Transcription
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today we got an exciting topic for you guys. We're talking about the top five states to do your first deal in. I'm your host Daniel Abki. I'm joined with my brother Ron Abki. And today we're going to talk about, like I said, the top five states, but we're going to get into the pros and cons of each state. And we're going to keep it simple for your first deal and different things to avoid if you're a beginner, cuz I remember back when we started this business, Ron.
We had no clue, put a pin on a map. We had no clue cuz people weren't doing it like they are today. It's different. There's not, you feel like you pick a good spot and you're like, "No, this sucks." Yeah. So, we know a lot more now. There's a lot more information and a lot more people doing this business now. I think this can be really helpful for someone new.
And beyond just like the top five states, guys, we're going to get into the areas within the states. I think like there are some areas in every state like you probably want to avoid if you're doing your first pros and cons. Yeah, for sure. Um, but yeah, I mean there's we did our YouTube live last night, Dan, and there's so many new people getting into this business and there's so much opportunity still. Um, so I think this will be a really actionable podcast for people who are just getting started. For sure.
Yeah. So, where do you want to start with this? Do you want to create a list uh and just start should we cross areas off or do you want to start throwing some that we like on the board? I think the most popular area or I'm sorry the most po yeah yeah the most popular area of the country to do this business at least like the way we the way when we talk to people is probably the southeast so I think we kind of start in that general area maybe and like what's so you want to build a list first. Yeah, I think we kind of build a list. I don't think we have to go through the entire country. There's areas like we we did an episode a while. No, just picking states that we like. Yeah, 100%. Okay. Yeah, like states I like for doing your first deal. We we can get rolling on it. Um, but we got to be unbiased here. We've done most our deals in the Southeast, so I don't want to act like other people are because I don't see that many deals down there anymore. That's fair. So, we have to be very unbiased here. For sure. Um, that's a good point. And like the analysis, choosing a market, guys, is your first step in doing this business. Like, if you're starting from ground zero, like choosing a market, choosing a solid market, it doesn't mean copy exactly what we talked about today, but there's so many counties in every state. Um, let's start listing states. I don't even We can focus there, but let's just start listing. Okay, let's start in the souththeast, we'll say. And let's start listing. Let's compile 15 to 20 just to get them on the board that we like. Okay. And then we can at the end we'll go through and sort them out. Georgia. Yeah. Tennessee. Yep. North Carolina. TN. South Carolina. SC. Okay. All good. I believe those are all like in the talking points. And we're again, we did another one like this, guys. We're talking more so today doing your first deal because there's a lot of barriers to doing your first deal. I really want to make that key when we're doing doing good land. We're talking about good prices, good demand when you sell it. Uh, and just simplicity essentially. It's not Yeah. Like disclosure states versus this. We're going to put them all together and just keep it simple because it's your first deal. Ohio. So, you want to go Midwest now? Okay. So, we got Southeast. I'm gonna put here. Did we put Alabama? Put Alabama. Okay. Alabama. Okay. Now we're going Midwestish. So we got Ohio, PA. That's East Coast. Do you want to split those? Wisconsin. No. Okay. So, don't put PA on. No. Put PA. Okay. PA. Wisconsin. Wisconsin. Michigan. Kentucky. Michigan. Michigan. Uh, Kentucky. I'm going to put in the South. You think it's fine either way? I'm putting Kentucky there. Okay. Michigan. Um, and then the some others that we're going to avoid. Illinois. Minnesota even is really wet. We could put Minnesota on there, but it's just up there. Yeah, it is a little tougher. Expensive too in a lot of areas. Yeah, you got a lot of farm. What' you say? I put Michigan. Yeah, Michigan's fine. Yeah, I I like Michigan on us. We'll talk about that deeper. Um I I don't have anything else to add, I don't think, for the Midwest and Iowa. All these high high farmland states, guys. We're going to keep out Indiana, Iowa, Illinois. And I added Kentucky to the other side. Yeah, exactly. Kucky's a little different. Let's keep moving. Let's go northeast then. Northeast. I don't have anything in there for new people. PA is considered Northeast. Yeah, that's fine. But we've got But we put that in there. Um, let's just think through it then. Anything by PA? I think you have too many. What we don't have is Virginia or West Virginia. Those are ones we didn't put in here. That's intentionally too mountainous in my mind. Virginia though, uh, just to like there's a lot of people doing deals there. So, if you guys are in Virginia, you're looking there, like I would not that's not a bad bad state. We'll do another one that's