't want to get bogged down by it. like go through the data, choose a few, look at them on the landport, look at the satellite view and like, okay, this makes sense because it has this type of land. Pull up the data like you can pull up data points and see what the land actually looks like. Um, better quality land is going to give you more at bats. Like good quality land, the type of land that we buy, uh, typically isn't cleared land, typically isn't agriculture land. It's not the best point. And that's all you're saying. That's not the best. It's not the best place to start your business is by targeting 3,000 parcels and 1500 of them are farmland. Correct. Correct. Absolutely. And I think you know it's and even when you look at like another thing that I look at a lot of times when I'm doing county selection is sales density, right? And when you go into a county that has a lot of agriculture and I use Lone Oak County, Arkansas as a example of a county maybe not to mail. um it might be a better text message county, but probably a good 70 to 80% of that county is agriculture. And when you go and you look at the sales in the last 3 years, what you see is that nobody's sold in that agriculture area. It's like it's like the whole bottom half of the county is brown and you can go back to sales and see no one sold in the last 3 years. There's maybe 10 sales in the whole county in the last 3 years in that brown area. the upper part of the county is all suburban land, right? Um, which once again, it's not rural. So, it's kind of those things where it's like you look at this county, you're like, man, this is a it's a really tricky county. Here's the thing, the data works. If you just took the data and looked at it, you're like, oh, it's good, but you need to go look and you go, I'm going to mail a county that 70% of these people aren't even selling, right? It's not to say don't mail farmers, right? Right? A lot of people like, "Well, let's just pull out the agriculture land." But like the number one land owner in America are farmers, right? Like I get so many deals from farmers. Do I buy their agriculture land? No. I send them a piece of mail and they go, "Hey, you can't buy this land, but I do have this parcel in so- and so county." Because farmers collect land like people collect cars, right? If they get a good deal on it, they'll buy it anywhere. Like farmers are the biggest land owner in America. So, we do want to target them, but I don't want to necessarily send out a marketing campaign to just like a county that's got lots of stuff that's not selling, if that makes sense.
I want to back up to sale density. That is a term that I've never used that I can recall and I think it is a very, very important thing. So, you are looking for widespread sales in a county. And a lot of times, like you look in some counties and you see uh spots of areas. A lot of times those are HOAs. A lot of times those are subdivisions where you see a spot of like five or six sales and then another spot. It's like, okay, this is a high probably a high a subdivision HOA type of county. Um so you're looking for like the whole count, not the whole county, but a widpread. That's a really good term. Uh widespread sale density. Is that correct? 100%. Like if you like I'll take Lone Nook as an example. 98% of the sales are in the northwest corner and it's all suburban, right? It's it's HOAs. It's the LAR and the Dr. Horton builders that are up there that are selling all this stuff like in this one little area and then nothing else in the rest of the county. I need I mean thinking about it like at the tail end I need to sell land here eventually, right? So if I get something under contract here, I need to be able to comp it, right? So, when I look at sales density, I want to make sure I got comps across the whole county. So, when I do get into after I've purchased something, I want to be able to go comp and go, "Yeah, I got I got good density of sales here. I could definitely find good comps here. I know exactly what my pricing is going to be." So, I think that's like and it it it also indicates that a lot of it is like similar land, right? Like we're we're mailing a county. When I go to send my dollars out in marketing, right? I want it to come back to me in multiples. I want to make sure that I'm putting all those dollars to use in an area that has lots of that kind of land, right? Like I would never go try to buy a a sofa at a car dealership, right? There's no sofas there. If I'm trying to buy rural vacant land, I want to go to a place that has lots of it, right? And so the sales density needs to be such that it's it's it's covering the entire county. I take a look at a county like Siri County, North Carolina. I just I use that county a lot in my coaching just because the sales density is incredible. And I even look at the number of sales on Zillow, you know, I usually go two acres to no max and I look at like the amount of and I and I go sold in any, right? So last three years. Um, and I look at that number. If that number is not over 400, if I don't have 400 sales in a county of land in the last three years, it's get, you know, it's to the point where I'm like, there's there's might might not be enough sales here. The stuff might not be moving, right? So I'm starting to think like I want to make sure once I do buy something that it's going to be moving, right? So that's that's a big part of it too, like those big numbers obviously.
