Transcription
In the next 12 minutes, I'm going to show you the exact system I'd use to build a 25 to 100K land flipping profit business in 90 days starting from zero.
Most people pick a county because they live there. Someone told them it's good. They saw a deal posted online from that area. Here's the problem. None of that tells you if land is actually moving in that market. Think about it like this. If you wanted to open a coffee shop, would you pick a location based on a hunch or you look at foot traffic data? Land is the same, but somehow people are making $50,000 decisions based on gut feeling or they're trusting an old guru to tell them what worked 10 years ago and it doesn't work anymore.
It all comes down to something called sell-through rate. Now, sell-through rate or SDR is a ratio of properties that's sold versus properties currently listed. If 918 properties sold in a county last year and only 409 are listed right now, that's a 225% seller rate. That means land is moving more than twice as fast as the inventory is hitting the market. That's a gold mine. But if 200 properties sold and 800 are listed, that's a 25% sell-through rate. That's a graveyard. Your land will sit forever. I only recommend new investors targeting markets with a minimum of 125 to 150% sell-through rate over 12 months. And I'm about to show you exactly how to find these markets in under 5 minutes.
But first, a quick question. Have you been picking markets blind? Comment "yes" below. I want to know how many people are making this mistake right now.
All right, here's a 90-day breakdown. And we're starting with the most important week. Number one, pick your state and rank your top 20 counties. Notice I didn't say pick a county. I said pick a state first, then rank 20 counties. Why? Because you want options. Markets shift. You want a backup plan. So, here's my exact process.
Step number one, choose a state. Pick either your home state, easy, easier to visit if needed, or a state you're familiar with. I'm going to use Florida as an example. You can go to landportal.com. You can click the link down below for 1,000 free records to get you started. Click on market research on the left-hand sidebar. You'll see an interactive heat map of the entire US.
Step number three, the colors tell you everything. Red, poor market, avoid. Orange, fair. Yellow, average. Light green is good, and dark green is excellent. These are your targets. So, you want to set your filters. Here's exactly what I'm looking for: sold last 12 months, land only, 5 to 50 acres. Statistics is sell rate.
Now, here are my non-negotiable criteria for ranking counties: 120% plus sell-through rate over the last 12 months. 1 to 3 hours from a major metro area. 20 plus land sales in the last 12 months. And here's the advanced filter that most people skip. I filter out wetlands, FEMA flood plains, steep slopes. Why? Because these properties are harder to sell. I want clean, buildable land that buyers actually want.
Step five, hover over counties. Turn on the "show info" popup on hover. As you mouse over the counties, you'll see STR, days on market, median price per acre. Example is Santa Rosa County, Florida. 220% sell-through rate, 65% days on market. Median price per acre is $12,500. That's a green light. Export your data. Rank by sell-through rate. Pick your number one county and export. There's 1,000 free records. The cost for your 1,000 free records is free. But if you were to buy it, it'd be only $60. This is your marketing list.
Here's the thing, and this is the part most people screw up. You can't just pull random data. You need to filter for certain acreage range, 5 to 50, owned free and clear, held 10 plus years, remove lands, FEMA, and slope issues. This is your high probability list. And by day three, you should have one state chosen, 20 counties ranked by sell-through rate, 1,000 record pool for county number one, and you have that Land Portal account set up.
Now we build the system. So, day four to seven, the three systems. Here's where most people fall apart. They get excited, they pull data, they send some mail, and then chaos. So, before you spend another dollar, you need three systems.
Number one, a CRM. Pebble CRM is a perfect one for land-specific pipeline. I recommend it. There's a 30-day free trial link down below. You'll get access to our internal stages, how we actually follow up with people in a CRM, and our direct mail and contract and agreement for land sales, totally for free. Every lead goes into this pipeline. No exceptions. Core fields I track: obviously owner name, APN, acreage, zip, retail comp, offer range, the stage, last touch, and next action.
System number two, you got to get your bank. Mercury Bank and QuickBooks. This is where most people fall down. They don't do this early enough, and by month three, it's super hectic. If you haven't already created your LLC, there is a link down below to create your LLC with Prime Corporate Services. I highly recommend Prime. Uh, we have done a lot of stuff with them. They're super easy to work with and have very affordable LLCs and have a bunch of other things like tax planning and estate planning and things like that that can really help you as you scale this business. But I would open a Mercury bank account. Super easy, separate from personal, non-negotiable. Then I'd connect it with QuickBooks for a simple P&L. Every deal gets tracked: purchase price, all costs, DD, closing, holding, marketing costs to acquire, sales price, net profit. You should be able to pull up your numbers in under 2 minutes. If you can't, your system is broken.