top five states to avoid, I think, for your first deal. But I think for this one, we're not going to get too much into that. And I won't go into Virginia. I won't go into West Virginia and all these, but we're not going to have those under. Staying away from the mountainous areas, staying away from the uh far heavy farmland states, I think, is what why we're not really talking about anything else in the Northeast. Let's go southwest. Texas. Southwest. Yeah, Texas. Okay. Arizona. Uh, oh, this is what we like. Do you like Arizona? No, just too too rough. Uh, Arizona, if you look on a map on Arizona, if you look on Zillow and look at Arizona and like all the sold, like they're too clustered in areas, I would put Oklahoma there, Dan. Oo, that's a good one. I like Oklahoma. Okay. We go over to the west. What about Arkansas? I don't like Arkansas. Too mountainous, too. It's slow to flip. Really slow to flip. Hard to evaluate land in my opinion. Oh, what did we miss though? Uh, Mississippi in the south. No. Non-disclosure. Non-disclosure. Texas is the one non-disclosure we have thus far. That's right. But we got to remember that. All right. So, all right. Then we go over. So, we're skipping New Mexico. We're skipping Arizona. We're skipping Nevada. Okay. Let's Let's move west and up. So, we got Colorado and uh Utah and all those states now. Wyoming. Let's go. Only one on the west that I would add that has even a conversation of being is California. Yeah. I list again if you look on a map and I'm not saying you can't do deals like we are trying to find the top five. This is 10% of the states in the country. When you look on a map in Colorado, very clustered in terms of where the sales are and like it's just it's harder to do deals. There's bigger gaps for doing your first deal. I think in areas like Colorado, these big states, you just have clusters of areas. The counties are huge. I don't like these states with huge people like Oregon, Washington. Oregon, I haven't seen as much activity uh from land investors, but I'm sure there's plenty out there and it just hasn't been hit yet. But Washington, I've seen a lot recently of people in Washington. Uh, we're not going to add this to this list because it's mountainous, it's tough, that's giant giant counties in Washington. Probably the same for Oregon. Very very rural. Like you go, it's just one county can have really expensive land and then really really cheap land. It's a barrier. We avoid We're not doing Colorado. We're not doing Utah. We're not doing Wyoming. We're not doing Montana. Those are all not good for this. I doubt those would probably be in the low five to avoid, honestly. All right, so we just have California on the West Coast. Let's just go through those states in your head and just think, are we missing anything? You have like the plains states which are like uh Kansas. No, we're not doing any of that. Okay, let's count how many we have. One, two, three, four, five, seven, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. We got 13 just like I wanted. We got Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Kentucky. In the South, we got Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. I'm just going to add Minnesota on there since we had 13, now we have 14 because I I don't like on this list, it kind of deserves to be in there. And then we go out west, we have uh southwest kind of we got Texas, Oklahoma, then we got California on the west. 14. All right. So, the only non-disclosure one in here is Texas, like you say. Yep. But Texas also has some of the most land. It also has some of the most people. It also has some of the most demand. Yep. And Texas, guys, or non-disclosure, guys, is where the sold prices are not disclosed. Uh like you do not know what things sell for essentially. Uh, so that is Mississippi, Texas, uh, Kansas is one. I'm I'm 99% sure. Uh, so there's I think there's seven or nine or something. 11 or 12. Yeah, it's a lot. I think it's 11. Uh, I can't remember. But off of this list, do you want to get rid of any immediately without discussing? Like we got Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Let's start there. Let's start. Pennsylvania. Get rid of. Yes. A lot of people doing deals there. But yeah, I agree. And for me, Pennsylvania is just it's a really really slow state. Like that's what I've noticed from like there's a lot of there's even when you get close to Pittsburgh, you get close to some places like it gets really slow. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like it's just really slow. There's not great markets. You can do really big deals. A ton of land. Yeah. Um very big. It would probably be on my top 10ish. Maybe right outside for doing your first. Yeah, like if we extend this five to like 10, it would it would be like towards the 10 range, I think. And you had Ohio also. I like Ohio. You had what else did you have up there? Wisconsin. Michigan. Minnesota. I'd get rid of Minnesota. We talked about this before just with it being really wet. It's prices are very variant. And even if you're not your properties aren't uh too wet to do deals, like you have 50%. It's just really hard to evaluate properties with wetlands and these other things. And I think the same thing with with Wisconsin. And Wisconsin has a lot more farmland also. Yes, I would. These are also probably close to my top 10, guys. So, don't like be completely shied away from those. Um, ever wondered how land investing can be the fastest path to financial freedom? I break it all down in my new book, One Lot at a Time. I'll show you exactly how to find, buy, and flip land for huge profits without dealing with houses, tenants, or any crazy renovations. It's simple. This is the book that I wish I had when I first started. If you're ready to take control of your financial future, grab a copy now. One lot at a time by Daniel Abky. Find it at your local bookstore or on Amazon.com. Michigan I do like, though. I don't want to. Michigan's interesting. I I don't know if it's going to end up on there and Ohio. I like Michigan. So, we got rid of three there. All right, let's go. Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky. I would get rid of Kentucky right off the rip. Too sloped. A lot of slow areas. Just not There's really, really good counties in Kentucky, guys. It's sloped. It's bad data. It It can be really slow. It's just hard to get records. It's It can be hard. Low volume records. Low volume. Yeah, I'd get rid of that. Um, I love Kentucky for like I think we lock in Georgia. Do you not want to lock in yet? I don't want to lock in. All right, let's not lock in. That might not be locked in. I'd get rid of Alabama as well. I'd get rid of Alabama. Okay. Alabama slow ton of like bad land. A lot of count. There's some good counties. You go close to Mobile. Even you're close to Birmingham, it's really slow, but close to Mobile is faster. But there's just very few counties that are good for someone who's just getting started. This might go against the grain here and there are very good areas in this state, but I'd be very cautious with North Carolina. Like I a lot of people are there for their first deals, but man is it gets slow and sloped and I don't like North Carolina at all. I don't either. I really don't like it for beginners. No, I think it's one of those states that a lot of beginners are hitting and that's it's not going to be in the worst five. Definitely. It's somewhere like I would be fine if someone said they're going after North Carolina, but you're dealing with a lot of terrain. You're dealing with a lot of different areas that are slow, very, very, very rural. Yep. North Carolina reminds me of the west part of it, how rural it gets. That deal we review for uh that webinar is uh that subdivide deal. That was his first deal in Rowan County, North Carolina, and he made $70,000. But yeah, it's a that's I don't want to say that's an outlier, but we're trying to find money there. We're only picking five. We're picking 10%. North Carolina is a great state. Get rid of Alabama. So, we have we got Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina. Man, those are good states. This South Carolina with the double closing and just the barrier with that. Does that throw you off a little bit? It makes it more difficult. Like there is a barrier. We're talking about top five, Dan. Like, okay, what barriers are there? Georgia has barriers too now with blind offers if you're mailing. Yeah, true. You got to disclose that it's an offer. Like, you can't you got to reward the whole package. You can't just send blind offers like we used to. Uh Tennessee doesn't really have any I like Tennessee a lot. Um, okay. We We knocked off a few there. We'll come back. Let's talk about Texas. Oklahoma. Oklahoma's good. So is Texas. Texas can be a little harder. Yeah, I I worry about Texas with Gosh, it's good though. I think that's kind of on that secondary list. Kind of like Wisconsin above that. But once you do like three deals or something like that, like get your first deal. Our goal guys for this and when we have coaching students come in we have like I'm when I'm helping someone get their first deal like okay what barriers are we having to getting that first deal Dan and that's one what the conversation I have like okay there is a big barrier with being a non-disclosure state in Texas um evaluating land's more difficult uh it's just there's I love the counties in Texas there's so many good counties but for me that's too big of a barrier to do and if you pick the wrong counties it can get bad yeah like I've seen a lot of bad deal like What I love about Texas is you can do deals half an acre all the way up to hundreds of acres like cuz the land is so good. Uh this flat and it gets real quick too like Travis County, you know, where Austin is. You can do deals in Travis County. Just exclude the city, go out a little bit, use a polygon. Yeah. And and circle like there is so much for high level people. I'd put for anyone trying to do you know five plus million dollars a year. I'd say go in Texas. Yeah. Like that would be on my top five. That's fair. I like that a If you want to stay in one market, go in Texas. First deal, we're going to say no. Yeah, first deal. Just a non-disclosure complexity is massive. It gets out on the west side of Texas. You have desert, you know. Um it just it's it's a can get a little rough. We'll we'll remove that. But that's in top 10 for sure. I don't know why, but I want to cross California off. I just don't think it has a How many do we have crossed off? So, what are we down to? Like eight. Six. We're down to six. Yeah. So, we have one more. So, what do we have? Ohio, Michigan. Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, South Carolina, California. Tennessee. We got Tennessee. Tennessee. Okay, so we have seven. Yeah. Okay. So, we need to cross out two of those. Okay. We're not in a bad spot. So, let's cross off California for same reasons, but it's not it is a disclosure. You'll see the prices, but it is it is so different from north to south and it's just hard to slope your slope. It gets rural. You have desert in the south. Up north you have massive slope, mountainous, you know, Tahoe, you have that whole region. Um, desert in the south, pray, you got massive, massive cities to work off of with major price discrepancies from Los Angeles to San Diego to San Francisco. It's tough, but there's a lot of opportunity there. I'd put it right with like Texas. It's it's a great area to do business in, but first deal I'd avoid. Yeah, that's fair. So, we got six now. So, let's list them off. Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma. You wanted to lock in Georgia. I think we can lock in Georgia. I think What can we lock in? Let's just start locking in. Like, what is this between in my in your opinion? South Carolina, I talked about the double close. Tennessee I like a lot. I I feel like it's between South Carolina and Michigan, honestly, Dan. Okay, so let's talk about pros and cons of each. I like Ohio a lot. I love Tennessee. There's some bad areas of Ohio. You want to stay away from the farm heavy farmland counties, but central um northeast eastern Ohio. Um, southwest once you get out of Cincinnati, there's some really good land. Southeast is good. Um, yeah, you're right. You do need to all the east coast though is good. West and northwest stay away from in Ohio. It's very very farm. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good point. But there's a lot of opportunity there. A lot of land there. Mhm. But yeah, it's your dream deal. It's like Indiana at that point. I don't know a lot about Michigan to be 100 100% honest. Dan, I feel like Michigan is like a sneaky really good place to do this business. Yeah. I like Michigan a lot honestly. Do you not like South Carolina? I think the barrier to double close can be tough and I think you can get really rural really fast. I don't think there's a ton of good counties in South Carolina. I think Georgia is 100% we can put that in the list in my opinion. I think you can do the same thing to Oklahoma. I like Oklahoma. Just really good land. You deal with some oil stuff like what we're talking about barriers in each one. You deal with some oil stuff which is just not fun for especially just us for we we haven't dealt with those areas as much as like Georgia. Yeah. But this we're talking no one if you're talking about first deal no one no one doing their first deal has dealt with oil and stuff. Mhm. Yeah. That's a barrier. That's a barrier I really don't like. Mhm. But Tennessee we can put it in. think I I really like that. Yeah, Tennessee is like my maybe number one right now just for someone new. And there's the county land moves fast. All right, so we have three locked in. We got three left. Well, we got Ohio. Did you lock in Ohio or No. You locked in Oklahoma. I locked in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Georgia. So, we got South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio. I I like what you just added. It changed my perception on Ohio with all the Aland. Yeah. Knocks off more than half the state. But you have northern Georgia which kind of sucks. You have southern Southern Georgia is actually good but you northern Georgia is big though. Yeah. You have a third of Georgia probably maybe. Yeah. So the northern Georgia is on the Blue Ridge in in the mountains. Appalachia mountains. Yeah. And you you're going to deal with tons of slope, tons of tourism and just inconsistent. It's kind of like uh parts of North Carolina are like that too. It's on that border there. Okay. So that's true. That's true. I'm I'm still struggling. What do you think? Michigan say I just wish I knew. I I haven't done many deals in Michigan. Probably less than 10. Honestly, we've we haven't done more than 10 deals in Michigan. Should we just lock it in at six or do we got to get rid of one? No, we got to get rid of one. What do you mean lock it in at six? I was like, let's just say top six. You guys know the top six, but we got All right. Um All right. Let's think. Let's go through pros and cons. South Carolina. We did not knock off South Car. But that's biased from how many pe But that should be though. I see all the people doing deals in South Carolina. Not as much anymore, though. I would knock off South Carolina, personally, I think. Okay, let's do it. Damn, Michigan over South Carolina, but I thought we'd never say that. All right, cool. We got our list here. And let's talk about why we knocked off South Carolina. Yeah, double clo I mean, when again, when we're talking about getting your first deal, like what are barriers doing your first deal? You have someone who is negotiating and you're trying to buy at 70% of market value. Double closing is a barrier. I don't know all the rules, like there are laws against it. There's a lot of title companies that will say no to doing it. Um I think that's the number one reason. You