Yeah. No, that's a really really good point. So let's back up to the data. So we talked about like looking at the land. Let's back up to the data. What are we looking for as far as that 70%? You said data part is 70%. What are we looking for? Population density. Is there anything you're doing differently? Let's let's talk about the actual data for someone who isn't in the education, anything like that. How can we help them out?
Yeah, so data is super important. Obviously, we're looking for, you know, The data tells a story, right? When I look at it across the board, I'm not looking at as like just the single data point and is it a yes or is it a no. I'm looking for the story that the data is telling. So, I'm looking for we do the the average 5 acre parcel price, right? Like that tells me how desirable the land is there. We're looking at population density. That's kind of telling me that works with that sales price to tell me what kind of land really am I buying? Like if I see a really high 5 acre price, but I see a low population density, I already have in my mind like if I'm driving around this county, what am I seeing? I'm probably seeing large homes on nice manicured big lots. Like if there's low population density, but it's expensive land, maybe it's like an equestrian, like you know, a lot of people own horses out there. You see a lot of that sort of stuff, really nice land. If I see low population density, low price, if I'm driving around that county, I'm probably seeing trailers and I'm seeing, you know, less, you know, well t less manicured land, right? Um, so it's just it starts to tell me this story of what kind of land am I going after here? And the program works like I don't care if I'm buying equestrian land or if I'm buying a land that somebody can put a trailer on. I I really do not care, but it kind of starts to give me an idea of what kind of land am I buying, right? It also talks about the popularity of land, who am I going to be dealing with? Um, and then I get into obviously, you know, the sell through rate, right? The popularity when we pull the data from Red Fin, um, like the the sales in the last 90 days, we're pulling homes as well, right? So, that's kind of telling me the popularity of the area, right? Are things selling quick? Homes, land, everything. Like, how popular is this? And then I'm looking at also, and I think this is the big thing is that I see the 90-day sellrough rate. And I think this is where people falter a little bit as well where we see how much is for sale and how much has sold in the last 90 days. And people forget that that's a twodigit mover, right? So people always want and and of course I want it as well where I see, you know, let's say 30 on the market and 34 have sold in the last 90 days. That's a that's a 90-day turn. We're seeing all those things turn in less than 90 days, which is great. The difference is what if there was what if there was the opposite, right? What if it was 34 for sale and only 30 that have sold? I love that as well. Those numbers are big enough. Really, what I'm looking for here are numbers that are big, you know, over 20 um but are close, right? I don't need them to be I don't need them to be a positive sellrough rate. I just need to be close because when something comes on market, that adds one digit to the for sale, right? But when that one sells, it becomes one less here and one more here. So it's a two-digit move. So in a very short period of time, you know, if five parcels of land sell, that can be a 10-point switch, right? So if those numbers are big, really what that telling me is that people are buying and selling here. It's a moving market. I love to be in moving markets. I want people to be selling. I want people to be buying. I don't like low numbers. Even if it's, you know, three for sale and 10 sold, just not busy enough for me. Even though that's like a great like, wow, we're turning that over in, you know, 30 days, the numbers just aren't big enough. There's just not enough movement in that county. And I think people are mailing slow counties and they're and they're moving, you know, because just because they look at the data and they go, it's a yes. Right. But in all reality, I think bigger numbers that are closer are going to be a little bit more important.
