Taxes are another big thing. There’s not as much tax benefit compared to traditional real estate. So that’s a downside. For the most part, the people that we target that we want to buy the land from, they have a reason to sell. They inherited it or laid on their taxes. They don’t live nearby it. If you’re going out to rural properties, which is what I do a little bit more of, it doesn’t have as much variation because the use cases are … There’s a lot more use cases for it. So somebody can live on it, they can use it for hunting, they can use it for camping, they can use it for a ton of different things. In the case where you have that variation and you might have been incorrect in what you were valuing it at, you have enough spread in there where you’re still going to be able to have profit or at least not lose money on it wholesaling, some of the laws and regulations around that changes a little bit state by state.

Welcome to the Real Estate Masters Podcast, where we bring you the top real estate investors in the country. If you also want to be in the top 1%, you are in the right place. Listening to podcasts like this is exactly what helped me to scale my real estate investing business to seven figures, flip over a thousand houses, and more importantly, step out of daily operations of my business over a decade ago so I could start and grow other businesses. So get ready to learn from the best and start building a business that works for you and not

The other way around. Enjoy. Hunter, I know you’re doing a ton of land deals, about a hundred a year. That’s awesome. First off, thank you for hopping on. Excited to talk about your journey, but I want to start at the beginning and kind of see how you got into real estate in the first place.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. So I started when I was in college about seven years ago. I was doing a little bit of traditional real estate. So I was working with the guy, I was doing wholesaling and flips and sub2 and rentals and everything. So that was kind of like my part-time job. So I was getting a little bit of experience in it and I wanted to buy my first property for myself. So I was looking all the time. And then I came across a piece of land. It was two and a half acres on a lake and it was about an hour from my house and it was listed for 25 grand, which was already a good deal. But I reached out to the guy and I talked him down and he sold it to me for nine grand, which was a really good price and kind of the goal with that was one, it was I knew it was a good deal, but two, I just kind of wanted it for myself because I wanted something I could go to on the weekend and go to the lake basically. So I bought it. And I found out then after owning it a little bit that you could only build on the property was the only use case for it because it was owning. And there was a 1200 square foot minimum to build on the property. And I didn’t want to do that because I was in college. So I sold the land and I made 40 grand on it. I sold it for 50K. So I made 40 grand off that. And I was like, wow, that was a lot easier than some of the other wholesaling and flips and stuff that we’re doing so basically what I did then is I was like, let’s go try to find another piece of land. And then I went and bought a couple more and I flipped those and then I just kept scaling up to where I am now.

I love it. I love it. And what was your life like before getting into investing?

Yeah, I mean, I’ve always been flipping things, so I was flipping cars and shoes and all sorts of things. So it’s kind of just the same stuff. It’s just it’s scaled up from a pair of shoes to real estate. So yeah, it’s nice because now, because I’ve been doing it for so long, I’ve set up a lot of the systems so I don’t have to do it as actively. A lot of the things are more automated, but yeah, I enjoy it.

That’s awesome. And just for the people listening, what does your business look like today?

Yeah. So the whole overall idea of what I do is I buy vacant land below market value. So I do a lot of off-market outreach, same as any type of real estate. So direct mail and cold calling is the two main things that we do. I don’t do much texting, but outreach to a bunch of landowners. We buy the cheapest land that has a good spread on it, and then we might do some improvement to it. So depending on the land, we might get it cleared out or leveled out or getting it ready for somebody to build on or use the property and then we sell it. That’s majority of what we do. We do a little bit of subdivision, so we will buy some bigger properties and subdivide them. And yeah, we buy them, sell them, and that’s kind of the whole process that we go through there we do a little bit of other acquisitions too. So we do some tax sales as well from tax forfeiture sales.

Well, what’s the main problem that you were trying to solve when getting into real estate?