System number three, 6x7 follow-up system. This is the most important system you'll ever build. Bold claim, but here's why. Six touches per day for 7 days. Number one, when a lead comes in, you want to call them up to three times. You want to text them up to three times. You want to email them up to three times. Right? You continue this pattern for the first seven days. The seller is going to have the highest likelihood of connecting with you over the first seven days. If not, you could basically consider them gone. And so, we want to call them back within one hour of them coming in, whether it's through a text message, phone call, direct mail, whatever. If they're qualified but not ready, I want to touch them every 30 days, especially in the beginning. So, I want to be hitting the follow-ups and nurtures a lot. If they're not a fit, I'll hit them every couple of months, until they tell me, "Never give me a call back." Why? Because deals happen when other people give up. Your follow-up system is your competitive advantage.
So, by day seven, you should have your Pebble CRM set up, your Mercury Bank account open, QuickBooks connected, and 6x7 follow-up system documented in the Pebble or whatever CRM you're using.
Week number two to three, your first marketing campaign. My recommendation is you go up to 10,000 records to start, but let's use 1,000 records as an example here. So, time the mail. If you're using Pebble, you can send it directly from the Pebble interface. You want postcard copies, something like this: "Hi, I'm looking to buy land in this county. I came across your property at 8:00 p.m. If you considered selling, I'd love to make you a fair cash offer. We do not lowball. We give fair cash offers. You can call or text me at this number." Simple, clean, conversational.
Now, here's where you have a choice. You can start with either option one, direct mail. 2,500 mailers at 58 cents each is about $1,450 bucks. 5,000 is $2,900. 10,000 is $5,800. I recommend starting between $2 to $5,000 or a little bit more if you can, your first month to text the market, or texting. Budget is $800 to $1,200 per month. You need to send approximately 25,000 to 35,000 to get one deal. The math is simple. Texts are much cheaper per touch, but you need higher volume and better infrastructure. Mail is much more expensive per piece, but typically a higher response rate per contract. You can pick one to start, master it, then layer on the second. Most people try to do everything at once. They want to text a little bit. They want to call. They want to send direct mail. They want to do PPC. So, they don't do anything well. Now, of course, before you do texting or anything like that, you want to check with an attorney. I'm not an attorney. I cannot advise you on any TCPA or DNC uh laws, but you want to make sure that you check if you are trying to text people outbound.
Week number two and three, the 6x7 follow-up. Well, responses will start coming in day 5-24 after your mailer hits. Here's the first call goal: you want to qualify, you want to underwrite, you want to offer. What I'm looking for is motivation. Why are they selling? Timeline. When do they need to close? Price posture. Do they have a number in mind? Buildability. Can you build on it? What's the access? What are utilities? Notice I didn't say suitability. I said buildability because that's what matters. Can a buyer do something with this? Is there road access? Are there utilities nearby? Can you get a permit? These are questions that determine if this is a deal. Offer discipline. Make an offer on every single qualified lead. Even every unqualified lead. Even if you're not sure, even if it might be too high, make the offer. Reps beat precision every single time.
Expected results from your first campaign: 10 to 30 responses, 5 to 15 qualified leads, maybe 5 to 15 offers, one deal in pipeline. If you have text, you send out 30,000 texts. You should be getting 15 to 40 responses, 10 to 20 qualified leads, 10 to 20 offers made, one deal in the pipeline.
By day 30, your first deal likely is in underwriting or under contract, right? And you have a lot more leads in the follow-up. Your system is starting to hum. If we think about budget for month one, depending on how much you actually pull, let's say you actually end up pulling the 10,000 records. If you do pull more than 10,000 records, then it's going to be closer to uh $600 to $1,200 in data, right? Of course, you get that if you click the link down below, you get 1,000 free records. For mail, you can be anywhere between $1,400 to $5,800. $1,200 in text. So, you can be anywhere between $2,000 mid-$2,000s to uh mid-$6,000s total for your first month. But with that amount of volume, you should get anywhere between one to two deals in your first 30 days.
Phase two is day 31 to 60, first deals in channel number two. Now, month two is time to close deals and scale. Your first deal is moving toward closing. You've got a few more in the pipeline. Here's what most people do wrong. They stop marketing. They think, "Let me close this first deal and I'll send more mail." Don't do that. You'll create a feast and famine cycle. And this is what I see kills so many land investors.