So that's a that's a good point. And the reason we do all this, guys, counting like what is the purpose of county selection? We're looking for areas where where there's data that supports that we're going to have the ability to buy land, like where there's going to be potentially interested sellers. And also on the back end, just as important, like we got to find areas where we can actually sell land. Um because there's some areas of the country where you could buy five parcels on a thousand mailers um at 50% of quote unquote what the market says, but then all of them are going to take two years to sell. Like there's just really really slow markets. We have ourselves. We we have found some success and I want to see your thoughts on like okay do you take the total data points does that matter for you not total of sold or for sale but if you go like one county might have 5,000 data points two to 100 acres one county might have 2,000 um but the obviously the 2000 county probably doesn't have as much sold for sale data points. Do you take it relative to the full amount of property records in the area at all? Do you take that in because some of the lower number counties are really really good counties to target. It's just they don't have a lot of land volume at those acreages. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, this it's super important. Obviously, this is one thing that I always take my clients through at the end of the county, like, okay, we found this county, everything seems to check out, the land looks good, the data looks good. Let's go look to see how many data points there are in this county. And that's that's always going to be a bit of a factor because it's still a numbers game. You know what we're really trying to do here is stack the deck in our favor, right? Like that's what county selection really does is saying, "Will this work? Could you could you blindly send offers out to any county in the country and get deals?" Sure. But let's stack the deck in our favor and put like when we're sending out marketing, especially stuff like mail, that's like the most expensive kind of marketing we do. We want to make sure that we're sending that out to great counties with good data and good like enough people, right? Enough data points. We know that we're getting one deal per 4,000 mailers. Let's try to get that let's try to get that county up to 4,000. And anecdotally, and what I have found, and it it's it's always tough because this is just literally in my own business and like what I've seen from my coaching clients, I get a good county, right? Everything looks good and I go and I pull data and it has 800 800 land owners, right? Like it's hard because I almost can guarantee that I'm not going to get a deal there because it's just not enough volume. Right now, could I, you know, send mailers out to 4 800, you know, parcel counties? Sure. Right. And I can get to that 3,200 mark of like that sent out 3,200. It's just a lot of work, right? It's like it's it's it's pricing. It's all the things that go into it where if I just found a county that had 3,000 4,000 data points, I can just mail that one county. I can do one pricing thing, I can get stuff out faster. And I'm once again, I'm I'm increasing the speed at which I'm going to get my first deal. So, that has to come into play because it's just so much less work and less time for me to get that first deal that it's super important to see how many people am I mailing, you know?
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I really like what you said and I was taking some notes um just like stack the de deck in our favor because there isn't a yes or a no like it's just not and you're never going to get this and that and if you're that type of person like you probably shouldn't be an entrepreneur or be trying to be an entrepreneur because like we are trying to like okay use the data like you said it tells a story and we're trying to give ourselves the best opportunity from um our experience from the experience of the coach whatever like okay we're trying to give you the best opportunity to get a deal other things need to fall into place for sure. But um we know generally like okay what kind of areas work especially for new people and I'm sure you've seen some of your students too like evolve over 3 sixmon period like okay they were doing these type of areas and then they're evolving into like maybe more advanced areas but like what we're trying to teach you guys here or talk about here is like okay what gives you the best chance when you're first getting started. What's the best dopamine hit is getting that first deal. You know what I mean? How thankful are you they to you, Derek, when they get their first deal? Like, it's like it's a dopamine hit for you, I'm sure, too. I love it. And we're trying. Yeah. Stack the deck in your guys' favor to get that first deal. Then we can make adjustments. You can get more creative. We have some money to play with then. Correct.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, like I said, I see I we I get I get a decent amount of coaching clients who have been in the program for a while who have spent some marketing dollars already and don't have a deal yet. And I'm like, "All right, we go into this." And like right away, like we had I had I had a a client that had spent like $10,000 already on marketing. Didn't have a deal yet. They came into the coaching program and I was like, "Let's find you a freaking 10 out of 10 county. Like that's where sending it." And we got two deals out of that first county. I'm like, "That's it, right?" Like we worked on. There's other factors to it obviously, but like the fact that we were able to do that right away, like that's huge for them, right? like and it was like so many of these little little things that we used to stack the deck in our favor. It's not just county selection, but it's a big part of it. Pricing is a big part of it. Like what your mailer looks like is a big part of it, but like all those things go into like making you a successful land investor. And you know, you don't want to skip any of those steps, right? Like you you want to be doing and I I go back to that podcast that we did the last podcast about doing the common things uncommonly well. And that goes into stuff even just like county selection, you know, like there's so many things that people aren't doing that I think let's like also you don't have to get picky. That was another point I wanted to make like or you can be picky. You you have the option here to be really picky because there's enough good counties. I find people talking themselves into counties all the time. What about this one? You know, this one looks okay. And I'm like, if it just looks okay, if it's not a heck yes, then it's a heck no, right? like let's let's find the let's you can be much more picky about your county selection than you think you can be. There's so many great counties out there. I'm constantly finding great counties for clients. Like it's rare that I'm I'm sending clients to the same county all the time. Like it's it's maybe happened twice in my coaching where I'm like, "Yeah, so and so picked this county a couple months ago, but like we're still finding great counties. You know, I'm four months into coaching and we're still finding great counties all over the place." So, and data changes too. County crap counties might not be crap four months from now. Like things change in areas that like, okay, this changes everything. Um, which which is the coolest thing about real estate, the coolest thing about this business, like data is constantly changing. Uh, that good county might not be good 6 months down the line. Like, you don't know like keep running the numbers, everything like that.