Yeah. So the value that we provide is on the buying side, people that are selling the land, it’s a lot harder to sell land. It’s more illiquid than other types of real estate. So the value that we provide is we’re a cash offer for somebody and we’re able to close quickly on it and they don’t have to deal with realtors or anything else really that you have to do with selling land or waiting that long period because usually land will sit for, if you go into Zillow and look at stuff, some stuff has been up there for six months, a year. So land takes a while to sell. So we’re just a quick option for somebody to get cash and not have much of a headache with it. So we make it easy for them. Then on the selling side, when we sell the properties, we make it a lot easier because we do really good marketing with the properties. So again, if you go and look at Zillow, there’s probably a good portion of those listings where it’s just a plat map of the piece of land or there’s one picture from Google Maps or something and you can’t really tell what the land is like or what you can do with it. So we go really into depth on what the zoning you can do with it, like the use cases for it. We have really good pictures and videos and drone photos and videos and everything. So it’s real easy for somebody to figure out if they’re looking for a piece of land that they want to do a tiny house and do a short-term rental with, we’re going to find that piece of land and present it to them so they know that that’s what they can do with it. And we make it real easy for the buyers in that way and then we also, we provide seller financing too. So again, with land, it’s harder to, especially with some of these rural properties to get financing for it if you’re not building on it. So we provide the seller financing where somebody can just get approved with us and we do contract redeem or do you have trust depending where it is, and they can get into a property for a very low amount down and pay it off over time to us. So we’re selling kind of like the on both sides where somebody can sell it quicker and then somebody can also buy it quicker from us too.

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Why do you think so many investors overlook land?

It’s definitely not as glamorous looking. I suppose there’s no fancy houses on. It’s just land. So that’s one part of it. A lot of people don’t talk about it either. A lot of people just kind of overlook it, so that’s big. And then the sale periods do take a little bit longer. For me on average, it’s about 90 days to flip a property. Sometimes it can go a little bit longer. Sometimes it can be shorter, but it takes a little bit longer just compared to houses, which you can turn over a little bit quicker. So there’s some downsides with it. Taxes are another big thing. There’s not as much tax benefit compared to traditional real estate. So that’s a downside, but that’s where you can compliment it where right before we start talking, I said, most of what I do is land, but then you can compliment it with some traditional rentals and tax write-offs.

Gotcha. So there’s not as much bonus depreciation or anything of that sort with the land itself. It’s not much to bonus to depreciate. I got you. That makes sense. What do you think is the most common misconception is about land versus traditional residential?

I think a lot of people think there’s not much money to make with land, but that’s kind of the opposite. It’s a lot easier to make money, I think, because there’s a lot more volatility with it, which comes into play. Traditional residential real estate, you can comp out houses or commercial pretty easily. With land, it’s a lot harder to comp it out. So that means you can get it at the bottom price basically, and then you can also sell it at a lot higher price because it’s harder to determine what the value is of it. So that’s good. You want volatility if you’re flipping something because you can get something and have a really big spread on it. So most of the properties that I flip, I have a strict criteria of what I go for when I’m buying it. So I always want to pay no more than a third of what I think the value is of it. So if it’s worth 60,000, the max I would pay would be 20,000 on it. The lowest price thing on market, lowest price piece of land on market, I always want to buy it below whatever that is. So again, if there’s two acres listed for sale for 30 grand and I’m trying to buy … Or no, if there’s one acre listed for 30 grand and I’m trying to buy two acres, I wouldn’t pay more than that 30 grand because I want to be able to be the lowest price thing on market if I go to flip it because then I can get rid of it a lot quicker. And then I usually never pay more than the assessed value either. So whatever it’s assessed at, I never pay more than that. And that’s usually less than what the actual market value is. But if you’re really strict to that criteria, then it’s hard to lose money. So I

Always do

That.

Does it sometimes work against you in a sense of if someone doesn’t have comp for their land, most of them I’m sure don’t know and they probably sell it for less, then it’s probably worth. But do you have people that just think it’s worth way more than it is or do you not see that quite as much with land?

Yeah, not as often. I mean, you do get people where you ask them if they want to sell and they’re like, a million dollars and you can have it. But for the most part, people either inherited … The people that we target that we want to buy the land from, they have a reason to sell. So they inherited it or they laid on their taxes, they don’t live nearby it. It’s like they’re a motivated seller for the most part. So when we talked to them, they either purchased it 20 years ago, so they bought it for $500 an acre, and they’re happy to get a thousand an acre now, which is still a good deal for us because it’s probably worth a lot more than that. But for them, they’re still making money on it too. So we don’t get too often where people are asking way over what it’s worth. You do get people where maybe it’s worth 50,000 and they want 45,000, something like that. So there’s not much spread on it. And something like that, that’s where I would instead double close it or wholesale it. I wouldn’t actually buy that myself because I don’t want to have just slim margins on it to have my money invested into it. But yeah, for the most part, the people that sell land, they’re sick of waiting a year to sell it or having to deal with that whole process, so they’re happy to get a cash offer.

