The Peaks & Valleys of
The Land Flipping Business Model

Dan: Welcome to the real estate investing podcast, where we help you unlock your potential freedom through land investing, real estate investing, and entrepreneurship. Hey everyone, welcome back to the real estate investing podcast. Today’s topic, we’re discussing how to create consistency through the peaks and valleys of your land business.

I’m your host, Andrew Apke joined again by my brother and business partner, Ron Apke. Before we get into the show, let’s go over a question from one of our featured discord members. Today’s question is from David. David asked, What is the legalities for text messaging? Do I need to be concerned or watch out for anything specific while texting for land?

Ron: You want to take this one, Dan? I think you’ve done more of that with a launch control.

Dan: The short answer is yes, you do, but it depends. So launch control, if you guys are using a legitimate service like launch control, and there’s a ton of texting services and softwares out there, we’ve tested a bunch out.

You can check out launch control at landinvestingonline.com/launchcontrol. And the short answer is yes. But if you’re using a service like launch control, that was built for legalities. Like if you read their description about us, they were built by litigators, attorneys, and they are constantly changing their laws.

There are things that they have in place to assure that you’re being legal. They have a bunch of different compliance things they’re doing. That doesn’t mean it can’t slip through the cracks at all, but that’s their number one thing they kind of focus on is legalities with ever changing. Uh, laws run and certain different states and different regulations on things you do need.

The short answer to this question is yes. And look at your local guidelines for sure. Consult with launch control. They have incredible service. You can message them. I think, you know, like 12 hours a day, they’ll get right back with you. They can put you to their legal team. Like they were very, very good.

They can get you scripts. They help write scripts. That’s a really good service. So go to that website that I showed. If you guys are interested in them, they really help with that to kind of avoid it is a little more expensive. But they are, you can scale with them. It’s a really, really good software.

Other than that, let’s get into the show. Today’s topic. We’re talking about the peaks and valleys of the land business and how to create consistency because obviously like any business there’s ups and downs, Ron, this business, you can get two deals a year with 200,000 profit each. And I mean, talk about the ups and downs of that, Ron, think about that.

So yeah, like you can get two deals a year and make this business work, or you can have slower, more consistent, which we kind of recommend and then trickle in those massive deals as well. They will come, but we like bigger deals. Of course, that just means fewer deals. So it’s obviously the fewer, the usually the less consistent.

So it’s very challenging in this business because of that, Ron, you can make 150,000 off a deal.

Ron: Yeah, I mean, you can be having a horrible month and then one of those deals comes in a horrible week and then one of those deals comes in. And I think the hardest thing, Dan, with people in this business is the mail thing.

Like, you can go 5, 7, 000 mailers without a deal. Unfortunately, like, that’s just the reality of this business. Then your next 10, 000 mailers, you might get 5, 10, 50, I don’t know, deals. And like, that’s, that’s where I think a lot of these questions come in. And I think this is a really good topic. Cause I know a lot of people go through these.

Highs and lows and the lows sometimes feel like they’re longer than, uh, they actually are, but it just takes one call. You got to attack every single phone call. Like it’s that deal, like, like, it’s going to turn that bit, your business around, um, or turn that bad month into a good month. If you have that attitude, you have that mindset, you have the consistency with the mail.

It’s going to turn around Dan, but. Mail’s not cheap. Like we say it a lot. Mail’s not cheap, but it is extremely effective and the ROI on the mail is extreme, like really, really good. Uh, so being consistent with that I think is the best thing. But, um, I think it’s easier said than done though.

Dan: Yeah, it comes down to understanding how the business model works, like Ron’s saying.

You can go 5, 000 mailers without a deal, but we know about consistency. We know about getting good lead flow. Like we need to put 95% of our dollars into texting, into cold calling, into mail, whatever our acquisition methods are. Maybe it’s a combination of all three of them. Like that’s where money needs to go because, and it needs to be consistent.

You don’t want to be sporadic on that at that point because if you’re sporadic and only send mail once a month, you’re going to get leads, you know, coming in for two days out of that 30 days. And it just creates less consistent deal flow. If you’re only sending out once a quarter, whatever your situation is, it’s about, you want consistent leads coming in.