So, someone is working with you, not working with you, it doesn't matter. Uh, someone's working, let's just say they're working with you, and they have three counties that they like. like what what gets them over the edge? Like all three of the counties are 2500 mailers, let's say, whatever, 2500 data points. like what is the deciding factor? How do they know when like, okay, this is the one we should do? Or is it just like, okay, these are all solid. Let's put them all in the pipeline um and hit these at some point.
Yeah. You know, I always do like a ranking for my clients because a lot of times, you know, we do county selection on our first call and I have them pick 30 counties, right? Three states, 10 counties each state. And uh you know there's a lot of times that we'll find two or three really good counties and I kind of rank them from like 1 to 10. Like this one's a two, this one's a eight, this one's a nine. Um and I usually like nines or above for our first mailers. And I I'll go through and and there'll be like small factors at that point. Let's say we find three really green counties, good sales density, like everything checks out. There's going to be like some things like, all right, this one's got a little bit better sales density, right? Like those there'll be little things where I'm like, let's do this one first. Let's do this one second. Let's do this one third. But it comes down to like those small things, but they're all going in the pipeline, right? I'm like, this one's number one, this one's number two, this one's number three. Maybe the first one has three, you know, 3500 data points and the second one only has 2,800, right? Like it's close, but like why not just send the 3,800 or 3,800 data point one first, right? Or 35, you know, 100 data point one first. Like, let's do the best one that we can find where everything is way, you know, a little bit better than all the other three. there's always going to be like a couple things that are going to push it over the edge to be like that's our first one, but they're all going in the pipeline because they're all great. So, and then that's when we really get into the marketing calendar, which is generally our second, you know, coaching calls besides pricing. We'll probably go over some pricing in there as well, but um the marketing calendar, like let's start filling that out, making sure that you've got three months of good marketing um set up. Like, you guys have done such a great job with all the resources that you give us. Like, it's it's incredible. Like you can go to the resource page and download obviously the county selection is huge and then you can get the the marketing scheduleuler where we can schedule out three months of marketing and have all of our numbers set up. Like that's such a huge thing for people. So they're all going in it.
talk. Let's talk about that marketing just scheduling your marketing out because so many people are like I'm going to do I'm going to choose a county then I'm going to send marketing then I'm going to choose a county again but they forget like okay you're you need to choose a county again but you also have leads coming in now and things start roles and things maybe you get a deal and now you have a deal you have to take through title and everything for the first time so you're learning all these things and I think the marketing calendar scheduling out your marketing for multiple months and just like okay this is what I decided the numbers work then the number should work next month. Like, yes, 6 months down the line, numbers can change. You want to rerun numbers, but we're talking about two, three months ahead. Like, things don't change that much then. Maybe look at it before you send it. But that being said, like talk about the importance of that cuz I think it's just like it takes people away from county selection for multiple months at a time, which I love. And it's like, all right, now I'm just marketing, sales, acquisitions. Like, that's what I need to focus on.