Hunter, I know last year real estate was very interesting for a lot of people in residential. Was it the same for land? How was last year compared to the past three years prior to the last year?

Yeah. Land doesn’t have as much variation depending on what you’re doing within it, because there’s a lot of different niches you can do. So if you’re doing infill lots, which is going to be in the city, utilities are at it, and that’s going to be mostly for developers on it, that’s more tied to the market because that’s where people are developing the land. So that can have a little bit more variation. If you’re going out to rural properties, which is what I do a little bit more of, it doesn’t have as much variation because the use cases are … There’s a lot more use cases for it. So somebody can live on it, they can use it for hunting, they can use it for camping, they can use it for a ton of different things. And because of that, there’s always a steady need for it, so that doesn’t have as much effect on it. Over the last three to four years, I can say the amount of people that flip land has gone up a little bit, I’ve noticed because a lot of these properties, like I said, I own them. So I’ve had land for seven years now, and I get mail from other people that want to buy properties. And in the last couple years, there’s more people that are doing it, but it’s still not very much competition. Out of all the people that you have on the podcast, 95% are probably doing something more traditional. It’s only a couple that do land. And in the whole US, there’s 160 million parcels. About half of those are developed, so houses or commercial or something. About half of those are just vacant land. So you have a majority of the people that are focused on the half that have something built on it, and then just a small minority of the people are working on the other half, which is vacant land. So still not that much competition. And overall, the market doesn’t get affected much unless you’re in a development type piece of land deal.

Yeah, for sure. Well, what mistakes do you often see investors make? Maybe people that might go from residential to land or just people in land in general, what mistakes do you often see investors make that you think could be really easily avoidable?

Yeah, I talk to a lot of people who want to get into land and then they go and do the first deal that they see, and it’s not a deal. So they might just go buy a piece of land and then expect that they can flip it. And it’s the same with traditional real estate where you can’t just buy any house and then flip it. It has to be a deal in the first place. So you really have to be able to comp it out to figure out what your safe margins are. And then that’s why you want to be so much below. That’s why I do a third at most of what I think it’s worth, because in the case where you have that variation and you might’ve been incorrect in what you were valuing it at, you have enough spread in there where you’re still going to be able to have profit or at least not lose money on it. So yeah, I definitely see people where they’ll just go and buy a piece of land because they think there’s a little bit of margin on it, but you need a lot more than what you really would think.

Yeah. And I know ideologically wise, it’s similar to residential. There’s just no house on it. But what would you say separates the top operators in land from everyone else in your experience?

Yeah, it’s really just the ones that do enough outreach. That’s all it is. It’s doing enough volume. So same with traditional real estate. You have to talk to enough sellers and when you talk to enough of them, it’s going to funnel down to some of those people are interested at selling and they’re selling way below what it’s worth where there’s a good spread on it. So if you do enough outreach, then you’re going to be successful with it. So the ones that are doing well just have good systems set up to be able to do that outreach and manage the leads that come in. Yeah, so that’s the biggest thing.

Yeah. When it comes to the word success, everyone’s got their own definition for it. Everyone’s got their own way of measuring it and striving for it. How would you say you measure the word success? How do you define the word success? And then how do you strive for it?

Yeah. For me, we set a goal every year of what we want to hit for number of deals. That’s the benchmark that we set. It’s just how many properties do we want to flip? And then you just have to break it down. So my goal is to do a hundred properties every year, and if you break it down, I shoot for 10 a month because then I’m going to exceed that goal. And worst case scenario, if you slightly miss it, then you’re still going to hit your overall goal. So yeah, set that overall year goal and we break it up month by month. Then as long as we keep on track with hitting our monthly numbers that we want to hit, then that’s kind of success to me. By the end of the year, we should hit it.

Awesome. Awesome. What are the biggest changes that you’re seeing in land right now?