That’s the thing. Because when consistent good leads come in, you’re going to be acquiring consistently. You’re going to be listing properties consistently. You’re going to be selling properties consistently. You got to look at it like a deal pipeline. How much are you, how much do you have in the lead pipeline right now?

How much are you buying that’s in title? How much is for sale? How much do you have that’s under contract on the sell side? How much have you just sold? And you want, you want it to constantly be balanced on all sides of the business because those things run through the timeline and if you have zero, you’re acquiring, but you have five, you’re selling like there’s going to be a major gap in your income at some point.

Ron: Yeah. And the, those, those gaps are caused from inconsistent mail. Like, yes, you can have poor mail results for sure. But those gaps are going to get bigger and bigger if you are inconsistent with your mail volume and you’re not sending mail on a consistent enough basis. Um, and those, like, like I said, those gaps on those lows are going to make, it’s more difficult because mail is a delayed thing.

We’re not sending mail today And getting deals tomorrow from it, like, it takes us 2 to 3 weeks to get deals because these are being delivered in the mail and it takes 2 weeks for them to get to the mailboxes typically. Um, so by being consistent with the mail volume, I think that is the number 1 thing from not avoiding these lows because there always are going to be lows and it’s, it can be lows that aren’t mail related to it can be lows and a deal goes wrong.

Um, but. I think the consistent mail aspect is what I see from minimizing those loads as much as possible.

Dan: Exactly, because it all starts on the acquisition side. And that’s why we put so much focus on this business of getting properties under market value. That’s what we do. Then we buy it, then we sell it, then we make a profit.

All of your energy, almost all of your energy at first, almost 100% of your energy going towards acquisitions, Ron, stay consistent with it. Whether it’s texting, like Ron was talking about mail taking two, three weeks to hit. Which is absolutely correct. Another way to get instant leads. If things aren’t, if you’re waiting on that mail, or you’re doing this full time, especially like when you’re doing this full time, you can take things to the whole next level because then you can start texting her on, you can start follow up texts, you can start cold texts while that mails out, whatever you’re doing.

It just create opens up a whole other strategy. And the good thing with texting is it’s an on and off button, right? So you can turn it on and send out as many texts as you want that get you busy enough that gets you enough leads. Like it’s just a simple formula versus mail. It’s like, you don’t really know what’s going to come back necessarily.

It’s more effective. It’s been more efficient historically, but it’s very questionable. It takes three weeks to hit. We don’t know what the lead ratio is going to be. We know what typically. For texting, whatever response rate is going to be. Yep. So we know how much it’s, it’s a simple on and off button to keep that flow straight.

So that’s another, like the title of this is how to create consistency. If you’re doing this full time and you have the time to text, yes, it’s a lot more work than mail, but it’s a good way to create consistency.

Ron: And it’s, um, what was I going to say? It’s it’s it’s mail can be like, you’re not going to get as many leads texting.

You’re going to get more leads. Some people like it’s so caught up in how many phone calls they’re getting. I really don’t care about that. It’s nice getting phone calls, having negotiations, stuff like that. I care about the leads I’m getting. I care about the purchase of the person purchase agreements.

I’m getting texting is going to get you a crap ton of leads, but they are the legitimate sellers are fewer and far further between in my mind. And it is way more operational, um, in terms of the business. But that being said, both of them can get you really, really good leads. It’s just that consistency.

That’s going to, uh, like I’ve said, minimize those lows.

Dan: Exactly. And that’s kind of the last thing we touched on is just diversifying, like creating consistency in your business is diversifying your acquisitions. Look at some other ways, especially if you’d like, we said, if you guys aren’t doing this for, if you guys are doing this full time.

Cause mail, like the pros of mail, the best thing about mail is you can scale to a million dollars fairly easily with just mail. Because you, like Ron said, you don’t get that many leads compared to texting. So you don’t need a big staff. You get good qualified leads because it’s a blind offer and you’re closing a lot of those.

So it just doesn’t take a lot of operations. Texting, just like Ron was just talking about, you’re going to get 10 to 20% response rate. Which is a lot of messages to go through. You need VAs and acquisition people and get offers. And they don’t have an offer on their plate too. So you got to evaluate their land and get them an offer.