Huge. Huge. And, you know, I ran into this a lot when I first started because I'm like I'm like the go go go guy, right? I'm like, I'm going to do all this stuff all at the same time. You find out as an entrepreneur, you can't do everything all the time, right? Like anytime you can batch something and like, all right, I'm going to do a ton of county selection today. I'm going to pick out my next nine counties and then I can put that aside, you know, for 3 months, that's incredible. Even just for a month, right? I try to batch as much as stuff stuff as I can. And one of the biggest things is let's batch our county selection. Let's and then let's get it into our marketing schedule. And then once I'm all batched out there, I can put that aside and then I pick a day, right? And I'm like, I did mail Mondays, but that was always my thing. It's still my thing, but sometimes it's it's text Tuesday now. But it's getting my marketing out on Monday. I don't do anything until that marketing goes out and I just go look at my marketing schedule and I go, "Oh yeah, Siri County, North Carolina today." Right? And I generally have it already all pulled, like the data is somewhere on my computer and I go pull it all up, get it scrubbed, whatever else I need to do to get that marketing out and I'm sending it on Monday and I know the next week I just look at the next thing on my marketing calendar, right? Uh I don't have to worry about going back into doing county selection. And a lot of times over the weekend I'll spend some time, you know, scrubbing my list or getting it ready to go. It doesn't take me long. Um, and I'm and I know that on Monday before I get anything else done, unless I get a sales call, I'm sending that that mail out on Monday, you know.
Y um yeah, I think I don't know when we added that. Maybe 12 24 months ago. I really don't know as far as marking schedule. And it's it makes it feel more like a business where it's like, okay, not everything's just like I'm doing this now and then this and then this and then I got to do that again. And it's like, okay, now I have a predictable business. I have deal flow. I have cash flow because my marketing is on a schedule. Like you know at scale what 2,000 mailers is going to get you. You know at scale what 10,000 texts is going to get you. So if you just do it and have it on a calendar like everything becomes like a flow opposed to like it just like things happen at random times pretty much. Um but uh yeah I I just want to Yeah, I think it's just a much more predictable business overall. It feels more like a business than like a side hustle.
Totally. I mean, the the fastest way to fail in this business is to not track like what you're trying to do and like not set up yourself with some sort of organization, right? Like you need to be organized as far as like when your marketing is going out. That's the lifeblood of your business. If you do one thing, if you organize one thing, your marketing going out has to be that thing, right? Like your your business will not be successful unless you have that organized because as soon as that falls off, you no longer have a business. you've got no money coming in, you've got no more deals, right? Like it's it's it's the it's literally the the one thing that leads into everything else, right? Yes, you should organize your deals. You should use your CRM. You should, you know, know where you're at in all your deals, but just so you know, you don't have a business if you don't have new leads coming in. That's what it is. You have no business.
So, someone gets a deal, like you guys do county selection, market selection, whatever. Someone gets a deal. Let's say they make $15,000, $20,000. Very normal first deal. Then they come to you, they're like, "Derek, uh, yeah, Georgia was great. The land's great down there. I want to go to the mountains or I want to do like like is that like, all right, let's this worked. Let's keep doing this." Or is it like, "Okay, let's look like what are your thoughts on that?" Or like people changing like just like county selection, like people trying things different things. Like when is the point like, "Okay, they want to try something different with their county selection. They want to go after maybe five acre properties that are selling for $300,000. They want to go into the mountains and find some flatter land than the mountains that can be built on. What What What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean, I love that stuff. Like I said, this the program works wherever, right? Like my whole goal is let's let's get the deals. Let's teach you how to do it first. Let's get the easy deals, low hanging fruit, right? Good counties, good flat land. We can do that. Once you have that, you can always do it. right now. You want to go into let's go into the the Smoky Mountains, right? Let's go, you know, let's go after some more agriculture land. Like, let's go after these, you know, let's go after subdivides. Let's go after more expensive stuff. Love it. Right. It's just all going to take a separate um Sorry, my phone's ringing there. Let's all go take let's take a separate like look at that county that you want to go into and let's let's go after that specific thing. And it's it's going to take different types of marketing, right? A lot of times sometimes the marketing the the words in your letter change, right? Let's let's take and look at different things as far as, you know, pricing is concerned. Um, and let's obviously we're looking at the county like if we want to go after more