The $500K Land Investing Hack NO ONE Is Talking About!
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The $500K Land Investing Hack NO ONE Is Talking About!
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In this episode of the Real Estate Investing Podcast, Daniel and Ron Apke dive into an innovative land-flipping strategy they've coined survey hacking.
What is it? It’s the art of buying a portion of a property—think slicing off 10 acres from a 50-acre parcel—and flipping it for profit.
This genius niche taps into a unique seller mindset: people are often willing to sell part of their land rather than the whole thing. Whether they need extra cash for college tuition or paying off debts, this approach opens doors to deals that traditional land flipping misses. With virtually no competition, it’s a game-changer in real estate investing.
But why does it work so well? The key lies in supply, demand, and creativity. Survey hacking enables investors to target untapped properties, including those with structures, vastly expanding the inventory.
Daniel and Ron also highlight the importance of building strong seller relationships, navigating operational hurdles like surveys, and staying flexible in negotiations. Want to know how this strategy could help you scale your business to half a million dollars a year with just 10–15 deals?
Tune in now to discover the insider tips, tools, and techniques that make survey hacking a win-win for everyone involved.
⬇️ Watch or listen to the full episode below!
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Ron: Survey hacking. When we kind of like came up with this buying part of a parcel. So it could be a 50 acre parcel. You’re buying 10 acres of it. It could be a 50 acre parcel with a house on it. You’re buying 10 acres of it.
Dan: That’s all negotiable. That’s why this works so well. You’re selling part of your asset and people are more likely to sell part of their asset than the whole thing.
Ron: Every person with 20 plus acres can be a potential deal. All you have to do is get a survey for the property, line it up, close it and just make money on the backend, flipping it.
Dan: You got to look at supply and demand though. Why is it working so well? Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Real Estate Investing Podcast.
Today’s topic, we’re talking about survey hacking and making 500, 000 a year from one niche, one strategy called survey hacking. I’m your host, Daniel Apke, joined again by my brother and business partner, Ron Apke. And we coined the term and created the niche survey hacking, probably It came naturally, but probably a year ago in the last year.
Yeah, in the last year or so, we came up with survey hacking and really put the niche to to work and started putting, putting it out there more, getting people on the same train in terms of actually going after it as a niche targeting it. And just to define survey hacking, let’s talk about what it actually is before we hop into it.
Ron: Yeah, so survey hacking is essentially buying a part of a parcel. Um, I think that’s the definition we put on it when we coined the term, uh, survey hacking when we kind of like came up with this, um, buying part of a parcel. So it could be a 50 acre parcel. You’re buying 10 acres of it. It could be a 50 acre parcel with a house on it.
You’re buying 10 acres of it. Um, so buying a portion of portion of a parcel.
Dan: Buying a portion of a parcel. So taking one parcel. And buying part of it. So you have one big square, you take a little corner piece and you buy part of it. Uh, the reason why this works so well, so let’s say someone has 50 acres with a house on it, that house and that 50 acres are connected.
If they want to refinance to get money, they can. But it’s connected if they want to liquidate some of their house, they can’t, they can’t liquidate part of your house. You can’t liquidate part of your assets like that. Um, so one way for them to get money to get their asset to get their cash out is selling part of their land for anyone.
That’s why this works for land or with houses. So if they need money, they don’t want to sell the whole thing. They just need 28, 000 to get their kid to college or they need 28, 000 for their whatever to pay off the rest of their house or whatever it is. Okay. You can sell, they have 50 acres, they can sell 20 of them.
They have 50 acres, they can sell five of it. They can have 50 acres, they can sell 48 of it. That’s all negotiable. That’s why this works so well. You’re selling part of your asset and people are more likely to sell part of their asset than the whole thing.
Ron: Yeah. And it’s so open ended is why I’m such a fan of this niche is because it’s such an open ended niche.
It also allows you to attack people. Um, you attack properties that you haven’t, uh, went after before because it’s not vacant land. Potentially it can be vacant. And you can be going after 50 acres of vacant land as well. Um, but it just, it’s so open ended. So it gives you so much opportunity for deals.