By day 45, you want to layer in channel number two. You start with either mail or text. Now, you add the other one. If you start with mail, add texting. If you start with texting, add mail. Or you can add cold calling. Pick one additional channel, focus it in getting really good at it on the next 30 days. You don't need to use your own money to scale. I work with funding partners who cover 100% of the acquisition costs. My typical split is 40 to 60% of net profit, depending on who brings the deal and who manages the disposition. Why does this matter? 'Cause I'd rather do five deals at 50% than one deal at 100%. Velocity in this business beats margin. And if you need funding, we can help you out. The link is in the description down below.
You can expect by day 60, one to two deals closed, $20 to $40k net to you, 3 to 5 deals in the pipeline, two marketing channels running. Your monthly budget could be anywhere between $1,500 to $3,000 for mail or even more. Maybe you're up all the way up to $6,000 for mail, sending out 10,000 pieces per month. Texting could be anywhere between $800 to $1,200. You might be skip tracing an additional uh $600 versus and $1,200. Pebble could be anywhere between $100 to $450 per month. Your total spend could be anywhere between uh $3,000 to $8,000 per month. Here's the beautiful part. Your deal number one usually covers this.
And when that first wire hits, here's what you need to do. We use the Profit First methodology, which is 50% goes back into growth and marketing, reinvesting immediately. 20% is earmarked for taxes and 30% goes to owner comp or the profit vault. You want to open separate accounts for each: income, profit, owner comp account, tax account, Opex growth account. Every time money hits, you transfer immediately based on these percentages. This discipline is what lets you scale without blowing up. If you want to move quickly and make 100k in your first 30 days or 6 months, this is how you do it: aggressive reinvestment combined with disciplined profit allocation.
Phase number three is day 61 to 90. Scale in systems. Day 61 to 90, you want to compound what works. You've closed one to two deals, maybe more. You have proof of concept. Now you scale. Typically by day 90, you might have three to four deals closed, which is $100k in gross profit. You might have another three to four deals in the pipeline. You have two to three marketing channels. You have one to two VAs hired. You have a part-time transaction coordinator, probably. And your marketing budget looks like $5,800 per month for 1,000 pieces of direct mail, $800 to $1,200 for texting, additional channel testing, maybe $1,000 or more. You're spending $4 to $8K per month on marketing because you've proven the model works.
So, the core KPIs that you want to track daily: leads in, how many of those leads are qualified, what's the qualified percentage, how many offers are made, how many are under contract, what's your close percentage, what's your speed to lead, which you want an hour goal, speed to offer, you want it to be 48 or 24 hours. If you're not tracking these, you're flying blind. And a little bonus that I would add: talk time. And here's why. You want to be able to to when you bring on new team members, hold them to the same standard that you were hitting when you were on in the sales team. So every morning I look at this dashboard. I know exactly how many leads came in yesterday, how many need follow-up today, which deals need attention, what the bottlenecks are.
So, here's how I actually sell these deals. So I would use LandWatch, Land.com, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or maybe even rely on a broker. I would owner finance it: small down payment plus monthly payments, which create cash flow. And you can use it to sell your land faster, and you can sell the notes on the secondary market to get liquidity. Or if you can't get the property under contract for a number that works for a regular flip, which is usually 40 to 60% of market value, you could sell to investor buyers for quick cash.
Here's a pro tip: Work with funders who specialize in disposition help. They'll help you move inventory faster and can sometimes take properties off your hands if they're still sitting.
Transaction coordinator. This is a game-changer. Hire cost $500 to $800 a month part-time. They'll handle opening title, close chasing docs down, lean survey access agreements, coordinate closing with the title company, weekly status reports on every deal. This frees you to focus on revenue activities: talking to sellers, and making offers, and getting out marketing. The moment you hire a TC, your deal velocity will double. I promise you.
I use Land Portal's heat map and removed wetlands, FEMA, and slopes. I launched on Pebble CRM (link down below), Mercury Bank, QuickBooks, and a 6x7 follow-up system. First, I didn't try to do five marketing channels at once. I picked one, I mastered it, then I layered on a second. I used funding partners to scale without risking my own money. I reinvested at least 50% immediately using the Profit First methodology. I track speed to lead, speed to offer, conversion rates daily. 20 counties, one to two channels, three systems, 90 days. That's the playbook.
And if you want a little bit more accountability for free, join our school group, which is in the link as well. I'll be in the comments cheering you on. Next video, I'm breaking down how to build the right team, who to hire first, when to hire them, and the exact job descriptions and training process I use. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it. Now, stop rushing and go find your market using the heat map. Let's go.