slow properties, we're going to lean a lot more on the land portal for the for the selection of the land, right? We want good buildable like lots. So, you know, we always turn on the buildability filter. using all those filters when it comes to, you know, going into the Midwest with lakes. You want to tackle lakefront property. You want to tackle like there's all different things you can do. We talk about polygon pricing. We talk about like, hey, let's let's take and cut this portion out around the lake and price that one separately, right? I see that a lot. Counties, giant lake in the middle of the county, right? A lot of land sells around the lake. It's beautiful, but it's more expensive. You don't want to send countywide pricing to that. M so but you when you go look at the county you go oh there's a giant lake here this is going to require a different set of skills than just hey I found a good county good sales density data all that stuff we're going to go we have to polygon out this lake and we're going to price that separately because you don't want to give them the same pricing you're giving somebody who's inland you know if you want to go after those we have to price that separately so we're cutting it out we're pulling the MLS data from the land portal which is such a huge thing the fact that I could do everything in the land portal like I could cut out the lake. I can get that MLS data straight from there. I can price that and then I can go after I can write with that same Polygon just pull the pull the land owners right there and mail those at a different price, right? And it's so convenient. Now, it's it's it's a little bit more advanced and I love that. Once you get that basic part down and you're making some money, let's go after that stuff. I love that stuff. Each one is a different strategy, right? Hilly land is different than lakefront land, which is different than suburban land, infill lots, all that stuff. It works everywhere, but it requires a little bit you we're stacking on skills now, right? And filters and all the stuff that we get to use in land portal. So, it's it's such a huge it's a it's a fun thing to do and it's you know, like once you have once you're able to mail any county in the country, it just I mean the world is your oyster. Go for it. So much opportunity out there.
And the cool thing about your perspective, Derek, is like you have so many people that work under you, with you, whatever you want to say, that like you you get to see how their brains work. You need to you get to see how many different like ideas they have, too. So, it's like, okay, that some ideas suck. Like, I'm sure you hear some like, "Yeah, let's not do that. That's a dumb idea." Um, but I'm sure you get a lot of ideas like that's incredible. Like, I've never thought about that. And that's the cool thing about your perspective is like you talk to so many people at such a high volume and uh I'm sure there's new ideas weekly daily that you hear from people like wow I never thought about whether like there's people using lamporter like you just said 10 things how people are using land port that I'm like I didn't know people were doing that I thought people would just use it to pull data bulk and sell whatever it is. Um there's so many different uh ways to use all these things so many different strategies which I which I think is really really cool from your perspective.
Yeah. I mean, obviously I see it at scale, right? I see so much stuff and like I think I I don't necessarily know if there's any bad ideas. I'm always going to I'm always going to glean something out of what you want to do and we're going to kind of mold that into something that I actually think will work. Like going after agriculture land. Like you're going to mail that person not to get their agriculture land, but to get any other land that they might own. Like it's a different it's you your letter is going to sound different, right? like it might even say, "Hey, I'm not trying to buy your farmland, but do you got land in another state or another county that you'd like to sell? I'm your guy, right? I can turn that into capital for you." Um because, you know, there's a good chance that they own land all over the place cuz that's what they do. Um it's just it just it's a different kind of marketing, you know, just it's just like anything else. And some people just need to be redirected. Like it's just their mind. Like it's always like shiny object and like you just did maybe someone just did su something successfully. Like the initial um question was like okay you just did a deal. Let's try to do four or five of those deals. Let's try to really change your life just doing the same thing. Like there's some really big businesses of people that are doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Exactly. 100%. Like I'm not reinventing the wheel. I do the exact same thing I did on day one as I'm doing now. Like y'all y'all could do whatever you want. I'm I'm here for I'm here for 20 to $50,000 deals all day long. Keeping it real simple and it's successful, you know? I I'm in for whatever people want to do. I'm I'm I I love coaching all those fun things, but I will say like I don't get involved in that sort of stuff. Can I coach it? Yes. Have I done those deals just because I've ended up backing into them? Absolutely. So, I understand it. But I'm not attacking them by any means. I'm just I'm doing the same thing that I'm coaching my clients on, right? Like I keep it simple in my business because I'm trying to do volume.