It just creates a whole nother separate business, but it can be very, very useful. And next thing I want to talk about, since we’re talking about consistency, cause someone brought this up yesterday, Ron was the bottleneck of selling land. You, you want to make sure things are coming, you’re acquiring things quick and you’re selling things quick to keep a smooth flow, things start getting caught up in disposition, which can happen, especially as markets start to decline a little bit.

And if your disposition slow, you’re going to have a bottleneck somewhere. Your, your for sale is going to start building up and you’re not selling enough and it’s just going to start stacking up and compiling and you need to focus on selling. It can get a bottleneck there.

Ron: Yeah. And not selling properties are going to do a couple of things.

Like one, if you’re buying the properties yourself, you’re going to run out of money. Um, or two, you’re going to hurt fund, uh, investor relationships because you’re not selling their properties fast enough or as fast as expected, whatever it is. One of those two things is going to happen and not selling properties fast.

Directly, uh, will reflect your acquisitions because you will have less money to acquire deals. If you cannot get investors their money back, if you cannot get money in your bank to be able to buy the deals, whatever the situation, but, um, yeah, disposition selling properties is a. I wouldn’t say I’m never really concerned with selling property because there’s always a price.

Someone’s going to be it’s when due diligence is done poorly. And we had an episode recently or something comes up on the sell side. Like crap. This property is half wet. Three quarters wet. That’s when it makes me more nervous. I know we can sell properties fast if we buy right. And that’s all it’s about.

It’s when things come up on the back end that I wasn’t expecting that that’s what slow slows our dispositions down is when there’s unexpected things on the back.

Dan: But that’s because we’re doing, we know how we know the recipe for it too. There’s a lot of people who don’t know the recipe for selling properties.

The recipe for selling properties is one either have a very good realtor. That’s number one. You guys can have bad realtors. You might think they’re good. You might have a bad realtor who didn’t list this. Make sure it’s listed everywhere. Make sure it looks good. Make sure they’re answering their phones.

Make sure they’re giving you updates. They need to be good land realtors and know what they’re doing. If you’re not using a realtor. Also, this goes to, if you are using a realtor too, you got to make sure your price, right? Like that’s number one price, right? With the right marketing in the right places to reach the biggest audience possible.

Like the combination. And it’s a lot easier said than done because a lot of people get hung up, but they’re like, Oh, I’ve had this listed on. Facebook marketplace only for the last, you know, three weeks. I’m not getting any purchases. Should I lower my price? I’m like, no, you shouldn’t lower your price. You haven’t been on the MLS.

You haven’t been on land. com. Definitely shouldn’t lower your price when you haven’t been seen by enough people. That’s not an indicator. Like there’s so many people who come to us. And try to lower the price, especially bad realtors, Ron, it’s like the price isn’t the issue. The issue is we’re not vetting these leads.

Like we have a bad realtor. We’re not vetting the leads. He’s not answering his phone, whatever that is. You gotta understand where the bottleneck is. And really go from there, I think.

Ron: We always talk, I think we talk about it so much. Like lowering the price so you have buyers. But that being said, I bet there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in our community lost every month by underselling properties because it’s posted horribly.

Um, we just had a situation where we took over a property to sell, um, that was being sold by a manager and I think it was listed at 47, And it just, I, I don’t, the property was posted. Great. It looked great. I think it was more of the response and people responding to the leads or lack thereof. We posted it up for 60, 000 and sold it in like 2 days.

Um, so I think there’s a lot of money. It, the, the solution is not always just lower the price. That’s why I’m very cautious when telling people like. The first thing I evaluate if it’s a realtor is a realtor, like realtors are going to always tell you your price too high. They want their job to be easy.

They want to get their commission. You dropping the price 10, 000 only affects their commission 600. If it’s 6%, it affects you 9, 400. If they drop it, it barely affects their commission. So they want to sell it fast and turn it fast because it doesn’t affect them that much, whether they sell it for 50, But it affects you a crap ton.

Like that is a lot of money coming out of your pocket. So evaluate that before you just drop the price.