Every person with 20 plus acres can be a potential deal. All you have to do is get a survey for the property, line it up and, uh, close it and just make money on the back end, flipping it, uh, it’s going, it just. It’s a win win like it is a true win win for the seller for you Not every seller is gonna work for obviously some people want to keep all their land But it is a win win for everyone and I just think it it makes sense Like it just 100 percent makes sense if the sellers asking for a little bit more money ask for a little bit more land and it just is really open ended in that aspect where I I just, there’s no way it doesn’t work.
Dan: Talk about a niche with no competition. No competition besides the ones we created over the last 12 months. Um, so Ron and I created this like I said 12 months ago and that’s the only competition because no one else is targeting it. So we had people after 12 months when we started pushing it, talking about it, content on it, all that stuff.
Okay, some people executed and now a lot of people in the community are getting these deals. You gotta look at supply and demand though. Why is it working so well? Competition’s low. Virtually in existence. You want to go to a house Ron and offer a 50 acre parcel with a house on it To buy part of their land.
Nobody else has done that No, I mean with less than 0. 001 they offer for the whole thing Maybe they offer the whole thing not part. Yeah, and that’s why you’re going to get this That’s why it works so well, and you got to think of the inventory So the the vacant land industry we have so many partials that we can go after in so many counties, right?
Which is it’s a lot of inventory. Don’t get me wrong. It’s eight times more inventory than houses, but there’s A lot of people going after ’em too, so you have more competition. This just opens you up to a whole nother place. So now we can go after not only vacant land, but we can also go after land with structures on it.
So it just opens up the inventory to everything.
Ron: Yeah. It, it literally lets you go after so many properties. It it so many properties that have never been targeted and it allows you to go after other properties that have been targeted in such a different way. And a couple of things I like about it also allows so much creativeness, like in how you’re offering things, um, we don’t have a set way of like how to go after these.
I have ways that I think work best, um, but we don’t have a set way and it allows you to be creative as you’re scaling up your business. Like if you want to transition to full time, this or full time subdividing or like those are real things where you can have really big businesses and doing less deals than traditional flipping.
It just, it just makes sense from that perspective, Dan. I think when there’s opportunity, there’s some barrier to entry with, uh, survey hacking because like you need a little bit more expertise than just flipping. Um, and there’s not education out there. There just isn’t education. There’s not competition out there.
So there’s so much opportunity on the table.
Dan: I agree. And, and I think it’s a good, um, it’s good. It’s really, really good for people. Good on the phones because it’s an open ended conversation because you’re going to send them now. You can send them a. Blind ish offer with giving an amount per acre roughly, but it’s going to change if they have 50 acres, whether they sell 48 acres or three, your price per acre is going to change.
So you can do like a range per acre. We offer blah, blah, blah, per acre. Hey, I’m looking to buy part of your land. The way we do this. Well, you, you own X acres fill in the blank. So it’s going to connect to your Excel. You own 50 acres in Crawford County, Georgia. I’m looking to buy. Um, part of your land, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever you’re interested in selling, whatever the piece we can all, um, the goal of this letter is to talk to you on the phone and see if you’re interested in selling any of your land and then you can kind of just explain it over there and then you can give them an offer price under that kind of a rough range if you want.
Like you said, we don’t have a set strategy for this, but that is one way that will work. We offer on average between depending on how much land you sell. Anywhere between 1, 700 an acre to 4, 200 an acre, something like that, just to get them on the phones. And then they call you back and he’s talking to him.
You ask him if they have interest, um, why they have interest, you know, break it down a little bit. And then you ask him how much they’re looking to sell potentially. And then they might tell you five acres. Oh, do you have a part of the land you want to sell? And they go all the way in the back. And you go, well, the back doesn’t have road access.
So then you start negotiating. Can we put it, can we get a little bit on the front? Or if you give me an easement back there, I can make it work, but my price per acre is going to be down. And you just start the negotiation process. And that’s why it’s so good for people, creative with an open mind and good on the phone.