To finish us out, how in your mind has like market selection, county selection evolved over the last 12 months or if if at all like how how has that evolved? How do you think it might continue to evolve over the next 12 18 months?
Yeah. So obviously when when I got into land investing, we were just coming out of the COVID era and like things were things were very rapidly changing in counties like things would go from like super hot to super cold within a month, within two months. Um, I felt like things were a little bit more volatile. Things have calmed down so much more. Um, so you're able to really like like plan out like the marketing like getting your marketing calendar done further out in advance. Like 3 months is great now. Before I was like do two months but then that third month might be a little bit but not anymore. Like things have slowed down. County selection has become but also like things have evolved as far as how we how I do it and how we look at land, right? Like before when I first started it was data was good, send the mail, right? And now it's data is good. Let's go look at the land. Now let's let's dig in deeper. Let's stack that deck um and and really find the the good land that I want to mail like and I'm also like I'm doing it for text messaging as well. My my criteria for text messaging is maybe a little bit different. I'm a little bit looser with text messaging, but also like places that are hard to price, Midwest, lots of lakes, I'm probably text messaging them, right? So I can comp on the fly. So because we have all these new tools, obviously text messaging is a big thing. Um, you know, the land portal is a big thing. We're able to go into county selection with way more tools and really find great counties. And even counties that don't necessarily seem great, the land portal can really make them great. Like you can really just mail the land that you want to in that area. And maybe even like you're dragging up like I love polygon pricing. You're going to hear me say that a lot. Um, I find a county that has, you know, 600 data points in it, right? But it's all great land, but it's a small county. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and polygon the area that I like and grab, you know, two or three more portions of other counties here. I'm going to create my own little county in this, right? Obviously, it's something I go over in my coaching program, but like I'll create my own county of land that I just like this land. I don't want to deal with the the hills up here and the water over here, but all this land right here. There might be three different counties right here. And I'll just pull that data right from the land portal. So like that's changed. Like I don't need to just pull a county. I can just pull good land and not even do a county, make my own county. Derek County Derek.
Yeah, that's a really good point. And like the tools are going to always change and it's just like how people use the tools. I think like just like we've said, like Derek said from the start of this episode, this business can be done from anywhere. Are there way places like it can be like like you said, stacking the deck in our favor when you're first getting started? Absolutely. Anything else to add on this, Derk? This was uh I think this is going to be helpful not just for new people, but for people who have been in this business a while as well.
Yeah. I mean, I see that constantly, right? I've seen people who have been in this business for a long time. They're like, I've never gone to look at any of my counties that I mail. And I'm like, oh, well, let's take a look at them. And we find, you know, good things and bad things about counties all over the place. So, uh, yeah, I think it it's it's a huge it's it's going to be a huge like lots of golden nuggets obviously in this episode, but you know, take a closer look at the land that you're that you're sending marketing to, whether it's texting or mailing or cold calling, like make sure there's a lot there. Make sure there's a lot of land that you want to buy that you want to have your marketing set up to buy. Whether that's rural vacant land, whether that's infill lots, just make sure that what is there is what you were hoping to be there, right? Go look at the land. That's my biggest thing. Satellite views on Land Portal, satellite views on Zillow, those are those are the nuggets.
Yep, that's a really good point. Um, well, if you guys are watching on YouTube, if this is the first whatever, if you guys are return viewers, obviously, if you haven't hit the subscribe button, hit the subscribe button. We're doing more podcast with Derek, Dererick's such a wealth of knowledge with this uh information. He works with so many students at once. Like, he is learning at like a accelerated pace because of how much he works with people. Um, let us know in the comments what you want us to talk about next. So much is changing in this business. Um, appreciate everybody being here. We'll see you guys next time.