cannot wholesale in South Carolina anymore. Yeah, you can't wholesale, but double closing you can get around it. I think I don't think all the title companies are willing to do it, though. Yeah. And in general though, like Ron said, it gets really there's good demand in the really good areas, but there's less good counties in South Carolina, I think. And then you get coastal. There's not a high volume counties like probably because you're coastal. You have all the sand train gets really rural. It gets really slow and you probably got five to 10 really good counties. Yeah, it's not a ton. I've done we've done a lot of deals. We've had a lot of success with low volume marketing. This was before the double closing stuff. Um Michigan, I want to look into Michigan some more because it is I've just never had any really bad situations. You deal with some wet stuff. It's a good state, but just yeah, it's I feel like there's a lot of good counties there to be honest. Is a really good state. I agree with you. I like that list. We got Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Michigan as the top five. Uh the only thing, let's go through these real quick. So, Ohio, we talked about how you got to avoid the central in the west area. Just look on a satellite, look at the Aland, avoid those areas. Half the state you have in though, uh anywhere east really of Columbus. Pretty much anywhere east of Columbus, you're good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. So the and Ohio is a big state and then you got Tennessee. Tennessee is fantastic, but you got you watch out for the mountains for sure, right? Yeah. You go uh far east. Yeah. Yeah. Far east you're going to deal with some bad land. Yeah. Far east you're going to it's very very but you got Nashville and you got Memphis. So Memphis is west, right? Very far. And you can even Very what? Farmmy. A lot of farm. Is it really? Yeah. I mean there's a lot of farm on the west coast of uh just look on satellite and play that. But yeah, just watch the mountain ranges in Tennessee as well for your first deals. Then you got Georgia. We said to avoid the north and the mailing law. And the mailing law in Georgia. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So mailing in Georgia is basically saying you need to disclose that you're making an undermarket value offer when you're sending that mail out. I believe that's what it is. And then Oklahoma, you got your mineral rights and you got your um all the oil rigs and all that stuff. So that's a uh you're going to run into that. You send mail and marketing there, you will run into two big cities, pretty solid cities in Oklahoma as well though. Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Tulsa. Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Yeah. Good point. Good point. Okay. And big land. That's what I like about it. Yeah. So, they chop these up. In the west, it looks it looks a lot different than in East. In the east, you might have 7 acre parcel in a 2.5 acre parcel and they're all chopped up and weird. You go west, you got just squares of 40 acres. You never see really good land because it's all flat and the same. Yeah. In Oklahoma. And you got good demands still, too. So, all the land's the same. It's easy to comp because of that. That's the easiest thing. It's like you got 17 80acre properties that sold in the last two years. You know what I mean? All around each other because they're all just chopped up. Same size, same shape, same thing, road, you know what I mean? So, it's super easy to comp as well. Yep. When we came up with this list, guys, I've said it a couple times like this is barrier to doing your first deal. What is what areas are giving you the best chance? Can you do your first deals? Like, obviously, people are doing their first deals everywhere. Um, but this is just our opinion from our experience, from our members experience, from what we think of the, uh, all the barriers with non-disclosure, oil, uh, mail laws, all these different things, double close laws. I think that's the main thing with this. Like, for sure, if you guys like areas outside of this, like we have a lot of areas that were very close to being on this list. California, Texas, all these different areas. North Carolina, South Carolina. Don't have everyone flooding these markets, but these are definitely good ones. And there's places We've done top 10 states for doing this business in general. We probably had 22 really good states on that list when we did that. Yeah. And we have 15 here that we just listed off that just came to mind. So like you don't only need to look at the top five. Look at these 15 states we just talked about. It was very hard for us to cross off South Carolina. It was hard for us to cross off Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kentucky, Alabama. All those states are good. Like you can guys, realistically you can do deals in all 50 states. We're just trying to get you your first deal with the least resistance. Anything else, Ron? No. Let us know guys what your thoughts on this list are. If you guys are watching on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button below, like it, leave us a comment. We appreciate everything. Um, other than that, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks everybody. for joining us.