Yeah, not too much changes really. I mean, the way that you acquire properties, so texting is always changing. The laws behind that, what you can and can’t do. So that’s why I don’t do much of it because I don’t want to get sued basically. So that’s why we mostly do direct mail and cold calling, but that changes. Wholesaling, some of the laws and regulations around that changes a little bit state by state. It kind of overlaps with just regular real estate, really. Not too much is different. Other than that, rural properties, it’s always been the same.

Gotcha. Well, if you were going to start from scratch, the business completely goes away, you get to keep all the knowledge you’ve learned over the years, but the business completely goes away. What would you focus on first to rebuild where you’re at now?

Yeah. If I didn’t have all my systems right now, you’re saying everything was from scratch. It’s finding a good market is key. So one thing that land investors do, some people will just go and send a ton of mail and do a ton of calling and a ton of texting and spend a lot of money on their marketing outbound, and then they’ll filter afterwards. I like to do a little bit different where I really filter down my list beforehand, before we do our outreach, because it saves money on the marketing costs. So instead of just mailing everybody in a county, we’ll filter it down to the people that are most likely to sell and also have good properties. So find a good market, filter my list down, just do the outreach and just repeat. It’s basically it’s very simple. It’s just knowing what you’re doing.

Yeah. It seems almost more simple than residential, for sure, because obviously there’s no house on it. There’s not as much stuff to worry about. For someone that’s in residential, what are the kind of people that you see get out of residential and go into land? Is there a certain pain point that you see them having or a certain type of residential investor that typically makes their way over to land, or what’s that kind of look like?

Yeah, I definitely see a lot of wholesalers transition over to it because it still has that low capital. Most of the land that I buy, I like to buy it for less than 50 grand. When you’re in a cheaper price point like that, stuff just sells quicker usually, and then you can turn it over faster. So less capital is required. So we get that from wholesalers don’t like to have a lot of capital put up into it. And then the traditional flippers, the ones that come over to it, they just don’t like all the different parties that are involved with the flip. Traditionally, you have your contractors, then you even have your local government getting things approved and all that, all the mess that can occur because of that. They just want it a little bit more simple. And what’s nice with land is you don’t have to be in a local market. So the other thing I told you is I live in Vegas and Minnesota, I go back and forth. I snowbird, but I can do land in other parts of the country and you don’t actually have to be at it because there’s not as much that can go wrong with land. Basically, everything you need is online. It’s like you have your plat maps, you have your topography maps and your wetland maps and FEMA maps, all these different things you can see online, basically what the land looks like. And you don’t have to have somebody walking through the property or managing your contractors or all that. So a lot of people that are flipping, they want to have something that’s a little bit more relaxed and they don’t have to be on the job site every day. So it’s kind of a mix between not needing as much capital and then having a little bit more freedom of your time that I see people get interested in land about.

Typically with residential, when it comes to out- of-town buyers, sometimes, and some people have really good systems, but sometimes it’s harder to get that volume of deals rather than being belly to belly. Do you see that with land? Is it harder if you’re not there? Obviously, if you’re going for Texas, there are so many places in Texas you could go. Do you see that at all or is that not really as much in land?

Yeah, I mean, being in person does give you a little bit of an advantage just because you can walk the property. For example, if the property’s sloped, usually if it’s under a 15% slope, you’re probably good. If it’s somewhere in a 15 to 30% slope, it’s kind of questionable. The online maps are not 100% accurate, so you kind of have to see it to see what it looks like. My solution is usually I get the listing photos and videos before I close on it, so that’s my final walkthrough with a property. But if it was something where you’re right next to it and you could go look at it, that would be nice. You could do it a little bit quicker. So you do get some advantages like that. And then just also knowing the market a little bit more, because if you live in that area, you probably know where good areas and bad areas are, but that’s not saying you can’t find out that living somewhere else. You start to learn markets after you work them for a while. So I don’t just do the entire country. I do focus on a few markets at a time because you do start to learn those things. But yeah, overall, there’s a little bit of an advantage you get, but not much where it’s needed.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Hunter, if someone is interested in learning more or maybe someone’s in residential and wants to learn more about land, where can people reach out to you? Where can people find you?

Yeah, Instagram’s easy. It says Hunter Pogo, HunterPogio on Instagram.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Hunter, I appreciate you taking the time today. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.