Dan: Exactly. I see it so much. And especially for newer people where that don’t really understand it. So it is understandable. You just need to, uh, all everyone brings their deals to the cause you’re on to go over their deals, bring your listings to the call.

And let’s go over those that we can start evaluating listings because we can look at it and be like. All right. This is priced, right? You just got to wait for the right offer. If it’s a slower market, your price, right? The listing looks great. You’re answering your calls. All that stuff might just be the market.

Maybe you need to drop the price if you want to sell it quick. But there’s a lot of times where a listing will have 40 saves in two days or four days, Ron on Zillow, it’s blowing up and, or maybe let’s say it’s been 14 days and they have like 50 saves, Ron, cause that’s enough time to get offers and stuff and they’re not getting offers.

And like, that’s when we kind of need to step in and say, what’s going on with this land when it’s getting this kind of traction, it’s priced right. Should get an offer probably soon, right?

Ron: Yeah, for sure. Like if it’s getting a lot of like something else is wrong, you got to evaluate everything that’s going on with that.

Um, so you don’t just lose money. Like if you’re not, if you’re the one selling yourself and you’re not answering phone calls or you’re not responding or getting these people what they need, these interested buyers, like that’s on you. Uh, so instead of lowering the price, uh, fix that situation where maybe you do need a realtor, cause you don’t have time to call these people back.

Um, but evaluating that, I think. Can make you a lot more money without even, you know, you’re losing money without even knowing it when you’re underselling properties.

Dan: Exactly. Last Ron, just kind of to wrap things up, I think the key to creating consistency to go over this episode. Is one consistently marketing, putting all your efforts, especially at first, all your efforts, get things under contract, like that, like consistently get things under contract, consistently send out offers, whether you’re texting or mailing or whatever it is, like the consistency of the mailing goes a very, very, very long way.

I know we say it a lot, but I cannot emphasize like, if you want consistency, you got to do that. And then secondly, be very good at selling properties. Like we are a marketing company. We buy land under market value and then resell it ourselves. Like where are the, we, we find a way to sell rural vacant land.

Very, very well. That’s what we do.

Ron: Yeah. I mean, that is the name of our business. That’s why there’s so much value in what we do is we know how to sell things. That a lot of people, even realtors cannot sell, like we know how to market land. And we also know how to acquire land via our methods. Uh, so those two combinations being consistent with those is going to keep your deal flow, it’s going to keep the less of a roller coaster and more of a flat line going up, hopefully in your business, opposed to being a roller coaster and having really low lows.

Dan: And we’ve bought land from realtors that were in realtor contracts before that expired because the realtor couldn’t send a data satellite picture. This has happened a couple of times. Really couldn’t sell it. They had a satellite picture. Their six month contract expired. We sent the owner a mail just constantly like the shotgun approach.

One of the people who just had their properties listed is actually still on the MLS. He didn’t take it down yet, but they got the mail at the right time. They can sell it. Their property was listed for 112, 000. We bought his property for 65, 000 from him because it was just cash. We could get it in two weeks.

He was sick of dealing with the realtor. He didn’t know what it would sell for. He knew he had it up for 112 grand and it wouldn’t sell for six months. They kept dropping the price, whatever. So we sent him offering cash that was very appealing to him. We sold that property 137, 000 or 140, 000.

Ron: It was a phenomenal deal.

It was just listed so poorly. The realtor was near impossible to get a hold of. He tried to list it himself. Yeah, like the realtor just, the realtor wasn’t doing his job. It was a one picture posting and that’s what happens a lot of times. I’m not, we’re not saying go after MLS postings or expired MLS postings.

But that’s just an example of a realtor not doing their job and just, it’s not the price. It was not the price. It was the execution of the marketing and the execution of following through with buyers.

Dan: Well, yeah, the first step was they priced it wrong because they overpriced it at first. They dropped it to 112 over the six or eight month contract, whatever it was, they started at like 200 or something.

We sold that within a week. I’m telling you, it was just, that just shows like what we do is in marketing. So you want to focus on disposition acquisition. Those are two major pillars in this business to keep that good, consistent deal flow. 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.