Ron: A hundred percent. Like if you can get those people on the phone, like there is a, if there’s someone interested and you can get on the phone, like you’re going to make a deal out of it just because how. Much opportunity and even if you’re just sending blind offers for normal land, like you can, when you get these people on the phone, you can talk to them about this strategy to as far as like you’re sending, you’re just trying to buy 50 acres.
You made a blind offer for 50 acres and someone calls you back like you’re way too low. You can, you can start offering those people like, okay, but it seems like we’re way too far off for 50 acres. What I can do is take, uh, offer to buy 10 of your acres and being creative that way when you’re just doing this business model traditionally, but getting to the point Dan where.
Okay. You’re making half a million dollars. Like I don’t think your margins are going to be that crazily different from just flipping. So I think to make a half million dollars, like if you’re making 20, 25, 000 per deal, you’re going to need to do about 20 deals, but you can flurry in. Some of these might turn into subdivides, uh, which I do like.
And maybe you can get that average up to 40, 50, 000. And do 10, 12 deals a year to make 50, 000, 500, 000 in this business. It’s gross. It’s not a high volume for something like this. I don’t think.
Dan: 20 deals. That’s a, that’s two deals a month essentially. Um, and then if you get your price breaker or not price breaker, uh, profit per deal up a little bit, then you’re talking 10 to 15 deals, uh, which is very doable, a deal a month, 30 to 50 grand from us, uh, Survey hack is, is very doable, I think.
But I think the key is also like geek, like continue to test out how you’re acquiring cold calling, try it out. Uh, direct mail is going to work. You’re going to get people on the phone. You just got to learn how to structure it. We, I go back and forth, whether we want a set way to do this, like we have for other ones, uh, or more open ended because I think this is so creative to how much of the land you buy, where the land is.
What you’re targeting houses versus I don’t know if I want a set way, but more guidance to, Hey, this is the philosophy. This is how it works. This is kind of what you should do, but also look in this area. But I’m curious, guys, if you guys have done 5 to 10 survey hacks, which I know you guys have. Please like DM us and let us know how you’re getting them.
Let us know your strategy. What’s working? What’s not working because I want to know what’s working in the community. We see so many of these come through It’s like, okay, how did these come through and I want to I just want to dig in So if you guys have five deals, we’ll get you on if you guys have done five subdivides We’ll bring you up on the podcast and talk about some of our survey hacking
Ron: I think a lot of the people who are doing these niches and stuff have found a lot of value in the one on one coaching stuff where they get with Anthony or another one of our land specialists for 90 days and they really kind of take on the whatever niche they’re trying to.
That’s when people get very, we have a lot of our coaching students are doing subdivide, very targeted subdivides. Survey hacking is a big part of it. Um, some people are just doing the business traditional. Um, but a lot of people are doing those different types of deals and those coaching, but yeah, for sure.
If you’ve done five, 10 survey hacking, DM us on discord. I would love to talk to you in more detail on this because it is something that’s growing. There’s no competent, literally no competition in this. I can’t say we’ve been talking about for 12 months, but. Like there’s 3000 counties. There’s what? 150, 160 million parcels in the country that you can target with something like this.
So I think the opportunity is there. The thing about it, if you’re doing 20 deals of these, there is more that goes into it operationally because you are paying for a survey. There’s more costs. Uh, like you have closer to closing time or longer closing time. Yeah. So you need to, you need to get them under contract.
So you have a 90 day closing period or something, a 60 day closing period. Um, if you have that, like earnest down, earn it. Yeah. You want earnest down. Cause you want to get survey. You probably can list it at that time too. Dan can pre list it. Like if you get the right documentation, like getting earnest and also having,
Dan: Don’t list it too early, but list it.
Three weeks of being out.
Ron: Yeah, three weeks been out of closing.
Dan: Yeah.
Ron: So many different ways to do this but yeah, there is more operationally as far as Managing like if you’re doing 20 deals a year and you have 60 day closing period on all of them You’re gonna have a lot of deals that overlap for sure four or five deals that overlap You’re gonna have a lot of surveys going on But I think just finding like would you try to stay in one ballpark area where you can use the same surveyor?
Dan: Yeah, I’d kind of recomment that for a lot Yeah, for subdivides too. Um, not staying in one, but you know, it’s going to be easier if you can stay in multiple. The cool thing about survey hacks is you can stay in one area because there’s so many people with houses. You just, inventory is exponentially greater and you can re mail, re text, re cold call, whatever it is.
It’s always easier, but try different things out. Don’t stay in one market. Try a couple and then see what’s working and then come back to that.
Ron: Yeah, I think that’s, I think you can stay in a market and some target subdivide, some
Dan: Surveyors can do multiple too.
Ron: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There’ll be, they’ll go a hundred miles out, um, different areas.
Um, anything else, Dan, as far as like who should be looking into this? Is it anyone really? I think what’s cool about this strategy is. Marketing wise it might subdivide in two. It’s going to be extremely efficient marketing because they’re just such open ended offers You can make a lot of deals happen and be Your deals per mail or your deals per text are going to be really low I think.
Dan: I agree. I think anyone. Um Keep an open mind to it when you send out land for 50 acres and they call you back and you’re having a conversation with them and they might not want to sell their full 50. Give them another option. Hey, I know you’re kind of emotionally attached to this land. I understand you’ve had it for 40 years.
Uh, if you didn’t want to sell the whole thing, it seems like you’re kind of teetering that would you be interested in selling, you know, 20 acres of it or 10 acres of it? You know, we can subdivide off. It’s a little bit longer of a process. I need to get a surveyor before closing. I’ll put down payment in earnest.
And, uh, a title company will hold that and then we’ll, we’ll survey off whatever 10 acres you want. We can talk about that. And a lot of times you’ll have that opportunity there.
Ron: It’s such a specialized offer. Like those people, like on the vert, like you can just, they need money. Um, they don’t want to.
Separate from their entire piece of land that they’ve had in the family for X number of years. So it just makes a ton of sense from everyone’s perspective. They can get good capital behind them. Um, then you obviously have the land value. You want to be buying these at 50 percent of market value though.
That’s something we haven’t really talked about. If you’re like, you want to make sure you can double your money.
Dan: Unless your subdividing. Yeah.
Ron: Yeah, but double your money, whether 50 percent uh, so making sure like that’s what you want to do. If you’re buying five acres of parcel, you got to, and you can only flip it.
Um, you got to make sure that you can flip that and make money. And it makes sense. Uh, and yours, it’s just, you can’t just have a couple of thousand dollars in margin or something.
Dan: Yeah. And literally a lot of times people will just want to keep their five acres around and they’ll sell their 45 or keep two acres around it.
Ron: It’s going to be very common for the house ones.
Dan: Yeah. For the houses. So you got to be open with it. Sometimes they might only want to sell two. Um, but you just got to go, go in with an open mind and see what they’re, see what they’re looking for, why they’re looking for what, oh, they need 28, 000 work backwards from whatever they need and then just negotitate.
Ron: Relationship buildings is huge with this strategy. I think I agree. I think if you don’t like have a relationship with the seller, it’s much harder to go back and forth about these. And when things come up, maybe a surveyor got pushed out another week, two weeks. Um, but building a relationship with sellers in this strategy in particular, I think it’s huge.
Um, anything that has a longer closing period, I think having a better relationship with the seller is more important, uh, because things are going to come, maybe the survey comes back and you were trying to get 15 acres and it came back at 13 and you got to lower the price or something like that. Um, like that’s something that’s going to happen.
And by having that relationship, I think it’s going to help you. Make more money, just close more deals. I agree. I don’t have anything else to add. Cool. If you guys are listening, make sure you hit the subscribe button. If you’re listening on YouTube, listening on Spotify, leave us a review, share with a friend.
It helps us so much. Other than that, thank you so much. We’ll see you next time.
Dan: Thanks for joining guys. As always, thank you for joining. Please do us a huge favor and like, and subscribe our YouTube channel and share this with a friend. It really means the world to Ron and I, but more importantly, it could help change the life of someone else.
Thanks for joining. And we’ll see you next episode.
